Toul Sleng goes global

David Corn, a well-known left-of-center American writer, uses photos taken at Toul Sleng to make a point about the current … the current debate on torture the Americans are having. In a post titled “This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like,” Corn, quoting anthropologist and former Senior Editor of US News & World Report Jonah Blank, offers this:

The crux of the issue before Congress can be boiled down to a simple question: Is waterboarding torture? Anybody who considers this practice to be “torture lite” or merely a “tough technique” might want to take a trip to Phnom Penh. The Khymer Rouge were adept at torture, and there was nothing “lite” about their methods. Incidentally, the waterboard in these photo wasn’t merely one among many torture devices highlighted at the prison museum. It was one of only two devices singled out for highlighting (the other was another form of water-torture–a tank that could be filled with water or other liquids; I have photos of that too.) There was an outdoor device as well, one the Khymer Rouge didn’t have to construct: chin-up bars. (The prison where the museum is located had been a school before the Khymer Rouge took over). These bars were used for “stress positions”– another practice employed under current US guidelines. At the Khymer Rouge prison, there is a tank of water next to the bars. It was used to revive prisoners for more torture when they passed out after being placed in stress positions.

Kampot pepper

Everything you ever wanted to know about Kampot pepper, and more, as told by Gourmet‘s Asia correspondent Karen Coates.

In case I haven’t been clear: Cambodian pepper rocks. And it’s not just its versatile flavor, which can range from intensely spicy to mildly sweet with a hint of flower. But it’s the history that went into making this pepper, which now grows in some of the former battlefields of civil war.

Cyberstalking

Over at Blogher Beth Kanter picks up the subject of cyberstalking. Along with some very interesting links regarding the subject and a general survey of the problem, she includes this little piece of advice from a former stalkee:

“If it happens to you, here is what to do: 1. Don’t respond, 2. Assemble data, 3. Wallop them via legal means.”

That sounds about right.

Encouraging news

From Adam Piore and the Christian Science Monitor comes this bit of encouraging news.

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA – Cambodian police this year have arrested at least 12 foreigners on charges of sexually abusing children – more than twice the amount snagged all of last year.

In addition to three Americans, they’ve caught four Germans, an elderly Swiss man, a Belgium national, and at least three Vietnamese nationals who helped the foreigners procure children.

For those who have long fought pedophilia here, the spike is actually cause for celebration. Most agree the increase from just five arrests last year probably has little to do with the prevalence of the crimes. Rather it’s a function of increased political will, effort, and skill – encouraged by foreign governments like the US – on the part of Cambodia’s police, who have for years been accused of allowing foreign pedophiles to operate with impunity.

There is still work to be done, no doubt, but today people are more vigilant in spotting pedophiles. Signs are present even in remote areas that inform villagers of a telephone number to call to report suspicious activity. Cooperation with Western governments is flourishing. And as the story makes clear, the number of suspects arrested is rising.

The ‘human rights’ situation

Prime Minister Hun Sen on the United Nations Human Rights Council:

“If the UN understands that it is necessary to continue to keep your human rights office here in Cambodia, please keep it, but if you want to close I will not oppose that either,” Hun Sen told the meeting.

“If you want to stay, at least Cambodia can continue to make money from your rent,” he added. …

“The most important thing is, what is your job here?” he asked. “I think you should move to Afghanistan or Baghdad, Iraq. That might be better than here, but I don’t think you will go there. There is fighting.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Cambodia:

Yash Ghai, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, said he was concerned that few of his or his predecessor’s recommendations had been implemented, and that human rights continued to be violated on a systemic scale. He considered that this was not because of carelessness, or lack of awareness of rights or the institutional and procedural rules to safeguard them, or that Cambodia suffered so massively during the regime of Democratic Kampuchea, or because of poverty. It was because the deliberate rejection of the concept of a State governed by the rule of law had been central to the ruling party’s hold on power.

