Pol Pot Journals

Summer read—I Am Pol Pot--ខ្ញុំ ប៉ុលពត

2010-04-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

Summer is coming and that means summer reading….I Am Pol Pot….ខ្ញុំប៉ុលពត...We all know what the press reported about the Communist Revolution in Cambodia, but what did things look like from the inside? Finally there is a story that gives the reader a feel for those who made up the Communist Party of Kampuchea. This is a fictional biography tries to interpret Pol Pot and see how things may have looked to the rulers who planned and executed Democratic Kampuchea in what is now Cambodia. The book contains quotes from the Black Papers, one of the few books ever released by Democratic Kampuchea. It is also based on many of the records from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (known as the Khmer Rouge).

And excerpts from I Am Pol Pot:

Chapter 9
The Great and Powerful Wizard of Mao

Journal entry: 15 August: Sâr:

I had been to China a few times. I remember being in Tienaman square and witnessing the activities of the Cultural Revolution. It was chaotic, with people running around tossing white leaflets everywhere, with Chinese characters I couldn’t read. Mao Zedong didn’t have a peasant revolution. He just used the peasants to get control of the country. He spent much of his time trying to industrialize the country instead of focusing on making it better for the peasants. He sent city people out to stay with the peasants for a few months. What good did that do? They just ended up going back to the city as if nothing ever happened. How can they learn about farming and peasant work in such a short time?
My delegation, including myself and a few of the other committee members, such as Hem, and Van. We arrived at the Pochentong Beijing Airport, where we were met with Chinese delegate Sun Hao. As with many Chinese, he wore the standard Mao jacket. By now we were beginning to try and develop a uniform that our party members and the rest of us could wear. In place of red stars we wore our red Kramas, which we felt fit in better with the peasant look. The Chinese delegation led us into the Great Hall of the People for a meeting with Chairman Mao. Next came a formal welcoming banquet hosted by Chou En-lai. And of course Mao was there. As we sat at the tables, all decked out in red, with large red curtains and the seal of the Chinese government above us, I noticed that Mao’s picture was everywhere. His books and posters of adulation were everywhere. This guy was a real egomaniac. We all sat down to dinner when Mao began to speak.
“We are beginning to fear that Sihacook is loosing control of the country and may turn against us. Is your revolution at a point where you can use arms to move ahead?”
“Sure,” I said. “We have new recruits, some who are well trained and training new ones. Sihacook is coming down hard on us and he’s attacking the left even in his capitol. He has driven our party and leftists out of the city and they are coming to us. We are definitely in a revolutionary position. The time is right. We also have a great arsenal built up and many of our weapons come from the corrupted officers in the Royal Army.”
“When the time is right, you shall have all the arms and equipment you need. But we still need Sihacook as long as we can use him. So this has to be done discreetly. The arms will be delivered, but you must make sure Sihacook does not know you are getting them from us.”
“We’ll help you in every way we can. Actually, we believe that the CIA wants Sihacook out and at some point in time that will happen.”
“We’ve considered that also. This Richard Nixon has been pushing the CIA to replace Sihacook with a more aggressive anti-communist leader.”
“There’s just one thing I need and that’s an assurance that you won’t tell us how to run our government after we win. We want full autonomy to run things our way.”
“Sure Mao,” said. “We never interfere in our allies internal affairs. Each country runs things their way. Some develop socialism at different rates, some slowly, others faster. We respect your autonomy completely.”
“Thanks Mao. That’s what I wanted to hear.”
I knew there would be more meetings with Mao. He seemed like a patronizing egomaniac, who didn’t really know how to run a revolution, but I needed his arms. We all got on a plane to return to Kampuchea. I also met with Deng Xiaoping, who told me that China was committed to giving us whatever we needed to get by. Not only all the weapons we asked for but also for some rice and food to help us while we got our harvests restarted, should we win.
As soon as we returned, we went to the base camp we had set up in the far north of the country. We had only been gone a few about a week. However, we heard about the military coup against Sihacook, by his own henchman Gen.Lon Nol, a few days before we left on March 18, 1970.
“Listen folks,” I told the central committee when I returned. “I know we are now officially part of the Maoist International, but our revolution is Khmer. Let’s make sure that none of our documents mention Mao or any Chinese revolution. Our revolution will be inspired by Khmers and not the Chinese. Of course, we’ll make references to Marx and Lenin as we are a Marxist-Leninist Party, as well as with Stalin, since he was our influence, but not Mao. He is not going to be listed in our records as an influence of our party. As for the party cadre, I believe they should avoid foreign influences as much as possible. They should learn that this is Khmer Communism and it is based on the Khmer culture and customs.”
I found the others to be in agreement with me.

Diary entry: Ponnary: 10 March 1970:

My stay in China was quite fascinating. To meet Chiang Ching in person was probably the high point of my life, next to my marriage to Sâr. She worked tirelessly to promote proletariat revolution and she constantly toured the country promoting the political left in a party that seemed divided between a conservative wing and the left, which was under her control.
She promoted women’s issues at all time, kept them in a Marxist perspective. She promoted proletariat culture and no one dared cross her because she was a woman of power, and she knew how to use it. She dealt with her enemies harshly and no one crossed her. In the orient, I have never met a woman who had the knowledge to wield such power and her knowledge of Marxist-Leninist perspective was remarkable to say the least. Of course, I have always been in the political circle as one of its main members. She only recently emerged as one of the most prominent members of the Chinese Communist Party. ……

…………. Chapter 10
The uprising in France
The French get a taste of their own medicine

The following are US news magazine clippings, printed in English:

Newstime magazine:

May 17, 1968

“Riots strike France”

Last week Paris erupted into the worst student riots of the decade. Thousands massed for confrontations with authorities, where cars were burned and bloody clashes with police seemed staged to coincide with an important meeting Charles de Gaulle was to hold for peace talks in Indochina.
The Demonstration started off peacefully, but bands of Maoists, Marxists, Trotskyites and Guevarist militarists had thrown the Nanterre College into turmoil. As if planned all along, these militants stormed the campus the following day and began to scuffle with police. Before long they were met by other protesters who chanted “De Gaulle assassin!”
Student protests have taken place all over Europe and in cities in the US, but this was by far the largest yet. Students made barricades with stones and cars, while leftist union workers went on strike. Students hurled Molotov cocktails at the police. Some of the rioting is believed to be over university policies in France. Such universities usually flunk about 20% of students, while 50% give up.
No lives were lost, but there were 596 injured and 1,081 arrests made. On top of that, general strikes threaten to bring the country to a standstill, with busses, electricity and other public works coming to a standstill………

This book can be ordered from Amazon.com. Just click on Amazon.com to order or view more of the book.

Fall reading: the fictional biography I Am Pol Pot

2009-09-11T21:52:00.000-07:00

Fall is a time when many people look for new books to read. I Am Pol Pot is a historical novel that tries to intemperate the motives of the leadership of the short lived regime called Democratic Kampuchea. Most people have heard of Pol Pot, the loss of Kampuchean lives, and his movement, which was called the Khmer Rouge, by the western press.

Here is a short summery of the novel:

I Am Pol Pot

The making of Democratic Kampuchea
A fictional autobiography

By Steve Otto

This novel looks at Pol Pot’s revolution, which developed as a result of the 1970s turbulence of the Vietnam War. When President Richard Nixon spread the Vietnam War to Kampuchea, (called Cambodia today) he not only caused outrage and protest at home, including the Kent State Ohio massacres, but he also threw Kampuchea into a state of civil war. His inept handling of the situation brought about one of the strangest and cruel social experiment of the 20th Century. Pol Pot ruled through a committee known for the first year only as the Ankar (organization). His name was not even spoken to the Kampuchean people for two years. His Communist Party of Kampuchea had amassed a powerful movement of disenfranchised peasants, who were loyal to him and his regime. The Residence of Phnom Penh, the city’s capital, were not so lucky. They were treated with suspicion and punishment for those considered “un-redeemable” was harsh.
This novel looks at the Cambodian revolution from inside the ruling circle. It is a depiction of the man, his ideas and his motives. He saw himself as the world’s great redeemer, while most people outside his movement saw a horror show. This is his story.

Available from Amazon.com.

Here are some more excerpts from I Am Pol Pot:

2009-09-11T21:46:00.000-07:00

Chapter 5

Paris

Diary entry: Khieu Ponnary - 12 September 1949:

Written in Khmer, translated to English:

He was walking out of the Moulin Rouge, in Paris, France, the place where the Artists of the Petite Boulevard, such as Vincent van Gogh, Charles Angrand, Louis Anquetin, Emile Bernard, Paul Gauguin, Camille and Lucien Pissarro, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec came to watch the Can Can Girls and drink the Absinthe. I didn’t know his name yet. He was Saloth Sâr.

Today the Khmer students probably drink French wine or fine Cognac. But they had come from a backward rural society, as I did, in Kampuchea, and this was the capitol of civilization. It was an inspiration for both artists and leftist political thinkers.

As with any young man at the time, Sâr was sewing some wild oats. I couldn’t blame him. There was so much to do there. Paris was filled with city lights and people from all over the world. The Moulin Rouge was a huge brightly lit building, easily living up to its reputation as a bright red attraction. It always had that fake windmill on top that was always brightly lit in red.

Sâr was short, shy, and a thin boy with a boyish look. He was very attractive.

One day I approached him as he walked out with some friends.

“You’re Khmer aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s always nice to meet another person from Cambodia.”

“Yes. I’m Saloth Sâr.”

“I’m Khieu Ponnary. I’m attending the University of Paris. I came to study Shakespeare and Khmer linguistics. Since I got here, I’m interested in politics and philosophy.”

“I’m going to the Ecole Française de Radio-Electricité. I like music so this is a good field for me to get into. I like poetry also.”

“Do you like politics?”

“Sure. This is the home of the French Revolution. They chopped off the king’s, and queen’s head, and the Directorate took control and brought order to this country, until Napoleon took it over.”

“The Communist Party has encouraged us to study the Paris Commune. It impresses me because women took such an active role in setting it up and defending it. One who really stood out was Louise Michel.”

Sâr and I began walking down the busy Paris street, with its heavy traffic, and we stopped at a sidewalk café.

“Care for some coffee?” Sâr asked.

“Yes.” We went into the cafe and decided to talk further.

We went to a small place on the main street, with white wicker chairs and white tables. The tables were outdoors had had umbrellas. Ours was red. So there we sat drinking French coffee and talking politics.

“Why don’t you come to the next meeting with me?” Ponnary said.

“The French Communist Party? But I’m Khmer,” answered Sâr

“There’re several Khmers that come and are members. We have a Khmer Association. It’s like a chapter within the party. There are many non-French people who belong to out party. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso? You’ll love meeting him. Everyone likes him and his paintings. He’s a party member. He did some wonderful paintings on the Spanish Civil War.”

“Well, if you’re going to be there, how can I say no? Where’s it at and what time?”

After we decided to meet up at the next party meeting, Sâr asked me to his apartment, for some wine. For weeks we met at the same café, a colorful café with red awnings on a street in the Latin Quarter, near the 5^th Arrondissement. There were many cafés and bistros on its streets. It was also along the left bank, an area known for its philosophers, artists and intellectuals. It was here that I introduced Sâr to many of his future comrades, at least three times a week. We also attended meetings. We went to a meeting hall at my university, a small brown corner building. I think the real reason he wanted to come is that he liked me. I didn’t care. I found him attractive also. It took him a while to get used to the ideals of communism, but he was very devoted to a free Kampuchea, and very nationalistic. Even though he didn’t seem that political, I could tell he was someone who would take politics seriously. Maybe it was just a gut feeling. But I knew he would fit in.

Journal Entry: 18 July, Sâr:

I met Ponnary near the Moulin Rouge as we were leaving. I was instantly struck by her beauty and the fact that she wore no makeup and avoided ostentatious clothing or jewelry. She was real earthy and I liked that. We went to a sidewalk café, which became a regular hangout for us. I had taken some interest in politics. I hated living in a country dominated by the French, turning us into a colony and bastardizing our culture, and I hated having a king. Here we were in the 20^th century and we still had a powerful monarchy. The French destroyed their monarchy and that’s one of the few things I liked about them.

Ponnary went a step further. She had read all the classics on Marxism, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, VI Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. She had also read the Asian revolutionaries Ho and Mao Zedong. I had never met a woman as smart as Ponnary. She had a political answer to everything. She just didn’t read the books, she fully understood them. We spent hours discussing the possibilities of Marxist revolution in countries such as France and at home.

But we also talked of ourselves. I told her of my love of music and how I saw music as a great way to change the world. I wanted to write and perform my own music. Then we spoke of each other. One night she invited me back to her place. She had a tiny tan room with a red metal-framed bed, a black and white clock on the wall and some small posters of communist events. She had no place to make tea, but she did have a bottle of some French red wine. We had a few glasses and then sat on the bed to talk. It didn’t take long for the small talk to change to kissing. Next we were in bed together. I was taken in by her bronze skin, her long dark hair and deep brown eyes. She seemed like the perfect Khmer woman. We made love that night and it was far more exciting than I could ever have imagined at the women’s quarters (red light district) at home.

