Month: November 2023

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Western media and the Middle East

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed.
If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.”
–  Mark Twain

I was in my mid-teens when the 1967 Middle East crisis was reaching boiling point. The novels of Leon Uris had filled me with admiration for the spirit of the Jews and so, my sense of fairness was outraged that tiny Israel was surrounded by these big, bad nations and that more Arab states were sending regiments to assist their ‘blood brothers’. I went to the principal of my school and demanded that he send student volunteers to fight alongside the Israelis. I wanted my name first on the list. He looked at me in exasperation and said that I should worry about my poor grades and leave the fighting to the armies there. He must have realised that he had offended me because in a more mellow tone, added that any fighting would end quickly because both sides would soon run out of armaments.

Then the Six-Day War happened and the roles of David and Goliath were reversed. Later, brought up on a weekly diet of Time and Newsweek bias and gung-ho Hollywood garbage, I tended to see the world through the haze of American propaganda. But after Bangladesh, Chile and the Pentagon Papers, the scales fell from my eyes. As I learned to be more discerning in my reading, I felt cheated by the fact that all media organizations had a slant, determined by their governments in some states, or by the owners’ business interests in others. And the truth? Damn the truth.

When the war in Ukraine broke out last year, I was teaching a course on Bias in the Media at my school. Several of my colleagues and friends, mainly American and British couldn’t understand why India didn’t fall in line with the perspectives coming out of, mainly, Washington and London. The readings in the course were often too difficult for the students and since I wanted them to understand the concept of bias, I showed them how the western media was covering the conflict vis-à-vis news organizations in China, India and other countries that didn’t toe the western line. Very effectively, I got the message through. One student, sharper than the others, pointed out that in the west, people tend to believe most things they read, whereas in countries where the press was controlled by the government, people tend to disbelieve most things in print.

The Hamas attack on several Israeli targets has once again highlighted the bias in the Euro and Anglosphere.

CNN and the New York Times in particular, but even the BBC and the Guardian, are full of reports of individual Israeli victims. The coverage of the death and destruction being rained down on the people of Gaza, most of whom are non-combatants, is disproportionately less. The imbalance is probably similar to the number of casualties on either side. The life of a light-skinned Israeli appears to be more valuable than that of a brown-skinned Palestinian. A Semite in a yarmulke evokes more sympathy than a Semite (for that is what Palestinians are too) in a hijab.

“Israeli murderers are called commandos; Arab commandos are called terrorists.”                                     
                                                                    – George Carlin, American humorist

It’s a fact that even if these armchair ‘journalists’ did try to be even-handed, AIPAC and other pro-Israeli lobbies would destroy their careers completely. While most of us swallow our principles from time to time when we have to put food on the table, washing cars or dishes is surely more honorable than shutting our eyes to the carnage in Gaza. Reporting misinformation is as dishonest as not reporting the truth. In the present situation, willful omissions are as criminal as willful commissions.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one’                                                                    
                                                -A.J. Liebling in the New Yorker

If you think that the United States is a shining example of free speech, think again. The hypocrisy of U.S. president Biden, asking the Emir of Qatar to rein in Al Jazeera, whose reporters on the ground in Gaza are showing what overwhelming Israeli force is doing to the people and the city. Likely to inflame passions around the Arab world, the president said. But passions in the non-Arab world are being inflamed too, at the indiscriminate and disproportionate destruction. Witness the growing number of demonstrations around the world of people calling for a ceasefire, or the rising tide of anti-Semitism, in Europe especially.

In U.S. universities, supposedly beacons of free speech and questioning minds, students are being threatened and academics are being censured, or losing their jobs outright, just for calling for a ceasefire and an end to the killing. So, being critical of Israel is tantamount to being anti-Semitic. Nothing is said about the anti-Semitism towards the Palestinians. I admit that I am confused. How can a white European Jew, be more Semitic than a brown Palestinian one?

What the Nazis did to Lidice in Czechoslovakia, the Israelis are doing to northern Gaza.

