For many travelers, the goal of tourism now seems as much to be recording the trip as living the experience.
This impulse is neatly captured in a photograph by Lydie France of the European Pressphoto Agency that shows a crowd of people around the Mona Lisa, several of them holding up small cameras for snapshots. Why? Who needs a snapshot of the Mona Lisa? Why not just look and appreciate? The camera seems to form a barrier between the viewer and the experience.
But perhaps the creative act of taking a picture, whatever its quality, can connect a person with a subject in a more personal, interactive way. Maybe it simply says, “Hey, I was there.” In any case, the spread of cameras has made tourism — from museums to mountains — a less passive pursuit than in the past, for travelers and subjects alike.
A new documentary, “Camera, Camera,” begins with a shot of the Laotian countryside as seen on the viewing screen of a small camera. As it proceeds, the film alternates between vistas of rural Laos in its natural beauty and the viewing-screen versions of those vistas. This duplicates the experience of many travelers today, who compose their experience through camera lenses as they go and then take the pixelated images home with them in place of memories.
["Camera, Camera" was directed by Malcolm Murray, written by Michael Meyer and produced by Josh Haner, who is a co-editor of the Lens blog and has photographed Laos for The Times.]
With cameras everywhere, one of the challenges photojournalists face is finding new ways to present familiar scenes. When my father, Carl Mydans, was shooting for Life magazine, pictures of combat, disasters and exotic locales were novel to most readers and carried their own power. Now, many such scenes have lost their freshness and impact.
Some news photography today comes close to being art, capturing a viewer’s eye — even challenging the viewer — with imaginative compositions. I’ve been surprised to see how far this can go in pictures where it takes a little work to make out the actual subject.
As photojournalists have greater license to be artists, reporters similarly have more latitude to be “writers” — not simply recorders of fact. Many subjects call out for new, imaginative presentation. I used to believe that the writer should not intrude between the reader and the subject, but should step aside and present the subject matter unadorned. (After all, I did start out at a wire service, The Associated Press.) It turns out, however, that it’s been a great pleasure to feel I’ve been liberated to try to bring more of myself into my writing.
It is the sadder side of these changes that “Camera, Camera” presents. As the world has become familiar to us, we have lost something valuable in human experience: adventure, discovery, exploration of the unknown. (The “adventure travelers” in the film rent inner tubes to float down the Mekong River and pay to swing above it on ropes.)
I was reminded of Khaosan Road in Bangkok, which I once described as “the black hole at the center of a shrinking world where the Age of Discovery has ended, all roads have been traveled and the words ‘remote’ and ‘exotic’ have all but lost their meaning.” (“Bangkok Journal; Bit of Trekkers’ Exotica, Looking More Like Home,” May 12, 2001.) The world of travel has been tamed.
“Camera, Camera” captures one of the most disturbing examples I know of the way tourists can overwhelm their subjects. It is the scene of what once was a heart-stopping moment in the ancient town of Luang Prabang: the early morning procession of hundreds of barefoot monks in their bright orange robes, carrying begging bowls. As the film shows, this sacred ritual is now swarmed by scores of bustling tourists, some of whom lean in with cameras and flashes for closeups as the monks pad silently past. “Now we see the safari,” a local artist, Nithakhong Somsanith, told me bitterly. “They come in buses. They look at the monks the same as a monkey, a buffalo. It is theater. Now the monks have no space to meditate, no space for quiet.”
Toward the end of the film, the voice of an unseen, unnamed Australian traveler sums up the state of affairs. “I’m looking forward to getting away from the beaten path,” he says, “but I find everywhere I go, every time I change my plan and think I’m heading somewhere that might not be full of Westerners, I’m so, so wrong. It seems like there’s not much left that’s undiscovered.”
A brief excerpt from “Camera, Camera,” shot in Luang Prabang, Laos.
Seth Mydans, who is based in Bangkok, covers Southeast Asia for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. His father was among the first photographers hired by Life magazine, in 1936.
Stealth & wealth in Moscow: MAKS 2011 up above the world
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Vietnam Legacy Shapes Today’s Military Leaders
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, April 29, 2011 – Tomorrow marks the 36th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War –- a conflict that claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and continues to affect the United States, including its military leaders and current wartime operations.