History paper from University of Paris, February 1949:

Written in French, translated to English:

The women’s role in the Paris Commune

By Khieu Ponnary

The Paris Commune was created in March of 1871, after France was defeated by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian war. Free elections were held in that city and it was declared an autonomous zone. The elected council was made up of Jacobins (based on a religious order) Republicans and socialists, mostly Blanquists (more traditional socialists) and followers of the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. They wanted to recreate France as a federation of communes. There were a few others formed in other parts of France. They were all called Communards.

Many anarchists played a role within the commune, including Louise Michel, a woman activist. She had been a schoolmistress at Audelancourt. She wanted to go to Paris believing it was the one place she could make a difference. While in Paris, she focused on teaching, writing, poetry and reading.

She began to see the poverty of many Parisians and how they had to live. It inspired her to write and recite this poem:

“I have seen criminals and whores

And spoken with them. Now I inquire

If you believe them made as now they are

To drag their rags in blood and mire

Preordained, an evil race?

You to whom all men are prey

Have made them what they are today.”

The Paris Commune was considered a socialist revolution, and the first communist uprising, which tried to create freedom and equality for all the people of Paris. Louise Michel, along with others, gave her total self to the revolution. She fought on the street’s barricades, and devoted herself to the cause. She was eagerly willing to sacrifice her life for the freedom she sought. The commune was possible because Prussia had beaten France. France had a weak government, which only encouraged the new radicals to try and take action.

The French Army, then led by Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who by now was calling himself Napoléon III, began attacking Paris in the name of “capitalist civilization” and "liberty." Government troops entered the city, May 21st and there were seven days of bitter street fighting. Squads of soldiers and armed thugs of the bourgeoisie wandered through the streets, killing and maiming at will. Over 25,000 people lay dead, their blood running like a river in the ditches and sewers. Many in the French army murdered Communards after they had surrendered, and their bodies where dumped in mass graves.

There was no distinction between men women. The women ended up fighting at the blockades along with the men. Many women took part in the government and the Central Committee of the Union of Women for the Defense of Paris and the Care of the Wounded ended up defending the commune with their lives.

According to Karl Marx, The Paris Commune was one of the first attempts at a communist workers state or a proletariat dictatorship.

History paper from Ecole Française de Radio-Electricité, 15 November 1951:

Written in French, translated to English:

The French Revolution and The Directorate

By Saloth Sâr:

Thanks to the French Revolution all history had changed. There was nothing like it at the time and the shock wave from it rippled out and changed all of Europe forever.

King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette plus many other aristocrats were beheaded by the Guillotine in 1793.

The monarchs of Europe were so outraged over the beheadings, that in 1793 Britain, Spain and the Netherlands declared War against France. Needless to say they were unsuccessful and the French proved that kings and queens were unnecessary. The slogans of the revolution were:

“Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité.”

The US at the time actually had some revolutionaries who inspired this event. It’s odd that such a revolutionary state could become so reactionary in 200 years. A man called Robespierre ruled during the time period from the fall of the Bastille to the reactionary “Reign of Terror.” During that time, many innocent people had their heads lopped off by the Guillotine. During one stretch of paranoia, 1,376 individuals were guillotined in 47 days, filling the streets with streams of blood. Blood gushed as each head fell into a brown wicker basket.

The executioners must have been soaked in blood by the end of the day, with blood seeping into their shoes. It must have been a sticky mess.

In 1795 the Reign of Terror ended with the Directorate. The Directorate had saved the French people from the terror of Robespierre. The Directorate was an organization without a king or godhead expecting the people to bow down to. The leaders seemed to stay secret. They operated and ran the new revolution. They secularized the country, even starting a new calendar with the year 1, to get away from the Christian calendar the rest of Europe was using,

They also had to protect the revolution, so the Guillotine still had to be used against those who would try to destroy it. The country and the ideals of the revolution were worth losing a few lives, especially when there were so many traitors among them. But there was one traitor the Directorate did not count on. That was their own General, the appointed young Corsican soldier, Napoleon Bonaparte, who led the armies of France against the revolution and all its progress. By 1799 Napoleon had become head of a new government that was in fact a dictatorship. He abolished the Directorate and set himself up for one-man rule. He had betrayed the revolution. He set himself up as a king-head or godhead, calling himself an emperor. He proceeded to try to conquer most of Europe. He was indeed a traitor to the people of France.

I’ve always hated kings. I saw a picture of a revolutionary holding up high the head of King Louis XVI by his hair. The king’s body was clothed in a white prison uniform. The Guillotine stood on a tall, large wooden platform. Seeing the royal family beheaded and the shock it caused must have been one of the most important events in history.

Here are some excerpts from I Am Pol Pot:

2009-09-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

Chapter 1

Nurodum Sihacook the gentle butcher – When a scorpion smells like a rose.

A journal entry by Saloth Sâr, better known as Pol Pot

10 June 1997:

Translated from Khmer to English:

The stench was overwhelming. It smelled like a slaughterhouse for animals. I was on a road in Kampuchea. It was barely a road. I’m not sure a large car could have made it over the dirt pathway and there were ruts that could easily trap a car. Green foliage of all types grew along the side. This was and still is Kampuchea, a hot, humid, jungle filled country.

It was not dead animals I smelled. It was people. They had been the cadre of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. They weren’t just killed. Some had their stomachs slit and their intestines pulled out. They were covered in flies, swarming all over them. Some hung from trees, others lie in ditches. They were captured by government troops and then savagely killed. And who led this vicious government that would allow such brutality? It was none other than Nurodum Sihacook. He had been a king, but he abdicated as king to run for office and become prime minister of Cambodia. It was he who always used the European term Cambodia. A squat man with a puffy face and squeaky voice; that man who probably never had to eat without a sliver spoon in his mouth; the man who thought he was as good at music as misleading Kampuchea; the man who probably never had to wipe his own ass his whole life was responsible for this. I always called our country Kampuchea.

To the rest of the world Sihacook had a reputation as a gentle peaceful ruler – a democratically elected former king who abdicated his thrown to be a real politician. Even many of the peasants liked him, despite the fact that he tried to keep them out of the capitol city and refused to let them wear their traditional peasant clothing in Phnom Penh.

Sihacook was a farce. He fooled nearly everyone. He was a shrewd politician. He followed a policy of "extreme neutrality." He was able to keep his country from being swallowed into the Vietnam War and he was able to preserve the country's independence up until the 1970s. To do this he often pitted various powers against each other. He refused to cooperate with the U.S. war in Vietnam. He not only refused to join SEATO (Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, formed under US influence in 1954) but also criticized the organization while on a trip to Beijing. He developed relations with the Soviet Union and Poland. He accepted aid from China. He had made the statement that "Although we are not communists we do not oppose communism as long as the latter is not imposed on our people from outside."

But inside the country, he was no different than Adolf Hitler. He rounded up the Communist Party members and sympathizers and put them in concentration camps, most of these people were destined to die. And as with Hitler, the middle classes of the city, the petite bourgeois and other conservatives not only didn’t care, they cheered him on for his brutality. It was the same thing, as in Germany, here in Kampuchea all over again.

Sihacook's tolerance of international communism, such as in China and Vietnam; was largely a diplomatic tactic. He killed us here at home. He had many of our leaders assassinated. I remember the day, in 1960, that our party's chairman walked towards the huge gray brick building that was known as the parliament at the time. A car pulled up and a group of armed police got out. They arrested him and took him off. We found his pasty white body a day later, in a ditch, outside the city. His throat had been slit.

There were other killings. I remember seeing a comrade sitting in a café when a group of soldiers, obviously Sihacook’s goon squad, walked up and fired a gun point-blank at his head. As he laid there, blood spouting from his head, his eyes staring out with that “death look,” the soldiers simply walked back to their Jeeps and left. Another day, another killing – to them it was no big deal.

There was one person he fooled in the wrong way and that was the US President Richard Nixon. I developed a love-hate relationship with the man over time. He killed hundreds of thousands of my people and tried to wipe us out. Yet he hated our worst enemy and he hated him for all the wrong reasons. I love what Nixon had to say about him in his memoirs.

Nixon had visited with Sihacook in 1953. He wrote that he was "vain and flighty. He seemed prouder of his musical talents than of his political leadership, and he appeared to me to be totally unrealistic about the problems his country faced."

Vain and flighty, that’s putting it mildly. He flitted around like a fairy. But he was ruthless to the core. In response to student riots in 1963, he drew up a list of the party's central committee and promised to wipe them out. What did we have to do with the riots? We didn’t start them. The students didn’t like Sihacook and his policies. So he took it out on us.

Unlike former President Lyndon Johnson, who respected Cambodia's independence and opposed trying to remove Sihacook, Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were eager to see him go. They were blinded by Vietnam. They thought if they could control Kampuchea, they could win the Vietnam War. Just as with the rest of the world, Nixon was duped. He and the CIA came up with an elaborate plan to get rid of Sihacook and they couldn’t have done us a bigger favor.

The greasy slick bastard always wore a suit and tie to impress his Western supporters. He met with every world leader he could, capitalist or communist, and he was also a gracious host.

“All my life, I have fought against all forms of colonialism, imperialism, expansionism and neo-colonialism of which my nation, Cambodia, was victim,” he wrote.

Yes, he was against all those things, as long as it was on his terms. Those who stood in his way, locally, got murdered. Some of our party members actually tried to run for office in a coalition with the Democrats who ran against him. Some of our people even tried to serve in his cabinet. But it was always the same. He’d give them a position, and then kill them.

He was no man of the people. Sihacook was well-known for leading what some have termed an extravagant lifestyle, and being an unabashed "ladies man." He married his sixth wife, Monique, an Italian-Cambodian, in 1952.

After being ousted in a coup, Sihacook wrote a book, My War with the CIA In the book’s introduction, he wrote that enough evidence was available at the time “to prove the unceasing and determined intervention of the (US) in the internal affairs of my country, and particularly the role of the (US) Central Intelligence Agency, in a series of plots which culminated in the military coup of 18 March 1970.”

He should have seen that coming all along.

Sihacook either allowed or was unable to stop US forces to pursue North Vietnamese soldiers across the Cambodian border in January 1968. However, Washington twisted Sihacook’s readiness to accept the principle of hot pursuit to justify the intensive bombing of Cambodia between 1969 and 1973.

The US bombing of Cambodia officially started in March 1969. The so-called Vietcong and North Vietnamese who were pursued and killed turned out to be Cambodian farmers, monks, teachers and students; and the bombing caused the destruction of Cambodian roads, pagodas, schools and plantations. Nurodum Sihacook wrote about this, as he seemed unable to stop it.

The war had moved into Cambodia well before that. A 1968 editorial from “The Sangkum,” a Sihacook publication, accused the US of bombing a village in Kandal province.

In a 1968 interview with Look magazine, Nurodum Sihacook accused US troops of attacking a Cambodian post, which was flying the Cambodian flag, more than eight kilometers inside the Cambodian border and killing three people. This is far from the concept of “hot pursuit,” he said an interview.

When I finally went to the countryside, I realized how much damage the US had done. Large areas of farmland were nothing but craters. Buildings of all types were nothing but rubble. The dead, victims of the bombings lay strewn all over the countryside, their pasty white bodies lying on the ground, swollen from the hot sun and covered with flies.

As with Nixon, we eventually found that we needed each other, as the US war intensified and began to drag Kampuchea into it. As much as we hated Nurodum Sihacook, when he was finally down and out, he turned to his worst enemy, us, for help.

In the short run we did help him. In the long run he paid a price for that help. We circulated our own axioms by our ruling party during Democratic Kampuchea:

“A king is unnecessary, for his shit stinks the same as his own people’s.”[1]

[1] Pol Pot’s Little Red Book, (see Acknowledgements), p. 301.

I Am Pol Pot

2009-02-17T06:38:00.000-08:00

The new book I Am Pol Pot is now available from Amazon.com and will be available at Barns & Noble as well as other book outlets soon. This is a good spring or summer read, a novel of war and revolution in what is now Cambodia. While student protests were going on all over the industrialized world, Indochina was thrown into civil war and then revolution. The revolutionaries in Cambodia carried out an extreme social program and it resulted in almost a million deaths. But more important, this book looks at the decision making process. What where its leaders trying to do? What did they expect would happen in their new Democratic Kampuchea? How could such a revolution go wrong? All this is looked at in I Am Pol Pot, a fictional biographic novel.
Now available at Amazon.com.

New Pol Pot book

2009-01-07T08:06:00.000-08:00

The Pol Pot Journals have been replaced with I Am Pol Pot by Steve Otto, the ghost writer. It’s on Lulu but it is supposed to be available on the usual book outlets, such as Amazon and Barns & Noble soon. So it should be available through your local Borders as well as through Barns and Noble.
It is still available at Lulu, http://www.lulu.com/content/5492340.

