Word: scene
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...might have been a scene from one of Africa's guerrilla wars: four men wearing green fatigues and packing FN assault rifles fanned out across a wooded ridge. The bush crackled under a punishing afternoon sun as the government patrol scoured the hillside for enemy tracks. Then they heard it: the low murmur of voices drawing closer. Below them, a file of four men -- three carrying AK-47 rifles -- slowly advanced through a yellow sea of elephant grass. Without warning, the government patrol opened fire, gunning down all four in 40 seconds. When the bodies were searched, they recovered...
...fact, Safire consistently skimps on physical descriptions. Photographers reach Antietam, the scene of the bloodiest battle in American history. What does it look like? How does it feel to be in the middle of unimaginable carnage? Safire disposes of such questions in two perfunctory sentences. Then he gets to the important part, a detailed exposition of how photographs are made, circa 1862: "He coated a sheet of glass with collodion, the guncotton dissolved in alcohol and sulphuric ether mixed with a little bromide and iodide of potassium they had compounded the night before...
...begins with a powerful interpolated silent prologue. A community of black-suited, ringleted and bearded Hasidim is peaceably gathered on a set that includes a large menorah and Torah scrolls and, on the sides, a Jewish cemetery. Suddenly, khaki-suited, helmeted storm troopers rush in and desecrate the scene. The swift brutality was a provocative coup de theatre -- especially in Austria, where memories of the 1938 Nazi invasion are still fresh and where former Wehrmacht Officer Kurt Waldheim now presides...
...accord. "He sold the sovereignty of our country," said one Sinhalese student. "The only way to get it back is to get rid of him." Soon after the attack, a previously unknown Sinhalese group, called the Patriotic People's Movement, claimed responsibility, but the killers had immediately fled the scene. By week's end, no arrests had been made...
Many foreign visitors are shocked by the Netherlands' wide-open drug scene. Heroin is still overtly sold on some streets, despite increased police vigilance, while soft drugs such as marijuana and hashish are readily available at coffee shops. Waiters bring the fixings right to the table. An enterprising service called Home Blow Couriers even offers free delivery of drug orders in excess of $12.50. Small wonder that youthful "hash tourists," especially from West Germany, flock to Amsterdam's Dam Square, or that visitors who do not understand Dutch occasionally experience strange feelings from the marijuana pastries they unknowingly...