Laos, between the West and China (3rd part)

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Did you know the World Bank is present in Laos? Yes, World Bank is here, but probably too ashame of their criminal nature to show their face. It is easy to find their address if we search for it on internet. It is not so easy to find it without the GPS on, because there’s not a single sign with the name of this western organization directly and indirectly responsible of so much human suffering and so much destruction.

Well, actually, it can be easy to recognize the building. Given the huge hyper-luxurious and fancy building they have here, protected as a jail, with plenty of luxurious cars inside, here, in the middle of one of the poorest country on Earth, it is easy to understand that there’s obviously something wrong about this building and, therefore, the owner must surely be an organization like WB or IMF.

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But let’s go back to the NGOs. The second western tool to whitewash western crimes that I visited was COPE. Yes more of the same, you can fact-check here that they are sponsored by the criminal USAID, plus the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Australian Embassy.Here you can fact-check Barack Obama visiting COPE while US terror army was doing more of the same in Yemen and Syria. And here you can learn more about the visit of Obama and other “VIP” guests from the US and its client states, including Madame Naraporn Chan-O Cha, wife of Thai Prime Minister Mr Prayut Chan-O Cha.

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How lovely, how symbolic: Obama posing behind clusters bombs dropped by the US in Laos, while his country continued to be the number 1 producer and user of cluster bombs in the whole planet; while, following Obama orders, thousands more were at that time being dropped in Raqqa or Deir-Ez-Zour, in Syria. And still are today, under Trump’s orders.

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How lovely and honest were mister Obama’s remarks at COPE Visitor Center. Read it! Amaze yourself with this perfect example of imperial hypocrisy. US regime, under Obama, invaded 7 nations. Under direct orders of this war criminal named Obama, millions lost their homes, were injured, killed, enslaved, raped or trained to become terrorist mercenaries. Under Obama’s regime, US terror army used chemical weapons (white phosphorus), depleted uranium and cluster bombs as the ones we see flying around Obama’s head (image above). Shameless USA. Shameless Obama.

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I watched, over and over, a video shown in a flat screen at the entrance of this “museum”. I want to talk about it, but first watch it, please:

 

Did you pay attention on the sentences said in the first 25 seconds? Unbelievable, right? I write it down here, to refresh your memory:

Imagine living in a country where your children, playing with a metal ball they found on their on backyard, could suffer great harm when it explodes in their hands.

Imagine a place where going to farm your land can put your life at risk, where cooking your family dinner can cause your house to go up in smoke.

This country exists.”

Sure it does! Seriously? You, Norwegians and Australians, are you telling me so? What about your troops illegally imposing terrorism upon Syrians, as your US master orders you to do? And you criminal North Americans, right now dropping cluster bombs in eastern Syria, are you telling me “this country exists”? Seriously?

Of course it exists, and it is called: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, etc. Enough with your newspeak you vicious monsters!

And you COPE, with don’t you talk about Syria or Yemen? Why? Why? Why?

You don’t because you are paid by the cancer of humanity that plunders the world and enslaves the non-humankind outside western world. You don’t because your task is to brainwash both paternalistic westerners on holydays in Laos and the Laotian victims of your Master’s crimes. You don’t because your duty is to whitewash western crimes.

But there’s too much blood on their clothes and hands, new blood, old blood, rotten blood, stinky blood, all deeply embedded in the fabric of their ties and suits. So please stop it!

USAID is directly involved in regime changes; in economic and political illegal interferences; in destroying good functional social systems to turn them into grotesque dictatorships where people are disposable, where people are raped, tortured, killed and enslaved for daring believing in political-economic systems based on mutual aid.

So no, you criminal USAID have no right to teach us lessons about human suffering.

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This museum is not as Orwellian as MAG’S one. Despite its criminal sponsors, COPE do blames US for all the killed or maimed Laotians. And they show statistics, numbers, maps, footage. COPE blames USA, technically, with the shown data, but COPE does not criticize US, of course not.

Actually, COPE indirectly “blames” Laotians for being communists at that time and for having helped Vietnamese communists. As if Laotians having different political beliefs was the reason for all the horror Laos endured! Of course not!

The reason was the criminal arrogance of the US Empire, not allowing people to follow economic principles of their choice. The reason is the US Empire will to impose a total political consensus, the will to do what North Korea does not do but ignorant westerns believe they do in North Korea. How ironic, no?

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By coincidence, I came to visit COPE exactly when they were celebrating their 10th anniversary. There was nice food and drinks, for VIP’s, and the center would be closed for “normal” visitors. Yet, I talked with the Laotian director and he let me stay. Nice. But no, I did not prostitute myself. I did not touch any food or drinks, although the director told me I could.

I talked with him and with other employees and guests, but well, I’m easily getting tired of it. Always the same Orwellian memorized euphemisms and western concepts of “humanism”. And never the required criticism about US terrorism. And no lessons taken from Laos’s sufferance, since no one knows about the cluster bombs falling over the skies of new Laos (Yemen or Syria). In some sense, I felt despair. Somehow I feel they won. They bombed Laos, they committed genocides and now they commit a cultural genocide. And they kind of won it. US is great and plenty of Laotians wear clothes with US flags. Whatever.

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But, in the meantime, Laotians continue to lose. COPE’s “museum” of western propaganda occupies only a small building that is part of a bigger complex. This complex belongs to the National Rehabilitation Centre.

