An American diplomat in Burma reported earlier that every, single monastery staffers visited in Burma was missing all the monks who usually live there. All gone. Nobody knows if they are alive or dead. But the junta has done something with the monks who were the main threat to the regime. Now they have targeted some other troublemakers.
They're going after the bloggers.
They have the skinny arms and long hair, the dark T-shirts and jokey nicknames. But few such figures have ever taken the risks that they have in the past few weeks, or achieved so much in a noble and dangerous cause.
Since last month, Ko Latt, 28, his friends Arca, Eye, Sun and Superman and scores like them have been the third pillar of Burma's "Saffron Uprising".
While the veteran democracy activists, and then the Buddhist monks, marched in their tens of thousands against the military regime, it was the country's amateur bloggers and internet enthusiasts who brought the images to the outside world.
Armed with small digital cameras, they documented the spectacular growth of the demonstrations from crowds of a few hundred to as many as 100,000.
On weblogs they recorded in words and pictures the regime's bloody crackdown, in a city where only a handful of foreign journalists work undercover. With downloaded software, they dodged and weaved around the regime's increasingly desperate attempts to thwart their work.
Now the bloggers, too, have been crushed.
Having failed to stop the cyber-dissidents broadcasting to the world, the authorities have simply switched off the internet.
Ko Latt and his comrades have abandoned their keyboards and gone underground, sleeping in a different place every night, watching and waiting to see whether thedemocracy movement has been truly crushed or simply put onhold.
"When things were hot on the streets, we were not the main worry," Ko Latt said.
"But as the situation cools down, they will follow us. They know who we are, they know we are bloggers, and I am afraid."
The junta, with characteristic paranoia, has always monitored and controlled every aspect of the internet, from licensing computers to issuing accounts through state-monitored internet service providers – meaning any dissident blogger could be easily tracked down through hisaccount.
Bloggers were the main channels of communication from that benighted country. They showed us the pictures of hope, they showed us the crushing of that hope. And now the junta is coming for them. Once again, it is talk, talk, talk versus do, do, do. Guess which one the west has chosen.
And say a prayer for the bloggers who will suffer at the hands of those who do rather than talk.





When President Shrillary cracks down on bloggers, she will use McCain-Feingold as justification.