[RonPrice]

LAOS

Part 1:

The Most Secret Place on Earth is a 2008 film by German director Marc Eberle. Eberle’s fascination grew with film grew from his teens, and many of those films have ended up serving as major sources of inspiration and enlightenment for him in his personal journey of trying to make sense of the world around him. His personal story, life-narrative, with film is an interesting one unto itself.

The film I watched last night dealt with the secret operation waged by the CIA throughout the sixties and early seventies against communist guerrillas in Laos, particularly in the city of Long Chen. I watched this film1 before going to bed. I’ve been recently altering the time when I take my medications in the evening so that I can stay-up later and not go to sleep, which is the effect of these pills from my psychiatrist. This change of time allowed me to watch this film which was on after midnight.

After 30 years of conspiracy theories and myth making in relation to Laos, from the 1970s to the 2000s, this film uncovers the story of the CIA's most extensive clandestine operation in the history of modern warfare: The Secret War in Laos. This war was conducted alongside the Vietnam War from 1964 -1973.

Part 2:

There is now a u-tube piece on this war for u-tube lovers, and there is a detailed outline of the story also available in cyberspace. There is no need for me to tell you the story here; you can read that for yourself or watch the u-tube video. I will, though, simply write this prose-poetic piece as I often do, utilizing poetry’s advantage of succinctness and brevity, and its strong tendency to be written in an autobiographical mode and manner.

While the world's attention was caught by the conflict in Vietnam, the CIA built the busiest military airport in the world in neighbouring and neutral Laos. They recruited humanitarian aid personnel, Special Forces agents and civilian pilots to undertake what would become the most effective operation of counter-insurgency warfare.-Ron Price with thanks to ABC1TV, 12:30-1:30 a.m., 20/2/’13.

I remember all that talk about
the Ho Chi Minh Trail & the
bombing of Laos, sending it
back into a Stone Age that it
had never really left by 1960.

I’d been involved in my own little
known war, trying to work-out the
most effective way to deal with all
those ups-and-downs, the books, a
strong libidinal urge now and then,
words of a new religion which had
come into my life back in those early
‘60s. Laos was mixed-in with all the
high-school words, birds flying over
Akka, a little world of family-friends,
sport and fun…..It was like something
from another part of the universe, far,
far out on the periphery of that world
back then when life was beginning—
little did I know until last night on TV.

Ron Price
20/2/’13