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More of what really happened in the Dirty War.

Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla was convicted and sentenced to 50 years Thursday for executing a systematic plan to steal babies from prisoners who were kidnapped, tortured and killed during the military junta’s war on leftist dissenters three decades ago.

Argentina’s last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, also was convicted and received a 15-year sentence.

The baby thefts set Argentina’s 1976-1983 regime apart from all the other juntas that ruled in Latin America at the time. Videla and the rest of the junta were determined to remove any trace of the armed leftist guerrilla movement that they said threatened the country’s future.

sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com

At the center of the violent unrest in Syria stands President Bashar Assad, the man who has ruled the country since 2000. Today Assad is almost universally seen as a bloodthirsty tyrant. He unleashed his army against his own population after the Arab Spring over a year ago, and since then has presided over thousands of civilian deaths. His name is grouped with other recent—and notorious—Arab dictators who have been overthrown, such as Khadafy, Mubarak, and even Saddam Hussein.

But he wasn’t always seen this way. Assad came to power amid hope and anticipation, with many Syrians and outside observers believing he would be a leader who could help loosen up the inert, stultifying Syrian system. Although it seems shocking now, his arrival ushered in a time of openness dubbed the “Damascus Spring.” Assad had a far different pedigree than the men he has come to resemble: He was, relatively speaking, normal, an ophthalmologist educated in London, the second son of Syria’s longtime ruler Hafez Assad. Bashar was an intellectual, not noticeably ambitious, even a bit of a computer nerd.

I should know because I met with him on a regular basis between 2004 and 2009, spending more time face-to-face with him than perhaps any other American. I witnessed his transformation first-hand, as he evolved from a potential agent of reform to a repressive dictator with his own people’s blood on his hands.

His story, and the recent hardening of Syria’s government against its own people, offers a stark illustration of how autocrats can ultimately be captured by the systems that they notionally control. And to understand how the conflict looks from within the regime—the view from Bashar’s seat, as it were—suggests a very pessimistic outlook for the peaceful kind of resolution the international community hopes to bring about.

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foreignpolicy.com

Dictators are supposed to be dumb, or at least crazy. Muammar al-Qaddafi was a ranting lunatic with a goofy fashion sense. Kim Jong Il had a weird hairstyle and a penchant for surreal sloganeering. Those generals in Burma were brutes given to consulting soothsayers on major decisions and shooting people at the drop of a hat.

But these caricatures — for that is what they are — actually tend to obscure some unpleasant facts about modern life. Qaddafi reigned for 41 years in a country where fractiousness and rivalry were the order of the day in the era that preceded him. Kim Jong Il died in his bed after ruling North Korea for 17 years — despite policies that condemned his country to humiliating poverty even while its neighbors rose to new heights of prosperity. And those generals in Burma? They came to power in 1962, and though they’ve started loosening their grip a bit lately, they still clearly call the shots.

All of these dictators managed to cling to power far longer than they or their people had any right to expect. They were evil, all right. But you can’t call them dumb. Measured by their own criteria, they were actually pretty successful.

This is something that we’d be advised to keep in mind if we’re going to help the forces of freedom to prevail in the world. And this, indeed, is one of the lessons of Will Dobson’s fascinating new book, The Dictator’s Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy. Dobson, a former FP editor who now works for Slate, got the idea a few years back when he was invited to a strategy game with some pro-democracy activists who were trying to undermine an authoritarian regime in their home country. When Dobson asked if he could play the role of the dictator, he was met with blank stares. “We’re not in the business of teaching people to repress other people,” he was told.

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npr.org

The wall of silence in Indonesia surrounding one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century is beginning to fall apart. A forthcoming report by Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights estimates that a purge of suspected communists during the mid-1960s killed between 600,000 and 1 million people.

The violence reshaped Indonesia’s political landscape and affected the course of the Cold War, just as the U.S. was escalating its fight against communism in Southeast Asia.

