Word: spites
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...West Germany's. Some economists blame the Bundesbank's late-December increase in its key interest rate, rather than the Bank of Japan's boost, for triggering January's wave of increases. The Frankfurt central bank is concerned about inflation because of West Germany's supercharged economy. In spite of the Bundesbank's credit tightening, the Frankfurt stock exchange is up 1% so far this year. The main reason: investors feel confident that West German companies will realize tremendous gains in the opening of East European markets...
...what is the government offering in exchange? De Klerk has released long- imprisoned black leaders and permitted black protest meetings, but these are relaxations of the security rules rather than political changes. In spite of sanctions and the new mood of optimism about negotiations for a new constitution, Pretoria remains essentially unyielding on the larger issue of one man, one vote. It insists that majority rule, the central demand of the African National Congress, is inherently "unjust" and would amount to black "domination" over the white minority...
...Line. Some days, walking home from work, I feel a self-contained elation, holding myself aloof and feeling bold; shouldering past the tourists, facing every new stranger with an inscrutable watchfulness. I'm still too weak though, there are traces of straw-sucking ingenuousness--my eyes sometimes widen in spite of themselves, and let people in. So I'm asked for 50p in the Chinese takeaway, I blush in shops, and I smirk at wolf-whistles. Only occasionally...
...same muddy field, laid out on white sheets, were two dozen other naked bodies, more victims of a massacre Dec. 16 and 17 by the Securitate, Ceausescu's secret police. These bodies too had been subjected to efforts to render them unrecognizable, an obvious attempt not only to spite those the victims left behind but also to intimidate them. The bodies bore various marks of torture: ankles entwined in barbed wire, stomachs crudely sewn up where they had been slashed open. On the corpse of one woman lay the seven-month fetus that had been ripped from her womb...
Thus the near future contains more questions than answers. Will the National Salvation Front win popular loyalty in spite of its domination by communists? Will the army lose patience with squabbling civilians and simply take over? Can peace be restored so that Rumanians can cooperate in constructing a freer political system? Does democracy stand a chance...