The United Nations has pulled staff out of two districts in southern Malawi where a vampire scare has triggered mob violence in which at least five people have been killed.
Belief in witchcraft is widespread in rural Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, where many aid agencies and NGOs work. A spate of vigilante violence linked to vampire rumours also erupted in Malawi in 2002.
“These districts have severely been affected by the ongoing stories of blood sucking and possible existence of vampires,” the UN Department on Safety and Security (UNDSS) said in a security report on the Phalombe and Mulanje districts that was seen by Reuters.
Of course this type of superstitious fear does not stop with Vampirism.
You may have read recently about the murder of numerous children in Africa accused of being witches.
It was so widespread that they had to found a relief effort just to rescue children accused of witchcraft.
This is why I bang the drum so hard against religion on this blog.
You may think that modern Christianity has nothing in common with this type of mass hysteria, but if so then you have not attended a fundamentalist church where talk of demonic possession, fights with the devil, and the ongoing battle between good and evil are peppered throughout Sunday sermons as if they are as common as household pets.
When you tell people that perfectly natural phenomena have a supernatural basis you are potentially disconnecting them from a reality based existence and plunging them into a world of terrifying possibilities which could quite easily convince them that their neighbors, friends, and even children, are demons, witches, and yes, vampires.
Enslavement. From the beginning of mankind man has used various means to enslave his fellow man. Religion, fear, food, currency, threat, ignorance, etc. Resist.
ReplyDeleteWell, and also from the beginning man has invented stories to justify killing people they don't like.
DeleteYou mean like 9-11 there 8:13
DeleteThat's why Bush Jr paints naked pics of himself. Guilt.
What does the global dotard drumpf tweet about this?
ReplyDeleteDear God (ha) Gryphen,
ReplyDeleteThey have NOTHING on the Catholic church. Believe me (again, ha), I grew up in a cult of that. Terrifying possibilities, tell me about it.
Apparently there are Satanic rituals occurring in the Vatican right now, and they are communicating with Los Angeles by telephone.
Why not some evil telepathy, is beyond me.
And don't even get me started.
Subjecting children to this kind of horrifying--yes, horrifying--crap is almost beyond child abuse, to me. Because it's ingrained in the mind, and the fear stays with you.
5:03, it's just SO much easier to simply say BRAINWASHING.
ReplyDeleteEXODUS>65 MILLION
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/asia/myanmar-aung-san-suu-kyi-speech-facts/index.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/record-65-million-people-displaced-2016-170619065619374.html
Je$u$ does NOT save.
oT;
ReplyDeleteJohn Roberts’ Nightmare. His decision on gerrymandering case could ruin Supreme Court’s reputation. http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2017/10/11/data-wonk-john-roberts-nightmare/
Read the surprisingly scathing letter leading sociologists sent to him. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/12/16464188/john-roberts-sociological-gobbledygook-eduardo-bonilla-silva-gerrymandering
"Chief Justice John Roberts, who dismissed the concept as “sociological gobbledygook” in oral arguments for the case. In that one phrase, he seemed to dismiss the very idea of using social science to try to figure out the effects of redistricting efforts. “Does this state assembly map make it nearly impossible for the opposition to retake control” is an empirical question, which needs to be answered with empirical methods. The best methods we have at the date are those of political science, sociology, and economics. Indeed, as Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan observed during arguments, the people drawing these maps are relying heavily on social scientists to more effectively rig them.
DeleteRoberts wasn’t just rebuked by his colleagues, however. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, professor of sociology at Duke and the president of the American Sociological Association, who sent an open letter to Justice Roberts excoriating him for his dismissal of sociology and social science more generally: UP^THIS SAME GUY DID THIS>
"the leader of the Supreme Court may have been just a tad nervous when he got one word of the presidential oath of office a little out of order.
Obama smiled slightly when he realized that Roberts, a fellow Harvard Law School graduate, misplaced the word “faithfully” during the oath. but the new president joined in the fun and repeated it the way Roberts initially administered it.
(Lest we forget, in the Senate Obama voted against confirming Roberts to the high court.
Here is how the oath is supposed to be administered: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
And here’s how it went:>On purpose?
http://blogs.reuters.com/talesfromthetrail/2009/01/20/roberts-obama-jumble-presidential-oath-of-office/
Robert$ and Gor$uch> $editionist? Traitor$?
I like scary stuff. It's hardwired in my DNA. I like a good scare. Bigfoot. UFOs. And so on. It's who we are.