“We conclude that there have been gross human rights violations, which can be classified as crimes against humanity,” says Yosep Adi Prasetyo, the commission’s deputy chairman.

He says the report places the blame squarely on Indonesia’s military dictator Suharto, who died four years ago.

“We found that the military and police were involved in the killings, as well as forced disappearances, rape, forced movement of people, torture and other crimes,” Prasetyo says.

A major general in the Indonesia army at the time, Suharto ousted Sukarno, the revered Indonesian independence leader and the country’s first president, in the wake of the kidnapping and killing of senior Indonesian generals on Sept. 30, 1965.

cnn.com

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived in the United States on Saturday, marking the latest phase in a series of political moves surrounding his transition from power in violence-wracked Yemen.

His arrival was confirmed by Yemen’s foreign press office and U.S. State Department spokesman Noel Clay.

The embattled president is expected to remain in the United States for a short time, while he undergoes medical treatment, Clay said.

Earlier in the day, Saleh’s plane landed to refuel at a United Kingdom commercial airport, according to a Foreign & Commonwealth Office spokesman who declined to be named, citing agency policy.

The purpose of Saleh’s U.S. trip is a “private medical visit,” according to the Yemeni Embassy in Washington. It said he plans to return to Yemen in February.

Saleh was wounded in a June bomb attack on his presidential palace.

The United States does not want to come across as providing safe haven to a dictator responsible for a violent, deadly crackdown on an uprising, according to a source with knowledge of the deliberations.

The decision was made in hopes that Saleh’s departure from Yemen could ease tensions in the country and help pave the way toward elections next year, the official said.

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economist.com

ALASTAIR SMITH is professor of politics at New York University. The recipient of three grants from the National Science Foundation and author of three books, he was chosen as the 2005 Karl Deutsch Award winner, given biennially to the best international-relations scholar under the age of 40. He is co-author of “The Dictator’s Handbook: How Bad Behaviour is Almost Always Good Politics” (2011).

To whom do your guidelines apply?

Everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you are a dictator, a democratic leader, head of a charity or a sports organisation, the same things go on. Firstly, you don’t rule by yourself—you need supporters to keep you there, and what determines how you best survive is how many supporters you have and how big a pool you can draw these supporters from.

Do they actually have to support me, or can I just terrify them into supporting me by threatening them with death?

No, they absolutely have to support you on some level. You can’t personally go around and terrorise everyone. Our poor old struggling Syrian president is not personally killing people on the streets. He needs the support of his family, senior generals who are willing to go out and kill people on his behalf.  The common misconception is that you need support from the vast majority of the population, but that’s typically not true. There is all this protest on Wall Street, but CEOs are keeping the people they need to keep happy happy—the members of the board, senior management and a few key investors—because they are the people who can replace them. Protesters on Wall Street have no ability to remove the CEOs. So in a lot of countries the masses are terrified but the supporters are not.

What about Stalin? Even his inner circle was terrified.

Well, the brilliance of the Soviet regime was not just that you relied on few people, but that there were lots of replacements. In a tsarist system you have to rely only on aristocrats, but in a Soviet system everyone can be your supporter. This puts your core circle on notice that they are easily replaced. That, of course, made them horribly loyal. The Mob are very good at this.

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news.am

An attempt was made to force the adoption of UN Security Council resolution on Syria.

“But our friends - Russia and China, as well as India and Brazil, prevented it,” he said, adding that adoption of the resolution would result in catastrophic consequences for Syria.

At the same time, Mamun Hariri stressed that position of some countries is surprising. Among these countries, the diplomat named Qatar and Turkey, as well as the position of the League of Arab States.

All this is a result of pressure and blackmail from the West and the Gulf countries, the diplomat said. According to him, the current situation, especially the recent blasts are of terrorist character.

“This indicates that the program is carried out against Syria aimed at undermining stability in the country,” stressed Hariri, accusing Al Qaeda of organizing terrorist attacks.

The only way out is to establish dialogue, to correct mistakes and to bring to justice those responsible.

