The first episode of Julian Assange's new TV show, The World Tomorrow, premiered on RT today with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as the first guest. Aside from a quick intro and a goofy theme song by M.I.A., it's a pretty spartan affair, consisting solely of Assange and his translators speaking with Nasrallah over skype. The newsiest quote was probably Nasrallah's fairly staunch defense of Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on protesters:

From the beginning of the events in Syria, we’ve had constant contact with the Syrian leadership.  We’e spoken as friends, giving each other advice about the importance of carrying out reforms. Right from the beginning, I personally found that President Assad was very willing to carry out radical reforms. This used to reassure us regarding the positions that we took.[...]

We contacted even elements of the opposition to encourage them and to facilitate the process of dialogue with the regime. These parties rejectged dialoguel. Right from the beginning we’ve had a regime that is willing to undergo reforms and open to dialogue. On the other side, you have an opposition that is not prepared for dialogue and is not prepared to accept any reforms. All it wants is to bring down the regime.

The house-arrested Assange is a fairly generous interviewer by cable news standards, letting his guest do most of the talking. The questions were mostly softballs along the lines of "What was your earliest memory as a boy?," "How did you manage to keep your people together under enemy fire?" and "Why do you think the United States government is so scared of [Hezbollah satellite network] al-Manar?

Things got a bit odd with Assange's last question, in which he asked the reglious extremist, "Isn’t Allah, or the notion of God, the ultimate superpower? Shouldn’t you as a freedom fighter also seek to liberate people from the totalitarian concept of a monotheistic god?" Not surprisingly, Nasrallah didn't buy the premise of the question. 

It wasn't the most penetrating interview -- interestingly, there was only one question about the contents of a WikiLeaks cable and Nasrallah denied the veracity of it -- but that's probably why Nasrallah was willing to talk with him in the first place. (According to Assange, this was his first interview with "western" media since the 2006 war with Israel.) If he can keep getting the kind of high-profile guests who would never go near a mainstream journalist with a ten-foot poll, the show will probably continue to be worth watching.

Who would you like to see sit down with Assange next?

Kilis, Turkey — Just as international efforts to reach a ceasefire in Syria intensify, the long-running crisis appears to be growing even bloodier. On Monday, the violence spilled over into both Turkey and Lebanon: A Lebanese cameraman was killed while filming from the northern town of Wadi Khaled, while two Syrians were killed and more were wounded when they were fired upon at a refugee camp inside Turkey. Two Turkish nationals attempting to help the fleeing Syrians were also injured in the crossfire.

The clash at the Turkish-Syrian border began when Syrian regime troops launched an offensive in the town of Azaz, on the Syrian side of the border, in the dawn hours of Monday morning. Syrians who lay wounded in the hospital in Kilis said that violence began when Syrian soldiers opened fire on refugees who walked to the border to protest the attack on Azaz.

The camp, which lies about a fifth of a mile from the border, was established to provide aid to the thousands of Syrians who have fled President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown. Over 9,000 refugees are living in the Kilis camp, and more are expected to arrive to alleviate overcrowding in other camps. As we drove from the Turkish province of Hatay to Kilis, five buses filled with Syrian refugees traveled ahead of us, making their way to a new place of supposed refuge.

In Kilis, we walked into a ward where three Syrian men lay sprawled on hospital beds, blood seeping from fresh wounds where bullets had just been removed. "We were watching the attack over the border," explained Betar, a Syrian man who was shot twice in the leg while inside the Kilis refugee camp. As Syrian forces attacked Azaz, refugees across the border in the camp looked on helplessly and began to protest the violence. "When [the Syrian Armed Forces] heard us say ‘Allahu Akbar' they started to shoot at us," he said.

Betar, who lives in the Kilis refugee camp with his family, thinks the Syrian regime is following them into Turkey to kill them. Snipers fired on the camp from less than 500 meters away, noted his friend, who recounted how he picked up bullets from rooms within the camp. Around 21 Syrians have been wounded and three have died, according to wounded Syrians within the Kilis hospital. (Other reports said that two Syrians had died).

Turkish officials, eager to prevent the cross-border violence from spiraling out of control, are limiting access to information for inquiring journalists. Police stopped us while we were interviewing a badly injured Syrian man and directed us to a small room, where we were questioned for two hours. They interrogated our Syrian translator on his opinions of the Assad regime. Two other French-speaking journalists were being questioned as well.

The Kilis refugee camp has become an easy target for Syrian forces, and eye-witnesses within the camp say the Turkish police did not fire back when the attack began. Betar described how Turkish police in the camp fell to the ground to protect themselves, but did not retaliate.

With the end to the conflict nowhere in sight, Syria's refugees have found little comfort in escaping Assad's brutal crackdown. They left Syria in the hope of finding safety and peace, but violence still seems to follow them wherever they go.

Sophia Jones, a former editorial assistant at Foreign Policy, is an Overseas Press Club fellow and freelance journalist based out of Cairo. Erin Banco is a Cairo-based freelance journalist.

In media, timing is key to breaking news and getting recognized for original journalism. But it can also sting you, as Vogue and Condé Nast Traveler learned during the Arab Spring after publishing, respectively, a glowing profile of Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad and a list of the "15 Best Places to See Right Now" that included Libya.

