Dictators of the World

OK, OK ...

2008-04-22T09:16:00.002-04:00

I know, I know. I've been gone a while. OK! Four months. But I just needed to take a moment to pop in to say yes, I still receive and read new comments and to let readers know that if you would like to become a contributing editor for Dictators of the World, leave a comment expressing interest. I should have more time to update DotW soon, but until then, the quiet period here will continue just a bit longer.

Dictator fetes ... dictator.

2007-12-09T16:26:00.000-05:00

In a move that startled absolutely nobody, Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chávez has bestowed Venezuela's highest honor, The Order of the Liberator, on dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus.

The award, given for "meritorious service to Venezuela" was given to Europe's last dictator shortly after Chávez's own attempt to become president for life was narrowly thwarted at the polls. Undaunted by Lukashenko's rotten records on press and political freedoms, Chávez gushed that Lukashenko's Belarus is "a model social state, like the one we are trying to create [in Venezuela]". Venezuelans will doubtlessly be overjoyed to learn that Chávez views Belarus as a political and social role model, which removes those final doubts some Chávez opponents had about leaving the country forever before they're locked up as political prisoners.

The seven wonders of the totalitarian world

2007-12-06T06:54:00.000-05:00

I know what you're thinking: only seven? Well, I didn't pick the list. Esquire magazine did. Why does a magazine devoted to women, cars and men's fashion care about totalitarian monuments? Your guess is as good as mine, but you can view their list right here.

Personally, I would have made room for North Korea's infamous Ryugyong hotel on this list. Maybe next time?

Dictator week!

2007-12-03T18:06:00.000-05:00

Voters in Venezuela say no to Hugo Chávez's bid to become president for life, fueling speculation if the one time military coupster will bypass the ballot box next time and simply go the more traditional route to seizing unlimited power.

On the other end of the spectrum, Pakistan's military strongman Pervez Musharraf has stepped down from his military position, hoping to hang on in what's sure to be an insanely rigged election in January. Trading on the political unpopularity of his opponents won't hurt, either.

And lest he think we've forgotten about him, Vladimir Putin has secured his efforts to keep running Russia behind the scenes after his term as president ends. Czarism, anyone?

And yes, I'm back! It's been a busy couple of weeks for me, but everything has settled down. 2008 promises to be every bit the golden age for dictators that 2007 has been, and DotW will be here to enjoy every second of it.

Yes, we're still here.

2007-11-20T03:17:00.001-05:00

I apologize for falling somewhat behind on DotW. I've been busy out there in the real world, and should have time for blogging again very soon.

As for dictator news, it's all Pervez Musharraf all the time lately, isn't it? I don't have very much to add on the man himself, but I'm certainly bemused by the editorial spin that paints the man as a creature of the Bush administration. Perhaps people have forgotten that America has, and forever will, back whichever dictator is holding the reins in Pakistan?

King Juan Carlos of Spain to Hugo Chávez: "Just shut up"

2007-11-12T02:52:00.001-05:00

Someone forgot to tell Hugo that "fascist" is a real word with a real meaning in Spain, and who better to remind him than the king?

Who's hot? Who's not?

2007-11-06T04:42:00.000-05:00

HOT: Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan)

The general has been down so long, that anything looks like up to him. So when Musharraf declared martial law this week, even his innumerable enemies had to concede that Musharraf still has enough political juice to be reckoned with. Is the state of emergency a desperate move to retain power? Will his bizarre assault on Pakistan's judges and lawyers capture the imagination of the public? Will the scolding by the United States help, or harm his reputation with Pakistan's intransigent intelligence services?

He's got nowhere to go but down from here, but for today? The man is red hot.

NOT HOT: Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe)

At long last, the world is getting ready for a Zimbabwe without Robert Mugabe. At 83 years old, he no longer has the energy or political will to keep control of the ruling ZANU-PF party. Could anyone have imagined five years ago that the ZANU-PF leadership would be talking about ousting Mugabe in a coup d'etat? Of course not. Mugabe's pitiful plans to run for re-election one more time are looking more and more like the pleas of a tired old man to go out on top. We're betting he'll be out long before the 2008 elections.

When You Wish Upon A Dictator

2007-11-01T05:40:00.001-04:00

You may have all noticed by now that most dictators are very, very fond of commissioning ridiculous, self-aggrandizing monuments. from Nicolae Ceauşescu's absurd Palace of the Parliament, the North Korean Kim dynasty's comically disastrous Rygyong Hotel, and Turkmenbashi's insanely creepy Rukhnama monument, dictators generally like to think big and expensive when scattering their legacy across the countryside.

So I was surprised to see how Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev has bucked the trend by insisting on a more modestly sized project in the former capital of Almaty, ethereally called The Wishbook. The monument is a bronze memorial, ostensibly celebrating Kazakhstan's independence from the Soviet Union, and is graced with an imprint of Nazarbayev's own palm. It is said that anyone who puts his or her hand in the imprint will be granted a wish, doubtlessly due to the magical, nay, mystical all-seeing benevolence of Nursultan Nazabayev himself. The original Wishbook was recently stolen by scrap metal thieves, but the government managed not only to replace it in near record time, but have posted police to guard the monument around the clock to make sure thieves don't make off with the wishes of an entire country.

Perhaps it was vanity that prompted Nazarbayev to recreate the magic of The Wishbook, so he commissioned another similar monument for the country's new capital, Astana. Located at the top of the city's tallest building, The Padishah's Egg also features an imprint of Nazarbayev's palm, and will also grant wishes - but with a twist: the monument will play the Kazakh national anthem to confirm that the wish will be granted, and will only do so for "worthy" supplicants. When visiting Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin fondled The Padishah's Egg, the anthem dutifully played, indicating that his wish would soon be forthcoming. When a Kazakh government apparatchik on the losing end of an internal power struggle did the same, the monument remained uncomfortably and unmistakably silent - as if Nazarbayev himself were watching.

Frankly, if I had the chance, I'd wish that Nazarbayev would take a long, one-way camel trip into the middle of the desert, but what wish would you want Nursultan Nazarbayev to grant you, Dictators of the World readers?

UPDATE: Josh at Registan.net knows what he'd ask Uncle Nazzy for: more giant yurts!

Year Zero (odometer: 546,944 KM)

2007-10-31T04:45:00.000-04:00

Fans of King of the Hill will recall that feisty family patriarch Cotton Hill is forever trying to raise a few bucks selling, what he claims, is Adolf Hitler's own personal canoe, which Cotton claimed to have seized as a war trophy.

Apparently, Cotton isn't alone on trying to cash in on a dictator's transportation. Someone recently put a 1973 Mercedes Benz stretch limousine allegedly belonging to the late Cambodian dictator Pol Pot (funeral pyre pictured) up on eBay with a minimum bid of $71,000 US. Or so the story goes, anyway. I searched exhaustively for the listing on eBay, but came up empty - it seems the sale ended late last night. The alleged ad copy, however, certainly caught my eye:

"For Sale - one classic 1973 Mercedes Benz Stretch Limousine ...previously used by one infamous owner - Pol Pot"

I'd buy it, if only to keep it in the garage ... right next to Hitler's canoe.

UPDATE: Want to buy the Lancia Astura given to Adolf Hitler by Benito Mussolini? It's up for sale, too.

An urgent message from Omar al-Bashir

2007-10-30T03:20:00.000-04:00

Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir, better known as the architect of the Darfur nightmare, has a message for all you Western busybodies:

Western nations have no ethics or morals and we will export it to them. These countries have the political, military and economic strength. We are strong with our values and we are waiting on Allah’s promise to obliterate them!

Thanks for clearing that up, your excellency.

UPDATE: Jimmy Carter will be talking to Omar al-Bashir personally to complain about the lack of appropriate immigrations and customs procedures in Sudan. Look out, Omar!

Chávez furious with Spanish pop star

2007-10-29T03:46:00.000-04:00

Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chávez has told Spanish pop star Alejandro Sanz, not in my house, motherfucker!

In 2004, Sanz told a reporter that he supported the recall referendum aimed at ousting Chávez, adding jokingly, "if that many people told me to quit singing, I would do so".

Fast forward to 2007, the Venezuelan government has canceled Sanz's appearance at a municipally owned and operated arena because of his three year old anti-Chávez comment. The Chavista Minister for Higher Education, Luis Acuna, blasted Sanz, saying:

If an artist comes to Venezuela to criticize Chávez and his movement, how do you think the people of this country would respond?

Judging by Sanz's immense popularity in Venezuela, the answer appears to be "just fine", but Luis Acuna went a step further by saying that from now on, the government will ban any event promoting "anti-educational" values from taking place in municipal venues. The sudden space freed up on the schedule can, and probably will be, filled by Chávez himself, who is fond of holding massive political rallies at the stadium.

Then again, Chávez's motivations may be somewhat more petty. While Sanz is a massively popular singer with a reputation as a ladies man, Chávez is short, squat, and has a face only Fidel Castro could love. And while Chávez has tried to branch out into a music career, for some reason, Sanz continues to outsell him, even in Venezuela. Perhaps Chávez would lighten up if someone would just buy his CD already?

Ribs, chicken, and a side of Kim Jong-Il

2007-10-26T02:06:00.001-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, DotW readers, meet Bobby Egan of Hackensack, New Jersey. Bobby is the owner of Cubby's Barbecue Restaurant, and besides his penchant for mouth watering baby back ribs, Bobby also has another passion - a passion for North Korea. So how did a man who makes a living slinging ribs take a shine to Kim Jong-Il's kingdom?

Bobby Egan's career in what can only be described as amateur diplomacy began over 20 years ago, when he contacted the Vietnamese mission to the United Nations and offered his services on repairing relations with Washington. Why the Hanoi government thought a guy who runs a rib shack could help thaw relations with the United States remains a mystery, but the Vietnamese, eager for a thaw, heeded Egan's advice about "coming clean" about the fate of US soldiers missing in action in Vietnam. Before it was all over, Egan was making trips to Hanoi (one of very few Americans to do so in the 1980s) and testifying before congress on the POW/MIA issue. None of Egan's leads ever panned out, but the rib man made his mark.

It wasn't long before the North Korean government picked up on Egan's volunteer work on behalf of Vietnam, and contacted them on how to improve their image with Washington. Egan's solution? Luring North Korea's infamously reclusive UN staff out to New Jersey for ribs, and tickets to see the New York Giants. After the death of Kim Il-Sung, Egan ingratiated himself with the new heads of the North Korean UN mission in New York, serving (by his own accounts) in roles from everything as a doorman to chauffeur. Somewhere along the way, the North Koreans began to use Egan as their point man for backroom negotiations with the US State Department, who were less than pleased with Egan's role with the North Korean government.

In 1996, a North Korean spy submarine became stranded in South Korean waters, letting loose a pack of 26 heavily armed North Korean commandos in South Korean territory. By the time it was all over, the commandos had killed 13 South Koreans, while 24 of the North Koreans had been killed, one captured, and one escaped. South Korea and the United States demanded an apology from Pyongyang, so the North Korean government threw Egan into the fray. Egan attempted to convince a gaggle of incredulous State Department officials to drop the demand of the apology in exchange for the release of five American prisoners of war rumored to still be held in North Korea. US President Bill Clinton's Asian affairs specialist, Colonel Charles "Jack" Pritchard, went to Cubby's in Hackensack to personally tell Egan to butt the hell out. Unfortunately for Egan, the United States got their apology from North Korea.

Pritchard's suggestion that Egan should stick to ribs has, apparently, fallen on deaf ears. Egan has resumed offering his advice to the North Koreans, even telling them that they should go ahead and conduct nuclear weapons testing in order to knock "Bush off his chair". The North Koreans went ahead and did just this, although the results haven't exactly thawed out relations with the United States as intended. The North Koreans, however, have rewarded Egan by making him the head of the United States of America-Democratic Republic of North Korea Trade Council, an organization that basically consists of Bobby Egan, because of the complete lack of trade ties between the US and North Korea. His bizarre dedication to helping the regime has also had another reward - a snazzy lapel pin bearing the image of the Dear Leader himself, Kim Jong-Il.

Quoth Egan, "I'm one of only two westerners to get this, me and some guy from Romania, I was told."

It makes me wonder just what that Romanian guy had to do to get his.

Lukashenko blasts Jews, but wants their money

2007-10-25T01:24:00.001-04:00

The dictator of Belarus, Alexandr Lukashenko, made the news recently for his bizarre comments on Jews, both within Belarus and without.

Commenting in a radio interview on his recent visit to the city of Babruysk, Lukashenko said:

"It was scary to enter - it was a pigsty! That was mainly a Jewish town, and you know how the Jews treat a place they are living in."

When asked to elucidate, Lukashenko noted:

"Look at Israel, I've been there. Now I don't really want to offend anyone, but they don't care as much about cutting the grass, unlike in Moscow."

No Muscovite Jews were apparently available to comment on their landscaping habits. Lukashenko did, however, call on Jews to return to Babruysk, asking them to bring their money to revitalize the formerly Jewish city.

You know, because the Jews are all rich. Another image boost for Belarus courtesy of Alexandr Lukashenko.

Attack of the Super Soviet Apemen!

2007-10-23T04:11:00.000-04:00

It's an old story, sure - but since it's an otherwise slow news day for dictator updates, DotW would be remiss if we didn't revisit the story of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's plan to build an army of super Communist Apemen to attack and overthrow the bourgeois, decadent capitalist West.

The story begins in the early 1920s when Uncle Joe approached famed Soviet animal husbandry expert Ilya Ivanov with a startling proposition:

I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat ...

Now, some would argue that the bulk of the Soviet Red Army already fit this description, but Stalin was thinking big. The Politburo rubber stamped Stalin's directives for creating bioengineered soldiers, and ordered the Russian Academy Of Sciences to proceed with plans to create a "living war machine". Ivanov, who was not actually a crackpot unlike many of Stalin's pet scientists, pioneered horse breeding with his crude, but successful, artificial insemination techniques. So, Ivanov reasoned, if we can build a stronger, faster horse, we can certainly build a stronger, faster man.

The problem Ivanov faced is that selective breeding for humans is an extremely tricky business. Besides, even Russian soldiers drawn from the peasantry had, from time to time, been known to complain, feel pain, and even mutiny. So Ivanov took a page from Charles Darwin and looked to man's closest primate ancestor - the chimpanzee. Armed with a small fortune provided by the Politburo, Ivanov traveled to West Africa to collect the chimps and transport them back to the Soviet Union. At his hastily constructed breeding facility in Georgia, Ivanov repeatedly tried, and failed, to impregnate the chimps with human sperm samples. Moving on to plan two, peasant girls were "volunteered" for attempted impregnation with chimpanzee sperm.

Naturally, the harder Ivanov tried, the more he failed. When Stalin grew impatient and demanded a progress report, Ivanov knew his time was running out. In desperation, he tried (and failed) to obtain newer (somehow better?) monkeys from a Cuban heiress, but the story leaked to the Western press, and Ivanov became an international laughing stock. The jig was up. Failing Uncle Joe was bad enough without making the Soviet Union look bad, and Ivanov died shortly after his exile to Karaganda.

The moral? No man could make a monkey out of Josef Stalin.

Venezuelans reject glass Guevara gimmick

2007-10-22T03:30:00.000-04:00

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is reportedly seeing red after ingrates demolished a pricey glass statue dedicated to the deader-than-a-doornail Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

A group describing itself as the "Patriotic Command of the Plateau" shot the glass statue six times, and thoughtfully left a note explaining their motive:

"We do not want a monument to Che, he is not an example for our children"

Considering for a moment that Che Guevara was an incompetent, bigoted terrorist, the protesters may be onto something with that sentiment. The real target, of course, is Chávez himself, and his endless love affair with all things relating to the Cuban revolution. Chávez has spent most of the month in Cuba, swooning over Che Guevara, and engaging in a romantic (if somewhat sickly) pas de deux with the zombielike remains of Fidel Castro. Chávez can't possibly be happy that one of his own ingrate peasants had the nerve to bring a token of his infatuation down to the ground in a sea of glass splinters, but that's the Venezuelan people getting all revolutionary on his ass, no?

Or perhaps it's simply a cry for attention? Hey, big spender, spend a little time with your electorate! With all the time Chávez has spent in Cuba during his rule, it's possible that the people just wanted to remind him which country he's actually president of! Either way, el caudillo hasn't seen fit to comment on the demolition of the Che memorial yet, but I'm sure there's a three hour televised rant on the subject coming soon.

Getting to know Iosef Dzhugashvili

2007-10-19T04:28:00.000-04:00

Do recognize the unassuming young man in the picture? No? What if I told you his name - Iosef Dzugashvili. Does that help?

No?

What if I told you his famous pseudonym: Koba. Would that tell you more?

No?

Ok, it's time to let the cat out of the bag. The picture is of Josef Stalin, born Iosef Dzugashvili in the small town of Gori in then Russian Georgia. It's also Dzugashvili as opposed to his more ferocious and infamous adult incarnation that is the subject of Simon Sebag Montefiore's new book Young Stalin, a book the New York Times has cheekily (but not inaccurately) described as a portrait of the "dictator as a young poet-thug". Montefiore's book apparently expands on where Donald Rayfield and Robert Conquest have tread only briefly to provide what may be the most comprehensive biography yet of the man who would become Josef Stalin. While I haven't read Young Stalin yet, I certainly intend to do so soon, but I'd already learned about Iosef Dzugashvili surprised me at first, as it surprises everyone who first learns about the man who become the powerful man of the 20th century.

Unlike his German contemporary, the young Dzugashvili has a credible claim to being an artist, with a talent for Georgian poetry. Also unlike Hitler, Dzugashvili was a quick study and an adept student - when not rebelling against the monastery where he was educated. Though an avid reader, the young man was also a street brawler, who managed to intimidate with his brawn despite losing much of the use of an arm that withered after it was run over by a horse drawn carriage. Undoubtedly, a vicious streetfighting intellectual seems to be a contradiction in terms, but not for Dzugashvili, who quickly learned to hide his brains and overemphasize his strength - a decision that served him extremely well for the rest of his life. And when young Dzugashvili had finally morphed into Stalin, the Man of Steel, his Bolshevik rivals - especially Trotsky - bought into his ruse, continually underestimating him as some sort of uneducated, bloodthirsty country bumpkin. This image alone kept Stalin out of the picture while the party intellectuals fought each other for power, allowing Stalin to sit back and wait to see who would emerge victorious.

Stalin invented a ridiculous biography to obscure what were, frankly, his more interesting (if infinitely more humble) origins, and I eagerly await reading Young Stalin to learn yet ever more about the man behind the monstrous myth. Perhaps I'll even read it by candlelight on Halloween, just for the effect ..

Bob Denard: dead as a doornail

2007-10-16T06:52:00.001-04:00

While not a dictator, French mercenary Bob Denard was responsible for no fewer than eight military coup d'etats, including a mindblowing four in the Comoros Islands alone. Read his obituary here.

