Word: pitilessness
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...Roman Catholic schoolboy. A mediocre student, he won a scholarship to study in Paris largely because so few candidates applied. There, the future communist leader read the works of Marx ("I didn't really understand them," he confessed) and, more usefully, a Stalinist political primer that urged "pitiless repression" of all enemies. Inspired in part by the French Revolution, Pol Pot's hotchpotch ideology was grounded in a warped version of Cambodian Buddhist theology and dreams of past national greatness. "If our people can make Angkor," he said, referring to the ancient Khmer empire, "they can make anything...
...made the Soviet Union seem like the way of the future, until prices collapsed. Putin has not used the boom to diversify the country's economic base. He claims victory in Chechnya but has only devastated the tiny republic, not pacified it. Hard-line Chechen secessionists are waging a pitiless war of urban terrorism in Moscow and elsewhere. Russia is a much more dangerous place to live now than before Putin came to power. In politics, he speaks of democracy but opts for authoritarianism. The result is in all but name a one-party system in which suspicion...
...Uzan with insulting the government, a crime under Turkish law punishable by up to six years in prison. In his interview with Time, Uzan pulled out a Turkish dictionary, flipped to a page bookmarked for the occasion, and read from the colloquial definition of the word infidel: "'without mercy, pitiless, without conscience.'" In that context, he says, "I would say it again." The government insists it was merely upholding the law when it shut the Uzan businesses down. Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said the Uzan utilities failed to pay debts and repeatedly refused to turn over their transmission lines...
...Pianist is a raw, unblinking film. It teaches that in dire circumstances our only obligation is to our own survival; all else--culture, ideology, even love--is a dispensable luxury. We admire Szpilman for the way he embraces that pitiless truth. We admire this film for its harsh objectivity and refusal to seek our tears, our sympathies...
...does a country show off its fresh liberty? A frilly sock, a dance, justice twinned with mercy. It has been seven months since the Taliban, with its pitiless version of Islamic rule, fell from power under the pressure of U.S. bombs. Last week 1,575 Afghan delegates representing all regions, all ethnicities and both sexes met in Kabul in a loya jirga, or traditional council, and chose as their new President for the next two years Hamid Karzai, who has served as interim leader since the Taliban collapsed. His administration, so far, is noted less for what it has rebuilt...