Word: crudely
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...industry have ever produced such a gusher of speculation. Early next month, engineers will drill a 14,000-ft. well near Jarim Reef off the island of Bahrain, a tiny Persian Gulf nation not far from the world's richest oil deposits. If the exploratory pipe hits crude, it will enrich a cast of investors that includes the Bass brothers of Texas, the Rupert family of South Africa, the Harvard University endowment fund and George W. Bush, the President's eldest son. If the well is dry, the episode will prompt shareholders to wonder why they ever put faith...
...suburban Dallas company is surely one of the most mysterious and eccentric outfits ever to drill for oil. Harken consists of almost no assets besides an exclusive 35-year contract to explore for crude in Bahrain. When the country's rulers handed Harken that deal early last year, it puzzled oil experts around the world. Why would Bahrain stake so much of its financial future on an obscure, money-losing company with no refineries and no experience in offshore oil exploration? "It was a surprise," says Jay Gallagher, a senior analyst for Petroconsultants, one of the world's largest...
...year after Bush came aboard, a reclusive Saudi named Abdullah Taha Bakhsh bought an 11% stake in Harken through a Netherlands Antilles shell company. The Saudi, a tycoon with global interests in oil, real estate and jewelry, hoped Harken could someday serve as a vehicle for moving Saudi crude into the U.S. But the strategy would never come to pass...
What Davis faced was crude xenophobia. Some activists in the U.S. and Europe, however, have raised a more sensitive moral issue. Why should millions of dollars be spent each year in the search for adoptive children, they ask, when the same money could be dispensed as foreign aid to help keep Third World children at home? "We're exploiting poor countries' resources the same as we have exploited other resources," argues Chris Hammond, director of a British association of government and nonprofit adoption agencies. "In most developing countries a pair of hands is a significant resource. Removing them handicaps...
Finally, suppose there's no touching, no tableau, no quid pro quo -- just a crude exploratory gambit along the lines of "Hiya, babe, you wanna . . . ?" Here too some moral Rubicon has been crossed. Intimacy in a public setting is not just "inappropriate," in the prissy, yuppie sense. It can be deeply insulting, which is why a misapplied tu in French or du in German can be a fighting word. When we leave our homes to go to work, we assume an impersonal role like "teacher," "secretary" or "judge." We may even don a special costume (black robes, skirted suit...