Stop Israeli War Crimes (video)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez (democracynow.org)

Debate: As Israeli kills of Palestinian top 100, who is escalating the violence? What can be done?

 

Israel launches horrific massacre in Gaza

The death toll in the Israeli occupied and controlled Gaza Strip continues to rise on the fourth day of Israel’s aerial bombardment of a civilian Palestinian city/open-air prison. Medical officials in Gaza estimate that at least 22 people were killed Thursday, bringing the number of Palestinian fatalities to 101, about half of them reportedly women and children. No deaths have been reported on the Israeli side.

• [UPDATE: The total is now 1,170 Palestinians killed and injured by Israel with 0 Israeli casualties in the offensive.]
•  If you do this, the NSA will spy on you

The Israeli military -- engaging in abominable and clear cut war crimes -- says it has dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on 1,000 targets throughout the overcrowded city of Gaza, more than during its eight-day assault in late 2012.

The intensification of Israeli airstrikes has been met with an internationally legal, self-defensive posture of weak and hopelessly imprecise rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, which unlike Palestine enjoys the luxury of bomb shelters.

Democracy Now! hosts a debate between Palestinian human rights attorney Noura Erakat and Senior Adviser to Israel’s ambassador to the United States Joshua Hantman.

"Israel is currently under attack," Hantman says with a straight face, neglecting to acknowledge that Israel is the provocateur looking for a pretext to erase Palestinians off their land. "Since 2005, over 8,000 rockets, missiles. and mortars have been indiscriminately fired at our civilians."

 

AUDIO: Aid boat seized by Israel as it approaches war-ravaged Gaza

 

But Erakat says Israel’s bombardment of Gaza [with hundreds of tons of targeted weapons aimed at civilians] "amounts to a massacre." 

"Israel has precise weaponry and is targeting homes," she says. "This is a disproportionate attack, by what we consider the only 'democracy' in the Middle East [a laughable claim based on the fact that not only Jews but Muslim Palestinians live as second-class citizens or temporary inhabitants under surveillance and subject to imprisonment and expulsion with little to no recourse to the Jewish-Israeli slanted legal system], by the U.S.’s most unique ally, to whom we provide $3.1 billion a year." More

[The amount our military-industrial complex provides Israel is much higher, not only billions of U.S. dollars in direct publicly accounted payments but much more in black budget expenditures, high tech weaponry, military contracts, arms sales, and mutual protection in NATO, at Security Council meetings, World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings, and in the hallowed halls of Washington, D.C.] 

• Gaza Death Toll from Israeli Strikes Tops 100  
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• Report: U.S. Knew in Advance About U.K. Plan to Destroy Snowden Hard Drives  
• United Auto Workers Announces Local Union at Chattanooga Volkswagen Plant 
• Child Laborers Found at Samsung Supplier in China  
• Detroit Residents Stage Civil Disobedience over Water Shutoffs; Activist Charity Hicks Dies  
• Saltwater from Oil Drilling Spills over 2-Mile Area in North Dakota
• Actress Laverne Cox Makes History as 1st Transgender Emmy Nominee  
• Grandmother Sentenced to 1 Year in Prison After Protest at U.S. Drone Base
• Palestinian Toll from Gaza Attack Tops 80, Including 18 Children  
• Gaza Hospitals Overrun with Victims; Bombing Exceeds 2012 Israeli Assault 
• Israelis Stage Peace Rally in Tel Aviv

Perfectionism: Taking the Easy Way

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Brianna Sacks (k llingthebuddha.com)

"K lling the Buddha" is a glib koan that became a Mahayana slogan for "do not put idols on pedestals." We can become awakened without depending on others, that is, when we awaken, the truth we realize does not depend on anyone or anything. But getting their does depend on noble friendship. So even the thought of harming the Buddha, a liberator, offends Theravada sensibilities. It makes light of one of the Five Heinous Karmic Acts.

.

Brianna Sacks (Huffington Post/USC)

Surrounded by ten other cross-legged and deeply breathing bodies rooted still in the thick India morning air, I felt a sense of triumph. I -- the buzzing, over-stimulated American -- was meditating.

