Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four...
Dänk 1010011010
is granted, all else follows."
-- 1984
I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago and the tour guide told us the story
of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and how they killed everybody with an
education. They went into schools and asked the children what two
plus two was, and anyone who answered 'four' was taken out and shot.
The remaining children caught on quickly and began answering 'five'
instead to save themselves.
*Anarcissie*
That's a wonderful story. But what about the freedom to
say two plus two equals twenty-two?
5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09
Somehow, I don't think that one is going to go down as "most believable
tale spun on Usenet in 2009", bubbles...
Dänk 1010011010
wrote:
The tale was told by an actual Cambodian who survived the genocide.
Maybe you should do some research on the Khmer Rouge before calling me
a liar. Maybe you should visit the Killing Fields outside Phnom Penh
and see the evils of socialism for yourself.
5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09
I'm quite familiar with the Khmer Rouge, but that story has "right wing
bullshit" printed all over it -- including your claim that you've been to
Cambodia.
Fred Williams
And what reliable source do we have for this story? I expect that there is
a lot about South-east Asia from that era that is lies. We know the U.S.
lies about the event that started the war. We know they were lying about
the Viet Cong, but there was a war and we expect those lies. Why should we
believe them when they talk about school children being shot for saying that
2 + 2 = 4. Why should we believe that when in all the time after that war,
the story has never surfaced before, and we've never heard it.
--
Regards,
Fred
(remove FFFf from my email address to reply by email)
5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09
It's such an idiotic story. Even among American right-wingers, two plus
two equals four is a well-known scientific principle, and the most
illiterate farmer in all of Kampuchea had to be able to count to at least
ten.
*Anarcissie*
wrote:
Si non e vero, e bene trovato.
Dänk 1010011010
wrote:
I am only repeating what an actual Cambodian who survived the genocide
told my tour group. If you don't like it, take a trip to Cambodia (I
used Sinh Tours out of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), and ask them what
happened yourself. Try calling them liars and laugh at them and see
how they react.
After touring the fabulous ruins of Angkor Wat near Siem Reap, head to
the capital city of Phnom Penh and see the infamous Killing Fields and
then try to tell me that the mass graves and tower of human skulls are
fake, part of a plot by "right-wingers" to discredit socialism.
*Anarcissie*
That's somewhat different than killing children
who think that 2+3=4.
Last time it was eyeglasses.
5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09
Spare us the bluster. You were never in Cambodia. You just read this
crap in Free Republic or WND or something and decided to try to use it
here.
>
> After touring the fabulous ruins of Angkor Wat near Siem Reap, head to
> the capital city of Phnom Penh and see the infamous Killing Fields and
> then try to tell me that the mass graves and tower of human skulls are
> fake, part of a plot by "right-wingers" to discredit socialism.
Oh, gosh, you've learned to use Google.
So did you climb Kilamanjaro while you were there?
Dänk 1010011010
Since you accuse me of lying about visiting Cambodia, here are scans
of my visas and passport stamps (potentially identifying information
redacted):
Vietnam visa, front page:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2479/4203970143_80274006dd.jpg
Vietnam visa, entry and exit stamps:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2769/4204726734_b2beffc68e.jpg
U.S. passport, Cambodia entry and exit stamps:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2689/4203970193_257a10c6ef.jpg
Sinh Tourist hotel receipt:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2548/4204726688_318b21dd11.jpg
(I also visited Serbia in October):
U.S. passport, Serbia entry and exit stamps:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2494/4204726798_c19fc0232a.jpg
5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09
You mean, just like THESE ones, only not redacted?
http://images.google.com/images?q=Vietnamese%
20passport&oe=utf-8&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-
a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi
Dänk 1010011010
Whatever, dude. You just prove that leftists can't stand the truth.
I was in Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Serbia in October and in
Vietnam and Cambodia in November and December, all while you were
sitting in your trailer in your underwear watching Oprah on teevee.
Further evidence of my travels can be found in the blogs I posted to
soc.culture.usa and elsewhere ("Dankblog: Vietnam", "Holiday in
Cambodia") which match the dates on my passport stamps. If I am
lying, I must have gone to a lot of effort to find scans of someone
else's passport stamps that exactly match my fictitious tale.
Passport stamps show I entered Austria on Oct. 12, entered Serbia on
Oct. 20, departed Serbia on Nov. 02, and entered the USA on Nov. 02.
Vietnam visa stamps show I entered Vietnam on Nov. 27, exited to
Cambodia (Moc Bai/Bavet border post) on Dec. 04 and re-entered Vietnam
(Moc Bai/Bavet border post) on Dec. 08, and departed Vietnam by air on
Dec. 14. Passport stamps show I entered Cambodia on Dec. 04 and
exited to Vietnam (Bavet/Moc Bai border post) on Dec. 08. The receipt
for my hotel in Siem Reap was issued Dec. 05 and for the night of Dec.
06. I can't find the receipt for my hotel in Phnom Penh, but I was
there Dec. 07 and checked out at noon on Dec. 08 and took the 13:30
bus back to Ho Chi Minh City.
Please explain how I Googled perfectly matching documentation, and why
you seem unable to do the same. In the meantime, keep watching Oprah,
because I heard that next week she will be doing a special series on
exciting travel destinations.
- - - - - - My Austria, Hungary, and Serbia posts - - - - - -
Nov. 01:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.music.marilyn-manson/browse_thread/thread/39168b360fc45be7?hl=en#
- - - - - - My Vietnam and Cambodia posts - - - - - -
*Anarcissie*
What truth is it we can't stand? But your
travels don't prove anything. Pol Pot is
accused of so many monstrous crimes one
more or less doesn't make any difference,
but this one is a bit cute, like the tale in
_Apocalypse_Now_ about the Viet Cong
cutting off children's arms if they had been
inoculated. By now there could be quite
a cottage industry in Pol Pot stories
which would be very popular among
anti-Communists.
> I was in Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Serbia in October and in
> Vietnam and Cambodia in November and December, all while you were
> sitting in your trailer in your underwear watching Oprah on teevee.
>
> Further evidence of my travels can be found in the blogs I posted to
> soc.culture.usa and elsewhere ("Dankblog: Vietnam", "Holiday in
> Cambodia") which match the dates on my passport stamps. If I am
> lying, I must have gone to a lot of effort to find scans of someone
> else's passport stamps that exactly match my fictitious tale.
>
> Passport stamps show I entered Austria on Oct. 12, entered Serbia on
> Oct. 20, departed Serbia on Nov. 02, and entered the USA on Nov. 02.
