{"id":7269,"date":"2016-03-12T13:49:40","date_gmt":"2016-03-12T20:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7269"},"modified":"2016-03-13T13:54:07","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T20:54:07","slug":"general-butt-naked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2016\/03\/12\/general-butt-naked\/","title":{"rendered":"General Butt Naked"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2016\/03\/14\/general-butt-naked-the-repentant-warlord\" target=\"_blank\">from The New Yorker<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h1>The Greater the Sinner<\/h1>\n<h3>A Liberian warlord\u2019s unlikely path to forgiveness.<\/h3>\n<p>BY <a title=\"Damon Tabor\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/contributors\/damon-tabor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"author\">DAMON TABOR<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"The Greater the Sinner\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/160314_r27715-1200.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/160314_r27715-690.jpg\" alt=\"Blahyi\u2019s public contrition satisfied a deep need, a reporter said. \u201cIt was only Joshua who said, \u2018I am sorry, please forgive me.\u2019\u00a0\u201d\" width=\"480\" \/><\/a><em><span class=\"caption-text\">Blahyi\u2019s public contrition satisfied a deep need, a reporter said. \u201cIt was only Joshua who said, \u2018I am sorry, please forgive me.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<em>CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH BY DOMINIC NAHR FOR THE NEW YORKER<\/em><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>On a recent Sunday morning in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, a few dozen people gathered in a tin-roofed church to hear a former warlord preach. His name is Joshua Milton Blahyi, but most Liberians still know him by his nom de guerre from the nineteen-nineties: General Butt Naked. A burly forty-five-year-old with a head shaped like a cannon shell, Blahyi took the stage wearing black dress pants and a cream-colored shirt. He has delivered sermons across West Africa about the power of forgiveness and the perfidy of Liberian politicians, but one of his favorite topics is himself. \u201cIn South Africa I was privileged to preach to parliament,\u201d he told his congregation. \u201cHallelujah! It can happen to you!\u201d A slip of paper fell from his Bible, and a worshipper hurried to pick it up. \u201cKeep it as a souvenir,\u201d Blahyi said.<\/p>\n<p>In 1980, Samuel Doe seized the Presidency of Liberia in a coup. Blahyi claims that he later became Doe\u2019s spiritual adviser, and that he used witchcraft to help Doe win a second term. (Doe also used more mundane methods, such as burning his opponents\u2019 ballots.) On Christmas Eve, 1989, Charles Taylor, a former Liberian government official, invaded from Ivory Coast with a hundred soldiers, and the country plunged into civil war. There was a ceasefire in 1996, and Taylor was elected the next year. Then, in 1999, another rebel group invaded from Guinea, sparking a second conflict, which lasted until Taylor was ousted, in 2003.<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2016\/03\/14\/general-butt-naked-the-repentant-warlord\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at The New Yorker<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The New Yorker The Greater the Sinner A Liberian warlord\u2019s unlikely path to forgiveness. BY DAMON TABOR Blahyi\u2019s public contrition satisfied a deep need, a reporter said. \u201cIt was only Joshua who said, \u2018I am sorry, please forgive me.\u2019\u00a0\u201dCREDIT PHOTOGRAPH BY DOMINIC NAHR FOR THE NEW YORKER On a recent Sunday morning in Monrovia, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}