BabbleFest

… something went boom.

First reports came as Syria complained that Israeli jets had violated Syrian airspace. Syria said they had fired on the Israeli planes, but didn’t claim to have shot them down. That surely means that, if they actually fired, they didn’t hit anything. Had the Syrians shot down an Israeli warplane in Syrian airspace, the wreckage would have been promptly put on display and Syria would be claiming it was the wreckage of 15 planes. (continue reading…)

There are numerous online tributes, memorials and commemoratives of the events and victims of September 11, 2001.

This one is among the best.

When you’ve got Buddhist monks taking government officials hostage and setting fire to cars, you’ve got to figure you’ve got some serious problems. That’s the situation in the Myanmar Republic, formerly Burma:

YANGON, Myanmar  —  Angry Buddhist monks in northern Myanmar took about 20 officials hostage for several hours Thursday until a senior abbot intervened, but tensions remained high over the beating of monks during an anti-government protest the previous day, witnesses said.

In an escalation of recent protests against the military junta’s economic policies, hundreds of monks — highly revered in Buddhist Myanmar — marched Wednesday in the town of Pakokku, political activists and town residents said. Soldiers fired warning shots into the air and kicked and beat some of the monks to break up the march, they said.

On Thursday, local government and religion department officials went to the monastery to apologize for the confrontation and ask that no further protests be held, a senior monk said. Young monks seized the officials and held them captive because of anger over their rough treatment Wednesday, he said. Four of the officials’ cars were burned, witnesses said.

“Bystanders cheered as the monks torched the cars one by one,” an activist who witnessed the events said when contacted by phone. The senior monk and activists spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of official retaliation.

This is the latest round of escalating unrest since the government imposed huge hikes in fuel prices last month, cost for some types of fuel jumping as much as 500%.  Protest marches and demonstrations have been taking place regularly, but this is apparently the first time shots have been fired – albeit, warning shots fired into the air.

Surprisingly to most westerners, who generally assume Buddhist monks are strict pacifists, the Burmese monasteries have historically been politically active,  protesting British colonialism and the military junta that seized power in  1962, and figuring prominently in a failed uprising against the junta in 1988.

Did you know . . .

The solar lighting concept is truly a remarkable discovery. Everyone has gone crazy about lights now. Previously, fancy lights were limited to the annual led christmas lights.  Now attention is being paid to garden lighting as well. Even in night lights home makers now demand variety.

The original BabbleFest material is now available again at www.babblefest.com/oldsite.

Most of the interactive features – comments, link and article submission, and the like -have been turned off.  The newsfeeds are still active, and all topics and articles are available. The image gallery and nuke-tv modules are also still working. We will be moving the feeds and other features to this site, but feel free to continue to browse at the old site.

Geo hasn’t modified the image directory yet, so posts containing images are, for the moment, displaying the dreaded “little red x”.

Welcome! If you are one of our regular readers, you’ll notice something has changed. Actually, everything has changed. For instance, where the heck is everything that used to be on this site?

We are in the midst of a complete site rebuild. We will shortly have all of our old content available in the familiar old format at a new address. For the time being, though, bear with us as we get the new site up and running.

It appears that we will be unable to transfer the old membership list, so if you were a registered member at the original BabbleFest, you’ll need to re-register here. Sorry for the inconvenience, but these things happen when you jump to a completely new and different platform.