Laos



, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR or LPDR) and also known as Laoland, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia.

Quotes

 * Then US terrorist activities shifted over to Southeast Asia. If you want to carry out terrorist activities, you need local people to do it for you, and you also need secret money to pay for it, clandestine hidden money. Well, if you need to hire thugs and murderers with secret money, there aren't many options. One of them is the drug connection. The so-called Golden Triangle around Burma, Laos and Thailand became a big drug producing area with the help of the United States, as part of the secret wars against those populations.
 * Noam Chomsky, Interview by John Veit in High Times, April 1998


 * Given its geography, the central party apparatus in Laos has always been unable to fully control what local officials do. Its capitalist reforms in the late 1980s also stripped socialist ideology as a common cause within Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP). In fact, the LPRP has long been less ideological than its Vietnamese counterpart. …The anti-communist diaspora is fractured and incompetent. Dissidents abroad, mainly in Thailand, are terrified of the long arm of state repression. …The LPRP’s monopoly on power and its willingness to quash any sign of a political alternative – the only thing that [a totalitarian] government needs to get right to stay in power – looks secure. Not even mounting public distress over the failing economy and declining living standards has sparked a recognizable anti-LPRP movement. Moreover, dynastic politics has become even more entrenched since Sonexay [Siphandone] became prime minister in late 2022.
 * David Hutt, "Why Laos’ Communists cannot do anti-corruption", Radio Free Asia (March 3, 2024)


 * Imagine if the 90,000 or so Laotians couldn’t have emigrated this year, nor the hundreds of thousands in previous years. Laos would be a political tinderbox. But it isn’t.
 * David Hutt, "Migration throws Laos’ communist government a lifeline", Radio Free Asia (October 28, 2023)


 * In the Western vernacular there’s a warning about tails wagging dogs. And [a] Buddhist adage dictates that when the sage points at the moon, only the fool looks at his finger. The point of both is not to confuse the object for the subject. For years, we’ve been warned that Laos has been ensnared in a Chinese “debt trap.’ What if Laos has equally caught Beijing in a “creditor trap?”
 * David Hutt, "Has Laos ensnared China in a 'creditor trap?'", Radio Free Asia (June 30, 2023)