PHOTOS: "#my NYPD" (police state on Twitter)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Newser; Occupy; PoliceStateUSA

F your dolly Lama, motherfather, you don't block crosstown traffic on my beat! (RB/T)

What's this, tainted baby food?! Hell no, b_tch, you're goin to be occupying my nightstick!

"I saw a movie once...only the police and military had guns. It was called 'Schindler's List.'"

Need a mammogram, b_tch? #myNYPD has you covered!Yeah you do, you Occupy sl*t. Comply, wh**e, comply! Forget Obamacare! Fusv3WhiRZ — आनिल् (@guru0509) 4-22-14.

(OS) Think we're kidding, think we're exaggerating? Occupy protesters in the U.S. were kicked, punched, maced, assaulted, arrested, and falsely charged with the very crimes committed on them all with impunity for speaking up against corporate and police corruption.
 

Lemme at 'im, let me at 'im, I'll kill the muthaf*ther! Die, you dirty hippie, die!

You're a bad man, a very bad man. All  of you are bad men. Get out of here!

 

Occupy police brutality

An NYPD (New York City Police Department) campaign to get Twitter users to share photos of themselves with officers got a massive response -- but not the kind the department had in mind. 

 

Instead of citizens posing with friendly cops, the #MyNYPD tag became the top trending hashtag on Twitter with thousands of photos of police brutality, Occupy Wall Street arrests, and headlines about unarmed citizens being brutalized by police and even shot, reports the NY Daily News.
 

Hey, [n-word], move and you die! Break his arm, break the f'n [subhuman mongrel]'s arm! Free massages from my NYPD. What do YOUR police offer? #MyNYPD (@OccupyWallStNYC)

 

USA/MIC/CIA trained Egypt

[See plenty of shocking examples of the impending police state at the Daily Dot. Our future was evident at this year's Boston Marathon, a year after launching in the false flag operation that was the Boston Marathon "terrorist" bombing of 2013, when police shut down an entire U.S. metropolitan area, acted on Martial law, and rolled out a paramilitary door-to-door "search" for cultivated-and-planted suspects, which suspended civil liberties as citizens were forced to hunker down (Newspeak: "shelter in place") so as not to be shot, arrested, or disappeared in the crossfire.] More

• NYPD's Twitter outreach backfires in most predictable way
• NYPD in social media fail with #myNYPD
• This NYPD idea backfired horribly on Twitter

I would sooner worship a pharaoh as trust the Egyptian paramilitary police.

Punishers come to punish all perceived disobedience and disrespect (policestateusa.com)

Please stop the killings and brutality! - Are you kidding? This is why we took the job.

Buddhist Brains: Meditation and Science (video)

Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Dr. Anne Harrington (hosted by the Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology at Boston University's Danielsen Institute)

(BU) Eastern Brains: Probing the Partnership Between Buddhism and and Brain Science

  

MRI brain scan of meditating monk (BBC)

Harvard University's Professor Anne Harrington (Ph.D., Oxford University) discusses the relationship between Tibetan Buddhism (Vajrayana) and the brain. The presentation was hosted by the Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology at Boston University's Danielsen Institute.
 

Want me to concentrate or bliss out? (MR)

She refers to the research of the University of Wisconsin's Dr. Richard Davidson on the brain functions of Buddhist monastics during long periods of meditation as well as American fascination with the Eastern-style of meditation of the human 1960s and 1970s counterculture.
 
She covers Transcendental Meditation (TM) and the Dalai Lama's first visit to the U.S. as well as why he was so important to the West's academic and scientific investigation of mystical meditative states.
  

It's Easier Than You Think!

Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Sylvia Boorstein (It's Easier Than You Think)

IMS: a retreat monastery for lay people in rural Massachusetts (Dharma.org)

 

Waking Up is Nonsectarian

FREE. Narrated by author (audible.com)

Every religious tradition I know talks about waking up to the truth. Every path I know promises that the direct experience of truth sets us free, brings us peace, compels us to compassionate action in the world. Knowing the truth brings happiness.

