Word: merchant
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...vulnerable underdog, struggling for survival against terrible odds. Today, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, Israel is the world's fourth most powerful military state. (The top three: the U.S., the Soviet Union and China.) Israel is also the world's seventh largest arms merchant. In the early years, Israelis improvised as best they could with any bits of weaponry they could lay their hands on. During the war in Lebanon they managed, with their combat experience and superb technical skills, to achieve superiority over some of the latest Soviet arms...
Back in Basra, I talked to one of that city's leading citizens, a Sunni merchant. He said he had no plans to leave, although almost all foreigners have already fled and business has come to a standstill. He is counting on a cease-fire by the end of October, although he agrees that the Iranians will not easily give up their dream of capturing Basra. "Most of the Iranians are members of the Shi'ite sect of Islam, and they want Basra," he explains, "because they know the Shi'ites here will welcome them with open...
...explosives gutted all six stories of the building. The government has played down the explosion, but such a terrorist strike in a city preparing to welcome the summit of nonaligned nations in September does not augur well for security. It also underlines the view of my friend, the Basra merchant, that the Shi'ites may not be as loyal to the Saddam government as we are told. There are two fronts in Iraq today: the battlefield in the desert, and the Shi'ite fifth column in the cities waiting for Khomeini's forces to arrive...
...swimming facilities at Hugh Hefner's Los Angeles mansion as "the herpes pool." A Manhattan resident who had always longed to disport himself at a sexual playpen called Plato's Retreat now says he will go only if he can wear a full-length wet suit. Flesh Merchant Al Goldstein, editor of Screw magazine, says glumly, "It may be there is a god in heaven carving out his pound of flesh for all our joys...
...then the quality of law-and-order in the streets has been erratic. Some shopkeepers complained of armed gangs demanding food or liquor, and rumors spread about car thefts and people forcing their way into gasoline lines at the point of a gun. On the bright side, as one merchant noted: "There is not much looting because there is nowhere to take the Loot. You can't steal it and go off to sell it elsewhere. We are all stuck here together...