If it's Friday, it must be a day for news from Cambodia on the International Adoption Blog. If you're looking for other adoption-related features and articles, please check out the Adoption News Blog.

A very interesting commentary with a firm and realistic footing in history is well worth a read for anyone interested in Cambodia then and now.

Making comparisons between Indochina in the 70s and Iraq today, it also highlights present day Vietnam's neocolonization of Cambodia through population floods and monoculture agriculture that are rapidly replacing what was thoroughly Cambodian with what is most certainly Vietnamese.

Hand-in-hand, this about an upcoming trade fair, the "Vietnam-Cambodia International Trade Fair" might illustrate what could become too much of a blending between the two countries.

And hand-in-glove ... plastic glove, that is ... is this good news/bad news account about Vietnam's $65 million-a-month export of plastic products, of which Cambodia is in the list of the top seven importers. The others -- the US, Japan, Switzerland, Norway, the UK and Germany -- may have some way of dealing with the refuse, but there are no recycling programs in Cambodia aside from those that involve families living in the dumps and washing out straws and such for use again in hotels.

And for yet another look at the potential disaster that oil might precipitate in the country, this article from Time spells it out fairly clearly.

Looking not only at Cambodia, but all countries now scrambling to find any deposits of black gold that might sit within borders, examples of the "resource curse" are easy to come by, and the writing would appear to be on the wall. Predicting the outcome of an influx of millions of petrodollars on governments like those of Cambodia, East Timor and Burma, especially with the example of Nigeria so handy, seems a simple, albeit distasteful, endeavor.

A mention of Burma brings this story to mind, about Sylvester Stallone's take on the country after spending six months shooting a film on its borders.

As he so eloquently put it, "This is a hellhole beyond your wildest dreams."

Horrific, and happening today, folks.

(Anyone want to ask what the UN is doing to help?)

Cambodia is stepping up, maybe.

Yes, Prime Minister Hun Sen has asked that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) play a more active roll in getting the ragingly out-of-control Burmese government to shape up.