#A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alexsmitposts · 4 years

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Why is this Ongoing American “Revolution” Bound to Fail? Observed from outer space, the United States is in a revolutionary turmoil. Fires are burning, thousands of people are confronting police and other security forces. There are barricades, banners, posters, and there is rage. Rage is well justified. Grievances run deep, through the veins of a confused and socially insecure population, in both cities and the countryside. Minorities feel and actually are oppressed. Indeed they have been disgracefully oppressed, since the birth of the country, over two centuries ago (see my latest report carried by this magazine). There are some correct words uttered and written; many appropriate sentiments are expressed. And yet, and yet… It looks like a revolution, it feels like a revolution, but it is not a revolution. It definitely is not! Why? *** An expert on Communist China, a man who spent many years living and writing books about the most populous country on Earth, Jeff Brown, recently voiced something that immediately caught my attention. He described, accurately, on his China Rising Radio Sinoland, what has been taking place in his native country, United States: “Protests in the USA, land of Marlboro Man will come to nothing because there is no solidarity, no vision, nor guiding ideology to unite the people in the common struggle against the 1%. Just ask the Black Panthers and Mao Zedong.” This is precisely when ‘guiding ideology’ is desperately needed! But it is nowhere to be found. For years and decades, the US (and European) elites and their mass media, as well as their educational plus ‘entertainment’ outlets, have been systematically de-politicizing the brains of their citizens. Pornography, consumerism, and sitcoms instead of deep, philosophical books and films. Massive – often booze and sex-oriented – travel, instead of roaming the world in search of knowledge, answers, while building bridges between different cultures (even between those of victims and victimizers). Results are increasingly evident. Citizens in the Western countries were told that the ideologies, particularly the left ones, became “something that belongs to the past,” “something heavy,” unattractive, and definitely not ‘cool.’ Western masses accepted it easily, without realizing that without the left-wing ideologies, there can be no change, no revolution, and no organized opposition to the regime, which has been plundering the world for several hundreds of years. They were told that Democrats are representing left-wing, and Republicans, right-wing. Deep inside, many felt it is rubbish. There is only one right-wing political party in the US – Democrat-Republican one. But it was better for the great majority just to ignore its own instincts and swim with the flow. *** It went so far that most of the people in North America and Europe reached the point when they were not even able to commit themselves to almost anything, anymore, from the Communist movements to marriages and relationships. I recently described this occurrence in my book “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism.” There are many explanations for this. One of them: regime created society built on extreme individualism, selfishness, and shallow perception of the world. To organize, to commit, actually requires at least some discipline, effort, and definitely great dedicated effort to learn (about the world, a person, or a movement) and to work hard for a better world. It is not easy to become a revolutionary when one is positioned on a couch, or a gym, or while banging for hours every day into a smartphone. The results are sad. Anarchism, consisting of countless fragmented approaches, is increasingly popular, but it will definitely not change the country. When leaders of the ‘revolutionary commune’ in Seattle were approached by sympathetic journalists and asked about their goals, they could not answer. These were, undoubtfully, people with good intentions, outraged by racism, and by the killing of innocent people. But do they have plans, strategy, an organization to overthrow the system which is literally choking billions of lives on all continents? Definitely not! On June 11, 2020, RT filed a report about the situation in Seattle: “A few different organizations have different demands, and no one speaks for everyone, but everyone’s trying to get together,” Simone clarified, implying that the much-discussed list of “demands” that have circulated for the past few days don’t represent the wishes of the entire community. However, there are a few lines of commonality running through the settlement. “Everyone’s upset. We all came here in unity, just over the fact that cops need accountability,” he said, declaring that his decision to join the demonstration was about “trying to send a message and get accountability held.” “Now we’re here – let’s get the dialogue going,” Simone continued, unwilling to commit to taking over other precincts, expanding the Zone, or any of the ambitious demands made by others in the group.” *** Russian Bolsheviks had it clear, and the same could be said about their followers. Before the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution, they spent years and decades educating people all over their vast country. Some of the greatest thinkers and writers, including novelist Maxim Gorky and poet Vladimir Mayakovski, were participating in the “project.” Even simple peasants were easily grasping the reality of their dismal existence while getting inspired by some of the greatest minds of their nation. If not for the Cold War and West’s brutal interference, the Soviet Union would survive and thrive until this day. The same could be said about the great revolutionary struggles of China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Venezuela, where hundreds of millions of tremendous works of philosophy, fiction and poetry have been distributed, for free, to both peasants and workers, who easily understood and got inspired by them. In China, in the 1930s, the entire so-called “Shanghai School of Cinema” was born, a true socialist-realism movement that helped to educate the Chinese public about the state in which it was forced to exist. Big and successful revolutions were constructed and then supported by the educated urban and rural poor, who were awaken and consequently outraged by their position in the society. *** The rebellion in the United States is strategically shallow. There are no great leaders, no cultural figures leading it, no extraordinary educators. Without any doubt, there are clear reasons for rage and resistance. Racism is one tremendous one. And, there are other ones: US society, in general, is tired as it is depressed. As it is confused. The country is robbing, literally looting the entire Planet. It tortures people in various countries. Rainforests are burning in Indonesia, Brazil, and Congo to satisfy demands for more palm oil and other raw materials. US citizens are consuming as no other nation under the sun does. They entertain themselves, often living frivolous, empty lives. And yet, almost no one seems to be happy there; no one satisfied. People know something went essentially wrong, but they are not sure precisely what it is. Or, who should really be blamed? There is an acute lack of solidarity. And everything is happening impromptu. Are the ‘members of the majority’ in the US truly kneeling because they are in unison with the oppressed minorities and the brutalized non-Western world? Or are they “trying to save their own skin,” and at the end, keep the status quo intact, as has happened in Australia and their basically insincere “We Are Sorry!” 2008 movement? There’s no strong “front,” there is no revolutionary program. It appears that the country is not ready, not prepared, for a huge job of re-defining itself. Insecurity is due to the lack of free medical care, education, and subsidized housing. Most of the people are in debt. Depression is, at least partially, due to overconsumption of intellectual and emotional junk. There is plenty of fundamentalist religions, but almost no discussion about how to improve life in this world. Segregated, atomized, and otherwise, fragmented society seems to be unable to give birth to a truly compassionate, egalitarian national project. Many US citizens see themselves as “victims.” Ethnic minorities definitely are. Are the others, too? Who is the victim, and who is the perpetrator? On which side of the scales sits a regular middle-class family, compliant and, by global comparison, heavily indulged in overconsumption? So far, there is no open discussion on this topic. In fact, it is being avoided by all means. There seems to be at least some consensus that 1% of the richest is to blame, as well as the entire corporate and political system, and also banks. But what about the majority; those individuals who keep voting the system, those who are making sure to ignore imperialism, racism, inequality? Many questions should be asked, particularly now, but they are not. The very uncomfortable questions they are. But without asking them, without searching for honest answers, there is no way forward, and no true revolution possible. The neo-liberal system created entire nations that cannot think independently and creatively. US is definitely one of them. People were bombarded with propaganda slogans that they are free, enjoying liberties. But when the day to act arrived, there has been nothing substantial in terms of new, revolutionary ideas. Just one enormous void. Nothing that could inspire the nation and the world. The outrage over the brutal police killing propelled millions of people to the streets. The mood has been truly rebellious, revolutionary, geared for big changes. But then, nothing! Revolution is being postponed. Postponed for how many years? The truth is – there are no shortcuts. Those who sincerely want to change the United States will have to follow the revolutionary formula from other countries. The formula is mainly based on education, knowledge, and determined, selfless work for the country and the world, called “internationalism.” Unless the US comes up with an absolutely new strategy, formula, but right now, frankly, it seems to be extremely far from coming up with it!

