[Edit: I am a prophet! Kim Jong Il died two days after I posted this entry!]
With the announcement of “The Protester” as Time’s 2011 Person of the Year, it made me realise that its been a bad year for dictators.
Osama Bin Laden is gone. Ghadaffi is gone. Mubarak is gone. Vladimir Putin is facing huge protests from his citizens. Fidel Castro has disappeared and his brother is introducing economic and social reforms. Stephen Harper is, well, technically not a dictator but increasingly acting like one.
It almost makes you feel sorry for Kim Jong-Il. The stumpy dictator with the wild hair and unchecked god complex maintains absolute power in North Korea but does so by forcing his citizens to live in terrible conditions as his personal serfs.
It will be interesting to see how one of the world’s last dictators fares in the coming year – given recent history I don’t like his chances! 😉
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