Opposing SEX, promoting violence (video)

Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly: POLICE STATE

"Lone Survivor" - a Hollywood war glorification propaganda reel about the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan based but not telling the actual story of Operation Red Wing.

  

Stop resisting me, stop resisting me (BS)

Torrance, Los Angeles LAPD Officer Brian McGee will not be charged for attempting to murder a white surfer after ramming his vehicle during the dramatic "manhunt" for accused black ex-LAPD Officer Dorner, who allegedly went on a rampage against other members of the LAPD.

Better wrong doing right than right doing wrong

That is the allegation, but we will never know because Dorner was summarily executed by fellow police who turned SoCal into an obvious police state. (Usually it is just a covert one).

• VIDEO: Ariel Sharon
• NYPD: stop and frisk

Israeli war criminal Sharon dies (TYT)

This was done to prevent an adequate investigation that may have turned up damning evidence against the Department. "Shoot first, ask questions later." You may not get many answers but, hey, that's how it goes when working in a violent culture of killer cops.

(TYT) Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola break down some criminal police 

misconduct and a new ACLU APP to safely record crime by police.

• ACLU app lets Android users secretly tape the police
• VIDEO: ACLU "Police Tape" app lets people police cops
• Noam Chomsky: Let's end US support for Israeli crimes

Citizens can now police the police (ACLU)

Fullerton, Orange County Officer Joe Wolfe, who helped fellow gang members bash in the face of a schizophrenic homeless man before beating him to death, had all charges against him dropped after fellow killers Manny Ramos and Jay Cicinelli were acquitted during their separate trial.

 

Tampa, Florida's retired policeman Curtis Reeves, former Chief of Security for Busch Gardens, murdered a man for having the audacity to text before the movie "Lone Survivor" (see above).
 

Said it about health plans, said it about NSA

He also shot a woman after popcorn was allegedly thrown in his direction, which may have touched his large toe. Reeves says that this gave him the right to shoot the couple, given that he could (later) say he felt "threatened" and thereby go scot-free for his crimes.
 

That's funny! NSA surveillance? "If you like your freedom, you can keep your freedom" is the best summary of President Obama's false speech about "reforming" USA/NSA spying.

• Sex abuse as Westerners pay to see Third World webcams British and American pedophiles are among those paying to watch the abuse of very young children in the Philippines via webcams, a BBC investigation finds.
• Nuclear bomb keepers "cheated on exam"
• "Net Neutrality"? No way! Pay up (Biased BBC)
• VIDEO: Giant American invaders before Europeans
  

The precept against killing

Buddha and aum (Brooke Montes/flickr)

Our world is plagued by conflicts, economic and ethnic, racial and religious, political and ideological, planned and carried out by the military-industrial complex.

"Terrorism" serves as the great pretext to launch all manner of state-sponsored terror thanks to the CIA, NSA, NSC, FBI, DHS, and other spies.
  

Israel's illegal Jewish settlements (DN)

Wars, "low-level kinetic actions" (a euphemism for bloody battles, invasions, and massacres), and genocides are more than just a looming threat. They are an active reality all over the globe.
 

No sex, please, just killing (govexec.com)

The threat of nuclear weapons being used causes worldwide anxiety. The manufacture and sale of weaponry is a thriving industry. So are there wars because there are weapons, or are there weapons because there are  wars? Who manufactures industrial-scale conflicts?

• Ron Paul launches "Think Tank," thorn in GOP's side
• Obama to call for curbs on NSA phone spying? 
• Study: NSA bulk phone data has "NO DISCERNIBLE IMPACT" on stopping terrorism 
• Report: NSA collects hundreds of millions of texts a day 
• U.N. Official: Central African Republic at risk of genocide 
• IPCC report: dire risks from inaction on climate change!
• John Kerry urges Syrian opposition to attend peace talks 
• Afghanistan: Pres. Karzai says U.S. forces killed 7 children 
• Sen. Feinstein blasts Iran sanctions bill as "March to War" 
• Executed Ohio prisoner takes 25 mins to die in death penalty experimental execution with untested drug combo
• Bipartisans introduce bill to restore Voting Rights Act
• GOP lawmaker: Anti-choice bill could promote job growth if women have more babies 
• Wal-Mart joins Fair Food Program to raise farm wages 
• Labor Board: Wal-Mart illegally retaliated against workers 
• Teens get month-long sentences for sexually assaulting girl days before she killed herself
• If you want your freedom... (don't get cancer)
• Right wing bumper stickers

