When Israel bombed Israel: Hellfire on Oct 7

Jimmy Dore (TJDS), Due Dissidence; Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

We're burying evidence out of respect for IDF!

Israel used its air force to bomb the rave (IDF militants and veterans partying with a very few civilian refuseniks) near Gaza by the kibbutzim spying on Palestinians and hosting their own security police forces to make sure no Palestinians entered Israel. Israel did it, killing their own soldiers and civilians in addition to anyone the Al Qassam Brigades' fighter attacked. Now Israel is BURYING the physical evidence of the burned-out cars and charred Israeli Jewish corpses they first tallied as 200 bodies, later found to be Palestinians Israel had fried from above. Israel attacked itself on October 7 along with Hamas fighter attacking, partly by overreacting with cowardly air force bombers rather than police and IDF troopers coming to fight rag tag Hamas volunteers.

Waiting for ARREST of Trump (photos)

Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; J. Dore; Forbes contributor Matt Novak (FOIA reporter, founder of Paleofuture, writing news, opinion on every aspect of tech), 3/19/23

Where will the MAGA warrior and loser of the last election be in six years?

Not the P! Don't grab me by the P! I'm not a girl, you SOB! You'll hear from my lawyers!

Trump arrested? AI-generated images of ex-prez create buzz on Twitter (livemint.com)

Viral images of Donald Trump getting arrested are fake news (for now)

We've got a runner. Old man hit the pavement, and we had to violently tackle him (Twitter)

Trump dances like Elaine Benis on Seinfeld. He moves like he drinks bottled water.

Tiny hands: AI-image of Ex-Pres. Trump's arrest

A fake AI-generated image of former president Donald Trump being arrested by police. Has anyone seen the "photos" of former president Don John Trump getting arrested by aggressive police?

They’re fake, fake news, not real, totally fake, fake-a-mundo, and they're fake. Or at least they were at the time of this writing on Sunday afternoon.

Images purporting to show DJ Trump getting arrested have gone viral on social media platforms like Twitter.

But Trump hasn’t been taken into custody — at least not yet. One image, shared by a Twitter user that goes by The Infinite Dude, looks realistic enough if one doesn’t look too closely.

Don't worry, I'll be there for you, Buddy. - Stay the hell away from me, Rudy, you're toxic.

He's not Obama bin Laden,. Does SWAT really need to raid his Mar-a-Lago compound?

The Rev. Tony Spell leads the tiny rally of Trump supporters in song (Louisiana Illuminator)

Louisiana Republicans rally for Trump on Capitol steps amid arrest rumors (lailluminator.com)

.

Ugly angry mugshot of The Don

The fake Trump, wearing his signature red tie and blue candy cane suit, can be seen getting led away by three police officers in a nighttime scene.

While The Infinite Dude only has about 800 Twitter followers, the image has been viewed over 600,000 times. There’s no disclaimer that the image is actually fake, though zooming in on the fingers reveals a monstrous mess.

Artificial Intelligence-driven image creators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion have struggled with creating fingers, often giving people way too many digits, as can be seen in the screenshot close up. Teeth also seem to be difficult, with AI giving fake people far too many teeth. More

Trump melts down online ahead of expected indictment | The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon

(The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon) March 21, 2023.  Jimmy addresses the latest news, like Trump melting down online in anticipation of his arrest for bribing porn star Stormy Daniels through corrupt attorney Michael Cohen to conceal his infidelity and sinfulness that Fundamentalist Christians look the other way on, while blaming that Jezebel for getting in the way of Drake's "God's Plan," the European country Turkey rejecting Sweden's application to join NATO and more. #JimmyFallon #FallonTonight

Should war criminal George W. Bush be prosecuted for his War on Iraq?

20 years on, should G. W. Bush be on trial for Iraq?

War criminal VP Dick Cheney

(MSNBC) March 16, 2023. A criminal indictment may be coming for Donald Trump…but 20 years after the launch of the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq, MSNBC host (of The Mehdi Hasan Show) is asking: Isn’t it finally time to hold George W. Bush accountable for the brutal war and the lies he told us about it [to get us into it]? #dick #msnbc #trump #georgebush

CODEPINK disrupts the Dick Cheney - CODEPINK: Women for Peace

Have you seen the movie VICE? #ArrestCheney - CODEPINK - Women for Peace

Like most of America, the bald eagle hates the coward Trump. He comes under attack.