The Guardian, quotes casualty figures from Gaza as coming from the ‘Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health’. Yes, of course, governments control their ministries. Would this newspaper refer to the Tory-controlled NHS?  Friendly administrations such as Saudi Arabia, no matter how despotic, are governments; unfriendly ones are regimes.

Some historical facts to educate those at Fox, CNN, the New York Times, et al.

The Balfour Declaration was an undertaking by one people, to give away the land of a second people, to a third people. This wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last time, that Britain, that arch colonial master of divide and rule, was taking, or giving away things, that didn’t belong to it.

The Zionists pushed for a Jewish state as the only guarantee for their safety and security. The western powers, for various reasons, including guilt, acquiesced in the creation of Israel. To achieve this, the Palestinians who had lived on the land for centuries, were displaced to make way for Jews from other parts of the world but mainly from Eastern Europe. In other words, the Palestinians were made to pay the price for the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism.

Following its massive victory in the Six-Day War in June 1967, Israel annexed Arab lands in Egypt, Jordan and Syria. However, with the Camp David Accords, the Sinai was returned to Egypt. This did not happen in Jordan or Syria and these territories are often referred to as the Occupied Lands.

UN Resolution 242, which called for the return of all Arab lands seized in 1967 in exchange for firm guarantees of peace, is the most flouted UN resolution in the history of the world body. This was and is done in connivance with the United States.

In 2006, Hamas overwhelmingly won the elections in Gaza, certified as free and fair by Jimmy Carter and other international observers. But like it has always done with governments it does not approve of, the United States refused to recognize the victor.  We can only wonder, how much different the situation in the Middle East might have been, had Hamas not been cast in the role of a pariah?

Published in 14th Anniversary Edition, Live Encounters Magazine, Volume One Nov-Dec 2023.

© Percy Aaron

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Against All Odds

I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet – Old Russian proverb

“I see my name, country and score flashing on the electronic board and I blink many times. I have won silver for my country and myself. I have done it and I can’t believe my eyes. My wildest dreams have come true and the tears start flowing. A short while later, my happiness is tinged with sadness: my family, my friends and my coach aren’t here to share this moment of a lifetime with me. I cannot explain how alone I feel, that the people I care for the most are not here with me. The silver around my neck would have been more than gold, had they been here.”

When Phouthavong Sisavengsouk (Pim) lifted 151 kg to win silver at the 7th ASEAN Para Games, Myanmar 2014, he put to rest the disappointment he had felt at the previous games in Indonesia 2011. A miscommunication between his coach and the judges had seen him disqualified on a technicality. So near and yet so far.

I’m no stranger to broken bones and have had my leg in a cast a few times. I remember the feeling of utter inadequacy and the extreme frustration at not being able to do the things that came so naturally to people around me. Watching Pim, polio-stricken as a child, swivel his wheelchair to load a five-kilogram plate on the barbell, his ready smile and his general cheerfulness, reminded me that I had not been a very patient or pleasant person, when I had had broken limbs. I heaved a sigh of relief that I had got away so lightly.

The disappointment in Indonesia was hard to take and despite the regular visits to the gym, he became increasingly dispirited. Two years ago he met American Sam Hollrah, working out at the same gym and they soon became gym buddies. Sam, a powerlifter in his native Texas, gave Pim tips on improving his technique. More importantly, Sam got Pim to focus on the future, not on his past. “I pushed him. I didn’t let him feel sorry for himself. If he dropped something, he had to pick it up himself,” Sam told Champa Holidays.

Then the big chance came and he was given two months to prepare for the 7th ASEAN Para Games in Nay Pyi Taw in Myanmar. He wet to another gym in the evenings for a further two hours of weight training. He worked harder on his triceps and shoulders. Sam advised him to lose weight, so that he could enter in a lower category. He stayed away from sugar and alcohol and increased his intake of fruit and vegetables. The preparation cost a lot of money stretching his family’s limited resources. Pim received a small amount from the Lao Paralympic Committee but it was inadequate. The cash award of 10 million kip ($1,250) promised to him for winning the silver medal will be welcome when it eventually arrives.

