Holte's corner

Breaking the Constitution

This particular bill being passed by Congress makes the Patriot act seem a civil liberties document by comparison -- and the "Republicans" are busy fending off all efforts to moderate the bill even this evening. This is an awful bill, and I hope it can be sent down in flames. And it reflects a sentiment of fear that is even uglier and more awful than the actual Bill. One can see from the rhetoric in Congress that the Republicans are planning to use "Fascism lite" to win this next election. Anyone who votes against this awful bill will be accused of being unpatriotic and aiding and abetting the enemy. The attack ads are already on the drawing board. If they don't lose the election, from the sound of the rhetoric it would seem they were planning to use this new law to arrest them as "enemy combattants." I've already talked about some of the awful provisions of this bill:
in post 001190.html so I won't repeat. It has to be opposed with every fiber of our being or we stand to see our liberties go down the drain. I'm not exaggerating. This is a Rubicon for the Government. And sixty minutes won't be profiling what is going on any time soon, so we have to tell people verbally.

The Rubicon was a river that the Roman Senate had forbidden Ceasar to take his army across. When he crossed the Rubicon he had to either become a dictator or go to jail and execution or exile. He crossed the Rubicon because the issues of his time, like those of our times, were not about democracy and upholding traditional values, but about power and money. He was after absolute power and so were his backers. Democracy in Rome was already dead, and killing him in the Senate did absolutely nothing to revive it.

It didn't die because of a lazy and benighted populace. It died because of a hierarchical, authoritarian, and dishonest system had developed and institutionalized violence, repression, dishonesty, corruption, and absolutism. When the executive is allowed to define the law, to be judge, jury, executioner and paymaster, then tryanny is in the door. Wars are fought because they benefit a few people and not because of necessity or in self defense. Politics is manipulated, with the ultimate manipulation being 100% consensus votes and hand picked "representatives." Corruption is institutionalized so it is no longer illegal.

People who question or who could question. As Ceasar is said to have said in Shakespeares version; "Give me men about me who are sleek and fat and such as sleep of nights." Those who might have a conscience had better stay out of the way. Politicians like George Allen will castigate their opponents for saying things publicly and long ago that they still say privately and believe. And politicians like George Allen may thrive because they are so utterly ruthless that they'll hitch their wagon with the most ruthless people they can find. And they will do so more and more shamelessly with each generation. Where George Bush senior obviously looked uncomfortable when he told a lie, this Bush looks directly at the Camera and appears to smirk and dare people to question him.

And all this is leading to something very ugly and very nightmarish. And if we Democrats don't stop this "determined enemy" we may find ourselves suffering a long night of repression. Our enemy is not the Republicans, it is their policies, their fear, their corruption and their irrational and selfish behavior.

Maybe I should fear them, but I refuse to. I've had enough. As Froomkin says today:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
"The legislation before the Senate today would ban torture, but let Bush define it; would allow the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant; would suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus; would immunize retroactively those who may have engaged in torture. And that's just for starters."

New York times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/opinion/28thu1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

"Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted."

Which means he could use this definition to slap down martial law and detain any of us who question his authority to!

"The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published."

Awful!!!

"Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence."

Means we would not be able to protest our secret arrest.

"Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial."

This means that secret detentions "disapearances" would be legal!

"Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses."

This means Torture.

"Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence."

This means the end of American Justice. And it means that the torturers will get off scot free.

"Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture."

This means torture will be legal, which means that people will be tortured.

Chris

Staying away from controversy

Lately, I keep having to stab my hand to keep from getting involved in old controversies. When I read lies, spins and inaccuracies on the web, it usually gets my dander up. This is expecially true if those lies or spins refer to me directly or indirectly. But I'm learning I have to go against the tide "side-ways" -- because it is a tide.

If I respond directly to the people spreading the lies and spins, they will spin my responses into "slander of the dharma" and accuse me of spreading lies and spins. But if I don't respond to them, these same people spread narratives about what has happened that are simply untrue. I'll go to my grave with a narrative about the split between SGI and NST that neither NST nor the SGI will admit. Both sides are convinced that they are 100% right and everybody else is 100% wrong and prefer to substitute myth building for history anyway. At the very best they put critics the influenced by the"king devil of the sixth heaven terms." Mostly, they simply stick to a message...

What the heck. They are only wandering down the same road our ancestors trod when they created Christianity, Islam and some incarnations of Buddhism and Judaism. The reason I prefer realistic histories is that there are plenty of myths for people to follow already. Why invent new versions of old ones? If one is going to build a new mythology, the very least one can do is to build a mythology that embodies the lessons learned and institutional wisdom of the past and doesn't just recreate Ozymandias or the Jesus Christ Myth anew. But what can I say? I'm just praying that we don't get to the stage where people riot and burn the libraries, the books and the librarians, the way they did as the Roman Empire declined from within.

I'm now convinced that that is how most religious movements get established. The founders are usually interested in a narrow band of truth telling, goals, and remonstrations against the former order of things. Usually their followers turn them into world conquering Kings, and their "opponents" into incarnations of the Devil himself. Sometimes the founders play part of that role themselves. Nobody is perfect. Turning an imperfect person into a perfect myth only destroys whatever truth the person was meant to impart. It doesn't really spread anything but lies and spinning heads.

Unfortunately, nobody ever let a little thing like reality get in the way of a good archetypical myth. And what is really ironic is that all the parties to a good fracase (both the English meaning and the Spanish false cognate meaning) so enjoy a good story that they will often create mirror tales. They often know better, but get such a kick out of the fight (english word Fracase) that they don't care if the result is a failure (Spanish Word Fracase=failure). They may be false cognates but they refer to the same process and result.

One can see traces of this in linguistic survivals. Somewhere in the ancient past there was a great conflict between the Indo-Iranian speaking Ancestors of the people who lent their language to most of India and Persia. You can tell this in their Gods and Demons. Ahura (God(s)) versus Devil (Indo-Iranian) versus Asura (Devil(s)) versus Deva (Gods) in India. I figure the ancestors of the Brahmans had a massive blow-up about religion.

The stories get changed, and the parties get to fighting, and any variants on the stories get lost or buried. Heaven help the honest historian in such a situation. When the Roman Empire fell apart it was in the middle of such a "recasting" of religion.

When Christianity went from the religion of Roman Slaves (initially mostly Jewish Roman slaves) to the language of Roman Slavers, Constantine recast the religion around the Trinity and started years of internecine warfare. There had already been quite a bit of warfare among Christians, but the personal God and God-man Trinity concept never took very well among people who understood the bible in Greek. Constantine thought he was combining the "best" of Judaic ideas, Mithraic, and Pagan ones, but he was just creating a monster and turning Jesus into an Anti-Christ.

The concept of a "personified Godhead" was foreign to the language or Aramaic or Hebrew. It had to be enforced by force. Alternative texts; (not just Gnostic texts, but a whole host of alternative versions of the New Testament, (the "old testament" had been thoroughly redacted and finalized 500 years earlier), were deliberately destroyed. We only know this because the Jewish Community of Egypt so loved their books they used to bury them in "Genizah" or graves as if they were dead bodies, and they did this with Christian books as well as their own. Nag Hamadi was a Genizah.

After Constantine, nearly three centuries later, Justinian tried to enforce "orthodoxy" with an inquisition in what is now Syria, Jordan and Israel/Palestine, he succeeded in creating a reign of terror that only succeeded in paving the way for Moslem invaders. Better to live as "Dhimmi" under Moslem rule than be burned at the stake under Christian. Meanwhile a fracase (both meanings) between Zoroastorian and Mithraism made Iran vulnerable to Islam too. Islam might have swept the world, but shortly after the Prophet died there was a fracase between the adherents of "Ali" and the founders of the first Dynasty of conquerers.

In all these cases the "fracases" between people have labelled themselves as being about doctrines and truths, but have been in fact about power, followers, and dominance. In most of these cases neither side has been entirely right or entirely right -- but both sides have tried to convince their followers that they were so.

The trouble is that in order to convince naive people that they are 100% right and their opponents are 100% wrong, somebody has to be demonized, lies have to be told, the storiest spun into twisted caracatures (I'll correct the spelling later) of their original content, and basically the spinners have to lie. This means that in the history of religion Mara has won about 80% of the battles and truth 20%. With those odds no wonder people suffer so.

