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Quote by Fawaz Turki

“Hysteria! And grief and bitterness. That's what goes on. Not satisfied that our fighters evacuated the city, the enemy went after their women and children whom they left behind in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, slaughtered them, and left their bodies stacked in grotesque piles in the muddy lanes, fly-covered, rotting in the sun. They went after our Palestine Research Center the repository of our culture and history in exile, whose treasures we had been collecting since the day we left Palestine, looted it then burned it to the ground. Fifteen thousand of our people, including boys under the age if twelve and men over the age of eighty, were picked up and put in a concentration camp called Ansar. Our community in Lebanon, half a million men, women, and children found itself suddenly severed from institutions (educational, medical, cultural, economic, and social) they had depended on for their everyday living, which the enemy destroyed. Our fighters, the mainspring of our national struggle, were shipped to thre deserts of Algeria, the outback of Sudan, and the scorching plain of Yemen. Our leadership sought refuge in Tunisia. And when the choked psyche of our nation gasped for air, some months later, we lunged atat each other in civil war, because we had failed our people and ourselves. Our promises had proved illusory.”

Quote by Fawaz Turki

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Soul in Exile

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Fawaz Turki

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“Rorion did for a generation of Brazilians what 30 years previously Brian Epstein did for a generation of English pop musicians, stimulating seemingly limitless demand for a product where none had existed before (Gould, 2007). But Rorion did it to an even greater degree, conceding that his system was basically judo. Helio felt the same way. In one of his last interviews, with Ana Missa on Sensei SporTV in 2009 (February 14), he explained that because he wasn’t physically suited for judo, he “modified jiu-jitsu so that a weak citizen like himself could fight” [pelo meu porte físico eu não podia ser judoka, então eu adaptei o jiu-jitsu para que até um cidadão fraco como eu pudesse lutar]. So there we have it. Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is pre-Olympic judo, taught by Helio’s method, whatever that is, and modified so that weak citizens can fight (apparently Helio felt that judo required too much strength, which is odd, because many of his promotional pictures and demonstrations involved judo throws). That doesn’t mean Gracie products and services aren’t worth what they cost. If judo people were teaching this material, people wouldn’t be paying Brazilians to do it. Rorion didn’t invent anything. What he did was to make it valuable.”

“Twenty million Brazilians have crawled up out from poverty since Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva became president in 2003. Rorion did not save 20 million Brazilians, but his achievement should not be underestimated. There are a lot of Brazilians making a living from jiu-jitsu who would still be doing construction work (if any work at all), if it hadn’t been for Rorion. And this book wouldn’t have been written.”

“Rorion had filed trademarks for both the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu triangle logo and the name itself. Which isn't really a problem in and of itself, and isn't even that odd a move: the idea with a trademark is to be able to control who gets to represent your brand and to corner any revenue that interest in the brand generates. It's standard business practice and, given what Rorion was trying to build, it would have been a mistake not to do it. Without an enforceable trademark there would have been nothing to stop anyone from hanging out a shingle and claiming that they taught "Gracie Jiu-Jitsu," or selling a teeshirt with the Gracie logo. The problem was that in the mid-'90s he started aggressively enforcing the trademark... against members of his own family.”

“Neoliberalism is essentially an intentionally imprecise stand-in term for free market economics, for economic sciences in general, for conservatism, for libertarians and anarchists, for authoritarianism and militarism, for advocates of the practice of commodification, for center-left or market-oriented progressivism, for globalism and welfare state social democracies, for being in favor of or against increased immigration, for favoring trade and globalization or opposing the same, or for really any set of political beliefs that happen to be disliked by the person(s) using the term.”