Word: specter
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...double agreement was a notable stroke for Iraq, which had been threatened with the specter of a Western boycott of its newly acquired oil, and loss of oil revenues that approach $1 billion annually. Even so, the government may still be in difficulty. The French could insist on taking oil as compensation for their investment in I.P.C., thus paying nothing for it; or they could offer payment in goods-chiefly heavy equipment-tagged with artificially high prices...
...designed to ensure his safety, and we conclude that it was reasonable." Dissenting, Brennan, Douglas and Marshall worried about the ease with which a policeman could search anyone and then say that an informant had "told" him what to look for. Said Marshall: "Today's decision invokes the specter of a society in which innocent citizens may be stopped, searched and arrested at the whim of police officers...
...specter of Viet Nam loomed, by omission, in an otherwise highly effective television speech Nixon had made earlier from the Great Kremlin Palace to the Russian people. "We, like you, are an open, natural and friendly people," he said. Americans "cherish personal liberty" and "would fight to defend it if necessary as we have done before." Yet, "however much we like our own system for ourselves, we have no desire to impose it on anyone else." Appealing for "a world free of fear," Nixon drew tears from some listeners by recalling the words of Tanya, a Russian girl whose entire...
Because man "is frightened to death by the specter of death," he tries to pretend that it does not exist, at least not for him; in the subconscious mind, "it is other people who die." Studying 350 terminal patients, Weisman found that denial can take many forms. Often a gravely ill patient, alarmed at being in a hospital, may say, "My doctor wants to be sure I don't have anything serious." Sometimes a sick person, worried about his loss of weight, may go on a diet to have a reassuring reason for the loss...
...federal agencies can improve their productivity by considerably more than 2% a year and still remain something less than models of efficiency. Also, the task force made no attempt to assess what has caused the rise in output per man-hour. Government officials speculate only that the ever-present specter of budget cuts and hold-downs has forced federal managers to figure out their own ways to get more out of their workers...