CODEPINK: Can they issue arrests for G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Elliot Abrams, & Obama?

Why are your hands so small, Donny? - Don't worry about, Vlad, I'm fake. - Oh, I see.

I wish the party pickers had selected you, Bernie. - Me, too, Don. I would have conceded.

Hillary: We funded terrorist Osama bin Laden

Jimmy Dore, Kurt Metzger (jimmydore.com); Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Hillary Clinton predicts blowback from U.S.-funded Nazis in Ukraine. It has happened before when we want to fight a US-proxy war against Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) by using Osama bin Laden as a "warrior" trying to get on the road to "peace."

"Military-Industrial Complex" = JSOC (video)

Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Sonali Kolhatkar (UprisingRadio.org, Oct. 9, 2013); Jeremy Scahill, Rick Rowley (Dirty Wars)

What is the US MIC (military-industrial complex)? These militants are called JSOC.

Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley expose secret U.S. wars

Two major military raids in the newer parts of the American empire, Somalia and Libya, this past weekend made headlines when American forces attempted to kill or capture individuals deemed to be linked with various Al Qaeda "affiliates" (i.e., any and everyone accused of anything).

The raid in Somalia was unsuccessful but in Libya, it resulted in the capture of Abu Anas Al-Libi, who unusually may be brought back to the US for trial in connection with the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

• LISTEN to radio segment or entire program NOW

Dick Cheney lives on in cousin Obama

But who are the people (American terrorists, militants, warlords, Pentagon officials, CIA operatives) conducting these raids, and why are they acceptable to us the American public given that there is no congressional dialogue much less formal debate about them?

By attempting to answer this question, there came about a remarkable film called Dirty Wars: The WORLD is a Battlefield. Written by investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and filmed and directed by filmmaker Richard Rowley, "Dirty Wars" explores the shadowy world of US military terror stemming from tens of thousands of night raids on civilians, uncounted collateral drone bombings, presidential kill-lists, and extrajudicial assassinations. 

 

What started out as an investigation into a mysterious night raid in Gardez, Afghanistan, where innocent Afghan women and men were killed, ended up uncovering a covert force known as the Joint Special Operations Command or JSOC, which operates in countries like Yemen and Somalia (and anywhere around the world) where there has been no declaration of war.

Pretending Osama "Emmanuel Goldstein" bin Laden was still alive then assassinating him for a media win, then burying the evidence of the mistake at sea. CIA Psy Ops 1, World 0.

  

Mouthpiece for military-industrial complex

As Scahill and Rowley worked on the film, President Obama bragged about the assassination of Osama bin Laden, suddenly making JSOC one of the most talked about military units in the media.

What is most disturbing about the idea of a small unit of highly trained killers that answer directly to any president in the White House is that US citizens are being targeted, minors are being targeted, and some targets have actually committed no crime other than to exercise their right to free speech. More

• VIDEO: Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield As the Senate holds its first-ever public hearing on drones and targeted killings, DN! turns to journalist Jeremy Scahill, who charts the expanding covert wars operated by the CIA and JSOC, the "Joint Special Operations Command," in countries from Somalia to Pakistan, including the US homeland. "I called it 'Dirty Wars' because..."
• LIVE: Chris Hedges coming to Santa Monica
• Lavabit: Refusing to give FBI "unrestricted" email access

• 

  1984-style spying

  In August, Lavabit became the first technology firm to shut down rather than disclose information to the U.S. government. Owner Ladar Levison closed his encrypted email company after refusing to comply with a government effort to tap his customers’ private information. It has now been confirmed the FBI was targeting National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, who used Lavabit’s services. But Levison says that instead of just targeting Snowden, the government effectively wanted access to the accounts of 400,000 other Lavabit customers....
• LIVE OCT 19: Amy Goodman at L.A. Green Festival Host of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman speaks at this year’s Los Angeles Green Festival, followed by a book signing of her latest book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope. Website
      Saturday, Oct. 2013, 2:00 pm
      LA Mart, 1933 Broadway #850,
      Los Angeles, CA 90007 (map)
• LIVE OCT 24: Boston, Honoring Women of Action
• LIVE NOV 07: San Francisco Green Festival
• VIDEO: Jeremy Scahill on JSOC war on Yemen and US citizens From drone strikes to massacres, secret U.S. military actions inside Yemen are exposed in "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield," the new book (published in April) and documentary film by Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley, which opened this summer. Why Yemen, why kill American citizens for drone strikes? DN! speaks with Scahill about two key Yemenis profiled in the film.

