"I feel like it's getting out God's word to those who need it."

The NY Times reports on that curious sacrament of Texas, played with religiosity.'

School district officials ordered the cheerleaders to stop putting Bible verses on the banners, because they believed doing so violated the law on religious expression at public school events. In response, a group of 15 cheerleaders and their parents sued the Kountze Independent School District and its superintendent, Kevin Weldon, claiming that prohibiting the students from writing Christian banner messages violated their religious liberties and free-speech rights.

On Thursday afternoon, the two sides met in a courtroom on the second floor of the Hardin County Courthouse. It had all the trappings of a high-profile courtroom drama: Lawyers from both sides haggled over the Texas Constitution and the cheerleaders’ own constitution, a police officer with an assault rifle and binoculars was stationed on the roof, reporters filled the jury box, and one witness — Kieara Moffett, an 11th grade cheerleader — teared up on the stand during cross-examination.

The superintendent’s decision has outraged many students and their parents, and has brought national attention upon a small town about two hours outside Houston. The cheerleaders’ supporters have put up lawn signs and started a Facebook page called Support Kountze Kids Faith that, with nearly 50,000 members, far exceeds the town’s population of 2,100...

Each side’s lawyers cast their clients as courageous: The teenage cheerleaders, for standing up to the school district to protect their religious views, and Mr. Weldon, himself a Christian and a former football coach, for taking an unpopular position in a largely conservative Christian town in order to, as he sees it, uphold the law.

After a daylong hearing that included the testimony of two cheerleaders, District Judge Steven Thomas of Hardin County decided to extend for an additional 14 days more a temporary restraining order that he had put in place two weeks ago. The move prevents district officials from enforcing the ban on religious signs for 14 days and allows the cheerleaders to continue to create and display the banners at the home game on Friday night as well as other coming games. It seemed likely that the judge would hold another hearing in two weeks.

“I feel like it’s getting God’s word out to those that need it,” Kieara, 16, said of the banners.

Yeah, people need to see bible verses and they need to do so at the football games to which they go.

And yeah, Kieara, you surely feel that way,  I submit.

I don't know how far it goes back, but the arrogance of this stuff is breathtaking.  Regardless of what eventually happens in this case (which depends, naturally on case law being followed, which in this benighted time and that benighted place might be different than what one might expect), regardless of what happens, it certainly doesn't reflect well on the bible sputtering cheer-leaders, their parents, or their religion.

Organizations and Buddhism

I DO want to briefly mention the tie-together of a few recent posts. Warner's rescinding his Dogen Sangha.  Barbara's kinda sorta China bashing over the Dalai Lama again. (Also see here.)  And Danny Fisher's happy as a clam that "Dharmic religions" gets their day in the sun at a White House -sponsored "faith-based" yadda yadda yadda.

These posts are all related to each other by some odd confluences of organizations (and in the latter two, government organizations) and Buddhism.  But Warner's is related too, as his is about a Buddhist organization or lack of one  thereof, to be more to the point. 

Barbara's critiquing China's meddling in a traditionally avowed theocratic organization, namely that of Tibetan Buddhism.  Danny Fisher is pleased that the government is meddling with Dharmic religions enough to recognize them, patronize them at the White House and so forth. And Warner's happy that he extinguished an organization before it had a crib.

To be fair to Danny Fisher, he'd be among the first to critique China too.

But I've a point in putting these all together: Lots of Western Buddhists bash China when it suits them for their preconceived political notions about a "Free" "Tibet" and all that, but they bash the US government when it doesn't positively patronize Buddhists.  And I put Warner in there 'cause he's kind of a too-cool for all that guy in his position of refusing all organization, but that's kind of impotent in my view.

Organizations are like knives; they are neutral morally. Patronage or oppression is the same way; it's the circumstances in which they're used that imbue them with a morality or lack thereof.  Nobody objects on moral grounds  if La Cosa Nostra is oppressed, except for some folks whose relations can be reliably traced back to the Old Country.

On the other hand, if you're going to accept patronage from a government, then it's only natural for there to be some kind of "organizational deformation" in response to that patronage; it's always been the case throughout human history.  And that deformation is a threat to the ethical soundness of a religious institution; of that there can be no doubt. Furthermore,  I'd also submit that Warner's position of removing the organization altogether is itself questionable, as it aborts the possibility of an organization to do any good.

I just think there's a great deal of hypocrisy presented as some kind of moral purity in the way many folks view state interaction with religion. States will interact with religion for their own political reasons. The US does it as well as China. Both lead to both benefits and morally questionable activities.  And religious organizations have similar issues.

The Limits of Religious Liberties

The recent flap about the contraception issue & the Catholic hierarchy & the Obama folks is reaching new levels of absurdity - and the reduction of that absurdity to even greater absurdity is satirized in a comic in today's NY Times.

While this was going on I was on travel/returning from Japan on business.  My travel reading was "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer, which intertwines the doings of Fundamentalist Mormons with the historical Mormons.  I have to say, after reading that book, that I would not be very likely to vote for someone very far up in the Mormon hierarchy for any political office.

If it offends anyone, well, not much can be done, but when religious figures seek to impose their viewpoints on the behavior of others, whether it's through the clumsy efforts of the Catholic hierarchy to complain about other people's sexual behavior, or the Mormon church's efforts to rein in criticism of it by their members efforts at honestly discussing that church's history, reasonable people should object.

The Catholic church still hasn't quite accepted its institutional complicity in the physical and sexual abuse of untold numbers of children and teens.  The Mormon church still denies any official responsibility for their role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. And regarding the latter, if you read Krakauer's book you can't but come to the conclusion that the Mormon culture bears a great deal of responsibility for the right-wing fringe in this country.

