Word: public
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Summer Olympics and World's Fair in 1992, a vibrant mood of enterprise and enthusiasm mirrors the distant days of another century, when Spanish ships braved the unknown to discover new lands and Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. Even Italy is awash in cash and exuding optimism, despite creaking public services and revolving-door governments that can be in and out of office faster than it takes a letter to go from Rome to Milan. "To speak of Europhoria is right," says Foreign Minister Gianni de Michelis. "There is a change of perception, not just among governments but among...
...debate over the Acre road places environmentalists in an uncomfortable position, essentially telling Brazilians that they cannot be trusted with their own development. Raimundo Marques da Silva, a retired public servant who helped build Acre's original dirt highway, asks, "How would Americans feel if years ago we had told them they could not build a road from New York to California because it would destroy their forests...
Fabio Feldmann, the leading environmentalist in the Brazilian congress, alleges that much of the momentum behind the dam projects and other large public works derives from an extremely lucrative relationship between the major contractors and politicians. A dam may not have to make all that much sense if it generates sufficient commisso (commissions) for the right people...
...even moral laxity. But we are all the product of our life experiences, and I, like so many of my peers, cannot entirely abandon this Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds heritage. Normally I only share these slightly outre sentiments with close friends. But such views have become a public issue with drug czar William Bennett's attacks on my generation's self-indulgence, coupled with George Bush's prime-time address to the nation on drugs. For in identifying those responsible for the cocaine crisis, the President pointedly included "everyone who looks the other way." Am I really...
...list, alas, is long. Begin with public officials who have exploited the issue for 20 years, advocating phony feel-good nostrums like the current fad for drug testing in the workplace, as if mid-level bureaucrats were society's prime offenders. Joining the politicians in the dock are those antidrug crusaders who have either squandered credibility with exaggerated scare talk or strained credulity with prissy pronouncements. The media are culpable as well, for sensationalized coverage that has often served to glamourize the menace they are decrying. Then there are the social-policy conservatives who purport to see no connection between...