She turned me into a newt!

It's a bit curious to me how this persists anywhere in this day and age, but a woman is facing the likelihood of beheading for witchcraft (yes, witchcraft) in Saudi Arabia (oh, yes, Saudi Arabia.) (I was looking for a good link for Saudi Arabia. Here's a thing to try--type "Saudi Arabia beheads everybody" into Google. It's really impressive.)

The woman in question, Fawza Falih, had signed a confession she could not read and did not have read to her, under what is described as "duress"--for which we can easily substitute the ready synonym, "brutality." Among the accusation against her is the claim by a man that her witchcraft made him impotent. (Really, it happens to everybody.) I'm sure entering that particular testimony into evidence was quite painful for all concerned. Some of those who made statements against her also made such statements--"under duress". An appeal court seems to have given her a reprieve, but then the law courts claimed her execution was "in the public interest." Obviously, a person who has mastered neither letters nor the ability to defend herself against the police, nor has the capability to "bewitch" the judges into releasing her is quite dangerous to the public.

Notwithstanding that many people by now understand that "witches" don't really have super-magic-penis-stealing powers (they are generally misfortunate people wrongfully accused, fortune-tellers who are either self-deluded or con-artists--or practitioners of a nature-based religion, many of whom are quite nice people), it's astonishing to try and guess at what other reason might exist for treating any person to this form of "justice." But then again, brutality seems to exist for its own reasons. Perhaps this affair is simply to remind people that in the absence of a written law, any traditional excuse for snuffing a human being is permissible. Maybe they were overdue for some witch-finding excitement (Hecate help us, it's been over three hundred yearssince we've had such excitement in the US--hell, it wasn't even the US, yet).

And after all, isn't the exotic swords and the majesty of the Saudi government just--captivating?




(Many people can be caught up in the pageantry, you know.)


As for the title--well, of course you know that's from Monty Python. Here's a bit of a palate-cleanser: