Execution of the Former Dictator

On the orders of the acting president, and by tacit consent of the known powers, the execution of the former dictator took place without public announcement.

In the film released after the event the former dictator is shown approaching the scaffold in his coat; his executors, in a curious act of humanity beside the act of inhumanity, having feared that he might catch a cold; the former dictator looks about him in an attitude that can be variously interpreted as bewilderment and fear as well as courage and defiance. In the final act in this macabre show it appears that the former dictator had refused the hood. Before the noose was hung round his neck, the last word the former dictator is supposed to have said is the name – one presumes as curse of his enemy.

As if to lay the full burden of proof before incredulous eyes, the former dictator, now defunct, is exhibited in his body bag.

So turning its blind eye, the World will wake (muses Dieterling) on a New Year that does not augur well, neither for its actor-agents nor its victims.