From the Diary of Poch Younly, dated February 9 to July 29, 1976.
“Why is it that I have to die here like a cat or a dog ... without any reason, without any meaning?” he wrote in the spiral-bound notebook’s last pages....
[T]he diary is... one of just four known firsthand accounts penned by victims and survivors while the Khmer Rouge were in power, compared to 453 such documents written by communist cadres at the time....
The Khmer Rouge were emptying Cambodia’s cities, marching millions of people into the countryside to work as manual laborers. Their aim was to create an agrarian communist utopia, but they were turning the Southeast Asian nation into a slave state.
Younly “didn’t believe what was happening. He kept saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be back soon, don’t pack much,’” his widow said. She ignored his advice, and took as much as she could — including five of her husband’s school notebooks, and several blue ink pens.
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Their aim was to create an agrarian communist utopia, but they were turning the Southeast Asian nation into a slave state.
That's what happens with all communist utopias.
Road to Serfdom.
The end result of modern liberalism.
Fernandinande,
"Their aim was to create an agrarian religious utopia, but they were turning the Americas into a slave state."
Perspective,...
Obviously, the Khmer Rouge didn't set out to solve the obesity problem, but by the time they got booted out by the Vietnamese, there wasn't a fat Cambodian in the place.
Buddhism needs to add the value of human life and a warrior culture that will fight the enemies pushing death as inevitable fate here on earth.
Nirvana and peace is overrated.
If only you senior boomers had supported the war in Vietnam and protested the Great Society. Oh, well. Forty years from now we will be reading someone's diary from the 2014 killing fields in Iraq.
tradguy: Buddhism needs to add the value of human life and a warrior culture that will fight the enemies...
Where do people get the idea that Buddhists never have warrior cultures? (Don't matter what the holy books say; Christianity was once a fighting faith, too.)
I think Joan Baez was one of the very few lefties who apologized for the delusions of the anti-war movement in the 60s. The rest, including Kerry, don't give a shit.
Poor Crack. He thinks slavery was a unique American phenomenon.
What do you think is happening in Iraq right now?
Genocide ain't in the past. It's the present.
Where is the Gulag Anne Frank? Where is the Marxist Willie Loman? Where is the thrilling melodrama of the Katyyn Forest survivor who, post war, hunts down his father's killers.......There were huge crimes committed by Communist regimes but for the most part they have passed unnoticed. The execution of Sacco & Vanzetti inspired far more drama, protests, and coverage than the contemporaneous murder of millions of agricultural workers in the Soviet Union.
Poor Michael K. He doesn't understand the American version of slavery WAS unique.
He also thinks - if it happened somewhere else - no one has a reason to bitch. Like we're talking about attending a party or something.
He also sees to think - if it happened somewhere else - no crime happened, here, because it was so common.
Man, I could go on all day, analysing all the crazy shit in one sentence, that Michael K believes.
He's that transparent,...
And yet some nations still look to us for protection. But they are learning.
Crack,
US slavery was unique. Every version of slavery was unique. (Is unique, I ought to say, given that slavery is by no means dead.)
Then again, there are "uniquenesses" that one could do without. You probably know of some of them. Care to compare the life expectancy of a slave imported to the US with one imported to, say, Brazil?
The very comparison is odious, of course; we ought not to be in competition for the nastiest record. But it's well to remember the world in which slavery was a global phenomenon.
----He doesn't understand the American version of slavery WAS unique.---
Sorry don't believe it. Slavery is slavery. It is just your hating that makes it so in your mind.
Possibly it was unique because 300,000 white men died to end it in 'in a great civil war'.
Communism is awesome. We just need to keep trying because we haven't perfected it just yet. It's all about sharing and caring. I learned that in the local government run elementary school.
Pobre Crack, ni siquiera puede lograr ser aburrido ya ...
Today John Kerry lectures Africans on not starting any more farms... but any question which ticket Crack will vote...?
