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That natural disasters are required to provide Americans with a glimpse of reality in their own country is an indication of the deep rot infecting the official political culture.

Tariq Ali

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Tariq Ali
Age: 80
Born: 1943
Born: October 21
Film Director
Historian
Journalist
Novelist
Peace Activist
Politician
Screenwriter
Writer
Natural
Official
Culture
Glimpse
Political
Required
Reality
Officials
Country
Provide
Disaster
Infecting
Americans
Disasters
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Indication

More quotes by Tariq Ali

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There are huge political problems in Germany, but German economic power is something which was bound to happen. The way out of this situation is through the further democratization of the European Union and a changing of its structures.
Tariq Ali
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The European Union has lost virtually all of its credibility amongst large swaths of the European population.
Tariq Ali
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One could think of ways to defeat the censor. I could put up the answers on my Facebook page or website or Counterpunch. In today's world it's not easy to suppress information. Technology has helped us a great deal.
Tariq Ali
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We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane.
Tariq Ali
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To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence.
Tariq Ali
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The European Union is effectively a union dominated by the German political and economic elite. Its main function is to serve as a nucleus for financial capitalism and to ease the road for that capitalism. The other functions just irritate everyone: it's undemocratic decisions are not made by parliament the European Parliament is not sovereign.
Tariq Ali
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Dear old al-Maarri was a great skeptic poet. He wrote a parody of the Koran, and his friends would tease him and say, al-Maarri, but no one says your Koran. And he said, Yes, but give me time. Give me time. If people recite it for twenty years it will become as popular as the other one.
Tariq Ali
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The EU is an alliance that the Americans control, in which the EU of course has a great deal of autonomy, but in which it still is very dependent on the United States, especially militarily, but not only in that respect. So to blame the Germans for everything is an easy way out for some of those suffering in Europe today.
Tariq Ali
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Tragedies are always discussed as if they took place in a void, but actually each tragedy is conditioned by its setting, local and global. The events of 11 September 2001 are not exception.
Tariq Ali
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American imperialism has always been the imperialism that has been frightened of speaking its name. Now it's beginning to do so. In a way, it's better. We know where we kneel.
Tariq Ali
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One cannot discuss Europe without understanding US imperial hegemony, both globally and certainly in Europe as it stands.
Tariq Ali
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We have populations now in the West with a very short memory span. One reason for this short memory span is that television over the last fifteen years has seen a big decline in the coverage of the rest of the world.
Tariq Ali
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Most Iraqis, even if they hated Saddam and suffered, say life was much better under him than it was under the occupation and what's going on today.
Tariq Ali
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Journalists go to press briefings at the Ministry of Defense in London or the Pentagon in Washington, and no critical questions are posed at all. It's just a news-gathering operation, and the fact that the news is being given by governments who are waging war doesn't seem to worry many journalists too much.
Tariq Ali
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People are increasingly beginning to feel that democracy itself is being destroyed by this latest phase of globalization and that politics doesn't matter because it changes nothing.
Tariq Ali
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Terror breeds terror. I am completely opposed to both state terror and those who respond in a similar way. There is no justification for any group that associates itself with the Left to kill innocents and encourage suicide bombings.
Tariq Ali
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Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.
Tariq Ali
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The function of a bourgeois democracy is to secure the consent of the masses to their own exploitation and oppression.
Tariq Ali
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There was a good moment in Islam when people were actually challenging authority at every level. Very different from the world we live in.
Tariq Ali
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I think the United States and its British attack dog are not taken seriously anywhere in the world and can play no role in helping a political solution.
Tariq Ali