The simple fact is, the hierarchies of such organizations are acting out of hubris, greed for power when they posit themselves as some kind of moral arbiters whose "morality" gives them license to run roughshod over the obvious public good.

People can believe what they will, but when it comes to public policy, we should be doing things that benefit all. 

Of course...

I think the troglodytes running Walnut CA are in deep doo-doo over their actions prejudicial to Buddhists.

I would also point out that their best response - as I'm sure their lawyers have told them - is not to say a word at the moment.

Recognizing that, I think though that a nice missive via e-mail to them might point out to them that the sooner they settle this issue, the sooner it will all go away for them...and they might be able to salvage their careers. 

One doesn't want to be on the wrong side of a legal action, especially if that "one" is a person who is performing outside of the duties of their office. 

And so while I truly appreciate Kyle's efforts here,  I tend to think this will all play out to a good outcome for Buddhists, because nobody likes to be on the wrong side of a protracted legal action brought about by the Federal government.

American Buddhists are silent about the mosque? Is that the biggest issue we face?

Danny Fisher asks why "Buddhists are sitting out the Islamaphobia debate."  This, to me, is a rather naive viewpoint, and completely and utterly misses the larger point: the brouhaha over building mosques in America is but a tiny piece of a much larger strategem by the right wing in this country in which it seeks to take power, to the detriment of all Americans.

It's but a tiny piece of a larger puzzle.  For example, it would do all well to speak out and oppose some of the nonsense that is going on in this year's ballot measures. Among them are measures which are clearly arising out of racist intent, a contempt for human existence, and a desire to cede ground on the environment. 

But, to be fair, it is somewhat unreasonable for all Buddhists to act like nice progressives on these issues; some of us aren't progressive.  I just bring up the points because the mosque issues are just one facet of a concerted effort by the right wing to divide us so they may continue to enrich themselves at our expense.  And that's a much bigger issue than the mosque- because it's the root issue of the mosque.  But, as many have routinely pointed out, "engaged" Buddhism can often wind up being one big ego trip.  As for myself, I am quite politically involved thank you very much on the left side of things.  And if you aren't trying to get the "big picture" then there's likely a whole host of issues you're missing.

Too, Fisher's characterization of "Buddhists" as passive observers in all this is quite incorrect.  Many of us have been doing that.    Furthermore, his characterization of the atheist bashing Dalai Lama  (I could  also mention "Dorje Shugden follower suppressing" ) as someone who is someone who "offer[s] ways of engaging that are rooted in practice" is itself ignorant of other forms of religious bigotry in the Buddhist camp that get a free pass from him - and other American Buddhists.

I share the concerns of Fisher regarding the rights of Muslims to build mosques anywhere they please.  But, Danny, please spare us the moralistic lectures, and the Dalai Lama isn't an example of Buddhism to American Buddhists in general.

Knowledge of religion...and my advertisers...

Much will undoubtedly be made of the latest Pew survey reported here (see for example P.Z. Myers' somewhat disjointed and way too inside take on the story).  What I find more interesting is that what is labeled as "knowledge of religion" largely does not relate to what is believed or practiced.

For example the questions involved were of the form, according to the NY Times article I first cited:

Among the topics covered in the survey were: Where was Jesus born? What is Ramadan? Whose writings inspired the Protestant Reformation? Which Biblical figure led the exodus from Egypt? What religion is the Dalai Lama? Joseph Smith? Mother Theresa? In most cases, the format was multiple choice. 

 That's a pity because its those beliefs and narratives (like golden plates and Moroni for Mormons or Mother Theresa's views on poverty and family planning) that are really where the rubber meets the road in terms of religious belief.

That brings me to point out some things about some of my advertisers.  I don't do a lot of strict filtering of advertisers for my blog.  To the extent I know how to do so, I keep the Scientologists off this website as well as some commercial advertisers who might get in the way of my professional ethical responsibilities (it's a long story and I won't get into it here).  But those that are left...hey, if they seem somewhat odd, feel free to find out more about them!

Take for example, Maharishi University of Management!  They teach something called "Maharishi Vedic Mathematics!"

Even though modern mathematics has achieved enormous success in all areas of life, it appears to be fragmented and incomplete. It lacks a solid foundation and breaks down when faced with the ultimate infinite. In fact, the work of twentieth-century mathematician Kurt Gödel gives mathematical proof that mathematics is not complete and can in fact never be complete. As an example, mathematics cannot even handle concepts such as “the set of all sets.” The result is that most mathematicians choose to ignore the foundations of mathematics and work in isolated, fragmented areas with no vision of the whole of mathematics.

Maharishi’s Vedic Mathematics, on the other hand, is a complete field of knowledge.

At Maharishi University of Management, students gain direct experience of the infinite field of pure knowledge through their practice of the Transcendental Meditation program. Your study of mathematical infinity is followed by personal experience of infinity. Your study of mathematics is complete and personally fulfilling and cultures the ability to spontaneously handle all possibilities in life.

 If I were to say that  Gödel 's proof is heavily dependent on the relationship between sets of cardinality  ℵ₀ (e.g. the set of natural numbers) and c, (e.g. the set of numbers on the real line) it may or may not mean much to you, but what it ultimately means is that there is no reason to have recourse to funny metaphysics pretending to be math to the uneducated.

I won't block MUM because I think, even if my readers don't know the beauty and nicety of transfinite mathematics, you do know what to do when you see my advertisers on this page! 

Ditto for "Eckankar."  This is a Buddhist blog, one heavily infused by existentialism, skepticism, and a post-modern outlook.  And as such, I can only scratch my head as to why the Eck folks would want to come here to advertise.  What do they think I'd make of "Gopal Das"  who "teaches at the Temple of Golden Wisdom on the Astral Plane?" 

