Word: coups
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...walking talking talisman," he writes. This, plus his status as a gweilo ("white devil," or foreigner), allows him to walk undeterred into Hong Kong's brothels and opium dens to befriend coolies, Triad gangsters and the real-life model for Hiroshima Joe. Perhaps Booth's biggest coup is talking his way into Kowloon Walled City, a notorious no-go area of vice and violence, where he watches old men smoke opium and prostitutes while away the afternoon waiting for business. Afterward, his guide, a young Triad member named Lau, gestures toward a pig in a nearby butcher shop...
Then there was Ron Reagan—his appearance, or more accurately his name, a huge coup for the convention. Still, Reagan delivered his altogether correct views on stem-cell research in the mellow tones of a genial, almost-vacant Mr. Wizard. It’s not that the speech wasn’t effective or right; it’s that there was something creepily stagey about it throughout...
...PDVSA's biggest market, which buys two-thirds of its exports--Venezuela often ignored OPEC's guidelines, stepping up production even when oil prices hit rock bottom in the late 1990s. But Chavez, a harsh critic of the U.S. who accuses the Bush Administration of backing a failed coup against him in 2002--a charge the White House denies--has led a successful campaign to revive a demoralized OPEC, curtailing Venezuelan production to gain what Rodriguez calls "fairer prices...
...stronger. If they opt for mayhem, blood and death, then al-Shahwani is more than ready to trade fire with them. "We know how to play that game," he says. He also knows the cost of playing it: Saddam killed his three sons a decade ago after uncovering a coup that al-Shahwani was helping to plot...
...Shahwani had fled to London. As the first Gulf War approached, he moved to Jordan and joined the opposition as an intelligence collector. Four years later, he played a leading role in a CIA plot to mount an army coup against Saddam. But the dictator's secret police penetrated the network and aborted the attempt. Al-Shahwani escaped, but among the conspirators inside the military were his three sons. They were imprisoned and eventually executed. As the U.S. prepared to invade Iraq in 2003, he joined American covert teams in the western desert, though he declines to discuss the missions...