Saving Afghanistan in Westwood (UCLA)

Amber Dorrian, CC, Wisdom Quarterly; Nazaneen Habib; Prof. Brent E. Huffman (IMDB)

Gold-covered images of the Buddha at "Copper Well" or Mes Aynak, Afghanistan (WQ)

Peaceful SAVE MES AYNAK! demonstration calling attention to imperiled Buddhist treasures in Afghanistan, Westwood Federal Bldg./UCLA, Saturday, June 15, 2013 (Wisdom Quarterly)

Gandhara art treasures being smuggled in neighboring southern Gandhara, now designated as an independent country after the 1947 partition of Buddhist India (BigStory.AP.org).

Organizer KH (WQ)

WESTWOOD (Los Angeles) Saturday afternoon at the site of many demonstrations along busy Wilshire Blvd., concerned Buddhists, Afghans, and Iranians gathered to call attention to the impending demolition of Mes Aynak.

Ancient Buddhist Afghanistan (formerly Gandhara, India, possibly the Shakyan territory and the Buddha's hometown) has a wealth of unrecovered archeological treasures.

Documentarian BK (WQ)

Perhaps the greatest in size and splendor is "Copper Well" (Mes Aynak), a formerly Buddhist monastic complex about to be bulldozed out of existence by the MCC/Chinese government with the complicity of the officially cash strapped Karzai regime and US/MIC imperial forces.

More demonstrations

NW India, Gandhara, now Afghanistan

At the doorsteps of the sprawling UCLA campus -- across from the soldiers' Memorial Cemetery, the Veterans Administration (VA) campus and hospital for returning soldiers, the Federal Building, and more corporate offices than a student can comfortably wince at in the dazzling California sun.

Demonstrators, concerned Afghans and Americans, lined up along a boulevard that stretches to the Pacific Ocean only a few miles away in neighboring Santa Monica beach (the site of the USA's most recent "medicated Manchurian Candidate 'lone wolf' school shooting").

  

Thai demonstration

Similar protests have been taking place in Theravada-Buddhist Thailand thanks to the efforts of Nadia Tarzi and Dr. Royce Wiles. Concern is mounting in Japan and Taiwan, two Buddhist nations more eager to bring attention to Chinese atrocities than salvaging Indo-Greco Buddhist history and the very earliest art depictions of the Buddha.

  

India, like Judeo-Christian Israel and all Islamic cultures, had a long history of not depicting prophets and "God" with graven images. 

 

This continued until Indo-Greco/Bactrian artisans in ancient Gandhara began to depict the Central Asian Buddha in diaphanous, Greek-style toga robes. The rest of India or the Middle Country of Jambudvipa east of Iran/Persia (Aryan), Seistan-Baluchistan, and Gandhara followed suit in a riot of carving and image making.

Why Afghanistan?

Demonstrations will continue and are likely to spread across the US in spite of war-supporting mainstream media indifference. The world media is eager to see a Chinese-capitalist endeavor taken off the table.

And American citizens want funds to actually reach needy Afghans rather than CIA-warlords and Taliban bogeymen, and desperate opium dealers. The invisible history of Afghanistan's untold story, as revealed by American scholars Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould (invisiblehistory.com).

 

Honk if you love the Buddhas," "Save Mes Aynak," Buddha images (Wisdom Quarterly)

Afghans and Americans united to save archeological treasures (Wisdom Quarterly)

Afghanistan: life-sized Buddha, one of more than 200 found at Mes Aynak (Jay Price/MCT)

Afghan-American Nanzaneen Habib, Theravada Buddhist image (Wisdom Quarterly)

Bring US War Money Home
CodePink.org

(CodePinkAlert/flickr)

The "Bring Our War $$ Home campaign" is directly inspired by CODEPINK's mission statement:

"to end U.S. funded wars and occupations, to challenge militarism globally, and to redirect our resources into health care, education, green jobs, and other life-affirming activities."

CODEPINK's BOW$H campaign had a national victory in 2011 when the US Conference of Mayors passed our "War Dollars Home resolution."

 

Afghani girls (Marianne Elliott)

It was the first such resolution since the US War on Vietnam, showing civic leaders' (and their constituents') desire for our taxes to be spent on domestic needs, not endless wars abroad.

The 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), at over $600 billion for a single year, consumes nearly 60% of the entire federal discretionary budget during a bleak period when the US economy suffers - See more at: http://www.codepink.org/section.php?id=429#sthash.kNy18Hxu.dpuf

The 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA, which allows Americans to be disappeared, that is, arrested and indefinitely detained without cause and without right to a trial or to any explanation), at well over $600 billion for a single year, consumes nearly 60% of the entire federal discretionary budget during a bleak period when the US economy suffers... More

• Save the Buddhas of Mes Aynak from demolition
• Protecting Buddhist Heritage (Guardian.co.uk)
• Petition to Afghan Pres. Karzai
• Urgent! Save Mes Aynak!
• Buddhas of Mes Aynak (Facebook)

UCI Afghan organizer (WQ)

he Bring Our War $$ Home campaign is directly inspired by CODEPINK's mission statement:
"…to end U.S. funded wars and occupations, to challenge militarism globally, and to redirect our resources into health care, education, green jobs and other life-affirming activities."
CODEPINK's BOW$H campaign had a national victory in 2011 when the US Conference of Mayors passed our War Dollars Home resolution, the first such resolution since the Vietnam War, showing civic leaders' (and their constituents') desire for our taxes to be spent on domestic needs, not endless war.
- See more at: http://www.codepink.org/section.php?id=429#sthash.zaMwTIWm.dpuf