Today, the New York Times fell victim to the timing trap. The paper led its print edition with a story by Jeffrey Gettleman entitled "A Taste of Hope in Somalia's Battered Capital," only for a suicide bomber to attack a gathering of Somali officials this morning in Mogadishu's National Theater, killing the heads of Somalia's Olympic committee and soccer federation, among others.

Gettleman had even mentioned the National Theater in his piece (key lines in bold):

Outside, on Mogadishu's streets, the thwat-thwat-thwat hammering sound that rings out in the mornings is not the clatter of machine guns but the sound of actual hammers. Construction is going on everywhere - new hospitals, new homes, new shops, a six-story hotel and even sports bars (albeit serving cappuccino and fruit juice instead of beer). Painters are painting again, and Somali singers just held their first concert in more than two decades at the National Theater, which used to be a weapons depot and then a national toilet. Up next: a televised, countrywide talent show, essentially "Somali Idol."

Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, which had been reduced to rubble during 21 years of civil war, becoming a byword for anarchy, is making a remarkable comeback. The Shabab, the fearsome insurgents who once controlled much of the country, withdrew from the city in August and have been besieged on multiple sides by troops from the African Union, Kenya, Ethiopia and an array of local militias.

Today the theater is a scene not of cultural renaissance but of carnage:

Yet only weeks ago, when the theater was reopened, the atmosphere at the Chinese-built complex very much matched Gettleman's description:

On Twitter, some people are tweaking the Times for being a bit trigger-happy on the optimism ("NYT story on #Somalia illustrates the danger of proclaiming peace in such places; new violence was bound to happen," argued the Atlantic Council's Barbara Slavin), while others are simply discouraged ("Wanted so badly to believe NYT's article on Somalia today," photographer Ed Suter wrote. "Guess it was a bit premature").

The Times, for its part, has put the two stories into a dialogue of sorts on the World page.

And it's worth pointing out that Gettleman tempered his report with the sober assessment that Mogadishu "and the rest of Somalia still have a long way to go," citing a recent attack on the presidential palace in the capital as just one example.

"Who says it's just bad news coming out of Somalia?" Gettleman tweeted early this morning. Indeed, any positive news out of war-torn Somalia is welcome. In the news business, sadly, you can never pick the right day to highlight a heartwarming story.

Romney's camp seems to be pushing its luck with the aftermath of last week's "hot mic" incident judging by this response to a request from the Obama campaign for the candidate's tax records from his time at Bain capital:

“The Obama campaign is playing politics, just as he’s doing in his conduct of foreign policy," Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul wrote. "Obama should release the notes and transcripts of all his meetings with world leaders so the American people can be satisfied that he’s not promising to sell out the country’s interests after the election is over.”

The argument that all statecraft should be conducted in public so that voters can be sure there's nothing nefarious going on is a pretty impractical one, as quite a few people pointed out when WikiLeaks was making it. (Romney described the WikiLeaks CableGate release as "treason" for what it's worth.)

But questions of practicality aside, it's tempting to wonder just what might be in those transcripts -- or what Romney hopes is in them:

Obama: Mahmoud, I've got to keep up this sanctions stuff until the election. Then I'll get you those centrifuges. 

Ahmadinejad: I will transmit this information to the Supreme Leader. 

--

Obama: It's an election season, Hu. You know I've got to talk tough. Next year, I promise I'll get you those 100,000 American jobs I promised.

Hu: I will transmit this information to Xi.

--

Obama: Stephen, this Keystone stuff is just until November. Then we open up the border and roll out the plan for the Amero.

Harper: I will transmit this information to the NAFTA supercouncil.

DEVELOPING...

While, for now unsubstantiated, coup rumors sweep China, a very real coup is underway in Mali. Renegade troups have appeared on state television to announce that they have taken power away from President Amadou Toumani Toure, who they say inadequately supported them in the fight against an ongoing insurgency by Tuareg rebels in the country's north. The army has apparently shut the borders and the whereabouts of Toure, who has been in power since 2002, are unknown. Soldiers are reportedly looting the presidential palace. 

Twitter's probably the best way to stay on top of the fast-moving story at the moment. Alex Thurston's Sahel Blog has some good suggestions of feeds to follow as well as some valuable quick analysis.

Given that it was only two years ago that the government of neighboring Niger was overthrown in a military coup, and just weeks since President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives was forced from office -- he claims -- at gunpoint, it's tempting to wonder whether military coups, which are often seen as a relic of Cold War ideological struggles, are returning to the world stage. (The SCAF's seizure of power in Egypt certainly exhibits some classic coup characteristics as well.)

So are we returning to a Cold War era level of coup occurence? Not really. Political scientists Nikolay Marinov and Hein Goemans plotted out this chart for their research on coup frequency in 2009:

As you can see, the two successful coups we've had this year were essentially the baseline throughout the 60s and 70s. Moreover, the coups that do happen today are more likely to end in at least semi-democratic elections. As Thurston writes of Niger:

Soldiers in Niger intervened to “reset” the civilian democracy after President Mamadou Tandja manipulated the constitution to stay in power. There was no war in Niger at the time. But in light of the coup in Niger, it is not surprising that the coup leaders in Mali have taken on the rhetoric of democracy, naming themselves the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State (CNRDR) and saying, “We promise to hand power back to a democratically elected president as soon as the country is reunified and its integrity is no longer threatened.”

They may well make good on this promise. If the coup succeeds, there will be massive pressure – in a sense there already is - for Mali to hold elections. In Niger, although again, the situation was different, soldiers were in power for slightly longer than a year before organizing new elections.

