Ancient jars, full of mystery

Cached from: http://www.boston.com/travel/getaways/asia/articles/2010/04/25/ancient_jars_full_of_mystery/

Thousands of massive stone jars are hidden in the hills of Phonsavan, in northern Laos near the Vietnam border.

PHONSAVAN — As the small, French-built prop plane descended through the clouds over mountains that opened into a high-elevation plateau, I spotted clusters of circular-shaped depressions scattered across the ground. As the plane flew lower over terraced rice paddies and rolling hills, I saw that a few of the holes were the size of a person, others as large as a house.

I had been warned that I might spot craters when flying into this part of northern Laos near the Vietnam border, but actually seeing these decades-old remnants of some of the more than half a million “secret’’ US bombing missions during the Vietnam War was a surprise. I was here to visit the Plain of Jars, one of Southeast Asia’s most mysterious archeological sites, but what I found was more complex.

Compared with other notable places in the region, Phonsavan is unusual in that many backpackers and tourists have heard of it, but few visit here. It’s on the map because hidden among its hills are thousands of 1,500-to-2,000-year-old stone jars made by an unknown people for an unknown purpose — Southeast Asia’s equivalent of Stonehenge or Easter Island.

But Phonsavan is difficult to reach over land, and its location is removed from the primary backpacking routes. None of the archeological sites was cleared of unexploded ordnance, or UXO, until 2004. Today, only seven of the roughly 60 sites in the area are safe to visit.

Like anyone who arrives in Phonsavan by air or bus, I was greeted by a cadre of tour and guesthouse representatives vying for my attention. This meant a free ride into town as long as I was willing to listen to the driver pitch his services as a tour guide. Once I was checked into a guesthouse, I opted for two days of exploration: On the first I would see archeological sites on a standard group tour, the next day I would rent a motorbike and head out on my own.

The group tour started the next morning at 9 when a small van showed up at my guesthouse. The driver and tour guide introduced themselves, as did the other tourists. Before visiting the first jar site, we stopped by a visitors center, decorated like most buildings in the area with disarmed bombs, land mines, and other rusted-out munitions dug up from the countryside. The front courtyard was lined with chest-high bomb casings.

As we walked single file into the first site, we saw red and white stone markers on the ground with “MAG’’ etched onto them. They had been placed by the Mines Advisory Group to show where the path was free of UXO. The short walk from the parking lot took us partway up a grassy hill. When we turned a corner, scores of large stone jars came into view. A few muffled gasps came from the group, and I felt my jaw go slack.

In the bright morning light, the crystal elements in the conglomerate stone sparkled, and the green and purple lichen on the rough sides of the jars appeared to glow. Among the jars were six 30-foot-diameter craters and an old trench warfare line. The combination of things made the experience overwhelming: the sheer size (up to 10 feet tall) and number of jars (250 at this site alone), the juxtaposition of the human ability to wage war and an ancient people’s drive to create, and the mystifying nature of artifacts in general.

Without knowing who made the jars, it is impossible to determine what they were used for. My favorite theory, and the least plausible, is the one put forward by some of the Lao people who live nearby: The jars were used by a giant king to brew lao lao, a clear, rice-based moonshine. An early theory, offered by Madeleine Colani, a French archeologist and the first Westerner to document the jars, was that they were ancient funerary urns.

Later we stopped at a “whiskey village’’ where we tried the local lao lao, and at a nondescript hillside where the remains of a Russian tank are still lodged against a tree. Two other jar sites, which we visited in the afternoon, sit atop small hills under stands of trees and are accessible by walking across rice paddies.

The next morning, after managing to get the motorbike started, I set out on a mountain road. The sun had yet to rise, and the thick fog lowered visibility to around 20 feet. About 16 miles out of Phonsavan, I stopped at a massive Hmong market, the lone Westerner among hundreds of people selling handicrafts, food, and beautiful Hmong clothing.

Back on the bike, I followed the road up above the cloud line, then descended into a narrow valley. When the sun suddenly cut through the cloud cover, I was awestruck by the beauty of what I saw: 6-foot-tall bushes covered in yellow flowers that ran past rice paddies and up the face of knife-sharp mountains still shrouded in fog. Shooting up through the rice plants were tiny lavender flowers, and carpeting the ground were sensitive mimosa plants whose leaves closed when they were touched.

Returning to town, I took a short detour down a bumpy dirt road to Baan Khai, or Crater Village. There were no signs marking the way, and I was just about ready to turn around when I spotted a gently sloping pasture of bone-dry earth covered in short tufts of bleached yellow grass.

