Word: commandeering
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...Siad Barre grew old and sick, his ability to command dwindled, and he ^ turned to his family and his Marehan clan to run things. In May 1988 the Somali National Movement, formed by the northern Isaq clan, rose in rebellion and seized several towns. The army put down the revolt with vicious bombing and shelling that killed as many as 50,000 civilians and insurgents. Said a relief worker in Mogadishu last week: "This regime has cold-bloodedly murdered or starved to death nearly 10% of the population, driven another 25% into exile and holds a multitude in jail...
...Stasi stain, however, will be almost impossible to erase -- for De Maiziere as well as tens of thousands of other former citizens of East Germany. At its height, the ministry was the most powerful arm of the communists and had at its command 85,000 full-time workers, 109,000 paid informants and innumerable unofficial snoops who kept tabs on everything from visiting foreigners to the affairs of their neighbors. It kept files on 4 million of the country's citizens as well as 2 million West Germans. Placed end to end, the Stasi's records would reportedly stretch...
During his nearly six years in power, Gorbachev has zigzagged repeatedly / between right and left, trying to stay in command of a center that he kept moving slowly leftward, toward greater democracy. At the same time he was steadily expanding his own powers, at least on paper, but implicitly pledging to use those powers to force reform on a backward bureaucracy...
...gaining influence with a frustrated Gorbachev. That should have been no surprise. The reformists' strength had always resided in an evanescent popular mood that has swung from euphoria to near despair as political breakdown has been mirrored in economic chaos and shortages of everything. The conservatives, in contrast, command the hard, physical tools of power: troops, tanks and vertushki, the direct telephone lines to the central authorities that are the lifeline of the government bureaucracy...
...serve the prosperous and perform most of the work, large numbers of foreign workers were attracted to Kuwait by wages far higher than those they could command at home. In the role of contractors, importers, landlords and bankers, many Kuwaitis found themselves members of a privileged minority set above the expatriate work force. A law enacted in the late 1950s required foreign businessmen to take Kuwaiti partners, another risk-free method of wealth creation that made millionaires of many overnight...