Free Republic

Victims of land grabs in Myanmar have eagerly tested new-found freedoms by protesting and sending petitions to the president and parliament, to no avail. Now some are turning to old ways: Curses and black magic. Coffins marked with the names of those who seized property have been set ablaze. In rugged central regions of the country, aggrieved villagers have prayed for mountain gods to unleash their wrath. […] Land seizures by the military, the government and private companies linked to junta cronies have long been commonplace in this Southeast Asian country, whether for development or the extraction of natural resources....

The iconic Doomsday Clock remains poised at five minutes until midnight, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced today (Jan. 14). The clock is no doomsday device — rather, it's a visual metaphor for the danger of a "civilization-threatening technological catastrophe." Every year, the board analyzes international threats, particularly nuclear arsenals and climate change, and decides where the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock should rest. The closer it is to midnight, the closer the world is to doom. "As always, new technologies hold the promise of doing great good, supplying new sources of clean...

If you think you’ve seen all the crazy antics the pro-abortion side in Texas has to offer as it opposes a pro-life bill to ban late-term abortions, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” They’ve found a new way to protest the bill by making voodoo dolls and sending the proceeds from the sale of the dolls to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s biggest abortion business. The Blaze has more on what’s going on in the Lone Star State as Perry signs the bill into law. Michelle Sinched, a noted corset maker, has found a new way to protest the bill: She’s making...

Residents in northern Namibia, on the southwest coast of Africa, have reported being terrorized by a bizarre dog-pig hybrid creature. The animal is said to be mostly white and unlike anything the villagers have ever seen, with a doglike head and the broad, round, nearly hairless back and shoulders of a giant pig. The beast was spotted chasing and attacking dogs, goats and other domestic animals in this arid region not far from the Kalahari desert. As often happens when rumors of monsters spread in rural areas around the world, some locals have taken extra safety precautions, such as traveling...

“The star attractions were these three effigy dolls dunked upside down in this brown liquid. One of them had my name, and the other two had the names of investigators.” Each doll had pins in its eyes, he said. Attached to the dolls was the case number in the criminal charges. Hanrahan said that inside the home on Thorndike Road investigators also found their names wrapped around a baseball bat. “Even the U.S. marshals were spooked,” he said. Officials decided to find out the background of the shrine, with help of a UCLA professor.

Why God Hates Haiti The frustrating theology of suffering. By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK Published Jan 15, 2010 From the magazine issue dated Jan 25, 2010 Haiti is surely a Job among nations. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere: half its population lives on less than a dollar a day. With 98 percent of its forests felled and burned for firewood, Haiti is uniquely vulnerable to flooding from hurricanes. In 2008 four storms in as many weeks left a million homeless. Haiti has an infant-mortality rate worse than that of many African nations, and its people are...

US evangelical preacher Pat Robertson levied blame Wednesday for the devastating earthquake in Haiti on Haitians themselves, saying that the country "swore a pact to the devil" at its creation. "Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," Robertson said on his Christian Broadcasting Network show "The 700 Club." Haitians were originally "under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil," said the 80-year-old former presidential candidate. "They said, we will serve you if you will...

If our nation continues to turn its face against God, it will pay severely with divine curses. There is an obvious, pressing need for a spiritual revival to engulf America; only then will divine blessings return to this country.

"We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." Video at link.

Excerpt - PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) — In a Haitian dance hall transformed into a temple, dozens of voodoo practitioners dressed all in white, scarves around their necks in red, yellow or green, came Friday to pay homage to their first-ever "supreme master". "Open the barriers," a sole voice intoned in Creole. "The master has arrive," answered the crowd of men and women, as they rose to greet Max Beauvoir, 72. Until recently, the priests of voodoo, the heavily spirit-focused, African-rooted belief of many Haitians, operated autonomously without a formal hierarchy or rules. But through the associations of followers, they decided to...

Hugo Chavez followers are said to be actually using witchcraft and incantations to bring down their mortal enemy #1... The United States of America,

A six-year-old albino girl in Burundi has been found dead with her head and limbs removed, in the latest killing linked to ritual medicine. Albinos in the region have been targeted because of a belief peddled by witchdoctors that their body parts can be used for magic potions. The girl, who was attacked on Sunday, was the sixth person with albinism to be killed in Burundi since September. There have also been a number of attacks in neighbouring Tanzania. ...The head of the Burundi Albinos' Association, Kasim Kazungu, says people with albinism had not suffered any discrimination until other Burundians...

