[Stung Treng, 3/11/23] My trip to Stung Treng was much more stressful than expected. In fact, an overworked yet much cursed part of my body deserves the highest medal. Just don’t pin it on him. Arriving, I couldn’t get off my mini bus a second too soon. Seeing an elegant yet cheap looking hotel across the street, I immediately checked in.
Hi Linh and friends of Linh. This essay reminds me of a story, I believe true, I read many years ago. In a Central or S. American country, a revolution had again occurred, and all the "intellectuals" were imprisoned. An MD, despite his age, was routinely beaten by his guard. The doctor commented one day that the guard, despite delivering beatings, was seemingly intelligent and decent in other respects. The guard asked if, years hence, the doctor would take revenge on his guard if the doctor were freed. The doctor said "Of course not; I'm a physician." The guard said "But don't you see? Mine is a profession, just like yours."
Hello Linh - enjoyed the brief recap of "distilled in Paris" Khmer Rouge sadistic madness. Of course as you allude, the KR did have a legitimate excuse for their insanity - being on the receiving end of U.S. "arc light" B-52 strikes for years. But the phrases that are really home runs are "TO FEED THEIR RIGHTEOUS HATRED, Jewish thinking DEMANDS NEW TARGETS constantly." "It's the ESSENCE of jewish thinking: where ENTIRE GROUPS are either innocent.... OR GUILTY."
Where I disagree with even the most articulate critics of Death Cult judaism is that I insist that this depraved way of thinking - ALWAYS LOOKING FOR ENEMIES TO EXTERMINATE - is sitting right there in the bible. And that the bible, instead of a being a historical document, HAS ALWAYS BEEN a COMMUNIST HATE-INDOCTRINATION PROPAGANDA psy-op. Communist terror purges? LOOK AT JOSHUA's terror purge in the book of Joshua! Or Moses invoking god to OPEN UP THE EARTH to SWALLOW KORAH and his kin - for Korah having the temerity to not want to cross over the River Jordan with Moses and the rest of the hebrews. This story, btw, is not found in Exodus - it is a much later addition. Like everything else in the hebrew, jewish bible, put there, written BY JEWISH PRIESTS to rationalize, to justify EXTREME RACIST group-think and GENOCIDAL POLICIES.
See also the story of DINAH - or, her brother's MASSACRE of her bridegroom AND HIS ENTIRE TRIBE! or see the story of how MOSES ORDERS (on behalf of g-o-d) the MASSACRE OF THE MIDIANITES - HIS OWN IN-LAWS! You see, if you go back to Exodus, you find that Moses MARRIED ZIPORAH, daughter of Midianite chieftain JETHRO, when he is on the run from Egypt for murdering an Egyptian overseer. THE MIDIANITES WERE ALLIES OF THE JEWS on the "exodus" from Egypt - but HERE THEY ARE DOING WHAT THEY ALWAYS DO, MASSACRING their neighbors and EVEN "former" ALLIES! See also the ABYSMAL story of SAMSON - like Dinah's brothers, HE PISSES ON HIS BRIDES' brothers! JUDAISM IS JUST COLD, SEETHING HATE, but Christians AND aetheist liberals alike ARE WILLFULLY BLIND to the GROTESQUE BACKSTABBING FURY and EVIL of the hebrew, jew bible... and the parasite peoples who DEMAND THE RIGHT to KILL, enslave or EXTERMINATE ANYONE they EVER come in contact with... in the name of g-o-d of course
I hate them all, “…these soy boys and girls with the coolest tatts.” Sometimes I think about mounting a major effort to defend the West, well, hahaha, by that what I really mean is probably a podcast about life in various Communist gulags of history. Hahaha. But then I think of all these pathetic Eloi I am surrounded by, who all caved in like compliant weaklings. Then crowed about it. They chatter about going to the gym and about where to get the best deals on new yoga pants. They treat their dogs for cancer and offer their children for the latest experimental gene therapy designed by Pfarma and mandated by the government. The West is already kaput. Are they worth any effort? Ich bin Kaput. One can see silver lining of a sort, the cool tatted Marxie girls will probably abort rather than reproduce.
