...The outside world makes the mistake of assuming that the junta is amenable to negotiation on what we regard as common values: democracy, respect for human rights, protection from the arbitrary exercise of power.

This is simply not the case. The junta can only understand the street demonstrations by monks and people as subversion fomented by (unnamed but baleful) "foreign powers".

Their perceived duty is to suppress the democracy movement, whatever the cost in human suffering, for the greater good of the nation.

In their own eyes, and encouraged by their astrologers, this is a virtuous action...

...The democratic movement is defenceless in the face of 300,000 soldiers, and its only hope, now as in 1988, is that enough troops might be so sickened by what they have had to do that they are prepared to disobey orders.

From personal experience my wife and I know that in the final stages of the 41-day uprising in 1988, democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi privately admitted that a split in the army seemed the only remaining hope of overthrowing the dictatorship...

...All the embassies in Rangoon have military attaches, and one can only hope that part of their duties include identifying and discreetly supporting dissidents in the Burmese armed forces.

Likewise, the world's democracies should mobilise the resources of their intelligence agencies, rather than soothing their consciences by imposing further useless economic sanctions (unless these can be extended to China, India and Asean, when they really would have an effect)...

(Tom White, former UK's cultural attaché in Burma during the 1988 protests and bloody crackdown writing for BBC News - "Viewpoint: Burma ruled by numbers")