Buddhist Jihad

Let's Just Drive Them Crazy, Then We'll Let Them Go

This is a nice story about this nice Christian nation, is it not?

Guantanamo conditions 'worsening'

                                                                                    

Some of Guantanamo's inmates have been held for five years

Conditions for detainees at the US military jail at Guantanamo Bay are deteriorating, with the majority held in solitary confinement, a report says.

Amnesty International said the often harsh and inhumane conditions at the camp were "pushing people to the edge".

It called for the facility to be closed and for plans for "unfair" military commission trials to be abandoned.

Many of the 385 inmates have been held for five years or more, unable to mount a legal challenge to their detention.

"While the United States has an obligation to protect its citizens... that does not relieve the United States from its responsibilities to comply with human rights," the report said.

       

                                 

Some [inmates] are dangerously close to full-blown mental and physical breakdown                                                           UK director Kate Allen Amnesty International

       

"Statements by the Bush administration that these men are 'enemy combatants,' 'terrorists' or 'very bad people' do not justify the complete lack of due process rights," the group said.

Amnesty reiterated its call for detainees at the prison camp in Cuba - many of whom are suspected Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters - to be released or charged and sent to trial.

'Already in despair'

The report, published on Thursday, said about 300 detainees are now being held at a new facility - known as Camp 5, Camp 6 and Camp Echo - comparable to "super-max" high security units in the US.

The US says it plans to prosecute 80 of the 385 remaining inmates

The group said the facility had "created even harsher and apparently more permanent conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation".

It said the detainees were reportedly confined to windowless cells for 22 hours a day, only allowed to exercise at night and could go for days without seeing daylight.

The organisation's UK director, Kate Allen, described the process at Guantanamo as "a travesty of justice".

"With many prisoners already in despair at being held in indefinite detention... some are dangerously close to full-blown mental and physical breakdown.

Full coverage here.

All beings by nature are Buddha

as ice by nature is water.

Apart from water, no ice,

apart from beings, no Buddha.

                         --Hakuin

James "Dogbeater" Dobson, King of Un-Christians?

It makes sense that a gentleman who proudly belt-beats his own puppy dog (with a belt), advocates the whipping of toddlers (with real whips) and children (with real whips), and supports grown men showering naked with little boys and comparing penises (in order to prevent homosexuality) is THE person to determine who is, and is not Christian.

Rightwing potential Presidential candidate Fred Thompson, a member of the Church of Christ, is not Christian.

See here?   Really, he isn't.  James "Dogbeater" Dobson, sadist for Christ, says so.  So there.

Speaking of crappy-Christians, via a comment on the noble blog "Hullaballoo", I came across this sweetheart entry on an End Times discussion.  I hope you'll enjoy it just as much as I do.  This rapture-ready guy has some neat crappyunchristian ideas about how crappyunchristians should run the world:

1) We should fight terrorism every where it raises its ugly head.   But I mean really fight it.  Be as brutal as they are.

2) Fight terrorism w/ covert operations and assissinate their leaders when possible. If there's a training camp, blow it off the face of the Earth. If you're caught in our country, you go to jail until you die.

3) Sadam thing was fine with me, but why waste time w/ the trial.

4) Iran - nuke their nuclear facilities.  Make a crater where they used to be.  Overthrow their government and let the people decide what kind of gov't they want. We control the oil, but we'll make sure you get a lot of the profits unless you start screwin with us again.

Afghanistan - we should have completely leveled the mountains where bin laden is/was hiding on 9/12. No warning, no nothin', just had it rain nuclear bombs on the whole place.

Sudan - force the UN to go in with us and straighten the mess out. 

5) see #1, hunt them all down and kill them or put them in prison until they die.

6) it's war, kill them

Well, you get the idea.

Thanks a lot Pope Urban I, for turning Christianity from a religion of peace and lovingkindness into a religion of cold-blooded killing and vegeance.  Wow.  It's as if the New Testament teachings never even existed, is it not?

Even if someone regards you as an enemy,

Though you've cared for him as you would your own child --

Being especially affectionate toward him,

As would a mother whose child is taken ill

Is the practice of a bodhisattva.

 

Christian Daddys' Inappropriate Balls

Eee-ew.  This story is just so creepy.

Why would grown men seek to have public control of their adult female daughter's sexuality?

Why would grown men seek to exert public ownership over their pre-pubescent female child?

"Purity" balls?

Sure, only the best for Daddy's little chattel.