WikiLeaks' Julian granted asylum in Ecuador

Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS)

(veteranstoday.com)

 

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who forestalled extradition to Sweden (then abduction to the US for torture and silencing) from the UK by asking for humanitarian asylum from Ecuador while residing safely in its London embassy, has been granted permission to remain in the embassy indefinitely.

  

The US/UK will not stand for it. Assange is wanted for questioning -- never having been charged -- by Sweden. But Sweden, in fact, does not want to question him about trumped up sexual offenses, for if it did it would come to England and conduct an interview. Instead, it is being pressured and guided by the US to get hold of the Australian citizen and then extradite him to America.

  

England is now contemplating the unthinkable: It is threatening to break into sovereign Ecuador's embassy, which like all embassies is regarded as Ecuadorian soil. Therefore, it claims to be planning an invasion.

  

Prosecuting Pfc. Bradley Manning contradicts every principle of whistle blower protection, freedom of the press, and free speech rights. If Manning is guilty then so are all people, papers, and other mainstream media outlets that have ever disseminated secret leaked information.

Violating Pakistan's sovereignty for PsyOps plan to pretend the real Osama was murdered

  

Similarly, if Assange is allowed to be silenced, disappeared, or indefinitely imprisoned in super-max facilities in the US, and entire organization is being silenced for whistle blowing. Manning, as a US soldier, had a personal legal responsibility to reveal American military crimes.

  

Assange as an Australian national was clearly within his rights to published leaked materials like an media outlet enabled by the worldwide Web. But because it revealed war crimes and plans of the only remaining superpower, it has not gone unpunished in contradiction to international law. 

• Will Americans stand silently by? Will we be complicit? (Germany was once a superpower, and precious few Germans spoke out when it counted. What will we do?)

The military says B.S. Obama did not kill Osama bin Laden; Americans did. I did not. Only those who applaud and approve of it did. SEAL Team 6 are not bragging about extrajudicially executing a man in long-dead Osama's place. Obama is bragging. Hillary Clinton is bragging. Joe Biden is bragging. Now the military is speaking out against its commander in chief even as he remains in office.

• 40 UK police surround Ecuadorian embassy
• Julian Assange granted asylum in Ecuador (CNN)
• WikiLeaks, Assange, AIPAC, and Jewish intervention
• Israel prepared and eager for war against Iran
• Neo-Nazis, gangs, criminals in the US military
• Sunset Strip Music Festival (SSMF) 
• Photographing Loch Ness creature or sturgeon

Dishonorable Disclosures

(OPSECTeam)

   

I didn't mean to brag about StuxNet and Iran?

Intelligence and Special Operations forces are furious and frustrated at how Pres. Obama and those in positions of authority have exploited their service for political advantage.
   
Countless leaks, disclosures, interviews, and decisions by the Obama Administration and other officials have undermined the success of the Military-Industrial Complex's Intelligence and Special Operations forces and put future missions and personnel at risk. 

   

Dishonorable disclosures are so serious that for the first time former operators have agreed to risk their reputations and go on the record in this special documentary. 

   

Its goal is to educate Americans about serious breaches of security by the Obama Administration (largely ignoring those of the previous administration and its Valerie Plame outing) and prevent them from ever happening again. (Use of military ranks, titles, and photographs in uniform does not imply endorsement of the Dept. of the Army or the Department of [War]. All individuals are no longer in active service with any federal agency or military service).

• How Obama Got His Groove Back

The Boy Who Played on the Buddhas of Bamiyan

Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS)

The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan (Phil Grabsky, Großbritannien, 2004)

The real Kapilavastu, where the buddha-to-be grew up, was likely not Nepal but Bamiyan, Afghanistan at the foothills of the Himalayan range -- or some such location in Baluchistan (Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan), Central Asia, the ancient frontier of India.

