RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images

With all eyes on China this week, it's refreshing to see George and Laura Bush noting that today is the 20th anniversary of pro-democracy protests in Burma that were brutally suppressed.

Last fall's Saffron Revolution was the probably the closest the country has come to mass protests since that fateful day when hundreds of thousands of Burmese took to the streets to call for democracy: 8.8.88.

The Irrawaddy, the best source of news on Burma, has a special issue today commemorating the '88 uprising. They are reporting that many people in the capital donned black clothing to mark the anniversary today, and that plainclothes police were out in force. All the while, conditions in the delta where Cyclone Nargis hit hardest remain dire, with little to no government or foreign aid coming through.

What do you do if you're a growing, quasi-capitalist dictatorship and you're confronted by the specter of rising prices?

If you're Vietnam, you simply outlaw them:

Vietnam announced tough measures to contain rampant inflation on Monday, warning companies they could be prosecuted for passing on higher commodity costs to customers.

The government will prosecute or revoke the licences of companies that increase the prices of goods without sufficient justification, part of a plan to freeze prices for the rest of the year on goods ranging from coal to public transport.

At 27 percent, Vietnam suffers from the highest rate of inflation in Asia. But simply banning it isn't going to work -- it will just create shortages and black markets -- and moreover it sends the wrong signal about the country's direction. It seems Vietnam's rulers still have a lot to learn about this whole capitalism thing.

TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty Images

Sunday's victory by the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) appears to be a landslide for Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power there for over two decades. The former Khmer Rouge guerrilla has elevated winning Cambodian elections to an art form, topping Cambodia's four polls since elections began in 1993. Here are some of his techniques:

1. Stoke the fires of nationalism: Hun Sen got a boost from a border dispute with Thailand over an 11th-century Hindu temple. After Cambodia's government secured re-election Sunday, the two countries agreed to pull back troops on Monday.

2. Ban beer: In the hope of ensuring a peaceful poll, authorities enforced an alcohol ban on Sunday. Reports say the election progressed "largely without incident."

3. Deliver economic results: Construction, oil exploration, and tourism are driving an upstart Cambodian economy. For many voters, economic success trumps democratic aspirations -- and Hun Sen happily takes credit for every piece of economic good news.

4. Rig the rolls: While the Cambodian People's Party hasn't shied away from outright violence to rig an election, this year's polls have seen a more subtle effort from the ruling party. Hun Sen's rivals claim the CPP deleted thousands of opposition supporters from voting lists.

5. Amend the constitution: A 2006 constitutional amendment replaced a requirement of a two-thirds majority to control parliament with a provision mandating only a simple majority. The CPP no longer needs the support of royalist party Funcinpec as a result.

6. When all else fails, control everything: Incumbents generally have the advantage, but after 23 years in power Hun Sen has entrenched his authority in all aspects of Cambodian politics. As Newsweek's Eric Pape sums up:

But given Hun Sen's near absolute control of Cambodian television, radio, the courts and the electoral structures that validate elections, any meaningful decline in his power would amount to a stunning blow.

The globetrotting documentarians over at Current Vanguard have just posted an interesting new short film from the Philippines, where the primary export is the country's own citizens.

"Destination Anywhere" looks at the 20 million Filipinos who work abroad in fields ranging from housekeeping to medical care. The billions of dollars in remittances they send home every year account for about 10 percent of the Philippines' GDP. While this is generally viewed as positive for economic growth (President Gloria Arroyo has described the overseas workers as "heroes of the republic".) it doesn't do much for the kind of longterm development and savings that could stimulate job creation at home. Plus, as the film's director, Tracey Chang, finds, there are enormous social costs when you consider the Philippines' millions of separated families.

For more on the relationship between remittances, corruption, and poor economic planning, check out "The Remittance Curse" in the current issue of Foreign Policy.

Yesterday's Washington Post Quote of the Week:

And I reminded the president that I am reminded of the great talent of the—of our Philippine Americans when I eat dinner at the White House.

—U.S. President George W. Bush with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, referring to White House chef Cristeta Comerford, who was born in Manila.

ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/Getty Images

Singaporean-American lawyer Gopalan Nair, who blogs at Singapore Dissident, threw the gauntlet down last week to the Singapore authorities:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am Gopalan Nair. Today is May 31, 2008 at 10.40am Singapore time. I am at present in Singapore at Broadway Hotel, Room 708, 195 Serangoon Road, Singapore, 218067. The hotel telephone number is is 62924661. My local SingTel telephone number is 83764236. [...]

Mr. Lee Kuan Yew [at left], look here. I am now within your jurisdiction and that of your corrupt police and your corrupt judiciary who will do anything you want of them, however criminal and illegal.

