Word: opium
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...year-old war in Laos is fought by words and guns, by strange antagonists for curious motives. Many of the Meo people battle the Communist Pathet Lao rebels because the Pathet Lao interfere with their traditional opium trade. Laotian politicians-right, left and neutralist -jabber inconclusively in the hope of forming a coalition government that can unite the country. And in faraway Geneva, Russia, Red China, the U.S. and eleven other nations scrap interminably over a workable arrangement for ending the war. Biggest bone of contention: the withdrawal of foreign troops from Laos, including the 300-man U.S. Military Assistance...
...owner of one of Britain's finest racing stables; of a heart attack; at Cable Beach, Nassau. Financial chief of a famed British banking clan-and cousin to World War I's angriest young man, Poet Siegfried Sassoon-Sir Victor parlayed a fortune originally built in the opium trade into ownership of much of prewar Shanghai...
With the army behind him, Diem could at last crack down on the Binh Xuyen and the sects. The Binh Xuyen's power was smashed when Diem closed the opium dens, gambling halls and bordellos, from which it drew its revenues, then fought the gangsters with armed force. To crush the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao, Diem sent his troops out again with orders to shoot; bullets whistled through Saigon's streets and in the delta swamps before the sect leaders caved...
...Clean, Well-Lighted Place, there is a parody of the Lord's Prayer built on the Spanish word nada, meaning nothingness ("Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name"). In The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio, the hero narrator decides that "bread is the opium of the people...
...their political sympathies, valley Lao wonder if the Meos, now that they have taken up modern arms, will ever put them down. Said one official: "We feel pity for them, disdain, but also respect. They have too much ability in a simple way, and too much money from their opium. They've chosen to live on the very tops of the mountains, among the clouds...