North Quotes - page 51
The media first turned the trial into a freak-show by emphasizing Jackson's peculiarities rather than his humanity, and stoked the ratings with constant, trivializing coverage while other, far more important stories went under-reported or completely ignored in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, and Washington, D.C. The press might respond by saying, We gave the people what they wanted. My response would be, My job is to give them what they want. When he steps into a recording studio, it's Michael Jackson's job to give them what they want. Your job is to give the people what they need.
Michael Jackson
I'm proud to belong to the NAACP, because it is made up of people who are dedicated in a great crusade to make America true to itself. This is what this is about. Make America live up to its highest hopes and aspirations and translate those hopes and aspirations into practical, tangible reality in the lives of all people, whether they are white or black, whether they live in the North or the South. I say that each of us is blessed that we can be engaged in this crusade, in this struggle for justice, for human dignity, in this struggle to wipe out in every phase of our national life every ugly immoral kind of discrimination.
Walter Reuther
Reading Europe's press, it is really reassuring to see how warmly Europeans have embraced President Bush's formulation that an "axis of evil" threatens world peace. There's only one small problem. President Bush thinks the axis of evil is Iran, Iraq and North Korea, and the Europeans think it's Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice.
Thomas Friedman
No French government except Léon Blum's short-lived Popular Front of 1936 paid serious attention to the grievous mis-rule practiced by colonial administrators in French North Africa. Moderate Algerian nationalists like Ferhat Abbas were well known to French politicians and intellectuals before and after World War Two, but no-one really expected Paris to concede their modest goals of self-government or ‘home rule' any time soon.
Tony Judt
Where are you from?” Sophia asked.
Larry looked a bit startled. "I'm from here...Great-greats came over from Holland."
"You said ‘y'all.'"
Larry was confused....
"What was that about?" Anne-Solenne asked.
"It's totally a Southern way of talking. Iowa is a Northern state. Fought on the Union side in the Civil War. Never had slavery...Northerners don't talk like that, they don't drawl, they don't say ‘y'all'...”
"Or put the Stars and Bars on their bumpers,” said Julian...and pointed at a Confederate flag sticker on the back of Tom and Kevin's truck.
"Point being, it was not like that to my uncle...When he was born, the Civil War was only ninety years in the past-almost within living memory. It would have seemed weird for Northerners to paste the traitors' flag on their bumper or cop an accent from Alabama. But while he was alive-”
"The cultural border shifted north.
Neal Stephenson
I say to Ireland what the Liberals or the Republicans of the North said to the Southern States of America-The union must be preserved. You cannot and shall not destroy it. Within these limits there is nothing which you may not ask and hope to obtain-equal laws, equal justice, equal opportunities, equal prosperity.
Joseph Chamberlain
They [the Government] argue that if the rich are made rich enough, some wealth will spill over to make the poor less poor. There is no sign of that happening. On the contrary, the gap has widened. The number of those below the poverty line and with little hope of rising above it has grown inexorably. Connected divides become deeper and wider-that between the employed and the unemployed, that between the north and south, and that between those who share prosperity and those to whom it looks like a closed fortress. The Budget...does nothing to counteract that. ... If I were the Chancellor, I would be deeply apprehensive for the future cohesion of our society under his policies.
Roy Jenkins
The central problem of our economy for more than a generation has been that, although our productivity has grown more slowly than that of our competitors, we have seen annual wage increases of the same order as theirs. So our inflation has risen faster than in other countries and we have been able to maintain price competitiveness and full employment only by a series of devaluations which have further added to inflation and increased the pressure for excessive wage increases. In the era of North Sea oil it will be more difficult to devalue our currency to maintain price competitiveness. So unless we can keep wage increases close to the level of productivity increase we shall face rising unemployment and a further erosion of our industrial base.
Denis Healey
[T]he Opposition [Conservative Party] have consistently resisted, from the time when they were in office until now, any extension of British control over oil in the North Sea. ... The development of the North Sea is going on apace. But we believe that it is right that the British people should have a growing share in the benefits of the North Sea. ... It passes my understanding why a party which used to pretend to speak for the national interest should regularly denounce any extension of British control and ownership of the oil in the continental shelf.
Tony Benn
...and Brian Dooher is down injured. And while he is, I'll tell ye a little story. I was in Times Square in New York last week, and I was missing the Championship back home. So I approached a newsstand and I said, "I suppose ye wouldn't have The Kerryman would ye?" To which, the Egyptian behind the counter turned to me and he said, "Do you want the North Kerry edition or the South Kerry edition?" He had both...so I bought both. And Dooher is back on his feet...
Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh
No modern tyrant ruled as long as Kim Il-sung. For almost half a century he was the only ruler his country knew. His invasion of South Korea in 1950 brought him to the brink of disaster, but he was rescued by his allies and removed internal opposition through bloody purges. He turned his country into one of the most industrialized and regimented on the planet. The personality cult surrounding him reached unparalleled heights. North Korea's economy collapsed with the end of the Soviet Union, but Kim did not live to see the mass starvation that followed.
Kim Il-sung
Kim Il Sung not only presided over the birth of a new nation in an old land, he was inextricably bound to the fate of North Korea. Perhaps to a greater degree than any other modern political leader, he may be seen as the full embodiment of the state. Indeed, Kim was more integral to state and society in North Korea than Stalin in the Soviet Union, or Mao in China.
Kim Il-sung
Korean schoolchildren in North and South learn that Japan invaded their fiercely patriotic country in 1905, spent forty years trying to destroy its language and culture, and withdrew without having made any significant headway. This version of history is just as uncritically accepted by most foreigners who write about Korea. Yet the truth is more complex. For much of the country's long history its northern border was fluid and the national identities of literate Koreans and Chinese mutually indistinguishable. Believing their civilization to have been founded by a Chinese sage in China's image, educated Koreans subscribed to a Confucian worldview that posited their country in a position of permanent subservience to the Middle Kingdom. Even when Korea isolated itself from the mainland in the seventeenth century, it did so in the conviction that it was guarding Chinese tradition better than the Chinese themselves. For all their xenophobia, the Koreans were no nationalists.
Brian Reynolds Myers
So it is that I can talk for an hour on North Korean race propaganda, only to be chided during the question-and-answer session for overlooking the "nationalism" inherent in Stalin's "Socialism in One Country" policy. This is a prime example of the terminological confusion discussed above. Putting one's multiethnic state first is not the same as propagating a race theory.
Brian Reynolds Myers
South Koreans are very nationalist, too, because in South Korea nobody cares if the North Korean people starve to death, but they get very nervous about the Chinese people investing heavily in North Korea and they get very worried about the prospect of China maybe taking over North Korea. In other words, they only worry about North Korea in terms of nationalist problems and nationalist questions.
Brian Reynolds Myers
For most North Koreans the state equals the race, equals the country. This is where the North has been so much more successful than what I call the "Unloved Republic" of South Korea. There, as in Weimar Germany, the state is seen as having betrayed the race. When Moon Jae-in looks back on the history of the ROK he holds up only the anti-state riots and protests as high points.
Brian Reynolds Myers
If Kim Jong Un is Chosun, as the slogan goes, then his decline in popularity must be the state's too? But it doesn't work that way. We all need to give our lives a sense of significance, of a meaning that lives on after our deaths. The North Koreans get that from their nationalism, which is one with their patriotism. If they lose that, what do they have?
Brian Reynolds Myers
While I too may be wrong about North Korea's intentions, I'm neither lying nor guessing. Granted, it's not easy figuring out what any country wants. America? Damned if I know anymore. The beginning of political wisdom is the recognition that no government's discourse can be trusted. That goes also for the regime our softliners consider uniquely guileless. And the beginning of I.R. wisdom is the realization that foreign-service officials lie especially often. I had to laugh when I first heard of a news magazine called The Diplomat; it's like calling a porn magazine The Prude.
Brian Reynolds Myers
