Word: strongman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...principal architect of this new policy is Teng, who has clearly emerged as China's strongman, overshadowing Mao's titular successor as Chairman, Hua Kuo-feng. Teng has given supreme priority to reversing the disruptive effects of Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which was zealously pursued for more than ten years by Mao's wife, Chiang Ch'ing, and her radical colleagues. Twice toppled from power by the radicals, in 1966 and 1976, Teng has stepped from the political shadows, not only to supervise the disgracing of Chiang's Gang of Four...
...battle a well-equipped 25,000-man EPLF army, which occupies the territory's central and northern plateaus. In one futile assault on Eritrean positions near Keren, a human wave of more than 6,000 Ethiopian militiamen were cut down by rebels firing captured Communist artillery. Ethiopian Strongman Mengistu Haile Mariam, who had vowed to crush the rebels by Sept. 12, the fourth anniversary of the overthrow of the late Emperor Haile Selassie, ordered the execution of 700 officers and men he held responsible for the fiasco...
...uniform of the National Guard training school, drew up in trucks. "Make way. Here comes el Hombre," snapped one of the soldiers as he ran to a side entrance and opened a path in the crowd. Bystanders expected to see General Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza, Latin America's most notorious strongman. But the soldiers, as it soon became clear, were not National Guardsmen at all. They were commandos of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a leftist guerrilla organization dedicated to the overthrow of the feudalistic Somoza dynasty. They were about to launch one of the most spectacular?and most successful?terrorist...
Until last week, no one had been certain that Strongman Balaguer and his loyal generals would actually leave. In May, when it became clear that Balaguer's right-wing Reformist Party was losing the election badly, the generals had ordered a halt to the vote counting. Immediately there was heavy pressure, both from within the country and from Washington. Jimmy Carter sent word that if Balaguer attempted a coup d'état, the U.S. would order sanctions against the illegal regime. Balaguer's supporters resented the interference, but they got the message...
...army Land Rovers equipped with machine guns appeared on street corners, the nature of the tempest became clear. Officers of the 15,000-man Mauritanian army, led by Lieut. Colonel Mustapha Ould Mohammed Salek, 42, had overthrown the regime of President Moktar Ould Daddah, 53, the mild-mannered strongman who had ruled the poverty-stricken country of 1.5 million Muslims since it gained independence from France...