Hunt for Heng Pov intensifies

AFP VIA Asian News Network: AFP reports today that Cambodian authorities have arrived in Malaysia to assist in the search for Heng Pov.

Deputy Internal Security minister Mohamad Johari Baharum said he had been told by police late Tuesday (Sept 26) that Cambodian authorities were in the country to search for Heng Pov, convicted in connection with the 2003 murder of a judge.

“I have been told that they have arrived in Malaysia,” Mohamad Johari told AFP. “The Cambodian police are also looking for him here.”

“We’re not sure where he is, but he’s here hiding somewhere (in Malaysia),” he added.

The minister indicated Heng Pov’s fate if caught was unclear, but said Malaysia may hand him over to Cambodian authorities, who want him to serve an 18-year sentence for the murder.

Since Heng Pov ostensibly entered Malaysia four weeks ago this is the first named source to confirm that Malaysian authorities are actively searching for the Cambodian fugitive. The even bigger news, though, is that Cambodian authorities are in Malaysia to help. But more than translate,  it’s not exactly clear how calling in the keystone cops that let Heng Pov get away in the first place is going to help.

Best Asian Photo Blog?

Working in their typically stealth ways, the Asian Blog Awards have nominated Cambodian ex-pat Steve Goodman, a.k.a Mythical Dude, for Best Asian Photo Blog.

Most importantly, voting for the category is now open. Judging by previous voter turnout, a few votes either way can mean all the difference. Wouldn’t it be nice for lil’ ol’ Cambodia to swoop in a steal a category?

The ballot is here.

Snake Island deal signed

The tourism boom continues apace.

The Cambodian government has agreed to allow a Russian-run company develop a coastal island into a tourist resort with an initial investment of up to US$300 million (euro234.9 million), officials said Tuesday. …

The agreement will allow Koh Pos Investment Co. Ltd. to develop and manage Koh Pos, or Snake Island, for 99 years, said Khiem Kolneath, an assistant to Alexander Trofimov, the company’s chairman. …

Khiem Kolneath said the company has six months to present the government with a development master plan, which will include hotel, recreation center and construction of a bridge linking the beach with the island.

More Heng Pov

Along with anonymous statements of the obvious and blatant factual errors, an article today in The New Straits Times moves the Heng Pov story forward by the smallest of fractions.

Acknowledging that Heng Pov had entered Malaysia, authorities here also confirmed that their assistance had been sought in apprehending the fugitive.

Assuming this is correct — and considering the quality of the overall story, that is no given — it would mark the first time that Malaysian authorities have confirmed that Heng Pov’s feet actually touched Malaysian soil. The fact that this is attributed to such a rock-solid source as “authorities here,” however, does awfully little to inspire much confidence in the accuracy of such claims.

The banality of evil

That this place even exists is just more wicked commentary on the human condition.

The Center for Victims of Torture is seeking a Consultant with expertise in the area of trauma to provide training and mentorship to a core group of clinicians in Cambodia so they can provide more expert trauma intervention and serve as leaders in the training of other professionals in the area of trauma and torture. The contract will last for 12 months, starting in November 2006.

Kicking the doors in

Two weeks ago Prince Sisowath Thomico and 50 loyal followers gathered at Wat Phnom to celebrate the launch of the prince’s new political party. Those present at the ceremony said they would give their lives “in order to protect independence, sovereignty, integrity, territory and are determined to protect the King and Queen forever.”

Today the Cambodia Daily relays the news that over the weekend a group of eight men turned up at a Sangkum Jatiniyum Front Party office in Phnom Penh and tested that resolve.

A weekend attack on a Sangkum Jatiniyum Front Party office in Phnom Penh that left a party member injured was likely a political assault, SJF leader Prince Sisowath Thomico said Monday.

“It’s quite difficult for me to believe it’s not politically motivated,” he said.

Local police officials dismissed the claim and say the attack was gang related.

