Muammar al-Gaddafi (1949 – )
In power in Libya since a 1969 coup, Gaddafi held no office or title. He is known as ‘Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’ or ‘Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution’. Gaddafi invented a system called Islamic Socialism, and wrote a three volume with his political philosophy, called the ‘ Green Book’. Didn’t like opposition and send Libyan hit squads abroad to kill dissidents.

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Idi Amin Dada (mid-1920s – 2003)
Succeeded to give even dictators a bad name. The number of people killed as a result of his regime is unknown, estimates range from 80.000 to 500.000. His mental state was reflected in the title he gave himself: ‘His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beast of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and the Conquerer of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular’.

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Mobutu Sese Seko (1930 – 1997)
Was president of Zaire from the mid sixties till 1997. He liked public executions, often organized as open-air spectacles. Mobutu created a personality cult around himself. The evening news on television was preceded by an image of him descending through clouds from heaven. There was only one political party, The Popular Movement of Revolution, and its membership was obligatory for everyone in Zaire. Voting also, with Mobutu as sole candidate.

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Saddam Hussein (1937 – 2006)
Everyone knows this fellow. Even killed some husbands of his daughters because they were not loyal. He used chemical weapons against his own people, that caused thousands of deaths. Uncountable portraits, posters, statues, and murals were erected in his honor. Saddam Hussein was also famous for his doppelgängers. The real Saddam was dragged out of a hole in the ground and met at the end, rather chaotically, the gallows.

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Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976)

IF you managed to control every daily aspect of the lives of one fifth of the worlds population, you got to have charisma. Mao Zedong combined that with a huge ego and a crazy mind. His ideas, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, are blamed for costing millions of lives. For instance, he ordered that unproven and unscientific new agricultural techniques should be used. The result was that the grain production dropped and many millions starved to death in the largest famine in human history.

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Jean-Claude Duvalier (1951 – )

Better known as Baby Doc. Ruled Haiti in the seventies and eighties. When his father Francios Duvalier (Papa Doc) died, he became at the age of nineteen the world youngest president. Baby Doc left all the work for his mother, attended only ceremonial functions and lived as a playboy. Robbed the country for millions. While the people struggled for their livelihood, Duvaliers wedding costed an estimated 3 million dollars. When he left in 1986 to live in exile in France, Haiti was bankrupt.

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Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini (1902 – 1989)
When you think that God is on your side, it’s hard for other people to convince you that what you do is wrong. From 1979 till 1989 Khomeini was the 1st Supreme Leader of Iran. His government was was ‘a God’s government,’ and disobedience against it was a ‘revolt against God’. He gave Rushdie his fatwa. Women were forced to cover their hair, men were not allowed to wear shorts. Opposition to the religious rule met harsh punishments. Or as he said; ‘I shall kick their teeth in’.

The transformation from a pleasant residential area till a warzone goes in several steps. In the South Bronx there have been several factors contributing to the decay: the flight of the middle class, landlord abandonment, general economic decline, and also the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway.

This expressway cut neighborhoods in half, causing a decrease in property value and loss of social cohesion. In combination with the elements mentioned earlier people started moving out. Whole blocks were abandoned and the only way landlords could make any money was to set fire to the apartments to collect the insurance money. At the peak of the downfall over 40 percent of the South Bronx’s buildings had been burned or abandoned.

At the time, because it struggled to deal with the overwhelming surge of crime, the police station of the  NYPD’s 41st Precinct became known as ‘Fort Apache, The Bronx’.  Hollywood even made a movie about the station house. By 1980, the 41st’s station had been renamed ‘The Little House on the Prairie’, as two thirds of the residents of the neighborhood had fled and left the station house as the only building on the block that had not been abandoned, burnt by arson, or both.

Another steady pillar in the middle of this decay was Yankee Stadium. But it was hard to see the two separated. In 1977, during a game in the World Series, a helicopter filmed the stadium from the sky. The viewers at home could clearly see an uncontrolled fire burn the corner of their television sets. When the commentator saw the fire, he said the iconic phrase ‘The Bronx is burning.’

Next to the rundown buildings, another typical feature of urban decay are the car wrecks in the street. Probably the city didn’t have the money or manpower to remove these rusty piles of steel.  The car wrecks even blocked parts on the exits of the expressway, where the problems in case of the South Bronx all started.

Read this article in the New York Times about how an apartment slides into decay. Photographer Robert Ronan made the pictures, see more here.

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See more gun ads here.

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photo’s Todd Tankersley

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Like on 02/15/1984 when ‘a 17-year-old youth was stabbed to death for his designer-frame eyeglasses. According to detectives, the victim, Henry Breed of 1011 East 212th Street, the Bronx, had been walking on Broadway, near 204th Street, at 4:15 P.M. Monday when he was accosted by five youths who grabbed his Cazal eyeglass frames. Sgt. John Boyle of the 34th Detective Squad said the teen-ager had resisted, and in the struggle was fatally stabbed. An optometrist said that Cazal frames were a ”hot craze” among teen-agers. Glasses cost about $125.’

Or on the 09/27/1997 when ‘the police said, Mr. Thomas and Christopher Bruce, a 16-year-old fellow gang member, decided that what was Mr. Vaughn’s should be theirs. They approached him about 3 P.M. at the Ralph Avenue subway station on the A line, chased him into a tunnel and stole his Air Jordans and beeper. Somehow Mr. Vaughn hit his head, and his assailants left him on the tracks, semiconscious as a train approached, the police said. He was killed when the train ran over him.’

And on 02/21/2001 ‘Ismael Mazran, 25, was near the pond about 100 feet from an entrance at the northeast corner of the park, at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue. The two were approached about 12:30 a.m. by three men in their late teens or early 20’s, one of whom had a gun, according to the police. After demanding Mr. Mazran’s down North Face bubble jacket and a chain he was wearing, the woman told police, one of the men suddenly shot Mr. Mazran in the head.’

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