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Colonialism Quotes

“The report quotes an earlier report on the Belgian Congo of 1919 which claimed that the population “has been reduced one-half.” It quotes this claim in order to state that it is almost certainly false. That is because population estimates for the Belgian Congo varied widely and remained pure guesswork. They were of “little value in drawing any precise conclusions.” The only firm conclusion it reached was that population was not increasing. The causes were multiple, including sleeping sickness, inter-tribal warfare, poor nutrition, female trafficking, polygamy, and the working conditions for men in European industrial and commercial enterprises.”

GenocideColonialismLeopold IiBelgian Colonialism
Book:The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics
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“Rather than considering the Iraqi regime solely responsible for these sanctions, many exiled and displaced academics believe that the UN bears the main ethical and human responsibility for the damage the embargo caused for Iraqi people and society. Many academics saw these sanctions as the UN’s method to obtain the consent of Iraqi people to the 2003 occupation through starving and weakening the people, as well as destroying Iraq’s strong institutions and infrastructure.”

WarViolenceMiddle EastColonialismImperialismSanctionsIraq WarDecolonizationEmbargo
Book:Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile
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“Adiós, mi compañero. Mi casa, mi nombre de animal. Adiós piel de venado con su olor, el pelo acostumbrado a su postura y el hueco de su abrazo. Adiós mi sujetado corazón a la única frontera que es la vida. Adiós a la multitud en uno solo. La única parte en que me pueden herir donde me duela. Adiós mi lengua, un tono que tuve al alabarte. Adiós a tu modo agazapado de caer. No puede uno morder su soledad sino como alacrán que se envenena”

ColonialismPoesiaArgentinaNovelaColonColonial AmericaMalincheVillalbaCristobal Colon
Author:Susana Villalba
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“Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan—'a land without a people for a people without a land'—disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea?”

ReligionLandEuropeIsraelIronyBritainColonialismPalestineZionismJewsIsraeli Palestinian ConflictHoly LandTurkeyArabs
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“The Christian Church is the original religious persecutor of planet earth, British monarchy is the original terrorist organization of planet earth, Druncle Sam is the planet's longest running pandemic, Israeli state is the planet's youngest delinquent.”

ColonialismImperialismBritish EmpireZionismDecolonizationIndigenous RightsChristian MissionaryChristian NationalismReligious PersecutionEthnics Cleansing
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“Wanna study geopolitics? First, take off your westwashed glasses - second, take off your westwashed shoes - third, scrub off your westwashed skin. In a world where the west has caused more humanitarian crises than Naskar has written books, you shall understand nothing till you decolonize your mind, no matter which hemisphere you are born in.”

SlaveryColonialismImperialismInternational RelationsGeopoliticsWestern CivilizationHumanitarian CrisisHuman Rights ViolationIndigenous RightsWhitewash
Book:Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth
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“Blunder Down Under (The Sonnet) Humans be human, alive and aware, not tokens of ancestral blunder. Awake, arise and right the wrongs, whether in the west or down under. We gotta fight on the beaches, We gotta fight on human grounds. This time we gotta fight as human, not as puppets to colonial clowns. Fight as brave lions for sacred inclusivity, not for saffronication as domesticated cows. Fight for justice, rejuvenated by reason, not for prejudice, decreed by apeman vows.”

GenocideColonialismAustralianFirst NationsIndigenous RightsNeonazisHindutvaAustralian HistoryAussieAussie Battler
Book:World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
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“In the old days, farmers would keep a little of their home-made opium for their families, to be used during illnesses, or at harvests and weddings; the rest they would sell to the local nobility, or to pykari merchants from Patna. Back then, a few clumps of poppy were enough to provide for a household's needs, leaving a little over, to be sold: no one was inclined to plant more because of all the work it took to grow poppies - fifteen ploughings of the land and every remaining clod to be built; purchases of manure and constant watering; and after all that, the frenzy of the harvest, each bulb having to be individually nicked, drained and scrapped. Such punishment was bearable when you had a patch or two of poppies - but what sane person would want to multiply these labours when there were better, more useful crops to grow, like wheat, dal, vegetables? But those toothsome winter crops were steadily shrinking in acreage: now the factory's appetite for opium seemed never to be seated. Come the cold weather, the English sahibs would allow little else to be planted; their agents would go from home to home, forcing cash advances on the farmers, making them sign /asámi/ contracts. It was impossible to say no to them: if you refused they would leave their silver hidden in your house, or throw it through a window. It was no use telling the white magistrate that you hadn't accepted the money and your thumbprint was forged: he earned commissions on the oppium adn would never let you off. And, at the end of it, your earnings would come to no more than three-and-a-half sicca rupees, just about enough to pay off your advance.”

