#exicution

The Saudi monarchy has long used the public death penalty as a means of repressing dissent and efforts to end or reform its feudal system. Government opponents and members of the kingdom’s Shia minority are routinely framed and face kangaroo courts. Many political opponents are accused of drug crimes and executed. The kingdom’s restive Shia minority, which looks to Iran, has been largely kept in line by draconian punishments. The same applies to neighboring Bahrain, a Saudi protectorate.

Decapitation is supposed to be swift and only briefly painful – provided it is done professionally and flawlessly. Unfortunately, it is often bungled and becomes a horrible torture.

Reading the fascinating memoirs of Sanson, France’s royal executioner, we learn that decapitations by sword and ax more often than not required numerous blows, while the victim screamed in terror and agony. Neck muscles go rigid, hair gets in the way, and victim’s instinctively contract their necks, making the task all the more difficult.

Every week some where in America someone is put to death. Some writers: Capote, Mailer have written and witnessed the ritual - theoretically made' humane' that is to say the diluting of the satanic drama of hanging, burning (electrocution the modern version) or the most lethal and quickest Madam Le Guillotine - death by lethal injection. America so back ward in incarceration (now mostly privatized) and putting to death a still beating heart. Guns, murder, violence, assassination - gangster-ism on the streets and in Washington, every man armed and dangerous with military style assault weapons, Mac the knife now almost a paragon of virtue and yet even as the political climate continues to divide and alienate itself there is still that Yankee cool, and a place for the familiar gifted democratic process.