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History haunts the Plain of Jars By Sebastien Berger in Laos (Filed: 09/12/2004) Deep in the mountains of northern Laos is one of the most dangerous archaeological sites ever. The last remnants of an ancient civilisation are next to 30-year-old craters and unexploded US ordnance left by the greatest aerial bombardment of all time. Little is known of the people who carved the huge sandstone containers that give the Plain of Jars its name. The purpose of the artefacts is not known though they are believed to be connected to burial rituals. Archaeologists are mystified by the ancient stoneware containers...

Forest of Broken Urns Volume 60 Number 2, March/April 2007 by Karen J. Coates Borneo's unexplored past is dying by the chainsaw. Tony Paran sits near a jar that held the remains of one of his ancestors. Soon, the forests that shelter these jars will be logged. (Jerry Redfern) Walter Paran was a lucky boy. Three minutes out his front door lay an old grave in the forest marked by big stone slabs, a broken jar, and human bones. A few minutes another way was a pit where the riches of the dead were purportedly buried. What more could an...

Built by mysterious ancient people for mysterious purposes (image credit: Chris Mitchell) Ancient Laos legends tell of the giants who drank water from these enormous mysterious "cups". Similar sites were also found in Thailand and in North India. Their locations are strung along a straight line, which suggests that they were built on some kind of a trade route. Chris Mitchell from Travel Happy sent us his travelogue about this ancient site: The Plain Of Jars is probably South East Asia’s most enigmatic tourist attraction. Situated in the remote north east of Laos, the mountainous communist country which has only...

Authorities in Laos Jail, Threaten to Kill Christians Local official tells pastor to renounce faith; church member expelled, children denied schooling. LOS ANGELES, September 11 (CDN) — Authorities in Laos last week jailed a church leader in Savannakhet Province for embracing Christianity and threatened to expel him unless he renounces his faith – and kill him if his arrest is made public, according to a human rights organization. Officials from Liansai village, from Saybouthong sub-district and from Ad-Sapangthong district on Sept. 3 arrested Thao Oun, an elder at Boukham Church, at his home and forced him at gunpoint to the...

LAOS - "LAO SOLDIERS DECAPITATE TWO-MONTH-OLD GIRL AHEAD OF SENATOR WEBB'S VISIT Infant used as target practice during military attacks that leave 26 civilians dead." August 20, 2009

CHARLESTON AIR FORCE BASE, S.C., Aug. 21, 2009 – A senior noncommissioned officer assigned here recently returned from a recovery mission to find the remains of an American pilot in Laos. Air Force Master Sgt. Wesley Housel sifts through dirt while conducting a recovery mission in Houaphan province, Laos. Housel was part of a 10-member recovery team on a deployment to recover the remains of Americans lost during the Vietnam War. DoD photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Air Force Master Sgt. Wesley Housel of the 437th Operations Support Squadron spent a 36-day deployment as a digger assigned to...

US President Barack Obama removed Laos and Cambodia from a trade blacklist, opening the way for US loans to companies doing business in the former US adversaries. The United States has been boosting ties with both Southeast Asian nations. But the decision on Laos was sharply criticized by campaigners for the country's Hmong minority, which says it faces persecution. In brief declarations, Obama said Cambodia and Laos had each "ceased to be a Marxist-Leninist country," a designation that prevented financial support by the US Export-Import Bank for businesses operating in the two nations. The move, which still must go through...

Hello everyone, I'm working on a book about my passion (and, I think, yours): American exceptionalism through the eyes of immigrants who haven't always had the fortune of living in freedom. This book consists of first-person stories of Americans who lived under authoritarian regimes: Cuba, Eastern bloc countries (Poland, Russia/former USSR), Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Laos, and so on. Unfortunately, there are many, many such countries to choose from. The local talk station I listen to has broadcast calls from new Americans who came here for liberty, which they weren't accorded in their homeland. Every call I've ever heard from one of...

No wonder Hmong cookbooks are rare, considering the challenges Sheng Yang and Sami Scripter faced collecting recipes: • Written forms of the language were not used until the 1950s -- and even now, spelling varies. • Recipes have been passed down through generations without the use of measuring cups and spoons. • Cooks varied each dish according to what was in season or available when an animal was slaughtered. • A people without a country and a population forced to flee their lands, the Hmong incorporated methods and ingredients of other cultures, so what is considered Hmong food has evolved....

Korea Eyeing SE Asia for Energy Resources MAY 04, 2009 07:56 “Advance into CLV, an alternative to the post-China era!” Countries are increasingly setting their sights on Southeast Asian countries in preparation for the era in which China loses its attraction as a base for manufacturing and a consumer market. The Korean government and companies are paying close attention to “CLV,” namely Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The three countries offer more investment opportunities than Thailand and Singapore, where advanced economies have gained the upper hand. In addition, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam have shown interest in learning from Korea’s experience of...

Fourteen Khmu Christian families in Laos are standing strong in their faith, despite the Communist government forcing them to relocate to another village and their homes and church building being destroyed, according to The Voice of the Martyrs contacts. In 2003, the families were evicted by the government and relocated to another village where they were moved again. "After these 14 families stayed at this village for a year, the Communist party members of the village found out that the head of the village loved them," VOM contacts said. "[The village leader] even allowed them to build a bamboo church...

A chef in the capital city of Laos, Vientiane got a surprise yesterday according to local media. He bought a well known local brand of vacuum sealed rice in a plastic bag and when he opened it

Belgian archeologist Julie Van Den Bergh... "The jars date back to the Early Iron Age (500BCE-200CE). But who made these jars? ..." The jars are in clusters, some with as many as 400 of the structures. Some are 3m tall and weigh 13 tons. Several come with angular or round disks that could have been lids, carved with images of humans, monkeys or tigers... French archeologist Madeleine Colani... in the 1930s... interpreted her findings on the sites as a prehistoric crematorium. At Site 1, she discovered a cave with handmade chimney openings. The cave floor showed the remains of burnt...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2008/s08110079.htm Monday, November 17, 2008 Lao Officials Release Christians from Stocks as Restrictions on Worship Still in Force in Village By Michael Ireland Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service LAOS (ANS) -- Lao officials have released three prisoners from Boukham village, Savannakhet province, after several weeks of detention, but restrictions on Christian worship in the village are still in force, says a news report from Compass News Direct. Pastor Sompong Supatto, 32, and two other believers, Boot Chanthaleuxay, 18, and Khamvan Chanthaleuxay, also 18, were released on Oct. 16 against the wishes of the...

DARRA ADAM KHEL, Pakistan — The Taliban fighters were sitting in the back of a pickup, parked right outside the army fort in Darra Adam Khel, a wild town in Pakistan's troubled northwest that's famous for its arms bazaar. The Islamic militia, linked with al Qaida, has controlled Darra for about six months. Wrapped in head scarves, with just their eyes showing, and bristling with weaponry, its members patrol the streets and impose their own austere rules. They've become such a routine sight in the town that no one pays them any attention. The security forces, when they emerge from...

(CHALEUNSOUK, Laos) -- The rice fields that blanketed this remote mountain village for generations are gone. In their place rise neat rows of young rubber trees — their sap destined for China. All 60 families in this dirt-poor, mud-caked village of gaunt men and hunched women are now growing rubber, like thousands of others across the rugged mountains of northern Laos. They hope in coming years to reap huge profits from the tremendous demand for rubber just across the frontier in China. As Beijing scrambles to feed its galloping economy, it has already scoured the world for mining and logging...

VIENTIANE, Laos - A high-rise Chinatown that is to go up by Laos' laid-back capital has ignited fears that this nation's giant northern neighbor is moving to engulf this nation. So alarmed are Laotians that the communist government, which rarely explains its actions to the population, is being forced to do just that, with what passes for an unprecedented public relations campaign. The "Chinese City" is a hot topic of talk and wild rumor, much of it laced with anxiety as well as anger that the regime sealed such a momentous deal in virtual secrecy. The rumblings are being heard...