This may seem odd, but Siddhartha was fair (golden), blue eyed, tall, and came from the west to India proper, where he became the Buddha in Bihar state and began teaching near Varanasi. The oldest Buddhist monastery discovered to date is 2,600-year-old Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, where so many of his family members (the Shakyans) might have gone to practice after ordaining.

The Buddha's father, King Suddhodana, gained faith when the Buddha visited seven years after leaving and, close to his death, became enlightened with the Buddha's help. His mother, Maha Prajapati Gotami, became the first Buddhist nun in history and also became enlightened. Many Shakyans such as Yasodhara (his wife), Rahula (his son), Ananda, Nanda, Sundari Nanda, Devadatta (his half-siblings often called cousins), Anuruddha, Kimbila... followed the Buddha and the Dharma and became part of the Sangha.

In this German film, a family struggles for survival amid the rubble of the Buddha statues of Bamiyan -- after their destruction by the CIA-backed Mujahadeen. Who were the Mujahadeen? Afghan tribal warlords? No, there were no such thing. Afghan and Pashtun culture have no history of such things -- even though that is the propaganda we are fed daily to justify America's most expensive, longest running, and most opaque war.

The Mujahadeen -- as well as Al Qaeda and the CIA's own Osama bin Laden -- were outsiders, criminals, released convicts (brought in from neighboring Islamic countries such as Pakistan) who were being encouraged to fight Russia in defense of Afghanistan with the secret help and military backing of the United States. See InvisibleHistory.com for the sordid details by American scholars Fitzgerald & Gould.

The reasons we are given in defense of endless war are psy-ops and propaganda. Unfortunately, the disinformation campaigns infect Hollywood, which goes on to produce modern propaganda films like "Charlie Wilson's War" featuring Tom Hanks. Blame the mess on a Texas Congressman. Blame it on a 6' 6" tall asuran billionaire cave-dwelling warlord and 9/11 mastermind. Blame anyone but our CIA or Pentagon.

But it all ties together the inscrutable range of topics regularly covered by Wisdom Quarterly, which must strike some readers as odd:

Afghanistan, Buddhism, extraterrestrials (and UFOs), giants or "titans," CIA abuses, 1984, US propaganda, war, Islam, Zoroastrianism, our military-industrial complex, Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 false flag operation, forbidden archeology, and endless government deception. It matters why our government (both elected and secret) actually fights wars as one of the most violent empires trying to rule the planet. Peace is hardly sustainable in the midst of deception. But when truth is found then peace comes quite naturally.

CIA/"Bin Laden" wants war in Afghanistan

Losing the Plot: The Afghan War after bin Laden
Jim Naureckas (fair.org)

With Osama bin Laden [Emmanuel Goldstein long gone and now "officially"] dead, can the United States finally bring an end to the Afghan War, its longest-lasting foreign military conflict?

It’s an obvious question, since the invasion of Afghanistan was largely portrayed as an effort to catch the leader of the group that carried out the September 11 attacks. [Create a problem, overcome reaction, and people will demand the "solution" you want -- because a pretext for war is easy if war is the goal.*]

Corporate media did sometimes address this issue.

On ABC (5/4/11), Christiane Amanpour asked in regard to bin Laden’s killing, “And many people are saying, well, does this require the U.S. to leave Afghanistan right now?”

She answered her question: “The job is not finished there. You’ll talk to the commanders. We’ll talk to them, it’s the Taliban there who are waging war against the United States, and that job is not finished.” More

*"Problem-reaction-solution" manipulation/propaganda technique explained by David Icke:

PBS: "Kill/Capture" (Frontline video)

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

In what seemed to be a natural follow-up to the May 1st assassination of Osama bin Laden, PBS's Frontline offered a fascinating look into the not so secretive operation of our "kill/capture" program. It has already claimed the lives of over 12,000 "militants." These include mid-level and senior members of the make believe terrorist organization "Al-Qaeda," anyone we label as being in the Taliban, and spin-off groups considered part and parcel of the insurgency. Most of the footage is from Afghanistan, the alleged cradle of our US War on/of Terror. More

• Inside the military's secret campaign
• Was bin Laden [Akbar Khan] assassinated?
• Who is Akbar Khan? (BBC says mistaken for Bin Laden)
  

AP poll-cooking: Obama approval jumps

Poll-Cooking With AP: Obama Approval at 60% -- With 46-29 Dem-GOP Split

Tom Blumer (May 11, 2011)
The chefs in the kitchens at AP-GfK (a joint effort of the Associated Press and GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications) have been working overtime cooking up a scrumptious dish for fans of Barack Obama and the Democratic party.

