Word: important
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...with the U.S. banana producers in Hawaii, even though the banana output in Hawaii doesn't amount to a hill of peels. The French threatened to scuttle the public-works plank of the GATT agreement unless Germany accepted the banana plank. The Germans refused, insisting on their right to import bananas at will, guaranteed by the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Back in the islands, the Prime Minister of the island of Dominica, Dame Eugenia Charles, has warned that if her people can't make a living on bananas, they might take up cocaine...
Wonderfully wrong. This was no Star Trek reunion, with techno-dweebs debating the mythic import of Episode 34. It was the first ConventioCon ExpoFest-a-Rama of cable TV's Mystery Science Theater 3000. On a recent weekend, fans paid $45 each (plus room and board) to bond with one another, meet the program's writer-performers, attend a live show, comb through old props, view rare tapes of early episodes and dress up for the Midwest's ginchiest costume ball...
...getting out the Filofax and phoning world leaders in pursuit of diplomatic goals, it was Bill Clinton who picked up the phone last summer and talked King Fahd of Saudi Arabia into buying $6 billion worth of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas civilian aircraft, and then got the Export-Import Bank to sweeten the deal so that European rival Airbus could not steal it away. Last May the President helped AT&T close a $4 billion deal for Saudi telecommunications modernization. He intervened again last June to persuade the Brazilian government to award a $1.4 billion radar project to Raytheon...
...with descriptions, it hedges. For example, in describing Professor Derek Parfit's Philosophy 161, Topics in Metaphysics, the guide notes, "Although a handful of those surveyed call [Parfit's] clarity impeccable, a slightly smaller number contend that the import of his lectures can be nebulous." Well, which...
...opportunity by building much of the Arab world's modern oil-producing infrastructure. McCartney reports that even as Bechtel was working hard to establish cozy ties with Saudi Arabian King Ibn Saud, former employees of the company were involved behind the scenes. Several worked for the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a government agency that subsidizes American corporate ventures abroad, to facilitate financing for the enormous projects...