Word: fruitlessness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...chief negotiator, Rex Reed, met briefly with Watts several times last week, but the talks were fruitless. Watts, who has led three previous rounds of bargaining with AT&T since 1974 and has always won big wage gains for his union, predicted that the strike could go on "a very long time." Said he: "At the moment, I don't see any kind of an immediate agreement at all. If the company's negotiators have any intention of changing their position, they're the straightest-faced poker players I've ever been up against...
...more than a year, U.S. advisers fretted about the army's "9-to-5 war," in which Salvadoran officers took their units on fruitless guerrilla chases during the day, then returned to their garrisons at night, leaving the Salvadoran countryside to the rebels of the Faraibundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.). As a result, the guerrillas have held the initiative in the war, using hit-and-run strikes, mobility and economic sabotage to wear down the battered country...
...Parisians themselves helped to twist my fruitless venture into a routine exercise in humiliation by placing me at the mercy of either their effusive kindness or black hearted contempt. One garrulous shopkeeper held me captive with a rapid-fire series of cheerful comments and questions, most of which flew past my comprehension. A neighboring grocer whacked my hand and swept me out of the store when I squeezed a tomato. The fact that I was unable to find simple and moderate good-naturedness among the Parisians left me jangled and teary-eyed at the end of each...
...aftermath of the whole saga, observers of Eastern European affairs remain split about the implications of Harvard's invitation to Walesa. Some argue that the gesture, though fruitless, carried symbolic significance. "I think it's a very good thing Harvard invited him," says Jeri Laber, executive director of the Helsinki Watch Committee, a prominent human rights monitoring group. "It's important that there be as much support in the West as possible for anyone who's the subject of as much harassment as he is. The more invitations like this the better...
...conservative members of the Committee knew only the language of cost-benefit analysis. In their strictly utilitarian calculations secure profits often weighed equally with considerations of simple justice. Other conservative members favored casting the issue in terms of revolution versus gradual change. Debates on the ACSR, then, often became fruitless clashes between incompatible moral jargons...