Word: discordant
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When men disagree, the steps to resolution are reasonably clear and unsophisticated. Acts of physical violence are visited upon one another's person or property, and the whole thing blows over. Women? Nu-unh. We savor the discord. We draw it out. We share our contempt with our friends, like a useful stock tip, or really good salsa. And then we all go hate together: a mutually encouraging group activity for when the book group gets quiet...
...Still, despite the apparent discord over continuing air raids, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the differences between Washington and Islamabad on the issue. The U.S. has given the Pakistani military about $6 billion in aid since 9/11, and recently announced a plan to supply Pakistan with 18 new F-16 fighter planes to be armed with satellite guided bombs to take out militant encampments. "That's the element that is missing in the fight now on their western border," Air Force Major General Burton Field told a House panel earlier this month. Lacking precision-guided bombs, the Pakistani...
...gathered in Brussels on Sept. 1 was whether words would be enough to answer its giant and unapologetically bellicose neighbor to the east. The meeting was only the third such emergency summit that E.U. leaders have held. The first came after the Sept. 11 attacks; the second, riven with discord, convened in the run-up to the Iraq war. This conclave is as unlikely to enter the hit parade of diplomatic history as the first two. The leaders condemned Russia's unilateral recognition of South Ossetia and another breakaway province, Abkhazia, and called for Russian forces to be withdrawn...
...Games the centerpiece of his presidency, a moment of truth looms. He will face mounting pressure to loosen the party's grip on power. Nicholas Bequelin, China researcher for Human Rights Watch in New York City, believes the pre-Olympics tightening of controls is actually contributing to rising social discord. "The pressure is building in the pressure cooker, and there's no current avenue for it to be released. I believe we will see many calls both inside and outside the party to put some sort of reforms on the agenda again," Bequelin says...
...Social discord is on the rise, says Bequelin, and contributing to that is Beijing's increased tightening of control over the media and reducing access to courts and the petitioning system that allowed people in the provinces to bring their complaints to the capital. Those measures have left no avenue through which victims of China's headlong rush to development, like those who have had land seized, can express their unhappiness. "The pressure is building in the pressure cooker and there's no current avenue for it to be released," he says. "I believe we will see many calls both...