Despotic Dictators

"Heard your songs of freedom and man forever stripped,
Acting out his folly while his back is being whipped.
Like a slave in orbit, he's beaten 'til he's tame,
All for a moment's glory and it's a dirty, rotten shame"

           Bob Dylan, "Dirge"


If you want to read about someone pallin' around with actual terrorists, you need look no further than the new investigative piece by John Dinges in The Huffington Post. The article reveals, for the first time, John McCain's dirty little secret. That is, his friendly, private, undisclosed meeting back in 1985 with General Augusto Pinochet, the fascist military dictator of Chile.

What's especially remarkable is that McCain, a man who endured torture himself during his time as a P.O.W. in Vietnam, would go out of his way to meet with a dictator whose regime was known for one thing above all else: Torturing people to death.

"He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy"
     -  Brian's Mom to the masses in "Monty Python's Life of Brian"

Like all petty dictators and megalomaniacs throughout history, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe seems to see himself as the saviour of his country, but, far from being Zimbabwe's Messiah, the man has now clearly become the destroyer of this once proud and prosperous nation. Self-delusion and pompous self-importance simply don't get much better than with this buffoon.

You really have to hand it to China. I mean, there's simply no denying the magnificent effort the Chinese government has put into becoming an old school Superpower, in the mold of America and the Soviets during the Cold War. Just look at how passionately the Chinese defend, love and nurture three of the most despicable regimes on the planet. That is, Burma, North Korea and Sudan, of course. Check out Beijing's heartfelt apologia for mass slaughter and horrific repression. Watch in amazement as petty dictators and genocidal regimes are coddled and cozied up to. And marvel at the sheer stubbornness and complete lack of morality on display as China increasingly steps out onto the world stage.

Whether it be Burma's ruthless suppression of its own people, North Korea's starvation of millions of its citizens while spending all of the country's money on nuclear weapons and the military, or Sudan's genocide of the people of Darfur, China is always there to encourage the tyrants, load 'em up with weapons, and protect them from sanctions and censor in the UN Security Council. To put it succinctly, China's simply there for them whenever they're in need. 'Cause, hey, as that old song goes, and as any petty dictator will tell you, "we all need somebody to lean on".

I was going to start this rant with some lame attempt to be witty, such as:

Q. Hu was that guy Bush was getting all defensive for today at the White House?
A. Yes.

or

Who's Hu and why is Bush so enamored with him?

But in the end I decided to just go with this:

I could easily write a whole rant on nothing but Bush's reaction to that heckler at the White House this afternoon. You know, the woman who was, after all, simply just shouting out some truth about the reality of the dictatorship in China and its brutal oppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Did you see the look of disgust on Bush's face? Thankfully, for those who like polite meetings with dictators, he quickly apologized to Chinese President Hu. Now everything's going to be ok, right? What a pathetic hypocrite! This was the guy who was supposedly so upset and worried about the human rights situation in Iraq that he had to destroy the whole country. I could write a whole other rant about how he sucked up to Hu all day. I mean, we're talking about a country - China - that still runs gulags, er, I mean "re-education camps", which are full of tens of thousands of innocent people. But, come to think of it, America's been running its very own gulag in Guantanamo Bay for years now, so I guess they can't really call other countries on such things anymore, can they? But, still, it sure looks pathetic. Don't you think he must feel at least a little bit embarrassed about sucking up to the leader of a communist dictatorship that throws people in jail for 10 to 15 years at a time for such things as publishing articles about a peaceful transformation to democracy?