Blowback Quotes

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?

The violent subjugation of the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans will only ensure that those who oppose us will increasingly speak to us in the language we speak to them—violence.

Islamic killers are over here because we are over there.

When your ideas shatter established thought, expect blowback.

The surest way to prevent seditions...is to take away the matter of them.

Most of the time, if you treat people right, you don't have to be afraid of them.

It is time to realize, however, that the real dangers to America today come not from the newly rich people of East Asia but from our own ideological rigidity, our deep-seated belief in our own propaganda.

In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows. Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret.

I will admit, there are times when I’ll react, do it fast and do it on gut. But I lived through some serious shit and I’m still doin’ it. I learned you don’t carry through with a kneejerk response. You think about shit and you do it smart. Eliminate blowback. Get the shit job done in a way you can move ahead free and easy.

Even an empire cannot control the long-term effects of its policies. That is the essence of blowback.

The Nature of Political Terrorism The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not “attack America,” as political leaders and news media in the United States have tried to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy. Employing the strategy of the weak, they killed innocent bystanders, whose innocence is, of course, no different from that of the civilians killed by American bombs in Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

In the real world, bullets that miss their targets keep traveling until they hit something. They fly through windows, and into the bodies of bystanders. And even successfully killing a bad guy creates blowback, sets off a whole chain of consequences that are impossible to predict. Guns always represent a failure of negotiation.

For years, the crime of sexual assault depended on our silence. The fear of knowing what happened if we spoke. Society gave us one thousand reasons; don’t speak if you lack evidence, if it happened too long ago, if you were drunk, if the man is powerful, if you’ll face blowback, if it threatens your safety. Ford broke all the rules. She had none of the requirements society tells us we need before we dare open our mouths.

Ronald Steel noted, “Unlike Rome, we have not exploited our empire. On the contrary, our empire has exploited us, making enormous drains on our resources and energies.

Focus on what you believe and what you want to create, regardless of the blowback.

Islamo-Fascism is NOT the result of economic deprivation or legitimate blowback because of Western foreign policies or even heinous drone attacks on Muslim civilians. All non-Muslims as Infidels, regardless of their faith or lack of it, are in an ideological war with a demonized, freedom-hating Muslim death-cult rooted in their accurate interpretation of the Qur'an!

The looming threat of blowback should we voice an opinion or idea that challenges our bunker maters keeps us anxious. When all that binds us is what we believe rather than who we are, changing our mind or challenging the collective ideology is risky.

Even though the American people may not know what has been done in their name, those on the receiving end certainly do: they include the people of Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959 to the present), Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965), Vietnam (1961–73), Laos (1961–73), Cambodia (1969–73), Greece (1967–73), Chile (1973), Afghanistan (1979 to the present), El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s), and Iraq (1991 to the present). Not surprisingly, sometimes these victims try to get even. There is a direct line between the attacks on September 11, 2001—the most significant instance of blowback in the history of the CIA—and the events of 1979.

You have a teenage daughter, Miles. She’ll be smart one minute and stupid the next. Deal with it.

If everyone loves you, maybe you don't need so many tanks.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned, it’s that life is all about change, and stress comes from avoiding change.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. — Alan Whitcomb

Aerotechnik Super Vivat Icarus motorgliders had an enormous wingspan and looked like a typical side-by-side pilot/passenger configuration sailplane that had been crossed with a small Cessna single-prop aircraft.

A 2013 study conducted by the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia found that the risk of levying a negative attack is well worth the reward, as any negative blowback on the person launching the attack tends to dissipate while the attack takes effect. “For voters who react with disdain toward the candidate (whether or not a defensive message follows), a sleeper effect is likely to occur,” the study said. “That is, the overtime impact of the negative attack increases.

Harvard sociologist Mario Luis Small found that slightly more than half the time, people confided their most pressing and worrisome concerns to people with whom they had weaker ties, even people they encountered by chance, rather than to those they had previously said were closest to them—like a spouse, family member, or dear friend. In some cases, the subjects actively avoided telling the people in their innermost circle because they feared unkindness, judgment, blowback, or drama. It raises questions of why we choose the listeners we do.

