OR del Barco (or whoever constructed that particular program) was susceptible to bribery:

>Note: The introductory host of NPR’s “New Religions” series Barbara Bradley Hagerty seems to have her own critics. CultNews was recently notified that there have been serious questions raised “about Hagerty's blatant conflict of interest and violation of professional ethics” (see report) - rather incendiary.

Do we have any reason to think there might be any barrier of any kind within the SGI to payola? No, we don't.

>It was Martin Luther King who nominated Thich Nhat Hahn for a nobel peace prize so I think they would both be in good company with one another. But why should we be so intent on pedestal placing? I believe that Thay is aware that since his nobel nomination, the nobel commission has manifested into little more than a glitzed out highly politicized group of immense egos with zero creditability. If actually true, it’s very saddening that Ikeda would work, focus and strive for this particular accolade or any other for that matter. Personally I would never follow a Zen master who showed any sign whatsoever of striving to win accolades or being driven to accumulate honorary doctorates. Peace is not about prizes and recognition, both of which are absolute opposites of everything Buddhism teaches. I believe in Intoku, which is to practice good done in secret and to practice peace without seeking attention and praise. How about instead we simply honor the nameless ones who practice and promote peace under the radar of our age of information culture? They are out there and their good deeds far outnumber those of a few major icons. Sending good thoughts their way during our meditation practice is one way of honoring AND helping them. Balveda

https://www.amazon.it/Soka-Gakkais-Human-Revolution-Contemporary-ebook/dp/B07BWFMMKF/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

This is the extract available on Amazon. Should give people a taster of what Levi McLaughlin has to say.

I think I need Blanche or Cultalert to help me out on that one . . . I believe they are my source of the original information. I did find this thread, though, titled "Are SGI members now excommunicated?" and appears to be dated 12/31/97.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.religion.buddhism.nichiren/ZYe0JCr4Q3E

It's like an ugly boil of animosity bursting between SGI (basically saying "ha-ha-ha, we don't care!") and a few NST members (saying "you got what you deserved, you dirty scum!")

>gif

I saw this how to and it said you basically need the frames of the image you want animated to make a gif. I think this is free one you can you use for it https://ezgif.com/maker

I have never done it, too tired right now but if anyone else is interested let me know if it works.

Check and see if you can get it through Roku:

https://www.roku.com/

I dropped cable last spring - lots available on there. You do have to pay for some services - Netflix (which carries a lot of HBO/Showtime content), Amazon, Hulu, and some others, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that you could get HBO through it. They just launched a free atheist channel last week, btw:

http://www.atheists.org/AtheistTV

Limited programming, but it is just starting up. I'd much rather lay out a few bucks for broadcasting I want and watch. I got the Roku streamer on Amazon - I want to say I paid around $65 for it? A one-time outlay. I pay less than $20 a month for the "channels" that aren't free. I get very basic cable since I like to watch the news - too many trees around for a digital antenna to pull anything in, but that worked fine before I moved. I think I pay around $20 for the cable service; it's combined with phone and internet, so I might be off on the price there.

I was curious about the Honolulu Star article, since Hawaii was where SGI first started gaining its foothold in America:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.religion.buddhism.nichiren/s93wWUxJJHU

Gee, that really isn't very favorable, is it?

https://www.scribd.com/doc/21001434/19768515-Psychology-and-Buddhism-From-Individual-to-Global-Community

See Chapter 8, Buddhist Empowerment, Individual, Organizational, and Societal Transformation pp. 173 - 194 by Elizabeth Dockett PHD psychology and SGI member

> The buddha Jeff and me

Oh! THAT's the book I read! Link

It was okay... A fellow member lent it to me; I read it, gave her my perspective, gave it back.

I can't trace any English translations. There is an extract in English on the link that I originally gave. This post is by DelbertGrady one of the valuable contributors here who speaks Japanese.

Here you go again:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sgiwhistleblowers/comments/rahp23/memoirs_of_a_yakuza/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb

>"The greatest evil of all is Daisaku Ikeda, a man who makes others do all the dirty work behind the scenes while he basks in the limelight like some Holy One...He was helped along by so many people, and yet he would think nothing of cutting you off once he got what he wanted.  I find it unforgivable.  Just look at how many of his loyal subordinates he ended up losing; the man is a joke..." > >---Excerpts from "In All Humility: Memoirs of Tadamasa Goto"  > >https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%86%9A%E3%82%8A%E3%81%AA%E3%81%8C%E3%82%89-%E5%AE%9D%E5%B3%B6%E7%A4%BE%E6%96%87%E5%BA%AB-%E5%BE%8C%E8%97%A4-%E5%BF%A0%E6%94%BF/dp/4796681345 > >Mr. Goto was a leader of the notorious yakuza syndicate Yamaguchi-gumi.  The book devotes an entire chapter to his relationship with the Soka Gakkai, which began around 1969-1970 when the SG was beginning to launch its massively lucrative cemetery venture.  In order to neutralize the opposition of civic leaders, the Soka Gakkai made the fateful decision to enlist the help of organized crime.  It is quite intriguing that the publication date (May 15, 2010) corresponds exactly to President Ikeda's stroke & the effective end of his public appearances

Mark Gaber's 1st memoir, Sho Hondo

(p. 205)

ALL the sources are linked. You just have to click on the links and read what you find there.

Bryan Wilson - "the eminent Oxford don [emeritus] who co-wrote a book in 1994 called 'A Time to Chant' promoting Daisaku Ikeda's side in the very controversy which had so shaken his sect, the mass excommunication of President Ikeda and his entire staff in 1991."

