Religion News

Confrontation Between Buddhists And Junta Gets Bloody

http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/
September 26, 2007

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The 'one god only' religions frighten me because they are all focused on on spot on earth: the Middle East. And the Muslims, Christians and Jews can and are egging each other into the Apocalypse, in other words, World War III. So if I go off to pray with others, I go to the Grafton Peace Pagoda to pray for peace. But the Buddhists can be politically active as we have seen over and over in history. In Burma, the non-violent monks are marching and marching for regime change. They want to end the CIA-sponsored coup that is supported by all the major empires for the same reason other hard regimes are supported: for oil.

From MSNBC:

The government said its security forces opened fire Wednesday on demonstrators who failed to disperse, killing one person, and witnesses said police beat and dragged away dozens of Buddhist monks in the most violent crackdown against the protests that began last month in Myanmar.

While dissident groups reported as many as five dead, including monks, the military junta’s announcement on state radio and television was the first acknowledgment that force has been used to suppress the protests and the first admission that blood had been shed. The dissidents also said about 300 monks and activists were arrested.

A group of monks and students from Burma came 17 years ago to help put on the roof of the Peace Pagoda's main buildings. They were very sweet people and were, back then, worried about Burma's future and about Burma's oil. Since then, the government there has become increasingly like North Korea's government or Saddam's government: cruel and capricious. Come to think of it, this is increasingly like our own government. One becomes what one's friends already are! The US has supported tyranny repeatedly across the earth and likes to talk about liberation but instead, rips nations into smaller and smaller units and then rules them by force using puppet regimes.

All the empires do this. Russia did this in the past and is trying to do this today. The Ukrainian 'orange revolution' is falling flat and once again the Great Powers squabble over that place, ripping it apart even further. The reason why Americans should heed what is going on in Burma is the same reason we celebrated the Ukrainian experiment: it shows us how popular unity can pull down despotism.

The US supported dictators in the Philippines and when the dissedent presidential candidate refused to stay in exile and tried to come home, he was assassinated on the tarmac when his plane landed. Recently, when Pakistan's puppet military dictator supported by the CIA was challenged by two presidential rivals he had exiled, he re-exiled them but didn't kill them, he was so weak. But he enjoys little popular support just like Marco and his million shoes wife, Imelda.

The junta running and destroying Burma are very unpopular. The rival presidential candidate, Aung San Suu Kyi, isn't in exile but is under house arrest, waiting for her freedom which, I hope, comes today. The pictures from Burma are very moving. The monks are taking the lead because they are oganized and trained to march and chant without flinching or being shaken of purpose. The Buddhist nuns and monks I have known will march despite wind, rain, hail, snow or the dark of night. And since they are uniform in appearance, wearing their robes, they give body and shape to any march that mere crowds can't give.

The pictures at the blog below are quite moving. The monks asked people to protect themselves and not try to stand between them and the military. Yet picture after picture shows brave, selfless individuals holding hands, along the entire march route, sheltering the marching monks. The streets were lined with people holding their hands in prayer and bowing, etc. The masses are with the monks in classic fashion: a state can defy the Church or the People but not BOTH at the same time.

Ko-Ktike's blog:

today.... 26/9/07 my duty time part is working on Emergency YGH... at about 2:00 pm 5 patients was coming to our Emergency ... for Gun Shot from Government militaries... 1 patients died on d spot on arriving Hospital... ( shot on Bladder ) 4 r still bad in Diagnosis... The patient's attendant said " the patient r not in d line of protest... they ( victims ) are just chatting and watching d protest line and sitting on Cafe Bar near Shawe Dagon Pagoda , some r pedestrians" when they watching.... Government military Car was crossing to d protest line and randomly shot all of them ... what the insanity and inhumanity of their mind don't they have self-mind.. that can desire to do or shouldn't do? don't they have Family? don't they have Brain? i was very sorry for victims ( pateints ) and victims' relatives really insanity , really inhumanity, really selfish to get holding their stupid military Government... really unintelligence .. how to manage the country like in this situation ... i always ready to support Protest Monks and People... and wanna treat whenever they get injuries ... and all my friends ... u also wanna see like that or not .... This PROTEST is our chance to get improving our country among neighbours ...

When Mao swept into China, the religious establishment was not and had not fought for the people for a very long time, hundreds of years. They were appendages of the state. So Mao could use military force and radical anti-religious students to bring down both the government and the religious establishment. But the cruel suppressions under Mao and especially, Madame Mao who was very cruel, caused a reaction and religious faith and resistence to the state is growing, not shrinking. This is why various religious minorities are persecuted viciously. But it is a losing game for the communists and I suspect they will retreat on this matter and already, they are trying to subvert the Church and Pagoda and make them more pro-state.