Discoveries of such secrets typically bring on tumultuous crises. Ironically, however...it is often the person who lied or cheated who has the easier time. People who transgressed might feel self-loathing, regret or shame. But they have the possibility of change going forward, and their sense of their own narrative, problematic though it may be, is intact. They knew all along what they were doing and made their own decisions. They may have made bad choices, but at least those were their own and under their control. Now they can make new, better choices. And to an astonishing extent, the social blowback for such miscreants is often transient and relatively minor...Our culture, in fact, wholeheartedly supports such “new beginnings” — even celebrates them.

For instance,” said Alan, “we’re now learning that the smallpox pandemics of the Middle Ages, not the plague, mind you, but smallpox, left generations of people with a rare genetic defect that protects them against infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. We estimate that approximately one percent of people descended from northern Europeans are virtually immune to HIV infection.

Humor can be such a good way to hide anger at racist, sexist degradation and to challenge white male authority sideways—without risking as much direct blowback—that it perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise that the comedian Tina Fey wrote jokes about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual predation—lines about being pinned under Weinstein, and turning down sex with him—that aired on her show 30 Rock in 2012, years before his behavior could be reported straight. In 2013, during the Oscars, the white male comedian Seth MacFarlane also made a Weinstein joke—about the lead actress nominees no longer having to pretend to be attracted to the producer. After 2017 reporting revealed the extent of Weinstein’s predation, MacFarlane explained that a friend of his, an actress who’d been harassed by Weinstein, had confided in him, prompting his joke. “Make no mistake,” he said at the time, his one-liner had come “from a place of loathing and anger.

There’s a soft totalitarianism coming into play,” Michael Steele professed. He spent two years leading the GOP as chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Modern-day conservatism meant lower taxes, less government, free markets. What we are witnessing now is a deconstruction of that.… I think the rational side is losing, if not having already lost. “For a party that’s all sensitive about the Left canceling them, they do a pretty good job of canceling their own,” he added. “That’s why the hammer came down so hard on Liz Cheney—to send a message of fear. No one wants to be targeted the way she’s been targeted, which makes this period we are in perhaps the most dangerous.

But as people become anxious to be accepted by the group, their personal values and behaviors are exchanged for more negative ones. We can too easily become more intense, abusive, fundamentalist, fanatical—behaviors strange to our former selves, born out of our intense need to belong. This may be one explanation for why the Internet, which gave us the possibility of self-organizing, is devolving into a medium of hate and persecution, where trolls6 claiming a certain identity go to great efforts to harass, threaten, and destroy those different from themselves. The Internet, as a fundamental means for self-organizing, can’t help but breed this type of negative, separatist behavior. Tweets and texts spawn instant reactions; back and forth exchanges of only a few words quickly degenerate into comments that push us apart. Listening, reflecting, exchanging ideas with respect—gone. But this is far less problematic than the way the Internet has intensified the language of threat and hate. People no longer hide behind anonymity as they spew hatred, abominations, and lurid death threats at people they don’t even know and those that they do. Trolls, who use social media to issue obscene threats and also organize others to deluge a person with hateful tweets and emails, are so great a problem for people who come into public view that some go off Twitter, change their physical appearance, or move in order to protect their children.7 Reporters admit that they refuse to publish about certain issues because they fear the blowback from trolls.

Trump’s shortcomings stood out particularly during emergencies. I remember briefing the president in the Oval Office on the projected storm track of an Atlantic hurricane. At first, he seemed to grasp the devastating magnitude of the Category 4 superstorm, until he opened his mouth. “Is that the direction they always spin?” the president asked me. “I’m sorry sir,” I responded, “I don’t understand.” “Hurricanes. Do they always spin like that?” He made a swirl in the air with his finger. “Counterclockwise?” I asked. He nodded. “Yes, Mr. President. It’s called the Coriolis effect. It’s the same reason toilet water spins the other direction in the Southern Hemisphere.” “Incredible,” Trump replied, squinting his eyes to look at the foam board presentation. We needed him to urge residents to evacuate from the Carolinas, where it looked like the storm would make landfall, but the president mused about another potential response. “You know, I was watching TV, and they interviewed a guy in a parking lot,” Trump leaned back and recounted. “He was wearing a red hat, a MAGA hat, and he said he was going to ‘ride it out.’ Isn’t that something? That’s what Trump supporters do. They’re tough. They ride it out. I think that’s what I’ll tell them to do.” Sometimes his irreverence could be funny, even charming. That day it wasn’t. Worried looks filled the room. A clever communications aide piped up. “Mr. President, I wouldn’t take that chance. This is going to be a pretty bad storm, and you don’t want to lose supporters in the Carolinas before the 2020 election.” The president thought about it for a moment. “That’s such a good point. We should urge the evacuations.” You couldn’t write such a stupid scene in a movie, but it always got a little worse.

