If you haven’t read it already, Jon Lee Anderson’s latest dispatch from Guinea is well worth your time. The piece does an excellent job of conveying the chaos of Moussa Dadis Camara‘s brief reign, which was marred by one of the great atrocities of recent vintage. Suffice to say that Dadis and his cronies come [...]
Entries Tagged as 'dictatorship'
The Lowdown on Brown-Brown
April 12th, 2010 · 9 Comments
Tags:brown-brown·cocaine·dictatorship·drugs·Guinea·Sierra Leone·The New Yorker·urban legends·weapons
Nothing Exceeds Like Excess
March 18th, 2010 · 12 Comments
Yesterday’s New York Times featured a piece on the lavish lifestyles of South African president Jacob Zuma and his fellow African National Congress bigwigs. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Zuma sitting on a gilded banquet chair, which bears a striking resemblance to a throne. (Note to Zuma’s handlers: If your boss is [...]
Tags:Bokassa·Central African Republic·corruption·dictatorship·Turkmenbashi
Funk Amidst the Food Riots
February 3rd, 2010 · 4 Comments
The mid-1970s were a gloomy time in Polish history, even by that long-accursed nation’s standards. Government-mandated price increases on essential goods led to a series of violent protests, which were quelled in typically brutal fashion. To paraphrase a certain Shogun Assassin quote made famous on GZA’s Liquid Swords, it was a bad time for Warsaw. [...]
Tags:Arp Life·Communism·dictatorship·funk·jazz·music·Poland·Polskie Nagrania Muza
Let There Be Hydroelectricity
December 16th, 2009 · 4 Comments
Explicitly Communist architecture gets a unfairly bad rap from critics. Sure, builders behind the Iron Curtain were overly fond of dismal panelaks and other multi-dwelling units that reeked of dingy misery. But when the last true believers in the dictatorship of the proletariat decided to go the triumphalist route, man, did they ever pull it [...]
Tags:architecture·art·Communism·dictatorship·mythology·Nicolae Ceausescu·Romania·statues
Words to Flail By
December 7th, 2009 · 6 Comments
A Thursday comment thread led us to unearth a true Web gem: an English translation of the Ruhnama, the textbook authored by the late Saparmurat Niyazov, better known to the world as the megalomaniacal dictator Turkmenbashi. The tome was infamously the only source of history and philosophy instruction for pupils during Turkmenbashi’s ruinous reign, a [...]
Tags:dictatorship·education·Ruhnama·Turkmenbashi·Turkmenistan
Doing Away With the Veneer
December 3rd, 2009 · 8 Comments
Most authoritarians these days know better than to go the Papa Doc Duvalier route and declare themselves president-for-life. The occasional sham election does wonders in terms of keeping off the international heat, especially if your country is an important source of gas or bauxite. But Nursultan Nazarbayev seems to be seriously considering bucking the trend, [...]
Tags:animals·birds·dictatorship·Houbara Bustard·Kazakhstan·politics·Russia·Winter Olympics