Chávez y Fidel por siempre

2007-10-15T04:34:00.000-04:00

Watching three plus hours of Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chávez's television call in show Aló, Presidente would bore men stronger and younger than ailing Cuban caudillo Fidel Castro to death. So you can imagine my surprise when the octogenarian recluse called in to Hugo's program to warble words of amor to the oil soaked political plutocrat who is almost single handedly financing the dying remnants of Castro's dictatorship.

Castro's call was prompted by an hour or so of Chávez singing hymns lionizing the deader-than-a-doornail Ernesto "Che" Guevara and the almost dead Fidel Castro. The Cuban dictator cooed words of loving encouragement to his pudgy protege, croaking "I am very touched when you sing about Che", prompting Chávez to excitedly squeal, "there is electricity in the air tonight!" Unfortunately, the standards of decorum were to slide even lower. Calling Fidel "the father of all revolutionaries", Hugo replaced God with Fidel Castro while riffing on the Lord's Prayer, a move that may ruffle some feathers in overwhelmingly Catholic Venezuela.

"Our father, who is in the water, earth and air ... you will never die. You remain forever on this continent and with these nations, and this revolution .... is more alive today than ever, and Fidel, you know it, we will take charge of continuing to fan the flame."

Even if Castro weren't already wearing a colostomy bag, it's uncertain that his mere mortal plumbing could remain unmoved by the avalanche of Chávez's affections. I think I may need to be excused for a moment myself.

We're #3!

2007-10-12T06:09:00.000-04:00

Yes Uncle Joe, things are looking up for Dictators of the World! We've gone from a measly eighth ranking in a Google search for "world dictators" all the way up to third. So who's ahead of DotW? Goddamned Parade Magazine! Yes, the only blog devoted solely to dictators is still outranked by the website of a free Sunday newspaper insert "magazine" whose journalistic focus leans heavily towards asking celebrities how they feel about children and puppies. That reeeeally could hurt a guy's pride.

I'm currently working on a (non-Google bombing) way to outrank Parade's yearly dictator roundup on the search engine rankings, so with any luck, we'll be alone at the top, looking down on the rest of the peasants below us. Just like Uncle Joe.

Kim Jong-Il: Internet Expert

2007-10-12T04:54:00.001-04:00

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il raised eyebrows around the world recently when he proclaimed himself to be an "expert" on the internet. Kim's comments came during a summit meeting with arch-enemies South Korea, who proposed the creation of an industrial park with a shared internet link between the two countries.

"I am an Internet expert" said Kim, "many problems would arise if the Internet is connected to other parts of the North."

So ... does this mean that Li'l Kim is totally l33t? Is he playing World of Warcraft, or using Bittorrent, or editing articles on BGP on Wikipedia?

Let's just say it's doubtful.

One of the perks of ruling a country whose state ideology worships you as a living demigod is having internet privileges. One of the downsides of living in a country whose ruler you are forced to worship as a living demigod is not having internet privileges. Kim Jong-Il certainly sees no need to let his captive population communicate in the outside world. Hence his comment that "problems would arise" if North Korea had internet access is true in the sense that North Koreans would have a chance to learn that their country is not the richest in the world, and that their dead Great Leader is not actually revered around the world as a divine supergenius. North Korea's freedom of the press is, officially, the worst in the world. There is literally no aspect of mass communication that is not controlled by the state. In a country where televisions and radios are locked in to one station and channel, the odds that the government would allow access to any outside source of information are around zero.

Still, if you happen to see someone in a chatroom with the handle "Pulgasari" bragging about his internet expertise, try to humor him. He doesn't really get out much.

A shocker from Robert Mugabe

2007-10-11T04:41:00.000-04:00

Robert Mugabe came perilously close to a moment of critical self-realization when he acknowledged that an economic meltdown, massive emigration and widespread malnutrition have turned Zimbabwe into an international "laughing stock". A quarter of Zimbabweans have fled the country, and of the remaining eight million people, nearly half will be requiring food aid in the coming year.

Shockingly, Mugabe even made what may have been his first ever public conciliatory remarks about his bitter political enemies, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Anyone who's read what Mugabe's had to say about the MDC and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the past must have been shellshocked when Mugabe said

We have become the laughing stock because of hunger. We all need to eat, whether you are Zanu-PF or MDC. Let's unite.
- Robert Mugabe

Mugabe calling for unity with the MDC? Based on his previous attitude towards the MDC, you get the sense that Mugabe would rather unite with a prostate tumor. It would be foolish to say that Robert Mugabe is unaware of Zimbabwe's miseries, but a statement calling for unity between ZANU-PF and the MDC suggests that, perhaps, he's also finally seeing the light at the end of the political tunnel. He has acknowledged that Zimbabwe's social and economic problems are, for once, of greater concern than whether or not ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe are in power forever. Could this statement further suggest his readiness to depart from the political scene?

Mugabe's acknowledgment of Zimbabwe's problems stopped short of an admission of guilt, however. While quick to take credit for everything that had gone right in Zimbabwe, Mugabe and ZANU-PF have forever been unable to take the blame when their harebrained schemes have backfired.

Ich liebe Dich

2007-10-10T04:49:00.001-04:00

Niccolo Machiavelli coined one for the ages when he opined it is best to be both feared and loved, however, if one cannot be both it is better to be feared than loved. Obviously, the man knew that one of the many perks of being a dictator is having a better than average shot at both.

Now obviously, some dictators have failed at having it both ways. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini managed to endear himself with the people, but never quite found a way to actually scare Italians. Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin got the fear part down to a science, but even with a relentless cult of personality that managed to engender respect - even reverence, Uncle Joe failed miserably on the "loved" portion of the equation.

Which leads us to a man who most people would view as history's least lovable dictator, German Führer Adolf Hitler. Adolf certainly had the "fear" part down pat, but how did he score on being loved? Well, according to an upcoming book called Letters to Hitler: A People Writes to Its Führer, Hitler did far better than one would expect from a short, bloodthirsty megalomaniac whose primary form of communication was screaming. The book compiles letters to Hitler recovered by Soviet troops in East Germany written by ordinary Germans to their dictator, and while some sycophancy is obviously included, there appears to have been a genuine outpouring of affection towards Hitler. Sure, he may have been bristly and aloof, but there had to be something that inspired a woman to write to him and declare "I would like to make you my little puppy my dear, my eternal, my lovely Adolf".

Historians would like us to believe that Hitler was some sort of magician who "wove a spell" around the Germans, but this is just a tedious cliche used a shortcut to explain how people internalize their feelings for authority. Hitler himself was about as lovable as a viper with the ebola virus, but something about his mien stirred genuine feelings of affection from ordinary Germans. Could it have been daddy issues on a national scale?

Nowadays, dictators appear to have largely dispensed with the loved part of Machiavelli's equation, opting largely to rule through one or the other. Hugo Chávez buys love with oil money, and Than Shwe uses riot police, but is it so much to ask that one of today's crop manages to provide some balance? Call me old fashioned, but I'd like to think we've got a right to expect more from the world's most notorious tyrants.

We will, in fact, have Pervez Musharraf to kick around

2007-10-09T04:32:00.000-04:00

So the world's most beleaguered dictator finally gets one in the win column. Amid opposition boycotts, parliamentary walkouts, and a series of looming Supreme Court challenges to the entire process, Pakistan's military strongman, General Pervez Musharraf, has won another five year term as president on Saturday.

That the seemingly terminally compromised Musharraf could cruise to re-election highlights just how bad Pakistani politics are. With the lack of fresh political energy in Pakistan, it's little wonder that voters opted for more of the same. Whether or not they would have done so without the self-defeating boycotts and walkouts by what passes for Musharraf's political opposition is another matter entirely. There doesn't appear to be as much enthusiasm for the return of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan as there does among pundits on the BBC and in the Washington Post, but Musharraf managed to strike a power sharing deal with her anyway. Perhaps the good general summed it up best with this pithy comment on the state of politics in Pakistan: "democracy means majority, whether there is opposition or no opposition".

Will the high court invalidate Musharraf's reelection? Will he declare martial law if they do? Will Pakistan finally give up the pretense of being a functioning nation state and just return a Mogul emperor to the throne? Stay tuned.

"It's become fashionable to pretend to be democratic"

2007-10-05T04:27:00.000-04:00

The normally taciturn and reclusive Isaias Afewerki appears to have transformed himself into something of an extrovert lately. I've already posted an article about Al-Jazeera's video interview with the Stalinist Eritrean dictator, and now I've found a delightful interview Afewerki granted to the Los Angeles Times. So how does Afewerki defend his rotten record? As might be expected, Afewerki blames all of his country's ills on neighboring Ethiopia and its superpower ally, the United States. Of course, Afewerki can't quite explain how Eritrea's rotten relations with Addis Ababa and Washington accounts somehow forces his government to torture political prisoners or indefinitely conscript his citizens as indentured servants, but I don't suppose anyone was really expecting him to connect the dots there, anyway.

I was especially interested to read Afewerki's defense of Eritrea's press freedoms (which are currently the third worst in the world):

There is no independent press anywhere. Who guides the so-called independent media? Who finances these organizations? Unfortunately, the independent media are being manipulated by those who can afford to buy them.

If his career as a dictator doesn't pan out, he still might have a bright future as a guest columnist for Media Matters. Even better, Afewerki provides a straightforward defense of tyranny itself. When asked if Eritrea's so called "democracy" might ever get around to letting people vote once in a while, Afewerki was blunt:

You can see today how this concept of democracy is abused. It's very sad. Democracy in its real essence should provide people with equal opportunity.

You see, it is precisely because Eritrea cannot guarantee equal opportunity to everyone that it has denied it anyone. Except, of course, to Isaias Afewerki himself. Speaking of which, has he ever thought of stepping down so that Eritrea could, perhaps, rejoin the rest of the world?

It's become a habit for me not to discuss this issue. I believe in a political process that will take this country from one level to a higher level. I see myself in this process. I think I'm moving in the right direction.

We'll take that as a no, Isaias. You can read the interview in its jaw dropping entirety here.

You won't have Bob Mugabe to kick around anymore

2007-10-03T04:31:00.001-04:00

Stop me if you've heard this before, but Robert Mugabe's career in politics looks like it may be coming to an abrupt end. If Zimbabwe were a normal country, they would have voted out a leader who has managed to single handedly ruin the economy and send a quarter of the population into exile, but that's just not how dictatorships work, now is it?

Mugabe's main method of retaining power has been the most effective tool of the African big man - cronyism. Over the years, Mugabe has, by and large anyway, eschewed the iron fist in favor of the velvet glove that offered potential political enemies a way into the ruling party to grab a share in the earnings from corruption. It's a classic strategy, and one that's proved to be extremely effective. The only problem is, what happens when the ruling political class runs out of money to steal, and people to extort bribes from? Robert Mugabe has been discovering the answer, and it isn't pretty.

Since independence, Mugabe has held a firm grip on the ruling ZANU-PF party, making quite sure never to let any single person rise through the ranks to the point where anyone would consider him or her to be "next in line". Yet because of Zimbabwe's economic implosion, a challenger within ZANU-PF has thrown down the gauntlet. A political faction within ZANU-PF led by retired General Solomon Mujuru has found itself engaging in a power struggle with the octogenarian Mugabe. So what's their beef?

Mugabe has insisted on running for reelection in 2008, and while he's hinted that he may step down if elected, he's also said that he intends to rule Zimbabwe until "at least" 2010. The Mujuru faction, on the other hand, is apparently insisting that Mugabe retire as soon as possible, which would lead the way for either Solomon or his wife Joyce to take control of ZANU-PF, which would lead the Mujurus just one more rigged election away from taking control of the country. Mugabe, of course, doesn't want to hear it, and he's attempting to fight back. Mugabe has ordered the state run press to insult the Mujuru faction, and has forbidden any "flattering" coverage of the Mujurus. Simultaneously, he's ordered the same outlets to provide extremely flattering coverage of Emmerson Mnangagwa, a politician who has fallen in and out favor with Mugabe, but who leads yet another ZANU-PF faction hostile to the Mujurus. Unfortunately for Mugabe, however, the press has very little influence on decision making inside the Zimbabwean politburo, and Mnangagwa's proximity to Mugabe is seen as little more than a crippling political liability.

Ominously for Mugabe, Solomon Mujuru appears to have gained supporters from the armed services, which is the only political faction Mugabe cannot afford to alienate. After squashing an alleged coup back in June, rumors abound that the Mujuru faction has reached out to the army, promising a greater role in government in exchange for their political support in the struggle with Mugabe. Nobody has been able to ascertain if the army backs the Mujurus, or if they will, as is also rumored, launch a coup if Mugabe is pushed out. As the only state institution capable of providing the muscle to prop up the government, the Army's political support has become the brass ring Harare's kleptocrats are flailing away at.

Now 83 years old, Mugabe is increasingly showing signs of frailty, and that he now lacks the physical and political vigor that sustained him during his most intense political challenges. The sharks are circling the lifeboat, and frankly, it's impossible to see how Mugabe is going to win that elusive final term to secure his "legacy" in politics. This isn't to say that the ZANU-PF predators looking to oust Mugabe will be any better for Zimbabwe's exhausted population of paupers, but I'm having a hard time imagining any scenario where Mugabe can outwit, or outmaneuver, them for much longer.

Than Shwe in the news? Sort of.

2007-10-02T02:53:00.001-04:00

The entire world is paying attention, or at least pretending to pay attention, to the crackdown on dissident monks in Burma. Missing in most of the coverage is any mention of just who runs the system that caused all this drama in the first place - SPDC chief Than Shwe. The coverage of the unrest in Burma has mostly avoided mentioning Than Shwe by name, preferring to run with "the military junta", "the generals" and so on and so forth. Then again, considering how Burma's top brasshat likes to avoid the limelight, this is somewhat understandable.

For now, Than Shwe remains in charge of the ruling SPDC party despite rumors of ill health and a desperate power struggle with the SPDC's number two man, Maung Aye. It's rumored that the delays in organizing the crackdown on the protesting monks were due to infighting among the generals, which could be construed as yet another sign of Than Shwe's diminishing influence. Nevertheless, Than Shwe's position at the top appears to still be intact, so much so that the United Nations will be directing its ineffectual pleas for "peace" and "restraint" to Than Shwe himself.

Perhaps the United Nations would try a different tack if they actually bothered to learn more about Than Shwe. How do you deal with a man who is, above all else, more of a brutal and monomaniacal kleptocrat than is an actual political leader? I can give you a hint: handing him a petition isn't going to get them very far, nor are "solidarity protests" in Belfast. The fact that the United Nations appears determined to deal with Than Shwe the same way they'd deal with the prime minister of Belgium shows that the international diplomacy bureaucracy still hasn't managed to to read the the essentially atavistic urges that motivate dictators, much less how to deal with them.

The talk of boycotts might scare a country like Belgium, but considering that most of Burma's trade involves heroin, mining and oil, it's a safe bet that Than Shwe isn't going to worry about boycotts. Besides, they only affect the poor. Who cares? There's been some talk about shaming China into restraining Burma with talk of an Olympic boycott, but wait - how will the Chinese know if the boycott is over Burma or Darfur? In the end, it's meaningless, because China has absolutely no intention to tell Than Shwe what to do, and Than Shwe has absolutely no intention to listen even if they did. Finally, a diplomatic relationship built on mutual understanding!

It's almost as if Than Shwe has figured out that there's no point in being a dictator if you're just going to let the rest of the world tell you what to do. Amazing, isn't it?

"Penniless" Baby Doc apologizes to Haiti

2007-09-26T04:47:00.003-04:00

Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier wants his former subjects to know how very sorry he is.

In a frankly bizarre radio address, the now exiled dictator who began his reign at the age of 19 admitted that "bad things" may have, in fact, occurred during his rule. Duvalier wisely omitted specifics, but claimed he "solemnly take(s) historical responsibility" for Haiti's miserable condition during his 15 years in power. Baby Doc also took the unusual step of begging the Haitian people's forgiveness, requesting "forgiveness from the people, and ask(ing) for the impartial judgment of history".

Broadcasting in French, a language only around 10% of his former countrymen can actually understand, the former dictator admitted his dire financial straits, saying he has been "broken" by his 21 years in exile in France. The irony of having a former dictator who embezzled a fortune from the poorest country in the western hemisphere talking about his hardships has not gone unnoticed by the relatively small handful of Haitians who were able to understand Baby Doc's unusual mea culpa. This report quoted a Haitian man named Robert Duval, who hit the nail on the head when he said "I don't accept his apology. He killed thousands of people, stole money and destroyed the psyche and heart of a people. This guy should be in jail and I'm just waiting for him to come back so that can happen."

The chances that France will extradite Duvalier to Haiti to stand trial are roughly equivalent to my chances of winning the Miss Venezuela contest, but one has to wonder why Baby Doc is suddenly in such a confessional mood? He certainly hasn't been at a loss for opportunities to apologize for his misrule in the past 20 years, so why now?

Where's Mahmoud?

2007-09-25T06:17:00.000-04:00

To date, I have said practically nothing about Iran's diminutive holocaust denying president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Surprisingly, nobody's written in to ask why a blog devoted to dictators hasn't devoted so much as a single post to such a prominent world leader who is frequently described as a dictator. And since nobody's asked, I can go ahead and explain why. Mahmoud's exclusion from Dictators of the World cannot be construed an endorsement of his politics, or his ability to govern Iran democratically. Mahmoud has been shut out from DotW because he's not a dictator.

Yes, you heard me right the first time. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not a dictator. Ahmadinejad is the president of Iran, and Iran certainly is ruled by dictatorship. Mahmoud himself, however, is not the dictator of Iran. It seems that many people have forgotten, although I can't imagine how, that Iran is no run of the mill dictatorship, but a theocracy run by a dictator. During the American hostage crisis, nobody knew, or cared, who the president of Iran was, because everyone on earth by that point recognized the dictator calling the shots in Iran. So, I hear you cry, if Iran is a dictatorship, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't the dictator of Iran, who is? That honor goes to Iran's "supreme leader", the reclusive Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In fact, Ahmadinejad can claim halfway credibly that his election was perfectly democratic - in a sense. For you see, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election as president was only made possible when the theocrats in the Ayatollah's 12 man Guardian Council approved of Ahmadinejad's candidacy in the first place, signifying in advance that the presidential figurehead running the day to day affairs of Iran would be utterly compliant in advance with the wishes and desires of "Supreme Leader" Khamenei. So why is it that we don't hear more about the real dictator of Iran? Whatever other failings Khamenei may have as a politician, he certainly gets credit for staying out of the limelight. His name and image adorn billboards in Iran, but he stays extremely quiet when it comes time to discuss his job as Iran's dictator. His role as "guardian of the Iranian revolution" means he is free to involve himself as much, or as little, in Iran's domestic and international affairs as he pleases. Frankly, without Khamenei telling him what do, think and say, we can safely say that we have no idea how Ahmadinejad would rule Iran if he were merely left to his own devices.

