Word: gang
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...exit. Yet the fact is that the U.S. lost a great deal because of the hostage crisis. It lost eight men, and that was the worst. It also showed itself and the rest of the world that its defense and foreign policies could be confounded by a street gang. It demonstrated that it was willing to work a deal with kidnapers; that its military and covert forces were faulty and impotent; that its political intelligence was porous. Beyond these, it lost clarity in its foreign policy when clarity was needed most...
Jiang and former Shanghai Mayor Zhang Chunqiao, 63, were named the chief culprits of the Gang of Four. They were the only defendants to receive suspended death sentences. The official reason given for their two-year grace period was to allow the condemned prisoners "to reform through labor." In fact, while their reprieve is theoretically only two years, Jiang and Zhang will almost surely never be shot...
...next stiffest sentence-life imprisonment-went to the Gang of Four's Wang Hongwen, 46, who had rocketed from obscurity to the No. 3 slot in the Communist Party hierarchy during the Cultural Revolution. The fourth member of the Gang, Propagandist Yao Wenyuan, 49, got 20 years. The other six defendants, including five former top military officers convicted of plotting to kill Mao in 1971, got sentences ranging from 16 to 18 years in prison...
...Deng is likely to get his way, and sentences could be announced this week. Nonetheless, the failure to dispose of the Gang of Four case comes at an awkward moment for top party leaders; they have frankly admitted that there is widespread disillusionment as to the party's ability to achieve results in just about everything. One problem is the persistent appearance of disunity at the top, brought about most recently by Deng's unceremonious dumping of Hua Guofeng as party chairman in late December. Deng sought to allay rumors that China was in the grip...
Sometimes their allies are teenage gang lords who come on like Geronimo crossed with the Blues Brothers; sometimes their toughest adversaries are officers whose tensions threaten to explode in a one-man apocalypse. The show treats those on both sides of the law with respect for their crotchets and obsessions...