Cambodia Headline 08 Feb 2010

1. Oliver Kamm: Chomsky and Cambodia

This is a subject with a tortuous history. But you should read one item in today’s Observer. That newspaper published last month a long and illuminating article by Andrew Anthony about an obscure academic, Malcolm Caldwell, who had acted as a cheerleader for the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, where he was murdered. In the article, Andrew made a brief observation about the role of Noam Chomsky in 1970s polemic on the crimes of Pol Pot. I wrote a post about Andrew’s article, along with one on a couple of authors called George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, whose whitewashing of the regime had served as one of the sources relied on by Chomsky.

2. The Prime Minister’s Anti-Corruption Declaration

The Mirror, Vol. 14, No. 650 The Mirror carried already last week a report about the extraordinary speech of the Prime Minister: “It Is Time to Stop; Military Officials Who Do Illegal Activities Are Not Fit to Work in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces” – where he directly named several generals present, criticizing their unacceptable, corrupt behavior. During the present week, there were still positive responses in the press, including from sources not so close to the government.