The First Precept: abstain from killing (sutra)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Abbot Thanissaro, Metta Forest Monastery, San Diego, California, "Getting the Message" from Purity of Heart

Man viciously attacked by bull after lightly taunting the animal and gently inserting knives into its back while attempting to slaughter him for the crowd's blood lust and amusement (Gustavo Cuevas/i.cdn.turner.com)

 

You'd kill her, but would you -- y'know -- her?

"What is unskillful (unwholesome, karmically unprofitable)?

1. Taking life (killing) is unskillful,
2. taking what is not given... 
3. sexual misconduct... 
4. perjury...
5. abusive speech...
6. divisiveness... 
7. idle chatter is unskillful. 
8. Greed... 
9. ill will... 
10. wrong view is unskillful.

"These (ten) things are unskillful... What is skillful (wholesome, karmically profitable)? Refraining

1. from taking life...
2. from taking what is not given...
3. from sexual misconduct...
4. from perjury...
5. from abusive speech...
6. from divisiveness...
7. from idle chatter...
8. from covetousness... 
9. from ill will... 
10. from wrong view is skillful. 

"These things are skillful." — MN 9

• AUDIO: "I want to kill!" (This American Life)

The result of our cruelty rarely comes so quickly.

Killing is NEVER skillful. Stealing... holding a wrong view is never skillful. When asked if there were any killing he approved of, the Buddha answered that there was only one: anger.

[That is to say, one should destroy the root motivation, the underlying intention -- which is aversion -- to harm or destroy living beings.]

 

In no recorded instance did the Buddha approve of killing any living being. Once when a Buddhist monk went to an executioner and told the man to kill his victims compassionately -- that is, with one blow, rather than torturing them by multiple strikes -- the Buddha expelled that monk from the Order (Sangha) on the grounds that even the recommendation to kill compassionately is nevertheless a recommendation to kill -- something this Dharma never condones.

• [Similarly, according to the monastic rules (vinaya), if one eats meat from an animal one sees, hears, or so much as suspects was killed for one's benefit, or to make an offering to one, is a violation on the grounds that it is tacit approval of killing. Moreover, if one recommends or speaks in praise of abortion or suicide or euthanasia, and life is taken as a result, one is guilty of killing and expelled from the Order. Why? Killing is weighty karma, very bad karma, and the Buddha went to great lengths to make this known. In ancient India he was known as a karma-vadin, a teacher of the consequences of physical, verbal, and mental action.]

Kill. Kill. Kill. And make us rich (BBC).

If a monastic were ever physically attacked, the Buddha allowed for that person to strike back in self-defense, but never with the intention of killing an assailant. 

 

As the Buddha taught monastics, "Even if highway robbers were to dismember one savagely, limb by limb, with a two-handled saw, anyone who would allow one's heart to become hateful and angry on account of it would not be following my Teaching. Even then one should train oneself: 

Even reviled dictator could act kindly (iln).

"'Our minds will not be affected, and we will not give vent to hateful words. Instead, we will remain sympathetic, with a mind/heart full of compassion [perhaps for the results they will one day face for their karma], and free of hate. 

"'We will pervade even these bandits with a consciousness imbued with good will. And beginning with them we will continue to pervade the world in all quarters with a consciousness imbued with good will -- abundant, expansive, immeasurable, free from hostility, and free from ill will.' That is how one should train oneself." — ("The Parable of the Saw," MN 21)

The Parable of the Saw

Acharya Buddharakkhita (Positive Response) edited by Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha, Gandhara/Afghanistan (Boonlieng/flickr)

"Meditators, even if bandits were to savagely sever you, limb by limb, with a double-handled saw, even then, whoever harbors ill will at heart would not be upholding my Teaching. 

"Meditators, even in such a situation, train yourselves: 'Neither shall our minds be affected by this, nor for this matter shall we give vent to hateful words, but we shall remain full of concern and pity (mudita, sympathy, compassion), with a mind of love (mettā, friendliness), and we shall not give in to hatred. On the contrary, we shall live projecting thoughts (feelings) of universal love to those very persons, making them as well as the whole world the objects of our thoughts of universal love -- thoughts that have grown great, exalted, and measureless. 