The biggest blowback is when ur mind strikes with "But" and "If".

It’ll happen sooner than you think. Today was as much blowback as you’re gonna get, I bet.” “Great, then you can expect amazing GIFs of squirrels acting out romance novel covers as soon as next week.” “You’re so weird, Rachel.

Oh, besides everything? Let’s see. The person who hired me, the boss I idolize, might actually be a homophobic piece of shit. But even if she’s not, she might get fired for being one anyway. Who knows what will happen? But in the meantime, the blowback has been…

The truth is, most entrepreneurs pivot many times before they find their footing. And often, even after they find their footing. And it can feel perilous. You have to steer toward a new opportunity, often before it comes into clear focus. And, equally challenging, you have to turn away from something—specifically, an idea that previously inspired hopes, dreams, and investment of time and money. Human beings don’t let go of old ideas easily. In pivoting, you risk blowback from your co-founders, your staff, your investors, and your users. For those reasons, it can be the single greatest test of your leadership skills.

Note that when we are very young and can’t flee physically, we flee in our minds, and that’s called the “freeze response.” So if your monster controls more on the inside, and makes you run away or shut down, that can happen when you had a parent who could explode and get real mad without warning. Or maybe they were dominant, inflexible, or narcissistic, and they always got heated or wanted to get their way and be right. This parent was out of control with control. And when you’re real small, fighting back in these situations usually isn’t a smart idea. That might just make the problem worse. So, to avoid getting blowback and the consequences that come with it, the best control strategy was to start walking on eggshells. You kept them and any situation from getting out of hand by shutting up and going with the flow.

The AR-57, also known as the AR Five Seven, is available as either an upper receiver for the AR-15/M16 rifle or a complete rifle, firing 5.7×28mm rounds from standard FN P90 magazines. It was designed by AR57 LLC and[3] was produced by AR57 of Kent, Washington, United States. The AR-57 PDW upper is a new design on AR-15/M16 rifles, blending the AR-15/M16 lower with a lightweight, monolithic upper receiver system chambered in FN 5.7×28mm. This model is also sold as a complete rifle, supplied with two 50-round P90 magazines.[1] The magazines mount horizontally on top of the front handguard, with brass ejecting through the magazine well. Hollow AR-15 magazines can be used to catch spent casings. Unlike the standard AR-15 configuration which uses a gas-tube system , the AR-57 cycles via straight blowback.[6] A fully automatic version exists and was marketed as a competitor to the P90 and other personal defense weapons.[7] Manufactured by the eponymous AR57 LLC, and chambered in 5.7x28mm, this upper is less powerful than the standard 5.56mm version, but it has certain tangible advantages, including reduced muzzle blast, a high practical rate of fire, nonexistent recoil, and the ability to use folding stocks. Since the buffer is located within the receiver, folding stocks may also be used for compact storage or carry. To load, place the base plate of a standard FN P90 magazine into the recess on the front of the upper, then press the feed lip side down on the catch located above and slightly back of the bolt. To charge, pull on the right-side nonreciprocating handle and release. The right-side charging hand placement makes it accessible for operation by the strong hand. Since it only has to be operated once every 50 shots, the time penalty for moving the hand off the pistol grip isn’t too great. Empties will eject downward through the nominal magazine well. Some people use a 20-round magazine body with the feed lips, spring and follower removed to act as a brass catcher. The magazine has no provision for activating the bolt lock when empty, but the bolt can be locked open using the catch on the lower. The upper runs very cleanly and reliably, requiring no maintenance after the first 500 shots. The AR57 comes with a medium fluted barrel, reasonable for a varmint rifle but excessive for a defensive carbine. Burning around six grains per shot, 5.7x28mm runs much cooler than 5.56mm, which burns four or more times as much. That yields much reduced muzzle blast and far greater heat endurance, of course at the cost of a roughly 40 percent slower bullet.