The Pol Pot Journals are no longer at LuLu.com

2008-12-03T18:19:00.000-08:00

I have chosen to cancel my book contract with LuLu.com, so The Pol Pot Journals are no longer available at that site. They can only be purchased at my book site, at http://steveottosbooks.tk/ for $25, while they last. Just go under Get autographed books! You’ll have to send in your address and the money as a check, money order or cash. I do have a Pay Pal account so I can work something out, if someone wants to use that to pay for a book. All copies will be signed and I only have a few left. Anyone who sends in an order after the last is gone, will have their money sent back.

The weeds of the US

2008-12-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

ទួកមិនចំរណញ ងករញ គីមិនឧ។ត
No Gain in keeping, No loss in weeding out
This was a maxim of Democratic Kampuchea. It may seem visious, as it implies some people’s lives have no value and therefore may be liquidated or killed to put it bluntly.
We don’t kill such people in this country (US) but we do have our weeds, as the Angkor may have called such people. The best example is this clipping from The Wichita Eagle, in Kansas. We can’t kill this guy, but he is a weed.

Important information about The Pol Pot Journals

2008-11-13T14:06:00.000-08:00

Due to some screw ups on the part of Lu Lu Press, my new book, The Pol Pot Journals, is not available at this time from Barns & Noble or your local Borders store. It is only available through Lu Lu.
This will change. I have two other publishers I’m looking at who will either distribute this book or they will republish it and it will be available for order it through the usual outlets. My other two books are available that way. If and when I announce that I have a new publisher and if it is republished, I will be deleting my account with Lu Lu. If that happens, that very limited first addition will be very rare and if I can sell a few books, as I have in the past, on line and at signings, that first addition may eventually bring in some money.In the mean time, Can You Pass the Acid Test?, and Memoirs of a Drugged-Up, Sex-Crazed Yippie, can be ordered at your local Borders or Barns & Noble.

The Making of Democratic Kampuchea

2008-11-03T12:23:00.000-08:00

The Pol Pot Journals;
The Making of Democratic Kampuchea
A Fictional autobiography

My new book: The Pol Pot Journals is out

2008-10-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

In this novel, in the 1970s the turbulence of the Vietnam War and protests by students and youth who where un-willing to fight for a cause that seemed unsinkable and useless. When President Richard Nixon spread the Vietnam War to Kampuchea, (called Cambodia today) he not only caused outrage and protest at home, including the Kent State Ohio massacres, but he also threw Kampuchea into a state of civil war. His inept handling of the situation brought about one of the strangest social experiment of the 20th Century. Pol Pot ruled through a committee known for the first year only as the Ankar (organization). His name was not even spoken to the Kampuchean people for two years. His Communist Party of Kampuchea had amassed a powerful movement of disenfranchised peasants, who were loyal to him and his regime. The Residence of Phnom Penh, the city’s capital, were not so lucky. They were treated with suspicion. And punishment for those deemed “un-redeemable” was harsh.
This is a novel, and while Pol Pot wrote little this fictional novel lets us see the real man if he had written his own memoirs. The book also provides the views of both his comrades and those outside of Kampuchea.

This book is presently available at Lu Lu Publishing http://www.lulu.com/content/4661186.It will be available at onther online stores in the coming days, at such outlets as Barns and Noble.

ខ្ញុំ a poem

2008-10-09T23:46:00.000-07:00

I'm learning to use Khmer letters. A few mistakes here and there, but I'm learning. Here is a Khmer poem I wrote

ខ្ញុំ

ខ្ញុំ

បដិវត្ត
ខ្ញុំ

កុម្មុយនីស្ត
ខ្ញុំ

កុម្មុយនីស្តបដិវត្ត
ខ្ញុំ

កម្មករ
ខ្ញុំ

កម្មករ បដិវត្ត

ខ្ញុំ

លេនីន

Excerpts from The Pol Pot Journal – soon to be realeased

2008-09-06T00:32:00.000-07:00

Journal entry Pol:

Our first year was going well. The first big snag came when an American ship called the Mayagüez came through our waters. We boarded and searched it as we did all other ships. If nothing unusual is on them we let them go. I no sooner gave the order to release the ship when US President Gerald Ford decided to make an issue of this thing and send in his marines. They crashed one of their own aircraft and killed around 25 of their own men. They killed several of our soldiers and sunk one of our navy ships. We never had a big navy to begin with. This was all done so Ford could look like a macho cowboy to his own people. The 100 or so deaths were completely unnecessary.
Still we were worried about further attacks and had to move our entire headquarters to a Silver Pagoda on the edge of town. The Pagoda was alright but although it was large enough for us, there were fewer rooms. Once again some of us lost our privacy and our own offices. This building just didn’t have enough rooms.

Newstimes:

May 26, 1975:

"Have been fired on and boarded by Cambodian armed forces. Vessel being escorted to unknown Cambodian port."

It was a crackling distress call over the radio waves from the U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez in the Gulf of Siam last week that got the Gerald Ford Administration rolling into action. Ford was determined to change the image of U.S. power in the world—and his own stature. He put up U.S. military might and successfully forced the Cambodians to surrender the ship and free the 39-man crew.
Ford acted firmly and decisively, more than at any other time in his presidency. The Ford Administration wanted to draw a line in the sand to let adversaries around the world know that despite the setbacks in Indochina, the US was not going to be intimidated. This action was seen as necessary to reassure some disillusioned allies that the U.S. intends to vigorously defend its oversees interests. Fords wanted allies to see that he not only used force but plenty of it. Ford used the navy, Air Force and assault troops. He used warships, helicopters. Some at home thought the John Wayne show of force was excessive. One reporter described it as shooting a chicken with a cannon ball.
By drawing the line against aggression in the Mayaguez incident, he put potential adversaries on notice that despite recent setbacks in Indochina and the Middle East, the U.S. is not a paper tiger. That action reassured some discouraged and mistrustful allies that the U.S. intends to defend vigorously its overseas interests. But the events of the week also raised a series of questions that are bound to be debated in the U.S. and in foreign capitals for months to come.
Ford showed that in a confrontation he was not only willing to risk using military force but also that, once committed, he would use plenty of it. Thus, to free one freighter and not quite two score crewmen, the President called out the Marines, the Air Force and the Navy. He ordered assault troops—supported by warships, fighter-bombers and helicopters—to invade a tiny island of disputed nationality where the crewmen were thought (erroneously) to be held. To prevent a Cambodian counterstrike, he ordered two much disputed bombing raids of the Cambodian mainland. At home and abroad, some political experts thought that the show of force, which had many of the gung-ho elements of a John Wayne movie, was excessive. The Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun asked, "Why did [the U.S.] have to use a cannon to shoot a chicken?"
Hard kick. The cannon was effective, of course, showing the world that the U.S. will not accept humiliating provocations. But the U.S. success owed almost as much to luck as to skill in combat. If the Communist Cambodians had dug in and refused to release the Mayaguez crew, the military mission might well have aborted.
In an interview with the staff of Newtimes, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger admitted: "The outcome was fortunate." Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently called for an "abrasive" foreign policy, even before the Cambodians seized the Mayaguez. One U.S. Government policy planner had told Newtimes, "There's quite a bit of agreement around here that it wouldn't be a bad thing if the other side goes a step or two too far in trying to kick us while we're down. It would give us a chance to kick them back—hard."
President Ford had been hoping for weeks to find a dramatic way to demonstrate to the world that the Communist victories in Indochina had not turned the U.S. into a second rate power……

New Excerpts from The Pol Pot Journals

2008-08-17T10:11:00.000-07:00

This if from an upcoming book:

Chapter 4
Hồ Chí Minh and the Indochinese Communist Party

Journal Entry: 29 June: Sâr:

By now, the people of Indochina were beginning to rally around Hồ Chí Minh and his Indochinese Communist Party, which he founded in 1930. At first he attended the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference in an attempt to present US President Woodrow Wilson with a proposal to free Vietnam from colonialism. He was naturally turned away by a government that had just as many imperialist ambitions as the French. The proposal was never even acknowledged.
It’s not surprising that people rallied around Ho. All Indochinese hated the French. They held us hostage for years. We all wanted them out. No one really thought about the politics of Ho. We just wanted to help him drive out the French. Many of the Khmer Freedom Fighters joined up with Ho Chi Minh and his Indochinese Communist Party in Vietnam. I eventually joined him.
As with my comrades and I, he hd spent time in France, although it was much earlier, 1922. Ho was a founding member of the French Communist Party when it splits from the Socialist Party in 1920. He worked with other groups of radical expatriates and publishes an anti-colonial journal, 'Le Paria' ('The Pariah' or 'The Outcast').
Ho traveled to Moscow, in 1922, for the Fourth Congress of the Communist International. He joined the Comintern's Southeast Asia Bureau and helped to organize the Krestintern, or Peasant International. At that time, the communists were united. It wasn’t until much later that he stuck to the revisionist line of the Soviet Union. Ho did work with China and served as an adviser to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army during China’s fight with Japan during World War II.
Ho was born 19 May1890 in Kim Lien in Annam, central Vietnam. His father was a public servant to the imperial court. Ho received his basic education from his father and the local village school. He attended the prestigious National Academy School in Hue but didn’t graduate. He worked for a short time as a teacher in a South Annam before traveling to Saigon, where he trained as a kitchen boy and pastry cook's assistant. He really should have kept to doing pastries. I’m sure he was great at making the kings tarts, which is more than he ever did for true communist revolution. He had a Fu Manchu moustache, It’s too bad he wasn’t a fictional character as Fu Manchu was.
If he were smart he would have stayed a cook. But he screwed up and got involved in politics.

Al JAzeer on Pol pot

2008-07-20T00:48:00.000-07:00

Films from the regime

2008-07-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

Pol Pot interview

A major writing project comes to an end

2008-06-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

I finally did it. I finished my newest book The Pol Pot Journals. I just have to proof read it and then send it to press. It is a fictional autobiography. Some people will accuse me of glamorizing a mass murderer. Actually that's not how I see it. I tried to portray him as he really was, and I cut through some of the misconceptions and exaggerations. I decided to finish this book when I put up a Pol Pot site that was designed simply as an educational tool. The blogs were meant to sound like him, as if he wrote them.
Some American felt I was insensitive and complained to Myspace, getting the site pulled. I hate to say this as an American, but when it comes to free speech, many of us are weenies and crybabies, when we hear something we don't like. It amuses me when I look at a British blog and they wonder why they have more freedom of speech when they don't even have a First amendment. I put up a new one, but most of the blogs are marked "friends only."
I've spent a lot of time on the book. All books take time to write and there is always some research even if the material is familiar. Just as some people like to play in a band, I like to write books. With the new internet services, a book can be quickly released through a small publisher. Most of mine are sold on line. Only 20% of buyers by on line, But it's less work and I do sell a few books.
I think this one will catch on.

Kent State after the invasion of Kampuchea

2008-05-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

The following is from my new book, The Pol Pot Journals, a novel about Pol Pot and his rise to power. It is filled with fake news paper accounts, based on real ones showing how the outside world saw and reacted to events in Cambodia. During the Kent State shootings, anti-war students were angered that President Richard Nixon, who promised to get the US out of Vietnam with “honor” had just ordered an invasion into Cambodia. He gave a televised speech to let the people know what he already had planned and executed in private. He couldn’t have polarized this country more, especially when he had clones such as James Allen Rhodes, of Ohio, to work as one of his own henchmen. Rhodes made no secret of his contempt for anti-war protesters as the following article states. The article is true, but it was condensed and rewritten since this my new book is actually a novel.

Excerpts: The Pol Pot Journals:

News Time:
May 11, 1970

“America’s youth: War on war”

Campus violence has erupted since President Richard Nixon decided to send thousands of troops across the border into Cambodia. Students called for immediate “provisional” strikes, across the country. One of the worst cases of violence was in Ohio last week.
Kent State, an obscure teachers college, became the national center of the anti-war debate, when National Guardsman opened fired, indiscriminately, on a crowd of about 2,000 unarmed students.
At first there was a carnival like atmosphere as students were drinking beer and dancing. Some students began using gasoline to light fires. Governor James Rhodes arrived. Without consulting the president of the college, Robert White, he began dispensing National Guard troops throughout the campus. There were about 500 in an hour. Rhodes said the campus trouble makers were worse than “brown-shirts, communists and vigilantes.”
He announced that he had banned all demonstrations, but he students hollered “This is our campus.”
Rhodes said “Evacuate the Commons area. You have no right to assemble.”
To that the students yelled back “Pigs of Campus! We don’t want your war”
At first tear gas was fired into the crowd, then the guards started running out and getting nervous. Facing rock throwing students, the guards retreated, but many held their guns, M-16 riffles, on the crowd. The guards opened fire and many students thought they were blanks at first.
“My God, this is for real,” a student shouted as she realized the bullets were chipping things around her.
Students began to run for cover.
“My God, they’re killing us,” one terrified girl said. A river of blood flowed from the head of one boy, while another tried to stop the profuse bleeding of another boy’s stomach. When the shooting stopped, four young people, none of whom were radicals for even protest leaders, were dead. Ten students were wounded.