While Westerners praise themselves with futile tears, and while Westerners mafias collect their money to be spend in propaganda and in SUVs and 5 stars hotels, Laotians suffer and work for real.

While western vampires suck millions to spend in aristocratic luxurious life style and brag about the removal of bombs they should anyway remove in absolut silent and with low profile, Laotians work for real, a lot, and with far less money.

I visited several buildings inside the National Rehabilitation Centre and talked with employees, victims and parents of victims. I met locals who lost (some of them recently, even here in Vientiane) hands, feet and legs. Western devises undermined their future. Yet, when facing a westerner, the adults were kind and smiley; the kids, lovely and smiley.

They were happy to have access to this place, where they have access to doctors, where they have a sports hall dedicated to parasports, where they have access to physiotherapy treatment; where they can learn how to walk with artificial legs. But they would like to have more and better. They have old prostheses and old crutches.

Would be nice to have newer and better ones. Would be nice to build more rehabilitation centers. But Laos is poor, we know. The government cannot make miracles. The country is poor precisely because US condemned them to be widowers and crippled human beings in a raped country.

Sure, let’s forget the past and focus in the present. Let’s be optimistic, sure.

But to do so, we the West, they the criminal US, should do something very easy and very simple: stop wasting money with western NGOs and give it to the local government. It is their country, they know better. They have no time to waste. They are not interested in museums of self-praising bullshit. They have their lives to live and their problems to be fixed. Let’s not be silly paternalists.

They need money for people who can no longer work, they need special schools for maimed children and adults, they need more rehabilitation centers, they need more sports halls where to try to enjoy to be alive…

We have the money but we do not want to give it directly to a “corrupted” and “communist” government, as I am tired of listening from the mouths of pedant westerners, westerners arrogantly ignorant, chauvinists, victims of overwhelming anti-communism and anti-socialism brainwash.

Ah, but you know, if we let a central government take care, they will take the money for themselves.”

“Ah, you know, Laotian government is very corrupted.”

“Ah, you know, it is already proven that communism doesn’t work.”

Ah, look the Soviet gulags.”

 

I laugh to not cry. What infinite despair!

Dumb brainwashed beings full of illogical postmodern crap mixed with cultural colonialism, extreme arrogance and extreme ignorance (then tell me stories about brainwashed North Koreans), please, tell me please, who are you to say Laotians cannot take care of Laos? Who are you to believe you know better than them? Who are you to criticize communist or socialist nations when your capitalist countries bombed them and embargo them to death? How dare you to talk about corruption when your IMF and your WB mafias are the biggest corrupters of Asian and African governments? Who are you to talk about bad governance when your corporations become the private owners of all water resources in the whole planet, from the Caribe to South East Asia, preventing millions of poor people from accessing drinking water?

And then, really, dear westerner, why don’t you shut up and visit Laotians working for real? Why don’t you check by yourself? Are you too sure of your western lies? Are you too racist or too chauvinist to believe Laotians can take care of money in their hands? Are you too racist or too chauvinist to believe Laotians can take care of themselves? Are you too sure of your civilizational and cultural “superiority”? Are too drunk to walk to the National Rehabilitation Centre? Take a tuk-tuk then!

Are you the ultimate and Orwellian brainwashed zombie who believes North Koreans to be what you, actually, are?

So many of this kind around here…

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Back to the NGOs, well, there’s plenty of contradictions to be pointed out about these Orwellian tools present in Laos, no doubt. But there’s another interesting side of it.

Many NGOs collect millions of dollars offered by naive westerners to pay, as I witnessed in Lebanon and here, luxury hotels, SUV’s and world class insurances their employees apparently can’t leave without (even when surrounded by people with no access to water, food or electricity in the Syrian refugee camps of northern Lebanon). All this is outrageous, no doubt.

But what about the NGOs collecting money of their naive donors who believe the NGOs are present in Laos when, actually, they are not? I tried to visit Japan International Volunteer Centerand Clinton Health Access Initiative. Yes, Clinton! I have their addresses, I went to the places where they are supposed to have their offices, but I couldn’t find them.

In both cases, the official addresses are suspicious. Poor dirty streets with humble locals living in equally humble houses. No, that’s not the kind of streets NGOs are usually found. These streets lack on glamour and do not have the smell of Western paternalistic colonialism.

So, where are these NGOs? Good question. I’m trying to contact them via email to see what excuses they can propose.  But they are not here. They collect money and they are even not here. 100% profit for the gangsters behind it? Why not.

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I will (try) to visit some more NGOs. The offer, unfortunately, is immense. For instance, look at the list I am using to find their addresses: Internet Directory of NGOs in Lao PDR. A lot, right? Yes, but there’s more, many more!

For now I leave you with this interesting video about cluster bombs, presented by the very well informed and brilliantly sarcastic Pepe Escobar:

 

 Luis Garcia is a self-made independent writer and traveler, focused on Syria and Venezuela. He also writes about Latin America and the Middle East, and about the propaganda machine of what he calls Western Economic Dictatorship. His articles can be read in English here, in French here and in Portuguese here. Luis Garcia traveled in 55 countries and lived in 10 of them, currently living in Thailand where he works as a teacher. He is also an amateur photographer, with his best photos published here. Please support his work at his Patreon account.

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