CapitalismIndiaColonialismDrugsImperialismOpiumBritish Colonialism
Book:Sea of Poppies
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“Many African leaders started out ostensibly modern, liberal, but began to behave more like traditional leaders- not as a leader who is part of an institutionalized political system, but as the system itself. They opened up their economy, but out of necessity; if it could no longer be obstructed. The same goes for elections: They were held to prevent civil war. The so-called “African renaissance” was only that on the surface. The leaders did not really believe in it. In reality they returned to forms of mythical, traditional governance. That is how they smashed into the wall. African tradition is irreconcilable with the modern world. Every country will have to break with it’s traditions in order to create a modern society.”

ColonialismImperialismBritish ColonialismAfrican Renaissance
Author:Bruce Gilley
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“The restrictions [Lord Cromer] placed on government schools and his raising of school fees held back girls’ education as well as boys’. He also discouraged the training of women doctors. Under the British, the School for Hakimas, which had given women as many years of medical training as the men received in the School of Medicine, was restricted to midwifery.”

EducationMedicineWomen EmpowermentColonialismWomen S RightsBritish Colonialism
Book:Women and Gender in Islam
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“Of all of my writings probably the article that created the biggest whoooraah turned out to be "The Woman of La Raza." This lost me friends and made me a target for the renowned "Malinche" label. But, like so many of my writings, the rewards were many and this article opened centuries-old flood gates that poured forth in women's words and thoughts. I knew "This is very important," and from this article came a whole women's history book, The Women of La Raza. This women's book begins to define the side of that mestizo face medallion we wore so proudly, La India. The Chicana/o Movement is a vital chapter of Southwestern history, a history needed to inspire new dreamers as activists become the elder generation. As we recall this chapter in Chicano history, we reseed the harvest of the Civil Rights Movement and cultivate the harvest of "La Revolución Chicana" remembering that our ancestors planted the first resisting seeds of non-defeat. This Revolución is the foundation of today's evolving issues, the metamorphosis of activism that makes all movements more important than ever. It will take more than thirty years to change 500 years of colonial racist exploitative attitudes, changes which only you can make possible as we live the sun of justice, The Sixth Sun.”

ColonialismCivil Rights MovementChicanaRazaChicano MovementChicano History
Book:Enriqueta Vasquez And the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito Del Norte (Hispanic Civil Rights)
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“Muslim identity and thought in Nigeria derive from the Sufi brotherhoods of Qadiriyya and Tijaniyya, primarily as a result of the historical role of the Kanem-Borno and Sokoto caliphates in the spread of Islam. The Sufi orders and the Izalatul Bidi’a wa Ikhamatis Sunnah (People Committed to the Removal of Innovations in Islam; hereafter Izala) are the two dominant contemporary Muslim foci of identity. The disdain towards and fear of boko (Western education) arose from its historically close association with the colonial state and Christian missionaries. This also suited colonial educational policy well, as the British had no intention of widespread education anyway. The aim of colonial education, particularly in northern Nigeria, was to maintain the existing status quo by “imparting some literacy to the aristocratic class, to the exclusion of the commoner classes” (Tukur 1979: 866). By the 1930s, colonial education had produced a limited cadre of Western-educated elite, who were conscious of their education and were yearning to play a role in society. Mainly children of the aristocratic class, the type of education they received was “different from the traditional education in their various societies, and this by itself was enough to mark them out as a group” (Kwanashie 2002: 50). This new education enabled them to climb the social and economic ladder over and above their peers who had a different kind of education, Quranic education. This was the origin of the animosity and distrust between the traditionally educated and Western-educated elite in northern Nigeria. Though subordinate to the Europeans, these educated elite were perceived as collaborators by their Arabic-educated fellows. Thus the antagonism towards Western education continues in many northern Nigerian communities, which have defied government campaigns for school enrollment to this day.”

