bombies and other debris

today was spent on the plain of jars, an odd site indeed full of massive stone jars of which noone seems quite sure of their purpose...funerary possible but the local legends lean more towards the creation of the local poiteen...but it was a more modern aspect of history which caught my attention...
this area had the shit bombed out of it by the usa during the 1960's and early seventies...they reckon that about 30% of the bombs dropped failed to go off and even now going outwith the marker stones is not a particularly good idea...people still die in their hundreds each year...thousand of tons of unexploded ordnance litter the area...and still..
it's the poverty that does it...scrap metal from the uxo's, up until recently when it was outlawed by the government this was a way to feed your family...you search for scrap metal, you find the debris of the great overseas empire and, you take your chance...maimed, dead or fed...russian roulette yankee stylee...and in a land decimated by this astounding show of empirical strength what choice do you have? starve? and so the trail of the dead continued and continues...
the plain is pockmarked with craters and the country too poor to clear the land without help...farmers can only grow enough rice to feed themselves for a portion of the year as it's too dangerous to attempt to use the rest of their land...the bombs remain, ticking, silent, waiting for an unexpected move, a spade, a step, the timelapsed possibilty to achieve their goal...the destruction of the innocent...grist to the mill of empirical insatiability.
and so 40 years later covert missions still reap their reward in the flesh of the locals...
while in europe we clamber upon the propaganda of 1914,refusal to wear a poppy almost a crime, continuing the myths...we remember the fallen in the war to end all wars..attempt to justify the decimation of generations..still hear the old unavoidable refrains....but here the war remains active, forty years on, the price remains and will remain for the forseeable future, as those countries responsible, rich enough to waste billions upon the latest conflict,s turn their back, blind their eyes and hide from their ongoing responsibilities towards the future dead from another old conflict...nothing seems to change except the point of the map, entrenched interests retain glib tongued untruths, restrain us with fear and then, unless the hydra surfaces again, go off to find another war to fight in order to keep their economies solvent, their citizens subjugated...dulce et decorum est pro patria mori...indeed, but better still that the nameless victims are of another people, that the destruction is done from a distance and that the slivers of information are so distorted that we accept the poisoned meat which we are fed...
war solves nothing. profiteers feast upon the flesh and governments peddle the illusion of national interests, nationalism, us and them. utter bullshit.
and so the plain of jars became another journey, one into the darkened horror of recent history and the price to be paid by the coming generations..
first rant in a wee while...
on a less political note, the other photo's of the day should be on my flickr accout...at some point connection allowing...