"I think Joan Baez was one of the very few lefties who apologized for the delusions of the anti-war movement in the 60s. The rest, including Kerry, don't give a shit."
Not only that, they viciously attacked her when she spoke out about the atrocities that the Vietnamese communists were committing. That showed that they were not just indifferent but actually approved of mass murder.
Worth pointing out the Khmer Rouge were significantly more ambitious than stated in this excerpt. In emptying the cities they were fundamentally transforming the society by killing everyone with an education. Even Wikipedia points this out:
During their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge overworked and starved the population, at the same time executing selected groups who they believed were enemies of the state or spies or had the potential to undermine the new state. People who they perceived as intellectuals or even those who had stereotypical signs of learning, such as glasses, would also be killed.
There's lots more....
How can a Black man, living in a country led by a Black man elected by a majority of his fellow citizens, who has never been a slave, who lives in a society that eradicated slavery 150 years ago at the cost of tens of thousands of dead White soldiers, say he has a reason to bitch about the slavery that existed? Crack, do you have a right to bitch about the child labor that was common well into the 20th century? You were, after all, a child at one time. No, I think the reason you want to bitch about the slavery that was abolished in the time of your Great-Great Grandfather is that you are aware that there are still Whites that you can intimidate, or shame, into giving up something of theirs to atone for the sin of others. It was, after all, the entire Obama campaign underpinning, so it does work.
William: "Where is the Gulag Anne Frank? Where is the Marxist Willie Loman?"
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov in Darkness at Noon
Dr. Zhvago
Russians can write. It is one thing they do very well
Crack, how about telling us HOW American slavery was "unique", as opposed to Caribbean slavery or Brazilian slavery..
You do know, don't you, that about than 95% of enslaved Africans transported to the Western Hemisphere went to those places, and not to North America...
For those who are interested in this subject, I highly recommend Haing Ngor's book A Cambodian Odyssey. He gives an entire play-by-play account of going from an affluent Phnom Penh doctor to living as a farm slave surviving bouts of torture. It's an old book and you can buy a used one cheap.
Crackhead wants attention. Please give it to him.
Another Althouse post, another thread-hijack by Crack, more mindless crack-chatter...
No Ann, their aim was to kill those who might challenge their rule. And they succeeded.
This was no accident or miscalculation. This was deliberate murder no different from what Hitler or Stalin did.
Or do you believe those were accidents too?
Emcee
Sorry, the American version of slavery was not unique unless of course you define it's uniqueness as the only country in the world who had to fight a bloody Civil War to end the practice of slavery, then you are right.
Why not, the practice ended in 1865 in blood and treasure as well as the life of an American President .
What crime? There was no crime because in spite of the barbarity of the whole slave trade thing, the whole practice was recognized legally by the African kingdoms, the Arab, African and European slave traders, the empires and kingdoms of Europe, Ottoman empire and the Indian kingdoms during the 16th up to the 19th century.
You don't get to practice 21st century moralities and sensibilities on 17th, 18th and 19th century norms because their sensibilities and some of their moralities were shaped by the events of the time period they were living in not on the time period you are living in right now.
I could sum up your post in one sentence. You don't have a clue what you are talking about because of your racist blinders being on.
You are very crystal clear in your prejudices.
You didn't mention the mindset of the rulers, they turn from ideologes to gangsters, murderers and thugs. In this utopian process they become greedy, wicked overlords obsessed with power and their own wealth.
"No Ann, their aim was to kill those who might challenge their rule. And they succeeded."
Don't attribute statements to me that I did not make.
You're looking at a quote.
All utopias are dystopias. The perfect society cannot be achieved if there is no consensus on what constitutes social perfection. Since such consensus never has and never will exist, the first task of the utopians, once gaining power, is to purge the influence of dissident opinions.
The second task is that of central planning. Since dissident alternatives to planning are disallowed, planning will be only as perfect as the competence of the planners. The Khmer Rouge was led by incompetence of a massive scale - those idiots thought that subsistence farming could feed a population of millions.
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