Word: raison
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...forcibly cleansed from their homeland during the so-called "War of Independence." The facts about the war are rarely mentioned in the U.S. media and are continuously disregarded by many with direct ties to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. My intention here is not to raise questions about Israel's raison d'être, legitimacy or right to exist. I am simply informing those who do not know, and reminding those who have forgotten, that a Jewish homeland was created in the midst of an Arab population...
...disconcerting yet exhilarating life becomes when everyone scrambles to make sense of sudden changes in circumstances. To wonder how future advances in science will change our perspective of ourselves, and how these new truths will affect those who may never grasp the importance of their meaning, is the true raison d'etre...
...each case, predictably enough, it's payback time. Mr. Payback gets on the job, and with the help of the computer-literate Gwen and her pet geese--whose raison d'etre in the film is totally inexplicable --exacts revenge upon the villain responsible for his client's humiliation. The final scene always involves the wronged individual confronting the wrongdoer (as in life itself, the wrongdoer is always a white male) and meting out to him his just desserts, the exact nature of which are determined by audience participation...
...flows from the design of an institution with a broad, credible mandate which boasts popular and ongoing support and the efficient exercise and evolution of the institution. Every written mandate, from the U.S. Constitution to the constitution of the Harvard-Radcliffe Canadian Club, is a consensual statement of the raison d'etre of a group and its system for allocating collective power among its members. All who operate under such a constitution respect and believe...
...model for Woolf's Orlando). Though not as well-known to American audiences (her one-woman show, A Room of One's Own, also adapted from Woolf, aired on PBS), Atkins is every bit as good as the dowdy, neurasthenic Virginia. It is the language that is the raison d'etre here, and the two actresses toy with it deliciously. Nevertheless, the material is simply not weighty enough to sustain the nearly 2 1/2 hrs. The words are beautiful, but the subject matter -- auto trips, Virginia's health, contemporaries unknown to us -- becomes tedious...