Word: opium
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...getting used to finding meth labs in places such as Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest, and pot farms everywhere from Kentucky's Daniel Boone National Forest to California's Sequoia National Park, last week's bust was a first. A hiker had discovered 40,000 lavender-hued opium poppies growing in the Sierra National Forest, south of Yosemite. The plants, enough to yield 40 lbs. of raw opium, were in a clearing on a 3,000-ft.-high slope scorched by a forest fire two years ago. When law-enforcement officers burst onto the scene, three men in camouflage...
...words of fiction, reportage, essays, poems and reviews - and the tantalizing contradictions of his life are today largely unknown to the rising generation. That may soon change. The centenary of Orwell's birth this week - he was born June 25, 1903, in Motihari, India, where his father was an opium agent for the British Raj - has brought a tide of conferences, articles and books on the man and his legacy. Chief among them are two engrossing biographies: George Orwell by British author Gordon Bowker (Little, Brown; 495 pages) and Orwell: The Life by British novelist and critic D.J. Taylor (Chatto...
...stumbled upon their hideout. The leader introduced himself, put his gun under my chin and told me they shot government spies." Boonma was beaten and interrogated. "They kept screaming 'Spy,' and I kept saying 'Doctor.' I was blindfolded, and they made me drink something. It must have been opium because I lost track of time." Later he was put on a donkey, still masked and bound. "I thought they were going to take me to the jungle and shoot me," he says. Instead, they knocked him unconscious and abandoned him. An army border patrol found him a week later, filthy...
...high-ranking government official for more than 15 years before sneaking out of the country in 1998, said the cash-strapped government began developing poppy plantations in the late 1980s; in 1997, all collective farms were ordered to devote at least 25 acres to the cultivation of opium, which is processed in state factories. "This is all done under the direct control and strict supervision of the central government," he said...
...starving people give way to tax cuts and new military adventures. If we want a lasting peace and a country that is not hated around the world, the American people must ensure that Iraq is not forgotten as Afghanistan has been. Afghanistan’s return to the opium trade should remind us that ravaged and neglected countries often revert to old ways. If we fail to secure the peace in Iraq, whatever progress we buy with American, British and Iraqi blood will go up in smoke...