Four decades after the Central Intelligence Agency hired thousands of jungle warriors to fight Communists on the western fringes of the Vietnam War, men who say they are veterans of that covert operation are isolated, hungry and periodically hunted by a Laotian Communist government still mistrustful of the men who sided with America. “If I surrender, I will be punished,” said Xang Yang, a wiry 58-year-old still capable of crawling nimbly through thick bamboo underbrush. “They will never forgive me. I cannot live outside the jungle because I am a former American soldier.”

There are two faces of Laos. One is the eco-tourism guided tour for backpackers with cheap hostels and an abundance of ganja (marijuana), coupled with the more expensive, more modernized Vientiane intent on luring western investors. The second is the insular Laos, behind a bamboo curtain, where the xenophobic, Pathet Lao communists (Lao People's Revolutionary Party), with apparent aid from the Vietnamese communists, are intent on annihilating an ethnic group of people -- the Hmong. During the Vietnam War, the US conducted a “Secret War” in Laos arming the Hmong tribesmen and using them to interdict North Vietnamese soldiers and...

When he was 11, True Thao was running with the chickens and pigs in his village in Laos. He had never seen a telephone or a flush toilet. He didn't speak English. He had never heard of Minnesota. He certainly didn't know that Cedarhurst Mansion, a 26-room jewel of history, was quietly rotting half a world away in a place called Cottage Grove. But in a bizarre only-in-America story, True Thao and his family became the refugees that rescued the mansion.

Flying low over the dangerous and impenetrable Laotian jungle on a bombing mission against the Viet Cong, U.S. Air Force Colonel Eugene Deatrick saw a lone figure waving to him from a clearing below. He continued on his flight path, but ten minutes later - puzzled that a native in this hostile terrain would try to attract his attention - he decided to turn back for another recce. This time, he saw the letters SOS spelt out on a rock. Beside them stood an emaciated man dressed in rags, waving the remains of a parachute over his head and signalling...

China's own regional jet may have first foreign order www.chinaview.cn 2007-09-21 00:12:45 SHANGHAI, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- China's first independently developed commercial regional jet, the ARJ-21, may be ordered for the first time by a foreign company in the near future, an official with AVIC I Commercial Aircraft company said on Thursday. The company signed a memorandum of understanding with Lao Airlines on July 2 in which Lao Airlines agreed to buy two jets, the official said. Both parties are working on details of the deal. Seventy-one jets have been ordered by domestic companies so far this year and another...

LITCHFIELD — A Laos national who is accused of breaking another man's face in a bar fight can't be departed because there's no process to send him home. A frustrated Superior Court judge tried but failed to initiate deportation hearings against a Torrington man accused of punching his former supervisor Aug. 9. Beun Xayachack, 27, of 49 Canterbury Court, has questionable U.S. citizenship status. Judge Charles Gill couldn't refer him to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, during an arraignment hearing in Litchfield's Bantam Court on Tuesday. Court officials told Gill...

If AlGore had invented the Internet prior to 1971 I think my Mother would have been an active bloger. She might have been a Freeper. The following are a couple of excerpts from an agenda type of calendar my Mother kept for the year 1971. First, I must set up the situation in which she was chronicling her daily activities and thoughts. I will try my best to keep this short, but to understand her comments you have to have know the background. My father was a career Marine, Master Gunnery Sgt. (E-9), 25 years. He retired in 1963 because...

Asean members hope to adopt the charter formally later this year Ministers from South-East Asian countries have reached agreement on a landmark draft charter. The document gives the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) a set of binding rules for the first time in the bloc's 40-year existence. The agreement comes after nearly two years of deliberations among members. It includes a contentious provision to set up a commission monitoring human rights in the region - despite strong misgivings from some Asean countries. Credibility boost With governments in the region running the gamut from fully-fledged democracies to a military...