The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, marked the dramatic and painful culmination of the Vietnam War. The last of the dominos were laid when then-President Richard M. Nixon announced the end of offensive operations against North Vietnam after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on Jan. 27, 1973. The accords called for a ceasefire in South Vietnam, but allowed North Vietnamese forces to retain the territory they had captured.
With nearly all U.S. forces gone, and Congress’ passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974 that cut off military aid to South Vietnam, North Vietnam became emboldened. Its forces began a steady march southward toward Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital.
As the North Vietnamese closed in on Saigon, Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation operation in history, commenced, moving tens of thousands of American military and civilian personnel from the city, along with thousands of South Vietnamese civilians.
On April 29, 1975, the North Vietnamese launched a heavy artillery bombardment that would become their final attack on Saigon. The city fell the following afternoon when a North Vietnamese tank crashed the gates of the presidential palace, accepting South Vietnam’s unconditional surrender.
Ho Chi Minh’s dream of a unified, communist Vietnam was fulfilled, and the city once known as Saigon today bears his name. Vietnam now celebrates April 30 as Reunification Day.
The Vietnam War cost millions of lives, including 58,267 Americans, with more than 300,000 U.S. servicemembers wounded in action and 1,711 missing in action.
The Vietnam War had a profound impact on today’s American military leaders, including Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. And in many ways, the lessons learned during the Vietnam conflict have shaped the way U.S. forces operate today, particularly in conducting counterinsurgency operations like those under way in Afghanistan.
Mullen, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer, is among the few people still on active duty who experienced Vietnam firsthand. Fresh from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968, he reported aboard the destroyer USS Collett for duty as an anti-submarine officer and participated in combat operations off the Vietnam coast.
Mullen speaks frequently about how the Vietnam War affected the nation and shaped him both personally and professionally.
“The Vietnam conflict was a life-defining experience for every American who lived during that era, and it continues to impact us all: the pain, the conflict, the healing,” he said during last year’s Memorial Day observance at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. “The lessons we learned in Vietnam were bought at a very great price. Acting on them is the best tribute we can pay to honor those who died” — among them, some of Mullen’s own friends and Annapolis classmates.
While he was struck during that first assignment at the intensity of the conflict, Mullen said, he soon began to process just how divisive the war had become.
“What I take away from Vietnam is the detachment of the American people from the U.S. military — the disconnect and the unpopularity of the war,” he told U.S. News and World Report in April 2008.
Mullen frequently tells audiences he addresses that he had concerns during the early days of the war in Afghanistan that it would have the same polarizing effect. To his relief, he said at the Vietnam Memorial, Americans “are so incredibly supportive of our military men and women now.”
The chairman said he attributes the changed attitudes to the lessons learned from Vietnam about supporting troops unconditionally.
“During that time, as a country, we were unable to separate the politics from the people,” he said. “We must never allow America to become disconnected from her military. Never.”
Like most other current military leaders, Petraeus, commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan, entered a military still healing from the Vietnam experience. Petraeus graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1974, a year before the fall of Saigon.
But Petraeus has studied the Vietnam experience thoroughly, even writing his doctoral dissertation at Princeton University on “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam.”
That dissertation, published in 1987, recognized the lasting impact the Vietnam experience would have.
“The legacy of Vietnam is unlikely to soon recede as an important influence on America’s senior military,” Petraeus wrote. “The frustrations of Vietnam are too deeply etched in the minds of those who now lead the services and the combatant commanders.
“Vietnam cost the military dearly,” he continued. “It left America’s military leaders confounded, dismayed and discouraged. Even worse, it devastated the armed forces, robbing them of dignity, money and qualified people for a decade.”
This experience, Petraeus wrote, left many military leaders overly cautious. Specifically, he said, many felt “they should advise against involvement in counterinsurgencies unless specific, perhaps unlikely circumstances” ensure domestic public support, the promise of a quick campaign and the freedom to use whatever force is needed to achieve rapid victory.
