Word: commit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...JAPAN, though Asia's most modern nation, has two despised minorities. Members of the pariah Eta caste are scorned because their impoverished ancestors were forced to perform the most degrading tasks-including the clearing of corpses from samurai battlefields. Etas perennially try to "pass" into respectable society, often commit suicide if caught. The 600,000 Koreans in Japan are called "senjin," the Nipponese equivalent of nigger. Japanese look down on them because Japan ruled Korea as a slave state for 35 years. In Author Kobo Abe's celebrated novel, Woman in the Dunes, one character, a socialist, notes...
...makes it unhealthy, if no less popular, to commit such "crimes against honor" as rubbing the nose (questioning ancestry), tugging at the ear (questioning male virility) or fondling the back of the ear (alluding to pederasty). It is even illegal to stare suggestively at a pretty girl, though every self-respecting Italian male does it. On the other hand, there is one splendid defense: not intentionally getting caught in the act. A silent insult made behind a victim's back may be ruled unintentional, even if it is seen reflected in a mirror or a window...
Restoration v. Reabolition. On the other hand, no one yet has the slightest evidence suggesting how many people who never commit murder are in fact deterred by the death penalty. The electric chair* thus remains in 23 states and the District of Columbia, the gas chamber in ten states, the noose in six, the firing squad in one (Utah). Indeed, ten abolitionist states have restored the death penalty in the past, usually after some brutal crime. Missouri did so in 1919, for example, after two hoodlums killed two policemen in a gunfight. Conversely, Oregon provided abolitionists with an unexpected argument...
Concludes David Bell, director of the Agency for International Development, which supplies most of the Alianza funding: "It has taken two or three years for the Latin American governments and people involved to commit themselves and to understand that this was a partnership in which their own self-help measures were crucial for success. Now, they are finally establishing a true Alianza relationship...
...Britain's John Braine here dabbles in religious sensibility. At 30, Vincent Dungarvan is still a mother's boy, a virginal Irish schoolmaster who likes music, poetry, teaching and, best of all, to keep safely within his ivory tower and dream, "a pleasure that couldn't commit him, couldn't puzzle him, couldn't humiliate him." Vincent's Mom, who keeps his house and conscience for him, wants him to embrace the priestly life. A green-eyed Protestant offers him something better to embrace. She is as unhappily married as he is unhappily single...