Free Burma!

McCain said he wanted Myanmar expelled from a regional group of Asian nations, calling the country's leadership thugs. He also decried China's inaction on its neighbor.

"My friends, we should kick the Burmese out of ASEAN," McCain said, referring to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The nation's crackdown on protesters, including monks, has led to at least nine deaths and hundreds of arrests.

"We should impose the most severe economic sanctions and penalties on them. We should treat them as the pariah nation they are," McCain said as he wrapped up a three-day swing the state. "I'm disappointed in the U.N. and I'm disappointed that the Chinese are blocking action in the United Nations against them."

McCain said he refuses to call the nation Myanmar because "the thugs that are running country changed the name of it years ago, so I insist on calling it Burma."

Whether it’s via mobile phone, blogs, picture sharing sites or good old-fashioned email, the consensus is that more news got out, and got out a lot more quickly, than it did during the last big Burmese uprising and subsequent dictatorial repression back in 1988.

“Sanctions are clearly failing and the junta looks no more likely to relinquish power today than when the sanctions were applied. Moreover, engagement hasn’t worked either.”

And thousands of bloggers from at least 45 nations joined a cyberspace protest against Myanmar's military regime on Thursday by posting "Free Burma" banners on their pages, according to the drive's Web site.

Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, and author of Outrage: Burma's Struggle for Democracy. He says the struggle for freedom in Burma is not over.

“I don't think it has ended, the anger is still there. And I think the gap between the military and the population at large is wider than ever because of these concerted attacks on the Buddhists monks, the pillar of the morality in the country… I mean you cannot just do that and get away with it. And if you go back to Burma's history, I mean the whole Burmese national movement began in the 1920-s when the British walked into the monasteries with the shoes on, with the boots on. And it really united the movement… In a sense it is happening now. The history is repeating itself. The military in Rangoon have been also walking into the monasteries with their boots on. The symbolism is very strong. And as in 1928 with the boots issue or the shoe issue in Burma was actually the beginning of the end, the beginning of the end of the British rule in Burma. So I think what we're seeing now is also the beginning of the end of rule of the present junta.”

As Burmese pro-democracy activists are rounded up, the west looks to China to intervene. We are failing to see the seismic changes that authoritarian capitalism is bringing the world.