Who is your favourite dictator?

i bet if you collated all the information on CIA supported coup d'états and rebel funding there would be some interesting stories.

i couldn't find the vid of the missile test failure that Mobutu allowed German scientists to carry out
found this though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShMgLcP4sQ4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR97o_FuX-c&feature=related

Is it just me or does the troposphere 5 engineer look mighty stoned when they interview him afterwards?

YouTube - ‪V.I.M. - Maggie's Last Party‬‏

My personal favourite

Very good. Take rep. Picture pun of the highest order.

Uncanny likeness

Should be dicktato

Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan) ...

Definitely a talent, unlike other dictators he stuck to the essential matters needed to run a country. Examples being:

• Renaming bread from chorek, the traditional Turkmen word, to Gurbansoltan edzhe after his mother
  
  • Changing the names of the days of the week to him and his family
    
• Banning news readers from wearing make-up as he had difficulty telling male and female readers apart
  
• Passing a law that every school pupil, student, soldier and military officer in Turkmenistan is to be presented on New Year's Eve with a watch bearing the picture of him
  
• Redefining the stages of life, with adolescence extending to 25 and old age beginning at 85
  
• Insisting that all licensed drivers pass a morality test
  
• Ordering that physicians swear an oath to himself instead of the Hippocratic Oath
  
• Created a national holiday to celebrate the muskmelon
  
• Changed all street names to numbers
  
• Erected golden statues of himself throughout the country including one on a revolving turntable
  

yeah the turkmenistan guy is definitely the most mental

think he had a golden statue of himself that rotates so it is always pointing at the sun

My dad was once given an album with portraits of Kim Ill-Sung (or Kim Ir sen how we know him)

Why isn't this thread a poll?

Mao was another goody, he blamed china's famine on sparrows eating all the seeds, so he got everyone to wave big flags around so they couldn't land and died of exhaustion

Big fraud from Dominicana, generalissimo Trujillo - who expelled Blacks to Haiti and let Jewish immigrants in instead

Nicolae Caucescu - everything went perfect until he visited North Korea in 1971 and got appetite for dictatorship.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Nicolae_Samora_Graça.jpg

Why isn't this thread a poll?

because it's for discussion of excess and pics of madmen with self appointed military honours and a liking for stretch limos

yeah the turkmenistan guy is definitely the most mental

think he had a golden statue of himself that rotates so it is always pointing at the sun

He got a book out:

oh look. a lighthearted thread dedicated to mass murderers and genocidal maniacs. cos that's not in poor taste in the slightest.

/mrs' grandparents were murdered by maoist thugs. so yeah, fuck this shit.

/mrs' grandparents were murdered by maoist thugs. so yeah, fuck this shit.

Depends what country really.
I went to uni with many students from Latin America and their sympathies were always on the maoist side as opposed to fascist military juntas sponsored by the CIA

It's impossible to comprehend the evil personified by some of the individuals mentioned in this thread. Maybe that's why it's easier to make a joke about Stalin's wonky arm than discuss holodomor.

yeah the turkmenistan guy is definitely the most mental

They must've a vacuum left by the Soviets, because Islam Karimov from Uzbekistan isn't that far behind.

Isaias Aferwerki of Eritrea - banned private media and elections "for three or four decades"

oh look. a lighthearted thread dedicated to mass murderers and genocidal maniacs. cos that's not in poor taste in the slightest.

/mrs' grandparents were murdered by maoist thugs. so yeah, fuck this shit.

what piqued my interest in dictatorships was the extremes of excess and misery, we don't hear about them unless there is oil involved, the human aspect is often ignored.
yes this thread is lighthearted but i have learned more in these 2 pages than what gets shown in the news (especially about dictators from the past)

my great grandparents were terrorised by the black and tans in ireland and oppressed by the other half of my family (english/scottish protestants) but i would rather be enlightened about egotistical despots than ignore their existence.

your choice to ignore this thread, i don't care either way apart from perhaps the chance you have to tell us about Mao.

Jean-Bedel Bokassa, or rather Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Empire.
Crowned in a elaborate (kitsch) ceremony with plenty of diamonds, sceptres etc, forced school children to buy designer school uniforms and killed them when they complained.

he was a cannibal too

Yeah, there is the making "lighthearted fun" of mass murderers aspect of it. But then there is much hilarity in the stuff that is just plain bonkers. Things that are not actually hurting anyone, just wacko stuff they do because they can.

Kim Jong Il supposedly has over a hundred official titles. My favourites being:

• The Great Sun of Life
  
• Glorious General, Who Descended From Heaven
  
• Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradely Love
  
• Guiding Star of the 21st Century
  
• Invincible and Iron-Willed Commander
  
  

There is a committee in place to manage all of them.

you can't have a list of Dicktators without this guy.