Word: barterer
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Although Soviet cargo planes are still flying in, the Russian wheat they are carrying is actually supplied by the Indian government (purchased by New Delhi under a barter arrangement). Despite those shipments, Kabul is suffering from a major wheat shortage at a time when it usually stockpiles supplies for the long winter. Najibullah still has a formidable store of weapons but is facing a critical shortage of fuel. The price of gasoline has more than doubled in recent months, and Western correspondents report only a trickle of traffic on Kabul's streets...
Though the bookkeeping is in dollars, the deal is still mainly barter, and prices are adjusted by exchanging different quantities. For example, the Soviets now pay 18 instead of 27 bbl. of oil for a ton of Cuban sugar. Moscow still delivers military and industrial equipment free, but no one is quite sure what it is worth. Western intelligence agencies price it at about $1 billion a year, but as Cuba's Deputy Foreign Minister, Jose Raul Viera, once described it, the equipment is "junk no one buys...
Washington swears it will not barter with Baghdad, but the U.S. or someone else may, nonetheless. -- The Bush Administration gives out mixed signals on the efficacy of sanctions. -- Gorbachev turns to the army...
...problem is not food supply -- for one thing, the U.S.S.R. had a record grain crop this year -- but distribution. Farmers have been holding back produce from the state, hoping to make more lucrative cash and barter deals elsewhere. A crumbling transportation system has left crops rotting in the fields or in warehouses. Soviet citizens grumble that many of the delays are deliberate, the work of diehard local bureaucrats seeking to undermine Gorbachev. The very fact that many Soviets have been stockpiling foodstuffs at home, though it provides them a cushion against the future, has only added to the sense...
...Gould: "It would be a very bleak world with cockroaches and dogs and not much else." The final blessing of the Endangered Species Act is that it preserves the elements that stir man's sense of wonder. That benefit alone is too precious for the God Squad to barter away...