Syrian diplomat thanked the Government and people of Armenia for “supporting Syria in this difficult time.” In this context, he also pointed out the presence of a large Armenian Diaspora in Syria.

Asked about the forecasts for 2012, Mamoun Hariri noted that the Syrian authorities are sparing no effort to continue already established dialogue with the opposition to make a decision acceptable to all the segments of population and put an end to discord.

news.nationalpost.com

Suspicion of North Korea runs deep in South Korea, so it wasn’t a surprise that within hours of the announcement of Kim Jong-il’s death Monday, some South Korean newspapers were asking if the Dear Leader had been murdered.

While North Korea’s Central News Agency reported Monday that Mr. Kim died of a heart attack last Saturday on a train while heading to an unidentified destination, Seoul’s Korea Times newspaper ran a headline, “Suspicions arise over cause of death”.

According to the newspaper, North Korean defectors doubt Pyongyang’s state-controlled media reports of Mr. Kim’s death. They cautiously suggested the dictator may have been murdered.

A political scientist, An Chan-il, was quoted as saying Mr. Kim may have been killed by elements within the North Korean government who disagreed with his policies.

“After his third son Jung-un was named for a dynastic leadership succession, many military officers, especially those in their 50s, were dismissed,” Mr. An told the Korea Times. “I think these people could have held deep resentment about Kim and North Korea’s next leader.

“A rumor is circulating that earlier a high-ranking North Korean official was shot dead,” he said. “This has yet to be confirmed, but such talk is evidence that discontent was brewing among some people in the North.”

Mr. An speculated hardline elements in the military may have also resented recent policy changes introduced by Mr. Kim.

“As their vested interests were hurt due to Kim Jong-il, I would not rule out the possibility that some military officers, who believed their clout and influence had been damaged, could have played a role in his death,” he said.

The newspaper said Chun Yo-ok, a member of South Korea’s National Assembly from the ruling Grand National Party also raised the possibility Mr. Kim might have been killed as a result of a power struggle.

Several years ago, a Japanese professor wrote a book arguing that Kim Jong-il died in 2003 and had been represented by body doubles ever since.

The latest conspiracy theories gained life from the fact that just hours before officials announced Mr. Kim’s death, U.S. officials were leaking news that they had negotiated a breakthrough deal to have North Korea suspend uranium enrichment in exchange for a resumption of food aid from Washington.

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washingtontimes.com

Oh, hi Mushy, didn’t know you were still around. Doing better than a lot of ex-dictators I see. Now why don’t you sit back and have a big steaming cup of STFU. If you can’t manage that, try explaining how OBL was whacked in an ISI safe house 800 meters from your main military academy, in a town that is crawling with current and retired military officers.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Monday accused the U.S. of violating his country’s sovereignty by sending in special forces to kill Osama bin Laden.

“American troops coming across the border and taking action in one of our towns, that is Abbottabad, is not acceptable to the people of Pakistan. It is a violation of our sovereignty,” Mr. Musharraf told CNN-IBN, an Indian news channel.

He added that it would have been “far better if Pakistani Special Services Group had operated and conducted the mission. To that extent, the modality of handling it and executing the operation is not correct.”

Bin Laden was killed Sunday in a firefight with Navy SEALs in a million-dollar, fortified compound located in an affluent neighborhood in Abbottabad, about a two-hour drive from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

Senior U.S. officials, who briefed reporters early Monday, said the Obama administration did not inform Pakistani authorities of the mission until after it was concluded.

Mr. Musharraf said the “lack of trust is very bad.”

“If two organizations [are] conducting an operation against a common enemy, there has to be trust and confidence in each other,” he said.

Pakistan is “totally on board” on fighting al Qaeda and Taliban.

Mr. Musharraf said it was possible that some local Pakistanis had colluded with bin Laden.

“A battle has been won, but the war continues,” Mr. Musharraf said, warning that “al Qaeda is still there.”