EducationIslamSufismColonialismImperialismNigeriaJihad2014Boko Haram
Book:Boko Haram: Islamism, politics, security and the state in Nigeria
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“I regard anti-Semitism as ineradicable and as one element of the toxin with which religion has infected us. Perhaps partly for this reason, I have never been able to see Zionism as a cure for it. American and British and French Jews have told me with perfect sincerity that they are always prepared for the day when 'it happens again' and the Jew-baiters take over. (And I don't pretend not to know what they are talking about: I have actually seen the rabid phenomenon at work in modern and sunny Argentina and am unable to forget it.) So then, they seem to think, they will take refuge in the Law of Return, and in Haifa, or for all I know in Hebron. Never mind for now that if all of world Jewry did settle in Palestine, this would actually necessitate further Israeli expansion, expulsion, and colonization, and that their departure under these apocalyptic conditions would leave the new brownshirts and blackshirts in possession of the French and British and American nuclear arsenals. This is ghetto thinking, hardly even fractionally updated to take into account what has changed. The important but delayed realization will have to come: Israeli Jews are a part of the diaspora, not a group that has escaped from it. Why else does Israel daily beseech the often-flourishing Jews of other lands, urging them to help the most endangered Jews of all: the ones who rule Palestine by force of arms? Why else, having supposedly escaped from the need to rely on Gentile goodwill, has Israel come to depend more and more upon it? On this reckoning, Zionism must constitute one of the greatest potential non sequiturs in human history.”

ReligionHistoryUnited StatesAtheismIsraelFranceBritainFascismNuclear WeaponsColonialismPalestineArgentinaZionismJewsGentilesAntisemitismIsraeli Palestinian ConflictHebronJewish DiasporaIsraelisAmerican JewsExpansionismLaw Of ReturnBritish JewsFrench JewsHaifa
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Sometimes, sexual violence is a ‘cultural problem’ (but only when this culture is non white). Sometimes, it is a product of male anatomy (but only when this anatomy is assigned to a trans woman or a man of colour). Sexual violence is never the violence of heteropatriarchy or globalising racial capital. Instead, representatives of patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism weaponise the idea of ‘women’s safety’ against marginalised and hyper-exploited groups.”

FeminismRacismCapitalismColonialismPatriarchyRapeSexual ViolenceTransphobia
Book:Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism
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“If Only (Sonnet 1983) If I were a fascist, I'd press that button, and wipe the colonizers off the planet for good. If I were a fascist, I'd press that button, and let millions of innocents burn for a greater global good. If I were a fascist, I'd press that button, sanctified of filth we would start anew. If only I were a fascist like you - if only!”

Human RightsHumanitarianFascismNonviolenceColonialismWorld PeacePeace ActivistNeonaziFascistCrime Against Humanity
Book:Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood
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“Sieg Heil and the rest (Sonnet 1162) Some shout Sieg Heil, Some shout Jai Hind. Some Star Spangled Banner, Others God save the fiend. Only the language differs, Jungliness remains the same. Even in an integrating world, Some maintain the habits lame. Once upon a time, they might have had some value. Today they are just anachronism, Kept alive by apes without clue. If you are still enraged, how dare I compare Sieg Heil with the rest! Study the history unvarnished - behind every tribal salute you'll find a holocaust equivalent.”

PatriotismNationalismGenocideHolocaustColonialismPatriotPersecutionImperialismTribalismNeonazi
Book:Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat
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“If the colored population of earth today mounted an uproar against the white colonizers, there wouldn't be any trace left of Europe and North America. Yet the thought never crossed our minds - you know why! Because vengeance is not in our nature, let alone invade other people's home and call it march of civilization. And if we the colored descendants of colored ancestors can choose not to hold you responsible for the atrocities of your white moronic ancestors, despite being subjected to the same kind of discrimination till this day, couldn't you at least foster the basic human dignity to recognize those atrocities of the past and do your best to make sure that they are never repeated again! Once and for all, couldn't we be human beings before we are colored and caucasians!”

RacismPrejudiceSlaveryDiscriminationBigotryColonialismWhite SupremacyXenophobiaSystemic RacismNeonazi
Book:World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
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“Outside the Gutters of West (Sonnet 2679) If you grew up with western media, you get brainwashed into asking, why are most terrorists muslim! But grow up and study actual history of the human race, then you start asking, why is every terrorist white! To look at Islam through western lens is like looking at the sky through a woodworm's eyes, the same is with Sindh, the same is with China, the same is with Africa, and Latin America. Objectivity is an impediment to understanding - if you yourself are not right smack in the middle of the experience, you have zero grasp of the truth, even if your head is full with facts and figures. But then again, this is not something a stubborn eurocentric mule can fathom, even to entertain the possibility that the prized imperial commodity of objectivity could be a fallacy, you have to have a decolonized mind.”

