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In the West, since the collapse of communism and the fall of the Soviet Union, the one discipline both the official and unofficial cultures have united in casting aside has been history.

Tariq Ali

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Tariq Ali
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: October 21
Film Director
Historian
Journalist
Novelist
Peace Activist
Politician
Screenwriter
Writer
Culture
Officials
Unofficial
Fall
Union
Official
Unions
Casting
West
Cultures
Discipline
Collapse
Since
Aside
United
Communism
History
Soviet

More quotes by Tariq Ali

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Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting.
Tariq Ali
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History, when they do it, is ancient history, and they sensationalize even that. Contemporary history is virtually ignored on television.
Tariq Ali
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Effectively, the EU is a very powerful bureaucracy, dominated now by the German elite, which is backed by the rest of the European Union members.
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
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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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The judgement makes no sense at all. It exposes the country, Turkey, to ridicule. It would have been so much better if Ahmet Davotgulu had behaved like a medieval jester, but no such luck for poor Turkey. Its Prime Minister is not taken seriously by too many people.
Tariq Ali
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The United States is now The Empire. There isn't an empire there's The Empire, and that empire is the United States.
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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The war in Afghanistan, the first war of the twenty-first century, shows the United States doing what it wants to do, not caring about who it antagonizes, not caring about the effects on neighboring regions.
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 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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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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The whole history of the 20th century is a history of resistance groups which are either nationalist or, in large parts of the Muslim word, religious groups.
Tariq Ali
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The implication strongly is that Osama bin Laden is a Hitler, even though he has no state power at all. It's just grotesque if you seriously think about it.
Tariq Ali
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As for ISIS, we know where they come from. We know who has used them in the past. We know their sectarianism leads to killings. Here the Turkish state, like its NATO bosses, has helped to create a monster that it now claims to oppose.
Tariq Ali
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The European Union is a union of the extreme center. It's a banker's union. You see how they operate in country after country, appointing technocrats to take over and run countries for long periods. They did it in Greece they did it in Italy they considered it in other parts of Europe.
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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What we are seeing in Turkey is a non-uniformed authoritarian regime led by a politician, Tayyip Erdogan, who has allowed power to go to his head and is behaving more and more like a despot. Sooner or later this will provoke political uprisings throughout the country as happened after Gezi.
Tariq Ali