American Buddhist Net

8 July 2008

In an interview with NPR on his latest New Yorker Article, titled ‘Preparing the battlefield', the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals more striking details of his findings on the aim of the $400 million budgeted US covert operations inside Iran. He provides valuable information on US military preparations to strike the country, on the total expansion of the Bush Administration's executive power, about the US recognition of Iran's overall positive role in Iraq and on the US support for the anti-Iran terrorist organisations Jondollah, PJAK and MEK.

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It's all those "noble lies." ABN
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Tuesday, July 08, 2008

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

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Book review of Shadia B. Drury's "Leo Strauss and the American Right" Palgrave Macmillan, February 1999

October 10, 2005
by Michael Doliner

...The visible leaders of this state are the "gentlemen." Drawn from the best families, trained to appear like leaders, imbued with the language of honor and piety, they are the Straussian State's figureheads. Although Strauss advocated a single state religion for the hoi polloi, at the top guiding the gentlemen, was a secret cabal of atheistic "philosophers." Strauss knew, and believed that all great philosophers knew, that religion is hokum. It was necessary for the masses, but not for the philosophers who, Strauss thought, would secretly rule the state. These atheistic philosophers would supply Machiavellian wisdom to the gentlemen. Drury notes that in attributing wisdom to the philosophers Strauss is not a conservative, for conservatives believe that the traditions of the society, as they have developed over time, and not these philosophers, are the repository of wisdom. The society Strauss envisions is really only "good" for these philosophers. Everyone else is forced to live in delusion. Of course, Strauss believed average people couldn't bear the truth and needed the comfort of religion, so he argued that his hierarchical state was good for them too.

Because they reason in secret, the Straussian philosophers must form a secret society in which they reveal the truth to their students, "the puppies"...

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By Tia Ghose
July 7th, 2008

It may be time to rethink the stereotype of grunting, wordless Neandertals. The prehistoric humans may have been quite chatty — at least if the ear canals of their ancestors are any indication.

The findings suggest human speech may have originated earlier than some researchers contend. Anthropologists disagree about whether language sprang up rapidly around 50,000 years ago or emerged more gradually over a longer period of time, says Rolf Quam, a paleoanthropologist at the American Natural History Museum in New York and coauthor of the new study.

...If H. heidelbergensis did have modern hearing capacity, however, it’s logical to assume they had a primitive form of human communication, he adds. Though it’s possible that H. heidelbergensis could hear in that frequency range but didn’t use that ability for anything special, “sensory systems are extremely neurologically expensive,” Coleman says. It’s unlikely that the body would invest the resources in maintaining such a system if it didn’t serve a purpose, he says.

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A new mathematical model indicates that dust devils, water spouts, tornadoes, hurricanes and cyclones are all born of the same mechanism and will intensify as climate change warms the Earth's surface.

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2008-07-08 16:14:09 -

BEIJING (AP) - Chinese police have detained a man they say spread a rumor that the Dalai Lama would pay people large sums of money to disrupt the Beijing Olympics torch relay, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

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Nopporn Wong-Anan , Reuters
Published: Tuesday, July 08, 2008

BANGKOK - Thailand's top court questioned on Tuesday the legality of Bangkok's support for a Cambodian bid to list a disputed Hindu temple as a World Heritage site, giving the opposition another weapon to attack the government.

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8 July 2008

Bangalore, India (ENI). A joint forum of Buddhist, Christian and Hindu minorities in Bangladesh is lobbying quietly for the restoration of a secular constitution that was abolished 20 years ago making Islam the state religion in the Muslim-majority nation.

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The Tibet-China talks are a sham, Sarkozy has said he won't go to the opening ceremonies if there is no progress, but after all that good food and wine, who knows? Now China tells him--with no apparent sense of irony--that he must not meet with the Dalai Lama in FRANCE because that would “would be contrary to the principle of non-interference in internal affairs.” ABN
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By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: July 9, 2008

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who is expected to announce on Wednesday that he will after all attend the opening ceremonies of Beijing’s Olympic Games, was warned by China on Tuesday not to meet with the Dalai Lama in France next month.

China’s ambassador to France, Kong Quan, told reporters there would be “serious consequences” for Chinese-French relations if Mr. Sarkozy meets the Dalai Lama, asserting that it “would be contrary to the principle of non-interference in internal affairs.”

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By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA officials maintains.

When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public health by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last October, the White House insisted the changes were made because of reservations raised by White House advisers about the accuracy of the science.

