Word: fiat
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...promised that their representatives on the Commission on Graduate Education would play a major role in drafting a new aid plan. When the plan was eventually presented to the Commission in January, its student members withheld their support. Their objections were dismissed: the plan was ordered implemented by administrative fiat with consent of department chairmen...
...independence as for linguistic, cultural and economic equality. In any given office building in Brussels, a Belgian saying goes, the doorman speaks only Dutch, the secretaries are bilingual and the managing director deals only in French. In Italy's Alto Adige region, severed from Austria by diplomatic fiat after World War I, German-speaking Tyrolean terrorists committed some 200 bombings and other acts of violence in the 1960s before Rome agreed to a measure of autonomy. Still, streets are known as both via and strasse, and many towns are known by entirely different names to their German-speaking residents...
...large extent is prosperous. And it is no longer only the privileged who share the wealth. A decade ago, a skilled worker in France, Germany, Italy or Belgium was likely to have ridden a bicycle or motorbike to work. Today he owns-or is saving to buy-a Volkswagen, Fiat or Citroen. He is almost certain to have a TV set (black-and-white, not color). He almost certainly has a savings account; and if he is lucky, he lives with his family in new, subsidized housing-architecturally undistinguished, but more comfortable than picturesque squalor...
Franco's first job had been with the Fiat-General Motors-Leyland-Renault combine, but life in a company town had not appealed to him. Based on the Japanese system, the company towns had been built with one purpose-to ensure loyalty to the combine, rather than to country or family. Inbreeding was not only allowed but actively encouraged. Few people escaped, because mergers had drastically reduced one's choice of multinationals. One could work for the combine's branch in Italy or France, but it was difficult to switch to another industry. Apart from anything else...
...Fiat engineers found their Soviet workers something less than heroic. The buses that brought workers from their homes about seven miles away somehow took 1½hours to make the trip, so that few workers were ever on the job before 10 a.m. To avoid missing the bus home, they sometimes quit a half-hour early. One Italian mechanic reported finding a machine that had been leaking 40 Ibs. of oil a day for two weeks; its Soviet operators had neglected to request repairs. "Our conception of maintenance is entirely unknown to them," the Italian said...