"We shall dwell radiating these thoughts void of hostility and ill will.' It is in this way, meditators, that one should train oneself.

 

"Meditators, if one should keep this instruction on the Parable of the Saw constantly in mind, do you see any mode of speech, subtle or gross, that you could not endure?"

 

"No, venerable sir."

 

"Therefore, meditators, one should keep this instruction on the Parable of the Saw constantly in mind. That will conduce to the well-being and happiness of all for long indeed."

 

That is what the Blessed One said. Delighted, those meditators acclaimed the Teaching (Dharma) of the Blessed One.

• COMMENTARY: How could the Buddha say such a pie-in-the-sky thing? First, when one realizes that ultimately there is no self, no ego, nothing to cling to, it is possible to behave in a universal way. But more down to earth, this instruction follows the Buddha's advice to his disciples to endure the abusive speech of others. Why should they endure it? The Buddha says one should even endure being painfully tortured and murdered without becoming angry -- which only harms the angry one. This being the case, keeping this instruction in mind, how hard would it be to endure mere words? It would be easy, the audience responds. Therefore, keep this instruction in mind.

How to CLEAN up radioactivity naturally

Dev, Dhr. Seven, Kalyani, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Paul Stamets (fungi.com)

Wild mushroom, Amanita muscaria, toadstool among fall leaves (Lila Daley)

We may make new problems, but Nature already has the solutions (brownsgas.com)

 

Is there anything HEMP can't do?

Fukushima? There are natural ways of dealing with radioactive contamination. Here we present three.

 

One is known but has always been ignored as it does not serve the petrochemical industry, the oily arm of the military-industrial complex (MIC). It is the use of Brown's gas (Co2 + H2O), which untested is dismissed as unreal, a product of water electrolysis.

The hydrogen gas produced by the H20 split burns cleanly, welds, cuts, and when used on radioactive contamination decontaminates it. How is a mystery, one not explored by a culture totally dependent on oil, gasoline, and toxic fuels and chemicals.

Mycological Society of SF (thekitchn.com)

The other two are more amazing because they occur naturally -- mushrooms (fungi, particularly the psychoactive varieties) and hemp (industrial, non-psychoactive cannabis). Paul Stamets (fungi.com) has already demonstrated the ability of mushrooms to rehabilitate soil contaminated by oil spills. How miraculous are the nature devas to be able to deal with nuclear contamination?

• Fukushima exploded; state says never mind
• Fukushima: crowdsourcing Geiger readings
• VIDEO: Fukushima across the Pacific

How Mushrooms Can Save the World

Fungi Perfecti Catalog (fungi.com)

(DiscoverMagazine.com, 05-31-13) Crusading mycologist Paul Stamets says fungi can clean up everything... global problems like radioactive waste, global warming, oil spills, and cancer. ...expert collaborating with Stamets to decontaminate the zone around...

(RevolutionLoveEvolve) Underground Solutions: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

An inspiring and fascinating lecture about various ways mushrooms can help heal humanity and the Earth, Stamets expands on themes outlined in his TED Talk "Six Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World" (Bioneers 2011). He has been a mycologist, one who studies mushrooms, for over 30 years. He has discovered new species and pioneered countless techniques in the field of edible- and medicinal-mushroom cultivation. In 2010 he received the President's Award from the Society for Ecological Restoration. He has written six books on mushroom cultivation, use, and identification; his books Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms and The Mushroom Cultivator (coauthor) have been hailed as definitive texts. His newest book is Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World.

 

How mushrooms can clean up radioactive contamination 

(Permaculture.co.uk, 04-16-11) ...Burning the mushroom will result in radioactive ash.... it's a fascinating proposition and potentially very valuable for radiation decontamination.

Can hemp, marijuana, and mushrooms fix Fukushima?

(CannabisCulture.com, 10-16-13) CANNABIS CULTURE - Certain mushrooms, cannabinoids.... According to one website, "food radiation should not exceed 500 Becquerel/Kg."...Not only are decontamination efforts ineffective, but TEPCO...