The ex-general's arrest inspires hundreds to rally in St. Paul. For the old, the concern is for a revered leader. For the young, it's for a distant homeland, too. Tou Meng, 12, of St. Paul, joins a rally Tuesday at the Minnesota state Capitol in support of former Gen. Vang Pao, who is charged along with 10 others with plotting to overthrow the Lao government. Vang Pao, a war hero to many, is drawing support from different factions of the Hmong community. (RICHARD MARSHALL, Pioneer Press) View an audio slideshow from the rally Many young Hmong-Americans view Vang Pao as...

Revered Hmong leader charged in Laos plot Gen. Vang Pao, a legendary figure to many Hmong Minnesotans, and 8 others are accused of planning to overthrow the communist government of Laos. The general, who has strong Minnesota ties, battled for control of Laos for most of his life. BY TIM NELSON, LAURA YUEN, JOHN BREWER and TAD VEZNER Pioneer Press Article Last Updated: 06/05/2007 06:33:15 AM CDT Former military leader Gen. Vang Pao meets with the Twin Cities Hmong community in St. Paul in this May 21, 2004 photo. (AP file photo) Related content PDF: Read the complaint The patriarch of...

SACRAMENTO — A former Laotian military general and a former California National Guard officer were among nine people charged Monday with plotting a violent overthrow of Laos' communist government. The group was raising money to recruit a mercenary force and buy enough weapons to equip a small army, including anti-tank missiles and grenade launchers, prosecutors said. "We're looking at conspiracy to murder thousands and thousands of people at one time," Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Twiss said in federal court. He said thousands of co-conspirators remain at large. General Vang Pao, who immigrated to the U.S. in about 1975 and has...

Excerpt - SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Nine people were arrested in the United States and charged with plotting a coup in the southeast Asian nation of Laos, a public prosecutor in California said Monday. The suspects, mostly members of the Hmong ethnic group, were seized after US authorities "interrupted a plot to overthrow the government of Laos by force and violence," the prosecutor in the state capital Sacramento said in a statement. They include the Hmong former general Vang Pao and Harrison Jack, a retired officer of the US Army, it said. ~ snip ~

BANGKOK, Thailand — A lingering legacy of the Vietnam War emerged from the jungles of Laos on Wednesday, as hundreds of members of the Hmong hill tribe minority surrendered to the communist government after decades on the run. The group is the latest of several ragtag bands of surrendering Hmong — remnants of a guerrilla army that served a pro-American government before it fell to the communists in 1975. The surrendering group's chieftain, Moua Tua Ter, accompanied the 405 people — mostly children — to Ban Ha village in Phoukout district before returning to the jungle with a few of...

Soldiers fresh from duty in the Gulf are finding catharsis in searching for the bodies of 1,800 men lost in Vietnam 35 years ago. On a hillside in South-East Asia, where America fought a brutal, costly and traumatic war, the US military is back. Giant figures pouring with sweat are digging in a jungle clearing as pounding rap music echoes through the trees. They are watched with awed fascination by tiny Lao Tung women squatting in a row, waiting for the foreigners to fill their buckets with soil and hand them by human chain to a row of sieves. The...

SEATTLE - A woman who grew up in a Laotian orphanage in the turbulent 1960s and '70s says she plans to donate part of a $55 million lottery jackpot she and her husband won to the people who raised her. Xia Rattanakone said she also plans to return to Laos to search for her birth family. "I don't know my parents," she said after the couple claimed their winnings on Monday. "That is my wish, to find them." Rattanakone, 44, came to the United States in 1979 after being adopted by an American family. She and her husband, Sommay Rattanakone,...

WASHINGTON - The United States on Friday classified six Asian countries as religious freedom violators, aside from China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam already blacklisted as worst offenders in the region. Afghanistan, Brunei, India, Laos, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were included in a ‘significant’ list of violators of religious freedom in the US State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Report 2006. John Hanford, US envoy for international religious freedom, said there was a possibility that one or more from the six nations could be added to a blacklist of ‘countries of particular concern’ that includes China, Myanmar, North Korea and...

