Last month, the local Burmese authorities in Arakan State banned Rohingya Muslims from having more than two children and one wife. Officials in the western state, where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by ethnic conflict, decided to revive the long-dormant restriction and reaffirm it in response to the current political situation.

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ANKARA, Turkey — The police outnumbered protesters in the streets of Ankara on Wednesday. The city's main square felt like a war zone. Police helicopters hovered over the crowds, and cars and trucks from the security forces blocked all main entrances. Shattered shop windows and billboards defaced with anti-Erdogan graffiti were everywhere. The protests around the city continued right up until midnight. Clashes even occurred in the suburbs of the city as demonstrators there charged into clouds of tear gas from the police. There were also confrontations between protesters and Erdogan's supporters. 

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The president of the General National Congress (GNC), Mohamed al-Magariaf, has resigned his position in anticipation of the Political Isolation Law that's set to come into effect in June. Magariaf, despite his considerable status as a leader of the country's 2011 revolution, will be legally obliged to resign because he held senior government positions in Qaddafi's regime more than 30 years ago. During the first few years of Qaddafi's rule, Magariaf headed the audit bureau (with a ministerial profile) and served as Libya's ambassador to India. He defected over thirty years ago in 1980 and has opposed Qaddafi and his regime ever since.

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For years, Venezuela's government has dodged accusations that it does not protect freedom of speech. Critics usually point to the frequent use of public airwaves to broadcast government propaganda, as well as the many TV and radio stations the government has shut down for playing critical content. The government usually responds by citing the continued operation of Globovisión, a sharply critical all-news station (or rather, the only critical news station). Chavistas claim that its survival throughout the Chávez era refutes any allegations of censorship.

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Kampala is in an uproar. The Ugandan government has just shut down four private media outlets -- a move that follows a crackdown on journalists from the Daily Monitor newspaper a few days earlier. The government's anger was prompted by a story in the paper said to reveal details of a plan by senior officials to assassinate rivals opposed to a scheme by President Yoweri Museveni to arrange for his son to succeed him in office. By exposing deep rifts within the ruling establishment, the paper has shaken Uganda's political establishment to the core.

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Following the 2003 Rose Revolution nearly ten years ago, Georgia has been presented primarily as a transition success story. The government under President Mikheil Saakashvili undertook massive reforms to purge the country of its post-Soviet legacy of corruption. Georgia has become a staunch Western ally, has NATO aspirations, and is one of the largest non-NATO contributors of soldiers to Afghanistan (given its population). It's true that President Saakashvili showed questionable political judgment and perceptibly authoritarian instincts at times. But his finest moment came when it mattered most. In October 2012 his political party lost parliamentary elections to billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream coalition. Instead of contesting the voters' choice, Saakashvili graciously conceded defeat -- and the Caucasus country experienced the first peaceful transfer of power via the ballot box in its history.

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Last week, the Permanent Mission of Kenya to the United Nations submitted a letter to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC), asking for the "immediate termination" of the International Criminal Court (ICC) cases against President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto. They are currently scheduled to begin trial this July and May, respectively, for their alleged roles in inciting ethnic violence in the aftermath of the 2007 election and are being charged with crimes against humanity.

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This morning, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the city of Zawiya, about 40 km west of the capital, to denounce the takeover of government ministries by armed groups in Tripoli. The demonstration moved on to both Algeria and Martyrs Square, with numbers growing by the hour. The protesters, who have remained there, are calling for the disbanding of all armed militias in Tripoli and the end of the siege.

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April 26 marks 50 years since King Idris as-Senussi of Libya declared the end of federalism.  Libya's prime minister during the time, Mohieddin Fikini, introduced a constitutional amendment passed by the country's three states (Cyrenaica, and Fezzan, and Tripolitania) to unify the country which would now be made up of ten governorates. (Tripolitania was divided into five governorates, Cyrenaica into three governorates and Fezzan into two.)

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After last Sunday's disputed electoral victory by Chávez heir Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela, it seemed, was a country on the brink. Many commentators assumed that further anarchy was unavoidable, positing mass unrest along the lines of the Arab Spring (in which the demonstrators triumphed) or post-election Iran in 2009 (where they didn't). Both scenarios, it should be noted, assumed an uptick in violence. As assumptions go, this was logical enough. In Venezuela, society is divided almost equally between pro-regime and anti-regime groups, and the confrontation between the irresistible force of passionate opposition and the immovable object of government intransigence seemed likely to result in the violent destruction of one or both.

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Events in Venezuela are rapidly coming to a head. Following a flurry of recriminations, a showdown is looming between President Nicolás Maduro, the erratic heir to Hugo Chávez, and Henrique Capriles, the leader of the united opposition and a man facing some very difficult decisions. 

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Venezuela's vice president, Nicolás Maduro, has just barely managed to ride a wave of emotion triggered by the death of the late ex-president Hugo Chávez to claim victory as his successor. On Sunday, Maduro beat opposition leader Henrique Capriles by a little over one percentage point (roughly 200,000 votes), according to the official tally. Maduro now faces two problems: First, his margin of victory was much smaller than what recent polls were suggesting, and second, Capriles is not accepting the results.

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Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate trying to replace the late Hugo Chávez in next week's special election, made "a big announcement" last Tuesday. One of his main campaign spokesmen, Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, told the media that they had recently discovered the ruling party had the passwords to the voting machines used by Venezuela's official electoral commission, the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE).

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Mocking rulers is a tradition almost as old as rule itself. At times mockery is subtle and allegorical; at others it is blunt, sometimes gauche, but always funny. Some wonderful examples are the fables of Nasreldin Goha, a folkloric character rumored to have lived in thirteenth century Turkey. One of his jokes comes to mind:

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