80,000,000 Bombs in Laos: A Conversation with Sera Koulabdara of “Legacies of War”
In this episode, Bob had a conversation with Executive Director Sera Koulabdara (@SeraKoulabdara) of “Legacies of War” about the 50+ year crisis of unexploded ordnance (UXOs) in Laos. Scott was away on assignment.
Listen: https://bit.ly/LegaciesGandR
At the same time as it was attacking Vietnam, the U.S. conducted a “secret war” against Laos through the air, dropping 2 million tons of bombs as part of its “sideshow” to the main war against the Vietnamese Revolution. Included in that massive campaign were 270,000,000 cluster bombs, smaller bombs–about baseball-sized–or “bomblets” that often did not detonate. So today, decades after the war ended, about 80,000,000 bombs remain in Laos.
In our second discussion with Professor Clinton Fernandes from the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, which is part of the Australian Defence Force Academy, we talked about the new Australian deal to buy subs from the U.S., and the larger role of Australia as a “sub-Imperial” country, not powerful in its own right so much as a supportive nation for American efforts in the Pacific.
We talked with Clinton Fernandes, professor at University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, which is part of the Australian Defence Force Academy, about his role in getting documents showing Australia’s role in the 9/11/73 coup in Chile to depose Salvador Allende.
Green & Red Goes Hollywood!
In Cochabamba Bolivia in 2011, tens of thousands were present on Mother Earth Day as the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth was declared in response to the “privatization” of nature by the corporate state. This was in alignment with Indigenous worldviews that have accelerated the development of rights of nature law. Both Ecuador and Bolivia, as well as numerous local jurisdictions, have amended their constitutions to include a “rights of nature.”
The Pacific Northwest has a long history of organizing and direct action around logging and timber industries. From the Wobblies trying to organize the logging sector in the early twentieth century to Earth First!’s campaigns to stop old growth logging to the new generation of forest defenders linking the struggle for wild places and communities to the climate crisis, direct action has always tried to get the goods.
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