This whole thing happening in Uganda is just so unbelievable. It sounds like it’s out of some kind of whacked-out novel. There is this group laying waste to everything, calling itself the Lord’s Resistance Army, which consists of 20,000 children most of whom were kidnapped and brainwashed. The 10-15 year old soldiers maraud the countryside raping, killing, torturing and burning people out of their homes.

The LRA has operated for 17 years under the aegis of an illiterate former alter boy, and nephew of a voodoo priestess, Joseph Kony.

The child soldiers are indoctrinated in Kony’s apocalyptic belief in the arrival of the “Silent World” — a time when all guns fall silent and those who use primitive weapons such as stones and spears will prevail. He uses selected Biblical passages to justify his soldiers severing limbs of their victims.

Kony, now in his 40s, is said to predict the outcome of battles by setting fire to toy guns and helicopters to see how they burn. He predicts LRA casualties by putting his finger in a glass of water.

In order to swell their ranks, the LRA soldiers kidnap other children and force them usually to murder their parents so that they have nowhere to return to. In response to this, most parents have sent their children away to live with a group called “the Night Dwellers” which are bands of children who huddle together in open spaces at night seeking safety in numbers.

The LRA’s stated goal is to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish a country based on the 10 Commandments. Evidently, they have been receiving support from neighboring Sudan as well. The UN is currently “investigating” the ongoing atrocities, and there seem to be a bunch of news items about them out right now. Crazy shit.