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High Resolution“This old man is from the Khamu minority (or Khmu). He’s very sick, he cannot see anymore, and is a former slave of the Lao people. The tattoos on his arms are the sign of this sad past. He was ok for the picture but didn’t want to let me take his face as he was ashamed.”
(via saintshiva)
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Con Co Ngua excavation potentially the earliest cemetery site in Southeast Asia
More than 140 ancient burials including men, women, teenagers and children have been recovered from the site in the Thanh Hoa province in Northern Vietnam.
The burial site, known as Con Co Ngua, is believed to have existed sometime between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. Rising sea levels helped preserve the site under a thick cap of marine clay.
“Archaeological cemeteries and living sites of such antiquity are all but unknown in the region, with only a handful of burials from a number of cave sites previously known,” Dr Oxenham said. [full article]
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High ResolutionCAMBODIA TOWN CULTURE FESTIVAL is a lively celebration of Long Beach’s Cambodian community, the largest concentration of Cambodians outside of Southeast Asia, showcasing the community’s cultural heritage and thriving community businesses and non-profit organizations. The annual festival will have interactive demonstrations and performances of a variety of art forms from Cambodia’s rich and ancient culture. Local Cambodian artisans and culture bearers will share their expertise on Cambodian arts and cultural practices, including Cambodian classical dance and costuming, drawing, shadow puppets, music and musical instruments, textiles, dressmaking, weddings, gardening, and cooking. The festival will also have special areas dedicated to activities for children, Cambodian food vendors, and merchandise vendors. Admission to the festival is FREE.
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![Farmers and activists in Letpadaung, Burma are beaten and shot at for plowing the fields. Security forces have been cracking down on protests against the controversial Letpadaung copper mine—activists such as Ko Thu (pictured above) have been especially targeted for attempting to document the violence. [source]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/43190704612f2b08757c5faf68cb3e00/tumblr_mltx8pNayc1qg8wc3o1_1280.jpg)
High ResolutionFarmers and activists in Letpadaung, Burma are beaten and shot at for plowing the fields. Security forces have been cracking down on protests against the controversial Letpadaung copper mine—activists such as Ko Thu (pictured above) have been especially targeted for attempting to document the violence. [source]
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Of Planes, Drones and Aswangs…
“Go to sleep or I will call the planes.”— what some Yemeni parents say to their children, according to activist Farea al-Muslimi’s testimony before a Congressional hearing Tuesday on the use of drones.
This reminds me of an anti-insurgency campaign conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in the Philippines during the 1950s which made use of Philippine folklore.
To cut off popular support for the communist Huk guerrillas, American advisors to the Philippine armed forces headed by Colonel Edward Lansdale, conducted psychological operations by playing on the supernatural beliefs of Filipinos. They would use the widespread belief in aswangs, or local mythological vampires, to keep civilians away from the Huks.
Wherever there was a strong presence of Huks in an area, Lansdale and his crew would spread rumors among the locals that there were aswangs in town. And should the locals venture out of their homes at night, they might be kidnapped and eaten by the aswangs.Using the same supernatural belief, some of the psychological operations teams would also kidnap Huks, inflict vampire bites on their necks, drain their blood, and leave them in areas where the other Huks would find them. Upon discovery, some guerrillas would abandon their cause for fear of being taken by the aswangs.
The fear of aswangs was so effective it eventually reduced the number of guerrillas, cut them off from the civilian population and eventually ended the Huk rebellion.
Decades later, the effect of the aswangs venturing at night persisted. So much so that in my childhood years, visits to relatives in rural areas would always result to early dinners and sleep at night. And the same relatives would warn me and my cousins not to go out of the house after dinner or else, the aswangs would come and get us.
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High ResolutionA boy on his way to school rides a bicycle across planks on an aqueduct that separates Plempungan Village and Suro Village in Karanganyar, central Java, Indonesia, on Nov. 26. As rickety as it looks, residents prefer to use the old aqueduct as a shortcut. The alternative route requires walking 3.5 miles.