> Vietnam visa stamps show I entered Vietnam on Nov. 27, exited to
> Cambodia (Moc Bai/Bavet border post) on Dec. 04 and re-entered Vietnam
> (Moc Bai/Bavet border post) on Dec. 08, and departed Vietnam by air on
> Dec. 14. Passport stamps show I entered Cambodia on Dec. 04 and
> exited to Vietnam (Bavet/Moc Bai border post) on Dec. 08. The receipt
> for my hotel in Siem Reap was issued Dec. 05 and for the night of Dec.
> 06. I can't find the receipt for my hotel in Phnom Penh, but I was
> there Dec. 07 and checked out at noon on Dec. 08 and took the 13:30
> bus back to Ho Chi Minh City.
>
> Please explain how I Googled perfectly matching documentation, and why
> you seem unable to do the same. In the meantime, keep watching Oprah,
> because I heard that next week she will be doing a special series on
> exciting travel destinations.
>
> - - - - - - My Austria, Hungary, and Serbia posts - - - - - -
>
> Oct. 18:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/a...
>
> Oct. 19:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/4...
>
> Oct. 22:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/b...
>
> Oct. 25:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/7...
>
> Nov. 01:http://groups.google.com/group/alt.music.marilyn-manson/browse_thread...
>
> - - - - - - My Vietnam and Cambodia posts - - - - - -
>
> Nov. 26:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2...
>
> Nov. 29:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2...
>
> Dec. 01:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/e...
>
> Dec. 04:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/1...
>
> Dec. 13:http://groups.google.com/group/rec.travel.misc/browse_thread/thread/4...
>
> Dec. 16:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/9...
weary flake
Maybe the tour guide didn't like you.
An actual reference for a communist slogan of "2 + 2 = 5" is
contained in the book Assignment In Utopia, by Eugene Lyons.
He reported seeing this slogan around Moscow during the era of
the Five Year Plan. It was concocted out of the slogan of
"Complete the Five Year Plan In Four!" Little did we know
that when the five year plan was completed in four years,
another five year plan came immediately after. The second
five year plan actually ended up taking five years, and
then another consarned five year plan after that. Orwell may
have been influenced by Eugene Lyons books, as well as Trotsky,
Wilhelm Reich, Protocols of Zion, etc. I gather Orwell read a
lot of stuff, more stuff than conservatives and liberals tend
to read, anyway.
Dänk 1010011010
> What truth is it we can't stand? But your
> travels don't prove anything. Pol Pot is
> accused of so many monstrous crimes one
> more or less doesn't make any difference,
> but this one is a bit cute, like the tale in
> _Apocalypse_Now_ about the Viet Cong
> cutting off children's arms if they had been
> inoculated. By now there could be quite
> a cottage industry in Pol Pot stories
> which would be very popular among
> anti-Communists.
I merely repeated a story told to me by a Cambodian who survived the
genocide as a child. I can't prove his story is true, but it sounded
similar enough to other stories told by other Cambodians about how the
Khmer Rouge exterminated everyone with an education - including
children. This particular story stood out because it sounded
literally Orwellian - straight out of '1984' - which is why I related
it here.
What's funny is that leftists who would deny the crimes of the
communist Khmer Rouge have no problem believing similar tales about
the fascist Nazi regime. I have also heard leftists denounce
statistics for deaths under Stalin (20 million) and Mao (40 million),
claiming them to be outright lies intended to slander socialism. Pol
Pot's murder of 1.5 million innocent people hardly breaks any records,
except that it constituted a quarter of the entire population of
Cambodia.
Here's an account from a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide. What's
so interesting about it is how truly Orwellian it sounds, and it's
really not surprising why American leftists would want to denounce the
stories of the survivors as "right-wing lies":
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/p/pran-cambodia.html
"Worms from Our Skin"
by Teeda Butt Mam
[Excerpts]
"I was fifteen years old when the Khmer Rouge came to power in April
1975. I can still remember how overwhelmed with joy I was that the
war had finally ended. It did not matter who won. I and many
Cambodians wanted peace at any price. The civil war had tired us out,
and we could not make much sense out of killing our own brothers and
sisters for a cause that was not ours. We were ready to support our
new government to rebuild our country."
"The Khmer Rouge were very clever and brutal. Their tactics were
effective because most of us refused to believe their malicious
intentions. Their goal was to liberate us. They risked their own
lives and gave up their families for 'justice' and 'equality.' How
could these worms have come out of our own skin?"
"They took my father. They told my family that my father needed to be
reeducated. Brainwashed. But my father's fate is unknown to this
day. We can only imagine what happened to him."
"Later the Khmer Rouge killed the wives and children of the executed
men in order to avoid revenge. They encouraged children to find fault
with their own parents and spy on them. They openly showed their
intention to destroy the family structure that once held love, faith,
comfort, happiness, and companionship. They took young children from
their homes to live in a commune so that they could indoctrinate
them."
"Parents lost their children. Families were separated. We were not
allowed to cry or show any grief when they took away our loved ones.
A man would be killed if he lost an ox he was assigned to tend. A
woman would be killed if she was too tired to work. Human life wasn't
even worth a bullet. They clubbed the back of our necks and pushed us
down to smother us and let us die in a deep hole with hundreds of
other bodies. "
"Our lives had no significance to their great Communist nation, and
they told us, 'To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.'"
"They accomplished all of this by promoting and encouraging the 'old'
people, who were the villagers, the farmers, and the uneducated. They
were the most violent and ignorant people, and the Khmer Rouge taught
them to lead, manage, control, and destroy."
"The city people were the enemy, and the list was long. Former
soldiers, the police, the CIA, and the KGB. Their crime was fighting
in the civil war. The merchants, the capitalists, and the
businessmen. Their crime was exploiting the poor. The rich farmers
and the landlords. Their crime was exploiting the peasants. The
intellectuals, the doctors, the lawyers, the monks, the teachers, and
the civil servants. These people thought, and their memories were
tainted by the evil Westerners. Students were getting education to
exploit the poor. Former celebrities, the poets. These people
carried bad memories of the old, corrupted Cambodia."
"The list goes on and on. The rebellious, the kind-hearted, the
brave, the clever, the individualists, the people who wore glasses,
the literate, the popular, the complainers, the lazy, those with
talent, those with trouble getting along with others, and those with
soft hands. These people were corrupted and lived off the blood and
sweat of the farmers and the poor."
