The pages of old and modern history are packed with several dark chapters, in which megalomaniac and paranoid dictators hijacked state powers, holding hostage a helpless nation for decades, and then forcing them to commit mass suicide in the form of war. These dictators, who were also sadistic, would be removed from power only after inflicting massive calamities on their own people and the people in neighbouring states. Under such conditions, a powerless nation would be held hostage, which almost always involves the dictator erecting a barricade between the people and the outside world. A team of skilled propagandists would be given the deceptive task of protecting the ‘innocent minds of the great nation' from corrupted foreign ideas. Citizens living behind the propagandists' curtain would not be allowed to see the outside world for what it really was (or is). Rather, they would be exhorted to tolerate the cultural, intellectual and economic siege laid deliberately by the dictator to repress or outright kill curiosity, a natural human inclination. Anyone, who dared to be a bit too curious would be viewed with suspicion and would be subject to brutal mistreatment, torture or being finished. To impress the confused people, skilled and dishonest propagandists, who together with the military generals are paid much more than any other citizen, would manufacture and maintain an image of the dictator with divine-like qualities. Words such as national, socialist, and workers would be essential terms used by handpicked political parties dictators would launch. For example, the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who was the victim of hostile xenophobia and chauvinism, held the helpless German people hostage before forcing them to commit a mass suicide in a global war, in which millions of people were killed and whole cities were destroyed in Germany and across the world. Like his counterparts, Hitler deceptively formed the Nationalist Socialist German Worker's Party – or Nazi Party – in 1923. The German dictator also discovered the propaganda talents of a journalist named Joseph Goebbels who was enthusiastically appointed as the Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. Goebbels showed unmistakable signs of devotion to his leader, but most importantly he zealously demonstrated a visceral and homicidal anti-Semitism. Goebbels exerted totalitarian control over the media, arts and information in Germany to incontestably inseminate Hitler's vision in the minds of the German people. After Hitler's suicide, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor. Along with his wife Magda, Goebbels killed their six young children, and then committed suicide. Africa used to – and is sometimes still – be the land of brutal dictators. Also, the US witnessed one of the largest mass suicides in history in 1978 in Guyana at the hands of a megalomaniac preacher named James Jones. Jones' mother, Lynetta Putnam, bestowed divine qualities on her son by claiming that she had given birth to a messiah. Childhood acquaintances recalled Jones as being a “really weird kid" who was “obsessed with religion...obsessed with death." Using his skills of oration and homicidal statements, Jones forced his followers in the Temple to commit suicide to protect themselves and their children from ‘the external enemy', which would torture and kill them mercilessly. The latest historical example of people being held hostage by their rulers, who are given divine-like qualities is in North Korea. The words: socialist and workers, were deliberately added to the alleged political party formed by its founder Kim Il-sung after the end of the Korean War in 1953. The entire world is on tenterhooks, expecting the first global nuclear war to be initiated from the Korean Peninsula and impact the entire region in southeast Asia. Nonetheless, people in North Korea are completely unaware that they are being forced to commit mass suicide because of the youngish whims of Kim Jong-un. Denied access to the Internet and satellite television, people in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula must not be aware that a nuclear retaliatory attack by US and its allies in the region would eliminate the majority of civilised life (rural and urban) in North Korean lands; and, of course, the majority of North Korean people. More unfortunately, the North Korean people must be innocently convinced that their ‘great leader', who took the keys from his father Kim Jong-il, who in turn inherited the country and its people from Kim Il-sung, has the power to decimate the capitalist enemy and its allies in neighbouring countries. The Asian region is bracing itself for an immeasurable calamity. Giving in to a disastrous boyish whim, Pyongyang has told embassies to evacuate diplomatic staff as the nuclear war became imminent and it (North Korea) would not assure their safety. A spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office said: “From April 10, the North Korean government would be unable to guarantee the safety of embassies and international organisations in the country in the event of conflict." Russia, which has relatively close ties with North Korea, also received the missive. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was in close contact with its partners including China over the suggestion. “The suggestion was made to all embassies in Pyongyang and we are trying to clarify the situation," Russian news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying on a visit to Uzbekistan.