Later in his career, as he oversaw the revision of the military’s counterinsurgency field manual, Petraeus applied some of the lessons learned through the Vietnam experience.
That manual has become the guide for counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. It emphasizes that military power alone can’t succeed against an insurgency, and the importance of public diplomacy as part of a “comprehensive strategy employing all instruments of national power.”
Informed by the Vietnam experience, the strategy also recognizes that clearing and keeping the enemy from an area alone does not spell success. A critical third tenet, it notes, is the establishment of a legitimate government supported by the people and infrastructure development that empowers them.
After applying those principles — first while commanding U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and now as the top commander in Afghanistan — Petraeus said he is seeing this strategy bear fruit.
Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month the coalition in Afghanistan continues to face tough days against insurgents, but is making steady progress in improving security and helping the Afghan government improve governance, economic development and the provision of basic services.
“These are essential elements of the effort to shift delivery of basic services from provincial reconstruction teams and international organizations to Afghan government elements,” he told the panel.
As the transition approaches for Afghan forces to begin taking security responsibility for their country, Petraeus emphasized that actions being taken now in Afghanistan will have consequences for years to come –- just as those in Vietnam more than three decades ago.
Laotian Kingdoms In 1353, after Laos had first been ruled by Khmers from Angkor, then by Thais from Sukhothai, Prince Fa Ngoum founded the Kingdom of Laos or “Lane Xang”, as it was called at the time, as a sovereign state.
It extended over present-day Laos as well parts of what is now North Thailand. The first capital of Laos was Luang Prabang. King Fa Ngoum made Buddhism the national religion.
In the 15th century the Vietnamese temporarily occupied the Laotian Kingdom and Luang Prabang.
In the 16th century Vieng Chan (Vientiane) developed into a parallel capital of the Laotian Kingdom. Burma, the dominant power in Southeast Asia in the16th century, gaining strong influence over Vieng Chan. Nevertheless, in 1563 King Setthathirat made Vieng Chan the official capital of Laos.
In 1575, the Burmese occupied Vieng Chan and stayed for seven years.
After two parallel Laotian kingdoms had developed in Luang Prabang and Vieng Chan, they were reunited in 1591 under King Nokeo Koumane.
In 1700 Laos broke up into three kingdoms: Luang Prabang, Vieng Chan and Champassak to the South.
After the Siamese capital Ayutthaya had been conquered and sacked by Burmese armies, Laos, in 1767, again fell under full Burmese rule. But after only a few years the Siamese kingdom, with its new capital Bangkok, grew stronger and Laos again had to obey Siamese overlords.
In 1827 the Laotians under King Anou rebelled against the Siamese but were soon defeated. The Laotian state disintegrateed.
Colonial Times
In 1868, after having annexed South Vietnam as a colony and having turned Cambodia into a French protectorate, the French sent an initial expedition to Laos to investigate the Mekong trade route to China.
In 1886 France received permission from Siam largely ruling Laos to install a vice consulate in Luang Prabang. In 1887, Siam, anticipating French expansion, vacateds large parts of Laos.
In 1893 France declared the Mekong the official border between Laos and Siam. Might is right; Siam accepts the unilateral decision of big-gun France. Laos officially became a French protectorate.
However, France had only limited interest in her new possession. Paris sent Vietnamese officials to Laos to set up an administration but did little to develop the Laotian economy.
In September 1940, after France was invaded by Germany, Japanese troops occupied Indochina without meeting any resistance.
Officially the word was that the French colonial power left all military installation for the Japanese troops to use; in exchange the French colonial administration remained in office. Therefore the years of World War II brought less destruction to Laos than, for instance, to the fiercely contested Southeast Asian states of Burma and the Philippines.
In East Asia, World War II ended August 14, 1945, with the capitulation of Japan. Subsequently, France tried to re-establish herself as a colonial power in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.
On September 1, 1945, Laos declared its independence. France refused to accept this, and retaliated by sending troops into Laos. A guerilla war against the French colonial power started.
