Word: act
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Most of all, however, the assailants target the emos for dressing effeminately, still a provocative act for many in a macho Mexico. "At the core of this is the homophobic issue. The other arguments are just window dressing for that," said Victor Mendoza, a youth worker in Mexico City. "This is not a battle between music styles at all. It is the conservative side of Mexican society fighting against something different...
Germany has the third largest contingent in Afghanistan. But by an act of the German Bundestag, those troops are confined to the comparatively peaceful northern part of the country, where they are engaged in reconstruction efforts. From Washington, Gates has urged Berlin to lift the restrictions on German troops, but any such change will have to wait at least until after elections in 2009 - and probably longer. "Only through a great political effort will we be able to convince the German public that we are engaged in Afghanistan in order to protect our security in Germany," says Ruprecht Polenz, Christian...
Stand-up comics are the suicide bombers of the cultural world. They act alone, using stripped-down devices - a mike, and maybe a glass of water or a barstool. Their weapon, language, is decidedly low-tech, so they rely on the element of surprise to startle unsuspecting crowds. "If a joke is set up properly, and detonates properly," says Irish comedian Abie Philbin Bowman, the effect is revelatory: "If you and your audience see something in a new way, and the explosion is joy and laughter, that's the most rewarding thing in the world, apart from...
Bowman, who is working on a graduate degree in peace studies by day, sees comedy as akin to a Gandhian exercise in passive resistance. It's a kind of intellectual sit-in - "a nonviolent act that can cause a change in public awareness." An atheist whose skepticism of organized religion was honed growing up during Ireland's Troubles, Bowman nonetheless claims his Guantánamo show is deeply Christian. It stands up "for American values, and for Christian values," he says. "Guantánamo Bay is profoundly un-Christian. I'm simply doing what Jesus did during his life: going...
...probably right. But let's play a little. Let's say the elders of the Democratic Party decide, when the primaries end, that neither Obama nor Clinton is viable. Let's also assume-and this may be a real stretch-that such elders are strong and smart enough to act. All they'd have to do would be to convince a significant fraction of their superdelegate friends, maybe fewer than 100, to announce that they were taking a pass on the first ballot at the Denver convention, which would deny the 2,025 votes necessary to Obama or Clinton. What...