CivilizationColonialismDecolonizationIslamophobiaEurocentrismOrientalismWhitewashColonizersWestern Imperialism
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“Most white scholars eventually turn out to be just another colonial twit, no matter how brilliant, how learned they are, because animal conditioning doesn't wear off with mere education of the intellect - your soul must be disinfected of colonial filth, which is not possible until you intrinsically embody the pain, indignity, and humiliations of the oppressed, subjected through generations.”

PhilosophyColonialismDecolonizationEurocentrismWhitewashDecolonizingWestern ImperialismDecolonialEurocentric Education
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“Racial categories were invented to enshrine the idea of white supremacy. They are the product of Eurocentrism and colonialism. To act in ways that reinforce their fixedness rather than undermine them is to continue to operate in the terrain mapped out by white supremacy.”

RaceRacismColonialismWhite SupremacyAntiracismEurocentrism
Book:What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition – An Empowering Guide to Interrogating Whiteness and Creating Justice
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“World History 101 - The Actual History History is not a record of truth, history is a record of triumph. The triumphant writes history as it fits their narrative - or to be more accurate, history is written by the conquerors for maintaining the supremacy of the conquerors, while the conquered lose everything. Let me give you an example. In a commendable endeavor of goodwill and reparations a descendant of the British conquerors, President Lyndon Johnson started Hispanic Heritage Week, which was later expanded into a month by another white descendant, President Ronald Reagan - fast forward to present time - during the Hispanic Heritage Month the entire North America tries to celebrate Native American history. But there is a glitch - Spanish is not even a Native American language. Native Americans did not even speak Spanish, until the brutes of Spain overran Puerto Rico like pest bearing disease and destruction, after a pathetic criminal called Columbus stumbled upon "La Isabela" in the 1500s. Many of the natives struggled till death to save their home - many were killed by the foreign diseases to which they had no immunity. Those who lived, every last trace of their identity was wiped out, by the all-powerful and glorious spanish colonizers - their language, their traditions, their heritage, everything - just like the Portuguese did in Brazil. The Spaniards would've done the same to Philippines on the other side of the globe, had they had the convenience to stay longer. Heck, even the name Philippines is not the original name - the original name of the islands was (probably) Maniolas, as referred to by Ptolemy. But when the Spaniard retards of the time set foot there, they named it after, then crown prince, later Philip II of Spain. Just reminiscing those abominable atrocities makes my blood boil, and yet somehow, the brutal "glory" of the conquerors lives on as such even in this day and age, as glory that is. That's why José Martí is so important, that's why Kwanzaa is so important, that's why Darna is so important - in the making of a world that has a place for every culture, not just the culture of the conquerors. No other "civilized" people have done more damage to the world than the Europeans, and yet, on the pages of history books their glory of conquest is still packaged as glory, not as atrocity. Why is that? I don't know the answer - do you? Trillions of dollars, pounds and euros in aid won't suffice to undo the damage - but what just might heal those wounds from the past, is if the offspring of the oppressors and the offspring of the oppressed, both hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder, unravel the history as it happened, not as it was presented - what just might heal the scars of yesterday, is if together we come forward to learn about each other's past, so that for the first time in history, we can actually write "human history", not the "conquerors' history" - so that for the first time ever, we write history not as conquerors and conquered, not as oppressors and oppressed, but as one species - as one humankind.”

SlaveryNative AmericanColonialismWorld HistoryIndigenousFilipinoEuropean HistoryEurocentrismWhitewashHispanic Heritage Month
Book:Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo
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“Educating the Educators (Sonnet 2281) Greeks did not invent philosophy, philosophy had existed across Latin America, Africa, Arabia, India and China, thousands of years earlier, not as some elitist discipline, but as everyday way of life, later the europeans contributed their puny drop in the ocean, but of course, the myth of europe as the origin of philosophy goes deceptively well with the whitewashed history of earth. Maps of the world are whitewashed, history of the world is whitewashed, ethics of the world are whitewashed, knowledge of the world is whitewashed. No wisdom is flawless 'n absolute, ancient or modern, but the point is, enlightenment and civilization did not originate in europe, they were born of the lands colonially categorized as uncivilized.”

