The Good

No, not Clint Eastwood:

• Monks lead largest Burma protest (The Beeb)

Buddhist monks led better than one hundred thousand people through Rangoon in a peaceful protest against Myanmar’s notoriously vicious military-led Leviathan.

The monks had called for the entire country to join them in their campaign to overthrow the government, which began eight days ago, and Monday saw marches in at least 25 towns and cities, including Mandalay, Sittwe and Pakokku.

Witnesses say the demonstration in Rangoon, the largest city, was so huge they could not see the beginning or the end of it.

That is some serious sisu, there:

The military suppressed the last democracy uprising in 1988, killing some 3,000 people, correspondents say.

These protesters are free in a way that very few people on this content can ever hope to be.  I commend and admire them.

The Bad

According to this article, those protests won’t stay bilaterally peaceful for long:

• 100,000 turn out for Myanmar protest (Yahoo! news)

In particular:

[O]n Monday night the country’s religious affairs minister appeared on state television to accuse the monks of being manipulated by the regime’s domestic and foreign enemies. Meeting with senior monks at Yangon’s Kaba Aye Pagoda, Brig. Gen. Thura Myint Maung said the protesting monks represented just 2 percent of the country’s population. He suggested that if senior monks did not restrain them, the government would act according to its own regulations, which he did not detail.

That’s probably not a good sign.  Then again, neither is this:

The Ugly

Remember the last time this “international sanctions” thing worked?  Neither do I:

• U.S. to impose new sanctions on Myanmar (CBC.ca)

You know how the ‘States imposed sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq way back in the ’90s, and the regime capitulated to become a model of even-handed populism?  We can expect the same results in Myanmar, I suppose.

The United States is expected to announce new sanctions on Tuesday against Myanmar, where protests are growing against the ruling military junta, the White House said Monday.

So it goes.