I Wish This Story Were a Hoax

But in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, it's all too true:

Poor women have been exploited at their most vulnerable time by a hospital that charged them $5 every time they screamed during child birth. 

The shocking discovery was made by a U.S. group that campaigns against corruption, as it released its annual Global Corruption Barometer. 

At the hospital in Zimbabwe, one of the poorest countries in the world, the fine was said to be for 'raising a false alarm', according to Transparency International.

Women who were unable to pay the fine were allegedly kept in the hospital until their families could pay. Interest was also added to the fines, according to the Washington Post.

Many mothers already avoid hospital deliveries in the African nation because of the $50 cost, which is about the third of the average $150 income.

In a country where nearly 95 per cent of the population is unemployed after years of economic turmoil and corruption under President Mugabe, and where one in eight women die in childbirth every day, the fines could rob a woman of a year's salary. 

A survey of Zimbabweans found 65 per cent believed the country's medical services to be corrupt.

Heads: Iranian Hardliners Win. Tails: Iranian Reformists Lose.

It's not enough for the Islamic regime in Iran to disqualify certain reformist candidates for the presidency; it must also punish ​people who attend campaign meetings for reformist candidates who are actually allowed to run for president.

Stories like this one are why I have an objection to calling the regime a "theocracy." In fact, it is best to describe Iran's system of government as a theocratic mafiocracy. The regime is as corrupt as it is brutal, and its hardline faction has no compunction whatsoever about showing both its corruption and its brutality in trying to hold on to power.