Practicing mindfulness and metta (loving-kindness) is not religiously challenging. This makes them accessible tools for meditators in all traditions. Awareness, clarity, compassion, generosity, understanding -- these are in the middle of everyone's spiritual road.

SCENARIO: In my early retreat experience I was part of a large group, perhaps 100 people, doing intensive mindfulness practice in a monastery in Barre, Massachusetts. Retreats are held in silence, so apart from costume differences, you can't tell who anyone is.

The Buddha reclining into final nirvana with artistic license, Bangkok (Clay/Mud Boy/flickr)

 

Days passed as we lived and practiced together in silence. I saw Theravadan monks in orange robes, Zen people in traditional Zen clothing, and Tibetan monks and nuns.

 

There were women in rose colored sari-style robes, and I guessed they were part of a Hindu traditional practice. Some people wore red clothes and beads, which meant they were followers of a certain Hindu teacher. One man wore a Franciscan monk habit. I liked passing near him because the long beads and crucifix that hung from his belt made a pleasant clicking sound as he walked.

 

On Friday evening, I entered the dining room and saw that someone had lit two candles on a small table in the corner of this communal room. Next to the candles was a sign that said, "These are Sabbath candles. Please do not blow them out. They will burn down by themselves, and I'll remove them tomorrow after sunset."

I looked around and thought, "Here we all are! Our vegetarian diet presents no religious challenges, so everyone can be here. We have a liturgy of silence, so everyone can be here. Each of us, in whatever religious context we live our lives, is trying to wake up. Practicing mindfulness -- we can do it together."

The maps in this book are definitely Buddhist maps. They are clear and useful and nonparochial. Truth is truth. Mind-tangles and suffering are universal, and the desire for happiness and the end of suffering is also universal. More

If I were the Buddha (video and cartoon)

Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Great Buddha, central Buddhist Island, Kandy, Sri Lanka (Tam Church/flickr.com)

 

Photog Tam Church in Sri Lanka

If I were a buddha the first thing I would do is enjoy it. When the historical Buddha gained great enlightenment -- maha bodhi, the awakening of a supremely enlightened teacher rather than just the liberation of a disciple arhat -- he is reputed to have said:

"I who wept with all my brothers' tears laugh and am glad for there is liberty!" There is a way to the "end of all suffering," to nirvana.

There is a problem: things are unsteady, unreliable, aching, heart breaking, disappointing, unfulfilling, lacking any kind of lasting satisfaction. That is a big problem. Is there a bigger solution? If there is there has to be a cause(s) of all this disappointment (dukkha).

(SubscriptionFreeTV) David Grubin documentary, narrated by Richard Gere, about the Buddha's life, full of great art and sculptures across two millenia. There are insights into the ancient narrative by contemporary Buddhists, including Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.S. Merwin and the Dalai Lama. Learn more about meditation, the history of the Dharma, and how to incorporate the Buddha's teachings on compassion and wisdom into daily life.

Buddha drawing (Arkiharha/flickr.com)

The ascetic Siddhartha rediscovered that there is a cause (craving rooted in ignorance) and therefore a way out. There is a solution: nirvana, freedom, liberation (moksha), emancipation.

If I were a buddha, the second thing I would do is formulate my own Four Ennobling Truths. Real nobility is not a Boston Brahmin birthright. It is based on one's actions in this life. Some karma ennobles us, some debases, some is neutral and leaves us just the same.

• What's a Boston Brahmin? (Slate) The Boston dialect

Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Magadhi -- the Buddha's languages and dialects might have readily understood negatives. English cannot. Their connotations are too pessimistic, gloomy, emphasizing the wrong thing. For example, when in English we say, "It's not that we don't like you..." we don't like you, even as we're saying we don't dislike you. Double negatives confuse the mind, which does not seem to happen in these Asian languages. So my Four Noble Truths would become:

1. There is liberation from suffering.
2. There is a Way to liberation.
3. There is a big problem (suffering).
4. There is a cause of the problem.

