Word: leopardskin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Carefully orchestrated publicity campaigns are nothing new to Mobutu's 23 million subjects. Every night the television station in the capital city of Kinshasa begins its news with a vision of heavenly clouds slowly dividing. As sonorous music swells, a dark, bespectacled face topped with a leopardskin cap emerges to fill the screen. It is the visage of Mobutu, 44, also known as "le Guide," "le Clairvoyant," "le Redempteur." Without undue modesty, he has also chosen another name for himself that roughly translates as "the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and will to win, will...
...advisers insisted that they had no part in the flag painting. But the phenomenon began after President Nguyen Van Thieu announced a stepped-up pacification program following President Nixon's suggestion in October of a standstill ceasefire. In such a cease-fire (known locally as a "leopardskin" arrangement), blotches of Viet Cong-held territory would be interspersed with strongpoints controlled by the Saigon government. Word soon reached Saigon's functionaries that any village that was to be regarded as government-controlled should be marked with flags-which reminded some observers of the origin of Passover, when the ancient...