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Meanwhile: Summit that's hard to swallow - world leaders enjoy 18-course banquet as they discuss how to solve global food crisis

We are posting this flashback article partly in response to an essay referred to us this morning entitled 'Harvesting Souls for God' and Religious Harmony. In it, Sri Lankan professor and social activist Harendra de Silva decries the "aggressive and unethical" approach taken by western evangelicals in his home country. Concerning their tendency, in the words of Allen Carr from his Planning the Demise of Buddhism, to "gleefully highlight Sri Lanka's many woes – civil war, high suicide rate, corruption, insurrection – and of course present this as just more evidence that Buddhism is false," de Silva makes the point that "using poverty, destitution, war and natural disasters as tools for conversion goes against accepted norms of decency and morality." This is certainly true.

I am by no means anti-Christian. But considering how prevalent this type of Christian presence has become in the world, it is easy to understand Mahatma Gandhi's view that "Christianity became disfigured when it went to the West." Robyn
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FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2006
Charles Marsh

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia: In the past several years, American evangelicals - and I am one of them - have amassed greater political power than at any time in our history. But at what cost to our witness and the integrity of our message?

Recently, I took a few days to reread the war sermons delivered by influential evangelical ministers during the lead up to the Iraq war.

In that period, from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2003, many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed President George W. Bush's war plans, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine.

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"We do not recognise this 'Tibetan exiled government'," Xinhua quoted an unnamed spokesman of the party's United Front Work Department as saying in an exclusive interview.
"The central government will never hold consultations with such an illegal organisation."
Tibet's "illegal" government-in-exile also has no role in the dialogue, the Xinhua news agency quoted the senior Communist Party official.
The official also insisted the dialogue only concerned the "personal future" of the Dalai Lama, in an apparent reference to negotiations on whether the Tibetan spiritual leader could one day return to China and eventually Tibet.
This has been China's central position since the talks started in 2002, although the Tibetan side has pushed for the dialogue to cover a broader range of issues, such as more meaningful autonomy for the Himalayan region.
AFP | China warns Dalai Lama ahead of Olympics

NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) — Iraq on Tuesday said it will reject any security pact with the United States unless it sets a date for the pullout of US-led foreign troops, a proposal turned down by US President George W. Bush.

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Jul 7, 2008 at 5:45 PM PDT
By KATU Staff

SALEM, Ore. - Relax it and tax it.

That's the motto behind a new cannabis initiative that would allow Oregon's state-controlled liquor stores to legally sell marijuana to adults.

Initiative backers said their plan would send 90 percent of the proceeds from the state's sale of marijuana to Oregon's General Fund, which could lower Oregonians' state tax burden.

Smaller percentages would go to funding drug abuse education and treatment programs.

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8 Jul 2008

After hundreds of years without them, prayer rooms are suddenly regarded as an essential requirement for the workplace. A guide produced by St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, in the City of London, says that employers should to take into account the “needs” of their religious employees. It says that that “the business case for providing prayer rooms and best practice on creating and managing effective space” makes good business sense by “helping to attract, motivate and retain staff, and building a reputation for diversity.”

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Jul 8, 2008

On July 1, Xian opened three newly-built ancient relics parks to the public free of charge. The three parks are the Tang Dynasty City Wall Relics Park, the Tang Dynasty Ci'en Temple Relics Park and Qujiangchi Relics Park.

Located near the Gaoxin Fourth Road, the Tang Dynasty City Wall Relics Park is a long corridor about 2.2 miles long and 100-meter wide. Displaying the Tang poems and calligraphy by stone carvings, the park is a nice place for visitors to savor the brilliant art and culture of the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

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By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter

Seoul Plaza, the Mecca for candlelit rallies over the last two months, is struggling to get back to normal. Under sweltering heat at noon Tuesday, dozens of workers were toiling to re-turf the round plaza and decorate it with flowers in front of City Hall.

The plaza is regaining its green, peaceful appearance as candlelit vigils are apparently waning, with civic groups and religious leaders positioned not to hold anti-American beef protests, at least not on weekdays.

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Monday, Jul. 07, 2008 By MADHUR SINGH

The Tirumala temple, in the south Indian city of Tirupathi, is one of Hinduism's holiest shrines. Over 5,000 pilgrims a day visit this city of seven hills, filling Tirumala's coffers with donations and making it India's richest temple. But since 2002, Tirumala has also been generating revenue from a less likely source: carbon credits. For decades, the temple's community kitchen has fed nearly 15,000 people, cooking 30,000 meals a day. Five years ago, Tirumala adopted solar cooking technology, allowing it to dramatically cut down on the amount of diesel fuel it uses. The temple now sells the emission reduction credits it earns to a Swiss green-technology investor, Good Energies Inc.