What are you going to do about it?

Turns out, a lot. Police quickly arrested Nair and charged him with insulting Belinda Ang Saw Ean, a judge whom the blogger had earlier accused of "prostituting herself" for Lee Kuan Yew during a hearing at which the former prime minister testified against opposition politician Chee Soon Juan, who was charged with defamation. Judging by comments like these, I think Nair got thrown in the briar patch, so to speak:

I repeat the threat that Lee Kuan Yew had made on day two of the show trial during the last 3 days in the High Court. When asked by Dr. Chee whether he will sue those who write on the Internet defamations against him, I mean defamations in the Singaporean sense, his definitive unequivocal answer was that he will sue them. There is no doubt in the Singaporean sense, I have defamed him and his Prime Minister son, not only in my last blog post but in almost all my blog posts since my blog's inception in December 2006.

The U.S. embassy says it is "monitoring the case closely." Stay tuned.

Money may not grow on trees, but from time to time it does fall from the sky:

AFP/Getty Images

That was the scene earlier today in Serang, a town 40 miles outside of Jakarta, where Indonesian businessman and author chose to promote his new book by dropping 100 million rupiahs (more than $10,000) from the sky. By American standards, that's actually a pretty cheap way to get massive global publicity, even if you account for the cost of the plane and pilot.

Give U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates the prize for understatement of the weekend while discussing the tragic situation in Burma:

When asked whether the Myanmar government's actions were tantamount to genocide, Mr. Gates stopped short of that accusation. "This is more akin, in my view, to criminal neglect," he said.

Criminal neglect? You're kidding -- I always thought that Burma's xenophobic junta sponsored some of the best healthcare programs in the world.

Yesterday, two-and-a-half weeks after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, junta leader Than Shwe finally descended from the remote mountain capital of Naypyitaw to tour cyclone-damaged areas outside of Yangon. He still has not visited the devastated Irrawaddy delta region. The Burmese government also agreed today to accept more aid from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations but is still blocking most aid from Western countries. French and American warships remain anchored off the coast of Irrawaddy, unable to bring food and supplies to shore.

One of the tragic ironies of Burma's glacial response to the disaster has been that they have made the Chinese Communist Party look really good by comparison. Say what you will about Hu Jintao, he was on the ground in Sichuan a few days after the earthquake and the Chinese government has broken sharply with past practice by asking for foreign aid.

Granted, "better than Burma" isn't exactly much of a compliment but the contrast is still striking. 

It's getting harder for the Burmese state to hide the truly profound level of its own dysfunction:

The Burmese generals were visible all right. State television showed them handing out boxes of the small amount of aid allowed in from neighbouring Thailand. Unwittingly, it also showed that the Burmese leadership had plastered their own names over the true origins of the food aid to fool their own people into believing that the emergency relief supplies had come from them.

You know things are bad when a military dictatorship can't even get its own propaganda right.

(Hat tip: Reason's Kerry Howley)

Invoking the United Nations' "Responsibility to Protect" clause, the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana joined French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in calling for the international community to aid the population of Burma, even without the consent of their government.

"We have to use all the means to help those people," Javier Solana said before an emergency meeting of EU ministers in Brussels. "The United Nations charter opens some avenues if things cannot be resolved in order to get the humanitarian aid to arrive."

China's veto pretty much precludes a Security Council resolution which is why some, like journalist (and top public intellectual) Anne Applebaum are calling for a new "coalition of the willing" to deliver aid without the junta's cooperation. Applebaum acknowledges that the phrase has been "tainted forever" by its association with the war in Iraq, but she isn't the only one drawing that parrallel. The Christian Science Monitor quoted one Burmese merchant who wondered why his country didn't meet the criteria for humanitarian intervention:

"I want to talk to Mr. George Bush. What are you doing? United Nations, what are you doing? We have no food, no water. This is the worst government in the world. Same as Saddam Hussein. Why you cannot help us?"

KHIN MAUNG WIN/AFP/Getty Images

Since last week's deadly cyclone in Burma, the nation's ruling military junta has been reluctant to allow aid to enter the country. Since then, trickles of food, water and medicines have been allowed to enter the country, but international aid workers have not. Citing a government that failed to even warn its citizens of the impending disaster, international observers believe that the regime in Burma has neither the will nor the capacity to distribute aid fairly, that corrupt officials are profiting from aid packages, and that the situation created by these conditions threatens to outpace the humanitarian devastation of the 2004 tsunami.

