Frances is EXACTLY right.

But you'll understand her a lot better after you've seen some of the article.

These are just excerpts focusing on the Warrior aspect of MEND; to understand MEND in context, I strongly encourage you to go to Vanity Fair and read the entire piece:

Vanity Fair

February 2007

Blood Oil: Politics and Power

by Sebastian Junger

Photographs by Michael Kamber

Could a bunch of Nigerian militants in speedboats bring about a U.S. recession? Blowing up facilities and taking hostages, they are wreaking havoc on the oil production of America's fifth-largest supplier. Deep in the Niger-delta swamps, the author meets the nightmarish result of four decades of corruption.

...

In January 2006, less than seven months after the first Oil ShockWave conference [of Western oil experts] -- almost as if they'd been given walk-on parts in the simulation -- several boatloads of heavily armed Ijaw militants overran a Shell oil facility in the Niger delta and seized four Western oil workers. The militants called themselves the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta and said they were protesting the environmental devastation caused by the oil industry, as well as the appalling conditions in which most delta inhabitants live. There are no schools, medical clinics, or social services in most delta villages. There is no clean drinking water in delta villages. There are almost no paying jobs in delta villages. People eke out a living by fishing while, all around them, oil wells owned by foreign companies pump billions of dollars' worth of oil a year. It was time, according to MEND, for this injustice to stop.

...

Throughout most of the delta there is a weak cell-phone signal, and MEND has run its entire military campaign using a flicker of reception and $3 phones. We were later told that, as word of our arrival spread, Ijaws in South Africa began calling to warn that we might be spies, and others, in the United States, were looking us up online to figure out who we were. The first sign of trouble was when one of the village boys got in our boat and drove it away into the creeks so that we couldn't leave. Another hour went by, and dusk started to creep in through the mangrove. Finally we heard the sound of a powerful outboard motor, and then a boatload of gunmen roared past the village, plowed a couple of angry circles into the narrow creek, and came into the landing at what looked like full throttle. The women in the village fled. MEND had arrived.

...

A MEND militant painted with magical symbols to protect him from bullets.

They climbed out of the boat with their weapons propped upright on their hips and their faces immobile and expressionless. They didn't bother to look at us and we hardly dared look at them. They carried heavy belt-fed Czech machine guns with the ammunition draped across their bare chests like deadly-looking snakes, and some wore plaid skirts called "Georges," and others wore shorts or cast-off camouflage. One was naked except for his ammunition and a pair of dirty white briefs.

They had painted their faces with white chalk to signify purity, and they had tied amulets around their arms and necks and foreheads for protection from bullets. Some had stuck leaves in their clothing so the enemy would see trees rather than men. One of them had painted the Star of David on his stomach to signify the lost tribe of Israel. They were a collection of walking nightmares, everything that is terrifying to the human psyche, and when confronted with them, Nigerian soldiers have been known to just drop their weapons and run.

Their leader was a slender boy wrapped in a red turban and white robe who was helped out of the boat almost like a child. Leaders are often chosen by the Ijaw god of war, Egbesu, and leadership can change daily. Egbesu sometimes communicates his desires by appearing in the dreams or visions of one of his followers and instructing him to be leader for that day. If the man tells the truth about Egbesu, others follow him without question; if he lies about it, Egbesu might kill him. The followers of Egbesu refrain from sex during time of war, and fast to increase their powers. Those powers, I was told, include the ability to drink battery acid without harm. "The spirit enters them when they go into battle," one anthropologist who had lived in Nigeria for years told me. "They don't have the same fears as you and I."

Mike and I were told to rise and we stood there like penitent schoolboys while the young leader approached. He handed his rifle to one of the other militants without bothering to look at us and said, "Which one of you is Sebastian?"

"I am," I said. The boy handed me a cell phone and walked away.

It was Jomo[, the MEND spokesperson]. "I told you that you couldn't go out into the creeks," Jomo said. I started to try to explain, but he cut me off. "What is the spelling of your last name?" he asked. I told him. "Don't worry," he said. "Everything's going to be all right." I handed the phone to the leader and walked back to where Mike stood. A few minutes later, one of the militants strode up to me and pointed his finger at my face. He was short but extremely strong and was covered in white war paint.

"You," he said matter-of-factly. "I am going to kill you."

Half an hour later, Jomo told the MEND leader to release us, and we were in our speedboat headed back to town.

...