A single set of tire tracks led through the pasture that was dotted on either side by massive craters, some up to 50 feet wide. I parked the bike near one, snapped a few photos, and scanned the horizon, fearful of wandering around without knowing whether the area had been cleared of UXO (it hadn’t, someone at the MAG office told me that evening). About half a mile over the next ridge was a small village of traditional houses on stilts, and in the distance, mountains on all sides. The only sound was made by the dried grass beating in the wind against the hard, clay-like ground.

Alone, I thought about the jars. It struck me that no matter the intention of their makers, the jars had taken on a vital purpose. After thousands of years of weathering and decades of being made inaccessible by unexploded cluster bombs, the jars are helping to rebuild the area. The influx of tourism money is aiding local development and paying for MAG to clear fertile agricultural land.

The jars may also bring a lesson of hope to those who come to see them: hope that our innate drive to create endures far beyond the tragedies of history.

Russ Juskalian can be reached at rjuskalian@gmail.com.

Cached from: http://www.boston.com/travel/getaways/asia/articles/2010/04/25/ancient_jars_full_of_mystery/

The Games “Anti-War” Congressmen Play

Cached from : http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Games-Anti-War-Congr-by-Ralph-Lopez-100422-870.html

For OpEdNews: Ralph Lopez – Writer

With a vote on further war funding coming up in a couple of weeks, Congressman Jim McGovern is sponsoring a resolution to require the president to submit an exit strategy by January of 2011, with plenty of loopholes. This is apparently meant to be a condition, attached as an amendment, to further funding for the war. The problem is, Rep. McGovern made the same request for an exit strategy last year before the war funding vote (gathering 100 co-sponsors,) and never got one.

How many times do we ask for an exit strategy and get ignored, before talk turns to voting for not funding the war?

The closest Obama came to an “exit strategy” last year was a promise to begin troop withdrawal in the summer of 2011 “subject to conditions on the ground.” But to insure that no one misunderstood this as a real promise, General David Petraeus quickly stepped in and said we could be in Afghanistan 5, 10, maybe 15 more years. The president said not a word to dispute this direct contradiction of his words to the American people by his highest-ranking military officer.

With 65 congressmen now on-record as voting to get out of Afghanistan by the end of this year, in a Kucinich resolution last February, it seems the time would have arrived to start building toward the number of votes which would cut off war funding. But instead, we are getting “exit strategied.”

It is true that previous attempts at stopping wars involved numerous tries with slightly different language. But what stands out is that almost all of these involved cutting-off funding, the only teeth Congress really has in stopping a war. An important note: to cut off the circular logic of saying even though you are against an escalation, once troops are deployed, you have to vote for money to support them, Vietnam-era bills cutting off funding always included funds to be used for orderly withdrawal. No one is talking about letting the troops run out of gas and bullets, and if you hear a congressman tell you this, it means he thinks you are stupid. Let’s have a look at the heroic efforts which finally stopped the Vietnam War:

1970 H.R. 17123 (“McGovern -Hatfield”)
Prohibited the obligation or expenditures of funds “authorized by this or any other act” to “maintain a troop level of more than 280,000 armed forces” in Vietnam after April 30, 1971. Between April 30 and December 31,l971, limited expenditure of funds to “safe and systematic withdrawal of remaining armed forces”

1970 H.R. 19911 (“Cooper-Church”, Enacted)
Prohibited using any funds authorized or appropriated in this or any other act to finance the introduction of ground troops or U.S. advisors in Cambodia.

1971 H.R. 9910 (“Cooper-Church”)
Stated that the repeal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution had left the U.S. government without congressional authority for continued participation in the Indochina war. Required that on or after enactment of this act, funds authorized in this or any other Act can be used only to withdraw
U.S. forces from Indochina and may not be used to engage in hostilities in North or South Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos except to protect withdrawing forces.

1971 H.R. 6531 (“Chiles”)
Prohibited expenditure of any funds authorized or appropriated under this or any other act after June 1, 1972 to deploy or maintain U.S. armed forces or conduct military operations “in or over Indochina” except to protect U.S. forces during withdrawal, or provide protection for endangered S. Vietnamese, Cambodians, or Laotians.

1971 H.R. 8687 (“Gravel”)
Prohibited expenditure of any funds authorized or appropriated under this or any other law to “bomb, rocket, napalm, or otherwise attack by air any target whatsoever” within Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam or Laos unless the President determined it necessary to ensure the safety of U.S. forces withdrawing from Indochina to set another date within that fiscal year.