 

What is hemp? (hemp.com)

Hemp is a weedy crop, not a drug to smoke.

Hemp is a variety of cannabis grown for fiber and seed. Hemp is incredibly valuable, often called a “cash crop.” Hemp is a very hearty plant and grows very quickly in very diverse soil conditions. Cultivation of hemp for industrial purposes in many civilizations has gone on for over 12,000 years. 

Mushrooms far from Fukushima show high levels of cesium

(ajw.asahi.com, 11-21-12) ...Another problem is that decontamination work in mountainous areas is extremely difficult.... "I also don't want to explain why we can't provide the mushrooms because that could lead to negative publicity that radiation is also a...

A Tale of Two Forests: Addressing Postnuclear Radiation...

(ehp.niehs.nih.gov) They also continue to eat mushrooms, berries, and other local forest foods despite... Radioactive cesium can in some cases be washed or wiped off smooth... The committee concluded there is little need to decontaminate entire forests.

Fukushima radiation threatens to wreak woodland havoc

(JapanTimes.co.jp, 02-17-13) ...However, radiation levels are lower there than they are in some parts of Tokyo; ...Additionally, mushrooms can absorb contaminants from the air or rain if they're... Could the mushrooms be used to decontaminate soils? 

Radiation continues 18 years after Chernobyl

(OrionMagazine.org) Eighteen years after the Chernobyl disaster, radiation continues its deadly work. ...Revisiting the accident "that could never happen here" ...“Yesterday, all afternoon, he picked the mushrooms from the woods..... declaring, “it proved unreal [sic] to fully decontaminate settlements... 

Japan's costly nuclear radiation cleanup may not work

(Nuclear-News.net, 08-16-13) ...The mushrooms that used to provide a livelihood for foragers are... First, there is a risk that radioactive isotopes can return to decontaminated...

The Truth About Hemp (thetruthabouthemp.org)

Hemp is a variation of Cannabis sativa. It is the most useful plant known to humankind. In fact, its name means useful (sativa) hemp (cannabis). Hemp is not "marijuana"; it is not an intoxicating plant like its cousin. Hemp is used to make over 25,000 consumer products from hemp apparel and accessories...

"I want to kill!" - This American Life (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; "Adam," Sarah Koenig, Ira Glass, ThisAmericanLife.com,  Jan. 10, 2014

"No apparent motive, just kill and kill again/Survive my brutal thrashing, I'll hunt you to the end. My life's a constant battle, the rage of many men. Homicidal maniac!" - Slayer "Kill Again"

 

Adam is a killer, and he knows it. He went to kill in Afghanistan -- with bloodlust inculcated in him by American military training during bootcamp. He is the first person to honestly speak about it. Fortunately, he did it on public radio.
 

SHOW 515: Good Guys

Lots of men think of themselves as "good guys." But what does it actually take to be one, to be a truly good guy?

Act Four: Deep Dark Open Secret

In 2009, a U.S. soldier ("Adam") contacted "This American Life." He offered to send audio dispatches from his military deployment in Afghanistan.
 

He wanted to do a story about what it is really like to go to war and to kill. What he learned when he was over there as a soldier [in the service of America's military-industrial complex] was way more personal and honest than anyone expected.
 

Even Adam had not planned to say as much as he did about how he was trained in bootcamp to WANT and look forward to killing people. He began as an older liberal among young, closed minded, gung ho killers.
 

War crimes, dishonor, moral injury, suicide

Although Sarah Koenig claims Adam never did get to kill anyone, it is clear he did: He killed by shooting humans he was invading, violating, and terrorizing. He shot alongside other Americans and saw targeted victims die but without being able to be sure that it was due to his gunfire.

• PLAY AUDIO
• WARNING: Story may not be appropriate for children.

More than gang killings, Adam called in airstrikes that got many people killed. He lusted after killing unarmed prisoners in his custody. He thought of executing them and shooting noncombatant civilians for no reason other than he had the power to. But he resisted like most other soldiers because he and they feared repercussions if they were caught killing without justification. It was fear of reprisal rather than respect for life that kept him and his fellow soldiers from killing more men, women, and children.

