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“The impeccable watchmaker geared the noble self to suffer. The ineluctable part of being human is perpetual sorrow, grief, and misery. Suffering is part of living. Life begins joyously and regretfully ends in tragedy. The cold realities of the world triumphantly crush each one of us. Between birth and death is comedic conjugation, the haunting prelude to the end of the self.”

“The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical.”

“The imperative to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale no longer seems like the childish preoccupation of a few nerds with slide rulers - It's the only way for the human race to escape from its current predicaments - Too bad we've forgotten how to do it”

“The imperatives of a market that valued people as commodities interposed a nearly impassable gulf between captives and any community that might claim them as new members. Captives learned that when they reached the littoral, their exchangeability on the Atlantic market outweighed any social value they might have. The price put on their persons pushed most captives beyond the possibility of eventual reintegration as members in any community. The crisis of captivity on that coast, in other words, was that only with great difficulty or great luck could the prisoners’ ‘commodity potential’ be masked or converted back into social currency.”

“The Imperial Household Law stipulates that only men whose fathers are emperors may inherit the throne. However, some scholars may argue that such law violates the principle that men and women be treated equally as set forth in Article 14 of the constitution." "You've studied the constitution?" The emperor eyes me keenly. "Yes," I say evenly. Thank you, Mariko and Mr. Fuchigami. "Historically, there has been precedence for females to reign." I list off the eight empresses, speaking in my own self-interest. Might as well. Men have been doing it for years. "We might even argue the goddess Amaterasu was the first to rule," I say lightly. My father smiles behind his hand. The empress takes a sip of tea. "I am inclined to agree with you.”

“The Imperial Household, as represented by the Emperor, has been praying for the welfare of the people while nurturing harmonious relationship with them. Based on the people's respect and adoration for the Emperor, the Japanese people have stayed united. That is the essence of Japan's national heritage, I believe.”

“The imperial Russian government's ineffectiveness in World War I had forced the tsar to abdicate in 1917. Following the February Revolution in that year the Provisional Government replaced the tsarist regime, but as a result of the October Revolution the Bolsheviks seized power, executing the tsar and his family, and the Russian Empire collapsed. The Ukrainian Central Rada, or governing council, proclaimed Ukraine an autonomous republic, but meanwhile the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, still at war with Russia, drove out the Russian army and occupied Ukraine. The Germans supported a coup led by Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky (1873-1945), who in April 1918 declared himself the Hetman of All Ukraine, a position he held until the following December, when, following the end of the war and the withdrawal of the German army, he was deposed and fled. It is here, in December 1918, that the novel White Guard begins, in a Ukraine damaged by World War I and engulfed in the Russian Civil War, with all of its confusion, violence, and chaos. As the novel unfolds, the Germans have mostly withdrawn and the hetman, essentially a German puppet, is under siege by Ukrainian nationalist and socialist forces led by Semyon Vasilievich Petlyura (1879-1926), who fought unsuccessfully for Ukraine's independence following the Revolution of 1917. Petlyura's nationalism made him an enemy of the Bolsheviks, and his socialist ideas made him an enemy of the Whites, who were opposed to the Communists. The Russian forces (both political and military) who became known as the Whites fought against the Red Army in the Civil War from 1918 to 1921. Their military arm was known as the White Army, or White Guard. Ideologically quite diverse, the Whites were not so much a single army as a confederation of counterrevolutionary forces loosely united by their anti-bolshevism, and to a lesser extent by the idea of preserving and restoring the Russian monarchy and Russian Empire, as well as by their anti-liberalism and anti-Semitism. After the events described in the novel, the Soviet army recaptured Ukraine, driving Petlyura out, and held Kiev in 1919 from February 6 until August 31. From August 31 until about December 16, forces under Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872-1947), a general in the imperial Russian army before the Revolution and one of the leaders of the Whites in the Civil War, were in charge. Then, from December 16 the Soviet government was back in the city until May 6, 1920, when it was occupied by the Poles, who on June 11 were forced out by the Red Army. Three centers of power, revealing the basic vectors of all the coups, had taken shape in Kiev: the military district headquarters (which included counterrevolutionaries, monarchists, and White Guards), the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies (Bolsheviks and other Communists), and the Ukrainian Central Rada (national-ist, independence-oriented, and Petlyurist).”

“The Imperial Senate, ever conscious of the weight of public opinion resting on the tip of the pencil come voting day, wanted to be fair and just – or at least appear that way. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there was little love lost between Imperial troops and the locals who viewed each other with little short of open hostility, and often through the sighting devices attached to weaponry of various diverse descriptions.”