So why haven't we heard more in the western press about the Ayatollah that actually rules Iran? It's very hard to say for sure. It could be because he is, if anything else, a powerful Muslim religious leader, and as we've all learned since 2001 or the Danish cartoon riots, the Western press has been very careful about offending Muslim religious sensibilities by calling a holy man a dictator, even if he is. Secondly, as I noted above, Ali Khamenei does most of his work behind the scenes. Unlike his very public predecessor, Ali Khamenei does not have the air of the firebrand cleric who never met a photo opportunity he didn't like. Rather, Khamenei is content to tell a puppet like Ahmadinejad what to do, and let Ahmadinejad take the political heat. It's probably nice work if you can get it.

As Iran's nuclear standoff with the planet intensifies, keep your eyes peeled for any mentions of Ahmadinejad's boss in the press. At present, those mentions are few and far between, but with Iran consuming an ever greater percentage of reporting, his name is bound to come up ... eventually. Until then? Khamenei is perfectly content having you believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is actually Iran's dictator.

"The jaunty nipples of collectivism"

2007-09-25T01:53:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I took a look at Kim Jong-Il's insane plan to use kidnapping to improve North Korea's dismal propaganda movie industry. If you've ever wondered why any dictator would think anyone would sit through a three hour long socialist parable featuring a cheap Godzilla knock off, you're not alone. Pulgasari: Legendary Monster obviously represents the low end of the communist propaganda arts spectrum, but that's not to say that The Party didn't occasionally dabble in more substantial fare.

The late Chinese dictator, Mao Zedong, declared that art becomes useless unless it has become wedded to politics, and that politics, naturally, are useless unless they are in the service "of the people". Art for art's sake? That, my friends, is decadent, and bourgeois! After the revolution, everything becomes political, don't you know?

Looking back, perhaps The Chairman didn't understand that "the people", broadly speaking, were not inclined to confuse political propaganda with art. The well known notion that the arts tend to slip away from ideological yokes when given half a chance also appears to have been ignored. Still, just as Kim Jong-Il couldn't wait to try his hand at the movies, Mao Zedong couldn't wait to tamper with his particular favorite art form: Chinese opera.

And so, courtesy of Jim Lileks, an analysis of the Maoist opera masterpiece "The Red Detachment of Women".

Portrait of the dictator as cinephile

2007-09-24T05:46:00.001-04:00

It should come as no surprise that even dictators have hobbies, so it should come as no surprise that being a dictator allows one to pursue a hobby to extraordinary lengths. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il is reportedly one of the biggest movie buffs on the planet, with a collection of over 20,000 foreign films in his library. Of course, like any true dictator, Lil' Kim is not content to merely watch movies when he could try his hand at making them.

In 1978 during his father's reign, Kim Jong-Il arranged for the kidnapping of an extremely famous and well respected South Korean director, Shin Sang-Ok, during a business trip Hong Kong. When Shin's ex-wife went to Hong Kong to investigate his disappearance, she too was kidnapped by North Korean secret police and spirited off to Pyongyang. To Shin's horror, the junior Kim turned out to be a fan, and naturally, put Shin to work on his pet projects.

It seems that Kim had been disappointed with North Korea's staid and boring propaganda films bureau, and sought to bring his tastes as a movie buff into promoting North Korean Normally, the phrase "socialist cinema" conjures images of movies about nickel smelting and tractors, so you can imagine the horror the "Orson Welles of South Korea" must have felt when Kim Jong-Il announced that his new captive would be directing North Korea's most ambitious project to date: a Communist reworking of the Japanese monster movie Godzilla. Shin gamely went ahead and produced Kim's monster movie, but was thrown into a North Korean prison camp for trying to escape. Shin and his ex-wife finally managed to escape in a daring flight from their North Korean guards during a business trip to Vienna, after which, the director was finally free to talk about their ordeal, both physical and artistic, under Kim Il-Sung.

Kim Jong-Il has remained committed to the arts, however, and is reported to shunt aside lesser concerns like famines, floods, and nuclear proliferation talks aside for his real passion: film. He hasn't apparently kidnapped any other famous directors, but now one of South Korea's hottest directors is offering to bring his hit movie to North Korea on the condition that Kim shares his creation with the people of North Korea.

The offer may be tempting, but I'd be willing to bet that Kim will take a pass on this offer. After all, he can always wait until it comes out on DVD, right?

Sympathy for the devil

2007-09-21T04:28:00.000-04:00

People always say that if you live long enough, you'll see everything at least once. Today is one of those days, for today, I have come to defend the honor of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.

OK, perhaps "defend" is a strong word, but I've been following the recent brouhaha surrounding Robert Mugabe's presence, or lack thereof, at a summit of European and African leaders to be held in Lisbon this December. British prime minister Gordon Brown has spared absolutely no effort to inform the press that he intends to boycott the summit if Robert Mugabe attends. Mugabe, whose dislike of the UK knows few boundaries, has gamely shrugged off Brown's threat as political grandstanding. Sadly, Mugabe is absolutely right.

Gordon Brown's decision to treat Robert Mugabe like a radioactive leper is, of course, quite fair. Mugabe is a horrible man, and he's managed to completely destroy Zimbabwe during the nearly 30 years he's been in power. However, I have yet to be able to find a single good reason that Mugabe has been subjected to a level of disgust and scrutiny that the United Kingdom has yet to apply to some of the world's even more notorious dictators. I have been searching in vain, for example, for any boycott threats Brown has made to yesterday's featured dictator, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, or the truly infamous Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea.

My own opinion of Robert Mugabe has been quite clear. However it much it pains me to do so, though, I will be the first to admit that the UK's rhetoric on Mugabe has become somewhat ... overheated. It would be one thing, I suppose, if Mugabe's notoriety for violence were at issue, but it's not. In fact, when the Mugabe regime carried out the bloody gukurahundi, Zimbabwe's official relations with the United Kingdom were quite good, still basking in the post-colonial glow that claimed Zimbabwe would be the country that proved blacks and whites could live together in harmony on African soil.

While the low level war conducted against one of Zimbabwe's largest ethnic groups for political reasons does not appear to have overly troubled the United Kingdom, Mugabe's utterly scandalous comments about homosexuality appear to have done more damage to Anglo-Zimbabwean relations than the apparently more trivial murder of 30,000 Ndebele in Matabeleland. Yet this can't be the only explanation for Britain's stance on Mugabe either, since no other African dictator has gone on the record to express an even vaguely dissimilar view of homosexuality. Could it have been policy of forcing white farmers off the land? It's possible, but Mugabe and Britain worked as parters on this project before things went sour, and even then, Britain's tone regarding Mugabe wasn't even half as poisonous then as it is today. So what, then?

I'd also love to chalk it up to the sour relationships that develop between former colonies and their former colonial masters, but the theory falls apart when comparing official British government rhetoric about Mugabe to that of Omar al-Bashir. Considering Sudan's rather notorious involvement in Darfur, you'd think that his responsibility in the rape, murder and displacement of millions would generate just a bit more opprobrium than Mugabe ran into for having Morgan Tsvangvirai beat up in prison. Mugabe jailed him, but you can bet that al-Bashir or Obiang Nguema would have ordered Tsvangirai to be shot.

After, Mugabe might be an intractable dictator, but at least since the end of the gukurahundi anyway, he has not been a mass murderer. I wish the entire world would snub Robert Mugabe, but I also wish they'd extend the exact same rhetoric, and the exact same treatment, to dictators who make Robert Mugabe look like a creampuff. Consistency may or may not be the hobgoblin of small minds, it can serve as a checkpoint for keeping things in perspective. Mugabe cannot be compared to the likes of Saddam Hussein, Than Shwe, or Pol Pot, because he's simply not brutal enough. Bad, yes, the worst, no.

So there you have it: a defense, however, weak of Robert Mugabe. I hope I don't ever have to do that ever again.

UPDATE: Comrade Bob may be an asshole, but does he have to make me look like an asshole for sticking up for him one time? No sooner had I finished this post when I learned that Mugabe is withholding water from the city of Bulawayo to punish them for voting against ZANU-PF. Thanks for nothing, Bob.

Omar al-Bashir "ready for cease fire"

2007-09-20T04:31:00.001-04:00

The military dictator of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, has declared that he's ready to declare a cease fire with rebels in Darfur at the start of peace talks to be held in November. All across the world, professional diplomats are breathing a sigh of relief at finally receiving some sort of commitment from the Sudanese government to end the senseless violence in Darfur. To show how serious he is about pursuing peace, al-Bashir named his minister of "Humanitarian Affairs", Ahmed Haroun, to co-chair a panel set to investigate human rights abuses in Darfur. That Ahmed Haroun himself is one of the biggest perpetrators of human rights abuses in Darfur is, perhaps, besides the point, right?

Omar al-Bashir's sly inclusion of Haroun in his panel to "get to the bottom" of abuses al-Bashir himself has sanctioned is just another in a long list of his fuck-you gestures to the rest of the world. Omar al-Bashir knows that he's already won in Darfur, and that years of stalling tactics with the "international community" have already given him the time to either kill, or displace, the same people in Darfur that were causing him so many headaches to begin with. It's easy to talk peace when you've already won, after all. What's more, Omar al-Bashir is doubtlessly more than aware that the aforementioned international community, who have made themselves look busy on Darfur if nothing else, will not jeopardize the precious concept of "peace in Darfur" by insisting that any of the parties responsible for the violence actually be held accountable for their actions. Sure, in an ideal world we'd press for accountability, but we can't threaten the peace process with difficult demands. Which is exactly the reaction Omar al-Bashir has been waiting to hear.

Can anyone tell me when the idea that peace alone trumps justice emerged? What good will Sudan's "peace" be when the very men who orchestrated the mayhem will continue to rule over them? Just as Suharto remains unafraid of standing trial over his bloodbaths in East Timor, Omar al-Bashir will not be troubled about his role in Darfur just as long as he manages to stay in power. While that's no mean feat in a country like Sudan, Omar al-Bashir has held the reins long enough to stay on top, and he remains more than savvy enough to have powerful nations and international institutions kissing his ass for merely extending them the privilege of talking to him about resolving the problems in Darfur. In all the recent coverage on this story, I have yet to read anything by anybody that acknowledges the irony of having the world's most powerful leaders congratulating Omar al-Bashir for his sudden willingness to make peace, only after he's received everything he's wanted from the war.

Then again, what good is being a dictator if you can't have your cake, and eat it too?

Soviet posters

2007-09-19T06:58:00.000-04:00

Thank heavens for the internet. First Stefan Landsberger took the time and care to create his archive of Chinese communist propaganda posters, and now Alexander Zakarov has upped the ante with a blog devoted solely to Soviet posters.

I certainly owe Josh at The Conjecturer one for linking to this amazing blog in the first place. where I could find it.

Interview with a dictator

2007-09-19T03:06:00.000-04:00

After last weeks post featuring a video clip of Al Jazeera's interview with Eritrean dictator Isaias Afewerki, I would be remiss if I didn't offer a link to an interview with Afewerki's arch nemesis, Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi.

EthioBlog has reprinted a Time magazine interview with Meles Zenawi, where the interviewer asks some tough questions about democracy in Ethiopia, his proxy war with Eritrea in Somalia, Ethiopia's relationship with the United States, human rights abuses, and whether nor not he intends to step down for good when his term expires in three years. Compared to the soft soap questions Al Jazeera asked Afewerki, Meles Zenawi was clearly put on the spot.

I can't say the interview revealed any surprises until he admitted that "fear" keeps him awake at night.

It has always been fear — fear that this great nation, which was great 1,000 years ago but then embarked on a downward spiral for 1,000 years, and reached its nadir when millions of people were starving and dying, may be on the verge of total collapse. Now it's not a fear of collapse, I believe we are beyond that. It's the fear that the light which is beginning to flicker, the light of a renewal, an Ethiopian renaissance, that this light might be dimmed by some bloody mistake by someone, somewhere.
- Meles Zenawi

Despite his "fears" about Ethiopia's political and economic progress going down the tubes, Zenawi insists that he will be stepping down when his term expires, a claim dictators often make in haste and repent in leisure. You can read the rest of the interview here at EthioBlog, and judge the sincerity of his claims for yourself.

UPDATE: Thank you, Dan, for giving a shout out to DotW over on The Democratic Piece. Yes, there really are blogs about everything.

Nazarbayev honors Turkmenbashi

2007-09-17T05:07:00.000-04:00

OK, so this story is a few days old, but Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev was on a state visit to Turkmenistan last week. I scoured the news for suitable photo opportunities of the man Reigstan playfully calls "Uncle Nazzy" and his Turkmen counterpart Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov, but alas - I can't find anything with a suitable freshness date. If anyone has a recent picture of Nazarbayev and Berdimuhammedov shaking hands, hugging, or laughing maniacally together, please consider sending it my way?

Anyway, this story has some intriguing tidbits about life in the dictator lane in Central Asia. Nazarbayev apparently had about as much fun in Turkmenistan as it's possible to have, and as a sign of respect, laid flowers on the grave of the recently departed dictator of Turkmenistan Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niazov, who lest we forget, is reputed to be Berdimuhammedov's real father. I'm not exactly an expert on customs in the former Soviet Central Asia, but in the west, a visitor would have taken great pains not honor the memory of the likes of Niazov, no matter what protocol calls for. Nazabayev himself is a dictator, granted, but Niazov's infamy is such that you'd imagine that Nazarbayev should have been talked out of it. Needless to say, if anyone can link or provide me with a photo of Nazarbayev giving props to Niazov, I'm all over that like white on rice.

Chávez set to jettison allies

2007-09-14T05:25:00.000-04:00

When Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chávez described Cuban strongman Fidel Castro as his "mentor", he really wasn't kidding. Like Castro, and other communist dictators before him, Chávez has already begun to jettison the political allies that brought him to power and accused them being "counter-revolutionaries". The party in question is PODEMOS, a party which uncritically helped elevate Chávez to power in 1998. This is also the party that provided Chávez with crucial support for his efforts to pack the Venezuelan Supreme Court with Chávez's political cronies, issued threats against Chávez's political enemies, and in general, did anything the caudillo wanted them to do. Even better, they almost always anticipated his desires in advance. Well, that was then, and this is now, and as Janet Jackson once famously inquired, "what have you done for me lately?"

"If any of you has shame, this is the right time. You have time to join us sincerily and build the revolution. Stop talking nonsense, saying you are revolutionary"
- Hugo Chavez

So what terrible thing has PODEMOS done to transform them into dyed in the wool chavistas to treacherous counterrevolutionaries? PODEMOS leaders expressed reservations about Chávez's proposal to alter the Venezuelan constitution to allow himself to be re-elected in perpetuity. PODEMOS is not alone there, as the proposal is widely unpopular, even among voters who strongly support Chávez. So what gives?

Daniel astutely notes that this is part of the dictator dynamic. Now that Chávez has packed the legislature and the courts with his cronies, PODEMOS is no longer very important in maintaining his grip on power. What's more, one of the key personality traits of the authoritarian leader is the overweening desire to occupy the spotlight of attention. Not sometimes. Not most of the time. All the time. Any "ally" who attaches importance to themselves by virtue of boasting how close they are to Chávez is, by extension, taking some credit for his glorious tasks, and therefore, diminishes the volume of praise and attention that Chávez recognizes as his, and his alone.

Sorry, PODEMOS, you're 99.9% on board with the Chávez agenda, but for an autocrat, that's just not high enough. Enjoy your trip to counterrevolutionary limbo, PODEMOS, and count yourselves lucky that Chávez apparently hasn't gotten around to asking Castro how Cuba got rid of their "counterrevolutionaries".

Bainimarama alleges Australian invasion plan

2007-09-14T03:39:00.000-04:00

The military strongman of Fiji, Commodore Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama, is alleging that the chief of the Australian Defense Forces threatened to send troops to Fiji if Bainimarama carried out his (eventually successful) plans for a military coup last November. Speaking to reporters from the Fiji Times newspaper, Bainimarama angrily countered claims made by Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer that Australia was "no threat" to Fiji.

"(Downer) was lying" claimed Bainimarama, "because in November the Chief of the Australian Defence Force Angus Houston called me in Sinai. He said 'do not do anything that would pit my soldiers against yours'. In military terms when you threaten someone it involves capability and intention so there was an intention to move troops to Fiji."

Downer dismissed the Commodore's claims, noting accurately (if a bit defensively), that "dictators often make false claims like these in order to build public support for their illegitimate regimes".

While this is true in the general sense, the question arises: why didn't Australia consider an intervention to prevent the overthrow of Fiji's democratically elected government? Bainimarama launched his coup after providing months of warning, and surely, Fiji's ostensibly loyal allies could have found some way to intervene, either militarily or diplomatically, to assure Bainimarama that he wouldn't get away with it.

Whatever the reason, Bainimarama on his part, appears to have calculated very accurately that none of the world's great powers would do anything more than raise an eyebrow when he made his move. And in typical fashion, he was exactly right. What, was Helen Clark going to stop him? Considering how she's presented herself as Bainimarama's staunchest foreign political foe, it might have occurred to her that New Zealand, being considerably more powerful and influential than Fiji, could have brought its own pressure to bear to prevent the coup.

So if I have any disgruntled military leaders in politically unstable countries reading, take heart: all the threats that "America won't stand for this" or "Europe would never let you do this" are so much puffery. I suspect you already know it, but don't take it from me - take it from Frank Bainimarama.

The Dictator Hunter

2007-09-13T05:13:00.001-04:00

A new documentary called The Dictator Hunters is making its debut this week at the Toronto Film Festival. According to this article in the Toronto Star, The Dictator Hunters covers the search for deposed Chadian dictator Hissène Habré, and the efforts to bring him to trial for a mind numbingly long list of human rights violations, mass murders and outright massacres he ordered during his reign. Director Klaartje Quirijns focuses on a man named Reed Brody from Human Rights Watch who is now lobbying the Canadian government to get "more involved" with Habré's upcoming trial in Senegal. There's just one problem: the Senegalese have not asked Canada, or any other western nation, for assistance because they insist they don't need any.

As I noted back in July, justice ministry officials in Senegal have expressed confidence in their ability to bring Habré to trial, but have rejected the ruinously expensive and farcically long tribunal sort of trial of the sort that Slobodan Milošević was subjected to. Patiently, and not unreasonably, the government of Senegal has expressed their intention to have opted to try Habré in a regular criminal court.

