Who is your favorite foreign leader

[DownWithTheLeft]

It use to be Berlusconi hands down, now its a tossup between Harper and Howard

What do you like about Harper?

I am first of all impressed at the job he did at turning around the Conservative Party, and second any leader opposed to gay marriage is great in my book

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Khruschev (if he were alive) or Blair.

[Joe Republic]

Boris Yeltsin.  That guy was awesome.

[angus]

I don't often comment on signatures, Joe, except to say that that I find them generally to be an offensive waste of bandwidth, but yours is nerdy, cute, and clever all at the same time.  And very appropriate to St. Valentine's Day.

Boris is a good choice too.  How often do you get a Russian president actually named Boris?  If his wife's name is Natasha, then he's my favorite as well.

[Platypus]

Big fan of Hans Adam II.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

For sheer kitsch, no one living can beat  Dear Leader Comrade Generalissimo Kim Jong Il, The Shining Sun And The Hope Of All Humankind, tho Türkmenbaşy had him beat, since he had the gumption to name not only a month after himself, but one for his mom and another for his book!

[angus]

His Excellency Robert Gabriel Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, gives Kim good competition as well.  Sure, he doesn't have a nuclear armament program in the works, but you gotta love that little moustache.  It's like a soul patch for the palete.  And the land "reform" program, whereby land was taken from white folks and redistributed among corrupt local chieftans, was a brilliant move for the country's economic health.   These "land reform" programs were such a hit that the UK, US, and Australia began calling for sanctions.  The former landowners' only crimes were being of European stock and, as luck would have it, they were the demographic of Zimbabweans contributing most heavily to the Zimbabwe economy in bulk.  Moreover, once-productive farms have now become rotting grounds and squatting grounds, no longer fueling the little engine that was the Zimbabwe farm economy.  Smooth move, Your Excellency.  I also noticed his "moral campaign" which, among other things, deemed homosexuality and other "unnatural sex acts" illegal with penalties of ten years in prison.  That's ten years in a sub-saharan African prison.  ouch.  But my favorite thing about Mugabe is his egocentrism.  Mugabe's portrait is on Zimbabwe's highest currency note, the one thousand Zimbabwe dollar bill, which is just about enough to buy one tomato in Zimbabwe.  At the time it first appeared, it may have bought, say, a whole chicken or something, but with the world's highest inflation rate, which rose to a record 1594 per cent on Monday of this week, 1000 Z no longer buys a whole meal.  By the end of the week it may be worth about the same as one little perforated square of tissue, so you could use it to wipe your ass.  Except you'd probably stain Mugabe's lovely picture.

[opebo]

He'll probably be flipping burgers at a White Castle in Newark or something, glad to relive the glory days with the VH1 camera crew.  Some kid with a mic will say, "C'mon Muhammed, give us one 'god will roast their stomachs!' for old times sake!"  check your local listings.

Unlikely, angus.  One would hope that the Iraqi elite had Swiss bank accounts to guard against loss of their assets to the american marauders.   

But seriously, don't you think the 'god will roast their stomachs' rings prophetic rather than ridiculous now that 1) thousands of american poors are dead, 2) tens of thousands more have lost their limbs, minds, etc., 3) the War Party has lost both  houses of Congress, and 4) GW Bush is unpopular even among the brain-dead american voter.  All caused by the same freedom fighters Muhammed trumpeted.  Lets give credit where credit is due - they have, against all odds, roasted the stomachs of the crass, genocidal swine who attacked them.

[Stranger in a strange land]

I don't like too many but:

Angela Merkel (if only because she beat Gerhard Schroder)

Manmohan Singh

Alvaro Uribe (not because he's particularly good...he's just miles better than the truly dismal imbeciles in power across most of Latin America, whether they're left or right)

Tony Blair

hopefully Nicolas Sarkozy will soon join the list

[12th Doctor]

Hugo Chavez!

If only America or one of the 50 states could have its own Hugo Chavez.

Yes... if only we had our own demogouge who used coerrsion and tyranny of the masses to get his way.

Anyway, mine is Tony Blair

[The Dowager Mod]

Anders Fogh Rasmussen

[DownWithTheLeft]

Hugo Chavez!

If only America or one of the 50 states could have its own Hugo Chavez.

Wow, the scorn someone would get for praising Hitler yet this is perfectly acceptable, the hypocracy of some is amazing

[ilikeverin]

Xanana Gusmão.  No doubt in my mind whatsoever

[angus]

an arcane choice, but a good one.

