Word: evils
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...countries may occupy the remaining seats in the Axis of Evil clubhouse, but they're hardly on friendly terms on the football pitch. In 2005, the last time the Iranians played a competitive match in the North Korean capital, the game turned sour. Slipping to defeat, North Korean players vented their frustrations on the Syrian referee, pushing the official to the ground. Irate fans hurled missiles - plastic bottles, mostly - at the Iranian team. The scenes then were broadcast via satellite around the world, giving watchers of the isolated communist state a strange, unprecedented glimpse of what civil disturbance could look...
...side by side with the German Chancellor in a Germany that is now a vibrant democracy and a valued American ally. They could not have known these things. But still surrounded by death they willed themselves to hold fast to life. In their hearts they still had faith that evil would not triumph in the end, that while history is unknowable it arches towards progress, and that the world would one day remember them. And it is now up to us, the living, in our work, wherever we are, to resist injustice and intolerance and indifference in whatever forms they...
...this century, we've seen genocide. We've seen mass graves and the ashes of villages burned to the ground; children used as soldiers and rape used as a weapon of war. This places teaches us that we must be ever vigilant about the spread of evil in our own time, that we must reject the false comfort that others' suffering is not our problem and commit ourselves to resisting those who would subjugate others to serve their own interests...
...reflect today on the human capacity for evil and our shared obligation to defy it, we're also reminded of the human capacity for good. For amidst the countless acts of cruelty that took place here, we know that there were many acts of courage and kindness, as well. The Jews who insisted on fasting on Yom Kippur. The camp cook who hid potatoes in the lining of his prison uniform and distributed them to his fellow inmates, risking his own life to help save theirs. The prisoners who organized a special effort to protect the children here, sheltering them...
...just as we identify with the victims, it's also important for us I think to remember that the perpetrators of such evil were human, as well, and that we have to guard against cruelty in ourselves. And I want to express particular thanks to Chancellor Merkel and the German people, because it's not easy to look into the past in this way and acknowledge it and make something of it, make a determination that they will stand guard against acts like this happening again...