Word: draconian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Draconian measures...
...night address to the people, and that their mildness would neither rally the country nor solve the energy dilemma. After asking Americans to wage "the moral equivalent of war" in meeting "the greatest challenge that our country will face during our lifetime," Carter put forward proposals that were hardly draconian. (Humorist Russell Baker observed that the acronym for moral equivalent of war is MEOW.) Indeed, if the financial discomfiture was to be as minimal as the Administration was claiming at week's end, the essential changes for Americans would be ones of habit and life-style?but those could prove...
Patrick also accuses Miller of a more unpardonable sin. "Arnold has betrayed the movement for democracy in the union," says Patrick. "He's behaving like a dictator." Miller has recently shown a draconian side, abruptly dismissing several top aides, beefing up security at the union's Washington headquarters and insisting that everyone, including Patrick, clear all travel with him. When one of Miller's secretaries was suspected of political plotting with Patrick, the door to her office was removed. (It has since been restored...
...this prosperity is the government's doing. The rise in food production is primarily the result of sheer luck: two seasons in a row of magnificent monsoons. At least part of the gains can be attributed to draconian but pragmatic policies that Mrs. Gandhi adopted while democratic liberties were suspended. The state of emergency was indeed partly proclaimed because opponents would not let the Prime Minister forget that her 1971 election slogan-AN END TO POVERTY-had been turned into a mockery by the war with Pakistan, the absorption of 10 million refugees from Bangladesh, two successive drought years...
Soweto's blacks insist that the death toll in their township alone last June was at least 350, or more than double the official toll of 168. (The government now admits that most of the officially dead were shot in the back.) Dozens of students are still detained under draconian security laws, and at least 1,000 others face trial on such catchall charges as causing public violence. Perhaps another 1,000 students, fearing further police pressure in the form of post-midnight security sweeps, have fled South Africa for neighboring Botswana and Swaziland...