PhilosophyEducationKnowledgeColonialismIndigenous WisdomEurocentrismWhitewashEurocentricDecolonialAncient Culture
Book:Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper
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“Greeks did not invent philosophy, philosophy had existed across Latin America, Africa, Arabia, India and China, thousands of years earlier, not as some elitist discipline, but as everyday way of life, later the europeans contributed their puny drop in the ocean, but of course, the myth of europe as the origin of philosophy goes deceptively well with the whitewashed history of earth.”

PhilosophyEducationColonialismIndigenous WisdomEurocentrismWhitewashDecolonizingEurocentricDecolonialAncient Culture
Book:Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper
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“Un autre exemple de fausse psychologie de nos « bureaux arabes ». Nous avons, pour les élections en Algérie, recours à l'influence des congrégations musulmanes sur la masse des électeurs illettrés. Cette politique de corruption est publique et compromet à la longue certaines vedettes précieuses. L'administration se dit alors dans sa sollicitude : il y a un moyen, pour les musulmans, d'être absous de leurs péchés, c'est d'aller à La Mecque. Nous leur paierons le voyage. Ils rempliront leurs devoirs coraniques ; ils nous reviendront absous, la conscience blanche comme neige. Ils pourront recommencer à notre service ; nous aurons donc double bénéfice. Mais un des derniers bénéficiaires de ce système ingénieux vient de le gâcher et nous a forcés, en revenant de La Mecque, à payer la scolarité d'un de ses fils à al-Azhar « pour se racheter » aux yeux de l'Islam anticolonialiste. Cet homme nous aura coûté fort cher pour aboutir au mépris réciproque et définitif. [L'Occident devant l'Orient. Primauté d'une solution culturelle. In: Politique étrangère, n°2 - 1952 - 17ᵉannée. pp. 13-28]”

IslamColonialismMecca
Author:Louis Massignon
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“As for the third Official Reason: exposing Western Hypocrisy - how much more exposed can they be? Which decent human being on earth harbors any illusions about it? These are people whose histories are spongy with the blood of others. Colonialism, apartheid, slavery, ethnic cleansing, germ warfare, chemical weapons - they virtually invented it all.”

HistoryHypocrisyColonialismWestern CivilizationPostcolonialismInternational DevelopmentWestern HypocrisyEuropean CivilizationWestern HistoryPost Colonial TheoryThird World Feminism
Book:The cost of living
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“The abiding western dominology can with religion sanction identify anything dark, profound, or fluid with a revolting chaos, an evil to be mastered, a nothing to be ignored. 'God had made us master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples.' From the vantage point of the colonizing episteme, the evil is always disorder rather than unjust order; anarchy rather than control, darkness rather than pallor. To plead otherwise is to write 'carte blanche for chaos.' Yet those who wear the mark of chaos, the skins of darkness, the genders of unspeakable openings -- those Others of Order keep finding voice. But they continue to be muted by the bellowing of the dominant discourse.”

ReligionOrderNatureHistoryFeminismChaosTheologyOppressionColonialismPostcolonialism
Book:Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming
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“This is one of the consequences of a superior education, you see. In this independent, hundred-per-cent-empowered and fully and totally indigenous blacker-than-black country, a superior education is one that the whites would value, and as whites do not value local languages at the altar of what the whites deem supreme. So it was in colonial times, and so it remains, more than thirty years later.”

LanguageRaceEducationColonialismAfricaZimbabweDialectAfrican LanguagesWhite WashMiseducationShonaLocal Languages
Book:The Book of Memory
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“What’s really notable about the Logi’s refusal to engage with us in our own language and media is how they’ve forced us to communicate on their terms. Our dire economic need to forge a productive relationship with another species has made us accept them and their demands. This gives them a lot more control over how they’re seen, meanwhile forcing us to put all the effort into communication, such as our network of translators.”

PoliticsLanguageCommunicationEconomicsColonialismImperialismTranslationTranslators
Book:Drunk on All Your Strange New Words
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“There is an attitude in the West which tends to assume that western norms are adequate and capable of universal application. Admittedly, there are some people who criticise the predominant western belief in growth economics, who worry about basing a national economy on debt, and who question the very notion that people and/or institutions may own land and other natural resources. Alas, there are all too few who question the western and now almost ubiquitous democratic structure which is based on the divisive binary vote”

DemocracyVotingColonialismElectionsMajority Rule
Book:From Majority Rule to Inclusive Politics
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