"I was afraid of who I was. I was an educated girl from a middle-
class family. I could read, write, and think. I was proud of my
family and my roots. I was scared that they would hear my thoughts
and prayers, that they could see my dreams and feel my anger and
disapproval of their regime. ... Every night I went to sleep dirty
and hungry. I was sad because I missed my mom. I was fearful that
this might be the night I'd be taken away, tortured, raped, and
killed."
"I wanted to commit suicide but I couldn't. If I did, I would be
labeled 'the enemy' because I dared to show my unhappiness with their
regime. My death would be followed by my family's death because they
were the family of the enemy. My greatest fear was not my death, but
how much suffering I had to go through before they killed me."
"The Khmer Rouge said they were creating a utopian nation where
everyone would be equal. They restarted our nation by resettling
everyone and changing everything back to zero. The whole nation was
equally poor. But while the entire population was dying of
starvation, disease, and hopelessness, the Khmer Rouge was creating a
new upper class. Their soldiers and the Communist party members were
able to choose any woman or man they wanted to marry. In addition to
boundless food, they were crazed with gold, jewelry, perfume, imported
watches, Western medicine, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, silk, and
other imported goods."
"In January 1979 I was called to join a district meeting. The
district leader told us that it was time to get rid of 'all the wheat
that grows among the rice plants.' The city people were the wheat.
The city people were to be eliminated. My life was saved because the
Vietnamese invasion came just two weeks later."
"It was devastating to witness the destruction of my homeland that had
occurred in only four years. Buddhist temples were turned into
prisons. Statues of Buddha and artwork were vandalized. Schools were
turned into Khmer Rouge headquarters where people were interrogated,
tortured, killed, and buried. School yards were turned into killing
fields. Old marketplaces were empty. Books were burned. Factories
were left to rust. Plantations were without tending and bore no
fruit."
"This destruction was tolerable compared to the human conditions.
Each highway was filled with refugees. We were refugees of our own
country. With our skinny bodies, bloated stomachs, and hollow eyes,
we carried our few possessions and looked for our separated family
members. We asked who lived and didn't want to mention who died. We
gathered to share our horrifying stories. Stories about people being
pushed into deep wells and ponds and suffocating to death. People
were baked alive in a local tile oven. One woman was forced to cook
her husband's liver, which was cut out while he was still alive.
Women were raped before execution. One old man said, 'It takes a
river of ink to write our stories.'"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Human skulls at Killing Fields memorial:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4047/4207696654_6fe0ce59c7.jpg
*Anarcissie*
No one's denying the crimes of the Khmer
Rouge, however. My contribution was mere
literary criticism.
However, you're a bit behind on your figures for
Stalin and Mao. Several years ago they were
doubled every year, and then when they got to
two or three times the ones you're giving, the
doublers slowed down for some reason.
Maybe they were afraid of reaching the total
population of the countries in question. But
regardless of the numbers, I would agree
that Stalin and Mao were not very nice
people. I disagree about them being leftists,
however; they may have been pretend-leftists,
but in fact they pretty much filled Mussolini's
definition of fascism.
Oddly, when I have pointed out that if the
same sort of reasoning which has been applied
to Stalin or Mao is applied to the British government
with respect to Ireland and India, the Brits are in
the Pol Pot class -- the population of Ireland under
British rule was halved between 1835 and 1850,
and as many as 20 million starved in India around
1900. Yet no one fulminates Pol-Pot-wise about
the British, or capitalism. Funny thing, isn't it?
>
> Here's an account from a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide. What's
> so interesting about it is how truly Orwellian it sounds, and it's
> really not surprising why American leftists would want to denounce the
> stories of the survivors as "right-wing lies":
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/p/pran-cambodia.html
The Americans who supported Pol Pot were the Reagan
administration, by the way, not usually considered
leftists.
*Anarcissie*
I still want to know about the freedom to say two plus
two equals 22.
Dänk 1010011010
> The Americans who supported Pol Pot were the Reagan
> administration, by the way, not usually considered
> leftists.
That's interesting, since Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were deposed in
1979, and Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. It is true that the
American government supported the Khmer Rouge (they were enemies of
the communist Vietnamese we lost the war to), but their reign from
1975 to 1979 coincided mostly with the Jimmy Carter administration.
Leftists like to blame Ronald Reagan for lots of things, including the
first cases of AIDS that appeared in late-1981, a disease cause by a
virus with a two to five year incubation period (meaning all those
cases of HIV/AIDS were contracted during the Carter administration).
James A. Donald
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:48:48 -0800 (PST), "*Anarcissie*"
> However, you're a bit behind on your figures for
> Stalin and Mao. Several years ago they were doubled
> every year, and then when they got to two or three
> times the ones you're giving, the doublers slowed down
> for some reason. Maybe they were afraid of reaching
> the total population of the countries in question. But
> regardless of the numbers, I would agree that Stalin
> and Mao were not very nice people. I disagree about
> them being leftists, however; they may have been
> pretend-leftists,
If you thought they were pretend leftists, you would
not be lying and in lying about the crimes of Lenin, Mao
and Stalin.
Critics of communism always said the crimes of communist
leaders were about what they were. You lot responded
that they did not kill anyone, then that they maybe
killed a few dozen here and there, then a few hundred
here and there, who probably deserved it every bit,
until finally you were saying maybe a few million here
and there, who probably deserved it every bit. Your
admissions have been increasing, not the accusations.
> Oddly, when I have pointed out that if the same sort
> of reasoning which has been applied to Stalin or Mao
> is applied to the British government with respect to
> Ireland and India, the Brits are in the Pol Pot class
> -- the population of Ireland under British rule was
> halved between 1835 and 1850,
The population of Ireland was free to leave, and for the
most part did so. The population of Cambodia was not
free to leave.
Again, if you did not believe that Pol Pot was a
leftist, and implemented exactly the program that you
intend to implement, you would not be making excuses.
5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09
Another lie from Danky. You'll never find any instance of a leftist
blaming Reagan for the AIDS epidemic.
What you will find is a lot of people who were critical of Reagan for
never making any public mention of the AIDS epidemic.
As long as he thought it only affected gays and minorities, he didn't
give a shit.
5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09
I still want to know about the freedom to say two plus
two equals 22.
z-That's where the climate change denialists and the birthers come in...
Dan Clore
> On Dec 23, 10:48 am, "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The Americans who supported Pol Pot were the Reagan administration,
>> by the way, not usually considered leftists.
>
> That's interesting, since Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were deposed in
> 1979, and Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. It is true that the
> American government supported the Khmer Rouge (they were enemies of
> the communist Vietnamese we lost the war to), but their reign from
> 1975 to 1979 coincided mostly with the Jimmy Carter administration.