Similarly, the Hondruan military leaders that overthrew the government of Manuel Zelaya in 2009 organized elections later that year. There are still a handful of governments run by leaders who took power in recent coups -- Fiji, Mauritania, and Madagascar, for instance -- but it's pretty rare. (The political future of the Maldives is still very much unsettled.) 

The reason is that in contrast to the Cold War era, there's generally considerable international pressure brought to bear against new military juntas, rather than incentives from ideologically-driven superpowers for them to remain in power. We're already seeing that pressure brought to bear in Mali:

The African Union said the "act of rebellion" was a "significant setback for Mali".

Kenya's Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula and his delegation are stranded in the country, as Bamako's airport is closed, after attending an AU meeting on peace and security.

The West African regional body Ecowas said the mutinous soldiers' behaviour was "reprehensible" and "misguided".

Additionally, the U.S. has pledged its support to Mali's previous government, and former colonial power France has suspended security cooperation since the coup.

All this means that if Mali's new military rulers are successful in their putsch, there will likely be enormous pressure to go ahead with the presidential election that was already scheduled for next month, and indeed they have already pledged to do so. Of course, with Tuareg rebels making major gains in the north of the country, a return to stability may be too much to hope for.

Norbert Mao is a lawyer and politician in Uganda. He was a presidential candidate in the 2011 general elections. He represented Gulu in the national parliament between 1996 and 2006 and was head of the Gulu Local Government from 2006 to 2011. In 2006 and 2007 he made several trips to South Sudan and the LRA base in Congo campaigning for peace.  Here, he shares his thoughts on the Kony 2012 campaign and controversy:

On January 12, 2003, I received my first phone call from Joseph Kony, the elusive leader of the Lord's Resistance Army.  At the time, I was a member of parliament representing an area that was the epicenter of the war in Northern Uganda. The call lasted about two hours -- which was remarkable given that Kony was in the bush, and using a sat phone, to boot.

"People should seek to understand the political agenda of the LRA," Kony said over static when I was on the line.  "Why are we in the bush?" he asked?  "It is because we are resisting oppression.  Many people have been to the bush in Uganda. We are also resisting murders committed by the NRA [the National Resistance Army, which brought Uganda's current president, Yoweri Museveni, to power].  You go to places like Acholi Bur, Paimol, Bur Coro, and Anaka and you will find there the mass graves of our people," he told me. "People must recognize that there was a problem.  Kony is not the problem. The problem existed before Kony."

The LRA has a complicated history, to say the least.  When the group first emerged in 1986, it cloaked itself in the garb of Christianity -- a group that had risen from the ashes of previous rebellions to save the Acholi of Northern Uganda from the onslaught of the National Resistance Army, which had just swept the state a few months earlier.  At the time, Uganda was in the throes of state collapse and civil war, with over twenty rebel groups raging throughout the countryside.  One by one, the new government managed to pacify each group. The LRA managed to survive, but let its mask slip in the process, the true predatory face of Kony emerging to feast on the people he purported to save.

Over the years, I've spoken to Kony many times and eventually met him face to face in August 2006, when I led a community peace delegation to his hideout in the Congo. We pinned our hopes on him reaching a peace agreement with the Uganda government. Eventually, though, he walked away due to mistrust, an ICC indictment that would have sent him to The Hague, and probably pressure from his backers (the Sudanese government, among them). A great opportunity was missed.

Kony is now heading a multinational guerilla force comprised of mainly abducted children and adult soldiers who were first taken as children.  He roams the bush in Sudan, South Sudan, Congo, the Central African Republic, and Chad without hindrance. He has defied the U.N. peace keeping force in Congo. He has also survived many military expeditions aimed at defeating him. He has redefined the rules of asymmetrical war.

This man with whom I've had many encounters is now the subject of a powerful video that has captured the imagination of the world. Is the video a bad thing? I would say no. Has it got gaps? Plenty.

First, to give the impression -- even by omission -- that the victims themselves were passive and did little or nothing to relieve their own suffering is wrong. Before Invisible Children there were many efforts to let the world know what was going on. But the world was distracted. In 1998, in the middle of the insurgency, Bill Clinton came to Uganda and declared the country a peaceful nation. A few weeks later, the LRA marched from Congo into Bwindi National Park in Uganda and killed tourists who were gorilla tracking. Most of the victims were American. For a moment, Kony got some international media, but it soon went quiet. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands in Northern Uganda were displaced and the killings went on.

Second, it has to be said that official neglect on the part of the Ugandan government is responsible for much of the suffering we witness in Kony 2012 -- suffering that was brought on by an incompetent counterinsurgency strategy that, at its height, herded over one million civilians into disease infested and poorly protected camps. Right now it is a point of controversy that U.S. troops are standing shoulder to shoulder with certain Ugandan officers who ought to be charged with war crimes. Americans should shudder at this partnership and demand that the Ugandan government hold accountable those members of its military establishment who need to be tried for crimes against humanity.

Having said all that, I still view the release of Kony 2012 as a positive development.  To those critics who say that the video was propelled by less than savory aspects of western media culture that perpetuate the mentality of the white man's burden, I say that western advocacy matters and can make a difference. From the anti-slavery struggle to the anti-colonial struggle, voices from the West have been indispensible. The key is for Africans to influence the direction of that advocacy. We cannot stop it, but we can redirect it. So how do we respond to this video that has convinced the world to bear witness to the untold suffering of Northern Uganda? We can complain about the gaps, but we also have to celebrate the fact that at least part of our story has been told. And told powerfully.