Ek Chanta, a SJF national council member and a former Khmer Front Party board director, said eight people stormed his office Saturday night in Russei Keo district, attempting to break down the door. … But his nephew and fellow SJF member, Sok Sopheak, was trapped outside and the thugs beat Sok Sopheak unconscious.

Since returning to politics two short months ago, Thomico has been the victim of either an incredible string of bad luck or a calculated campaign to silence him. The answer depends on who is reading the tea leaves.

King Father Norodom Sihanouk has several times ridiculed Thomico’s campaign and more than once officially distanced himself from the prince. This month the former king kicked Thomico out of the Royal Palace and withdrew his $600 per month allowance.

The Ministry of Interior, too,  is in on the plot, Thomico says. It has purposely blocked the registration of his party, making it impossible for him to apply for official permits and carry out official business.

Adding to the prince’s troubles,  the Daily reported yesterday on a split in the fledgling party’s ranks, with Ban Sophal leaving the SJF to start his own party, the Sangkum Yutithor, a move with ominous political allusions.

And now the assault.

Whether the ruling party is behind this incredible string of coincidences or not, they will assuredly take the blame for it. They certainly have a motivation to see Thomico fail and the means to make it happen.

If indeed the ruling party is innocent in all these events, that is even worse news for Prince Thomico, because it means that the problems his party has faced so far are merely the result of hapless luck. And once the CPP really does fire up a political offensive, life in Prince Thomico’s world is bound to get a whole lot worse than it has been already.

Saint Heng Pov

VIA Khmer Intelligence: On Monday September 18 the Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced disgraced police chief Heng Pov to 18 years in prison for the April 2003 murder of judge Sok Sethamony.

In the honorable and long-standing tradition of crooks everywhere, Heng Pov says he was framed by the man.

I categorically deny the charges that have been brought against me. I have never committed the crimes that they accused me of. Anybody who has lived in or have a real knowledge about Cambodia would know that those accusations are politically motivated. They are there as propaganda to influence the public opinion and to cover up the wrongdoings on their part. I would be prepared to go to a trial for the accusations they have now made against me in any other court system except in Cambodia or Vietnam. You can easily buy a conviction under the Cambodian justice system. This has been borne out by the outcome of today’s trial in abstentia – I am not a bit surprised about the result.

Now that Heng Pov has fled the country, questions regarding his innocence seem irrelevant. He is gone and not coming back. That is certain.

Presumably the Americans or somebody else will want to know everything that Heng Pov knows, and in time it seems certain that they will. What gets done with that knowledge, if anything, looks like the only real hand left to play.

DF rocks NYC

Dengue Fever played a packed house at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan Friday night, and just the same as every other gig the band has played on this tour, they blew the local media away.

Could there possibly be another band in the world like Dengue Fever? The group is a true original, consisting of four Los Angeles indie-rockers fronted by a Cambodian immigrant chanteuse. Together, they play psychedelic, Khmer-language pop. Many of their songs are covers by Cambodian artists of the 1960s, though they write their own authentic-sounding tunes as well.

It’s a wild concept, and Dengue Fever executed it wonderfully Friday night during its first New York show at a packed Joe’s Pub. (The band was a well-kept secret until the editors at Amazon.com and influential Los Angeles radio host Nic Harcourt became fans; Matt Dillon included the group on the soundtrack for his movie “City Of Ghosts.”) Whatever the expectations of Friday’s crowd – which included Dillon, incognito in a fashionable gas-station shirt – Dengue Fever surpassed them.

Apsara dancers of the Royal Ballet

Singaporean blogger and photographer Mr. Sanguine gives a brief but good run down today of the Cambodian apsara and the resurgence of classical Cambodian dancing. Although his account is unlikely to reveal anything you don’t probably already know, his photographs, taken during a practice session of the Royal Ballet, are lovely.

Sweet Cucumber ’signing off’

Guy over at Sweet Cucumber says he is ’signing off’.

Political splitsville

Since announcing two months ago his intention to return to politics, Prince Thomico’s foray back into the national political drama has been racked by gaffes and missteps. And if the news in this morning’s Cambodia Daily gives any indication, his future does not look any better.

