Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

Ashes to Ashes

26

25

"…the Tableau is one of only two witch treatises that addressed the issue of witches as women. There were two aspects of their feminity which de Lancre emphasized in his discussion of witches: their sexuality…and women's 'natural inclination' for sorcery (de Lancre Tableau p. 89). This natural inclination was not rooted in women's physically weaker state. In fact, jurists such as Bodin had previously commented on having witnessed 'that women suffer torture more continuously than men' (de Lancre Tableau p. 89). Women's affinity for sorcery was based on women's extreme nature—her pursuit of her appetites, her desire for revenge, and her need for novelty, all distinguished her from the more balanced male."
Lorraine Berry, "Destabilizing Categories: Jews, Witches, and the Christian Male," Aestel 4 (1996)

Are we aware what lies at the end of the road opened up by the normalization of torture? A significant detail of Mr. Mohammed’s confession gives a hint. It was reported that the interrogators submitted to waterboarding and were able to endure it for less than 15 seconds on average before being ready to confess anything and everything. Mr. Mohammed, however, gained their grudging admiration by enduring it for two and a half minutes. "Knight of the Living Dead" By SLAVOJ ZIZEK
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I always have difficulty expressing my political judgments in a clear, emphatic, and strong way—I feel pretentious, as if I'm saying things that are not quite true. This is because I know I cannot reduce my thoughts about life to the music of a single voice and a single point of view—I am, after all, a novelist, the kind of novelist who makes it his business to identify with all of his characters, especially the bad ones. Living as I do in a world where, in a very short time, someone who has been a victim of tyranny and oppression can suddenly become one of the oppressors, I know also that holding strong beliefs about the nature of things and people is itself a difficult enterprise. I do also believe that most of us entertain these contradictory thoughts simultaneously, in a spirit of good will and with the best of intentions. The pleasure of writing novels comes from exploring this peculiarly modern condition whereby people are forever contradicting their own minds. It is because our modern minds are so slippery that freedom of expression becomes so important: we need it to understand ourselves, our shady, contradictory, inner thoughts, and the pride and shame that I mentioned earlier.

— Orhan Pamuk
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