An embryonic movement to promote civil liberties and freedoms may be brewing in China. But it has nothing to do with political prisoners, the Falun Gong, or the upcoming 2008 Olympics. Rather, the release of director Ang Lee's film “Lust, Caution” has spurred an unusual surge of Chinese visitors to Hong Kong. The reason? On the mainland, the movie is heavily censored. The combination of a nuanced portrayal of a World War II-era traitor and explicit sex scenes was apparently too much for Beijing officials to stomach, but not the libertarians in laissez-faire Hong Kong.

With many of China's wealthy elites reportedly shelling out big bucks for flights from the mainland to see the film in Hong Kong, could we be seeing a backlash against Chinese censorship? A revolution sparked by a newfound respect for freedom in the arts? Probably not, at least not in the near future.

The vast bulk of the Chinese public, by and large, is more concerned with pocketbook issues than being able to see racy scenes in a movie by a Taiwanese director. And for those who don't want or can't afford to travel to Hong Kong, pirated copies of the uncensored movie are available from street vendors (as is most every other film, album and book), making official censorship difficult and almost useless. No wonder the few calls by individuals for the movie's unedited release on the mainland have been dismissed by the Chinese government with little public reaction.

That said, if the theory of relative deprivation holds true, China's elite may get jealous of Hong Kong's freedoms and take the lead in pressuring Beijing into greater liberal reforms. Said one Chinese businessman who traveled to Hong Kong:

We could have bought a pirated copy of the movie here, but we were not happy with the control and wanted to support the legal edition of the film.

Sentiments like those from China's wealthy elite undoubtedly irks the Chinese leadership, but the Communist Party has skillfully avoided having to yield to greater democratic reforms. I doubt that a movie is going to be the catalyst that breaks that trend.

BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images

Here's a disturbing story. Jewish groups in Venezuela are protesting what they claim is intimidation by government forces on the eve of the country's national referendum.

The JTA and the New York Times report that Venezuelan paramilitary officers conducted a raid for suspected illegal weapons shortly before 1 a.m. on Sunday at the Israeli Union of Caracas synagogue during a wedding party; no weapons were found. The Jewish community in Venezuela has come under assault before: once in 2003 when Iraq war protestors attempted to vandalize another Caracas synagogue and again in 2005 when Venezuelan police raided a Jewish school looking for—you guessed it—weapons.

The small, 200-year-old Jewish community in the country has been critical of president Hugo Chávez. And for understandable reasons: Chief among their concerns is his relationship with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar Assad, who have both made their thoughts about Israel well known.

But perhaps more curious than the details of this peculiar raid is that fact that very few non-Jewish news outlets in South America bothered to report the story. In Venezuela, the raid was mentioned in only a single major daily newspaper, El Nacional. In fact, searches for any stories related to the Jewish community in other major, Spanish-language Venezuelan papers proved empty. Perhaps the other news outlets were too busy covering Chávez's first electoral defeat but then again... perhaps not.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/Getty Images News

On Wednesday evening at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley spoke broadly about freedom and the Middle East. His prepared remarks (pdf) weren't too surprising—the key point was that the time is right to push for peace because Israel is becoming more receptive to the idea of a Palestinian state, the Palestinians are being more cooperative, and Arab states are engaging in the debate.

Hadley did go off script a bit during the Q&A session, though. A SAIS student asked a question about why some Arabic states would support democracy in Iraq when those states are not democracies themselves. Hadley's answer was pretty standard until he began taking about elections in Iran. But Hadley replaced the "l" in elections with an "r" and instead began to speak about Iranian erections (The audio is here. Right click and save as. It's around the 38:30 mark).

A harmless slip of the tongue? An attempt to throw off Tehran's ruling mullahs, who have made it clear that they're uncomfortable with sexuality? You decide.

