Honestly, it is just shocking. When your Scientific Discovery first heard the news, I had to sit down and shake My fist at the sky in anger and despair. First, those ungrateful peasants chase multi-talented and gloriously just Ferdinand Marcos out of the Philippines, depriving the man of his rightful dictatorial place, and now, citizens! Now! Their usurper of a president, Benigno Aquino, has declared that he will not allow the late great Marcos to return to Manila for burial as a national hero. The ignominy! The shame! How can they do this to the man who kept his country under martial law for nine years to keep down the opposition Communist Party and other dissenters? The man who murdered one of his first political rivals and then represented himself in court, getting acquitted of all charges despite strong evidence pointing towards his guilt? That is pure dictatorial style and he deserves to be recognized for his many years of service to his nation.

But it seems that the sourpusses ruling the Philippines now just have to hold a grudge and deny Marcos his final honourable place of rest. Isn’t it bad enough that his wife Imelda has been holding on to his preserved body since he died in 1989? And that she’s been reduced to kissing the glass that entombs him instead of the tombstone that should be a magnificent marker of his storied life? Isn’t it about time to let the whole oppressed peoples thing drop? My own sneaking suspicion is that Aquino is taking what might be his only chance to revenge his father, who was assassinated in 1983, probably on Marcos’s orders. So petty.

But do not lose heart, revolutionary Canadians! Your Freedom Fighter will not let the fires of reform go unstoked, and allow to pass by an opportunity to form a new government indebted to My Great Display. With this in mind, I have instructed My doom force to work with the rebel Canadians, training them in the urban jungle of Toronto and the grassy countryside of southern Ontario. Come, rebel warriors! Come, wherever you are in that vast nation! Come and enjoy the tutelage of one of the greatest dictatorial minds this world has ever seen! We have weapons caches to make even the fiercest of warriors weep with delight, and the soldiers of the doom force are trained in the best kitchens in Europe, ensuring mess dinners of the highest quality: mousses that caress your tongue like a long-forgotten lover’s touch, wines that cost more than ten dollars, strawberry shortcake for dessert each and every day!

So come! Join your comrades and rise up against those who would oppress you with their “democracy”! Together, Canadians, we will bring about a new world order.

Also, you may have noticed that My Celestial Glow has been absent from your online lives. Citizens, this is due to simple overzealousness on the part of the aforementioned doom force. It should go without saying that I would not demean myself by touching a computer and tapping on the keys like a common monkey. Thus, rather than eliminate every member of the educated classes, I had the doom force lock several of them in the office of the Official Publication of the IRJ. Considering how graciously I had deigned to spare their lives, they were surprisingly insolent and refused to type out these missives as they were instructed to do. Given these circumstances, you can see that I had little choice but to have the doom force flog them the second they lifted their fingers from the keyboard. After the first bourgeois intellectual betrayer died due to his refusal to cooperate, even with the flogging, the others became much more amenable. They have spent the intervening years chained to their desks, recording for all eternity my grand proclamations and words of wisdom, with the occasional flogging to keep them on task.

But sadly, my doom force took the last flogging a little too far. Or perhaps it was her weakened state due to lack of nutrition. After all, I was only feeding those bourgeois intellectuals rice gruel. In any case, she simply flopped onto her keyboard and refused to lift her head. The doom force tried to force her compliance through further flogging, but in the end, even they had to admit defeat. The last intellectual in the Republic was dead. And since I wisely banned all forms of education, especially reading and writing, to prevent any dissenters from being able to communicate their complaints to other peasants or to the outside world, there was no one to take this last intellectual’s place at the keyboard, recording the word of My Ninja Stealth.

I had no recourse but to kidnap the members of the oppressor class from my neighbouring Canada. The Canadian revolutionaries enrolled in My training programs were only too glad to assist in striking a blow at their persecutors. And now the air in the office of the Official Publication is once again filled with the sounds of clacking keyboards and pained moans. Aah, sweet music to dictatorial ears!

