Top 139 Quotes & Sayings by Tariq Ali - Page 3

There was a good moment in Islam when people were actually challenging authority at every level. Very different from the world we live in.

It's a total failure of the Western imagination that the only enemy they can see is Adolph Hitler.

I think Syriza and Podemos are very, very different from Sinn Féin in many ways, and so I wouldn't put all three together. I would say that Syriza and Podemos are movements which have come out of mass struggles. In the case of Podemos, directly out of tariqaliextremehuge mass movements in Spain, which started with the occupation of the square. In Greece, as a response to what the EU was doing there, punishing it endlessly, for the sins of its ruling elite.

I think the Americans fished out the same condom but found it had too many holes in it.

Gamal Abdal Nasser, the nationalist leader of Egypt, was described by British Prime Minister Anthony Eden as an Egyptian Hitler. Then it carried on like that. Saddam Hussein became Hitler when he was no longer a friend of the West. Then Milosevic became Hitler.

In many parts of the world, including the Arab world, the Latin American world, and even parts of the Western world, there is a tradition of writers being quite engaged. Particularly in the Arab world you have had very, very strong traditions of literature and poetry and most of the writers have been deeply committed to the cause of the Arab nation.

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.

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.

The Internet has been an invaluable acquisition. I wonder how we would do without it. Information can be sent from one country to the other within the space of minutes, crossing channels, crossing oceans, crossing continents. But still, we can't compete with the might and power and wealth of those who dominate, control, and own the means of the production of information today.

At the moment we have a critical situation in Greece. Even as we speak, where there is an open attempt by the EU to destroy Syriza by splitting it. There is a German obstinacy and utter refusal to seriously consider an alternative. The reason isn't even a lack of money, because money swims around the EU coffers endlessly, and they could write off the debt tomorrow if they wanted. But they don't want to do so, because of the election of a left-wing government. They want to punish Syriza in public, to humiliate it so that this model doesn't go any further than Greece.

Tony Blair is a war criminal.

History, when they do it, is ancient history, and they sensationalize even that. Contemporary history is virtually ignored on television.

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.

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.

The United States is now The Empire. There isn't an empire; there's The Empire, and that empire is the United States.

The current Eurozone is obviously dysfunctional. And serious people within Germany and elsewhere know this to be the case and know things cannot function this way forever.

The European Union has lost virtually all of its credibility amongst large swaths of the European population.

I do think the Cubans have to change some of the political structures there and allow critical voices, for their own sakes, because unless there is accountability the revolution will totally atrophy.

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.