Several months before she was defeated in the Wyoming Republican primary, Liz Cheney told me that the fear of physical harm was working. Flanked by armed guards at a fundraiser, she said that Republican colleagues rejected Trumpism but were afraid to come forward after witnessing her experience. She was no stranger to Secret Service protection, given that her father had been vice president of the United States, but this was different. A security detail was not a mark of status for the Cheneys anymore; it was reflective of the fact that people were making violent threats against her family back in Wyoming, where she couldn’t go out in public the way she used to. Her fellow dissenters felt the same. “You know, it puts you at risk,” said Michigan congressman Fred Upton, who decided to walk away from a thirty-year career in Congress after his impeachment vote, “particularly when they threaten not only you—and I like to think I’m pretty fast—but when they threaten your spouse or your kids or whatever, that’s what really makes it frightening.” Ohio congressman Anthony Gonzalez decided to quit, too, confessing to receiving threats and fearing for the safety of his wife and children.

Now, in this matter, they seem to feel their time has come to act as they wish, without concern about blowback.

BOHICA: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again. A Vietnam War–era phrase that has lasted for decades, meaning those folks in the field—military or intelligence—are going to be the sacrificial lambs once again to protect the ones issuing orders.

The United States Senate: the most exclusive club in the world, with more than 250 years of history unimpeded by progress.

To limit the political blowback, we put out a framework rather than comprehensive legislation.

If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”–traditionally attributed to President Abraham Lincoln

Donald Trump introduced a new brand of extremism to the Republican Party, and the thuggish populism has grown beyond his control. If corrective action isn’t taken, the MAGA movement will reclaim the American presidency in the coming years and do irreparable damage to our democracy.

The many vanished books on these forbidden subjects (among others) altogether constitute a shadow history of America—a history that We the People need to know at last, our country having now become a land with billionaires in charge, and millions not allowed to vote, and everybody under full surveillance.

Substantial evidence indicates that the Army’s central repository for intelligence records has intentionally destroyed its files on prominent Nazis closely associated with U.S. intelligence during the early Cold War when their names surfaced in the media.

These books sank without a trace, or faded fast, because they tell the sort of truths that Madison and Jefferson believed our Constitution should protect—truths that the people have the right to know, and needs to know, about our government and other powers that keep us in the dark.

I had seriously considered conducting an unscheduled press conference after the November meeting, but decided that it risked disrupting markets. Instead, I spent several hours telephoning key reporters individually, answering questions on background. I also wrote an op-ed that was published November 4 in the Washington Post. Despite these efforts, I was unprepared for the blowback from policymakers abroad and politicians at home.

This self-reinforcing delusion is the real definition of insanity. We’re insane to think we can save or consume our way to peace and happiness. We’re insane to believe we can control people or work them to the brink of meltdown with no blowback. We’re insane to imagine that we can ravage the Earth to our hearts’ content. We’re insane to focus on the urgent at the expense of the important. And we’re insane to use the same thinking and methods and expect wildly different results. Have you been doing pretty much the same things over and over?

The government employed these men and women for their expertise in propaganda and psychological warfare, for work in American laboratories, and even as special guerrilla troops for deployment inside the USSR in the midst of a nuclear war. CIA recruiting in Europe in particular often focused on Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians, and other Eastern European nationalists who had collaborated with the Nazis during Germany’s wartime occupation of their homelands. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of such recruits were SS veterans; some had been officers of the bloody Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Nazi party’s security service.

As explained by Carlos Marighella, the Brazilian guerrilla leader whose writings influenced political terrorists in the 1960s and 1970s, if a government can be provoked into a purely military response to terrorism, its overreaction will alienate the masses, causing them to “revolt against the army and the police and blame them for this state of things.

Americans generally think of Pol Pot as some kind of unique, self-generated monster and his “killing fields” as an inexplicable atavism totally divorced from civilization. But without the United States government’s Vietnam-era savagery, he could never have come to power in a culture like Cambodia’s,

economic relations with our East Asian satellites have, for example, hollowed out our domestic manufacturing industries and led us into a reliance on finance capitalism, whose appearance has in the past been a sign of a hitherto healthy economy entering decline.

she wore a Walther TPH .22 automatic in her right hand. The TPH is a pretty little thing. It has a straight blowback action, a six-round box magazine and two-and-a-quarter-inch barrel. It’s also utterly useless as a firearm, because unless you can guarantee hitting either the heart or the brain first time, you’re only going to annoy the person you’re shooting at. For most people, a wet mackerel is the better choice of weapon.

