Beauty and Atrocity in Burma

Wisdom Quarterly; The Irrawaddy Magazine (irrawaddy.org)

Burma's beautiful Shwedagon Pagoda: 360° aerial panorama (airpano.com)

Burma has unspoiled beaches (protected by war) and reefs beyond our widlest dreams like southern Thailand's Phuket and India's secretive Andaman Island (azamaraclubcruises.com)

  

Who is this lady?

Buddhists are right (monks rally to stand against the totalitarian government in a rebellion known as the Saffron Revolution), Buddhists are wrong (mobs of villagers attack Muslim Rohingya minority along border with Bangladesh). 

  

The Lady Aung San Suu Kyi (shown left) is released from house arrest and wins a seat in Parliament, and along with her new best friend Hillary Clinton she remains silent on the military massacre of the Rohingya by a military-government that considers them "illegal aliens" or, more correctly, native non-citizens like an indigenous group running afoul of the majority culture.
 

Shwedagon by night, built to house the Buddha's hair relics (beauty-places.com)

  
Tragically there is also silence about other ethnic minorities, such as the Karen and Rakhine, particularly along the border with Thailand. If only there were a website showing the Buddhist beauty and military horror of Burma. Wait. There's The Irrawaddy Magazine. There's USCampaignforBurma.org. There's the BurmaCampaign.org.uk. There's BurmaDigest.org. And the BBC does a decent job of covering the region. News on the Rohingya can be found in the Bangladeshi press.

Great arhat Sivali, symbol of luck and abundance

• Buddhists go on murderous rampage?
• Burma's amazing ethnic Karen people
• Riots in Burma: Buddhists vs. Muslims
• Burma's secret Muslim genocide 
• Burmese refugees' grim future in Bangladesh
• Travel to Burma, Andaman Isle, Thailand, Singapore