Chris

Another Brick in the Wall

If anyone thinks that the "compromise" that Senators Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and Senator Warner just offered really protects the Constitution or is a step in the right direction. They should read this articles, and my letter to Senator Graham:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092501514.html

I sent this message to Senator Graham:

Senator Graham;

I know you think you have "compromised" with the Bush Administration on laws allowing detentions of persons as "enemy combattants," but expanding the definition the way they wanted it expanded opens a pandoras box of future probabilities for abuse. Already we've seen that a huge number of people have been detained whose only fault was to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and who are still being held simply because the Government is unwilling to admit they made mistakes and has the power to do so.

Under the expanded definitions, someone who contributes to an Irish Catholic Charity could someday be held as an "enemy combattant" simply because that charity supports an auxilliary of the IRA -- even though the person doing so has know knowledge that that is true. They claim that this law would never be applied against citizens, which is awful enough, but as the Washington Post notes;

"Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said that by including those who "supported hostilities" -- rather than those who "engage in acts" against the United States -- the government intends the legislation to sanction its seizure and indefinite detention of people far from the battlefield." This could eventually include people like you and I. Does that sound far-fetched? As critics note:

"The definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant."

And if no-one can challenge their detention in the courts, then the government has the right to disapear you, me, or anyone it feels is aiding and abetting the enemy. Today it could be "Democrats" and "liberals", tomorrow Republicans who take the Constitution too seriously. The enemy for the moment may be "muslim extremists" but tomorrow it could be "second amendment backers," or "dissident Congressmen."

Think about it. Mistakes happen. Even worse, if the Government is given a power, corrupt or perverse persons generally will abuse it. We are not immune from that in this country.

The can of worms opened up with secret evidence, indefinate detentions and "aggressive interrogation" (torture-lite), is something that is so reprehensible that I would think that any decent American who values the constitution would be aghast at the very notion of ratifying this behavior.

If anything the perpetrators of these things should be getting investigated, facing subpoenas, impeachment, and jail-time, not being compromised with.

This is awful stuff. And the one thing that is certain is that give the Government an inch and it will take a mile -- expecially this bunch in the White House right now.

Chris

Rosh Hashana and Starting Over

I have fallen in love with the sages of Judaism. That doesn't mean I've become a fanatic convert. It just means that I'm finding congruence between what they are saying and my evolving understanding of Buddhism, religion and life. I haven't compromised my beliefs, just learned to see all religion as figurative narrative meant to guide people to enlightenment -- and to hold together communities.

To me Judaism is becoming another religious language I'm learning to speak. This all started when some Kaballist writings I was reading resonated with ideas from the Nirvana Sutra and Nichirenism that I'd been studying. It was thanks to that story about the PaRDeS that I finally understood the sixteenth chapter of the Lotus Sutra and the story of the Physician and his sons differently. And of course if I hadn't been meditating on that story and the meaning of the Lotus Sutra I never would have picked up the PaRDeS story from the particular angle I picked up from. This happened in 2002. It is hard to believe it has been that long.

At any rate now it is another Rosh Hashana, and I wish you all a wonderful "Shana Tova." -- A good year of good life.

"You must have done something"

When I read about the repression era in Argentina, what struck me hardest was the arbitrariness and inaccuracy of it. Repression is always incredibly stupid. It drives the power hungry underground, it rarely actually captures its purported targets, it destroys all that is worthy and noble about a society, and it rarely accomplishes its stated mission. The motto in Argentina was "you must have done something." So imagine my surprise when I found out my own country was engaging in this same stupidity!

The fact is, they disapeared people and tortured them. The fact is they disapeared the wrong people. And not only did they do this, but they disapeared innocent people and tortured them anyway. And not only have they done this but they want to keep most of the people they disapeared after 9/11 indefinately. The proof of the idiocy and inaccuracy of the effort is all over the news the past few days. A canadian national was arrested, sent to Syria and tortured on mistaken identity. His story is all over the news. The US is a pariah all over the world. And there is one administration rightly to blame; the Bush Administration.

To make matters worse, these bald faced hypocrits still claim they were justified. They even still claim it works, and they use popular media to get that message out. For years now a narrative has gone out that the "dirty wars" were what "really" won the cold war -- and now we have a new dirty war in the name of Allah. Oh excuse me, the name of God.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/paper/

The current affairs about the US and Torture have been so shocking to me largely because I've been reading on the subject, from a human rights point of view, since at least the Carter Administration. What this reveals about the motives, deceptiveness, past behavior, and sheer vileness of some present and past officials is shocking.

What side are these officials on? The side of the Constitution or the side of oppression, fascism and authoritarianism? How can the President talk about "freedom on the March" while rendering moral support to torture and murder? If they are not on the side of the Constitution, then it is they, and not the people they lay charges against, who are the traitors to the Country. They take an oath to uphold the constitution. That oath should not be broken by lip service.

He honestly can't. But that doesn't stop him.

Now it is turnng out that evidence is coming out that the illegal kidnappings and arrests (if there is no court order and no due process it is illegal) of "detainees" by the US has been inaccurate and gotten the wrong people. Some claim that there are 9 innocent people for every one guilty party. And since they have all been treated shamefully the administration now is afraid to release them lest they sue or prosecute them.

Here is circumstantial evidence for past crimes, and primae facae evidence of current crimes and misdemeaners! No wonder the administration is trying so hard to get "aggressive interrogation" legalized. The only thing I can be thankful for is that, initially at least, the Administration felt constrained by US law and so we have a living victim rather than a permanently "disapeared" statistic.

Senator Frist says:
http://frist.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=1648&Month=6&Year=2004

“These seven men are a stirring example of the cruel torture inflicted on Iraqis under the stifling dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. They were made scapegoats for Saddam’s mismanagement of the Iraqi economy. They were unfairly charged with the crime of handling U.S. currency. They were jailed for seven months in Abu Ghraib prison. As a final humiliating punishment, Saddam’s regime ordered the surgical removal of their right hand and scarred their foreheads. Their lives were forever changed by the brutal actions of a madman."

Is he talking about Saddam Hussein, or the current dirty war. Since Saddam has been deposed thousands have been arrested, detained, and since the last visit by Negroponte to Iaq, 15-60 people a day have been disapeared, tortured, and dumped on the streets in Baghdad.

Nobody disagreed that Iraq needed to be freed. But what has happened there is such a scale of magnitude worse than what happened under Saddam, that the words "madmen" can only be applied now to the chief architects of that war. People who lied our way into the country, refused to provide the kind of effort needed to make a successful regime change, and now want to keep us there despite evidence that we are only making things worse by staying the course the way we are.

“The personal stories epitomize why a free Iraq, absent from the tyrannical Saddam regime, is necessary and just. I thank each of them for their bravery in sharing their personal experiences, and remain committed to staying the course to bring peace and democracy to Iraq.”

If it was Evil for Saddam to torture his victims. It is a scale of magnitude worse what is going on now. Local reporters, and even military people, believe that this is going on systematically as part of efforts by the Shiite led and Muktadr Sadr infiltrated Government to fight off a mostly Sunni insurgency. To me this is the 'circumstantial evidence' of past crimes as well. Disapearances and the torture of victims was something that the dictators of South America did during their dirty wars in the 60's, 70's and 80's. They alleged at the time that the CIA was behind them. The modus operandi was similar with the exception of the dumping on the streets. In South America the bodies disapeared as well. Now Negroponte is defending the same kinds of interrogation methods he denied defending when he was pro-consul to Honduras in the 80's.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/nation/15546871.htm?source=rss&channel=ohio_nation
Months ago Fox reported this:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175704,00.html

However, Sunni Arab anger welled up Wednesday following revelations by the Shiite prime minister that 173 detainees, malnourished and some showing signs of torture, had been found in an Interior Ministry building seized by U.S. troops in Baghdad last weekend. Most were believed to be Sunni Arabs.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari promised a full investigation and punishment for anyone guilty of torture. But Sunni leaders claimed the Shiite-led security forces were trying to intimidate Sunnis from voting and demanded an international investigation.

Most insurgents are Sunnis, while Shiites and Kurds dominate the U.S.-backed security services.

Meanwhile, U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, met in Baghdad with al-Jaafari, but neither spoke to the media.

He was sent down to Iraq to supposedly advise Al Jaafari to stop detaining and torturing prisoners, but after he left, the bodies started showing up on the streets murdered and tortured. This is dirty war, pure and systematic. And if the Sunni's are retaliating in kind, that only goes to indicate why it is called dirty war. But as anyone who follows the history of what happened in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador during the 70's and 80's, Negroponte seems to be a covert expert on "aggressive interrogation." And his real beliefs are coming out now when he defends current efforts;

"Bush's national intelligence director, John Negroponte, said the interrogation program has had ``precious little activity of that kind for a number of months now'' because of questions about its legality. But, he said, it is important that the program continue."

He has experience in these things. He thinks they work.

Chris

Historicity and Religion

One of the points I've been driving at is the importance of the Nirvana Sutra's "four assurances:"

• "To abide in the dharma and not the person":
• "To abide in Sutras of Ultimate Truth and not in Sutras of Incomplete Truth"
• "To abide in the meaning and not the word"
• "To abide in Wisdom and not in Consciousness"

And the importance of applying them, not only to our study of Buddhism, but also to our study of the politics, religion, history and mythology of our general society. To reinforce this point it should be considered that even the sutras such as the Nirvana Sutra, were probably not literally authored by the Buddha -- and that those who have practiced these teachings have known that all along!

Reading assignment:

Peggy Morgan's essay:

http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/5/morgn981.htm

Peggy writes in an article "Historical Claims as an Issue in Ethics" quoting the :

The authority of Buddhist suutras has traditionally rested on
their being Buddha vac or Buddha vacana, the word of the
Buddha, and this has usually been understood as the word of the historical
Buddha Shaakyamuni. The Lotus Suutra presents itself as the teaching
of Shaakyamuni Buddha dwelling in the city of King's Home (Raajag.rha)
on Vulture's Peak or Mount of The Numinous Eagle (Gridhaki.s.ta) surrounded
by many arhants and bodhisattvas and emitting a white light from the circle
of hair on his forehead. The white light is seen as a portent and "it is
because he wishes all living beings to be able to hear and know the Dharma
(teaching/truth), difficult of belief for all the worlds, that he displays
this portent" (8).

This indicates that the story is to be taken figuratively.

She continues:

That this is understood as claiming a literal root in the life of the historical Buddha can be illustrated by the struggle of a Tibetan student studying at Indiana University when he first read the Lotus Suutra. "As a devoted Buddhist, he accepted the verdict of his tradition that all Mahaayaana scriptures (including this very peculiar suutra) were the word of the Buddha Shaakyamuni. But at the same time it seemed quite clear to him that the Lotus Suutra conflicted with everything that he, as a Mahaayaana Buddhist monk, had been taught and said 'I can't believe that the Buddha would say such things'" (9).

Next she raises the authenticity question:

The setting is a mixture of historically linked and mythological description which raises real questions about the origins and authority of the suutra. Its emergence on the stage of history is described by Williams in the following way.

The earliest Chinese translation was made by Dharmarak.sa in 286 CE and revised in 290 CE. The version which conquered East Asia, however, and therefore by far the most significant version given the suutra's importance in East Asian Buddhism, was the Lotus translated by Kumaarajiiva and his team of translators in 406. . . . Kumaarajiiva's Lotus Suutra consists of twenty eight chapters. It is not a homogeneous work. Japanese scholars, who have carried out extensive study of the Lotus Suutra, are inclined to see the oldest part of the text as having been composed between the first century BCE and the first century CE (chapters one to nine, plus chapter seventeen). Most of the text had appeared by the end of the second century (10)

What she is quoting from Williams describes Buddhism's evolution from a disparate and sometimes combattive set of oral traditions into even more diverse written traditions. The Lotus Sutra also represents an effort to syncretize these traditions into a useful whole. She continues:

To support his statements, Williams quotes two Japanese and one western scholar
(11).

The literal link of the Lotus Suutra with the historical
Buddha Shaakyamuni is thus questioned in historical scholarship, including
that done by Buddhist scholars, along with that of other great Mahaayaana
suutras. (D.K.) For many historically-minded people this tension
can present a crisis of confidence and the raising of what is an ethical
question about making claims for the suutra's origin that are not
'true', which tends in this context to mean historically accurate. If people
have been and are being told that this suutra was preached on the
Vulture's Peak during his lifetime by the Buddha Shaakyamuni and they then
find out that there is good reason for questioning that this is historically
the case, there might well follow a crisis of confidence in the integrity
of the whole tradition of the teaching and the authority figures who have
handed on that tradition.

This sounds harsh as I have stated it, but I think it is a realistic presentation
of the challenge involved. It is a challenge that has been experienced
by many Christians as a result of historical critical work on the Christian
Bible during the last century or more and is therefore a familiar one to
westerners coming into Buddhist scholarship. There is an imaginative exploration of the challenge in the life of one man in the nineteenth century novel by Mrs. Humphrey Ward entitled Robert Elsmere
(12).

The point here is that anyone studying religion soon finds out that all religions represent "accepted literature" -- and that whether they are attributed to God, or to a Buddha, they have been written down and edited by human beings seeking to tell a story. Western Religious authorities have trouble dealing with this truth, and so do some Buddhists. But the truth is it should be easier to deal with this realization as Buddhists because of the message of the Nirvana Sutra I alluded to in the opening. She continues:

But the challenge should not be seen as one
that comes to the material and eastern Buddhists from the outside culturally
and solely as part of a package of post-enlightenment western thought.
The distinguished Japanese thinker Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–1746 CE) also
questioned Shaakyamuni Buddha's authorship of the Mahaayaana suutras
and says:

The scholars of later generations vainly say that all the teachings came directly from the golden mouth of the Buddha and were intimately transmitted by those who heard him frequently (13).

Tominaga Nakamoto seems to have been the first writer "systematically to
question the assumption that the Mahaayaana suutras, or indeed others, were transmitted directly from the Buddha himself. He did this by the critical, historical method of juxtaposing innumerable variations in the various
texts and illustrating how these arose in order for some point to be made
over against another school" (14).
He did this entirely independently of western scholarship. He states that:

We can tell that for long after the Buddha's decease there
was no fixed exposition among his followers and there were no writings
upon which one could depend. Everybody renewed the teachings according
to their opinions and passed it on orally (15).

Many of the suutras were compiled by people five hundred years after the Buddha, so they contain many words from these five hundred years (16).

Finally she gets to her essential point:

This kind of challenge made on the basis of historical investigations and
claims about historical truth needs to be taken seriously within as well
as outside religions, if scholars and members of traditions are to communicate
with each other. But, being more phenomenological, so does the style of
language being used by a tradition in the claims that it makes, and with
it the possibility that different kinds of truth claims are being made.
One of the best investigations and analyses of the issue of the claims
of suutras to be the word of the Buddha, to my knowledge, is that
presented in two articles in the journal Religion. in 1981 and 1982
by Graeme MacQueen. His investigation uses the evidence of the tradition
itself to build a coherent picture. He notes that at the time of the Mahaayaana
suutras' emergence, traditionalists in the Buddhist community called
attention to the fact that these were not literally the word of the Buddha
as it was collected in the Pali Canon and that they were therefore spurious.
MacQueen investigates what the Pali Canon itself takes as the authority
behind a suutra and finds a significant number of suutras
there also that are spoken by other than the Buddha but which are included
for one of three main reasons: because the Buddha approved of what was
said by a disciple, because he invites and gives someone permission to
teach and because he affirms a person's wisdom and ability, so by implication
approves what they teach. These are all seen as Buddha vacana in
some way. All of these, though, assume the existence of the historical
Buddha to validate them. But MacQueen also describes a purely functional
understanding of Buddha vacana (the word of the Buddha) and that
is described in the Pali Canon itself.

The problem with this approach is that literalism belies the importance of the Buddha's admonitions to "abide in the dharma and not the person" and to seek ultimate truth. This fairly requires that people contemplate what is being said every bit as much as who said it. The Buddha never admonished his people to such literalism as so many of them seek. Even in the Pali Canon, as she notes next, the Buddha says:

The doctrines, Upali, of which you may know: 'These doctrines
lead one not to complete weariness (of the world), nor to dispassion, nor
to ending, nor to calm, nor to knowledge, nor to the awakening, nor to
the cool (nibbana)'—regard them definitely as not Dhamma, not the
discipline, nor the word of the Teacher. But the doctrines of which you
may know. 'These doctrines lead me to complete weariness, dispassion, ending,
calm, knowledge, the awakening, the cool'—regard them unreservedly as Dhamma, discipline, the word of the Teacher (17).

Moreover, Buddhism specifically, and all religion generally, relies not on literalism or even material reality, but on "inwardness." The spiritual is more pscyhological than materially phenomenal. It is the kind of reality that allows people to build, to pray, to hope, to dream; and to find ways to turn their dreams into realities. When one lives life that way, the Buddha is always present in ones heart. Not literally, but real nevertheless.

She explains:

Mahaayaana suutras such as the Lotus do not rest, however, on this kind of principle alone. They set a scene in which the Buddha is still present so their origins are not restricted to the time of his historical birth as Shaakyamuni. MacQueen's understanding that this is not a fraudulent claim rests on an appreciation of the Mahaayaana belief that the Buddha had never gone away and is still present, though only the faithful are aware of this. There is a completely new emphasis and understanding of the Buddha as more than an enlightened teacher in history. Of course Mahaayaana Buddhists may claim that it is not discontinuous with the understanding within the Pali Canon, though it is not the understanding developed in Theravaada Buddhism. The mythological setting of the giving of the teaching in the Lotus and other suutras sets them against this background and there is in the text a dharmabhaa.naka, an inspired speaker who is the channel and messenger. Williams gives an example from the Pratyutpanna suutra of this being attained through meditation practice.

While remaining in this very world-system that bodhisattva sees the Lord, the Tathaagata Amitaayus; and conceiving himself to be in that world system he also hears the Dharma. Having heard their exposition he accepts, masters and retains those Dharmas. He worships, venerates, honours and reveres the Lord . . . Amitaayus. After he has emerged from that samadhi (meditative absorption) that bodhisattva also expounds widely to others those Dharmas he has heard, retained and mastered them (18).

Finally we get to the subject of Upaya or skillfulness, which she skillfully explains:

In the case of the Lotus Suutra we can add to MacQueen's exploration the general understanding that derives from the suutra itself that teaching is a device and that things taught have only an interim truth, a truth that is useful if it takes people along the path towards enlightenment. This fits in with the quotation from the A"nguttara Nikaaya, given above. The whole tone of the scripture is quite different from any intent to claim historical validity. It is mythological, poetical and full of imaginative narrative (stories, parables) intended to produce insight and wisdom not factual knowledge.

In the Lotus, the Buddha is no longer regarded as a mere mortal but as a sublime being with supernatural powers who preaches in a mythological paradise surrounded by thousands upon thousands of followers (19).

Michio Shinozaki has stated the situation for Buddhists in the following way:

From the perspective of religious experience, the Buddha will appear together with us on the Divine Vulture Peak when we are upright and gentle and wish to see the Buddha. The Divine Vulture Peak is the sacred place where the Lotus was expounded by Shaakyamuni Buddha. Such a place can be everywhere for religious people. When people seek to meet the Buddha, wherever they are; it is the place for 'uniting' between the Buddha and the people in their vision (20).

Historical context is only one device used in Buddhism. The historical Buddha himself was an upaaya kausalya, a skillful means for helping beings. The real source of the teaching is beyond a historical figure.

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In other words, the admonitions of the Nirvana Sutra apply to the Lotus and the Nirvana sutra themselves.

The power of story telling, the hero as "figurative embodying myth."

Archetypes are something that religious thinkers talk about a lot. Joseph Campbell for example compared the arcthetypes of different religions and devoted entire Books to comparing and contrasting them. Thinkers and writers use these images to convey information intended to guide their followers. If one looks at religion, any religion, they all use these models and stories in a similar fashion. The hero is a "figurative embodying myth" used to convey the message desired by those teaching a person as a hero.

This is a well known reality, and the reality of religious thinking is exploited systematically by people who know this reality, so it is important that we understand what they are doing and why they do it, and then use these realities well.

Wikipedia defines an archetype as:

An archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned or emulated. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality or behaviour. This article is about personality archetypes, as described in literature analysis and the study of the psyche.

Archetypes present moral teachers with a means to present difficult subjects in easy to understand forms. For example, to teach dependent origination one can draw stories from India, China or Japan, or one can draw similar stories from the culture of one's audiences, such as the Nasrudin stories.

They also present a way that teachers traditionally have "buried" heretical but true ideas within religious traditions by putting them into stories. The fanatics are usually to obtuse to pick up on the hidden message -- seeing what they want to see or even ignoring the discrepancies -- while ordinary folks pick up on the message unconsciously. This blog talks about this subject: http://www.anulios.org/index.php/page/6/. Anyone who has lived in or dealt with people from a country where there has been an authoritarian regime will know that this is also the way modern writers explore the truth.

In the analysis of personality, the term archetype is often broadly used to refer to:

a stereotype—personality type observed multiple times, especially an oversimplification of such a type; or

an epitome—personality type exemplifed, especially the "greatest" such example.

So when Wikipedia refers to archetypes as "merely" something, there is nothing "mere" about the power of story telling

In a strict linguistic sense, however, an archetype is merely a defining example of a personality type. The accepted use of archetype is to refer to a generic version of a personality type. In this sense "mother figure" can be considered an archetype and instances can be found in various female characters with distinct (non-generic) personalities.

Archetypes are critical for our own spiritual (human) development. They actually contribute to defining personality. For example anyone familiar with the old Superman archetype (from the 50's series) will understand a lot about my own self image. When I was a child I thought if I believed enough I might even be able to fly. [I tried, I flew, I fell].

Wikipedia says:

Archetypes have been present in mythology and literature for at least hundreds of years. The use of archetypes to analyse personality was advanced by Carl Jung early in the 20th century. The value in using archetypal characters in fiction derives from the fact that a large group of people are able to unconsciously recognise the archetype, and thus the motivations, behind the character's behavior.

Mastering Narrative, is not something that indicates complete enlightenment. Devadatta had mastered the power of religious language, imagery and skillful words. He came out of learning this to thinking that he could manipulate people and develop wealth and power. In our own day and age Marketers, Fascists, Leftists, and even the Republican Party, have mastered the power of narrative, and used the power of archetypes and imaging to manipulate people. We have government by focus group, and it is evil government because it has no moral compass.

The point is that we have to move from beyond a surface view of these things as mere methods for manipulating people, to recognizing that archetypes and myth represent an inward reality that is as important to us as it is to others. That is important to master, not to use and misuse, but to help people master their lives and society become peaceful. We need our inward myths to define our own motives, proper behavior, paths, and the bounds of what is right and wrong behavior.

We need to go from the power of authority based orthodoxy to the power of law based on correct views (true orthodoxy); and to take this authority out of the hands of selfish and authoritarian persons.

McCain and Powell are right -- but late

The President is trying to legalize torture 'lite'. He is afraid that the people working for him in the CIA, and to a lesser degree in the Military Police Components, will get into the same kind of trouble that the scape goats for this shameful behavior got into at Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo. For that reason he is trying to get Congress to legalize his behavior. If it had been legal he wouldn't be worried about it. No ex post facto law can be applied retroactively. It is precisely because he and his henchmen knew they were breaking the law that he is crying "national security" and trying so hard to get his behavior legalized.
(please read this: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_091906C.shtml)

Besides he knows that normally appeals to fighting terrorism make him popular with the minority of Americans who feel that any means to keep us secure is fine with them, and the majority who fear Bin Laden. Its good to see Powell adding his voice:

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," wrote Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Bush's first secretary of state, to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)."

But where was Powell when this material was being crafted and he was Secretary of State?

He claims he was a critic of the Iraq war and of this from the beginning. He is right, if we use these means then we are demonstrating that we have no moral fiber. That the terrorists are at least partly right about us. But he's a Johnny come lately to this debate. I'm sorry, but had he the moral fiber and convictions to back them on this issue he would have publicly opposed these things he opposed privately, publicly, and during he first administration. McCain at least tried to, but seems to have thought that if he acquiesced on other things the President would support him on this.

It doesn't work, the President is an ideologue and an abusive person, he doesn't want to deal on this. He, and those backing him, want the power to create a terrorist police state. Maybe not for himself, but for some successor.

I understand McCain, McCain seems to have thought he could make a deal with the administration. But you can't deal with terrorists unless you hold a better hand then they have. You can't deal with dishonest people unless you have a means for checking their maneuvering and verifying their signitures. And McCain and Powell have less credibility now than they had prior to the election because they gave into these abusive dishonest people.

The press is casting this as politics, but this is a struggle for the moral fiber of our nations soul. We will literally and figuratively go to hell (on earth) if we don't stop this effort.

The President should not only be stopped from getting this lawless travesty of a law passed, but should be prevented from telling his subordinates that what they did was ever legal or correct. Moreover, this should be investigated and those who engaged in water-boarding, humiliation, and "torture lite" should be punished. At the very least they should be drummed out of the companies and Government and stripped of their security clearances. And then finally those behind these orders should be impeached from office. And they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Then maybe the rest of us can look in the mirror again. This is shameful.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/452522p-380822c.html

Chris

They Clapped

George Lucas would have done a better job with "Star Wars I,II,III" had he involved Steven Spielberg in it, but that is water under the bridge. The link between negative arguments and the behaviors of Anakin Skywalker wasn't very convincing because it is obvious that this was out of George Lucas's league. That is a shame because the story line itself had a lot of promise and I certainly understood what he was trying to demonstrate. I think in his heart George Lucas was just afraid to "go there" and show how a young idealistic person can be ensnared by cult ideas into acting the patsy for manipulative and selfish people. This is because it is cult ideas and not mere demonic possession that drives such people. This is true whether the cult is "Al Qaeda," (really Wahabi) style interpretations of Islam or Neo-Fascism in the US.
Raw publishes this today:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Raw_acquires_NSA_wiretap_talking_points_0913.html

The "ideological struggle" appeals to idealistic and community starved young people who find a sense of community in the ideals of the group. It also appeals to more cynical goal orientated people whose prime goal is to achieve and hold power. Once Fascist / cultish style ideology gets hold of people, the sense of community, the devotion to person, tends to hold tight to them, even after they start to realize the lies and hollowness of the ideas they hold onto. These kinds of ideologies create armies with rank and rewards. Those at the top can completely lose their faith and still be counted members. Once the group becomes powerful ambition and self-interest take over in attracting converts. In Communist China or Fascist countries, joining the party is a pre-requisit for advancement.

Initially they may be attracted by idealism, or goals of achieving rank, or simply the need for a job, but these kinds of groups always want their members bloodied. Guilt and fear of discovery and retribution hold them as squarely after they are bloodied, as ever idealism or ambitious did before. They can't walk away because usually the "initiation" was into doing something illegal. If they walk away they'll no longer have the group protecting them from prosecution. Once that line is crossed, even if a person stops believing he/she won't stop forcing him/herself to believe because the pain of facing the truth will be too much.

He caught that process a little. The story board he wrote got that part right. But its not just loosing self control that drives evil, it is false concepts and usually the idea that one is going to make the world a better place (after breaking it, after defeating an 'evil' enemy, after destroying everything one had previously believed in). He didn't do a good job of showing that link. He somehow thought that such evolutions result from mere temper tantrums, no they follow a logic all their own, and the key transition is when the actors start thinking that might makes right, that "end justifies means."

Had George Lucas cast the Jedi and their Sithi enemies as behaving like cults, then the dynamic of their savagry would have been more obvious, and he'd have captured the psychology better.

So what does that have to do with the link I just posted to "Raw?" Well, one point about ideological cults is that once established they aren't about to let go of their power. If the facts reveal that whole-sale law-breaking is going on, all the members have to do is to lie in tandem. And that seems to be what the administration is asking Senate Staffers to do. Eventually they may well eat their young and destroy the "Jedi".

And the other point is that when the Emperor abolished the Republic, the Senate and Galley cheered. Seems that was a parable about US.

Chris

Who is paying Bin Laden?

A guy who calls himself Clown Hidden comments:

"More and more I think Bin Laden is still on the CIA payroll. They can't find Bin Laden, yeah, I believe that."

I don't think Bin Laden is on the CIA pay. He is too Wahabist in his religion for that. But there are a lot of conspiracy theorists who think that that is the case, and given the fact of the massive amount of propaganda, deception and weirdness, there is just too much fishy business to not be either the manifestation of the grossest incompetance, or something at least partly deliberate. Who knows maybe Bush is secretly a Wahabi himself. After all he's been around them since he was little.

Note, when I close comments it is nothing personal, it's just that if I leave them open eventually some greedy fool starts posting spam links.

Clown writes:"If the terrorists really are acting for the reasons they say, it seems to me they are completely justified in targeting the U.S."

Of course I don't believe that this kind of insanity is ever justified. These people are nuts. They talk about the honor of being able to die for a noble cause and don't give anybody any option but die or convert to Wahabism. Excuse me, five minutes of actually listening to Zawahiri ougth to disabuse you of any notion that these folks are justified to do what they are doing. Still the whole thing is fishy.

First there is the fact that all of us working with the Federal Government and even periphrially involved with the Defence department have known that Bin Laden was aiming to attack again since the first World Trade attacks. I've acquaintance with military people and I was working near the Pentagon until a year before the attacks, and believe me we knew they had evil intentions. The US was doing some of what they could. Walls were going up around the Pentagon. The security threat was used to clear out protestors from near the White House, and the Secret Service "men in black" went from polite young men one could sometimes have a polite conversation with to really scary guys. We knew things were getting dangerous and that at least some people in the Government wanted to use that as an excuse to curtail liberties most of us had come to take for granted -- like the Constitution.

Now we are finding out that the administration had some general idea of exactly what Bin Laden was planning, just not the details of place, time and who was doing it. They had some of that too, but seem to have decided that they'd wait until after the attack went forth to take action on the subject. There is something fishy about the fact that no Jet planes were nearby. When a private plane entered Air Space one year before it was escorted to a landing and nearly shot down. It is incredible to the point of imbecility or malfeasance to think that they wouldn't have had airplanes ready to scramble in this situation. But they didn't, despite having issued a warning of immediate threat:
http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/live/node/3985
"Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," and refers to possible hijacking attempts by Osama bin Laden disciples and the existence of about 70 FBI investigations into alleged al-Qaeda cells operating within the United States. The August 6 PDB, an excerpt from which you'll find below, was presented to Bush while he vacationed at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. The digest is prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency, an official from which briefs the president on the report's contents. While Bush critics have described the August 6 PDB as a warning of an impending al-Qaeda attack, Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, testified Thursday that the document contained "historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information."

Randi Rhodes also cites an essay written by the neo-cons (authored by the other William Krystol, who one sees on TV sometimes) that notes that only a Pearl Harbor type event would allow the kind of strategy he wanted to execute in changing the military and throwing weight around abroad. I read that essay myself (in a different context) and didn't pick up one what she said, but the quote is right in there. She writes on the Straussian theory of "Dominianism" which is an outgrowth of the ideas of Georges Sorel, Mussolini, and Portuguese and Spanish style Fascism. The article says:

http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/live/node/1971

“One of the more sinister aspects of the current crisis is the influence of Leo Strauss on the pro-war, “neo-cons” who are determining so much of our foreign policy. While the Christian right thinks it is running the show, Leo Strauss’ irreligious philosophy is actually in control. Strauss believed that the rulers should not be religious, but should use religion to manage the people — which he evidently regarded as a stupid herd. He also believed that a state of war was great for controlling and directing the masses. So it’s all come together: the weirdest book of the bible [Revelations], with its mysterious disasters; the scheming behind the scenes warmongers and an incident of terrorism that has served admirably as the Project for a New American Century’s hoped-for ‘new Pearl Harbor.’” Adrien Rain

more on Strauss: http://www.alternet.org/story/15935

She and others advance the theory that the administration knew that Bin laden was up to something and were waiting for him to do it so they'd have their Pearl harbor event. That sounds way probable given recent comments by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. It sounds like high treason to me, so I'd need a lot of evidence before I'd endorse this theory. But then there is an increasing body of evidence for corruption, deception, propaganda, misrepresentation, and definately the use of mythologized people and man-made legends to replace facts and to cover up the corruption and theft. All very Straussian behavior:

"Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."

Finally we get to why I don't believe that Bin Laden could possibly be on the CIA payroll. Because the Saudis also use Straussian methods and religion to control their people. They are the ones bankrolling Wahabiism, the underlying notions that guide Bin Laden and Zawahiri. Bin Laden was once a deputy of the Saudis, and was bankrolled by them when he went to attack the Russians. Of course Bin Laden has also savagely attacked the Saudis, but that just means that the source of the funds might not be the folks in power right now.

clown writes: "we've been screwing with them for a century" -- not hardly. The Saudis and other Arab Emirates have been screwing everyone for 80 years or more. Britain made a devils bargain with the House of Saud, which counts the Bin Ladens as one of its retainer families. The US picked up some of that devils bargain on behalf of the British. It's the rich Arabs who are screwing their brothers and blaming it on the West. While rich folks like Bush and company help them. We've just been acting as mercenaries for them. Osama may be a renegade, but he is their renegade, and it is pretty obvious that we've been protecting him with the help of Musharriffe and the House of Saud. Why else would we attack Iraq and create so many disciples for him? We also pulled our base out of Saudi Arabia, which was his demand, and also the Demand of the Saudis.

They are famous for playing both sides so nothing would surprise me. They want Osama to be successful enough to keep American's afraid and allow them to trample on anyone who gets in the way of their unchecked power and ambition.

"it's about time someone stood up. War and terrorism are stupid, but one side's right and one is wrong. The U.S. is not right in conducting this war and more wrong for giving up all lip service to it's ideals in doing so."

If you are talking about Iraq you are right. If you are talking about the broader war, we have no choice. However, the way to conduct this war is not the way they are doing it. Steven Decatur set the example for how to conduct a war against Islamic extremists in the first war the US ever fought against the Barbary pirates. He went ashore, he bargained, he paid the right bribes and got the support of the local leaders. It may sound good to say "never talk to terrorists" but it is ones enemies one should always talk to, so that one can convert them to rivals, and maybe even into Business partners.

Bush is turning the US into a giant version fo the Island described in the book Cats Cradle. Further readings:

http://www.eurolegal.org/neoconwars/interafghan.htm

"VO: The neoconservatives set up a lobby group to publicize the findings of Team B. It was called the Committee on the Present Danger, and a growing number of politicians joined, including a Presidential hopeful, Ronald Reagan."

Showed clips from propaganda film similar to the one being shown tonight:

"[ TITLE: The Price of Peace and Freedom / Committee on the Present Danger, propaganda film 1978 ]"

"VO: Through films and television, the Committee portrayed a world in which America was under threat from hidden forces that could strike at any time, forces that America must conquer to survive."

"ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN, through interpreter: A concentration of world evil, of hatred for humanity, is taking place. And it is fully determined to destroy your society. Must you wait until the young men of America have to fall defending the borders of their continent?"

"VO: This dramatic battle between good and evil was precisely the kind of myth that Leo Strauss had taught his students would be necessary to rescue the country from moral decay. It might not be true, but it was necessary, to re-engage the public in a grand vision of America’s destiny, that would give meaning and purpose to their lives. The neoconservatives were succeeding in creating a simplistic fiction—a vision of the Soviet Union as the center of all evil in the world, and America as the only country that could rescue the world. And this nightmarish vision was beginning to give the neoconservatives great power and influence."

"HOLMES: The Straussians started to create a worldview which is a fiction. The world is not divided into good and evil. The battle in which we are engaged is not a battle between good and evil. The United States, as anyone who observes understands, has done some good and some bad things. It’s like any great power. This is the way history is. But they wanted to create a world of moral certainties, so therefore they invent mythologies—fairytales—describing any force in the world that obstructs the United States as somehow Satanic, or associated with evil."

Of course this world view is perfect for people who want to sell arms, divide and rule, or who love to fight.

Chris

Georges Sorel, the power of myth

The only thing to fear is fear itself

If the Democrats do win in 2006 (we) they should not let their guard down. I'm not saying that they (we) should be paranoid -- just serious. The Democrats now have serious enemies arrainged against them who have few self imposed limits on their behavior and who are willing to stoop to any new low to achieve their goals. As Roosevelt said the main thing to fear is fear itself -- and lies.

Nobody can defeat terrorism by launching a rain of Terror, and "terror lite" like "torture lite" and "fascism lite" have been the modus operandi of the Bush Administration, in an even more systematic manner than even they were during the McCarthy era. Fear has been the basis for their campaign, since the fall of the twin towers they have combined appeals of fear with dishonest rhetoric, twisted narrative, and skapegoating in order to get and keep power. They have promised security, and delivered insecurity.

They have taken the "war" to create enemies where they once had potential friends, and revenged the twin towers on innocents tenfold or even a hundredfold. They legitimately called on us to Unite and then attacked the bases for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But then they used that fear to make up links to and launch the war in Iraq. To demonize even patriotic Americans like Kerry and win the 2002 and 2004 elections; And they took their attention away from Bin Laden while lying about the relationship of Saddam to him. Now, civilians are dying in Iraq by the thousands, and the war in Afghanistan is going badly, and so far all we've succeeded in creating there is an insurgency, a civil war between Sunnah and Shia, and tens of thousands of deaths.

While all this is happening abroad, at home they've launched wars against Gays, against secularists, and against women and the poor. Abroad they tell us that the Pakistanis and Saudis (who funded their nationals who attacked us) while looking the other way as the Pakistanis cut deals with Al Qaeda and provide safe havens for Bin Laden and the Taliban.

They have an awful record of keeping promises made to their followers, but that won't stop them from crowing about achievements and looking for scapegoats for their failures. If they can scare people enough they can create their hegemony long enough to create an even greater world wide fracase then they have already done and destroy our country and themselves in the process.

But with all that we democrats still can't expect the American people to believe our narrative, because these people have the money and organization to change the narrative, to rewrite history, and if we let them they'll do it. That is what this "docudrama" about 9/11 is about. It is the first step in creating a fantasy alternative narrative for their base.

This is nothing new, they've rewritten the history of the Cold-war; McCarthy, Nixon, Hoover era to lionize or at least rehabilitate those twisted people and paint a narrative in which international terrorism was justified because it "defeated" communism. They wrote a self-serving narrative about Vietnam that blamed the Press and the peaceniks for a failure that was largely a matter of really flawed military concept.

Reality isn't as important as power to these people. They have adopted Trotskyite, Goebbels and William Randolph Hearst methods and they know that what "really" happened doesn't matter as long as they control the narrative. To them they can have the real Bin laden as a partner, while telling the people of the US they are hunting him. They can let their ally Mussharif make a treaty with Bin Laden and allow Wahabi anti-Christian and Jewish propaganda to be the only education for the next generation of Mujaheedin, while telling us that he's in control and working for us. They know that they need to paint Bin Laden as an omnipresent enemy, who has hidden allies everywhere, and they don't need to really do anything to catch him and bring him to justice or to stop Al Qaeda from launching bombs and mad-bombers. Indeed if they stopped him that might stop the gravy train.

No wonder there are conspiracy theories that believe that Bin Laden works for them. This is a government that will lie in tandem, they believe in the maxim the government that lies together stays together. These are people who would convince us that Bin Laden lies under every bed, and in every opponant. Who would make Bin Laden a proxy for Satan and an excuse to clamp down on the Constitution, subvert our civil liberties, and spy on and defame opponents. This is terrorism redux. They are Bin Laden's allies in this. But they are such cynics that they can be both. I don't know if they are just fools who are taking advantage of a situation or as diabolical as the paranoids suggest. I doubt they are competetant enough to be aware of what the effect of what they are doing is. They probably really think that their fight with Bin Laden should proceed this way. They need a fight with Bin Laden as much as he needs a fight with them. Such people live in a fantasy world where things are how they want to see them not how they actually are. An agreement might explain why there have been no further attacks, our borders are still not secure, our ports are not.

They will rewrite history if we let them. They cannot be stopped from trying. We can counter their short term narrative, elect representatives who still believe in genuine democracy, but the long term battle is going to be difficult as long as they think this way; and as long as they think they can control the presses. It is no accident that folks from the security services have been scouring the national archives and other sources for things to re-classify. Their goal is not to protect the "national security" but the Republican Party Security from criticism. And the goal of docudramas like that of ABC is to create an alternative narrative to teach their children so that the poison can be spread to the next generation.

The unholy alliance between greedy interests and perverse moralists will survive any electoral defeat. The Republicans have learned to hedge their bets, and they are already preparing backup plans for what to do if they lose the house and Senate in 2006 -- and you had better believe it won't be pretty. They can't be fought on their own playground -- which is violence, simple-mindedness, fear and paranoia. They have to be fought on higher ground; rhetoric with good underlying logic and analysis, courage, and a willingness to face the facts without fear and by explaining realities in a manner that ordinary folks can understand. And we have to struggle to preserve the truth, because the whole idea of 1984 type tyrannies is to bury it. When O'Reilly calls for the arrest of liberal critics, he isn't kidding. He and his cabal are patient, they are preparing the ground for the future.

The only thing certain about New-speak Conservative Republicans like Bush is that if they say they'll be a Uniter, it means they (and his team) plan to divide and conquer, that if they say "The US doesn't torture," they mean that they have redefined torture to mean "organ failure," and that if they talk about fiscal responsibility watch your wallet! If they talk about keeping the US safer from Terrorists they mean to use that as an excuse to pursue another agenda all together.

From observing the behavior of the Justice department, the rhetoric and the intentions, it seems that when they talk about "freedom on the march" it seems that their plan is to march it out of the United States. That is the only possible explainations for the constant demands for plenary powers and the defective, arbitrary and perverse application of the powers they already have. We gave them power to go after terrorists and they have gone after "victimless crimes", dissidents, peace-niks, Reporters, Democrats and the CIA instead. The right to demonstrate has been abolished unless one has a permit. People still go to jail for years for crimes such as smoking dope (not smart even if it were legal), while folks who rob and steal from thousands of people go unpunished and folks who cause the needless deaths of tens of thousands get "Freedom Awards" or give them.

People are finally catching on that this is actually true and not just rhetorical excess. The deceptions about Iraq are finally starting to come to light and folks are realizing that we have a culture of sociopaths in the White House -- and that those who have been calling them that are not liars or exaggerating. Would that that were true. There is a chance that the Democrats can pull of an electoral victory.

It is slim because we Americans are a trusting lot who can be lied to again and again and still have trouble believing the liars are actually lying. Bush is crying wolf a third time, and we'll see if we are dumber than the folks in the fabled village or not. Will we rally to his rhetoric?

But this effort to redefine US law and create a permanent Republican Hegemony and police state is not going to be stopped by one electoral reversal. It represents a long term effort, backed by monied interests and simple people who believe that their opponents are evil and who may represent a minority but represent a large one. The "base" is people who really do believe that they are fighting to protect the rights of the unborn and not the rights of Exxon and Halliburton; People who really believe the US is promoting Democracy by an eternal war in Iraq; And people who believe that Democrats and "liberals" are akin to traitors and "Reds." Some of these kind souls are willing to kill to protect the unborn, kill cities in the name of freedom and go along with the end of their own civil liberties in the name of fighting "terror." They also believe other lies they've been told. No matter how much we tell them that Bush is a liar, they don't believe us, they believe their ministers, preachers, priests and Rabbis. They believe Dick Cheney. They believe Bush. And they believe the lies that are put into devious narratives by those people. I don't care if folks disagree with me. As Clinton says, they just need to tell the truth; to not lie.

Most folks are kind of in the middle. We don't like abortion. We'd love to see Democracy in Iraq and cheered for the Iraqis when the statues fell. And we are willing to go to great lengths to promote Freedom. that is why the efforts of the Republicans are so devious. For example if the Democrats succeed in repealing these laws and raising taxes on the rich, the Republicans are counting on blowback in the elections in the form of rich campaign coffers and deceptive advertizing in 2008. They have loaded all the costs on the system in such a way that the pain is not going to set in until they are out of office and someone tries to pay the debts they incurred. You can already see Robert Novak building this narrative for the Republican Come-back.

Those who know Bush is lying but back him anyway belong to a cynical set who don't like paying taxes and have the money to pay politicians to tax other people or borrow money so they don't have to pay taxes. Those people don't care if Bush is lying or not. Like Robert Novak their big issue is whether they have to pay for it or they can get other people to pay for it. Bush sees them as his "real base" and has said so at meetings with them. He means it. You can see the motivation and germ for their efforts in this editorial by Robert Novak:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak07x.html
He doesn't really care about balanced budgets, he only cares about who has to pay for the debts. And he knows that sooner or later the economy is going to suffer for paying back those debts. And when it does the economy will have to inflate to reduce value, or deflate. Either way someone is going to suffer, and his narrative is designed to make sure it's folks like you and me and not his Country Club set -- and that he's going to put the blame for that suffering on any politicians who try to do something about the bleeding of middle and lower class wealth into the super-rich and into the ground.

For folks like Novak if they shout "class warfare" it means that they've already launched one. They really do think the rest of us are rubes. I've seen them in action, most of the elites (left or right) in this country despise "outside the beltway" from inside the beltway -- and despise "flyover country." They see wealth creation as win-lose, while talking about "trickle down" or how their wealth floats all boats. In a fair society it might, but not ours.

These cynical folks have discovered that if they have the right positions they can profit from the war, pay less taxes, loan the government money, and make money three ways; war-profiteering, rent-seeking, and tax cuts. And they ahve a machine to keep that power in place. All the emphasis on "getting them over there so they won't attack at home" -- while running a defective criminal and diplomatic effort is designed to increase the real risk while maintaining that the Republicans are the saviors from that same risk is designed to maintain that money machine. They "know" that law enforcement and diplomacy can't stop Terrorism by themselves because they also know that they have limited resources to fight terrorism and that terrorism keeps them in power. They know what all of us who understand the situation know, that Moslem extremists are certain to attack again, and they are creating a narrative among us "simple people in flyover country" that their draconian methods are the only thing that will protect people, but that if something happens on their watch it is despite those draconian methods, while if it happens on the watch of Democrats it is the result of traitorous malfeasance. We can be certain that the propaganda machine will blame Democrats for the next terror attack especially if the Republicans lose in 2006. That machine nearly guarantees a blowback in the next election if people continue to buy their lies.

So the only way to defeat them is to keep the air-ways free, to liberate the press from prior restraint, retaliation, secrecy, and corporate monopoly and oligopoly, and to develop a permanent project aimed at protecting the middle ground of Democracy in order to force the politicians and folks backing them back into fighting in the "middle zone" of a politics that respects the constitution, is truthful and respects us voters. That may require a revival of anti-trust efforts, repeal of some old laws, and genuine campaign reform aimed at making elections more transparent, accessible, and better debated. And it will certainly involve recognizing the sheer extent of corruption we've built into our political system without recognizing it for what it is. The lies have to stop.

We need liberals and conservatives and to see things from all POVs. We need people to work out their differences and make legitimate compromises not ones that benefit the "players". We don't need violent and authoritarian Righties and Lefties setting up to duke it out in the streets; or a police force with unchecked power and a veil of secrecy over all their actions. We need to read and protect our Constitution not abandon it.

Chris

Tyranny, Bin Laden and Torture under cover of secrecy

The President gave a good speach last night and made a good policy directive. He also used one deception after another in making his points. Frankly I'm glad he ordered the military to stop Torture. Frankly I'm sure he has not stopped the CIA and our "partners" from doing torture.  Moreover, he called on Congress to ratify his efforts to use Kangaroo Military Tribunals to try the detainees¹. He wants to be able to use secret evidence, withhold that evidence from any challenge by defense lawyers, and convict those prisoners without the embarrassment of a public trial. In short he wants Congress to ratify his law-breaking by "legalizing it" unconstitutionally.  He needs a 2/3 majority for a Constitutional Amendment but only a 51% majority to change the Supreme Court. 

For those who are guilty the way the evidence was gained almost guarantees a corrupted outcome. For those who are innocent, secret evidence almost always proves inaccurate and dishonest evidence.  This is the method of the lazy and perverse who would punish scapegoats instead of doing justice. In short this is tyranny. And it will almost certainly increase the terror threat to the United States to let him get away with it.  People need to stop believing his bald-faced lies and impeach him. Unfortunately that may not end the terror threat either.  The far Right in this country is getting increasingly violent and paranoid in their rhetoric (because they are afraid) and if they can't take the war to places like Iraq and Afghanistan they may start bombing abortion clinics and Murrah Buildings again. Might is right, and right now the Right is about might.