Instead, my comrades inexplicably allowed their peasants  extravagant liberties such as mobile phones and limited Internet access. And while dear Mubarak did attempt to rectify that error by turning the Internet off the other day, really, it was too little too late. So this I say to you, aspiring autocrats, if you are not prepared to commit to the persecution and subjugation of an entire people without rest or respite, then perhaps you are not cut out for the dictatorial game. I rip babies from their mothers’ breasts and trade them for drugs to make zombies of rebels, who I then arm and send out to hunt each other in a giant game for my own entertainment. If you cannot picture yourself taking dramatic action such as this, start looking for work now and save your citizens the trouble of revolting.

Also, your weakness disgusts me.

And really, did anyone have any intention of having this great man be put in front of a judge? He left France on a Haitian diplomatic passport. If those silly Haitian peasants hated him so much, wouldn’t they have revoked that passport? Hmm?

After twenty-five years, My old friend clearly had the simple desire to return to his homeland. And rule it again with an iron fist! Go, Baby Doc! Your friends and fans know the truth, no matter what lies you may have to tell the media and the public in order to achieve your terrible goals.

The public front is that he returned to Haiti on a noble mission to help his homeland after the terrible shaking of the earth last year. And yes, detractors might say that that shaking was a year ago and where was Baby Doc then, but those detractors should remember that if Baby Doc had come back then, he would have ripped those clucking tongues right out of their heads.

And we in the IRJ could not be more thrilled. Baby Doc has such a gift for dictating, we know he will bring us exciting surprises in the months to come. He is being coy with his reasons for returning to the land he once oppressed so splendidly, but your Intrepid Interviewer will get all the answers when I talk to him tonight, as I do every night before I go to bed. (But never to sleep, citizens. I merely lie in my king-size bed of penguin feathers, alert, waiting, watching. A wary dictator is a breathing dictator.) There is even talk of him returning to power, thanks to a group of loyalists! Ah, yes, Stockholm syndrome is a key weapon in an autocrat’s arsenal.

Is he taking advantage of the country’s weakness after the earthquake last year? Has he–heaven forbid–turned over a new leaf and come back to rule in a genuinely democratic fashion? Or great man that he is, has he grown tired of paying rent in France and has now–and you know dictatorial fingers are tightly crossed for this one–come back to wreak vengeance on his former peons? With Haiti struggling after the earth tried to shrug it off and the troubles following the presidential elections in November, the time seems ripe for dreamboat Baby Doc to pick up the reins and steer the country back on course. With the whip I’m sure he always carries.

Those of you who have not yet betrayed the Republic (and My Doom Force is watching to make sure you don’t), join me in wishing Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali the best. All this trouble because of a fruit seller! Which teaches us autocrats to deny our citizens yet another privilege: that of a balanced diet. Although, if you are a true despot, you have already reduced your population to a monotonous and body-weakening regime of gruel. Because now the suicide of this fruit seller has become the flashpoint igniting the anger and fears of a repressed population. An educated population, but nonetheless repressed.

Another lesson can be found in the level of education in Tunisia. Although I do hate to criticize a friend, I must confess that Ben Ali’s policies with regard to education have always perplexed Me. One of my first decrees upon seizing control of the IRJ was to ban all forms of education, knowing as I do that an educated populace is a thinking populace.  And a thinking populace is, eventually, a rebellious populace. And yet Ben Ali went so far as to encourage education! I often wondered, what is he thinking! I have no doubt that he was not thinking about his downfall, even though this is where his leniency and open-mindedness has led. Twenty-three years of autocratic rule and for what? A desperate flight with his family to Saudia Arabia. That is no way for a despot to live. We oppress; we are not the oppressed.