Excerpts from The Pol Pot Journals

2008-05-07T17:26:00.000-07:00

The Pol Pot Journals will probably be released some time this summer:

Chapter 7
Collaborating with the Vietminh

Journal Entry: Sâr:

As the plain dropped down on the runway of the Cambodia International Airport, I couldn’t wait to be back in my own country again. France was interesting enough, but this was my home and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of joy at my returning.
For a while, Ponnary, Hem and some of the others stayed in Phnom Penh and tried to build up the party there. Ponnary worked as a school teacher at Lycee Sisowath, the very school she had graduated from before she left for France. For a while I taught at Chamraon Vichea, a new private college.
But it didn’t take for me to decide I needed to be in the country side helping to ensure that Kampuchea would become an independent country. I decided to become active in the Khmer Issarak. It was there that I met Comrade Chhit Choeun, who later changed his name to Ta Mok. He had fought against the Japanese as well as fighting with the resistance to the French. He was a seasoned fighter and new how to run a battle. With his balding head and his small thin frame, he could move through the jungle like a cat.
“You couldn’t have come at a better time,” Mok said, as we stood on the muddy embankments of the Chinit River. “I don’t think it will be much longer before we finally run the French out of Indochina. They took a real beating from the Germans in the World War.”
It was through the Vietnamese that we read books on guerrilla war, including Mao’s views on peasant and people’s war and the tactics of Vo Gip. We had a common enemy with the colonists in Indochina. Mao’s victory was a boost to our efforts. But we knew the war was not over yet, far from it. Ho had founded a government in the North of Vietnam and China was the first country to recognize it. The Soviets and their allies quickly followed.
At the time we were all united against the French. The Vietminh had formed a federation with all three countries, but they wanted to concentrate on pushing the French out of Vietnam once and for all.
“The Vietnamese seem to run everything.” I said.
“I’ve noticed that. But I don’t think that will last either. There are some of us who will not help Vietnam create a small empire and call it a federation.”
I was glad to hear that. I wasn’t the only one who felt suspicious of the Vietnamese intentions on Laos and Kampuchea.
Our Khmer Association was now considered a Marxist Study Circle. We had learned the basics of Marxism, now we needed tactics, especially guerrilla tactics. Reading out of books was helpful, but when members of the Vietminh actually invited us to go with them to Vietnam and learn to fight guerilla warfare for real, we were all ecstatic.
Once there, we got to see the French soldiers. After all these years, I finally saw the tables turned on them. They still had superior weapons, but we developed superior tactics. We fired at them from behind the dense jungle brush and they couldn’t even see us. They fell like flies, often getting it right in the head and going down before they knew what hit them. At times they seemed like a flock of panicked geese, not knowing what to do next. They had a hard time spotting us and at times they were like blind men shooting in the dark.
The Vietminh were setting up Khmer cells across Kampuchea and forming a front, similar to one they had formed in Vietnam. However, very little fighting was going on in Kampuchea. By 1953 Kampuchea had gained independence from France and the Vietnamese considered the conflict over. But they had left four zones, East, West, Southeast, and a zone nearly completely controlled by the Vietnamese, in control of party Khmer Communist Party operatives.
The war with the French was about through, although they left a puppet government in the south. It took the French Indochina Flag, yellow with the French tri-colors and replaced it with a yellow flag with three red lines.
All the Vietnamese had to do was push out the fledging government to the south and their country was liberated. But two problems came up. First, they didn’t realize the United States would send military adviser, weapons and establish a presents there. This meant the South had a government that would be much harder to over through than first believed. The second was that they never considered our revolutionary potential for anything other than independence. I began to overhear Vietnamese officers saying that Laos and Cambodian had a common enemy, but Vietnam would was mature enough to liberate itself and form a people’s government, based on socialism. This line went straight up to the top.
When I discussed the development of a socialist people’s government in Kampuchea, the Vietnamese always scoffed at the idea.

Happy May Day

2008-04-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

Khmer lesson

2008-04-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

This is your first Khmer language speaking lesson, okay?Let's pretend you have a nice Khmer girl friend.

You say, as I have here:
"suhs day. Neak srey sok sap baie, chea te? khnyum srolanh srok khmae"(Hello. How are you (to a lady or girl). I love cambodia!S
ee how easy that was.

Buddhist Stupa Tributes Khieu Ponnary

2008-04-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

A Buddhist Stupa has been built at Wat Svay Pope for Khieu Ponnary , the the late ex-wife of Pol Pot. The stupa was built by Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith.
This may seem strange, but Ponnary and Pol got married in a Buddhist ceremony and the Communist Party of Kampuchea actually took a lot from that religions since it was nearly the only local theoretical influence Kampuchea had at the time.
A stupa (from Sanskrit and Pāli, literally meaning "heap") is a mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics--typically, the remains of a Buddha or saint.

Model of a stupa

Masters of War

2008-03-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

My book is progressing

2008-02-16T13:52:00.000-08:00

I have just finished my rough draft of my autobiography. I hope to have it out by summer. Since I’m actually dead, that makes me a ghost writer. It would have been better if I had written this while I was still alive, but I figure better late than never.
-ប៉ុលពត/Pol

Armed forces day Jan. 17

2008-01-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

Last week was the founding of our armed forces for the Communist Party of Kampuchea. It was a special holiday as we organized the poor peasants and introduced them to the military riffle and use for the first time.

We didn’t have jets. If we had had more time, I’m sure we would have gotten them from China.

Jan. 5 Birth of the Consitution Day

2008-01-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

From the Pol Pot Journals:
So as you might expect, we do have festivals in January, but not new year day. That comes later. We do have Constitution Day, maybe some parades and parties, and later on the 17 is Armed Forced Day. A not to those interested in my Autobiography (a work in progress), my assistant, who is a great arm chair traveler, is planning a trip to Kampuchea next Spring Break. Of course he may back out due to the fact that he's usually broke, but he seems determined to make the trip. So a great year awaits us I hope.

No December holidays

2007-12-23T22:36:00.000-08:00

One thing we never had in democratic Kampuchea is a holiday for December. We had an independence day, Armed forces day, the defeat of imperialist day, most of which fell in different months. Almost all months had at least one holiday, but not December.

សតិវេ ត្តុ់

Scary monsters

2007-11-17T22:58:00.000-08:00

The ruling class of our empire needs to keep people in line and to do so they have enlisted past leaders that they use as horrible scary monsters the way ancient Christians used wolfs ghosts, hobgoblins and other spooks in horrid fairy tales to scare children from danger. After all, no child would go near an old Witch woman living in the woods after hearing fairy tales of them pushing children into ovens to cook an eat them.Today’s modern spooks include Pol Pot, (ប៉ុលពត), Joseph Stalin (Иосиф Сталин), Mao Zedong (毛泽东), Adolf Hitler and even VI Lenin (В. И. Ленин). Pol and Stalin did kill large numbers of people unnecessarily. Others, Mao and Lenin, have become the focus of modern historical revisionist who get published by and for those who want to exaggerate these people’s mistakes to make them look like mass murderers of history, along with Hitler. Hitler grew out of a movement supported by capitalist and he inspired such historical villain as Francisco Franco, of Spain or António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal, fascist rulers who came from the same mold as Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Franco still has supporters and apologists of US conservative pundits. Hitler only became an evil monster after he turned the capitalist western countries.

ប៉ុលពត and 毛泽东

When Ronald Reagan was president, he and Televangilist Pat Robertson described the Sandinista Revolution as if it were the same as Pol Pot. Former President Richard Nixon treated the elected Marxist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, as if he were Stalin and he made every effort to remove him. Many in the press treated Augusto Pinochet, the bloody military dictator who replaced Allende, as a hero. It seems the term totalitarian has begun to mean a government of egalitarianism and it is that egalitarianism that the ruling elite can’t stand. It’s not the killings or repression. It’s the idea that rich and powerful people are the first to go in a socialist revolution. What they don’t want us to know is that the poor are usually the last to suffer.It was Herbert Marcuse who, in his book One Dimensional Man, Warned that “Society takes care of the need for liberation by satisfying the needs which make servitude palatable and perhaps even unnoticeable.”So our large middle class is bought off with TVs cars and other toys that make it seem as if we are living the good life. But our democracy is a farce. Powerful corporation buy political power for our election candidates, who pay lip service to issue the spend little time on, such as abortion, while providing nearly nothing but lip service for the people who vote for them. This creates the façade that we are using “democracy” to control our fates when the US bourgeoisie ruling class is providing us a patronizing façade, of nor more value than a pacifier.In the third world, there is much less façade. Poverty is deep and obvious. Opponents of the system are met with harsh repression. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are prime examples. In Iraq our leaders bring them meaningless elections that do not improve their lives at all, they have lines and rationing for gasoline, yet they sit on the worlds largest oil reserves. Pakistan is a complete dictatorship. But are we all afraid of these scary monsters and super creeps. Much of the third world has long lost it’s illusions of the first worlds “scary monsters.” Stalin and Pol have their supporters and Maoism has inspired insurgencies that have made great strides in Nepal and India.As for America and the west, even here disillusioned youth question the idea that Mao or Che Guevara are such “scary monsters.” They have seen through the façade of US “democracy,” especially with the war in Iraq and the hypocrisy of our president and they are beginning to see the scary monsters for what they are:paper tigers made from historical people in the past.They know the ruling class is only using these people to scare everyone away from change, revolution and socialism. More and more I see signs that young people in the US, as well as those in the third world, are not afraid to change society.So let our elite leaders sleep at night with nightmares of Stalin, pol and Mao victories, while the rest of us sleep well with dreams of a better tomorrow.

In the US, the First Amendment protects books on Pol Pot

2007-11-07T10:57:00.000-08:00

I may take a trip to Kampuchea next spring break, both because it will help me understand what I’m writing in my book and the fact that I am interested in Khmer culture.
As for the book I’m writing about Pol Pot, The Pol Pot Journals, it is not the usual “making of a nightmare” style book, which has been over done, neither does it glorify Pol. Ever since my first Pol Pot history site was closed due to complaints, which I believe came mostly from American citizens, I’ve decided the time is right to write on a man who many people find interesting, even if they don’t like the large numbers of people who died during his reign.
All the complaints I got were from Americans who went to Cambodia (I’m sure on a guided tour sanctioned by the government) and they felt they could tell me I have insulted the entire population in Kampuchea. I know that isn’t true because the man still has admirers in his own country. And since when can an American speak for all the people in Kampuchea? I would have taken the complaints more seriously if they did not come from some sanctimonious arrogant Americans.Even if I wrote a book endorsing Pol Pot, we have a free speech amendment in the US and I have every right to say what I want.

Frank Zappa has stated the obvious. If the first amendment document does not protect words, then we live under fascism.

Everyone needs humor from time to time

2007-11-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

If I had nuclear power,
I’d take an evening show,
If I only had a bomb..
De do de do de do

I would waist away the hours
As I become a major power,

If I only had a bomb. (OK I stole the music from the Wizard of Oz.)

These were taken fro the wizard of Oz also.

Freedom – yes –Theocracy NO!

2007-10-18T19:52:00.001-07:00

Monks are tapeworms gnawing out the bowels of society- Angkar

លោកសង្ឃជាព្រូនសដ្ដម - អដ្ដកា

the Mayagüez

2007-10-14T22:56:00.000-07:00

Our first year was going well, The first big snag came when an American ship called the Mayagüez came through our waters. We boarded it and searched as did all other ships. If nothing unusual is on them we let them go. I no sooner gave the order to release the ship when The US President Gerald Ford, decided to make an issue of this thing and send in his marines. They crashed one of their own aircraft and killed around 25 of their own men. They killed several of our soldiers and sunk one of our navy ships. We never had a big navy to begin with. This was all done so Fork could look like a macho cowboy to his own people. The 100 or so deaths were completely unnecessary.
Still we where worried about further attacks and had to move our entire headquarters to a Silver Pagoda, on the edge of town. The Pagoda was alright but although it was large enough for us, there were fewer rooms. Once again some of us lost our privacy and our own offices. This building just didn’t have enough rooms.