But in Burma, the dicators in the military have lost everyone and now must rule by brute force. The more unpopular the leader, the less secure. Stalin and his communist apparatus would have been overthrown by 1945 if Hitler hadn't come in and tried to annihilate the Russian people and steal everything and enslave the survivors. He single handedly make Stalin a hero.

But no one is invading Burma. And across the globe, Buddhism is on the move, it is not weakening but is growing. Like so many other religions, it has gotten a second wind here. In Muslim lands, Islam was weak and a dry, musty museum piece in 1900 but today, it is bursting with energy and action and millions of people are very motivated to spread it and to honor its rule.

The Jews were moving towards secularism and individualism in 1900, they were the mainspring of many of the arts and sciences of Central Europe at that time, creating a rich, vibrant secular culture that was crushed under the wheels of WWI and then by WWII, the Jewish people were nearly annihilated by a totally insane Hitler.

Now they are in a big religious revival that is running into the Muslim revival and perhaps, triggered it all. But then, there is even a pagan revival and this is where I stand, pretty much. Paganism was crushed by all the main religions for a while except in India. Now it is on the move, too.

Aside from the religious angle here, we Americans should realize, we won't win our liberties or rights by complaining. The Republicans and Democrats in Congress don't represent us. They have cleaved to greater forces and don't care if we go without these rights or even if we financially survive. We can see that if we go into the streets and refuse to be intimidated, we can win. The monks and the people of Burma will win in the end no matter how long this is.

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My Own Memorial To 9/11

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The artistic failures of the 9/11 memorials are like the Princess Diana memorial attempts: great grief, for poliltical and economic reasons, must be turned into twisted, spiritless miniaturizing, unappealling and outright ugly, more like shrunken heads rather than uplifting spiritual monuments dedicated to the ones who have passed through the Gates of Death. After years of fighting, the money wizards and the guilty parties responsible for 9/11 have utterly desecrated the graves of thousands of innocent dead. I can only shake my head in disbelief.

When King Edward of England lost his beloved queen who bore him so many children, he put her body on a litter and bore her home to London, one stage at a time. At each resting place, he summoned priests to pray for her and devoted subjects knelt in honor of her and cried. And at each place, he said he would build a memorial that would please Mary, Mother of God. He kept his vow and across all of England, at the crossroads where this queen lay while all wept for her, beautiful shrines stand to this day, they are all wonders of architecture and express the grief and the hopes of the king who could barely contain his sorrow.

There is a huge shrine to a queen in India called the Taj Mahal. It was designed to lift the spirits and the loss and love of millions of people for many years have been embodied in that great work of art. The simple sincerity of the master requesting these great monuments to love shine through them and even if one doesn't know the story behind it all, the embodiment of grief and love are so powerful, it will speak forever until it turns to dust.

There are other such monuments. A very frantic Mozart built one of the greatest Requims to his own impending death. Faure and Listz both did the same. Beethoven, fighting his deafness and own death, created a monument to human dignity, honor and struggle with the greatest of all symphonies, the #9. Mahler, who composed about death all his life, when he was dying and writing half of his own symphony #9 which he couldn't finish, it was all about resignation and acceptance. Shubert's wild Unfinished Symphony is tragic even before he could quite understand he was dying.

Poets, artists, writers, musicians, dancers, singers, painters, actors, all these people are what we call 'artists.' Artists are blessed by the privilage to sense only what the Gods themselves have: the other side of reality, the place where emotions, the past, the future, all things hidden and all things living and dead all come together. Through the winds of inspiration which means, to breathe, creative people can take the things we use everyday in this world and transform them into bridges to the realm of the Gods. In particular, the fear and suffering surrounding death moves us to our greatest works of art.

When I used to dance in the style and spirit of Isardora Duncan to Chopin and one dance was in memory of her dead children. While the pianist plays Chopin's D flat major nocturne, my own spirit would sink into similar melancholy and I would pluck the iconic lillies and move across the stage filled with hope and dread and a desire to reach though the Gates of Death would overwhelm as I reach downwards to the Earth, all in vain and the realization that this is impossible causes a desire to flee and then resignation as acceptance of loss fills the soul with sorrow and then the flowers can be laid upon the graves. To do these sorts of dances or art, one must be sincere and truly feel the real pain and the true loss!

