outback to jungle

Musings on experiences of volunteering in Papua New Guinea with some gratuitous domestic social and public comment

Monday, November 06, 2006

so who is actually going to pull the lever

to drop the floor on Saddam Hussein? I suppose "they" will do it, the nebulous anonymous "they". Not Mr Smith, or Mr Qadir, but "they". Or maybe he is going to be hung by the passive voice: "Saddam is to be hung". That is very clinical and there is no person or agent involved as is the case with the active voice. There is no actual lever puller, no actual hangman, no actual executioner, no actual person doing the hanging. Saddam is just hung. We just wake up one morning in a month's time to the news that a human being, albeit a not very nice human being was hung. It is a miracle! There we were ghoulishly watching the hanging when the guards brought Saddam into the hanging room. Then the guards and everybody else just left the scene - they walked out and closed the door. So there was Saddam standing alone in handcuffs looking bewildered when miraculously a black bag suddenly covered his head. It just came out of nowhere. Then just as miraculously there was a rope around his neck. No-one put it there, it just appeared around his neck out of nowhere. Then he just disappeared. It was unreal how it happened. It was just like magic. He was just hung. I don't know why he didn't run away because there was no-one there to stop him. Nobody did the hanging; not the judge, not the warden nor an official hangman, nor a victim of his sadism. He was hung by the passive voice.

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