Status quo maintained for Arab dictator duo

There was a small burst of excitement from Libya where unconfirmed reports from a Palestinian news agency stated that the venerable Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi had suffered a stroke and gone into a coma. Now the ever nattily attired Colonel Qaddafi has not only declared that not only is he alive and well, but that he intends to sue the reporters who released the story. In a bizarre news conference in Tripoli, Qaddafi vowed vengeance, declaring bombastically, "the one who fires at you, you should fire at him too. The one who tells you 'I am your enemy', consider yourself his enemy."

Whatever the hell that means.

In other news, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad wants the world to know he's just getting comfortable running the family business. Since assuming power after the death of his father, the bloodthirsty Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad has had a somewhat tough time of things. All that work his father put into turning Lebanon into a satellite state? That turned out badly, no thanks to Junior. However, a family dictatorship is still a dictatorship, and one bad turn deserves another. So when the Syrian Ba'ath Party nominated Bashar al-Assad to run for a second 7 year term as President, we here at Dictators of the World congratulated al-Assad, knowing that the May 27th popular election is a mere cynical exercise in ballot box stuffing. Frankly, since al-Assad is the only candidate on the ballot, one wonders: why is this election even required as a formality?