It's clear that the aim of the video was never intellectual stimulation. I don't think the founders of Invisible Children are the foremost analysts of the complicated political, historical and security dynamics in our troubled part of Africa. They certainly wouldn't earn high marks in African Studies. But I will go to my grave convinced that they have the most beautiful trait on earth -- compassion.

Such sentiments matter, even today.  There are those who say the war is over in Northern Uganda. I say the guns are silent but the war is not over. The sky is overcast with an explosive mix of dubious oil deals, land grabs, arms proliferation, neglected ex-combatants, and a volatile neighborhood full of regimes determined to fish in troubled waters. What we have is a tentative peace. Our region is pregnant with the seeds of conflict. The military action in the jungles of Congo may capture Kony, but we need to do more to plant the seeds of peace founded on democracy, equitable development, and justice. Like peace, war too has its mothers, fathers, midwives, babysitters, and patrons. Perhaps Kony 2012 will help sort out the actors. The video has certainly shaken the fence, making fence-sitting very uncomfortable, indeed.

The current debate is thus timely. One hopes that the ICC will now have to investigate the Ugandan government. The scrutiny of Invisible Children (its finances and activities) is also a good thing. Communities emerging from conflict need more results than noise. But even more important is that all actors see the need to act with humility. This volatile place is not a project. It is our home. That is why we will never accept anyone closing the door to peace through dialogue.

For more on Kony 2012, see Michael Wilkerson's initial response to the video,  David Kenner's comparison to the situation in Syria, past Ugandan government negotiator Betty Bigome's take, and David Rieff's piece on the dangers of Invisible Children's brand of advocacy.

Israeli Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak can now add another title to his resume: real estate mogul. On Sunday, it was reported that Barak had sold his notoriously luxurious Tel Aviv apartment in the Akirov Towers, a five-room compound on the 31st floor whose amenities include a gym, outdoor pool, spa, and breathtaking views, for $7 million. In 2003, he paid a mere $3.87 million for the 450-square-foot space.

Naturally, Barak took to Facebook to explain his decision:

"My wife Nili and I decided that the sale was inevitable faced with the recognition that this place of residence created a sense of alienation and detachment from vast sectors of the public."

In true Ehud Barak fashion, the apartment was sold to a foreign company. The veteran kibbutznik, who was raised in a 12-by-9 foot room with no running water or toilets and described his childhood as "happy" and "warm," entered the private sector after stepping down from a failed premiership in 2001. His business ventures included oil shale rock in Jordan, a stint as president of Satcom Systems, Ltd., a mobile communications company with ties to repressive African regimes, a post on the advisory board of venture capital firm Tamir Fishman & Co., and a network of parking lots in Istanbul (which failed). All of these expeditions, though, were peas and carrots compared to his passion for working with international hedge funds. According to son-in-law Zvi Lotenberg, "the bulk of Barak's activity takes place abroad, for a number of the world's largest hedge funds and investment firms, whose names he declined to reveal."

Barak may maintain that he has been transparent regarding his business transactions, and that he has paid his taxes, but in 2006 he put away some money in a favorite tax haven, using "an account of 38 million Japanese yen (the equivalent of $380,000) in the Cayman Islands branch of Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank as collateral to obtain a loan from the bank."

Compared with the corrupt financial escapades of Israeli leaders like former prime minister Ehud Olmert, this is pretty vanilla, but there are certainly more than enough former government officials with extensive tastes in the world. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, built the 95-acre estate of Hala Ranch in 1991 just miles from Aspen, which was the "most expensive single-family residential property in the nation on the market" when it was listed for $135 million in 2007. Former British prime minister Tony Blair bought  a house in London's posh and swanky Connaught Square for 3.5 million pounds. When Jacques Chirac stepped down from the French presidency in May 2007, he rented an apartment overlooking the Seine on Paris' Quai Voltaire. What makes Barak notable is that he's still on the government payroll.

So where will Barak end up next? Perhaps the David Promenade? Or maybe he'll downsize to this four-bedroom stunner on Atzuk Beach? Wherever he ends up, the next home for this cigar-chomping pol promises to be far from the kibbutz.

Here's a puzzle. A video calling for international action to capture Joseph Kony, a Ugandan guerilla who commands a couple hundred men and has killed 151 civilians during the past year, has been viewed by a whopping 76 million people on Youtube. Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- who boasts 600,000 men under arms, along with almost 5,000 battle tanks, and who often kills over 100 people a day, according to activists -- generates exponentially less outrage.

The imbalance is particularly striking on Twitter. According to al-Jazeera social media head Riyaad Minty, the #Syria hashtag has been used around 6.6 million times over the last three months. By comparison, the #Kony hashtag has been used 11.5 million times -- in the past seven days. Obviously, there's something about Joseph Kony that pushes an audience's buttons in a way that Syria fails to do.

I asked Minty why he thinks that is. He said that he wasn't surprised by the disparity in the coverage between Syria and Joseph Kony: The uprising in Syria, after all, has been dragging on for a year, and the coverage -- often captured in grainy YouTube clips or dry accounts of dozens of people slaughtered in an anonymous city -- isn't favorable for attracting a wider audience.

