Monday, March 23, 2009: Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Well, here goes.
This is the last blog from Sihanoukville, Cambodia. I arrived in this place about 9 months ago and started reading all of the available books on the Genocide. So, a goodly portion of this time was spent in reading, but not all of it. Sihanoukville is a good place to read these books on Cambodia; much better than Phnom Penh. I say this because it is kind of removed from the mainstream of daily Cambodian life that is sort of over-charged with unresolved feelings. So, I kind of sat in my place and read these books.

I also came out with this series of security assessments after the election of Barack Obama. With Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, there is hope that certain security risks linked to WMD's can be clamped down so that the "ëxtremely hazardous" prognosis can be contained to some degree.

For example, the financial crisis has been moving along pretty quickly without any bombs going off so far. This is excellent. However, hidden in this crisis is the potential for the bomb to go off somewhere. Look at the Pakistani terrorist attacks on Mumbai and the Sri Lankan Cricket Team. These have been extremely successful attacks, but contained to the Indian/Pakistani area. Very good for the world; not so very good for India. Pakistan is another matter. I don't think they have the ability to contain the terrorism in their borders, which is why it is exploding all around. This makes the Taliban look in control and becomes a perfect propaganda tool for them too.

Obama, on the other hand, seems to look fairly confident about how things are going for us which could mean that we are coping much better than expected. This is excellent again.

These are my thoughts for today.

Sunday, March 1, 2009: Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Well, here goes.
I have got to hand it to Sec. of State Hillary and President Obama, both showed reasonable concern about the human rights reaction to the Secretary's trip to China. It seems that this is a country that absolutely has to live in a fantasy world of "Ï am only what I want you to perceive that I am". So much for what is actually going on. Then, the State Dept. 2008 Report on Human Rights Worldwide came out and it is really good. It tells it like it is and does not play politics with human rights, which is a good way to go. China has always played politics with people's human rights, especially the Tibetan issues. This report pointed out quite clearly that these Chinese people really live on another planet from us and on that planet there are no human rights.

Then, I am going to put my two cents in about the Tribunal Trials. It seems that there is reasonable concern over the fact that there are apparently some 192 Top Administrators of Concentration Camps/Torture Centers under the Khymer Rouge that are not a part of the Crimes Against Humanity Tribunal. One has every right to ask "why". This issue is raising a lot of flags in a lot of places and I think it behooves the players to the trail to deal with the issue is an open and transparent fashion. Not a single name of these other 192 has ever been released to the public to my knowledge.

More later.