Word: absurdities
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That a popularly elected government in a distant nation should be deposed for the sake of a bunch of banana salesmen may seem absurd and even comical. Mostly though, it is terrifying. Arbenz's policies--essentially the legalization of labor unions and a modest land reform that expropriated only unused fields, including much of United Fruits holdings--were hardly those of a Marxist revolutionary Nor did they pose a lethal threat to United Fruit's interests, its fruit-producing lands remained untouched But America, caught up in the hysteria of McCarthysim and the Cold War, flinched. The reflex to react...
Finally, Natasha Pearl '83, the Student Assembly chairman viewed the ivy crisis as the latest in a series of "absurd attempts" on the University's part to demonstrate fiscal prudence. Citing Harvard's hesitancy to build an addition to the Fogg Art Museum and the current discussion of revoking summer storage privileges as other such demonstrations, Pearl expressed concern that the logical next move will be an end to aid-blind admissions...
They also fail to realize that investment in pollution control more than pays for itself in health cost savings. And the idea that local authorities could effectively regulate waste disposal is absurd, it seems none of those who militate for relaxed standards are aware that the wind blows and the rivers run, spreading pollution from one noxious pipe or smokestack all over the country. It is for just these sorts of problems that we have a federal government...
Argentina's military rulers seemed surprised at Britain's vehemence, and stunned by the nationalistic forces it had unleashed. "The English reaction is so absurd, so disproportionate," lamented Foreign Minister Nicanor Costa Mendez. "This seems like a chapter in a science-fiction novel." The junta had miscalculated international opposition to its invasion and grossly underestimated the risk of war. Its seizure of the Falkland Islands nonetheless remained popular at home. Activist Perez Esquivel, who won the Nobel Prize for his human rights crusade against the government, offered his support to the junta last week, as did an organized...
...Poland. The bottom line of all this--more nuclear weapons that are increasingly complex and hence more prone to accidental detonation. This is the stuff of dissent, of passion, of fear. And these are the supporting actors, the backdrop and the props for the ultimate scenario of the absurd...