Laos- under construction -- see below

In French type cafe where we came last night and had veg. pizza. I sit in the corner. I think of P and start to cry... bc she always looks for the corner to sit in - to stay away from people - to search for the safest place. She has been hurt so much, so many times, by so many people. The song playing was "It's incredible that someone so unforgetable thinks that I am unforgetable too."

took some pics.

first was about cutture - the propaganda about "nationhood."

P says that culture is nothing more than doing the same thing people did a long time ago, just because people did it a long time ago.

When I look at it this way It seems true that there is no other value to culture except that people did it long time ago. But for most things that people did a long time ago there is no practical reason to keep doing them. Like making fire by rubbing stones together or rain dancing or wearing feathers on your head like Indian chiefs. (One day perhaps people will also stop wearing ties and jewelry, gold watches etc.) The list of useless things which were done a long time ago is endless. It seems to serve only those in power that we don't change with the times and our needs.

too much fear in society - way way way too much. caused by other humans - not by non-human animals as in past.

Yesterday I was depressed most of the day. At night too weak to walk into the tourist area so we went back to our room. So weak I had to lean on pole, then sit down. Fear - discouragement. Afraid to express my true feelings and thoughts. Surrounded by reminders of unhealthy society. Worked on "recovery" article - may post it later.. here is an excerpt

 

I was just thinking about how to explain to someone why I cry so much. Why I am in so much pain so often. The person I was having the imaginary conversation with went thru a life threatening illness and a surgery and then a long period of recovery a few years ago. So I was trying to compare my pain and recovery to hers.

But then I realized that when you have a typical illness, or say you break your leg, or eat some food that gives you food poinsoning, it is a temporary situation. After the temporary situation passes, your body has a chance to heal and recover. For example, if you stop eating the food which caused the food poisoning, your body will use all its resources, developed through millions of years of evolution, to heal. We are, for the most part, self-healing organisms.

But what if you can't find any healthy food? You can't find any food that is not tainted or poisoned? Or you can't find any clean drinking water?

I would have to say that emotionally, this is the case for me and my partner, and probably others who simply are not aware of it yet.

--

The point is that wherever we go in the world we are reminded of the things which pain us...police, guns, propaganda, lies, hypocrisy, force, abuse of power, marketing, waste, war, destruction, unhealthiness, needy people who are unaware of their own unmet emotional needs

 

Later I saw a quote which goes something like "You can't get clean in dirty water"

couple fighting on balcony accross from me... she was hitting him, verbally attacking him... i went out... said something. they stopped fighting for a while. then she was crying. now she is talking again, but still attacking him.. polish or russian maybe...

http://www2.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=2365&page=1

As pressure to recover agricultural land mounts, the neglected problem of unexploded ordnance in Laos is becoming more acute as each year passes. "The shrapnel only popped out yesterday," said Boon Home, rubbing a small raw crater in his grubby right heel. "I was very surprised." Boon, 50, farms a two-hectare plot near Ban Nakok in Laos’s Mahaxay district, Khammouane Province. He inherited another 1.5 acre plot from his father, Kham Phay, 78, who accidentally blew himself to pieces in August last year. Boon carried on prodding his healing ankle as he mulled the tragedy. Small lumps and scars up his leg suggested more metal waiting to be excised from his flesh. "Personally, I didn’t see what happened," he recalled. "I was shouting at Dad not to hit it when the bomb went off. We broke the rules." The story is all too familiar in Laos, which is littered with up to 600,000 tons of unexploded ordnance (UXO). ....

Apart from releasing an enormous amount of raw bombing data, the main US contribution to date has been around 250 trainers sent in over a three-year period to establish a central training school. Ironically, most of the 18-man training teams rotated through were Special Forces. To satisfy Congress’s requirements, they were not allowed into the field to work directly on the UXO. "They were very high quality soldiers—very mission orientated," says Bean.

"I was told there were no people where we bombed," says Lee Thorn, 59, a bomb-loader with Squadron VA 55 aboard the USS Ranger in 1966. Thorn’s squadron lost three pilots, and he witnessed some horrific accidents aboard the carrier. But he only saw the consequences of the bombs he loaded in footage brought back by the aircraft. "The movies showed more craters than the moon," he recalls. Film of a firestorm in North Vietnam’s Haiphong port turned him against the war, and after leaving the military in 1967 he became active in anti-war veteran movements while studying at Berkeley.

Thorn established the Jhai Foundation in the late 1990s. By the end of last year, it had brought in $1.5 in private development and medical assistance. "We do this not so much out of guilt," says Thorn of his much-needed philanthropy. "The purpose is reconciliation. I was young and did the best I could do, but I was lied to. I know that what I did unwittingly to the people here was wrong." Thorn believes there is a good case to be made for compensating victims of UXO.

"It’s a question of getting the US government to take responsibility for putting the explosive here in the first place."

Dominic Faulder is a veteran journalist based in Bangkok.

Operation Menu

Nixon and Kissinger went to great lengths to keep the missions secret. The expansion of the US effort into "neutral" Cambodia was sure to cause serious debate in the US Congress, negative criticism in the media, and were sure to spark anti-war protests on US college campuses.

I'd really like to write about this concept of an "emotional affair". I found it on wikihow... but I want to do a lot of other things too so I will just show the comment I left in the discussion page.

This article is a bit simplistic. It also uses words like "appropriate" which are very subjective.

If someone talked to me with these words I would feel more controlled and judged than understood and cared about.

Met Daniela from Boliva - she told me Evo Morales - president there, had good intentions but poor people aren't much better of now. Also said he is anti-european since he is an Indian.

She told me about documentaries The century of the self and "The Corporation"

danielaboli.... hm She lives in Spain now. They wouldn't let her into Thailand so she had to come here to get visa, or let's say to buy her visa.

I've been thinking, if other people want and need to control us, why don't they pay for it? IE they pay for our passports and pay us for the time we spend on their controls.