James Ure recently wrote about how the Kalama sutra encourages investigation for one's self (and I tried to add, but it hasn't appeared, that this is also mentioned in the Mahaparanirvana sutra).  The latter states, in one form, with the Buddha addressing Ananda as he is dying:

Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as your island, the Dhamma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge.

"And how, Ananda, is a bhikkhu an island unto himself, a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as his island, the Dhamma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge?

 "When he dwells contemplating the body in the body, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world; when he dwells contemplating feelings in feelings, the mind in the mind, and mental objects in mental objects, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world, then, truly, he is an island unto himself, a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge; having the Dhamma as his island, the Dhamma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge.

One needs not to know about folks on Venus or astral planes in this business.

So, yeah, go learn about other religions, cults, belief systems, etc. if you wish. Do your homework.  Overcome desire and sorrow.  Help others.  There's really more important things to do these days  than accumulate a collection of factoids about belief systems.

Those final bits, are to me, far more important than whether Job was the suffering guy or whether the Dalai Lama's Buddhist.

The other side of fundamentalist religious oppression

As Barbara notes here, one component of it is a fear of losing one's self - but there is another component. And it's a type of hubris, greed, and narcissism, based on a denial of a fundamental self-evident observation of  human behavior in the human condition, as succinctly put by R. D. Laing:

I see you, and you see me. I experience you, and you experience me. I see your behaviour. You see my behaviour. But I do not and never have and never will see your experience of me. Just as you cannot "see" my experience of you. My experience of you is not "inside" me. It is simply you, as I experience you. And I do not experience you as inside me. Similarly, I take it that you do not experience me as inside you.
"My experience of you" is just another form of words for "you-as-l-experience-you", and "your experience of me" equals "me-as-you-experience-me". Your experience of me is not inside you and my experience of you is not inside me, but your experience of me is invisible to me and my experience of you is invisible to you.

And:

I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men. All men are invisible to one another. Experience used to be called The Soul. Experience as invisibility of man to man is at the same time more evident than anything. Only experience is evident. Experience is the only evidence.

We can take "experience"  for Buddhist purposes to mean one's own collection of the 5 aggregates and the various forms of consciousness.  When I declare that your experience invalid because of either my experience or some external to both of our experiences (such as somebody's opinion of "scripture" or  what someone was told "God's intention" or "God's words" were, this is a statement against your very being.  In the case where either of us are citing something external to invalidate both of our experiences, this is a statement directed against both of us.

Although we can "see areas light up in the brain" corresponding to all kinds of human thoughts, feelings, emotions, hallucinations, volitions and sensations, these can never be the equivalent if any person actually experiencing those thoughts, feelings, sensations, emotions, hallucinaitons, and volitions.

Despite what I have experienced in my life, I  really don't have a clue as to why Lindsay Lohan  is messed up, or what makes a fundamentalist tick,  what's in Eddie Long's brain, or any of a thousand other such questions.  Only the principals know what's in their hearts and minds. True, there is empathy and compassion, but this empathy and compassion is counterfeit if it does not take into account that what another is experiencing is really experienced..

It is this invalidation of others that is the beginning of all kinds of religious exploitation, and all the big religions have done it from time to time.  I practice Buddhism in part because by placing the issues with regard to the Way on the individual, at least in my school, much of this harm can be avoided.  And that's another reason, as I say, that such practices are the last best hope for religion. Maybe Taoism and Jainism are too.

P.Z. Myers has a point...

Although it's grossly insensitive to many people's beliefs, if the first amendment is real, and if you have no problem with flag burning as far as the first amendment is concerned, or Nazis marching in Skokie Illinois (ACLU first amendment cases that were decided in favor of free speech) then I think our system could stomach a lunatic who wants to burn "Korans". (I saw some footage, and it looked like they were burning translations of the Koran, and as anyone who knows anything about Islam knows, a translation of the Koran just ain't the Koran.)

The lesson of that incident [where Myers "desecrated" a communion wafer]  wasn't that you can find some jerk somewhere who will disrespect what some group finds holy — that was trivial and uninteresting, and I actually had to ignore many of the elaborate suggestions for cracker disposal sent my way to emphasize the absolute triviality of tossing a cracker/piece of Jesus in the trash. No, the real lesson was that mobs of people will react with irrational freakish hysteria to the idea that other people don't believe as they do.
The problem isn't the desecrators. The problem is the people who have an unwarranted sense of privilege, that their beliefs will not be questioned or criticized, ever, by anyone. What I was saying was that it was crazy to believe a cracker turns into Jesus, and what all the outraged Catholics were doing is confirming to an awesome degree just how mad their beliefs were, with their prolonged and excessive outrage.
So I'm looking at this recent episode with Terry Jones — a fellow I don't like at all, and I think he's a fanatical goofball — and I see that the serious problem here isn't Jones at all…it's all the lunatics who are insisting that burning the Koran is a major international catastrophe.
It's just a frackin' book, people.

 And yeah, there's folks that this is the "very word of  a deity" spoken to a guy in Arabia long ago, but if freedom speech and religion means anything, it means the freedom to ridicule, insult, and yes, "desecrate" whatever others think is "holy."

Now whether this guy Terry Jones should burn Korans is another issue; the guy's clearly Koo-Koo for CoCo Puffs^®.

And our way of life can even handle clowns like this guy who's going to be at a "Value" "Voters" "Summit."  (How come that "value" has come to mean "low quality?" Maybe it's the same way that the meaning of the word "cynic"  has evolved.)  And I think the word "clown" here is not meant to be derrogatory, it's meant to describe psychologically what this man represents functionally in our public square.

