Peaceful Uprising and Violent Repression in Burma

If you haven't heard, there have been massive peaceful uprisings in Burma against the dictatorial government, which has responded with violence and repression resulting in 9 killed thus far. What interests me the most is that the Buddhism monks are at the forefront of the uprisings. This is really interesting, especially in contrast to my previous blog entry linking to an article by Zizek (a renowned cultural studies academic with Marxist persuasion) who critiques Buddhism for being passive and complacent and going hand-in-hand with exploitative Capitalism. Here are some quotes I've taken from this BBC article:

"monks in Pakokku briefly took government officials hostage"

"Tens of thousands of monks are now involved."

"A group called the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks has emerged to co-ordinate the protests, and on 21 September it issued a statement describing the military government as "the enemy of the people".
They pledged to continue their protests until they had "wiped the military dictatorship from the land of Burma", and they have called on people across Burma to join them."

Wow. It'll be exciting to see if anything progressive comes out of this.