Article from Time May 26, 1875,

"Have been fired on and boarded by Cambodian armed forces. Vessel being escorted to unknown Cambodian port."
When that last distress call crackled over the air from the beleaguered U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez in the Gulf of Siam last week, it set in motion a dramatic, controversial train of events that significantly changed the image of U.S. power in the world—and the stature of President Gerald Ford. By calling up U.S. military might and successfully forcing the Cambodians to surrender the ship and free the 39-man crew, Ford acted more firmly and decisively than at any other time in his presidency. By drawing the line against aggression in the Mayaguez incident, he put potential adversaries on notice that despite recent setbacks in Indochina and the Middle East, the U.S. would not allow itself to be intimidated. That action reassured some discouraged and mistrustful allies that the U.S. intends to defend vigorously its overseas interests. But the events of the week also raised a series of questions that are bound to be debated in the U.S. and in foreign capitals for months to come.
Ford showed that in a confrontation he was not only willing to risk using military force but also that, once committed, he would use plenty of it. Thus, to free one freighter and not quite twoscore crewmen, the President called out the Marines, the Air Force and the Navy. He ordered assault troops—supported by warships, fighter-bombers and helicopters—to invade a tiny island of disputed nationality where the crewmen were thought (erroneously) to be held. To prevent a Cambodian counterstrike, he ordered two much disputed bombing raids of the Cambodian mainland. At home and abroad, some political experts thought that the show of force, which had many of the gung-ho elements of a John Wayne movie, was excessive. The Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun asked, "Why did [the U.S.] have to use a cannon to shoot a chicken?"
Hard Kick. The cannon was effective, of course, showing the world that the U.S. will not accept humiliating provocations. But the U.S. success owed almost as much to luck as to skill in combat. If the Communist Cambodians had dug in and refused to release the Mayaguez crew, the military mission might well have aborted. In an interview with TIME Correspondent Joseph J. Kane, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger admitted: "The outcome was fortunate."
It was fortunate also because President Ford had been hoping for weeks to find a dramatic way to demonstrate to the world that the Communist victories in Indochina had not turned the U.S. into a paper tiger. He had been searching for a means to show that the U.S. is now conducting what Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently called an "abrasive" foreign policy. Even before the Cambodians seized the Mayaguez, one U.S. Government policy planner had told TIME, "There's quite a bit of agreement around here that it wouldn't be a bad thing if the other side goes a step or two too far in trying to kick us while we're down. It would give us a chance to kick them back—hard."
The Khmer Rouge, intoxicated by their recent takeover of Cambodia, provided that chance because the whole world could see that their seizure of the ship was an outrageous hijacking on the high seas.

តហេសតិនកិនងដិចកសូកេរ

It seems that Pol Pot still has supporters in Cambodia

2007-10-02T15:31:00.000-07:00

It seems Pol Pot is not universally hated even in Kampuchea. He has many supporters who lived near him who see him as a larger than life personality who has almost saint-like qualities. Here is an example of this from the New York Times - សតិវេណុ ទតុ

New York Times September 26, 2007:
Anlong Veng Journal; Praying to Pol Pot, Seeking Health and Good Luck

By SETH MYDANS
Published: June 23, 2001
Only the buzz of cicadas and the croaking of frogs break the silence here in the remote Dangrek Mountains. The damp monsoon air is filled with black butterflies.
Grinning and chattering about his war wounds like a man who has seen too much death, a villager named Som Neum, wearing only a dirty sarong around his waist, pushed aside reeds and brambles as he led a visitor up a rocky path to a small clearing.
Here, under a makeshift tin roof, lies the grave of one of the 20th century's worst mass killers, Pol Pot, who died three years ago leaving behind him a country stunned and ruined, where every person is a shattered survivor or the child of one.
From 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot ruled Cambodia, heading the Khmer Rouge government, which was responsible for more than a million deaths. The country has never recovered.
At the grave, Mr. Son Neum, 40, bent and with careful fingertips brushed away a scattering of twigs and leaves. Pol Pot was a good man, he said, so he has taken it on himself to tend this all but abandoned plot.
This is the place where Pol Pot, rejected at the end even by his Khmer Rouge followers, was cremated in disgrace on top of a stack of old tires and debris, the acrid black smoke curling up above the jungle trees.
There is still a rubble of black cinders among the sand and pebbles under the little roof, and strips of tire treads that survived the flames, as well as a tangle of thin radial wire salvaged from the burned tires.
Nearby is a wood marker reading, ''Pol Pot's cremation site.'' Nailed beneath the roof is a sign that says, ''Please help maintain this.''
What is most unsettling to an outsider is not that the grave has been forgotten, but that it has been remembered; people have come here to pay their respects.
At the head of the grave is a small cluster of their offerings: an empty Angkor beer can, a plastic water bottle, an unopened chocolate wafer bar, five cigarette butts on little skewers, a tin of joss sticks, a spray of wilted flowers.
Who has prayed here?
''They come for lottery numbers,'' said Mr. Som Neum, spitting out seeds from a handful of small blue berries. ''They pray to him. They ask his soul to tell them the winning numbers and the numbers come to them in dreams.''
And these are not necessarily hard-core Khmer Rouge. Like Mr. Som Neum, they include the villagers and soldiers who call these mountains home.
There are those in the mountain villages nearby who say they have won with the lottery numbers Pol Pot has given them. Others say they pray to him for health and good luck. Some say his spirit can cure disease.
In death, it seems, Pol Pot has become something of a patron saint of the Dangrek Mountains. Here along the northern border with Thailand, in one of the last strongholds of his Khmer Rouge movement, he is remembered by many with respect and by some with reverence.

Some organizations still support Pol Pot

2007-09-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

Here is a blog entry from the Rural People's Party(Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)
RPP Polemic Regarding Pol Pot: A Party Response to Trotskyists, Revisionists
The party was recently criticized at a forum frequented by "anti-racists." The criticisms were in response to a post by the party on the occasion of the Glorious 17th April and commemoration of the advances of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and Comrade Pol Pot. One critic was a member of the CPU$A who asserted, in response to our party line on Pol Pot, that "90 percent of the population" wants nothing to do with Pol Pot. The other critic was a Trotskyist art-youth, who found anti-revisionism, Maoism and the struggle of the Kampuchean people against amerikkkan imperialism "funny." A response was written by the party to the two detractors and upon completion of a response the party realized that we had been banned from further posting. Later on, the original post promoting the Glorious 17th April and the CPK was deleted. What follows is the party's response to the deleted post by the CPU$A member and self-proclaimed Trotskyist respectively:From a local perspective, we don't think that the rural and urban internal black nation oppressed colonies in the south-eastern united snakkkes have a problem with implementing Pol Pot line. We don't think that if you asked the huge portion of imprisoned members of the black nation in the south suffering this very moment under immediate imperialist repression that they are going to be opposed to the bottom rail becoming the top rail by establishing the iron fist of proletarian dictatorship against the oppressor classes and for the consolidation of proletarian power. We don't think the proletarian and lumpenproletarian elements are opposed to reparations being extracted from the white nationalist amerikkkan bourgeoisie and there being self-determination and self-reliance (both of the latter which are upheld by the CPK, Juche Korea and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism) in a revolutionary independent state for the black south, which constitutes a nation according to Comrade Stalin's analysis. In declaring war on private property, we do not think that the southern black nation has a problem with property being expropriated from the white nationalist exploiter who has a long and well-known history of oppression of non-whites. This includes the old bourgeoisie AND the noveoux rich which compromise the entire spectrum of labour aristocracy, petit bourgeois and bourgeoisie. The CPUSA as you know supported Comrade Stalin's analysis of the amerikkkan southeast in that an independent black nation should be established in the south-eastern united states, a line which was furthered by CPUSA member Comrade Harry Haywood. However the CPUSA later became traitors to the international proletariat when they embraced Kruschevite revisionism when Krushev betrayed the people of the USSR to capitalist restoration. When the CPUSA dropped support for Comrade Stalin they also dropped the line which Comrade Stalin had forged in regard to a black nation in the southeast U.S. and effectively decided (in line with their new-found revisionism) that there "isn't" a black nation in the south. Bourgeois and labour aristocratic elements have every interest in declaring war on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism so that the oppressed proletariat and lumpenproletariat can stay "in their place." In reference to the CPUSA, feel free to contact the party directly at our post office box or email address as listed on our website and we would be happy to send you via mail a polemic between a leadership level member of the CPUSA and supporters of the MIM (Maoist Internationalist Movement), taken from the theoretical journal MIM Theory. This may aid in your analysis between the contradictions of your party line (CPUSA) and our party line.We'd like to suggest that you consider also in regard to Pol Pot, the fact that there is an uncriticized racism and xenophobia amongst the communist movement in the U$ that encompasses Pol Pot, Mao, Great Leader Kim Il Sung and Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. From a critical standpoint, class members of the white bourgeois and white labour aristocracy should be asking themselves, why the condescension towards Asians - and certain Asians in particular (it is fine for bourgeoisified amerikkkan populace to love the Japanese - but of course many of these other nations, they simply must be crazy, correct?) Also when one criticizes Maoism on this continent, one has to consider in their criticism the Black Panther Party, which was founded and existed as a Maoist political organization and active worker's administration toward implementing a dynamic revolutionary black nationalism according to Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought before it was destroyed by FBI sponsored wrecking internally and externally. The Black Panther Party historically IS the pre-eminent Maoist vanguard in the U$, so they should be considered in any criticism of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism from an anti-racist perspective.There is a largely uncriticized white chauvinism existent in communist/socialist circles within the U$ - which basically posits that they, whether being bourgeois college intellectuals or blue collar unionised labour aristocracy (who are not part of the proletariat, as their interests are intimately entwined with the interests of U.S. imperialism) "basically know better" than the internationalist proletariat. "We, the white bourgeois and labour aristocracy, we know better than what Mao, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Pol Pot worked for and established." "We, the white bourgeois and labour aristocracy, possess the CORRECT revolutionary line for the internationalist proletariat but, well, the internationalist proletariat THEMSELVES are obviously insane (throw in a reference to the DPR of Korea and thoughts of one's own "distaste" for actual socio-political elements of non-white nations foreign to "White America") so please, leave formulating the CORRECT revolutionary position to us (the white bourgeois and labour aristocracy) and we'll inform you as to what to do." "We, the white bourgeois and labour aristocracy, we appropriate the right to co-opt racial images of 'acceptable' Asian origin and 'acceptable' South American and Aztlan origin and 'acceptable' black nation origin in a fetishistic manner however, in reality, when it comes down to line and practice in regard to the black nation Maoists and the Maoists in India and Juche Korea, etc., we are going to completely reject them from an individualistic, privileged vantage point regardless of material conditions." These sort of perspectives are example perspectives of white chauvinism, and should be criticized. In line formulation, both open revisionists (CPUSA) and Trotskyites (referencing the other individual poster) should consider why they, from a privileged material vantage point, are "too good" to implement materialist criticism, analysis, self-criticism and Maoist thought-reform as promulgated by the luminaries of communism upheld by the Rural People's Party (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist.) Historically this sort of chauvinism is not unprecedented of course, as the internationalist proletariat are used to being broadly dismissed. The internationalist proletariat can see them (the bourgeois) however the bourgeois can't see the internationalist proletariat, as the former's vision is effectively blurred by individualism, racism, white chauvinism and the poisonous bourgeois way of life. Once thought-reform has been done and there been a sufficient cleansing of the mind, only then will socially-programmed bourgeois start to get to the point where they can accept proletarian leadership without their knee-jerk genetic supremacist response that "we know better than the oppressed nation proletarians."

A younger Ponnary

2007-09-03T21:31:00.000-07:00

I found a younger and more flattering picture of Khieu Ponnary (លោកខៀវ ប់នណារី)

The name Pol Pot or ប៉ុលពត

2007-08-17T22:38:00.000-07:00

It was along the Laos border that we all took aliases. We all had used aliases by now. Mine was Pol. The name was taken from a group of aborigine type people captured and enslaved by the Ancient Khmer Kings. I hated kings, so naming myself after the kings slaves made was a great irony. My main enemy in life had always been the monarchy in Phnom Penh, which was dominated by Sihanouk.

We all wore the same clothes as the poor, sandles made of tires, plain black clothes and a Krama, red checkered for our army and our cadre. We decided that all members of our party would not drink beer or smoke the store bought cigarettes from the city. We could drink Palm wine and roll our own cigarettes which was all that was the poorest peasants had to drink and smoke. We would also eat the same food as them. We would not live better than the poorest of the peasants.

As time went on I continued to use my alias. It stuck and I was rarely referred to as Sâr any longer. I eventually added Pot to the name, which came from an old Khmer tradition of people without a second name simply taking a one syllable name that sounded similar to the first name, for example, someone named Vet might add V at. It is that name that I became known throughout the world as Pol Pot or as they say in Khmer, ប៉ុលពត.

Coming soon The Pol Pot Journals

2007-08-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

I have been working on a book about Pol's life, which will be called The Pol Pot Journals. I've been working on this for some time, but I now feel I can find a publisher and get the book on the shelves as soon as I finish it. It will take a few months, but be prepared for The Pol Pot Journals.
This book will give you the true scoop on how he devised one of the most egalitarian societies on the earth. he made some serious mistakes, he made a lot of enemies among the people and killed many unnecessarily, but in the long run, he will go down in history as a very influencial man.
This will not be about Kampuchea, but Pol Pot, as a character study.

Merchandising

2007-07-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

I've been approached by more merchandisers and they made the point that there are shirts for Mao, Stalin and Che, but none for Pol Pot. I’ve been curious as to how much of this stuff people would actually buy. I suppose this is what kind of stuff people would by to honour pol Pot. Shirts, action figures, just imagine it.