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Mainly a recap of recent events, but still well-worth reading in full. As we see it, nation states today cannot function without participation from citizens, including Buddhist clergy. The keys to Buddhist participation in politics and social movements should be wisdom, truth, positive effective action, compassion, and balance. It is our hope that the American Buddhist community will deservedly come to be seen as one of the wisest and most effective communities in the country. ABN
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Jul 9, 2008
By Megawati Wijaya

SINGAPORE - From Sri Lanka to South Korea, from Tibet to Myanmar, Asia's Buddhist clergy are in unprecedented numbers exerting their moral authority onto politics, abandoning their detachment from worldly events and giving rise to what at least one academic has referred to as a region-wide "angry monk syndrome".

...The recent surge in monk-led political ferment, usually towards the aim of giving voice to the often silent majority, seems to signal a political reawakening of Asia's Buddhist clergy. Well-organized and in most instances peacefully executed, the protests have provided a resounding reaffirmation to the Sangha's social relevance in modern times. It is also a potentially profound political trend, in that monks tend to speak out on behalf of the politically oppressed and economically downtrodden.

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PREMA NANDAKUMAR

THERI GATHAI — Pauththa Pikkunikalin Padalkal: (Tamil) A. Mangai; Sandhya Publications, Flat A, Nutech Vaibhav, 57-53rd Street, Ashok Nagar, Chennai-600083. Rs. 100.

Perhaps there was a time long, long ago when all the songs in Theri Gatha were known to the Tamil people. The land might have drawn comfort and inspiration from women renunciants like Sundari and Chela to produce a sublime epic like Manimekalaiyin Turavu (The Renunciation of Manimekalai). However, though we hail Sathanar’s epic, Theri Gatha, which forms part of the Pali canon, remains a closed book for the contemporary Tamil reader. A. Mangai has d one well to present them in a free translation (with helpful introductory notes), by relying mainly on the English version from Pali by Ms. T.W. Rhys Davids. Mangai’s own Tamil study has done the rest in making a comprehensible recording of the voice of women renunciants who lived 18 centuries ago. She is right in pleading for space to seek feminist thought in Buddhism instead of reading it only as an alternate religion.

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LSU associate professor of sociology Troy C. Blanchard recently found that a community's religious environment – that is, the type of religious congregations within a locale – affects mortality rates, often in a positive manner. These results were published in the June issue of Social Forces, a leading journal in the field of sociology.

July 03, 2008

"Although there is a great deal of research on religion and health, previous studies have tended to focus on the individual aspects of religion, such as how often an individual prays or attends worship services," said Blanchard.

Along with co-author John Bartkowski from the University of Texas at San Antonio and other researchers from the University of West Georgia and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Blanchard found that people live longer in areas with a large number of Catholic and Mainline Protestant churches. He offers two key reasons for these findings.

"First, these types of churches have what's known as a 'worldly perspective.' Instead of solely focusing on the afterlife, they place a significant emphasis on the current needs of their communities," he said.

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Well-worth reading. ABN
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Naomi Wolf Mon Jul 7, 3:52 PM ET

NEW YORK - Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators of these crimes, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

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* Patrick Wintour and Patrick Barkham
* The Guardian,
* Tuesday July 8, 2008

As the food crisis began to bite, the rumblings of discontent grew louder. Finally, after a day of discussing food shortages and soaring prices, the famished stomachs of the G8 leaders could bear it no longer.

The most powerful bellies in the world were last night compelled to stave off the great Hokkaido Hunger by fortifying themselves with an eight-course, 19-dish dinner prepared by 25 chefs. This multi-pronged attack was launched after earlier emergency lunch measures - four courses washed down with Château-Grillet 2005 - had failed to quell appetites enlarged by agonising over feeding the world's poor.

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Mon Jul 7, 2008

HANOI (Reuters) - Police have detained two custodians who were about to harvest their first crop of cannabis, a source of drugs like hashish and marijuana, from a cemetery in Vietnam's capital, a state-run newspaper reported on Monday.

Police took in Nguyen Manh Hung, 44, who heads the caretaker team at the cemetery in Hanoi's outer district of Hoang Mai, and Ho A Lau, 46, after the authorities found cannabis plants grown on a 25 square metre (82 square feet) patch, the Vietnam Labour Confederation-run Lao Dong newspaper said.

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Every year across the world a forest area the size of England, about 32m acres, is destroyed or degraded.

07/07/08

About 40,000 hectares - roughly 150 square miles - are logged or burned to make way for agriculture or grazing on a daily basis.

In the past 60 years greed, wanton destruction and exploitation has seen about 50 per cent of the world's rainforests disappear.

Millions of hectares of rainforest in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil and Africa containing a vast diversity of plants and animals have now been replaced by agricultural crops such as palm oil and soya.

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