Tariq Ali

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• The government of the US has no moral authority to elect itself as the judge over human rights in Cuba, where there has not been a single case of disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959, and where despite the economic blockade, there are levels of health, education and culture that are internationally recognised.
  • Appeal signed by Tariq Ali in The Guardian, March 26, 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1445897,00.html

• We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane.
  • Commentary essay, "For one day only, I'm a Lib Dem: We must take the politics of the anti-war front into the electoral arena," The Guardian, March 26, 2005.

• For all their incoherence and senseless rage, their message is attractive to those layers of the population who yearn for some order in their lives. If the fanatics promise to feed them and educate their children they are prepared to forgo the delights of CNN and BBC World.
  • Referring to the Taliban. The Clash of Fundamentalisms (ISBN 1-85984-457-X), pg. 200.

• Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting.
  • The Clash of Fundamentalisms

• Let's discuss the world. To answer the question, "is globalisation possible without God", the simple answer is "yes". Globalisation is after all itself a code word, a mask, for not using the C-word, capitalism. Globalisation is basically the latest phase of expanding capitalism. This not something which is neutral, this is a capitalism that has its rules: it has its economic rules, it has its political rules, it has its cultural rules and it has its military rules. It is a system. At the heart of this system is the United States of America, the world's only existing empire today. The first time in the history of humanity that you have just had a single empire, so dominant, whose military budget is higher than the military budgets of the next 15 countries put together, and whose military-industrial complex itself is the eleventh largest economic entity in the world. This is the reality we live in, and this is the reality which confronts us in different ways.
  • 10th Globalisation lecture, VRPO. http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/artikelen/21200518/