 

Now that he is back in America, he looks forward to being given an excuse to kill someone stateside. He needs a kill under his belt, which is not anything he discusses with VA doctors. He does not consider himself exceptional or psychopathic. In fact, he is sure other veterans kill and like it. Like other soldiers, he has discussed these facts with them. But they ordinarily never talk about it outside of the military. Producer Sarah Koenig explains (20 mins). WAR

Climate chaos: Forest fire rages in Los Angeles

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

The Colby Fire is raging in the deep foothill suburbs of Los Angeles and moving west due to wind gusts and the state's continuing drought.

Temperatures are in the eighties, humidity is at 10%, and the chemtrails -- which seem to be more about geoengineering and toxic weather modification attempts lately, more so than spreading heavy metals and aiding HAARP experiments. Right wing AM radio has been laughing heartily at the misnomer "global warming" due to the polar vortex and dropping temperatures across the country, even the very chilly nights in California. But climate change is general and punctuated not a simple linear increase in across the board measures. All temperatures do not rise everywhere to call it warming.

Such simpleton logic and climate-denier misinformation is alarming. Increases in rain and flooding in one place means drought and fire in another. Hurricanes and cyclones spinning out of control is not a harbinger of a new ice age. Our declining snowpack shows movement in the other direction.

• Glendora police have taken three people into custody in connection with a 1,700-acre brush fire that ignited in the Angeles National Forest north of Glendora early Thursday, [bur]ning homes and prompting mandatory evacuations. More

Glendora castle burns (sgvtribune.com)

And geoengineering (cloud seeding, aerosol chemical cloud/haze cover, squeezing more rain out of weather systems, redirecting hurricane paths with atmospheric agitators...) does not correct what human activity is disrupting. Their are natural cycles, and there are exacerbated cycles. Human doings are aggravating the problem. The result?

Monsoon patterns are changing; forest and freeze zones are retreating north; seas are acidifying; poles are melting (in general as seen over time); coral is dissolving; toxic fuels are leaving their mark; and corporations are raking in record profits. 

No one can successfully deny that the climate is generally worse -- hotter, colder, wetter, drier, and more chaotic. Look at the places it used to snow, used to rain predictably, used to cool, used to remain above water.

• PHOTOS: Firefighters try to protect the main house as a fire burns a section of Singer Mansion on Kregmont Drive in Glendora (Los Angeles Times/Irfan Khan)

The central question is, Why? Even if all the planets in the solar system are growing warmer, our human-created pollution, our annihilation of ecosystems, our monocropping, our allowing of endless military-industrial complex war and crushing poverty, all of which exhausts natural resources, is contributing. 

What FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, and similar ideologues are doing is unconscionable.

Why would rightwingers, such as Tea Party racists and Tea Party egalitarians (are there many?), help the Koch Brothers, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council, the source of most actual conspiracies affecting the US and the world), Chevron, BP, and transnational corporations continue to ruin the planet while denying that something is terribly wrong? Sea levels are rising. Fukushima and nuclear sites on the East Coast of the US are contaminating. And Republicans, with plenty of help from their brothers the nominal Democrats, are colluding.

Meanwhile in nearby HOLLYWOOD-Land...

The West's version of Bollywood (the world's largest producer of movies, located in Mumbai/Bombay, India) does not stop even when the hills are on fire, the skies are choked with smoke, and a second coming of a post Ariel Sharon messiah is ready to launch (or be launched by the NSA, Mossad, and similar spying agencies around the world). Nominations were announced and it is looking very good for "12 Years a Slave," based on the true story of the American slave trade, and Amy Adams in "American Hustle," based on the true story of Abscam. "Gravity"? Bullocks. And better luck next time, Tom Hanks. See all the nominees: Oscar.go.com

Fukushima: crowdsourcing Geiger readings

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; SAFECAST.org; Democracy Now

Protests Grow in Japan: "Bring our message to the world to stop nuclear power plants"

Volunteers crowdsource radiation monitoring, map risk on every Japanese street

Reporting live from Japan

Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan (DemocracyNow.org)

Hiroshima like Nagasaki (kootation.com)

TOKYO, Japan - “I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world,” wrote the journalist Wilfred Burchett from Hiroshima [site of the atomic bombing by the US].

Get your own Geiger counter

His story under the headline “The Atomic Plague” appeared in the London Daily Express on Sept. 5, 1945.

