Word: chasms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Europe was set to paper, on a continent unsettled but past the worst of the postwar period. The air was clear of sulfur if not spleen. Ireland was a small rock in the North Atlantic made relevant only by its cultural totems and ever increasing diaspora. In Berlin a chasm was opening up between East and West--the partition of lives, fortunes and fates. In the global struggle between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., between freedom and totalitarianism, Europe was the fault line and the front line. Old Europe was being rebuilt to fight the next war: a battle...
...bridge connecting the two neighborhoods is now closed for security reasons--just as well, since the chasm between them is too wide for any man-made span. Mortars fired from the cemetery behind Abu Hanifa, a Sunni shrine in Adhamiya, have caused carnage in the bustling markets of the western bank. There are more mortars going in the opposite direction; on a recent afternoon, the sound of an explosion on the Sunni side of the river is greeted with cheers by worshippers at a Shi'ite shrine in Khadamiya...
...UNBRIDGEABLE CHASM...
...Iraqi colonel told Time that the captured men all seemed to be Shi'a and came from heavily Shi'a areas such as Hilla, Karbala and Diwaniya. Given the chasm between the two groups' religious and political goals, an alliance between al-Qaeda and the Army of Heaven seems far-fetched. It is more likely an attempt to divert attention from unsettling realities. Chief among those realities is the Iraqi Army's inability to defeat a band of cultists without hours of air support from the U.S. military. This speaks to the limits of the Iraqi Army's competence...
...passage, Kapuscinski describes a road trip in East Africa that stalled when the road descended into a massive sinkhole. Cars and trucks had to nose slowly into the chasm then be hauled up the other bank by chain and human hand. Kapuscinski details the setting and the inconvenience, then turns his attention to the men helping the passing vehicles, the women selling drinks or food to waiting drivers, the other little businesses that had sprung up, and the atmosphere of fellowship that had emerged around this abyss...