*Ø* John Frum, where are you when you're needed?

This news is a bit late (May 9), and too late for John Frum Day (February 15), but important nonetheless, and I think Fred would want me to post it:

Vanuatu villagers in bloody cult clash
"It has all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster: a smouldering volcano, a jungle battle, a bizarre cult and a self-styled messiah called Prophet Fred.

"But the feud that has broken out between two villages in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu is all too real for the dozens of men in hospital with axe and spear wounds.

"It has split one of the world's last surviving cargo cults, one of the strangest legacies of European colonisation of the South Seas.

"The John Frum movement first emerged in Vanuatu in the 1930s when the islands were jointly ruled by Britain and France as the New Hebrides. Rebelling against the aggressive proselytising of Presbyterian missionaries, dozens of villages on the island of Tanna put their faith in a mysterious outsider called John Frum.

"They believed he would drive out their colonial masters and re-establish their traditional ways. The cult was reinforced during World War II when the US military arrived with huge amounts of 'cargo' – tanks, ships, weapons, medicine and food.

"On Tanna, islanders became convinced that John Frum was an American. They have spent the past 60 years dressing up in home-made US army uniforms, drilling with bamboo rifles and parading beneath the Stars and Stripes in the hope of enticing a delivery of 'cargo' again ..."
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
John Frum movement
More at February 15 (John Frum Day) at the Book of Days