24 October 2010

I know it's probably gilding the lily...

...but there's just a few small details the Globe & Mail (and celebrity/guest editor Bono)... left out of their recent mini-series on the "socio-economic miracle" that is modern-day Africa...
"The dismembered body of a young albino boy has been found in a river on the Burundi-Tanzania border, reports say. Albino body parts are prized in parts of Africa, with witch-doctors claiming they have special powers."

"In Tanzania, the body parts of people living with albinism are used by witch-doctors for potions which they tell clients will help make them rich or healthy. Dozens of albinos have been killed, and the killings have spread to neighbouring Burundi."
And here I've been moaning about the state of the Canadian healthcare system. Suddenly, that six hour wait in the local emergency department seems, well... kinda trivial.

Meanwhile... on the social justice front...
"Giles Muhame, editor of the two-month-old Rolling Stone paper, denied that he had been inciting violence by publishing the names next to a headline which read 'Hang them'."

"The BBC's Joshua Mmali in Kampala says a newspaper that was barely known in a country with a poor reading culture, has now grabbed international headlines."
Seriously... "a poor reading culture?" That's gonna be the focus of your article here?

How many millions of lightly-armed, blue-helmeted, politically hamstrung troops... you figure we'll need to solve little wrinkles like this?

Un-freakin'-believable.

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RELATED: Bright lights, big city...

...never an exorcist around when you need one...
A four-month-old baby is dead and 10 other people are injured in the small town of La Verriere, west of Paris, France after they jumped out of their apartment's third-storey window after believing to have seen the devil.

"Thirteen people were in an apartment (watching TV) on the second floor when, at around 3a.m., one of the occupants heard his child crying,"

"The man in question, of African origin, who was completely naked, got up to feed his child, at which point the other occupants took him for the devil."

The man, 30, was stabbed in the hand and thrown out of the apartment. When he tried to barge back into the flat, the other occupants began jumping out of the window.