The medical establishment of the day, Ayurvedic or Allopathic, might not like it. But I think the people would appreciate the emphasis on liberty.

The Buddha cartoon

The third thing I would do after enjoying it and formulating my Dharma dispensation in a nutshell is start kicking some reptilian (naga) butt and demonic (yaksha) derriere like Saint Sakka/Saint Michael, not violently but rather like Maha Moggallana's display to subdue a disgruntled dragon when the Buddha and others ascended into space.

"Military-Industrial Complex" = JSOC (video)

Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Sonali Kolhatkar (UprisingRadio.org, Oct. 9, 2013); Jeremy Scahill, Rick Rowley (Dirty Wars)

What is the US MIC (military-industrial complex)? These militants are called JSOC.

Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley expose secret U.S. wars

Two major military raids in the newer parts of the American empire, Somalia and Libya, this past weekend made headlines when American forces attempted to kill or capture individuals deemed to be linked with various Al Qaeda "affiliates" (i.e., any and everyone accused of anything).

The raid in Somalia was unsuccessful but in Libya, it resulted in the capture of Abu Anas Al-Libi, who unusually may be brought back to the US for trial in connection with the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

• LISTEN to radio segment or entire program NOW

Dick Cheney lives on in cousin Obama

But who are the people (American terrorists, militants, warlords, Pentagon officials, CIA operatives) conducting these raids, and why are they acceptable to us the American public given that there is no congressional dialogue much less formal debate about them?

By attempting to answer this question, there came about a remarkable film called Dirty Wars: The WORLD is a Battlefield. Written by investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and filmed and directed by filmmaker Richard Rowley, "Dirty Wars" explores the shadowy world of US military terror stemming from tens of thousands of night raids on civilians, uncounted collateral drone bombings, presidential kill-lists, and extrajudicial assassinations. 

 

What started out as an investigation into a mysterious night raid in Gardez, Afghanistan, where innocent Afghan women and men were killed, ended up uncovering a covert force known as the Joint Special Operations Command or JSOC, which operates in countries like Yemen and Somalia (and anywhere around the world) where there has been no declaration of war.

Pretending Osama "Emmanuel Goldstein" bin Laden was still alive then assassinating him for a media win, then burying the evidence of the mistake at sea. CIA Psy Ops 1, World 0.

  

Mouthpiece for military-industrial complex

As Scahill and Rowley worked on the film, President Obama bragged about the assassination of Osama bin Laden, suddenly making JSOC one of the most talked about military units in the media.

What is most disturbing about the idea of a small unit of highly trained killers that answer directly to any president in the White House is that US citizens are being targeted, minors are being targeted, and some targets have actually committed no crime other than to exercise their right to free speech. More

• VIDEO: Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield As the Senate holds its first-ever public hearing on drones and targeted killings, DN! turns to journalist Jeremy Scahill, who charts the expanding covert wars operated by the CIA and JSOC, the "Joint Special Operations Command," in countries from Somalia to Pakistan, including the US homeland. "I called it 'Dirty Wars' because..."
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  1984-style spying

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• LIVE OCT 19: Amy Goodman at L.A. Green Festival Host of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman speaks at this year’s Los Angeles Green Festival, followed by a book signing of her latest book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope. Website
      Saturday, Oct. 2013, 2:00 pm
      LA Mart, 1933 Broadway #850,
      Los Angeles, CA 90007 (map)
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• VIDEO: Jeremy Scahill on JSOC war on Yemen and US citizens From drone strikes to massacres, secret U.S. military actions inside Yemen are exposed in "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield," the new book (published in April) and documentary film by Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley, which opened this summer. Why Yemen, why kill American citizens for drone strikes? DN! speaks with Scahill about two key Yemenis profiled in the film.