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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (61793)	4/12/2005 10:58:53 PM
From: Slagle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Maurice, back in your days with the oil company I bet you could write a mean business letter and a tough inter-office memo. I always read your posts because not only do you write well but you think, too. Thats one problem with the internet; way too much composition and not nearly enough high quality thinking in advance of the composition. A number of your thoughts, which are probably pretty much original with you, have informed some of my prejudices on similar matters. I wonder if in this day and age we would, sans income redistribution and the social engineering of the left, allow a Dalit-like permanent underclass to arise. I think not, at least not to the degree such caste differences have been handed down from antiquity in Asia and elsewhere. When I was a kid the old sharecropper system was still in full bloom in my reigon of the American South. Most sharecroppers were whites and were not looked down upon or mistreated in any substantial way. They had total social mobility; indeed many sharecropper families had once been affluent and any sharecropper, through luck, intelligence and hard work could advance out of sharecropping fairly easily. But sharecropping could be tough and was not the kind of life to which a person would likely be attracted, given a choice. Rather it loomed like a gaping maw, ready to swallow up anyone who made what we call today "bad lifestyle choices". And in that way it served as a powerful deterrent against making those bad choices. Slagle

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (61793)	4/13/2005 5:30:21 AM
From: shades	Respond to of 74559

"Voting to help yourself to other people's money does seem to be the very major defect of democracy." Message 21212877 "Thus currency crank systems, like all welfare programmes, have always been very popular with those without capital." The Crazy Carnival of Clown Capitalists a Conundrum? A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:from bondage to spiritual faith;from spiritual faith to great courage;from courage to liberty;from liberty to abundance;from abundance to selfishness;from selfishness to complacency;from complacency to apathy;from apathy to dependency;from dependency back again to bondage. --Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813) Scottish jurist and historian What was it Buffet was saying about a new sharecroppers society?? en.wikipedia.org Many say this quote about the fall of ATHENS was an urban myth spread by PJ O'Rourke as a practical joke that appeared in one of his books - perhaps true - but still telling maybe - ATHENS was a direct democracy - they didn't vote for representatives or candidates - they voted on the issues directly. I sit here laughing remembering the lines of Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood about 4th generation welfare and how work is for suckers. Drop out of school and get your check NIGGA! But then I am reminded of the trajedgy of poor native american indians who were marched on the trail of tears with no say by those brutish europeans decendants and go to the indian casino here in florida and see Tonto living la vida loca and my heart bleeds! Then I read some ayn rand crap from some self serving non breeder woman looking for an excuse why she failed to attract a mate that could tolerate her drama and can only defer to buddha in such philosophical matters : tricycleblog.blogspot.com Monday, April 11, 2005 Once Upon a Time Let me tell you a story about a great man who lived 2,500 or so years ago. He was born to a loving mother and father in a family that held considerable power and wealth. His mother passed away soon after his birth, but his step-mother/aunt continued to care for him as if he was her own son. He grew up with all his needs taken care of. People fed him, clothed him, stimulated his mind, encouraged him to seek righteousness and truth (as they understood it, of course), and gave him lots of love. Eventually, a marriage was arranged for him to a beautiful and loving woman, and she bore him a son. As a member of the royal family, he existed literally on the work and generosity and love of the entire nation. Everything he had and was, he received from others. As an adult, he wished to understand life beyond the simple fulfillment of his own desires. Venturing forth, he learned from the life of commoners the truths of old age, sickness, and death, and from a wandering mendicant he learned of the age-old path of spiritual pursuit. His mind was opened to the suffering of other people, and suddenly all he could think of was how to end this suffering, for himself and all others. He left the palace, and was borne away by his faithful steed and horseman, till he crossed a river and left the world behind. For