Action figure
Flag ShirPol's Shirt

From the Pol Pot Journals

2007-06-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

Chapter 14
The Creation of កម្ពុជា ប្រជាផិបតេយ្យ (Democratic Kampuchea)

Update magazine, April 28, 1975

KHIEU SAMPHAN: OUT OF THE JUNGLE
Cambodia’s conquerors are as
shrouded in mystery as the jungles in
- which they operated for so long. Western
experts have not even been able to de-
termine whether the movement is basi-
cally Cambodian nationalist, Cambodi-
an Marxist or doctrinaire Communist.
What is already clear, however, is that
Khieu Samphan, 43, will probably wield
the most power in the new regime. Dur
- ing the war he was Deputy Premier to Prince Norodom Sihanouk as well as
Minister of Defense and commander in
chief of the Khmer Rouge fighting forc- es. TIME’s Stephen Heder interviewed
Samphan ‘s younger brother Khieu Seng
Kim in Phnom-Penh early this month and cabled this profile of the new Cambodian leader:

សតិវូ ទតុ

Khmer language.

2007-05-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

The Khmer language is something I’m trying to learn. I’ve go a book on it so it should not be that hard to learn. There’s also the words and while it may take longer to learn all the words, I can learn some of them and although I may never be a fluent Khmer speaker, I can learn it as well as I’ve learned Spanish.
This is my attempt to translate my name into Khmer. I’m fairly certain the first name is right, providing the Khmer system doesn’t use silent vowels that the English language does.
សតរវ រាតត់

May celebrations in Democratic Kampuchea

2007-05-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, May Day was a national holiday in Democratic Kampuchea, but it was on May 20 and called the Birth of the Peasant Co-operation Organization.

Happy New year

2007-04-06T23:16:00.000-07:00

Yes it was April 17, 1975, that the Communist Party of Kampuchea rolled into Phnom Penh and declared the beginning of Democratic Kampuchea. It was called it the year Zero and today it would have been the year 32.
Pol Pot ordered that all cadre would drink only what the peasants had, palm wine.

So happy new year! Get out the palm wine and have some fun!

Pol/ប៉ុល vs. Mao/毛

2007-03-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

In Reading Philip Short's Pol Pot, he makes a distinction between the attitudes of the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Having had the influence of Confucius who believed people were basically good, the Chinese believed in trying to reform people or giving them a second chance. In Kampuchea, the Pol Pot government was more influenced by Theravada Buddhism, a somewhat fatalistic religion with the belief that those who are bad are unredeemable.

Even though we are a capitalist society, it is odd that we keep leaning to the idea that people are unredeemable. More and more we here people say that small crimes, if not dealt with harshly, only lead to severe crimes. For example a petty thief will move up to murder and rape if not keep behind bars most of his life.

We have new laws against sex offenders. The restrictions are becoming so great, that some people are beginning to wonder where we will let these people live and where they will work? Also, while some of these people are quite vile, there may be some men who are 18 years old convicted of having sex with a 15 year old. Does it really make sense to lump them with 30 year old men that have sex with 9 year olds and have them carry that type of label the rest of their lives?

The drunk driving laws are stiffer every year. Now there is no way to expunge an earlier DUI charge, even if it is a minor one. It is a life long label.

This is probably the only country that will not allow a person to vote after a felony conviction, even after their time is served. This law actually violates a human rights agreement we signed years ago at the UN.

So the question I raise is --why are we following the examples of a person such as Pol Pot, when so many Americans have condemned him for his causal killing of people who made mistakes or broke minor laws?

Kansas, as with many states now has a carry and conceal law that allows a person who sees a robbery or crime in progress to act as judge, jury and executioner. Isn't this similar to what Pol Pot's cadre actually did? They were left on their own to dish out any punishment they felt fit a crime and that often met execution, even for minor theft.

A common argument for capitol punishment is that the criminal will never kill again. He also will not have a chance at rehabilitation.

I have a friend in prison who is a member of the Ohio 8. He told me the constantly cut back on educational opportunities for inmates and there seems to be a lot less emphasis on rehabilitation and more on punishment.

Another wise observation of Mao was:

"To sum up, we must learn to look at problems from all sides, seeing the reverse as well as the obverse side of things. In given conditions, a bad thing can lead to good results and a good thing to bad results. More than two thousand years ago Lao Tzu said: "Good fortune lieth within bad, bad fortune lurketh within good.''

So in America, we move closer and closer to a society which offers trouble makers no second chance for redemption. There is no longer the belief that people who have gone bad can be rehabilitated. Statistically crime has been going down, yet people, politicians and the news media continue to act as if it is still on the rise. This was pointed out in "Bowling for Columbine." Our politicians, pundits and many educators still call Mao one of the main mass murderers of the 20th century and yet even in his country, he believed in looking at the root causes of a disturbances and without looking at why people cause trouble. According to Short, in China they believed people could be rehabilitated.

In the US we are headed in a different direction. If anything, we are emulating Pol Pot who, along with his party, believed bad people were unredeemable. Some were unredeemable due to their background and upbringing. Is that the direction the US is headed? Will America's leaders be the next Pol Pot of the 21st Century?

Is this really what Americans want for their future?

Pol Pot --- the 20th Century authoritarian leader

George Bush --- the 21st Century authoritarian leader

International Women's Day

2007-03-17T22:13:00.000-07:00

The Mother of our Revolution Ponnary

Women fought for the revolution so they could be free.

Women played an active part in running the party, fighting in the military and helped rebuild war-torn Kampuchea.

Democratic Kampuchea National Anthem

2007-03-03T15:09:00.000-08:00

The bright red blood was spilled over the towns
And over the plain of Kampuchea, our motherland,
The blood of our good workers and farmers and of
Our revolutionary combatants, of both men and women.
Their blood produced a great anger and the courage
To contend with heroism. On the 17th of April,
Under the revolutionary banner, their blood freed
Us from the state of slavery.
Hurrah for the glorious 17th of April!
That wonderful victory had greater significance
Than the Angkor period!
We are uniting to construct a Kampuchea with a
New and better society, democratic, egalitarian
And just. We follow the road to a firmly-based
Independence. We absolutely guarantee to defend
Our motherland, our fine territory, our
Magnificent revolution!
Hurrah for the new Kampuchea, a splendid,
Democratic land of plenty! We guarantee to raise
Aloft and wave the red banner of the revolution.
We shall make our motherland prosperous beyond
All others, magnificent, wonderful!

ឈាមក្រហមច្រាល
ស្រោចសព៌ក្រុងវាល កម្ពុជាមាតុភូមិ
ឈាមកម្មករ កសិករដ៏ឧត្តម
ឈាមយុទ្ធជន យុទ្ធនារីបដិវត្តិ ។
ឈាមប្រែក្លាយជា កំហឹងខ្លាំងក្លា
តសូមោះមុត
ដប់ប្រាំពីរមេសា ក្រោមទង់បដិវត្តិ
ឈាមរំដោះ អំពីភាពខ្ញុំគេ ។
ជយោ ! ជយោ ! ដប់ប្រាំពីរមេសាជោគជ័យ !
មហាអស្ចារ្យមានន័យធំធេង
លើសសម័យអង្គរ !
យើងរួបរួមគ្នា
កសាងកម្ពុជានឹងសង្គមថ្មី
បវរប្រជាធិបពេយ្យ សមភាពនឹងយុតិធឞ៌
តាមាគ៌឵មច្឵ស់ការ ឯករាជ្យរឹងមាំ
ប្តេជ្ញាដាច់ខ឵ត ការពារមាតុភូមិ
ទឹកដីឧត្តម បដិវត្តដ៏រុងរឿង
ជយោ ! ជយោ ! ជយោ ! កម្ពុជាថ្មី
ប្រជាធិបពេយ្យ សំបូរថ្កុមថ្កើង
ប្តេជ្ញាជ្រោងគ្រវី ទង់បដិវត្តិក្រហមខ្ពស់ឡើង
សាងមាតុភូមិយើង អោយច្រើនផ្លោះ
មហារុងរឿង មហាអស្ចារ្យ !

Where Pol Pot got his name

2007-03-01T20:43:00.000-08:00

Several people have wondered where Pol Pot got his name it was originally Saloth Sar, until shortly before the Communist Party of Kampuchea came to power in 1975.
According to From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Saloth Sar (May 19, 1925–April 16, 1998), better known as Pol Pot (short for Politique Potentielle, French for "potential politic"), was the ruler of the Khmer Rouge and the Prime Minister of Cambodia (officially Democratic Kampuchea during his rule) from 1976 to 1979, having been de facto leader since mid-1975.

WRONG - according to Philip Short, author of Pol Pot, The name was taken from a group of aborigine type people captured and enslaved by the Ancient Khmer Kings. Pol hated kings, so naming himself after the kings slaves made a lot of sense. His main enemy in life had always been the monarchy in Phnom Penh, which was dominated by Norodom Sihanouk. The name Pot came from an old Khmer tradition of people without a second name simply taking a one syllable name that sounded similar to the first name, for example, someone named Yen might add Yat and be known as Yen Yat.
The obvious clue that Wikipedia is wrong comes from the idea that Sar would take a French name, when his movement spoke and wrote only in Khmer and rejected all foreign influence including foreign languages.

Chidren of The Revolution

2007-02-13T20:22:00.000-08:00

Anghar slogans:"Clay is molded while it is still soft."

"You have to be, and remain, faithful to the revolution. People age quickly. Being young, you are at the most receptive age, and capable to assimilate what the revolution stands for, better than anyone else." - Pol Pot

by T-Rex

CPK always needed musicians

2007-02-13T20:12:00.000-08:00

From NPR

Day to Day, July 14, 2005 · "I cannot tell you how or why I survived; I do not know myself."
So begins the book Music Through the Dark, the remarkable story of how Cambodian musician Daran Kravanh survived the under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Kravanh came from a musical family of 11, but at 21, his tranquil life as an accordion player ended as the Khmer Rouge stormed the capital on April 19, 1975. Followers of Pol Pot singled out anyone educated, professional or "capitalist," meaning Westernized.
Kravanh, then a college student wearing a collared shirt and tie, was singled out and marched into the forest with others to be executed. He escaped and tried to reach Thailand, but chose not to risk the minefields along the border. He surrendered to the Khmer Rouge and was put to work in the camps, farming without tools.
Then, a miracle: He discovered an accordion on a tree stump and began to play. The soldier who owned the accordion told him to keep playing, and soon he and other musicians were performing in festivals glorifying the new regime.

How to sell a book

2007-02-04T22:57:00.000-08:00

Endorsements by dead people. The far right does this all the time, claiming Martin Luther King would march with the pro-life forces or that he would back a lot of our present wars because he would realize the injustice we are fighting. Some even claim Karl Marx would embrace capitalism if he were around today and saw how well it's turned out.
Of course they are dead and can't speak for themselves. That's the beauty of finding a dead spokesperson. You can put your words in their mouth and they can't stop you.

See the picture below for an example

ប៉ុលពត has a following

2007-01-28T15:37:00.000-08:00

While the official mainstream press calls him one of the most worst and murderous leaders of the 20th Century, it turns out Pol Pot (ប៉ុលពត) has a popular following. Although I lost the hyperlink, I actually found a pro-Pol Pot web site, dedicated to this wonderful leader. I understand they are putting up casinos near his death site, a town so small, most maps don't list it.
I might as well have him as a logo to sell my new novel, since he is so much better known that I.

Apocalypse Now

2007-01-23T20:06:00.000-08:00

There are some similarities between Colonel Kurtz f the movie “Apocalypse Now” and Pol Pot. Pol went into the forest and recruited Kampuchea’s most backward and fierce peasants for the core of his army of peasants to create what they believed would be a Communist Revolution (កុម្មុយនិស្ត បធិវត្តន).

More excerpts from the Pol Pot Journals

2007-01-04T20:53:00.000-08:00

The French Revolution – The Directorate

Journal Entry: Sâr

Khieu, was one of the first of us to read the Communist Manifesto, which he found in the back of the college library. Books like that were banned under Sihanouk’s rule. But Khieu read it and was determined to understand it.
I was reading something entirely different. Thanks to all the French history books, I was able to read about the French Revolution. There was nothing like it at the time and the shock wave from it rippled out and changed all of Europe forever.
I hated kings. There was nothing I liked better than reading about the King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette plus many other aristocrats were beheaded by the use of the Guillotine, in 1793.
I saw a picture of a revolutionary holding up high the head of King Louis XVI by his hair. The king’s body was clothed in a white prison uniform. The Guillotine stood on a large dark wooden platform.