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orenonahaichigoda · 5 years

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I had a rough day, and came to a realisation. I will say a bit about my own experience, and then, after having to lay the groundwork of explaining 400 things about Japan because American schools and media think the whole world is the US, Western Europe, and places to blow up, making explaining necessary, will tie it to Ichigo, or at least how I portray him.

I'm Post Dankai Juniors, growing up in Japan. So's Kubo, actually. The boundaries of this Japanese generation are roughly '75 to '85, Yutori, the following generation that's always translated and localised as Millennial, pretty solidly set as beginning at '86. These things are always fuzzy because you can't vivisect living brains and find the part that likes char siu buns and the part that likes jazz fusion. I *majored* in Social Science. You'll have teachers who say "it is absolute that we date people who are similar to us because we're all actually narcists." (It *might* be because they're like our beloved family or community. Narcistic Personality is not universal) But it really just is fuzzy, and that teacher/book author is an idiot. Anyway, Yutori is always translated as Millennial. I don't know the end boundary. Post Dankai Juniors covers almost totally a debated throe for Germanic nations (I know Britain, Germany, and Nederland use the same generations as America, and their languages are Germanic) because of how fuzzy it all is, though.

Anyway, so since coming to the US, my interactions with other Asians, again, how is this defined when China, Mongolia, Japan all border Russia and West Asia includes Jordan and Saudi Arabia, South Asia is India's area, Southeast Asia is Laos, Thailand's area, I mean, find the Arabic kanji. I don't think Thailand even uses soy sauce. What the heck IS Asia, really? (Or "Middle East" when half of that's Africa and the other half shares plate with Europe? )

Anyway, my experience with Asians that are Boomer ages tends to be people who immigrated as adults, who more identity with a generation like "Dankai" or "Sirake." My experiences with Latinos older than me... I've never actually asked if the generational labels are even the same.

The thing about that is that when the name is the same, it means enough cultural traits are shared.

My biggest experience with people who grew up under the term "Boomer" are Black and white.

I've noticed a unifying trait.

If they're something oppressed (Black, gay), their attitude tends to be"it is mandatory to stand up for *my* demograph...but kicking the person behind me on the ladder in the teeth is wholesome, pure, and fun."

Outing me to large groups and saying I "speak Asian" seem to be the most common two. Calling me "Chinese" long after I've cleared this up for them is a close third.

I mean, don't get me wrong--my experience with Italian Americans past GI generation has been that now acquiring the "white" label, just like biphobic/aphobic/transphobic cisgays, they're more often staunch priveledge defenders than cishet people of Anglo descent! And it's just as true for X and Y as it is for Boomer (for the latter, one need only look at NYC destroyer and trump defender Giuliani) I actually don't really identify with my Italian side at all because I was kinda locked out of making any meaningful connection.

But back to my point that even in so-leftist-it's-almost-not-America Bay Area, Boomers are still like this!

The kind of stuff that flows out a X/Y TERF's mouth, or the mouth of an X/Y person with a Confederate flag on his wall, American-raised Boomers say with ease regardless of their alignment! It's banananas.

(Please note that I also just have not met a whole lot of Native Americans, period, nor enough people significantly older than me from any one place in Africa, that was an omission of lacking data, not intended as erasure)

How I tie it to Ichigo--

So Kubo avoids specifying birth years for anyone.

When I see something like this, I generally assume date of publication, as do most people in most fandoms (which of course gets screwy when you have something endlessly rebooted like Superman or Batman or something eternally unchanging like Detective Conan)

Anyway, the first Bleach something published was the comic in '01.

I generally assume it was supposed to be the start of a new school year, as Ichigo doesn't know many of his classmates until at least the first test scores come out. So it's probably April or something.

If Ichigo was 15 then, he'd also be Post Dankai Juniors, just barely. If Ichigo TURNED 15 shortly after, during his adventure, he'd be undebatably Millennial.

Now, there is still something up with Dankai and Sirake. PM Abe is the latter, b. 1954. A lot of his age-peers are behind him. This is the guy who supports remilitarisation and was caught funding a private militarist/fascist high(?) school that teaches that people from countries Japan conquered during its brief phase of trying to beat colonial Europe are less than dogs.

Now, I left there as a teen. Clinton was US president. Scandals still got people kicked out of public office in Japan. I hadn't figured or come out yet. Sure, I got bullied for being mixed, but kids will pick if you like different singers than the "cool" ones. They'll pick based on what's in your lunch. That data is sausage.

I'm not 100% sure what Ichigo would face day-to-day sociopolitically as he grew up/aged. I haven't had living family since'95 there, and friendships don't get deep enough to ever last distance until at least high school. For me, adulthood.

But I've kept/caught up enough (you try keeping up in the South before the internet was more than ten University sites!) that I know he'd face fascists (c'mon, the guy takes on a martial law government to save a new friend--that's anarchist, he just doesn't seem anarchist in his own world. He only fights humans in defence) I'm not sure how he'd feel about the JSDF, but he only fought the sinigami's war out of feeling like it was his responsibility because the adults around him kinda made it so. I super don't see him being for *starting* wars. In a human war, I see him actually being like Sugihara Chiune, a historical figure who died when I was a kid who I majorly admire. He worked at a Japanese embassy in Nazi territory, and when the embassy was evacuated,he continued throwing passports to Jewish people to go to Japan from the train he was departing on,and is hidden from Americans in the same spirit that Martin Luther King is...pulled the teeth out of. (PS, speaking of,go Google Steven Kiyosi Kuromiya)

Also, Ichigo's whole schtick is defending those worse off than him. He's not someone I see defending Yamato Japanese priveledge. Heck, I could see him joining Uchinanchu efforts to get Parliament and the US base to leave them alone. I can easily see him sticking up for a Filipino domestic worker he met thirty seconds ago.

To this end, I think regardless of what he is, he'd have a large rub with Japan's equivalents of Boomers.

Not to mention that Abe supporters tend to be very sexist and queerphobic, which isn't even homegrown but imported from Américanisation. I mean, there were female warriors--assasins, which is what Yoruichi and Soi-Fon are styled after, and go look at some Ukiyoe, like Utagawa Kitamaro. Quite a few artists in the 200-ish years of the Edo period depicted life in the queer districts. I've also had people posit that Noh might've been a welcoming draw for trans people the same way drag was all over the US in the twentieth century and still is in rural areas, where there's less cisgay gatekeeping. But this isn't something I can reasonably research without access to plenty of older and not well known dusty documents, and lots of time, and I live in the US many years now. And do you know how much round trip airfare alone is!? Also, the language changed so much and I can't read anything before Meiji without dropping words. Rukia, Byakuya, Yoruichi all have made for TV old-sounding Japanese like period dramas. Actual 18th Century Japanese would be unintelligible to the unspecialised.

So this stuff isn't really native, but Abe and a lot of people his age support all these -isms.

I super don't see Ichigo being happy about this.

