(no subject)

1. I recently read in the paper a list of the world’s worst dictators. The king of Saudi Arabia was among them. Hardly surprising, but one of the state reasons seemed incredible. His rule was judged tyrannical because witchcraft is still listed as a capital crime in the Saudi law code (it did not mention the last time anyone had been executed or even prosecuted for the crime, however). Now, nothing seems to me more sensible. Some will object that there is no such thing as witchcraft. What a bizarre notion! If a witch casts a spell, will it work in the way that she believes? Of course not, but that is the least of it. What is far more common is this. A woman is told by a witch that her lover is plotting to kill her and so she kills him first. In this case it is not known whether the witch offered to use her powers to carry out the murder, but, strangely, the witch is only considered a witness by the authorities, rather than a conspirator who should also be on trial. Perhaps the prosecutor feared to look foolish before the press for charging a witch. Witchcraft is frequently used to further murder and rape, though it is more frequently criminal fraud for larceny. I have no objection therefore to executing witches. Whether or not ‘it works’ is a sort of childish consideration: we know how it functions in society just as surely as we know how it fails to function in the physical and spiritual worlds.

 

2. A Somali novelist was profiled in the newspaper today because he is about to give a public lecture here. The article suggests that he is given to voicing a fundamental criticism of the United States—that America is like a heavy-booted giant (perhaps his English does permit him to use a phrase like ‘Jack-Booted’) crushing the peoples of the rest of the world like little ants. Now the reason he lives in the US is because it became clear to him in 1975 that, since he had published writings critical of the government of Somalia, he was shortly going to be murdered, so he comes here to criticize the barbarism of the United States, secure in the knowledge that our government will take no action against him. Some people are oblivious.

 

The fact is we have to police the world because we are the only ones in a position to do so, and because it would be immoral to let disorder grow unchecked that would inevitably lead to untold suffering and death for vast multitudes. Its just for the last 20 years we’ve been run by idiots so we haven’t done a very good job of it. (Clinton, for instance bears the full moral responsibility for the massacres in Rwanda because he did nothing to stop it—he thought it was funny to joke with his cronies about the state department official he kept waiting in his office for a week to brief him on the matter, assuring that he would not be able to act in time and therefore justifying his indifference. Why he was indifferent he will no doubt explain to the devil in due course. So now our UN contribution goes to pay for the aid and shelter of the murders in refugee camps in the Congo, but I won’t go on, except to say the Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are even stupider).