Welcome to fiery Los Angeles and Burma

Wisdom Quarterly

(whyintheworldaretheyspraying.com) (losangelesskywatch.org)

(LosAngelesSkyWatch.org)

Welcome to Los Angeles. (Now go home). Fall Out Boy made a comeback with ...Light em Up. "I'm on fire!" Who knew Wentz and Co. were talking about LA and it's little town Hollywood -- and why do they have a Buddhist novice-monk on the cover of their new album? LA is on fire, its forest fuming, and the Powers That Be are on an aerial aerosol attack, trying to create a cloudy canopy to reduce temperatures and alkalize the ground so nothing will grow in it. Yields are down, chemtrail-toxins (aluminum, barium, and other particulate metals...) are up.

  

A growing forest fire rages in nearby Camarillo, seen from space (NOAA/SCPR.org)

 

What a wonderful time to welcome the Summer Tourist Season, coinciding as it does with Fire Season. But don't worry, the only smoke at the is on the Venice Boardwalk with its dispensaries.

 

Fall Out Boy's Punk and Monk

(NMEcom) The cover image -- shot by photographer Roger Stonehouse -- features a "punk and monk" [shown at left]. The band have said that the artwork reflects the idea behind the album, which represents "the idea of old and new clashing. Tradition and change coming together." In a statement posted on the band's Tumblr, they said: "When we were beginning the journey of making this record we wanted to find some inspirational images. We came across the punk and monk image on the internet and it really solidified what we were trying to get across on the record -- the idea of old and new clashing. Tradition and change coming together. There was something striking about it." More

Buddhist Rioting in Burma

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Welcome to Burma. Now get the h^ll out of the country.

In totalitarian Burma, renamed "Myanmar" by the military-dictatorship led by Gen. Than Shwe, the once peaceful Theravada Buddhists are behaving like Indian mobs on the attack. The target? The ethnic Muslim-Rohingya people. We hasten to clarify that this is a cultural problem. Rioting is race-related, not religious.

Ethnicity, particularly among the poor and uneducated, divides the Burmese. But religion and race and so intertwined around the world as to make them hopelessly inseparable in the pedestrian mind. That a monastic should encourage discontent or enmity is a miserable development (and a Vinaya violation). 

  

But some monks say this is political, resisting the jihadi effort of some Muslims to create a Muslim state in western Burma. on the border of Islamic Bangladesh, whose own ethnic Buddhist minority generally lives peacefully in the Hill Tracks and Chittagong marsh region. The country was settled on the east end of India by Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, and Tibeto-Burman peoples. Burma, then, once blended with India. Buddhism made it all the way east to the shores of Vietnam on the South China Sea. 

What’s fueling Buddhist-Muslim clashes? 

  

Buddhists clash with Burmese Muslims

(The World) In Burma, history may soon be made. And history is also repeating itself in a deadly way. There is every expectation that Burma’s reformist Pres. Thein Sein will be invited to the White House this month. If it happens, it will be historic: the first state visit by a Burmese leader since 1966. But amid the anticipation is deep concern over a sharp spike in communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims. It started a few months ago in western Myanmar, also known as Burma, but has spread to the central part of the country. More

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