Word: vanishings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Nablus, the largest Arab city in the West Bank. After two years of revolt, the ancient and impoverished community has won distinction as the most dangerous turf in the occupied territories. The dense, mazelike architecture gives the Palestinians a home- court advantage, enabling the young shabab (activists) to vanish down secret passageways or disappear over rooftops. Nervous soldiers respond with trigger-happy brutality. The consequences: at least 23 residents have been killed by Israeli troops, and more than 1,000 wounded. Internecine bloodshed has claimed an additional 18 Arabs accused of collaborating with the Israelis. Israelis feel no safer...
...certainties vanish. The earth liquefies. It becomes as wild as surf. The solid is abruptly fluid. Normally, earth is the refuge, the stability, the foundation of things. The earth should be alive only to grow vegetables and flowers. Now the earth itself becomes a beast, all teeth and gashes and sudden topplings. Reality has turned molten and violent...
...pictures have been piling up for 150 years. Battlefields, floods, summit conferences, auto accidents, congratulatory handshakes, game-winning touchdowns. Most scenes vanish quickly into the newspaper morgue. A few, however, linger in the mind's eye. Of the billions of metal sheets, glass plates, celluloid spools and other light-sensitive surfaces exposed to history in the name of publishing, only a handful of images have themselves become part of history. These form a sort of shared visual heritage for the human race, a treasury of significant memories. Every educated person should be familiar with them, just...
...Friday plunge of 108.35 points. Last week's drop-off rekindled fears that an era of heedless borrowing by corporations and the Federal Government might finally be coming to grief. At the very least, the rout reminded investors that the stock market is a volatile place where fortunes can vanish at the touch of a computer key. After one frantic hour of selling conducted to a large extent by program trades, nearly $200 billion of stock values were wiped out last week...
...been poisoned before, 3 billion years ago, when the blue-green algae began manufacturing oxygen. That was the first ecological crisis. Life survived then. Life will not vanish now, but this may be the last chance for humans to go along gracefully...