Last week, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner--the founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)--suggested that the international community and the UN are obligated to intervene in Burma, regardless of the wishes of the military junta, in accordance with the "Responsibility to Protect", or R2P, as outlined by the UN at the General Assembly in 2005. The concept asserts that the international community is obligated to intervene in cases where states fail to protect their populations from "genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity."

There are widely varying opinions (pdf) on the legality of the Responibility to Protect. Some argue that it violates the basic concept of sovereignty, while others like the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt, believe as Kouchner does, that the UN is abdicating its responsibility in Burma. Garreth Evans, of the International Crisis Group, offers a more nuanced interpretation in an editorial for The Guardian:

If it comes to be thought that R2P, and in particular the sharp military end of the doctrine, is capable of being invoked in anything other than a context of mass atrocity crimes, then such consensus as there is in favour of the new norm will simply evaporate in the global south. And that means that when the next case of genocide or ethnic cleansing comes along we will be back to the same old depressing arguments about the primacy of sovereignty that led us into the horrors of inaction in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the 1990s."

He admits that if the inaction and neglect of the Burmese government is widely interpreted as a crime against humanity, then there might be room for the principle's application.

But there is no disagreement that the people of Burma can't wait for these issues to be bandied about at the Security Council or across editorial pages. Frustrated nations have a choice to make: either they must defy the wishes of the Burmese junta and send aid workers or airlifts to the Irrawaddy Delta, or they must submit to the regime and send whatever they have in the hopes that it will reach those in need. Regardless, it is clear that moralizing and posturing on the issue is not going to influence many, either in Rangoon or at the UN.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Nearly a week after Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma, the first UN World Food Program and Red Cross planes were finally allowed to land in Yangon today. U.S. military planes carrying supplies are still waiting in Bangkok for permission to fly from the Burmese government.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen. The total number of casualties is anywhere between 23,000 and 100,000 depending on estimates and over 1 million people may have lost their homes. As the arresting images in FP's photo essay "Burma Picks up the Pieces" show, rebuilding after this catastrophe would be a monumental task for any state. For one as repressive and paranoid as Burma, it may be impossible.

While it might seem unimaginable to find a reason for optimism in suffering of this scale, the Burmese people can only hope that the cyclone, and the government's inept handling of it, might be the final blow that brings this odious regime to an end.

KHIN MAUNG WIN/AFP/Getty Images

The devastating cyclone that hit Burma this weekend, killing perhaps 22,500 people -- 40,000 more are still missing -- seems to have spared the country's new administrative capital, Naypyidaw. Deep in the heart of the country's interior and surrounded by mountainous jungle, the isolated new capital, only unveiled last year, suits the insular military junta just fine. But The Irrawaddy reports that civil servants and military officials, many of whom left family behind in Rangoon, are bucking orders from the junta to stay put. Instead, they've fled to look for lost family members in the cyclone's path:

We left our children in Rangoon, and we should be there with them now," the official said, adding that higher authorities have turned down all requests for leave until after the May 10 referendum.

Many of Burma's bureaucrats have homes in Rangoon, where they lived until the junta suddenly shifted the capital to Naypyidaw in November 2005. Telephone lines and Internet connections in Rangoon, which is still the country’s main commercial center, have been down since Friday.

Military personnel with relatives in the stricken area have also been returning to their homes without permission from their commanding officers.

Perhaps another sign that bungling relief efforts could weaken the junta's control?

ROSLAN RAHMAN/Getty Images

Here in the United States, the recently released Rambo hasn't gotten the best reviews; it scored a lowly 35 on Rotten Tomatoes's tomatometer. But among Burmese nationals, it's a huge hit—and inspirational, to boot. Yesterday, a Rambo screening in Singapore, organized by the Overseas Burmese Patriots Group and packed with Burmese expats, sold out all 600 tickets.

In the movie, everyone's favorite former Green Beret, John Rambo, takes on Burma's military junta in an effort to rescue Christian missionaries who have been taken captive. Burmese moviegoers at yesterday's screening broke out in loud cheers and applause at the movie's climax when Sly Stallone saves the missionaries and slays their captors. "Just like Rambo is in the movie, Burma is waiting for a hero or someone to lead the revolution," one audience member told AFP.

The junta has banned the film from being shown in Burma, but that hasn't stopped pirated DVDs from flooding Rangoon. "People are going crazy with the quote 'Live for nothing, die for something'," one Burmese told Reuters, in reference to one of Rambo's gems of wisdom from the film.

Meanwhile, Stallone says he is willing to go personally to Burma to confront junta officials. He has even offered to debate them in front of the U.S. Congress. And I think we'd all love to see that happen. 

