Word: thuggish
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...government's lurch backward to the thuggish practices of the Cultural Revolution may be the only way it knows to deal with another kind of madness: popular anger. At the time of the massacre, many citizens were so incensed that the P.L.A. was being used against the people that they ambushed stray groups of soldiers with fire bombs, bricks, clubs, even bare hands. Later, outgunned and powerless, the resistance turned to words. In the shadow of the Beijing Hotel, a young man spotted a military helicopter hovering over Tiananmen and wrathfully wished destruction on it. "Fall down!" he cried. "Fall...
What a difference five years can make. In 1984, when Panama staged its last presidential election, the exercise in democracy proved a thuggish sham. Tabulation sheets vanished, vote counting was suspiciously slow, and when citizens stormed the streets in protest, soldiers fired on the crowds with rifles. Through it all, the U.S. remained silent. Five months later, as protesters chanted, "Fraud! Fraud!," Panama inaugurated Nicolas Ardito Barletta, the candidate favored by Manuel Antonio Noriega -- and the man, many Panamanians charged, handpicked by then U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz...
...thuggish," Amenta said. "It was an exercise of blind, naked authority, so far from any modern method of management as to be absurd...
...source of controversy. An embattled General Manuel Antonio Noriega is trying to rally his countrymen by claiming that Washington wants to break the agreement. Meanwhile, some legislators on Capitol Hill are asking whether the U.S. shouldn't keep the canal if in 1999 Panama is still being run by thuggish dictators like Noriega...
...citizens -- 10,000 troops and 40,000 civilians -- living in Panama. Although U.S. officials do not see an immediate threat, diplomats and military officers are urging Americans to be careful. "We're heading into a very, very rocky period," says an Administration official. The U.S. has pushed a thuggish ally into a corner, and now it can only wait guardedly for his reaction...