An elegant piece. Stories like those of the Khmer Rouge that you shared have always saddened me. But now, with my own country, the US, circling the drain with the active connivance of its government, they also frighten me, because they somehow make me suspect I'm reading a sneak preview of coming attractions.
Coi ảnh anh chụp lúc nào cũng thấy nổi da gà. Anh có nghĩ đến chuyện gửi Vô Danh làm một cuốn sách ảnh?
In all countries that have endured Communism, there are countless stories of the worst abuses, yet its appeal endures, especially among half-educated Westerners. Smug, indignant, righteous and arrested, they won’t stop baying for Marx until they themselves are tortured and murdered, these soy boys and girls with the coolest tatts.
(Reading this, I can explain why I have few friends in the "intellectual community" full of soy boys and girls in Vietnam. At times I can see in my dreams, the nerves in my brain are isolated, then shaking, as I am so frightened of a future when I might become insane for being too sane. Perhaps this is also the reason water just uncontrollably flew out of my two orbits when I saw Van Gogh's paintings in Amsterdam).
Your essays are so instructive - it is so much easier to take in situations when they come with pictures. But now I know a whole lot more about one more tiny corner of the world than I did yesterday. I wonder when the hotel did get built and why such an attractive building is somewhat of a facade for a series of dirty rooms. It has amazed me for years that so many people still think Marxist ideas are compelling. Never more when I discovered a man I have known really since birth as our Canadian fruit orchards faced each other across the highway and we and a group of other kids all played together for many years. His parents were devotedly Anglican (Church of England), mine not so much although my mothers grandfather was a Anglican minister so she sent us off to church and sunday school every week. In the last decade I have renewed contact with him and discovered that after becoming an academic in the US he had eventually achieved some sort of teaching position in a small liberal university in Illinois. He had converted to Judaism and identified as a Marxist. This in contrast to me, the hippy drop out who lived on intentional and or spiritual communities and later, coming up for air, spent twenty years working in a government job in Australia. We are both now retired but by contrast, I hate everything about Marxism from Marx on down. I have read many books about China under Mao, Pol Pot, enjoy Solzhenitsyn even at his grimmest, and for many years drenched myself in as much information about the depredations of Communism as I could and very quickly turned my tolerant attitude to Marxism around. We both had the same access to books, he probably more than me. and I wonder why we had such different outcomes. Our backgrounds were quite similar, we went through school together, played the cello together, and then lost touch for forty years. Very happy to meet up again but wouldn't have many points of agreement if we spoke about politics for very long.
My last year at NSA, I got to interact with some college student summer interns. I quizzed them about a few things like Kulaks. Most of them had never heard of the Kulaks. Most of them had never heard the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes either. Maybe this means nothing but to me it’s indicative of the low quality of their education. These were top students in a competitive internship program.
Cheerful stuff... Though I don't think people are so much into Marx these days as into... Climate stuff and transgender stuff and those things. I mean, they don't even pretend to care about proletarian workers or such. Not that Marx cared either.
Thank you for writing this, Linh. The crimes of human beings against other human beings vividly show how true it is that, as Sri Krishna tells us in the Gita, people "have both divine and demonic tendencies." People in such remote places will find a way to survive, if possible, when climate catastrophe and maybe even nuclear war deform and perhaps destroy the interconnectedness of our current world, in which killers in cities half a world away can rain destruction down on remote villages, and Cambodian villagers wear Louis Vuitton zip up jackets.
Perhaps you or one of your readers might find hope, as I did, in the projections of N Oreskes & EM Conway: The collapse of Western civilization: A view from the future - Daedalus, 2013 [available for free download]. They postulate that Eastern civilization could reconstitute itself by the end of the 24th century, and maybe something like that will happen - in their scenario environmental conditions will be such that Africa and Australia will have no human inhabitants, however.
