Has there ever been another Uday in the worlds history?

check out vlad the impaler on wikipedia. I don't know if he did any of the torturing himself, but it's some of the most horrible stuff I've heard of.

Caligula

african warlords?

Commodus - "performed" gladitator fights in the ring where his opponents only hade fake weapons, and he had full armour, supposedly killing thousands personally. Also, he had wounded soldiers tied togethar and beat them to death himself while pretending they were giants (he thought he was the reincarnation of Hercules)

Also look at Charles Taylor, Saint(!) Theodora, and Beria (stalin's henchman).

And those are just off the top of my head.

"No man is just a number"

PBS did a series many years ago about the Borgias, narrated by well-known TV journalist Edwin Newman. At one point he said this:
.

After [learning about] the Borgias, you have to put aside the notion that
we live in particularly violent times. The times we live in ARE violent,
no doubt about that, but as you go through history, you find that almost
every time was violent. The only difference is that it was taken for
granted.
- Edwin Newman -

.

The times we live in are unique in human history because, more than any other, we really, truly, expect them to NOT be violent, when that is actually the usual state of affairs -- not just by human nature but the very nature of the universe itself.

This idiotic notion that if it weren't for big bad nasty ol' humans that the place would be a paradise is the sheer height of arrogant stupidity. It's a violent universe. It is our inherent nature to try and make it NOT violent which separates us from the animals, who have no such notions, really.

The concept of "Lucan", "Tarzan" or "Mowgli" -- a human child raised by other animals -- is notable because it IS so unusual or unlikely. Most animals -- both herbivors and carnivores, kill any unattended young of any other species.

And this is biologically sensible -- either it's a predator, in which case it's a threat to the herbivores and competition for carnivores, or it's another herbivore, in which case it's competition to the herbivores or "food" for the carnivores. For the most part, it takes a human sense of empathy to substitute human compassion for young onto that of the young of another species.

It's a violent place -- Red In Tooth And Claw.

If we make it ANY less violent, then we're rising above our baser instincts.

You lump Castro in with Hitler and Milosevic? Hmmm.




What's this week's obsession? Provided that it doesn't involve green ears or ra*e? Who cares?

Take Marko Milošević for example.

Milošević is accused of involvement in smuggling numerous goods through Serbia, including cigarettes, petroleum, stolen cars, and drugs such as cocaine, which he is purported to use. Milošević also took ownership of a radio station, bakery, computer store, luxury perfume shop named Scandal, and was appointed deputy chairman of a horse show in Ljubičevo. Other sources of revenue included currency speculation and management of the construction of a $380,000 Serbian nationalist theme park called Bambipark. By 1998, he had purchased an expensive new villa in Požarevac, owned and crashed over 17 luxury cars, and purchased a yacht for 500,000 Deutsche Marks. In 2000, the total black market assets held by Milošević were estimated at £500 million. Milošević used violence and intimidation to expand and control his black market empire, suppressing rival gangs and the Serbian media. This use of violence included alleged connections to the 15 January 2000 killing of paramilitary leader and business competitor Željko Ražnatović in Belgrade.

Quite a few dictators' sons turn out spoiled, sadistic and hard to control. Maybe the obvious comparison to Uday was Nicu Ceausescu, the son of late Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. He was a playboy, alcoholic and gambler who was a notorious for rapes and running people over with his car. He was later convicted (after the fall of his father's regime), but only for misuse of government funds.