The Daily Mail is reporting that Burma's Saffron Revolution has disintegrated under the weight of a government crackdown:
Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma's ruling junta has revealed.
The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."
Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand.
And what is the response from the left? Talk Left says:
This is a huge human rights violation. Amnesty International is calling for an international arms boycott to Myanmar.
As for what's being done about it, not much that I can tell. The U.N. Envoy was scheduled to meet with the leaders of the Myanmar military junta but it's now been delayed.
Yes, if Amnesty International could just convince the Chinese to stop selling arms to Burma....that's realistic. Shakespeare's Sister is also frustrated by U.N.'s slow progress: "Meanwhile, the UN envoy is still being stalled by the junta, and it will only be increasingly difficult to get accurate information out of Myanmar, as soldiers continue to go 'to hotels in search of foreign journalists operating without permission.'" Do these folks really believe that once the U.N. envoy is allowed to meet with the Burma's ruling junta some progress will be made?
Andrew Sullivan, who has provided the best coverage of this, acts as if he's going out on a limb today in saying that:
"Threatening a boycott of the Beijing Olympics does not seem to me unreasonable, unless the Chinese really do tell the junta to stop the killing."
Well at least that's something. Matthew Yglesias, who has a policy prescription for everything, can only muster this in response to the crackdown:
"It bears mentioning that things seem to have gone entirely to hell in Burma, with reports now coming out that the death toll in the crackdown has been higher than it initially appeared.
Bears mentioning? How about a suggested course of action? It's the same at the Huffington Post, where Jim Wallis laments that "The news this afternoon from Myanmar/Burma is not good." The DailyKos makes no mention of the crackdown at all, and the blog at the American Prospect doesn't appear to have mentioned Burma all week. What gives?
Surely the left is just as outraged by the events in Burma as we are, but what do they suggest be done about it? Nothing apparently, except wait for the United Nations, which will also do nothing. Wait, I've found a diarist at DailyKos with a plan:
Speak out to stop the massacre! We are asking you to wear red to demonstrate that students everywhere care about the situation in Burma.
That'll show the junta. Ace has a pretty spot-on analysis of why "for the left the proper way--the only way--to deal with brutal murderers and tyrants is to caterwaul about it and peacock-preen their pretty feathers of righteous indignation." It's worth reading the whole thing.
