Word: bleak
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Things weren't always so bleak. Last November, Bush brought Palestinians and Israelis together in pursuit of a paper-only deal with minimal on-the-ground concessions in the hope of creating political momentum for peace. A good idea, until resurgent attacks by the militant Palestinian group Hamas made a paper-only deal seem like just that. Now even White House spokeswoman Dana Perino admits, "We have a hell of a lot of work...
Nevertheless, few subjects escape the artist's bleak skepticism. Still lifes tend to comment on the transience of things, but Goya's piles of lifeless fish and game lend unexpected violence to this theme: the white fur of a rabbit's belly exposes the wound where it was shot; the blank eyes of a lamb's skull look disconsolately at its butchered torso. Equally unsettling, a large painting of The Taking of Christ is notable less for the sorrowful figure at its center than for the jeering, crazed mob that surrounds him. The same menacing irrationality appears in disturbing later...
...didn't always look so bleak. Last November Bush brought Arabs and Israelis together in Annapolis, Md., to launch a final-year push for peace. Though there were skeptics, Bush was proposing something none of his predecessors had tried: a "paper only" deal that would be signed even with minimal on-the-ground concessions. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas were so politically weak, Bush negotiators thought, such a deal might be the only way they each could hold on to power...
...sense of security. The exterior goings-on of this “Pleasantville”-esque neighborhood renders its interior discord shocking. “Snow Angels,” while successful in its faithful representation of human relationships, suffers from some heavy-handed production choices that warp the bleak into the boring. Most notably, the ending drags on painfully as the climax gets buried beneath a long series of concluding scenes. Green manages to tie together each relationship’s loose threads—some neatly, some clumsily—but the time he takes...
...government was set to lift a curfew that has been in place since fighting broke out between government forces and the Mahdi Army at the end of last month. Residents of the beleaguered neighborhood - where American forces are assisting the Iraqi military in daily operations - say the situation remains bleak, and most are subsisting without water or electricity. "It was quieter today, but the streets are empty. We heard some bombing from American planes in another area," Sadr City resident, Eman Hamid, told TIME. "The Americans are moving from building to building. They are on the roofs of the buildings...