Word: stiff
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...spot between his shoulderblades . . . Our scheme was to shift the little sod Howe out to Leader of the House, along with all the other deadbeats . . . I remember very clearly writing all this down and Margaret agreeing. My writing may have got a bit illegible towards teatime . . . A few very stiff drinks later, we looked at the list and realised we'd forgotten the Foreign Office, so M. had to ring a little shopwalker figure called Mr. Major who not surprisingly couldn't believe his luck and will no doubt continue to embarrass us in the councils of the nations...
...addition, Western arms dealers face an increasingly stiff challenge from the developing countries. "All of God's children are producing military weapons," remarked a U.S. contractor, "so the competition is blistering." New arms exporters crowding into the market include Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Singapore and South Africa. At last month's Paris Air Show, Brazil proudly displayed its new Embraer EMB-312 Tucano, a turboprop military trainer jet that has been ordered by Britain's Royal Air Force. As more countries step up production of military hardware, they are buying less from traditional suppliers. Tokyo's insistence earlier...
Extremism was in the ascendancy again last week in the Middle East. Capitulating to the hard-line right of his Likud bloc, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir fettered his own plan for elections in the occupied territories with stiff conditions that seem to doom the peace initiative. Almost before the players could grasp the political implications, a fanatic Palestinian wrenched an Israeli bus over a cliff, killing 14 passengers in what was described as an act of vengeance. Those civilian deaths will only harden hearts against thoughts of peace. Once again the small steps being taken toward peace were shoved...
...with a lapse of decorum and values. In a discussion of capital punishment, the condemned is told, "Try to think of something piquant to say on your way to the gas chamber. 'See you in hell, Mom,' is nice. Things like . . . 'Don't stop to mourn, organize' sound too stiff for what's basically an informal situation." It is at such times that the mask of the mockingbird slips off to reveal the owl beneath, hooting at a world he is furiously attempting to save...
TIME's Walter Isaacson and Michal Donath were the only journalists present as the two men talked, sitting side by side, Havel animated and excited, Dubcek reserved and stiff. "I was expecting every miracle today except that I would meet you," said the playwright. The aging politician recalled one of Havel's plays, though none have been performed in Czechoslovakia since 1968. Havel leaped up and gathered a stack of foreign editions that had been smuggled into the country. "I will sign them for you in green ink because green is the color of hope, and I am an optimist...