May 2013
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“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for...”
– Tolstoy, “Family Happiness,” chapter 5
December 2012
4 posts
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This evening I was teaching a bunch of kids the past perfect verb tense when one stood up and went to look out the window. There was a protest going on further up the road - I knew already because I had spent part of my lunch break there - and it was becoming quite loud. I went to have a look, and a few students asked what was going on.
I looked (past simple) at the student who had stood up (past...
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"In Future Life, Hun Sen Vows to Defend Koh Kong's...
By Kuch Naren and Ben Woods, Cambodia Daily, Tuesday, December 18, 2012, p. 18:
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday used a visit to Koh Kong province’s Mondol Seima district to reiterate his firm opposition to a massive titanium mine once planned for the area, and proposed that he might protect the area if he is reborn as a forestry activist in a future life cycle. “Just leave it [the...
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November 2012
5 posts
“[W]hen Thoreau was released from jail [having not paid tax given the U.S-Mexican...”
– Wendy McElroy in the conclusion to her new book ‘The Art of Being Free’
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The sum total of my worldly possessions, 09/11/12.
The sum total of my worldly possessions, 10/11/12
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"Hun Sen Blasts Media for Misrepresenting...
I doubt this article is on the Cambodia Daily website, as it’s only a ‘National Brief’ which they tuck in the back of the paper. I’m about to throw away a bunch of old Cambodia Dailies, though, and I want to put this online for posterity. It’s one of my favourite news articles from the Daily. For some added context, it was published one month prior to Prime Minister...
October 2012
10 posts
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February 2006: PM Invites SRP to Join G’ovt After... →
Prime Minister Hun Sen said Thursday that he would invite opposition leader Sam Rainsy to join a coalition government if the CPP wins the 2008 election, and vowed to reduce the bloated ranks of government advisers.
Speaking at a meeting with donors to launch a new World Bank poverty assessment, Hun Sen said that while the concept of Western democracy requires an opposition, Khmer culture...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or...”
– Samuel Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations’, 1996, p. 51. Via helvetii.
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“There’s something chilling about the government citing these as...”
– Waleed Aly, ‘Defeated in a cruel game’ via trish
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“When I read this and similar articles by the Western press (the ones in the...”
– One of my friends on Facebook commenting on this NY Times blog post.
I’m not sure I entirely agree. I think the standard account of 1960s and 1970s Cambodian politics does appropriately put Sihanouk’s actions “into the context of international realpolitik.” And I think that...
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Milton Osborne: The complex legacy of Norodom... →
By any standards, Norodom Sihanouk was one of the most remarkable political figures of the 20th century. During the course of a lifetime that lasted 89 years, he filled the roles of king, prime minister and chief of state of his country and in doing so took actions for good and bad that had profound effects on the course of Cambodia’s modern history. In his early adult life, he was by...
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Philip Gourevitch: The Fantasy of King Sihanouk →
The first thing to remember about Norodom Sihanouk, the former king of Cambodia, who died yesterday, in Beijing, is that he was the titular head of the Khmer Rouge in the nineteen-seventies, when it held power under the command of Pol Pot, and presided over the extermination of nearly two million Cambodians. Never mind that Pol Pot (who was raised in the royal palace in Phnom Penh before being...
“Do not seek to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for...”
– Epictetus
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“Why has the oppressed proletariat not come to its senses and joined you in your...”
– Nadia C., “Your Politics Are Boring As Fuck” 