Saint, monster…they’re the same thing

A name I’d like to see banished to oblivion is that of Paul Hill, the religious fanatic and murderer who gunned down Dr John Britton and James Barrett at an abortion clinic. I don’t care whether you are pro-choice or anti-woman, only the most wretched, insane god-walloper can possibly approve of assassinating health-care providers to protect fetuses. And there can’t be that many of them, can there? And they are going to face universal public censure, right? Cruelly, archy tells me otherwise.

Behold, Paul Hill Days.

A couple of deranged Christian organizations are planning to send their members to Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the end of July to thump about like a gang of gumbies, bellowing about what a good man Paul Hill was. God’s man. A hero. A martyr.

And to crown this exercise in lunacy and poor taste, they’re planning a reenactment of the murders.

I guess the Rev. Phelps and his merry band of haters aren’t quite as uniquely bizarre as I’d thought.

Ick — now the Rev. Donald Spitz has sent McKay a letter, blaming him and people like us for AIDS, rape, murder and robbery, and all kinds of such nastiness, because we don’t believe in Jeeezus. These people are crazy evil; I’m beginning to get a sinister vibe from just the title “Reverend” anymore.

Major *ick* factor

South Dakota: very conservative, very Republican, very concerned with women’s reproduction, and none of it in a good way. This story just personifies the worst of South Dakota’s repressive residents perfectly.

A former South Dakota lawmaker is accused of molesting his own foster children and legislative pages.

Ted Klaudt, 49, a Republican rancher from Walker, faces a long list of charges: eight counts of rape, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, two counts of witness tampering, sexual contact with a person under 16, and stalking.

Court documents mention five possible victims. Three were foster children between the ages of 15 and 19 who lived with Klaudt’s family. One is a cousin of one of those girls, and the fifth is a friend of Klaudt’s daughter.

In the most disturbing accusation, the girls say Klaudt had them convinced they could earn up to $20,000 by donating their eggs to a fertility clinic. And even though he has no medical training, the girls say Klaudt did all the supposed “exams” and “procedures” himself.

If you feel the urge to go wash compulsively, you’re excused.

But, see, this is one of the virtues of keeping young women ignorant of basic reproductive health. He was able to convince them to let him, a farmer with no medical training, that he needed to give them breast exams and poke around in their reproductive tracts…and they believed him. All those restrictive laws passed by repulsive old Republicans suddenly make sense.

If the South Dakota legislature is sufficiently repelled by this horror story, one way they could make amends is by rushing through some sensible sex education laws.

Contemptible ghoul

First commentator to tie the Virginia Tech shootings to Muslims, without a lick of evidence: Debbie Schlussel. And if it isn’t connected in any way to Islamic terrorism?

Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.

She’ll connect it anyway.

The killer was Chinese. With the anticipated satisfaction, Schlussel sees that as a vindication — kick out all the foreign students!

An evil book

Over at Street Anatomy, you can find some utterly stunning anatomical images from a series of books called Pernkopf Anatomy; really, it’s beautiful stuff, with artfully posed models and exquisite detail. If you get on Amazon and look up the books, you’ll see that you might be able to find used copies for $500 and up — far out of my price range, but for the quality, they might well be worth that.

Except, unfortunately, for this little detail…

Like Pernkopf, the artists for his atlas were also active Nazi party members. Erich Lepier even signed his paintings with a Swastika, which up until 15 years ago remained in editions of the atlas, but have been airbrushed out since then.

In 1995, an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, summarized the history of the University of Vienna in 1938. They found that the Anatomy Institute of the University of Vienna, where Pernkopf worked, received the cadavers of prisoners executed during the Holocaust. The University of Vienna conducted their own investigation and found that in fact 1377 bodies of murdered victims, including children, were taken into the Anatomy Institute. It is also known that Pernkopf willingly accepted the bodies of murdered adults and children to the Institute. Therefore, it is almost without a doubt that Pernkopf used these bodies for the dissections from which the anatomical illustrations were drawn.

I’ve often said that I’m not a spiritual person, and that I don’t believe in any kind of spirituality at all. I do believe, however, that objects can be imbued with meaning beyond their simple physical parameters; they can carry a burden of history and intent that, when you know it, can trigger deeper feelings than mere matter would warrant. If I were to own such an item, I know that I could not touch it without feeling revulsion for its authors, and reverence for its victims, and that I would set it aside from my ordinary library as something more than just a book.

Don’t mistake that for a belief in the supernatural, or that there is some greater metaphysic that surrounds our material existence. Ghosts and gods do not sanctify portions of our world. The resonance of a book like Pernkopf Anatomy comes from the fact that it is anchored in purely human evil, and purely human sacrifice—it is a morbid reminder of what we can do.

Nigerian universities: clean up your act

Nigeria is experiencing an unimaginable horror for this academic: widespread sexual harassment of women students. It’s injust, it’s a corruption of the student-teacher relationship, and it harms their country, that half their potential leaders are abused and blocked from progress.

For years, sexual harassment has been rampant in Nigeria’s universities, but until recently very little was done about it. From Associated Press interviews with officials and 12 female college students, a pattern emerges of women being held back and denied passing grades for rebuffing teachers’ advances, and of being advised by other teachers to give in quietly.

Crippling a young person’s potential and denying them access to knowledge ought to be regarded as a serious crime—these ‘teachers’ are really just felons and rapists.

(via Salon)

Rivers of blood

Some have complained that my post on the snake slaughter gave them nightmares. If that’s you, do not click on this next link! I’m usually fairly tough about seeing grisly gore, but this video of a dolphin harvest in Japan is extremely unsettling. A slaughterhouse is always going to be an ugly piece of work, but what’s on display there is also callous indifference to the suffering of the animals, and methods that increase stress and pain. This video shows animals in agony. Even if I were to accept the argument that they are “mere” animals being processed for food, there is no excuse for the brutality of the methods.