4 Shocking Things I Discovered This Week

Hot coffee, iced coffee and soft drinks sold from a vending machine in Japan
Hot coffee, iced coffee and soft drinks sold from a vending machine in Japan (photo: via Wikimedia Commons)

Just last week my family moved to Japan. Pretty far from our cozy suburbia in Nebraska. We’re not even on mainland Japan; we’re living on an island over 250 miles south of the mainland called Okinawa. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

While I have been in transition I have discovered a few things that have seriously shocked me. We cannot believe in pure evil, but these things come drastically close to convincing me. Here they are:

1. Hunting and killing of Albino-born children and adults

This is horrifying. Not just because it involved murder, but because it involves the murder of not even a race or a religion, but of a set of people who were born with one very rare and unpreventable condition where the pigment of their skin is lost. Could you imagine the fear of being snatched at any moment from any lingering assailant to be ritually murdered from some satanic superstition?

What’s the scoop? Being most common near the African Great Lakes – that would be the Congo area – and perpetuated by tribal witch doctors, there is a local belief that their skin – I’m not making this up – admits magical power. This is a reverse-psychology persecution. Typically, persecutions happen because a person or a group has a negative view of a minority, a class, or a religious persuasion. In this case, the view is one of, albeit bizarre, positive gain from the ritual killing to create what they believe to be powerful concoctions, potions, and prosperity. Even when they have died, the graves of these with albinism have been dug up, removed, dismembered, and abused.

It’s an ongoing issue, and this week CNA published a great article on what Catholic bishops in the area are doing about it.

2. The details in Abby Johnson’s new book, The Walls Are Talking

The cover of this book reminds me of the many horror movies I watched when I was young where the presence of flies signified there is intense demonic activity present. Now, I have no clue if that is even a real thing; I’d refer us all to Adam Blai, peritus on all things demonic. But really, her book has this huge fly on it and it’s a little scary to me. That’s nothing though, what inside the book is nothing short of petrifying. Dozens of abortion and abortion-related stories are included in this book that contain such chilling detail as to the amount of evil the goes on inside the walls of Planned Parenthood, I have had to stop reading.

The book is more than a wake-up call. It’s a gripping and disturbing account of the abortion industry from first-hand experiences, not hearsay and gossip. Anyone reading this book is either going to be challenged deeply, or endure a complete reversal of their pro-choice views. I dare any pro-abortion reader to get through this book without seriously re-thinking their worldviews. The wall are talking any they’re telling you to read this book and share it so that the witness of these brave women are not in vain!

3. Attack of the vending machines!

No really, in Okinawa there is a vending machine everywhere, and of every kind. From hot curry to ice cold papaya juice, from 42 flavors of ice cream to piping hot coffee, toys, beer, music downloads, anything, you can get it anywhere and anytime in Okinawa. Literally, I was exploring the coast on Yomitan where the local landscape is sugar cane and roads so thin you have no clue how they will fit two lanes of traffic (but they do!) and when I come to a stop sign, about 2km from the nearest house, there’s a vending machine on the corner of the road. Just in case you could not wait a moment, longer, about 100 feet down the road there was a bus stop and what was there? A vending machine.

What even more sad is after only one week, I’m kind of addicted to the products they carry. I find myself with a pocket full of change – the first time since 1995 – just so I can be sure I don’t miss the chance to try a new Goya or DyDo juice, or make my wife laugh with some off-the-wall Pepsi product. It’s hilarious, but the culture here is deep and we’re loving our vending options.

4. Dignitas

This makes me so upset and mad. Ever heard of a thing called “suicide tourism”? It’s exactly how it sounds: people visit a country just for suicide, because it is legal to be euthanized there. There’s many – alarmingly many – countries where this takes place, and people in the United States are even beginning to discuss the desire for domestic suicide tourism. I have in fact been told my people dearly close to me, “I’d go to Oregon, I’d like that, I think that should be available everywhere.”

As evil as the idea is, there’s a sick and twisted company in Switzerland called Dignitas that has gone to a whole other level. As if their name, “Dignitas” signifies any sniff of actual dignity, the company has seen scandal after scandal that will seriously shock you. Hollywood could not even write up the things I’m about to tell you. The company’s leader Ludwig Minelli is a former lawyer who not only opened Dignitas in 1998, but has made sure the law and culture has changed to benefit his operation, creating social demand and looser ways of gaining clientele.

What do you have to do to die at Dignitas? First meet with Dignitas personnel for in-processing. Then, an “independent” doctor meets to assess the condition of the person. This person can have a terminal illness or a broadly defined “mental illness”. Then there is a “time-gap” the person must wait to return to be sure this is the decision they wish to have. If they are too ill to sign that they do in fact with to die, they watch a video to confirm their identity. All of this remains private, the process, the decision, everything, and is only used to defend Dignitas in any legal dispute. Then, they are given the overdose that will end their life. It’s so tragic.

The scandals are unthinkable. Thanks to the brave whistleblower Soraya Wernli, the company has come under serious scrutiny. She claimed once that the company dumps the urns in lakes, makes huge profits, and is not killing their patients with the “humane” experience many think they do. She claimed that many patients die in pain, and a new machine once caused a patient to endure 70 hours before the final moments came. This is not The Green Mile – this is real life! Literally, I kid you not, over 300 cremation urns were found in the bottom of Lake Zurich – each with the logo of Dignitas present. You can look it up online. What’s worse, there are real claims that Ludwig Minelli dumped them himself, and asked family to do it for him. In 2008, two employees were caught attempting to dump the remains in the lake again. Ludwig – please pray for this man – has done more. He has testified that, while locked out of his office and residence, he offered the suicide to two clients in the backseat of a car. So much for “dignity”.

Though there is much evil in the world, we know how it all ends. God wins. And in the meantime, we should be just as brave as Abby Johnson, and people like Soraya. Even if we cannot be as brave, we can support the efforts and testimony of these brave people who speak out against the atrocities of our time.