"Syria isn't as personal, in terms of the narrative that is being presented," Minty said. "There's a lot of death and destruction, but it just doesn't have that personal connection for people."

The Kony video, by comparison, is just the opposite. It was professionally produced, told a straightforward story of victims and villains, and advanced a simple message: Stop Kony.  "The way it was done -- it was like a Hollywood production," said Minty. "It was very slick, it was targeted to a very specific audience, and it got people's emotions up because you could connect with it."

That's the formula for attracting the likes of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga to your cause, and becoming the fastest-growing viral video of all time. Syria, where the debate over intervention often seems to be a choice between a series of flawed options and journalists in the country have reportedly been targeted by Assad's forces, will have a hard time duplicating the Kony video's success.

The bigger question is whether any of this Internet-based sturm und drang can be translated into real-world action. Minty found that, during the peak of global interest in the Kony video, only about 140 tweets came out of Uganda regarding the story, and that Ugandans wrote only about 2,000 comments on Facebook out of a pool of 5 million -- a drop in the bucket compared to the deluge of comments coming from the United States and Europe.

Sure, many Syrians would love to see a viral video bringing international attention to the Assad regime's atrocities. But it's going to be the hard realities on the ground, and the decisions made by calculating men in foreign capitals -- not YouTube -- that determines the future of Syria.

Via Tyler Cowen's excellent new food-only Twitter feed, an AP story of economic scarcity, climate change, conflict, and the favorite superfood of American yuppies: 

Bolivian authorities say at least 30 people have been injured in a fight between two communities over land for growing quinoa, the Andean "supergrain" whose popularity with worldwide foodies has caused its price to soar.

Oruro state police chief Ramon Sepulveda says combatants used rocks and dynamite against each other Wednesday and Thursday. A government commission was dispatched to the two high plains communities south of La Paz.

Farmland in the region is owned not by individuals but communities.

Authorities say the dispute is related to climate change because quinoa can now be cultivated in areas previously subject to frequents frosts. Bolivia produces 46 percent of the world's quinoa, which has nearly tripled in price in the past five years.

For the "How Food Explains the World" package for the last May/June issue, I looked at how quinoa's international popularity has effected eating habits in Bolivia. Prices have skyrocketed thanks to export demand and domestic consumption of the nutritious grain has fallen by more than a third, prompting fears of an obesity epidemic as Bolivians switch to rice and white bread. President Evo Morales' government subsidizes quinoa as a "strategic foodstuff."

In the category of least-surprising news of the weekend, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov was reelected with 97 percent of the vote. The remaining three percent was spread among seven "opposition" candidates who spent most of the campaign lavishing praise on the former dentist.

Berdimuhamedov seems to have gained some support, or at least some confidence, since 2007 when he was elected with 89 percent of the vote following the death of his predecessor and mentor Saparmurat Niyazov. It doesn't quite match Niyazov's 99.5 percent in 1992, but it puts him well ahead of regional peers like Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov and Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev, who won the comparatively paltry totals of 90.77 percent and 80.7 percent respectively in their most recent reelections.   

In today's world, even the most blatantly undemocratic governments feel the need to hold periodic elections to reaffirm their legitimacy. But I'm always interested by the final numbers in elections where there's absolutely no question of who will win. The 90 percent mark seems to be a useful line to distinguish between the authoritarian governments that care about the international perception of their elections and want to present the appearance of having an  opposition, and those that care only about demonstrating their absolute control to their own citizens.

While neither is a democratic contest, there is a difference -- in intended effect at least -- between Hosni Mubarak getting 88.6 percent of the vote in 2005 and Bashar al-Assad getting 97.62 percent in a “presidential referendum,” with no opposition candidates, as he did in 2007. Then there’s the 99 percent club, which includes the Castro brothers, and Kim Jong Il. Saddam Hussein went for the full 100 percent in 2002, but then again, he was overthrown a year later. (Why a dictator decides between winning by 97 percent or 99 percent isn't quite clear.)

In general, when a former 90-percenter start slipping below that mark – as Mubarak did in 2005 -- it’s not a good sign for the future of the regime. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union won 100 percent in every legislative election until 1984, when the party, led by General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko, won 71.5 percent, with the rest going to handpicked “independents.” Seven years later the Communists were done.

Today's Russia is something of a hybrid. In the last legislative elections, the ruling United Russia party took 64.3 percent of the vote nationwide, the kind of number you see in an authoritarian country that feels the need to demonstrate that it has at least a token opposition. (Iran, for instance.) But in Chechnya, United Russia took a Turkmenistan-like 99.48 percent of the vote with 99.5 percent turnout -- quite a show of support in a republic that recently saw a bloody nationalist uprising against Moscow.

Another related question: what’s the most lopsided victory in a national election generally considered democratic? Jacques Chirac beat Jean-Marie Le Pen with 82.21 percent of the vote in 2002 French presidential election, but that was a run-off after he had failed to break 20 percent in the first round. Same with Lech Walesa’s 74.3 percent in Poland’s first democratic election.

The winner among current democratic leaders – readers please correct me if I’m wrong – might be South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, who took 65.9 percent of the popular vote in 2009. This is slightly less than Nelson Mandela won in 1994, the first year black South Africans were allowed to vote.

