Word: harshly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...District Judge Richard Williams of Alexandria, Va., had harsh words last week about the abuses uncovered by Operation Ill Wind, the federal investigation of Pentagon procurement fraud: "I can't believe our Government, the Congress and Executive, lets a system like this endure." In fact, the judge was so disgusted that he handed out astonishingly light sentences to the first two defendants convicted by a jury as a result of the probe (twelve other people have pleaded guilty). Teledyne Electronics executive George Kaub could have received 40 years in prison. His co-worker Eugene Sullivan could have got 20 years...
...about the same time, the government issued harsh martial-law decrees ordering leaders of the prodemocracy movement, "important figures who incited and organized this counterrevolutionary insurrection in the capital," to turn themselves in for "lenient treatment." The decrees set up a spy-and-report network, complete with 18 telephone hot lines, so that citizens could help round up dissidents. Fearful of arrest, student leaders who had survived the carnage went underground or fled the city. The astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, a leading dissident who was prevented by the government from dining with George Bush during the President's visit last February...
Apparently Deng's strategy prevailed. Throughout the week, party documents circulated detailing the events that contributed to Zhao's unofficial removal. As recounted by President Yang Shangkun in these papers, Zhao's offenses included failing to support a harsh editorial in the People's Daily that condemned the demonstrators and refusing to join other Politburo members in backing martial...
Comandantes do not like to be called boys, and both Dona Violeta and her newspaper have been singled out for harsh treatment over the years. The walls of her home are often defaced with insulting graffiti. As for La Prensa, it has been shut down by government decree five times in the past decade, once for 451 days. Last September a La Prensa editor was abducted and savagely beaten by people he recognized as Interior Ministry agents. The next month the government circulated a memo threatening sanctions against public enterprises that advertised in the newspaper...
Khomeini's ascent to power worked a remarkable change in a man who had once seemed a gentle, if extraordinarily zealous, cleric. During the upheaval that toppled the Shah, Khomeini urged his followers to remain nonviolent. In part, this was a shrewd wish to avoid harsh military reprisals, but his caution also reflected Khomeini's temperament at that time. Abolhassan Banisadr, whom Khomeini ousted as President in 1981, notes that in the final weeks of Khomeini's exile the Ayatullah "would not even kill a fly." Yet after Khomeini became Iran's ruler, he exhorted his countrymen to kill, burn...