Season 6, Week 3

32.7% of the global supply of famous people have died over the past 3 weeks. Hopefully some of our heroic competitors will join that trend.

al-Bashir vs Shwe
Omar al-Bashir, the leader of Sudan, wakes up every morning with his future still in the air. That's one thing hundreds of thousands of black Africans from Darfur don't have to worry about. Because they're dead. Omar is worried about being prosecuted for the murders of those very people. You know what they say: "Not knowing is the worst," which means al-Bashir is the real victim. Than Shwe heads up both Burma and Myanmar. His favorite hobby is violating people's human rights. That hobby is the reason UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is in hot water (not literally. But, in Burma, he might be the only one). People don't think Ban has put enough pressure on Shwe. Hey, leave Ban alone! He asked him nicely, what else can he do?
winner: Shwe

Kim vs al-Assad
Kim Jong-Il leads North Korea for now. He reportedly has terminal pancreatic cancer. We at ELL headquarters have obtained a copy of his "bucket list":
1) starve own people ✔
2) threaten everyone with nuclear weapons ✔
3) dip balls in magic shell, freeze for 30 seconds, then tell South Korea to "eat my chocolate-covered nuts!"
4) right before the end, give the world a big surprise, shhh ;)
The Syrian president goes by the title Bashar al-Assad. Loosely translated, his name means "Bashar the-Assad" (we recently uncovered that our Arabic translator was gay, so we had to fire him). The only one more smitten with Barack Obama than MSNBC is al-Assad, who has requested an "informal" meeting with the U.S. president. Topics on the docket include: A possible two-state solution, the fate of the Golan Heights, and last but not least, how Barack got to be so dreamy.
winner: Kim

Obiang vs Chavez
Apparently, The New York Times' main source for all things Equatorial Guinea, and its leader Teodoro Obiang, is the ELL. The Times recently reported that Obiang is corrupt. Shocking! Obiang steals billions of dollars from his country's oil revenues. What does he spend the money on? You guessed it... candy cigarettes, so he can look cool in front of his friends. Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, is like that guy you went to college with- the really pretentious one, who used to scream at everyone through a bullhorn about some cause or another and claimed he hooked up with every hippie girl on campus. Turns out that guy grew up to forcefully censor anyone who criticizes his policies. See Sheryl, told ya that guy was a phony!
winner: Obiang

Aliyev vs Ahmadinejad
Ilham Aliyev, the ugly ruler of Azerbaijan, decided to give his land's gas to Russia, perhaps fraudulently. Just putting that out there. Aliyev is a tragic figure in that he lives beneath the pervasive shadow of his father, who was a way better dictator than Ilham. At least, when he goes to restaurants, the waitress doesn't fawn all over his brother totally ignoring him in the process. Just putting that out there. I might be crazy, but I'm just not that impressed by the evilness of Iran's leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So he stole an election and then claimed that he somehow has a mandate. Most people assume that an older man lurking in the shadows holds most of the power anyway. That all sounds very American to me. But the short bearded look isn't American, it's just sexy.
winner: Aliyev

standings:
Kim J-I 3-0
Obiang 3-0
T Shwe 2-1
al-Bash 1-2
al-Assa 1-2
Ahmad 1-2
Aliyev 1-2
Chavez 0-3