Yet in at least three situations, a touch of jerkiness can be helpful. The first is if your job, or some element of it, involves a series of onetime encounters in which reputational blowback has minimal effect. The second is in that evanescent moment after a group has formed but its hierarchy has not. (Think the first day of summer camp.) The third—not fully explored here, but worth mentioning—is when the group’s survival is in question, speed is essential, and a paralyzing existential doubt is in the air. It was when things got truly desperate at Apple, its market share having shrunk to 4 percent, that the board invited Steve Jobs to return (Jobs then ousted most of those who had invited him back). But here is where we

We still don’t have the full story on Benghazi, but thanks to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch we know a lot more and are in a position to continue to crack open the Benghazi cover-up. Take the email that showed the military was prepared, indeed was in the process of launching timely assistance that could have made a difference, at least at the CIA annex where two Americans died. The Washington Examiner correctly noted that the email “casts doubt on previous testimony from high level officials, several of whom suggested there was never any kind of military unit that could have been in a position to mount a rescue mission during the hours-long attack on Benghazi.” All this goes to underscore the value of Judicial Watch’s independent watchdog activities and our leadership in forcing truth and accountability over the Benghazi scandal. The lies and inaction by President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice (who is now Obama’s national security adviser) were monstrous. Rather than tell the truth, and risk political blowback for the Libya mess and the lack of security, the Obama administration abandoned those under fire and pretended that the attack had nothing to do with terrorism. Judicial Watch saw through the lies and began what has become the most nationally significant investigation ever by a non-governmental entity. Our Benghazi FOIA requests and subsequent lawsuits changed history. Our disclosure of White House records confirming that top political operatives at the White House concocted the talking points used by Susan Rice to mislead the American people in order save Obama’s reelection prospects rocked Washington. These smoking-gun documents embarrassed all of Congress and forced Speaker John Boehner to appoint the House Select Committee on Benghazi. And, as you’ll see, the pressure from our Benghazi litigation led to the disclosure of the Clinton email scandal, the historical ramifications of which we are now witnessing. If the American people had known the truth—that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go—and yet lied and covered this fact up—Mitt Romney might very well be president. Our Benghazi disclosures also show connections between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war—and confirm that the US knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists.

hunt you down and kill you myself. Chapter 18 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA The call from Philippe Roussard’s handler came in the middle of the night. “Do you have everything in place?” Roussard sat up in bed

Meaning “by way of the anus.” “Per annum,” with two n’s, means “yearly.” The correct answer to the question, “What is the birth rate per anum?” is zero (one hopes). The Internet provides many fine examples of the perils of confusing the two. The investment firm that offers “10% interest per anum” is likely to have about as many takers as the Nigerian screenwriter who describes himself as “capable of writing 6 movies per anum” or the Sri Lankan importer whose classified ad declares, “3600 metric tonnes of garlic wanted per anum.” The individual who poses the question “How many people die horse riding per anum?” on the Ask Jeeves website has set himself up for crude, derisive blowback in the Comments block.

The heads were flushed with sea-water, so they constantly stank! But in rough weather, the water pressure varied as the ship pounded the waves. This often caused a phenomenon known as “Blow-Back!” When this happened, the contents of the toilet exploded violently upwards, all over the walls of the cubical and the floor. And when it happened, it tended to explode in sequence; one toilet followed by the next in line, and so on. God help you if you happened to be on the toilet at the time as there would be no warning until a last minute gurgling sound; then, “BOOM!” A very messy experience; equally messy for those of us who then had to clean it up afterwards!

For years, the crime of sexual assault depended on our silence. The fear of knowing what happened if we spoke. Society gave us one thousand reasons; don’t speak if you lack evidence, if it happened too long ago, if you were drunk, if the man is powerful, if you’ll face blowback, if it threatens your safety. Ford broke all the rules. She had none of the requirements society tells us we need before we dare open our mouths. She had every reason to stay hidden, but stepped straight into the most public, volatile, combative environment imaginable, because she possessed the single thing she needed, the truth.

Change agents can drive transformation and handle the blowback when an organization needs to shake up business as usual to survive or level up.

They never actually have fire inside them, unless they get a case of blowback.” “What happens then?” “You’re scraping dragon off the scenery,” said Lady Ramkin cheerfully. “I’m afraid they’re not very well-designed creatures, dragons.

