HANOI — A disease that in Asia is as common as chicken pox and usually about as severe.
The 20-month-old boy was sickened by a particularly menacing form of hand, foot, and mouth disease that has killed hundreds of young children in the region....
Any time something like this comes up I think two things: a) depopulation plot to get rid of useless eaters, and b) time to make some money for the vaccine makers.
When the strain hit Cambodia recently, the enterovirus 71 strain, or EV-71, raised fears earlier....
Some doctors have warned that if the virus isn’t controlled, it can jump borders and threaten other regions as well....
They intend to kill all our kids and sap their parents energy, spirit, and will?
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That was the last (and first) I saw of it in my Globe.
Related:
Long-missing Marine buried with full honors
"REMEMBERING A KING -- Workers installed a portrait of Cambodia's late former leader, Norodom Sihanouk, in Phnom Penh on Tuesday as the country prepared for the return of his body from Beijing. Sihanouk, who abdicated in 2004 in favor of his son, died Monday at 89 of a heart attack. At least 100,000 people are expected Wednesday to line the route from the airport to the royal palace, where his body will lie in state during a week of mourning (Boston Globe October 17, 2012). "
"Cambodia grieves during cremation of former king" Associated Press, February 05, 2013
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians thronged the capital for the elaborate royal cremation of the maddening mercurial leader, Norodom Sihanouk, whose charm often overshadowed missteps that to most of his countrymen have faded away in a fog of nostalgia for a simpler time....
Sihanouk’s elaborate funeral rites — mingling Hindu, Buddhist, and animist traditions — were last seen 53 years ago with the death of his father, King Norodom Suramarit. And they may never be seen again in a rapidly modernizing country where the monarchy has lost much of its power and glamor....
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"Cambodian brings story of genocide to younger audience" by Joseph P. Kahn |
Globe Staff, November 08, 2012
He has become a symbol of courage, resilience, and reconciliation as his country continues to heal from genocide’s wounds. The Khmer Rouge regime killed an estimated 2 million of his countrymen in the 1970s....
Appearing together in New Bedford last month, author and subject spoke to a group of teens who, when they hear about genocide, are more likely to think about what happened in the Holocaust during World War II or in Rwanda in the 1990s — and not what happened in Cambodia four decades ago....
Or the Congo. Or Iraq. Or Vietnam.
Cruelly teased by schoolmates for his mannerisms and skin color, he describes the trouble he had controlling his pent-up anger, to the point where he considered running away from his adopted home or killing himself. Only in 1984, when he began to speak publicly about his experiences, including fighting alongside the Khmer Rouge and committing atrocities of his own, did Arn Chorn-Pond begin to heal.
I hope he's on a watch list, and doesn't that make him a war criminal?.
Chorn-Pond sat for an interview in the offices of US District Court Chief Judge Mark Wolf, a close family friend. He and Wolf met 20 years ago, through Wolf’s work with worldwide refugee organizations. While in Lowell, Chorn-Pond and Matthew Wolf, the judge’s son, helped launch Light of Cambodian Children, an educational and advocacy organization serving the city’s large Cambodian-American population.
Who also happens to be Jewish, and thus explaining this promotion piece in the paper.
Wolf stays in close touch with Chorn-Pond — “my other son,” judge Wolf calls him — and says Chorn-Pond’s willingness to share his story has global importance, beyond what it means in terms of its personal therapeutic value.
“In my experience, Jewish Holocaust survivors will talk about what happened, but Cambodian survivors are remarkably unwilling to,” said Wolf, who has helped sponsor a photo exhibit of Cambodian war refugees on display at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse. “This book gives a generation of Cambodian-Americans their story, in a way they probably have not heard from their parents.”
We've heard enough.
Many young people who have read the book or hear him speak react by openly weeping, Chorn-Pond says, a response that allows him to grieve — again — for all he has seen, done, and lost. Nightmares, headaches, and stomach ulcers are part of that legacy, he adds, calling his guilt “the tiger in my heart” that he must tame.
That 's also why soldier suicides are at record levels' that and the cocktail of pharmaceuticals they military prescribes them for PTSD and the other more obviou$ rea$on.
A slightly built man with soft brown eyes, Chorn-Pond noted that many young Cambodian-Americans whose families survived the Khmer Rouge have drifted into gang activity, or worse, as they have struggled to assimilate into a different culture....
Why is music so important? Because, according to Chorn-Pond, 90 percent of the artists and musicians alive in Cambodia in the 1970s were targeted for murder. His family owned an opera company, one reason they were driven from their village by soldiers and dispersed to the countryside, where most of his relatives either vanished or perished.
Back then, it was his ability to play the flute that helped keep Chorn-Pond alive. Today, he says, Cambodian children enter a world that would have no music unless efforts were made to preserve it....
Cambodian Taliban? I thought they were Buddhist.