You always promote the side that's paying you - that's Propaganda 101!

The first time I can remember hearing about keiretsu was in the excellent 1993 film Rising Sun starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, and based on the book by Michael Crichton Here's a movie trailer

>John Connor: There's a keiretsu war going on. A Japanese corporation never stands alone. A keiretsu is a united front of hundreds of powerful companies, all acting in partnership to win.

>Web Smith: To win what?

>John Connor: Whatever's there. You ever hear "business is war"? The war is never over.

>Web Smith: Maybe you heard "All's fair in love and war"?

>John Connor: No.

>Web Smith: So where does that leave us?

>John Connor: Us? We're in the war zone.

source: Rising Sun (film)

I've run across Kathy Ruby on various chat sites - a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work if I've ever encountered one. And who doesn't enjoy the schadefreude of gloating over how the self-proclaimed mighty fall? It's almost as if - I hate to say it - the Mystic Law has had enough of their shenanigans, know what I'm sayin'???

...and Willie???

I've got the gist of it, but I wish I knew the where and when of all this. I don't think I have any connection with any of these lowlifes, and that's something I'm quite content about. Did you know them personally?

I dunno, dude - this is some pretty gutter stuff >.<

That's quite enough for me, thanks just the same!

Do you have any personal experience with Mormonism? There are a bunch of them in the area where I live.

I strongly recommend the book "Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy" - it's about the handcart migration west that the Mormons convinced unwitting, uneducated poor people to undergo - to their peril.

Did I mention I got our information about resignation letters and legal precedents off a couple of ex-Mormon sites? I know what you mean about the similarities - it's quite astonishing to realize that ALL these cults, from Mormonism to Moonies to Jim Jones and Scientology to SGI, are so much more similar than different...

Here's a review:

>If you are a member of SGI, ignore me and buy this book. It'll look great next to your 10,000 other books by Master Ikeda!

>If you aren't, keep reading... this book is trash from start to finish. The reason it was written (ghostwritten, I should say)

He's certainly got Ikeda's number!

>is because SGI members think Daisaku Ikeda must have perfect knowledge of all Buddhist history, so of course they had to start from the beginning, even though most Japanese Buddhists don't know anything about Early Buddhism. The result is a disaster zone cribbed from a half-dozen Japanese-language books listed at the end; no footnotes are used.

You called it! That "bibliography" bit!

>Here's an example of the ridiculousness: chapter 2 is entitled "The Theravada and the Mahasanghika". These two schools didn't even exist at the same time!! It is about the Second Buddhist Council, but it keeps on using the anachronism "Theravada" for Sthaviravada. The word in the original Japanese is "jouzabu", which can be either. I guess you could fault the translator for that, but look at this chestnut: the mark of the bodhisattva as decided in the 2nd century (87) is said to be "shakubuku". Oy vey... that's a 14th century Nichiren term, kids.

Reviewer's right...

>Look, just don't bother with this book. For a Mahayana look at Early Buddhism, read Light of Liberation: A History of Buddhism in India (Crystal Mirror Series, Vol. 8) . You'll enjoy it a lot more. Source

>Interesting tid bit: Today I listed all my Ikeda books on Amazon. Shockingly, this comprised over 50% of my bookshelf and i'd only been a member for three years. Indoctrination happens quickly, apparently when HIS books contain the answers to the UNIVERSE.

Holy cow!! That really is a surprise! It does sneak up on you.

True story - I only bought, like less than a dozen SGI books during my just-over-20-years of SGI tenure, and some of these were the Yasuji Kirimura Fundamentals of Buddhism and a couple books of Gosho. I purchased a couple of the small, cheap Human Revolution installments, but was not impressed and did not buy more. I bought a small cheap book of "guidance", and Richard Causton's Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism book (which I don't think I ever read) - that's it for just over 2 decades.

I think they started flogging the books much harder since I left in early 2007 - all the studies' material was printed in the publications. I've noticed much more emphasis on everyone having their own purchased copy of the material since then.

But NOW I've got, gosh, probably over 75 books relating to SGI and Nichiren Shoshu and religion in Japan in general, probably a third to a half from outside of the Ikeda cult.

Is it Takashi Ikeda? There's a Ryoko Ikeda who started doing a transgender manga clear back in 1978!

I'd love to see that. I have a book of Stukeley's drawings of Avebury before so much was damaged and destroyed by Christians. I think it's this one - I can't find it right now >:(

This one looks interesting, too: https://www.amazon.com/Stukeley-Illustrated-Stukeleys-Rediscovery-Britains/dp/0954296338/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=stukeley&qid=1559527328&s=gateway&sr=8-2

Yeah, it's known for being clannish. There's a book on the Mormon migration to Utah - "Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy". I read it a coupla years ago - it's really good but chilling and very sad. Such irresponsible leadership, only interested in its own concerns and so what if large proportions of the membership die en route??

Another fun topic to discuss with Mormons is the Mountain Meadow Massacre.

So they didn't make you wear the "garments"? ~snicker~

I think that's a blend of a lot of fact with a certain amount of anti-"Jap" sentiment. It's kind of a shame, really - the flash-bang-boom almost negates the validity of the legitimate claims. When it appears in the context of a magazine that had a cover feature of "Weasels Ripped My Flesh!" it sadly loses the credibility it could have had.

http://www.amazon.com/Weasels-Two-Fisted-Stories-Adventure-Magazines/dp/0988462109

Actually, I think that the original post here refutes the idea that it's "magic." And this book provides plenty of evidence that it is a science, and a very lucrative one at that.

http://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461