Word: rationalism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...restrictions. Possession of U.S. currency is no longer illegal, and some private employment is allowed. The timid reforms raised hopes for improved living standards. But a year later, with Castro blocking liberalization, and tensions erupting between the haves and the have-nots, refugees say hope has died. Ration books provide barely two weeks' worth of food. For the rest, families must rely on the black market, $ where 120 to 150 pesos, generally half a month's salary, buys only one U.S. dollar. "We had been waiting four or five months for soap. Everybody has got skin diseases...
Everywhere one looks in Goma, swaggering soldiers are mistreating those they are meant to protect. They cut to the front of ration lines reserved for malnourished civilians. In a special military camp, they drive wood-laden trucks, while elsewhere refugees shaking with sickness must tote fuel by hand. But mostly they simply loaf, squatting outside their tents, guzzling home- brewed banana beer and smoking marijuana until their eyes take on a red, glassy light. "These soldiers could be distributing food, keeping the roads clear, looking after orphans," says Martin Collier, a driver with the aid group Assist. "Instead, they just...
...said that in the 10 largest cities in the United States, 4 of the cities had an average ration of 740 students to 1 high school counselor...
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher recalled "feasting" on Spam as a girl in the war years. Soviet boss Nikita Khrushchev claimed, "Without Spam, we wouldn't have been able to feed our army." G.I. ration or not, Supreme Commander Eisenhower got a taste and encouraged the fiction. "I ate Spam along with millions of soldiers," he claimed. Hormel glories in the tales and lets the jokes continue to roll: "The ham that didn't pass its physical. The meatball without basic training...
...alive. Booby traps tormented him and the other soldiers deployed in the coastal region near Danang known as the Riviera. The devices were the spoor, primitive and deadly, of a mostly invisible enemy. Some were as simple as nails slathered with excrement pushed through the bottoms of discarded C-ration cans. But the booby trap Puller stepped on, while in full flight from a squad of advancing North Vietnamese regulars, was made with a howitzer shell. Puller described the moment in Fortunate Son: "I thought initially that the loss of my glasses in the explosion accounted for my blurred vision...