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I Have Never Known What Is Arabic Or English, Or Which One Was Really Mine Beyond Any Doubt. What I Do Know, However, Is That The Two Have Always Been Together In My Life, One Resonating In The Other, Sometimes Ironically, Sometimes Nostalgically, Most Often Each Correcting, And Commenting On, The Other. Each Can Seem Like My Absolutely First Language, But Neither Is.

-Edward Said

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I Have Never Known

Edward Said

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I Have Never Known What Is Arabic Or English, Or Which One Was Really Mine Beyond Any Doubt. What I Do Know, However, Is That The Two Have Always Been Together In My Life, One Resonating In The Other, Sometimes Ironically, Sometimes Nostalgically, Most Often Each Correcting, And Commenting On, The Other. Each Can Seem Like My Absolutely First Language, But Neither Is.

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Speaking As A New Yorker, I Found It (9/11 Event] A Shocking And Terrifying Event, Particularly The Scale Of It. At Bottom, It Was An Implacable Desire To Do Harm To Innocent People.

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[roots Of Terrorism] Come Out Of A Long Dialectic Of U.s. Involvement In The Affairs Of The Islamic World, The Oil-producing World, The Arab World, The Middle East - Those Areas That Are Considered To Be Essential To U.s. Interests And Security.

Part Of The Main Plan Of Imperialism... Is That We Will Give You Your History, We Will Write It For You, We Will Re-order The Past...what's More Truly Frightening Is The Defacement, The Mutilation, And Ultimately The Eradication Of History In Order To Create... An Order That Is Favorable To The United States.

There Isn't A Clear Goal In Sight. Osama Bin Laden's Organization Has Spun Out From Him And Is Now Probably Independent Of Him. There Will Be Others Who Will Appear And Reappear. This Is Why We Need A Much More Precise, A Much More Defined, A Much More Patiently Constructed Campaign, As Well As One That Surveys Not Just The Terrorists' Presence But The Root Causes Of Terrorism, Which Are Ascertainable.

Speaking As A New Yorker, I Found [september 11] A Shocking And Terrifying Event, Particularly The Scale Of It.

The Central Fact For Me Is, I Think, That The [role Of The] Intellectual... Cannot Be Played Without A Sense Of Being Someone Whose Place It Is Publicly To Raise Embarrassing Questions, To Confront Orthodoxy And Dogma (rather Than To Produce Them), To Be Someone Who Cannot Easily Be Co-opted By Governments Or Corporations, And Whose Raison D'etre Is To Represent All Those People And Issues That Are Routinely Forgotten Or Swept Under The Rug.

Embarrassing Questions

And In This Relentlessly Unfolding Series Of Interactions, The U.s. Has Played A Very Distinctive Role, Which Most Americans Have Been Either Shielded From Or Simply Unaware Of.

Humanism Is The Only - I Would Go So Far As Saying The Final- Resistance We Have Against The Inhuman Practices And Injustices That Disfigure Human History.

It Is Quite Common To Hear High Officials In Washington And Elsewhere Speak Of Changing The Map Of The Middle East, As If Ancient Societies And Myriad Peoples Can Be Shaken Up Like So Many Peanuts In A Jar.

Just As None Of Us Is Outside Or Beyond Geography, None Of Us Is Completely Free From The Struggle Over Geography. That Struggle Is Complex And Interesting Because It Is Not Only About Soldiers And Cannons But Also About Ideas, About Forms, About Images And Imaginings.

Speaking As A New Yorker, I Found It A Shocking And Terrifying Event [9/11], Particularly The Scale Of It. At Bottom, It Was An Implacable Desire To Do Harm To Innocent People. It Was Aimed At Symbols: The World Trade Center, The Heart Of American Capitalism, And The Pentagon, The Headquarters Of The American Military Establishment.

The History Of Other Cultures Is Non-existent Until It Erupts In Confrontation With The United States.

Exile Is Strangely Compelling To Think About But Terrible To Experience. It Is The Unhealable Rift Forced Between A Human Being And A Native Place, Between The Self And Its True Home: Its Essential Sadness Can Never Be Surmounted. And While It Is True That Literature And History Contain Heroic, Romantic, Glorious, Even Triumphant Episodes In An Exile’s Life, These Are No More Than Efforts Meant To Overcome The Crippling Sorrow Of Estrangement.

These Actions Were Taken With The Support And Financing Of The United States. How Can You Say This Is Part Of U.s. Adherence To International Law And U.n. Resolutions? The Result Is A Kind Of Schizophrenic Picture Of The United States.

Power, After All, Is Not Just Military Strength. It Is The Social Power That Comes From Democracy, The Cultural Power That Comes From Freedom Of Expression And Research, The Personal Power That Entitles Every Arab Citizen To Feel That He Or She Is In Fact A Citizen, And Not Just A Sheep In Some Great Shepherd's Flock.

Ironically, Many Of These People, Including Osama Bin Laden And The Mujahedeen, Were, In Fact, Nourished By The United States In The Early Eighties In Its Efforts To Drive The Soviets Out Of Afghanistan.

History Is Written By Those Who Win And Those Who Dominate.

In The Islamic World, The U.s. Is Seen In Two Quite Different Ways. One View Recognizes What An Extraordinary Country The U.s. Is.the Other View Is Of The Official United States, The United States Of Armies And Interventions. The United States That In 1953 Overthrew The Nationalist Government Of Mossadegh In Iran And Brought Back The Shah. The United States That Has Been Involved First In The Gulf War And Then In The Tremendously Damaging Sanctions Against Iraqi Civilians. The United States That Is The Supporter Of Israel Against The Palestinians.

In Short, Israel Is The Measure Of Our Failings And Our Incompetence. We Have Waited For A Great Leader For Years, But None Came; We Have Waited For A Mighty Military Victory, But We Were Defeated Roundly; We Have Waited For Outside Powers (the United States Or, In Its Time, The Soviet Union), But None Came To Our Aid. The One Thing We Have Not Tried In All Seriousness Has Been To Rely On Ourselves: Until We Do That With A Full Commitment To Success There Is No Chance That We Can Advance Towards Self-determination And Freedom From Aggression.

The United States That Has Been Involved First In The Gulf War And Then In The Tremendously Damaging Sanctions Against Iraqi Civilians. The United States That Is The Supporter Of Israel Against The Palestinians.

Refuse To Allow Yourself To Become A Vegetable That Simply Absorbs Information, Pre-packaged, Pre-ideologized , Because No Message.. Is Anything But An Ideological Package That Has Gone Through A Kind Of Processing.

In The Islamic World, The U.s. Is Seen In Two Quite Different Ways. One View Recognizes What An Extraordinary Country The U.s. Is. Every Arab Or Muslim That I Know Is Tremendously Interested In The United States. Many Of Them Send Their Children Here For Education. Many Of Them Come Here For Vacations. They Do Business Here Or Get Their Training Here. The Other View Is Of The Official United States, The United States Of Armies And Interventions.

The Just Response To This Terrible Event Should Be To Go Immediately To The World Community, The United Nations. The Rule Of International Law Should Be Marshaled, But It's Probably Too Late Because The United States Has Never Done That; It's Always Gone It Alone.

Terrible Events

Every Single Empire In Its Official Discourse Has Said That It Is Not Like All The Others, That Its Circumstances Are Special, That It Has A Mission To Enlighten, Civilize, Bring Order And Democracy, And That It Uses Force Only As A Last Resort. And, Sadder Still, There Always Is A Chorus Of Willing Intellectuals To Say Calming Words About Benign Or Altruistic Empires.

It [9/11 Event] Was Aimed At Symbols: The World Trade Center, The Heart Of American Capitalism, And The Pentagon, The Headquarters Of The American Military Establishment. But It Was Not Meant To Be Argued With. It Wasn't Part Of Any Negotiation. No Message Was Intended With It. It Spoke For Itself, Which Is Unusual.

Density, Complexity, And Historical-semantic Value That Is So Strong As To Make Politics Possible... Gramsci's Insight Is To Have Recognised That Subordination, Fracturing, Diffusion, Reproducing, As Much As Producing, Creating, Forcing, Guiding, Are Necessary Aspects Of Elaboration.

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We Can Not Fight For Our Rights And Our History As Well As Future Until We Are Armed With Weapons Of Criticism And Dedicated Consciousness.

