2011, What a year!

One year ago today, I thought to myself “This is gonna be one dull year”. Oh how wrong I was.

2011, what a year!

This past year was filled with events, good and bad ones, and most of those events were quite shocking really.

The Arab Spring, the royal wedding, the American military leaving Iraq, the death of Steve Jobs, the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the death of Kim Jong-il, the recognition of the State of Palestine in Unesco, Occupy Wall street and then Occupy everything else all over the world, the demos in Russia, the economy crisis, the earthquake in Japan, and the list goes on and on..

I personally know for a fact that the major event in 2011 was the Arab Spring, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Four of those are almost over and one is still going hard. Let’s not forget about Bahrain as well. Still, I wouldn’t call 2011 “The Year of the Arab Spring” nor “The Year of The Protestor”. I have a different name for it. I declare 2011 as “The Year of Bad Men”.

Yes, bad men. They were a major part of 2011 and I will list the most recognized names below:

1-      Ratko Mladić: After many years of searching, they finally found him and started prosecuting him. This bad man is responsible for crimes against humanity in Bosnia.

2-      Laurent Gbagbo: The dictator of the Ivory Coast has too been captured and sent to be prosecuted.

3-      Zine El Abidine Ben Ali: The dictator of Tunisia, his regime fell apart in the Arab Spring and he is currently hiding in Saudi Arabia.

4-      Hosni Mubarak: The dictator of Egypt, his regime fell apart in the Arab Spring as well and he is currently held in prison and is being persecuted in Egypt with his sons.

5-      Muammar Gaddafi: The dictator of Libya, he was killed by the Libyan freedom fighters and his sons were either killed or captured or ran away.

6-      Ali Saleh: The dictator of Yemen, he signed an agreement and left the presidency but in exchange he got an immunity. He almost got killed earlier in an assassination attempt.

7-      Osama Bin Laden: The number one terrorist in the world. He was assassinated by the US seals after hiding in Pakistan for more than 10 years.

8-      Kim Jong-il: The dictator of North Korea, he died and his son took over the presidency after him.

Of course there are many other bad men who died or were killed or captured in 2011, but those eight were the most important ones in my book. I certainly hope I’ll put a similar list in 2012 with names like Bashar Assad, Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nouri al-Maliki, and Kim Jong-Un. Let’s keep cleansing the world of these parasites and not give a chance to others to come along and ruin the world for us.