Yogi Berra could have said "You never know when something surprising might happen." I was browsing hoping to find more on the establishment you are staying at, but a few minutes did not turn up anything by the same name - however, a rather similar building is identified as Savet Guesthouse
Hi Linh and friends of Linh. This essay reminds me of a story, I believe true, I read many years ago. In a Central or S. American country, a revolution had again occurred, and all the "intellectuals" were imprisoned. An MD, despite his age, was routinely beaten by his guard. The doctor commented one day that the guard, despite delivering beatings, was seemingly intelligent and decent in other respects. The guard asked if, years hence, the doctor would take revenge on his guard if the doctor were freed. The doctor said "Of course not; I'm a physician." The guard said "But don't you see? Mine is a profession, just like yours."
Hello Linh - enjoyed the brief recap of "distilled in Paris" Khmer Rouge sadistic madness. Of course as you allude, the KR did have a legitimate excuse for their insanity - being on the receiving end of U.S. "arc light" B-52 strikes for years. But the phrases that are really home runs are "TO FEED THEIR RIGHTEOUS HATRED, Jewish thinking DEMANDS NEW TARGETS constantly." "It's the ESSENCE of jewish thinking: where ENTIRE GROUPS are either innocent.... OR GUILTY."
Where I disagree with even the most articulate critics of Death Cult judaism is that I insist that this depraved way of thinking - ALWAYS LOOKING FOR ENEMIES TO EXTERMINATE - is sitting right there in the bible. And that the bible, instead of a being a historical document, HAS ALWAYS BEEN a COMMUNIST HATE-INDOCTRINATION PROPAGANDA psy-op. Communist terror purges? LOOK AT JOSHUA's terror purge in the book of Joshua! Or Moses invoking god to OPEN UP THE EARTH to SWALLOW KORAH and his kin - for Korah having the temerity to not want to cross over the River Jordan with Moses and the rest of the hebrews. This story, btw, is not found in Exodus - it is a much later addition. Like everything else in the hebrew, jewish bible, put there, written BY JEWISH PRIESTS to rationalize, to justify EXTREME RACIST group-think and GENOCIDAL POLICIES.
See also the story of DINAH - or, her brother's MASSACRE of her bridegroom AND HIS ENTIRE TRIBE! or see the story of how MOSES ORDERS (on behalf of g-o-d) the MASSACRE OF THE MIDIANITES - HIS OWN IN-LAWS! You see, if you go back to Exodus, you find that Moses MARRIED ZIPORAH, daughter of Midianite chieftain JETHRO, when he is on the run from Egypt for murdering an Egyptian overseer. THE MIDIANITES WERE ALLIES OF THE JEWS on the "exodus" from Egypt - but HERE THEY ARE DOING WHAT THEY ALWAYS DO, MASSACRING their neighbors and EVEN "former" ALLIES! See also the ABYSMAL story of SAMSON - like Dinah's brothers, HE PISSES ON HIS BRIDES' brothers! JUDAISM IS JUST COLD, SEETHING HATE, but Christians AND aetheist liberals alike ARE WILLFULLY BLIND to the GROTESQUE BACKSTABBING FURY and EVIL of the hebrew, jew bible... and the parasite peoples who DEMAND THE RIGHT to KILL, enslave or EXTERMINATE ANYONE they EVER come in contact with... in the name of g-o-d of course
I hate them all, “…these soy boys and girls with the coolest tatts.” Sometimes I think about mounting a major effort to defend the West, well, hahaha, by that what I really mean is probably a podcast about life in various Communist gulags of history. Hahaha. But then I think of all these pathetic Eloi I am surrounded by, who all caved in like compliant weaklings. Then crowed about it. They chatter about going to the gym and about where to get the best deals on new yoga pants. They treat their dogs for cancer and offer their children for the latest experimental gene therapy designed by Pfarma and mandated by the government. The West is already kaput. Are they worth any effort? Ich bin Kaput. One can see silver lining of a sort, the cool tatted Marxie girls will probably abort rather than reproduce.
An elegant piece. Stories like those of the Khmer Rouge that you shared have always saddened me. But now, with my own country, the US, circling the drain with the active connivance of its government, they also frighten me, because they somehow make me suspect I'm reading a sneak preview of coming attractions.
Anh Linh,
Coi ảnh anh chụp lúc nào cũng thấy nổi da gà. Anh có nghĩ đến chuyện gửi Vô Danh làm một cuốn sách ảnh?
In all countries that have endured Communism, there are countless stories of the worst abuses, yet its appeal endures, especially among half-educated Westerners. Smug, indignant, righteous and arrested, they won’t stop baying for Marx until they themselves are tortured and murdered, these soy boys and girls with the coolest tatts.
(Reading this, I can explain why I have few friends in the "intellectual community" full of soy boys and girls in Vietnam. At times I can see in my dreams, the nerves in my brain are isolated, then shaking, as I am so frightened of a future when I might become insane for being too sane. Perhaps this is also the reason water just uncontrollably flew out of my two orbits when I saw Van Gogh's paintings in Amsterdam).
Anh giữ sức khoẻ ạ.
Your essays are so instructive - it is so much easier to take in situations when they come with pictures. But now I know a whole lot more about one more tiny corner of the world than I did yesterday. I wonder when the hotel did get built and why such an attractive building is somewhat of a facade for a series of dirty rooms. It has amazed me for years that so many people still think Marxist ideas are compelling. Never more when I discovered a man I have known really since birth as our Canadian fruit orchards faced each other across the highway and we and a group of other kids all played together for many years. His parents were devotedly Anglican (Church of England), mine not so much although my mothers grandfather was a Anglican minister so she sent us off to church and sunday school every week. In the last decade I have renewed contact with him and discovered that after becoming an academic in the US he had eventually achieved some sort of teaching position in a small liberal university in Illinois. He had converted to Judaism and identified as a Marxist. This in contrast to me, the hippy drop out who lived on intentional and or spiritual communities and later, coming up for air, spent twenty years working in a government job in Australia. We are both now retired but by contrast, I hate everything about Marxism from Marx on down. I have read many books about China under Mao, Pol Pot, enjoy Solzhenitsyn even at his grimmest, and for many years drenched myself in as much information about the depredations of Communism as I could and very quickly turned my tolerant attitude to Marxism around. We both had the same access to books, he probably more than me. and I wonder why we had such different outcomes. Our backgrounds were quite similar, we went through school together, played the cello together, and then lost touch for forty years. Very happy to meet up again but wouldn't have many points of agreement if we spoke about politics for very long.
Weird how things turn out, non?
This is probably one of the most beautiful songs ever made. I feel sick when i think about what happend to Cambodia.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xsyABES1TTI
My last year at NSA, I got to interact with some college student summer interns. I quizzed them about a few things like Kulaks. Most of them had never heard of the Kulaks. Most of them had never heard the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes either. Maybe this means nothing but to me it’s indicative of the low quality of their education. These were top students in a competitive internship program.
Cheerful stuff... Though I don't think people are so much into Marx these days as into... Climate stuff and transgender stuff and those things. I mean, they don't even pretend to care about proletarian workers or such. Not that Marx cared either.
Thank you for writing this, Linh. The crimes of human beings against other human beings vividly show how true it is that, as Sri Krishna tells us in the Gita, people "have both divine and demonic tendencies." People in such remote places will find a way to survive, if possible, when climate catastrophe and maybe even nuclear war deform and perhaps destroy the interconnectedness of our current world, in which killers in cities half a world away can rain destruction down on remote villages, and Cambodian villagers wear Louis Vuitton zip up jackets.
Perhaps you or one of your readers might find hope, as I did, in the projections of N Oreskes & EM Conway: The collapse of Western civilization: A view from the future - Daedalus, 2013 [available for free download]. They postulate that Eastern civilization could reconstitute itself by the end of the 24th century, and maybe something like that will happen - in their scenario environmental conditions will be such that Africa and Australia will have no human inhabitants, however.
Yogi Berra could have said "You never know when something surprising might happen." I was browsing hoping to find more on the establishment you are staying at, but a few minutes did not turn up anything by the same name - however, a rather similar building is identified as Savet Guesthouse
https://www.agoda.com/region/steung-treng-province-kh.html
Really! liked this essay and especially enjoyed the pictures. Thanks so much