What goes around...

In a final moment of defiance, he refused a hood to cover his eyes. Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle. A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed." "Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail. The post-execution footage showed the man identified as Saddam lying on a stretcher, covered in a white shroud. His neck and part of the shroud have what appear to be bloodstains… In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate…. It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents… The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 108… Within hours of his death, at least 56 people died and scores wounded in three bombings — two nearly simultaneous explosions in one Baghdad neighbourhood, and one south of the capital. Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he learned of Saddam's death. "Now all the victims' families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence," said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 80 miles south of Baghdad. But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death. "The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior," said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque… A couple hundred people also protested the execution just outside the Anbar capital of Ramadi, and more than 2,000 people demonstrated in Adwar, the village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by U.S. troops hiding in an underground bunker. In a statement, Saddam's lawyers said that in the aftermath of his death, "the world will know that Saddam Hussein lived honestly, died honestly, and maintained his principles."… Saddam's half-brother (Barzan Ibrahim) and the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court (Awad Hamed al-Bandar), were not hanged along with their former leader as originally planned… "We wanted him (Saddam) to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run al-Iraqiya television. Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told The Associated Press that Saddam initially resisted when he was taken by Iraqi guards but was composed in his final moments. He said Saddam was clad in a black suit, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb. His hat was removed and his hands tied shortly before the noose was slipped around his neck. Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present. "Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a hood," al-Askari said. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab.'" Iraqi state television showed footage of guards in ski masks placing a noose around Saddam's neck. Saddam appeared calm as he stood on the metal framework of the gallows. The footage cuts off just before the execution. Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighbourhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. During his regime, Saddam had numerous dissidents executed in the facility, located in a neighbourhood that is home to the Iraqi capital's most important Shiite shrine — the Imam Kazim shrine. Al-Askari said the government had not decided what to do with Saddam's body.It’s Christmas day and I was going through the news archives on my computer when I came across this. Then, I had just culled it (the news item) from the Associated Press. This week, it shall be a year since the demise of the subject of that news item. It’s almost implausible that the world did not end through the year 2007 without the presence of some people. This morning I looked out my window and lo! a butterfly spread his wings to fly but alas, the morning dew still had its hold on him. It would only be a few seconds until he’d dried and was off to start his day as well. But what fascinated me was my knowledge of the little flying friend’s lifespan. In only a few more days, perhaps 10, perhaps 14, he would be decomposing somewhere and another one taking his place. The continuity of life! Charles Darwin, in his “origin of Species” wrote, “…the structure of every organic being is related…to that of all other organic beings, with which it comes into competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys.” Personally, I do not subscribe to the theory of evolution but I do, to natural selection. What fascinate me even more are the hard hitting facts about this afore-mentioned competition; “…the struggle almost invariably will be most severe between individuals of the same species, for they frequent the same districts, require the same food, and are exposed to the same dangers.” In other words, no competing organism has such similar requirements for survival as another of the same species. Can we say the same of mankind?“Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” –The Red Queen (to Alice) in Through the Looking Glass.