Because of this corruption, most of Nigerian society has been starved of money and is effectively cannibalizing itself. Between Port Harcourt and the delta city of Warri there are 20 or 30 police checkpoints -- some within sight of one another -- where drivers simply hand cash out the window in order to pass. I was told that when police arrive at the scene of a bad car accident they won't call for medical help until the injured and dying have paid them off. There are car accidents all the time -- I saw two fatal accidents on as many drives across the delta -- because the roads have not had major repairs since the early 1980s. Even expressways have collapsed, turning a drive that once took several hours into a terrifying ordeal that can last days.

Every sector of society has been left to fend for itself. The airline industry, for example, is so slack in its maintenance that it has seen three catastrophic plane crashes in the past 16 months, which together have killed more than 300 people. The airport at Port Harcourt was shut down in 2005 after an incoming Air France flight plowed into a herd of cows that had wandered onto the runway; it still has not reopened. Tens of millions of people live in urban slums without water or sanitation, restaurants have to hire guards with AK-47s to protect the diners, and the levels of chaos and street violence rival that of many countries at war. A dead man lay on the street near my hotel for two days before someone finally came to take him away. Even during Liberia's darkest days of civil war, the dead were usually gathered up and buried faster than that.

When Nigerians are asked about these problems, few can offer more than anger and despair -- or the promise of violence. A typical Nigerian reaction came from President Owei, the Ijaw priest who tried to help with our first trip into the creeks. Owei is the head of an organization that promotes Ijaw rights and protects their communities in the delta. At first, my questions just provoked a torrent of indignation. "The people of the Niger delta don't need theory -- they need practical things," he declared. "We need to be made to feel like human beings. There is an economic blockade of the Niger delta -- they don't want money to flow here. With the wealth that Nigeria has, the whole nation should have roads and free education."

Owei lives in the great, seething slum of Bundu-Waterside, on the outskirts of Port Harcourt. Bundu-Waterside is a community built literally atop garbage and mud. High tide and raw sewage continually threaten to rise up over the thresholds of its thousands of plank-and-corrugated-iron shacks. People are packed into Bundu-Waterside with such desperate ingenuity that almost every human activity -- cooking, fighting, eating, sleeping, defecating -- seems to be observable from almost anywhere at any given moment. When I met with Owei, he and several of his assistants were seated on a wooden bench beneath a canopy of corrugated iron that serves as an open-air community center. Young boys swam in the tidal muck while, a few feet away, other young boys squatted to relieve themselves. Every 20 minutes or so, an oil-company helicopter thumped past on its way to one of the offshore rigs.

"The Niger-delta people are the new world power," Owei informed me solemnly. "I don't have a bulletproof vest, but I can drink acid. Can you drink acid? I can drink acid. We are a world power. We are waiting. We want to live in peace because God is peaceful, but the rest of the world is building armaments while they wait for Jesus. I don't know."

...

The brutal functionality of this system [of corruption] started to break down in January 2006, when MEND arrived on the scene. MEND was not simply another bunkering cartel; it renewed the grievances first voiced by Saro-Wiwa and began to seriously disrupt the flow of oil from the creeks. "We are not communists or even revolutionaries," Jomo commented by e-mail to a journalist. "We're just extremely bitter men."

The formation of MEND seems to have been triggered by Asari's arrest in September 2005. Asari had threatened to "dismember" Nigeria, which smelled enough like treason for the Obasanjo government to finally go after him. The first MEND attack came four months later and was soon followed by e-mails from Jomo demanding the release of both Asari and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the Bayelsa state governor charged with corruption. (Alamieyeseigha is Ijaw and was closely connected to Asari.) The first four oil workers kidnapped by MEND were lectured for 19 days on the poverty and environmental degradation of the delta. More than ransom money, the militants said they wanted all foreigners to leave their territory. In other words, they wanted control of their oil.

A former hostage whom I talked to (who did not want to be identified by name) reported essentially the same experience. He was a contract pilot for Shell who was taken from a landing platform in 2000 and held for two weeks. He was never physically abused or threatened, though he did worry that he might eventually get malaria and die. "Their grievances are legitimate," this man told me. "It's just that those who do the kidnapping don't necessarily do it for the community. There's no water in these communities, no education, no medical facilities whatsoever. To be out in the swamp without any electricity or drinking water -- of course they're upset."

