Word: thailander
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They call it the heartland, a term with appropriate connotations. When the Vietnamese boat people came to the U.S. last spring, the state of Iowa actively sought 1,500 for resettlement. When Governor Robert Ray toured Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand and returned with tales of starving children, offers of aid from lowans flooded the statehouse, the Des Moines Register and churches. The interest was so great that just before Thanksgiving the Governor announced a program called Iowa Shares, an acronym for Iowa Sends Help to Aid Refugees and End Starvation...
Back in Iowa, the money keeps coming in. At week's end Iowa Shares had raised almost $500,000, and supplies and medical personnel are being sent to other refugee camps in Thailand...
January 10: Vietnam mounts offensive against remaining Khmer Rouge guerillas, overrun Thailand, China re-invades Vietnam. Dalai Lama urges India to sieze opportunity to free Tibet by invading China. Sen. Edward Kennedy releases a statement condemning China and Vietnam, but noting that Pol Pot's government had murdered millions of Cambodians prior to Vietnamese intervention. Opinion polls next day reveal that Kennedy slips a further ten per cent against President Carter...
Because Labbe did not visit the war-torn regions of Cambodia, he saw no actual starvation during his tour, though he says that people are eating "very bad-ly." The Cambodians working for the new regime are being paid in rice and corn. Still, Cambodian refugees in Thailand report that there are hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the outskirts of every Cambodian city because the Vietnamese have forbidden them to return home for fear of encouraging un rest. These families are threatened with starvation, as are the 600,000 refugees along the Thai border...
Instead, some nations are returning to preindustrial methods. Over the past few months, the price of tractors in rural Thailand has fallen 20% as fuel has become scarce and expensive. Prices of water buffaloes, which do not consume diesel fuel but do produce free fertilizer, have soared. Some Thai officials are rather relieved that their bureaucratic bungling has stalled the pace of industrialization. Says one official: "If we had been more successful, Thailand would be in much bigger trouble today...