Word: piasters
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Begged, borrowed and sometimes stolen outright from the Communists, the psywar ploys cut in many directions. When the Viet Cong stopped paying in cash for staples and supplies last summer, and began issuing 1,000-piaster bonds redeemable after the V.C. victory, a U.S. psywar adviser in Camau ordered up 20,000 counterfeit bonds to be dropped in the territory. In Kien Hoa province, a South Vietnamese captain thought up a unique counter to the groups of women and old men that the Viet Cong were sending into town to protest the war. He ordered all local palm readers...
...advice becomes." To defend Tuyphuoc, Bradley has one American captain, four noncoms, and a handful of Vietnamese Civil Guardsmen and ill-trained Popular Forces. The communists obviously think he has done a good job. Bradley has been ambushed six times, and the Viet Cong have a 40,000 piaster (nearly $500) price on his head-dead or alive...
...Piasters & Perfection. Some of these traits were evident quite early in the character of Mustafa, as the young Atatürk was called. His father, who ran a lumber business in Salonica, died in 1889 when the boy was eight, and left the family without a piaster. Little Mustafa made a fierce resolve: "I am going to be somebody." At twelve, against his mother's orders, he took entrance examinations for a government military school, passed them, and then hectored her till she signed his admission papers. He was a proud, cold, brilliant boy who could follow several conversations...
...doubt, since Diem has $168 million in gold reserves which can keep him going for perhaps a year. However, some effects were beginning to show last week. As fear of future food shortages spread, hoarding set in and prices jumped. Sugar, textiles, and tires vanished from shelves, and the piaster, normally worth 73 to the dollar, was being traded for as much as 160. All this produced a sullen mood on the part of Saigon's people, sometimes directed at the Diem regime, sometimes against the Americans. On the eve of National Day, marking the eighth anniversary...
...cities and villages and in the army. Because of floods and civil war, rice stocks in Saigon are down to an alltime low of 20,000 tons, and prices have jumped 50% to 100%. Defeatism is widespread in the middle class, as the black-market rate on the piaster has dropped 30% to more than 100 to the U.S. dollar. Along with increased military action, the Reds are stepping up subversion with front organizations headed by respectable sympathizers. Many Saigon university students, who supposedly went to their villages during vacation, actually entered the Communist-controlled zones for indoctrination...