[Skybird]

The presence of British colonialism caused violence, yes - but all too often it ended in even more violence between tribes in Africa. It brought rudimentary basics - and often quite some more - of humanism, civilisation and education to quite some hellholes of blossoming barbarism and places of constant bloodshed. It taught people the basics of administration and maintaining a public society where before people spend their time with trying to kill each other with clubs and axes.

To compare it with Stalin's tyranny, is the most absurd thing I've red in this board for one or two weeks. which means it is really quite absurd. The British Empire was Light and Shadow, in in many places it was more light than shadow. Stalinism only was deepest darkness. Is there any civilisational benefit you would see in it? Hardly. with estimations of victims killed by Stalinism ranging from 20 to 40 millions, it would need courage to claim that.

Also, i would not even rate buddhism (the essentials of it, ignoring the sects and school'S institutional businesses) a religion, nor a belief. It does not tell you fairy tale stuff to believe. It hints you to the need to examine your mind - and by that, learn and find out about yourself, your own true nature. Buddha insisted on you testing and examining stuff all by yourself, by reason and logic and common sense and analysis. He cautioned you to not just "believe", he even cautioned you against believing in his own words, but to test them. Test it yourself, keep what convinces you after you examined it by reason and logic, and live by it if you found it to be of good for you and for others, and not being at the cost of others. There is no stuff to "believe" in buddhist thinking. Believing and buddhist thinking are mutually exclusive. Buddhist schools may tell you to believe their rite and rituals, your Lama, your teacher, or to believe in Dhakas and dhakinis and mantras and whatever, and here you touch the fact that many of them - imo in ignorration of basic principles of Siddharta's way of thinking - indeed behave like the Christian church does. but both are raising these false impressions of their religion for reasons of material and powerpolitical self-interest. religious institutions are not interested in your interest to get free. They are interested to make you support their political interests and their material existence - and that means for you to give up your freedom. forget them, no matter whether you call yourself Buddhist or Christian or whatever. If you meet buddha, kill buddha. If you meet Jesus, slay him. You have holy scriptures - burn them. There comes Muhammad - shoot him. Buddha is a state of self-knowledge in your mind. The kingdom of heaven is a state of mental evolution. Only "what is" will set you free.



Letum,

obviously you mean the term revolution metaphorically when you really think there are several ones every year. I mean the term in the more historic meaning of events like the French or american or Russian or Chinese revolution, and that means: a violent overthrowing of an established order, violent so that nothing of the old order shall remain and be given the chance to reestablish itself again later - that'S why revolutions tend to be so bloody. Exceptions to this rule are for example the peaceful overthrowing of the government in the GDR in 1989.

And your reply to Ghandi just states the obvious and confirms my argument. It means that he would have been ineffective with damn many nations and societies on this planet, from the contemporary and obviously barbaric Saudi to the apparently more civilised Chinese, from the corrupt despots of Kongo to the jihaddi djanjaweed in Darfhur or any Talebna-formed government like you had it in Afghanistan before. In Kongo alone you would have saved 7 million lives by now if the world wpould have willed to intervene by force, and over 1 million in Darfhur have been killed due to lacking efficient military action. On the other hand, substracting those 6 millions murdered in the camps, the 6 million killed Germans who for the most happened to have been born on the wrong side of borders, those 40+ million people who died in WWII, died for the freedom you know enjoy and that allows you to argue that only peaceful means could overcome terrorist violence and violence shall never be used. Had that attitude been the norm with leaders of the Allies, for your unconditional pacifist views you maybe would sit in a concentration camp yourself today. And do you really believe that working there would set you free just because the slogan over the gate of Auschwitz said so?

Face it, this world has plenty of beasts with claws and teeth, and sometimes it'S the lesser harm to kill the other than to accept him committing his own killing spree. The Khmer Rouge as a reminder. The Skull Towers Islamic conquerors built in Northern Africa. The many, many genocides taking place in Africa - and who temporarily interrupted during the British ruling, and broke out again after the British had left. Not always such conflicts arise from artificial border-drawing on maps that lead to failed states like Irak. I do not mind (and I do not care) whether there are "just wars", all I know is that there are wars of needs and wars of choice. The first should not be avoided, the last better should. Even if following Buddhist thinking to major parts and considering karma and all that, I have no problem and see no evil in eventually killing by my own hands. The critical questions are: for what reason, and in what state of mind and emotional condition. Unlimited pacifism - is one of the most inhumance and uninterested factors in human history, causing an incredibly load of horror and suffering to continue. and there is neither peace of mind nor a superior humane argument to be found in that attitude. It just is carelessness and dsinterest, taking itself as more important than to engage in trying to stop such events going on. You must neither convince nor argue with for example terrorists, or barbars. You ust make them stop without giving them reward for their being what they are. That is good enough. That is what decides on whose side you really are. Reason only convinces you still is open to reason. Many are not.