COMMENT: We’ve spent much time in these pro­grams on the sub­ject of Sau­di Ara­bia. A recent sto­ry high­light­ed the medieval, benight­ed  nature of this “ally.” (Sau­di Ara­bia has also invest­ed heav­i­ly in U.S. com­mer­cial and edu­ca­tion­al infra­struc­ture.)

It seems the Sau­di secu­ri­ty forces are tak­ing a high­ly-tout­ed course in how to negate “black mag­ic” (no kid­ding!).

Great.

“Haia Offi­cers Get Train­ing to Com­bat Black Mag­ic” by MD Humadain; Arab News; 4/4/2011.

EXCERPT: A total of 30 offi­cials of the Com­mis­sion for the Pro­mo­tion of Virtue and Pre­ven­tion of Vice (Haia) have been trained on how to deal with cas­es of black mag­ic.

The three-day train­ing pro­gram was held in the East­ern Province city of Al-Ahsa.

The com­mis­sion has achieved remark­able suc­cess­es in com­bat­ing black mag­ic in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try. It has set up nine spe­cial­ized cen­ters in the main cities to deal with black magi­cians.

The major­i­ty of peo­ple arrest­ed for prac­tic­ing black mag­ic in the King­dom are Africans and Indone­sians.

Accord­ing to a report received by Arab News, a sin­gle spe­cial­ized cen­ter had dealt with 586 cas­es involv­ing black mag­ic, show­ing the enor­mi­ty of the prob­lem.

About 50 cas­es were report­ed in Jed­dah alone in the first half of 2009. Guray­at and Qun­fu­da also report­ed high rates of black mag­ic cas­es dur­ing that year. . . .