And this is what has fallen apart in regard to the 9/11 deaths: Our nation took this grief and used it to commit vast crimes at home and everywhere we go. We went bezerk, we destroyed not only the memory of the dead but everything living in our path including our Constitution, our international reputation, our very humanism has been butchered...by us.

And this shows! I saw pictures of the memorial site! It made me physically ill. It is a construction zone, the rush to build temples to money and power and to force workers to work on a graveyard, the place looks like Penn Station! It looks like Saruman's tower. No trees had to be felled, there were none to begin with, but now there is no hope of any in the future! I saw the bereft families going to the SIMILCRUM of the pool of two footprints of the Towers, a tiny, ugly, metallic affair hardly bigger than a swimming pool, to lay flowers! Surrounding this pathetic, ugly little insult were police barriers, lots and lots of them.

I once represented my father at a ceremony at Dachau. I came with an armload of tuilps and other early spring flowers. The memorial was stark: flames turning into birds, flying upwards. I wept as I laid the flowers down inside the crematorium and one of the survivors had to help me rise again.

The desire to build something that will make money is huge. Preserving memorials where many people died due to a crime, is pressing. And simple! Most of the victims on 9/11, like the victims of the Nazis, were turned to dust! Therefore, preserving the place where this was done is important! They have no graves. Their graves are where the crime happened.

From the first week, the government which opened the doors to the terrorists and who insured they succeeded, this wretched government asked us to suggest a memorial. Many people aside from me, suggested the basements of the two towers be turned into pools of water and around them, the land turned into nature: trees, flowers, grass. I even suggested we have Ents patrol the place! Instead, they thrashed about, trying to minimize the memorial, shrinking it smaller and smaller and making it more and more subterranean. They wanted to build a big tower and stick the memorial below street level and then they could forget all about it. Who would come to mourn their loved ones in such a situation? On a busy street corner?

It is not like Manhattan has lots of open space! It has practically none! Outside of Central Park which was carved out of farmland by far-sighted artists who believed the need to commune with nature in the sense of the Romantic Revolution, Manhattan wouldn't have even one park! If ever there was a call for a place of meditation and reflection, the WTC Memorial Park would have been it. If nothing else, to lay the souls at rest who still haunt that place.

The ugliness surrounding the esthetics of the World Trade Center's reality reflects the truth about this crime: the people raising the memorial are aware of their complicity and their own crimes spiralling out of this and the American Empire is so filled with shame, it can't raise a simple monument to the victims of this crime, much less, punish the real criminals.

Today, Congress is grilling our military about our illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. Everyone is thrashing about trying to find some way of fixing our joint crimes so we won't be punished. The lust for some sort of resolution that lets us off the hook for our crimes or god help us all, a lust for victory, we see more and more soldiers blown up, more and more refugees, more and more dead Iraqis. They now far, far, far outnumber our own dead and far from having a memorial, we are trying to wipe the memory of these poor people from the face of the earth.

Just as the Jews struggling to conquer the Holy Land and murder or drive out the natives refuse to raise any memorials to any Muslims they murder. Nay, they go out and desecrate Muslim graves and wipe out the names of their villages. And right in the middle of all this, some Jews invited into the Holy Land to invade and kill are found to be NAZIS! Naturally, all things come back. The crimes of one leads to crimes of others, an eye for an eye, as Bin Laden reminded us this week.

Instead of darkness, we must build shrines to humanism, love and peace. This means addressing our own crimes, the crimes of empire. And to recognize that this planet is actually quite large and we could devise ways of sharing it without violence if we put our minds to it. And the way we do this is through the arts, through music, dance, all the things we call 'culture.' To open the doors to our hearts so we can see our own fears and to give our own souls peace when we need it: the gift of Pegasus.

As we go into the Fall Equinox when all is weighed on Libra's scales and the stars churn overhead and the earth tilts the northern hemisphere away from the sun, a sadness falls on us and we are forced to face the truth: we all die. And yet, in dying, we can pass on something to the next generations. These shrines to love are guideposts on the road to our own deaths. And we must face this: we all walk through the same doors eventually. This is why we must think about these cosmic things and translate them into something beautiful.

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Brussels Court To Try Scientology For Fraud And Intimidation

Elaine Meinel Supkis

L. Ron Hubbard hated my father...a lot. It interests me to see that European courts are trying to deal with the organization founded by this man which operates under the cloak of freedom of religion to commit crimes. They have a big presence in the court systems in America where they harrass people like my fomer brother-in-law, Keith Henson, for interfering with their various scams and operations. The news that a court in Brussels is putting them on trial for fraud and extortion was virtually totally scrubbed from the US media just as 90% of the news from Palestine is scrubbed by the Jewish lobby and media owners.