The monarchs of Europe were so outraged over the beheadings, that in 1793 Britain, Spain and the Netherlands declared War against France. Needless to say they were unsuccessful and the French proved that kings and queens were unnecessary. The slogans of the revolution were:
“Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité”
The US, at the time, actually has some revolutionaries who inspired this event. It’s odd that such a revolutionary state could become so reactionary in 200 years. A man called Robespierre ruled during the time period from the fall of the Bastille to the reactionary “Reign of Terror.” During that time, many innocent people had their heads lopped off by the Guillotine. During one stretch of paranoia, 1,376 individuals were guillotined in 47 days, filling the streets with streams of blood. Blood gushed as each head fell into brown whicker basket.
The executioners must have been soaked in blood by the end of the day, with blood seeping into their shoes. It must have been a sticky mess.
In 1795 the Reign of Terror ended with the Directorate. The Directorate had saved the French people from the terror of Robespierre. The Directorate was an organization, without a king or god-head expecting the people to bow down to. Its leaders seemed to stay secret. It operated and ran the new revolution. They secularized the country, even starting a new calendar with the year 1, to get away from the Christian calendar the rest of Europe was using,
They also had to protect themselves, so there the Guillotine still had to be used against those who would try and destroy the revolution. The country and the ideals of the revolution were worth loosing a few lives. Especially, when there were so many traitors among them. But there was one traitor the Directorate did not count on. That was their own General, the appointed young Corsican soldier, NAPOLEON, to lead the armies of France against its enemies. By 1799 Napoleon had become head of a new government that was in fact a dictatorship. He abolished the Directorate and set himself up for one man rule. He had betrayed the revolution. He set himself up as a king-head or god-head, calling himself an emperor. He proceeded to try and conquer most of Europe. He was indeed a traitor to the people of France.

New Years Day 31

2006-12-28T20:55:00.000-08:00

In Democratic Kampuchea, the a new calendar began with the year zero. That was in 1975. So for Polists, the New Year will be 31.

they are not the only ones with a different calendar.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s new year will be 96.
The North Korean government and associated organisations use a variation of the Gregorian calendar with a Juche year based on April 15, 1912 A.D., the date of birth of Kim Il-sung, as year 1. There is no Juche year 0. The calendar was introduced in 1997. Months are unchanged from those in the standard Gregorian calendar. In many instances, the Juche year is given after the A.D. year, for example, 27 June 2007 Juche 96. But in North Korean publications, the Juche year is usually placed before the corresponding A.D. year, as in Juche 96 (2007).
A calendar similar to Democratic Kampuchea was also tried during the first governments of the French Revolution, starting with the year 1, of the revolution.

오토

New Pol Pot book to come out

2006-12-19T22:23:00.000-08:00

The Pol Pot Journals - a fictional account of a leader who wrote only songs.

CPK Maxims

2006-12-02T00:05:00.000-08:00

Some of KPC slogans were a bit dreary, others were inspirational.
Here is an example of both. The first is inspirational, the next a letdown to a lot of people.

ងករាផ្សម្ម។ស់ការ

aékriech mchah ka:

Be masters of your own destiny!

ទួកមិនចំរណញ ងករញ គីមិនឧ។ត

Tuk min châmnénh, dâ:k chénh kâ: min kha:t

No Gain in keeping, No loss in weeding out

Attacking Buddah

2006-11-05T13:56:00.000-08:00

Here is an excerpt from my new bool The Pol Pot Journals.

The problem is that this stuff is so ingrained in a person's heads, it's hard to get out. So we ended up using it, unconsciously. For example, some phrases from Ankar included:

"Learn from the model comrades, learn from our magnificent people, and forever learn from valuable documents, concentrate your mind to increase the discipline of Ankar and the theories of Marx-Lenin, in order to raise your mental competency."

And:

"Everyone has to rely solely on his own strength."
"You have to take a hand in your own future!"
"Be masters of your own destiny!"

And yet we also pursued a campaign against the Buddhist monks with such slogans as:

"Monks are parasites."
"Monks are tapeworms gnawing at the Bowels of society."
When I read about the religion in politics involved in the US, I can only remember our own problems with religion we dealt with it harshly. We were not going to become a Theocracy, Which is happening in the US.
Here is an excerpt from my journals:

"Buddhas were born from a mason's trowel."
"Religion is the opiate of people."
As for the monks themselves, they were dressed like everyone one else and sent into the country side to do hard work, farming the land for rice. They got no privileges from us. They worked like everyone else, or they paid for it.
We constantly stressed to the people that Buddhas were nothing more than statues and good for nothing more than bags of cement.

Casino Rouge

2006-10-30T22:12:00.000-08:00

What do the Kampucheans do to commemorate Pol Pot and his movement. Now in the extremely tiny town of Anlong Veng, The last strong hold of the army of Democratic Kampuchea, there are tourist sites and now a full size casino.
Before the town had dirt roads and the buildings lived in by the former KD rulers, were simple cinderblock buildings. While the organization may be gone, some of its former members are still around and can remember their glory days.
According to The Cambodia Daily:

"A small dirt path snakes through the tall grass beyond Bin Saravuth's stall to Pol Pot's final resting place, which is marked with a Ministry of Tourism sign that reads "Pol Pot was cremated here."A low shelter of wood and corrugated metal has been built over a pile of dirt and ash where the body of Democratic Kampuchea's Brother No 1 apparently lay burning at his unceremonious cremation, days after his April 1998 death. Locals have also constructed a new wooden fence around the area, which earlier this month appeared freshly swept and clear of weeds and refuse.Sticks of incense and offerings of now-shriveled flowers decompose in front of a wooden shrine set up beside the cremation site evidence of remaining loyalty to the notorious leader.Apparently unaware of the upkeep at the site, Seang Sokheng, the district tourism director, said he has designs to build a fence around Pol Pot's resting place, which he was optimistic would help lure tourists."We plan to clear the grass and bush around Pol Pot's grave. It's quite overgrown and difficult for tourists to go there," he added."We think Pol Pot's grave is a potential destination for Anlong Veng," said Seang Sokheng, who also told of plans to offer boat rides to promote tourism at the swamp around Ta Mok's house."

And:

"During the Khmer Rouge, before integration, everybody was very disciplined and followed the Khmer Rouge rule: To not drink alcohol, no prostitution, no gambling," said Im Sopheap, a former rebel soldier and also now a deputy Anlong Veng district governor."Now Anlong Veng has been transformed into a liberal place," he said. "A casino is against the rule we used to follow. I don't understand why they're building it."

Apparently a lot of Kampucheans are trying to use Pol Pot as a tourist attraction and there seems to be some reverence for him by some of the locals. He wasn't hated by everyone, apparently.

Dissalusionment with Democratic Kampuchea

2006-10-15T21:12:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from: Memoirs of a Drugged-Up, Sex-Crazed Yippie Tales from the 1970s counter-culture: Drugs, sex, politics and rock and roll
By Steve Otto

Chapter Seventeen 1979- A changed world

“The Khmer revolution has no president. What we are trying to do has never been done before in history.”

- Ieng Sary, foreign minister of Democratic Kampuchea

The one thing I could always count on with Ian was a good political conversation, when he wasn’t trying to pick up women. On this particular winter day, I walked into the Bier Stube and found Ian and one of his friends talking about the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia, now called Kampuchea.

“I agree with Henry Kissinger,” Ian said. “The Vietnamese did not go into Cambodia for humanitarian reasons. They went in to take advantage of the instability of Pol Pot’s government and then install a regime that would benefit them.”

“I can agree with that,” I said.

This was one of the few times that I did agree with Ian. It was ironic because I had discussed this matter with Shokrollah about a week earlier and he also agreed with Ian and me. Of course we agreed for different reasons.

In December of 1978 Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea and overthrew its leaders. By January of 1979, they installed a new government, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, headed by Heng Samrin. Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea government was over. His organization was pushed out into Thailand. He and his followers formed a guerrilla army of resistance. The Vietnamese kept troops and advisors in Kampuchea to help establish the new government.

My discussion with Ian reminded me of a conversation I had had with Shokrollah about the Khmer revolution of 1975. We had just left a Friends of the Iranian People’s meeting.

“I refused to just believe what a lot of reporters in the main-stream Western press are saying,” He said. “There may be some truth to those reports, but I won’t just take their word for it. And I don’t believe they are just real vicious as the reports say. That sounds like propaganda to me.”

I finally had to agree with him that the reports deserved some skepticism. The Western press was biased enough that if no one had been killed during that government, I seriously believe the press reports would have been almost the same. I had learned to be skeptical of foreign reporting. Shokrollah was even more so.

At first, I took the press reports for their face value; that Pol Pot was really mean. He killed a lot of people and banned just about anything a person, as myself, would like to do, such as listening to rock music. But after talking to Shokrollah, I began realizing that people from third world countries might see things differently. I decided to try to see the other side. I too began to question all the horror stories and noticed that certain leaders were singled out as brutal and evil who just happened to be opponents of US foreign policy. The Shah of Iran and Chile’s Pinochet were rarely, if ever, singled out for their torture and murder of political prisoners. Only opponents of US foreign policy were. Many foreign students told me Uganda’s Amin was brutal, but he also took a stand against imperialism. It was for that stand, they said, that Western journalists and politicians focused on his human rights abuses. ………….

After gaining an appreciation for Maoist philosophy, I was intrigued with the idea of a miniature Maoist revolution in Kampuchea. I began to notice the far-left tendencies of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, which the press called

the Khmer Rouge. It was the only other Maoist revolution to succeed in the world at that time. Kampuchea’s rulers eliminated money and private property. Democratic Kampuchea seemed fiercely independent, even though it got some military aid from China. For some time, I had mixed feelings about Pol Pot. On one hand, his movement seemed to be far to the left and yet there was no justification for those executions. I was also puzzled. I was so impressed with the philosophy of Mao, I couldn’t understand how a government that tried to imitate it could produce such a disaster. It was during the Cultural Revolution that Mao and Chiang Ching broke with Marx’s view that everything is based on economics. They insisted that ideas are more important than material things. That was a view that I agreed with. How could Kampuchea go so terribly wrong?

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the Kampuchea regime was not Maoist. It had an alliance with China but the CPK considered itself an ideological rival rather than having fraternal ties with the Chinese Communist Party. China simply needed Democratic Kampuchea to counter Vietnam’s expansion. The CPK’s views on Marxism were muddled and poorly developed. Most of the ideological documents of Pol Pot and his CPK were kept secret from all those outside the party, both inside and outside the country. They began leaking out of the country starting in 1979. Most of their ideology was summed up in two documents, Decisions of the Central Committee on a Variety of Questions and The Party’s Four-Year Plan to Build Socialism in All Fields, 1977 - 1980.

By 1979, both Shokrollah and I began to see that Democratic Kampuchea had some serious problems.

“They made a lot of mistakes,” Shokrollah said one night after our meeting. “They didn’t tolerate any of the nationalist bourgeoisie, which they may have needed in the short run. They should not have arrested Sihanouk, who

was progressive and had a popular following. The fact that they fell so fast showed they lacked popular support. But that was no excuse to invade the country and occupy it as Vietnam did.”

The Indochina war spilled over into the streets of the USA

2006-10-14T23:19:00.000-07:00

Most of the New Left grew out of the US involvement in Indochina. The following is an example

Here at home, the protest against the Vietnam War was beginning to wind down, since Nixon was withdrawing troops and ending the draft. However there were still our own radicals, such as the Weathermen or Weather Underground, as they called themselves, who were planting bombs by now.
A new group emerged, the Symbionese Liberation Army or SLA. They kidnapped Patty Hearst, the daughter of the famous newspaper mogal, William Randolph Hearst.
On August 21, 1973, they issued a Declaration of Revolutionary War & the Symbionese Program:
“The Symbionese Federation and The Symbionese Liberation Army is a united and federated grouping of members of different races and people and socialistic political parties of the oppressed people of The Fascist United States of America, who have under black and minority leadership formed and joined The Symbionese Federated Republic and have agreed to struggle together in behalf of all their people and races and political parties’ interest in the gaining of Freedom and Self Determination and Independence for all their people and races.”
They also robbed some banks and were trying to form an armed uprising. They didn’t last long, but it was clear that radicals had brought the war to the streets of America.

Another the Communist Party of Kampuchea song

2006-10-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

The Society of the Future

Stand up all the slaves!

Stand up the wretched of the earth!

We suffer cruelly, we stifle, our chest is about to burst!

From today, life or death, no mailer!

Let us at once make a clean sweep of the past!

Crowds of slaves, stand up!

Tomorrow, our new regime will be restored:

We shall be masters of all the fruits of our labor!

Refrain

Now this is the final struggle:

Let us all band together and tomorrow

The Internationale will be the society of the future!

Let us all band together and tomorrow The Internationale will be the society of the future!

Top leadership

2006-09-16T01:31:00.000-07:00

Book by Khieu Samphan

2006-09-05T21:38:00.000-07:00

A recent book by Khieu Samphan(លោក ខៀវ សំផន), second in command of Democratic Kampuchea and often the front person in the Communist Party of Kampuchea guerrilla units, is an autobiography titled the Recent History of Cambodia. It has already drawn the wrath of Critics who claim the book is nothing more than an attempt to whitewash his crimes during the DK period, 1975 through 1979.
However, this is just about the only biography written by a member of the so called “Khmer Rouge.” (they never really called themselves that name.) There for it may shed some light on a dark and mysterious period in Kampuchea’s history.
The book hasn't been traslated yet to English or French. It should be available in the US soon.

