QUOTES
...in
our continent, in the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, around two hundred
million people, almost half the population, live on incomes of less than 60 dollars
a month, and of these, over 90 million survive under the poverty line on less
than one dollar a day. These circumstances, which from a moral standpoint are
scandalous, represent a serious obstacle to development, an attack against social
peace, are incompatible with democracy and pose a dangerous threat to the political
stability of nations.
...even
in the United States, the richest nation in the world, poverty affects 16.5% of
its population. All these are symptoms, in my opinion worrying symptoms, of a
serious process of dehumanization in which men and women are increasingly enslaved
by consumer goods, more self-centered, less supportive of others and less capable
of loving their fellow men.
....the
globalization that characterizes today’s economics goes beyond or eludes the sovereignty
of individual states, and thus the power of their rulers. It is not they, but
rather financial groups in control of vast amounts of capital, who decide upon
their vertiginous passage through nations, without taking into account the serious
crises they might generate.
...ordinary men and women may often feel unmotivated to exert their citizenship,
either because they cannot tell the difference between the different alternatives,
or because they have lost faith in the political classes, or because they feel
that the really important issues are not in their power to decide.
