Taken together with the major characteristic of the event surprise these factors may have contributed to a context of compounding uncertainty, which stifled national responses and hindered decision making and adequate action.
Breen tormented them with the spectre of what anti-Semites might do as a way of stifling their response to what anti-Semitism was already doing — and would do, in Europe, with annihilating violence.
Opiates are a central nervous system depressant, and they stifle brain responses to pain without affecting the cause of the pain.
Because the "fight or flight" response is stifled, stress results in escalating anger.
"The bacterium is stifling the immune response completely, so that the body doesn't know it is being infected," said Dr. Robert C. Liddington of the Burnham Institute in Torrey Pines, Calif.
"What are we doing!", "We work so hard!", "Vive la revolution!" they cried, via Twitter, while I sat at my computer trying to stifle my immediate response: "Stop bloody whinging!" Despite my instinctive inner-eye-roll, I know stress in academia is a legitimate issue, for both staff and students.
But rigid adherence to annual fixed plans and budgets stifled innovation, hindering the corporate response to the earnings and cost pressures that arose in the 1980s and 1990s from the demands of institutional shareholders, foreign manufacturers' entry into domestic markets, and the ratcheting up of competition.
A lot of creative processes are being stifled by the knee-jerk responses of intellectual-property holders to even the slightest use of parts of their original work.
They stifle customers' emotional responses to marketing offers.
They argued that critics are misrepresenting the class and that the university was stifling academic freedom in response to demands from Israel advocacy groups.
Some part of current inflation was likely being suppressed by administrative measures, it cautioned, adding: "This may stifle the appropriate supply response to higher prices and could lead to the inflationary dynamic showing more inertia and persistence during this cycle".
