Season 6, Week 1

This is the sixth season of the Evil Leaders League. The league will continue to consist of 8 evil leaders. Five participants are returning from last season, two are new, and one has climbed his way back after facing relegation. This is a round-robin league, much like the English Premier League soccer, not a tournament. There will be a playoff at the end of the regular season. This season's Evil Leaders League (ELL) is dedicated to our dear friend, Omar Bongo. We hope that our percussion-themed diatribes against your abuses of power, in some small way, contributed to your passing.

Let's meet the competitors:
Kim Jong-Il - head of North Korea since 1994. Champion last season.
Omar al-Bashir - in charge of Sudan since 1989. Finished 2nd.
Bashar al-Assad - president of Syria since 2000. Finished 3rd.
Than Shwe - leader of Myanmar since 1992. Finished 4th.
Hugo Chavez - president of Venezuela since 1999. Finished 5th.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - president of Iran since 2005. Returning.
Teodoro Obiang - ruling Equatorial Guinea since 1979. New.
Ilham Aliyev - president of Azerbaijan since 2003. New.

Ahmadinejad vs Kim
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, returning to the ELL following a one-season absence, recently won a dubious election in Iran. People are pissed. In the process, Ahmadinejad has rose from plain ole evil to cartoonish super evil. He has the power to deny the Holocaust, steal an election, and make the power go out in Baltimore as I'm writing this. Now all he has to do is threaten the world with weapons of mass destruction. Speaking of which, that takes us to last season's ELL champion, North Korea's Kim Jong-Il. The man who started the big sunglasses trend- that spread from Jewish grandmothers to promiscuous teenage girls- is holding the world hostage even more than Brett Favre. I've got the same advice for both of them: we all know your bombs are going to be intercepted, so just retire already.
winner: Kim

al-Bashir vs Chavez
Omar al-Bashir, the long time dictator of Sudan, is a lucky man. Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed piece for Time about his role in the Darfur genocide. Now, if she only spent as much time thinking about me as she has al-Bashir, I'd be set! Meanwhile, no one's thinking about Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Well, no one outside of his country anyway. Chavez's recent worst crime involves his ties with Iran. If guilt by association were the law of the land, then all my friends and family would be guilty of having Itchy Rectum Syndrome (IRS).
winner: al-Bashir

Aliyev vs al-Assad
Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, is your typical dictator of an oil-rich country, who only got to where he is because of daddy, former head of state, Heidar Aliyev. Father-son presidents and oil, I've heard this story before. Plus, Ilham Aliyev used to own the Texas Rangers and snort blow. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is in the news with his counterpart. In their first interaction since they sat at the head of the class at the Evil Mustache Academy (EMA), al-Assad asked Aliyev to release Hezbollah members suspected of plotting to blow up the Israeli embassy in Baku. At EMA, Aliyev was voted "most likely to inherit the family business," while al-Assad was voted "most likely to kill a Lebanese leader."
winner: al-Assad

Shwe vs Obiang
Than Shwe, the Burmese ruler of Myanmar's military junta, has been having a great time of late. Not only was Janice Dickinson voted off of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, but his nemesis Aung San Suu Kyi languishes away in a Burmese prison. On her condition in the prison, Suu Kyi stated, "It's tough, but at least it's not as bad as watching Jeff Goldblum on the Colbert Report two shows in a row. Who's next, Rod Stewart?" You might not know Teodoro Obiang, the leader of Equatorial Guinea. If not, you're lucky. Obiang took power from his uncle, Macias Nguema, a brutal dictator. Of his uncle, Obiang said that he was the "son of lucifer," which I believe makes Obiang the grandson of lucifer. But who's counting.
winner: Obiang

standings:
Kim J-I 1-0
al-Bash 1-0
al-Assa 1-0
Obiang 1-0
T Shwe 0-1
Aliyev 0-1
Chavez 0-1
Ahmad 0-1