1973 H.R. 7447 (“Addabbo”)
Prohibited the Defense Department from transferring $430 million in H.R. 7447 from other defense programs for U.S. military activity in Southeast Asia, including the cost of bombing raids over Cambodia, and paying for increased costs due to devaluation of the dollar.

1973 H.R. 7645 (“Case-Church”)
Prohibited obligation or expenditure of funds “heretofore or hereafter appropriated” to finance the involvement of U.S. military forces in North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia or to provide direct or indirect assistance to North Vietnam “unless specifically authorized hereafter by the Congress.”

1973 H.J.Res. 636 (Enacted)
Prohibited obligation or expenditure of any funds in this or any previous law on or after August 15, 1973 to directly or indirectly finance “combat in or over or from off the shores of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia.”

Singularly missing from any of these attempts is any bill which granted no-strings funding while asking the president to give a timetable for withdrawal of some sort, sometime next year. Subject to many escape clauses. Those bills not intended to cut-off funding went even further, requiring complete withdrawal by a certain deadline. In 1970 Congress tried and nearly succeeded in revoking the Gulf of Tonkin War Powers Resolution.

When Congress cut-off supplemental war appropriations funding, Nixon found money elsewhere. The lesson is the stubbornness and intransigence of an Executive branch bent on war, even against a Congress which opposes it with passion. The conclusion is inescapable: this Congress does not want to stop this war. But they do want to get re-elected. The McGovern bill provides political cover for those who vote to continue to fund it while wishing to appear to be against it. They can go home and say “But I voted for a withdrawal plan! I’m against the war!” Meanwhile, the thing that keeps the wars going, the money, keeps coming.

A better withdrawal strategy would involve support for Afghanistan’s National Solidarity Program, which addresses the economic roots of the insurgency by funding village-owned infrastructure projects, voted on by elected village councils, and hiring lots of local labor for doing simple things like clearing canals and digging irrigation trenches. Providing wage alternatives to joining the Taliban, which pays $10 per day in a climate of 40% unemployment, would go far toward giving Afghans control of their lives, and decreasing the chance of civil war when we go home.

Since the organized Taliban commands little bedrock loyalty, the result of this will be a weaning away of fighters from the opium economy which finances the insurgency, as they turn upon the Taliban and rebuild tribal structures. As a warrior society, Afghans can deal with the Taliban and Al Qaeda on their own. But this will not happen as long as the Taliban is the only actor distributing cash to feed your family with, when your children are starving.

Nowhere, no-how did the Vietnam war-stoppers say, “Mr. Nixon, we’ll give you more money for war again, if you promise us a withdrawal plan next year, if that’s okay with you.” What we do know for certain is some congressmen will go back to their districts after voting for Afghanistan war funding and say “Why should anyone challenge me? I’m against the war; I voted for a withdrawal plan.”

That will be good enough for most people whose kids are not bleeding in the sand or suffering from brain-rattle injuries, or haunted by civilian casualties. Who’ll just keep going on with their lives until the issue is focused on like a laser.

CONTACT YOUR CONGRESS MEMBER HERE

Science and Technology: Democracy Activists Look at Digital Opportunities, Challenges

Oleg Kozlovsky, Issac Mao, Ernesto Hernandez Busto use the Skype technology to participate in the recent conference on the Internet and dissidents.

Cached:  http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/Democracy-Activists-Look-at-Digital-Opportunities-Challenges-91983104.html

The power of digital devices, such as mobile phones equipped with cameras, was seen in protests that followed the disputed Iranian election in June, 2009.  Postings on such websites as Facebook and Twitter brought thousands to the streets, and digital images from Tehran fueled sympathetic protests around the world.

A recent conference in Dallas looked at the Internet as a tool for democracy activists, and at the challenges facing Internet commentators, or bloggers.

The power of the worldwide web and portable digital devices was seen in Iran last year.  It was seen a year earlier in protests in Latin America and other parts of the world against kidnappings by the Colombian rebel group FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Dissident bloggers involved with some of the protests met with Internet experts, and current and former U.S. officials, at a new center and institute named for former U.S. President George W. Bush.  Mr. Bush opened the conference, held at Southern Methodist University.

The cyber-dissidents were joined by two bloggers unable to attend because of flight cancellations following the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland.  They took part by way of the Internet site Skype. “If they arrest one, 10 more bloggers become dissidents,” said Russian blogger Oleg Kozlovsky. He described a growing movement of dissidents in his country who post blogs on the Internet, despite the threat of arrest.