Now, I will say straight off the bat that I haven't seen The Dictator Hunters. However, I've also seen absolutely no indication that Senegal has mysteriously changed its mind about their desire for the assistance of the industrialized world in conducting this trial. Frankly, it seems a little odd that Reed Brody is pressing Canada, a country with absolutely no expertise in the business of trying dictators, to assist in any way. What little assistance Senegal has asked for has in been in the form of obtaining documents that are, for the most part, already in Europe. In other words, they've asked for no special help, or financing, for the trial itself as far as I can determine.

Reed Brody's rationale that, as a non-colonial power, Canada is in some way "less tainted" than the other Western nations Senegal has already told to stop bothering them misses the point. Senegal is not rejecting Belgium's offers to put Habré in trial in Belgium because of their "colonial taint", as Senegal already has fairly warm relations with Belgium. Senegal rejected offers of assistance with the trial because they truly and genuinely believe that they are capable of conducting it themselves. The thought that a poor African nation can, with proper planning, conduct a criminal trial of a dictator may seem unspeakably farfetched to Reed Brody, but it's also fairly condescending. In the extremely unlikely scenario that the government of Senegal somehow begged Reed Brody to act as intermediary between themselves and Canada? Hey, I guess it wouldn't be so insulting after all.

Inteview with a dictator

2007-09-12T15:40:00.000-04:00

Riz Khan of Al Jazeera interviews Eritrean dictator Isaias Afewerki about accusations of sponsoring terror by the United States, and the long running border dispute with Ethiopia. Afewerki, naturally, denies claims of sponsoring terrorism, and claims that there is "no reason" for tensions with rival dictator, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia. It's interesting, but it would have been nice if Riz Khan had asked Afewerki any questions about his rotten records on human rights, and why his country is among rivals only North Korea and Cuba when it comes to curbing freedom of the press.

Suharto crushes Time magazine for telling the truth?

2007-09-11T05:06:00.001-04:00

We all know the canard about the propensity of bad things to happen to good people. Well, thanks to fate's eternal perversions, good things often seem to happen to perfectly terrible people, even deposed dictators. Case in point, former Indonesian dictator Suharto will be probably be $100 million richer than he already was because a magazine actually printed the truth.

Time magazine's Indonesian edition lost a $106 million defamation lawsuit by the family of the former dictator for alleging, perfectly truthfully, that the former dictator had embezzled an enormous fortune during his 32 year dictatorship. A spokesman for the Indonesian Supreme Court, which rendered the verdict, declared "the article and photographs hurt the image and pride of the plaintiff as a great retired army general and the former Indonesian president."

Which might be true, but the Indonesian government is seeking to recoup with one hand what it is trying to confiscate from Time with the other. Suharto himself has been charged with a number of crimes related to his record breaking kleptocracy, but the frail 86 year old has kept himself out of criminal court by pleading that he's too ill to stand trial. This excuse will not, apparently, grant him immunity from a civil suit by the government which seeks to recover $440 million in embezzled funds, and a further billion dollars in damages.

It is also worth noting that the Indonesian government, while ostensibly democratic since Suharto was overthrown, is still governed by and large by Suharto's former cronies. Their attempt to recoup stolen money is one thing, but it also tends to explain why Suharto hasn't been charged with offenses relating to the massacres that gained him so much notoriety. After all, the civil suit is simply business, but charging the old man with murder? Not on your life. Since the defamation lawsuit verdict was delivered by the Supreme Court, it's unclear what Time can do to contest the verdict at this point. With any luck, the government will win their case, or Suharto will finally kick the bucked, and his embarrassed family will simply decline to press for the award money.

Or not. Congratulations then, Suharto, on adding another $100 million bucks to your stash of ill gotten loot. It's almost a shame you'll be dropping dead before you can treat us to yet another outrage of this sort. Almost.

Noriega prepares for la vie francaise

2007-09-06T01:14:00.000-04:00

Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is due to be released from his prison cell in Florida on Saturday, but he's leaving the frying pan for an express trip into the fire. An American judge ruled yesterday that the United States will not block an extradition request by the French government, clearing the way for the 69 year old (see footnote) dictator to spend his dotage in a Parisian prison. The former caudillo was tried and convicted in absentia in France on drug trafficking charges, and sentenced to 10 years in jail. The French, for their part, have promised to re-try Noriega upon his arrival in France, thereby extending his detention even further.

Noriega's lawyers have argued, not insensibly, that their client is a prisoner of war, and that he is entitled to return to Panama after the completion of his prison sentence. At first, Panama said they didn't want him back, but quickly changed their tune, saying that they intended to try Noriega themselves for his connections to a series of grisly politically motivated murders, and Panamanians are angry at being overlooked while the United States and France deal with their former military dictator. Barring any further complications, however, it looks like Noriega is still on track to head to France. Bon voyage, Manny?

Note: Noriega himself claims to have been born in 1934, which would make him 73 years old, but his court documents list him as being 69. Which figure is right is anyone's guess.

60 years later, Seeger is denouncing Stalin

2007-09-06T00:19:00.000-04:00

I nearly spit out my coffee today when America's preeminent communist folksinger, Pete Seeger, finally admitted that, perhaps, Josef Stalin was more of a cruel tyrant than he was an enlightened socialist leader. I congratulate Pete for his bravery in denouncing Josef Stalin a mere 51 years after Stalin's own successor, Nikita Khrushchev, did. I guess he finally decided it was either safe, or non-controversial enough, to finally do so. Good show, Pete.

I name dropped "Stalin's Songbird" back in my post about dictator chic over a year ago, but never in my wildest dreams could I imagine that Pete Seeger would not only apologize for lionizing Stalin, but actually wrote a song daring to criticize Stalin. During the 1940's and early 1950's, Seeger stuck to the Kremlin's party line without error. When Stalin and Adolf Hitler forged their infamous non-aggression treaty, Seeger put out a strongly anti-war record, Songs for John Doe. Needless to say, when Hitler double-crossed Stalin, Seeger's mood and artistic outlook mysteriously changed in perfect accord with the party line. Songs for John Doe was withdrawn by the label, and Seeger joined the imperialist, capitalist, bourgeois American army. Who could have foreseen it?

In fairness to Seeger, he broke with the communist party in 1950, but oddly, he's had almost nothing to say for the past 50 years about the "paragon of humanity" he praised to the heavens and back during his years in the Communist Party of the USA. We heard a lot of singing about Vietnam, Selma and Lyndon Johnson, but not so much about Katyn or Kolyma. Seeger blames the Soviet emphasis on Leninist party discipline for his rigid adherence and continued silence, but let's face it: Seeger was also probably fairly embarrassed. Seeger's most enthusiastic support for Stalin came at the same time as Stalin was occupying himself with the starvation of the Ukraine and unleashing a reign of terror.

Now the octogenarian Seeger is attempting to make good with his usual tool - song. Included is a snippet of the "Anti-Joe Blues"

I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe
He ruled with an iron hand!
He put an end to the dreams
Of so many in every land

He had a chance to make
A brand new start for the human race
Instead he set it back
Right in the same nasty place

I got the Big Joe Blues
Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast
I got the Big Joe Blues
Do this job, no questions asked
I got the Big Joe Blues

OK, so it's a little on the obvious side, but I suppose it's better late than never, right?

Startling new information on Uzbekistan

2007-09-05T04:39:00.001-04:00

You've got to hand it to non-governmental organizations for their unfailing ability to state the obvious months or years after everyone else has already noticed. To wit, the International Crisis Group (ICG) has, apparently, just noticed that the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan is ruled by an actual, bonafide, honest-to-God dictator, and that dictatorships, for some reason, tend to be unstable, sometimes even violent, places. No, really! The ICG has graciously taking the time to restate the obvious in a report on Uzbekistan that will surprise absolutely nobody who has paid even 10 minutes worth of attention to Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov over the past decade.

For starters, the ICG appears stunned (stunned!) that Karimov is still in office even though his term legally expired in January! I, for one, can scarcely believe that a dictator would do such a thing, but there's more. Did you know that under the Karimov dictatorship, there's scant attention paid to the rule of law, no freedom of speech, and that political opponents are often arrested and tortured without cause? And did you know that, for some reason, Karimov's daughter is filthy rich while ordinary Uzbeks barely manage to make a living? Nepotism, I hear you ask, in a dictatorship? I know, it beggars belief, doesn't it? Finally, the ICG has, by virtue of their fearless devotion to ferreting out the truth, determined that the Karimov dictatorship uses fear and violence as a tool of maintaining power. You don't say!

I suppose I shouldn't be this sarcastic, since the ICG is telling the truth, but why do I get the sense that they're just discovering that states ruled by dictators are inherently rotten places to live in? I can only wonder what eye popping revelations we can expect when the ICG decides to scratch the surface of what's going in Zimbabwe and Belarus.

Will Albania dabble in dictator tourism?

2007-09-04T05:50:00.001-04:00

Could Albania be looking to turn the scars dictator Enver Hoxha left on the country into tourist attractions? This article quotes the head of the tourist agency Outdoors Albania as saying "there is interest in this paranoid, psychotic regime".

While Hoxha has been dead for 22 years, Albania has struggled to come up with the money to undo the damage done to Albania during the Hoxha dictatorship. For starters, over 700,000 concrete bunkers built to defend Albania against a "Western imperialist invasion" that never came still scar the countryside, while a former Soviet submarine base stands largely intact, inviting the question of converting it to a museum. With so much remained to be cleaned up, the lines between "dictator detritus" and "tourist attraction" have naturally started to blur. Of course the larger question remains: is dictator tourism in bad taste?

The short answer, of course, is yes, but beggars can't be choosers. Albania is still, by far, the poorest country in Europe. While the country boasts pristine (by European standards) beaches and coastline, the nation's reputation for poverty, chaos and violence has put an unwanted damper on tourism. Albania is most famous in Europe and around the world for having gone into seclusion for much of the 20th century during the Hoxha regime, so why not find a way to turn into tourism revenue? At present, the famous concrete bunkers are doing little more than gathering graffiti. After all, people don't visit North Korea for the food - they do so because of the illicit thrill at getting a glimpse of a paranoid, secretive society, and to gawk at oversize monuments of their dictator. Dictator tourism in Albania would offer all the sordid voyeurism of peeking through the iron curtain with none of the actual risks or drawbacks.

Putin gone wild!

2007-08-31T04:52:00.000-04:00

And now, because of overwhelming demand by Dictators of the World readers, here's a photo of Russia's authoritarian president Vladimir Putin on vacation in Siberia stripped down to the waist. Here, dear readers, is the dictator beefcake you've all been craving.

Wait, nobody wanted to see that? Goddamnit, you readers can be so mercurial, sometimes.

Anyway, there is still actual news about Vladimir Putin, most notably because of a bizarre paid advertising supplement seeking stronger "national branding" for Russia in the Washington Post (viewable here). In addition to the predictable blurbs about borscht and Sputnik, are bizarre pro-Putin articles like "When a little paranoia is good for you" and an article about Putin's political opponents titled "The opposition's disarray is lucky for some". The overall message of the supplement? Toss away your old tired preconceptionss of a gray, totalitarian Soviet Russia and instead, acquaint yourself with fresh new realities about a dynamic and exciting post-Soviet authoritarian Russia!

Jack Shafer at Slate astutely notes that Putin's Kremlin has the same ham handed touch with political propaganda as his Soviet predecessors did, laying it on so thick that American readers come away from it suspecting that the terrified authors probably wrote the piece from a gulag. This is an unfortunate byproduct of authoritarian regimes, and some dictators have learned how to bypass awkward obvious propaganda by hiring American public relations firms to do their dirty work, but apparently, Vladimir Putin insisted on letting a hometown team write this mess. One wonders if his recent shirtless photo ops are part two of his ridiculous attempts at a charm offensive? I don't know, but I will say this: if Robert Mugabe starts baring some skin to get attention, I'm hanging up this blog for good.

Will Musharraf step down as army chief?

2007-08-30T04:51:00.001-04:00

Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf still can't seem to catch a break. Indeed, since the creation of Dictators of the World, I haven't found a single thing that's managed to go his way. The trend doesn't change this week, because once again, Musharraf's grasp on power has managed to slip even further through his fingers.

After he seized power in a military coup d'etat in 1999, Musharraf has managed to hold onto power by his constitutionally disallowed, but strategically important, position as both president and leader of Pakistan's armed forces. Now it appears that Musharraf has promised that he will be stepping down as army chief before national elections in 2008 as part of a byzantine power sharing arrangement with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Now, I wouldn't bet the farm that Musharraf will actually step down as army chief, but the fact that he's been put into a political position where he's had to promise to do so speaks volumes about the precipitous political implosion of the man once popularly hailed as Pakistan's political savior.

If he were to remove himself as leader of the armed forces, Musharraf is doubtlessly aware that his dual career as president would be finished. His popularity with the public is at an all time low, and as a mere civilian leader, he'd be a juicy target for removal by yet another military coup. If Musharraf is serious about stepping down as leader of the army, it's a mere prelude for leaving office - and likely Pakistan itself - altogether.

Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe ...

2007-08-29T04:39:00.001-04:00

Zimbabwe's octogenarian dictator Robert Mugabe has, apparently , decided that the current smoldering ruins of his nation's economy aren't, er, smoldering or ruined enough. Therefore, in a fit of inspired brilliance, Mugabe has decreed that the small handful of foreign owned companies remaining in Zimbabwe should hand over 51% ownership to "native Zimbabweans", thereby destroying whatever slim chances remained that foreign companies will be bringing any investment whatsoever to the world's most damaged economy. A bill to nationalize the assets in questions has been produced, and there's no doubt whatsoever that Mugabe's rubber stamp parliament will give it the green light as soon as possible. Nationalization is a controversial process anywhere it's practiced, but in Zimbabwe, "nationalization" has simply become a shorthand term for punishing your political enemies with the confiscation of their property, and handing it over to your political cronies as a reward for their continued loyalty. And in Zimbabwe's tough times, buying loyalty is proving harder than ever.

In a country where ordinary citizens no longer drive because of the scarcity of fuel, Mugabe has rewarded the bigwigs in the state security services with brand new Mazda 3's. In the old days, he was fond of rewarding his friends with Mercedes-Benzes, but even dictators have to tighten their belts when the going gets really tough. Mugabe had better hope that a shiny new Japanese economy car satisfies the police and military brass, because the rank and file army - the only institution capable of propping up the tottering regime, are defecting over their low wages - which come to less than $10 month. Mugabe has offered to step down from power if he wins the 2008 presidential elections (curiously, he made no such promise to do so if he lost), but frankly, it's difficult to imagine that he can hold onto power for even that long. It's difficult to see how Zimbabwe can even afford the cost of staging yet another round of nakedly crooked elections when the nation's political and economic institutions have practically ceased to function.

Kim's eldest son "back in favor"

2007-08-28T06:28:00.001-04:00

The eldest son of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, Kim Jong-nam, is rumored to have returned to North Korea from exile in China - a sign that the scion of the Kim dynasty has officially returned to favor. Details are sketchy, but it seems that the elder Kim has put his newly returned son to work in a "high position" in the ruling North Korean Workers' Party. The return of Kim Jong-nam, if official, might just settle North Korea's thorny succession question in the world's only communist monarchy, which has become much more important after Kim Jong-Il's recent brush with death.

Castro death watch - part 35

2007-08-27T04:32:00.000-04:00

Rumors swirled this week that the Cuban government would finally announce the death of longtime caudillo Fidel Castro. Frantic phone calls to Cuban exiles in Miami signaled that, perhaps this time, the dictator was pushing up daisies, and the announcement was going to come at "any hour". The deadlines came and went without any such announcement, and finally, Castro's Venezuelan lapdog Hugo Chávez cryptically announced that Fidel would "never die". Perhaps in response to the rumors, an article purportedly written by Castro with an August 25th byline was published in a Cuban communist youth newspaper.

Conspiracy theorists continue to spread the rumor that Fidel has, in fact, died already, shortly after he disappeared from public view last year for intestinal surgery. I'm not one to buy into such theories, but Fidel's continued public absence and the secretive nature of communist dictatorships makes these sorts of rumors inevitable. When will the next batch of rumors swirl? Probably next month, but until then, Cuba remains in a grim holding pattern waiting to rejoin the free world.

Vacation, all I've ever wanted

2007-08-17T04:01:00.000-04:00

Dictators of the World will be on hiatus until August 27th while I vacation in lovely, crime free Rhode Island. In the meantime, please visit some of the sites we link to for your daily fix of news on the world's most notorious despots, won't you?

Bainimarama promises elections in 2009

2007-08-15T18:48:00.000-04:00

The military dictator of Fiji, Commodore Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama, today announced his intention to hold free elections in March of 2009. The date coincides with a deadline set by the European Union as a cutoff date for foreign aid if elections were not held.

Since seizing power in a coup d'etat last December, Bainimarama has been fairly cavalier in his dismissing the "outrage" and "concerns" about his dictatorship from western democracies, but apparently, Fiji really needs the money. Will the promised elections be free and fair? That's highly doubtful. The man ousted in December's coup, Laisenia Qarase, has been fighting an unsuccessful battle in the Fijian courts to declare the coup illegal. The Commodore, for his part, has invoked immunity granted by Fiji's executive figurehead, Ratu Josefa Iloilo. What's more, there seems little doubt that Qarase will not be permitted to run again in 2009, as Bainiamara's shake up of the government continues.

UPDATE: This site appears to be new, but is well worth a look for anyone interested in Bainimarama's hostile takeover of paradise: FijiCoup.org

Castro turns 81

2007-08-14T00:53:00.000-04:00

Cuban caudillo Fidel Castro celebrated his 81st birthday yesterday, to the apparent yawning indifference of most of the world. Granted, we used to care about how old Fidel Castro was, because each birthday Fidel celebrated roughly coincided with Cuba spending another year under his thumb.

However, Fidel ceded power to his only slightly less elderly brother Raúl over a year ago, before disappearing from the public eye completely. Fidel's golden years haven't exactly been kind to him. Since undergoing extensive intestinal surgery for reasons that are still classified as a Cuban state secret, the frail dictator has been seen only by a select group of cronies (like Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chávez) and foreign leaders (like Vietnam's Nguyễn Minh Triết). The Cuban people, the alleged beneficiaries of Castro's dictatorship, haven't seen hide nor hair of Comrade #1 in over year, making do instead with Raúl's Fidelismo sans Fidel.

Castro's disappearance from public view naturally sparked rumors that he died, but frankly, I don't buy it. No conspiracy theory is required for the dull, ugly truth that while the dictator himself is holed up in a palatial compound, wearing his colostomy bag and receiving foreign dignitaries, Cuba itself continues to decay at a slightly slower pace than the man himself. The "revolution" has, as all revolutions centered on a single authoritarian personality eventually do, stagnated from lack of fresh political energy. The next Cuban revolution will only take place after Cuban finally dumps the rotting corpse of Fidel's dictatorship alongside his skeletal remains.

Venezuela to women: "You gonna get RAPED!"

