Word: strongman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Sept. 6, Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz, the supposed strongman who had insisted on Poland's forward strategy, evacuated his military headquarters from Warsaw and kept retreating until he crossed into Rumania. After Sept. 16, no further general orders went out from either the marshal or his headquarters. Local units maintaining pockets of resistance throughout Poland -- about 250,000 men in all -- were simply left on their own, to fight on as best they could...
...eight years as Customs commissioner, Von Raab's penchant for independent action and colorful talk has landed him in a series of well- publicized scrapes. He was an early and vehement critic of Washington's see-no-evil policy toward Panama strongman Manuel Noriega. He appalled civil libertarians by proposing to shoot down suspected drug-smuggling planes. He infuriated the State Department by trying to mark passports of drug smugglers caught at the border. He promoted the "zero tolerance" program that called for prosecuting people apprehended with small amounts of drugs and confiscating their cars, boats and planes...
...Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights has a surreal and oxymoronic ring. Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, better known as a patron of terrorism than a benefactor of humanitarian causes, has unaccountably set up a Swiss foundation to bestow an annual award on a Third World figure in the forefront of "liberation struggles." Last week Nelson Mandela, the jailed black South African leader, was named the first recipient of the prize and the $250,000 that goes with...
...former secretary-general and current strongman of the 200,000-member oilworkers union, Hernandez, nicknamed La Quina, had built up a personal fortune and a large following among those beholden to him for jobs, education and health care. Many of the area's poor people regarded him as something of a Mexican Robin Hood. The enmity between Salinas and Hernandez dates back to the President's tenure as Secretary of Planning and Federal Budget in the administration of Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado. At that time, Salinas accused both the oil union and Pemex, the state oil company, of inefficiency...
...rude awakening for Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, the strongman behind Mexico's oilworkers union. At about 9 a.m. last Tuesday, scores of federal police officers and troops surrounded Hernandez's heavily guarded house in Ciudad Madero, northeast of Mexico City. Whether authorities first attempted to arrest Hernandez without force is unclear; what is beyond dispute is that the lawmen used a bazooka to blast open the front door. When the battle was over, a federal agent lay dead and Hernandez and about a dozen other union officials and bodyguards were under arrest...