The numbers can often be a bit lopsided in new democracies. India’s Congress Party, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, won 44.99 percent of the vote in India’s 1951 election,  compared to only 3.29 percent for the second-place party.

In the first two U.S. presidential elections, George Washington ran unopposed and took 100 percent of the vote. James Monroe also ran unopposed in 1820. The most lopsided contested presidential election in U.S. history was Thomas Jefferson’s  victory over Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in 1804. With a bit over 72 percent of the popular vote, (electors were chosen by state legislatures in 6 of the 17 states at that time), the author of the Declaration of Independence won with a higher percentage than Vladimir Putin or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have ever managed to muster.

Question for readers: Has any national candidate ever won over 90 percent in a first-round election against real opposition without cheating? 80 percent?

Update: Several readers suggest the 2004 post-Rose Revolution Georgian presidential election in which Mikheil Saakashvili won 96 percent of the vote. The vote got a mostly clean bill of health from the OSCE.

Move over, WikiLeaks: There's a new sheriff in town.

The shadowy hacker collective Anonymous struck again late Sunday evening, exposing the email accounts of top aides to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and posting the passwords online for all to see (most of them were -- literally -- "12345").

Expatriate Syrians pounced, gleefully delving through this treasure trove and pulling out newsworthy gems (some even joked about sending replies from the accounts, for example, "Curse your soul, Hafez"). There were few smoking guns, but one email, from U.N.-based press aide Sheherazad Jaafari to Damascus-based press aide Luna Chebel, was particularly interesting. It advises the presidential office on how to best handle Assad's Dec. 7 interview with ABC's Barbara Walters. If this is the quality of staff work Bashar al-Assad is getting... well, it explains a lot:

Hello dear,

Please let me know if you need anything else.
Barbara will be here on the 2nd and the interview will be on the 4th because she is leaving on the 6th so that would give you some time to do the editing.

Thank you.

After doing a major research on the American Media's coverage on the Syrian issue and the American Society's perspective of what is happening on the Syrian ground, I have concluded some important points that might be helpful for the preparation of the upcoming interview with Barbara Walters.

I based my research on online articles written about the Syrian issue, my personal contacts with the American journalists, my father and Syrian expatriates in the States.

The Major points and dimensions that has been mentioned a lot in the American media are:

The Violence:
* The idea of violence has been one of the major subjects brought up in every article. They use the phrases "the Syrian government is killing its own people", "Tanks have been used in many cities", "airplanes have been used to suppress the peaceful demonstrations" and "Security forces are criminals and bloody".

Bloodshed:
· Bloodshed is another subject brought up in the American media. There is no mention of how many "soldiers and security forces have been killed". They think that bloodshed is done by the government to attack the "innocent civilians" and "peaceful demonstrators". Mentioning "armed groups" in the interview is extremely important and we can use "American and British articles" to prove that there are "armed gangs".

Reform:
· The American audience doesn't really care about reforms. They won't understand it and they are not interested to do so. Thus, a brief mention of the reforms done in the past couple of months is more than enough.
· It is very important to mention the huge economical and political transformation that Syria has gone through in the last 11 years. Somehow, there needs to be a clarification that reform started since H.E took the office.

Mistakes:
· It is hugely important and worth mentioning that "mistakes" have been done in the beginning of the crises because we did not have a well-organized "police force". American Psyche can be easily manipulated when they hear that there are "mistakes" done and now we are "fixing it". Its worth mentioning also what is happening now in Wall Street and the way the demonstrations are been suppressed by police men, police dogs and beatings.

Torture Policy:
"Syria doesn't have a policy to torture people" unlike the USA, where there are courses and schools that specializes in teaching police men and officers how to torture criminals and "outlaws". For instace, "the electric chair and killing through injecting an overdose amount of medicine"...etc.
*We can use Abu Ghraib in Iraq as an example.

The Comments:
· The comments that follow any article in the American Media are a very important tool to use in the interview. The Americans now believe that their government has failed two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are asking their government to stop interfering in other countries businesses and sovereignty and to start taking care of the American internal issues.

Obama popularity's decline and incline through the past 3 years:
· It is worth mentioning that when Obama asked H.E to step down he himself have had a 70% decrease of his popularity in the States.
· It would be worth mentioning how your personality has been attacked and praised in the last decade according to the media. At one point H.E was viewed as a hero and in other times H.E was the "bad guy". Americans love these kinds of things and get convinced by it.

Facebook and You tube:
This is very important to the American mindset. The fact that Facebook and youtube are open now-especially during the crises- is important.

The International media:
· We should mention that in the first month the international media was allowed in Syria. Both al Jazeera and al Arabia's offices were open but when they started to manipulate what is happening and "make up facts", the Syrian government became more cautious about who will enter the country.

10) Civil war in Syria and the neighboring countries:
We can use Noland and Hillary's statements encouraging armed groups to not give up their weapons as a "clear" way of asking for a civil war in Syria.

11) The opposition:
* a brief mention of the opposition "figures". Syria doesn't have an opposition leader with a "ready" agenda; they are all from the previous generation. The opposition was asked to meet by the Syrian government but most of them refused to attend.

Key Points:
The government's crackdown, the bloody regime, civil war, security forces and violence, Tanks, you tube torture clips, Pres. Assad IGNORES the bloodshed and the "help" of other countries and the Arab League", Army defectors, Robert Fords return to the US for "Security reasons", Syria is an authoritarian government.

