Word: westernism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Like many of Western civilization's finest achievements, the long and scrumptious history of waffles can be traced to ancient Greece, when Athenians cooked obelios - flat cakes between two metal plates - over burning embers. The word waffle is related to wafer, as in the communion wafer - one of the only victuals that early Catholics could eat during fasting periods since wafers didn't contain animal fats, eggs or dairy products. During the Middle Ages, when bakeries decided to compete with monasteries in the wafer market, the secular - and considerably tastier - waffle was born. (See the top 10 food trends...
...Haqqani network is believed to have long-standing links with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence organization, while senior Western diplomats allege that Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban continues to operate out of the southwestern city of Quetta - a claim furiously denied by Pakistan's military. Many suspect that the reason that the Afghan Taliban manages to operate unmolested on Pakistani soil is Pakistan's need to maintain leverage in Afghanistan, where the U.S. presence is viewed as temporary. Indeed, some Pakistani observers suggest that even if a U.S. surge is successful, it will at best lead...
...Friday's meeting in Brussels between representatives of the group of Western powers, Russia and China that has been negotiating with Iran produced little indication that new sanctions may be imminent if Iran continue to prevaricate. The difficulty facing Washington in mustering support for ratcheting up pressure on Iran was already clear in Thursday's statement by a Russian foreign ministry official that, "As far as we know, there has been no final official answer from Tehran", and that "there is currently no discussion on working out additional sanctions against Iran." And Friday's Brussels meeting simply reaffirmed disappointment...
...Russian position is technically correct: Iran hasn't formally responded, but for the Western powers, that's the whole point - the proposed deal was negotiated weeks ago with Iranian representatives in Vienna, and Iran's government was asked to endorse it within a couple of days. But the plan faced a firestorm of criticism from across the political spectrum in Tehran, prompting the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to backtrack. The aspect of the plan that most appeals to the West - removing from Iran most of a uranium stockpile that could hypothetically be turned into a weapon, and returning...
Such arrangements are anathema to the key Western powers, of course. But the key leaders in Tehran don't appear to feel a wall at their backs on the nuclear issue. Mottaki's insistence that Iran accepts the "framework" of the deal and Ahmadinjead's declaration last weekend that the Islamic Republic is committed to "nuclear cooperation" with the international community suggests that they know they'll have to show flexibility and deal, but they may still believe they can strike a more favorable agreement - or withstand the level of pressure the U.S. and its allies can muster...