Next, they'll be bringing back the honeymoon night's proof-of-virginity bloodied sheet.

Eee-ew.

Full story here.

(Digby, here --scroll down.  More Digby here.)

MORE crappychristianism from crappychristians. GOLDEN RULE, ANYONE?

From Pandagon, entitled "People Who Claim to Love Jesus write me . . . ."

Well, really, cripes, goddammit, Jesus wept, this crap from crappychristians speaks for itself.

One hesitates to sully one's blog with it, in fact.

So, click through if you want more crappychristian crap.  But remember, I told you so.

Moi, I want less.  Way less.

More Reasons Why Creating Gitmo-esque Classes of "Sub-Humans" is Evil

"In my language . . . ."

"In my language . . . ."  is a multi-faceted communication, available here, from YouTube.

Stay with it, all the way to the end.

Then respond.

(We create classes of sub-humans so can conceive of ourselves as just and good people even whilst mistreating others, confining them, ridiculing them, humiliating them, torturing them, killing them.)

Protecting Western Civilization Via Medievalist Savagery

Some beings go from dark to dark.

Some from dark to light,

And some from light to dark.

May you go from light to light.

                --Nagarjuna

Link here.

Hat tip to No Blood for Hubris.

Suffering Ennobles Mankind? Well, OK, so at least suffering ennobles Sally Satel's Patients?? Oh, and don't call her silly Sally.

Here's a fun article on why therapists and patients need not pay attention to dumb ol' stuff like childhood sexual abuse, childhood physical abuse, witnessing trauma, and like, um, feelings.  Not to mention stuff like, um, you know, symptoms.  Hyuk.  Just keep blaming the victims.  That works fine! 

(Here's more on silly Sally Satel, MD, via No Blood for Hubris.  Turns out, she doesn't believe in PTSD.  See, if you don't believe in it, you don't have to pay for treating it!  Isn't that a keen way to pay for the war in Iraq!?! Moi, I don't believe in fairies!  Gets me totally off the hook!  Thanks so much, Sally!)

Yo. Nice People Don't Call Other People "Satanic"

I've been getting some blog comments which suggest that calling people "Satanic" is waaaay nicer than calling people "crappy."

Well, I dunno about that.

Apparently, according to this reader, calling Buddhists "Satanic" is somehow much more polite than, say, suggesting that, due to the results of their actions in their current lives, some misguided Christians may find themselves reborn as single-celled intestinal inhabitants.  Or worse.  Which I, personally, rarely do.  (See posts below, where poster Honest Observer make reference to this behavior).

The argument appears to be that calling people "Satanic" is a theological statement, while calling people "crappy" is, well, not nice.  Or something.

I, as one Buddhist among many on the receiving end of the "Satanic" Mohler-esque namecall thing, strongly disagree.  The S-word is the religious equivalent of the N-word.

If you want to call my religion "misguided" or something, that's fine.

Name-calling that implies devil-worship, on the other hand, is REALLY not nice.  In the N-word sense.  It's beyond the pale.

On the other hand, "Crappy-Christian" is accurate.  I'm using this nomenclature in a theological way, pointing out that those Christians who behave in ways inimical to Christ's teachings are doing a crappy job of being Christians.

Any questions?

Call Me Buddhist, But I Thought Christmas WAS About Peace on Earth!

Guess I was wrong about that.

Here's a story of a person being fined by her homeowners association for putting up a Christmas wreath with a peace symbol.

Other neighbors, you see, are complaining.

Some are saying that peace is Satanic.

Well, well, well.

Some crappy-Christians, as we have documented earlier, opine that sand mandalas and the scarey Dalai Lama are Satanic, too.

As is Buddhism in its entirety.

Ah me.  So much time to freak out about Satanic-ness, so little time to practice the Beatitudes.

After We Torture People and/or Animals, We Wear These to Bed. It Doesn't Help Much With the Nightmares, Though.

Well, I find these more than a little bizarre.

Don't much like the little veil that the little lady is wearing, either.

I think boys and girls would have a much safer and more secure feeling in the dark if Mommy and Daddy weren't whipping them with little sanctified whips like James "Dogbeater" Dobson advocates, and not showering naked with grown men and comparing penis sizes like James "Dogbeater" Dobson advocates, and not giving their kids over to other people to paddle for them, and generally not being tortured in the name of spare-the-rod sadistic "discipline" and stuff like that.

Hat-tip to Jesus' General.

I think then you wouldn't have to worry so much about protecting your kids from nightmares.