Cross-dressing superhero cannibal guerillas begin WW III in earnest in Liberia.

[Poll_Blind]

From http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/01/18/vbs.liberia/index.html?hpt=C2">VICE UK via CNN. Note: The video is graphic but not as graphic as it might seem, given the nature of the subject matter.

"This is like a civil war on steroids. It's a post-apocalyptic armageddon with child soldiers smoking heroin, cross-dressing cannibals, systematic rape: It's total hell on Earth." -Shane Smith, reporter

I thought I got a spider bite on my leg this morning. It troubled me. I worried about what kind of spider it might have been- whether it was benign or one of those nasty poisonous ones. Maybe it was an ingrown hair- you never know.

Then I watched this video.

I forgot all about the spider and put some coffee on, grateful that even if I am murdered today, nobody's going to do it an then eat my fucking heart.

This is my description of the first 30 seconds or so of this piece:

Two men slog through the mire of an African marsh. Joshua Blahyki, Liberian guerilla leads the way.

The white man behind him, a reporter wearing a blue polo shirt and dark Raybans asks "So is that why your nickname was 'General Butt-Naked'?"

Joshua matter-of-factly replies "Yes, because I was naked. Because I fought naked."

Reporter "A lot of people would drink or do drugs before fighting?"

"Yeah, most of my boys..." begins Joshua.

"Yeah..."

"They would drain the blood from an innocent child and drink it before going into battle." he finishes.

"You killed the child?" the reporter asks.

"Yes..."

"And then drink the blood?"

"Yeah..."

Cut to a group of teenage Liberian boys. In the middle of the group, a boy holds up a human heart.

"I lifted it up to the temple. Now I'm gonna eat it. It's a Liberian General's heart." he says as the heart swings from side to side.

Cut to another teenage boy, dressed like some kind of post-apocalyptic super hero. Green shirt, white gloves, green facepaint and black Green Hornet-style mask, he raises the AK-47 over a wall and fires a full-auto salvo into the distance.

Cut to a bunch of men. A reporter asks "What kind of war is this? A guerilla, or World War III?"

"World War III" they reply.

Strange, disturbing and unfortunately real. I can't believe I'm living on the same planet as the one this video was about. Really. I'm not really sure I have good reason for posting it- except the astoundingly grim spectacle of it all and the natural realization that these people are me and you, with different skin in a vastly different world and one where food and safety and life itself come at a greatly inflated price.

PB

[cali]

1. holy whatever. or rather unholy whatever. I don't know why but I had

trouble processing this. I kept thinking it was a description of a video game.

[Poll_Blind]

3. I was thinking more or less the same thing: I don't have a...

...frame of reference to easily fit this reality into my world-view except in the realm of fiction of some sort or an ultra-violent video game. Some ultra-violent insane video game.

PB

[Schema Thing]

10. I have a weird defense against this sort of thing

I read about this, and saw this, or similar videos, a year or two ago. I somehow manage to forget it. It's as if it's too much for me to process, too horrible, so it just goes away. Your post brought it back of course, but now it's like a deja vu more than an actual memory.

[NoPasaran]

4. Wait, you haven't mentioned the weird part

The former General Butt Naked is now a Christian evangelical preacher.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1576088/Gen-Butt-Naked-confesses-to-nude-killings.html

[Poll_Blind]

5. ...

:wtf:

PB

[jobycom]

2. Not naming names, but...

sounds like some of the battles in GD. :rofl:

(Disclaimer: That was a joke. Any resemblance to any real person or persons, or forum or actual thread discussion, is purely in the mind of the reader and/or me. Nothing is expressly stated or implicitly implied in any commital, legal manner.)

[NYC_SKP]

9. I will eat your heart and drink your blood.

Oh, wait, I think you might be on "my side" of GD things.

Lemme get back to you on that heart-eating blood-drinking thing.

KTHXBAI.

:P

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. Best served with arugula stuffing.

Just another reason that being a vegetarian on DU must be hard.

:rofl:

[pscot]

6. The Liberian equivent to our founding fathers

I kept hoping it was a video game.

[kenny blankenship]

7. Note to self: move Liberia to bottom of the bucket list.

[NYC_SKP]

8. The Subject Line Got My Attention. So, I Watched the Video about Liberia. Wow. Bookmaring VBS

http://www.vbs.tv/newsroom

What a mess.

Is this kind of thing a growing phenomenon?

Is this the future of the world?

:shrug:

[FedUpWithIt All]

11. I really just want off. Seriously. I don't want to recognise *this* world.

I don't want it to make sense to me.

And it is not just in other places. Shit is everywhere.

I really do think that we could have chosen differently. We blew it.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Wasn't this from several years ago?

A saw a similar sounding video (I haven't watched this one) with a similar premise with a teenager biting a heart that clearly wasn't human and pranking the reporter.

[Poll_Blind]

13. Not familiar with that other one but this is an 8-part series. From the footage it's hard...

...to imagine this is staged in any way, given...well, given the raw brutality of it all. Did you get chance to watch the piece? Only part 1 out so far, though.

PB