Word: pawning
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...essence, it was Cambodia's unwilling role as a pawn in the Indochinese wars that led to what U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim calls "a national tragedy that may have no parallel in history." In the mid-1960s the country's peaceful mode of life, under the benevolently authoritarian rule of Prince Sihanouk, was suddenly imperiled by the Viet Nam conflict. At the time, Cambodia was an overwhelmingly agricultural country that exported rice. Though it could hardly have been termed prosperous?per capita income was only $110 a year?its people lived relatively well by Asian standards. Unfortunately, the Cambodian...
...believe they'll actually give you what you want, do you? They'll use you for cannon fodder... They'll put you in a war plane and order you to kill people." Kinsman, already straining his Quaker heritage by joining the military, vows he won't be a pawn of a system he does not like but must deal with to get what he wants--into space...
...Letters--out of a sentimental attachment to Barth's brilliant earlier epic-length efforts, Giles Goat-Boy and The Sot-Weed Factor, or out of sheer quixotic nerve--you could take the advice of Jacob Horner, formerly the protagonist of The End of the Road and now a pawn wandering Barth's checkerboard...
...much as did the years spent at sea. Indeed, the prophetic pessimism of Conrad's fiction can be traced to his youth; a child of the 19th century, he was tossed about in true 20th century fashion. Born in the Ukraine in 1857, he quickly became a pawn to a larger power. His father, a nobleman and Polish patriot, was convicted of political crimes by the occupying Russian authorities and sent into exile, along with wife and child. In arctic solitude, young Conrad watched his mother and then his father dying slowly of consumption. An orphan at eleven...
...Pawn the Library. Desperate to meet a payroll, the University of Miami once hocked $1 million worth of library books to Miami's Pan American Bank in order to secure a $400,000 short-term loan. Fortunately, that was some years ago, and today the library is safely out of hock...