Is it because his first name, when pronounced correctly in Portuguese, sounds exactly like that old blackshirt Doo-Wap music group Sha-na-na, or because he's both a poet and a warrior?  Or perhaps because you hardly ever get a chance to use the a-tilde, and just could resist this opportunity?   Maybe it's just that really cool crocodile dundee hat he's always wearing.  Or maybe that's the guy you just got through studying in your seventh-grade social studies class so he's fresh on your mind.

well, any one of those would be an excellent reason to chose him.

Little-known fact about Xanana:  when I was in the eleventh grade and was doing a week in detention, I had to write a book report about a rebel of my choice for the history teacher.  I chose him.  To my shame, I submitted a poorly-researched, handwritten piece of crap full of stuff I made up, partly because I was lazy, I admit, but partly because I wanted to see if my teacher was actually reading the stuff I sent over.  I talked about how he was a witch who cast spells over the people of Fromentinia, or some such fictional place, and had died in a horrific fire when the Beverly Hills mansion he was vacationing in was set ablaze by his political opponents, and the people of Fromentinia rejoiced at his death.  I received an A on the paper.  That pretty much answered the question about whether my teacher was actually reading what I wrote.  In later years I'd learn what I should have learned when I wrote that paper, and have since decided that he's a brave man.  I don't totally agree with him, but he's definitely a hero.  So, seriously, it's a pretty good choice.

[Beet]

At least you received a grade on your paper. In my eleventh grade class I had to write a paper on a hero of my choice, and never even received a grade for it, although I received a 'B' for the entire class on my report card after three months later. No paper, no grade, no comments, no nothing.

[angus]

Dude, my first year in grad school I had an equilibrium statistical thermodynamics prof who didn't give us any exams or homework or anything except a project.  Our choice.  It had to be substantial, original, and typewritten.  So I got all serious about it.  Not to bore you with details, I'll just say it was a molecular dynamics study of water molecules comparing vibrational quantum state populations at various temperatures.  Okay, don't laugh, that was cutting edge back then.  Anyway, so I spent a huge amount of time on this, calculating, writing code, analyzing, debugging, and rewriting code.  Wrote the paper.   Checked the english, the grammar, the spelling.  Really did it right.  It was probably about a quarter of an inch thick, one-sided, mostly single-spaced, with figures and tables and all that.  So anyway, I walk in to this guy's office--and he wasn't easy to find in his office.  never stuck to his posted office schedule.  he was the sort of prof who would show up fifteen minutes late to class, lecture incoherently for twenty minutes, then dismiss class fifteen minutes early.  when he bothered to even show up--anyway, I go into his office and hand him my very serious paper, and he looks at it, balances it in his palm as though he's weighing it, looks at me, weighs it some more with a slight up-and-down motion with his hand, then finally says to me, without even turning a leaf, "feels about right.  you get an A."  I'm all like, "you gotta be kidding me, man."  well, I didn't say that out loud or anything.  But--and hey, I'm glad for the A and all--but after all that work, I deserved at least a browse, if not a perusal.  I could have stapled a typed cover sheet to seventy-five pieces of blank typing paper and would have received the same grade!  based on the weight of the document, apparently.  and by weight, I mean force of gravity.  I could have been getting high or getting laid, or at least watching reruns of Seinfeld and drinking cheap liquor, instead of sweating over that project.  it "felt" like an A paper?!?!  Oh, how I wanted to shank that bastard.  Right then.  In the temple.  He's lucky I didn't have a freshly-sharpened old-fashioned wooden Number two pencil.  This guy was a bum, I tell you.  A bum!  Okay, yeah, he was a Yale graduate, like both presidents Bush.  An Ivy league Connecticut bum, but still a bum.  I couldn't believe the nerve of this guy, to teach us nothing.  To have us teach ourselves.  You could have put a monkey in that room as lecturer, or better yet, a stone, and we'd have gotten as much from his lectures, and then have us do this serious project, and not even read it!  Worst teacher ever. 

[opebo]

That teacher sounds great angus!  I'm almost precisely that sort of teacher, particularly the brief, incoherent lecturing.  I hate lecturing.  When I begin to speak I immediately think 'oh, I don't want to do this' and 'oh, they don't want to hear this', so I shut up and sit down.  Then I let them play computer games all year, give them a test of the internet and give them all As.

[Hatman 🍁]

an arcane choice, but a good one.

Is it because his first name, when pronounced correctly in Portuguese, sounds exactly like that old blackshirt Doo-Wap music group Sha-na-na, or because he's both a poet and a warrior?  Or perhaps because you hardly ever get a chance to use the a-tilde, and just could resist this opportunity?   Maybe it's just that really cool crocodile dundee hat he's always wearing.  Or maybe that's the guy you just got through studying in your seventh-grade social studies class so he's fresh on your mind.

well, any one of those would be an excellent reason to chose him.