Bryan Fischer, the "Director of Issues Analysis" for the American Family Association, wrote a blog post yesterday that argues that "Germany is giving us a template on how we handle Muslims: just like we handle neo-Nazis," which amounts to German police carrying "out 30 predawn raids against the nation's largest neo-Nazi group two days ago."
Fischer is known for his Islamophobia, previously arguing that the U.S. should have "no more mosques, period," because "every single mosque is a potential terror training center or recruitment center for jihad" and thus "you cannot claim first amendment protections if your religious organization is engaged in subversive activities."...

Fischer, who is scheduled to speak at the conservative Value Voters summit this month alongside Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee and others, also wrote: "I see no reason why our policies toward Islam in the West in general and America in particular should not be a mirror image of our policies toward the neo-Nazi movement."
Fischer adds that "our aim should be to make it as unthinkable for a resident of America to embrace Islam as we have made it to embrace Aryan Nations ideology. And for the same reasons."

 Finally, one more bit courtesy of P.Z. Myers...

The Dukkha of the Political Class in the United States

Most of the posts on this blog, especially recently, have had Buddhist themes.  If one is serious about alleviating the suffering of people in the United States, one should be very concerned about the situation in Washington.  While not dire in any sense of the word compared to some of the more pressing issues in the world, the fact that we are governed by proxies for a plutocracy should be of grave concern to all.

Over at the New Yorker, there is a must-read for those who are following the political and economic situation in the United States on the Koch family, who are famous for funding right-wing causes.

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.
In a statement, Koch Industries said that the Greenpeace report “distorts the environmental record of our companies.” And David Koch, in a recent, admiring article about him in New York, protested that the “radical press” had turned his family into “whipping boys,” and had exaggerated its influence on American politics. But Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times....

...After the 1980 election, Charles and David Koch receded from the public arena. But they poured more than a hundred million dollars into dozens of seemingly independent organizations. Tax records indicate that in 2008 the three main Koch family foundations gave money to thirty-four political and policy organizations, three of which they founded, and several of which they direct. The Kochs and their company have given additional millions to political campaigns, advocacy groups, and lobbyists. The family’s subterranean financial role has fuelled suspicion on the left; Lee Fang, of the liberal blog ThinkProgress, has called the Kochs “the billionaires behind the hate.”

Only the Kochs know precisely how much they have spent on politics. Public tax records show that between 1998 and 2008 the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation spent more than forty-eight million dollars. The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is controlled by Charles Koch and his wife, along with two company employees and an accountant, spent more than twenty-eight million. The David H. Koch Charitable Foundation spent more than a hundred and twenty million. Meanwhile, since 1998 Koch Industries has spent more than fifty million dollars on lobbying. Separately, the company’s political-action committee, KochPAC, has donated some eight million dollars to political campaigns, more than eighty per cent of it to Republicans. So far in 2010, Koch Industries leads all other energy companies in political contributions, as it has since 2006. In addition, during the past dozen years the Kochs and other family members have personally spent more than two million dollars on political contributions. In the second quarter of 2010, David Koch was the biggest individual contributor to the Republican Governors Association, with a million-dollar donation. Other gifts by the Kochs may be untraceable; federal tax law permits anonymous personal donations to politically active nonprofit groups.
In recent decades, members of several industrial dynasties have spent parts of their fortunes on a conservative agenda. In the nineteen-eighties, the Olin family, which owns a chemicals-and-manufacturing conglomerate, became known for funding right-leaning thinking in academia, particularly in law schools. And during the nineties Richard Mellon Scaife, a descendant of Andrew Mellon, spent millions attempting to discredit President Bill Clinton. Ari Rabin-Havt, a vice-president at the Democratic-leaning Web site Media Matters, said that the Kochs’ effort is unusual, in its marshalling of corporate and personal funds: “Their role, in terms of financial commitments, is staggering.”
Of course, Democrats give money, too. Their most prominent donor, the financier George Soros, runs a foundation, the Open Society Institute, that has spent as much as a hundred million dollars a year in America. Soros has also made generous private contributions to various Democratic campaigns, including Obama’s. But Michael Vachon, his spokesman, argued that Soros’s giving is transparent, and that “none of his contributions are in the service of his own economic interests.” The Kochs have given millions of dollars to nonprofit groups that criticize environmental regulation and support lower taxes for industry. Gus diZerega, the former friend, suggested that the Kochs’ youthful idealism about libertarianism had largely devolved into a rationale for corporate self-interest. He said of Charles, “Perhaps he has confused making money with freedom.”

It's actually even worse than this article suggests, and for those who may be wondering about how come things are so polarized and paralyzed in the politics in the US  there is a simple answer: this corrupt money, meant to increase the profit margins of the very, very few, is flowing into both major parties. And the Koch family is doing this too.

But, here's a key piece of information: the Kochs haven't just given to right-wingers. Back in April of 2001, The American Prospect's Bob Dreyfuss reported that the Kochs also funded the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC):

And for $25,000, 28 giant companies found their way onto the DLC's executive council, including Aetna, AT&T, American Airlines, AIG, BellSouth, Chevron, DuPont, Enron, IBM, Merck and Company, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Texaco, and Verizon Communications. Few, if any, of these corporations would be seen as leaning Democratic, of course, but here and there are some real surprises. One member of the DLC's executive council is none other than Koch Industries, the privately held, Kansas-based oil company whose namesake family members are avatars of the far right, having helped to found archconservative institutions like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Not only that, but two Koch executives, Richard Fink and Robert P. Hall III, are listed as members of the board of trustees and the event committee, respectively--meaning that they gave significantly more than $25,000.

The DLC board of trustees is an elite body whose membership is reserved for major donors, and many of the trustees are financial wheeler-dealers who run investment companies and capital management firms--though senior executives from a handful of corporations, such as Koch, Aetna, and Coca-Cola, are included.