A disgruntled former member of Prince Sisowath Thomico’s fledgling Sangkum Jatiniyum Front Party has defected to form his own similarly named party, after accusing the prince of holding anti-democratic ideals.

Ban Sophal said Sunday that he founded the Sangkum Yutithor, or Society of Justice Party, two weeks ago after rapidly becoming disillusioned with the prince’s politics.

As the story notes, opposition political parties have in the past accused the ruling CPP of encouraging, if not outright orchestrating, such factionalism. A 1998 split in the Khmer Nation Party gave rise to Sam Rainsy, and the original Khmer Nation Party faded into obscurity. Similarly, the Buddhist Liberation Democratic Party split along factional lines during the mid-1990s. Both sides disappeared completely after each failed to win a single seat in the 1998 national elections.

The Thai Coup

What kind of impact has the Thai coup had on Cambodia?

The number of Thai gamblers crossing the border to visit Cambodian casinos dropped by more than half following the military coup in Thailand on Sept 19, officials said Sunday. According to Pich Saran, immigration police chief at Banteay Meanchey province’s Poipet border checkpoint, over the last five days about 200 gamblers have come into Cambodia every day, a sharp drop from the 400 to 700 daily visitors who were crossing the border before the coup. Saing Sakhun, chief of the Chom Yeam checkpoint in Koh Kong province, said that no Thais passed through the day after the coup, but now 100 Thais come daily to visit the casinos. Officials said Thai gamblers are likely frightened and want to remain in Thailand to see how the situation unfolds. (Thet Sambath/CambodiaDaily)

Angie’s new tattoo

Angelina Jolie got a new tattoo for Pchum Ben. It’s a Khmer inscription on her left shoulder blade:

May your enemies run far away from you.
If you acquire riches, may they remain yours always.
Your beauty will be that of Apsara.
Wherever you may go, many will attend, serve
and protect you, surrounding you on all side

It appears extremely unlikely, however, that the person actually doing the tattooing was, you know, literate in the language, because to the fractionally less illiterate, Angie’s new ink displays what might generously be called a slightly unorthodox interpretation of the Khmer alphabet. So if the magic doesn’t work, you know why.

UPDATE: Arrgh! This tattoo is apparently ages old (blog first, ask questions later.)

For those about to blog

In the last few weeks some new voices in the Cambodian blogostan have come online — some transient, others less so. They are all what the writer Tha Rum would call “international digital citizens.” Each one offers an engaging account of life in Cambodia from a perspective unlikely to be found elsewhere.

Catch Me If You Can – Makenna describers her web log as the “confessions of a lonely planet poster child.” If there is a “young and hip” side to Phnom Penh, she seems a likely candidate to be plugged in to it.

Arie Goes to Cambodia – Well written and funny.

Tim Hoiland – Tim is a media consultant, or something like that, for World Relief Cambodia. It’s a job that apparently involves a lot of travel to the country side, sometimes in a car with a sub-woofer.

Julayne’s Blog – Julyane is a photographer on a 3-month volunteer mission working as an art therapist at the Children’s Hospital in Siem Reap. Curiously, her blog has no photos.

Cambodia Calling – An unlikely entrepreneur in Cambodia.

Happy Pchum Ben

From everybody’s favorite Russian newspaper Pravda, a little levity to round out the holiday.

Residents of a village near Cambodia’s capital staged a “Formula 1″ race Friday to mark the end of the annual honoring of deceased relatives. The contest wasn’t between cars, but water buffaloes.         

Each year, millions of Cambodians visit Buddhist temples across the country to honor deceased loved ones during a 15-day period commonly known as the Festival of the Dead.

But in Vihear Suor village, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) northeast of the capital, Phnom Penh, citizens each year wrap up the festival with a water buffalo race to entertain visitors and honor a pledge made hundreds of years ago.

