Word: commandeers
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...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...
Embarrassing the boss is never a good move. In September, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney fired General Michael Dugan as Air Force Chief of Staff for disclosing sensitive Air Force war plans for the Persian Gulf. Last week Vice Admiral Richard C. Gentz, head of the Naval Air Systems Command, became another casualty. He was sacked because he was in charge of an oversight system that failed to alert the Pentagon to problems in the Navy's A-12 attack-bomber program. That led Cheney to assure Congress in April that the plane was on schedule and on budget. In fact...