six years he wandered from place to place, learning from others. He learned how to fast, how to meditate, how to mortify the flesh. He strove mightily to achieve his own enlightenment for himself, to understand the Self (atman), which was the highest spiritual pursuit in ancient India and believed to be the path to release. Finally, as his body wasted away to nothing and his efforts proved fruitless, he gave up his attachment to ascetism and self-power. Siddhartha went down to the stream and bathed. Its flowing waters cleansed and supported him, and as he bathed, a young untouchable girl gave him a meal. The food nourished and restored him, and with a mind of gratitude he walked through the forest. A young untouchable boy appeared and offered him fresh grass for a meditation seat, and sitting down beneath the sheltering branches of a Bo tree, he relaxed back into an easy and natural meditation. Now that he had stopped trying to win enlightenment through extreme effort, his mind was clear and he began to see into the nature of all things. He saw how in innumerable past existences he had traveled toward this moment, supported by the work and kindness of others, and learning to perfect the paramitas by helping them in turn. He saw into the emptiness of all things, their interdependent co-arising, and saw that there was in fact no self after all. A rainstorm arose, and the Naga King spread his hood to protect the seated figure. Mara appeared to challenge Siddhartha, and the meditator bent and touched the earth. Mother Earth trembled and sprang up, wringing out her hair and washing Mara away. The Buddha sat serenely, his eye on the rising morning star. The Buddha became the Buddha because of his father and mother, because of his courtiers and the peasants in the fields, because of the horse that he rode to the forest, the sages who encouraged his pursuits, the ascetics who showed him that mortification isn't the answer, the stream that bathed him, the girl who fed him and the food, the boy and the grass, the tree, the snake, and the earth, because of the star that rose and shone just-as-it-is, because of the air that Siddhartha breathed as he sat there, the moon which exerted a gravitational pull on the oceans and thereby churned up the first particles that became life in the first place, because of the sun that provided him heat and nourished the plants he ate, everything everywhere came together to produce the Buddha. And most of all, the Buddha became the Buddha because he was already one with enlightenment to begin with, as are all things--he only discovered what had been the true state of himself and all things all along: vast emptiness, nothing holy. The Buddha did not discover something special about himself. He did not become something different from other things or people. He awakened to the true nature of all things (himself included) as liberated suchness. This awakening came after he had been supported in innummerable ways by countless beings and conditions, and after he had ceased to strive after enlightenment and relaxed back into his natural state. "To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the 'self.' To forget the 'self' is to be enlightened by the 10,000 things." (Dogen) I'm not saying that he put out no effort. But effort is empty and arises interdependently from the contingency of all things. He could only put out "his" effort after and while being supported by the entire universe. Likewise, today our own efforts toward awakening can only take place within an infinite matrix of supportive actions by others. How lucky we are to live in such an open-ended universe, where we can receive what we need from others and contribute toward the happiness and awakening of one another. Funny how a religion followed by so many had such high ideals but then it has untouchables in its society - but the west is no bastion of perfection either. Warren Buffet has 40 billion plus, he should be the epitome of maslow's hiearchy and self actualization - he gives 12 million a year to charity while millions that could use his money for LIFE die everyday - the world is not so black and white - shades of gray.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (61793)	4/13/2005 6:04:44 AM
From: shades	Respond to of 74559