Another blogger joined the discussion from China.

“There is no single person can be easily targeted,” said Isaac Mao. He said the Chinese censors are not able to crack down on all of the growing dissident voices on the web.

Harvard University researcher Ethan Zuckerman says Chinese censors aggressively block content they disapprove of. “But what they do, which is much more powerful and really much more sinister in some ways, is encourage the development of alternative platforms,” he saiod

In March, the worldwide search firm Google stopped censoring its site in China and moved its servers to Hong Kong, but Chinese internet users can easily access the government-favored search site Baidu.com.  China blocks the videos from Youtube, but provides an alternative site, without political content, called Youku.com.

Censorship strategies vary from country to country.  Robert Guerra of the private watchdog organization Freedom House says the Iranian government, faced with images of protests, restricted bandwidth to slow the speed of Internet videos.

“What we’ve also seen since the election of last June is that they’ve increased their technical sophistication, so much so that there’s real-time surveillance and repression.  People that post a message online or send a message through their mobile phone are tracked down within hours and taken into custody,” he said.

Iranian blogger Mohsen Sazegara now lives in America but has felt the long arm of the Iranian regime and its supporters.  Sazegara was one of the founders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard before becoming disillusioned with the Iranian government.  Now he posts videos sent by activists in Iran and says his websites have been attacked.  He believes the group responsible is linked to the Revolutionary Guard.

“They posted a pamphlet instead of my website that said the Cyber Army of Iran has hacked this website and at the same time, they removed all my home videos from Youtube and succeeded to control one of my three Facebook pages,” he said.

Blogger Ahed Al Hendi was arrested and jailed in his native Syria because of his online postings.  He now lives in the Uinted State and supports democracy activists worldwide.  He says that in Syria, bloggers still face persecution. “I heard the news of arresting a girl.  She’s a high school student.  She’s 19 years of age.  Instead of being at her school, she’s now in the prison.  Tens of bloggers remain in prison right now in Syria, subject to ill treatment, torture, and they have no access to their lawyer,” he said.

Venezuelan activist Rodrigo Diamanti writes blogs critical of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and Diamanti helped to form a group called Un Mundo Sin Mordaza – A World Without Censorship. “We organized and we have representation in more than 20 countries around the world.  And we all write about the importance of freedom of speech as a fundamental right.  We understand that once you lose this principal right, you will start losing the other human rights,” he said.

Cuban Internet activist Ernesto Hernandez Busto blogs from Spain, and he sees growing cooperation between traditional dissidents and Internet bloggers.  He says the partnership bodes well for change in Castro’s Cuba.

Colombia activist Oscar Morales Guevara says his experience organizing millions of marchers against the FARC on the Internet site Facebook changed his life. “When we did that and when we saw the power of people organizing things, we decided that we would continue the effort and try to speak up,” he said.

David Keyes, director of the organization CyberDissidents.org, is critical of countries like China and Iran, and also of some U.S. allies, including Saudi Arabia.  He says the Gulf state limits Internet freedom and has sentenced a man to death for his work in Lebanon as a television psychic.

But Keyes says digital technologies have changed the political landscape in repressive societies. “The Internet has given democratic dissidents power that’s unprecedented in human history, literally the ability to talk to millions of people across the world with a few clicks.  At the same time, there may be deleterious effects to over-reliance on technology,” he said.

He says the Internet cannot replace the face-to-face contacts and real-world activism that political change requires.   But Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard says the digital technologies can create a virtual public arena where people living under repressive governments can exchange ideas. “They’re not able to write in the newspapers.  They’re not able to hold meetings in public.  I think of Egypt, where you literally can’t assemble more than five people without getting arrested for holding an illegal demonstration.  But the Internet represents a digital public space,” he said.

An Iranian blogger based in Toronto, Arash Kamangir, says the Internet is a place for international conversations, which he thinks most Iranians want.

Internet experts say emerging issues involving the web are difficult.  Robert Guerra of Freedom House worries about  initiatives by democratic countries such as Australia to censor objectionable content.  Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard says the same high tech tools that protect dissident bloggers can also be used by terrorists to conceal their identities.

LAO COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT HUNTS FOR POLITICAL DISSIDENTS IN THE INTERNET

(( “If not us, who?

If not now, when?”))