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Also see: Court frees ex-Khmer Rouge leader
Cambodia Court Report
"Panetta reaffirms US military ties to Cambodia" by ELISABETH BUMILLER | NY Times Syndication, November 17, 2012
SIEM REAP, Cambodia — The United States on Friday reaffirmed its military ties with the authoritarian government of Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia, a former Khmer Rouge commander, but Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta also warned the country about its long record of human rights abuses.
Translation: we need you in our corner, not the China's
After attending a regional security conference and a separate meeting with General Tea Banh, Cambodia’s defense minister, Panetta said he wanted to emphasize the US support ‘‘for the protection of human rights, of civilian oversight of the military, of respect for the rule of law, and for the right of full and fair participation in the political process.’’
He didn't say that, did he? From the nation that tortures innocent people?
Panetta was in Cambodia as part of the Obama administration’s ‘‘pivot’’ to Asia that seeks to bolster relationships in the region and serve as a counterweight to China. His visit came four days ahead of a planned trip here by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama, who will be the first sitting US president to visit the country.
Human rights groups say the administration is ignoring the record of people like Hun Sen, who has a bloody, decades-long history of crushing political dissent.
Hey, he just got back from Israel and I didn't see any complaining.
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"President Obama hits Cambodia on rights; Tense meeting marks milestone for US president" by Julie Pace | Associated Press, November 20, 2012
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — President Obama was cheered by massive flag-waving crowds in Myanmar....
Related: "But there were still signs of the old days. Plainclothes government security personnel videotaped guests as they walked to the university’s Convocation Hall to hear Obama talk about freedom."
It's called security. What's the big deal?
Obama's private meeting Monday evening with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was tense....
Translation: No one likes being bo$$ed around by a fading superpower at the top of the EUSraeli Empire.
The Cambodian people appeared to answer Obama’s cold shoulder in kind. Just a few small clusters of curious Cambodians gathered to watch his motorcade speed though the streets of Phnom Penh.
Translation: the world is shrugging its jaded shoulders and saying, "just another war criminal president coming through."
Obama talked on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan. Briefly addressing reporters before the private meeting, Obama called the relationship between the United States and Japan a ‘‘cornerstone of prosperity and security in the region.’’ The two leaders were set to discuss jobs, trade, and the economy.
Obama was also due to meet with Wen, the Chinese premier.
Human rights groups fear that because Obama delivered his condemnation of Hun Sen in private, government censors will keep his words from reaching the Cambodian people. And they worry the prime minister will then use Obama’s visit to justify his grip on power and weaken the will of opposition groups.
‘‘If Hun Sen’s narrative about this visit is allowed to jell, it will create a perception that the United States and other international actors stand with Hun Sen, and not with the Cambodian people,’’ said John Sifton, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
Hun Sen, 60, has held power since Ronald Reagan was in the White House, and says he will not be stepping down until he is 90. He is known as one of Asia’s most opportunistic politicians, with a knack for making sure his rivals end up in jail or in exile.
Over the last decade, he has overseen modest economic growth and stability in a country plagued by desperate poverty and nearly destroyed under the Khmer Rouge ‘‘killing fields’’ regime....
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"Obama’s Asia trip viewed as validating area’s import; Global problems keep president’s attention diverted" by Jim Kuhnhenn and Julie Pace | Associated Press, November 21, 2012
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — For all the attention wrenched elsewhere in recent days — on new violence in the Middle East, the ‘‘fiscal cliff’’ back home — President Obama’s speedy trip to Southeast Asia achieved a major goal: It was clearly seen in the region as a validation of Asia’s strategic importance as the United State refocuses its foreign policy to counter China’s clout.
It was not easy. Even in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, Obama could not escape the budget woes waiting for him back home. And his historic visit to Myanmar was all but drowned out by the rocket fire and missile strikes between Israel and Gaza. He went half a world away to promote US-style democracy but could not leave his troubles behind.
Even as Obama traipsed in stocking feet through a temple in the heart of Bangkok, a monk wished him luck negotiating the deficit-reduction challenge awaiting him in Washington. And the bloodshed in the Middle East, exploding as he toured Southeast Asia for three days, illustrated the limits of US foreign policy even as he tried to display its influence.
But he came away from his trip to this corner of the world — a place once defined by a cloistered and shunned nation like Myanmar or by Khmer Rouge ‘‘killing fields’’ or by Chinese power — with at least the hope that the example of US democracy can effect change and strengthen America’s hand.
He made his case clearly during a Bangkok news conference: ‘‘It’s worked for us for over 200 years now, and I think it’s going to work for Thailand and it’s going to work for this entire region,’’ he said.
Ours is in its death throe$.
Establishing a more influential presence in the Asia-Pacific region has long been an Obama objective, a goal driven by geopolitical considerations and by the Hawaiian-born president’s own self-identity as the first Pacific president.
He was greeted by large crowds in Thailand and in Myanmar, a country less than two years removed from a repressive military dictatorship where such assemblies were long forbidden.