"On the other hand, voting to create a caste of Dalits, with no property and no ability to pay taxes would enable Dalit suppression laws to be passed easily. Or, alternatively, negro slaves with no vote and no property and no ability to pay taxes would be forever enslaved by the "Slave Perpetuation Law"." Don't starve in the welfare line when you can work the farm assuming the richies holding the land will let you! democracynow.org Landless Workers in Brazil Occupy Farms Members of Brazil's Landless Workers Movement, known as the MST, have occupied 12 farms to try to pressure the government to speed up land reform. More than 5,000 families from the MST have moved on to the farms in one of Brazil's poorest states. The MST said the government had failed to live up to its election promises to have settled 400,000 families by 2007. The government says it has settled little over a quarter of that number. The MST said the real figure is much lower. Brazil has one of the biggest wealth gaps in the world. Nearly half of all farmland is owned by just 1% of the population. The Landless Movement usually steps up action in April to commemorate the murders of 19 activists in 1996. Starve to death! I don't want you on my land! What a sad world we still live in. Why are paper profits still above human life? But then I read this - some want the old ways back: nytimes.com A Morsel of Goat Meat By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Binga, Zimbabwe The hungry children and the families dying of AIDS here are gut-wrenching, but somehow what I find even more depressing is this: Many, many ordinary black Zimbabweans wish that they could get back the white racist government that oppressed them in the 1970's. 'If we had the chance to go back to white rule, we'd do it,' said Solomon Dube, a peasant whose child was crying with hunger when I arrived in his village. 'Life was easier then, and at least you could get food and a job.' Mr. Dube acknowledged that the white regime of Ian Smith was awful. But now he worries that his 3-year-old son will die of starvation, and he would rather put up with any indignity than witness that. An elderly peasant in another village, Makupila Muzamba, said that hunger today is worse than ever before in his seven decades or so, and said: 'I want the white man's government to come back. ... Even if whites were oppressing us, we could get jobs and things were cheap compared to today.' His wife, Mugombo Mudenda, remembered that as a younger woman she used to eat meat, drink tea, use sugar and buy soap. But now she cannot even afford corn gruel. 'I miss the days of white rule,' she said. Nearly every peasant I've spoken to in Zimbabwe echoed those thoughts, although it's also clear that some still hail President Robert Mugabe as a liberator. This is a difficult place to gauge the mood in, because foreign reporters are barred from Zimbabwe and promised a prison sentence of up to two years if caught. I sneaked in at Victoria Falls and traveled around the country pretending to be a tourist. The human consequences of the economic collapse are heartbreaking. I visited a hospital and a clinic that lacked both medicines and doctors. Children die routinely for want of malaria medication that costs just a few dollars. At one maternity ward, 21 women were sitting outside, waiting to give birth. No nurse or doctor was in sight, and I asked the women when they had last eaten meat, eggs or other protein. They laughed uproariously. Lilian Dube, a 24-year-old who had hiked 11 miles to get to the hospital, said that she had celebrated Christmas with a morsel of goat meat. 'Before that, the last time I had meat was Christmas the year before,' she said. 'I just eat corn porridge and mnyi,' a kind of wild fruit. An elementary school I visited had its fifth graders meeting outside, because it doesn't have enough classrooms. Like other schools, it raises money by charging fees for all students - driving pupils away. 'Only a few of the kids who started in grade one are still with me in school,' Charity Sibanda, a fifth-grader, told me. 'Some dropped out because they couldn't pay school fees. And some died of AIDS.' As many as a third of working-age Zimbabweans have AIDS or H.I.V., and every 15 minutes a Zimbabwean child dies of AIDS. Partly because of AIDS, life expectancy has dropped over the last 15 years from 61 to 34, and 160,000 Zimbabwean children will lose a parent this year. AIDS is not President Mugabe's fault, but the collapse of the health system has made the problem far worse. The West has often focused its outrage at Mr. Mugabe's seizure of farms from white landowners, but that is tribalism on our part. The greatest suffering by far is among black Zimbabweans. I can't put Isaac Mungombe out of my mind. He's sick, probably dying of AIDS, and his family is down to one meal a day. His wife, Jane, gave birth to their third child, Amos, six months ago at home because she couldn't afford $2 to give birth in the hospital. No one in the family has shoes, and the children can't afford to attend school. They're a wonderful, loving family, and we chatted for a long time - but Isaac and Jane will probably soon die of AIDS, and the children will join the many other orphans in the village. When a white racist government was oppressing Zimbabwe, the international community united to demand change. These days, a black racist government is harming the people of Zimbabwe more than ever, and the international community is letting Mr. Mugabe get away with it. Our hypocrisy is costing hundreds of Zimbabwean lives every day.