BigSoccer Tyrant Draft Selection Thread

Somewhat - he was elected by the Senators to the office of Dictator, which was hardly unprecedented. His was of a longer duration that the Constitutional 6 months, but he was hardly the first Roman to wield that much power. The process that Augustus would complete probably began with the Gracchi some 60 years prior to Sulla's adventures.

 

Heh. I was choosing between him and another very old European monarch and went with him, because I figured he was ever so slightly better known.

 

Sorry for the delay. My sixth round pick is



Hippias of Athens

He succeeded to the throne of Athens in 527 BC. By 525, he had implemented a new currency, in the process embezzling massive amounts of tax money. He systematically executed the rival Tyrannicides, who had killed his brother, and was removed from power in 510. It is indicative of his brutality that when the Persians gained joint power with Sparta in the region, they threatened to siege Athens if the Athenians did not re-accept Hippias as their ruler. The Athenians so detested Hippias that they decided to risk a joint Spartan-Persian attack rather than consenting to reinstate him.

 

In the (whatever round it is) round, SoFla Metro picks:

Pedro Antonio Marin, better known by his nom de guerre, Manuel Marulanda Velez, head of FARC.

Write-up to follow shortly.

 

The following write-up is courtesy of Wikipedia, but I'm not sure it really conveys the level to which the US government really wants to own his ass, mostly due to his group's propensity to kidnap Americans and hold them for ransom. Hopefully reports of his demise have not been greatly exaggerated.


Pedro Antonio Marín, known by his "nom de guerre", Manuel Marulanda Vélez, and nicknamed by his comrades "Tirofijo" (English: Steadyshot), apparently because of a reputed ability to accurately aim firearms. He is the main leader of the FARC-EP ("Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejército del Pueblo"). He was born on May 13, 1930 (a date that has been disputed), in a coffee-growing region of west-central Colombia in the Quindío Department, to a peasant family politically aligned with the Liberal Party during La Violencia.


Marulanda himself changed his political and ideological inclinations to the Communist Party (PCC) sometime during the period of "La Violencia" (roughly 1948 to 1958) that followed the assassination of the Liberal Party's leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

He has been considered to be seriously ill, and his death has been reported several times throughout his long career as a guerrilla, but the status of his health remains uncertain.

In March 2006, Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General of the United States, announced in conjunction with DEA and Department of Justice officials that the State Department had placed a $5 million dollar reward on Tirofijo's head, or for information leading to his capture.


Early armed activities
Pedro Antonio Marín Carreño and members of his family, like many Liberal peasants, rose up in arms not long after they heard the news about Gaitan's death. Initially they were defending themselves from members of the rival Conservative Party and of local police forces.

Eventually, Marulanda split with some of his relatives and became part of a column of guerrilla fighters that came under the influence of the Communist Party, which developed a more proactive role in the fighting, executing more raids and offensive operations. He took on the name "Manuel Marulanda" in honor of a murdered union leader. Marulanda eventually met and befriended Luis Morantes, also known as Jacobo Arenas, a PCC political cadre sent to the rural areas by the central party structure.

Members of this group later settled in an area known as Marquetalia towards the end of "La Violencia", keeping their weapons mostly (but not exclusively) to protect their community. They distrusted the Colombian Army and government even after a 1953 coup led by General Gustavo Rojas against Conservative president Laureano Gómez. Rojas had offered an amnesty that was accepted by most Liberal irregular fighters nationwide, but reputedly the murder of a few demobilized individuals made Marulanda, his rural comrades and his PCC superiors in the cities uneasy.

After the fall of Rojas in 1957 and the signing of the National Front agreement in 1958 between Colombia's two main parties, self-sufficient armed enclaves, such as the so-called "independent republics" and in particular a supposed "Marquetalia Republic", were considered as dangerous by the new government. Pressure from Conservative members of Congress and from the United States led to a Colombian Army attack on Marquetalia, which was eventually overrun during what was termed "Operation Marquetalia" in May 1964.

Formation of the FARC
The Colombian Army's attack was mostly ineffective, though it did scatter the guerrillas, and most of the survivors reunited elsewhere and later became part of the "Bloque Sur" (Southern Bloc) guerrilla group in 27th of May 1964, a precursor to the official foundation of the FARC in 1966. Marulanda and Jacobo Arenas soon established themselves as the main leaders of the new guerrilla group.