I added the emphasis.

Fitting, isn't it? The entity that tries to undermine the progressive agenda from within the Democratic Party was getting funding from the guys who are trying to destroy the Democratic Party from the outside.

There has been a concerted effort in the past 40 years to take right wing money and use it to distort the legal system (Federalist Society), the political system (the various groups funded by the Koch brothers), and even organized religion (The Institute on Religion and Public Life and The Institute on Religion and Democracy).  At the time this has happened these groups have had a disparate effect on influencing public policy, and now we have the highest unemployment of any developed nation, and we spend more per capita on the military than any other comparable nation.  Our roads are crumbling, our schools are underfunded.  Hunger is a real issue in many American communities.

A class war has been waged against the American people by these people who have bought the government for their own ends.  There simply isn't a nicer, gentler way to put it.

This situation can only be reversed by people pushing back against this in a way that helps all.  Even the right-wingers, since ultimately, if their policies were to come to fruition, it will eventually destabilize our political system entirely.  But at the very least the American people should realize that a class war is being waged against them.

And here's something you don't see much in the Buddhist Blogosphere...

I admit I haven't been following this at all, but it is clear that this isn't just pro-Chinese propaganda.

Regarding recent scandals in Western Buddhism, I think some folks haven't received an appropriate amount of attention, and I am still amazed by the reluctance to have any criticism of the Dalai Lama in the Western Buddhist blogosphere.

The notes on the Youtube site say it comes from January 5th, 1998, but if you look around evidently this is still a very big thing in the Tibetan community.

As I've said this is a continuing controversy:




I realize I'm writing on an event over 2 years old, but to take a fresh look at this, especially in light of recent scandals, look at Barbara's Buddhism blog post on the subject from around that time.

I can't tell you how much I don't want to get mixed up in the Dalai Lama-Shugden controversy. Unfortunately, hundreds of Dalai Lama supporters and Shugden devotees clashed in the streets of Manhattan yesterday afternoon and had to be separated by police. I can't very well ignore that. So here goes...


At a time when the majority of monks from Lhasa's three largest monasteries are in prison or detention camps, and possibly being tortured, it shouldn't be hard to understand why some Tibetan Buddhists might be infuriated by the Shugden protesters, as His Holiness's Radio City audience was. The Shugden cult is undermining the fragile coherence of the Tibetan diaspora and the future of Tibetan Buddhism itself. And for what?

If you ask the Shugden culties, as I keep doing, why they don't just break with institutional Tibetan Buddhism and go their own way, you get no answer. Truly, if the point were worship of Shugden, there is absolutely nothing stopping NKT and the rest from setting up a new sect and doing whatever they like. Then they can worship Mickey Mouse phones for all I care.

There are, like most of these things, a political backstory, which neither Barbara nor I for that matter, have the knowledge to explore.

But notice Barbara's language here: implicit within is the cult-like certainty that the Dalai Lama can do no wrong. I mean, yeah, right, people have been getting death threats for opposing the Dalai Lama, why should they be complaining?

I'm not done yet about the Mosque & religious freedom: Hugh Hewitt's sacrilege

Hugh Hewitt opposes the mosque because he says:

I oppose it because the land and buildings damaged by the assault are now part of the sacred space of America's great civic religion. I would oppose the construction of any sectarian project there that wasn't a rebuild of an existing sectarian use for the same reason.

There is no formal designation for the sacred spaces of America's civic religion though they extend from the Mall to the Arizona Memorial.  The land around Ground Zero is very much part of that space, and any project that politicizes it or brings a religious purpose to those sites should be refused.

 The picture above is a sculpture by Fritz Koening, that once stood in the World Trade Center, and now damaged, sits as a "temporary" memorial to 9/11 in Battery Park.  Battery Park's fences were damaged by patriots in the Revolutionary War, allegedly, because the tops of the fence posts had crowns on them.

Nearby, (unfortunately that photo "got away") is the Stock Exchange, and the place where Washington took the oath of office, as well as the church (Episcopal) Washington used to worship in; of course before the Revolution, it was Anglican, and the titular head of that church was George the III.  And of course the Bull is nearby too; which was recently animated in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

All sacred space.

Just. Like. The Cordoba Center.

A Stirring Speech on Religious Freedom by Michael Bloomberg...

From here (also see the Speaker's speech as well as the Mayor's speech in the video here):

“We have come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We’ve come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that, more than 250 years later, would greet millions of immigrants in the harbor, and we come here to state as strongly as ever – this is the freest City in the world. That’s what makes New York special and different and strong.
“Our doors are open to everyone – everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it is sustained by immigrants – by people from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than two hundred different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here, or you came yesterday, you are a New Yorker.
“We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors.  That’s life and it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11.
“On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn’t want us to enjoy the freedom to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams and to live our own lives.
“Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that, even here in a City that is rooted in Dutch tolerance, was hard-won over many years. In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in Lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue – and they were turned down.
“In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal, political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies – and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.
“In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion – and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780’s – St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.
“This morning, the City’s Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted not to extend landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building. The simple fact is this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship.
“The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.
“The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves – and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans – if we said ‘no’ to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.
“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.
“For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime – as important a test – and it is critically important that we get it right.
“On September 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked ‘What God do you pray to?’ ‘What beliefs do you hold?’
“The attack was an act of war – and our first responders defended not only our City but also our country and our Constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights – and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.
“Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation – and in fact, their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community. By doing so, it is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our City even closer together and help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 were in any way consistent with Islam. Muslims are as much a part of our City and our country as the people of any faith and they are as welcome to worship in Lower Manhattan as any other group. In fact, they have been worshipping at the site for the better part of a year, as is their right.
“The local community board in Lower Manhattan voted overwhelming to support the proposal and if it moves forward, I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire City.
“Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure – and there is no neighborhood in this City that is off limits to God’s love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us today can attest.”

