The Panama Papers opened yet another window on the global system of financial corruption, showing how political leaders and businesses use shell companies in secrecy havens like the British Virgin Islands and many US states to evade taxes and hide corruption and other crimes. Yet the system of corruption depends on another factor beyond secrecy, one that is perhaps even more important: impunity. Impunity means that the rich and powerful escape from punishment even when their malfeasance is in full view.
Jeffrey D. SachsRelated topics
beyond escape factor full hide perhaps punishment rich shell showing tax use view window yet means global panama StatesRelated quotes
The presently existing global financial and monetary system will disintegrate during the near term. The collapse might occur this spring, or summer, or next autumn; it could come next year; it will almost certainly occur during President William Clinton's first term in office; it will occur soon. That collapse into disintegration is inevitable, because it could not be stopped now by anything but the politically improbable decision by leading governments to put the relevant financial and monetary institutions into bankruptcy reorganization.
Lyndon LaRouche
Another response to racism has been the establishment of unlearning racism workshops, which are often led by white women. These workshops are important, yet they tend to focus primarily on cathartic individual psychological personal prejudice without stressing the need for corresponding change in political commitment and action. A woman who attends an unlearning racism workshop and learns to acknowledge that she is racist is no less a threat than one who does not. Acknowledgment of racism is significant when it leads to transformation.
Bell hooks
We have looked first at man with his vanities and greed and his problems of a day or a year; and then only, and from this biased point of view, we have looked outward at the earth he has inhabited so briefly and at the universe in which our earth is so minute a part. Yet these are the great realities, and against them we see our human problems in a different perspective. Perhaps if we reversed the telescope and looked at man down these long vistas, we should find less time and inclination to plan for our own destruction.
Rachel Carson
It was measured that the splinters of the Armenian nation that had managed to miraculously escape the Genocide would not be able to recover from the blow, would disappear in the whirlpools on five continents, lose their national identity, and aptitude to be a political factor. But we, as a nation and as a state, were able to reappear at the international arena to affirm that we continue our eternal journey and that we are determined not to allow for such a crime to ever happen again.
Serzh Sargsyan
The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately interesting object, the human body, and puts it out of reach of time and desire; it takes the most purely rational concept of which mankind is capable, mathematical order, and makes it a delight to the senses; and it takes the vague fears of the unknown and sweetens them by showing that the gods are like men and may be worshiped for their life-giving beauty rather than their death-dealing powers.
Kenneth Clark