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b164ba8
|
Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!
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nationalism
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David Sedaris |
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15de391
|
We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.
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nationalism
poignant
pride
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William Golding |
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e24eb01
|
But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either , which is infamous, or , which is imbecile.
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maturin
nationalism
nationality
patriotism
stephen-maturin
|
Patrick O'Brian |
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5ed5bfd
|
National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.
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astronomy
conceit
earth
folly
human-nature
nationalism
pride
science
space
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Carl Sagan |
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ad1d043
|
He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals
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morals
nationalism
religion
science
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Henry Miller |
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21ebc44
|
National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.
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nationalism
religion
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Umberto Eco |
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82454b8
|
At times there's something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism. Build a dam to take away water AWAY from 40 million people. Build a dam to pretend to BRING water to 40 million people. Who are these gods that govern us? Is there no limit to their powers?
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|
capitalism
corporations
dam
economics
environmental-degradation
equality
exploitation
false-gods
government
government-corruption
human-rights
india
inspirational
narmada-valley
nationalism
reality
truth
women
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Arundhati Roy |
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a508dbb
|
I have often noticed that nationalism is at its strongest at the periphery. Hitler was Austrian, Bonaparte Corsican. In postwar Greece and Turkey the two most prominent ultra-right nationalists had both been born in Cyprus. The most extreme Irish Republicans are in Belfast and Derry (and Boston and New York). Sun Yat Sen, father of Chinese nationalism, was from Hong Kong. The Serbian extremists Milosevic and Karadzic were from Montenegro and their most incendiary Croat counterparts in the tended to hail from the frontier lands of Western Herzegovina.
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|
karadzic
milosevic
napoleon
nationalism
sun-yat-sen
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Christopher Hitchens |
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56088a6
|
"I am most often irritated by those who attack the bishop but somehow fall for the securities analyst--those who exercise their skepticism against religion but not against economists, social scientists, and phony statisticians. Using the confirmation bias, these people will tell you that religion was horrible for mankind by counting deaths from the Inquisition and various religious wars. But they will not show you how many people were killed by nationalism, social science, and political theory under Stalin or during the Vietnam War. Even priests don't go to bishops when they feel ill: their first stop is the doctor's. But we stop by the offices of many pseudoscientists and "experts" without alternative. We no longer believe in papal infallibility; we seem to believe in the infallibility of the Nobel, though...."
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nationalism
religion
skepticism
stalinism
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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6ce4324
|
Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.
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|
american-history
american-revolution
history
jefferson
lincoln
nationalism
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Joseph J. Ellis |
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a31c682
|
The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.
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forced-migration
migration
nationalism
refugees
war
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Mohsin Hamid |
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6483877
|
Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.
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nationalism
religion
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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3df3af3
|
... that kind of patriotism which consists in hating all other nations ...
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nationalism
patriotism
xenophobia
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Elizabeth Gaskell |
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9e3bbe9
|
Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy....The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always be an exceptional sort of citizen who has or claims the right to rule over ten cities, and these remote and altogether alien cities...To make all politics cosmopolitan is to create an aristocracy of globe-trotters. If your political outlook really takes in the Cannibal Islands, you depend of necessity upon a superior and picked minority of the people who have been to the Cannibal Islands; or rather of the still smaller and more select minority who have come back.
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|
local-government
nationalism
one-world-government
politics
|
G.K. Chesterton |
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9163dd5
|
I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.' I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips.
