Word: present-day
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Clearly, the politics of present-day Lebanon and of the Middle East as a region are extremely complex. For this reason, any single incident that takes place cannot be viewed as an isolated occurrence, but must be interpreted as it emerged from a larger context of conditions and causes. The hijacking of flight 847 by Lebanese Shiites is an event which must be evaluated from the broad perspective. I do not suggest the interpretation that Mr. Kahn is so quick to reject, that U.S. foreign policy is directly responsible for the hijacking; nor do I in any way condone...
...every turn, Hav's storybook past collides with the neon present. The annual Roof Race, Europe's oddest sporting event, sends multinational Havians sprinting across the peeling ruins left by Athenian, Czarist and British occupations. Noel Coward and Nijinsky played here in Hav's heyday; Nazis hid out among its elite residents. Present-day Havians are baffling shadows. The last pretender to the Turkish caliphate, a principal shareholder in Hav TV, tries to marry Morris to his vizier. She sips coffee with a Chinese financial pirate and recognizes a bartender at the opulent casino from his days at Harry...
...Some 200 pages later, many of them stingingly funny, Kanfer ends his novel invoking the same message. Yet the novel itself lies somewhere on the continuum between tragedy and farce. Ostensibly it is a sardonic burlesque of the United Nations (here thinly disguised as the World Body) and its present-day cast of characters, but underneath runs a current of sadness that the ideals of the 1940s have been overrun by the travesties of the '80s. One veteran envoy, producing an old Esperanto primer, even remembers when "one universal language would make war obsolete...
...beginning of history? In 1983, our entrance into then-Christian-controlled Lebanon was in a peace-keeping capacity. We tried to end the bitter war which threatened Israel, flattened Beirut and advanced Syria's goal of geographical expansion into "Greater Syria," a goal which happens to include domination of present-day Israel. After terrorists killed 241 U.S. servicemen and we pulled out of Beirut, after Israel pulled out of the region, the fighting between Christians and Moslems continued as fiercely as ever. It will continue as it has for hundreds of years...
...said that in March of 1942 . . . in certain present-day standards of something called 'credibility,' he would have been telling the quote truth unquote. But . . . he would have been telling a profound lie because he and Churchill and Stalin and millions of us mobilized faith and hope in necessity . . . Now, you must not expect people to try to poor-mouth % what it is they are trying to accomplish. Nobody else does it. Why should we in government...