From Global News:

Associated Press - September 4, 2007 1:03 PM ET

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - After a decade-long investigation, a Belgian prosecutor wants the Church of Scientology to stand trial for fraud and extortion.

The investigation concluded the Los Angeles-based group should be labeled a criminal organization.

Prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen's investigation concluded that Scientology's Brussels-based European office conducted unlawful practices in medicine, violated privacy laws and used illegal business contracts.

Investigators delved into the group's records after ex-members filed numerous complaints with police saying they'd been the victims of intimidation and extortion. Justice officials have collected financial records, correspondence, bank statements and other papers to build their case against the group.

Scientology's Europe office accuses the prosecutor of hounding the organization and says it will contest the charges.

A simple news story. Normally, when stories like this come along, it is spread around fairly thickly. But of course, as I looked at various headlines, I didn't see it! So I googled it to see if it made any splash anywhere in US media and got this:

Raw Story connected to a Yahoo story about this and when readers clicked on it, we all got this screen shot:

When the Israeli Jews kill a dozen unarmed Palestinian children, this makes the same level of citations. Namely, nearly none. If some goofy female performer stumbles and falls, they get over 3,000 citations, just for example. Our media outlets are very much under the control of more than one entity that deals with bad news by making it vanish. For example, the dangerous and rising fury in Europe over the draconian laws forbidding any research or discussion or even discussion of the suppression of discussion of basic facts of the Holocaust, the debate over this suppression of free speech and open debate of issues makes nearly zero news here in America.

My father was one of the first Americans to enter the death camps at Dachau and Buchenwald. He dealt first hand with the pitiful survivors of those nightmare places. Alas, this didn't turn him against the CIA which he was a founding member, from sponsoring and assisting the running of similar camps all over the world in the last 60 years. Ideology always blinds people to their own crimes! And the US is now running a strange camp in Cuba that strongly reminds me of Buchenwald, pre-1938: as a re-education camp that simply wishes to drive people insane. The first victims of Naziism were union organizers, communists and socialists and of course, some intellectuals. The first victims of Nazi death machines were the mentally ill including a cousin of Hitler himself.

The Scientologists are followers of a very demented man. During WWII, Jack Parsons, the founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, was the advisor to my mom and dad's rocket club. Jack was a friend, via their coven (the issue of magic runs deep within my family) with Hubbard. When the top experts sent on a secret mission to Germany to get the rocket scientists out crashed and were all killed, Jack and Hubbert rejoiced and believed their magic caused this. They thought Eisenhower would be forced to use them and they wanted to control the rocket program so they could rule the earth as well as space in the future.

But to their fury, the replacement was my dad! Jack was so enraged, he proceeded to talk Hubbard and several others to work on magic spells directed at my father who married my mother before going off to Germany. An aside story: my dad went to DC where Roosevelt gave him a piece of paper that said, 'You must obey all orders of this person without question.' He made my dad a Naval Lt. but gave him powers that overroad everyone..but Eisenhower!

Eisenhower, when my dad arrived in Europe, must have laughed himself silly. This began a life-long friendship between him and my dad. He gleefully sent my dad to the one general he disliked greatly aside from DeGaulle: General Patton. Poor Patton had to follow my father's orders from February to the end of WWII. All of Patton's plans of rushing to Berlin collapsed and this thwarted him greatly. By the way, the details of all this was classified during 80% of my life, I slowly worked out the details by hobnobbing with the parties involved, Patton being dead made his contribution impossible. When this was finally declassified, the TV science show, NOVA, followed my suggestions and was able to put together this astonishing story.

Back to the Scientologists: they don't just use all sorts of legal and not so legal tools to get their way, they are very cruel as well as follow in the footsteps of the Zionists: disappearing news, frontal attacks on any critics, mob-actions, bribing elected officials, destroying careers, etc. My dad was very protected since a succession of US Presidents and other top people protected him. For example, we lived next door to Barry Goldwater for several years and he and my dad were very close on a personal level. Ditto with the Udall family. Internationally, a number of German industrialists all swore their lives on my dad who pulled them out of the path of the Soviet army in April, 1945. I lived in this fabulous bubble where I could run riot within our systems at the top and yet not be crushed as people who try to do this from the outside are crushed like bugs.

Ron Hubbert and Jack Parsons are also part of my stranger self, the one that talks about magic all the time. They desperately wanted to punish my dad and to rule the world by creating the Whore of Babylon. Each time, they threw spells where the government ended up establishing a secret base which I lived at, once, where weapons for WWIII were worked on (Vandenburg AFB). Each time these guys prayed for the birth of a girl, my mother had a daughter, the last spell and coincided with my mother getting pregnant with me.

