Word: sovietize
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What caused the loss of the Kursk remained unclear. Russian officials fell back on old Soviet habits of secrecy and confusion during the first days of the disaster. They made no announcement for two days, then issued a bland statement that there had been a "technical fault" and the boat was on the sea bottom. After the seriousness of the accident became clearer, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev declared that there was "incontrovertible evidence" that the sub had collided with another vessel. In past years Soviet and U.S. vessels have had near collisions while spying on each other, but the Pentagon...
Musykantsky's alert that the country is "at war" was a jab at Russia's liberals, who have been fighting a losing battle for more civil rights. Throughout the post-Soviet reform period, Moscow's city government has been enforcing Soviet-era rules that require visitors to register with the police. Russia's Constitutional Court, the nation's highest legal authority, has repeatedly held that these rules violate the rights granted by the Russian constitution. But constitutional debate in Russia is shaped more often by shrapnel than by legal doctrine. Putin's anti-Chechen rhetoric often seems a calculated reminder...
...Francisco. Here he's surrounded by other gents of a certain age: hotdogging fly-boys of the '50s named Hawk (Tommy Lee Jones), Jerry (Donald Sutherland) and Tank (James Garner) who were pioneers in Air Force research but got passed over for the first U.S. astronaut program. An old Soviet satellite is about to crash to earth, threatening humanity; since Frank built the technology the Russkies swiped, his expertise is needed. He insists on going up to fix the damn thing and taking his pals along for a senior-citizen road trip to outer space. The Over the Moon Gang...
After reading these tales of the ruinous river diversions of Soviet planners and American water experts, you might conclude that ecological ignorance unites all nations. Misanthropes will hoot as governments simultaneously beggar their neighbors and poison their own wells. With a brutal accounting looming for our profligate misuse of earth's amniotic fluid, the author offers ways that countries can secure more supplies. The most likely scenario is an old standby: steal water from others...
...Norman Schwarzkopf. In that media rush Cheney went mostly unnoticed, though as the hawkish Secretary of Defense, it was he as much as anyone who put in motion the military option against Saddam. That's what a retiring manner will sometimes get you. On a trip to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when Cheney was a powerful but mostly unassuming Congressman, he and a few other House members killed some time with a pop-psychology test. It was supposed to indicate the profession best suited to your personality. Cheney's turned out to be funeral director...