With the anniversaries of both Ukraine and Georgia's "color revolutions" this month, Eurasianet's Salome Asatiani looks at the progress and disappointments that both countries have faced since casting out authoritarian governments and finds that they've followed very different paths. Here's how it breaks down:

Georgia	Ukraine
"Rose Revolution": November, 2003	"Orange Revolution": November, 2004
Current President: Mikheil Saakashvili	Current President: Viktor Yuschenko
Progress: Georgia has been far more successful at pushing through much-needed economic reforms, thanks largely to the free hand enjoyed by Saakashvili in setting policy.	Progress: Despite inheriting a devastatingly corrupt political system and a linguistically and culturally divided population, Yuschenko's government has been able to establish a robust system of checks and balances in governance that has made political compromise possible.
Letdown: The same executive power that has allowed Saakashvili success in liberalizing the economy has also allowed him to demonstrate disturbing authoritarian tendencies, such as this month's crackdown on peaceful protesters in Tbilisi and the government's increasing control over the media.	Letdown: The rivalry between Yuschenko and onetime ally Yulia Tymoshenko has frayed the "orange coalition" and the continued influence of former president Viktor Yanukovych (he was briefly elected prime minister) has resulted in political stalemate. Few of the promised economic reforms have been accomplished.
The Russia factor: Saakashvili has been among the most vocal critics of Vladimir Putin's government, denouncing Russian involvement in the still-simmering regional conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He has also been a strong supporter of George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, hoping to pave the way for future NATO membership.	The Russia factor: Although the Orange government came into power promising a Ukraine free of Russian influence, its leaders have been far more muted in their criticism while in office for fear of angering voters in Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern region.

One analyst quoted in the story sees the contrast as one between "In the case of Yushchenko -- passivity and weakness... In the case of Saakashvili -- strong-headedness and, I would say, an overtly great desire to see things done right away, and only his way."

It's certainly too early to say for sure, but this month's events seem to indicate that Ukraine's frustratingly slow progress may be more sustainable in the long run.

AFP/Getty Images

Two weeks ago, when it was announced that Russia was only inviting 70 observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the election, I suspected that Russia's arcane visa process would prevent even that number from attending. Turns out I underestimated the good folks in the Moscow bureaucracy who have not, as of yet, sent any visas to OSCE, prompting the organization to cancel its mission altogether. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to answer questions about the visas, describing it as a "rather technical issue". It always is, isn't it?

While this is pretty grim news, it may actually be for the best that OSCE is sitting this one out. A mere 70 observers couldn't possibly be effective in a country the size of Russia. Pretending otherwise would simply lend this sham more dignity than it deserves. Russian opposition leader and FP contributor Garry Kasparov told the New York Times that "Putin's regime has no interest in revealing its dark side."

With all due respect to Kasparov, I'd say it already has.

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)

MOHAMMAD MALIK/AFP/Getty Images

Sameer Lalwani argued back in September that "meaningful democracy will not emerge in Pakistan anytime soon, nor will the military abandon its grip on government." Accordingly, "Rather than embracing false harbingers of democracy, the United States should deepen its ties with the Pakistani military through further commitments in funding" and "do more to channel visible development aid and encourage the growth of real democratic institutions instead of feudal patronage networks like those of Bhutto and Sharif."

In the Financial Times, however, columnist Gideon Rachman offers a starkly different view of Musharraf:

Gen Musharraf would like the west to believe that the only alternatives to his continued rule are anarchy or Islamism. But the people he is locking up in this latest crackdown are not the proverbial “mad mullahs”. They are lawyers, journalists and human rights activists – the backbone of the civil society that is needed if Pakistan is ever to make the transition to a sustainable democracy.

Would these people eventually be swept aside by militant Islamists – making westerners and middle-class Pakistanis swiftly yearn for a return of military rule? Again, the evidence for this is quite weak. Islamist parties have never captured above 11 per cent of the vote in Pakistan. The polls suggest that popular sympathy for terrorism is actually falling, as Pakistanis experience suicide bombing on their own soil. In 2004, 41 per cent of Pakistanis told the Pew pollsters that suicide bombing was “sometimes” justified. This year that figure is down to 9 per cent.

Lalwani is probably on safe ground in pointing out that "meaningful democracy" will not emerge in Pakistan any time soon. But it is Musharraf and his military supporters who consistently prevent this from happening, either through what Human Rights Watch called "deeply flawed" elections or, most recently, by imposing martial law. How on Earth are real democratic institutions supposed to grow when the Pakistani military keeps locking up the democrats?

SAMANTHA SIN/AFP/Getty Images

Remember the case of Shi Tao? He's a Chinese journalist who was imprisoned back in 2004 for supposedly leaking state secrets by writing an e-mail to a New York-based pro-democracy group, describing how the Chinese government planned to crack down on local media covering the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.  Yahoo supplied information about Shi's e-mail address to the Chinese authorities, leading to his arrest and 10-year prison sentence.