Pok Thiva, an organizer, said there was a time when many village cattle which provide rural Cambodians with muscle to plow their fields and transport agricultural products died from an unknown disease.

He said the villagers prayed to a spirit to help save their animals from the disease and promised to show their gratitude by holding a buffalo race each year on the last day of P’chum Ben the festival’s name in Cambodian, reports AP.

“I’ve seen the real Formula 1, but this buffalo race is the Formula 1 we have in our village every year,” Pok Thiva said.

“Car or motorcycle racing was never written into the village’s history,” he added jokingly.

The race drew some 1,000 spectators who saw 28 riders and their animals charge down the racing field, the racers bouncing up and down on the backs of their buffaloes, whose horns were draped with colorful cloths.

Finding Heng Pov

ABC Radio reports today that Malaysian authorities are still searching for fugitive Cambodian killer Heng Pov.

The head of Malaysia’s police force says authorities are still searching for a former Phnom Penh police chief who fled murder charges in Cambodia, and is believed to be in Malaysia. …

Police Inspector-General Musa Hassan says they are still investigating the whereabouts of Heng Pov.

Is believed to be in Malaysia? It would seem a rather simple check to confirm whether Heng Pov had ever actually entered the country and whether he was or was not still there. So why the uncertainty?

From the very beginning the whole Malaysia side to this saga has sounded more than just a bit sketchy, and such transparently non-committal statements do nothing to alleviate suspicions that Malaysia is just a cut-out here in somebody else’s ruse.

Cambodian sleeper cells

From the Intelligence Summit blog comes news that Cambodia could be the operational base of a European sleeper cell.

After his arrest, Hambali was transferred to Jordan in a detention center run by the CIA and then to Camp Delta at Guantanamo. But before beginning that journey he told interrogators during sessions attended by Cambodian intelligence operatives that he had had the intention of using Cambodia as an operational base to organize a series of assaults against sensitive Western targets not only in the region but also in Europe, particularly Italy and France. A source close to Cambodian intelligence said information gleaned from Hambali and from investigations still underway pointed to the existence of a Cambodian sleeper cell in Europe, most of whose members had attended the Al Mukara school [near Phnom Penh]. The cell could be activated to carry out attacks at any point, and the Cambodians say Italy is potentially one of the prime targets.

Of course anything is possible. Osama bin Laden could be hanging out on the river in Kampong Cham with a bottle of Mekong, a fat spliff and harem of fisher wives. But a sleeper cell of Cambodians in Europe? What is the world coming to?

Sweatshops in Cambodia

In an otherwise accurate, even-handed and well-presented view of Cambodia, Steve Goodman offers this statement about Cambodia’s garment industry and the economy it drives.

The biggest and only cash cow for Cambodia is textile production and export, which bring in about $3 billion a year. Unfortunately, many textile factories operate with sweatshop conditions with long hours, low pay, and few rights for the poor workers.

Not only does this breezily dismiss all the hard-working souls in the tourism and heroin-smuggling industries, but it must drive the International Labour Organization nuts.

Whether through lack of a proper publicity campaign or something else, the work of the ILO gets consistently overlooked in conversations about Cambodia’s garment industry, and not a month goes by that someone or other has this or that to say about Cambodia’s sweatshops. While bad factories certainly exist, this IPS story from June makes pretty clear that the 6-year-old Better Factories Cambodia program has made remarkable improvements in the employment conditions of Cambodia’s garment factory workers.

The clothes produced by the 270,000 factory workers, of whom 90 percent are women, bring in over two billion US dollars annually in foreign earnings to the country’s coffers. That amounts to 80 percent of earnings from Cambodia’s exports.

