Word: ultimatum
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Britain's film censor, Arthur T. L. Watkins, delivered an ultimatum to U.S. producers (whose movies last year grossed $109,992,000 in Britain): "Anyone who prolongs scenes of violence is only doing so to titillate a small unhealthy section of the audience." More broadminded about sex than U.S. censors, Watkins long ago abandoned the taboo on picturing husbands and wives in bed together by commenting: "Where else would you expect them to sleep nights...
...used by the Lampoon to designate those people who wish to join its group; their analysis this morning proved very penetrating. To continue with this narrative about two minutes later a young man attired in a pair of army fatigues appeared at the door prepared obviously to defy the ultimatum. Having been asked once again if he would refrain from disturbing the lecture, he pointed a drill at Professor Schlesinger and began to turn it in a manner which I assumed to point out more clearly his complete superiority and utter disdain. I do feel very sorry for that...
...Britain's responsible labor unions that forced an end to the strike. Twelve unions, representing out-of-work printers, pressmen, etc., asked the top-level Trades Union Congress to put a stop to the Communists, then laid down their own ultimatum: if the strikers refused to ease their demands, the printers would go back to work anyway, handle electrical and maintenance jobs themselves. At that, the strike leaders capitulated, were handed a $1.40 raise by the publishers, just about what they had been offered in the first place...
Battle on the Boulevard. The mortar shells and the ultimatum were fired at the struggling new state of South Viet Nam (pop. 10.5 million) by a war lord named General Le Van Vien-a man who used to be a river pirate and now runs the Binh Xuyen (pronounced bin soo yen), one of South Viet Nam's exotic alliances of political and religious sects, with its own private army of 8,000 uniformed men. The general often seems like an inclusive version of Murder Inc. and the police force, for his Binh Xuyen controls Saigon's prostitutes...
When the general launched his surprise attack on the palace last week, Diem rushed outside to check the mortar damage and comfort the wounded. Brushing aside the general's ultimatum, Diem called up Vietnamese army reinforcements to relieve a couple of hardpressed Vietnamese garrisons near by. Thundering to the scene in trucks, the reinforcements were ambushed along the Boulevard Gallieni by well-placed Binh Xuyen machine gunners, but the Vietnamese government troops piled out, unlimbered a 37-mm. fieldpiece, battered point-blank at the Binh Xuyen, and then charged...