There seems to be quite a lot of head whirling going on over M's support for a lot of extremely nasty dictators. The simple fact is that M seemed to use one criterion only for supporting a head of state, "do they support us?". In Mugabe's cases he had promised land for a new meditation center, probably thinking it was a tourist hotel near Victoria Falls. Similarly with Marcoses in the Philippines, they were searching for a way to control violent unrest and heard about how the ME was supposed to help, so Imelda gave some support and we went there and embarrassed the hell out of everyone, as we always do. (It was a great 4 months though!) If Bush and Blair had offered to build a peace palace somewhere then everything would have been forgiven and they'd have been praised to the sky. Maharishi was never hot on ethics, utility was always the be all and end all. Couple that with the fact that authoritarian dictators can steal land from people and give it away to some group that promises to relieve them of their troubles and you've got a perfect partnership. The TMO promises to subdue a restless population through the ME, and the dictator buys into it because they're running out of bullets and friends. It looks like a cheap way to stay in power, but of course it never is because the ME doesn't work.
The only reason these unpleasant people were ever supported was because they had, or might have, or suggested that they might get around to it someday, given some material help to the TMO. The motto of the TMO is "Utility before Ethics"