I was very honored to have spent time in the historic area of Flushing, where these symbols of the true heritage of religious freedom in the United States exist for all to see.  The quote on the sign at the Quaker meeting house reads, "Men's consciences at least ought to remain free and unshackled."

The Religious Right Gets Repugnant in Amaraillo Texas

Think Progress has news of what can only be called a Christian hate group.

An evangelical Christian hate group called “Repent Amarillo” is reportedly terrorizing the town of Amarillo, Texas. Repent fashions itself as a sort of militia and targets a wide range of community members they deem offensive to their theology: gays, liberal Christians, Muslims, environmentalists, breast cancer events that do not highlight abortion, Halloween, “spring break events,” and pornography shops. On its website, Repent has posted a “Warfare Map” of its enemies in town.

And they don't like Buddhists one bit. If you look at the map in the link, for example, at the green push-pin in the upper right hand corner they've "targeted" Wat Lao Buddharam as a place where they have identified as having "idol worship" and a "false god."

And if you read their "Mission" page clearly they think it's within their "mission" to harass non-Christians, and that includes Buddhists.

I hope people of all religions and non-religions can join together to help expose this group for what it is.

Not Dead Yet: The Religious Right

Brad Warner takes the opportunity to take Pat Robertson's recent cynical and absurd remarks over Haiti (something to do with Satan) to proclaim that the religious right "ain't nothin." At the moment that's more or less true, but I'd like to expand a bit on a comment I made at his blog.

Here's some points to consider, Brad:

1. Follow the Money
Pat Robertson made this remark no doubt because he knows damned well that his audience is not well informed. I mean, his contributors give money to his organization and he likely takes a cut, and profitted mightily from his relious TV business. And he's making sure the gravy train continues for his offspring. How much is Robertson worth? Hundreds of millions of dollars. So, Brad? Pat Robertson wasn't talking to you. The religious right might be dead to you, but I assure you it's not dead to the Tea Party movement and I'll have a blog post on that in the near future - I'm hoping it's a "scoop" as they say.

2. Memes: The Nasty One is Dormant
Brad, ever hear of the concept of a meme? It's like an "idea virus," and it can be said to respond to evolutionary pressures. Some memes are good memes and some seem to be quite harmful. It's TBD as to why, other than strict evolutionary baggage, a "Kumbaya" meme hasn't emerged as virulent as an SS Stormtrooper meme, and how come when cynical people try to create a Kumbaya meme, they wind up creating Up with People.

But I digress.

Virulent memes can be like virulent viruses; an ancestor of the current H1N1 virus was the one that killed tens to hundreds of millions in 1918-1919, and they can crowd out healthier memes in the same way as E. coli can give you some bad intestinal effects at the expense of the healthy bacteria that abide in your gut.

So it is with the religious right. Although Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and all the creationist guys are highly marginalized, they are still clawing for a comeback in Texas through the schools, and they still have a ridiculously disparate influence in Washington due to "The Family", and they have infiltrated the US military in ways that are detrimental to unit cohesion and readiness (Google "Military Religious Freedom Foundation."

Yes, Brad, Falwell's dead, gays are coldly tolerated outside of Texas, and even medical marijuana's legal. But, in the world of Christian fundamentalists and "evangelicals," and theocrats, Sarah Palin is a martyr. And a hockey mom with lipstick.

And the meme which is relatively dormant right now could emerge more virulent than ever because cynical folks like Pat Robertson and Brit Hume will act in the spirit of IGMFU. (Trivial digression: Christoper Plummer - one of the most highly underrated actors of my lifetime - patterned his performance of a cynical minister in 1987's "Dragnet" after Pat Robertson. I haven't seen it written down anywhere, but just watch the freakin' movie! And get out your goat leggings.)

3. Liberty Requires Vigilance
PZ Myers, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, Larry Flynt, the guys at talk2action, the folks who brought talkorigns.org to life, Stanton Peele and lawyers acting on the basis of his work, the internet infidels, and countless others and contributors, and demonstrators and political activists pushed the religious right to its current state. But by no means is it permanently rendered harmless. Impermance will dictate, of course, but the only way to prevent a disaster of our negligence and laziness later is to be aware and dilligent now and in the future.

Brit Hume, Gateway Pundit, and Others Should Try Buddhism

I had only noted in passing the other day about the Brit Hume bit. Given the extent that it made a splash in my corner of the blogosphere, and given the vitriolic reactions from some righties in response to the insouciance received from Hume's advice to Tiger Woods is to abandon Buddhism I thought a bit more discussion was in order.

Barbara O'Brien wrote a touching bit on explaining Buddhism to those who ought to know better.

Several conservatives however, have actually defended Hume's remark. The Gateway Pundit's site over at "First Things," seems to have cornered the market on vitriol and bigotry. This is the link to the first post the blogger wrote on that, and this is good enough to get the feel for the, uh, Christian love. Now to the Gateway Pundit's credit he links to a piece by David Gibson at Politics Daily (though implying that it's unfairly criticizing Mr. Hume). From Gibson's piece it is brought out that Hume became more religious after his son's suicide in 1998.

I can not conceive of the personal deformation that one must endure in the death of one's child. Such a thing is horrendous to contemplate. But of course, for such suffering Buddhism does offer a path out of that hell. To one's own suffering, perhaps, one's own path. Or not. Does Brit Hume appear as though he is not resentful? Do I in this blog? In "worse times" there was quite a bit of vitriol on this blog about the horrible directions the former regime led the country. Even now, I am extremely dissatisfied with the current administration, although it is orders of magnitude better than their predecessors. But I digress, perhaps.

