He came as a ruler intent on restoring order in his domains.
"They're intent on keeping order, but their position now is they want to remain neutral," said the American ambassador, R. Niels Marquardt, who, along with other diplomats, has tried to talk the two politicians off the ledge.
Inside the White House, officials feared that if the looters were shot -- the fastest way to send the message that the United States was intent on restoring order -- the pictures on Al Jazeera would reinforce the worst images of America in the Arab world.
But nothing deflates a thriving club scene like repeated unheralded visits by a local constabulary intent on upholding "social order".
Just as after the July 7 terrorist bombings of 2005, Britons were forced to acknowledge that their own society had bred those intent on overturning its order.
I'll be along in fifteen minutes, all right?" She stood defiant, intent on executing her orders even though she was only five years old.
But as with so much of what happens in Russia, working out the direction of that change depends on what you make of Mr. Putin: sinister former K.G.B. officer bent on dragging the country back toward the fearful obedience of the Soviet Union, or simply a tough but modern-minded enforcer intent on bringing some order out of chaos?
Averting his eyes, Recorder John Williams told Gough: "I'm afraid there is going to be a revolving door in and out of prison, because you are intent on flouting these orders and there is absolutely no way you are going to comply with them".
He will have to claim, not only that a slippery slope might be set in motion by the adoption of 'Decision 1', but that it will overpower whatever – legal, institutional, psychological, moral – resistances and safeguards responsible citizens and politicians, aware of the risks, are intent on putting in place in order to avoid the morally problematic decision being made.
His top business adviser can say the UN's climate body is intent on a "new world order" and his backbenchers can label green groups "terrorists" or call for an inquiry into climate science and there is no internal fallout.
