Finally! I sit here at our desktop computer and can work on an article. But this little happening almost did not happen. We got home to Moscow, Russia and found our main computer non functioning. It seemed that it decided to quit working during our unplanned vacation time and it wanted to stay on vacation itself. I spent Saturday determining what the issue was and Sunday went to get a part for the old girl. It seems that the power supply decided to give up the ghost. She is up and running like new now. So I am sipping my morning cup of coffee and enjoying typing this article on a full size keyboard and screen. Instead of a tiny cell phone screen and keyboard… 🙂
It may take a few days to get fully back in the groove again but it does feel good to be able to get back to teaching English and working on all my projects again. One thing I was hoping, while I was incognito, was that the world would start the process of getting its act together. (You can hope!) But as I see in the news, things are actually much worse and we are on a short path to Hell it seems…
But actually nothing really changes and I guess my attitude comes from little things like – Laos: A declared neutral country located next to Vietnam, that was actually bombed more than any country in history by America (or the world for that matter) and we were not even at war with Laos. Did you know that the busiest airport in the world at one time was in Laos?
Here’s a non-trivial question for trivia night organisers: In the late 1960s, what was the world’s busiest airport? Stumped? Here’s a hint: What was the most bombed country, per capita, in the history of warfare? If you answered “Vietnam”, you’re getting close, but not quite there. Until 1975, the CIA ran the world’s busiest airport at Long Cheng, on the edge of the Plain of Jars in Laos. More than 400 flights a day took off to bomb communist Pathet Lao troops — and just about anything else that moved.
The US clandestine war against Laos killed hundreds of thousands of villagers and created 700,000 refugees — from a population at the time of only around 3 million. In the words of Alfred McCoy, author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972): “If the US is guilty of war crimes, not just mad minutes of soldiers in Vietnam breaking down under stress, but systemic crimes by commanders, that war crime was the bombing of northern Laos. We destroyed a whole civilisation, we wiped it off the map. We incinerated, atomised human remains in this air war .” By Allen Myers
Did you know that bombs unused in Vietnam were dropped all over Laos. You see, You could not land the aircraft with bombs aboard and Laos was the receiver of all extra Vietnam bombs unused. That is along with and on top of the bombs destined for Laos. Laos was the most heavily bombed country in the whole world bar none. Laos was declared a neutral country also. Laos was another country that America was against the Soviet Union as they both played war and politics within the borders of Laos. Could you have imagined if they were a non neutral country? I know I have been there, seen that and remember it well…
I guess that little unimportant things like Laos! (Sarcasm) Just has a tendency to affect my thoughts about the validity of the American government. As I watch the manifested induced scaffolding’s in Libya and the whole Middle East. I realize that, “One day, payback will be Hell…” as my Grandma use to say…
All of those past goings on, remind me of the goings on now in the Middle East, right now at this very moment…
Didn’t take me long to get back into the swing of things… 🙂
Windows to Russia!