Word: mekong
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When the flamethrower on the Navy gunboat burned off foliage along the riverbank of the Mekong Delta in Viet Nam in 1967, recalls Robert Sutton, a ship's gunner, "I inhaled the fumes of the foliage that had been killed by Agent Orange." Before long, he says, he began suffering from diarrhea, vomiting and headaches, and in 1969 was given an honorable discharge. Back in West Babylon, N.Y., the veteran's health deteriorated rapidly; today the unemployed steam fitter's ailments include brain lesions and degenerative joint disease...
...good day to die," declared James Gordon ("Bo") Gritz. The date was Nov. 27, 1982, and Gritz, 44, a swashbuckling former Green Beret, was about to lead three American daredevils and 15 Laotians on an improvised commando raid across the Mekong River. Their scheme: a 14-day trek to rescue American prisoners of war in the jungles of eastern Laos. After only three days, however, the bravado of "Operation Lazarus" was abruptly buried when a band of local guerrillas ambushed the raiders, killing two Laotians, capturing an American, and forcing the others to turn tail...
Each August the residents of the hamlet of Baan Nabua, 30 miles south of the Mekong River center of Nakhon Phanom, stop all work and open their stilted houses to visitors for a celebration. Government officials gather for a feast and an all-night spectacle that features classical Thai dancing and Kung Fu movies. The holiday is called the Stop the Gunfire Festival: it commemorates the government's success in quelling a Communist insurgency that once infested most of Thailand's 16 northeastern provinces. This year the eight-man band that played popular tunes at Baan Nabua...
...campaign tactics were rowdy even by the rough-and-tumble standards of Thai politics. Nails were scattered around cars parked at party rallies; saboteurs disrupted election speeches by plying crowds with Mekong whisky; and before they went to the polls last week, many of the peasants of the northeastern province of Roi Et gladly pocketed bribes from the 14 candidates. When the 133,000 ballots were counted in the key parliamentary election, a familiar figure emerged triumphantly: former Prime Minister Kriangsak Chomanan, 63, who hopes that his victory will soon sweep him back into power in Bangkok. Said Kriangsak after...
...Minh City are reminded by the bust of Uncle Ho and numerous red banners that the religion is tolerated only as an appendage of the state. In Laos, over the past five years, one-fourth of the peasant population of 3 million have swum or rafted across the Mekong River to Thailand. One of the most famous of these waterborne refugees is Laos' 88-year-old Supreme Patriarch, Pra Yodkaw Vachirorods, who sighs, "Buddhism is alienated and separate from the people. Religion is dying in Laos...