However, the US/UK/UN support for the Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot) began after
the Vietnamese invaded and deposed them. (Technically, this support was
for a Khmer Rouge-dominated coalition topped by a non-Khmer Rouge
figurehead. But the fig leaf is easy enough to see through.)
For example:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_PolPot.html
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
Dan Clore
The problem isn't necessarily that they are lying. Scholars dealing with
the Khmer Rouge have often had problems when collecting testimony from
refugees and survivors. (This is dealt with often enough in the
scholarly literature on the subject.) Some stories turned out to be
outright black propaganda, exaggerations with a core of truth,
untraceable rumors, and so on.
Acknowledging this fact in no way constitutes support for the Khmer
Rouge. Their documentable crimes condemn them more than adequately.
Anarcissie
<59idnZxZ159rKKzW...@posted.carinet>,
"5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09" <de...@dead.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:16:53 -0800, Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
>
> > On Dec 23, 10:48 am, "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> The Americans who supported Pol Pot were the Reagan administration, by
> >> the way, not usually considered leftists.
> >
> > That's interesting, since Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were deposed in
> > 1979, and Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. It is true that the
> > American government supported the Khmer Rouge (they were enemies of the
> > communist Vietnamese we lost the war to), but their reign from 1975 to
> > 1979 coincided mostly with the Jimmy Carter administration.
> >
> > Leftists like to blame Ronald Reagan for lots of things, including the
> > first cases of AIDS that appeared in late-1981, a disease cause by a
> > virus with a two to five year incubation period (meaning all those cases
> > of HIV/AIDS were contracted during the Carter administration).
>
> Another lie from Danky. You'll never find any instance of a leftist
> blaming Reagan for the AIDS epidemic.
Are you sure? You can usually find one of anything.
There used to be a conspiracy theory about how HIV
was invented by the U.S. Department of Defense in
order to wipe out Gays and Black people, or something
like that. If you define Gays and Blacks as automatic
leftists, which many do out in the hinterlands, then
you can say 'leftists like to blame', etc. All 38 of
them.
(The term 'leftist' can be expanded and contracted at
will, since it has no settled definition. Thus, if 38
'leftists' believe that Ronald Reagan invented HIV in
his basement laboratory, this proves the entire
Democratic Party, the state of Massachusetts,
and the population of New York City believe that
Ronnie invented HIV, because they're all the
same. And they probably do look the same from
the suburbs of Topeka.)
> What you will find is a lot of people who were critical of Reagan for
> never making any public mention of the AIDS epidemic.
>
> As long as he thought it only affected gays and minorities, he didn't
> give a shit.
Assuming he was aware of the situation at all.
Anarcissie
> D�nk 1010011010 wrote:
> > On Dec 21, 7:10 am, "5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09" <d...@dead.com>
> >> It's such an idiotic story. Even among American right-wingers, two
> >> plus two equals four is a well-known scientific principle, and the
> >> most illiterate farmer in all of Kampuchea had to be able to count
> >> to at least ten.
> >
> > I am only repeating what an actual Cambodian who survived the
> > genocide told my tour group. If you don't like it, take a trip to
> > Cambodia (I used Sinh Tours out of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), and
> > ask them what happened yourself. Try calling them liars and laugh at
> > them and see how they react.
>
> The problem isn't necessarily that they are lying. Scholars dealing with
> the Khmer Rouge have often had problems when collecting testimony from
> refugees and survivors. (This is dealt with often enough in the
> scholarly literature on the subject.) Some stories turned out to be
> outright black propaganda, exaggerations with a core of truth,
> untraceable rumors, and so on.
>
> Acknowledging this fact in no way constitutes support for the Khmer
> Rouge. Their documentable crimes condemn them more than adequately.
You're being rational again. 2+2=4 doesn't
cut it here, either.
I was reading lately about disaster and atrocity
tours. Ever hear of them? Someone noticed that the
site of the World Trade Center is a big tourist draw,
I guess -- for years you saw hundreds of people coming
to stare at holes in the ground. (The actual debris
had long since been cleaned up, so all there was to
look at were nicely squared-off concrete-walled holes,
like some really big basement.) And Auschwitz has
been something of a tourist draw, too, especially for
politicians, celebrities, and religious leaders like
the Pope to do little soft-shoes numbers in front of.
Anyway, according to an article I read anyone who
can pay can go on tours to gawk at disaster sites
world-wide. In some cases, like African civil wars
and famines, the disaster may be ongoing, although I
don't know if you're guaranteed touching tableaux of
children with vultures hanging around. It would be
a shame if Tour Cambodia missed out on this sort
of thing.
5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09
> In article
> <59idnZxZ159rKKzW...@posted.carinet>,
> "5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09" <de...@dead.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:16:53 -0800, Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
>>
>> > On Dec 23, 10:48 am, "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> The Americans who supported Pol Pot were the Reagan administration,
>> >> by the way, not usually considered leftists.
>> >
>> > That's interesting, since Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were deposed in
>> > 1979, and Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. It is true that the
>> > American government supported the Khmer Rouge (they were enemies of
>> > the communist Vietnamese we lost the war to), but their reign from
>> > 1975 to 1979 coincided mostly with the Jimmy Carter administration.
>> >
>> > Leftists like to blame Ronald Reagan for lots of things, including
>> > the first cases of AIDS that appeared in late-1981, a disease cause
>> > by a virus with a two to five year incubation period (meaning all
>> > those cases of HIV/AIDS were contracted during the Carter
>> > administration).
>>
>> Another lie from Danky. You'll never find any instance of a leftist
>> blaming Reagan for the AIDS epidemic.
>
> Are you sure? You can usually find one of anything.
It that case, start digging. But Danky was speaking of leftists in
general, so you still won't be taking him off the hook for lying.
There used to be a
> conspiracy theory about how HIV was invented by the U.S. Department of
> Defense in order to wipe out Gays and Black people, or something like
> that.
Yeah, I remember that. It gained ground in the black community for a
while and then faded out, the way really dumb conspiracy theories usually
do.
If you define Gays and Blacks as automatic leftists, which many
> do out in the hinterlands, then you can say 'leftists like to blame',
> etc. All 38 of them.
>
So the only way to show that Danky isn't lying is to accept all his left-
is-right and right-is-left definitions of the world.
Too high a price. Don't ruin your brain like that!