Burchett violated the U.S. military blockade of Hiroshima. He was the first Western journalist to visit the devastated city after the bombing. He wrote, “Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence.”

Small, portable Geiger counters (safecast.org)

Jump ahead 66 years to March 11, 2011. Six hundred miles north is the Fukushima Nuclear Plant, where the Great East Japan Earthquake [possibly set in motion by the HAARP weapon as the US had previously threatened Japan] caused a tsunami, which led to the nuclear disaster at the nuclear power site. Listen

• "We want to fight for this cause": Nuclear refugees from Fukushima join anti-nuke protests
• Mayor of town that hosted Fukushima Nuclear Plant says he was told: “No accident could ever happen”
• Fukushima: An Ongoing Warning to the World
• Mushrooms can de-contaminate waste (fungi.com)

Fukushima across the Pacific (video)

Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; SafeCast.org, Jan. 11, 2014

Uh, Lois, we may have to move.

This map is from a detailed simulation of the spread of Pacific Ocean radiation.

It shows the anticipated levels as of August 2013. It may look scary, but the red color indicates that the levels of Cs137 (cesium/caesium) from Fukushima are 10,000 times less than when released in March 2011. The light blue indicates levels that are less than one-millionth.

 

Let’s be clear: The release of radioactive contamination from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant to the environment -- air, land, and sea -- is a massive disaster. There is no other way to describe it.

 

(Radiation on California Beaches) Last month's shocking video,

“Fukushima radiation hits San Francisco! (Dec 2013)”

 

(Bassfiend/deviantart.com)

Radiation in the air has spread far and wide. It was even detectable, just barely, on other continents. Radiation in the ocean is spreading more slowly but inexorably [with the daily dumping of contaminated water into the Pacific].

Fish caught off Japan have been too contaminated to be sold for human consumption. And wide expanses of farmland in Japan have been contaminated as well. But what effects can be expected overseas? What effects can be expected in Hawaii, Alaska, Seattle, California... Boston? More

The Silk Road (Natural History Museum)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Natural History Museum (nhm.org)

Exploring the Silk Road

Tour the Silk Road (nhm.org)

Take a journey exploring the traded goods and ideas of the world’s cultural superhighway -- one that took Buddhism out of India (Gandhara and Magadha) into Central Asia (Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, the other 'Stans), ancient Greece (Bactria/Persia, Sogdiana, and the greater empire), and finally into China. Join the Natural History Museum for the Traveling the Silk Road Lecture Series to experience the sights, sounds, and tastes of the ancient route! More

• 

  Old Buddhism in Uzbekistan, new Googoosha

  Bactria - Ancient History Encyclopedia
• The Sogdians in China: A Short History
• Sogdiana - Ancient History Encyclopedia
• BBC: Popstar President Googoosha a.ka. Gulnara Karimova: Corruption in Uzbekistan (Central Asia's largest country, near Afghanistan)
• Monks' Footsteps: Uzbek Buddhist monuments
• USA/NSA "collected 200 million texts per day"
• Actress sues over French Pres. Hollande's "affair"
• Taliban [CIA] to return to power [to keep Afghan War going]
• UN confronts Vatican on its child molestation

Historical Sketch of Buddhism in Western Asia

(BerzinArchives.com) Historically, Buddhism was found in all five former Soviet Central Asian Republics that constitute West Turkistan: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan [and, of course, Afghanistan, which the former USSR failed to conquer]. It initially spread in the first century BCE from Gandhara (Indo-Pakistan) and Afghanistan to the kingdoms of Bactria and Parthia [The remains of two Parthian Buddhist monuments each have been found in Turkmenistan at Mary (Merv) and near Ashkabat; Buddhist caves have also been found near Ashkabat]. Turkmenistan and northeastern Iran constituted the kingdom of Parthia; while southern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and northern Afghanistan constituted the kingdom of Bactria [The remains of Bactrian Buddhist monasteries have been found near Termez in southern Uzbekistan at Kara Tepe, Fayas Tepe and Dalverzin Tepe, and the remains of a reliquary at Zormala and of Buddhist wall murals at Balalyk Tepe, both in the Surkhan Darya region. Remains of a Buddhist monastery have been excavated at Ajina Tepe in southern Tajikistan.]