Word: workmen
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...people to weep for Mengistu, whose brutal 14-year dictatorship -- the last hard-line Marxist-Leninist regime in Africa -- had turned his nation of 51 million people into a wasteland of famine and internecine fighting. In the streets, hundreds celebrated the tyrant's departure, cheering as workmen dismantled a huge bronze statue of Lenin in one of the capital's main squares. The Israeli government took advantage of the confusion to launch a massive airlift of some 14,000 Ethiopian Jews who had fearfully gathered near the Israeli embassy (10,000 had been rescued during a famine in 1984). Using...
...blaze is likely to rekindle the debate over the fate of the new embassy building nearby, which was deemed unusable in 1985 when U.S. security experts discovered that the structure was riddled with electronic listening devices planted by Soviet workmen. Congress has been unable to agree on whether to tear down the building, which has already cost taxpayers $300 million, or to build a spy-proof addition atop the existing structure. Now the embassy has no home at all, and the staff has temporarily set up offices in auditoriums on the 13-acre compound...
...Watson beats his son every Sunday and throws a half-caste mistress off his land when she becomes inconvenient. But the narrative, which is told in 36 short chapters by ten locals, mostly mixes awe and dread, along with a certain aw-shucks accommodation. Outsize characters, Watson's workmen and neighbors seem to think, have their little crotchets...
...common citizens are now policing the former Stasis. Many tradesmen refuse service to ex-agents. Gasoline stations have posted signs denying them petrol, and job notices often specify that dismissed Stasis need not apply. When three ex-agents showed up at an East Berlin slaughterhouse in search of jobs, workmen locked them in a storage refrigerator for two hours. The Stasis no longer feel safe even in their own homes. "My friends have had their windows smashed, and they get threatening letters," says Dieter. "If they report it, the police don't investigate...
...Trump's tastes run more toward grandiosity ("the eighth wonder of the world"), hyperbole ("totally unique") and wishful thinking ("the crowds are going to be so big, you won't be able to get into the place"). India's Taj Mahal took 22 years and more than 20,000 workmen to build. Trump's Atlantic City version took only eight years and 1,800 laborers. But Trump cedes nothing to the original structure. He claims to have built "the largest (and most expensive) casino resort, convention center and entertainment complex constructed at one time," a great, glittery gumdrop...