"An Earthquake Rocks Myanmar and Thailand/The 7.7-magnitude quake caused widespread damage in a country already in chaos because of civil war."

The New York Times reports, with many photographs and videos. Free-access link.

"A peace prize has never been revoked and the committee does not issue condemnations or censure laureates."

"The principle we follow is the decision is not a declaration of a saint. When the decision has been made and the award has been given, that ends the responsibility of the committee."

Said Gunnar Stalsett, a member of the Nobel committee that gave the Peace Prize to Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, quoted in "Why Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel Peace Prize Won’t Be Revoked" (NYT).

In Myanmar, after heavy rains, the Thiri Yadana Pyilone Chantha Pagoda slid into the Ayeyarwaddy River.

"I was really tired that night and woke up to the noise. I was very angry and assumed that children were playing music."

"I told them to lower the volume of the loudspeakers before I unplugged the amplifier, and they didn’t understand me. That’s why I unplugged it."

Said Klaas Haijtema, a 30-year-old Dutchman, to the judge in Mandalay, Myanmar. He'd been staying in a hostel and the chants blasting from the Buddhist center annoyed him.

Haijtema was sentenced to 3 months in prison — at hard labor.

Previously, in Myanmar:

A bar manager from New Zealand and two Burmese men were sentenced to two years in prison in Myanmar on Tuesday for posting an image online of the Buddha wearing headphones, an effort to promote an event.

The court in Yangon said the image denigrated Buddhism and was a violation of Myanmar’s religion act, which prohibits insulting, damaging or destroying religion. “It is clear the act of the bar offended the majority religion in the country,” said the judge, U Ye Lwin.

Why do people travel with no awareness of the problems of violating the law in a place they don't understand? Do they believe that their lack of understanding is a laudable interest in exposing themselves to the exotic?

"All of our calculations were wrong. It was like a tsunami.... For two decades, people have voted the same."

"This is an unexpected situation...The government and the military would have had Plan A, B and C, but now Plan Z has just happened.... All of their pre-election expectations went wrong."

"It's not often that the Dalai Lama calls out a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate."

"But that's what happened last week when he was asked about Aung San Suu Kyi, who has declined to speak out on the worsening plight of Rohingya minority in her homeland of Myanmar."

"You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog. I am proud to be called a radical Buddhist."

Said Ashin Wirathu, the leader of Burma’s 969 movement, quoted in a WaPo article titled "The serene-looking Buddhist monk accused of inciting Burma’s sectarian violence."

A catchy pop tune titled “Song to Whip Up Religious Blood” is often played at 969 rallies. The movement is named for three digits that monks say symbolize the virtues of the Buddha, Buddhist practices and the Buddhist community, but its theme song is far from devotional. The lyrics reference people who “live in our land, drink our water, and are ungrateful to us,” according to the Times. And the chorus, “We will build a fence with our bones if necessary,” is repeated over and over again.

Wirathu claims that his movement is not responsible for the violence against the Rohingya [Burma’s Muslims]. But he does repeatedly insist that Muslims — whom he often calls “kalars,” a derogatory term roughly equivalent to the N-word — need to be kept in their place. He calls for boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses, warns Buddhists to protect their women from Muslim rapists and was a vocal backer of a law restricting marriages between Buddhists and Muslims...

"It is clear the act of the bar offended the majority religion in the country," said the judge, handing down a 2-year sentence.

The judge, U Ye Lwin, said that the 3 men had "denigrated Buddhism " in "violation of Myanmar’s religion act, which prohibits insulting, damaging or destroying religion."

The 3 men — a New Zealander and 2 Burmese — promoting some event at a bar, had put up a Facebook post with an image of Buddha wearing headphones. They'd quickly removed that image and even apologized:

"Our ignorance is embarrassing for us, and we will attempt to correct it by learning more about Myanmar’s religions, culture and history, characteristics that make this such a rich and unique society," the apology said.

"A New Zealander and two Burmese men have gone on trial in Myanmar on charges of insulting Buddhism."

"The trio, who run a bar in Yangon, are accused over a flyer promoting a drinks event depicting Buddha... with his eyes shut, wearing large headphones, and surrounded by lurid colours."

"The world has grown accustomed to a gentle image of Buddhism defined by the self-effacing words of the Dalai Lama..."

"... the global popularity of Buddhist-inspired meditation and postcard-perfect scenes from Southeast Asia and beyond of crimson-robed, barefoot monks receiving alms from villagers at dawn."

But over the past year, images of rampaging Burmese Buddhists carrying swords and the vituperative sermons of monks like Ashin Wirathu have underlined the rise of extreme Buddhism in Myanmar — and revealed a darker side of the country’s greater freedoms after decades of military rule. Buddhist lynch mobs have killed more than 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslims, from their homes.