After tasting the output this morning, the AP's Liz Sidoti and Jennifer Agiesta could hardly contain their glee (also saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes):

President Barack Obama's approval rating has hit its highest point in two years -- 60 percent -- and more than half of Americans now say he deserves to be re-elected, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll taken after U.S. forces killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

In March, the same poll had the president's approval rating at 53%. The graphic which follows, obtained from the the poll's "topline" at AP-GfK's web site, reveal that the AP pair enjoy feasting on empty calories: More

Does Dalai Lama approve of killing Osama?

It's not so strange for a Buddhist to endorse killing [Oh yes it is!]
Stephen Jenkins (Guardian.co.uk)

The Dalai Lama's attitude to Bin Laden's death should not be too surprising – Buddhism is not as pacifist as the West fantasizes, claims Jenkins. [We beg to differ: bracketed rebuttal and commentary by Wisdom Quarterly.]

The Dalai Lama [a CIA asset] said Osama bin Laden deserved compassion but his killing was "understandable" (AP/Jim Mone).

How could the Dalai Lama, who hesitates to harm mosquitoes, endorse killing Osama bin Laden? The terrorist deserved compassion, the Dalai Lama said, but "if something is serious…you have to take counter-measures."

[If China, a criminal state with little regard for human rights, points out that Tibet's traditional god-king ran a religious oligarchy and ruled a kingdom of "serfs," then taking "counter-measures" that include killing opponents, we suppose, makes sense. It seems His Holiness is being consistent, wrong and anti-Buddhist, but consistent.]

The apparent inconsistency here is with idealistic Western fantasies of pacifist Buddhism, not with Buddhism itself. [Of course, "Buddhism" is what the Buddha taught. It needs to be distinguished from what "Buddhists" practice or what we in the West imagine should be taught or should be practiced.]

The power of those fantasies is so strong that it even affects Tibetans themselves. Some young refugees blame Buddhism for losing Tibet. [This Dalai Lama in private blames Bon-era black magic practices allegedly continued by the Shugden Movement. There wasa no freedom of religion in Tibet under the Dalai Lama system.]

Saying "we were warriors once," they invoke their history of empire [Tibet's former Vatican-style leadership had far-reaching influence like an empire] and incorrectly think their ancestors did not resist Chinese invasion. Those fantasies also cause us to fail to appreciate how extraordinary the Dalai Lama is. [He's a pope and a politician, a spokesperson for peace and a secret CIA operative fighting China.] We take his values as those of a typical Buddhist or a typical dalai lama, and he is neither.

Buddhists work out their values through stories of Buddha's past lives [Wrong, wrong, wrong! Values are laid out explicitly in sutras (such as the Sigalovada Sutra for laypeople) and monastic disciplinary guidelines (Vinaya), whereas Buddhist Birth Stories (Jataka Tales) are fables that illustrate various moral truths. If Buddhist values depended on Buddhists cherry picking and interpreting their values from animal stories and Aesop Fables, there wouldn't be a Buddhism], which show him in myriad roles, such as a battle-elephant or minister defending his besieged city.

The following story is analogous to a terrorist situation. It is known throughout northern Buddhism. [The historical and canonical Jatakas are Theravada or "Southern Buddhism" texts, so it's interesting that later apocryphal Birth Stories start justifying and promoting non-Buddhist ideas, like China making war against Korea. Of course, Jenkins may not be aware of these subtleties, he does not seem to go out of his way to investigate the matter by asking anyone would know. That's not good journalism as he implicitly undermines Buddhism's view of peace and compassion, mars the super-politically correct Dalai Lama's actual words, and promotes the killing of anyone deemed a "terrorist."]

