Word: contemptible
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...weeks ago, the government of Nigeria demonstrated its contempt for justice by hanging Ken Saro-Wiwa, a nominee for the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, and eight other environmental activists. Hoping to silence one of its most eloquent critic, the Nigerian military junta executed Saro-Wiwa after a widely-condemned show trial for his alleged role in the deaths of four tribal chiefs killed during a riot. Harvard should divest itself of interests in companies that continue to do business in Nigeria despite its oppressive regime...
...STRONG SUBSURface themes of Smilla's Sense of Snow, the fine 1993 thriller by Peter Hoeg, a Danish novelist then new to America, was a slyly expressed contempt for what the author saw as his country's bourgeois self-satisfaction. This much relished contempt and cheerfully malign slyness are the driving forces of Hoeg's first novel, The History of Danish Dreams (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 356 pages; $24), which has now been issued in the U.S. That said, there's not much similarity between the two novels. Smilla has a powerful narrative flow; Dreams is a lumpish absurdity that fuddles...
...unpaid assessments is owed by all countries but one, with the U.S. the biggest deadbeat. Washington's arrears amount to $1.4 billion, or nearly a third of the U.N.'s combined budgets of $4.5 billion. The U.S. Congress's Republican majority has withheld payments as a gesture of contempt for the U.N.'s perceived wastefulness. America's 31% budget share may be too high, but the U.N. was justifiably stunned when Congress unilaterally slashed the levy to 25%. This month in the General Assembly, a parade of Uncle Sam's allies scolded this delinquency--what British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind...
...separate Republic of African America. The arrangement would confirm a secession that has already occurred in millions of minds all over the country. The attitude is that it was a horrible marriage from the start and has long since dissolved in chronic dysfunction, occasional riot and permanent mutual contempt. Why keep the ugly, abusive charade going? (Was it some such domestic metaphor playing in the unconscious mind that made the Simpson case so fascinating...
...without looking at the common grounds shared by everyone. In a recent piece by Cornel West for the New York Times, West writes, "For most whites, the Million Man March...can only worsen race matters. For them, he [Farrakhan] not only embodies black rage but also black hatred and contempt for whites." Exactly what is the black community mad about? There has never been a time in American history when all members of the black race have had opportunities before them...