Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Perspective on the Death of a Dictator


According to Wikipedia the free Internet Encyclopedia, Fascist Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini who was allied with Hitler in World War II was found as follows:
On April 29 the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were found hung upside down on meat hooks in Piazzale Loreto (Milan), along with those of other fascists, to show the population the dictator was dead. This was both to discourage any fascists to continue the fight and an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader became subject to ridicule and abuse by many who felt oppressed by the former dictator's policies.


This was done by the Italian people before the American and British forces could capture him at the end of World War II in Europe. There are numerous pictures now on the Internet of Mussolini hanging from the light pole. The pictures were taken in the days before picture phones. (sarcasm)

More recently, on Christmas Day 1989 communist Dictator Nicolea Ceausescu, of Romania and his wife were executed. According to Wikipedia:
On Christmas Day, the two were condemned to death by a military kangaroo court on charges ranging from illegal gathering of wealth to genocide, and were executed in Târgovişte. Before they were shot dead, Ceauşescu sang part of the "Internationale" and proclaimed that history would judge him well. His wife was screaming at everyone to go to hell.

The Ceauşescus were executed by an officer named Ionel Boeru who shot them with his sub-machine-gun.

The "trial" and execution were videotaped. The footage was promptly released in France and other western countries. Several days later, footage of their trial and pictures of their corpses (but not of the execution itself) was released on television for the Romanian public.


Of course both of these examples took place in Europe where they are more sophisticated in these sorts of things (sarcasm)