Word: blocs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...East bloc refrigerator costs $2,000, an average worker's income for an entire year. A $35 Sanyo fan goes for $500 -- no small consideration in a country where the daily temperature averages 78 degrees F. Local goods are in short supply too. Thanks to inefficient methods of growing and harvesting, Cuba may be the only tropical island in the world where fruits and vegetables are hard to find. The widening rift between Havana and Moscow has caused other deprivations. The Soviet Union's increasing unwillingness -- or inability -- to continue carrying the Cuban economy has created severe shortages of flour...
...worst is yet to come. Cuba relies on the East bloc for about 90% of its imports and exports. This trade is based mainly on barter, not cash, and on terms heavily skewed in Cuba's favor: the Soviets, for example, buy Cuban sugar at about four times the market price. But as East bloc countries move toward free-market economies, they are seriously reassessing their ties with Cuba, which cannot pay in the hard currency that Western customers offer...
...says she is even glad to see it happening in the Soviet bloc. Her party disowned the Soviet Union and its satellites 30 years ago when Nikita Khrushev began his program of reform, thus turning his back on true communism, she says. Lawrence says she feels no tinge of regret at the downfall of East Bloc regimes...
...previous years, Walsh tended to serve as a spokesperson for a strong conservative bloc that often dominated the nine-member council. Now that Walsh's conservative allies no longer control the council majority, the third-term councillor says he has had to adopt more agressive tactics...
...enough straining the metaphor; the fight was important in itself and needs no lofty comparisons to justify the media klieg lights trained on it. For the future, aficionados should keep an eye on Douglas, the new champion on the bloc. Just because a new face has replaced the old and interminable domination has ended doesn't mean we should hail the arrival of a boxing Era of Equity. Buster Douglas is champ, but the world is not necessarily a better place for his victory. Lots of things could happen from here, and many of them are rather forbidding prospects...