**************************

Thanks to FreeLao’s Staff

Cached from: http://freelao.tripod.com

http://freelao.tripod.com/id32.htm

by Staff Writer

September 2000

After 1975, thousands of Lao people fled communist regime in Laos. Many resettled in the US, France, Australian and other western democracies. Despite living in relative safety of the West, some of these refugees remain fearful of the communist government in Vientiane. Even in the year 2000, many Laotians living in the West, particularly in the US, are fearful that the communist government has hundreds of agents living amongst our fold. These agents, it is further believed, regularly report to Vientiane of the political movement and affiliation of Lao expatriates. Whether this fear is real or imagined, the FREE LAO ALLIANCE feels obligated to warn that so long as the Lao people allow the communist government to intimidate us, we can never rid our homeland of communism. Many Lao expatriates fear that the communist government could discover their identities by knowing their E-mail addresses. We are of the opinion that the communist government fearing the exchange of information through the Internet will lead to political unrest. As the result of this fear, the government engages in a psychological warfare by propagating a scare tactics against those who express their opposition through the use of the World Wide Web.

Communism in all corners of the world persists so long as the central government can control all sources of information. When there exists a source of information uncontrollable by the government, the legitimacy of the state would soon come into question. Any opposition to authority creates potentially explosive political dissent. In a system where dissent is not tolerated, the threat presented by an alternative source of information becomes real. The explosion of information, particularly information exposing human rights violation and political opposition to the communist government, presents an unstoppable challenge to the state. The threat from freedom fighters in the jungle is physical and can be suppressed by brute force. The source of such a threat can be physically removed. However, the threat posed by an alternative source of information in the Internet presents a challenge never before encountered by the illiterate and backward communist cadres in Vientiane. This information age forces these cadres to deal with dotcom politics and dotcom dissidents. They cannot really tell whether the source of the opposition comes from outside or generated inside under their noses. This uncertainty wrestles the communist government in Vientiane into a state of paranoia. To maintain control, it must suppress the opposition. To succeed in suppressing that opposition, it must paralyze the source of that information. To do so, it must instill fear into those who would even think of joining the opposition. What can be more effective an instrument of fear than to say “your identity can easily be discovered if we know your E-mail addresses.” The roar of this paper tiger sends two messages: (i) the Lao communist is technically competent, and (ii) if you are a Laotian, no matter where you live, you are still under the control of the communist government in Vientiane. Truly, these messages ring hollow. They can be true only if we permit it to be so.

Psychological warfare is one of the most potent weapons of all. We witness the American’s superior fire power during the late 1960s and 1970s in Indochina, yet it lost to the Vietminh’s psychological warfare. The US later learned that its military technology was no match for the North Vietnamese psychological weapon. In psychological warfare, the instrument of war comes in many forms. Instilling fear into the enemy is the common element of psychological weapon. Propaganda is another; it helps mobilize the masses against the opponent. If used effectively, propaganda can be an effective tool to demonize and dehumanize the enemy. In short, psychological weapon changes the mindset of the combatants, as well as the populace. It makes it easier to kill the enemy without hesitation. While these facets of psychological weapons are well documented in all major wars in the world, we know little about its use by the Lao communist government against the Lao expatriates living in the West.

We learn from many Lao expatriates living in the US that there are many Lao communist agents living in the States. We also have been told that these agents report to Vientiane the movement and political affiliations of our brethren. This belief is so strong that it paralyzes the political movement and expression of our Laotian expatriates in the US, save those brave souls who dare to remain vocal in their opposition to the communist government in Lao.

While the fear appears to be real to some people, we believe that political paranoia is not a healthy thing to nurture. If we have been asked whether anyone can guarantee the safety of those who express their anti-government sentiment, we could not help but dismiss the question as disgenuine. For those timid souls who now live in the US and remain fearful of the communist government in Lao, we can say with our heads held high and without trepidation that they are not truly free. Politics by nature is an unsafe business. If a ‘politician’ concerns so much for his personal safety, perhaps it is more profitable for him to enter a less strenuous profession. In a fight for liberty, a slave must be brave enough to lay down his life in return for freedom when necessary. When the world of injustice sets into motion the antagonism among the strong and the weak, master and slave, in short, communist and free world, those who want to live in a free society must do every thing, including to kill and be killed, to preserve themselves as freemen. To be free, we must not live in fear and insecurity. We cannot truly be free if we cannot turn our back without thinking that “my E-mail address can be discovered by the Vientiane government.”

