Word: freest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...standstill, the normally congested streets deserted. Thousands of police and riot-control troops out on patrol had the silent city to themselves. Citizens were staying home to protest the ruling military's refusal to hand over power to the man elected President on June 12 in the freest, fairest balloting in three decades. For a people accustomed to rule by force, the three-day strike was a brazen act of defiance...
John Williams' score, all thunder, lightning and self-importance, reinforces the film's charmlessness, and Hoffman's Hook emblematizes it. He's broody and self-absorbed, utterly gleeless in his villainy. But then even Robin Williams, that freest of comic spirits, never has a truly antic moment. Roberts, as Tinkerbell, is luckier than her co-stars. Her character has no obligation to try to fill the already overstuffed screen. Couldn't possibly do it anyway, since she's only a wee little fairy, a couple of inches tall. But Roberts is ingenuous, unaffected and what Hook is only some...
Since becoming independent from Britain in 1961, Kuwait has enjoyed the greatest democracy and freest press in the gulf region -- which is not saying much. The last parliament, elected in 1985, was suspended by the Emir in 1986 largely because it began to act like the U.S. Congress. Its sin: investigating the financial affairs of senior government officials. The Emir also imposed a press censorship that continues to this day. Pressure against the government's autocratic tendencies began to rise in 1990, so the Emir created a National Council, an assembly that could question policy but not legislate. The council...
...could not vote; permits required for public rallies were rarely granted; demonstrators were dispersed by force; political parties were banned. When the parliament was suspended in 1986, the press was censored as well, a particularly depressing action because Kuwait's papers, books and magazines had long been among the freest in the region. Whether it was accurate news from Lebanon or the Arabic version of Sesame Street, it could well have originated in Kuwait...
This whole strange country that can endlessly fool itself and be fooled and yet retain a saving common sense; this materialistic, money-driven country that is constantly caught up in moral, sometimes naively moralistic struggles; this smug country that is relentlessly self-critical; this freest of all countries in the world, living both the dangers and the triumphs of freedom...