broadsword
Brigadier
For a moment, I thought you lost me. Were we not in the Russia-China partnership thread?
What the Heck?! Thread (Closed)
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For a moment, I thought you lost me. Were we not in the Russia-China partnership thread?
kwaigonegin
Colonel
you must be really fun at parties.. lol here have a cake and some wine to loosen up.
Miragedriver
Brigadier
I couldn’t decide where to place these posts, but I figured that the “What the Heck” thread might work out ok. The next two posts are famous (infamous) dictators (strongmen) that have blighted our plant within the last hundred years. Or in other words the despots we love to hate.
"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce," said Karl Marx.
The Great Dictators who brought death and war to millions in the Twentieth Century - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot - did not make others think twice about the dangers of seeking absolute power. Instead, they seem to have encouraged them to take ever more eccentric and cruel routes to achieve it.
(clockwise from top right) Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong
Kim Jong-un, the Young Dictator of North Korea, has devised his own signature method of execution. His hair cut looks like one given to patients at metal hospitals
Picture: AFP/Getty Images
Idi Amin of Uganda
Amin was perhaps the first Ruler for Life that the rest of the world took obvious enjoyment in hating. The former British Army cook was described by the American ambassador to Uganda as “racist, erratic and unpredictable, brutal, inept, bellicose, irrational, ridiculous, and militaristic".
Picture: Rex Features
Emperor Bokassa of Central African Republic
Jean-Bédel Bokassa led a straightforward military coup against his cousin who had unwisely made him head of the armed forces, but then bankrupted the country by staging a lavish ceremony in which he was crowned emperor with a $5 million diamond-encrusted diadem. After being overthrown, he was convicted of numerous crimes, including the mass execution of children who failed to wear school uniforms made by his wife’s company, though he was acquitted on appeal of a charge of cannibalism.
Jean Bedel Bokassa became Emperor Bokassa after his coronation in 1977
Picture: Rex Features
General Stroessner of Paraguay
Son of a Bavarian immigrant, Alfredo Stroessner rose through the ranks of the army to seize power and rule for 35 years as the archetypal Latin American caudillo. He declared martial law immediately - renewing it every 90 days for 32 years - and won seven elections by suspiciously large majorities.
His security chief would occasionally make dissidents sit in a bath of excrement while he interrogated them. Others were thrown from planes, bound hand and foot. Gen Stroessner himself listened in by telephone as his enforcer dismembered a Communist Party leader alive by chainsaw.
Picture: Rex Features
Back to bottling my Grenache
"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce," said Karl Marx.
The Great Dictators who brought death and war to millions in the Twentieth Century - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot - did not make others think twice about the dangers of seeking absolute power. Instead, they seem to have encouraged them to take ever more eccentric and cruel routes to achieve it.
(clockwise from top right) Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong
Kim Jong-un, the Young Dictator of North Korea, has devised his own signature method of execution. His hair cut looks like one given to patients at metal hospitals
Picture: AFP/Getty Images
Idi Amin of Uganda
Amin was perhaps the first Ruler for Life that the rest of the world took obvious enjoyment in hating. The former British Army cook was described by the American ambassador to Uganda as “racist, erratic and unpredictable, brutal, inept, bellicose, irrational, ridiculous, and militaristic".
Picture: Rex Features
Emperor Bokassa of Central African Republic
Jean-Bédel Bokassa led a straightforward military coup against his cousin who had unwisely made him head of the armed forces, but then bankrupted the country by staging a lavish ceremony in which he was crowned emperor with a $5 million diamond-encrusted diadem. After being overthrown, he was convicted of numerous crimes, including the mass execution of children who failed to wear school uniforms made by his wife’s company, though he was acquitted on appeal of a charge of cannibalism.
Jean Bedel Bokassa became Emperor Bokassa after his coronation in 1977
Picture: Rex Features
General Stroessner of Paraguay
Son of a Bavarian immigrant, Alfredo Stroessner rose through the ranks of the army to seize power and rule for 35 years as the archetypal Latin American caudillo. He declared martial law immediately - renewing it every 90 days for 32 years - and won seven elections by suspiciously large majorities.
His security chief would occasionally make dissidents sit in a bath of excrement while he interrogated them. Others were thrown from planes, bound hand and foot. Gen Stroessner himself listened in by telephone as his enforcer dismembered a Communist Party leader alive by chainsaw.
Picture: Rex Features
Back to bottling my Grenache
Miragedriver
Brigadier
Sergeant Doe of Liberia
Master Sergeant Samuel Doe made his mark almost immediately after leading the coup that brought him to power at the tender age of 29 in 1980. He rounded up the cabinet, and made them parade naked through the streets of Monrovia, before marching them to the beach where they were tied to stakes and shot.
A 27-year-old Samuel Doe with his mother Anna at Jalalat Village
Picture: Rex Features
Col Gaddafi of Libya
For years Muammar Gaddafi was Britain’s favourite bugbear. His diplomats killed PC Yvonne Fletcher, he armed the IRA, he brought down airliners - most famously PanAm 103 over Lockerbie but also UTC772 from Chad to Paris. He stood for Arab Nationalism and socialism but he mainly stood for self-promotion. His “Little Green Book”, modeled on Mao’s Little Red one, held forth on the causes of everything, from world injustice to women’s menstrual cycles.
Picture: Getty Images
Saddam Hussein
A byword for despotism, he is perhaps best-remembered for the variety with which he inflicted mass suffering on the people unfortunate enough to be subject to his rule. He began by overseeing a videotaped meeting of Ba’ath Party bosses at which he slowly read out the names of 68 “plotters” present. The others were made to jeer the “guilty” as they stood up to be arrested, and were later forced personally to join in the firing squads.
Picture: Getty Images
Kim Jong-il
It is doubtful that any of these predecessors were as influential on the young Kim Jong-un as his beloved father, Kim Jong-il. While the founder of the dynasty, Kim il-Sung, was a conventional Stalinist tyrant, who ruled over his country with the usual Communist excess for almost 50 years, his son Jong-il was a different kettle of fish - artistic, sensitive, and according to official accounts supremely gifted.
North Korea's Kim Jong-il in 1979
Picture: Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP Images
Back to bottling my Grenache
broadsword
Brigadier
... the despots we love to hate.
"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce," said Karl Marx.
Mao? Hated by the West, understandably.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
You sound like you attended some boring parties.
broadsword
Brigadier
SteelBird
Colonel
Here the original show.
The show was seriously criticize by majority (mostly Facebook users) in Cambodia and media oversea. However, the MyTV has formally apologize to the girl, Allen, and the apology has also been accepted by the girl. Stupid TV show!
solarz
Brigadier
That 13-year-old girl showed more class than the entire team behind this show, and then some! Her father is right to be proud!
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