ReplyDeleteBut sometimes we lean toward a collective mental illness. It's a designed thing by the ruling governments. For instance, in our country, we lean toward chaos, and nonsense because we have such leader. Basically, it all depends on who is ahead there on the caboose. Right now it's little Donny. We just ride right along like true victims. In Africa, lack of education, nutrition, and despotic nutcases, those poor people most certainly will start to see and hear things. Everyone must one day be required to read Carl Sagan's demon haunted world.
Sounds like Ghost of Shaka Zulu needs to make a visit.
DeleteChase those freaks to hell.
;)
i believe in some of it. i'm living in a haunted house. i never use to believe but i've seen him and he eats my apples. don't they sell them in the afterlife? at least it's not Beetlejuice. other than the apples he is very polite. he bangs around in the kitchen a lot. it's an apartment house and the neighours talk about him too. a house burned down on the land here. it's the only only apartment building in a neighourhood of Victorian houses. some people dug up the midden(outhouse). people would throw their trash down there and they found unbroken light bulbs and yes!!! a small glass bottle pressed with the word snake oiL!!! found a lot of those, in fact. so it wasn't that long ago when we believed in odd things.(some one had been really sick or really addicted because they found a lot of small bottles, and it was the days you could order heroin from the sears catalog.) ah, the good old days.
DeleteHERE!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/how-a-growing-christian-movement-is-seeking-to-take-control-of-the-top-sectors-of-american-society/
Um, a bunch of hysterical uneducated third world people having hysterics over made up shit and legends? Surprised? No. Just sad that anyone is taking them seriously. What they don't understand is overbreeding, starvation and overpopulation are their greatest dangers, um, not vampires.
ReplyDeletenow you won't believe me-i didn't at first. but i lived next to a house that,yes, had only what could be described as a demon. no one lived there longer than a month. no one-not even the college kids. the front door was always wide open. i called the landlord and the cops because i was afraid drunk|drugs would go in and set the place on fire. no matter how often it was locked up, the next day the door was wide open. he changed the locks. didn't work. i babysat there one night and i was there for a half hour and brought the baby home with me. there were sounds and shadows and things moving at the corner of my eyes. i was freaked. i never believed before that night. there is evil in this world, and it all isn't named trump. oh, i moved away and about 2 months after i was gone the house burned down. it's been since 2000 and the lot is still empty. no one wants it. maybe a bad killing? and there are native American graves all though this small city in Wisconsin.they found a lot of metal in that yard-things i didn't know what for. and there is an empty lot i won't walk by here now. call me crazy, but sometimes things are not right. i wouldn't even bring lilacs into my house from that place. this is turning into a horror novel, but i'm remember so much of that now. i was sick all the time i lived there, and so were the people in the house on the other side. we had Asian immigrants move into that house, and the kids played in my yard,even though theirs was real big. they didn't like their yard. it was just bad. i think bad things happen, some one rapes and kills a kid, and the karma just hangs around. the house i lived was built around 1920-i found a 1920 penny in the yard. the scary house was older. i found a cookbook in the basement, from the 20's and sold it for a very nice amount of $$$$. it pays to explore old places. if they are not evil.
ReplyDeletethere are vampires. it is a illness called polyphia and it is the cause of vampire myths in Europe (although most cultures have vampires unique to their culture). the sufferer can't go into the day. the skin rots. the gums pull back, the teeth look like fangs. they would try to self medicate with blood-human. their urine was purple. i was tested for this when i became very ill. i was tested for all kinds of things. i had the lowest amount of blood recorded in a living person since they they started recording things like that. i didn't run around at night trying to drink other people's blood. i was treated with tranfusions from my sisters. they still don't know..maybe a vampire got me. i doubt there is a plague of polyphia in Africa. it's riddled with war, poverty and AIDS. people return to old beliefs when civilization breaks down.(The Walking Dead-how some people in that show became cannibals even though game and wild plants were easy to find?)(you can snare rabbits and such, you don't need a noise making gun). men are raping little girls because they believe it will cure AIDS. that was done in Europe for syphillis. we don't understand, we go backwards. people in Africa don't always have access to education like we have. my sister's son went to Africa with the Peace Corp's, really the middle of no where, they had to buy Lee a special phone that would link to a satellite once a week. it was a two day drive to the closest "town". that is deep poverty and deep ignorance. he won't talk about it-only about the animals there, i asked that. really big bugs- and they ate them.
ReplyDeletePeople who indiscriminately"bang the drum against religion" do so from personal bias and a limited viewpoint.
ReplyDeleteGeez, even Gryphen admits to admiring faith in action on the part of people like Mr. Rogers and President Jimmy Carter.
The comments here about personal experience with demons and haunting remind me of the books of M. Scott Peck, a distinguished psychiatrist who, after years of personal experience with disturbed people, started to believe that Satan truly existed.