In a recent blog I informed readers that Save The Children and a long list of other humanitarian non-profits have taken a public stand against the marketing practices of the Swiss food company Nestle. They charge that Nestle is again marketing products that entice parents in developing countries to cease breastfeeding their children. That...
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For the sake of younger readers this senior citizen will provide a bit of historic background information. About half a lifetime ago (well… half of my life, anyway) Nestle, the Swiss food manufacturer, was harshly taken to task for aggressively promoting it’s infant formula in third world countries. Mothers, in response to compelling advertisement...
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In earlier posts we described how a Lao construction company undertook the construction of a road without first clearing the roadway of old ordnance. Their actions put their workers at grave risk and ignored the safety of villagers who live near the construction zone. In the video embedded below we show how WHWV came...
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A fellow hand delivered a cluster bomblet to us! What in the world was he thinking? Many people in his village have had tragic, first-hand experiences with the device that they call “the bombie”. During our visit villagers described incidents in which at least six of their neighbors had been killed by similar bomblets....
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It wasn’t the first time someone has approached us with ordnance in hand, but it was the first time that my video camera was running and I captured the excitement on tape. We were in a village to discuss the safe removal of some ordnance and I was filming the team’s discussion of how...
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During August 2010 the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations held a competition in which chefs at several of Vientiane’s most popular restaurants were challenged to create meals that employed insect protein as the main ingredient. The objective of the event was both to pay tribute to native Lao cuisine and...
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Americans who’ve traveled in Laos will confirm that this is a nation of short people. My best posture, combined with an ambitious, vertebrae-cracking neck-stretch, still leaves me a hair under six feet tall. But, when I stand among residents of a typical Lao village I tower above everyone else- six inches taller than most...
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KRONENWETTER — Jim Harris’ career has taken an unlikely trajectory and has now come full circle. Since retiring as principal of Weston Elementary School in 2003, Harris, 63, of Kronenwetter developed a nonprofit organization called We Help War Victims. He and a crew he hires spend three months of the year finding and disposing...
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British and American officials colluded in a plan to hoodwink parliament over a proposed ban on cluster bombs, the Guardian can disclose. According to leaked US embassy dispatches, David Miliband, who was Britain’s foreign secretary under Labour, approved the use of a loophole to manoeuvre around the ban and allow the US to keep...
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Bangkok Post 24/4/11 Mercenary turned monk passes away A former United States soldier of fortune who later became a monk in Thailand and helped hundreds of people overcome alcohol and drug addictions at the world famous Wat Tham Krabok in Saraburi has passed away. A spokesman for the temple said Phra Gordon, also known...
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