This week's global perspective from Burma's military junta: the new enemy is "IT".
Information technology, complained the state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar, is rallying the forces of Western decadence and fabricated news, "as if Burma were producing narcotic drugs on a commercial scale, violating human rights, and committing the forced recruitment of minors for military service". Not a single mark of this IT must be allowed to stain the cherished Burmese nation.
No mention however, of this week's real story; the purge of prime minister Khin Nyunt, who is apparently languishing, as is pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest.
A cursory glance at Khin Nyunt's curriculum vitae does not suggest a man of faltering resolve. The former military intelligence chief was as seasoned as any in the brutal game of absolute control.
But Khin Nyunt had raised international hopes for change. Unlike many of his colleagues, he seemed to understand those IT-led forces of globalisation massing on Burma's borders. Khin Nyunt's now-stalled road map for democracy may have been just another ploy to buy time for junta. But at least he was a conduit to the opaque, inner circle of the generals, suggesting the world was not entirely without leverage.
The elevation of Lieutenant-General Soe Win puts Burma back in the hands of one of the world's least educated, but most powerful, hard-line military cliques. This same clique, recently shaken by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the implied threat to the world's remaining despots, is now reportedly revelling in the US-led forces' misery in Iraq.
But can this latest purge lead anywhere? Two decades ago, Asia was one big, affable authoritarian club. The region's rapid economic rise and its engagement with global markets since have often left the crude, old models of political control behind.
Democracy, capitalism and free trade are the stuff of sophisticated politicians and diplomats in smart civilian suits. That has left Burma's uniformed generals looking a bit like embarrassing poor relations, who insist on turning up at regional get-togethers in their 1970s fancy dress.
Authoritarianism in Burma is more than four decades old. The perennial question is, how much longer it can hold?
On the censorship front, Burma's generals carry on as though IT can be stopped at the border and that Joseph Stalin's old adage, keep the masses absolutely ignorant, will prevail.
The official news media is required to publish at least one article or cartoon attacking Aung San Suu Kyi a week. Pop song lyrics and films are censored, while the state-run media churns out distorted, nationalistic appeals to past glories. But the country is full of cheap Chinese short wave radios, and the public has long known when dissidents are shot or jailed.
The junta does, however, want to open its border to foreign money. The Burmese army staff training college is offering MBAs. The military envisages business profits flowing only its way.
Aung Sang Suu Kyi has repeatedly called for the toughest possible international sanctions, because while the regime is impervious to its people's suffering and sanctions do hit ordinary citizens very hard, it is not impervious to its own greed. The theory goes that if the economic cake gets too small to support the lifestyle of the military and their families, then the regime will turn on itself. The sudden arrest two years ago of the family of the former strongman, Ne Win, may have been the first sign of political cannibalism over the shrinking cake, and Khin Nyunt's demise the next.
Burma can probably continue to get by on subsistence agriculture and current trade, including narcotics. China and India are increasingly interested in Burma's natural resources, such as timber. Only the US has tough sanctions in place.
International pressure will only be effective if Burma's neighbours join in. The Association of South-East Asian Nations has been reluctant to break the old club rules of non-interference. But it was Thailand which quietly convinced Khin Nyunt to draft his democracy road map last year. With Burma due to assume the association's rotating chairmanship in 2006, the pressure is on. Khin Nyunt might have just been squeezed into a business suit. Soe Win, in military dress uniform, is a far more difficult fit.