Word: brotherhoods
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Figure skating actually predates the Winter Games as an Olympic sport. When Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived brotherhood in 1896, he forgot to take temperature into account. Figure skating first appeared at the Summer Games in 1908, and brought hockey along in 1920. It was not until four years later that Nordic skiing, speed skating and bobsledding joined them for the first winter pageant, the others straggling in later, the biathlon (skiing riflemen) not until 1960, the luge 1964. But the premiere event is still the first: figure skating...
...Guccis. It was, perhaps inevitably, a draw. The Fendis would provide most of the basics, and Gucci the leather goods. The first designer wear should hit the streets on April 21, just in time for the Birthday of Rome celebration. What Solomonic cunning! What a gesture of fashion brotherhood! And-let's face it-what a relief. Who could ever have thought that uniforms would be so. . . important...
Then things started to sour. Syrian intervention in the Lebanese civil war proved immensely unpopular at home and triggered a wave of car bombs and assassination attempts against government officials, including three attacks on Foreign Minister Khaddam. Assad faced his most serious challenge from the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic group rabidly opposed to Damascus' secular policies. In June 1979 the group gunned down more than 60 cadets, mostly Alawites, at the Aleppo military academy. The next spring, a general strike in northern Syria was stopped only after 12,000 troops killed hundreds and arrested thousands...
...Brotherhood's goal was to provoke more repression that in turn would alienate more Syrians from the regime, it succeeded. Since the late 1970s, the elaborate security apparatus?which includes the Mokhabbarat, the secret police organization with some 20,000 to 30,000 members, and Saraya al Difa, a praetorian guard run by Assad's merciless brother Rifaat?has grown more heavyhanded. After a bodyguard reportedly tried to kill Assad with a hand grenade in June 1980 (the President's life was saved when another guard threw himself on the explosive), some 250 to 300 political prisoners were massacred...
...sometimes been called on to defend the government from internal enemies. Last year, for example, they reportedly executed around 100 air force officers who had tried to stage a coup. In February 1982, some 8,000 of Rifaat's troops exacted a bloody revenge against the rebellious Muslim Brotherhood in the historic city of Kama, leaving most of the ancient quarter in ruins and at least 10,000 civilians dead...