(I also feel like Issin's old enough to remember before these -isms, but that's my own thing. In my project, he was in those districts, but that's me)

At the same time, I'm still writing this through my own lens. Also, not still being there, I just don't have enough data on Yutori in adulthood, or the grown Yutori lens. Honestly, even most other immigrants I meet are older than that. Or older than that and their adorable three year old children. So I have no clue.

In the early 2000s, I got myself from the South to CA and began to reconnect, but began to is the key phrase. I can tell you right now that Abe is as much of a second phase of Nakasone as trump is of Nakasone's buddy Regean. But what shifted when, I can't say. I'm not entirely sure how Koizumi ran the ship, as it were. I know some things, but not enough to say.

But whenever things shifted however, and whichever year Ichigo was born, I just cannot imagine him being any more on board with current events than really anyone in my area not born between 1946-1964 and raised in America.

I feel like he'd probably be too tired or self-effacing to fight for himself, but he'd take on, loud and proud, any bigotry against *others.*

I...also can't really say I'm much different, except my joints are held together by the power of wishes, so I'm more like "get the victim to safety" than "give the attacker plenty of regret." So, I can only do anything in limited ways.

Ichigo is also entirely fuelled by the power of love. Lost his ability to protect and feels like his sinigami friends ditched him? Mondo depressed, however much he wants no one to notice--which most do a great job of ignoring! Everyone in his world turned against him for a guy who has attacked people close to him? Terrified, and murder can now be an answer. (Fullbring Arc)

I was going somewhere with that. I've forgotten, but I'll leave it.

But anyway, I feel like he really only comes close to fighting for himself when others are taken away from him in a way that's also wronging them.

So yeah, I super don't see him happy with current events or Sirake gen.

I'm not sure how much I see him fighting for himself as mixed panromantic grey-ace. I mean, we know he fights people who are about to punch his face in for his looks, but what else can you reasonably do at that point? Get your head bashed in? I'm not sure how much I see him fighting hateful words pointed at him versus resigning himself to "people are the worst." I mean, when he talks about being picked on, he kinda seems resigned, or at least like it's a fact, like shoes being for outside or something.

I guess I tied it to Ichigo a lot better than I thought!

But also, the struggle against people born just after the war is not just you, and not just America. It's a major problem.

And it's likely that Ichigo would agree.

#out of body #musings #baby boomers #generation x #millennials #Japanese generations #Japanese politics #queerphobia #colonialism #moritomo gakuen scandal #sugihara chiune #japanese history #yoruichi shihouin #edo period

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southeastasianists · 8 years

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In the early 1960s, as the conflict in Vietnam between communist and US-backed anti-communist forces gained traction, US intelligence operatives focused their attention on Laos, Vietnam’s sleepy neighbour that, at the time, was populated by 2.2 million people. The “secret war” that was to come – an anti-communist paramilitary operation waged by the CIA with support from the Hmong ethnic minority – would see the US carry out the heaviest bombardment in history.

In A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA, a forthcoming book to be released 24 January by Simon & Schuster, author Joshua Kurlantzick uses recently declassified records and extensive interviews with former CIA operatives to shine new light into this war and the mission behind it, known as Operation Momentum.

In A Great Place to Have a War, Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, profiles four major players in the war: the CIA operative who engineered the operation, the gregarious general who led the Hmong army in the field, the US State Department staffer who took charge of the war as it grew, and the unpredictable paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong army – and is believed to be the inspiration for Marlon Brando’s character in Apocalypse Now.

Ahead of the book’s launch on Tuesday, Kurlantzick spoke to Southeast Asia Globe about what inspired his research, the stunning scope of the war, and how it sparked the growth of an autonomous CIA in the 21st century, one that continues to wage shadow wars around the world.

****

What prompted you to write this book and investigate the origins of the CIA? What were the most interesting things you found out?

I was based in Bangkok in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a reporter, and I travelled to Laos a lot at that time – and have since. I became fascinated by how this war had really had an enormous impact on Laos, and yet had been largely forgotten in the US, and so had been kind of part of a pattern of US foreign policy in which countries can become central to policy-making – even tiny countries like Laos – and then there is a 180-degree shift, and those countries are all but ignored. Also, I had done a fair bit of research on the early days of the CIA for one of my previous books, a biography of Jim Thompson, the famous American expatriate in Thailand and former intelligence officer. That research drew me into the early days of the CIA, and then I became fascinated with how the CIA shifted – how it shifted from a small, analytic/spying organisation into one that was much more responsible for paramilitary activities, and one that became, increasingly, one of the most important actors in US foreign policy-making.

Can you tell us a little bit about some of the major characters in this book, their significance, and how you came across them?

All four of the major characters in the book have now passed away. One of them, the former US ambassador to Laos, William Sullivan, I never met. I did, however, speak to many of his former aides and received his personal memoirs; he also wrote several published books about his diplomatic career. Sullivan played a unique role: he was the US ambassador but essentially co-managed a war along with the CIA. I met Vang Pao, the leader of the Hmong forces, about a decade ago, while researching a magazine article… and spoke with him at length about Laos and the Hmong-American community. I spoke with the other two main characters, Bill Lair and Tony Poe, at various times by phone and in person before they passed away; Bill Lair was the CIA operative who conceived of the war effort, and later was disillusioned by it as it morphed from a small-scale effort to assist the Hmong to a massive war that did not really, in his mind, put the priorities and interests of the Hmong and other Laotian anti-Communists first. Lair wound up leaving the operation as it grew in size and he became more disillusioned, and he saw it as too Washington-centred and Washington-dominated. I think he always regretted what had happened in how the war was run.

Can you explain the scope of this war – how big it was and its role within the Vietnam War?

It eventually developed into a war that consumed hundreds of thousands of anti-communist and communist Laotian troops, and lasted for nearly two decades in Laos. Given the size of Laos – it’s tiny – this was a huge war for the country. And at least early in the conflict, in the early 1960s, Laos was a high national security priority for US administrations – it was one of the main foreign policy topics of discussion in the transition period between the Kennedy and Eisenhower administrations. This might seem amazing today, since Laos has totally dropped off the US foreign policy radar, but it was true in the early 1960s. Kennedy devoted his first foreign policy-related press conference to Laos, actually. It was certainly subsumed within the Vietnam War; and, as the war went on, one of the problems was that Washington wanted to use Laos as a theatre to chew up North Vietnamese troops, but in doing so, it often chewed up Laotian anti-communist forces at a rate they could not sustain.

How did the CIA’s war in Laos pave the way for its current ‘shadow wars’ around the world?

The Laos war was really the first conflict in which the CIA (along with the US ambassador in Laos) was given such a control of a conflict – arming local forces, advising them, coordinating bombing efforts, even doing some actual fighting by CIA operatives. The conflict made the CIA a more central actor in the US foreign policy apparatus, and entrenched paramilitary work within the CIA in a way it hadn’t been before. This entrenchment never fully went away, and in the current war on terror, the CIA, along with Special Forces, plays a central role assisting foreign forces, overseeing drone strikes, conducting strikes on the ground in places from Pakistan to Somalia. And all of this is done with relatively little oversight, as happened in Laos; there is far less oversight of the CIA and Special Forces than there is of the conventional US military. This might be good, politically, for an American administration, but it’s highly problematic as a way of conducting low-level wars all over the globe.

How is Laos still dealing with the remnants of this war?

