Word: propped
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...someone who has long been assumed to hold a weak hand, Kim has played his cards well. Using delay and deceit, always threatening, expressly or by implication, to deploy or sell his nukes, he has wheedled cash, fuel and food aid from the outside and used them to prop up his rule. Nothing, as I say, lasts forever. But the unification that Lee maintains is the "long-cherished desire of the 70 million Korean people" is not yet in sight...
Venezuela, which possess the hemisphere's largest oil reserves, may actually weigh more heavily today on Raul's mind than the U.S. In recent years Venezuela's left-wing, radically anti-U.S. President, Hugo Chavez, a fervent Fidel admirer, has helped prop up Cuba's economy with almost 100,000 daily barrels of cut-rate crude. Chavez, however, is deeply suspicious of, if not antagonistic to, Raul's economic reform intentions. "Raul has to play ball with the Venezuelans," says Latell. "He has no one else to turn to right...
...Hence the Déby dilemma: Prop up an odious but friendly regime, or allow Sudan, via its proxies, to sabotage efforts to stop the killing in Darfur...
...Still, intervening would undercut Sarkozy's efforts to move France beyond Françafrique, its half-century old policy of intervening in former colonies to prop up friendly dictators. Sarkozy had made it clear he wants to end such arrangements and favor greater democracy, events in Chad have left no good option. "I didn't want direct intervention before a precise legal framework" had been outlined, Sarkozy said Tuesday, insisting that the U.N. vote changed the equation. "We're no longer in what was called Françafrique. There are international rules, and I want to conform to them...
Which is precisely the point of prop bets. Like any advanced form of capitalism, they twist something simple (like who will do better in the game) into a way to express yourself. My bet allowed me to self-express what a snotty jerk...