Word: taboo
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...Until recently, even the suggestion that Japan take up arms?for virtually any reason?was taboo. As late as 1978, Joint Staff Council Chairman Hiromi Kurisu was sacked for his seemingly reasonable comment that the country's military?pointedly called the Self-Defense Force (SDF) might take "extralegal" measures if the homeland ever came under surprise attack. Any Japanese politician who so much as suggested amending the pacifist clause of the constitution was effectively committing career suicide. Shinichi Kitaoka, a law professor and diplomatic history expert at the University of Tokyo, says the government "long ago decided that its hold...
...Pham Ngoc Canh was a 23-year-old Vietnamese exchange student in Pyongyang. There he fell in love with Ri Yong-hui, 24, a North Korean factory worker. Their governments were communist soul mates, but relationships with foreigners were taboo in both countries. "I saw no chance," says Canh. Both were devastated when he left in 1973. A year later, Ri asked a Vietnamese student to smuggle a letter to Canh. Thus began three decades of furtive exchanges...
...ramble through the usual vineyards. Vine growing and winemaking in many parts of Africa, says John, "is as far from Burgundy or California as bungee jumping is from croquet." Highlights included raising their glasses to passing elephants in Kenya, finding winemakers in Muslim Africa where drinking alcoholic liquor is taboo and, on the edge on Réunion Island, seeing wine-producing vines planted up to the rims of black volcanic chasms. And then there was dodging the fallout of civil unrest and surviving border crossings, cyclones, mosquitoes, leeches and, in some cases, John recalls, the wine itself. "Robust goat...
...millions who perished on the eastern front and in particular the 1945 sinking in the Baltic Sea of the Wilhelm Gustloff, when as many as 9,000 lives were lost. The debate about the novel soon centered on the political correctness of dealing in literary form with the once-taboo suffering of German wartime refugees fleeing from the Red Army. Even beyond the similar, painful debate it has caused, Der Brand's most lasting contribution will be its depiction of war, no matter how inevitable, as cruel and inhumane. "Does the end justify all means?" Friedrich asks. "That...
...when favorite Grubman stocks like Global Crossing, WorldCom and Winstar began to slide in 2000, so did Grubman's clout. He has come to embody everything that went wrong on Wall Street in the late '90s, as it blended investment advice with investment banking. That mix was long taboo, yet Grubman brazenly played both roles and once boasted that "what used to be a conflict is now a synergy...