This nation of 27 million people spent much of the day crowding around television sets to watch mesmerizing replays of a videotape that showed the 69-year-old Mr. Hussein being led to the gallows at dawn by five masked executioners, and having a noose fashioned from a thick rope of yellow hemp lowered around his neck. In the final moments shown on the videotape, he seemed almost unnaturally calm and cooperative.
—John F. Burns, "Hussein Video Grips Iraq; Attacks Go On," New York Times 31 Dec. 2006.
- Is this good or bad for the drug-legalization movement? (It is clear that this kind of charming/"finely observed" detail — "yellow hemp" — is a "thing" par excellence.)
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What exactly is "unnatural" about cooperating with your executioners? Doesn't almost every state-run execution proceed in this fashion? Not to do what I'm about to do, but "discipline" has long since overcome the kind of chaos and uncertainty that greeted the ancien régime executions Foucault talks about in D&P. Hell, even our good friend Charles I famously took his execution in stride, way back in 1649:
Then he called to the bishop for his cap, and having put it on, asked the executioner, 'Does my hair trouble you?' who desired him to put it all under his cap…
Then the king asked the executioner, 'Is my hair well?'…
After a very short pause, his Majesty stretching forth his hands, the, executioner at one blow severed his head from his body; which, being held up and showed to the people, was with his body put into a coffin covered with black velvet and carried into his lodging.
His blood was taken up by divers persons for different ends: by some as trophies of their villainy; by others as relics of a martyr; and in some hath had the same effect, by the blessing of God, which was often found in his sacred touch when living."
[Via.]
I wonder how long it will take for bits of Hussein to wind up on eBay…
Perhaps the best thing about this logo: it's from an eBay item described as "SADDAM HUSSEIN anti iraq war t-shirt mens peace arabic." Well, I guess that's as effective a protest as any we've had so far…
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