Word: instrument
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Khmer Rouge, whom the arch-moralist Jimmy Carter called "the worst % violators of human rights in the world," became an instrument to drive the Vietnamese out of Kampuchea...
...dissolute uncle Wining Boy, who leads family members in musical interludes that include a haunting, African-influenced chant. Director Lloyd Richards needs to tinker with the ending, a sort of exorcism in which a sudden shift from farce to horror does not quite work. But already the musical instrument of the title is the most potent symbol in American drama since Laura Wingfield's glass menagerie...
Bilzerian's staff has solved a minor Bikkembergs dilemma -- how to get his moniker to move trippingly off the American tongue -- by referring to the designer as "the Dirker," as if he were some arcane medieval instrument used for storming castles. A native of Germany, Bikkembergs grew up in a strict, financially comfortable household. During his teenage years, he moved to Antwerp and became one of the leading designers in the city's gutsy fashion circle. Bikkembergs has some pretty strong ideas about his impact. "So far," he says, "I have made no money at all. But in four years...
Last week the Kremlin recommended blanket amnesty for everyone convicted by the infamous star-chamber "troika" courts of the Stalin era, in which three party and state officials had absolute power over the accused. The courts were the dictator's primary instrument of mass terror during the 1930s and functioned until his death in 1953. According to Western historians, the amnesty may apply to as many as 20 million people, a large number of them posthumously. Another post-Stalinist landmark: the weekly magazine Literaturnaya Gazeta published a detailed account of the role played by the dictator's secret police...
...comes Mikhail Gorbachev with a sweeping vision of a "new world order" for the 21st century. In his dramatic speech to the United Nations last week, the Soviet President painted an alluring ghost of Christmas future in which the threat of military force would no longer be an instrument of foreign policy, and ideology would cease to play a dominant role in relations among nations...