Word: ripping
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B.C.C.I.'s downfall was inevitable because it was essentially a planetary Ponzi scheme, a rip-off technique pioneered by American flimflam man Charles Ponzi in 1920. B.C.C.I. gathered deposits, looted most of them, but kept enough new deposits flowing in so that there was always sufficient cash on hand to pay anyone who asked for his money. During the years of its most explosive growth in the late 1970s and mid-1980s, B.C.C.I. became a magnet for drug money, capital-flight money, tax-evading money and money from corrupt government officials. B.C.C.I. quickly gained a reputation as a bank that...
...Slovenia had been voicing separatist ambitions for months, few could have predicted that the situation would career so quickly to the edge of civil war. Time and again during the past year, ethnic and political tensions in and among the six republics and two semiautonomous provinces have threatened to rip apart the Yugoslav nation. But Slovenia's quest to extricate itself from the quarrelsome federation had been relatively peaceful. The sudden eruption of armed hostilities between Slovenia and the central government in Belgrade raised fears that Yugoslavia's breakup might be at hand...
...rise of the Hindu nationalists, like the upsurge of Islamic politics in the Arab world, reflects widespread disillusionment with the leftist political order that dominated the freedom movements in the colonial world after World War II. In India, Advani and other B.J.P. politicians draw huge crowds to hear them rip into the Congress for the billions wasted on unproductive, state- owned industry, the alleged "pampering" of Muslims or the downplaying of Hindu tradition in favor of "pseudo secularism" -- their catchall term for Congress politicians who claim to be blind to religion but play to Muslim sentiments. Nehru, Gandhi and Congress...
...born-and-bred rebel music, languishes when it becomes a commercial tool, part of a marketing package. When Dennis Hopper made Easy Rider and Martin Scorsese made Mean Streets, the use of rock 'n' roll on a movie sound track was practically revolutionary. Now it's de rigueur: the rip-snorting Thelma & Louise, with first-rate tunes by the likes of Toni Childs, Marianne Faithfull and Glenn Frey, released its sound track even before the movie hit the theaters. This is good for the movie and good for business, but it makes rock part of a formula. When great rock...
Society can be cruel, mainly because the people who form them can be cruel. Alberto Grella beat me up every day in the schoolyard when I was in second grade. And I've got to admit that part of me still wants to rip him to shreds. I don't think that the cruel side of my character would emerge as Robert Alton Harris paid the price for his sins. But it might...