“The imperialist found it useful to incorporate the credible and seemingly unimpeachable wisdom of science to create a racial classification to be used in the appropriation and organization of lesser cultures. The works of Carolus Linnaeus, Georges Buffon, and Georges Cuvier, organized races in terms of a civilized us and a paradigmatic other. The other was uncivilized, barbaric, and wholly lower than the advanced races of Europe. This paradigm of imaginatively constructing a world predicated upon race was grounded in science, and expressed as philosophical axioms by John Locke and David Hume, offered compelling justification that Europe always ought to rule non-Europeans. This doctrine of cultural superiority had a direct bearing on Zionist practice and vision in Palestine. A civilized man, it was believed, could cultivate the land because it meant something to him; on it, accordingly, he produced useful arts and crafts, he created, he accomplished, he built. For uncivilized people, land was either farmed badly or it was left to rot. This was imperialism as theory and colonialism was the practice of changing the uselessly unoccupied territories of the world into useful new versions of Europe. It was this epistemic framework that shaped and informed Zionist attitudes towards the Arab Palestinian natives. This is the intellectual background that Zionism emerged from. Zionism saw Palestine through the same prism as the European did, as an empty territory paradoxically filled with ignoble or, better yet, dispensable natives. It allied itself, as Chaim Weizmann said, with the imperial powers in carrying out its plans for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. The so-called natives did not take well to the idea of Jewish colonizers in Palestine. As the Zionist historians, Yehoshua Porath and Neville Mandel, have empirically shown, the ideas of Jewish colonizers in Palestine, this was well before World War I, were always met with resistance, not because the natives thought Jews were evil, but because most natives do not take kindly to having their territory settled by foreigners. Zionism not only accepted the unflattering and generic concepts of European culture, it also banked on the fact that Palestine was actually populated not by an advanced civilization, but by a backward people, over which it ought to be dominated. Zionism, therefore, developed with a unique consciousness of itself, but with little or nothing left over for the unfortunate natives. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if Palestine had been occupied by one of the well-established industrialized nations that ruled the world, then the problem of displacing German, French, or English inhabitants and introducing a new, nationally coherent element into the middle of their homeland would have been in the forefront of the consciousness of even the most ignorant and destitute Zionists. In short, all the constitutive energies of Zionism were premised on the excluded presence, that is, the functional absence of native people in Palestine; institutions were built deliberately shutting out the natives, laws were drafted when Israel came into being that made sure the natives would remain in their non-place, Jews in theirs, and so on. It is no wonder that today the one issue that electrifies Israel as a society is the problem of the Palestinians, whose negation is the consistent thread running through Zionism. And it is this perhaps unfortunate aspect of Zionism that ties it ineluctably to imperialism- at least so far as the Palestinian is concerned. In conclusion, I cannot affirm that Zionism is colonialism, but I can tell you the process by which Zionism flourished; the dialectic under which it became a reality was heavily influenced by the imperialist mindset of Europe. Thank you. -Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban.”

“The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. The gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation.”

“The imperialists and domestic reactionaries will certainly not take their defeat Lying down and they will struggle to the last ditch. After there is peace and order throughout the country, they will still engage in sabotage and create disturbances in various ways and will try every day and every minute to stage a comeback. This is inevitable, beyond all doubt, and under no circumstances must we relax our vigilance.”

“The impersonal aspect [of God] (Nirakara, Nirguna) is called Brahman, or 'unknowable' by Herbert Spencer, 'will' by Schopenhauer, Absolute Noumenon by some 'substance' by Spinoza. The personal aspect (Sakara) of that Being is termed 'Ishvara' or Allah, Hari, Jehova, Father in Heaven, Buddha, Siva, etc. Just as vapour or steam is formless, so also God is formless in His unmanifested or transcendental state.”

“The impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time.”

“The impious soul, however, punishes itself by seeking a human body to enter into, for no other body can receive a human soul; it cannot enter the body of an animal devoid of reason. Divine law preserves the human soul from such infamy... The soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold. Thou puttest off thy bodies as raiment; and as vesture dost thou fold them up. Thou art from old, O Soul of Man; yea, thou art from everlasting.”

“The implausible, well-nigh-miraculous functioning anarchy that we know as New York is adorned with every excellence of Western art. It is a city of manifold suggestions, which ministers to every ambition, engenders a thousand talents, nurtures ingenuity and experimentation.”

“The implication that the change in nomenclature from “Multiple Personality Disorder” to “Dissociative Identity Disorder” means the condition has been repudiated and “dropped” from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association is false and misleading. Many if not most diagnostic entities have been renamed or have had their names modified as psychiatry changes in its conceptualizations and classifications of mental illnesses. When the DSM decided to go with “Dissociative Identity Disorder” it put “(formerly multiple personality disorder)” right after the new name to signify that it was the same condition. It’s right there on page 526 of DSM-IV-R. There have been four different names for this condition in the DSMs over the course of my career. I was part of the group that developed and wrote successive descriptions and diagnostic criteria for this condition for DSM-III-R, DSM–IV, and DSM-IV-TR. While some patients have been hurt by the impact of material that proves to be inaccurate, there is no evidence that scientifically demonstrates the prevalence of such events. Most material alleged to be false has been disputed by someone, but has not been proven false. Finally, however intriguing the idea of encouraging forgetting troubling material may seem, there is no evidence that it is either effective or safe as a general approach to treatment. There is considerable belief that when such material is put out of mind, it creates symptoms indirectly, from “behind the scenes.” Ironically, such efforts purport to cure some dissociative phenomena by encouraging others, such as Dissociative Amnesia.”