We were sitting at an open-air bar inside the Shell compound near Warri. It was early evening, and bats flitted through floodlights that illuminated a tennis court. On the other side of the compound's chain-link fence was a local village that had been plunged into darkness. "The host community here," the man went on, waving at the ramshackle houses, "they are without electricity for days sometimes. This is obscene. They are looking through the fence at golf courses and tennis courts where the floodlights are on at midnight. Why not throw them an electric line? I mentioned it to someone at Shell. I said, 'Why not? You've got the turbines! Let there be light!' He said, 'If we do that, they'll all want that.'"

After his release, this man was repatriated to his home country and immediately came down with malaria. While he was recovering, he received a letter from the lead militant of the group that had kidnapped him. It was directed to his wife and children, and it even had a return address. "I apologize for kidnapping your husband and father," the letter read. "I did it because of Shell. I am born again and I will not do it again. I should be forgiven."

"They used light plastic speedboats with 75-horsepower engines," the man said. "They take the top off the engine to get more cooling. They know exactly what they're doing. The army will never have a chance."

...

Added to these technological problems is the fact that -- as if by some divine prank -- most of the world's oil reserves happen to be in politically unstable parts of the world. (The alternative theory is that oil exploitation tends to de-stabilize underdeveloped countries.) Because of the financial risks involved, oil reserves in politically stable countries have more value, per barrel, than oil in politically unstable countries. As we speak, the value of Nigerian oil -- as a function of the capital investment that must be risked to produce it -- is in steady decline.

That is MEND's trump card. It has several times threatened to shut down all Nigerian oil production, but it's possible MEND doesn't quite dare, because of the chance it will provoke a military retaliation it wouldn't survive. By the same token, the Nigerian military has threatened to sweep the delta with overwhelming force, but it doesn't know whether that might force MEND to carry out one devastating counterstrike -- taking out the Bonny Island Liquefied Natural Gas facility with a shoulder-fired rocket, for example. An act of sabotage on this scale could drive Shell and the other oil companies from Nigeria for good, completely wiping out the national economy. One major company, Willbros, has already discontinued operations in Nigeria because of the security threat.

On the world stage, as well, MEND's political power depends on its ability to cause economic pain in other countries. Some industry experts contend that new market mechanisms and the availability of U.S. petroleum reserves would mitigate the effects of even a complete shut-in of Nigerian oil. "Look at Katrina," one oil analyst at the Department of Energy told me. "There was a spike in oil prices for a couple of weeks, but then demand shifts and there is a little bit of conservation. Two years ago we were at $28 a barrel and now we are in the mid-50s. Short-term market predictions are a fool's game."

The Oil ShockWave panel wasn't so sure. It found that a complete shut-in that coincided with another event -- a terrorist attack in the Persian Gulf or even an exceptionally harsh winter, for example -- could trigger a major recession. Furthermore, there seemed to be no good options for dealing with it. Opening up the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- some 700 million barrels of oil in underground salt caverns along the Gulf Coast -- would lower oil prices for the whole world without providing a long-term solution. Begging Saudi Arabia for more oil could compromise the United States politically and damage our long-term interests in the region. And sending the U.S. military into the Niger delta would be politically risky and possibly unfeasible, given American commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

That did not stop the U.S. government from authorizing a joint training exercise with the Nigerian military in 2004. It was reported to have been focused on "water combat."

Two weeks after our first trip to the creeks, Jomo told me by e-mail that he would arrange for MEND to take us into its camp. It was deep in the mangrove swamps, and he said that no journalist had ever been there. Allegedly, the only foreigners who have ever seen the MEND camps were hostages.

We hired a boat at the Port Harcourt waterfront and headed south into the creeks, hoping not to run into any Nigerian gunboats. We had the feeling that the authorities knew what we were up to, and it seemed like an encounter that would end badly. We passed a few fishing villages and a flow station and two gas flares, and then we swung into the broad expanse of Cawthorne Channel. Twenty miles to the east, wobbling in the heat shimmer, was the Bonny Island L.N.G. facility. The rumor in Port Harcourt was that MEND was planning to blow it up. A wind had come up, and we banged our way southward into a hard chop and finally swerved into one of the nameless creeks and ran our boat into the village where we'd been two weeks earlier.

Calls went out, and half an hour later a boatful of militants dressed raggedly in old Western clothes pulled into the landing, and we climbed on board. We continued south for a while, almost to open ocean, then plunged back into the mangrove up a creek that got narrower and narrower until we had to duck to avoid getting hit by branches. We passed under a talisman strung between two trees, and minutes later we were at the camp. Every tree, it seemed, had a man behind it with a gun pointed at our heads.

