When Mikhail Gorbachev became head of the Communist Party in 1985, he launched perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) to revive the nation's economy by introducing a semi-fee market system. His reform policy had set the stage for loosening Russia's hold over the Soviet Bloc countries. Communism began to falter in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in 1988 and 1989. In the summer of 1989 Hungary opened its border with Austria. East Germans began fleeing through Hungary into Austria, which had an open border with West Germany. Gorbachev refused to send in troops to stop the flow. Then suddenly, on the evening of November 9, 1989, an announcement made by East German government official Günter Schabowski stated, "Permanent relocations can be done through all border checkpoints between East Germany into West Germany or West Berlin." November 9th marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was both the physical division between West Berlin and East Germany from 1961 to 1989 and the symbolic boundary between democracy and communism during the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin Wall has been known as the sign of victory for democracy and capitalism over communism. And the following collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 became a probe of the fail of Marxism and the end of the Cold War. Then what? Do we enjoy living in a relatively peaceful world? For the last 25 years the U.S. defense budget has never decreased in the absence of the Soviet threat. The vision of a 'new world order' since 1990 has been a world with one superpower: the United States. The new world order has been essentially an economic order with a military arm, alleging a pre-emptive strike as the best defense instead of waiting for the multilateral decision on international affairs. At an event to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Sunday, Mr. Gorbachev, saying the West had succumbed to triumphalism, warned that the world is on the brink of a new Cold War.

 

소매업체들의 치열한 세일경쟁으로 전통적인 '블랙 프라이데이'의 개념이 사라지고 있다. 앞다퉈 오픈시간을 앞당기는 것에 이어 할인기간도 하루에서 최대 5일까지 늘어났다. 세일 아이템도 50인치 TV가 199달러에 등장하는 등 할인경쟁도 더욱 뜨거워지고 있다. 단 하루 동안 실시하는 블랙 프라이데이 세일의 전통을 고수하기엔 온라인과 오프라인 경쟁업체의 할인공세와 맞서기에 역부족이라는 판단.