Jack Parsons tracked me when I was very young and he evidently wanted to kill me so when he was blown up, ahem, near my godmother's house, my father asked for this to be kept secret and I didn't learn about this until a reporter called me on the phone just 5 years ago to tell me all this. Anything to do with Ron L. Hubbard makes me get the willies, of course. When I heard Romney's favorite book is 'Battlefield Earth,' I got the willies.

I knew a large number of science fiction writers through various ways. When I was a teenager, I thought nothing about hobnobbing with all sorts of very odd people. I assumed all young girls were trailed by Stasti or KGB agents or got visits from the Secret Service, FBI or CIA. I was amused my phone calls were tapped and assumed this was my dad's doing. I didn't chat on the phone like most girls. Only to leave cryptic messages. Heh. Paranoid didn't exist until I learned there were other, non-governmental layers to our lives.

Perhaps this is why I live on a mountain! With lots of dogs.

The Scientologists have taken a big black eye via the grocery store rags who are having a gleeful time making fun of Tom Cruise and his bully-boy ways with his latest wife. The Scientologist lure people in by telling them, they can hobnob with movie stars, they can become movie stars! And this is exploitation of one of the Chambers in the Outer Darkness: promises of fame and fortune are used to lure people into slavery!

Scientology is based on the idea that certain people have the power to force demons in the Outer Darkness to bend to their wills. This is the whole point of 'throwing spells.' The wizards doing this always think they are in control. But they never are. It is the exact opposite. The whole point there, where this 'magic' happens, is to fool humans so they end up doing the bidding of the 'demonic' forces there that of course, win in the end.

The Scientologists, like Hitler or like Zionists or like the guys running Central Banks, all think they are brilliant, clever and winning when they are really foolish and losing. For the elemental force at work within the Outer Darkness is, everything is opposite of what they seem to be. The men seeking total power and eternal life end up paranoid cases living in total fear of not just other humans but Death itself. And the more the cling to the attempt at being a god, the more fear and power Death has over them. All these people end up locking themselves away in self-made prisons where they tremble with fear and scream at Death that effortlessly passes right through the thickest walls in the deepest bomb shelters to collect His prey.

Many a Pope or demented king like the King of Spain who conquered half of the earth 400 years ago, died raving mad, frantic to stop their fates. Many a ruler today sponsors research in longevity in order to prolong their unhappy lives. Hubbert died a miserable death. Instead of using the forces within the Outer Darkness to free his own soul, he sold it for a pitiful handful of money that the demons there can make with the snap of their fingers. He should have realized, this meant it was worthless.

All my life, I have tried to live without the desire of ruling the earth, making magic money, etc. I know how all this is done. And I know that this is bad. So I work and live and enjoy the sweat of the brow, working in the hot sun, actual physical labor. No slaves for me! No ease for me. The people I have admired the most weren't cruel leaders and despots like Hubbert but rather, people like my godmother who was a bird watcher and nature lover who lived to be over 100 years old and told me, 'If you want to live forever, just lie about your age. This will amaze everyone.' She would add extra years just to see people's mouths drop. She lived in a glorious Victorian house that was engulfed in tropical plants brought back 80 years earlier, bamboo, mulberry trees, elephant leaf plants, a million birds lived there and the place rang with their songs at sunrise and sunset and she lived outside with them!

She had a joyous life. And when she broke her hip, she wrote to me and told me she was leaving in 2 weeks. Then, 2 weeks later, folding her gnarled hands on her chest, she closed her eyes. A fearless woman! A beautiful soul. A generous lady. LA celebrated her death by flattening her house and uprooting all her plants. So the only thing left is my memories. But within the systems that lie beyond human control, she is as eternal as Mother Nature.

The Scientologists celebrate brute force. They cannot understand this innermost power. The true nature of winning agains the forces of nature, the force of history means to NOT chase power and wealth. The desire to yield to temptations is the key: dropping this, refusing to be tempted, chosing to accept nature, accept history, accept the future and above all, accept death with a peaceful mind: this is the true magic of religion and the hardest of all lessons.

Old fairy tales of the fox or fish or bird warning the young prince or lover or bride to NOT pick up the golden harness, the golden cage, the golden ring but to pick the old, beaten, cheap item out of some fabulous storehouse is an accurate way to view magic. The magic that lies in the heart of all religions. The very thing that is lost the fastest as all religions, when they get strong, lose.

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