The world is unfortunately far from a peaceful place like its easy to end up thinking where I live. Having traveled to many places, I have come to see the consequences of brutal leadership and government have for people in general.

Omar al-Bashir, Sudan

One of my favorite blog writers Nicholas D. Kristof made a list of the top 3 worst dictators in the world and why he feels this. The list is as follows

Top three

“1. Kim Jong Il, North Korea. This is the most ruthless and totalitarian regime in the world, by a good margin. I’ve been to North Korea and all the other contenders for nastiest country, and it is simply in a class by itself. Every home has “the speaker” in the wall, to dish out propaganda all day, and radios can be only tuned to preset stations. If someone makes a political mistake, the whole family is sent off to a political concentration camp, and in the late 1990’s Kim Jong Il presided over the death by famine of some 2 million people. When the wife of one of Kim Jong Il’s bodyguards complained about the Dear Leader’s womanizing, she was arrested and brought out before the guests at one of Kim Jong Il’s parties. Everyone denounced her and then Kim Jong Il allowed the bodyguard the opportunity to execute his own wife — and he did so.

2. Omar al-Bashir, Sudan. Bashir launched the genocide in Darfur, but he also engaged in the slaughter of southerners in the north-south war in Sudan, as well as mass killings in other parts of Sudan. He backed the Lord’s Resistance Army to invade Uganda and organize mass rapes and initiate children by having them kill their parents. Lately, he has tried repeatedly to invade and overthrow Chad, and in his spare time he sent a force to invade Central African Republic.

3. Than Shwe, Burma. In Burma we’ve seen a brutal repression of the Karen and other ethnic groups and most recently the suppression of the democracy movement led by Buddhist monks.

The regime stifles the country and destroys the economy, and it didn’t lift a finger to help people in the aftermath of the recent cyclone — except that it blocked foreign assistance.

Which are your top three?

Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Chad, China, Cuba, Syria, Turkmenistan and other central Asian countries all are autocratic and repressive, but I don’t think they compare to these three.”

So which are your suggestions for the top three dictatorships ?

Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York times writes the following from a recent visit to the holy land.

He draws up two contrasts with the bad and ugly on one side;

“It is here in the Palestinian territories that you see the worst side of Israel: Jewish settlers stealing land from Palestinians (almost one-third of settlement land is actually privately owned by Palestinians); Palestinian women giving birth at checkpoints because Israeli soldiers won’t let them through (four documented cases last year); the diversion of water from Palestinians. (Israelis get almost five times as much water per capita as Palestinians.)”

and the beautiful, dynamic and life changing on the other;

“Yet it is also here that you see the very best side of Israel. Israeli human rights groups relentlessly stand up for Palestinians. Israeli women volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians through. Israeli courts periodically rule in favor of Palestinians. Israeli scholars have published research that undermines their own nation’s mythologies. Many Israeli journalists have been fair-minded toward Palestinians in a way that Arab journalists have rarely reciprocated.