“The significance of the public service to the overall wellbeing of the country has never been more evident than during the past 10 months.”—Michael McGrath, minister for public expenditure, 16 December 2020
“Anyone who takes an active part in creating a nuclear weapon is a dead man walking.”—Eli Cohen, Israeli intelligence minister, commenting on the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian nuclear scientist. (Israel has illegal nuclear weapons; Iran has not.)
“We have to find a balance. It’s very important to have transparency, it’s very important to tell the public the way it is, but it’s also important to get across that this is a normal part of virus evolution.”—Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, on the question of mutations of the covid-19 virus
“From the end of 2017 to the end of 2018, the total prison population in the United States declined from 1,489,200 to 1,465,200, a decrease of 24,000 prisoners.”—The US Department of Justice, announcing that there are now only 1,465,200 people locked up in prison
“For all of its chest-thumping about spreading human rights and democracy throughout the world, the US, at heart, remains the preeminent force in the world against national liberation, and the means it uses to carry out this retrograde project is nothing less than horrifying.”—Daniel Kovalik, lecturer in international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law
“. . . It is clear that there are no guarantees that would allow Venezuela’s opposition to participate in a vote let alone accept the result, other than a guarantee that they would be declared winners, of course.”—Pablo Vivanco, journalist and political analyst
American billionaires’ wealth grew so much that they could give a cheque for $3,000 to “every man, woman and child in the country” and “still be richer than they were nine months ago.”—Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies
