Word: embargos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When the U.S. embargo on Cuba finally goes, no one will miss it as much as Fidel Castro. That much was clear Wednesday when the Cuban strongman led a reported 800,000 people in a protest march along Havana's oceanfront to denounce Washington's latest adjustments to the 38-year embargo. Now that little Elian Gonzalez is back at school, the embargo remains the most useful tool in Castro's ideological shed: It provides both an all-purpose excuse for the privations suffered by his people since the collapse of Cuban socialism's Soviet patron, and a nationalist rallying...
...have looked a little incongruous, perhaps, that the Cuban leader donned his sneakers and led the equivalent of half of Havana's population on a protest march the very day the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of legislation ostensibly relaxing the embargo. But a closer look at the measures contained in an agriculture spending bill makes clear that the easing of the embargo on imports of food and medicine is more symbolic than practical - Cuba would still be denied the credit facilities routinely used by countries trading with the U.S., rendering any new purchases extremely unlikely - and restrictions...
...depots, emptying nearly every filling station, propelling panicked buyers to strip milk and bread from market shelves, closing schools and businesses, provoking the Queen to grant Blair broad emergency powers. In the end, he didn't need them. The savvy protesters claimed "moral victory" and broke up their gas embargo before the nationwide disruption caused what Blair had predicted: "real damage to real people...
...supporting the international crackdown on blood diamonds, the cartel is also helping itself by preventing competitors from flooding the market with cheap gems. But while De Beers' cooperation with the embargo may spare the industry the sort of organized boycott that shook the fur trade in the 1980s, it probably won't stamp out trafficking. De Beers claims that only 3% of the global diamond supply comes from African conflict regions. London analysts believe the amount may be as high...
...Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created in the wake of the Arab oil embargo of the '70s, meant to keep the oil-dependent U.S. from being held hostage by Middle East ne'er-do-wells. It's been tapped only once for pricing reasons - at the start of the Gulf War in 1991 (itself largely a price-control maneuver) and then only, in the end, for 17 million barrels. Now the use of the SPR has officially been expanded - in the cause of keeping Northeasterners' homes heated at affordable prices in an election year...