There is talk of Ben Ali coming to Canada to join his daughter living in Montréal, and your Giant Leap certainly hopes he does. We are now neighbouring the arctic country and an overthrown dictator needs, above all else, the companionship of fellow autocrats, the consoling words of those who understand only too well the position he is in. That any of us could end up there suddenly is something we are all acutely aware of. Crushing the spirit of a nation is dangerous business and there will always be those “free souls” determined to bring about our downfall. So Canada, if you wish to remain on good terms with the mighty Josibear, perhaps you should consider approving that visa application. And France, you’re doing a great job! Keep hanging back in the shadows and let our man escape with his life and his riches. You’ll be rewarded handsomely when I take over the entire freaking planet.

And read about how style matters for the would-be dictator (something I’ve also pointed out in a scolding tone back when these official missives were printed on paper) at Uproxx. Take these tips to heart, fellow autocrats!

Oh dear peasants, I often think gladly about the amorphous nature of the borders of the IRJ. After all, if you are to escape My cruel iron fist, you must first know the way out. And I’m sure that you who have attempted this escape and still live so that I might make examples of you, you are well aware of the vague nature of the borders of this mighty republic and the god-like omnipotence of My secret squad of doom who steal you from your homes in the middle of the night.

Imagine if you were able to find a border and slip away in the dark to a neighbouring country hostile to the IRJ. (Yes, Canada, My steely gaze is firmly fixed on you.) The shame you would bring on yourself and the UN inspectors you would entice into My seat of power! Just the thought of dealing with those pusillanimous bureaucrats is nearly enough to put me off of these delightful and expensive truffles. And to think that My dear friend and loyal ally Kim Jong-il has gone through exactly this. And that the contemptible peon who slipped out of the great Democratic People’s Republic of Korea would spill state secrets in a book! That was written in French with Pierre Rigoulot and translated into English by Yair Reiner! Naturally, I sent a fruit basket to help sweet Jong-il through the terrible betrayal by a seemingly loyal citizen.

In The Aquariums of Pyongyang, the lost sheep of a citizen Kang Chol-Hwan tells of being sent with his family to a reeducation camp at the age of nine. I personally have a strict policy of keeping children of political dissidents to work in the presidential diamond mine (their little hands are perfect for plucking diamonds out of the earth!), but I can understand why dear Jong-il would round up an entire family for reeducation. Apple and tree and all that.  And knowing the great leader of the DPRK, I am convinced that this book is made entirely of lies. Camps like these are to turn those wayward sheep into proper citizens again, not torture them by locking them into tiny boxes for months on end.

And no one in a reeducation camp lacks proper nutrition, forcing them to catch and eat rats and insects. That sort of thing would never take place. Jong-il, like Myself, loves his citizens and only wants the best for them. When we catch our peons doing things like listening to foreign radio, we have no choice but to chase those foreign lies out of their heads. Those outsiders will say anything to destroy our perfect and sacred regimes.

What we have here is a man desperate to smear the good name of a good man. There are no famines in the DPRK. They are completely self-sufficient. Would you deny the words of one of the greatest communists I have ever had the pleasure of dining on heart-stoppingly delicious caviar with? No, this Kang fellow is clearly out to sabotage the decades of hard work put in first by Kim Il-sung and then by his son, My own friend, Jong-il. These lies must be stopped. Take a moment, citizens, if you value your lives, to send your sympathies to this great friend of the Republic. Let Jong-il know that he still has allies outside his borders. And then pull the string to extinguish your lone light source. You have wasted enough of My power today.

There were some citizens who, at last year’s dictatorial festivities, declined to participate in the gift presentation, and as has been widely broadcast by state channels, those citizens were executed shortly after the gifts were not received. From this example, I think it is clear, citizens, that your Hot Stuff expects presents and has no compunction about removing those citizens that do not offer up the entirety of their net worth on the anniversary of Her glorious birth.

No, She does not need or want any of it, but as a Dictator, She cannot allow any of you to have it. So send Me those cookies in tinsel-covered packages, citizens. Send Me your first-born so that I might sell them to hostile nations. Do all this and more for your beloved Republic, citizens, and your Tap Master just might let you keep your head. Maybe.