LIBREVILLE, gabon–When the body of 13-year-old Ralph Edang N'na was found drained of blood and with gaping wounds in his genitals, chest and neck last month, many in Gabon thought it was politicians who had ordered his killing. The murder of children and young adults, whose organs are eaten or used to make magical amulets, has increased in recent years in the oil-rich central African nation. Campaigners say some Gabonese politicians use the black magic rituals to boost their chances of winning lucrative government posts. With elections to municipal councils on Sunday, many fear a spate of gruesome child murders....

Monrovia - An evangelical pastor described the atrocities he and his men committed during the Liberian civil war, including magical rituals that involved slaughtering children and eating their hearts. Joshua Milton Blahyi spared no details on Tuesday as he told Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of his years with one of the most feared militias of the war. Dressed in an immaculate suit, Blahyi, 37, said it was for the TRC to decide whether he should be given an amnesty or prosecuted. "I am willing to go to court if necessary," he said. "And I will repeat just what...

A women was stripped and brutally beaten with hot iron rods after she was branded a witch and held responsible for the death of a woman in a Jharkhand village, police said Monday. The incident came to light only after a week when the woman from Dadighagar in Hazaribagh district, about 130 km from here, approached some local reporters Sunday. Basdeo Manjhi said 45-year-old Chandmuni Devi had used black magic against his wife who died of snakebite on July 14. He complained to the panchayat that ordered that Chandmuni be stripped and beaten with hot rods and sickles. Chandmuni and...

The fixation with the occult dates back to apartheid, writes Gavin du Venage in Cape Town A CHURCH custodian is murdered in the dead of night and his mutilated corpse, bearing vicious stab wounds to his head and side mimicking those of Jesus Christ on the cross, is left in front of the altar. On the ground, in the victim's blood, is written the word "Satun" (sic). The Halloween slaying of 53-year-old Charles Jacobs, janitor at the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints in the quiet, church-going town of Paarl, east of Cape Town, is the latest in...

Channel 10 Executive Producer Avi Barzilai on Wednesday repulsed the idea of broadcasting a tape of the Pulsa Denura ceremony against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, calling the rite "a despicable ceremony by despicable people bought and broadcast by individuals who pretend to be journalists and would do anything in order to raise their ratings." "As a senior journalist," he told Army Radio, "I don't regard them as members of the profession," Barzilai continued. Israel Segal - chief editor of Channel 2's current affairs program Mishal Ham that acquired the tape for $5,000 - claimed that the moment the tape became...

The modest brick homes and landscaped lawns of Green Acres look like fine places to settle. Nestled within Bellefontaine Neighbors in north St. Louis County, the wooded subdivision is home to gays and straights, whites and blacks, executives and utility workers. Hardly seems the kind of neighborhood where police officers once paid almost daily visits. The Bellefontaine Neighbors Police Department has spent the past three years refereeing a freakish feud between the neighbors at numbers four and five on Green Acres Road. The trouble began with a dispute over a driveway, then snowballed into a bizarre free-for-all involving everything from...

London - Police fear that dozens of children may be victims of black magic in Britain and a case last week of three adults found guilty of torturing a young girl whom they believed to be a "witch" is just the tip of the iceberg. The ordeal suffered by the eight-year-old from Angola at the hands of her aunt and another woman and man is now over. Her abusers are due to be sentenced on July 8, and criminal court judge Christopher Moss warned on Friday that their prison term would be "lengthy". But the case - in which the...

Anna Ayala once kept a black magic shrine and slammed her husband's ex-wife against a wall when the woman complained about his failure to pay child support, the ex-wife claimed in court records. This portrayal of the woman accused of planting a finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili was contained in court documents supporting the arrest of Ayala's husband, Jaime P. Plascencia, at the couple's Las Vegas home on Wednesday. Plascencia was charged with six felony counts, including failure to pay support for children from previous relationships with two San Jose women and allegedly stealing his young son's identity...