Word: understands
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...departing from this tradition, Stanislaw Lem shifted his focus from society to the individual. He considers his early utopian novels too optimistic and naive, and in his mature works he is interested in the subjective view of the individual as he tries to cope with a reality he cannot understand. And although his novels are often set in futuristic or chimerical landscapes, Lem's characters are in essence real-life men facing problems familiar to every reader...
...resigned. Further, Ford writes, "I did ask Haig about the extent of a President's pardon power." But after being warned by Aide John Marsh that the mention of a pardon in this context was "a time bomb," Ford later read Haig a statement: "I want you to understand that I have no intention of recommending what the President should do about resigning or not resigning and that nothing we talked about yesterday afternoon should be given any consideration in whatever decision the President may wish to make...
Soviet Union. During a 1977 visit to Moscow by Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev proposed opening a Soviet consulate in Benghazi. Fine, said Gaddafi, Libya would like a consulate in Tashkent. "Why Tashkent?" asked Brezhnev. "Because I understand there are a lot of Muslims in that part of Russia," Gaddafi answered, "and I'd like to take care of them." Obviously unwilling to give the fiery Libyan a chance to arouse religious feelings among the Soviet Union's 50 million Muslims, the Kremlin leaders shelved the notion. The Muslims of the U.S.S.R. constitute a demographic time...
...predecessors. Perplexingly grand and "Oriental," incorporating elements of Judeo-Christianity, Islam never fully submitted to the West's power. Its various states and empires always provided the West with formidable political and cultural contestants-and with opportunities to affirm a "superior" Occidental identity. Thus, for the West, to understand Islam has meant trying to convert its variety into a monolithic undeveloping essence, its originality into a debased copy of Christian culture, its people into fearsome caricatures...
...culture, imperial policy. In films and cartoons, Muslim Arabs, for example, are represented either as bloodthirsty mobs, or as hooknosed, lecherous sadists. Academic experts decreed that in Islam everything is Islamic, which amounted to the edifying notions that there was such a thing as an "Islamic mind," that to understand the politics of Algeria one had best consult the Koran, that "they" (the Muslims) had no understanding of democracy, only of repression and medieval obscurantism. Conversely, it was argued that so long as repression was in the U.S. interest, it was not Islamic but a form of modernization...