The indigenes of Papua New Guinea share
a bond with the capitalists of Wall Street,
for they are both cannibals. In the highlands
surrounding Port Moresby and far into the
hinterland, taking heads and eating human
flesh was considered sacred, part of the
native cosmology. Abolished too late for
Michael Rockefeller, it is no longer practiced.
But no such ban has been imposed on Wall
Street, where the cannibalism derives not from
religion, but greed. Greed IS the religion. One
fourth of US children are poor, many mal-
nourished. Greed cannibalizes resources that
should be passed to them and future generations
intact. Greed installs nuclear Armageddon into
tubes of steel far beyond any rational definition
of defense. Each dollar spent on folly is a theft
from the poor. The word for it is cannibalism.