(via southeastasianists)
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Ancient Pyu City-State from Sri Ksetra Dynasty (RFA Burmese)
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ေရွးေဟာင္းသုေတသန ဌာနက တူးေဖာ္ သုေတသန ျပဳလုပ္ေနတဲ့ ပ်ဴၿမိဳ႕ေဟာင္းေတြ အမ်ားအျပား ရိွေနပါတယ္။ အဲဒီၿမိဳ႕ေဟာင္းေတြ အထဲက ပဲခူးတုိင္း ျပည္ၿမိဳ႕အနီးမွာရိွတဲ့ သေရေခတၱရာ ပ်ဴၿမိဳ႕ေဟာင္း အေၾကာင္း RFA ေဆာင္းပါးရွင္ ရွင္ေဒဝီက တင္ျပထားပါတယ္။
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ASEAN Community
Nat Gadaw, MyanmarNat Gadaw is the “bride of the spirits”, usually a man dressed like an old lady, often a transvestite, sometimes a real old lady in the most traditional festivals. The Nat Gadaw is essential to Pwe festivals, she dances, sings and collects money to make the spirits talk to her, she then tells the people what the spirits say. This can involve hours of dancing and drinking which sometimes ends with a drama and ethylic death for the unfortunate Nat Gadaw.
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High ResolutionPheulpin Laos C9 Standing Buddha 11-18-53 M Leguay April 1 2013
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Cambodian villagers receive ‘water blessings’ during this week’s New Year festivities.
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ASEAN Community
Ream Eyso & Moni Mekhala, Khmer traditional dance, CambodiaLate upload… but here is the Khmer Arts Academy performing “Reay Eyso & Moni Mekhala” for their 10th year anniversary back in October.
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Suu Kyi Says No Easy Answer to Sectarian Violence
Burma’s charismatic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi made rare comments on Wednesday on sectarian violence in her nation…
“They wanted me to talk about how to make these communal differences disappear … I’m not a magician. If I were, I’d say ‘disappear’ and they would all disappear. Differences take a long time to sort out,” she told Japanese students.
“We have to establish an atmosphere of security in which people with different opinions can sit down and exchange ideas and think of the things we have in common.”
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High ResolutionGoddess Sri
This sculpture is a lintel of Shri Lakshmi, which would have been located above the main door of a Champa temple. It came from Tra Kieu village, in the present province of Quangnam, a site formerly named Simhapura (the city of the Lion), in the ancient capital of Amaravati in the Champa kingdom.
Tra Kieu village is about 50 km from Danang in the southern province of Vietnam. Most of the characteristic artifacts that were found at Tra Kieu have been displayed in the Danang Museum of Champa Sculpture. The Champa temples were constructed with bricks, combined with decorative sandstone sculptural works. In this lintel dating from the seventh to the eighth centuries, Shri Lakshmi is presented as a goddess who appears popularly in Champa sculpture as well as poetic inscriptions.
The kingdom of Champa was established at the end of the second century. It had many trading centers that spread along the coast of central Vietnam. The main economic base of the Champa kingdom was maritime trade, through which they maintained contact with the commerce and culture of India, China, and the Arabian peninsula.
Text provided by Tran Ky Phuong, Curator, Museum of Champa Sculpture, Danang, Vietnam.
- Culture: Cham
- Medium: Grey sandstone
- Dates: 10th century
- Brooklyn Museum
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ASEAN Community
Songkan, LaosLao New Year, called Pbeemai or Songkan, is celebrated every year from April 13 to April 15.
(via saintshiva)
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![Farmers and activists in Letpadaung, Burma are beaten and shot at for plowing the fields. Security forces have been cracking down on protests against the controversial Letpadaung copper mine—activists such as Ko Thu (pictured above) have been especially targeted for attempting to document the violence. [source]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/43190704612f2b08757c5faf68cb3e00/tumblr_mltx8pNayc1qg8wc3o1_500.jpg)
