BANGKOK, Thailand — Americans, Burmese and others are waging an elaborate Internet assault against Burma's military regime, which has retaliated by e-mail and a website to deflect charges of mass executions, torture and other abuses.

The battle in cyberspace also involves Pepsi-Cola, Unocal, ARCO, and Texaco, plus billionaire financier George Soros, students at US campuses, President Clinton and others.

The regime is defended by a mysterious electronic presence named, "Okkar."

American foreign policy and legislation has already been manipulated by the Internet users, including many who are not US citizens, residents or voters.

"This seems to be a revolutionary state of affairs -- for perhaps the first time, the Internet allowed members of the international community to comment and affect domestic, local legislation -- a privilege once reserved for lobbyists or, at the very least, registered US voters," said an in-depth study, titled, "Networking Dissent, Burmese Cyberactivists Promote Nonviolent Struggle Using the Internet."

A "relatively insignificant constituency" was "able to influence American foreign policy using the Internet."

Written by Washington-based journalists Tiffany Danitz and Warren P. Strobel, for the United States Institute of Peace and Nonviolence International, the report on cyberactivists shows how PepsiCo crumbled after hit by an Internet campaign to boycott the soft drink because it invested in Burma.

Burma's unelected government renamed Southeast Asia's biggest nation "Myanmar," after ignoring a landslide election victory by the party of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

Her anti-regime speeches and interviews form the backbone of the pro-democracy activists' Internet websites and e-mail.

In response, the government's official newspaper, The New Light Of Myanmar, has declared that the Americans, Burmese and others who use Internet to smear the regime's name were actually "sipping beer, going to restaurants and massage parlours, and talking about democratic and human rights affairs to such an extent that they are frothing at the mouth."

The government claimed "international colonialists, led by America, are using a group of evil (Burmese) persons living abroad. The colonialist group offer computer courses for those who have little education in America, Canada and Australia, through NGOs (non-government organizations).

"When these trainees had completed their computer course, the colonialists opened the Internet mass-media network for them. The colonialists have ordered them to distribute false information on Myanmar, shamelessly with this Internet mass-media weapon."

Internet's neutrality makes it possible for the junta's newspaper to reach the outside world, via the government's website and e-mail campaign.

One site, alerting Internet websurfers to the dangers of "disinformation" "propaganda" and the "New World Order," details "The Subjugation of Burma" under the military regime.

"Those who don't cooperate are subject to heavy fines, rape, torture, and death, and even those who do are constantly on the verge of starvation," it says.

"Is your fast food habit, or local gas station, funding a murderous fascist regime?"

"It's Easy to Boycott" another link crows. "And it is, if you think about it. Really, how hard is it to avoid eating at Pizza Hut?"

A "Free Burma Coalition" site offers, "Check out the breaking news stories, real audio, boycott information, and links to related sites."

The coalition's site is "in care of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin."

Burma easily melds with other, seemingly unrelated Internet wars.

The "Corporate Dirt Archives" site promises an "excellent source of information on corporate abuse and mayhem of all kinds.

"In addition to PepsiCo in Burma info, you can also read up on Coors, Ben and Jerry, Nestle, Mitsubishi, Wal Mart, INTFACT, and breast implants," it offers.

Amid allegations that the regime prefers to "rape and kill the Burmese people," are lengthy reports by London-based Amnesty International and other human rights groups documenting such atrocities.

US Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright also appears, blasting opium and heroin production in Burma.

"We are increasingly concerned that Burma's drug traffickers, with official encouragement, are laundering their profits through Burmese banks and companies -- some of which are joint ventures with foreign businesses," Albright said in a recent speech.

Internet activists make it easy for anyone to send an opinion about Unocal's role in extracting oil and natural gas from Burma.

One push of a button sends your e-mail comments to "stockholder services," "investor relations" and several named officials at Unocal.

The web spins on and on, to a slew of US universities which have Burma groups, and also to organizations all over the world, including San Francisco's Bay Area Burma Roundtable, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the Burma Relief Center-Japan, and the John F. Kennedy School's Asian Student Caucus at Harvard University.

The Networking Dissent report on the cyberactivists, now conveniently occupying its own website, said, "Activists already had organized on the Internet, and used this ready-made network" to escalate boycotts and legislation against Burma.

"The campaign itself was conceived through communications on the Internet. Information on conditions in Burma was fed to sympathetic legislators on the Internet. E-mail alerts were sent out at key points in the legislative process," it added.

The Internet campaign pushed Massachusetts, and other states or cities, to declare their own sanctions against doing business with Burma, it said.

In April 1997, President Clinton signed legislation that banned any future American business investments in Burma.

Activists had sent countless e-mail petitions to the White House and other US politicians.

Internet's Burma-linked activists began uploading and downloading in the early 1990s.

"Among the first was Coban Tun, an exile living in California who redistributed newspaper reports from Bangkok and other information on the Usenet system, using an electronic mailing list," the report said.

"The first regular and consistent source of information on Burma available on the Internet was BurmaNet. It took shape in Thailand in late 1993, the brainchild of (American) student Douglas Steele."

"Steele realized that the Internet could be used to fill the global vacuum in information about human rights abuses and the usurpation of democracy in Burma," the report added.

"Steele began keying in, verbatim, reports on Burma from The Bangkok Post, The Nation and other sources and sending them out on the Internet without comment.

One year later, "Steele received a 3,000 US dollar grant from the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute to purchase modems and electronic mail accounts, testing whether it was feasible to train the large Burmese exile community in Thailand to be active on-line."

Steele and other activists later entered Burma to meet Burmese dissidents.

Computer modems, software and other equipment were smuggled into the restricted nation.

In 1994, Burma's embassy in Washington DC, along with other Burmese government officials and supporters, retaliated online by posting their own text to BurmaNet.

Recent postings include documents about investing, touring and other events in Burma which the regime favors.

"Okkar, who is obviously in sympathy with the regime, if not its actual agent, has from time to time posted messages on BurmaNet designed to confuse or undercut the movement," the Networking Dissent report said.

"Without the Internet, it would have been virtually impossible in the case of Massachusetts -- or many other cases not cited here -- for activists to coordinate and bring the pressure to bear that they did," the Networking Dissent report concludes.

"Burma activists were dispersed around the United States and around the world. But, because of the Internet, they might as well have been around the block.

"Neither did the fact that Massachusetts has a minuscule Burmese population matter."

Websurfers in Burma, meanwhile, can be imprisoned for up to 15 years, and fined, for owning an unregistered modem or fax machine.

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Richard S. Ehrlich has a Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and is the co-author of the classic book of epistolary history, "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" -- Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.

His web page is located at http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent and he may be reached by email: animists *at* yahoo dot com