Lost Over Laos Scientists and soldiers combine forensics and archaeology to search for pilot Bat Masterson, one of 88,000 Americans missing in action from recent wars. By Robert M. Poole Night closed over Laos, where clouds were piling up over the rugged mountain jungle. An American pilot, on a mission to disrupt enemy traffic bound for North Vietnam, was flying into trouble. The artificial horizon on his A-1 Skyraider, a single-prop workhorse of World War II vintage, had suddenly stopped functioning, making it impossible for him to gauge his position among the clouds. Dizzy and disoriented, Air Force Capt. Michael...

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has a record that is the envy of conservative leaders around the world. Recently elected to a fourth term (with an enhanced majority, to boot), he has charted a distinctive and largely successful course for Australia's international relations over the past decade. As the Harper government begins to formulate its own approach to foreign policy, Mr. Howard arrives in Ottawa at an opportune moment. Under Mr. Howard's leadership, Australia's ties with the United States have warmed considerably, stemming in large part from Canberra's staunch support for U.S.-led anti-terrorism initiatives and the invasion of Iraq. Mr....

The fall of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has thrown Thailand into uncertainty. Thaksin will remain at the head of his Thai Rak Thai party and has not ruled out a possible comeback, so the rough road has not yet reached its end. But if Thai politics are in for more political jockeying, what about the rest of Southeast Asia? What about the political fortunes of his fellow leaders in the region, some of whom emerged around the same time? Is Thailand alone? The uncertainty in Thailand is not likely to have any shattering effect on the region. But it is...

BANGKOK, Thailand - You want to find a new frog species? Head to the Southeast Asian nation of Laos. gcScientists working in conjunction with the New York-based World Conservation Society, or WCS, say they have discovered eight new species of frogs in the past two years. Among them is one where the male is half the size of the female and another which has a row of spines running down its belly. Their findings were reported earlier this year in Copeia, the journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, and in other peer-reviewed scientific journals since 2004. "Nobody...

THE BOOK OF HONOR -- THE TWO MIKES Alas, but Michael fell young: Hee never fell, thou fallest my tongue. He stood, a Souldier to the last right end, A perfect Patriot, and noble friend, But most a virtuous Sonne. FROM AN ELEGY BY BEN JONSON AT TEN O'CLOCK on a sunlit Sunday morning -- October 10, 1965 -- two young men in khakis, both named Mike, hoisted themselves aboard an Air America chopper and lifted off from a tiny air base in Pakse, Laos. One was named Mike Deuel. The other, Mike Maloney. Both were said to be with...

Cut-price air travel has arrived in South-East Asia - and it is making the same kind of impact as it did in Europe and the United States. Well-established national carriers that have enjoyed near-monopolies are finally being challenged. The newcomers use a similar business model to internet-based operations in Europe and the US. Because of the limited access to computers in some countries in the region, tickets are also available through travel agents. But the same principle applies: the earlier you book, the cheaper the ticket. One of the main players is the Kuala Lumpur-based Air Asia, a company that...

Asia Rising Donald Rumsfeld infamously made a distinction between Old Europe and New Europe. He has been scored ever since for his sweeping and impolitic language, but he wasn't sweeping enough: In geopolitical terms, all of Europe is old, the world's most tourist-friendly museum piece. For the future of high-stakes U.S. diplomacy and of great-power politics, look no further than Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S. It is Asia that should occupy an outsized place in our strategic thinking, and it is Europe that should be the relative afterthought, not the other way around. The media and foreign-policy...

April 2006, Vol. 89, No. 4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The radar site was deep in enemy territory. The assumption was that it was impossible for attackers to climb the sheer face of the mountain. The Fall of Lima Site 85 By John T. Correll Lima Site 85 and the secret Air Force radar facility sat atop one of the highest mountains in Laos, 15 miles away from the border with North Vietnam. The site was defended by a force of 1,000 Hmong irregulars in the valley below, but a key element in its security was the mountain itself. The drop on three...