Laos is still really shattered by the remnants of the war, and will be for decades. There remains a vast amount of unexploded bombs in the country, and a significant portion of the country was disabled by the war, and the infrastructure (which was already minimal) was destroyed. The civil war split the country in many ways, and since 1975, the Laotian regime has remained a repressive, one-party state. It isn’t really a communist state, but it’s certainly one of the most repressive states in the world, even though when you visit the country, it does not seem as menacing, outwardly, as a place like North Korea or Eritrea or even Cambodia. But it is. And the war drove a high percentage of the population into exile, becoming refugees; this robbed the country of educated people, and Laos still struggles from that exodus.

#Southeast Asia #Laos #Foreign Intervention #A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA #History #Resources

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wheresmogs-blog · 6 years

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Reading our way around the world.

Before we started our trip we decided to make sure we each read at least one book that is set in or about each of the countries we visit.

We really want to try and get a proper taste for the places we’re travelling through. Taking local transport. Eating at local spots. Staying at home or farmstays. Visiting historic sites. Supporting local social enterprises. Talking to people about what it’s like living there. All these things have helped to start to gives us a feel for a place. We’ve also found reading has proved to be another really useful and fun way of helping us understand the histories, cultures and peoples of the countries we’ve been travelling through.

Here’s a list of books that we hope might provide some inspiration for you if you plan on visiting any of these amazing counties - or if you’re just looking for something to help you escape during your commute.

We’ll keep adding to it as we go so feel free to pop back occasionally to see what else we’ve been reading.

Click on the title to find out more about each of the books.

Nepal🇳🇵

House of Snow - Ed Douglas

This as an incredible introduction to Nepal. A massive collection of fiction and non-fiction pieces inspired by the insane landscapes and rich and sometimes complicated cultural heritage of this epic country.

While the Gods Were Sleeping: A Journey Through Love and Rebellion in Nepal - Elizabeth Enslin

The personal story of an American sociologist who moves to Nepal after marrying a Nepali man. She writes honestly about the challenge of adjusting to her new life in rural Nepal and trying to fit into a culture so different from hers.

Thailand 🇹🇭

Fieldwork - Mischa Berlinski

The amount of research that went into this book is incredible. It’s a great story set in the hills of northern Thailand that often feels so real it could be a true account found in an anthropology textbook.

The Beach - Alex Garland

Even if you’ve seen the movie with Leo DiCaprio, the book is still a great read. Richard’s internal monologues pull you in and brilliantly reveal his eventual emotional and mental breakdown.

Anna and the King of Siam - Margaret Landon

Based on the true story of Anna Leonowens, a young Welsh teacher who ended up in the Siamese court in Bangkok, teaching King Mongkut’s numerous children and wives for six years from 1862. Her liberal, humanist beliefs were at great odds with the king’s tyranny and the country’s archaic traditions, but she eventually had a huge impact on the young crown prince who later on abolished slavery and set the bases for modern Thailand.

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

Set in an intricately believable futuristic Thailand, this book takes aspects of current day Thai culture and twists them into a brilliant sci-fi story. As all good sci-fi books do it poses fascinating philosophical questions. What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? Quite dark and depressing at times but very entertaining.

Sightseeing - Rattawut Lapcharoensap

A collection of short stories that provide a diverse, funny, and deeply affectionate view of life in a small Southeast Asian country that is inevitably facing ever encroaching westernisation.

Laos 🇱🇦

The Coroner’s Lunch - Colin Cotterill

This book provides a really funny and entertaining way to get a feel for what life was like in Laos in 1976, after the communist takeover. Told through the eyes of the loveable Dr Siri Paiboun you learn masses about Laos culture history without even realising it.

One Foot in Laos - Dervla Murphy

Dervla is a badass Irish travel writer who cycled around the world. At the age of 67 she visited Laos, hiking and cycling her way through the mountainous country. Her book is written with great wit, charm and empathy, and it provides a wonderful insight into the lives of rural Lao people whom she’s very fond of.

A Great Place To Have A War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA - Joshua Kurlantzick

This incredibly well-researched book reveals how the USA was able to run a 9-year war without the world noticing, and the devastating impact it had on Laos.

Vietnam 🇻🇳

The Beauty of Humanity Movement - Camilla Gibb

This captivating story is told in contemporary Vietnam but provides a huge amount of insight into the impact of the conflict and turmoil the people of this country faced over the decades. A story of loss and longing but also filled with hope.

Cambodia 🇰🇭

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him

A harrowing, first-hand, child’s account of what it was like to live through the hell of the ‘Cambodian Killing Fields’. Chanrithy doesn’t pull any punches and at times even reading can get a bit tough. But in the end, the thread of the strength and love between her family pulls you through.

World 🌎

Only Planet - A Flight-free Adventure Around the World - Ed Gillespie

An amazing book about Ed’s journey around the world without getting in a plane. His ability to express his observations and beliefs so eloquently means it’s full of things you want to quote all the time. His attempt to reconnect with communities and our planet in a sustainable way has been a real inspiration for our trip.

#WorldBookDay #WorldBookDay2019 #Reading #Books #TravelReading #ShareAStory

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frenchifries · 4 years

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inchresting & informative... (copy-pasted under the readmore)

Rosa Lichtenstein’s answer to “Why did socialism fail in Russia?”

[In what follows I am using "socialist" and "communist" (and their cognates) interchangeably and, in most cases, in conformity with Marx's understanding of those terms]

1) As Marx saw things, communism could only be built in countries capable of producing a massive abundance — the result of a very highly developed economy coupled with high levels of productivity, even if they actually failed to do so because of ‘market forces’. That wasn't the case in the fSU — or, indeed, in China, Cuba, much of E Europe, Vietnam, N Korea, Laos, Cambodia, and now in Venezuela. They were all backward economies or were recovering from war. Socialism can’t exist where there is scarcity; it can only be built on abundance.

[Why that is so will be explained on request.]

So Lenin and the Bolsheviks looked to the massive productive capacity of the German economy to come to the aid of their revolution -- on that, see below.

(2) Equally, if not more important: a communist society can only be built by the working class organised by themselves, acting democratically in their own interests, not relying on anyone else to do it for them. The Russian revolution was initially led by the urban working class (in alliance with the peasantry), but that class was cut to ribbons by WW1, and then all but destroyed as an effective social, political and economic force by the Russian Civil War and the famine that followed. Socialism can’t be built if there is no powerful and politically engaged proletariat (i.e., the urban working class under capitalism).

Why that is so has been explained here:

Why-did-Karl-Marx-believe-that-industrial-workers-would-be-the-ones-leading-the-revolution-not-peasants/answer/Rosa-Lichtenstein

So, Lenin and the Bolsheviks argued that their revolution was doomed unless the revolutions spreading across Europe at that time succeeded (in Hungary and Italy -- but more importantly in Germany). Those revolutions failed for various reasons, and with that the prospects for the Bolshevik revolution nose-dived.

The revolutions in China and Cuba many decades later weren't even proletarian revolutions (howsoever popular they might have been at the time), but were made by guerrilla armies comprised largely of peasants, students, and 'intellectuals', etc. Whatever emerged as a result -- and independently of the aims of those taking part, howsoever well-intentioned they might have been -- could in no way be called Marxist. His version of communism can only be created by the proletariat (again, follow the above link for an explanation).

