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By Syed M.Aslam
Sep 25 - Oct 01, 2000

*** "WHAT A SHAME."

(Chief Justice of the apex Supreme Court of Pakistan, Irshad Hassan Khan, watching the video showing the rowdy crowd crossing the outer gate in the storming of the SHC case by stalwarts of the then ruling Muslim league during the trial of former premier Nawaz Sharif)

*** "CAPITALISM'S GLOBAL GLADIATORS are going to have to come up with something better if they are to convince others."

(Economist Kenneth Courtis, Asia vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, commenting on the tumultuous protest against globalisation at the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, Australia)

*** "WE WANT TO make the financiers' lives as difficult as possible . . . We don't consider the IMF and World Bank to be legitimate institutions and they don't have the right to have meetings somewhere and decide about other people's rights."

(Viktor Piorecky, spokesman of umbrella group 'INPEG' organising many of the 200 planned demonstrations to stop world's top financiers debating the reform of IMF and global economy. Some 18,000 bankers, finance ministers and government officials attending the forum in Prague would be facing barricades and protests)

*** "DON'T ASK ME what poverty is because you have met it outside my house. Look at the house and count the number of holes. Look at the utensils and the clothes I am wearing. Look at everything and write what you see. What you see is poverty."

('Voices of Poor', World Bank study conducted as background to its 2000-2001 World Development Report, quoting a poor man in Kenya. The study contains interviews of some 60,000 poor people in 60 countries)

*** "THESE MEN, these slaves, laid the very foundation of our democracy."

(US Senator, John Lewis, on the approval to authorise the speaker of the House to set up a special task force to honour slaves labourers for building the US capital Washington DC the seat of American democracy)

*** "I SINCERELY APOLOGISE to you, Dr Lee, for the unfair manner in which you were held in custody by the executive branch . . . They have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."

(US District Judge James Parker ordering release of Chinese-American nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee for spying for his country of origin)

*** "*** "THIS IS UNMISTAKABLY of superb naval construction."

(Colombian submarine Captain Fiddle Azalea commenting on the finding of a 30-metre half-built submarine by drug smugglers on the outskirts of Bogota)

***WHERE CORRUPTION is at its worst, disillusionment with democracy is at its highest."

(Chairman of Berlin-based non-government corruption watchdog Transparency International, Peter Eigen, quoting Gallup International 200 Millennium Survey presenting the sixth annual report. The TI judged Finland the least corrupt and Nigeria the most corrupt country of the 90 nations surveyed)

*** "WHAT WE'RE FINDING is that childhood exposure to infections and certain environmental toxins seems to have a protective effect."

(Paediatric asthma specialist at National Medical and Research Centre Denver, Dr Andrew Liu. A string of studies in the US found that little squalor is good for health)

*** "IT IS FORBIDDEN for any person not in possession of a family vault [burial space] to die on the village's territory."

(Mayor of French village Le Lavandou, Gil Bernardi, issuing a decree telling people not to die as the local cemetery has run out of space)

*** " IT'S A POSITIVE first step for the government because it's an important victory."

(Presidential Press Secretary, Ricardo Puno, commenting on the forfeiting of $ 627 million from several Swiss bank accounts by a Filipino anti-graft court. Despite denying that the money belonged to the former dictator Marcos, the former First Lady Imelda Marcos has said that she will appeal the decision in the Supreme Court)

*** "I AM NOT SATISFIED when drug companies run up profits so high that many seniors just can't pay for the medicines need."

(Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate, Al Gore, demanding access to affordable prescription drug coverage for the 40 million Americans on the healthcare plan, Medicare at a rally in Silicon Valley)