 

My screaming hips and lower back quivered in resistance as I focused on the gentle rocking of my long breaths, silently repeating, “Hong Sau” as the monks directed. Swaddled in a red felt blanket under the swaying mosquito net of the Ananda Ashram’s makeshift temple, I had won. That’s how I saw my dip into the spiritual world -- something to check off my accomplishment list.

 

Some did try to kill the Buddha like Angulimala.

I pray to no religious leader, nor do I seek guidance from a higher power. I am a disciple of the great American religion of ambition.

• [Be lamps (dipa) unto yourselves, be islands (dipa) unto yourselves taking no other as a lamp or island with only the Dharma as your guide was the historical Buddha's final admonition (DN 16). See exact wording below.]

It hasn’t always been that way. Two very loving, comforting, metaphysically aligned parents brought me into this world, and I thank these people for my unique, spiritual childhood -- parents who often meditated against the trunk of an ancient oak tree shadowing our home because of its “powerful energy” or gathered with their handful of spiritual friends, who opened chakras and performed healing treatments. At breakfast my brother and I discussed last night’s dreams from our booster seats. Crystals and worn, ripped copies of the Kabbalah were my playthings. Everything smelled like incense. I sang Hebrew blessings over my preschool lunches, attended Hebrew school, was bat-mitzvahed, and later dabbled in Christian youth groups and momentarily found Jesus.

 

“Meditate, it will save you,” is what I grew up hearing. But I couldn’t.

When I was six, my parents asked me to draw the hurt in my soul because, as my mother says, I was born with a painful wound burrowed into my being. They kept the drawing -- one of a gray, black mass resembling a cave that lived inside my giant red, lopsided heart.

 

My mother calls me a machine, a robot wrought of skin and bone that can always push harder, do more, be better.
 

My unrelenting quest for perfection often produces debilitating panic attacks and pitfalls of depression. The number of times I have spent trapped in my car, hyperventilating, sobbing, trying to breathe into the phone while my mom on the other end of the line tries to calm me begs the question: “What am I chasing?”

Pausing, forcing myself to pull back the restless, insecure pieces of myself and look deep inside is a task I have been running from, fearing that if I do, I will get lost.

 

“You’re already lost” is a thought that often rings far off in my consciousness. But ambition is still my accepted method of self-torture.

 

So when I learned that my journalism class would be spending almost three days at the Ananda Ashram in Pune, India, before our reporting week in Mumbai [Bombay], I silently cursed everything. 

 

Meditation, which had haunted me my entire life, would put me on lockdown. In rural India, surrounded by grey shrubs, slow, shriveled cows, and red mountains, I would not be able to escape. More

What the Buddha said at the end
"The Great Final-Nirvana Discourse" (Maha Parinirvana Sutra, DN 16.33-35)

Theravada: The Buddha reclining into final nirvana, Thailand (DennisonUy/flickr)

 
33. "Therefore, Ananda, be lamps/islands (dipa) unto yourselves, guides (sarana) unto yourselves, seeking no external guide, with the Dharma as your island, the Dharma as your guide, seeking no other guide.
 
"And how, Ananda, is a disciple an island unto oneself, a guide unto oneself, seeking no external guide, with the Dharma as one's island, the Dharma as one's guide, seeking no other guide?
 
34. (1) "When one dwells contemplating (satipatthanas or The Four Foundations of Mindfulness) the body in the body, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome hankering and sorrow with regard to the world; (2) when one dwells contemplating feelings in feelings, (3) the mind in the mind, and (4) mental objects in mental objects, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome hankering and sorrow with regard to the world, then, truly, one is an island unto oneself, a guide unto oneself, seeking no external guide, having the Dharma as one's island, the Dharma as one's guide, seeking no other guide.
 
35. "Those disciples of mine, Ananda, who now or after I am gone, abide as a island unto themselves, as a guide unto themselves, seeking no other guide, having the Dharma as their island and guide, seeking no other guide: it is they who will become the highest (tamatagge), if they have the zeal to learn."

• VIDEO: Buddhist monks bless new Thai restaurant's opening

UN: Is America "the land of the free"?

Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Kevin Uhrich (pasadenaweekly.com, 4-8-14)

The Mirror Turns: UN Human Rights Committee says...

