Word: commoner
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...five authors of the report came from widely separated parts of the world and had been educated in profoundly different cultures, but they had one thing in common-they were all from what the U.N. calls "small nations": Australia, Ceylon, Denmark, Tunisia and Uruguay. The bulk of the work of preparing the report fell on the shoulders of Keith Shann, able young (39) Australian statistician-turned-diplomat, who on the day of publication flew back to his post as Australian Ambassador in Manila. To Shann's credit, he maintained a detached attitude in the presentation of fact and conclusions...
...decided not to go. As a man of the cloth, Simaan Dweihi was also present. As the various churchmen and family elders made their way toward the little parish church of Our Lady of Miziyara, their henchmen gathered in a nearby café, eying each other with the distrust common to the district...
...confessed: "We have killed friends, struck comrades. The countryside was full of funeral altars and mourning widows wearing white turbans around their heads." Twelve thousand "falsely accused" peasants were freed; rehabilitated landlords were promised their land back. For some 15,000 men who had been tortured and flung into common graves, the regime offered decent graves and public funerals. Comrades executed by "mistake" were posthumously declared "national heroes...
...that Canada had had a bellyful of self-assured government too long in power. The pain affected even Liberals with a subtle death wish: many wanted their own party cut down for the good of the two-party system. A Liberal in Ottawa who voted Tory summed up a common Liberal reaction: "I never dreamed everybody else would do what I did!" Among the irritants was External Affairs Chief Lester Pearson's we-know-best refusal to answer the crowding questions about the suicide of Ambassador Herbert Norman in Egypt (see box). The voters saw in earnest John Diefenbaker...
...books were virtually ignored, but for some readers they have long been collector's items. In the bland climate of U.S. letters, true satire rarely flourishes, but the chilling ferocity of West's satirical attack would be rare anywhere. It involves not only a total rejection of common American ideals, but a Swiftian loathing for the texture of life itself. In his earliest work West recognized this of himself, in the character of a Cultured Fiend who says: "I was completely the mad poet. I was one of those 'great despisers' whom Nietzsche loved because...