What Is Quite Worrisome Is The Absence Of Analysis And Reflection. Take The Word "terrorism." It Has Become Synonymous Now With Anti-americanism, Which, In Turn, Has Become Synonymous With Being Critical Of The United States, Which, In Turn, Has Become Synonymous With Being Unpatriotic. That's An Unacceptable Series Of Equations.

The Just Response To This Terrible Event [9/11] Should Be To Go Immediately To The World Community, The United Nations. The Rule Of International Law Should Be Marshaled, But It's Probably Too Late Because The United States Has Never Done That; It's Always Gone It Alone.

Terrible Events

In The Islamic World, The U.s. Is Seen In Two Quite Different Ways. One View Recognizes What An Extraordinary Country The U.s. Is.

If You Look At The Curricula Of Most Universities And Schools In This Country [usa], Considering Our Long Encounter With The Islamic World, There Is Very Little There That You Can Get Hold Of That Is Really Informative About Islam. If You Look At The Popular Media, You'll See That The Stereotype That Begins With Rudolph Valentino In The Sheik Has Really Remained And Developed Into The Transnational Villain Of Television And Film And Culture In General.

My Argument Is That History Is Made By Men And Women, Just As It Can Also Be Unmade And Rewritten, Always With Various Silence And Elisions, Always With Shapes Imposed And Disfigurements Tolerated.

Ideas, Cultures, And Histories Cannot Seriously Be Understood Or Studied Without Their Force, Or More Precisely Their Configurations Of Power, Also Being Studied.

Look At Situations As Contingent, Not As Inevitable, Look At Them As The Result Of A Series Of Historical Choices Made By Men And Women, As Facts Of Society Made By Human Beings, And Not As Natural Or God-given, Therefore Unchangeable, Permanent, Irreversible.

... The Connection Between Imperial Politics And Culture Is Astonishingly Direct. American Attitudes To American "greatness", To Hierarchies Of Race, To The Perils Of "other" Revolutions (the American Revolution Being Considered Unique And Somehow Unrepeatable Anywhere Else In The World) Have Remained Constant, Have Dictated, Have Obscured, The Realities Of Empire, While Apologists For Overseas American Interests Have Insisted On American Innocence, Doing Good, Fighting For Freedom.

Until The June 1967 War I Was Completely Caught Up In The Life Of A Young Professor Of English. Beginning In 1968, I Started To Think, Write, And Travel As Someone Who Felt Himself To Be Directly Involved In The Renaissance Of Palestinian Life And Politics.

But I Do Not Know Whether The Photograph Can, Or Does, Say Things As They Really Are. Something Has Been Lost. But The Representation Is All We Have.

Appeals To The Past Are Among The Commonest Of Strategies In Interpretations Of The Present.

[one Task Of Intellectuals Is] To Break Down The Stereotypes And Reductive Categories That Are . . . Limiting To Human Thought And Communication.

The Sense Of Islam As A Threatening Other - With Muslims Depicted As Fanatical, Violent, Lustful, Irrational - Develops During The Colonial Period In What I Called Orientalism. The Study Of The Other Has A Lot To Do With The Control And Dominance Of Europe And The West Generally In The Islamic World. And It Has Persisted Because It's Based Very, Very Deeply In Religious Roots, Where Islam Is Seen As A Kind Of Competitor Of Christianity.

Uninformed And Yet Open To Appeals For Justice As They Are, Americans Are Capable Of Reacting As They Did To The Anc Campaign Against Apartheid, Which Finally Changed The Balance Of Forces Inside South Africa.

There's Been Essentially The Same Analysis Over And Over Again And Very Little Allowance Made For Different Views And Interpretations And Reflections.

Since The 1960s, We Have Seen The Failure Of The Melting Pot Ideology. This Ideology Suggested That Different Historical, Cultural And Socioeconomic Backgrounds Could Be Subordinated To A Larger Ideology Or Social Amalgam Which Is "america." This Concept Obviously Did Not Work, Because Paradoxically America Encourages A Politics Of Contestation.

No Cause, No God, No Abstract Idea Can Justify The Mass Slaughter Of Innocents.

In 1985, A Group Of Mujahedeen Came To Washington And Was Greeted By President Reagan, Who Called Them "freedom Fighters." These People, By The Way, Don't Represent Islam In Any Formal Sense. They're Not Imams Or Sheiks. They Are Self-appointed Warriors For Islam.