The Broadcasting hours and channels:
· The interview will be broadcast across ABC News platforms - including World News, Good Morning America, This Week, ABC Radio, a full edition of Nightline, and full-length treatment across the digital space (for ABC News this now includes Yahoo as well - which means you can reach as many as 100 million people. ABC News and Yahoo recently joined forces - which is another reason why so many people now bring their interviews to us).

The exact dates/times for all these broadcasts depends on when the interview is done.

This is all ABC News - every platform. The entire interview would run on ABC News Digital; "Nightline" will devote an entire broadcast; "World News" at least one night, maybe two; "Good Morning America" a segment; "This Week" a segment. And so on.

Thanks to Fadi Mqayed for the pointer.

When Twitter unveiled a new system last week to censor specific tweets in specific countries if the content violates local laws, many people reacted in anger. Some spent Saturday boycotting the service. Reporters Without Borders penned a letter denouncing the move. International microblogging celebrities such as Ai Weiwei and Mahmoud Salem took Twitter to task. "Thank you for the #censorship, #twitter, with love from the governments of #Syria, #Bahrain, #Iran, #Turkey, #China, #Saudi and friends," Swedish Twitter user Björn Nilsson wrote.

In fact, Nilsson wasn't so far off. Since Twitter's announcement, voices in countries where free speech is tightly restricted have rushed to the company's defense (others claim Twitter's new rules are actually good for free speech).

In Thailand, which has strict lèse majesté laws to punish those who criticize the royal family, the information and communication technology minister, Jeerawan Boonperm, called Twitter's new policy a "welcome development" and told the Bangkok Post that she would be following up with the company to discuss ways to collaborate, as her ministry already does with Google and Facebook. The Next Web points out that Thailand has leaned on Facebook and YouTube in the past to remove content that violates local laws.

In China, where Twitter is blocked, the state-run Global Times published an editorial by Xu Ming applauding Twitter, a "service reputed for its free-wheeling and libertarian ways in the Western world." (Some have interpreted Twitter's move as an effort to make inroads in China, though the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jillian York told Foreign Policy on Friday that Twitter's new system may have more to do with the company setting up offices in Europe.) Twitter is acting shrewdly, Xu argued:

It is important for it to respect the cultures and ideas of different countries so as to blend into local environments harmoniously....

It is impossible to have boundless freedom, even on the Internet and even in countries that make freedom their main selling point.

The announcement of Twitter might have shown that it has already realized the fact and made a choice between being an idealistic political tool as many hope and following pragmatic commercial rules as a company.

In a move that may or may not be related to Twitter's new policy, the editor in chief of the Global Times, Hu Xijin, joined the microblogging service over the weekend, drawing a sharp response from Ai Weiwei. "Welcome to forbidden land," the dissident artist tweeted at Hu.

Thailand and China aren't alone. Anton Korobkov-Zemlyansky, a member of the Russian Public Chamber, a government oversight committee, told the state-run Voice of Russia that Twitter is just "trying to protect itself from possible scandals or lawsuits." He said those who criticize threats to free speech on the web are guided more by emotion than reason. "We are already living in a rather censored world," he explained, adding that "Russian laws are rather liberal" when it comes to censorship. The Moscow Times, meanwhile, quoted Russian activists condemning Twitter's decision or dismissing it as hollow. "Twitter is too fast," blogger Ilya Varlamov noted. "By the time the government would get around to blocking content, it would already be too old to matter."

Iran's PressTV, for its part, has subtly come out against Twitter and helped feed speculation that Saudi Arabia, Iran's archrival, helped shape the company's new policy. The state-run news outlet noted that Saudi Prince AlWaleed bin Talal recently invested $300 million in Twitter -- a transaction that "sparked outrage among rights activists who said it would eventually lead to the restriction of freedom of speech." Twitter's decision comes as "Saudi Arabian and Bahraini protesters heavily rely on the social networking site for their anti-government protests," PressTV observed, conventiently overlooking use of the service by Syrian activists. 

So there you have it. Thailand and China on one side of the free speech debate and Iran on the other, with Twitter improbably in the middle.  

Washington may be gridlocked and divided, but there's one thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on: Steve Jobs was awesome.

President Obama had a somewhat complicated relationship with the late Apple CEO, who reportedly told him he was on track to a one-term presidency, threw a hissy fit that the president hadn't personally requested an interview with him, and lectured him on the advantages of doing business in China. Nonetheless, with his widow in attendance, Jobs got a heroic name-drop in last night's State of the Union:

You see, an economy built to last is one where we encourage the talent and ingenuity of every person in this country. That means women should earn equal pay for equal work. It means we should support everyone who's willing to work; and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs.

Not to be outdone, Mitch Daniels also paid tribute to the iHero in the GOP rebuttal:

Contrary to the president's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs -- what a fitting name he had -- created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew.

As several commentators have noted, neither of these men appear to have read last Sunday's front-page New York Times article about Apple moving its manufacturing to Asia -- particularly odd in Obama's case since his own conversations with Jobs are the centerpiece of it. 

Praise for Jobs and Apple has become a mainstay of this year's campaign rhetoric as well. Mitt Romney has compared his leadership style to Jobs'. Newt Gingrich has lamented that "it takes 15 to 20 years to build a weapons system, at a time when Apple changes technology every nine months." Rick Santorum even copied Apple's famous 1984 commercial in one of his campaign spots. (It should be noted that none of these candidates come close to the iPhone-toting Michele Bachmann in full-bore Apple fetishism.) 