Independence
On July 19, 1949, France formally granted Laos independence. For almost three decades, from 1949 to 1975, the political situation in Laos was highly confusing. Three factions struggled for power:
1. Conservatives, commanding, among other forces, a 30,000-men army of the Hmong (Meo) hill tribe; 2. Neutralists, organized by Prince Souvanna Phouma; 3. Communists, lead by a feudal prince, Souphanouvang (a contradiction Marx had not anticipated).
The civil war among the three rival factions was, however, not fought as fiercely as the civil wars in Vietnam or Cambodia. Several times in three decades coalition governments were formed, including all three factions. The neutralists usually led the coalitions.
From 1964 to 1973 the US fought a secret war in Laos against Laotian communists as well as North Vietnamese troops channeling war material to the Vietcong in South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Min Trail through Laos.
After the US forces began their retreat from Indochina in 1973, the right-wing government in Vientiane was replaced by a coalition government of neutralists and the communist Pathet Lao.
In 1975, after communist troops conquered the capitals of Vietnam and Cambodia, the communist Pathet Lao gained sole power in Laos. While in Laos, too, parts of the population were detained in re-education camps, there wasn’t the kind of revenge as in Cambodia. Former neutralist Premier Minister Souvanna is not even arrested, just demoted in rank to government advisor.
In the following decades Laos cultivateed a close relationship with Vietnam. The most powerful man in communist Laos, General Secretary of the Revolutionary Party of the People, Kaysone Phomvihan, is half Laotian and half Vietnamese.
In March 1991, at the fifth congress of the Revolutionary People’s Party, far-reaching changes of the economic structure of the country were decided. As in China and Vietnam, private business, free-market competition and foreign investment are permitted in order to accelerate the economic development of the country. However, as in China and Vietnam, political leaders are not inclined to share power in a multi-party system.
LONDON (Dow Jones)–European stock markets were sharply lower Tuesday, along with the euro, as investors began to reassess the viability of the EUR750 billion euro zone rescue package.
“Yesterday’s strong rally following the euro-zone bailout announcement has halted as questions marks over whether the EUR750 billion amount will be enough,” said Dolmen Securities, “and while it addresses the sovereign liquidity issues, it does not help resolve the current solvency pressures facing many of the EU states.”
There were also concerns over potential fiscal tightening in China, after the country’s inflation data came in stronger than expected. “These figures will add fuel to the argument that China is struggling to control its inflation and will find it difficult to maintain price stability without undermining its growing economy,” Dolmen said.
By 1020 GMT, the Stoxx Europe 600 index had lost 1.5% to 250.28. London’s FTSE 100 index was down 1.7% at 5296.34, Frankfurt’s DAX index was 1% lower at 5960.28, and Paris’s CAC-40 index was down 1.8% at 3653.66.
And U.S. stock futures pointed to a sharply lower open on Wall Street. The DJIA front month futures contract was down 0.8% at 10,655, and S&P 500 futures contract was down 1% at 1145.3.
In Europe, banking and basic resources stocks bore the brunt of the selling, amid worries about what the austerity measures the individual countries would be forced to undertake in order to receive the cash would mean for growth going forward.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 basic resource index fell 3.3%, while the pan-European Stoxx 600 banks index was 3.1% lower.
Yet despite the decline in banking shares, the sector’s outlook was given some support following a research note by Morgan Stanley, in which the investment banking firm raised the European banking sector to in-line from cautious.
“We feel tail risks from counter-party concerns have been cut off by the EU/ECB’s major package to address sovereign liquidity and solvency. We see valuation support after continental banks have fallen approximately 13% year-to-date,” said Huw van Steenis, analyst at Morgan Stanley.
In the U.K., stronger-than-expected industrial output data for March were largely shrugged off by equity markets, as concerns over the euro-zone bailout package and post-election wrangling dented sentiment.
“Gordon Brown’s speech after the London market closed last night has added an extra dimension of confusion regarding the coalition government talks and raised concerns that these could drag on much longer than expected ??? it is maybe not too surprising that some investors have viewed the remnants of Monday’s bounce as an opportunity to sell and sit things out for now,” said David Jones at IG Index.
In line with the losses in the equity markets, the euro fell against the yen and dollar Tuesday amid the continued threat of more credit rating downgrades to fiscally troubled euro-zone members.