Manuel Marulanda led the FARC's participation in the peace process between the guerrilla organization and Andrés Pastrana's Conservative government in 1999. Pastrana's government accepted the FARC's condition of a demilitarized zone consisting of five municipalities centered around San Vicente del Caguán to organize the peace talks. FARC had virtual control over the area, as most of the government's local representatives had to leave. When the guerrillas moved in they could now openly operate in the urban municipalities, establishing what some press observers called a de facto "FARC-land", because of the rebel group's high profile and degree of open influence in the zone's daily life, including in political, judicial, educational and security affairs. Critics accused the FARC of also equipping, training and organizing its troops for war within the zone, as well as using the available land for the purposes of the drug trade.

The negotiations were held without any form of permanent ceasefire implementation, but nevertheless open violence was reduced seasonally, including through the use of Christmas truces as temporary measures. Still, observers noted that the continuation of armed clashes and kidnappings caused problems and mutual criticisms between the negotiators. After surviving a previous crisis in January with the intervention of the international community, the process finally ended in February 2002 when the FARC hijacked an airplane in order to take a congressman hostage, an act which led to Pastrana's declaring the end of the negotiations and the return to a full state of war.

 

Back to England (or France, depending on your perspective) this round, with John of England, aka John Sans Terre, aka John Lackland.



Youngest son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Younger brother of Richard I, aka Richard Cœur de Lion, aka Richard the Lionhearted. Vilified by Shakespeare. The arch-enemy of the legendary Robin Hood. And the main reason the Magna Carta was written.

 

I'm out business is starting to pick up and this has become to unorganized.

 

Emperor Yang of the Sui



SUI YANG-TI
560 - 618
Chinese Emperor

Yang Ti was the second and last emperor of the Sui dynasty.

Under Yang Ti the Grand Canal was built joining northern China with the Yangtze river which by then had become a major grain growing area. Yang Ti spent lavish amounts of money on palace construction and reinforcing the Great Wall. About half of the six million men recruited for the building projects died at their work.

Then came three failed expeditions against the Koreans. Each expedition is claimed to have resulted in over a million Chinese casualties. Korean casualties are unknown. The people revolted and the emperor was forced to flee to south China where he was assassinated and the short-lived Sui dynasty came to an end. Emperor Yang was generally considered by traditional historians to be one of the worst tyrants in Chinese history and the reason for the Sui Dynasty's relatively short rule.

 

Is this draft dead?

Who's turn is it?

 

Have the others been contacted?

 

Agree.

I'm going into exams and really won't be out till friday at the earliest.

 

Boy I go on vacation and this thread goes to shit. Am I behind a round?

 

I didn't have any internet at home for the last week, so I couldn't participate. Turns out mice under the apartment building had some very, very tough teeth. I'll prepare my last pick tonight.

 

And just your luck, I am still available for the picking!

 

I only have one left, and I'm sure there are lots of great people left including yourself. For example, I'm leaving the one US president that most deserves to be on the list and isn't on the table.

But I want someone unorthodox, so I am picking:

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (AKA Mother Teresa)


Talk about cult of personality. She had so carefully cultivated her image that the entire world loves her and thinks of her exactly as she wished. She partially does this through ostentatious displays of poverty. For example, when she went to the Vatican for the first time to visit the Pope, she took the bus to let everyone see how poor she was instead of taking a taxi or more privileged forms of transport which she could have well afforded.

Oh, yes, very easily afforded. There are no audits of her books, but Susan Shields, a former nun in her organization who worked in the treasury, said that only one of her bank accounts held over $50 million. Her total worth was likely many, many times that - the German magazine STERN estimates that she got something like $100 million a year. And that's after the larger portion of money given to her goes straight to the Vatican coffers without stopping at Go.

And it didn't matter where the money came from. She was friendly with, and publicly praised, leaders familiar to members of the draft, such as Enver Hoxha and the Duvaliers as well as private scum such as Charles Keating. Even when told that the money was stolen, she never returned any of it.

That could have been used to build hospitals and buy medicines. But the Calcutta home base has not changed from the time she first came there to the time she died. She did not want to help anyone get better or feel better; she only wanted people to suffer and die. She has said "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." But when she gets ill she sees the best clinics in the western world, of course. Because her fundamentalist rules for the poor don't apply to people like her or her rich and famous buddies.

And now you are thinking, "Hey, a tyrant is supposed to be a ruler, not just a purveyor of evil". Well, guess what she did with all that money and equipment that wasn't going to the sick and poor? It went to creating a network of more than 400 convents and nunneries in 120 countries all over the world. She is creating an army of thousands of women trained to think as she did and spread her actions all over the Earth. Her ambitious dream to create her own order, which she had long before she was plucked from obscurity by a British filmmaker, is becoming reality.