Word: porousness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...also showed itself and the rest of the world that its defense and foreign policies could be confounded by a street gang. It demonstrated that it was willing to work a deal with kidnapers; that its military and covert forces were faulty and impotent; that its political intelligence was porous. Beyond these, it lost clarity in its foreign policy when clarity was needed most...
...Soviet operations. "The real problem is to get high-level penetrations of foreign power centers. Oleg Penkovsky (a top-ranking Moscow defector who supplied the U.S. with information on Soviet weaponry in the early 1960s) is worth a hundred Ph.D.s." But Penkovskys are not going to approach a porous...
...steady rise in the number of wells found to be contaminated by chemicals. Fully 50% of all Americans depend on ground rather than surface water for their drinking supply. Water that may have fallen to earth as long as a century ago has percolated slowly down through soil and porous rock to collect in vast underground aquifers that were virtually void of chemical and bacteriological impurities. Now substances, mostly petrochemicals thought to have been harmlessly disposed of years ago, are beginning to show up even in the deeper U.S. wells. This contamination will grow as those forgotten chemicals...
...ditch, and the trees along its banks are dead. Inside a wire fence, an acrid scent brings tears to visitors' eyes. Some of the tidily stacked barrels bear household names: General Electric, Dow Chemical, Shell Oil, Monsanto. Paint sludges collect in sticky red and green pools on the porous ground, and such chemicals as arsenic, benzene, toluene, trichloroethylene and naphthalene ooze from rusty barrels. Near by, two former dairy trucks, one still bearing the faded invitation DRINK REFRESHING MILK, contain dangerous chemical wastes...
...those particular instances, the dangers of loyalty were largely professional. When wider issues are at stake, however, a loyal friend may be a traitor to the rest of us. E.M. Forster, who wrote a moving, if porous, defense of personal loyalty in 1939, of all years, declared: "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." Forster then went on to concede that his viewpoint might be shocking and called upon Dante for support, arguing that Dante placed "Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circle...