This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow)

Despite our government’s many military entanglements and abuses of authority at home, most Americans still maintain a pretty high opinion of our country and the way our government treats its citizens and others around the world. 

  

The thing is, the unquestioning zeal regularly expressed for “our way of life” by cheerleading mainstream media personalities and politicians isn’t something that’s universally shared, according to a recent report issued by the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

What's America really like? This map shows some snapshot traits (koalogist.tumblr.com)

 

Whereas it is usually the United States that stands in judgment of other countries, and has traditionally used the UN to justify the wars it’s waged since the Korean Conflict, the script has been flipped in this case, with America now being portrayed as a bully and a villain, not only abroad, but at home as well. 

Uncle Sam (Big Brother) is watching

“The committee’s recommendations highlight the gaps between US human rights obligations and current laws and practices,” said ACLU Human Rights Program Director Jamil Dakwar in a statement issued last week by the organization’s national office. “The Human Rights Committee rightly called out the United States for setting dangerous examples from counterterrorism operations to an unfair criminal justice system to inhumane treatment of migrants.”

Local reactions to the report released on March 27 were no less critical of the United States, as well as the American media, few of which gave much play to the committee’s findings.

Heads or Tails, Lesser Evil vs. Greater Evil...

“It is shocking that media in Los Angeles [capital of the world] -- print, broadcast, and social -- have nearly entirely ignored what can only be called a factual but nevertheless horrifying, detailed indictment of violations of human rights in our country,” said local civil rights activist Marvin Schachter. Schachter is a longtime member of the ACLU, both its Southern California and Pasadena Foothills chapters. He is also a member of the Pasadena United Nations Association. More

How Christianity SPREAD so far (film)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly; Americans United for Separation of Church and State, O.C. Chapter (AU-OC.org) JUDEO-CHRISTIAN IMPERIALISM

 

Garuda and Naga on Mex flag and his palace

(History) Using war to create one world-religion: Saint, Roman Emperor "Constantine the Great" (Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus, 272-337 AD) converted many to Christianity by killing those who refused. Co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, proclaiming religious tolerance for the empire. Constantine vanquished Licinius during a civil war and went on killing. He replaced the capital of Byzantium with Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), later the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for over 1,000 years.

 

SEE IT: Sat., April 12, 2014 1:30 pm, Irvine: AU-OC.org: Constantine's Sword (@ IRWD Community Mtg Rm, 15500 Sand Canyon Ave.) uncovers the roots of war and uncovers the ongoing evangelical infiltration of the U.S. military.
 

Nazi insignia embraced by Catholic Church

The story revealed in "Constantine's Sword" is shocking. It reveals the Holy Roman Catholic Church's involvement in Germany's attempted take over of the world.

Within two weeks of Adolf Hitler coming to full power in March 1933, the Vatican's Foreign Minister Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (Vatican Secretary of State, who went on to become Pope Pious XII) sent the new Fuhrer warm greetings.

 

Bringing Catastrophe to Palestinians like...

Treaty negotiations began between the Church's Pacelli, Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs Giuseppe Pizzardo, Cardinal Eugenio, and Germany 's Vice Chancellor under Hitler Franz von Papen.

By July they signed the Reichskonkordat (Vatican-Nazi treaty), and the Vatican became the first foreign power to enter into a bilateral treaty with Hitler. 

Was the murderer "Saint Constantine" really a saint?

The accord included a secret provision that the Church defend Jews who converted to Catholicism, but it indicated that it would have nothing to say about Nazi assaults against Jews who remained Jews.
 

Jesus' robe, the Messiah's Magic Tunic, in Trier

A few days after signing the treaty for Hitler, former German Chancellor and Hitler's Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen represented the Fuhrer at the unveiling of Jesus's seamless tunic, the Holy Robe of Trier, which would not be shown again until 25 years later. The same robe that had come into the Gospels as proof that the Messiah had come. That robe had become the centre of the celebration of the church's treaty with Hitler.

Over the next three weeks more than two million pilgrims poured into Trier to see the robe, now the symbol of the Nazi alliance of church and state. Cardinal Pacelli went on to become Pope Pious the 12th. Whereas it may be unfair to call him "Hitler's Pope," it is fair to call him "Hitler's Cardinal (who became a pope)."

