Word: basics
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister, rallied students to a vast bonfire outside the University of Berlin, where the works of illustrious liberals (Emile Zola) and Jews (Heinrich Heine) were consigned to the flames. Jews were barred from public office, the civil service and professions like teaching and journalism. The basic idea behind all this was embodied in the slogan "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" (One people, one nation, one leader...
Meanwhile, at Washington's National Zoo another experiment was under way: scientists wanted to acquaint their rare golden lion tamarins with a facsimile of their natural habitat, a lowland Brazilian forest. But the coddled, zoo- happy monkeys lacked some basic skills -- how, for instance, to peel a banana. Instead, they fell out of the trees and got lost in the woods...
Beyond the aesthetic and mechanical challenges, there is the basic issue of what zoogoers should be allowed to see in a naturalistic setting. Zoo directors refer to "the Bambi syndrome," a belief common among visitors that all creatures should be cuddly, or at least not killers. A while back, the Detroit Zoo staff euthanatized a dying goat from the children's zoo and placed it in the African-swamp exhibit, which includes big vultures. Doing what came naturally, the vultures ate the goat. About half the zoogoers who happened upon the scene were fascinated, says director Steve Graham...
...qualifications. The former FBI agent and Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan conceded that he "was new to the law." A practicing attorney for only two years, he had never tried a case, written a brief or argued an appeal. Most damaging, Lucas displayed a woeful ignorance of basic civil rights issues. Asked about the distinction between de facto (actual) and de jure (legal) segregation, Lucas drew a blank. "If it had been a white man who had been nominated who had the same background," said Alabama Democrat Howell Heflin, "he wouldn't have gotten anywhere. I think the fact...
...decided last week to form a legal opposition calling itself the Interregional Group. At a freewheeling conference in Moscow's House of Cinema, the new faction elected a collective leadership and adopted a platform that called for rewriting the Soviet Constitution to make the system safe for pluralism and basic civil rights. In a direct challenge to Leninism, the central dogma of the Soviet Union, the organizers agreed that the power to rule should be taken from the Communist Party and handed to an elected government...