This [terrorists Attacks On 9/11] Was Part Of Nothing. It Was A Leap Into Another Realm - The Realm Of Crazy Abstractions And Mythological Generalities, Involving People Who Have Hijacked Islam For Their Own Purposes. It's Important Not To Fall Into That Trap And To Try To Respond With A Metaphysical Retaliation Of Some Sort.

Note That There Was No Claim For These Attacks [on 9/11]. There Were No Demands. There Were No Statements. It Was A Silent Piece Of Terror.

If You Live In The [middle East] Area, You See [u.s Actions] As Part Of A Continuing Drive For Dominance, And With It A Kind Of Obduracy, A Stubborn Opposition To The Wishes And Desires And Aspirations Of The People There.

And What Terrifies Me Is That We're Entering A Phase Where If You Start To Speak About This As Something That Can Be Understood Historically - Without Any Sympathy - You Are Going To Be Thought Of As Unpatriotic, And You Are Going To Be Forbidden. It's Very Dangerous. It Is Precisely Incumbent On Every Citizen To Quite Understand The World We're Living In And The History We Are A Part Of And We Are Forming As A Superpower.

Ironically, Many Of People, Including Osama Bin Laden And The Mujahedeen, Were, In Fact, Nourished By The United States In The Early Eighties In Its Efforts To Drive The Soviets Out Of Afghanistan.

I Don't Remember When Exactly I Read My First Comic Book, But I Do Remember Exactly How Liberated And Subversive I Felt As A Result.

The Definition Of Terrorism Has To Be More Precise, So That We Are Able To Discriminate Between, For Example, What It Is That The Palestinians Are Doing To Fight The Israeli Military Occupation And Terrorism Of The Sort That Resulted In The World Trade Center Bombing.

Take A Young Man From Gaza Living In The Most Horrendous Conditions - Most Of It Imposed By Israel - Who Straps Dynamite Around Himself And Then Throws Himself Into A Crowd Of Israelis. I've Never Condoned Or Agreed With It, But At Least It Is Understandable As The Desperate Wish Of A Human Being Who Feels Himself Being Crowded Out Of Life And All Of His Surroundings, Who Sees His Fellow Citizens, Other Palestinians, His Parents, Sisters, And Brothers, Suffering, Being Injured, Or Being Killed. He Wants To Do Something, To Strike Back.

I Have Never Known What Is Arabic Or English, Or Which One Was Really Mine Beyond Any Doubt. What I Do Know, However, Is That The Two Have Always Been Together In My Life, One Resonating In The Other, Sometimes Ironically, Sometimes Nostalgically, Most Often Each Correcting, And Commenting On, The Other. Each Can Seem Like My Absolutely First Language, But Neither Is.

They [root Causes Of Terror] Come Out Of A Long Dialectic Of U.s. Involvement In The Affairs Of The Islamic World, The Oil-producing World, The Arab World, The Middle East - Those Areas That Are Considered To Be Essential To U.s. Interests And Security.

The Orient And Islam Have A Kind Of Extrareal, Phenomenologically Reduced Status That Puts Them Out Of Reach Of Everyone Except The Western Expert. From The Beginning Of Western Speculation About The Orient, The One Thing Th Orient Could Not Do Was To Represent Itself. Evidence Of The Orient Was Credible Only After It Had Passed Through And Been Made Firm By The Refining Fire Of The Orientalist’s Work.

All Knowledge That Is About Human Society, And Not About The Natural World, Is Historical Knowledge, And Therefore Rests Upon Judgment And Interpretation. This Is Not To Say That Facts Or Data Are Nonexistent, But That Facts Get Their Importance From What Is Made Of Them In Interpretation… For Interpretations Depend Very Much On Who The Interpreter Is, Who He Or She Is Addressing, What His Or Her Purpose Is, At What Historical Moment The Interpretation Takes Place.

Historical Knowledge

Much As I Have No Wish To Hurt Anyone's Feelings, My First Obligation Has Not Been To Be Nice But To Be True To My Perhaps Peculiar Memories, Experiences And Feelings.

[9/11] Was Not Meant To Be Argued With. It Wasn't Part Of Any Negotiation. No Message Was Intended With It. It Spoke For Itself, Which Is Unusual.

