in the streets of Yangon, a distraught man shouted, "Bloodbath again! Bloodbath again! Why don't the Americans come and help us?" It was a familiar plea for intervention by the outside world, heard every time the pro-democracy movement has dared stand up against Myanmar's 45 years of harsh military rule, only to be crushed.
Some now battling the regime in bloody, month-long protests still hope such help - even in the form of U.S. bombing - may arrive. But others tell reporters they're resigned to a repeat of the 1988 uprising when the world community stood by as thousands were gunned down on the same Yangon streets.
This week's crackdown on the demonstrators, dramatized by mass arrests, killings and beatings, is triggering an unprecedented verbal flaying of Myanmar's generals from almost every corner of the world - even some criticism from no. 1 ally China.
But little else that might stay the junta's heavy hand in the foreseeable future.
The United States, which exercises meager leverage, froze any assets that 14 Myanmar leaders may have in U.S. financial institutions and prohibited American citizens from doing business with them. The leaders, including junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe, are believed to have few if any such connections.
Special envoy Ibrahim Gambari was dispatched to Myanmar, also known as Burma, by the United Nations, which has compiled a lengthy record of failure in trying to broker reconciliation between the junta and detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"Nobody is taking Gambari seriously any more. What can he do? He and other special envoys have been here again and again, and nothing happened," said one veteran Myanmar journalist in Yangon, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Like other international figures and institutions, including the Red Cross and the U.N. International Labor Organization, Gambari had been hoodwinked while his predecessor, Razali Ismail, was snubbed or sometimes barred from entry by the ruling State Peace and Development Council.
The junta has clearly signaled it won't give in to any foreign pressure that might lead to an erosion of its absolute power. Razali resigned his position out of frustration.
"Unless and until Beijing, (New) Delhi and Moscow stand in unison in pressuring the SPDC for change, little will change," says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
"The SPDC has virtually invented its own `great game' in which it has become a masterful manipulator and has been winning to the consternation of the wider world," he said.
However, none of the three powers seem prepared to go beyond words in their dealings with the junta, ruling out sanctions as they jostle for a chance to get at Myanmar's bountiful and largely untapped natural resources, especially its oil and gas. The regime, Thitinan says, adroitly plays one off against the other.
