Eideard

Katharina Henot, postmaster of Cologne and her brother

The trial of a woman burnt at the stake 400 years ago for witchcraft resumed in Germany on Monday in an effort to clear the woman’s name.

Katharina Henot suffered her fiery fate in Cologne in 1627 after being found guilty of practicing black magic. Arrested, and tortured to such an extent that the right-handed woman had to scrawl her last letter of defence with her left hand, she was eventually paraded through the city in an open cart before being tied to a stake and burnt.

Now the panel on the city council whose predecessors found her guilty of witchcraft hundreds of years ago will review the evidence. It is suspected that Henot, head of the city’s post office, fell foul of a deadly game of political intrigue orchestrated by her rivals and detractors.

The fact that Henot’s name has a chance of exoneration is due largely to the efforts of Hartmut Hegeler, an evangelical pastor and religious education teacher, who has championed the woman’s cause in Cologne…

Between 1500 and 1782 at least 25,000 Germans, mostly women but also some men and children, were executed for witchcraft. Many were made scapegoats for natural disasters or faced accusations because of personal vendettas or just because they failed to fit in with the people around them.

In one of the most infamous cases, a three-month burst of bloodletting in the small town of Oberkirchen in 1630 claimed the lives of 58, including those of two children, as accusations of witchcraft spread like wildfire.

Be of good cheer – if you miss the good old days.

If my fellow Americans elect someone as looney as Rick Santorum, he’ll have the Inquisition back up and running in a matter of days.

Muslim women on their way to the symbolic stoning of Satan

Saudi authorities have executed a woman convicted of practising magic and sorcery.

The Saudi interior ministry said in a statement that the execution had taken place on Monday, but gave no details of the woman’s crime.

The London-based al-Hayat daily, however, quoted Abdullah al-Mohsen, the chief of the religious police who arrested the woman, as saying she had tricked people into thinking she could treat illnesses, charging them $800 a session.

The paper said a female investigator followed up the case, and the woman was arrested in April 2009 and later convicted in a Saudi court.

It did not give the woman’s name, but said she was in her 60s.

So far 76 people have been executed this year in Saudi Arabia, according to an Associated Press count. At least three have been women.

In the GOUSA – with appropriate political connections – she might have been elected governor, say, of Florida. Although her profit margins were obviously not sufficient to impress Saudi princes much less Big Pharma.

Why Texas? Well, if the topic is political rule based on ignorance, allegiance to superstition and bigotry – stimulated by the occasional execution to excite fervor – there’s hardly a better comparison.

Har, har, har!

Thanks, Mr. Justin

An increasing number of children are being accused of witchcraft in parts of Africa, the UN children’s agency says. Orphans, street children, albinos and the disabled are most at risk.

A new Unicef report warns that children accused of being witches – some as young as eight – have been been burned, beaten and even killed as punishment.

The belief that a child could be a witch is a relatively modern development, researchers say. Until 10-20 years ago, it was women and the elderly who tended to be accused.

The agency says the rise in vulnerable children being abused in this way is linked to greater urbanisation in the continent and disruption caused by war…

The agency said there was little it could do about the belief in witchcraft itself, and that it was not trying to eradicate the practice. But it said violence against children was wrong, and that it would do everything it could to stop it…

It is reported that some evangelical preachers have added to the problem by charging large sums for exorcisms. One was recently arrested in Nigeria after charging more than $250 for each procedure.

Anyone surprised?

Do you wonder if this cruelty was helped or hindered by Christian missionaries.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civil award, and is given to individuals who have contributed to: 1) the security or national interests of the United States, 2) world peace, or 3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

In his new book, Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor, former Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer reveals how politicized the revered Presidential Medal of Freedom became during the Bush administration.

Latimer writes that administration officials objected to giving author J.K. Rowling the Presidential Medal of Freedom because her writing “encouraged witchcraft” (p. 201)…

The Bush administration was notorious for awarding the medal to its staunchest Iraq war allies. Bush’s final three recipients of the Medal of Freedom were two supporters of his war in Iraq — former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard — and leading human rights violator and Bush foreign policy ally Alvaro Uribe. Other recipients included a whole lineup of figures heavily involved in the Iraq war, including Paul Bremer and George Tenet.

When President Obama took office, he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 16 recipients, including Kennedy and former congressman Jack Kemp, a Republican.

The Know-Nothings who front for neocon politicians eat this stuff up with their grits.

Police in Nigeria are holding a goat handed to them by a vigilante group, which said it was a car thief who had used witchcraft to change shape. A police spokesman in Kwara State has been quoted as saying that the “armed robbery suspect” would remain in custody until investigations were over.

The belief in witchcraft and the power to change shapes is common in Nigeria.

Police reform activists have condemned the “arrest”, saying it highlights the low education levels of many Nigerian police officers.

At least get him to tell where the [lamb] chop shop is located before he’s released.