Were Not Meant To Be

I Have Been Unable To Live An Uncommitted Or Suspended Life. I Have Not Hesitated To Declare My Affiliation With An Extremely Unpopular Cause.

It's Very Hard, For Example, To Justify The Thirty-four-year Occupation Of The West Bank And Gaza. It's Very Hard To Justify 140 Israeli Settlements And Roughly 400,000 Settlers. These Actions Were Taken With The Support And Financing Of The United States.

It Was Thought That To Rally Islam Against Godless Communism Would Be Doing The Soviet Union A Very Bad Turn Indeed, And That, In Fact, Transpired. In 1985, A Group Of Mujahedeen Came To Washington And Was Greeted By President [ronald] Reagan, Who Called Them "freedom Fighters."

Most Arabs And Muslims Feel That The United States Hasn't Really Been Paying Much Attention To Their Desires. They Think It Has Been Pursuing Its Policies For Its Own Sake And Not According To Many Of The Principles That It Claims Are Its Own - Democracy, Self-determination, Freedom Of Speech, Freedom Of Assembly, International Law.

...it Is Sensible To Begin By Asking The Beginning Questions, Why Imagine Power In The First Place, And What Is The Relationship Between One's Motive For Imagining Power And The Image One Ends Up With.

It [destroying Twin Towers] Was A Leap Into Another Realm - The Realm Of Crazy Abstractions And Mythological Generalities, Involving People Who Have Hijacked Islam For Their Own Purposes. It's Important Not To Fall Into That Trap And To Try To Respond With A Metaphysical Retaliation Of Some Sort.

This [9/11 Event] Was Bloody-minded Destruction For No Other Reason Than To Do It. Note That There Was No Claim For These Attacks. There Were No Demands. There Were No Statements. It Was A Silent Piece Of Terror. This Was Part Of Nothing.

It [9/11 Event] Transcended The Political And Moved Into The Metaphysical. There Was A Kind Of Cosmic, Demonic Quality Of Mind At Work Here, Which Refused To Have Any Interest In Dialogue And Political Organization And Persuasion.

The Other View Is Of The Official United States, The United States Of Armies And Interventions. The United States That In 1953 Overthrew The Nationalist Government Of Mossadegh In Iran And Brought Back The Shah.

Since The Time Of Homer Every European, In What He Could Say About The Orient, Was A Racist, An Imperialist, And Almost Totally Ethnocentric.

The Arab Rulers Are Basically Unpopular. They Are Supported By The United States Against The Wishes Of Their People. In All Of This Rather Heady Mixture Of Violence And Policies That Are Remarkably Unpopular Right Down To The Last Iota, It's Not Hard For Demagogues, Especially People Who Claim To Speak In The Name Of Religion, In This Case Islam, To Raise A Crusade Against The United States And Say That We Must Somehow Bring America Down.

Osama Bin Laden, Who Is A Saudi, Feels Himself To Be A Patriot Because The U.s. Has Forces In Saudi Arabia, Which Is Sacred Because It Is The Land Of The Prophet Mohammed.

It's Very Hard, For Example, To Justify The Thirty-four-year Occupation Of The West Bank And Gaza. It's Very Hard To Justify 140 Israeli Settlements And Roughly 400,000 Settlers.

Israeli Settlements

[mujahedeen], By The Way, Don't Represent Islam In Any Formal Sense. They're Not Imams Or Sheiks. They Are Self-appointed Warriors For Islam.

Captain Ahab Was A Man Possessed With An Obsessional Drive To Pursue The White Whale Which Had Harmed Him - Which Had Torn His Leg Out - To The Ends Of The Earth, No Matter What Happened. In The Final Scene Of The Novel, Captain Ahab Is Being Borne Out To Sea, Wrapped Around The White Whale With The Rope Of His Own Harpoon And Going Obviously To His Death. It Was A Scene Of Almost Suicidal Finality.

All The Words That George Bush Used In Public During The Early Stages Of The Crisis - "wanted, Dead Or Alive," "a Crusade," Etc. - Suggest Not So Much An Orderly And Considered Progress Towards Bringing The Man To Justice According To International Norms, But Rather Something Apocalyptic, Something Of The Order Of The Criminal Atrocity Itself. That Will Make Matters A Lot, Lot Worse, Because There Are Always Consequences.