> (The term 'leftist' can be expanded and contracted at will, since it has
> no settled definition. Thus, if 38 'leftists' believe that Ronald
> Reagan invented HIV in his basement laboratory, this proves the entire
> Democratic Party, the state of Massachusetts, and the population of New
> York City believe that Ronnie invented HIV, because they're all the
> same. And they probably do look the same from the suburbs of Topeka.)
>
>> What you will find is a lot of people who were critical of Reagan for
>> never making any public mention of the AIDS epidemic.
>>
>> As long as he thought it only affected gays and minorities, he didn't
>> give a shit.
>
> Assuming he was aware of the situation at all.
Well, by year six he might not have been. This is, after all, a man who
couldn't remember trading arms for hostages.
Fred Williams
They certainly are. Hitler killed 13 million and no one has ever come
close to breaking that record,
> Pol
> Pot's murder of 1.5 million innocent people hardly breaks any records,
> except that it constituted a quarter of the entire population of
> Cambodia.
>
Is that the total number of people who died in Cambodia? Western
propagandists tend to lump all the deaths together and blame them on whoever
they don't like at the time.
5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09
Yeah, the actual, real meadow fences built of sculls, and the millions
who indisputably died speak far louder than really silly vignettes.
Hell, Khmer Rouge made the North Vietnamese look like GOOD GUYS!
James A. Donald
> The problem isn't necessarily that they are lying. Scholars dealing with
> the Khmer Rouge have often had problems when collecting testimony from
> refugees and survivors.
Liar
> (This is dealt with often enough in the
> scholarly literature on the subject.)
Liar
This claim only appears in works defending the Khmer Rouge, in
particular in "After the Cataclysm" which not a scholarly work, but a
compendium of lies.
James A. Donald
> the Vietnamese invaded and deposed them. (Technically, this support was
> for a Khmer Rouge-dominated coalition topped by a non-Khmer Rouge
> figurehead. But the fig leaf is easy enough to see through.)
Since the intent of that support was to end communism in Cambodia, and
the effect was to successfully end communism in Cambodia, no fig leaf.
Tell it like it is.
> On Dec 20, 11:03 pm, Dänk 1010011010 <dank...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that
is granted, all else follows."
-- 1984
I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago and the tour guide told us the
story
of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and how they killed everybody with an
education. They went into schools and asked the children what two
plus two was, and anyone who answered 'four' was taken out and shot.
The remaining children caught on quickly and began answering 'five'
instead to save themselves.
That's a wonderful story. But what about the freedom to
say two plus two equals twenty-two?
You'd be a survivor.
James A. Donald
> Hell, Khmer Rouge made the North Vietnamese look like GOOD GUYS!
But until 1979, when the Soviet line changed, you guys were saying
that the Khmer Rouge were good guys, for any leftist who said they
were bad guys got instantly cast out of the left and demonized as a
right wing capitalist tool of CIA propaganda.
In 1978 some moderate leftists, notably Joan Baez and Senator
McGovern, belatedly acknowledged the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, but
this was violently controversial and got them into hot water.
Then when the Soviet line changed in January 1979 *then* you suddenly
started reporting that they were horrible demons.
But even now, you were still minimizing the deaths that occurred under
the Khmer Rouge, hence the slowly rising estimates, as very, very
reluctantly, you acknowledged a few deaths, then a few more, then
quite a few more.
Dan Clore still will not admit to any realistic estimate, Anarchissie
speaks out of both sides of his mouth.
In 1976 Time estimated about six hundred thousand. In 1977 Ponchaud
estimated about one million two hundred thousand wrongful deaths,
Barron and Paul the same, consistent with the estimate of three
million three hundred thousand for 1979 issued by the successor regime
to the Khmer Rouge. The killing field records we now have show a
roughly constant rate of killing throughout the existence of any one
killing field, with a moderate increase in the later years, thus these
numbers are consistent with each other, and consistent with the
records we now have, suggesting about six hundred thousand a year for
the first two years, and about one million a year for the next two
years.
In the nineteen nineties, after the fall of communism, outsiders were
free to come in and start digging up the mass graves and so forth, and
at the start of the twenty first century, found substantial evidence
that the estimate of three million three hundred thousand is around
about right <http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/toll.htm>
Tell it like it is.
> On Dec 21, 12:03 pm, "5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09" <d...@dead.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:03:53 -0800, Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
> > > "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is
> > > granted, all else follows."
> > > -- 1984
>
> > > I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago and the tour guide told us the story
> > > of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and how they killed everybody with an
> > > education. They went into schools and asked the children what two plus
> > > two was, and anyone who answered 'four' was taken out and shot. The
> > > remaining children caught on quickly and began answering 'five' instead
> > > to save themselves.
>
> > tale spun on Usenet in 2009", bubbles...
>
The tale was told by an actual Cambodian who survived the genocide.
Maybe you should do some research on the Khmer Rouge before calling
me
a liar. Maybe you should visit the Killing Fields outside Phnom Penh
and see the evils of socialism for yourself.
Thanks for writing something that makes sense. In America anyone
who doesn't accept oppresing the native population of Palestine is
labeled an antisemite by these ethnocentrics:
http://aipac.org
It would be nice to know people with a dual loyalty can seek their
rights without doing it a the expense of another country.
Tell it like it is.
wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:58:17 -0800, Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
> > On Dec 21, 12:03 pm, "5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09" <d...@dead.com>
> > wrote:
> >> On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:03:53 -0800, Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
> >> > "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that
> >> > is granted, all else follows."
> >> > -- 1984
>
> >> > I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago and the tour guide told us the
> >> > story of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and how they killed everybody
> >> > with an education. They went into schools and asked the children
> >> > what two plus two was, and anyone who answered 'four' was taken out
> >> > and shot. The remaining children caught on quickly and began
> >> > answering 'five' instead to save themselves.
>
> >> Somehow, I don't think that one is going to go down as "most believable
> >> tale spun on Usenet in 2009", bubbles...
>
> > The tale was told by an actual Cambodian who survived the genocide.
> > Maybe you should do some research on the Khmer Rouge before calling me a
> > liar. Maybe you should visit the Killing Fields outside Phnom Penh and
> > see the evils of socialism for yourself.
>
> bullshit" printed all over it -- including your claim that you've been to
> Cambodia.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
That makes sense.
Tell it like it is.
> Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
> > "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that
> > is granted, all else follows."
> > -- 1984
>
> > I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago and the tour guide told us the story
> > of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and how they killed everybody with an
> > education. They went into schools and asked the children what two
> > plus two was, and anyone who answered 'four' was taken out and shot.