Champa Holidays asked Pim what he did when he wasn’t working out, did he have other interests? He used to play basketball but that was too difficult from a wheelchair. Also, he preferred working alone. He draws when he has the time and makes handicrafts from dried coconut shells. So, was he an artist or a powerlifter? He held up his silver medal with a chuckle.

But he is not resting on that success. His immediate goal is to take part in the Asian Para Games in Incheon, South Korea in October this year but that depends on his finding sponsorship. And Rio 2016? Pim rolls his eyes and his face fills with a big smile.

Does Pim see himself retiring? No, he says, but in the future he’d like to become a trainer, working especially with people like himself. So, does he have any message for young Lao people today? He thinks for a while, then answers. “If you want something really badly, you have to work for it.” Then looking at Sam, he adds with a big smile, “ and only listen to people who tell you, you can do it.”

(Published in Champa Holidays – Apr-May 2014)

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Chef Chandra – in touch with his roots

Talking to Chef Chandra Vongsaravanh is like attending a combined lecture on gastronomy, the environment, culture, history, linguistics and more. A veritable walking encyclopaedia, we were spellbound with his wide and diverse knowledge. Despite his unassuming demeanor, once you get Chandra started, his passion for taking Lao cuisine to the world is soon apparent.

While studying economics at Budapest University, he ran a restaurant during term breaks. After graduating he decided he liked cooking more than counting and found himself a job with the Marriott Hotel in the Hungarian capital, preparing a variety of Asian, French and Hungarian dishes. In 1996, he opened his own signature restaurant in that city. As his reputation spread, he was invited to take part in a number of European cooking forums and even served time as a TV celebrity chef. The Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. invited him and a number of other international master chefs to take part in cooking demonstrations spanning a month and a half.

He returned to Laos in 2000 with his Hungarian wife and opened his first restaurant the following year in Luang Prabang. A cooking school followed, which has seen around 30,000 enrolments. Chandra, who speaks six languages will be presenting a cooking show on Lao TV in the coming months and a cook book will be published later this year. A man of many interests, he is also the founder of the Luang Prabang Royal Ballet Theatre, Phra Lak Phra Lam.

Chef Chandra took time off his busy schedule to talk to Champa Holidays and started by emphasizing the relationship that Lao cuisine and culture has to the four basic elements: air, earth, fire and water. The Lao people were animists long before Buddhism came to the country and it is their belief in their belief in the spirits of the forest that influenced their cuisine. Lao cooking is very simple and only what is available, in season, should be used. “Nothing more than what is essential, should be taken from the trees or the earth,” he stressed.

Khao niaw (sticky rice) is the very soul of Lao food according to Chandra, and even Lao people are unaware of this. No other country has accorded such a central role to this rice. It, rather than steamed rice, is offered to the monks in the morning taak baat. At weddings, a ball of rice, divided in half and eaten by the bride and groom with arms intertwined, signifies two halves becoming a whole. Sticky rice is never thrown away but instead left outside for the birds, he said.

Our lesson in gastronomy segued into history. “Hundreds of years ago, large parts of northeastern Thailand were part of Laos. The food, language and culture were the same.” After the war on Vietnam, the Lao diaspora increased and many needed to earn a living in their adopted countries. Some opened ‘Thai’ restaurants, since Lao cuisine was unknown. While Thai food increasingly popular, diners were unaware of the difference between Isaan cuisine and Thai mainstream dishes. Chandra’s mission is now to rectify that misconception and see that due credit is given to Lao food.

“Anything that is not natural, destroys the organisms of the body”

 Since the environment and the elements are so integral to Lao cuisine, we asked Chandra what he thought about the increased use of chemicals in agriculture and galloping global deforestation. “If you look around the region, China, Vietnam, Thailand, all their forests have gone. Here in Laos, we still have some forests. We must protect them.” He agreed that this was a matter of grave concern that needed to be addressed without delay. The indiscriminate use of agrochemicals worried him, as biodiversity is critical to food supplies. Every insect plays its part in rejuvenating the environment. He is also alarmed by the rise in fast foods and additives, something that is completely alien to Lao culture.

