Word: rare
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Such self-protective steps presumably are rare, but there is little doubt that the nation's air controllers are straining to handle their workload. A survey by the Government's General Accounting Office last March produced some disturbing findings: an overwhelming 91% of controllers complained that the system does not have enough qualified controllers, 70% reported that they handle more traffic in peak periods than they should be required to accept, 69% claimed that their heavy workloads adversely affect air safety. In the fiscal year before the 1981 strike, controllers put in 377,000 hours of overtime; in 1985 they...
...Kremlin watchers, several things were noteworthy about those remarks. They were Gorbachev's first pronouncements on religion since he took office 22 months ago. Indeed, it is rare for a Soviet General Secretary to attack religion so directly; that is usually left to underlings. Beyond that, the critique suggested the Kremlin is concerned that the state's struggle against religion has not been going well. Finally, the fact that Gorbachev chose Tashkent as the place to attack religion indicated that the Soviet leadership is specifically fearful about the currents of fundamentalist zealotry sweeping the Islamic world, which might eventually infect...
...contemplates the enormous challenges before her, Aquino can take heart, perhaps, from her rare gift for surprise. Stalin is said to have claimed that "you can't make a revolution with silk gloves." Edward Bulwer- Lytton, the British 19th century novelist, believed that "revolutions are not made with rose water." And Oliver Wendell Holmes pronounced that "revolutions are not made by men in spectacles." In coming to power on a wing and a prayer, Aquino has already disproved them...
...reviving the promise of democracy without bloodshed, all too rare in the past, the Philippine revolution also held up a candle of hope in some of the world's darker corners. Moderate South Africans, for example, could take some heart from the success of civil disobedience; nor could they fail to note the victory of a woman who was once her jailed husband's ambassador to the world, much as Winnie Mandela works in the name of her imprisoned husband Nelson. In overthrowing Marcos, moreover, Aquino helped erase a whole volume of shibboleths. She showed that politics could...
...Aquino's stunning rise allowed the world a rare chance to suspend its disbelief and exult, 1986 also gave it many more familiar opportunities to distrust its leaders and to weep. Late in the year, the Reagan Administration was suddenly shaken by the disclosure that it had been covertly selling arms to Iran in an attempt to win freedom for American hostages in Lebanon. That dubious policy flared into scandal with the revelation that some of the money received for the arms had been diverted, apparently in violation of congressional laws, to the contra rebels in Nicaragua. As questions multiplied...