Rising prices for soyabeans and soya-based products such as tofu have Indonesians steamed: 

On Monday, 10,000 Indonesians demonstrated outside the presidential palace in Jakarta after soyabean prices soared more than 50 per cent in the past month and 125 per cent over the past year, leaving huge shortages in markets.

The rapid soyflation, a result of surging Chinese demand, rising oil prices, and ethanol production in the United States, has also hit other parts of the region, such as Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong—all wealthy places that can probably weather the storm.

KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images

One country that is probably headed for trouble with rising food prices is not in Asia, but the Middle East. Egypt is the world's second-largest importer of wheat, another commodity that is at all-time highs right now. Egypt subsidizes wheat, flour, and bread, a policy that costs the state about $2.74 billion a year and leads to corruption and economic distortions. The government is reportedly mulling an across-the-board reduction of basic food subsidies, which in the long run would be healthy for Egypt's economy. But everyone in Egypt remembers what happened in 1977 when Anwar al-Sadat tried to cut the bread subsidy: riots in the streets. The Egyptian opposition is demoralized and defeated after more than two years of harsh government crackdowns. Widespread outrage over high prices, however, could be the spark that finally ignites popular unrest.

Which is why we can safely expect Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who is no dummy, to ignore U.S. President George W. Bush's latest polite request to move toward "economic openness... and democratic reform."

For a top politician you can't continue in power when you are seen naked."

—Political analyst Ooi Kee Beng, commenting on news that Malaysia's health minister resigned after admitting being the guy in a widely distributed sex video

Politicians usually turn out the elderly vote by scaring them that their benefits will be cut unless they don't come to the polls. But I suppose this is another way to do it:

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Vote-buying is an old practice in Thai politics, but one candidate for December's Thai election has reportedly come up with a new tactic — handing out Viagra instead of cash.

The allegation, made Thursday by a campaign worker against a rival party, comes as rules about handing out favors to voters have become stricter than ever, barring even the distribution of free T-shirts and soft drinks.

Sayan Nopcha, a campaigner for the People's Power Party in Pathum Thai province just north of Bangkok, said the drug used to treat sexual dysfunction in men was being distributed to elderly male voters at social functions.

In Israel, hundreds of thousands of youngsters have been wandering the streets, and it's not because they're skipping school. Rather, it's because the country's public secondary schools have been shut down since their teachers went on strike on Oct. 9 to protest low salaries and poor working conditions. Starting teachers make $600 monthly (less than the rent for a decent one-bedroom apartment in Tel Aviv), and classrooms have 38 to 40 students.

On Monday, Knesset member Avishay Braverman called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to help resolve the situation. "Mister prime minister, Annapolis is important. Finding a solution to this strike is more important than Annapolis," he said, referring to a Middle East peace meeting the United States is arranging in Annapolis, Maryland.

The strike is symptomatic of an educational breakdown that some say will hurt Israel's high-tech industries, which generate 12 percent of the country's gross domestic product and more than one third of its exports. In the 1960s, Israeli kids ranked near the top in international assessments of math and science. By 2002 though, Israel was 33rd out of 41 countries. Additionally, potential math and science teachers have been ditching schools for more lucrative jobs in the high-tech sector.

Israel's education problem extends to universities as well. Up to 3,000 professors have left for jobs abroad in the past decade. Meanwhile, funding for Israel's seven universities has fallen 20 percent in four years, and the number of instructors has held steady, while the number of students has jumped 50 percent in the last decade.

Let's hope Israel's low-paid teachers don't have to resort to what Cambodia's teachers have to do. At schools that are supposed to be free, they have been reduced to charging students "informal fees" to top up their salaries, which can be as low as $30 a month. In a country where one third of the people live on less than 50 cents per day, many Cambodian parents can't afford the fees—which for one student were almost 25 cents per day—and kids have to drop out of primary school.

Are you a journalist who doesn't mind a dose of censorship with your morning coffee? When I say "junta" to you, do you think "stable employer"?

If so, there just may be a job for you in Rangoon. The government-affiliated Myanmar Times is looking for a subeditor, and the job advertisement has to be seen to be believed. You'll really be asking the tough questions.

Sub Editor, Timeout, The Myanmar Times, Myanmar Consolidated Media, Myanmar, Southeast Asia

The Myanmar Times (http://www.mmtimes.com) is published in both English and Myanmar (Burmese) and are leading publications with a readership in excess of 250,000 weekly, but operate under censorship in a challenging media environment. [...]

JOB DESCRIPTION: The subeditor will manage, edit and layout our ‘Timeout’ arts and entertainment section (8 pages), Page 2 (trivia and opinion), Science & Health page and two Travel pages every week.

(Hat tip: New Mandala)