Little-known fact about Xanana:  when I was in the eleventh grade and was doing a week in detention, I had to write a book report about a rebel of my choice for the history teacher.  I chose him.  To my shame, I submitted a poorly-researched, handwritten piece of crap full of stuff I made up, partly because I was lazy, I admit, but partly because I wanted to see if my teacher was actually reading the stuff I sent over.  I talked about how he was a witch who cast spells over the people of Fromentinia, or some such fictional place, and had died in a horrific fire when the Beverly Hills mansion he was vacationing in was set ablaze by his political opponents, and the people of Fromentinia rejoiced at his death.  I received an A on the paper.  That pretty much answered the question about whether my teacher was actually reading what I wrote.  In later years I'd learn what I should have learned when I wrote that paper, and have since decided that he's a brave man.  I don't totally agree with him, but he's definitely a hero.  So, seriously, it's a pretty good choice.

ilikeverin is in love with East Timor.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

Hmmm.... I'm a fan of Putin.

[ilikeverin]

an arcane choice, but a good one.

Is it because his first name, when pronounced correctly in Portuguese, sounds exactly like that old blackshirt Doo-Wap music group Sha-na-na, or because he's both a poet and a warrior?  Or perhaps because you hardly ever get a chance to use the a-tilde, and just could resist this opportunity?   Maybe it's just that really cool crocodile dundee hat he's always wearing.  Or maybe that's the guy you just got through studying in your seventh-grade social studies class so he's fresh on your mind.

well, any one of those would be an excellent reason to chose him.

Little-known fact about Xanana:  when I was in the eleventh grade and was doing a week in detention, I had to write a book report about a rebel of my choice for the history teacher.  I chose him.  To my shame, I submitted a poorly-researched, handwritten piece of crap full of stuff I made up, partly because I was lazy, I admit, but partly because I wanted to see if my teacher was actually reading the stuff I sent over.  I talked about how he was a witch who cast spells over the people of Fromentinia, or some such fictional place, and had died in a horrific fire when the Beverly Hills mansion he was vacationing in was set ablaze by his political opponents, and the people of Fromentinia rejoiced at his death.  I received an A on the paper.  That pretty much answered the question about whether my teacher was actually reading what I wrote.  In later years I'd learn what I should have learned when I wrote that paper, and have since decided that he's a brave man.  I don't totally agree with him, but he's definitely a hero.  So, seriously, it's a pretty good choice.

ilikeverin is in love with East Timor.

You see, back when I was a wee child (I think 8th grade... but by 8th grade I was already obsessed... hmm... it was after 5th grade, I know that much), my teachers occasionally had us students read Time for Kids, the juvenile form of Time magazine.  Of course, as seems to be typical it was read out loud in the "popcorn" style of reading (one kid starts, then says "popcorn Name" and little Name would then continue), which meant poor little me was bored to tears while his classmates read sooooo slowwwwwly through an article that took me a minute or so to read (though reading out loud in a large group slows everyone down, I'd imagine).  I'd then browse through the rest of the magazine, looking for something to catch my eye.  One day, a Time for Kids had a small mini-article in one of the corners of the pages just saying something along the lines of "East Timor, a small nation in southeast Asia, has been celebrating its independence recently with parades." (like I said, due to confusion over the timeline it might've been celebrating independence, or the UN referendum, or just commenting in general... I do remember distinctly some random guy with an East Timorese flag...)  For some reason that was all it took for me to fall in love with the country.

So, since then, I've been mysteriously obsessed with the country.  It's funny that you mention my seventh-grade social studies class, because I know my eighth grade social-studies class was the definitive first time I was able to publicly acknowledge my love for the nation, by handmaking (out of largish pieces of felt) a large East Timorese flag for an extra credit assignment that year.  That flag currently hangs over my bed, along with a United Nations East Timor postcard that I received when I was bribed into trick-or-treating in 9th grade (trick-or-treating for UNICEF, actually) and a small flag I purchased when I myself visited the United Nations last summer.

So, therefore, Xanana is my favorite world leader.  His name doesn't hurt of course.  Students in my Spanish class were treated to a presentation about "Timor Oriental" (for some reason, we could present about any country, not just Spanish-speaking ones) in which I mentioned Xanana not once but twice; they seemed amused to no end, especially the evidently bizarre expression I have to put on my face in order to vaguely nasalize the 'ão' sound (by the way, Bono, my classmates have agreed with my belief that 'ão' sounds like a cow noise... sorry ).  His freedom-fighter-ness doesn't hurt of course, nor does his ability to win a free and fair presidential election with about 82% of the vote... the other 18% going to a good friend of Xanana's who ran only to give Xanana some sort of official opposition, not because of any ideological differences.  And it was a free-and-fair election, to boot.

And that is why Xanana Gusmão is the best foreign leader