"Chad Irby" wrote in message
om...
In article et,
"LawsonE" wrote:

"Chad Irby" wrote in message
. com...

Actually, a lot of the bombers are more or less middle class, and not
particularly poor.


http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/...30307.joyce.ht
ml

After living in such misery a 1000$ is real Jack Pot.

"As for the bombers themselves, Krueger says terrorist literature
indicates they are more likely to come from the ranks of middle-class
college students."

You need to reassess your opinions on this one.

The profile of suicidal bombers has been changing lately. HOWEVER, I'm
not
sure if the bombers in Palestine fit the profile that you mention above.
I
think that was the profile for the 9/11 crew and other international
terrorists, not the people that strap bombs to their chest and walk into
a
crowded area in Israel.

Nope. It's a fairly widespread trend. The story quoted even mentions
it.

"At Princeton University, economist Alan Krueger has studied not only
bombers but the views of the Palestinian public on terror attacks aimed
at Israelis. Again, surveys found no link between poverty and
illiteracy and support for terror."

From an earlier paper:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/povterror.htm

"New research by Claude Berrebi, a graduate student at Princeton, has
found that 13 percent of Palestinian suicide bombers are from
impoverished families, while about a third of the Palestinian
population is in poverty. A remarkable 57 percent of suicide bombers
have some education beyond high school, compared with just 15 percent
of the population of comparable age."

The root cause of terrorism is not poverty, it's repression and
extremism.


Not sure that that can be supported by what you said. The terrorists
themselves may be better educated than the norm (how many are college and
post-college graduates, BTW?), but the justifications they use for their
actions may be totally different than what you're concluding from their
backgrounds.

Repression and extremism may play an important role, but unless you can
convince someone its somehow *right* to commit a terrorist act, they wont do
it. WHY do people become convinced its ok to convince terrorist acts? My
guess is that guilt and anger ABOUT poverty may play an important part. Rich
kids, or well-to-do middle class kids are also the most likely to embrace
Communism, in my experience. Thats not because they're rich, but because
they feel *guilty* about being rich, or so I surmise.