Buddhists have techniques for overcoming greed, hatred, and ignorance and their derivatives, even if we aren't always skillful at using them. (The Japanese have a saying, "Even monkeys fall from trees." Perhaps monkeys have sayings too.) If you look at the comments in the post I referenced from the Gateway Pundit, you'll find many commenters seething with resentment, with very few self-avowed Christians willing to actually go near the fact that Hume's remark was profoundly ignorant of Buddhism.

That brings me to my last point. It would be very good, I think, for these commenters and pundits to actually investigate Buddhism, so that they would not make such ill-informed statements at the very least. In the 1893 Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, Buddhists from Japan attended, even though the prevailing attitude there was Christian triumphalism. Teachers such as Soen Shaku and D. T. Suzuki ably presented the Buddhist case and more. And yet, the anti-Buddhist bigotry on the part of Christians persisted, and in 1896 Soen Shaku responded to a particular bit of bigotry reminiscent of Hume's uninformed remarks. Soen Shaku's remarks are telling, in that he makes a cogent case that Jesus Christ wasn't exactly a moral paragon for Buddhists:

We may grant that Jesus Christ is the greatest master and teacher that appeared in the West after Buddha, but the picture of Jesus Christ as we find it in the Gospel is marred by the accounts of such miracles as the great draft of fishes, which involves a great and useless destruction of life (for we read that the fishermen followed Jesus, leaving the fish behind), and by the transformation of water into wine at the marriage-feast at Cana. Nor has Jesus Christ attained to the calmness and dignity of Buddha, for the passion of anger.

Now truth be told, I haven't attained the calmness and dignity of the Buddha, but that's my goal at least. It does seem to me that too many of the self-avowed followers of Christ tend to emulate his lack of anger management. So in the spirit of Mr. Hume recommending what he claimed helped him, I would humbly suggest to these gentlemen and others what worked for me is the practice of Buddhism, the recognition that life is suffering, that there is a cause and a way out of suffering, and that by following the Eightfold Path one can transcend suffering.

True, I don't have Hume's megaphone, and ultimately I'm just a guy still trying to transcend much suffering and ignorance myself, but at least I recognize the need to quench resentments, and sometimes have some success.

And speaking of "those people over there" being more enlightened than the West...

I think that the folks who idealize Asia had a good does of reality with the Ajahn Brahamavamso issue (see also here). (Ajahn Braham seems like a visionary to this westerner writing this blog, though, and I'm sure this is the way it seems to others in the West.)

This is probably an instance of Orientalism at work here picked up from the Western environment almost by osmosis, especially to those who have called this affair a "controversy." The truth is, most people have never heard of "Thai forest monks," and of those that have, probably most of them likely agree with the folks in Thailand who censured Ajahn Braham, and to them, it's probably not a controversy. How do I know this? Did you see any news of anyone stopping contributions to monasteries in Thailand? No?

Anyway, today has news that Thailand is evicting 4000 Hmongs to Laos, over protests of human rights advocates.

Thailand acted despite protests from the United Nations and human rights groups. Even as the soldiers were trucking the Hmong over the Mekong River into Laos, the United States government was calling on the Thai government to stop.

“We deeply regret this serious violation of the international humanitarian principles that Thailand has long been known for championing,” said a State Department spokesman, Ian C. Kelly. “The United States strongly urges Thai authorities to suspend this operation.”

But Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Thailand had received assurances that the returnees would be well treated and “that these Hmong will have a better life."...

The United States has a special interest in the fate of the Hmong, a mountain tribal group that was enlisted by the Central Intelligence Agency during the 1960s in a “secret war” in Laos.

“They could walk in the mountains like the wind,” William Lair, the operative who recruited them, said in an interview last year. “I thought at the time what great guerrillas these people would be.”

They died in large numbers on a mission to tie down units of the Communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese soldiers and helping to rescue downed American pilots.

The 4,000 asylum seekers are a last remnant of as many as 300,000 Hmong who have fled Laos over the years since the Communist victory in 1975. Half of these were settled in the United States, and many others returned to Laos, most of them voluntarily."

The Thais do not really have a history of colonial exploitation as horrendous as the Vietnamese, or even Koreans, and although the US has a role here (like we did with the "Boat People" in the 1970s), the behavior of the Thais is not the fault of the White Folk Over Here. Thailand is a wonderful country to be sure, but like Tibet, it's no Shangri-La, so to speak. There is no Shangri-La.

Meanwhile, in Tehran

All kinds of stuff is hitting the fan.

I know someone there. Hope he and his family is OK.

Have whatever Christmas you want

Or none at all, if that's what floats your boat.

[T]here are indicators that Christmas revelry in general may be slipping among the population at large. The Christmas Spirit Foundation, a charity that provides holiday assistance to needy children and sends Christmas trees to military families, has been examining people’s plans for the holidays for the last five years. This year’s survey, conducted by the polling firm Harris Interactive, found that while 95 percent of households plan to celebrate Christmas (about the same as every year), the percentage of families who plan to exchange gifts is dropping: 77 percent this year, down from 85 percent in 2005. Slightly fewer people said they were going to attend parties or listen to Christmas music, too.

Another organization hired Harris to conduct a different type of Christmas poll — this one on holiday stress. The survey, commissioned by Breakthrough at Caron, a residential program for adults suffering from drug and alcohol addiction as well as dysfunctional family situations, found holiday stress to be almost universal — 90 percent of respondents said they suffered from it — but that this year the feeling was amplified. Thirty-eight percent of the people polled said they expected to feel more anxiety this holiday season than last. Most blamed the economy, but 77 percent also cited family conflicts.