Finally, Yahoo is issuing a mea culpa for its role in the case. More specifically, Yahoo's top lawyer is apologizing for failing to tell the U.S. Congress that Yahoo knew more about the case than it claimed in testimony given last year. U.S. lawmakers have been querying Yahoo about its business practices in China for the past couple years. Last year, Callahan said that Yahoo had no information about the Chinese government's wishes for customer information. Lo and behold, it turns out Yahoo was in possession of an order from Beijing seeking information about Shi. Callahan's apology comes in advance of another Congressional hearing next week about the challenges and moral quandaries that U.S. companies like Yahoo face in doing business in authoritarian places such as China. It's great that Yahoo is starting to come clean, but that's undoubtedly little comfort to Shi Tao, who still has at least another seven years to go in prison.

Photo: National Security Archive

One of the oddest cultural trends of our time is the Cult of Che Guevara. I was just down in Peru, where street vendors proudly peddle Chinese-made tapestries and t-shirts bearing Che's image to U.S. college students. Hollywood—most notably Robert Redford—has glamorized Che on screen. And in more than one European hamlet will you find a "Che Guevara Bar," inevitably attracting hipsters with the same, sad tapestries, fake Cuban cigars, and cheap rum.

Today, the Cult of Che hit a new low, when a 3-inch lock of his beard and other items went up for sale at a Dallas auction house. The starting bid? $100,000. Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez is rumored to be among the potential interested bidders. The seller is Gustavo Villoldo, a retired CIA operative of Cuban heritage who was involved in Che's capture and was present when Che was buried. Villoldo says he cut the lock of hair because, "I wanted proof that I had completed my mission." His motive for selling it now appears to be profit. (This month marks the 40th anniversary of Che's death.)

MIKE CLARKE/AFP/Getty Images

It's disappointing to see Che glorified in this way. The man was a Marxist-Leninist of the worst kind: He presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads; he assisted in the persecution of homosexuals [see note below]; he imprisoned dissidents. Che preached a dangerous breed of martyrdom and hatred reminiscent of the most radical jihadists of today's Middle East. You may see some familiar themes in this, one of Che's choicest lines:

Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become...."

Today, we seem intent on remembering Che as a liberator in the Bolivarian vein, a freedom fighter. He was not. As Paul Berman has elegantly documented, Che inspired many middle-class Latin Americans to take up arms in insurgent campaigns that did nothing more than set the cause of Latin American democracy back decades. That a tiny lock of his hair can sell in Texas (of all places) for six figures is a sad comment indeed on just how severely his legacy has been distorted.

Editor's Note: This post was changed by the editor to avoid any confusion. It originally said that Che "assisted in the persecution of homosexuals and AIDS victims." Many readers asked about the original language. Mike explains here.

This is the best news I've heard all week:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Taxicabs in the nation's capital will switch to meters from the current confusing zone system of calculating fares, the mayor announced Wednesday. [...]

Visitors and residents have grumbled for years about the lack of meters in district taxis, saying the zone system is confusing and vulnerable to cheating.

Before [Mayor] Fenty's announcement, the District was the only major U.S. city without taxi meters.

The decision to switch to meters or keep the current system was required by a provision inserted in legislation last year by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a longtime critic of zones.

The map used for calculating fares consists of 22 zones radiating outward from the U.S. Capitol. Each time a zone boundary is crossed, the fare goes up a few dollars. Surcharges are added for stops, rush hour travel and extra riders. The base price for a ride within one zone -- whether it's a few blocks or a few miles -- is $6.50.

When I moved to Washington last December and got in my first taxi, I thought I was back in Cairo, where having to haggle over the fare is a daily source of frustration for foreigners and locals alike. Very few people in D.C. have figured out the arcane zone system, which makes it easy for taxi drivers to charge nearly any price they want. Now, they won't be able to get away with it anymore.

In case you missed it, Barack Obama is taking heat over a comment he made this week to an Iowa television station:

I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest. Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my patriotism.'' 

