The world did not move to assist millions of starving Ethiopians until international journalists broke the dictator's stranglehold on information.
Fidel Castro had toppled the dictator Fulgencio Batista, broken Cuba's ties to the United States, withstood a United States-backed invasion, redistributed land and built schools and hospitals for the poor.
Mr Megarief was Qaddafi's ambassador to India but broke with the dictator in 1980, fleeing to exile to organise an opposition and surviving at least two assassination attempts.
A former officer in Muammar el-Qaddafi's army, General Hifter broke with the dictator in the 1980s and received C.I.A. support before fleeing to Virginia, where he lived for two decades.
As fighting intensified further in Iraq today, an audiotape surfaced with a voice claiming to be that of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's toppled dictator, breaking a long silence since an allied military campaign drove him from office in April.
I was up for anything: resigning Popes, broken government, sequesters, North Korean dictators, the Cypriot banking collapse, Supreme Court hearings on same-sex marriage, even the N.R.A.
Certainly, there will be unpleasant moments if we finally decide break our dictator addiction -- just like its painful for the junkie to go cold turkey, we may feel uncomfortable with newly democratic governments choosing to do things we don't like.
As a result, the dictator's power base was broken, and he died while on trial in The Hague for war crimes.
On their wish list for the premiere issue was a cover story on the Dictators, but the band had already broken up.
Similarly, mass public protests are far less likely to break out following a dictator's death than after other forms of authoritarian leader exit.