Maybe he’s being too cautious, but that’s like saying there’s too much bacon.

You know what they say: a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting its pants on.

Americans believe their ideas are universal—the supremacy of the individual and free, unfettered expression. But they are not. Never were . . .

What do you think their game plan is? Why the delay?” Jean sits down across from her,

A paying customer was a worthy customer.

This book is a guide to some of the policies during and after the Cold War that generated, and continue to generate, blowback—a term the CIA invented to describe the likelihood that our covert operations in other people’s countries would result in retaliations against Americans, civilian and military, at home and abroad.

The energy blowback of her death crashed over him and then washed out, leaving him momentarily dazed and rattled.

The sad fact is that, alien as the attacks of September 11 may seem, they were in fact a refraction, distorted beyond recognition over the years, of policies and practices emanating from Washington, the blowback, more horrible than anyone could have imagined, of covert operations gone disastrously awry.

In my experience, there is only one thing worse for a woman’s mental health than trying to be a superhero, and that is being told to “chill”—especially since any efforts to do so incur swift blowback.

The term has no clear meaning, but it is used by liberals to refer to political blowback against the social disruption produced by their own policies.

Lately we have been hearing a great deal about "blowback". But the real menace we face today is global rollback. The goal of conservative rulers around the world, led by those who occupy the seats of power in Washington, is the systematic rollback of democratic gains, public services, and common living standards around the world.

But how “good” are we, really? If we’re so good, why do we inspire such hatred abroad? What have we done to bring so much “blowback” upon ourselves?

History had awakened me to the fact that racism is the only food Americans crave. Mornings in class with Mr. Harrison had taught me that Americans had reduced the world’s most elite soldiers to a single word: Jap. I had grown up hearing my father’s Marine friends, even Uncle Mazz, use Haji. I wasn’t having any of it in this house. I was prepared to deal with the fallout, the blowback of sassing an elder and kin, but—To hell with it, I thought. I wasn’t having any of that low ignorance up in my house. Especially not from him.

Questions like “Did you feed the dog?” or “Did you check when the paperwork is due?” can feel accusatory. The intent may be benign, just a request for information, but they can easily be interpreted negatively. Who said it was my responsibility, or why wouldn’t I have taken care of it? A subtle shift in phrasing (“Has the dog had dinner?”) is less likely to generate blowback. By focusing on the action rather than the actor, it removes any suggestion of reproach. I’m not suggesting that it’s your job, I just want to find out whether it happened so I can do it if it hasn’t. The same goes for statements like “I wanted to talk but you were busy.

Delaney suggested something she called FictFix, expecting, correctly as it turned out, that Alessandro would claim it. The main thrust of FictFix was to take old novels and fix them. Unsympathetic protagonists were made likeable, chiefly through aggregating online complaints and implementing suggestions; problematic and outdated terminology was changed to reflect contemporary standards; and superfluous chapters, passages and anything preachy was removed. This could be done instantly in e-books, even those purchased long before. When FictFix rolled out, it was done gingerly, Alessandro assuming the blowback would be extreme. But there was not much, and it was confined to a few irrelevant academics, whose own back catalogs were soon fixed by their former graduate students.

You know that line from The Art of War, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’? Well, only if your enemies aren’t holding a knife, ready to plunge it in your back.

Whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt.” In other words, trust your gut.

You know what they say, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than seek permission.

I’ve always felt like we were the civilized ones, fighting against the ones enjoying blowing up kindergartens, taking down civilian airliners, shooting up shopping malls.

His first time in South Africa, and there’s a desolate beauty here, if one has the time to appreciate it.

As unions flagged, business interests sensed an opportunity. Corporate lobbyists made deep inroads in both parties, launching a public relations campaign that blamed labor for the slump and pressured policymakers to roll back worker protections.[16] A national litmus test arrived in 1981, when thirteen thousand unionized air traffic controllers left their posts after contract negotiations with the Federal Aviation Administration broke down. When workers refused to return to work, President Reagan fired all of them. The public’s response was muted, and corporate America learned that it could crush unions with minimal blowback. In 1985, Hormel Foods, of Spam and Dinty Moore beef stew fame, cut worker pay in its Austin, Minnesota, plant from $10.69 to $8.25 an hour and kneecapped the strike that followed by hiring replacements. “If the President of the United States can replace strikers, this must be socially acceptable,” remarked one observer at the time.[17] And so it went, in one industry after another. As global trade expanded and plants shuttered, unions collapsed, and corporate interests made sure they remained weak.