> > The remaining children caught on quickly and began answering 'five'
> > instead to save themselves.
>
And what reliable source do we have for this story?
Exactly right.
I expect that there is
> a lot about South-east Asia from that era that is lies. We know the U.S.
> lies about the event that started the war. We know they were lying about
> the Viet Cong, but there was a war and we expect those lies. Why should we
> believe them when they talk about school children being shot for saying that
> 2 + 2 = 4. Why should we believe that when in all the time after that war,
> the story has never surfaced before, and we've never heard it.
>
Tell it like it is.
wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:52:51 -0400, Fred Williams wrote:
> > Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
>
> >> "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is
> >> granted, all else follows."
> >> -- 1984
>
> >> I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago and the tour guide told us the story
> >> of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and how they killed everybody with an
> >> education. They went into schools and asked the children what two plus
> >> two was, and anyone who answered 'four' was taken out and shot. The
> >> remaining children caught on quickly and began answering 'five' instead
> >> to save themselves.
>
> > there is
> > a lot about South-east Asia from that era that is lies. We know the
> > U.S. lies about the event that started the war. We know they were lying
> > about the Viet Cong, but there was a war and we expect those lies. Why
> > should we believe them when they talk about school children being shot
> > for saying that 2 + 2 = 4. Why should we believe that when in all the
> > time after that war, the story has never surfaced before, and we've
> > never heard it.
>
> two equals four is a well-known scientific principle, and the most
> illiterate farmer in all of Kampuchea had to be able to count to at least
>
> - Show quoted text -
I think the moral of the story is if you live in the USA and like the
Cambodians you have a spine , you might risk being labeled an
antisemite by these paranoid-ethnocentric dual-loyalty
jews: http://aipac.org
Tell it like it is.
> On Dec 21, 7:10 am, "5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09" <d...@dead.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:52:51 -0400, Fred Williams wrote:
> > > Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
>
> > >> "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is
> > >> granted, all else follows."
> > >> -- 1984
>
> > >> I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago and the tour guide told us the story
> > >> of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and how they killed everybody with an
> > >> education. They went into schools and asked the children what two plus
> > >> two was, and anyone who answered 'four' was taken out and shot. The
> > >> remaining children caught on quickly and began answering 'five' instead
> > >> to save themselves.
>
> > > And what reliable source do we have for this story? I expect that
> > > there is
> > > a lot about South-east Asia from that era that is lies. We know the
> > > U.S. lies about the event that started the war. We know they were lying
> > > about the Viet Cong, but there was a war and we expect those lies. Why
> > > should we believe them when they talk about school children being shot
> > > for saying that 2 + 2 = 4. Why should we believe that when in all the
> > > time after that war, the story has never surfaced before, and we've
> > > never heard it.
>
> > It's such an idiotic story. Even among American right-wingers, two plus
> > two equals four is a well-known scientific principle, and the most
> > illiterate farmer in all of Kampuchea had to be able to count to at least
>
> I am only repeating what an actual Cambodian who survived the genocide
> told my tour group. If you don't like it, take a trip to Cambodia (I
> used Sinh Tours out of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), and ask them what
> happened yourself. Try calling them liars and laugh at them and see
> how they react.
>
> the capital city of Phnom Penh and see the infamous Killing Fields and
> then try to tell me that the mass graves and tower of human skulls are
>
> - Show quoted text -
God bless you I hope I haven't offended any Zionists exploiting
America for an enduring Israel promoting the ashkenazis of Russia and
Germany while labeling antisemitic the semitic peoples native in all
the countries of the Middle East. That includes threatening Iran with
a nuclear strike if they even think about using nuclear energy to
power their villages towns and cities with electricity. Besides, when
you are the self-chosen of Gd promoting your pure race labeling
everybody else antisemitic because they live in the Middle East, and
they've never known Communism, Zionism, and Naziism, Fascism, and
every other secular ism in a theocracy, why shouldn't you ignore the
Biblical warnig against goading people leading to bloodshed, except
for an excuse to nuke them before they nule you. Now every Zionist in
the Knesset will admit that's,s more fun than diplomacy, or a respect
for other people's rights in the Middle East.
Tell it like it is.
> who think that 2+3=4.
>
> Last time it was eyeglasses.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
There is a doctor named Bates his book can be downloaded free over the
internet. He taught in a University that you can improve your vision
without glasses. The ophthalmological union got together and kicked
him out of the union he wasn't good for business. In those days
glasses were used to correct eyesight. Dr. Bates taught that your
eyesight accomodates to the focus of the glasses and therefore will
never improve. Since every time you put your glasses on your eyesight
accomodate to the faulty focus that made you need the glasses
in the first place. He also recommended there be a Snellen eye chart
in every classroom in America.
Tell it like it is.
wrote:
> crap in Free Republic or WND or something and decided to try to use it
> here.
>
>
>
> > After touring the fabulous ruins of Angkor Wat near Siem Reap, head to
> > the capital city of Phnom Penh and see the infamous Killing Fields and
> > then try to tell me that the mass graves and tower of human skulls are
> > fake, part of a plot by "right-wingers" to discredit socialism.
>
>
> So did you climb Kilamanjaro while you were there?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
That's a long way around calling a man a liar.
Tell it like it is.
> On Dec 22, 10:41 am, "5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09" <d...@dead.com>
> of my visas and passport stamps (potentially identifying information
> redacted):
>
> Vietnam visa, front page:http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2479/4203970143_80274006dd.jpg
>
> Vietnam visa, entry and exit stamps:http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2769/4204726734_b2beffc68e.jpg
>
> U.S. passport, Cambodia entry and exit stamps:http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2689/4203970193_257a10c6ef.jpg
>
> Sinh Tourist hotel receipt:http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2548/4204726688_318b21dd11.jpg
>
> (I also visited Serbia in October):
>
> U.S. passport, Serbia entry and exit stamps:http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2494/4204726798_c19fc0232a.jpg- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Thanks Dank, but do you realy think we are worth the trouble? You have
more faith in humanity than my Zionist neighbors have in non-jews
which is a euphemism for non-person. To make it clear no Christian
would ever call a man a non-Christian. He'd respect the man for what
he is. If I'm a non-jew than they only see me in relation to their
jewishness, not on my own merits as a Cristian. Communism came to
Cambodia because we abandoned the war in Vietnam after giving
everything we had to save Israel's bacon in '73. No reference intended
to Wayne Green or 73 magazine which Wayne published for us []
licensed] ham radio operators.
