Edward Said died today.
"Every empire... tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate. These ideas are by no means shared by the people who inhabit that empire, but that hasn't prevented the U.S. propaganda and policy apparatus from imposing its imperial perspective on Americans, whose sources of information about Arabs and Islam are woefully inadequate."Said worked most of his life trying to remove the burden of our ignorance.
[Said was speaking this past July, and the quote was taken from a tribute on The Nation site today]