I Take Criticism So Seriously As To Believe That, Even In The Midst Of A Battle In Which One Is Unmistakably On One Side Against Another, There Should Be Criticism, Because There Must Be Critical Consciousness If There Are To Be Issues, Problems, Values, Even Lives To Be Fought For... Criticism Must Think Of Itself As Life-enhancing And Constitutively Opposed To Every Form Of Tyranny, Domination, And Abuse; Its Social Goals Are Noncoercive Knowledge Produced In The Interests Of Human Freedom.

Theory Is Taught So As To Make The Student Believe That He Or She Can Become A Marxist, A Feminist, An Afrocentrist, Or A Deconstructionist With About The Same Effort And Commitment Required In Choosing Items From A Menu.

We Are At A Point In Our Work When We Can No Longer Ignore Empires And The Imperial Context In Our Studies. (p. 5)

The Orient That Appears In Orientalism, Then, Is A System Of Representations Framed By A Whole Set Of Forces That Brought The Orient Into Western Learning, Western Consciousness, And Later, Western Empire.... The Orient Is The Stage On Which The Whole East Is Confined. On This Stage Will Appear The Figures Whose Role It Is To Represent The Larger Whole From Which They Emenate. The Orient Then Seems To Be, Not An Unlimited Extension Beyond The Familiar European World, But Rather A Closed Field, A Theatrical Stage Affixed To Europe.

There Is Also This Great Sense Of Triumphalism, That Just As We Defeated The Soviet Union, We Can Do This. And Out Of This Sense Of Desperation And Pathological Religion, There Develops An All-encompassing Drive To Harm And Hurt, Without Regard For The Innocent And The Uninvolved, Which Was The Case In New York.

Beginning Is Not Only A Kind Of Action. It Is Also A Frame Of Mind, A Kind Of Work, An Attitude, A Consciousness.

Since When Does A Militarily Occupied People Have The Responsibility For A Peace Movement?

What We Must Eliminate Are Systems Of Representation That Carry With Them The Authority Which Has Become Repressive Because It Doesn't Permit Or Make Room For Interventions On The Part Of Those Represented.

Orientalism Can Be Discussed And Analyzed As The Corporate Institution For Dealing With The Orient—dealing With It By Making Statements About It, Authorizing Views Of It, Describing It, By Teaching It, Settling It, Ruling Over It: In Short, Orientalism As A Western Style For Dominating, Restructuring, And Having Authority Over The Orient.

I Am For Peace. And I Am For A Negotiated Peace. But This Accord Is Not A Just Peace.

It [9/11] Transcended The Political And Moved Into The Metaphysical. There Was A Kind Of Cosmic, Demonic Quality Of Mind At Work Here, Which Refused To Have Any Interest In Dialogue And Political Organization And Persuasion. This Was Bloody-minded Destruction For No Other Reason Than To Do It.

Every Empire, However, Tells Itself And The World That It Is Unlike All Other Empires, That Its Mission Is Not To Plunder And Control But To Educate And Liberate.

It Is Very Easy To Make Wild Generalizations About Islam. All You Have To Do Is Read Almost Any Issue Of The New Republic And You'll See There The Radical Evil That's Associated With Islam, The Arabs As Having A Depraved Culture, And So Forth. These Are Impossible Generalizations To Make In The United States About Any Other Religious Or Ethnic Group.

[9/11] Was Bloody-minded Destruction For No Other Reason Than To Do It.

To Say That We're Going To End Countries Or Eradicate Terrorism, And That It's A Long War Over Many Years, With Many Different Instruments, Suggests A Much More Complex And Drawn-out Conflict For Which, I Think, Most Americans Aren't Prepared.

The People Who Perpetrated The Terror Of The World Trade Center And Pentagon Bombings Are Something Different Because These People Were Obviously Not Desperate And Poor Refugee Dwellers. They Were Middle Class, Educated Enough To Speak English, To Be Able To Go To Flight School, To Come To America, To Live In Florida.

I Emphasize In It [my Orientalism] Accortdingly That Neither The Term Orient Nor The Concept Of The West Has Any Ontological Stability; Each Is Made Up Of Human Effort, Partly Affirmation, Partly Identification Of The Other.

You Cannot Continue To Victimize Someone Else Just Because You Yourself Were A Victim Once—there Has To Be A Limit

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