Word: flashpoint
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1983-1983
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Black workers have approached Black faculty, staff and students throughout the University to rally support for the workers' efforts to get a fairer shake from Harvard. After all, the conflict between seniority and affirmative action is a flashpoint of the struggle for racial justice in the context of fiscal austerity and job cutbacks. If we Third World students were up in arms about job opportunities for relatively privileged legal scholars, then we are righteously even more animated by the stark spectacle of Black workers and their families literally losing their livelihoods...
What purpose do the U.S. Marines serve in Beirut? What purpose could they conceivably serve? There can be no peace in Lebanon without political reconciliation. Perhaps U.S. diplomacy can speed such reconciliation, but the Marines in Beirut are merely a flashpoint for new hostilities. They are clay ducks vulnerable to any of the many anti-U.S. terrorists in Beirut. Did we not learn our lesson in Vietnam? Foreign armies cannot solve domestic political squabbles...