[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Dan Lusthaus]

>You may
> ask yourself what would be the smartest move: building many huge prisons
> and raising a hugy army or helping the poor to live a decent life.

Eric,
If this were a different kind of email list, we could devote some time to
enumerating and debunking the ten most common fallacies (or 25 most common,
or 100 most common) mindlessly and inappropriately reiterated to prevent
insight and thinking (and blame someone else). I included a few in the last
message (blame everything on the USA [a fallacy Richard engages in about
once a week], blame it on the Jews/Zionists/Israelis, blame it on the right
wing, blame it on the left wing, blame it on anyone who is not the actual
agent of the action, etc.). To that list we can add this worn out notion,
borrowed from the sociology that blames all crime on poverty. White collar
crooks have to blame it on their parents, or society, or govt entrapment, or
Columbian drug lords, whatever.

Bin Laden not only has more money than the collective readership of this
list, but more money than all readers of this list from the three times
(past, present, and future, i.,e. past subscribers, present subscribers and
future subscribers) will earn, inherit, collect, steal, borrow, and think
about for their entire lives, put together. Poverty was never his problem.
Nor was it Arafat's (about whom similar claims of wealth could be made). Nor
Bin Laden's leadership. Nor many of those active in the European cells, who
are usually at minimum middle class, and often highly educated. That the
legitimately poor and miserable can be exploited by those people is a
secondary issue, not the cause. Hell, Britain puts them on the dole just for
making it over the border (a policy that is being reexamined). Economics is
only one of many factors, not the key element. It's the Saudis and Kuwaitis,
etc., who have been funding this. Impoverish and isolate them -- and blow
them up a bit -- like the evil US did with Qaddafi, and the song changes.

Exercise number one: mindfulness, sm.rti, which means listen to what they
say carefully. What do they want? A hallal chicken in every pot, or
hegemony? You don't cure t.r.s.naa for hegemony by trying to pay it off, by
nurturing it; nor by underestimating it. They are not victims of American
imperialism, but of the bankrupt political culture of the Muslim world (rich
and poor Muslim countries alike).

On the other hand, if you really believe what you said, you should be 150%
behind Bush's invasion of Iraq, since that has been one of the goals for
creating a decent nation in post-Saddam Iraq (the "beacon of democracy"
spiel). For some reason, there are people -- most not even Iraqis -- who
would rather kill women, children, clerics in their mosques, and anyone else
who gets in *their* way, rather than allow a decent infrastructure to be
built that would provide a decent living for Iraqi citizens. Ponder that
long and hard, my friend.

Dan Lusthaus