More-or-less the same can be said about Vietnam (which, despite the rhetoric, was a nationalist, not a communist, revolutionary war, first against the French, and then against the USA), as well as Laos and Cambodia. North Korea was set up as a puppet regime which only existed and survived because of the backing of the red army (Russian and Chinese). The 'revolutions' in E Europe in the years following WW2 were the result of invading red army tanks, and so could only be called Marxist by someone with a twisted sense of humour.

Related to the above there are a few additional considerations, which are a little more theoretical, that differentiate Marx and Lenin’s approach to socialism from Stalin’s and Mao’s, the most important of which are the following factors:

(3) There are in fact two forms of socialism:

a) 'Socialism from above',

and

b) 'Socialism from below'.

The first form seeks to bring ‘socialism’ to the mass of the population, whether they want it or not. It is imposed from above (by a centralised, or even a democratically elected, state), as its name suggests.

This approach has been adopted and tried out by various political movements and ideologies, including Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism, Chavezism (as we have seen in Venezuela), Social Democracy [SD]. Democratic Socialism [DS], and conspiratorial Blanquism, which many confuse with Leninism.

Blanquism

Quite often, the population acquiesce to this form of socialism, and they might even welcome it at first — until they discover it doesn't work. That is because it leaves the mass of the population passive and unchanged (except where they are allowed, in some cases, to vote every now and then, or they are required to provide cannon fodder in defence of this new form of the state). Left like that they are always going to be a threat to the new ruling class that has been formed as a result of imposing socialism from above — as we saw in Russia, E Europe, and, indeed, much of the rest of the planet over the last hundred years. On that, follow this link:

Revolution

That is because 'Socialism from above' either:

(i) Leaves the class structure of society unchanged (as is the case with SD and DS), or

(ii) It introduces a new ruling elite (as was the case with all forms of ‘Communism’) -- but, in both cases, the mass of the population remains exploited and/or oppressed for their pains.

[Many confuse the above statist/corporatist forms of socialism with Marxism. They will struggle long and hard and to no avail to find anything in Marx’s writings that supports such a gross distortion of his ideas. It is also worth adding that ‘Communism’ and Marxism parted company in the fSU in the mid-1920s after Lenin died, and the Stalinists seized power.]

Every time this form of socialism has been tried it has failed, or is now failing. That because:

(iii) In the case of SD and DS, the rich and powerful will always fight such lukewarm forms of socialism, try to strangle them to death (as we are now witnessing in relation to Venezuela), or manoeuvre/force them to compromise what few principles they retain so that they are gradually transformed into a pale reflection of those parties that genuinely and openly represent the interests of the ruling elite — that is, so that they begin to resemble to some extent Conservative and other right-wing parties — as we have repeatedly seen in the USA, UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, S America, Scandinavia, Australia, Canada, etc., etc. So, SD and DS don’t change society in any fundamental way, and leave class division -- and hence the rich and powerful -- in place at the top.

Whoever is in office under this form of ‘socialism’, the top 1% and their political representatives are always in power (they control the army, the police, the courts, the media, etc.), which means that SD/DS politicians, no matter how well intentioned they might be, will either have to accommodate to the 1% and their ideologues in the media, or they will be out of office in no time.

These 15 Billionaires Own America's News Media Companies

The barrage of abuse and lies that the former leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, faced from the vast bulk of the UK media is only the most recent example of this:

Anti-Semitism. Orchestrated Offensive against Jeremy Corbyn in the UK

They are now trying to do the same with Bernie Sanders:

Campaign against Sanders on ‘antisemitism’ for his criticism of Israel begins in earnest

The pusillanimous and compromised nature of SD/DS is part of the reason for the rise of ‘populism’ across the globe right now, as the mass of the population reacts to the long-term failure of this form of ‘socialism from above’ coupled with the evident failure of ‘liberal democracy’ world-wide — which political currents have in general looked after the interests of the rich and powerful, not the working majority they claim to represent.

Some have claimed that Scandinavian forms of social democracy have worked, but as with the rest of the capitalist world, it, too, is now beginning to fail -- I have explained more here:

Do-you-hate-capitalism-if-so-then-why-is-that/answer/Rosa-Lichtenstein

(iv) On the other hand, Communist regimes leave the capitalist world largely intact, isolating themselves from the international division of labour, which in the long run renders their economies inefficient and totally incapable of competing with the rest of the world. Hence, they are also doomed to fail; the moment of their birth is the moment they begin to die (to paraphrase Hegel). They either (a) slowly strangle themselves to death (as we saw in E Europe and the fSU), (b) they adopt ‘market reforms’ and emulate ‘free market capitalism’ (as we are now seeing in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Cuba), or (c) they are smothered by the imperialist powers (as happened in Nicaragua, and might be about to happen in Venezuela — in relation to which dozens of countries supposedly committed to democracy seem quite happy to recognise an unelected no-mark, Guido, as President).

What-is-happening-in-Venezuela/answer/Rosa-Lichtenstein

As Engels, Lenin and Trotsky argued, islands of socialism can't be created in a sea of capitalism, and any attempt to do so will always fail. Post-1925 ‘communism’ disagreed, but history has shown that Engels, Lenin and Trotsky were right. That form of ‘communism’ has been refuted by history, many times over.

(v) The second form of socialism, 'Socialism from below', represents Marx, Lenin and Trotsky’s view. It involves the great mass of the population, the working class, creating a socialist society for themselves, not waiting for anyone, or any party, to do it for them.

Marx was quite clear about this in the Communist Manifesto:

========================

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

========================

Communist Manifesto (Chapter 2)

Indeed, several years later he added:

“The emancipation of the working class will be won by the workers themselves.”

Self-Emancipation of the working class in Marx and Engels

Lenin agreed, insisting “All power to the soviets!” in October 1917 (the soviets were factory and army councils set up by the workers after the popular February 1917 revolution — indeed, Lenin had argued that their insurrection should only take place when the Bolsheviks had won a majority in those soviets, which happened in the autumn of that year):

In Defence of Lenin and the October Revolution

This form of socialism is inherently internationalist (“Workers of the world unite!”) — it has to spread and take over the core economies of capitalism so that it can't be strangled in the above manner, as the proletariat of each country rebel. Follow this link for more details and an explanation of how such a revolution will be international:

Revolution

We aren't talking about invasion here; an invasion by an external or foreign socialist country won't change the working class of the country invaded in the required manner -- they have to change themselves, in their own way, by their own revolution. Each strike, for example, is a mini-rehearsal for this (whether the strikers appreciate this or not), whereby workers have to learn to organise in their own communities, sharing ideas, money, clothing, food, shelter, etc. In effect they have to run a mini-socialist society for a few weeks or months. These are, in effect, mini-dress rehearsals for a working class revolution.

This is a basic fact about Marx’s form of socialism that SD-ers, Stalin, Mao, Castro and all the rest who advocate socialism from above, fail to comprehend, so determined are they to impose ‘socialism’ on other countries, or, indeed, on their own people.

(4) Again, connected with the above, and primarily in the case of the fSU, when Stalin and his henchmen seized power in the mid-1920s, they knew full well that the capitalist states would either strangle them to death or they would invade and destroy them.

This they would do in order to quarantine the Bolshevik revolution, guarantee it failed, or physically crush it in order to prevent the idea spreading that ordinary working people are capable of re-making society for themselves and in their own interests, expropriating the productive capacity of society by taking it out of the hands of the ruling elite.

