Archive for December, 2006

When Saddam Hussein dies


I find the news that Saddam Hussein’s execution is to be filmed very upsetting. I shed no tears for him but I will forever be sorry that a man whose crimes against humanity were obvious was tried by a farcical puppet court in almost constant disarray.

Justice could so easily have been served, yet instead we see the world’s media relishing the imminent sounds of choking, the creaking of the gibbet. How they’d love to show Saddam twitching in his death throes, his legs dangling, on the cover of every newspaper, on every TV news channel. The blood-lust is tangible, the greedy thirst for that copper taste almost universally vampiric.

But what this rush to self-congratulatory pleasure in the face of ostensibly sanctioned murder has to say about the world we live in, the feelings that are encouraged, is easily as bad as the many evils Saddam perpetrated.

Read the full article.

Friday, December 29th, 2006