This is not to say that a Lao political dissident should not have fear. It is only natural that every one should experience fear, especially political dissidents opposing a formidable foe. However, the type of fear experienced by political dissidents differs from personal greed and selfishness of the man on the street. Political dissidents live under constant fear that their country—Lao—one day will disappear from the world map unless they fight to preserve the territorial integrity and the lives of those who live in it. We fear that the ever increasing foreign debt accumulating by the Vientiane government will scuttle our country’s growth and keep us in poverty. We fear that the destruction of our environment and over exploitation of natural resources will one day leave Lao unprotected against natural disaster and become dependent on foreign imports. We fear that the continue political suppression by the Vientiane government will inure unto the minds of our younger generation that there is no alternative to tyranny. We fear that the continuing growth of political apathy by the Lao expatriates will result in the abandonment of democratic movement for Lao. We harbor these fears in our hearts and minds daily. We are also quick to point out that, instead of making us cowards, these fear have tempered our nationalist sentiment and yearning to breathe free. At times these fears are too great to bear; we are willing to sacrifice all that we hold dear to prevent these fears from becoming a reality.

It is an irony that some of us should live in the freest county on earth yet remain psychologically shackled by the communist government in Vientiane. The fear comes not so much from the concern for their own safety here in the US, but by their selfish concern of losing the privilege of walking freely in the morning market in Vientiane when they visit Lao. We do not question the intensity of love nor the degree of patriotism of Lao our descents; it is understandable, if not expected, for every Lao person yearning to return home. However, to savor that vacation visit at the expense of expressing their political opinion in a whisper or at worse remain reticent in face of brutal suppression of all political dissent by the Vientiane government, we trust that is too high a price to pay.

Lao is an underdeveloped country. In the information age, the country struggles to acquire the most basic technology. It was a great achievement for the Lao government to launch a communication satellite in 1997 and claimed a 20% equity on the payload. However, we know that information technology comes too slowly to Lao. The Vientiane administration is very perceptive to the threat of the Internet. High speed information and communication technology created by the Internet presents an uncontrollable threat to the government. However, despite its lack of expertise, the communist returns to its basic element of jungle warfare: psychological weapon. By implanting the fear into the hearts and minds of the Lao people, both inside and outside of Lao, that it is easy for the Vientiane government to figure out the identity of the Lao people who oppose the government in the Internet, the government sets into motion a condition conducive to paranoia situation. Ill-informed Lao expatriates who visited Vientiane returned home with new brand of propaganda to tell friends and families that the Vientiane government can discover their identity by just knowing their E-mail addresses. Mind control is the most effective form of psychological warfare.

This newfound fear will paralyze our political dissent against the Vientiane government unless we stem its tide at its source. The source of this fear is not the mouth piece of the communist government. The fear is created in the hearts and minds of the Lao expatriates who give too much credence to the communist’s claim on its technical competence. It is not easy for the Lao communist government to make a transition from a jungle warfare of the 1970s to an information warfare of 2000s. We saw in 1975 that riding a bicycle was a great challenge to every Lao communist fresh out of the jungle and caves of Samneua. It was a big step for these aboriginals to graduate from bicycle to automobiles in the early 1980s. Then came the computers in the 1990s, these metal boxes presented an unprecedented challenge to our beloved cadres. As if these series of challenges are not enough to the already intellectually stunt communist leaders in Vientiane, the late 1990s injected the Internet into Lao. As the country was propelled into the information superhighway, the cadres really found themselves at a crossroad to the la-la-land.

They thought that when high ranking cadres sport cellular phones on the streets, that would be the height of techno overspill into Lao, but the digital penetration really takes its toll when Lao is no longer immune from the bombardment of information via the Internet. Anti-government sites pop up here and there; soon they are every where. Dotcom politics and E-dissidents present a new challenge to Vientiane. This new threat requires a new type of response. The suppression of political opposition such as that staged by the students in October of 1999 was a task too easy for a government trained in jungle warfare. However, with all the guns and chemical weapons stockpiled in its arsenal, the communist government finds itself helpless in face of the new technology. Although untrained in and unprepared for this new technology, the government goes back to the basics: jungle warfare.

