Of course on any given day one can read capitalist-good-guy slanted
articles filled with half-truths that distort, and blatant omissions of
infamous past horrors of U.S. foreign policy committed against
vulnerable nations, but the 9/17/09 published snide ridiculing of tiny
Laos, once identified by President Eisenhower as the first domino that
would later need merciless carpet bombing, reads in tone as if written
just for fun and entertainment for the wealthy and arrogant Wall Street
upper class.
Communism and Capitalism Are Mixing in Laos by Thomas Fuller
September 17, 2009
The writer depicts a sweet backwater, mistaking innocent sincerity and
the lack of artifice as naiveté and ignorance. He quizzes a rice farmer
and reports his admitting being unknowledgeable about Marx, and answers
humbly, “If I had studied more, I might know more about it,” a
bookshop saleslady answering to booklets about Lenin offers, “He was a
brave and smart person, everyone wants to get lessons from him. It's
still important.” He criticizes school girls' dancing style and quotes a
bank representative admission, “Civil society in Laos is still very
immature ...”. Lack of sophistication is ‘exposed' as a fault which
will be hopefully be remedied “mastering the [capitalist] ideology
might require some re-education.”
Why pick out little Laos to belittle? The article features a snide
commentary and a condescending portrait of a modest nation. It derides
the idea that its noted soft, quiet, innocent and gentle humanitarian
Buddhist non-aggressive culture could be effecting a commitment to
socialism.
This
New York Times lightly humorous targeting of a brave communist nation would
seem to have been generated merely as an accompaniment to a rather
insignificant news item for Americans, namely, the event of Obama
officiously lifting the decades long punishing economic sanctions
strangling Laos.
“Pursuant to the authority vested in me by section 2(b)(C) of the
Export-Import Bank Act ... I hereby determine that The Lao People's
Democratic Republic has ceased to be a Marxist-Leninist country within
the definition of such term in section 2(b)(2)(B)(i) of that Act.”
Barak Obama, June 12, 2009
Could it be that the blockade was lifted because American business has been losing out to Chinese and Vietnamese joint ventures?
Though depreciating Laos as what is described as a pastoral backwater,
the writer saw fit to acknowledge fleetingly that Laotians are still
beset with the lingering damage of the devastation the greatest empire
in the world saw fit to wreak upon it in the aftermath of their
liberating themselves from brutally exploitive French colonial rule.
Here is some history / "
History of the Bombing of Laos
Secret U.S. Bombings in Laos” “From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of
ordnance over Laos during 580,000 bombing missions - equal to a
planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years. ...
The U.S. launched an unprecedented secret bombing campaign without
authorization from the U.S. Congress. To evade the Geneva agreements,
the U.S. placed CIA agents in foreign aid posts, contracted with
private plane companies, and temporarily turned air force officers into
civilian pilots. The Ravens, a code name for U.S. pilots in Laos, flew
1.5 times the number of air sorties flown in all of Vietnam. Each
cluster bomb casing scattered several hundred tennis-ball-sized
bomblets (known as bombies in Laos) over 5000-sq-meter areas. About 260
million cluster bomblets fell over Laos with close to 53 million
bomblets dropped within one kilometer of villages. Up to 30% of the
bomblets did not detonate on impact, leaving as many as 86 million
unexploded cluster bomblets buried in fields, roads, forests, rivers
and villages."
Thirty-six years later the
New York Times has its writer playing the
wise guy describing the survivors and descendants of the above as a
confused bunch of Asian hicks - maybe to boost Times American readers'
sense of superiority over these louts who lets the Yanks cream ‘em with
bombs and screw them over homicidally in line with various U.S.
presidents' kill-the-third-world- communists war wishes.
Mr. Fuller puzzles sterilely, “What to make of Laos, the former French
colony that became a focal point of great powers during the Vietnam
War, only to slide back into obscurity once the Cold War ended?”
The article plays to many old saws that were invented to debase
communist economic performance, it being fair game to laugh at the
‘copying of capitalism' every time the ancient invention of money is
used or anything is imported from the advanced shlock & rock modern
cheap U.S. commercial culture.
Ah, but we few archival research historian whistle-blowers on media
distortions and blackouts read the Times in depth, and are therefore
most appreciative of Mr. Fuller for inserting a blue link: “Laos” in
the middle of his third paragraph - dutifully, for the New York Times
is the U.S. newspaper of record.
A few of the articles that come up upon clicking on the link word
“Laos” are worthwhile reading that makes one shudder in patriotic
embarrassment at the cavalier treatment Laotians receive in this fun
poking article:
“Highlights From the Archives
Old U.S. Allies, Still Hiding in Laos by Thomas Fuller, 9/19/09
"Thousands of jungle warriors hired by the C.I.A. during the Vietnam War live in fear of the Laotian government."
Laos Sees Possibility of Tourism in Caves Used During the ‘Secret War'
by Jennifer Conlin
"A network of caves promises to further illuminate the “secret war” the
United States waged in Laos against the North Vietnamese, but may also
help open a region in need of tourism revenue.”
TravelNews, March 18, 2007
Next Stop
The Centuries-Old Allure of Laos's Relaxed Capital
by Daniel Altman
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Musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England and the US, and now resides in New York City.
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