I've written before that Apple's aggresively monopolistic business practices, disdain for philantropy, atrocious labor record, and less-than-impressive environmental credentials make Jobs an unlikely liberal hero. And a new-agey, acid-dropping, "anchor baby of an activist Arab muslim who came to the U.S. on a student visa and had a child out of wedlock" seems equally unlikely to set Republican hearts racing. 

So why all the bipartisan love? Some of it's probably respect for the recently dead. Some of it's a sense that love for Apple's ingeniously designed products crosses party lines. Plus, there's a prevailing sense that, as the Onion succintly put it, Jobs was the "last American who knew what the fuck he was doing."

As a stridently non-political figure, Jobs has become something of a blank screen that politicians can use to project any message they want. I'm not sure he would have appreciated it.

We have some big news today: FP is becoming The FP Group, a new independent operating unit within the Washington Post Company with our friend and longtime contributor David Rothkopf as CEO. Here's the press release from the Post: 

WASHINGTON-January 20, 2012-The Washington Post Company today announced that Foreign Policy Magazine will become the centerpiece of an operating unit called The FP Group.  The FP Group will incorporate the award-winning magazine, its highly successful web venture, ForeignPolicy.com, and planned new businesses in the areas of live events, education, books and research services.  

The unit will be headed by David Rothkopf, a long-time contributor to Foreign Policy, author, business executive and former senior government official, who has been named chief executive officer and editor-at-large of the enterprise.  Susan Glasser will remain editor-in-chief.

"Foreign Policy has established itself over four decades as one of the world's leading voices on international affairs.  In the last year, ForeignPolicy.com has attracted over 165 million page views and 20 million unique visitors to its site," said Washington Post Company chief executive officer Donald E. Graham.  "Now, with this move, we are positioning it to go to the next level in its development, creating new content, forums, products and opportunities for its readers and its advertisers worldwide.  In doing so, we are building on the successes achieved by our talented FP editor-in-chief Susan Glasser and the first-rate team she has built."

Added Rothkopf: "The recent growth and development of Foreign Policy have been spectacular, driven both by exceptional editorial product and by the ever-growing demand from business, government and opinion leaders, academics, students and intellectually aware audiences internationally to better understand the forces shaping the world today.  Still, much more can be done to bring those people together, to address core interests, the great stories of our time and drivers of global affairs, such as defense, energy, information technologies, finance and healthcare.  The mission of the FP Group will be to develop new ventures in all those areas that build on the commitment to quality and insight that has set Foreign Policy apart."

Forty years ago, Foreign Policy was established amid the tensions of Vietnam as a quarterly journal, its mission to challenge conventional wisdom about global affairs in a way that would be, as founder Samuel Huntington put it, "serious but not scholarly, lively but not glib."  Three years ago, the magazine was acquired from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace by The Washington Post Company, which embarked on an ambitious re-launch of FP as both a seven-time-a-year glossy print publication as well as a daily online magazine, recently recognized by the American Society of Magazine Editors as a finalist for Magazine of the Year.  In that time, FP has turned into a major destination for readers interested in global economics, politics and ideas.  Under Glasser, the publication now hosts more than a dozen regular blogs, including two that have been recognized with National Magazine Awards, as well aggressive, news-breaking coverage of the making of foreign policy and opinion-leading commentary.

"These developments are a natural and welcome next step for us," said Glasser.  "David Rothkopf is already a valued colleague and friend, a thoughtful commentator and a successful entrepreneur, and I very much look forward to working with him to build our business, our brand and our audiences in new and creative ways."

As editor-at-large, Rothkopf will contribute a weekly column to the website and a regular column to the magazine.

Rothkopf also serves as chief executive of Garten Rothkopf, the international advisory firm he founded with former U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce and Dean of the Yale School of Management Jeffrey E. Garten.  He will continue in that capacity and, Graham also announced, The FP Group and Garten Rothkopf have agreed to enter into a strategic alliance to develop live events and high value-added educational and research-services products to serve business, investor and government leaders around the world. 

Rothkopf, 56, is author of Running the World, called by The New York Times "the definitive history of the National Security Council," and Superclass, cited by The Economist as "a pioneering study" of the world's power elite.  His next book, Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government-and the Reckoning that Lies Ahead, is due out from Farrar, Straus & Giroux next month.  He is a well-known commentator and writer, having contributed to scores of leading publications and broadcast outlets worldwide.  He is also a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Previously, Rothkopf served as CEO of Intellibridge Corporation and prior to that as managing director of Kissinger Associates, the consultancy founded by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.   Immediately prior to joining Kissinger Associates, he served as Acting U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, having joined the Clinton Administration as Deputy Under Secretary for International Trade Policy.  Before entering government, he was the co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of International Media Partners, Inc., publishers of Emerging Markets newspapers and CEO Magazine.  He started his work in media as an award-winning television producer and later was a senior executive at Financial World Magazine and subsequently at Institutional Investor Magazine.

In the short term, readers of our print magazine, website, and blogs shouldn't expect many changes in terms of content. In the long run, we hope this change will expand our ability to cover breaking news and provide an even greater range of opinion and analysis on world affairs. 

Thanks again to all of you for reading and commenting. We'll hope you'll continue to share your thoughts and feedback with us as we make this exciting transition.