He's talking about the American flag lapel pins that are now ubiquitous among American politicians. In an editorial this morning, the Chicago Sun-Times throws Obama a low punch, declaring that the comment "undermines his whole campaign." And Real Clear Politics is already calling it "Pin Gate" (though they qualify it with a question mark). Both reactions seem like a bit much.

But there does seem to be either a lapse in judgment here, or a touch of hypocrisy. Sen. Obama has a problem with wearing one tiny little flag on his chest. But he has no problem using seven gigantic American flags as a podium backdrop during his stump speeches. Notice Obama's backdrop here:

So Obama objects to wearing the flag, but not speaking in front of it? Care to explain, Sen. Obama? When do you believe it's appropriate to use the flag for political purposes and when do you believe it is not?

STR/AFP/Getty Images

With more than a hint of smugness, folks in the West are rushing to declare Burma's Saffron Revolution a failure. But now comes a report, via Hla Win, the defecting chief of the military junta's intelligence operations, that thousands of monks have been executed in recent days and their bodies dumped in the jungle. Thousands more were reportedly taken to a stadium on the outskirts of Rangoon and beaten. Win, who is attempting to defect to Norway via Thailand, says:

Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand. I decided to desert when I was ordered to raid two monasteries and force several hundred monks onto trucks. They were to be killed and their bodies dumped deep inside the jungle. I refused to participate in this."

Official government figures had put the death toll at between nine and 15. Now we learn it is "several thousand." And the junta is paying families a whopping $13 in compensation.

Will this be enough to shake the Bush administration, and the foreign-policy community's chattering classes, from their complacency? Talking with one foreign-policy type last Friday, he summed up for me what is a sad conventional wisdom emerging in Washington: "What can we do?"

What can we do? For one thing, let's stop the pretending that the U.S. response so far has been anything but pathetic. The Wall Street Journal this morning refers to the "aggressive American response to the Myanmar crisis." Hmm, they must be talking about First Lady Laura Bush's interview with the Voice of America, which is about the sum total of the American response thus far. After that, Washington Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt has a few other ideas:

Tell China that, as far as the United States is concerned, it can have its Olympic Games or it can have its regime in Burma. It can't have both.... If a threat to those Games -- delivered privately, if that would be most effective, with no loss of face -- could help tip the balance, then let the Games not begin. Some things matter more."

I argued last week that China is unlikely to be shamed, by use of the Olympic card, into taking meaningful action on Burma. But Hiatt is right. If there's even a remote possibility that such pressure could help, then a U.S. threat to withdraw from the games should be made. The Bush Administration is reportedly looking into other, unnamed, options. Let's hope so. Because if 100,000 people were marching the streets of Baghdad or Riyadh, or if thousands of Catholic priests were lying dead in Vatican City, you can bet there would have been a little bit more action by now.

SHAUN HEASLEY/Getty Images News

It was January 20, 2005, a heady time. U.S. President George W. Bush had just won reelection and believed the Bush Doctrine had handed him a powerful mandate. And he intended to run with it:

Today America speaks anew to the peoples of the world: All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

Oh, how times have changed. This was White House Press Secretary Dana Perino speaking to reporters yesterday:

I have a statement by the President on Burma that I will read out for him," she said, "and then a statement about the FAA.... I call on all nations that have influence with the regime to join us in supporting the aspirations of the Burmese people and to tell the Burmese Junta to cease using force on its own people who are peacefully expressing their desire for change."

In case you missed it, that was the vaunted "freedom agenda" lumped in with airport delays. To the tens of thousands of Burmese risking life and limb to demand freedom from their oppressors, Perino essentially said: We aren't really going to stand with you, but we'll definitely put a call in to China and Russia to see what they can do.

The hope of the Bush administration is apparently that increased sanctions—or the threat of them—and travel restrictions on a half dozen or so top junta leaders will bring the regime in Yangon crumbling down.

But just ask a Cuban how effective these kinds of sanctions are at toppling dictatorial regimes. The increased sanctions Bush announced at the United Nations on Wednesday are little more than symbolic. They will likely have almost no impact on the political situation, and the same goes for Europe's existing sanctions. As one European observer put it, "Stopping European companies from investing in a pineapple juice factory is laughable."

As for the now apparently universal belief that China can somehow be shamed into pressing the junta for democratic reforms, that's a joke—as Bill Overholt pointed out here on Wednesday. But let's step back for a second here: Is the United States really prepared to stake the hopes of freedom on the Chinese Communist Party? Is this what the Bush Doctrine has come to? 