Moody’s Investors Service Inc. said overnight that it will likely make a “substantial” change to Greece’s A3 credit rating in the coming four weeks.
At 1040 GMT, the euro traded at $1.2689 and Y117.31, compared with $1.2775 and Y119.00 late Monday in New York. Meanwhile, sterling traded at $1.4761, weaker than $1.4864 late Monday in New York, helped by stronger-than-expected U.K. industrial production data but still off the $1.50 level seen before investors moved to price in the possibility of a minority coalition government led by the ruling Labour Party.
This followed Prime Minister Gordon Brown saying Monday he would quit in a bid to keep his party in power, opening the floor for formal discussions with the Liberal Democrats.
“If this is a sign of things to come over the next 4-5 years of a coalition government [for instance, lots of foot dragging] then it highlights at an early stage the reasons why a hung parliament in itself is not a trigger for a downgrade, but it does bring with it the conditions that could facilitate such action,” said Alan Clarke, economist with BNP Paribas.
Still to come on the economic calendar, U.S. wholesale inventories data are due at 1400 GMT.
In Asia, stocks markets ended lower as traders re-examined the EU’s bailout package. Japan’s Nikkei 225 ended down 1.1%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropped 1.4% and the Shanghai Composite dropped 1.9%.
Among other asset classes, the front-month June crude oil futures contract was down $1.14 cents at $75.66 per barrel on Globex, while spot gold was at $1213.00 per troy ounce, up around $11 from late New York Monday.
Elsewhere, the European sovereign debt markets were higher, rebounding after Monday’s sharp losses, with the June bund contract 0.70 higher at 126.19. However, the U.K. gilt market underperformed, as concerns over the makeup of the next government, and what this means as far as paying down the country’s debt, weighed.
At 1045 GMT, the June gilt contract was 0.15 lower at 116.03, rebounding off the lows after the first gilt auction since last week’s U.K. election met a surprisingly strong response Tuesday.
The U.K. Debt Management Office’s reopening of the 4.25% 2027 index-linked gilt resulted in a bid-to-cover ratio, a gauge of demand, of 2.47 times, data showed. That’s better than when the last time this type of gilt was sold last August when the bid-to-cover ratio was 1.88.
-By Michele Maatouk, Dow Jones Newswires; +44-20-7842-9447; michele.maatouk@dowjones.com
Dams in Laos threaten Asia’s largest waterfall, critically endangered river dolphin
Fisherman on the Mekong in Laos' Siphandone area near the proposed Don Sahong dam. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.
mongabay.com
March 16, 2009
Eleven proposed hydroelectric projects on the Mekong River in Southeast Asia threaten migratory fish stocks, regional food security, and the livelihoods of millions of people, warns a new campaign launched by environmental groups.
The Save the Mekong coalition says the dams would “block major fish migrations and disrupt this vitally important river, placing at risk millions of people who depend upon the Mekong for their food security and income.” Several threatened species — including the critically endangered Irrawaddy dolphin and the giant catfish — would be at risk, as would important tourist sites, including Khone Falls, Asia’s largest waterfall. More than 2,100 square kilometers of land — including agricultural areas, wetlands and tropical forests — would be flooded.
Most of the projects are planned in Laos, a poor, but resource-rich country that shares the Mekong as a border with Cambodia and Thailand. The dams would generate more than 20 megawatts of power, most of which would go to cities in Thailand and Vietnam.
“Big dams don’t develop Laos; they destroy invaluable rivers and resources upon which Lao people depend for daily survival,” said Shannon Lawrence, Lao Program Director for International Rivers — a coalition member — and editor of Power Surge, a report outlining the dams proposed in the country.
Khone Falls. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.
“Mekong mainstream dams – like Don Sahong – would be a tragic and costly mistake,” said Dr. Carl Middleton, International Rivers’ Mekong Program Coordinator. “For only 360 megawatts of electricity, Don Sahong would devastate fisheries that are central to people’s food security and the wider economy and undermine the region’s growing tourism potential. In a region where wild-capture fisheries are valued at US$2 billion per year and are of critical importance to riparian communities, these dams simply don’t add up.”
