Most people chafe under too much authority, too much forcefulness, too much control.

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The Obama administration is not the first to chafe under these restraints, but it has been among the most flagrant in ignoring them.

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Yet millions of Iranians chafe under irksome limits to their freedom and blame their country's international isolation on bellicose posturing by Mr Ahmadinejad.

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Algeria's private businessmen chafe under a heavy bureaucratic yoke.

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The western regions have the highest proportion of non-Han minorities. (Uighurs and Tibetans outnumber the Han in Xinjiang and Tibet respectively, where they chafe under Chinese rule.) The regions have the least-secure parts of China's long borders.

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