But, the fSU in the mid-1920s was still economically backward, its industry and working population all but destroyed by WW1 and the Civil War that followed. As Stalin argued, they would have to make up the yawning gap between their economy and the rest of the capitalist world in a generation or they would be crushed.

[That is indeed what was attempted by Nazis in 1941, originally regarded by many in the UK and the USA, for example, as ‘good anti-communists’ — hence, we had appeasement (in the UK) and isolationism (in the US).]

This meant that the Stalinist regime would have to impose an anti-democratic, autocratic and oppressive system on the mass of the working population of the fSU. That is because, in order to catch up, the state would have to subject them to super-exploitation -- whereby, the proportion of wealth going to that section of society would be reduced almost to subsistence levels, and often even below that (hence the massive famines — for example in the Ukraine) -- so that investment in heavy industry could be maximised. This in turn meant that the state had to become totalitarian, executing and terrorising hundreds of thousands, including nearly every one of the leading revolutionaries of 1917, since working people would resist, as they always have done, such extreme economic deprivation and anti-democratic imposition. Only absolute terror would intimidate them enough.

‘Communism’ destroyed itself by such moves — moves forced on it by trying to create ‘socialism in one country’. Attempting to catch up with ‘the west’ forced the Stalinist regime to trample on every socialist principle it had once espoused. In order to compete with capitalism, it had to emulate it. It thus became its own opposite.

Tyrannies ruling in the name of socialism

To a greater or lesser extent, the same considerations applied right across the former ‘Communist Block’.

Who made China’s revolution?

Cuba, Castro and Socialism

Hence, these regimes were never popular; quite the reverse, in fact — and when they fell nearly 30 years ago, as they were always doomed to do, not one single proletarian hand was raised in their defence. Indeed, workers were glad to see the back of them, and many joined in their demolition.

A supporter of the old Stalinist regime in Russia has questioned the above allegation, that the Russian and E European working classes sat on their hands when the system collapsed between 1989 and the end of 1991. I have responded to his criticisms here:

Russian Workers Raised Not One Finger

So, Marxist socialism, socialism from below, hasn't itself failed; it just hasn't been road-tested yet. No one knows if it will work, but there are good reasons to suppose it will.

Can-any-other-economic-system-rival-capitalism/answer/Rosa-Lichtenstein

More details here:

Two souls of socialism - socialism from above vs socialism from below

State Capitalism in Russia

How Marxism Works

Finally, I have responded to several tired old criticisms of Marxism — including the ‘No True Scotsman’ canard, the ‘Socialism has killed 100 million’ slur, and the ‘You can’t change human nature’ ruse — here:

Why-didn’t-Marx-offer-a-better-form-of-government-than-dictatorship-of-the-proletariat-given-the-fallibility-of-human-nature/answer/Rosa-Lichtenstein

#politics

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thestorybehindthetale · 7 years

Text

The Story Behind ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’

Wes Craven’s

A Nightmare on Elm Street

will celebrate its 30th anniversary on November 9… the day the original opened up in theaters and introduced sleepy teens to the terror that is, was and forever shall be Freddy Krueger.

In preparation for the milestone, Craven has been sharing a ton of information about the creation – and impact – of his incredibly influential horror franchise, including how he came up with the idea in the first place.When he wasn’t busy sharing vital Nightmare on Elm Street information on Twitter, Wes Craven was taking part in a comprehensive oral history of Elm Street for Vulture.

The primary players behind the film open up in great detail about what went in to the hiring of the cast, the creation of Freddy, and the landscape of horror in the early 1980s. With Craven coming off of Swamp Thing and The Hills Have Eyes Part II at the time, he needed to find something that was truly terrifying. And he found it in real life, so to speak.

The way Wes Craven describes it, he came up with the idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street after reading an L.A. Times article about a family that had survived the Killing Fields in Cambodia. They made it to the United States, but a young boy in the family still found himself haunted by terrible nightmares while he slept. Craven says:

He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time. When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night. By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare. Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street."

The origin of Freddy Krueger? That’s awesome. And far more psychologically chilling than the parental vendetta that led to the birth of the on-screen Krueger – which also is explained in greater detail in the Vulture oral history. Burning the neighborhood child murderer in the boiler room of the local school? Vicious. The 1980s were a different time, man.

People forget how terrifying the original Nightmare on Elm Street actually was. Because over the years, Freddy became more of a huckster, or a punchline, and the Elm Street sequels went for laughs as much as they went for scares. Now’s a good time to go back and revisit Wes Craven’s film, to remember why it became a classic in the first place.

In the late 1970s to the mid 80s, more than 110 men died in their sleep. Until their quiet final moments, they were young and healthy. Their families were stunned. Investigators were bewildered. With the victims all being Asian, medical authorities named the sleep scourge “Asian Death Syndrome.” Witnesses and families called it the night terror.

The first case was reported in California’s Orange County in 1977. By the summer of 1981, 20 people had fallen victim to the night terror. Authorities and medical responders were powerless as men across the country went to sleep and never woke up.

The exotic morbidity of the night terror caught the media’s attention, with the Los Angeles Times running a string of stories on the “medical mystery” in 1981. The New York Times and newspapers in Connecticut, Florida and elsewhere devoted column inches to the sleep deaths.

Freddy Krueger’s real-life victims weren't white, middle-class teens, as played by Heather Langenkamp and Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street. They didn’t talk in mall slang, excessively blow dry their hair or dress in early 80s-style pastels. They were mostly male and were uniformly Asian. They were refugees with poor English skills who had fled their homeland to escape a nearly genocidal conflict.

They were the Hmong, a largely pre-literate or non-literate nomadic people from the mountains of Southeast Asia. Originally from southern China, they fled what had been their homeland for thousands of years in the mid-19th century, when the Manchu dynasty labeled them barbarians. They escaped to neighboring countries, notably Vietnam and Laos.

For the Hmong who relocated to Laos, their struggle continued first under French Colonial rule before settling down for the decades of Laotian royal power. When the Vietnam War spread to Laos and Cambodia, the American supported Royal Lao government recruited the Hmong to fight the Communist Pathet Lao troops.

The Hmong gained a reputation as fierce fighters, but the war devastated their people. An estimated one-third of the Hmong population in Laos was wiped out in the conflict. Following the 1975 Communist takeover, about 100,000 Hmong fled Laos to seek asylum in Thailand. Of the Hmongs who remained in Laos, thousands were detained in reeducation camps.

Away from their home, the Hmong struggled to adapt. They were mountain farmers and warriors with a unique religion centered on animals and spirits. They farmed by growing opium and cleared fields with fire. Their written language only came into being in the 20th century; many couldn’t read it anyway.

Then they came to America and began dying in their sleep.

The first modern recorded victim of the so-called “Asian Death Syndrome" was Ly Houa, of Orange County. Before his sudden 1977 death, he had acclimated to American life and worked as a medic. An Orange County social worker who knew him told the L.A. Times said she was shocked to hear of his passing. Houa was in robust physical condition, she said, and health-conscious through his professional expertise.

By the summer of 1981, the L.A. Times reported, 20 Hmong men living in America died under the same circumstances. All were young and showed no signs of ill health until death took them in their sleep. Their families said most didn’t smoke or drink. Some witnesses said they heard troubled breathings and groans right before the death.

Only about 35,000 Hmong lived in America at the time. For the communities scattered throughout the states, the deaths were more than morbid curiosities. They were a seeming existential threat to their people. The ratio of victims to total Hmongs in the country equalled all five leading causes of death for other American men in their age group. Orange County Medical Examiner Tom Prendergast told a reporter that the mysterious incidents accounted for half of all deaths among the Hmong in America during that period.

The deaths prompted an inquiry by the Federal Center for Disease Control. They tried to contain the unexplained horror of the sleep death in the dry wording of “Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome,” or SUNDS.

Officials suspected cardiac failure, but were otherwise baffled. Many blamed the stress of culture shock for refugees moving to the U.S. Minnesota Medical Examiner Dr. Michael McGee told the New York Times he thought Hmong victims in St. Paul may have been frightened to death. Hang Pao, a former Laotian general and a political leader for the Hmong, publically attributed the deaths to wartime gassing attacks. Pao, eager to turn public opinion against the Hmong’s old communists foes, said the nighttime seizures were delayed reactions to the chemical toxins the Pathet Lao used to poison villages.

No definite cause emerged. The mystery deaths peaked in 1981, when 26 men, mostly Hmong refugees from Laos, died in their sleep. A few victims of the seizures who were immediately treated by CPR survived.

While the sudden sleep death hit the American Hmong refugees the hardest, the mystery illness wasn’t limited to their people alone. The sleeping death was striking Asian men across the globe.

The disease had a long history in Asia, even in countries with no Hmong population. In 1983, the Associate Press reported that Japanese and Filipinos were dying from similar unexplained deaths. Researchers estimated that between 500 and 1,000 Japanese men, described in their 20s and 30s and healthy, died in their sleep of the condition known in Japan as “Pokkuri,” wordplay slang for death that occurs in a “snap.”

Recently uncovered research indicated it wasn’t new. CDC official Roy Baron and forensic pathologist Robert Kirscher published a report saying the attacks predated the Hmong arrival in America.

As researchers dug into the cultures with histories of SUNDS, they found something surprising. Freddy Krueger wasn’t the only killer stalking its victims through their dreams. According to Asian folklore, monsters had been preying on sleepers for years.

Hmong traditional beliefs revolve around nature spirits and ancestor worship. Among the most feared spirits is a nightmare monster known as the Dab Tsog. When Hmong fail to perform religious rituals properly, their ancestor and village spirits stop guarding them, leaving them vulnerable to the Tsog Tsuam, the crushing attack the Dab Tsog uses to press the life out of its victims.

Shelley Adler, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, conducted dozens of field interviews among the Hmong population while researching her 2011 book Sleep Paralysis. She found people who survived SUNDS, who related tales of dream visitations from dark creatures. One interviewee said a large, hairy monster, which he likened to an American stuffed animal, accosted him in his dream. As the oversized creature set on him with claws and teeth, the dreamer was paralyzed but still able to hear voices in his home.

The Dab Tsog doesn’t haunt the dreams of Asian men alone. In the Philippines, where 43 people out of 100,000 die from SUNDS per year, the death was known as Bangungut, a Tagalog word meaning “to rise and moan during sleep.”

Filipino folklore holds that malevolent spirits called Batibat are behind Bangungut. The Batibat have the appearance of ugly, obese women and live in trees. They infest houses when the trees they live in are used to build a home. Enraged by their displacement, they wait until the homeowners are asleep they kill them in the style of the Tsog Tsaum, sitting on their victim’s chest and face to force out their life force like air from a balloon.

By the time A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in 1984, the Hmong SUNDS was slowing to a halt after its 1981 peak. It hadn’t been cured, but after taking the lives of 116 healthy young men, the night terror shuffled back into whatever dark dream it came from.

As Freddy Krueger grew increasingly cartoonish and prone to one-liners in his follow-up films, the real-life sleep deaths became less deadly. Officials like Kirschner took an optimistic assessment, postulating that stress from American culture shock caused the previous attacks. With the Hmong more used to life in the states, Kirschner said, the stress was reduced and the danger was over.

The same year, SUNDS researchers made a breakthrough. After studying the medical histories of three survivors of the attacks, medical examiners were able to identify ventricular arrhythmias as the cause of the fatal cardiac arrests. The cause of the arrhythmias wasn’t yet known, but medical authorities now knew what happened to the heart before the SUNDS deaths. In 1988, CDC pathologist Roy Gibson Parrish published a study proposing that SUNDS victims were likely carriers of hereditary defects that affected tissues that conduct electric signals. While in most cases the defects wouldn’t be a problem, they could become fatal in a body undergoing stress.

And while the Hmong were moving past their twin traumas of warfare and displacement, the night terror was attacking displaced Asian elsewhere in the globe. In 1990, two Thai men working construction in Singapore died in their sleep on the same night.

The coincidence of two SUNDS death in a single night was shocking. But they weren’t alone. About 200 Thai people living in Singapore are believed to have died in their sleep since 1983. In Sleep Paralysis, Adler quoted heart specialist Michael Brodsky attributing the deaths to stress, saying that the men were working 13-plus hour days while enduring slavery-like conditions.

#thestorybehindthetale #talesofterror

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protoslacker · 7 years

Quote

The CIA history in Laos provides a cautionary tale of how a supposedly minor tactical operation could mutate into a monstrous military undertaking. This is especially the case if there is no public accountability and transparency, particularly regarding the use of funds for these covert operations. Seen from the narrow prism of U.S. domestic politics, public pressure can be avoided as long as civilian casualties and collateral damage are mainly members of the local population. But for the countries where the CIA is operating, the fundamental issue is the military and political intervention of a foreign power.

Mong Palatino at The Diplomat. What Laos Taught the CIA The Agency’s role in the country is a reminder that suspicion about U.S. intervention in the region is not without basis.

A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA by Joshua Kurlantzick

#laos #american foreign policy #war #history #cia #book

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marketingadvisorvietnam · 8 years

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Demystifying the secret war in Laos

Marketing Advisor đã viết bài trên http://www.ticvietnam.vn/demystifying-the-secret-war-in-laos/

Demystifying the secret war in Laos

Demystifying the secret war in Laos From 1964 to 1973, U.S. warplanes reportedly dropped more than 270 million cluster munitions on Laos. Photo by Reuters/Jorge Silva

Joshua Kurlantzick, the author of a new book about the Vietnam War's most misunderstood legacy, talks to VnExpress International.

Joshua Kurlantzick spent a decade tracking down old spooks, pouring through declassified documents and interviewing Hmong refugees to put together his excellent new book on America's “secret war” in Laos.

The senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations became interested in the topic while writing "An Ideal Man", a biography of a sidelined WWII spy named Jim Thompson who largely fell out of favor during the Cold War because he opposed the United States’ rabidly anti-communist agenda in Southeast Asia.

In addition to providing an excellent introduction to the details of the largest aerial bombing campaign in human history, "A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA" offers insights into the way the U.S. continues to pursue a military agenda today.

The book is full of gripping battlefield narratives, geopolitical betrayals and plenty of forehead-slapping moments of gross official miscalculation.

In emails and Skype calls, VnExpress International asked Kurlantzick about CIA drones, twilight wars and the future of U.S.-Laos relations.

