The cyclone has presented the junta with one last, vast business opportunity: by blocking aid from reaching the highly fertile Irrawaddy delta, hundreds of thousands of mostly ethnic Karen rice farmers are being sentenced to death, writes Naomi Klein. Apparently, "that land can be handed over to the generals' business cronies". This isn't incompetence, or even madness. It's laissez-faire ethnic cleansing. If the Burmese junta avoids mutiny and achieves these goals, it will be thanks largely to China, which has vigorously blocked all humanitarian intervention in Burma. In China, where the government is going to great lengths to show itself as compassionate, news of this complicity could prove explosive. Will China's citizens receive this news? In the wake of the quake, the notorious 'Great Firewall' censoring the internet is failing. Naomi Klein The Guardian
Burma latest: Aid disappears as junta claims constitution victory

Like many great actors, Tony Blair's public emoting and apparent vulnerability disguised a core of icy detachment, which spared no one, not even his closest friends and associates, says Dominic Lawson. Ask Peter Mandelson. Gordon Brown is exactly the opposite. While the outside world sees a man of robotic self-discipline and imperviousness to normal human weakness, the real man is a ferment of emotion – almost out of control, in fact. Frank Field's extraordinary remark a few days ago about Gordon Brown's "indescribable tempers" was a piercingly honest description of exactly this aspect of the Prime Minister's personality. On a more mundane level - and visible to all - Gordon Brown's chewed fingernails are an indicator of this inner turbulence and anxiety. Dominic Lawson The Independent
The Mole: Not again! Car tax set to embarrass Brown

After waiting weeks to discover if they would be allowed free votes over its most contentious elements, notes Robin McKie, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is now to be subjected to the amendments desperately sought by religious and right-wing groups: curtailing stem-cell research, stopping the creation of saviour siblings and ensuring the naming and tracing of sperm donors. I look forward to a defeat for these godly interventionists. The alternative - their victory - is too unpleasant to contemplate. We should say it loudly and clearly. This bill, an updating of rules concerning fertility treatments and stem-cell science, is a critical piece of legislation which will ensure that Britain continues to play a vital role in international science and will help British researchers develop treatments for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes and heart conditions. Weaken it, and we will blunt scientists' powers to help the sick.
Robin McKie New Statesman

How in the name of all the saints did we allow all those New Labour über-buffoons to swank it over us for so long without marching on Downing Street, asks Matthew Norman? Of course all administrations are suffused with rancour and turf wars. With the likes of Jim Callaghan, Denis Healey, Barbara Castle, Roy Jenkins, Dick Crossman, Tony Crosland, Tony Benn, Michael Foot, at times Harold Wilson's Cabinet in the mid-late 1960s more closely resembled a loose confederation of feudal baronies than collegiate seat of power. Yet these were all colossal political figures, as to a slightly lesser extent were the factions in the 'wet vs dry' early Thatcher years. What typifies the New Labour years is the tininess of the characters and the overweening queeniness with which they filled the ideological vacuum.
Matthew Norman The Independent

It is hard to see why Gordon Brown needs the coup de grâce just yet, says The Economist. Britain is not being overtly misgoverned, and nobody else in Labour is promising anything radically different. And Mr. Brown may yet improve. To do so however, he needs to articulate his basic political creed—essentially a meritocracy leavened with egalitarianism—better than he has managed to do so far. Moreover, he needs to commit unequivocally to the course of public-service reform eventually set by Mr. Blair, then pursue it with dogged competence. If he does this, especially if the economy recovers, he will have a chance against the Tories. Otherwise, he will go down in history as the worst sort of political failure: the sort who schemes to get a job and then has no idea what to do with it. Leader The Economist

It is only too easy to groan in disbelief as George Bush tours the Middle East for his last time as president, treading around the minefield of his past policy disasters, says a Guardian leader. The two most implacable opponents of a two-state solution, Hizbullah and Hamas, are stronger than ever before, while their sponsor Iran crows in delight off stage. Hamas's popularity has increased as a result of the siege of 1.4 million Gazans. Nor is Mr Bush's ally Tony Blair exempt from the responsibility. On Tuesday he announced what he considered an achievement: the Israeli army's decision "in principle" to dismantle or relocate four military checkpoints. That is four out of a total of more than 600 roadblocks and gates that paralyse movement in the West Bank. If this is success, what is failure?
Leader The Guardian
Israel: a warning from history