The name of the place has remained so sharply in my mind all these years, unforgettable. Such a foreign sound, as if from another galaxy!
When US Americans don't identify at all with people so far away, it doesn't seem to bother them as planes bomb the bejesus out of them, an untold thousands are destroyed, lives, bodies, spirits broken, victims who haven't the vaguest idea why it has happened.
Just found this in a quick google grab:
“[In Laos,] where a right-wing government installed by the CIA faced a rebellion, one of the most beautiful areas in the world, the Plain of Jars, was being destroyed by bombing. This was not reported by the government or the press, but an American who lived in Laos, Fred Branfman, told the story in his book Voices from the Plain of Jars.” —Howard Zinn
“A classic. . . . No American should be able to read [this book] without weeping at his country’s arrogance.” —Anthony Lewis, New York Times
Voices from the Plain of Jars—recently re-issued by the University of Wisconsin Press—first came out in 1972. Through poetry, songs, drawings, and other first-person testimony, Laotian villagers tell the story of the incessant U.S. bombing—a secret war brought to light by Fred Branfman, who collected these accounts.
In his foreword to this unique book, Alfred McCoy notes that, “By April 1973, the [U.S.] Air Force had dropped an estimated 2.1 million tons of bombs on Laos, which was the equivalent to the entire tonnage the United States dropped on industrialized Germany and Japan during the whole of World War II.”
More:
https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/voices-from-the-plain-of-jars/
Yes, the culture has to be so very old. You can tell it in the parts of the culture which still remain from ancient times. They have been so damaged. I hope the people's life will be able to mend sometime down the road.
The pictures of the jars have always been so mysterious, after having seen them in magazines for decades. It should have been a sign to our politicians these people are from a different world, and should have been respected, not treated like trash.
Have to admit to envying your opportunity to walk in that place, breathe that air, feel the wind there. It is amazing. Thank you.
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