Why was "the world" such a nitwit?

"Buddhist Mobs Burn Mosque and Muslim School in Myanmar."

"... a sign that radical strains of Buddhism may be spreading to a wider area of the country."

"The unusual order makes Myanmar perhaps the only country in the world to impose such a restriction on a religious group..."

"The local authorities in the western state of Rakhine in Myanmar have imposed a two-child limit for Muslim Rohingya families, a policy that does not apply to Buddhists in the area and comes amid accusations of ethnic cleansing during earlier sectarian violence."

It was unclear how the local government would enforce the rule, and the announcement could be as much about playing to the country’s Buddhist majority as about actual policy....

A spokesman for Rakhine State, Win Myaing, said the new program was meant to stem rapid population growth in the Muslim community, which a government-appointed commission identified as one of the causes of the sectarian violence.

Although Muslims are the majority in the two townships in which the new policy applies, they account for only about 4 percent of Myanmar’s roughly 60 million people....

"Soon after the fall of Ava, a new dynasty rose in Shwebo to challenge the authority of Hanthawaddy."

"Over the next 70 years, the highly militaristic Konbaung dynasty went on to create the largest Burmese empire, second only to the empire of Bayinnaung."

Empires and dynasties galore in the history of Burma, our "History of" country today.

"I’m proud to be the first American president to visit this spectacular country..."

"... and I am very pleased that one of my first stops is to visit with an icon of democracy who has inspired so many people, not just in this country but all around the world."

ADDED: "Obama Repeatedly Mispronounces Aung San Suu Kyi."

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi...

... wins a seat in parliament in Myanmar.

"I feel like crying when I talk about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi... It felt so good to vote for her party — only Daw Aung San Suu Kyi can save us from deep poverty.”

"The basis of democratic freedom is freedom of speech... Democracy is when the people keep a government in check."

"Please do not give up hope. There is no reason to lose heart. Even if you are not political, politics will come to you."

"Those who hated India, those who sought to ruin it, would need to ruin Bombay."

Wrote Salman Rushdie wrote, in The Moor's Last Sigh, Christopher Hitchens tells us:

[H]e was alluding to the Hindu chauvinists who had tried to exert their own monopoly in the city and who had forcibly renamed it—after a Hindu goddess—Mumbai. We all now collude with this, in the same way that most newspapers and TV stations do the Burmese junta's work for it by using the fake name Myanmar. (Bombay's hospital and stock exchange, both targets of terrorists, are still called by their right name by most people, just as Bollywood retains its "B.")

Andrew Sullivan resolves to write "Bombay" from now on.

I'll change my "Mumbai" tag to "Bombay." (My "Burma" tag was always "Burma.")

ADDED: From Hitchens's book "God Is Not Great":

Bombay... used to be considered a pearl of the Orient, with its necklace of lights along the corniche and its magnificent British Raj architecture. It was one of India's most diverse and plural cities, and its many layers of texture have been cleverly explored by Salman Rushdie... and in the films of Mira Nair. It is true that there had been intercommunal fighting there, during the time in 1947-1948 when the grand historic movement for an Indian self-government was being ruined by Muslim demands for a separate state and by the fact that the Congress Party was led by a pious Hindu. But probably as many people took refuge in Bombay during that moment of religious bloodlust as were driven or fled from it. A form of cultural coexistence resumed, as often happens when cities are exposed to the sea and to influences from outside. Parsis -- former Zoroastrians who had been persecuted in Persia -- were a prominent minority, and the city was also host to a historically significant community of Jews. But that was not enough to content Mr. Bal Thackeray and his Shiv Sena Hindu nationalist movement, who in the 1990s decided that Bombay should be run by and for his coreligionists, and who loosed a tide of goons and thugs onto the streets. Just to show he could do it, he ordered the city renamed as "Mumbai"....

Burma's most famous comedian has received a 45-year prison sentence for...

... for what???

Zarganar was arrested with sports writer Zaw Thet Htwe in June after organising deliveries of aid to victims of Cyclone Nargis, which left 138,000 people dead or missing when it pulverised the country the previous month.

Does the U.N. have a duty to undertake a military intervention in Burma?

Matthew Lee explains the "responsibility to protect." Military intervention is the most extreme option, but there is a policy, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly that extends from the obligation to stop genocide.

ADDED: The Australian has an editorial "Tear Down Burma's Bamboo Curtain."

Can we justify invading Burma on humanitarian grounds?

A NYT op-ed from January 17, 1990.