New drive in Germany to ban scientology

[AntEater]

Theory and practice.
That was off the record. Of course the Constitution is the basic principle of german law.
What I meant is that in everyday legal life, the basic rights part constitution serves as general guidelines on how to interpret the rest of the legal system and as a failsafe in chase of open questions.
You normally do not directly use the constitution because what you always use the most special law there is. Since the Grundgesetz is the least specific ("basic") law, it is some kind of a legal fallback point.
But still even pre-1949 common law is important. Most basic systematics of criminal law are just Wilhelmine time chase law.
But there's no point in denying that our constitution is quite young and most german statute law is at least twice as old.

Regarding the lenght of our legal code, you're right. The art of writing clear and universally applicable statute laws seems to have been lost.
I always admire how systematic and clear the BGB and the other law codes from the late 1800s/early 1900s are.
The old paragraphs of the StGB are mostly 2-3 sentences, a one on money laundering is over a page long!
In the HGB there's now a paragraph which has subparagraphs from a to i

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by AntEater

You normally do not directly use the constitution because what you always use the most special law there is.

You mean that if the special law violates the constitution, the constitution is overruled?

Of course you do not mean that, I know. Just to illustrate that this is the reason why I said there is no law preventing you from demanding a law being checked for constitutional compatability. This may not be a reasonable practice in every "Wald- und Wiesen-Verhandlung", but it surely is an option in high profile cases like this one. Political parties also make excessive use of it, since a couple of years. Whenever they do not get their will in democratic debate and voting, what do they do? they go to Karlsruhe (seat of the highest constitutional court in germany, for our international audience). Indeed they abuse this option so massievely that both the Bundesverfassungsgericht and the Bundespräsident have expressed disgust about this and cautioned all parties to be more restrictive in demanding the court to decide political differences that the parties themselves are unwilling to solve in negotiations.

anyhow, I could debate the specifics of German laws only from my little knowledge on the constitution, the one of the only two German legal documents that i really spend some time for investigating it, so my ability to carry on our discussion is limited. I fear I cannot continue to debate this here, for lacking background knowledge on my side - I am no lawyer.

But a pleasant talk it was, thank you!

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I must confess i am totally innocent concerning any knowledge of these two. Never heared of them. What are they?

THIS should give you most of what you need to know.
And here is a bit more background from WIKI.

Shugden worship is the background to the problem, but even without it, the NKT is very
much a cult and shares some common aspects with scientology.

They are spreading very fast, especialy in the UK.

[Skybird]

If his own lineage banned the founder of it, his offenses must be seen as very serious. Usually things do not get that worse in Tibetan Buddhism, but their tendency to cloath many meanings of Buddhism into the form of deities and demons surely helps to rise the risk that people not being able to look beyond the surface of it get confused and start to think of it in literal terms. and then even the most positive philosophy and religion can become the fundament of misunderatanding anbd going into the wrong direction.

In the 1.5 years I examined Tibetan Buddhism in the Kagyu tradition in the early 90s, I was given the Buddhist consegration (compares to the christian babtism), the Lama doing that gave me an according name and compared me to the demon protecting their lineage, the Mahakala, probably because I had not much respect for their teachers and challenged them on every opportunity, and because he learned that I had dreams while sleeping and visions when meditating at that time where I used to chase monsters and slaying them down to the last beast True. Needless to say that neither my babtism as a baby nor my consegration as a young adult have any meaning to me - i slayed both as well...

I can only recommend all those falling under the spell of that cult of Kadampa to do like i did: slay their demon, and the rest of the band with him, and then turn and leave them behind.

[Letum]

Should you meet the buddha; kill the buddha!

[Chock]

Should you meet the buddha; kill the buddha!

If you do it with a machine gun, it will even make an appropriate noise: 'BUDDHA! BUDDHA! BUDDHA!'

Chock

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Letum

Should you meet the buddha; kill the buddha!

Too true, that is the only right thing to do.

But maybe not with a machine gun.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Too true, that is the only right thing to do.

But maybe not with a machine gun.

Kill him with denial!*

*denial also makes 'BUDDHA! BUDDHA! BUDDHA!' sound.