Word: rebel
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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President Carlos Saul Menem was still awake in the presidential palace at 3 a.m., following a late dinner with friends, when aides informed him that rebel soldiers had stormed army headquarters in downtown Buenos Aires, just a cannon shot away. The insurgents had also seized the nearby coast-guard building and three other installations. For Menem the timing could hardly have been worse. He knew that if he did not act fast, George Bush, who was in the midst of a South American goodwill tour, was likely to cancel his visit to Argentina -- to the deep embarrassment of Menem...
Compared with such problems, the uprising by the carapintadas, or "painted faces" -- so named for the greasepaint that has become a recurring rebel trademark -- was a quickly resolved affair. After Menem ordered the army to retake the captured military facilities, loyalists and rebels exchanged small- arms fire for the better part of a day. Cars and buses in the combat zone were riddled with bullet holes. Eventually Menem told the mutineers at army headquarters that if they did not surrender, he would order the building bombed. Shortly afterward they gave...
Furthermore, other Southeast Asian nations were alarmed by Vietnam's 1979 invasion and feared further expansionist action. Thailand, Laos, Burma and others took a strong stand against Vietnams's action, and supported the rebel coalition, which includes the Khmer Rouge...
Unfortunately, the Cold War never allowed the U.S. to oppose the Vietnamese-backed government in any constructive way; rather than backing the Cambodian rebel group--which was dominated by the Khmer Rouge--the U.S. should have recognized neither side and supported a peace process. But then again, the world was a different place 10 years...
Alas, poor Cyrano. For decades he has been little more than a rumor of antique flourishes, known to the mass American audience mainly as the source of Steve Martin's genial little comedy Roxanne. Swordsman and poet, idealist and unrequited lover, born rebel as well as natural nobleman, the hero of Edmond Rostand's great romantic play is not, face it, a figure calculated to inspire a nonromantic age. One does not suppose, for example, that he figures very largely in George Bush's inner life. Or, for that matter, Jesse Jackson...