Part of the population of Laos lives in urban centers, Vientiane being the largest.

The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon those who borrow and lend. Money was not borrowed by campesinos, assembly plant workers, or slum-dwellers. The mass of the population gained little from borrowing, indeed often suffered grievously from its effects.

India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.

Since the civil war in Laos was resumed in earnest in 1963, American participation has been veiled in secrecy.

It doesn’t take long to become aware of the presence of the CIA in Laos.

The American escalation of the war in Laos provoked a response by the Communist forces, which now control more of Laos than ever before.

I always thought we had an environmental problem, but I hadn’t realized how urgent it was. James Lovelock writes that by the end of this century there will be one billion people left.

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is.

There are still thousands of people dying every year in Laos, mostly children and farmers, from unexploded anti-personnel ordnance that the U.S. simply saturated much of the land with, especially in the Plain of Jars. There actually is a British engineering team trying to remove some of these things, which are much worse than land mines.

WikiLeaks is a service to the population. Assange should get an award for – presidential medal of honor.

When I arrived in Laos and found young Americans living there, out of free choice, I was surprised. After only a week, I began to have a sense of the appeal of the country and its people – along with despair about its future.

Out of 6 billion humans, the troublemakers are just a handful.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

The Iranian government is undoubtedly a severe danger to its own population, but not beyond that.