Communists even used it to rouse Chinese Buddhists to fight in Korea. The Buddha, in a past life as a ship's captain named Super Compassionate, discovered a criminal on board who intended to kill the 500 passengers.

[The "Buddha" only lived once. The Buddha does not appear in any Birth Story since every life recounted in the Jatakas is about the Bodhisattva, the "being trying to become a buddha"; in no way are the characters in the fables, fairy tales, and simplified histories the actual "Buddha" or Buddhist saints, even if they were to evolve into such figures much, much later in future lives. It would be like considering the acts of an infant the same as that of that same person as an adult; there is not a "soul" or "self" that persists through time to be called the same person. One arises dependent on what came before but is different from it. So these figures are not meant to be used as guides on how to behave. Often the opposite is true; they are cautionary tales on how not to behave. The sutras themselves give examples of what the Buddha and exemplary Buddhist nuns, monks, lay disciples, and good non-Buddhists did.]

If he told the passengers, they would panic and become killers themselves, as happened on a Southwest Airlines flight in 2000. With no other way out, he compassionately stabbed the criminal to death.

[It can never be "compassionate" to intentionally kill someone. Misguided by delusion by misunderstanding, one might imagine killing or euthanasia were justified. But when that karma bears its result, or sees it with the divine eye bearing its result for someone else, one will clearly understand one made a mistake. By not thinking of the person we harm, focusing instead on the good one imagines one is doing for others, it is possible for a more or less "good" person to kill. And we might all understand that -- but it is not justified, it is not okay, it is not good, nor is it without painful result, nor would a buddha or any arhat praise it or excuse it as okay. "Understandable," yes, but okay, no way! And in Jenkin's Guardian article, the Dalai Lama has been quoted as saying he finds the executing of Osama bin Laden "understandable," not good or acceptable as Jenkins seems to be suggesting.]

Captain Compassionate saved the passengers not only from murder, but from becoming murderers themselves. [And of course it's not as if Super Compassionate in this apocryphal Jataka could have conked him on the head, or arrested him, or otherwise stopped him. Does anyone believe he had to be stabbed "to death"? If one stabs to stop and the person dies, that is not murder as such. Manslaughter, harming, or something not good, but it's a far cry from "murder."

Unlike him, they would have killed in rage and suffered hell. He saved the criminal from becoming a mass murderer and even worse suffering. He himself generated vast karmic merit by acting with compassion.

[It's a wonderful make believe story ripe for abuse by governments: "Hey, soldiers, go be like Super Compassionate and kill out of compassion. Then it won't be 'killing,' so have at it! Let's go wage war against those terrorists in Korea for the glory of our peace-loving China!" What a wonderful spin Jenkins and Chinese generals are putting on Mahayana (or "Northern") Buddhism. The American military used this exact same sophistry in Vietnam, right, when some young soldiers zealously following CIA/FBI/Military Intelligence orders "burned a village to save it" from Communism.]

The story is double-edged. Killing protects others from the horrific karma of killing. At Harvard in April 2009, the Dalai Lama explained that "wrathful forceful action" motivated by compassion, may be "violence on a physical level" but is "essentially nonviolence."

[If he did, and if this is what he meant, then the Dalai Lama is wrong. It's very simple. People imagine that the Dalai Lama is "holy" and speaks infallibly as the pope of Buddhism. He is not. He is not the Buddha. He may not even be a bodhisattva, someone reborn purposely to become a buddha, but we hold out hope that he has vowed to be one, and that the correct tulku, or incarnation, was found. Even so, he does not represent Buddhism. He does not even represent all Tibetan Buddhists. He is stained by his association with the CIA, military resistance to grave Chinese crimes, and his position as a god-king, who of course recently stepped down from his position as king.]

So we must be careful to understand what "nonviolence" means. Under the right conditions, it could include killing a terrorist. [It could never include intentionally acting to kill someone, not even bogeymen, "demons" (yakkhas, asuras, nagas, pretas) or Mara, the very worst being in Buddhism. If killing could be "compassionate," would not the Buddha have killed Mara? Would he not have at least instructed a powerful disciple like Maha Moggallana to kill him? No, far from it. He would not even allow Maha Moggallana to slay a terrible dragon (a naga or powerful reptilian who encircled the world and threatened the Buddha and a company of saints in space.]