(Published in Champa Holidays, Feb-Mar 2014)

© Percy Aaron

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A Man of his Words

“Are you Burenang?” the burly plainclothesman asked, referring to me by my pen name.

“No,” I lied.

He sensed my fear. From his pocket he pulled a pamphlet I had written and stared at my picture below the text. “You chose,” he hissed, “your life or your writing.” A few feet behind, stood his partner. Under his loose shirt I could see the outline of the gun in his waistband.

Bounthanong Xomxayphol’s first brush with the royalist authorities, came when he was only 20. He was certainly intimated but not deterred. He continued to write, changing his pen name or moving from house to house whenever he sensed danger, or a sympathizer in the police tipped him off. The war was going badly for the royalist government and though the pressure eased, he was always a target.

The Vientiane of the 60s and 70s was a frontier town. The American War on Vietnam flooded across Lao borders and the capital filled with foreign soldiers, merchants and mercenaries, who played alongside the French colonials and their local supporters. Anything and everything was for sale, especially guns, girls and drugs. The majority of the people remained mired in deprivation and exploitation.

Bounthanong was passionate about books and words came easily to him. So, the decision to become a writer was inevitable. It was the best way, he felt, to catalogue the injustices he saw all around him.

He told Champa Holidays that he was probably one of the few Lao, who as a child, had his own library at home. An avid reader from an early age, he was profoundly influenced by the works of the short story writer, Outhin Bounyavong and the poet Panay (Pakien Viravong). Later, it was Guy de Maupassant, Victor Hugo and O. Henry.

After high school, he went to the Royal Institute of Law and Administration, becoming an active member of the Lao Progressive Students Association. He wrote a series of articles in the student newspaper denouncing CIA activities in Indochina. In 1973 he had printed 1,000 copies of The Bright Side of Darkness, his first collection of political articles, essays and short stories and sold them outside schools and theatres. This resulted in that first visit from the secret police with the warning to choose between his art and his life.

“I am not a fly that travels around collecting news of other people to report to the powerful in the hope of collecting a reward…I have no wish for this land to have any more cowards than it already has.” 

  • A Bar at the Edge of a Cemetery

Gorbachev’s glasnost sent ripples beyond the Soviet Union, and this eased some of the restrictions But, the more things changed, the more they remained the same. Writers, by the very nature of their profession, are outsiders and if they wish to remain objective, they must stand aloof from the society they chronicle. This brings on its own set of problems and to avoid these, some collaborate, while others adapt or allegorize.

“Oh you men! What a life a poor bird has! I harmed no one. All I wanted was for to live.”

  • Oh! Men….May I breathe

 In 2011, Bounthanong received the Lao Top Artist Award from the government. Three months later, he won the SEA Write Award for his short story Kadook America (American Bones), a powerful anti-war tale of a Lao-American team searching for the remains of U.S. servicemen missing in action during the American War in Vietnam.

There was no medicine that could cure his anger whi8ch had remained a lingering disease in his mind. During the past few days, however, he had been forced to suffer the imaginable. Here he stood digging up and sifting through the dirt, not to search for gold, but rather the bones of American soldiers, the same people who ten years earlier had arrived in Laos to murder his own parents and relatives.

  • American Bones

Earlier this year, Bounthanong earned another laurel when he won the Mekong River Literature Award (MERLA) for his novel Fai Noom (Young Fighter). Champa Holidays asked Bounthanong about his writing schedules. Despite having written about 150 short stories, over 100 poems and 4 novels, he has no fixed routine. He reads a lot and writes only when he has an idea. Otherwise, he spends his time sipping freshly brewed coffee, puffing on strong cigarettes, and observing, in the way writers do.

(Published in Champa Holidays – May-Jun 2014)

© Percy Aaron