Underpinning this feat is a unique programme to uphold high labour standards in each factory — rather than reduce them to sweatshops –that have won wide acceptance by international clothing buyers in the West, which include such well-known brand names as ‘Gap’, ‘Banana Republic’ and ‘Polo’. …

A 2005 World Bank study also gives high marks for the ‘’sweatshop-free” environment of the Cambodian garment sector. The working conditions in the Phnom Penh-based industry ranked higher than other Asian countries that have a similar industry, such as Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam and China. Cambodia outperformed these countries on ”union rights,” too, according to the Bank. …

”It is a unique programme since no other garment factories in South-east Asia are monitored by the ILO,” Ros Harvey, chief technical advisor for the global labour agency-run programme, told IPS. ”The ILO’s engagement with the industry has created the space for labour issues to be addressed. Many buyers are concerned about these ethical issues.”

Besides the right to form or join unions, the predominantly female labour force has also seen improvements on such fronts as receiving the agreed wages, getting overtime pay, enjoying annual leave and also being guaranteed maternity leave, says Harvey. ”These concerns were not fixed overnight. We are always working to improve standards.”

Unfortunately, the ILO is expected in 2009 to hand over financial control of the Better Factories program to government and industry groups, and it’s not at all clear how that shift in financial support will effect the current balance of power.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the government so far has shown an affinity for business, not labor, and whether the government can stay neutral in a post-ILO environment will have a tremendous impact on the ability of unions to continue their advances or see them whittled away.

The evils of radio ‘journalism’

Mention the term “radio journalism” to any experienced newspaper reporter and you are likely to get rolled eyes and a retort of “oxymoron.” Crap like this is the reason why.

Holidays

According to the Cambodia Daily workers in the Kingdom enjoy 25 official holidays every year, more than any other country in ASEAN. According to well-placed sources, however, that figure doesn’t take into account all the overtime government officials spend in the weeks preceding those holidays hosing down the public.

“Do not say we take too many holidays,” one anonymous official demanded. “Stealing 75 percent of all the government’s revenue is very hard work. When you consider this fact, I say we work harder than anybody.”

American bombing of Cambodia

Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan yesterday released the first in a series of new articles regarding the American bombing of Cambodia. The series is based on new data regarding American bombing runs made available to Vietnam during the Clinton administration. While demining and MIA missions have used the updated data for years, no one until now grasped the larger picture that the new information revealed.

The still-incomplete database (it has several “dark” periods) reveals that from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941 tons’ worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having “unknown” targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all. The database also shows that the bombing began four years earlier than is widely believed—not under Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson. The impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a coup d’état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately the Cambodian genocide.

When Taylor first posited the theory that American carpet bombing provided the driving force behind the rise of the Khmer Rouge, it sounded like a rather tenuous proposition. But Taylor Owen is a smart guy, and along with Ben Keirnan, the new argument they make is massively compelling.

Every time after there had been bombing, they would take the people to see the craters, to see how big and deep the craters were, to see how the earth had been gouged out and scorched…. The ordinary people sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told. It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on co-operating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer Rouge, sending their children off to go with them….

To read the whole story you must register with The Walrus Magazine, but it just takes a minute and only requires an e-mail address.

The State of the Aid World, as told by Nicholas Kristof

For the October 5th edition of the New York Review of Books, Nicholas Kristof turns in what is essentially a “state of the aid world” address.

In the article, Kristof primarily reviews William Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, but along the way also manages to color the piece with facts from other similar publications, most notably The End of Poverty by Jeffrey D. Sachs and The Trouble with Africa by Robert Calderisi.

Titled “Aid: Can It Work?,” Kristof’s piece primarily explores aid work in Africa and he doesn’t mention Cambodia until the very end, and even then only in passing. But from the very first sentence it is clear that where aid strategies have failed in Africa, so too have they failed in Cambodia.

The conundrum facing the rich countries is that everywhere in the developing world, and particularly in Africa, you see children dying for want of pennies, while it’s equally obvious that aid often doesn’t work very well.

Travel through the third world, and you may see clinics with signs proudly proclaiming that they were built by such-and-such an agency—but no other sign of life. It’s easy to build a clinic, but harder to ensure that doctors and nurses actually report for work in the days that follow—and when the doctor stops showing up, so do patients. Go on to the market, and there you may see the clinic’s stock of medicines for sale (marked “donated by” so-and-so, “not for sale”).