The danger of the Bush Doctrine was always that people in places like Burma, Sudan, or Zimbabwe might take it seriously. That they would literally stand up for their freedom, expecting Team Bush to stand with them. "We either go to democracy or back to military dictatorship," one Burmese citizen wrote to the BBC this week. The Bush administration, apparently believing it has done enough, is prepared to sit back and watch the latter happen. More than 100,000 Burmese citizens a day are standing, and the Bush administration is sitting down.

That may be the saddest comment yet on the Bush Doctrine.

ANDREW WONG/AFP/Getty Images

Recent press coverage and commentary on Burma's "Saffron Revolution" got me thinking: Is it really as simple as China flipping a switch and Burma will be democratic overnight? Judging by many reports, you'd think so. "If China won't change its policies toward Burma on its own," writes Nobel laureate Jody Williams in today's Wall Street Journal, "it must be pressured to do so."

But aren't we forgetting that the West spent much of the second half of the 20th Century trying to get China out of the business of regime change in Asia? Is it wise to reverse course now? To get some insight on the situation, I got a hold of RAND's Bill Overholt, who has spent decades working on Burma and helped set up the Provisional Revolutionary Government in the country's mountain jungles in 1989. Here's what he had to say.

On China's ability to encourage change in Burma:

China has interests and involvements in Burma, but limited leverage. Burma is not some kind of client state of China. It is a xenophobic, divided, tribalized country with a nationalistic government; it bears more resemblance to one of the less coherent sub-Saharan African states than to most other East Asian countries. It’s not an easy place to influence. Through most of the 1980s there was a Burmese Communist Party, which consisted primarily of the Wa tribe plus Chinese leadership. When the Wa decided to turn anti-communist in the late 1980s and chased the Chinese leadership into China, China’s influence in the country was drastically reduced but there was little China could do without military intervention. So Beijing basically sat by passively when it happened.

There's a crucial lesson in that episode. The fact that China has economic involvements in this neighboring country and sells weapons to it doesn't mean anymore than when big U.S. companies are involved in some third world country and the U.S. government also sells weapons to it. Those things imply neither political commitment to a certain regime nor any ability to change the regime. The Chinese have been pressing Rangoon diplomatically for some time to liberalize the political system. Going beyond that to some kind of active Chinese attempt to impose a new kind of politics would be like the U.S. invading Mexico to clean up Mexican politics, but much messier because Burmese nationalism and tribalism make Mexico's nationalism and Iraq's tribalism seem modest by comparison.

One would hope that our experience with regime change in Iraq would temper somewhat the occasional neocon fantasy that China could simply install a new regime in North Korea or the apparent new fantasy of some liberals that China could just install a different kind of government in Burma."

On whether next year's Olympic Games factor into China's calculus on Burma, as many news outlets are suggesting:

China's motives in relations with Burma have nothing to do with the Olympics. I doubt that even the idea of some connection has ever crossed the minds of Chinese leaders. Only someone distant from the region could even imagine that."

On how events in Burma impact Sino-U.S. relations:

Washington basically has the same attitude toward Burma that China does. It doesn't like what’s happening there, but isn't willing or able to do much about it. We have largely symbolic sanctions, and we have not done as much as we could have. We have not, for instance, gone after the oil companies that provide the big money to the junta and that have benefited so much from infrastructure built by tribal people who were kidnapped by the Burmese government and often forced to work without food until they died. Our drug policy has off and on fed the fox to guard the chicken coop.... We have occasionally given economic and military aid to the same government for the purpose of suppressing the drug trade, but the aid was of course used instead against the democracy movement.

Burma is one of the world's most serious human rights problems. We need to focus on getting our own policy right and on staying in sync with Burma’s neighbors, including China, as we do so. We're pushing in the same general direction as the Chinese, for somewhat different reasons, with equally little success. Hopefully the monks are going to change the structure of the game."

With reports that the junta is stockpiling insecticides to use against demonstrators and is clearing space in jails and hospitals in anticipation of a harsher crackdown, the stakes have never been higher.

PS: For those following the "Burma" vs. "Myanmar" debate—and here at Passport, we've used both—James Fallows convincingly puts the issue to rest.