I can still hear the guy saying from the U.S. Comgress over my black
and white television set in 1973 "we don't have enough tanks to
continue the war" in Vietnam. What he meant was we are not going to be
able to continue doing the impossible in Vietnam if we ship our tanks
and other heavy equipment and artillery to save Israel.
*Anarcissie*
One could certainly count on the Khmer Rouge to end
Communism, so perhaps you should support their
revival and introduction to other locales where they
might further practice their peculiar methods. Watch
out, Des Moines!
I am kind of surprised, though, that you would want
to associate yourself or Mr. Reagan with this sort
of business quite so openly.
Tell it like it is.
> On Dec 22, 4:34 pm, Dänk 1010011010 <dank...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Dec 22, 11:24 pm, "5295 Dead, 428 since 1/20/09" <d...@dead.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > >http://images.google.com/images?q=Vietnamese%
> > > 20passport&oe=utf-8&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-
> > > a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi
>
> > Whatever, dude. You just prove that leftists can't stand the truth.
>
> What truth is it we can't stand? But your
> travels don't prove anything. Pol Pot is
> accused of so many monstrous crimes one
> more or less doesn't make any difference,
> but this one is a bit cute, like the tale in
> _Apocalypse_Now_ about the Viet Cong
> cutting off children's arms if they had been
> inoculated. By now there could be quite
> a cottage industry in Pol Pot stories
> which would be very popular among
> anti-Communists.
>
>
>
> > Vietnam and Cambodia in November and December, all while you were
> > sitting in your trailer in your underwear watching Oprah on teevee.
>
> > Further evidence of my travels can be found in the blogs I posted to
> >soc.culture.usaand elsewhere ("Dankblog: Vietnam", "Holiday in
> > Cambodia") which match the dates on my passport stamps. If I am
> > lying, I must have gone to a lot of effort to find scans of someone
> > else's passport stamps that exactly match my fictitious tale.
>
> > Passport stamps show I entered Austria on Oct. 12, entered Serbia on
> > Oct. 20, departed Serbia on Nov. 02, and entered the USA on Nov. 02.
> > Vietnam visa stamps show I entered Vietnam on Nov. 27, exited to
> > Cambodia (Moc Bai/Bavet border post) on Dec. 04 and re-entered Vietnam
> > (Moc Bai/Bavet border post) on Dec. 08, and departed Vietnam by air on
> > Dec. 14. Passport stamps show I entered Cambodia on Dec. 04 and
> > exited to Vietnam (Bavet/Moc Bai border post) on Dec. 08. The receipt
> > for my hotel in Siem Reap was issued Dec. 05 and for the night of Dec.
> > 06. I can't find the receipt for my hotel in Phnom Penh, but I was
> > there Dec. 07 and checked out at noon on Dec. 08 and took the 13:30
> > bus back to Ho Chi Minh City.
>
> > Please explain how I Googled perfectly matching documentation, and why
> > you seem unable to do the same. In the meantime, keep watching Oprah,
> > because I heard that next week she will be doing a special series on
> > exciting travel destinations.
>
> > - - - - - - My Austria, Hungary, and Serbia posts - - - - - -
>
> > Oct. 18:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/a...
>
> > Oct. 19:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/4...
>
> > Oct. 22:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/b...
>
> > Oct. 25:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/7...
>
> > Nov. 01:http://groups.google.com/group/alt.music.marilyn-manson/browse_thread...
>
> > - - - - - - My Vietnam and Cambodia posts - - - - - -
>
> > Nov. 26:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2...
>
> > Nov. 29:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2...
>
> > Dec. 01:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/e...
>
> > Dec. 04:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/1...
>
> > Dec. 13:http://groups.google.com/group/rec.travel.misc/browse_thread/thread/4...
>
> > Dec. 16:http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/9...- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
The truth that some people aren't know-it-all skeptics or liberals.
Some have enough religion to be honest with one another. Which is the
way to say something constructive over these forums.
Tell it like it is.
> Dänk 1010011010 <dank...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> > "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that
> > is granted, all else follows."
> > -- 1984
>
> > I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago and the tour guide told us the story
> > of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and how they killed everybody with an
> > education. They went into schools and asked the children what two
> > plus two was, and anyone who answered 'four' was taken out and shot.
> > The remaining children caught on quickly and began answering 'five'
> > instead to save themselves.
>
>
> An actual reference for a communist slogan of "2 + 2 = 5" is
> contained in the book Assignment In Utopia, by Eugene Lyons.
> He reported seeing this slogan around Moscow during the era of
> the Five Year Plan. It was concocted out of the slogan of
> "Complete the Five Year Plan In Four!" Little did we know
> that when the five year plan was completed in four years,
> another five year plan came immediately after. The second
> five year plan actually ended up taking five years, and
> then another consarned five year plan after that. Orwell may
> have been influenced by Eugene Lyons books, as well as Trotsky,
> Wilhelm Reich, Protocols of Zion, etc. I gather Orwell read a
> lot of stuff, more stuff than conservatives and liberals tend
> to read, anyway.
Stalin invented the five year plan.
Dänk 1010011010
wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:16:53 -0800, Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
> > Leftists like to blame Ronald Reagan for lots of things, including the
> > first cases of AIDS that appeared in late-1981, a disease cause by a
> > virus with a two to five year incubation period (meaning all those cases
> > of HIV/AIDS were contracted during the Carter administration).
>
> Another lie from Danky. You'll never find any instance of a leftist
> blaming Reagan for the AIDS epidemic.
I was a kid when the epidemic started, and I distinctly remember a
popular conspiracy theory that said Ronald Reagan ordered the CIA to
create the disease in an attempt to kill blacks and homosexuals.
Evidence of the plot was that the virus broke out on both coasts
simultaneously - and seemed limited to gay men and blacks - which
could only be the result of the CIA deliberately infecting people (it
turned out to be a single gay flight attendant on a quest to break the
world record for number of anal sex acts in a lifetime).
> What you will find is a lot of people who were critical of Reagan for
> never making any public mention of the AIDS epidemic.
The CDC wasn't even sure what the disease was, and Reagan mentioned it
as soon as the HIV virus was identified. Leftist activists continued
to condemn Reagan for not inventing a cure immediately, and for not
doing more to 'prevent' the disease (the only real prevention -
mandatory testing and quarantine - would have been seen as fascist and
also condemned by the left).
Dänk 1010011010
And a future accountant for the Obama administration.
