Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Holy ass!

General Butt Naked returned to Liberia and confessed to killing about 20000 people during its civil war.

"Damn," - I thought, - "if my parents called me Butt Naked, I'd probably become a homicidal maniac too." But no, this guy was originally called Milton Blayee, and earned the Butt Naked nickname for killing people without any clothes on. (He was not wearing any clothes, not his victims. Or maybe they too. Who knows.)

One of the activities he did while naked was sacrificing children and eating their hearts. For luck. I know politicians demand that people should make sacrifices during a war, but I didn't know somebody took this quite that literally.

Later Mr. Ass found God and became an evangelical Christian preacher in Ghana. I can imagine that his sermons on what exactly a good Christian is not supposed to do are quite graphic and colorful.

All that right when Helsingin Sanomat just told us that there were more murder and manslaughter per person in Lappi than in West and Central Africa.

Let's see. Liberia: 3,195,935 people (now), 250 000 killed during 1989-2003 (Butt wasn't the only participant). That would make 7822 killings per 100000 people during the whole time, about 559 a year. Lappi has just above 6 killings per year per 100000 people.

But of course, the killing done during a war does not qualify as crime. Logical in a way, but how do you count murder and manslaughter during a war? And let's face it, sacrificing children and eating their hearts while naked does not quite conform to the Finnish idea of warfare. The Geneva Convention says that you have to wear a uniform to be a legitimate soldier. Their standards of uniforms are quite lax, an armband would be enough, but I am pretty sure that a heart sticking out of a naked combatant's mouth still doesn't qualify.

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