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|
absolutism
caprice
communism
confucianism
cruelty
farce
ideology
karl-marx
kim-il-sung
kim-jong-il
korea
nationalism
north-korea
queen-noguk
religion
tomb-of-king-kongmin
totalitarianism
veneration-of-the-dead
vladimir-lenin
xenophobia
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Christopher Hitchens |
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49e3fb7
|
k`veqnisat`vis sic`oc`xlis gacirva: qvela erma ic`is am shesaciravis p`asi. ch`exebis mtrebmac`, germaniamac` da ruset`mac`, ic`ian, ra aris es, magram isini xom didi erebi arian, amitom mat`i patriotizmic` gasxvavebulia: mat` t`avbru esxmit` t`aviant`i didebisagan, t`aviant`i mnishvnelobisagan, t`aviant`i sakac`obrio misiisagan. ch`exebs qovelt`vis uqvardat` samshoblo ara imitom, rom igi saxelgant`k`muli da didebuli iqo, aramed imitom, rom igi uc`nobi iqo; ara imitom, rom didi iqo, aramed imitom, rom patara iqo da t`anac` mudmivad sap`rt`xe emuk`reboda. mat`i patriotizmi k`veqnis mimart` uzomo t`anagrz'nobaa.
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nationalism
patriotizm
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Milan Kundera |
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59ff8dd
|
Arab nationalism in its traditional form was the way in which secular Arab Christians like Edward had found and kept a place for themselves, while simultaneously avoiding the charge of being too 'Western.' It was very noticeable among the Palestinians that the most demonstrably 'extreme' nationalists--and Marxists--were often from Christian backgrounds. George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh used to be celebrated examples of this phenomenon, long before anyone had heard of the cadres of Hamas, or Islamic Jihad. There was an element of overcompensation involved, or so I came to suspect.
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arab-nationalism
arabs
christianity
christians
edward-said
george-habash
hamas
islamic-jihad
marxists
nationalism
nationalists
nayef-hawatmeh
overcompensation
palestinians
secularists
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Christopher Hitchens |
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3b24a7b
|
Nationalism and ethnic pride, in the long run, delay human development, and the misery they cause must be recognized. If enough people saw that , maybe we wouldn't have so many wars.
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life-philosophy
nationalism
war
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Harvey Pekar |
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da75eb2
|
The urge to lie is produced by the contradictions in our lives. We are made to declare love for our country, while it tramples our rights and dignity.
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dignity
love-for-country
lying
nationalism
patriotism
rights
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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cfd0bde
|
I have a feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking into the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that it held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members of one another. Do we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers - making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests?
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civilization
culture
nationalism
society
tradition
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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968a350
|
How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession...Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.
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|
nationalism
patriotism
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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2d67767
|
What hurt him most of all, made him feel like a sick child aware of terrible wrongness and yet incapable of explaining it to anyone who might help, was that in spite of the evidence around them, in spite of what their eyes and ears reported-and sometimes their flesh, from bruises, stab wounds, racking coughs, weeping sores-these people believed their way of life was the best in the world, and were prepared to export it at the point of a gun.
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|
health
nationalism
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John Brunner |
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dbf3642
|
And I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of, how that yearning loyalty that had shaken my friend's voice arises, and how a real love can become, too often, so foolish and vile a bigotry. Where does it go wrong?
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|
love-of-country
nationalism
patriotism
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
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eefa4a8
|
Without a country, you are the basket of humanity.
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|
distortion
nationalism
|
Barbara W. Tuchman |
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899509f
|
Today even the dimmest of capitalist can see that the centralized nation-state, so promising an idea a generation ago, has lost all credibility with the population. Anarchism now is the idea that has seized hearts everywhere, some form of it will come to envelop every centrally governed society . . . If a nation wants to preserve itself, what other steps can it take, but mobilize and go to war? Central governments were never designed for peace. Their structure is line and staff, the same as an army. The national idea depends on war. A general European war, with ever striking worker a traitor, flags threatened, the sacred soils of homelands defiled, would be just the ticket to wipe Anarchism off the political map. The national idea would be reborn. One trembles at the pestilent forms that would rise up afterward, from the swamp of the ruined Europe.
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|
nationalism
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Thomas Pynchon |
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8f0faf5
|
The fact that the Hegnish have absolutely no interest in any people except themselves can also cause offense, or even rage. Foreigners exist. That is all the Hegnish know about them, and all they care to know. They are too polite to say that it is a pity that foreigners exist, but if they had to think about it, they would think so.
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|
foreigners
nationalism
xenophobia
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
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da0bfa7
|
"Asked what would be his idea of Heaven, one statesman in 1897 said it would be to "receive a flow of telegrams alternating news of a British victory by sea and a British victory by land."