VnExpress: Your story opens in 1961 with a lanky Texan CIA operative named Bill Lair having his wrists tied in a traditional baci ceremony on the floor of a hut in the hills of Laos. Fluent in Thai and Lao, Lair's heading a small effort to arm and train members of the Hmong ethnic minority led by the crazed, if charismatic, Vang Pao — a hardened veteran of France’s failed post-war slog to take Indochina back from communist nationalist fighters. By the end of the book, Lair has quit the operation, which devolves into an unholy air war. Had the war not escalated, do you think Lair's plan could have ever ended well for Vang Pao and those who said they believed America would never abandon them?

Kurlantzick: I don't think Lair had a huge vision about what the government of Laos would look like today. Remember that U.S. troops hadn’t entered the war in Vietnam yet.

I think he thought the Hmong could make it very hard for the North Vietnamese (who were doing most of the fighting in 1961) to make inroads into Laos. I can't say I understand what leaders in Hanoi at that time were thinking, but I think Lair's logic made some sense.

I don't think Lair thought: 'oh, we're just going to sacrifice all these Hmong people to protect the government of South Vietnam.' He didn't have a super high opinion of the government of South Vietnam, anyway, and I don't think he had that intent.

Efforts to arm and train guerilla fighters had proven successful in the past, so I don’t think Lair’s logic was unreasonable.

Your book chronicles how this plan spiraled into the largest bombing campaign in human history. As you put it: "On a per capita basis, many more Laotians were killed in the war than Americans or Japanese in World War II. For example roughly 0.3 percent of the American population died and approximately 3.75 percent of the Japanese died; in Laos, as much as 10 percent of the population was killed in the war." At what point did the whole thing become unreasonable?

By the mid-60s, Laos had become a theater for the U.S. to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail, largely through bombing. They basically viewed their Laotian allies as an anvil to hammer the North Vietnamese. With foresight, I think some Laotian leaders could have seen, at that point, they were becoming involved in a larger conflict in which they were a resource, but not the goal.

Last year, Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Laos, during which he made the following comments about the toll exacted by the campaign.

"The ancient Plain of Jars was devastated. Countless civilians were killed. And that conflict was another reminder that, whatever the cause, whatever our intentions, war inflicts a terrible toll, especially on innocent men, women and children. Today, I stand with you in acknowledging the suffering and sacrifices on all sides of that conflict."

What do you think Laos was expecting from that visit? What do you think characters in your book like Fred Branfman, the anti-war activist who helped expose the secret war, hoped to see during that visit?

The visit was consistent with other Obama visits elsewhere.

He tried to acknowledge, you know, U.S. history good and bad. But, the U.S. president just generally doesn't apologize. Even Obama's acknowledgement of policy in the past resulted in his U.S. critics at home slamming him.

I can't tell you what Lao politicians hoped for during that visit, but I think they're always looking for some triangulation between China, Vietnam, Thailand and other partners like the U.S.

Laos is an afterthought to U.S. policy today, however.

And, for me, the question isn't why is Laos an afterthought to the United States? It's a very small country, very far away, with minimal trade.

The question that fascinates me is: “Why was Laos of strategic importance to the U.S., ever?”

This story features bloodthirsty lunatics like Anthony Poshepny (AKA Tony Poe), a CIA contract-warrior who literally goes mad, decorates his hilltop redoubt with severed heads and executes five captured Vietnamese doctors after keeping them in a hole for a week.

Poe almost seems human, however, when juxtaposed with Bill Sullivan, the U.S. ambassador who oversees Nixon's acceleration of the bombing campaign and, at one point, flies home to Washington to personally lie about the whole thing before a special congressional panel.

Did a single villain emerge out of this tale? Or are you inclined to believe that all parties are equally responsible for what happened in Laos?

I don’t think there’s a single “villain”. I also don’t think everyone is equally responsible for the Laos war.

Regarding Tony Poe, I suppose you could ask why he continued to receive so many commands with the CIA even though his behaviors were pretty well-documented. Eventually, they did force him into a kind of semi-isolation and retirement, but it took a long time.

This book is about the CIA and U.S. policy. There are a few places where I describe how atrocities were committed on all sides, but I don't make an attempt to focus on those because that's not what the book is about.

The story makes one question the whole logic and morality of the secret war, even from a specifically logical-type military approach.

At the beginning, it perhaps made sense. Later on, the military interests of the U.S. and Laotian anti-communist army weren't even the same.

Your book mentions how the CIA now offers classified briefings about its drone programs to select members of Congress, who overwhelmingly approve of them. To what extent is the current drone program similar to America's campaign in Laos?

Well, those members of congress are briefed about some of the drone programs, but we don't really know what they're briefed about.

If you did a telephone poll in America right now, some people might be able to tell you that the U.S. has a drone program. And some people might even be able to name some of the places where they think it's happening. But, the full details aren't really there.

Whether they care is an entirely other question.

The war in Laos was kind of like that for a long time. It wasn't a total secret. But the complete story was obscured. The executive branch wasn't very forthcoming, even as certain members of congress and staff tried to dig.

The full picture never really emerged.

You intimate that the CIA viewed its campaign in Laos as a success, right?

Well that view emerged from the analysis written immediately after the war and left as a legacy within the agency. Those analysts were looking at it from a narrow “interests” perspective.

And one of the big problems with the Laos conflict was that the U.S. and its partners' interests didn't converge.

So, from the CIA perceptive, the campaign could be a huge success, but a complete disaster for the Hmong at the same time, which is kind of a terrible irony.

As far as accounting for it, I wrote a book about it but I'm not a judge. You could probably make a similar case about other actions.

Obama announced new funding and efforts to help clear the unexploded ordnance that continues to contaminate huge swaths of the Lao countryside, but many experts say the funding won’t begin to make a dent in the problem. Can you imagine the U.S. taking any extraordinary steps to compensate Laos for all the damage it did there?

Well in contrast to say, Vietnam, Laos is a very small place that went from being of great importance to almost no importance after the war.

Remember that the U.S. embassy in Vientiane in the 60s was of some sizable importance. It wasn't like today: a place where most diplomats don't want to end up.

This meant the consequences of the war in Laos could be almost entirely ignored, in contrast to Vietnam.

Today, Vietnam is an important U.S. partner, so coming to some reckoning with the war and with the Vietnamese government became important whereas in Laos I think the most you'll see is something like the speech Obama gave.

That's unfortunate, but that's probably the reality.

The book describes how President John F. Kennedy (worried about dominoes but wary of a ground war) opted to pursue a covert operation in Laos that trained local forces, deployed aerial bombings and dispatched a small number of “advisors” and contractors from the CIA and the military to Laos. The policy continued under Johnson and then got escalated by Nixon. To what extent did the CIA create a kind of Frankenstein monster in Laos?

It’s highly concerning that successive administrations have made use of twilight war with minimal oversight from Congress and the public. That’s a really problematic legacy.

I think Laos set a precedent under which the U.S. began to rely on CIA paramilitary officers and military Special Forces teams to basically fight wars.

In these situations, the U.S. uses these men to do something they weren't designed to do.

Seven hundred Americans died in Laos, but most of the casualties on the U.S. side didn't get much interest and that lowered the threshold for continuing the war because the president didn't have to worry much about it.

Usually in these “twilight wars” you get almost no press coverage, which is another major challenge.

So, the recent death of a soldier dispatched to a raid in Yemen is a bit of an outlier because it did get attention.

The Trump administration wants to hit harder in the war on terror, and these tools are the obvious ones they would use. Whatever anger the administration has against the intelligence community related to reports about Russia are probably not going to stop the usage of paramilitary officers and Special Forces.