Vatican documents reveal Hitler's Pope: Pius XII (John Cornwell)

"NO WAR IS HOLY"

"Constantine's Sword" is a historical documentary on the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jews. Directed and produced by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Oren Jacoby, the film was inspired by former priest James P. Carroll's 2001 book Constantine's Sword.

It is the story of author and former Catholic priest James P. Carroll's journey to uncover the roots of war. Carroll, whose father Joseph Carroll was a famous U.S. Air Force general, implies that there has been a relationship between religiously-inspired violence and war.

This has been taking place beginning with the adoption of Christianity by the genocidal Holy Roman Emperor Constantine I in 312 AD.

Constantine was convinced that he had won a battle because he had followed the instructions of a vision to inscribe a sign of the cross (labarum) on the shields of his imperial Christian soldiers. In Carroll's view, this event marked the beginning of an unholy alliance between the military and the Church.

Carroll focuses on Catholic and evangelical anti-Judaism and invokes the cross as a symbol of the long history of xenophobic Christian violence against Jews and non-Christians, from the Crusades through the Roman Inquisition and the creation of the Jewish ghettoes, to the Holocaust (the "whole burnt," which some deny, not to be confused with the Israeli Catastrophe, which no one denies).

Carroll also charges that there is an ongoing evangelical infiltration of the U.S. military (Church supported military-industrial complex) and that this has had negative consequences for U.S. foreign policy.

 

The film's final chapter, "No War is Holy," concludes with views of military cemeteries as Aaron Neville sings "With God On Our Side." [Perhaps the film budget did not allow for "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition."]

• Constantine's Sword (Greek Orthodox Christian TV)
• VIDEO: Interview with filmmaker former Fr. Carroll
• Jesus was born, lived, and died a Jewish (PBS) except for the ~18 years he was a Buddhist in India (BBC)
• Passover 2014 begins next week (The World, PRI)
• VIDEO: Hitler's Pope Pius XII, Nazi collusion
• VIDEO: Understanding Christian Anti-Semitism
• Jews for Judaism (Why Jews say NO to Jesus)

(PPB) Christianity took Egyptian and Osiris symbolism, mythic stories, and iconography.

Known Unknowns: How we got into Iraq (video)

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman (democracynow.org, 3-27-14)

Bush felt by John (cracked.com)

"The Unknown Known" is based on 33 hours of interviews with former U.S. Defense Secretary [apparent madman and unrepentant "war criminal," who trained his assistant, the young Dick Cheney] Donald Rumsfeld, who once lost 2.3 trillion dollars. That was the day before 9/11 distracted everyone's attention, and it's still missing.

Errol Morris, an Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker (executive producer of the fantastic Oscar-nominated film "The Act of Killing"), visited Democracy Now! today to talk about his newest film. The title refers to an infamous press briefing in 2002 when Rumsfeld faced questions from reporters about the lack of evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

We loved Don "Rummy" Rumsfeld in his first movie, "Get

This Woman Away From Me!" with Medea Benjamin

"The Unknown Known" is Morris’ tenth documentary feature. He won a Best Documentary Oscar for his film "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara." His other films include "Standard Operating Procedure," about alleged U.S. torture of terror suspects in Abu Ghraib Prison, and "The Thin Blue Line," about the wrongful conviction of Randall Adams for the murder of a Dallas policeman.

The release of "The Unknown Known" comes in a month marking 11 years since the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq (as Russia's Pres. Putin reminds us and Pres. Obama does a bad job revisiting and lying about). The U.S. military-industrial complex left an estimated half a million Iraqis dead (in addition to the million children starved by the U.S. through crushing sanctions that did nothing to former Dictator-Friendly-to-the-West Saddam Hussein), along with the needless death of at least 4,400 American troops. More

Errol Morris, director of the documentary "The Unknown Known," won an Oscar for Best Documentary for his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. His other films include Standard Operating Procedure and The Thin Blue Line, executive co-producer of the Oscar-nominated "The Act of Killing." He is a regular contributor to The New York Times opinion pages, where he is currently in the middle of a four-part series, "The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld."