American Buddhist Net

08/07/2008

A Buddhist tattoo artist from Boulder expelled from China with three others after unfurling pro-Tibet banners from atop light poles near China's showpiece Olympic stadium said authorities questioned them for 10 hours, threatened them with jail and refused calls to the U.S. Embassy.

Rotating teams of interrogators at a makeshift police station on a gated technical college campus quizzed them about Chinese who aided activists on their mission, Phillip Bartell said in an interview today after arriving in San Francisco.

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A fundamentalist church group from the U.S. has announced it plans to picket the funeral of Tim McLean Jr. in Winnipeg, declaring, "God is punishing Canada."

"People are absolutely outraged about it," said Doug Mitchell, a friend of McLean's for about seven years.

Led by pastor Fred Phelps, the Westboro Baptist Church from Kansas issued a release saying they would picket McLean's funeral this weekend.

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It's reached the point now where almost anyone can see that the case against Ivins is not strong. It does not come near proving that he acted alone, let alone acted at all. It also does not in any way prove that he stole the anthrax--to which some 100 people had access--or that he had the means or the skills to convert it to the very sophisticated weapon it was when mailed. Furthermore, the FBI has not established a credible motive. So, opportunity has been established, but the means and the motive are far from having been proved. Beyond that, the evidence shows that Ivins, like so many humans, could be a bit weird and that he was sensitive, a trait that likely drove him to kill himself. So the question now becomes why the rush to close the investigation? Is it because Bush's term is nearing an end and this is yet one more thing they need to cover up? ABN
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Handwriting analysis also failed to tie Ivins to letters
August 07, 2008
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

Bruce Ivins
Casting further doubt on the FBI's anthrax case, accused government scientist Bruce Ivins passed two polygraph tests and a handwriting analysis comparing samples of his handwriting to writing contained in the anthrax letters, U.S. officials familiar with the investigation say.

The Justice Department yesterday closed the case, announcing the late "Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks."

Ivins passed the first polygraph to satisfy a security requirement prior to working with the FBI as part of a team of scientists at the Fort Detrick, Md., lab who originally helped analyze the anthrax letters. He passed a second exam after he became a suspect.

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People like Hamdan are usually not even tried for war crimes. This sentence seems appropriate, if he is let go on time, and more fitting to the image of the USA as a great nation than the life sentence proposed by the prosecution. It's not much but it is the first glimmer of sanity we have seen in some time over these detainees. ABN
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By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: August 7, 2008

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the convicted former driver for Osama bin Laden, was sentenced Thursday to 66 months in prison by the military panel that convicted him of a war crime Wednesday.

The unexpectedly short sentence was far less than military prosecutors had sought. Through more than five years of legal proceedings against Mr. Hamdan, prosecutors had pursued a life sentence, and earlier in the day, faced with Mr. Hamdan's acquittal on the most serious charge against him, prosecutors recommended a sentence of at least 30 years and said life may be appropriate.

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Bruce Ivins wrote in a September 26, 2001 email that he "heard tonight" that Bin Laden has anthrax and sarin gas.

Major report from that day:

Bin Laden terror group tries to acquire chemical arms
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 26, 2001

"Intelligence officials say classified analysis of the types of chemicals and toxins sought by al Qaeda indicate the group probably is trying to produce the nerve agent Sarin, or biological weapons made up of anthrax spores"

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She makes a good point. ABN
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by Robin Abrahams August 7, 2008 07:32 AM

According to Buddhism, desire is the root of suffering. I desire many things, which is a spiritual struggle for me at times. Thanks to the miracle of spam, however, I have come to realize that there are also many things I do not want. Here are some:

A job from home ... starting this month!
A time share in Costa Rica
A safe and secure Canadian pharmacy
Discount printer ink
A Rich Beautiful Lawn
To Meet Christian Singles
To satisfy her all night long

Thank you, spam, for helping to liberate me from the tyranny of desire.

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Last night we received the message below in an email from a very reliable source. Today, we found confirmation here. Since this is all coming from Mike Whitney, it is surely very reliable information. ABN
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My friend Tom Feeley is in Big trouble. He runs the web site informationclearinghouse.info which updates "news you won't find in the corporate media" every day. The site is strongly anti-war. Tom has gotten his share of death threats over the years, but what happened this week is a lot more serious. Two days ago, Tom's wife found three well dressed men in their kitchen. The man who did all the talking, told Tom's wife (I won't give her name) that Tom must "Stop what he is doing on the Internet, NOW!" As crazy as it sounds, he pulled back his lapel and showed her a gun of some kind which she could not identify.

SEP 04, 2001
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad.

Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons.

The 1972 treaty forbids nations from developing or acquiring weapons that spread disease, but it allows work on vaccines and other protective measures. Government officials said the secret research, which mimicked the major steps a state or terrorist would take to create a biological arsenal, was aimed at better understanding the threat.

The projects, which have not been previously disclosed, were begun under President Clinton and have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.

...Earlier this year, administration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare.

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Facilities in Los Angeles and Tustin allegedly churned thousands of indigents through their sites and billed Medicare and Medi-Cal for costly and unjustified medical procedures.

By Cara Mia DiMassa, Richard Winton and Rich Connell, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
August 7, 2008

On a Sunday afternoon two years ago, five homeless people being dropped off on Los Angeles' skid row by an ambulance caught the attention of police officers.

The officers videotaped what they thought was a case of hospitals dumping patients in a section of the city where few would notice or care.

But as investigators began to unravel the incident, they say they found something far different: a massive scheme to defraud taxpayer-funded healthcare programs of millions of dollars by recruiting homeless patients for unnecessary medical services.

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Thursday, August 07, 2008

NEW YORK — Guantanamo waterboarding as a Coney Island sideshow — that's what one political-minded artist has created on the Brooklyn seashore.

The "Waterboard Thrill Ride," by Steve Powers, is a stone's throw from Coney Island's famed Cyclone roller coaster and Nathan's hot dog stand.

For a dollar, visitors get to look through a barred window on a Guantanamo-like interrogation, enacted by animated robots. The hooded figure leans over a man in an orange jumpsuit, his face covered with a towel and his body tethered to a tilted plane.

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Nass has written some good stuff on this case and her blog is worth following. About the evidence presented, Ivins' lawyer also puts it well: “It was an explanation of why Bruce Ivins was a suspect,” said Paul F. Kemp, who represented the scientist for more than a year before his death on July 29 at age 62. “But there’s a total absence of proof that he committed this crime.”

Which brings us back to the even bigger question of why the rush to close this case now? It hardly seems to have been "solved" as the FBI claims. In the spirit of their rush to condemn Ivins, are we not permitted the same leeway in our speculation about their timing? To wit, is this case being closed now because Bush's term is coming to an end and someone does not want the matter pursued further under the next administration? Does anyone else see a pattern here with other things like telecoms, domestic spying, torture, attorney hirings and firings, executive privilege, fake WMDs, GITMO trials, and so on? ABN
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August 6, 2008
Meryl Nass

U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said at a Justice Department news conference, "We regret that we will not have the opportunity to present evidence to the jury."

Everybody else regrets it too--since what came out today was another pastiche of innuendo and circumstantial evidence, with an awful lot of holes. Time for the FBI to present all of what it has to the court of public opinion, don't you think? A major benefit for the FBI of sharing its case would be restoration of confidence in the US' system of justice, the Justice Department and its FBI.

I worked all day at the hospital, but want to get something out tonight, in a hurry, regarding the strength of some of the evidence presented today. I'll no doubt have more to say once I have read the rest of the "evidence".

Here goes:

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One of the biggest questions in this case is why the rush to close it? Some say the FBI is trying to clean up its reputation and put the anthrax business and the embarrassment of having aggressively pursued Hatfill behind it, but "solving" a case on purely circumstantial evidence--and in the same week that the Hamdan trial ended with such a dubious verdict--is not going to accomplish that. Far from it. So why the rush? Is it not possible--and this speculation is no less far-out than the FBI's speculation about Ivins--that the agency is rushing to close this case because Bush's term is nearly over and they do not want the investigation to be continued under the next president not because there is nothing more to be found but because there is? ABN
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By SCOTT SHANE and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: August 6, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday outlined a pattern of bizarre and deceptive conduct by Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist who killed himself last week, presenting a sweeping but circumstantial case that he was solely responsible for mailing the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001.

After nearly seven years of a troubled investigation, officials of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department declared that the case had been solved. Jeffrey A. Taylor, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, said the authorities believed “that based on the evidence we had collected, we could prove his guilt to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Some survivors of the attacks and members of Congress said they were persuaded by the evidence against Dr. Ivins, laid out in hundreds of pages of applications for search warrants unsealed for the first time. But some independent scientists, friends and colleagues of Dr. Ivins remained skeptical, noting that officials admitted that more than 100 people had access to the supply of anthrax that matched the powder in the letters.

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FBI'S ALLEGATION THAT IVINS WAS "SOLE CUSTODIAN" IS FALSE

August 7, 2008

Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired — has held its first trial. It produced ... a guilty verdict.

The military commission of six senior officers (whose names have not been made public) found Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who worked as one of Osama bin Laden’s drivers until 2001, guilty of one count of providing material support for terrorism.

...It is impossible, in any case, to judge the evidence against Mr. Hamdan because of the deeply flawed nature of this trial — the blueprint for which was the Military Commissions Act of 2006, one of the worst bits of lawmaking in American history.

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08/07/2008

A Buddhist tattoo artist from Boulder climbed a light pole outside China's main Olympic stadium and unfurled a "Tibet Will Be Free" banner Wednesday before Chinese police whisked him and three others away.

Phillip Bartell's whereabouts could not be confirmed Wednesday evening, but Chinese state-run media reported that he and the others were not arrested.

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Brides.com on how to maintain a zen outlook when planning your wedding

August 6, 2008

So what is Zen, and what does it have to do with being engaged? First, here's what Zen is not: a cult, a diet, or something that requires lots of chanting. Now, what it is: a way of thinking, being still and mindful of each second, breathing deeply, focusing. A Zen outlook can help calm you down when the seating plan or his mom is driving you nuts. Consider Zen your spiritual wedding planner. With Zen, you say to yourself: Right here, right now, everything is fine. Got it? Good. Hear that sound? It's you, breathing peacefully. Followers of Zen Buddhism believe that certain guidelines, or precepts, are the key to living a wise and contemplative life. We adapted the precepts (below) to help you be a more blissful bride.

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This excellent essay provides an in-depth look at the various modes of resistance we unknowingly or half-knowingly employ when faced with new information. Some of the stuff detailed here will be disturbing to those who see themselves as being guided, at least most of the time, by the light of reason. But why hold on to false notions? As Buddhists, we should be constantly striving to understand the inner workings of our own minds. Robyn
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June 2007
Laurie Manwell

Imagine for a moment that you are trying to discuss the 9/11 truth movement with a family member, friend, or even a colleague, and are met with remarkable resistance (of course if you are reading this, you most likely do not need to use your imagination). On the rare occasion, perhaps you’ve heard, “Hmm, that’s interesting, tell me more.” More likely though, merely the mention of alternative theories of the events has of 9/11 drawn dismissal, joking, or even ire: “I don’t listen to conspiracy theories,” “Yeah I’ve heard some really crazy stories that the government did it,” or “How dare you mock the victims of 9/11!” You begin to wonder, why are some people less willing to examine all of the events of 9/11 than others? Is it really because they are obstinate or in denial? Is it because they are apathetic or judiciously lazy? Or perhaps is it because they are uninformed or purposely misinformed? Are there any other explanations? These are all very important questions to be explored if all of the properly investigated facts and evidence of 9/11 are ever going to reach the forefront of public consciousness.

...How much conscious, intentional control then does an individual have over the processes that govern his or her decisions and behaviors? In a review of the automaticity of mental processes, Bargh and Chartrand (1999) present a strong case that people have very little conscious control over most of their moment-to-moment psychological lives. Specifically, they argue “that most of a person’s everyday life is determined not by their conscious intentions and deliberate choices but by mental processes that are put into motion by features of the environment and that operate outside of conscious awareness and guidance”

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I am posting most of the preface to "Faulty Towers of Belief, Part II", in which Manwell points to the very conspicuous lack of curiosity about 9/11 on the part of those who should be MOST curious - namely, her colleagues in the academic community. I highly recommend that everyone, academics and non-academics alike, read these few paragraphs. Robyn
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August 2007
Laurie Manwell

...However, of the many nonreceptive answers I have received from professors regarding [9/11], that have ranged from unawareness to dismissal, the ones that concern me the most are those that are just plain indifferent. Being told that, although they believe that there is merit in such work, they are ‘too busy career-building’ or ‘cannot see how it directly affects them,’ is deeply troubling. In the aftermath of 9/11, it is strangely ironic that many academics still choose to remain within the proverbial ‘ivory towers’ of intellect, while the rest of the human population fights for truth from deep within the trenches. How can scholars, especially those who study the plight of people affected by deception, aggression, terror, and war, dispossess themselves of the responsibility to stop it, whilst accepting the publics’ money to further their own careers? Have we academics lost sight of the needs of our fellow man, to whom we endeavor to teach our insights? How long can we safely continue to believe that these towers too will not fail, as most of us believed on 9/11?

Thus, to those who would question the breadth and depth of Part II, which is absolutely more political than Part I, I respectfully ask you to consider the reasons why I endeavor to cross the boundaries of science and the humanities...

August 5, 2008
George Washington

Bestselling Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind has revealed that the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11 . . . and that the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq.

Suskind also revealed that "Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official 'that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.' ”

This is a stunning revelation in its own right. But what does it say about the government's claims that 9/11 was an attack by Muslim extremists which the U.S. government could not have anticipated?

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Anthrax mystery: the FBI/media narrative is laughable – and sinister

by Justin Raimondo
August 6, 2008

It sounds like a very bad made-for-television movie: a mad scientist – a violent sociopath, a "nerd with a dark side," who had already tried to kill several people, is obsessed with pornography, and is fixated on a particular college sorority – unleashes a strain of deadly anthrax through the U.S. mail, killing five, infecting 17 others, and terrorizing the country. His motive, aside from sheer antisocial vindictiveness: he holds the patent for an anthrax vaccine, and he also wants to direct the nation's attention to the supposedly overlooked and underfunded problem of bio-terrorism. That'll teach 'em!

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This is our first glimpse of an overview of the evidence. The claim that he had "hundreds" of letters similar to the anthrax letters may be something, but we will need to see those letters. The other evidence is circumstantial and could well fit other people; obviously, the FBI thought so too or they would not have pursued Hatfill so relentlessly. We will know more in a few days as more people look over the files. ABN
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By DAVID STOUT and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: August 6, 2008

WASHINGTON — A few days before the anthrax attacks of 2001, the scientist who has emerged as the suspect in the case sent e-mails with wording that was sometimes identical to the language used in deadly anthrax-laced letters that autumn, according to documents released by the government on Wednesday.

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TULKU DAMCHO RINPOCHE will speak Tue. Aug. 12th at 7pm at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito, 1036 Solana Dr., Solana Beach.

Born in 1985, Tulku Damcho has already completed a three year retreat and has been recognized as the incarnation of Tsoknyi Rinpoche, a famous meditator and teacher in Tibet. He is sent on this first North American Tour by his teacher, Thrangu Rinpoche, recognized as one of the greatest scholars in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.

The Solana Beach Dharma Study Group welcomes newcomers to meditation and any with interest in these traditions to join us for this special event. Suggested donation is $10. Directions may be found at http://uufsd.org - Questions? christieturner @ gmail.com

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By Melissa Dahl
Wed., Aug. 6, 2008

When Bill Russell tells people that his severe depression was relieved by shock therapy, the most common response he gets is: "They're still doing that?"

Most people might be quicker to associate electroshock therapy with torture rather than healing. But since the 1980s, the practice has been quietly making a comeback. The number of patients undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, as it's formally called, has tripled to 100,000 a year, according to the National Mental Health Association.

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