888 I know the future, and it is red. I claim no powers of divination, unlike the soothsayers depended on by the State Peace and Development Council. I have spent a quarter of my life in quiet contemplation. I have spent as much time in opposition to wrong effort, attempting to destroy the unwholesomeness that is, and prevent the unwholesomeness that might be. It is twenty years since the will of the people conquered Ne Win; it is nearly as long since the SPDC, when it was called the State Law and Order Restoration Council, replaced one authoritarian with another. It is five years, the maximum amount of time allowed under the State Protection Act, since the Lady was imprisoned without charge; slanderous propaganda in the state-run New Light of Myanmar alleging tax evasion will not stay her freedom. Than Shwe will be 75, and his government will be weaker than any time before as he consolidates power to protect himself- as he did arresting Prime Minister Khin Nyunt and hundreds of others. If he has any hope at all for his future and legacy, it will be in passing power back to the people, before they choke it from his throat. International guilt over mass failures in Darfur will cause the UN to act quicker; the Karen refugees will be propped up with Western money and joined by a coalition from ASEAN countries to end the government’s genocidal campaigns. And people will protest again- not simply in refugee sections of Thailand or London, but through the capital itself, the true one and the false. And people will die; I take no pleasure in this statement, even if it is my conviction that those who perish will be those who forged their downfall with wrong endeavors; it is simply my conviction that this is the world that will be.