Which is when Carlos kicks Burr in the face. It’s a championship-winning, full-run-up, top-of-the-foot fifty-yard-field-goal monster. He could try out for the Rams with that kick. When his foot whips past my face, I actually feel the blowback.

him

Often the mere suggestion of impropriety is enough to ruin someone. — Scot Harvath

How these poisons survived is really not what’s important. The point is that for some reason historians all too often choose to overlook the ancients’ skillful manipulation of nature. They’d rather believe that’s soldiers of old adhere to the highest moral codes in battle, but this just isn’t the case. The ancient world is filled with terrifying precursors to today’s sophisticated chem-bio weapons: from flamethrowers and incendiary devices, all the way to poison gases and dirty bombs. And they did it all without the help of modern science. – Jillian Alcott

It doesn’t matter. In their minds we are an extension of Europe. Everything the West is, whether it’s Europe or America, is connected. Seven minutes or seven centuries ago, it’s all the same to them. They paint us with the same brush. It’s frustrating as hell, but these people just don’t think the way we do. - Jack Rutledge

Nobody thinks the way we do. We have a unique spirit, and that spirit is what defines America. Freedom, democracy, liberty, and the willingness to use force when necessary to help us serve those ideas – that’s what we are all about. You pick any man or woman on the street in the Middle East and give him or her think option of staying put or coming to America start their alliance offer and can with the rights and freedoms we identify ourselves by, and they’ll choose the good ‘ol USA every time. They might burn our flag for the cameras. But throw a handful of green cards in the air and they’d cut each other’s throat’s to get their hands on them. - Charles Anderson

and

Ancient Greek mythology claims that Dionysus, the god of wine, had been insulted by a passing mortal and swore that you would take revenge on the next one that came this way. He conjured up a team of ferocious tigers just as a beautiful young maiden was approaching. The maiden’s name was Amethyst, and she was on her way to pay tribute to the goddess Artemis. As Dionysus released the Tigers, Artemis turned Amethyst into a statue of pure crystalline to protect her from the tiger’s claws. Upon seeing the beautiful statue, Dionisio wept wine–filled tears of regret, which stained the statue a deep shade of purple. From that moment on, the amethyst stone was known to hold significant protective properties. Apparently, as the myth recounts, amethysts could even protect you from the wrath of gods themselves. - Dr. Davidson

Absence of fear didn’t make your brave; it was what you did in spite of being afraid. — Scot Harvath

Absence of fear didn’t make you brave; it was what you did in spite of being afraid. — Scot Harvath

Rabies is one of the oldest infectious diseases is known to mankind. Accounts of it date all the way back to Asia in 2000 B.C but the best detailed medical accounts date from around 300 B.C. – Alan Whitcomb

Our paper is very fibrous, and it doesn’t take much for things to get embedded in those fibers. The best example would be cocaine. According to statistics, trace amounts of cocaine are believed to infect four out of every five bills in circulation. – Scot Harvath

With its street crime, prostitutes, and drug dealers, Milan was second only to Naples as the seediest city in Italy.

Citing the Koran, the Saudis claimed to be preserving their Islamic values by blocking access to any materials that contradicts their beliefs or might influence their culture. All this while they smoked, drank, did drugs, and whored in foreign countries. The hypocrisy of it all we have been amusing is the net affect wasn’t so lamentable for the average Saudi citizen.

For years, the crime of sexual assault depended on our silence. The fear of knowing what happened if we spoke. Society gave us one thousand reasons; don’t speak if you lack evidence, if it happened too long ago, if you were drunk, if the man is powerful, if you’ll face blowback, if it threatens your safety.

it was a Defense Department bureaucratic ploy: if the Pentagon could produce enough blowback in Congress, it could avoid responsibility for any degradation

Sometimes collateral damage can impact the entity that inflicted the damage in the first place, which is called blowback. Blowback sometimes can occur well after the initial action. The U.S. supported Afghan insurgents in the 1980s against the USSR. Years later these same groups joined al-Qaeda to fight against the U.S., using some of the very same weapons the U.S. had provided decades earlier.