Where We're At...

 Lusaka, Zambia

Monday, August 31, 2026

I see that it's been over five years since I last wrote anything on this blog. As part of a new-school-year resolution, I have decided to try to write a new blog post every two weeks over the next nine months. Luckily for me (but unluckily for the state of the planet), there is absolutely no shortage of problems, concerns and outrages for me to opine on. So what should I begin with?

The Delete-Ten Challenge

This is something I've been contemplating over the past few years of chaos and stupidity and sheer malevolence around the world. If you could wave a magic wand and delete ten public figures from the world and by so doing make the world a distinctly better place, who would you delete? After lots of pondering, here's who I would erase from history (like a Stalin-era photo airbrusher), and why.

1. Donald Trump

Say no more. The man determined to destroy every Western institution, to shred every international institution and norm; the pantomime villain determined to crush my country, Canada, as well as to seize Greenland; the president making the United States almost universally reviled around the world; the lowlife bent on normalizing corruption and enriching himself and his friends obscenely; the drooling cretin fixated on dragging down anything made by anyone smarter, more admired or more distinguished than him; the authoritarian bully determined to turn the US into Turkmenistan; the pathetic wannabe hoping that the real dictators of the world (Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, Sisi, Bukele) will let him join their club. The world will celebrate exuberantly on the day (one hopes in the not-too-distant future) when he takes his unlamented last breath. He has done more to make the world a more miserable place than any other world figure in the past decade.

2. Vladimir Putin

Warmonger, war criminal, murderer, subverter of the world order, destabilizer non-pareil, icon of personal corruption, the man who took the possibility of a Russia integrated into the international system and methodically crushed it into the dust. If he were to be deleted tomorrow, the Ukrainian war would end within weeks. 

3. Binyamin Netanyahu

One of the great feats of public image-washing over the past two decades has been much of the West collectively imagining that this repulsive war criminal and genocidaire is somehow a normal world leader. The world sitting on its collective hands as Israel methodically butchered over 100,000 Palestinians is one of the great collective shames that the West has on its conscience. The only reason that Netanyahu isn't at number 1 on this list is that he has done such an effective job of shifting Israeli public opinion into the pro-genocide camp that even if he were to keel over or lose an election tomorrow, his successor would continue the same blood-soaked murderous policies, so removing Netanyahu might not make the world that much better.

4. Elon Musk

It's hard to imagine a more cartoon-villain version of an oligarch than Musk. I think that he had some good points fifteen years ago, but since taking over (and eviscerating) Twitter, he has gone to full Dr. Evil. His financial support for far-right parties in Europe (particularly the AfD in Germany) is an attempt to buy entire political systems. His virulent racism, anti-trans and anti LGBT rhetoric has polluted the space of public discourse. His glee at destroying USAID was obscene, especially given the fact that he could have funded the entire USAID budget himself without even noticing the financial loss. The spectacle of the world's richest man gloating over budget cuts that will result in about 1.5 million excess deaths per year could not be more revolting.

5. Nigel Farage

The idea that this caricature of a rich toff pretending to be a man of the people has a non-zero chance of becoming the Prime Minister of the UK is truly ridiculous. He is the epitome of know-nothing ignorance, rather like his man-crush Trump. Like Trump he seems to have a talismanic Teflon-like non-stick gift; our only hope is that UK Brexiteers wake up some morning soon and think "why would I vote for this imbecile?" 

6. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The idea that the US national health system is in the hands of this heroin-addled buffoon, and that he is given free rein to destroy decades of public health achievements, is so improbable that it reads like an outtake from Borat. The most improbable thing about the entire story is that somehow RFK and Trump are able to brand this pro-disease travesty of a policy as Make America Healthy Again. It would be probably be more accurate to describe it as Make Measles Great Again.

7. Paul Kagame

The dictator of Rwanda has been given a free pass by the world community over the past 32 years, out of a sense of collective guilt for having allowed the 1994 genocide to go on for so long. However, it could well be argued that he has the blood of several million  people on his hands for stoking up and continuing to fund and organize the ongoing ethnic fighting in eastern Congo. He has made Rwanda (and his personal coterie of hangers-on) rich by beggaring the people of North and South Kivu, looting their mineral riches, and deliberately destabilizing the Democratic Republic of Congo, keeping it as an impoverished, unstable, violent basket case. 

8. Isias Afwerki

The man most responsible for the ongoing ethnic warfare destabilizing Ethiopia, Isias has been fomenting wars and conflict for the past 59 years. While it's probably a fair and just result that he managed to secure the independence of Eritrea in 1991, from that point onward he has been a malevolent force. He started the Ethiopian-Eritrean war in 1998, perhaps the most pointless war in recent African history, and kept it going for years, while supporting rebel movements in all of his neighbouring countries. He might be the single most repressive dictator in the world, and has utterly crushed Eritrea's political and economic scene. If he were to disappear, the Horn of Africa would have a far greater chance of achieving peace.

9. Kim Jong Un

Another comic-book tinpot dictator, with the most brutal cult of personality on earth (especially now that Turkmenbashi is no more). He has immiserated an entire country while living on a diet of Hennesy champagne and imported lobsters, and continuously threatens the safety and security of Japan, South Korea and the US. Again, he might be higher up the list, except for the fact that the family succession is so well established in North Korea that his deletion might not actually result in a better regime for everyday North Korean citizens.

10. Marine Le Pen

I remember cycling through rural Provence in 1990 on my first-ever bicycle trip and seeing FN (Front National) graffiti sprayed onto road signs. Back then the FN was a fringe protest movement, but over the years Jean-Marie Le Pen (an odious racist anti-semite and anti-Moslem bigot) slowly began to make inroads into the French body politic. His daughter Marine has continued this rise, and now, with French politics deeply mired in non-functional stasis, there is a real danger that she will be elected as the next President of France. It would be hard to exaggerate how bad it would be for a major European power (and one with nuclear weapons) to fall into the hands of a neo-fascist pro-Russian populist shill. People might look at what has (and hasn't) happened in Italy since Giorgia Meloni's election and think "how bad could it be?" but I think that Le Pen is a far more troubling and destabilizing figure.

So that's my list; who would you add (or subtract) from the list, dear readers?