“There’s a lot of pain associated with Christmas,” said Hank Stuever, the author of a new book, “Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present,” which follows the Yuletide preparations of three families in a sprawling Dallas suburb over three consecutive years, 2006 to 2008. “There’s a lot of joy, too. You’re supposed to be happy — thank you, Charles Dickens — and when you aren’t, you feel bad.”

As someone who has had my share of Christmas, both good and bad, growing up as I did with many siblings, 2 parents, and for a time a grandmother under one roof with one bathroom, I understand sentiments all around with this.

I think the key to doing any of this - or not at all - is to make sure you're the one doing it, that you show up. As I've noted, it's good to have a holiday for kids, and this year, IMO, it's a kindness to retailers who have had their share of issues this year themselves. In my vicinity quite a few stores have gone out of business in the past year, and it's almost irrelevant how long they've been in business. So, this year I lean a little more towards Christmas than against it. And, no, it's not about the baby Jesus; it's a solstice holiday we call Christmas. And all of us can have the holiday if we want. Or not.

A while back Barbara O'Brien asked Buddhists what they do about Christmas.

I think the rest of the world has the same question about themselves, and if they address it they can do a little more holiday kindness than otherwise might be possible.

That's my opinion, yours may vary.

Yes, Ross, Nature is suffering and death. And the First Noble Truth is noble.

I'll say this for Ross Douthat, "conservative" op-ed columnist for the NY Times. He's better than the guy he replaced. However the fact that the NY Times still publishes folks whose columns can be kindly called sophomoric, should give everyone pause. Today's column is a fine example, a jeremiad against "Hollywood pantheism." Now Hollywood pantheism is a subject that I, too, can join in criticism, because it appears simplistic, it trivializes profound ideas, but it should not be taken seriously because, in the end, it's not meant to be serious.

Now, for full disclosure I should point out that I prefer the term "non-theist" applied to myself when describing theism and related philosophies, and "pantheism" to me, is an inapplicable category for Buddhists. I must also disagree with D. T. Suzuki and Shaku Soen's attempt to use the term panentheism, because, although they were trying to put the ideology of Buddhism in terms Westerners at the time could understand, the reality is the terms of discourse for discussion of Buddhist concepts such as sunyata, Dharmakaya and the like were generated largely independently of Western theological categories, and so it makes little sense to try to shoehorn Buddhist philosophical categories and concepts into Western categories and concepts. In fact, the very presentation of Buddhism as a set of concepts "to be believed" is very much at variance with the "Noble Truths" of Buddhism, which can be practiced and considered experimentally, without recourse to belief.

But putting Buddhism in terms unsuited for it is often done, and the folks who tend to do it the most are either proponents of Christianity or New Age Woo. So I can almost sympathize with Douthat. Particularly if pantheism is equated with Buddhism, which is often done both by New Age-ists as well as "Christian apologists." Douthat writes:

[P]antheism opens a path to numinous experience for people uncomfortable with the literal-mindedness of the monotheistic religions — with their miracle-working deities and holy books, their virgin births and resurrected bodies. As the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski noted, attributing divinity to the natural world helps “bring God closer to human experience,” while “depriving him of recognizable personal traits.” For anyone who pines for transcendence but recoils at the idea of a demanding Almighty who interferes in human affairs, this is an ideal combination.

Indeed, it represents a form of religion that even atheists can support. Richard Dawkins has called pantheism “a sexed-up atheism.” (He means that as a compliment.) Sam Harris concluded his polemic “The End of Faith” by rhapsodizing about the mystical experiences available from immersion in “the roiling mystery of the world.” Citing Albert Einstein’s expression of religious awe at the “beauty and sublimity” of the universe, Dawkins allows, “In this sense I too am religious.”

Then of course Douthat pitches that a theistic religion must be superior - presumably not only to pantheism but to all other "-isms" or lack thereof - because death is scary.

The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its “circle of life” is really a cycle of mortality. And the human societies that hew closest to the natural order aren’t the shining Edens of James Cameron’s fond imaginings. They’re places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short.

Religion exists, in part, precisely because humans aren’t at home amid these cruel rhythms. We stand half inside the natural world and half outside it. We’re beasts with self-consciousness, predators with ethics, mortal creatures who yearn for immortality.

This is an agonized position, and if there’s no escape upward — or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it — a deeply tragic one.

As I wrote yesterday, death is our lot itself. It is true that humans (and for that matter, dogs, elephants, other primates and other mammals) are not happy with that. Theistic religion's response, as apprehended by Douthat, is to view himself and his fellow humans as partly outside of nature, hoping, despite evidence to the contrary, that there's an "upward escape."

My apprehension of Buddhism though would say that no escape is likely, and in a world where no escape is likely and yet we still must act (since there is simply no avoidance of it), we must act to mitigate suffering and strife and discord while we're here, because that is the way we can be most merciful to ourselves and others.

To whatever extent we're within, and apart from Nature is irrelevant. No rescue ship is coming, and the hungry still need to be fed.

Nobody's mug is sacred...

Despite what some folks would have you believe.

For all the charges and counter-charges that have been raised during the crisis — including vote rigging, the rape of jailed protesters and the plotting of a velvet revolution — each side seemed to agree that burning an image of Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the state who is revered as divine, was going too far.

The opposition has rebutted charges that its supporters were responsible for the trampling, ripping or burning of images of Ayatollah Khomeini that were broadcast on state-controlled television after student protests spread across the nation on Dec. 7. Thousands of students clashed with Basij militia members at universities across Iran, in the largest protest rallies in months.

Since then, state television has broadcast images of the damaged pictures. None of the videos showed clearly who was responsible.