East Timor Hit With "Ninja" Epidemic

East Timor is in the middle of a six-month "war" against ninjas. As East Timor's police chief Longuinhos Monteiro, wearing commando fatigues and personally leading the charge, declared in a press statement:

"Any ninjas who want to take us on, your final stop will be Santa Cruz cemetery."

There is only one problem. The "ninjas" may or may not really exist.

Perhaps the term refers to those shadowy militias that plagued the relatively-young nation during the 1990s, terrorizing the countryside. Or it could refer to the some 90,000 members of East Timor's 15 or so martial art groups/gangs. Or it could refer to the quasi-supernatural bogeymen that cause citizens to leave cups of water with a knife in them outside their beds at night for mystical protection.

Or it could be a hydra-headed combination of all these things, purposely conjured, fearmongered, and mythologized by a troubled government as a way of uniting the country under a common threat.

I know it's pretty unbelievable to our dear Daily 23 readers that a government would think of doing something like that.

Read Time: "Why East Timor Has Declared War On Ninjas"