Word: martial
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...December of 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law on Poland, orchestrating a brutal crackdown on the pro-democracy Solidarity trade union movement that eventually saw some 90 people killed, and around 10,000 detained in internment camps. But as Jaruzelski and six other former top officials set out their defense in a criminal trial over their coup and crackdown, many of the former leaders of Solidarity have emerged among the general's staunchest defenders. In a bizarre twist of history, the leaders of the very movement Jaruzelski sought to crush 27 years ago now say he was right...
...lengthy defense statement at the Warsaw regional court, Jaruzelski, who was prime minister at the time as well as the head of the Communist Party, explained his motivation for declaring martial law this way: In 1981, he argued, the Solidarity movement was in the throes of an internal power struggle between radicals and moderates, with Moscow watching closely, having reinforced the Soviet troop contingent stationed in Poland. The Soviets had previously sent troops to crush a popular rebellion in Hungary in 1956, and to brutally destroy a reformist Czech communist regime in 1968, and Jaruzelski was acutely aware...
...political aspirations," the general argued. "Because of the geopolitics, the authorities could not step back. There was a knot which we decided to cut ourselves." The crackdown, however brutal, was a "lesser evil" that spared Poland the a direct Soviet military intervention, he argued. He acknowledged that martial law brought human suffering, for which the general said he "is sorry and takes the responsibility...
...randomly enrolled in a wushu class during a summer sports program. He had no idea what wushu was, which isn't surprising. At that time, wushu was only 13 years old. It was a committee-ordained synthesis of the various age-old Chinese combat forms (wushu literally means "martial arts"), intended to create a new codified sport. Emphasis was placed on the solo execution of martial stances and routines, and the system of point-scoring rewarded purity of form. In effect, it was a Chinese form of gymnastics, and Chinese officialdom was rather proud of it, making it an integral...
...sentiments running through Li's film corpus. In Bruce Lee's action movies, the Eurasian outsider fought for no greater cause than himself (the sole exception is 1972's Fist of Fury, in which he battled the cocksure Japanese). Jackie Chan made the action-comedy subgenre his own, reducing martial arts to a form of slapstick. Li, however, has most often played the sober upholder of national pride...