Word: vast
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Beyond money, the Mafia is a study in power. Provenzano withstood conditions of abject poverty in order to reign over a vast criminal network from the heartland of the Italian island. (A boss who flees his home turf with a suitcase of cash is, on the other hand, considered a failure and possible traitor.) Of course, power and money feed off each other: Provenzano, for one, never stopped working to acquire wealth for Cosa Nostra, even if he couldn't spend it himself. Despite the blows to its leadership, the organization still generates billions of dollars of annual turnover...
...have been issued through the 12 branches of five local banks, according to Susan Witt, executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society, the nonprofit behind the currency. And in South Africa, proprietary software keeps track of Community Exchange System (CES) Talents; one ambitious plan is to make Khayelitsha, a vast, desolate township of perhaps 1 million inhabitants near Cape Town, a self-sustaining community...
...base, then a troop surge on this scale might have an impact. But Afghanistan is physically larger than Iraq and more than 75 percent of all Afghans live in remote rural communities where the Taliban now has a significant base of support. Controlling a growing Taliban insurgency across this vast countryside will be impossible with just 58,000 American soldiers. Our NATO allies are showing no stomach for this fight, and the Afghans themselves are poorly equipped to help. In contrast to the current situation in Iraq, America has not been able to train up a significant local army...
...Climate change, education, health care, immigration, fiscal responsibility: These are the issues on which we build our political identities. They rouse us to fight so-called enemies in election after election, to support scoundrels in the interest of the party, to donate vast sums and volunteer long hours—they divide us because they matter...
...know what the mission used to be - to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and destroy his al-Qaeda command. But once bin Laden slipped away, the mission morphed into a vast, messy nation - building effort to support the allegedly democratic Karzai government. There was a certain logic to that. The Taliban and al-Qaeda can't base themselves in Afghanistan if something resembling a stable, secure nation-state exists there. But the mission was also historically implausible: Afghanistan has never had a strong central government. It has been governed for thousands of years by local and regional tribal coalitions...