...

Mike and I stepped out onto land and were immediately blessed by a man who dipped a handful of leaves into what might have been palm wine and splashed us twice. No one blesses someone before killing him, I thought. The camp was a rough wood barracks hidden in the trees with a few nylon tents scattered around. There was a small generator and a satellite hookup for television. There were two Egbesu shrines, unremarkable little thatched enclosures with inexplicable things tied to them. The men had stocking masks on their faces with leaves sticking out of the eye slits, and they watched our every move through the slits, though they had stopped pointing their guns at us. Some of the militants couldn't have been 15 years old. They carried old British guns from the colonial days and ugly little submachine guns with the clips sticking out to the side -- and the big belt-fed Rachot machine guns that Nigerian soldiers were so scared of. We walked through the camp rubber-kneed and weak, or at least I did. Their leader was named Brutus and he sat on a wooden bench in a clearing. He motioned me to take a seat next to him, and I opened my notebook and sat down. His men surrounded us in a semicircle with guns cocked at all angles.

"I have been instructed by Jomo to answer any question you have," he said. "And to let you take any pictures you want. The Nigerian government has been marginalizing the people who have the resources of this country. We are deprived of our rights. This time around we don't even want to wait for them to attack. When the order is given we can go ahead and crumble whoever we can crumble, because we don't die; we live by the grace of God. If one man remains, that man can win the cause -- that is my own belief."

I had heard this before -- that the delta was bracing for a wave of attacks. The attacks were rumored to include coordinated car bombings, assassinations, and hostage-taking. I asked Brutus what was going to happen next. "The first phase was just a test run for the equipment," he assured me. "Soon the real violence will come up and will be let loose. We are waiting for the orders from above and we won't waste an hour.... This is modern-day slavery. They have killed so many people in the struggle. The government will attack us, but we are very ready for them. We are just waiting for orders from above. Then we will move." (On December 18, two explosions were reported at Shell and Agip facilities in the delta. MEND claimed responsibility for the attacks.)

Brutus looked at me through the eyeholes of his mask. "When the Nigerian man moves," he said, "nothing can stop him."

[emphases mine]

Bill Weintraub:

What we see here is a typical homosocial warrior society, led by priests and governed by a war god, Egbesu.

Here are some Greek warriors ca 550 BC.

And this is an artist's depiction of an early Roman army encampment.

It's a little hokey.

But -- the warrior is the guy in the front with his shield raised.

The other guys are priests or warrior priests.

They take their instructions from Mars.

And all the men in this Roman warrior band have swore allegiance to Mars.

Just as the Ijaw warriors swear -- presumably -- allegiance to Egbesu.

Here are the Ijaw Men of MEND again.

Look at the Greeks, look at the Romans, look at the Ijaw -- it's the same deal.

The Ijaw men use warpaint and wear amulets; they say they abstain from sex -- Frances thinks what they may mean by that is they abstain from sex with women.

And it's possible and indeed likely that they're doing some form of cockrub among themselves.

They look very much like Greek warriors -- naturally masculine Men at War.

Except for one guy, whom Junger describes as almost naked, they're wearing some sort of loincloth or kilt or shorts, but they may well be naked in camp or in the jungle, and carrying only their ammunition belts and their rifles and other weapons.

That's what the Greeks did.

And make no mistake, this is a Warrior society.

As their spokesperson says, "We are not communists or even revolutionaries," Jomo commented by e-mail to a journalist. "We're just extremely bitter men."

They are bitter and they have reason to be.

And this will connect with something which is upcoming from Jedi.

Let's get back to Frances:

In the interview on the Newshour Sebastian Junger [the journalist who wrote the article] said these guys abstain from "sex with women." Here, he just states "sex." I don't know, but I know these guys are definitely involved with rites of manhood. Junger states that he, a man worthy of respect among Western norms, felt like a little boy among them, many of whom are boys.

"rites of manhood"

That's correct, and that's why they're governed by a War God, Egbesu, who in my view reflects the collective unconscious of the Warrior band.

And that's the key to this passage: "Leaders are often chosen by the Ijaw god of war, Egbesu, and leadership can change daily. Egbesu sometimes communicates his desires by appearing in the dreams or visions of one of his followers and instructing him to be leader for that day. If the man tells the truth about Egbesu, others follow him without question; if he lies about it, Egbesu might kill him."

