From The Half-Red House

    As part of our public affairs radio show “Thinking Out Loud”, we have a segment in the Lao language hosted by a group of Buddhist monks.  You can hear them Mondays at 11:00 a.m. EST on WUML, 91.5 FM or listen to the podcast of selected shows. You couldn’t ask for a more positive, peaceful group of people than these monks. One of the monks just came back from an extended  visit to Laos. In the middle of his absence, we got a wonderful postcard showing him riding an elephant and wearing (as he always does) saffron robes. Talking with him after his return, we learned that Laos is suffering from extreme povery and needs help developing fair trade with the affluent world. He had brought back a number of beautiful silk-cotton textiles and handbags that he hopes to sell to raise money for self-help projects. He also gave each of us a saffron good-luck bracelet; I’ve been wearing mine since then, even though I have never been able to place much stock in such things as wedding rings and religious symbol jewelery. The bracelet is made of braided synthetic fibers and holds a single golden-colored plastic bead with a word in Lao script.
   
    By coincidence (I think), shortly afterward, we received an angry email from a Lao exile group that asked why we displayed a “communist” Lao flag on the Lao portion of our website. They said that all Lao emigrants hate Communists and that they have been promoting the use of a pre-1975 royalist flag. I assume the “Communist” flag was placed on the website to represent the country of origin of the co-hosts, and I have not yet heard from the monks about their feelings for or against the flag(s), but it is obvious to me that if monks can visit Laos freely, the current regime is not persecuting them and may even be encouraging the return of former refugees. The group that sent the email claims :

To Laotian Americans, the Laos Communist flag is a reminder of death. It is flag full of blood where a million and half Laotian lives have been sacrificed for the war-mongering goals of the Lao Revolutionary Party (or Laos Communist).  Some 300,000 civilians were shot and some buried alive, and over 100,000 religious leaders and political prisoners have been executed in “re-education” camps since 1975.

Most Laotian Americans, having fled persecution and reprisals, find the display of the “Laos Communist” flag insulting, offensive, and culturally insensitive. It is like flying the swastika flag of Nazi Germany in the presence of Jewish-Americans.

I have not found this claim echoed by more objective sources of historical information, but it is clear that Laos became a “People’s Republic” by being too close to Vietnam  during the Vietnam war. The most salient fact that I had been aware of was that the US dropped incredible numbers of cluster bombs on Laos during the war and that these cluster bombs have maimed and killed thousands, making the subsistence farms that support half the population much more risky. The Hmong ethnic group, which is found in mountainous areas of Laos, provided clandestine support to the US in Vietnam and tens of thousands of them were granted refugee status in the US at the end of the war. Among the estimated 25,000 people of Laotian origin in Massachusetts are some 1200  Hmong, who do not identify themselves as Laotian and who speak a very different language, but who are fiercely anti-communist.

    I am deeply suspicious of refugee, emigre and exiled groups who advocate the reconquest of their homeland (with US help). I don’t know if this group falls into that category. Remember Ahmed Challabi, who worked tirelessly and deceitfully to get the US to attack Sadaam’s Iraq (sharing a part of the blame for the situation we are in now), and the may Cuban exile groups who have advocated and carried out terrorism against Cuba, sometimes with explicit US support. As much as I respect and as much as I have have learned from the Dalai Lama, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of re-taking Tibet and handing it back to its former rulers. We can’t afford war, and alternatives to war depend on starting from where we are and not trying to return to some glorified status quo ante.

   On the other hand, the statements of this group about the flag is mostly low-key, and they did convince the Lowell City Council to endorse the use of the royalist flag.

   What will happen with the flag on the “Thinking Out Loud” website has not been decided as of today, but whatever happens, the monks will be working to help in lifting Laos out of poverty by bringing the Laotian crafts to local events including the Grassroots Radio Conference (which Thinking Out Loud and WUML will be hosting in July.. hint hint), and I strongly urge you to take a look at them, talk with the monks and see what you can do to help them in this quest.

The American Friends Service Committee remided me of the grim FOURTH anniversary of the Iraq war which comes just a little after my 60th birthday. Of course we’ll be having our regular peace vigils and showing the peace-flags, but of course that isn’t enough. There are national events you could connect with. The AFSC writes:

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The Iraq war’s fourth anniversary peace events

On March 19, the Iraq war will have gone on for four years. Along with delivering the “Not One More Death

On Wednesday’s “ThinkingOut Loud”, I played an extraordinary interview with Helena Norberg Hodge on “Learning from Ladakh“. This interview with British producer Paul Goodwin is one of the most succinct presentations I’ve heard on why the mainstream trade paradigm based on comparative andvantage, specialization in a single crop, and “free trade” must be replaced with one that honors human diversity. She places the local food movement and sustainable agriculture squarely at the center of the solution. I highly recommend listening to this 40-minute interview. If you’re like me, you’ll also fall in love with the song “Gaia” by Cathie, whose voice reminds me just a little of Martha Tilston’s.

Elizabeth Kucinich now has her own MySpace page focusing on the project called the 9-10 Forum, an effort to get us all discussing the positive aspects of our past and our strengths as a nation as we might have viewed them on September 10, 2001, before we came to focus on the wrongs, fears and divisions almost exclusively. Paradoxically, having a dozen major crises coming to a head at once opens up the possibility of positive visions and progress:

Joe Gainza of the Vermont American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) office is recommending that we all view this flash slideshow of ordinary Iranians
with (a mangled version of) Yusuf Islam’s “Peace Train” as background music. Lets get it through our heads that Iranians and Americans are essentially the same. We all love our children and both countries are modern, fun-loving and progressive in spite of the “fundamentalist” ideologies that our rulers tend to subscribe to. Once we acknowledge that an attack on Iran will be a disaster for all of us, we need to contact out Senators and Congressfolk and tell them to stop this war. The dominant players inside the Bush administration are pushing to get us (and Israel) into this next war before the election cycle heats up. They think that Congress is powerless, and that the executive branch holds all the cards. We all know about the lies that got us into Iraq and we all know how much suffering has come from that war; if this is not dja vu I don’t know what is! Please let’s not start a bigger, possibly nuclear, war against the land that brought us Rumi and Hafiz and the movies “The Blue Balloon” and “Secret Ballot”.