Continue on your way, and you may encounter bridges built with foreign aid over streams—but the construction led to erosion on both banks. So the ends of the bridge are a couple of feet higher than the ground, and vehicles can’t use it. Travelers continue to ford the stream in the dry season, and nobody goes across in the rainy season.

As Kristof goes on to explain, Easterly’s White Man’s Burden doesn’t just distastefully point out the failures of his predecessors — namely Sachs and the U.N. — but along with Calderisi, a 30-year veteran of the World Bank, the book comes to a conclusion that apparently Kristof himself supports. As Easterly explains:

It seems strange that bureaucrats and politicians would focus on the input—total aid dollars spent. The Hollywood producers of Catwoman, which won an award for being the worst movie of 2004, would not dare to argue with moviegoers that the movie wasn’t so bad because they had spent $100 million on making it. We can understand the emphasis on aid volume only as reflecting the pathology that in aid, the rich people who pay for the tickets are not the ones who see the movie.

The whole story is quite long, and the above really just rehashes Kristof’s opening remarks. But in its entirety, the story contains a wealth of information on current aid theories and philosophies and points to some rather unsettling conclusions.

Troubling as it is to say so, there may be a parallel between the impact of oil on a poor economy and the reception of aid in the ways by which they both promote corruption and also cause problems for other businesses and enterprises. Several studies have found that high levels of aid can lead to more corruption and worse government. Easterly even cites one study between 1960 to 1999 in which aid appeared to have a more corrosive effect on democracy than oil.

Julio Jeldres v. Hun Sen

As if many doubts remained, this statement by Julio Jeldres seems to indicate pretty clearly that whatever doors may have remained open for a reconciliation with Hun Sen have just slammed shut, and the kitchen knives are close at hand.

Once again, Prime Minister Hun Sen, has threatened those who do not agree with him or his policies which have led Cambodia to become a failed state, with the loss of their lives by suggesting that “please find a coffin if your intention is to disturb the constitution”. This is yet another example of the violent nature of Cambodia’s authoritarian leader. …

[M]y question is how many more Cambodians must die before countries such as Australia, France, Japan, Germany, Britain and the United States recognize that they are dealing with a new psychopath and violent ruler and that their association with Hun Sen’s regime is not helping the people of Cambodia but creating a wider gap between the ruling class and the little people of Cambodia, who continue to suffer at the hands of the regime.

You know, the whole act of “self-righteous indignation” kind of falls apart with that term “little people,” so dripping with condescension that it makes all of Jeldres’ hand-waving look more like a one-man stage show than any genuine plea for the common class.

A fact about prostitution

Factropolis gives no information as to where it accumulated this particular snippet of knowledge, but apparently, no matter how hard it may be to believe, this is true:

In Cambodia, male prostitutes outnumber female prostitutes by a ratio of three to one.

Who would have guessed that?

Labor talks

This is admittedly a minor grievance, but today’s story in the Cambodia Daily about negotiations between the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia and union representatives doesn’t really get it right.

The Daily gives the story this headline, “Garment Unions Retreat in Latest GMAC Talks,” and leads with this:

Garment factory unions backed down from their demand for an $82 monthly minimum wage during negotiations with the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia in Phnom Penh Monday, officials said.

But to say that the unions “backed down” is not really what happened. The two sides are involved in negotiations, and as anyone who knows how these things work will tell you, each side opens with a list of “in a perfect world” demands, and from there the bargaining proceeds to an equitable middle ground.

No one ever expects the other side to accept their opening proposal.

The unions no more “retreated” from their initial demand of $82 per month than the Manufacturers Association “retreated” by raising their initial offer of a monthly increase from nothing to $2.50. That’s just how negotiations work, and by itself gives no indication of who may be winning or losing. It’s still way too early to discern that.