Chinese officials appeared to condone the xenophobic outcry triggered by Western criticism of the clampdown.
At the time Volkswagen said the "highly stylised and choreographed" adverts were not intended to condone violence.
America, which for seven years has called the Taliban al-Qaeda's cousins, may find this harder to condone.
The novelist worked neither to correct nor to condone, and not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive.
The former head of the CBI, Lord Digby Jones, has criticised Coca-Cola over labelling that appears to condone taking unauthorised sick days.
For sure, governments are famously skittish about appearing to condone smoking, but this may be a case where the perfect is the enemy of the good.
The senior Iraqi official told NPR that it is in no way the policy of the Iraqi government to condone torture, but, he said, these are exceptional times.
Back at home, nationalist anger, stoked in part by state propaganda, has seen groups of Chinese target symbols of the countries that are seen to condone disrespect of China.
In 1976, paranoid about the communist threat, the king appeared to condone the growth of the right-wing vigilante movement whose members later took part in the slaughter of unarmed student protesters.
Even through self-immolations took place in medieval China and 20th-century Vietnam, even though the Lotus Sutra praises "burning for Buddha" as the supreme self-sacrifice, Buddhists are very reluctant to condone violence.
"We do welcome the fact that he has issued a swift comment that there was no intention to condone the Nazi regime, " said Jeremy Newmark, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council.
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The prospect of having to condone the involvement of German soldiers in what would be their first offensive mission since the second world war might now, some believe, prove the last straw.
One of these is the reluctance of the existing Commonwealth countries to have anything to do with Britain qua colonial power, to seem to condone colonialism by accepting a colony as a partner in their company.
Membership of the Christian Coalition, which provided the foot-soldiers for the Gingrich revolution in 1994, is plummeting, its finances are chaotic, and its leader, Pat Robertson, is under fire for appearing to condone China's policy of enforced abortions.
Under fire for having spared Saddam Hussein's Iraq from bombing, and struggling to convince Congress of the need for further peace-keeping in the Balkans, the Clinton administration may reckon it increasingly awkward to be thought to condone Mr Milosevic.
But the ASA ruled that the ad was unlikely to "encourage or condone cruelty to animals or cause serious or widespread offence".
Political parties continue to organize and condone the intimidation of voters, often perpetrated by their youth wings.
But Scotland Yard warned the sentence should be a warning to those who condone or stay silent about the mistreatment of women in their communities.
By contrast, on August 5, the Prime Minister announced that he was "absolutely and completely committed" to ensuring that those foreign clerics and others who come to Britain and condone, glorify or justify terrorism are deported.
In a statement, Cupid, whose websites include cupid.com, benaughty.com, girlsdateforfree.com and flirt.com, said the company "does not employ members of staff to create fake profiles, impersonate users or use any other dubious practice to encourage customers to take out subscriptions or in order to retain existing customers, nor would the company condone, promote or persuade employees to do so".
It would be very hard for him to do anything but implicitly condone the attack.
"The officers of this association cannot possibly condone his decision to ask for the Labour whip, " it said in a statement.
We have a strong commitment to diversity and we do not condone, or tolerate, discrimination within our business for any reason.
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But prosecutor John Skrzynski objected, arguing that the pictures were irrelevant to the charges and that the defense was only going to use the proposed evidence to generate sympathy for Youk and condone Kevorkian's actions.
UN, will have to convince the world (including the criminals) that they will not condone crime as their predecessors were sometimes thought to do when the criminals have political friends.
"We do not condone it, we would like them to stop, " says Bassam Khoury, the Palestinian Authority's Economy Minister.
I'm a real Scotland fan and I want to see them do well but I can hardly condone what we saw in Cardiff.
While the CIA would not comment on the report, an agency spokesman told NPR that renditions are an anti-terror tool that the United States has used for years and is consistent with international law, and that the CIA does not condone torture or the transport of individuals to other countries for the purposes of torture.
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