The Original "Buddha Patriot"

One of the ways I know I can be a semi-practicing Tibetan Buddhist and still be a rabid pro-war right-winger is because of this fine gentleman, an immigrant from Cambodia fighting for you and me overseas:

Soldier awarded Silver Star

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1445747.php

......Even as Master Sgt. Suran Sar charged multiple enemy firing at him in
the mountains of Afghanistan, he knew it wasn’t his turn to die.........
Two of the bullets missed. A third creased Sar’s Kevlar helmet and snapped
his chin strap. Sar won’t give the specifics of what happened next, but the Army
Special Forces soldier collected a handful of firearms — most of which weren’t
given voluntarily. And yesterday a Silver Star was pinned on Sar’s chest.
Recalling the March 5 firefight, Sar said: “At that point, I knew I’m coming
home.” He added, “I already know, if I’m supposed to go, I do believe,
I’m Buddhist, and if I’m supposed to go, I’ll go.
.............

Oh, then there's this:

Dalai Lama endorses just wars but not in case of Tibet (AFP)

http://www.tibet.ca/en/wtnarchive/2005/11/6_1.html

...........The allied victory in World War II "saved Western civilization," and
conflicts fought in Korea and Vietnam were honorable from a moral standpoint,
the 14th Dalai Lama said in answer to questions...........

Take that, Left-wing navel-gazing Euro-"Buddhist" scum!!

(Blogger linking not working tonight, so I have to post the full links)

Go, Go Hanshin Tigers (next year)!!

The Minnesota Twins are OK, but this is my all-time favorite baseball team: the Osaka - Kobe Hanshin_Tigers of Japan .
Found this great blog this morning about the team...

"Hindsight bias" and the Left

Ran across this today from the Washington_Post :

Antiwar liberals last week got to savor the four most satisfying words in
the English language: "I told you so."
This was after a declassified National Intelligence Estimate asserted that the war in Iraq was creating more terrorists than it was eliminating. For
millions of people who opposed President Bush's mission in Iraq from the start,
this was proof positive that they had been right all along. Yes, they told
themselves, we saw this disaster coming.

Only . . . that isn't quite true.

One of the most systematic errors in human perception is what
psychologists call hindsight bias -- the feeling, after an event happens, that
we knew all along it was going to happen. Across a wide spectrum of issues, from
politics to the vagaries of the stock market, experiments show that once people
know something, they readily believe they knew it all along.

It took me a while to find it again, but here's a case in point from the local Lefty rag, City_Pages :

I know this sounds like I'm being cynical, but this is my point, what's really
cynical, it seems to me, is this: Take a nation with the most hyperthyroid
self-concept in the history of the world; kick everybody's ass for 150 years;
help plant a bunch of people on the other side of the world in the middle of a
land where nobody likes them, because you feel bad you didn't do anything about
the Holocaust until it was too late, and then piss all over anyone in the Middle
East who complains about it; build a pair of ultrafucking tall
buildings in the most prominent city in the world, taller than almost like fucking anything, and do NOTHING to protect them from the air, in a world of billions of assholes; and then act surprised when something bad happens, like
"Oooh, you got chocolate in my peanut butter! You got peanut butter in my chocolate!" And then sell this fake surprise over the airwaves to a bunch of people who are so dead inside they can't cry until they watch 5,000 people die on TV. That's fucked up. That's cynical.

[emphasis added]

As with the "I told you so" anti-Iraq protesters, we could ask City Pages, "where was your reporting on the vulnerabilities of the World Trade Center to air attack in the years running up to 9/11?"

I believe Christopher_Hitchens has pointed out that Leftists themselves warned against invading Iraq, lest Saddam use his chemical and biological weapons. I can't currently find the link- it will have to wait for an Update.

"Mandala" magazine, EuroBuddhism and the Left

I had been meaning to pick up a copy of Mandala magazine at Shinders for a while, me being somewhat of an adherent of Tibetan_Buddhism , though after glancing at Al Gore on the current_cover , I had to pass this time.

I currently do not believe that human activity is the primary cause of global warming, mostly after reading articles like this:

Open Kyoto to debate
Sixty scientists call on Harper to revisit the science
of global warming
Special to the Financial PostPublished: Thursday, April 06,
2006
An open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper:
Dear Prime
Minister:
As accredited experts in climate and related scientific
disciplines, we are writing to propose that balanced, comprehensive
public-consultation sessions be held so as to examine the scientific foundation
of the federal government's climate-change plans. This would be entirely
consistent with your recent commitment to conduct a review of the Kyoto
Protocol. Although many of us made the same suggestion to then-prime ministers
Martin and Chretien, neither responded, and, to date, no formal, independent
climate-science review has been conducted in Canada. Much of the billions of
dollars earmarked for implementation of the protocol in Canada will be
squandered without a proper assessment of recent developments in climate
science....

It is my wish that Tibetan Buddhism not be hijacked by the Left. One of the reasons I can only practice Buddhism in the company of Asian immigrants is so I can avoid crap like this:

Understanding Our (Racial) Selves:Racial Moments As Spiritual
Practice

In this class we will explore the nature of the self and our ego
attachments to particular racial self-images. We will consider how whiteness
shapes racial identities and how it structures institutional and social
relationships, including spiritual communities. Although the self has no fixed
inherent nature, it organizes around particular expressions, such as race,
gender, and nationality, each with different personal and social meanings. The
practice of skillfully engaging the racial self can open us to more fluidity and
to the insubstantiality of all selves. This course will invite us to focus on
racial moments as a vehicle for deepen spiritual practice and for understanding
and addressing social suffering.

You get the picture. I've never had to put up with this "EuroBuddhist" crap in all my journeys to Japan, China and Southeast Asia- because believers there tend to practice Buddhism instead of pseudo-intellectual, politically correct claptrap.