Word: draconianism
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...night before my announcement a dream came to me that the Asian problem was becoming extremely explosive, and that God was directing me to act immediately to save the situation." Thus last week Uganda's mercurial President, General Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin, explained his draconian edict: some 60,000 Asians-principally those from the Indian subcontinent who hold British passports-must quit the country within 90 days...
Myth tells us that the god Apollo, whose instrument was the lyre, was challenged to a musical contest by a coarse satyr named Marsyas, who had learned to play the flute. Marsyas lost, and Apollo skinned him alive. In our day, this draconian triumph of reason over instinct has been reversed: Marsyas, the unrepressed goat-man, has won; the Rolling Stones are one of his incarnations. Unlike the Beatles-the very prototype of nice English working-class lads accepted everywhere, winning M.B.E.s from the Queen-the Stones from the start based their appeal partly on their reputation as delinquents. They...
...addicts. A life sentence is meted out for selling butsu (the Japanese gangsters' untranslatable coinage for heroin). Mere possession can mean several years in jail. To cut off the demand, the government required that every user caught be confined for at least 30 days of treatment. The most Draconian fact-by American standards-is that each addict's treatment begins with "cold turkey," or withdrawal unassisted by chemical crutches such as methadone...
...Netherlands' AKZO, for example, is laying off more than 6,000 workers, a draconian measure that has raised questions in the Dutch Parliament. The move has also caused Dutch, German and Belgian labor leaders to plan a joint committee to monitor AKZO's future management decisions. U.S. companies in Europe have been hurt too. "Very few firms, European or American, are making much money out of fibers," says a Monsanto executive. "The European industry has double-knitted itself into a corner...
Technically, the 1970 recession ended more than a year ago-but try to tell that to the battle-scarred bosses of many corporations. They are continuing or even tightening the draconian controls on spending that they started during the downswing. And their austerity campaign is cutting a wide swath -from hiring practices to such two-bit matters as engineers' putting tuxedo rentals for professional dinners on their expense accounts. In what could be a permanent, important change in U.S. business, more and more managers have adopted a show-me attitude. They are asking: "Is this expense necessary...