2007-08-13T05:27:00.001-04:00

Just when you think Hugo Chávez's "Bolivarian Revolution" in Venezuela can't get any weirder, it does. Courtesy of The Devil's Excrement comes this public health billboard issued by the Chavista governor of Carabobo province. It breathlessly declares:

Inciting sex ... causes rape. Security is everyone's responsibility

Venezuela is not exactly famous for having a culture of sexual repression or modesty, so the sudden inference that wearing a bikini thong at the beach is an incitement to rape may come as a startling shock to Venezuelans. Then again, considering all the quality time Chávez has been spending with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, one supposes it was only a matter of time before Venezuela starting exhorting their beach bunnies to start covering it all up.

UPDATE: The Chavistas continue to astound. The Caracas Chronicles shows the Venezuelan government of Carabobo's latest offering, which declares that political scandals cause terrorism. This is not so much a "public service advisory" as it is a veiled threat to journalists who might be inclined to print unfriendly news about corruption inside the Chávez regime.

So remember, if you notice ostentatious political corruption in Venezuela, do NOT make a big deal out of it. Or else.

Putin gives Stalin some love

2007-08-13T04:24:00.000-04:00

Just how many millions of his countrymen does a dictator have to murder these days before he's reviled by his subjects? The late Soviet strongman Josef Stalin would doubtlessly be tickled to know that the Russian government is putting a new shine on Uncle Joe's reign of terror by giving him an image makeover in high school history textbooks. According to the latest textbooks, Stalin's rule was "strong" if a bit "cruel", but it's OK! After all, Stalin was merely using his indomitable will to strengthen the Soviet state. Why, that's just like Peter the Great, right? Or even Vladimir Putin! So really, what's all the fuss about, anyway?

Stalin's image makeover coincides with Putin's saber rattling with Georgia, land of Stalin's birth. Doubtlessly, Stalin would heartily approve of a strong, if cruel, leader looking to hold Russia together ... even if it just happens to mean swallowing up independent countries entirely. That's just what "strong" leaders do, right?

Stick a fork in Pervez Musharraf

2007-08-10T04:59:00.001-04:00

Pakistani strongman General Pervez Musharraf, has reportedly backed away from his threat to declare a state of emergency after a 17 minute telephone conversation with US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Musharraf was mulling the emergency declaration as a response to an increase in domestic terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists, but conveniently, the state of emergency would also have the (purely coincidental, I'm sure!) side effect of postponing elections.

Of all the world's dictators, only Pervez Musharraf and Kim Jong-Il have a nuclear arsenal. Unlike his North Korean counterpart, however, Musharraf's country is politically devolving into anarchy, and his own political position is now almost totally untenable. Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup, has long found himself at odds with Pakistan's politically powerful state security services, but for a while, he enjoyed some measure of popular support from a populace that had lost confidence in his predecessor, Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf repeatedly cited a plan to remove himself from power, as dictators are wont to do, after single handedly fixing Pakistan's innumerable political and social problems. Well, obviously, Musharraf couldn't fix Pakistan, but now, his popular support has nearly vanished, and he's lost the confidence of nearly every politically important sector outside the high command of Pakistan's armed forces, which he still (unconstitutionally) leads.

Where his alliance with the United States once provided critical aid in his struggle with domestic Islamic militancy, Pakistan's population now views him as nothing more than Washington's puppet. Recent comments by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama about the possibility of America violating Pakistani sovereignty to attack Al Qaeda targets in Waziristan. This blunder, however naive or foolish on Obama's part, hit Musharraf like a ton of bricks. His innumerable critics immediately jumped on the gaffe, saying that no matter who the next president in, Pakistan is at risk because Musharraf is an American puppet.

And so it goes. Musharraf has been down for so long that it's starting to look like up to him. With the state of emergency canceled, the path is clear to free (if not necessarily fair) elections that could pave the way for his removal from office. Musharraf, at this point, would probably like nothing more to get the hell out of Pakistan before he's knocked off in yet another coup. If Musharraf survives through 2008, he'll be lucky. If he survives in office? That would be nothing short of a miracle.

Omar who?

2007-08-08T04:39:00.000-04:00

Most people draw a blank when asked which African leader has ruled for the longest period of time. Was it Mobutu Sese Seko? No. Colonel Muammar Qaddafi? No. Could it be Robert Mugabe? Not even close.

Give up?

The answer is Omar Bongo, who has ruled the oil rich, former West African French colony of Gabon since 1967. The 71 year old ruler made the news recently by sending a journalist to jail and fining him 250,000 Central African francs for "offending the dignity of the presidency". The offense in question, as you've probably guessed, was writing an editorial which criticized Omar Bongo for monopolizing political power in Gabon.

The unlucky reporter had better get used to a whole lot more of Omar Bongo. Since 2003, the Gabonese constitution has "officially" discarded presidential term limits, the existence of which seemed to be purely theoretical considering Bongo's lengthy tenure at that point. Since winning a thoroughly crooked election in 2006, Bongo was sworn in for yet another 7 year term in office. 2012 is five years off, but already, people are asking: will he run again in 2012? What would life in Gabon be like without Omar Bongo? With a half-dead Fidel Castro officially out of power, Bongo could be poised to make a run at the coveted title of the longest actively reigning leader on earth, having a two year head start on his next closest competitor, the aforementioned Colonel Qaddafi of Libya.

Will he pull it off? Dictators of the World thinks so. Bongo keeps a low profile, but frankly, so did Enver Hoxha, who managed to sneak onto our top 10 list. The sky's the limit, even in relative obscurity, for Omar Bongo.

Don't call it a comeback: Lil' Kim is out and about

2007-08-07T04:32:00.000-04:00

He's back! North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il has made five, count them, five, consecutive public appearances for the first time since he reportedly underwent emergency heart bypass surgery in June.

The post-operative, mangier looking Kim had made a select number of private appearances since the alleged operation, but none in public. Lil' Kim's most recent appearance was a machinery parts factory in North Korea, where he took time to praise the Marxist struggle of the factory's "heroic labor class" against ... well, that's where it gets tricky. The only class there is left to struggle against in North Korea is Kim Jong-Il's ruling Stalinist plutocrats, and God knows, he can't very well have that, now can he?

Political contradictions aside, global political analysts are scrambling to grasp what the "true meaning" of Kim's sudden outburst of public appearances may mean. Does this mean Kim is attempting to renegotiate with the west on his atomic weapons program? Is this the precursor to political liberalization? A round of purges? Or he is just on the prowl for some more hot young girls to kidnap as sex slaves?

Ewhsnahtrellik!

2007-08-06T03:49:00.000-04:00

The Danish collective known as Surrend have made an art form out of an interesting idea. How do you criticize dictators right under their noses without getting caught by the censors? I have to admit that I might be their newest fan after reading about Surrend's latest escapade, which targeted Myanmar, the country still known as Burma to the rest of the world, and the leader of the ruling totalitarian military junta Than Shwe.

Surrend bought advertising space in the English language Myanmar Times to print what looked like a nondescript ad for Burmese tourism. Touting Burma's tropical sun, friendly people, and so on. At the bottom of the ad was written: "The Board of Islandic Travel Agencies Ewhsnahtrellik and the Danish Industry Besoeg Danmark". And what the hell is Ewhsnahtrellik? Why, that would be Killer Than Shwe when read backwards.

OK, so the idea of printing an insult backwards isn't particularly clever. Considering how tightly the Burmese press is monitored and censored for just these sorts of things, however, Surrend's accomplishment becomes a bit more impressive. I think it goes without saying that someone in the paper's advertising department is having a very long, uncomfortable talk with the police.

Lukashenko wants to bleach internet "sewer"

2007-08-06T03:32:00.001-04:00

Dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus says that he will be cracking down on unregulated internet usage in Belarus, in a move pro-democracy advocates say may be a precursor to a wider crackdown on anti-government speech. At present, the internet is the only source for independent news in Belarus, with all newspapers, radio and television produced and edited by government officials. Lukashenko called the state of online news about Belarus "anarchy", and vowed to clean it up, saying, "we cannot allow this great technical success by humankind to become a news sewer."

It is difficult to imagine how Belarus could add even more restrictions on domestic internet users. At present, internet cafe owners are required to report visits of anti-government websites to the police, and people caught publishing any material deemed insulting to the state or Lukashenko himself are targeted for arrest. Belarus does not, however, appear to have a centralized system of internet censorship akin to the infamous Great Firewall of China.

Karimov builds a prison for purged officials

2007-08-02T05:43:00.001-04:00

With the death of Turkmenistan's dictator Saparmurat Niazov, Uzbekistan has moved up to the head of the class to become the most repressive and totalitarian state in Central Asia. Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov may not have the late Turkmenbashi's sexy eccentricity, but he makes up for his lack of headline appeal with his dreary Soviet style authoritarianism.

And what better way for a strongman to flex his post-Soviet muscle than cracking down on his political enemies? Karimov has never been shy about using force to maintain the status quo, but he appears to be going the extra mile by building a special prison for Uzbek government officials who have fallen from his good graces. The new detention facility has ostensibly been built as part of a government response to punish corruption, but nobody seriously expects the vengeful dictator to stop there. Conservative estimates place the number of political prisoners in Uzbekistan at around 7,500, while the end tops out at over 15,000. According to human rights organizations, torture is endemic in Uzbekistan, and political prisoners are often completely denied communications with friends or family - a punishment not extended to ordinary criminals.

Karimov's cavalier attitude regarding violence and political activity briefly made the news in 2005 after the infamous Andijan massacre, when Uzbek security forces started shooting fully automatic weapons into a crowd of unarmed people. The death toll has been estimated as being between 178 people (the Karimov government's estimate), to around 500 (most survivors of the attack), to over a thousand people. Karimov's new gulag for his disgraced lackeys lacks the flash and glamor of simply shooting them all en masse, but the message will doubtlessly still get through: messing with Islam Karimov is just too dangerous to think about.

UPDATE: I know what you're thinking, "two consecutive days of Central Asian dictators"? It's just coincidence, I swear. I might getting around to doing an entire week devoted to Central Asia, but frankly, I may just leave that to the experts.

The cult of the bling daddy

2007-08-01T05:29:00.000-04:00

It wasn't supposed to be this way, was it?

Since the death of Saparmurat Niazov, Turkmenistan's new president Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov seemed poised first to cling to the status quo established by Turkmenbashi, and then, to erase it. Berdimuhammedov was quick to publicly criticize the need for a personality cult, and quickly moved to purge revanchist elements within his ruling party. L'État c'est moi was out, après moi le déluge was in. Could the new guy be an actual reformer?

The illustrious Berdimuhammedov appeared to change direction last month during his 50th birthday. After initially promising to downplay the event, he reversed course and turned it into a public celebration. He also decided celebrate the occasion, by awarding himself Turkmenistan's highest national honor, complete with serious bling.

Apparently, he must have enjoyed his first public flirtation with self-aggrandizement, because signs now point to the creation of a new personality cult centered around Berdimuhammedov. The personality cult of his predecessor, one of the world's most pervasive, will be a hard act to follow, and it seems that Berdimuhammedov's image and public praise isn't nearly as lavish as Turkmenbashi's, Yet still, for the man who appeared poised to completely do away with the wild Stalinist excesses of his predecessor, the emergence of any personality cult has people worrying about a return to the bad-old-days under Niazov.

Berdimuhammedov's first trip into public self-glorification appeared during his 50th birthday. Could be suffering a mid-life crisis? Does he need self-validation? A cookie? A hug? Or are the persistent rumors that Berdimuhammedov is Niazov's illegitimate son actually true, and that a personality cult is simply a way of honoring the daddy he never knew that well? Construct your own Freudian postulate here, people, but I'll definitely be keeping a close on eye on Berdimuhammedov to see if his casual flirtation with a personality cult blossoms into a torrid love affair with Niazov-style self-deification.

Softening at home, hardening abroad

2007-07-31T04:38:00.000-04:00

Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi has reportedly provided a full presidential pardon to 38 people, alternately described as "opposition political activists" or "terrorists" depending on who was asked and when. The move came as something of a surprise to foreign observers, especially since the Ethiopian government had originally sought the death penalty for the 38, before sentencing 35 of them to life in prison.

Meles Zenawi's pardon could be read as a peace offering to his political allies in Washington, who appear willing to overlook Ethiopia's rotten political climate as long as their strategic ally in the war on terror doesn't do anything too repressive to embarrass the United States. After all, political unrest at home at home is but of one of Meles Zenawi's concerns, and he's got bigger fish to fry. I speak, of course, of Ethiopia's bitter enemy Eritrea, and his increasingly personal duel with its dictator, Isaias Afewerki.

Whether Meles Zenawi's pardon was due to magnanimity or expedience, the escalating border tensions with Eritrea, along with Ethiopia's proxy war in Somalia, have insured that keeping the flow of American cash, weaponry and good will are essential to keeping Afewerki in check. His strategy appears to have borne fruit; the flow of American aid has continued unimpeded, a new $140 million dollar embassy is in the works, and best of all, his hold on power appears to be unassailable. With rewards like these, pardoning political prisoners hardly seems like a risk at all, does it?

Cuba's year without Fidel

2007-07-27T02:03:00.000-04:00

Yesterday marked the 54th anniversary of the beginning of the revolution that brought dictator Fidel Castro into power in Cuba. Yesterday also marked the first year of Fidel's unprecedented absence from Cuban life since 1953.

Last year, Fidel traveled to two rallies for his annual July 26th speeches. And then he disappeared, for good. After suffering an unknown intestinal ailment and transferring power to his only slightly less elderly brother Raúl, Fidel has been photographed, videotaped, interviewed over the phone, and feted by fellow autocrats from Vietnam and Venezuela, but he hasn't been seen in public by anyone. Fidel's appetite for enervating four hour speeches and interminable television appearances quickly sparked rumors that the "real" caudillo had died on the operating table, and the "recuperating Fidel" (as seen above) was nothing more than a body double for a dictator now pushing up daisies.

Do I believe Fidel is dead? No, but I believe Fidelismo is dead, and has been dead since Cuba's oil-for-sugar deal with Soviet Union collapsed. The lingering 17 year hangover has seen the corpse animated, like a zombie, but the consciousness had been snuffed out. Cuba is now in a bizarre holding pattern, with Fidel still officially alive, while Fidel's revolution is dead but unburied. The entire world appears to be holding its breath, waiting to bury the dictatorship the second the dictator himself expires (except, of course, the people who Fidelismo even more than Fidel does). Even Raúl himself has seen the writing on the wall, but he too feels compelled to wait until Fidel's body is in the grave before he starts shoveling the dirt of la revolución on his coffin.

Après le déluge, que vient après?

UPDATE: Apparently, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal linked to this article, but it's for subscribers only.

Will Spain erase Franco?

2007-07-25T04:39:00.000-04:00

The government of Spain is having a hard time with caudillo Francisco Franco nearly 32 years after his death in 1975. Spanish prime minister José Luis Zapatero is championing a controversial law that would, among other things, ban all images of Franco and his regime from public places, including all Nationalist symbols and references.

So what's the problem, you ask? Hasn't Spain already torn down nearly all of the statues of Franco?

Well, yes. That's not a problem. Zapatero's proposed law goes a step further than simply tearing down Franco's statues, but starts to get into attempting to erase Franco's memory from Spanish history entirely. Zapatero's eerily titled Law for the Recovery of Historical Memory provides monetary compensation, burial with honors, and retroactive political rehabilitation for victims of Franco's fascist government, as well as the relatives of Republican fighters killed during the civil war. However, the attempt to erase the memory of Franco and his government entirely smacks somewhat of Spanish civil war veteran George Orwell's famous "memory hole" from his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the past has been erased, the erasure forgotten, and the new history becomes true by default. Will whitewashing get rid of Franco's legacy?

Not on your life. In fact, Zapatero's attempt to legislate history has brought everyone back into the act of rehashing the Spanish civil war. Parties on the left are outraged that the new law doesn't compensate enough or annihilate Franco's memory enough. Parties on the right are outraged about the selective memory of the radical left's abuses during the civil war. The rancor has been pretty impressive for a war that's been over for 70 years. After Franco's death, the left and right wing political parties themselves had managed to put aside arguments about the civil war itself by means of the unspoken pacto del olvido ("pact of forgetting"), which put rebuilding Spanish democracy and reintegrating with the world ahead of their own civil war squabbling. Considering Spain's fragile democracy was by no means assured in the 1970s and 1980s, the truce was seen as a viable way for the country to move ahead without risking another left-right fissure that led to political discord, or worse, Fascist or Communist radicalism.

However, it can be more or less successfully argued that Spain's democracy is vibrant enough today to the point where it is no longer threatened by a Fascist resurgence. So why has Zapatero put aside the unspoken pact? God only knows, but once he did, the Spanish left and right have been going at each other like cats and dogs, trading body counts, atrocities, etc. with each other nearly non-stop. It could be that Zapatero's attempt to whitewash the history of the Spanish civil war and the Franco regime was either the best idea Spain ever had, or the dumbest. Yet Spain need only look to Germany to realize that political reconciliation and unvarnished history can, in fact, live side by side, if allowed the opportunity. The folly in legislating history should be self-evident, but then again, it could just be that Spain hasn't learned the hard way yet.

UPDATE: Nobody's quite sure yet what this proposed law would mean for the one of Spain's most visited national monuments, the Valley of the Fallen.

al-Bashir to West: "Knock it off, you drama queens"

2007-07-24T06:08:00.000-04:00

Sudan's military dictator Omar al-Bashir has a few words for anyone in the West concerned about the years long humanitarian disaster in Darfur:

You're all making a big to do about nothing, really!

"Bush and Brown exaggerate what's happening in Darfur to hide the operations carried out in Iraq", explained al-Bashir apropos of nothing in particular.

That will doubtlessly come as startling news to the rest of the world, especially to foreign aid agencies which, at present, are keeping nearly half of the population of Darfur fed, watered and clothed. It also comes as something of a surprise to Western politicians who have spent more time ignoring al-Bashir's personal role in Darfur than, say, doing anything to stop the violence. It's almost as if Omar al-Bashir is trying to get them to feel less guilty by suggesting that there's really not that much to be concerned about. Genocide? Mass murder? Rape? Pillage? Forget it! It's all an exaggeration by neo-colonialist powers, dudes!

Still, the message is clear: concern over Darfur is a Western imperialist trick meant to divide and conquer Sudan. More so than even a dictator who uses mass murder as a tool of domestic policy? Apparently so. Thanks for setting us straight, your excellency.

Mugabe offers to step down in 2008

2007-07-23T17:53:00.000-04:00

Zimbabwean despot Robert Mugabe is reportedly offering to resign after the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2008. The 83 year old Mugabe is said to have informed his military general staff that he would be willing to step down in exchange for their assistance in securing a parliamentary win for Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party.

