#middle

I was taken to a villa to meet Sabri al-Banna, known as 'Abu Nidal' ('father of struggle'), who was at the time emerging as one of Yasser Arafat's main enemies. The meeting began inauspiciously when Abu Nidal asked me if I would like to be trained in one of his camps. No thanks, I explained. From this awkward beginning there was a further decline. I was then asked if I knew Said Hammami, the envoy of the PLO in London. I did in fact know him. He was a brave and decent man, who in a series of articles in the London Times had floated the first-ever trial balloon for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. 'Well tell him he is a traitor,' barked my host. 'And tell him we have only one way with those who betray us.' The rest of the interview passed as so many Middle Eastern interviews do: too many small cups of coffee served with too much fuss; too many unemployed heavies standing about with nothing to do and nobody to do it with; too much ugly furniture, too many too-bright electric lights; and much too much faux bonhomie. The only political fact I could winnow, from Abu Nidal's vainglorious claims to control X number of 'fighters' in Y number of countries, was that he admired the People's Republic of China for not recognizing the State of Israel. I forget how I got out of his office. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#arafat #china #interviews #iraq #israel

There we were in the middle of a sexual revolution wearing clothes that guaranteed we wouldn't get laid. ↗

— Denis Leary

#get #guaranteed #laid #middle #revolution

We used to play the underground clubs like the UFO, and Middle Earth, and they were great because they would have on things like a poet, string quartets, and then a rock band! It was kinda cool! ↗

— Alvin Lee

#because #clubs #cool #earth #great

I come from an everyday middle class family in India. The film industry reached us only through our television sets and cinema halls. ↗

— Lavrenti Lopes

#class #class family #come #everyday #family

What is hard to remember when you're in the middle of it is that when you get through to the other side, you always walk away with a gift. If you can stand in there and not walk away from it, you get transformed by it. ↗

— Kathy Mattea

#away #get #gift #hard #middle

You don't know whether he's thought through how this is going to affect the Middle East. ↗

— Chris Matthews

#east #going #how #know #middle

Some people put up a peace sign with one hand. Some people put up the middle finger instead. I use two hands and put up both. ↗

— Brian Celio

#finger #hand #hands #i #instead

I don't want to remember 2005 as a year that the government heaped unnecessary burdens upon American families. Stealing from the poor and middle class and giving to the rich, while increasing the deficit, is hardly responsible. ↗

— Marty Meehan

#american families #burdens #class #deficit #families

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil! ↗

— Golda Meir

#bring #desert #east #israelis #me

Many people in the world today are not starving because there is an inherent inability to produce food, they are starving because they are caught in the middle of political fights and blockades that have been used as weapons. ↗

— Ralph Merkle

#been #caught #fights #food #inability