Anyone looking for true bravery found it last week.

Not in the gasbag-athon between Columbia University's president and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Not in presidential wannabe John Edwards announcing he'll accept public financing for his campaign. Hardly impressive when he could finance the whole shootin' match with the stroke of a pen.

No, courage showed itself in an unusual place — Myanmar — and wore robes the color of old blood, older bricks. Pluckiness sported a shaved head and bare feet. Defiance was armed only with holy words and photos of Buddha.

What began as a protest of government fuel-price hikes has morphed into a full-blown uprising led by monks and nuns in Myanmar, the Southeast Asian nation formerly known as Burma.

All week, Buddhist monks have been standing up to one of the world's cruelest regimes. On Tuesday, 10,000 monks reportedly led 100,000 citizens in a march through the capital, Yangon, in defiance of the country's generals.

In an age of improvised weapons and suicide bombers, when everyone is as mad as hell and packing heat, it was nothing short of inspiring to see a long saffron line of monks armed with nothing but righteousness and prayer stand up to one of the globe's cruelest regimes.

The military junta that has ruled Myanmar for decades has no compunction about smashing dissent. This includes killing or imprisoning anyone who gets in its way, reportedly using slave labor to build infrastructure and keeping the country in an information lockdown, allegedly to prevent influence from foreign "stooges." The junta loves that word.

Needless to say, journalists need not apply. In 2002, I managed to sneak into Myanmar for a week. What I found was a hot-weather version of what I imagine North Korea to be, if that country had religion.

The general feeling among the populace was a scared-yet-exasperated paranoia. The Burmese know Big Brother is watching them, and one wrong conversation could land them in prison.

That's particularly true when it comes to foreigners. In most places that see few Westerners, a visitor is the subject of abject curiosity. Not in Myanmar. Westerners are politely but assiduously avoided. People speak anonymously, if at all. Self-preservation is a powerful thing.

For most in this former British colony, there was, quite simply, no outside information. The government blocks foreign news sites and e-mail services in some of the planet's strictest Internet control. When I was there, Ne Win, a ruthless dictator who ruled the country for 26 years, died in Yangon. I got it from the BBC. The Burmese I spoke to thought I was kidding.

But two factors — one new, the other ancient — could spell the beginning of the junta's end.

First, international sanctions against Myanmar have been in place since 1996. And on Thursday, President Bush announced new ones.

But in a country awash in drug money, natural gas and resources, sanctions have barely made the junta flinch. Most of the new skyscrapers and swanky hotels cropping up in Yangon are courtesy of the Chinese: Myanmar feeds China's insatiable need for natural resources, sanctions be damned.

And therein lies the rub.

Businessmen, particularly those with international interests, rely on the Internet. And a host of proxy servers and encrypted e-mail accounts have popped up to circumvent government controls.

That means photos and video of the very stuff Myanmar's junta wants to suppress have appearing hourly on CNN and in surreptitiously accessed Burmese e-mail accounts. The information genie is out of the bottle.

To stop the flow of images and unofficial news reports regarding the protests, Internet access in Myanmar was cut off Friday. It was briefly restored for a few hours on Saturday.

Second, the Burmese are devoutly Buddhist, which helps explain why only nine people have been killed in this latest uprising. Even gun-toting soldiers deployed to a temple to prevent monks from entering reportedly first removed their shoes, a sign of respect.

Soldiers may resist an order to mow down the highly respected monks. Or an action could further embolden the Burmese, who are already risking life and limb to give the monks water and form protective human chains along their march routes.

Thanks to a steady supply of Chinese weapons, Myanmar's brutal regime is strong. But for the first time in almost 20 years, it may be in a box that international sanctions and opprobrium couldn't fashion.

And to think: It's been put there not by men wielding guns, but the humblest of weapons: scripture and a begging bowl.

Bronwyn Lance Chester is a columnist for McClatchy-Tribune News Service.