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|
discipleship
identity
nationalism
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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4c8a38d
|
A nation's not a child, for God's sake. ... It's like a wild horse you tame by breaking it. Or a fiery woman you slap till she sees sense and warms your bed.
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|
nationalism
sex
taming
|
A.J. Hartley and David Hewson |
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bbe4e7c
|
One's country is like oneself. The more you learned about it, the more there was to be ashamed of.
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|
country
nationalism
patriotism
self-reflection
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
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e0ffb8a
|
All this visible greatness was really one with Nineveh and Tyre.
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|
culture
materialism
nationalism
|
Barbara W. Tuchman |
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2122c30
|
Despoiled and exploited like the South, and like it, a poverty-ridden, agrarian, feudal society, Poland has shared with the Old South one bulwark against its immemorial humiliation, and that is pride. Pride and the recollection of vanished glories.
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|
nationalism
poland
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William Styron |
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a0d1808
|
Discord among the ex-Soviet nationalities was fuelling an ugly brand of Russian nationalism. Voices in Moscow called for the re-conquest of Russia's 'near abroad'. For after Abkhazia, there waited several further targets for Russian intervention, including Tatarstan and Chechenia, and other non-Russian lands within the Russian Federation. Sooner or later, Russia would be forced to choose between its new-style democracy and its old-style imperialism.
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|
nationalism
russia
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Norman Davies |
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d913c94
|
The Englishman, as an American observed, felt himself the best-governed citizen in the world, even when in opposition he believed the incumbents were ruining the country.
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|
nationalism
patriotism
|
Barbara W. Tuchman |
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8dd332d
|
The major religious fundamentalisms--Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu--certainly all demonstrate intense concern for and scrutiny of bodies, through dietary restrictions, corporeal rituals, sexual mandates and prohibitions, and even practices of corporeal mortification and abnegation. What primarily distinguishes fundamentalists from other religious practitioners, in fact, is the extreme importance they give to the body: what it does, what parts of it appear in public, what goes into and comes out of it. Even when fundamentalist norms require hiding a part of the body behind a veil, headscarf, or other articles of clothing, they are really signaling its extraordinary importance. Women's bodies are obviously the object of the most obsessive scrutiny and regulation in religious fundamentalism, but no bodies are completely exempt from examination and control--men's bodies, adolescents' bodies, infants' bodies, even the bodies of the dead. The fundamentalist body is powerful, explosive, precarious, and that is why it requires constant inspection and care... Nationalist fundamentalisms similarly concentrate on bodies through their attention to and care for the population. The nationalist policies deploy a wide range of techniques for corporeal health and welfare, analyzing birthrates and sanitation, nutrition and housing, disease control and reproductive practices. Bodies themselves constitute the nation, and thus the nation's highest goal is their promotion and preservation. Like religious fundamentalisms, however, nationalisms, although their gaze seems to focus intently on bodies, really see them merely as an indication or symptom of the ultimate, transcendent object of national identity. With its moral face, nationalism looks past the bodies to see national character, whereas with its militarist face, it sees the sacrifice of bodies in battle as revealing the national spirit. The martyr or the patriotic soldier is thus for nationalism too the paradigmatic figure for how the body is made to disappear and leave behind only an index to a higher plane. Given this characteristic double relation to the body, it makes sense to consider white supremacy (and racism in general) a form of fundamentalism.
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|
body
fundamentalism
nationalism
|
Antonio Negri; Michael Hardt |
|
cd7deed
|
Who knows whence this creation had its origin? He, whether He fashioned it or whether He did not, He, who surveys it all from the highest heaven, He knows--or maybe even He does not know. -- Rig Veda, X.129 1 'Maybe even He does not know!' I love a faith that raises such a fundamental question about no less a Supreme Being than the Creator of the Universe Himself. Maybe He does not know, indeed. Who are we mere mortals to claim a knowledge of which even He cannot be certain?
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india
nationalism
religion
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Shashi Tharoor |