The lure of Asia INDONESIA is coming back and is set to resume its rightful leadership of Southeast Asia. This week its President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, decisively reshuffled his cabinet, substantially strengthening the economics team. Two months ago SBY's Government took the crucial domestic economic reform step of cutting fuel subsidies after already enduring a huge increase in the external price of oil. Even Suharto had baulked at this reform. Recently, Indonesian authorities eliminated one of the worst terrorists in the region, Azahari bin Husin. Indonesia also recently surpassed, for the first time, its peak per capita income level from...

Asian juggernaut 'ONE vision, one identity, one community", proclaim giant blue ASEAN banners straddling the six-lane motorway from Kuala Lumpur's gleaming airport into Malaysia's capital. For ASEAN's true believers, next week's inaugural East Asian Summit, bringing together leaders of 16 nations including Australia and New Zealand, will be the first tentative step towards the long-term goal of creating an East Asian Community. For the first time Asia's rising giants, India and China, will sit together at a regional forum. For the first time in post-World War II history, the US will be absent from a multilateral gathering encompassing the leading...

WASHINGTON - Nearly four decades after 11 American servicemen were killed by North Vietnamese commandos at a secret radar site in Laos, U.S. investigators have made the first identification of remains — with the help of two of the commandos. The breakthrough is one of the most remarkable achievements in the U.S. military's decades-long effort to find and identify the remains of hundreds of U.S. serviceman missing in action from the Vietnam War. Yet the recovery and identification of the remains of Air Force Tech. Sgt. Patrick L. Shannon, of Owasso, Okla., also created a new mystery. On the mountain...

VIENTIANE, Laos - As the aging revolutionaries of Laos celebrate 30 years in power, their country looks less communist, and speech is a little more free. It is open to tourists and is warming up to an old enemy — the United States. But when it comes to real change in one of the five one-party communist states left in the world, the regime's grip is as tight as ever. The world's backpackers arrive in droves and return home with tales of a welcoming people with genuine smiles, a lifestyle of tropical languor and only quaint traces of communism, such...

Laos tomorrow marks 30 years since the capital Vientiane fell to communist forces, an anniversary the regime is expected to use to shore up its legitimacy as the rulers of one Asia's poorest countries. The event comes in a year when landlocked Laos, long considered a sleepy Asian backwater, hosted a regional political summit, secured an international loan for a major dam project and attracted more tourists. But while Laos is moving on, the legacy of the Indochina conflict still lingers in the enigmatic, bomb-littered country, where a little-known conflict continues from the days when the Vietnam War spilled across...

Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who commanded the United States forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, overseeing the vast troop buildup and the height of the fighting, died last night in a retirement home in Charleston, S.C., his son, James Ripley Westmoreland, announced. The general was 91. Westy, as he became known while a West Point cadet, was driving and combative - in World War II, leading a fast-moving artillery battalion; in Vietnam, directing "search and destroy" missions meant to decimate the enemy; in retirement, suing CBS for a television documentary that he said had defamed him. The libel suit,...

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained for a total of9 years and 237 days Free Aung San Suu Kyi! Email General Than Shwe

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Up to 4,000 ethnic Hmong, remnants of a U.S.-backed anti-communist guerrilla army in the Laotian jungles during the Vietnam War, are ready to surrender after 30 years on the run, a U.S. activist said on Thursday. Ex-California police officer Ed Szendrey, who was detained at the weekend by the Laotian communist government for helping 173 women, children and elderly people give themselves up, said many more Hmong were waiting to come in from the cold. "We've had indications that there are nearly three to four thousand ready to surrender," Szendrey told a news conference in the Thai...

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - After decades on the run, 170 women, children and old men of the Hmong ethnic minority - which was once part of a U.S.-backed secret army fighting communists in Laos - emerged from their jungle hideouts on Saturday to surrender to the government. Their move, expected to be followed by thousands of their fellow hilltribe people, is the first step in closing the book on one of the most tragic episodes of the Vietnam War. U.S. sympathizers who rendezvoused with the tribespeople said the first batch turning themselves in to the communist government were received warmly...