Dänk 1010011010
<DanielAlbertDesfos...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> ...... Communism came to
> Cambodia because we abandoned the war in Vietnam after giving
> everything we had to save Israel's bacon in '73. No reference intended
> to Wayne Green or 73 magazine which Wayne published for us []
> licensed] ham radio operators.
> I can still hear the guy saying from the U.S. Comgress over my black
> and white television set in 1973 "we don't have enough tanks to
> continue the war" in Vietnam. What he meant was we are not going to be
> able to continue doing the impossible in Vietnam if we ship our tanks
> and other heavy equipment and artillery to save Israel.
I visited Vietnam as well as Cambodia, and after listening to their
side of the story (propaganda), I've decided that the war was
unwinnable. Whether you agree with them or not, the Communist
Vietnamese had a cause they believed in (independence and
reunification), while the Americans were simply fighting because they
were ordered to.
The Vietnamese could also fight in conditions that American soldiers
would refuse to tolerate, if they weren't physically unable to. For
example, to escape the American bombing, the Vietnamese built an
elaborate network of underground tunnels (Cu-Chi Tunnels), using
nothing but pickaxes and handpails, and lived in them for years as
they staged attacks on the Americans, using homemade booby traps and
even fireproof leaves to shield them from the firebombs. American
soldiers would have been incapable of performing such horrible
backbreaking manual labor, and couldn't even fit in the tunnels
because they were too large, and would have complained that they
weren't air-conditioned.
In the end it was their motivation and efficiency that allowed the
Communist Vietnamese to drive out the Americans. And I say
'efficiency' because they were able to fight their side of the war at
a fraction of the cost the Americans spent - requiring no heavy
equipment, fancy weapons systems, bomber planes and trillions of
dollars of bombs, imported C-rations, and so on. An American
'victory' was only possible with such massive force that it would have
sterilized the whole country, which would have amounted to genocide -
far too high a price to pay for a cause most Americans didn't even
believe in.
James A. Donald
<fr...@frewilliams.FFFfca> wrote:
> They certainly are. Hitler killed 13 million and no one has ever come
> close to breaking that record,
Communist artificial famines easily surpass Hitler, so I suppose you
are only counting death camps and killing fields.
Artificial famines during forced collectivization also greatly surpass
Hitler. These famines being directly coercive, rather than a result
of incompetence or negligence, are directly equivalent to killings by
death camp and killing field.
James A. Donald
wrote:
> On Dec 23, 1:15 pm, James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote:
On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:32:35 -0800, Dan Clore
> > > However, the US/UK/UN support for the Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot) began after
> > > the Vietnamese invaded and deposed them. (Technically, this support was
> > > for a Khmer Rouge-dominated coalition topped by a non-Khmer Rouge
> > > figurehead. But the fig leaf is easy enough to see through.)
James A. Donald:
> > Since the intent of that support was to end communism in Cambodia, and
> > the effect was to successfully end communism in Cambodia, no fig leaf.
"*Anarcissie*"
> One could certainly count on the Khmer Rouge to end
> Communism,
The Vietnamese installed the Khmer Rouge in power in the first place,
and after they overthrew Pol Pot, installed a different faction of the
Khmer Rouge, a less murderous faction.
Reagan's program was to put an end to both factions - which program
succeeded.
And if you did not believe that Pol Pot's faction was real communism
or real socialism, you would not still today be casting doubt on their
crimes.
5306 Dead, 439 since 1/20/09
<jam...@echeque.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:06:14 -0400, Fred Williams
><fr...@frewilliams.FFFfca> wrote:
>> They certainly are. Hitler killed 13 million and no one has ever come
>> close to breaking that record,
>
>Communist artificial famines easily surpass Hitler, so I suppose you
>are only counting death camps and killing fields.
Nearly all famines are essentially political. Yes, droughts and crop
failures happen, but it's the willingness (or unwillingness ) of
neighboring provinces and lands to mitigate the effects.
>
>Artificial famines during forced collectivization also greatly surpass
>Hitler. These famines being directly coercive, rather than a result
>of incompetence or negligence, are directly equivalent to killings by
>death camp and killing field.
Actually, most of the famine deaths for Stalin came as a result of his
"burn everything to the ground" as the Russians retreated, leaving
nothing for the advancing Nazis to use. And stupidity played a role,
too. Famously, someone convinced Stalin of Lysenkoism (that it was
possible to attribute genetic characteristics), and it was his
enthusiasm for that idiocy that lead to widespread crop failures.
Something for American right wingers to keep in mind when crackpots
come along and tell them evolution is a humbug and there's no such
thing as global warming.
>
*Anarcissie*
> On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:20:52 -0800 (PST), <anarcis...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On Dec 23, 1:15 pm, James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:32:35 -0800, Dan Clore
>
> > > > However, the US/UK/UN support for the Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot) began after
> > > > the Vietnamese invaded and deposed them. (Technically, this support was
> > > > for a Khmer Rouge-dominated coalition topped by a non-Khmer Rouge
> > > > figurehead. But the fig leaf is easy enough to see through.)
>
> James A. Donald:
>
> > > Since the intent of that support was to end communism in Cambodia, and
> > > the effect was to successfully end communism in Cambodia, no fig leaf.
>
> "*Anarcissie*"
>
> > One could certainly count on the Khmer Rouge to end
> > Communism,
>
> The Vietnamese installed the Khmer Rouge in power in the first place,
> and after they overthrew Pol Pot, installed a different faction of the
> Khmer Rouge, a less murderous faction.
>
> Reagan's program was to put an end to both factions - which program
> succeeded.
I think the Vietnamese government still calls itself
Communist and is still in fact more or less fascist,
I don't know what's going on in Cambodia (beside
the tourist business).
> And if you did not believe that Pol Pot's faction was real communism
> or real socialism, you would not still today be casting doubt on their
> crimes.
I have not been casting doubt on their crimes. I
have been merely indulging in literary criticism.
Of excessive cuteness.
Fred Williams
"Artificial famines?" Never heard of that. You're making this up.
5306 Dead, 439 since 1/20/09
Actually, nearly all famines are "artificial". Oh, there's often natural
causes--drought, fire, flood, disease--but it's always localized, and can
be mitigated by help from authorities and neighboring regions.
James A. Donald
> > Artificial famines during forced collectivization also greatly surpass
> > Hitler. These famines being directly coercive, rather than a result
> > of incompetence or negligence, are directly equivalent to killings by
> > death camp and killing field.
Fred Williams
> "Artificial famines?" Never heard of that.
Why am I not surprised.
Fred Williams
Then "accidental" as well. Fine.
Tell it like it is.
wrote: