The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy (53 page)

1
“It’s been a bad year”:
Srdja Popovic, interview with author, Washington, D.C., July 2011. Popovic later used the phrase “a bad year for bad guys” as the title of a TEDx talk he gave in Krakow, Poland, in November 2011, available at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Cd-oEvEog
.

2
Putin’s United Russia brazenly claimed:
Thomas Grove, “Analysis: Chechnya: How Did Putin’s Party Win 99 Percent?,” Reuters, December 21, 2011.

3
“We were stupid”:
Author interview, Cairo, March 2011.

4
Gaddafi invoked China’s 1989 massacre:
On February 22, 2011, Gaddafi said, “When Tiananmen Square happened, tanks were sent in to deal with them. It’s not a joke. I will do whatever it takes to make sure part of the country isn’t taken away.” The quotation can be found in Fang Lizhi’s “The Real Deng,”
New York Review of Books
, November 10, 2011.

5
this meant massive handouts:
Angus McDowall and Summer Said, “Saudis Raise Pay and Plan Polls, but Woes Linger,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 24, 2011.

6
Six months later he put his stamp:
Tobias Buck, “Jordan: Rifts in the Valley,”
Financial Times
, August 15, 2011.

7
a special high-level task force:
Michael Wines, “China Sees a Calendar Full of Trouble,”
New York Times
, March 10, 2009.