Word: comprehend
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Though the two states have been closely scrutinizing each other for decades, they still seem astonishingly ignorant of the way each other's political systems function and the premises underlying policy decisions. Moscow, for instance, appears unable to comprehend the U.S. Congress's fundamental independence. After meeting with Soviet leaders last week, Senator Howard Baker, the Tennessee Republican, concluded that "the Soviet Union does not fully understand the role of the Senate debate" in ratifying SALT. Adds one U.S. expert: "The Soviets see the treaty in strict political terms. They see it as yes or no. Carter can either deliver...
...gardens, majestic mountains and mighty rivers, art and artifacts as old as civilization: they are all there, glittering, tangible and not quite believable. Off the usual tourist track are the ramshackle tenements, mud-walled village cottages and the grinding labor of the peasant, equally hard for the Westerner to comprehend. They will all become picture postcards of the mind, but on first encounter they are closer to hallucination than reality...
...took only a few seconds more for Hassan Bandegi, 52, head of the town council in the pleasant northeastern Iran community of Tabas, to comprehend what was happening. In a country that has recorded 20,000 earthquakes and aftershocks in the past 18 years and suffered an estimated 100,000 casualties as a result, another temblor of major proportion had struck. In its aftermath last week, even seasoned rescue workers were appalled by what they found as they dug through the ruins of Tabas. Of the town's 17,000 people, as many as 15,000 had perished...
Belatedly, and at great cost, the Shah himself has begun to comprehend the real nature of Iran's malaise and his role in its creation (see Interview page 43). In other societies run by strong rulers - Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, Leopold Senghor's Senegal, Tito's Yugoslavia - literate and cultivated populations have succeeded in matching political progress with economic and cultural development. But Iran's unique society, so influenced by its religious structure and rooted for centuries in a different world, simply could not adjust to such radical change. The Shah failed to realize that the dramatic alterations...
...stereotypes in himself and twists them, turns them around, shatters them as any real person does just by living, and lets them color his life without defining it. He has a Jewish outlook, a Jewish sense of humor--some of which, as a confirmed goy, I could not comprehend--a Jewish pride, and yet he remains a universal character. To Levine, as to Halberstam, ethnicity and personal background are important parts of life, and learning to cope with them--when to use them as a form of instinct, and (more important) when to ignore them--is the key to personal...