Word: benignant
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...prisoners held because of service to the old Saigon regime, thousands of new "enemies" have been discovered. The police may not be able to stop banditry, prostitution or corruption, but woe to anyone openly critical of the government. The regime has even launched a harassment campaign against the relatively benign Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, seeking to force it to merge with the government-approved Vietnam Buddhist Church. Says a Saigon observer: "It seems our leaders think they are still fighting in the jungles...
Hamas is actually a homegrown movement, born in the Gaza Strip a few years ago as an answer to Israel's occupation and the perceived ineptitude of the , Palestine Liberation Organization. Israel treated the movement with benign neglect until it turned violent in 1991. Then the government began deporting its leaders, and that sent others running for the border...
...time when exploiting presidential connections has meant everything from Billy Beer to serving on the board of a savings and loan, Roger has to figure out more than ever how to avoid becoming the family's buffoonish freeloader. It seemed benign for him to be employed by his brother's friends, television producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, working on the set of Designing Women and warming up the studio audience with his band. But now Coke and Pepsi are talking about the possibility of endorsements; on a Los Angeles radio show last month, he was asked to answer...
...industrial countries, as much as 50% of the population will suffer from a rash or other skin disease during the course of a year, compared with maybe 2% in the 1950s. "Is this an indication that pollutants have weakened human immune defenses, leaving city dwellers more vulnerable to otherwise benign diseases?" the epidemiologist asks. Many of the effects of environmental degradation are far from benign. In Upper Silesia, Poland, indiscriminate dumping of toxic wastes has so poisoned the land and water that 10% of the region's newborns have birth defects, from missing limbs to brain damage...
...immense security threat along the Gaza border. But Hamas clearly has the Israeli government's attention -- a sharp departure from the past, when security officials believed the fundamentalists to be more interested in spiritual matters and social work than political or military struggle. The Israelis treated the movement with benign neglect and hoped that it would erode support for the P.L.O...