When the cadres walked out of the jungle in 1975, they thought that they would leave their jungle mentality behind and join the ranks of the civilized world. However, dotcom politics has forced the communists in Lao to revert to its basic instinct of jungle mentality. It must retrieve from the dust bin of its revolutionary refuse the fundamental element of guerilla tactics: psychological warfare. The principle is most basic: “if you cannot fight them, scare them into submission.” Thus, the campaign against Lao expatriates, who use the Internet as a tool to oppose and expose the communist government in Vientiane, begun in earnest. The propaganda is quite simple. The government claims that it can discover the identities of political dissidents through their E-mail addresses. The government hopes to coward potential dissidents into fear and paralyze their political activism by claiming that “big brother” is watching. The success of this propaganda depends on the gullibility of its audience. A propaganda succeeds so long as its audience believes in it. Unfortunately, many Lao expatriates had fallen prey to this scare tactic. Some lessen the harshness of their criticism of the government. Others coil into reticence exchanging the perceived threat for relative safety and convenience of their next visit to Vientiane.

Democracy will come to Lao through the hard work and dedication of those who dare to question authority. That opposition to the communist government must be vocal. A silent opposition is no opposition at all. An unexpressed opinion is not much of an opinion. We must gallantly fight against the foe of our nation and the enemy of mankind. The history of our beloved country taught the world that the Lan Xang Kingdom seldom produces cowards. It is more of a fact than opinion that every nook and cranny of Lao is filled with men and women who braved battle against our enemies, foreign and domestic. Had our ancestors harbored the same degree of cowardice as those who fear the communist government today to discover their E-mail addresses, we would still live under the Burmese, Siam and French rule. There was no Internet during those eras, but the analogies are equally illustrative.

We can assure all Laotians living outside of Lao today that the communist government is toothless. It cannot even maintain control of its political power among its fold. Did we not hear the explosions ripping through the morning market, the post office and the bus station in recent months? Did they arrest anyone “really” responsible for those bombings? The prospect of the Vientiane government to search for political dissidents through the Internet—-by merely knowing their E-mail addresses— is a far fetch hunt for the enemy of the state. The famous lines for communist officials in Vientiane to maintain are that:

1. “We know every movement you make in the US;”
2. “We have a transcript of every meeting you hold in Australia,” or better yet,
3. “Do not think you can hide in the web if you oppose us?”

Really? Catch us! At the Free Lao Alliance, we claim to speak for those who have been muted by brutal suppression. We shall represent those who cannot represent themselves. We shall never succumb to communist scare tactics. No matter how long and no matter how arduous the fight, we shall continue our struggle until democracy is restored unto the hands and hearts of every Lao person inside and outside of Lao. We shall serve as the foundation for those who will brave with us to oppose communism in Lao.

Gallantry, bravery, heroic, unyielding, intelligent, and visionary. These words describe the character of Lao politicians and intellectuals. We carry them on our sleeves every where we go. We remind ourselves at all time and in all places that liberty and freedom are our God given rights. No one shall take them away from us. Before we throw communism out of Lao, we must first chase cowardice from our hearts and erase fear from our minds. The fight to restore democracy to Lao is not a child’s play. For those who think that the Vientiane government can hunt them down by just knowing their E-mail addresses, we say ‘come brethren, let us walk the true path to freedom.’ Come unto our fold and we shall set you free from communist scare tactics. We have been to the future and can tell you that there is nothing to fear. We have seen what could be; do not shy from this opportunity to show to the world that Laotians are not easily scared into submission. The fear you have is created by the communist government. To succeed in the fight for freedom of our people and country, we must maintain clear heads. We must keep our minds open to ideas that are conducive to the reconstruction of our beloved country. We must close our minds to all propaganda scare tactics disseminated by the communist government.

LAO COMMUNIST ON WEB

When the cadres walked out of the jungle in 1975, they thought they that would leave their jungle mentality behind and join the ranks of the civilized world. However, dotcom politics has forced the communists in Lao to revert to its basic instinct of jungle mentality. It must retrieve from the dust bin of its revolutionary refuse the fundamental element of guerilla tactics: psychological warfare. The principle is most basic: “if you cannot fight them, scare them into submission.” Thus, the campaign against Lao expatriates, who use the Internet as a tool to oppose and expose the communist government in Vientiane, begun in earnest. The propaganda is quite simple. The government claims that it can discover the identities of political dissidents through their E-mail addresses. The government hopes to coward potential dissidents into fear and paralyze their political activism by claiming that “big brother” is watching. The success of this propaganda depends on the gullibility of its audience.

Vietnam’s guarded US embrace

By The Hanoist

Cached:  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LD24Ae01.html
Fifteen years after normalizing diplomatic relations, military cooperation between the United States and Vietnam is evolving bit by bit.