The reception was more muted in neighboring Cambodia, a staunch ally of China that pointedly displayed a sign at the presidential palace welcoming Chinese premier Wen Jiabao but nothing for Obama. Still, there was a message for Asia in Obama’s mere presence.
Then WTF was Panetta talking about?
Also see: China Captures Cambodia
The trip marked the first time a US president had visited Myanmar and Cambodia.
For decades, Myanmar was an international outcast with a repressive military junta accused of gross human rights abuses.
Asia's Israel?
But last year it began to shift toward democracy, and Obama went there to welcome the change and encourage more.
His motorcade sped to the lakeside home of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who spent the better part of 20 years under house arrest. He embraced her and praised her as an ‘‘icon of democracy.’’
He didn't go for a swim, did he?
You know, Suu Kyi is Burmese for CIA, right?
Why do you think he visited?
Obama’s aides hoped that image would dominate in the United States, but news events and coverage didn’t go quite as planned. Hostilities in Israel and Gaza overshadowed the president’s trip. He spent every day monitoring developments. Monday night he was on the phone until 2:30 from Phnom Penh, calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi twice.
By Tuesday morning he had dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had been traveling with him in Southeast Asia, to the Mideast to engage directly in Jerusalem and Cairo. And he called Morsi again from Air Force One on the way home.
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"Air pollution worsening in Asian cities" by BETTINA WASSENER | NY Times Syndication, December 06, 2012
HONG KONG — Air pollution has worsened markedly in Asian cities in recent years and presents a growing threat to human health, according to experts at a conference that began Wednesday.
Clean Air Asia, a regional network on air-quality management, aggregated data from more than 300 cities in 16 Asian countries and found that levels of fine particulate matter — a key pollutant in terms of its impact on human health — were below targets recommended by the World Health Organization in just 16 cities, most of them in Japan.
Pollution levels in 70 percent of the cities, mostly in fast-growing, less developed countries like China, India, Bangladesh, and Mongolia, exceed even the most lenient of several targets recommended by the WHO, the organization said.
“The economic rebound in Asia following the global economic crisis of 2008 has accelerated sales of both passenger and freight vehicles as well as power generation,’’ Sophie Punte, Clean Air Asia’s executive director, said in a statement. This ‘‘is putting pressure on urban air quality in the region,’’ she said....
A study by the World Health Organization published in 2008 estimated that outdoor air pollution caused 1.3 million premature deaths worldwide per year, 800,000 of them in Asia.
Similarly, a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development this year warned that air pollution could become the biggest environmental cause of premature death by 2050 if action is not taken.
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Related: Clearing Out the Chinese Smog
Also see: Defiant Laos pushes Mekong River dam
"Hmong’s deportation to Laos delayed" by Grant Peck | Associated Press, March 27, 2013
BANGKOK — A US admonition to Laos over its shaky human rights record spurred efforts Tuesday to halt the possible deportation from Thailand of a former ethnic leader to the authoritarian Southeast Asian nation.
How do you the Hmong say hypocrite?
Rights activists said former ethnic Hmong rebel leader Moua Toua Ter is being held at an immigration detention center in Bangkok, while they and at least one Western embassy made representations on his behalf to the Thai government. They fear he faces severe persecution if returned to his homeland.
Globe just did a whole agenda-pushing expose on the hell holes of AmeriKa, so WTF?
Concern over his fate came after the United States took Laos to task for failing to account for the disappearance of a prominent social activist.
Secretary of State John Kerry said Laos’s failure to provide significant information about the case of award-winning activist Sombath Somphone is raising questions about the government’s commitment to the rule of law and engaging responsibly with the world — notwithstanding its recent accession to the World Trade Organization.
Translation: He's a U.S. intelligence agency asset.
And go tell it to Israel, John.
‘‘Mr. Sombath’s disappearance resurrects memories of an earlier era when unexplained disappearances were common,’’ Kerry said in a statement timed for the 100-day anniversary of the activist’s disappearance Monday....
Not so long ago when you consider what AmeriKa has been up to the last decade or so.
What an a**hole we are sending around the world now.
Why is it every secretary of state is worse than the last one?
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Related:
"Laotian veterans of the Vietnam War who served in a special guerrilla unit are gathering in New Britain this weekend to commemorate the 50th anniversary of their service. The CIA organized and funded the guerrilla unit, known as the ‘‘secret army,’’ to conduct covert operations in Laos where US forces were forbidden to enter. More than 35,000 of the fighters died in combat, and thousands relocated to the United States after the war. Governor Dannel P. Malloy is scheduled to attend the opening ceremony of the daylong celebration on Saturday (AP)."
Yeah, how many Laotians died at the hands of our law-breaking, war-criminal involvement? 500,000 or so? No big deal, huh? A celebration of violence from the gun-grabbing governur of Connecticut.
Also see: China proposes railway through Laos
Clinton Draws Line in Laos
I crossed it.
