Word: ceausescu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...communism began to self-destruct last year, TV journalists did more than just report the phenomenon -- they participated in it. The presence of foreign cameramen seemed to embolden the demonstrators. Once the Chinese authorities decided to shed blood, they literally pulled the plug on television coverage. Rumania's Nicolae Ceausescu also kept the press out of his country while he slaughtered its citizens. Not until TV aired footage of his lifeless body were many Rumanians convinced that the despot had really been executed...
...rebel, too young to be lying naked in the snow; another is a seven-month fetus on the torso of its disemboweled mother. But it was not just a slaughter of the innocents in Rumania last week. A few days later came another unforgettable image: the fallen dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, executed by a firing squad, a pool of blood by his head...
...because while the Soviets stood by and did nothing in Rumania, the U.S. was violating its pledge under the charter of the Organization of American States not to invade a neighbor. In most ways, of course, the downfall of Panama's General Manuel Noriega had little in common with Ceausescu's overthrow. The Rumanian was driven out by his own people, the Panamanian by an outside army. The Rumanian ran and was caught; the Panamanian found sanctuary in the Vatican nunciature in Panama City and may yet escape punishment. What the two episodes had in common was the simple fact...
...tyrants go, Ceausescu was surely crueler, more methodical and more blood-soaked than Noriega, who often came off as a tin-pot dictator. Yet the similarities were striking. Like many of their kind, both described themselves as reformers, Ceausescu as a leader independent of Moscow, Noriega as a Panamanian nationalist. The U.S. was not above using both when they served its special purposes. Richard Nixon welcomed Ceausescu's help in negotiating the first opening to China; under Ronald Reagan, the CIA sought Noriega's assistance in aiding Nicaragua's contras. But in Ceausescu's 24 years of iron rule...
Both became drunk with vanity. Ceausescu styled himself the "Genius of the Carpathians," put his face on posters all over Rumania and had 30 volumes of his speeches published. One of Noriega's last political acts was to have himself named Maximum Leader. Both pursued quirky impulses. Ceausescu made his wife Elena his deputy, and she not only draped herself in furs and jewelry but also used the police to spy on her grown daughter's love life. According to U.S. Army investigators, Noriega practiced Santeria, a mystic religion, and wore red underwear to fend off the evil...