17 October 2004 Blog Home : October 2004 : Permalink
This weekend I met some Zimbabweans for the first time in over a decade. These ones were ex-farmers who had see their land appropriated by the state and who had, as a result, lost pretty much everything. What really hurt was not so much the loss of the land so much as the fact that the new owners were completely incompetant. Anyway that, and the way they are attempting to survive and help Zimbabwe, is not the subject of this piece.
We had in interesting discussion about Zimbabwe and its leader, Comrade Bob, after which it occured to me that there really are people who would be better off dead. I rather doubt that contributions would be tax deductable but it seems to me that, in terms of return on investment of giving, near to the top would be to finance a program of assasination for named individuals. This could be considered terrorism of a whitehat sort although more recently terrorist organizations seem to prefer to go after random civilians than the leadership. Personally I believe that one successful assasination would probably do more good that a million tons of aid to starving refugees.
I therefore propose that a non-profit organization be formed to coordinate the termination of tyrants. This organization could put a bounty on the successful elimination of named individuals or could in fact locate and hire the assasins itself. In order to minimise the terrorism charge the bounties/contracts would only be handed out after strict and open review of the charges. Charges would be placed based on the assumption that the leader takes responsibility for the actions of his regime or group and thus when documented atrocities occur unless the leader makes an attempt to bring the perpertrators to justice he is considered responsible. Assasination need not be limited to the single leader, if (say) a particular general or minister is also considered to be entirely responsible for the secret police then his name would also be placed on the list.