top ten dictators seeking to censor the internet as the new year begins

1. The Islamic Republic of Iran.

2. The Communist government of China.

3. The resovietising President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

4. The Sun Newspaper. This Rupert Murdock owned title, fresh from cheerleading the media show trial of deceased broadcaster Jimmy Saville, and fresh from the excoriation of its own reputation by a British Public Enquiry, has launched a campaign to censor the internet under the logo Delete Cyber Bullying. The possibility that Rupert Murdock's amoral, thuggish, phone hacking, police corrupting, politician subverting, society debauching, private citizen intimidating, News International Corporation could possibly care about the bullying rings which use the internet and other methods to murder people by harassing them into suicide, is too remote for words. A more realistic explanation of the Sun's advocacy of internet censorship is the Sun's awareness that the public are going to the internet to hear opinions which have not been dictated by an amoral, thuggish, etc etc, corporate strategy.

5. The Daily Mail. Playing the same game as the Sun. Pretending to be worried about bullying gangs using the internet to harass people to death. One particular piece of Daily Mail irony came just before Christmas when an Irish parliamentarian killed himself. The Daily Mail attempted to hijack the man's death as part of its self styled supposed anti internet Bullying campaign. The Daily Mail's call for internet censorship came under the banner headline: "Let's Protect our Parliamentarians From Internet Cowards." The exact same day the Daily Mail ran an article supposedly exposing Irish parliamentarians who were using their accredited dimplomatic status to by pass airport security procedures. Among the accredited diplomats was my old friend the South Kildare parliamentarian Jack "Travelling Expenses" Wall. Jack Wall alone of the parliamentarians impugned by the newly sensitive Daily Mail has a good excuse for using fast track diplomatic methods to by pass airport procedures that the rest of us are compelled to go through. Jack Wall, sometimes unkindly referred to (by me) as the Mumbly Joe of South Kildare, speaks so indistinctly that if he had to go through standard counter check interviews, the whole airport would be paralysed while the staff endeavoured to understand him.

6 The Irish Independent. (See Daily Mail.)

7. The Sunday World. (See Daily Mail.)

8. The Evening Herald. (See Daily Mail.)

9. President Kim Jong Un of North Korea.