Word: scratch
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Simply getting a country in business at all can be a formidable task. Mauritania, for example, is practically a movable country, whose Moorish nomads wander after water in passportless circles through neighboring Mali and Algeria. Since every country must have a capital, Mauritania had to build one from scratch: Nouakchott (pop. 8,000), a clump of pastel cubes on a bleak stretch of sand dunes near the coast. In Laos, there are so few trained government elite-about 100 in all-that Cabinet making is essentially a game of musical chairs. Ethnic vivisection abounds nearly everywhere. The Somali peoples...
Although the Administration devoted a very large portion of the Honolulu conference to this central problem, the success of Premier Ky's rural pacification plans remains doubtful. According to Mohr, "after five years of war, the allies are starting from scratch in this field, and that progress must be slow." The allies will have to destroy the Viet Cong's powerful political organization before they can begin to build a viable political structure, and to date they have never ventured into areas under heavy Communist influence which comprise the largest part of South Vietnam...
...Africa, political stability is a thin veneer that can flake off with the slightest scratch of a military finger. Since mid-December, three black governments* have been toppled by military coup. For a while last week Nigeria seemed on its way to becoming the fourth. What makes Nigeria different is that it is no tiny tinhorn republic. It is the continent's most populous nation (56 million people), its economy is one of Africa's most prosperous, and-with 250 tribes and tongues-it has long been considered one of Africa's most democratic and stable countries...
...many as 36,000 letters an hour can be fed into a conveyor system that carries them past a cathode-ray tube. The tube's scanning beam locates the last line of each address, converts it to electrical impulses that are recorded on an electronic version of a scratch pad. They are then read by a computer that recognizes city, state and ZIP code characters by comparing them with 6,000 combinations of standard characters...
...story. While I'm up there, I'm completely un-self-conscious...a lot of burlesque is really all in fun... I'm glad you can't see the audience while you're up there. If I saw someone really leering, I'd be embarrassed," she said, starting from scratch to put on her costume ("I hope I'm not embarassing anybody...