Egbesu communicates through dreams and visions -- messages from the collective Warrior unconscious; Egbesu chooses the leaders.

But the leaders have to lead correctly; if a man doesn't, "if he lies about it, Egbesu might kill him."

And of course Egbesu does that through the bonded Warrior group.

So you can think of the Warrior band as a gestalt -- as something which is more than the sum of its parts.

And which is very male.

Remember what my foreign friend said in Natural Masculinity and Phallic Bonding:

The masculinity of men flows from their group. It's like their natural masculinity combines and gets manifold when masculine identified men unite. The camaraderie, mutual understanding, support, playing together, learning the ways of the world as a male, dealing with roughs and toughs of life together --- they all help to develop the natural masculinity that exists within him.

An intimate sexual relationship between two masculine men is equally helpful for the mutual development of their natural masculinity.

Bill Weintraub:

Obviously the MEND Warriors are going through a lot more than just "roughs and toughs."

But the group's Warrior maleness -- its WARRIOR MANHOOD -- which is both a product of and mediated by testosterone -- another good reason to abstain from sex -- is leading the group.

The collective Warrior Manhood manifests as Egbesu.

Or Mars.

Or Ares.

Or Tu.

It's the most powerful raw male force.

And it has to be controlled.

Boys have to be taught how to use it -- in a way that's disciplined and honorable.

Back to Frances:

What do you think guys in MEND would think of boys here who think they're men, or more accurately, want to believe they're men because they've stuck their penis up a 15 year old girl's vagina? Boys here know that doesn't make them men, and the fathers of 15 year old girls aren't convinced of the manhood of such boys either. They know, they were once those young boys.

Right.

Boys don't become men simply by sticking their penis in a vagina.

That's why in Southern Africa and virtually all societies, there were MANHOOD rituals.

Which in the case of Africa included male circumcision.

And my guess is that the boys had to circumcised, in what was no doubt a very painful series of rites which would have gone on for days if not weeks, before they could have sex with a girl.

That's why the anthropologists call it a MANHOOD ritual rather than an MC ritual.

The MC -- male circumcision -- is a means to achieving MANHOOD.

Again, the MC is a means -- it's not the end.

But it has the benefit of protecting both the boys and their future wives from STD.

Frances:

We have aborted manhood. And, the reason it's aborted isn't ultimately about sex between men. It's about power and who's got it. Men are controlled through their balls. It's critical that they never be allowed to form the kind of bonds known among ancient peoples. Those ancient men protected the people, they served their interests. Larger interests are scared of that power. Boys must learn to cower at a young age. Choose right, or choose left. Gay, or straight, either way your're screwed. The forces allied against them are huge. But, these MEND guys, are following an ancient and powerful path. As you say, the Path of Salvation.

Manhood has been aborted over a question of power.

Control.

"Men are controlled through their balls."

That's right.

"It's critical that they never be allowed to form the kind of bonds known among ancient peoples."

So it would seem.

"Those ancient men protected the people, they served their interests."

Most of the time.

In the city-states, they did indeed protect and serve the interests of the people, who were their fellow warriors and citizen-soldiers of the city-state.

Spartan hoplites protected the interests of Spartans.

Theban citizen-soldiers the interests of the people of Thebes.

And city-states could work together, as they did when they combined to fight off the Persians.

"Larger interests are scared of that power."

Yes.

The Persians attempted to destroy Greek Warrior bonds through money.

They used their money to meddle in the affairs of the city-states.

They bribed.

And that's what, eventually, persuaded the Warrior Greeks to invade and destroy Persia.

Because the Persians were attempting to corrupt their society -- their Warrior society.

"Boys must learn to cower at a young age. Choose right, or choose left. Gay, or straight, either way your're screwed. The forces allied against them are huge."

Yes -- that's exactly right.

The sexual orientation game is set up to ghettoize same-sex affection while destroying Natural Masculinity and Manhood.

But, these MEND guys, are following an ancient and powerful path. As you say, the Path of Salvation.

Yes, and let's hope it is for them.

At the moment they're fighting for the betterment of their people.

Let's hope that continues and that they aren't squashed flat by the armed might of the West.

Which, as Junger explains, will do anything to protect its oil.

But, whatever happens, aren't these Men better off for having risen up against an injustice and thus reclaimed their Manhood --

then they would have been had they passively allowed the forces of corruption and globalization to destroy them through pollution and neglect?

Bill Weintraub

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2007 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.