Both sides would like to counter China’s military buildup and historic desire to dominate the region – including the strategic South China Sea where a quarter of the world’s trade transits and where Vietnam, China and other countries contest two island chains believed to contain rich mineral deposits.

While US motives are relatively clear – to deepen contacts with the Vietnamese military and establish areas of cooperation – the Hanoi side is often tied up in knots on how and whether to partner strategically with Washington , its former war adversary.

On one hand Vietnam enjoys high-level attention from the US.  In October 2008, the two countries initiated an annual security meeting held at the assistant secretary-vice minister level. Referred to officially as “political-military talks” by the US, Vietnamese diplomats advertise the event as a “strategic dialogue”, referred to locally as doi thoai chien luoc.

According to a diplomat in attendance, Ambassador Le Cong Phung made the first public announcement of the dialogue while speaking at a Vietnamese embassy function in Washington a month prior, to the surprise of some American guests.

But there are also Vietnamese concerns over the appearance of too close a military relationship. Since 2003, American warships have docked in Vietnam to conduct a range of military-diplomatic exchanges. While welcoming these highly symbolic visits by the US Navy, Vietnam initially limited port calls to one a year and ensured that the Chinese navy enjoyed equal docking rights.

The desire to placate China is reflected in a gamut of policies, from how activities with the US are disclosed in the state-controlled media, to the habit of sending high-level delegations to China coincident with any high-level visit to the US.

In March, a US naval supply ship quietly spent 16 days at Vietnam’s newly completed Van Phong port located in strategic Cam Ranh Bay. This famed deep-water harbor was originally built by the Americans during the Vietnam War and after the communist takeover became a key base for the Soviet Union’s Pacific Fleet. The recent port call by the USNS Richard E Byrd was not publicly announced, but the purpose of the visit was supposedly for repairs and resupply under a new comprehensive agreement for logistical support.

In December 2009, General Phung Quang Thanh became just the second post-war Vietnamese Minister of Defense to visit Washington. True to form, senior Defense Ministry delegations went to China before and after General Thanh’s US visit. This deference to Beijing is reflected in a recent Hanoi white paper on defense policy where territorial disputes with its northern neighbor China are downplayed.

Overall, warming US-Vietnam ties have generated actual and promised results. Vietnam has been invited to observe US military exercises with regional allies, including Thailand. There is also discussion of joint search and rescue operations off Vietnam’s coast and of the US training Vietnamese peacekeepers for international United Nations-led missions.

Vietnamese staff officers have also been offered participation in International Military and Education Training (IMET), the American program for developing ties with future military leaders. While none of the exchanges is particularly significant in isolation, each activity represents further cooperation between Hanoi and Washington and facilitates an active US naval presence in the South China Sea.

Friend or friendemy?
Although relations with the US have advanced on many fronts, there is nevertheless a deep ambivalence in Hanoi on proceeding further. And it is just not about sensitivity to China’s feelings. Many in Vietnam’s leadership dread “peaceful evolution,” code for closer ties to the US unleashing forces of political liberalization that the ruling communist party cannot control.

This paranoia is manifested in various ways. Earlier this month, the Vietnamese government refused to grant a visa to US congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, a senior member on the House Armed Services Committee and staunch human rights defender. According to a statement by Sanchez, Vietnam was worried she would highlight the government’s well-chronicled and ongoing rights abuses.

The suspicions are sometimes personal. In the fall of 2008, Hanoi would not allow the current US military attache to serve at the US embassy because of his ancestry. Born in Vietnam, Colonel Patrick Reardon was adopted by an American family as a toddler. Vietnamese authorities are known to remain suspicious of overseas Vietnamese, particularly those with political influence.

The deep-seated paranoia also affects decision-making at the highest level. Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh’s trip to the US last December was reportedly postponed twice. According to a Vietnamese source, there were differences in the party politburo over the goals of the visit.

While the defense minister is seen as pro-Western, others within the communist leadership – such as first deputy Defense Minister General Nguyen Chi Vinh – rely on Beijing as a political hedge and are wary of closer ties with the US. The conflicting worldview is reflected in a popular saying now making the rounds in Vietnam: “Too close to China and lose the country. Too close to America and lose the party.”

Such is the dilemma in which Vietnam’s communist leaders now find themselves. Who knows what the captains and colonels of the People’s Army of Vietnam might learn when they attend US staff colleges? While there is momentum for increased US-Vietnam military cooperation, expect ties to cycle hot and cold.

The Hanoist writes on Vietnam’s politics and people.