He retracted his recommendations to the Army from 2002, finally bowed to US law and international law and claimed that the "United States" doesn't do torture. The Army doesn't, from now on, and according to the definition of torture created by Alberto Gonzalez's team anything short of actual bodily harm qualified as torture. So the President, in his mind at least, never authorized torture heavy; just water-boarding, excruciating positions where the torture is "self inflicted" and other diabolical and mentally or physically excruciating methods that don't actually kill the detainee. And when people carried out those orders at Abu Gharaib and Guantamo, they were punished; but so far not their commanders or their commander in chief. (See 00480.html "They acted with Impunity")².

But then again that memo was false from the beginning. The Republicans had passed a law banning torture outside the United States conducted by anyone, including US officials. Ashcroft tried to weasel out of applying that law by saying that US possessions are exempt from that law because they are technically in US territory:

'Now, the law against the torture applies. When the Congress enacted the torture statute, it enacted a law that said it applied everywhere outside the United States. But when the Congress defined the United States, it's not simple: It will sometimes include military bases, it will sometimes include consular offices, it will sometimes include the residences or embassy offices. And when the Congress of the United States makes these definitions, that's what I have to live by."

But then his memo justified violating the law within these territories like Gitmo on the grounds that they are "outside the United States" Jurisdiction. The memos tried to create an imaginary world where the property was both in United States Jurisdiction for the sake of one law and outside of it for the sake of the other law.  Two opposit things cannot be true at the same time unless one is parsing or the definitions were intended to create such a 'third state.' Parsing is just a way to pretend to be legal while committing lies that one hopes can't be proven as perjury.  The Supreme Court has ruled that it was BS. It was legal "GobbledyGook" designed to put a cover on illegal actions.

He also tried to exempt people on the grounds that they hadn't signed the convention; "the only people who are accorded the protections of the Geneva Convention are, number one, according to the convention itself, those nations that are high contracting parties to the convention." That the conventions don't apply to non-Combattants (actually the 1977 conventions do but the US still hasn't ratified those). However, the US did ratify the torture conventions and it applied them in country and outside country. see (http://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture/law.html

All of this was devious, and at the very least parsed. And he was obviously uncomfortable with the subject because he had the good sense to depart at the end of his term. He was replaced with Alberto Gonzales who signed the Torture memos and seems very comfortable parsing and dissembling.

So anyway now the administration has finally found a reason for publicly eschewing torture; bad publicity.  But their credibility is, to put it mildly, non existent.  For one thing, those memos have only been disowned because they were leaked, and the Administration is trying its very best to arrest and punish those who leak such memos in the future, so it can say one thing publicly and practice another. The Presidents instruction applied to the Military -- but the only thing he said about the CIA was that the Congress should ratify his effort to use Kangaroo courts and secret evidence to try those terrorists it detained four years ago and whom it is finally releasing from its secret prisons -- to Guantanamo.

Footnotes:

1. I normally don't call military trials Kangaroo trials. Normally a military trial is as good as any civilian trial.  But in this case if the defendent is subject to secret evidence with no defense review, lax rules, and the admission of coerced evidence, hearsay, partisan judges, and unreliable witnesses, that is what they'd amount to. They would be at best show-trials, and at worst so secret all we'd hear about later was that they were convicted and executed.  That would be fine except that it means that folks like "Bin Laden's chauffeur" will be treated as if they were "Bin Laden's number 2 man" and sheep herders from Tajik province may be mistaken for leaders of Al Qaeda.

2. If the Democrats do win in 2006 (we) they should not let their guard down. This effort to redefine US law and create a permanent Republican Hegemony is long term and devious.  For example if the Democrats succeed in repealing these laws and raising taxes on the rich, the Republicans are counting on blowback in the elections in the form of rich campaign coffers and deceptive advertizing in 2008. Moreover, all the emphasis on "getting them over there so they won't attack at home" -- while running a defective criminal and diplomatic effort is designed to increase the real risk while maintaining that the Republicans are the saviors from that same risk.  The Arabs are certain to attack again, and if the Democrats dominate Congress we can be certain that the propaganda machine will blame Democrats. The fear nearly guarantees a blowback in the election.
I'll put more about this point in my next post.

I did not vote for the guy!

Much of the World is extremely critical of the United States right now. Folks have cause to be, though as usual things are more nuanced than people like to make them. Because Bush won re-election they are critical of the whole country, many of them believing that we are an intensely immoral and dishonest place. After all they all "knew" that he was a massive liar, and that he'd lied brazenly and repeatedly. How could we have voted for such a liar?

Well the fact is, that many of us didn't vote for him. That doesn't excuse us collectively, but the other fact is that we have been developing a proto-fascist controlled press where people were sold on George Bush like he was an Oscar Meyer Hotdog and not a mere human being. It wasn't just Fox either. Worse both Kerry and Gore failed to represent the Democratic party with the kind of leadership we needed. Kerry worse than Gore because the stakes were higher.

But the final factor is that it is turning out that many people didn't vote for Bush in this last election after all. Bush officially won the popular vote only because many votes were not counted, because there was whole-sale election fraud in many districts. But that still doesn't excuse us Democrats. Kerry like Gore before him conceded the election despite evidence of wide-scaled voter fraud. In a sense that was betraying the system. He should have challenged voter fraud on principle grounds, by conceding so "swiftly" he gave undue credence to the frauds and misrepresentations of groups like the Swift-boaters and other authoritarian neo-cons.

Even before the votes were totalled and certified there was wide-spread evidence of massive fraud in Ohio:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/031104votefraud.htm Even fox news conceded there was widespread fraud:

"http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Vote_Fraud_Intimidation_Suppression_2004_Pres_Election_v2.pdf", though -- naturally -- they spun the issue to blame the Democrats (for loosing?). Of course they neglect to mention two facts about the allegations they made. One is that the perpetrators in each of the Fox news cases were caught before any serious damage was done, and two, in each of the cases they noted the damage not only was minor, but in the case of the tire-slashing incident the incident not only didn't impact get out the vote efforts, but probably motivated the workers to work even harder. See Wikipedia's report: 2004 election irregularities.

What made the voter fraud by Diebold and election officials so pernicious was that it was officially sponsored, secret and fraudulent. Nobody was caught, those who perpetrated it were rewarded and promoted, and there is evidence that there is a repeat planned. That should not be.

But I'm not posting on that this time (see bottom for links). What is irritating is that Europeans and others "out there" are judging the whole country on the basis of this evil man and his evil cabal, and I have to explain why this man gets away with it to them. He gets away with it because our media, and entire society, are getting to be controlled by the 3-5% who have most of the money; and because we've been so comfortable so long that we are susceptable to being hoodwinked. In that we are no different than any other country out there. The French Government is famous for blowing up Green-peace ships and invented Razon-De-Stat (forgive my spelling). The British have been conniving with us. The Italians invented Fascism, the Germans perfected it, and the Spanish, and Portuguese refined it and made it pallatable to Post War Europe. There is not one country on the earth without blood on its hands.

Forgive the US for being made of humans. There has ever been a gap between principle and practice, ideal and attainment. And I'll be damned if I'll take any blame for this man and his administration being elected, re-elected, or serving as anything other than trash-collector. I will accept that I live in a Democracy, where the majority rules, and where we go along even with minority rule until we can do something about it legitimately.

I will accept blame for having been stupid enough to give these theives the benefit of the doubt on their intentions. And I will explain that most Americans are decent people who are guilty of no more than refusing to believe it when some group are such bald-faced liars and sociopaths that they will lie in tandem to accomplish their goals. There are darker things going on as well, but I'm sure that older Germans, French and Italians can relate to what we are going through now.

Chris Holte, Shabbat Shalom!!

Oh and here are the URL's:
Start here: http://www.crisispapers.org/topics/election-fraud.htm
http://www.reformelections.org/commentary.asp?opedid=759
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.electionfraudnews.com/news.htm
and what to do about it;
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/2077
Ohio:
http://www.gadsdentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060831/ZNYT02/608310336