Mugabe wishes to run for re-election in 2008, and if the reports are accurate, he wishes to win the election to save face and "humiliate the Western governments bent on re-occupying us". After winning in 2008, he would hypothetically turn control of the country over to a successor. Which successor? Nobody knows, as Mugabe has cycled through countless sycophants since coming to power in 1980. Mugabe certainly knows how to control the Zimbabwean electoral process, with a mix of force and fraud, and there seems to be little doubt that Mugabe could pull out another ZANU-PF win if he really wanted to.

Mugabe's advisers have read the writing on the wall, however. Zimbabwe's economy is the worst in the world, and Mugabe's own security services chief has publicly advised Mugabe that the public is so fed up that Mugabe might not even win a rigged election in 2008 - an unthinkable proposition for Robert Mugabe. Mugabe's lied for so long that it's hard to imagine anyone taking him seriously this time, but this certainly is the first time Mugabe has made any indication that he'd be willing to step down at all period.

UPDATE: Radio Netherlands Worldwide hosts a round table discussion on the political and economic meltdown in Zimbabwe (available here).

Chávez to expel foreign critics from Venezuela

2007-07-23T05:29:00.000-04:00

If you're visiting Venezuela any time soon, you'd best keep any observations about the autocratic rule of Hugo Chávez to yourself, or else expulsion from the country. On his television show Aló, Presidente, president Hugo Chávez vociferously promised to expel any visitor who might dare to publicly criticize either him or his cabinet. "No foreigner can come here to attack us!" the caudillo thundered, "anyone who does must be removed from the country!"

Chávez has long been sensitive to the "dictator" label (as we've seen before), and has not been shy about drying up criticisms of his regime at the source. Chávez's bluster appears related to comments made by a visiting Mexican politician attending a Venezuelan pro-democracy conference who made comments that Chávez's plans to eliminate presidential term limits were anti-democratic. A visibly fuming Chávez blasted back, saying:

"How long are we going to allow a person - from any country in the world - to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it? It CANNOT BE ALLOWED! It is a question of national dignity!"

- Hugo Chávez

Chávez apologists in Europe, the United States and Canada are finding it harder and harder to excuse Chávez's increasingly erratic, and autocratic behavior. Domestically, Chávez's political opponents are worrying that the expulsion order of foreign critics is a precursor to a fresh round of crackdowns on Venezuela's political opposition. The vow to expel foreign critics comes on the heels of Chávez's attempts to further concentrate political power in his own hands. The elimination of term limits is only set to apply to Chávez himself. Chávez is also set to attempt to further mold the rubber stamp National Assembly (who have already granted Chávez the power to rule by decree) in his own image, by gathering all of the currently pro-Chávez lawmakers into a single pro-Chávez party.

So there you have it. Chávez's rich Marxist friends from America are still welcome in Venezuela, but everyone else? Better keep your mouth shut. You have been put on notice.

UPDATE: I really wish he'd take that goddamned beret off that poor defenseless Amazon parrot.

Lukashenko purges security chief

2007-07-23T04:48:00.000-04:00

Judging from the news, this appears to have been something of a busy week for the man who has been dubbed "Europe's last dictator", Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus.

First, Belarus reported that they had "smashed" a Polish spy ring in Minsk that had been stealing secrets about a proposed joint air defensive system with Russia. And then the next thing you know, Lukashenko goes ahead and purges the chief of Belarus' KGB. Is that how you thank your domestic intelligence agency for busting up a spy ring?

Apparently, the purges reflect an ongoing struggle between Lukashenko and his secret police. Lukashenko claims his removal of KGB chief Stepan Sukhorenko was an "administrative" move, but Lukashenko apparently isn't finished purging his apparatchiks. Next on the chopping block is prime minister Sergei Sidorski who will probably be history sometime this week. What's gotten into Lukashenko, anyway? Is it possible that he's worried about a possible coup d'etat?

Dictator's WMD stockpile destroyed

2007-07-23T04:23:00.000-04:00

At long last, a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction assembled by one of the world's most notorious tyrants has been destroyed.

No, not that tyrant. We're talking about the late dictator of Albania, the paranoid Stalinist Enver Hoxha, who in the 1970s had assembled a stockpile of over 18 tons of mustard gas to protect his isolated communist paradise from his myriad (mostly imaginary) enemies. With the destruction of the stockpile, Albania has become the first nation to certifiably eliminate its entire stockpile of chemical weapons.

After Hoxha's death in 1985, the Albanian government appears to have forgotten about the deadly cache resting in a massive arms bunker outside the capital of Tirana. The post-communist government's attempts to get rid of the stockpile were derailed in the 1990s, when the country collapsed into chaos following a massive Ponzi scheme that nearly bankrupted the entire nation.

Fortunately (or unfortunately - depending on your outlook), most of the elaborate public monuments dedicated to Enver Hoxha have long since been torn down by his ungrateful nation. However, a tourist with a taste for a dictator's legacy can still travel to Albania and see Hoxha's most notorious gift to his country: hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers meant to defend Albania from foreign aggression.

The only thing missing from the equation? Actual enemies who wanted to invade Albania.

Papa Doc wants YOU to write for Dictators of the World

2007-07-20T05:10:00.000-04:00

Got a hankering for history's most infamous strongmen? Do you yearn to let the world know about dictators in the news? Perhaps you'd care to become a contributing editor for Dictators of the World. Simply drop me a line and let me see what you've got, and who knows? Perhaps you too can contribute to the first (and only?) blog solely devoted to the world's most notorious tyrants.

UPDATE: Someone has picked up the gauntlet! Our newest contributor is also known as blogger in chief at Asian Wild Rose. Bring it on.

Venezuela's brain drain

2007-07-20T03:23:00.000-04:00

It's a safe bet that Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chávez hasn't given much thought to the concept of labor as capital. Oh sure, he's given some scant surface level attention to the Marxist concept of the labor theory of value, but it's hard to be certain he even understood what that meant. Well, unfortunately for Chávez, he's going to have to start giving the human capital idea some serious thought, because Venezuela is starting to feel the pinch of the nemesis of every developing economy, the dreaded brain drain.

For those unfamiliar with the term, brain drain describes the loss of skilled labor in a national economy; doctors, engineers, lawyers, and so on. Chávez, whose populist politics are built on pandering to Venezuela's lowest economic classes, has made a point to label Venezuela's formerly sizable middle and upper classes as "fascists" and "parasites". It's been no secret that the middle and upper classes in Venezuela have been hostile to Chávez's use of Cuban style class struggle rhetoric, and have turned against him at the polls and in the streets. Nearly 3.4 million people, many of them from the middle and upper classes, were signatories to a petition in 2004 for a referendum to recall Chávez.

While the recall referendum failed to oust Chávez, the petition remained. Never failing to seize on a way to screw his enemies, Chávez demanded that the Venezuelan government get their hands on the petition signatures. Chávista parliamentarian, deputy Luis Tascón, did just this, publishing 2.4 million names and ID card numbers on the internet. This list, now known as the "Tascón list" suddenly provided the Chávez government with the personal information of millions of political opponents, and predictably, Chávez moved to get even.

Once the list was online, Chávez appeared on television to provide the URL of the list, and exhorted his supporters to go online to examine it. Within days, thousands of the signatories found themselves losing their jobs, both in the public and private sectors. Some signatories from the Venezuelan armed forces found themselves suddenly demoted, while others found their contracts with the Venezuelan government mysteriously revoked without explanation. The message was crystal clear: oppose Chávez, and you just might find yourself out of a job.

Between the Tascón List and Chávez's infatuation with painting the middle classes as fascist parasites, Venezuela's educated professional classes found themselves doing something they'd never imagined doing before: leaving Venezuela. The numbers of people leaving, which had started as a trickle, is now turning into a torrent. A number estimated at more than 150,000 mostly middle class Venezuelans have fled to the United States alone, with many more applying for visas at the American embassy in Caracas, with hundreds of thousands of others reportedly heading to Europe, Canada and Brazil. The attitude of the Chávez government appears to be along the lines of "good riddance to bad rubbish", but there's certainly cause for concern. Not all of the same people who are fleeing Venezuela are idle plutocrats. Most of them are the trained professional specialists that a nation relies on to function, like the aforementioned doctors and engineers. So what is Venezuela doing to stop the brain drain?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It seems that Chávez is content to let malcontents leave, reasoning that one less political opponent equates to one less vote against him the next time he runs for office. The thought that the loss of the people who run his hospitals, power plants, law firms and the like, not to mention the loss of an ever increasing chunk of his tax base, might be a disaster doesn't appear to have crossed his mind. The thought that so many of his skilled professionals are going to the United States, home of his sworn enemy George W. Bush doesn't appear to have occurred to him either. Apparently, he suffers from a classic delusion that when enough force is applied, a political enemy will be converted into an ally when he or she gets tired of fighting the system. The answer, incidentally, appears to be a resounding "no". They'll simply pack up and leave, taking as much of their money and all of their skills with them.

Some Venezuelans have voiced concerns about the possibility of Chávez restricting travel from Venezuela along the lines of Fidel Castro's Cuba, but for the time being, the Chávez government appears content to use emigration as a political steam release valve. Will Chávez crack down on professionals leaving once the effects of brain drain become too severe to ignore? We probably won't know for a few more years yet, but in the meantime, Miami welcomes the cream of the Venezuelan crop. Chávez's brain drain is proving to be America's gain.

Just the tip of the iceberg: part II

2007-07-19T05:56:00.001-04:00

Last week, I posted a story about how the government of Indonesia is seeking to retrieve $420 million of the money looted by their former dictator, Suharto. Now it appears that the government of Switzerland announced it would be returning $6.6 million dollars of money stolen by the late dictator Mobuto Sese Seko to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As before, the proportion of loot returned is a pitiful fraction of the estimated $5 billion Mobutu is thought to have looted from the treasure of the country then known as Zaïre. How does Congo's current autocrat, Joseph Kabila, feel about his diminished windfall? Well. Kabila's spokeswoman diplomatically described Kabila as being "disappointed" at hearing that the Swiss only found $6.6 million dollars, but frankly, I can imagine his actual emotions were probably a little more intense. This $6.6 million appears to be the last remnants of the billions looted by Mobutu, as Mobutu's tangible real estate and other assets in Europe and Congo have long since been auctioned off - albeit for dimes and pennies on the dollar. So where the hell did the money go?

While Mobutu certainly was one of history's greatest kleptocrats, efforts to find out where he's stashed the money have been time consuming and fruitless. Part of the problem, of course, is that while the sums looted by Mobutu were impressive, much of the money passed through his fingers almost as fast as he stole it. His fortune, mostly from assistance provided by the United States for Zaïre's development, bought the usual trinkets dictators waste their money. There was the luxury jumbo jet, lavish vacation homes in Europe, the usual fleet of pricey cars, and even an opulent palace with its own international airport deep in the heart of the jungle.

Time and money are fleeting, however, and nobody seems to have realized this more than Mobutu. The majority of the money was spent buying the loyalty of Mobutu's political enemies, most of whom forgot whatever grievances they had when a manila folder stuffed with $100 bills arrived mysteriously at their house. Under Mobutu, a ruling clique of kleptocrats nicknamed "les gros legumes" ("the big vegetables") emerged, all bought off with a steady stream of looted cash.

After all, Mobutu reasoned, why use violence when bribery will suffice?

France wants a piece of Manny

2007-07-19T05:25:00.000-04:00

Could prisoner number 38699-079 be headed for an all expenses paid vacation in France?

Yesterday, lawyers for the United States Department of Justice have filed a request before a federal judge in Miami to extradite former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to France when his US prison term expires on September 9th of this year. The Justice Department is seeking an arrest warrant for Noriega to be issued the same day his sentence is up in Florida for extradition to France. The 69 year old Noriega was convicted in absentia in France for drug trafficking charges, and sentenced to 10 years in prison and a fine of 75 million French francs. It would appear that the French are really chomping at the bit to get their hands on them.

Noriega himself was hoping to return to Panama, but the Panamanian government has made it clear that they want nothing to do with their former caudillo whatsoever. Noriega's lawyers are arguing, with fairly good reasoning, that their client is a prisoner of war, and is entitled to return to his country of origin. Panama's refusal to take him back, combined with the determination of the Americans and French to see Noriega extradited strongly suggest that Manuel Noriega will be 80 years old, broke and homeless by the time he's finally had his fill of French liberté, and égalité - to say nothing of all the fraternité.

So where will Noriega go if he actually survives his French prison term? I'd be willing to bet that Hugo Chávez will have a spot ready for Noriega in Caracas. And why not? Military strongmen need to stick together after all, and as the saying goes, "any enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine".

UPDATE: The Panamanians want Noriega back after all - to try him for the murder of a political enemy whose severed head was found in a mailbag. Who gets him first, Panama, or France?

Mao: The Movie!

2007-07-17T04:27:00.000-04:00

Idi Amin Dada had his moment in the Hollywood sun with The Last King of Scotland, prompting me to ask: where are the rest of the dictator movies?

Well, Robert De Niro of all people has heard my plea, and will be making a movie about the late Chinese dictator Mao Zedong. De Niro has managed to secure the film rights to Roy Rowan's book Chasing the Dragon: A Veteran Journalist's Firsthand Account of the 1949 Chinese Revolution. Presumably, De Niro will be shortening the title to Chasing the Dragon, because, you know, it's impossible for Americans to write books or make movies about China without the words like jade, pearl or dragon in the title.

There's no word yet on how the film intends to frame Mao's bloody war with Chiang Kai-Shek, or the bloody chaos that ensued after the Communist victory. Because the book focuses on the Revolution, it seems to be a safe bet that we're going to be shown Magnanimous Mao, hero of the Agrarian Dispossessed, Enemy of Japanese Fascism, and so on and so forth. Hey, beggars can't be choosers, and I'll take a defanged Mao movie over none at all. But if anyone's listening, it's time to deliver the goods on a Mao movie we can sink our teeth into. Has anyone ever made a movie about the Great Leap Forward? How about a Scorcese style treatment of the Cultural Revolution? They could call it Redfellas!

Saddam's British sycophant MP suspended

2007-07-16T03:43:00.000-04:00

British MP "Gorgeous" George Galloway will have an entire month off from work to wax nostalgic about his late bosom buddy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. That's because the British Parliament's Committee on Standards in Public Life is about to hand out a one month suspension to Galloway for "failing to properly declare his links" to a shell charity that funneled money from the United Nations "oil for food program" into Galloway's pockets. Under the scheme, the oil revenues were transfered to the transparently bogus charity devoted to ending sanctions on Iraq, before disappearing into Galloway's hands. One hand washed the other, turning sanctions busting into Mercedes Benzes and a swank luxury villa in Portugal for Galloway. Not bad for a poor boy from Dundee, eh?

The one month suspension is one of the harshest penalties to be handed out by the Parliamentary regulatory body, but Galloway isn't particularly worried. Perhaps he's waiting for someone to salute his "courage and indefatigability" while he's out?

Hissène Habré to face trial in Senegal

2007-07-16T02:45:00.000-04:00

The government of Senegal has announced that it is "nearly ready" to begin the trial of former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré for war crimes and crimes against humanity resulting in over 40,000 people killed. Habré is accused of launching a nearly genocidal assault on ethnic minority groups opposed to central rule, and directing his secret police to kidnap, torture and murder tens of thousands of political prisoners during his eight year reign between 1982 and 1990. After his 1990 ouster by Chad's current president, Idriss Déby, Habré fled to Senegal to escape the vengeance of his victims.

In 2005, the government of Belgium invoked its ludicrous "universal jurisdiction" law (which had expired two years earlier) to indict Habré on war crimes charges, and demanded that the Senegalese extradite Habré to Belgium to face trial. The Senegalese government, somewhat sensibly, told the Belgians to forget it, saying that they don't recognize Belgium's self-appointed authority to indict war criminals, especially under an expired law. So is Habré going to get off scot free?

Apparently not. The Senegalese parliament has recently passed a law to allow Habré to face trial in Senegal, and placed him under house arrest. Furthermore, the Senegalese have rejected calls for a special tribunal for the Habré trial, opting instead for a regular criminal court, claiming that the creation of a special tribunal would cost upwards of $90,000,000. The figure sounds preposterous, until one realizes that the tribunal created for the late Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milošević cost nearly $300,000,000. Senegal won't be doing this on the cheap, however, and said they have plans to "transport and protect" over 20,000 witnesses against Habré to Senegal to take part in the trial. The Europeans are fuming about how long it's taking to bring Habré to trial, but then again, none of them are offering to pay for it, either.

The Senegalese are determined to give Habré a "fair" trial, but skepticism abounds that the government has the will to convict someone of such prominent notoriety who had been living out in the open for so long. Other questions linger, too. Will Habré's political connections inside Senegal be a help, or a hindrance? Will the Belgians continue to sulk about being dissed by Senegal? And, oh yeah, what about Habré's victims? Anyone remember them?

No South African bailout for Mugabe

2007-07-13T05:13:00.000-04:00

Apparently, the rumors that the South African Development Community were planning to rescue the Zimbabwean economy by pegging the value of the Zimbabwean dollar to the South African rand have, apparently turned out to be inaccurate.

Well, the reports probably were accurate. After all, they were leaked by sources inside the SADC itself. However, the SADC wasn't quite prepared for the flurry of condemnation that followed. Why would anyone in their right mind prop up Robert Mugabe's regime by fixing his economy and leaving (for the most part) the political problems that have ruined it in place? Within less than two days, South Africa went from expressing "concern" over the Zimbabwean economic nightmare, to pitching the rand idea, to denying everything. I've got to hand it to Thabo Mbeki - he's certainly figured out the mechanics of the news cycle par excellence. Once an invaluable ally in the anti-apartheid struggle, even some of the same black South Africans who once owned Mugabe a debt of gratitude are starting to get fed up with Mugabe's intractable tyranny.

There's no denying, however, that South Africa has made a royal mess out of their relationship with Robert Mugabe, and they're looking for a quick and politically painless exit from their once inseparable relationship with Mugabe. President Mbeki is learning first hand how "regional leadership" isn't all it's cracked up to be. South Africa did not create the Mugabe dictatorship - true. However, they suddenly realized just how ineffective their "quiet diplomacy" with Mugabe was.

I suggest that Thabo Mbeki start reading up on the nature of dictatorships to find out why Robert Mugabe has put his own interests ahead of his relationship with South Africa, or even that of his own people. It might even save South Africa a bit of embarrassment down the line when they will inevitably deal with the same problems down the line with Angolan dictator José Eduardo dos Santos! And until then? Well, there's always the strategy of "quiet disengagement", which is also known as, "ignore him, and maybe he'll just go away". It doesn't work any better than "quiet diplomacy", but it certainly offers the same results with even less work.

Welcome to Stalinworld!

2007-07-12T04:59:00.001-04:00

Russia has recently declassified documents from the reign of Josef Stalin to allow access to the records of people arrested, jailed, tortured, exiled to the GULAG or executed by family members of the victims.

From the years of 1920 - 1950, nearly 30 million Soviet citizens were "repressed" (to use the official term) by Stalin's security services, with anywhere from 10 to 15 million of them dying either from execution or exposure and starvation in a prison camp. Today, the modern ancestor of Stalin's NKVD (the FSB) is the agency taking the lid off the histories of people who, for all intents and purposes, had simply disappeared.

So is there a catch? Yes. Access to the archives is only provided to surviving relatives of the politically repressed, and will not be made available to the public. While this is certainly a boon to the families of victims, it must be remembered that most of the surviving relatives who were small children during Stalin's bloodiest are now starting to get quite old. Why aren't the Russians releasing the information to journalists and historians? Perhaps they are, and just want the families to have first crack at them, although the current trends under current Russian president Vladimir Putin suggest that these records will head back under lock and key once the "healing period" is over.

I wondered: is it too much to hope that the Russians will opt for total disclosure, as the Germans have with regards to Nazi atrocities? The quick answer is, "yes, of course it is". Since the end of World War 2, no other country on earth has undergone as much self-analysis and self-criticism as Germany has. Russia, by way of contrast, will have none of it. Would you believe that Stalin, even today, remains popular in Russia? Where German schools have spared no details on the nature of Nazi atrocities, most Russians don't learn the extent of Stalin's bloodbaths at home or abroad until they leave Russia.

You know, why dwell on the negative all the time, anyway?

Final finale for Fidel?

2007-07-11T04:21:00.000-04:00

The political role of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has been up in the air since he transferred power to his younger brother Raúl nearly a year ago. Fidel, who has not made a public appearance since the handover, was still seen as being at least nominally in charge despite the formal handover. Skepticism abounds, with some people believing Fidel may actually be dead, while others believing that he's been shunted aside, while others believing that he's primed for a comeback.

Soon, however, we may be finding out what role if any Fidel will be officially playing. Raúl has set October 21 as the date for general elections to the Cuban National Assembly, the Communist party organ that "chose" (actually rubber stamped) the country's president, who just happened to be Fidel Castro, decade after decade, by unanimous margins. National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcon declared that he would once again nominate Fidel for the presidency back in March, but if Fidel's name doesn't come up when the Assembly convenes after the election, it's a safe bet that Raúl will win the job by a Fidelesque landslide. And after that? You can bet that only time we'll be seeing Fidel in the news after that is in the obituary section.

All of this begs some interesting questions. Is Fidel out of the way for good? What sort of changes will Raúl make? Obviously, Raúl has seen the writing on the wall regarding the economic and political viability of one party socialist states after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Cuban people are becoming noisily fed up with empty store shelves and ever shrinking government rations. It's a safe bet that Raúl, who is no spring chicken himself, won't rock the boat too much (least of all on human rights). After all, he's invested too heavily in the status quo to turn Cuba into Canada, but it will certainly be interesting to see what Raúl will do once he wields the same unlimited political authority that Fidel was used to.

The incredible shrinking Kim Jong-Il

2007-07-10T03:18:00.000-04:00

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il is looking, well, decidedly mortal these days. After reportedly undergoing heart bypass surgery in May, Kim has finally reappeared in public for a meeting with China's foreign minister during a celebration of the North Korean army's 75th anniversary.

The once rotund "Dear Leader" appeared much thinner than usual, and his once resplendent pompadour has given way to a terrifyingly sparse and patchy scalp full of bald spots and odd bursts of wiry hair. Never before has such a powerful dictator looked so ... mangy. Of course, Kim's health is a strictly kept state secret, so how did the illustrious Stalinist monarch explain his recent frail appearance? By claiming he's been spending long nights in the office. Obviously, Kim can hardly afford to do something as bourgeois as dropping dead before he settles the question of which of his sons will succeed him when he dies.

Kim's oldest son, Kim Jong-nam, is nearly 36, and apparently, had devoted himself mostly to living a life of leisure. By contrast, Kim Jong-Il had already joined the North Korean politburo by the age of 32. While Korean tradition obviously favors primogeniture, the porcine heir apparent is reportedly in disgrace with his father. After Kim Jong-nap was arrested in Japan for trying to enter the country with a fake Dominican passport, Kim Jong-Il apparently began grooming his second oldest son, 25 year old Kim Jong-chul. Rumors abound, however, that Kim Jong-chul is a homosexual, and is considered "too effeminate" to rule North Korea. That leaves 22 year old Kim Jong-woong as the last choice, but he's considered far too young to enter the cutthroat world of North Korean politics.

Ladies man Kim Jong-nam

What dictator watchers really want to know is: just what kind of "leader" will take over when Kim Jong-Il dies? Papa Kim Il-Sung was the "Great Leader", while his son Kim Jong-Il is the "Dear Leader". Following the downward trend of adulatory adjectives, can we expect an "Alright Leader" or even a "Just Okay Leader"? Would anyone like to propose a new adjective for North Korea's next Stalinist despot?

Berdimuhammedov goes for the bling-bling

2007-07-09T04:31:00.000-04:00

Turkmenistan's president Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov continued dismantling the personality cult of the late Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niazov by mandating the removal of the overlay of Niazov's profile (seen in the upper right hand corner of the photo) from television programs in Turkmenistan. What's more, statues of the late "Father of all Turkmen" have been quietly disappearing, while villages named after Niazov have been quietly re-named.

The quiet demise of what was one of the world's most powerful dictator personality cults is perhaps one more indication that Berdimuhammedov is serious about dragging Turkmenistan out of the political dark ages. It's also a sign that he's coming out on top of a recent power struggle with the remnants of his predecessor's former lackeys and apparatchiks. Berdimuhammedov was apparently expected to be a puppet controller by Niazov's former director of state security, Akmurad Rejepov. However, in a move reminiscent of Nikita Khrushchev's triumph over Lavrenti Beria, Berdimuhammedov unexpectedly had Rejepov sacked and arrested for "crimes against the state", thus eliminating his single greatest political obstacle.

It's still too soon to say whether Berdimuhammedov is a genuine reformer or not, but there appears to be no doubt that he's firmly in the driver's seat. So, will Berdimuhammedov be a dictator or not? Despite the nascent political reforms and dismantling of the Niazov personality cult, some signs remain that old habits die hard in Turkmenistan. Despite an official pronouncement that he would not welcome an official celebration of his fiftieth birthday, Berdimuhammedov apparently changed his mind at the last moment.

After only six months in office, Berdimuhammedov presented himself with the medal of the "Order of the Motherland", an award created by Turkmenbashi himself to honor, well, Turkmenbashi himself. The medal itself is said to weigh just over a kilogram of solid gold and is adorned with diamonds. It's also worth noting that the Order of the Motherland prize comes with a $20,000 cash bonus and a 30% increase in salary and pension benefits. Not bad for a former dentist, eh? What's more, despite his previous refusal to create a personality cult, Berdimuhammedov has decided to splurge a bit and release a commemorative gold coin with his portrait as a part of his birthday celebration. No word yet on whether or not he'll be going for gold statues, as Niazov did, but Berdimuhammedov's abrupt volte face in favor of Niazov style self-aggrandizement shows that he's still relevant fodder for discussion on Dictators of the World. Thank heavens!

UPDATE: Does anyone know what's going on with the status of the Ruhnama in Turkmenistan under Berdimuhammedov? It's hard to imagine that Berdimuhammedov would dismantle Niazov's personality cult while leaving the Ruhnama's intact.

Just the tip of the iceberg

2007-07-09T03:14:00.000-04:00

Prosecutors in Indonesia have filed a lawsuit against their former dictator, Suharto, seeking to reclaim some $420 million dollars embezzled by the elderly kleptocrat. So what's the problem?

The problem is that $420 million is the tip of the iceberg. As the most infamous of the 20th century's kleptocrats, Suharto's haul of stolen monies reads like a typographical error: over $15 billion dollars, with some estimates going as high as $25 or $30 billion dollars obtained through bribery, the establishment of monopolies and outright embezzlement. This figure elevates Suharto to, perhaps, being the greatest thief in history. Certainly, the amount of money looted by Suharto far surpasses his somewhat more notorious kleptocrat peers like the late Mobutu Sese-Seko of Zaire, the late Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and the Duvalier dynasty of Haiti.

So why are prosecutors only looking for such a relatively paltry amount? It's alleged that the money has been widely dispersed, both in the forms of economic monopolies on everything from clove cigarettes and fuel at home, to investment properties overseas, nearly all of which are nominally owned by Suharto's brainless playboy son, Tommy Suharto. Much of the money allegedly resides in bank accounts in Switzerland and Austria, countries whose banking laws favor the privacy of the depositor.

It's doubtful that Indonesia will recover so much as a thin dime from the octogenarian dictator, who has been in poor health for years. What's more, much of the stolen money has been so thoroughly laundered through legitimate (or semi-legitimate) business interests inside Indonesia for so long, that recovering the stolen money by appropriating the assets that laundered it could seriously damage the Indonesian economy. So it appears that the $420 million figure may have been reached by attempting to calculate the cash reserves kept by Suharto and his family inside Indonesia itself, which really, is nothing more than pocket money for the world's most successful kleptocrat.

How I love foreign news services

2007-07-06T04:42:00.000-04:00

I believe I already mentioned how I love reading Syria's awkward information ministry press releases on SANA (home of the mandatory celebration isosceles trapezoid!) - but wait! Fresh from the Caucases, the generically named Trend News Agency reports that dictator Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan "felicitates US President on Independence Day". It almost sounds filthy when you put it that way, doesn't it?

Speaking of Azerbaijan, I love how their official tourism site contains a list of all the "filthy and despicable" acts committed by the "Armenian aggressors" in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Yeah, nothing sells Azerbaijan as a tourist destination quite like that, fellas.

Is Chávez cracking down on journalists?

2007-07-05T05:14:00.000-04:00

Roger Santodomingo, the editor of the Venezuelan web site Noticiero Digital, resigned last week in the face of increasing threats from supporters of autocrat Hugo Chávez. Santodomingo received a letter that had been circulating at his son's school which called him a "traitor", and began receiving voicemails that suggest that his son would be run over while walking home from school. The cherry on the sundae occurred yesterday when his car was set ablaze while it was parked outside his home.

Chávez has been working hard to stifle media opposition to his "Bolivarian revolution", but the targeting of Santodomingo marks a new low in Venezuela's rapidly diminishing press freedoms. Just as when a Chavista mob attacked the offices of the (now closed) RCTV, Chávez could wash his hands of it and blame overzealous supporters. However, Chávez cannot wash his hands either of the incendiary anti-opposition press rhetoric that inspires his followers to use violence, much less forget that power in Venezuela is from the top down. If Chávez doesn't issue a statement calling on his party's regional leaders to stop, or even condemn, the violence, the attacks on journalists will continue. Granted, the Mercedes Marxists in America and Europe are embarrassed by Chávez's institution of Cuban style repression of journalists. A law passed in 2005 threatens journalists with legal action for "insulting" public officials, and while it had used mostly as a threat to journalists unfriendly to Chávez, the government has gone on the offensive with a spate of prosecutions.

Is anyone starting to realize why Hugo gets along so famously with Robert Mugabe and Alexsandr Lukashenko?

UPDATE: Welcome readers of The Beak Speaks!

Will Meles Zenawi attack Isaias Afewerki?

2007-07-04T04:51:00.000-04:00

Rumors abound that Ethiopia is planning a "preemptive" invasion of Eritrea, starting a new chapter of military tension between perenially dueling dictators Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea.

While their proxy war in Somalia continues, Meles Zenawi raised tensions by moving thousands of troops and heavy military hardware near the perpetually contested border with Eritrea to "prevent a possible Eritrean invasion of Ethiopia" while simultaneously issuing a warning to Afewerki to butt out of Somalia. Unperturbed by Ethiopia's threats, Afewerki's government blasted Meles Zenawi as a "boot licker" to the United States, and predicted Ethiopia's imminent defeat in Somalia.

While Ethiopia does indeed have its hands full at home and in Somalia, there's little doubt that Ethiopia's recent military training and equipment upgrades have given Meles Zenawi a decisive tactical edge in any potential conflict with Afewerki. And who knows? Kicking Eritrea's ass might take his mind off improving human rights or expanding political freedoms on the home front.

Obviously, you can tell I think Meles Zenawi is dealing from a position of strength with Afewerki, but perhaps that's just me. Looking through my site statistics, I see a couple of readers in the United Kingdom who read my posts about Eritrea and Ethiopia for hours a day. What do you the readers, especially you blokes in Epsom, think?

Top 10 Profile: Adolf Hitler

2007-07-04T02:43:00.000-04:00

Name: Adolf Hitler
Born: April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria
Died: April 30, 1945 in Berlin, Germany
Length of rule: January 30, 1933 - April 30, 1945 (12 years)
Means of ascent to power: Quasi-democratic
Means of removal from power: Committed suicide to avoid capture
Style: Police state, cult of personality, fascist, national socialist

NOTES:

Even though Adolf Hitler is arguably the 20th century's most infamous dictator, his very notoriety makes him a difficult topic to analyze rationally. We in the Western world all know the man's basic biography by now: born in Austria, a failed artist, wounded in the first world war, attempted to overthrow the German government in a clumsy putsch, took power more or less democratically before seizing total power, started a ruinous war, instituted genocide and finally, killed himself and his girlfriend to avoid capture by the Soviet Red Army. In fact, thanks to Hitler's infamy, he may be the most intensely studied dictator in world history. Ever watch The History Channel? The Hitler Channel is more like it. No matter where we go, there are comparisons of X to Hitler, warnings about "new Hitlers", footage of Hitler, soundbites of Hitler, usage of Hitler as a metaphor for raw evil, and so on.

All of this is fine and useful up to a degree, but the West's ceaseless interest in all things Hitler tends to overlook the finer points of what Hitler was like as a dictator. How did he assume power so easily? Who were his political role models? What was his relationship with other leaders really like?

We know that Hitler was certainly faced a gap between his boundless political ambition and his actual political conviction. Hitler drew his inspiration from Europe's contemporary revolutionary movements. Hitler certainly admired Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's fascist doctrine, but what good is mere ideology alone? Hitler also greatly respected the willingness of the burgeoning socialist revolutionary movements to resort to utterly ruthless violence to achieve their political ends. At some point, Hitler appears to have asked himself: what if Red violence were tied to the power of a fascist state? What would the characteristics of empire engaging in a perpetual statist revolution be? While Josef Stalin arguably beat Hitler to the punch in mixing leftist revolutionary violence with omnipresent state authority, Hitler nevertheless found the combination quite potent.

As a dictator, Hitler let his cunning and unerring political instincts fill in any troublesome ideological gaps. When Hitler wiped out his potential political rivals during the infamous night of the long knives, no less an authority than Stalin himself exclaimed admiringly, "that's how you do it!" And while his comical penchant for dramatic Wagnerian aesthetics and military pageantry was ridiculed at home and abroad, Hitler's innate grasp of politics found a way to make his dictatorship resonate emotionally with the masses in a way that eluded Stalin or Mussolini. After all, Hitler argued, the all-powerful state is the culmination of your revolution!

With a pervasive cult of personality to win the adoration of the masses and a disciplined secret police to weed out enemies, Hitler kept himself at the center of attention at all times, recognizing the need for the dictator to constantly be the focus of political attention. His admirers, both domestic and foreign, were enthralled by how the drab little Austrian became an electrified man of action in rebuilding a Germany shattered by war. And Hitler certainly recognized the value of being the center of world attention. No other dictator in history, not even Saddam Hussein, managed to crowd the spotlight so effectively. Even 60 years after his death, Hitler's loathsome fans find a way to stay enthralled. How many dictators can say that?

So where did Adolf's hold on power slip? It's quite simple: he flatted himself into believing that he possessed a talent for military leadership that simply didn't exist. While his political instincts were excellent (Hitler correctly foresaw the willingness of France, England and the Soviet Union to capitulate to German demands), he wound up biting off far more than he could chew when he insisted on overruling his generals on actual military decisions. Leading the masses is one thing, but leading troops? That's a job best left to the professionals.

In a way, it's a shame we've (somewhat understandably) reduced Hitler to an empty cartoon embodiment of pure evil, because this gets in the way of understanding the real man and real events of his time with the proper distance and seriousness they deserve. Hitler is the most famous dictator on my top 10 list, while simultaneously being the most frustrating to talk about. The most analyzed tyrant in history is also still the biggest blank slate when it comes to putting the pieces together. People have attempted to build psychological profiles of Hitler to little avail. We've asked if he was a homosexual, what role his vegetarianism may have played in his personality, how deep his anti-semitism ran on a personal level, what impact his failure as an artist had on his ambitions, and so on ad nauseam. I could talk about Hitler for a month straight and still feel like I've added nothing new.

So perhaps the readers who voted for Hitler in the last Top 10 profile contest can tell me: what do you want to know about Adolf Hitler?

Mugabe's comatose economic policy

2007-07-03T04:17:00.000-04:00

Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe is living proof why octogenarian Marxists have absolutely no business trying to manage a nation's economy. Consider Mugabe's classic Marxist response to his country's eye popping, regime threatening, hyperinflation, to wit, unleashing the state security services on shopkeepers who violate state price controls. Mugabe's blamed the British government for hatching a devious plot to undermine his regime by somehow getting shopkeepers to ignore government price controls and has instituted a crackdown by the "inflation police" to remedy the problem.

If you're the sort of person whose eyes glaze over when the topic of economics comes up, pay attention to this painless summary of what caused Zimbabwe's hyperinflation. Due to horrendous economic mismanagement and scandalous public corruption, the value of the Zimbabwean dollar has plummeted as the reserves of foreign "hard" currency in Zimbabwe's central bank dwindled to nothing. Without any hard currency to back up the value of the Zimbabwean dollar, the Zimbabwean government found itself unable to pay for imports of things like oil, food, and so on. With no cash on hand, the government simply printed more money. When you have a growing supply of worthless money chasing an ever dwindling supply of goods, inflation is born. When the government's printing presses outstrip the supply of goods by an enormous margin, you wind up with hyperinflation.

Mugabe's fetish for implementing halfassed Marxist economic policies have left him unprepared for dealing with the world's worst hyperinflation. The classic economic view of inflation states that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. Mugabe himself probably knows this, but for whatever reason, he continues to ignore the reasons the Zimbabwean dollar is worth less than a square of toilet paper. Why institute economic reforms when you can have the cops rough up shopkeepers for failing to adhere to prices concocted at random by government bureaucrats?

"Do not distort our prices. Stop it or we will force you to close or we take over your factory!"
-Warning to Zimbabwean shopkeepers in government newspapers

Mugabe is doubtlessly aware that even if shopkeepers sold their goods at the official price, the actual value of the currency received at the end of the day will be worth much less by the end of the next day, precipitating the need for yet another set of "official" prices on a daily (or more!) basis. The merchants lose money on every single transaction, and when they're out of goods, they're out of business, thereby reducing even further the number of goods available to buy with the still skyrocketing supply of banknotes. As always, Mugabe's solution is making the problem infinitely worse.

It's impossible to imagine that Mugabe actually believes he has any chance of succeeding, which prompts the question of what Mugabe intends to do when his police and soldiers are getting tired of being saddled with mountains of worthless money that can't buy them food or clothing. A real economist would have stopped the bleeding years ago by implementing government austerity plans and tackling corruption. Mugabe, however, relies on extravagant perks to his minister and access to stealing public monies as the cement that holds his ever increasingly shaky government coalition together. In other words, when beating the crap out of store owners fails to fix the problem, Mugabe's going to need one hell of a Plan B.

UPDATE: Archbishop Ncube is begging Great Britain to invade Zimbabwe and overthrow Mugabe. I think this qualifies as a "discourse on post-colonial power", don't you?

The masses have spoken!

2007-07-02T04:18:00.000-04:00

The polls are closed! The vote to choose the next dictator to receive a Top 10 profile has ended, and the masses have chosen German Führer Adolf Hitler as the next tyrant to be profiled on Dictators of the World. It's like 1933 all over again! Hitler's 30% share trumped heavyweights Josef Stalin (25%) and Mao Zedong (17.5%) and also unfortunately trounced my personal favorite, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier (2.5%). To be honest, I was dreading Hitler's triumph, will or no will. I'm really going to have to dig a bit to avoid a standard biographical rehash a la The History Channel.

Der Führer will get what's coming to him shortly, after which, the field of contestants will be reduced to five. Who will be next? And why isn't poor Enver Hoxha getting any votes?

Chávez and Lukashenko indignant over "dictator" label

2007-07-02T03:39:00.000-04:00

Happy belated Canada Day! While our neighbors to the north were off doing the barbecues and beer thing, Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chávez was putting the finishing touches on a trip to Minsk, Belarus to hobnob with Europe's last dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko. After pledging "mutual cooperation" in trade, military affairs (?!) and scientific research, both caudillo and commissar sniffed indignantly about their rotten images abroad. Chávez in particular was indignant, huffing the following:

"We have many obstacles and opponents, above all this empire that calls us dictators."

This is a moment of irony so absolutely perfect, that I can't even bear to ruin it with a sarcastic comment.

Memorable CIA failures revealed

2007-06-28T04:24:00.001-04:00

For some inexplicable reason, people outside of the United States still regard the American Central Intelligence Agency with the fear and respect the organization hasn't commanded inside the United States since the end of the Cold War. For the most part, the CIA is a mere shadow of its former more infamous incarnation, and has more famous for interoffice leaks than heroic feats of international espionage. So why were they once so feared? This week, the CIA released its so called "family jewels", a treasure trove of previously classified information detailing the shady operations of the American spy agency.

So is there a dictator angle to any of these reports? You bet your ass there is. The CIA's role in bringing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to power is pretty old news, but the release of the jewels shows that the CIA had other dictators on their mind as well. The CIA's comically hamfisted attempts to knock off Cuban dictator Fidel Castro are also old hat, but the newly released documents reveal that the CIA tried to outsource getting rid of Castro to the midwestern branch of La Cosa Nostra (aka, "the mafia"). After arranging a relatively modest payment, the CIA provided the mob with a powerful poison to take out Castro. Apparently, the plan was abandoned when the mob's Cuban stringers got cold feet and gave up.

Another interesting revelation is that the CIA had hatched a hopelessly botched assassination plot against then Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, apparently to stall or possibly derail upcoming talks on the transfer of the Panama Canal from United States to Panamanian sovereignty. Apparently, word had leaked out to the press, forcing the CIA to cancel the plans and issue a denial to reporters. What it may have involved, or how it would have been pulled off is strictly a matter of conjecture.

Want to read more? Of course you do. Indulge yourself by clicking here, but be warned - there's a TON of information to download.

200th glorious post, comrades!

2007-06-27T04:22:00.001-04:00

After a slow 2006, I resolved to knuckle down in 2007 and get serious about blogging about authoritarianism. Lo and behold, I think I've managed to do just that this year. I'm grateful to you, my loyal returning readers (however few!) for posting your comments and questions about the dictators who've made history and headlines since launching this blog. I'd also like to thank Joshua Foust at Registan and The Conjecturer for not only linking to DotW, but providing us with boatloads of news about the often authoritarian events going on in the former Soviet Union. I'd also like to thank the visitors to this blog who live in dictatorships, like the visitors I've been receiving from Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Angola and Fiji.

The one question I've been asked over and over is "why would anyone blog about dictators?" Well. 2007 has, for whatever reason, shown that most of the world appears to have made their peace with dictatorial regimes. 62 years after the death of Adolf Hitler, 54 years after the death of Joself Stalin and only 13 years after the Rwandan genocide, the so-called civilized world only too ready to tolerate our rogue's gallery of dictators for no other reason than to avoid rocking the boat. More than ever, we're living through a golden age of dictatorships, both old regimes (Fidel Castro, Muammar Qaddafi) and new (Hugo Chávez, Frank Bainimarama). Would be be so passive if they knew just what sort of men rule these countries, or the terror and violence they use to cling to power?

My biggest motivation in dictator blogging came over the curious absence of the word "dictator" itself in the press. Of course, the largest press outlets strive for some measure of neutrality in the tone of their coverage, but most of the world's largest news stories, from the Darfur crisis, to Iraq to North Korea all involve dictatorships, and precious little analysis is paid to how the very existence of totalitarian leadership leads to these crises. In the days leading up to the coalition invasion of Iraq, I lost count how many times I'd heard Saddam Hussein referred to rather blandly as the "leader" of Iraq. In the same vein, nearly all the press coverage of the North Korean nuclear crisis refers to Kim Jong-Il with the same deceptively neutral term, calling him only the "leader" of North Korea. While the term "leader" certainly applies, the use of such a neutral term effectively equated Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il with the prime minister of, let's say, Luxembourg.

The very avoidance of the word "dictator" as a purely pejorative term has, inevitably, begun to inure the public to dictatorships themselves, to the obvious detriment of people who have to live under totalitarian rule. We live on a Dictator Planet, but we seem to spend very little time talking about dictators. I hope that be keeping the spotlight on dictators themselves, we can begin to reacquaint ourselves with the word "dictator" and hopefully even restart the dialog about why the free world has made so little progress in reducing the power and influence of authoritarian regimes around the planet.

So that's it. Thanks for sticking around, and hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with some actual new content for everyone - even my increasingly robotic chavista audience.

Gurbanguly gone wild!

2007-06-26T04:20:00.000-04:00

One of the occupational hazards encountered while blogging about dictators is that some of these guys refuse to stick to the script. And do you want to know who really knows how to rain on my parade lately? Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov.

Turkmenistan was, perhaps, one of the world's most notorious dictatorships under the infamous Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niazov, and why not? It had all the ingredients - a post-Soviet political pedigree and an isolated (some would say exotic) Central Asian locale added an irresistible setting for the world's most notorious political personality cult. So when the lunatic despot kicked the bucket back in December of 2006, everyone sat on the edge of their seats: would the dictatorship crumble, or would some party hack close to Niazov simply pick up where the late dictator left off?

Things seemed promising for Dictators of the World when Niazov's successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov, replaced Niazov after a nakedly fraudulent election. I guessed that I would simply be able to pick up where I'd left off with Niazov, and write all of these juicy exotic stories about bizarre edicts, gold statues and secret policemen terrifying the populace. But that would just be too easy, wouldn't it? Instead, Berdimuhammedov appears to be doing the nastiest thing a man can do to a dictator blog, namely, instituting genuine political reforms and dismantling his predecessor's authoritarian state. What a dick!

Sure, he started off slowly, but he's gaining steam with every passing month. And now? Now I'm reading this article in Kommersant which talks about Berdimuhammedov instituting a political thawing out in Turkmenistan. First he decided to dispense with Niazov's all pervasive personality cult, declining all offers to build a new one of his own. Now, he's even declined to stage national celebrations in honor of his own birthday. Veteran dictator watchers know that serious dictators always live large on their birthdays. But would Berdimuhammedov stop there? Apparently not. He's also decided to disburse Niazov's secret oil and gas contract kickback slush fund. Now, granted, there are a number of criteria that make a dictator a dictator, but you show me a leader who declines a ready made personality cult and a multi-billion dollar slush fund, and I'll show you someone who's itching to make meaningful political reforms.

That's good for Turkmenistan, of course, but it's obviously bad for Dictators of the World. Will Gurbanguly go whole hog with this reform business, or will he pull back? I'd like to think he's going for something akin to Nursultan Nazarbayev's style in Kazakhstan. You know the type of regime I'm talking about - autocratic enough to get what he wants politically at home, without being brutal or dismal enough to make Turkmenistan an international laughing stock and pariah again. Obviously, we don't know which way he's going to turn ... yet. I'm still starting to worry that I'm not going to have anything to blog about from Turkmenistan in the near future.

Tomorrow: Dictators of the World celebrates its 200th post.

The mouse that roars

2007-06-26T03:11:00.001-04:00

Shortly after returning from a $3 billion dollar arms shopping spree in Russia, Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chávez told his armed forces to get ready to fight a guerrilla war against the United States. And what's his evidence that Washington is preparing to invade Venezuela? Why, the fact that students in Venezuela had the temerity to protest the shutdown of RCTV, of course. Who else but dirty dealing Yanqui imperialist capitalist swine could turn the revolutionary people against their caudillo?

Sure, Hugo Chávez may be out of his mind, but he's certainly putting his petrodollars where his paranoia is. In the past year, Chávez has gone on an arms acquisition binge the likes of which South America has never seen - not even when Argentina, Chile and Brazil were ruled by military dictators. The Russians are particularly eager to sell Chávez 9 hopelessly obsolete diesel powered submarines to stem the Yanqui tide of Ohio class nuclear submarines. While Chávez's attempts to build a modern navy from submarines that were outdated before Leonid Brezhnev even took office, such a purchase would, unbelievably, give Venezuela the largest submarine fleet in all of South America.

The real irony here, of course, is that the United States has no intention of invading Venezuela, and has no real need to. The United States is perfectly comfortable buying Venezuelan oil, which provides Chávez with the cash he needs to spend Venezuela into the poorhouse. The more oil the United States buys, the more hard currency Chávez throws down the drain, and the less valuable the Bolivar Fuerte becomes. The United States would, doubtlessly, not shed any tears if Hugo Chávez were to disappear, but unless Chávez is looking to build nuclear weapons, Washington considers him to be nothing more than a vulgar pipsqueak whose belligerent rhetoric can't keep up with his laughable ambitions and pitiful arsenal. The status quo is, ironically, exactly to Washington's tastes, especially since Chávez's self-inflicted out of control inflation can be just as hazardous to a dictator as any military invasion.

There's Something About Mao

2007-06-26T00:44:00.000-04:00

At Dictators of the World, we'd like to think that fashion and celebrity reporting are pitiful trifles reserved for the women's magazines. Inevitably, the worlds of celebrity, fashion and tyranny are bound to collide sooner or later, and that appears to have finally happened last Friday in Peru. Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz took her apparently fashionable bag emblazoned with a red star and a Chinese phrase (seen at left) with her to the ruins of Macchu Picchu. No biggie, right?

What Miss Diaz didn't know is that her bag is emblazoned with a red star as well as Mao Zedong's political slogan "Serve the people!", which also happened to be one of the rallying cries of Peru's own bloodthirsty homegrown Maoist rebel group, Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path"). Oopsie! Miss Diaz was suitably embarrassed about her faux pas to issue an extremely Hollywood celebrity style apology:

"I'm sorry for any people's pain and suffering and it was certainly never my intention to reopen what I now know is a painful wound in this country's history"

Apparently, she went on to praise the "beauty" and "warmth" of the Peruvian people, perhaps forgetting that the "Peruvian people" also includes the aforementioned Maoist rebels who caused so much misery in Peru. At any rate, I touched on the phenomenon of Communist chic back in December, and as I said back then, Che Guevara t-shirts and Mao Zedong bags should only be the beginning. Where the hell are my Josef Stalin throw pillows and Kim Il-Sung placemats?

Less than a week remains

2007-06-25T05:23:00.000-04:00

Less than a week remains to vote for the next Dictators of the World tyrant to receive a top 10 profile. Who's winning? Well, so far, Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler are locked in a struggle for supremacy. Hmm, sounds familiar, doesn't it? While the heavyweights duke it out, there's still time for a come from behind win by the likes of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier or Enver Hoxha, and I have a feeling this one could go down to the wire.

So why wait? Let me know which autocrat tickles your fancy by voting in the poll located on the right sidebar.

The Lives of Others

2007-06-25T04:15:00.000-04:00

Ever wonder if secret policemen get the blues? Set in East Berlin circa 1984, the German film The Lives of Others tells the story both of secret police of the Stasi and that of hapless targets and informers. The plot revolves around an earnest socialist playwright loyal to the East German regime, and the Stasi officers who have been tasked with spying on him. Unlike Good Bye Lenin! which trafficked in cheerful Ostalgie, The Lives of Others deals with the grim details of one of the most paranoid countries in history.

Even by the standards of other nations behind the Iron Curtain, the East Germans had the dubious distinction of being the most spied upon people on earth. It has been said that nearly every man, woman and child in the country had a Stasi dossier, and nearly two thirds of the populace had either been a Stasi agent, Stasi informer, or spied upon by the Stasi, a feat of espionage that dwarfs even the formidable efforts of the Soviet KGB and Romanian Securitate. From simple bugging, to video surveillance to collecting scent samples, no scrap of information was apparently too trivial for the organization charged with being "the sword and shield" of the Communist party.

Like their Soviet counterparts, the Stasi's primary task was to ferret out "politically unreliable" people, a category that included not only genuine dissidents, but even loyal party members or Stasi other Stasi officers who might be caught telling a joke about Erich Honecker within earshot of his superiors. Loyalty to the party, naturally, was certainly no guarantee of immunity from the Stasi. When the film's playwright protagonist, himself a true believer in the socialist system, finds out that he himself has been targeted by spies and informers, the shock is nearly too great to bear, and immediately, he begins asking himself why the Stasi come to search his house, and which one of his friends may be an informer.

I can think of no other film that has presented life behind the Iron Curtain with such seriousness and which has eschewed resorting to cheap political polemic or Yakov Smirnoff style comedy. At a time when former Stasi agents are trying their hand at historical revisionism, The Lives of Others dismisses sentimentality and nostalgia for the unvarnished paranoia and mistrust that characterized the most spied upon society in human history.

Crushed by cash

2007-06-22T04:34:00.000-04:00

Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe for nearly 30 years, and during this time, he's tackled a number of challenges to his authority without breaking much of a sweat. You name the crisis, and Mugabe's had a response. Is a portion of your populace supporting rival politicians? No problem, just send a North Korean trained goon squad to blast them to pieces. You say trade union leaders are clamoring for democracy? Just arrest them and beat them within an inch of their lives. Even if the problem is just poor people creating unsightly slums, Mugabe's found ways to come out on top.

However, not all problems can be solved by force, and one such trouble in particular might just lead to the end of the Robert Mugabe era. What's that problem, you ask? Hyperinflation. I've mentioned before on how Zimbabwe's inflation rates have gone well over the 1,500% mark, but it appears now that the worst is yet to come. In the past three days alone, the Zimbabwean currency has devalued by half, a rate of inflation of somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 percent for the month of May alone. June's been even worse, with currency values now changing twice or more per day as the government simply prints more Zimbabwean dollars to chase after a scandalously tiny supply of goods to buy with their mountains of money.

Yesterday, one US dollar bought 300,000 Zimbabwean dollars and it's expected to rise to 400,000 to 1 by today. Outgoing US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell said the embassy's economic forecast based on the past year's pattern predicts the rate of inflation to reach a staggering one and a half million percent by the end of the year. Normally, the ZANU-PF regime has been untroubled by Zimbabwe's economic woes, just as long as long as the ruling elites had access to reserves of foreign currency that had, in the past, usually been gained by taking kickbacks on government contracts. At one point, this was a very lucrative business in Zimbabwe, and more than one ZANU-PF minister made a fortune skimming contracts on everything from pencils, to oil, to canned goods.

The good old days can't last forever though, and Zimbabwe no longer has any hard currency with which to buy anything. With the country flat broke, power brokers in ZANU-PF are nervously contemplating the possibility they will have to try and make do with getting paid government salaries in Zimbabwean dollars - a frightening prospect for anyone at the moment. The fear of their own poverty, more than any other issue, appears to have driven a solid wedge between Mugabe and the ZANU-PF leaders who used to act as his rubber stamp ministers and parliamentarians. Party infighting, and even coup plots, are tearing apart Comrade Bob's once politically unassailable ruling clique.

Mugabe is desperate to buy US dollars on the black market, if only to secure the gasoline and electricity to keep his security services with the bare minimum of resources required to scare his enemies. He's learning the hard way that these same security services have a finite level of patience for being paid with Zimbabwe's Monopoly money currency, and the odds of Mugabe collapsing under the weight of mountains of worthless cash increase every day. Sure, normal people in Zimbabwe are screwed by this, and the poor even more so!, but they might be able to take comfort in knowing that the symptoms of their economic misery might just prove to be fatal to the man responsible for it all.

Indulge your Ostalgie

2007-06-21T06:03:00.000-04:00

Via Reason Magazine's Hit and Run blog comes news of a German hostel that deliberately recreates the ambiance of the late East Germany (aka, the German Democratic Republic). According to the hostel's website, you too can indulge your Ostalgie with a stay in the "Stasi suite" for a mere $78.

Frankly, I would demand true authenticity. If the room isn't bugged, then honestly, you're just wasting $78 for a room with lousy wallpaper, uncomfortable beds and pictures of Erich Honecker on the walls. For less money, you could get even greater authenticity by staying in a country that still behaves like East Germany. Why play around with recreations when you could get the real deal in Cuba, Moldova or Belarus?

Oh, I know. You can leave the fake East Germany whenever you want.

There ARE new posts today

2007-06-21T05:20:00.000-04:00

Today's new post about appeasing dictators is up, but because it was started yesterday, it appears with yesterday's dateline. You can read it right here. I blame Colonel Mobutu for any inconvenience.

Blame me all you want - just keep the money coming!

No new posts today!

2007-06-20T09:14:00.001-04:00

Uncle Joe disapproves, but hey, that's how it goes sometimes. Tomorrow, a piece on why ostensibly civilized countries continue to appease third world dictators.

Unacceptable, comrade!