Death, death, death – lunch- death...

...[Hitler] was a mass-murdering fuckhead, as many important historians have said. But there were other mass murderers that got away with it: Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed, well done there. Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians; died under house arrest at age 72, well done indeed! And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people, and we're sort of fine with that.
"Ah, help yourself," you know? "We've been trying to kill you for ages!"
So kill your own people, right on there. Seems to be… Hitler killed people next door...
"Oh… stupid man!"
After a couple of years, "We won't stand for that, will we?"

Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people. We can't even deal with that! You know, we think if somebody kills someone, that's murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that's what they do. 20 people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever. And over that, we can't deal with it. Someone's killed 100,000 people, we're almost going; "Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning. I can't even get down the gym! Your diary must look odd: "Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death – lunch-death, death, death, death - afternoon tea - death, death, death - quick shower…"

-- Eddie Izzard, Dress To Kill

I don't often talk about events here outside of my own life, but I thought the - perhaps untimely - demise of Slobodan Milosevic deserves a mention. The Eddie Izzard extract I think makes a fair point about the likes of Milosevic, how can we begin to grasp the killing and displacement of people on that kind of scale? Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has been voted Parade magazine's number 1 worst dictator in the world for the second year in a row, having overtaken Kim Jong-Il of North Korea. Bashir is reported to have killed 180,000 people and displaced a further 2 million from their homes.

Ignore for now that Omar al-Bashir's name doesn't get mentioned in any axis of evil speeches, or that nobody has 'liberated' the people of Sudan unlike Iraq or Afghanistan. How do we even begin to grasp this level of depravity? We have laws on murder, and mass murder, but what do you do with someone like Milosevic? He had been on trial for the past five years, and naturally with an untimely death (that is, one not sanctioned by the state) like this, while the trial is going on, people talk of being denied justice.

How exactly do you give justice to the thousands of people killed, or the thousands more without homes? Exactly what kind of sentence can you give to someone that would be 'justice'? I don't believe in the death penalty, a rant for another day, but I don't think even taking his life -- the life of one 65 year old man -- could in any way balance the scales. As Mr Izzard says, you can't even deal with that.

I don't believe in a thing -- an entity, or a force -- called evil. I don't think there's some timeless bad that influences people to commit random acts of atrocity, from beating your girlfriend to exterminating hundreds or thousands of people. It might explain a lot, but it's an easy answer. At the same time, I don't think it can always come down to bad parenting or social factors. I guess there's just a meanness in this world.