People fail to appreciate how extraordinary the Dalai Lama's commitment to nonviolence is. After all, he is a Buddhist and [as a bodhisattva and leader] the manifestation of Avalokiteśvara [the Bodhisattva of Compassion], the deity of compassion.

But Buddhist values are not simply pacifist, and Buddhist scripture and legend inform us that Avalokiteśvara readily takes a warrior's form when needed and supports the warfare of righteous kings.

[It seems to us that Buddhist values are, by and large, pacifist even if Buddhist behavior is not. One may defend oneself; one may do anything. But one will not thereby evade the karmic results of such actions because "one had to" or "had a right to." The Buddha taught what he understood would bring suffering -- when it came to fruition -- and what would bring happiness. In our shortsightedness, we imagine that the immediate visible results of what we have done are the karmic results. That is incorrect. That karma has had no time to mature. A buddha, a far-seeing teacher, someone versed in the Dharma tells us what is difficult to see, difficult to perceive, difficult to guess: Actions are like seeds. They are shaped by intention and categorized this way. When we think, speak, or act with an "impure" mind -- intentions tainted by even residual amounts of greed, hate (aversion, fear, disgust), or delusion -- then the karma laid down will ripen in unpleasant and unwelcome ways. This does NOT make "common" sense. The Buddha was not blithely uttering commonplaces and easy-to-swallow truisms. Many things he taught were hard to see, hard to accept, hard to finally understand.

[For example, if I steal, what will happen? I will be richer to the extent of what I've stolen. But later, when that act ripens, I will be poor. When will that act ripen? It will ripen when it finds the opportunity, which could be aeons. So it may not be "me" (the personality, name, and form who did it) who will bear the result and consequence but some future version of "me" at the time (a personality, name, and form who did not steal). Likewise, I am rich, beautiful, healthy, and influential now. What did I do to deserve it? Not much. But in the past, it is possible to trace someone who did do such things as now ripen. I call that person "me," but it is not me. And I call this person "me," but it is not me either. I call the line of beings passing away and being reborn "my soul," but it is not one thing, and it is not me. There is action (karma and cetana), and there will be result (vipaka and phala). That is, deeds and intentions are willed and carried out, and when they mature there are mental-resultants and fruits to be experienced. But we personalize it, imagine it is happening to an immutable entity that cannot die or change when it is dying and changing every moment leaving us nothing worth clinging to.

[There are things that if done will bear a bad (painful, unpleasant, unwelcome, unwished for) result. What are those things? Five of them are universal: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech, and taking intoxicants that occasion heedlessness). It's not a punishment from the Buddha, God, or anyone else. It's a natural ordering of things referred to as karma. Understandably, it's hard for us to imagine anything being impersonal. But the personal gets mixed in there. People are not satisfied to wait for our karma to come back onto us; they taint themselves by helping it along through revenge or engaging in things that hard us and them.]

Buddhist cultures, including Tibet, have not historically been pacifist.

["Buddhist" cultures have not historically been Buddhist. Long before Buddhism entered anywhere, there was a culture. Buddhism could not solve the root societal problems of greed, hatred, and delusion. It could, however, solve the root personal problems of these poisonous internal motivations for those who practiced Buddhism. But good luck curing society or a culture just because it adopts Buddhism as a religion. Nevertheless, wherever it went, the people became kinder, more generous, and far more peaceful. Kings still crave greater influence (territory and honor), more material goods (war booty), and more of everything. And in their blind ambition, whether Buddhist or not, they instigate their populations to fight for these ends. That in no way means "Buddhism" advocates them. Even intentionally killing in "defense" is not defensible, which is to say even such an "understandable" act will have a negative consequence. One would be wiser to find another solution, as hard or fleeting as that other solution may be.]

The previous dalai lama strove to develop a modern military. So the current one's dedication to nonviolence should not be taken as a matter of course. He was influenced by Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer whose pacifism was rooted in Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. His nonviolent approach is exceptional for a Buddhist political leader and integrates Indian and western concepts of nonviolent struggle. More