The end of reason

2006-08-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

From my new book, The Pol Pot Journals:

"Yes Ive had a bum rap in the last few years. I killed a few too many people. I disrupted some lives and made some serious mistakes. But on the other hand, when the powers to be try to censure you and close down your voice, you must have done something right. That means not everything I did was bad.

The imperialist powers have always needed scapegoats, scary monsters and super creeps to divert attention from their own crimes.

When men who are the moral equivalence of drunken prostitutes and they pretend to be our leaders and moral guidance, then there is no morality, there is no sin. There is only the law of the jungle.

That is the reality of today."

ដំណាក់កាលប្រវត្តិសាស្ត្រ

2006-08-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

ឆ្នាំ1967: លោកខៀវ សំផន និងលោក ហូយន់ បានបង្កើតចលនាក្រុមឧទ្ទាមទ័ពព្រៃ ប្រឆាំងរដ្ឋាភិបាលទៀត។

ឆ្នាំ1970: ថ្ងៃ18 មិនា ជាថ្ងៃដែលលោកលន់ ណុល ធ្វើរដ្ឋប្រហារទំលាក់ សម្តេចព្រះនរោត្តសីហនុចេញពីអំណាច ជាហេតុធ្វើអោយមានការប្រយុទ្ធគ្នា នៅភូមិភាគឥណ្ឌូចិនទាំងមូល រវាងកងទ័ពថ្មើរជើងសហរដ្ឋអាមេរិក-វៀតណាម នៅក្នុងសង្រ្គាមស៊ីវិលនេះ។

ឆ្នាំ1970: ថ្ងៃ04 ឧសភា សម្េតចព្រះនរោត្តមសីហនុ បានបង្កើតរាជរដ្ឋាភិបាលរួបរួមជាតិ ឬសហភាពកម្ពុជា។

ឆ្នាំ1975: ថ្ងៃ17 មេសា ជាថ្ងៃជ័យជំនះរបស់ខ្មែរក្រហម ដែលដឹកនាំដោយប៉ុលពត។ ដោយបង្កើត របបកម្ពុជាប្រជាធិបតេយ្យខ្មែរ។ ប៉ុលពត បានទំលាក់ លោកលន់ ណុល ចេញពីអំណាច និងបានដណ្តើមកាន់កាប់យក ទីក្រុងភ្នំពេញ ដោយជំលៀសប្រជាជនទាំងអស់ ចេញពីទីក្រុងភ្នំពេញ។

Atrocity theme park? Cambodia's "genocide trail" attracting tourists -- and criticism

2006-08-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

By DENIS D. GRAY
Associated Press Writer

ANLONG VENG, Cambodia -- Call it crass, macabre or educational, but Pol Pot's shabby grave and a towering stack of his victims' skulls are drawing a growing number of visitors to Cambodia's genocide trail.

These and other relics of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror are the grim counterpoint to Angkor Wat, Cambodia's world-famous ancient temple. Some decry it as "dark tourism" and "a Khmer Rouge theme park," while officials and private entrepreneurs argue that it will reap tourist dollars for an impoverished nation.

The latest station on the circuit is Anlong Veng, the final stronghold of the Khmer Rouge and its leader, Pol Pot, who turned the country into a vast slave labor camp in which as many as 2 million of their fellow Cambodians perished from disease, starvation and relentless executions in the mid-1970s.

"Cambodia is known to the world for two things -- Angkor Wat and the 'killing fields.' Some believe one came from God and the other from hell," says Youk Chhang, a leading researcher of Khmer Rouge atrocities.

This scruffy town in northwest Cambodia once housed one of the 20th century's largest assemblages of mass killers. Now, following up on a government order to preserve Khmer Rouge sites, officials are planning to restore nearly 40 houses of former Khmer Rouge leaders and build a museum where the guides are ex-soldiers of the ultra-communist movement.

"Pol Pot was cremated here. Please help to preserve this historical site," says a Ministry of Tourism sign next to a dirt mound bordered by half-buried soda bottles and protected by a rusting iron roof. The hut where Pol Pot died in 1998, the movement collapsing around him, has disappeared.

Thirty meters away, bulldozers are laying the foundations for a South Korean-built resort with swimming pool. And just down the road, a casino and massive market will cater to visitors from neighboring Thailand.

Youk Chhang, who heads The Documentation Center of Cambodia, is concerned that sites such as Anlong Veng will lose their raw, powerful authenticity.

"We don't want them turned into Disneylands and seen merely as a source of money," he says.

A private Japanese enterprise, JC Royal Co., last year won the concession to develop Choeung Ek, the vast killing ground, into a more tourist-friendly place, while the World Bank is completing a wide, paved road to speed tourist buses to the site 17 kilometers (10 miles) south of Phnom Penh.

At Tuol Sleng, the notorious torture and interrogation center in the capital, some of the desperate prisoner graffiti has been painted over and Youk Chhang had to dissuade the director from giving all the starkly drab buildings a whitewash. He said the director told him: "Don't worry, brother, they will look old again after two or three years."

A harsh critic is former King Norodom Sihanouk who last month objected to genocide memorials which displayed victims' skulls and bones, saying this was done "for the pleasure of tourists." He said it did nothing for the "wandering souls" of those killed and urged that their bones be cremated according to Buddhist custom.

Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek, which charge a US$2 entry fee, are on the itineraries of almost every tour company and are expected to be visited by many of the 1.6 million foreign tourists expected in Cambodia this year. Even more interest may be generated next year when the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders go on trial for genocidal crimes before a long-delayed, U.N.-backed tribunal.

Youk Chhang's U.S.-funded center, which is delivering boxes of documents on Khmer Rouge atrocities to the tribunal, plans a museum. One of its staffers, Sayana Ser, has toured Nazi concentration camps, other Holocaust sites and Berlin's Jewish Museum while attending a graduate program at Wageningen University in The Netherlands.

Roberto Rossano, a 22-year-old Londoner, said he knew little about the Khmer Rouge nightmare until he visited Choeung Ek.

"When somebody tells you one or two million were killed it's just a number, but when I came and saw just a fraction of what they did -- these skulls -- it absolutely shocks you," he said.

He and a friend had just seen the soaring stupa, or Buddhist reliquary, crammed with 8,985 skulls, some bearing clear evidence of death by hammers, hoes, bamboo sticks and bullets. Skeletal remains and ragged clothes lay in surrounding shallow graves. A sign next to a tree explained how executioners bashed the heads of children against its trunk.

The victims were bused in from Tuol Sleng, a former high school where up to 16,000 suffered torture and abysmal living conditions before being "smashed." Also on display are instruments of torture and scores of haunting photographs of those about to die, taken by their captors.

In the bougainvillea-shaded courtyard are tombs of 14 prisoners killed just before Vietnamese troops captured Phnom Penh in 1979, driving the Khmer Rouge into the jungles to fight as guerrillas and eventually to be squeezed into enclaves like Anlong Veng.

Anlong Veng, only recently cleared of mines, is perhaps the only "living museum" of the horror. Many of its 26,000 inhabitants are Pol Pot's former fighters and officials, some of them missing limbs.

Ta Mok, a brutal military commander, lived here until his death last month. Although he was to have stood trial for atrocities, he was a hero in Anlong Veng, and people eagerly point out his humanitarian legacy -- schools, clinics, a dam, a sawmill that provided free wood to the poor.

"The people all love Ta Mok," says his nephew, Cheam Ponlok.

The commander whom the Western media dubbed "the Butcher" was seen off by hundreds of mourners and chanting Buddhist monks, and his ashes placed in a tomb in a temple _ the newest addition to Cambodia's genocide trail.

Kent State – The war came to the streets of the US

2006-08-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

From The Pol Pot Journals:

By April 1970, the US had launched an all out invasion of Cambodia with 30,000 US troops and 40,000 South Vietnamese troops. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong moved west to avoid the troops.
Meanwhile, back home the press found out about the invasion and campus demonstrations erupted all over U.S. universities.
At Kent State University in Ohio protest of the bombing of Cambodia, just as many others. But Governor James Rhodes sent in the National Guard. Some rocks were thrown, some windows were broken, and an attempt was made to burn the ROTC building.
The units that responded were ill-trained and came right from riot duty elsewhere; they hadn't had much sleep. The first day, there was some brutality; the Guard bayoneted two men, one a disabled veteran, who had cursed or yelled at them from cars. The following day, May 4th, the Guard, commanded with an amazing lack of military judgment, marched down a hill, to a field in the middle of angry demonstrators, then back up again. Seconds before they would have passed around the corner of a large building, and out of sight of the crowd, many of the Guardsmen wheeled and fired directly into the students, hitting thirteen, killing four of them, pulling the trigger over and over, for thirteen seconds.
As four student lay dead, others approached in shock. They were horrified that they had been fired on. They were also stunned. None of us can forget that press picture of a woman kneeling over her dead boyfriend as he bleed to death.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,We're finally on our own.This summer I hear the drumming,Four dead in Ohio.
- Neil Young
“Ohio”
_________________________________________________
Nixon and many of his supporters acted with indifference or even delight that this massacre had happened. They felt the students deserved it. The country was divided now more than ever and it was not just the Vietnam war anymore, it had moved over to Cambodia and that involvement was about to increase.

More pictures of Khieu Ponnary

2006-08-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

Khmer (ភាសាខ្មែរ) Beer

2006-08-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

The Angkar

2006-08-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

Seal of Democratic Kampuchea

2006-07-31T14:59:00.000-07:00

Working in Democratic Kampuchea

2006-07-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

Khmer (ខ្មែរក្រហម) Rouge Cartoon

2006-07-16T00:41:00.000-07:00

When a government kills a lot of people there are bound to be survivors with negative opinions. This is an anti- Khmer (ខ្មែរក្រហម) Rouge Cartoon.

Pol Pot pop art

2006-07-13T22:44:00.000-07:00

Another artists rendition of Pol Pot.

ប៉ុលពត

The Communist Party of Kampuchea turned against the Soviet Union

2006-07-11T19:00:00.000-07:00

The Communist Party of Kampuchea turned against the Soviet Union after Stalin died. In The Black Papers, one of their few public documents, they said:

"During the stay of the delegation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in Hanoi, Le Duan wanted to induce the Communist Party of Kampuchea to establish relations with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He reported that the Soviet Ambassador to Hanoi would like to meet the delegation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea to invite it to pay a visit to Moscow.
The delegation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea told Le Duan that the Communist Party of Kampuchea did not oppose the Soviet Union. Its tasks consisted only of achieving its objective which was to lead Kampuchea’s revolution to victory. It did not want to interfere in the China-Soviet difference. But the Soviet Union has shown its hostility towards the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Indeed, in 1964, the Soviet Embassy in Phnom Penh strove to set up in Kampuchea another communist party and charged the Communist Party of Kampuchea with being an inefficient Party and of having an absurd line. The communist party that the Soviet Union wanted to set up should have been made of on the one hand the renegades at the time of the struggle against the French colonialists, such as Siv Heng and Pen Youth who became intelligence agents in the Lon No! clique’s pay and on the other hand the students from the Khmero-Sovietique Technical Institute in Phnom Penh. But in the end, that party could not come to life for lack of people’s support. Concerning the meeting that the Soviet Ambassador was asking for, the delegation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea answered that it would be better to postpone it."

Pol Pot and the French Revolution

2006-07-09T16:48:00.000-07:00

Pol Pot hated Kings and he was fascinated with the French Revolution. There are clear similarities between the French Directorate, after the execution of Louis XVI, KingLouis XVI, KingLouis XVI, KingKing Louis XVI, and the Angkar Padevoat. The adoption of a new calander with the year zero even resembles the new French revolutionary government.

Pol Pot and Stalin

2006-07-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

Pol Pot and his comrades were originally very found of Joseph Stalin. After he died, they became very anti-Soviet Union.

MLP! Not MLM

2006-07-01T01:20:00.000-07:00

From the Pol Pot Journals:

There have been a few times when some people have refered to me as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist. Wrong. Mao was an ally, but he is dead now and the MLM movement has disowned me. That is fine with me because I have my own international, the MLP movement. That’s right, Marxist-Leninists-Polists.

Mao made a lot of mistakes in his time. I remember being in Tienaman square and witnessing the activities of the Cultural Revolution. It was chaotic, with people running around with leaflets everywhere. Mao didn’t have a peasant revolution. He just used the peasants to get control of the country. He spent much of his time trying to industrialize the country instead of focusing on making it better for the peasants. He sent city people out to stay with the peasants for a few months. What good did that do? They just ended up going back to the city as if nothing ever happened. How can they learn about farming and peasant work such a short time?

Mao was a staunch ally. He supported us with all the weapons we needed to win our war. He stood by all his allies and I applaud him for that. But I made it clear from the start, that we would have full autonomy to run our country as we see fit, with no interference with China. Mao agreed, but later, when we told him we had eliminated class distinctions he had the nerve to say:

“Certainly you have made mistakes. So rectify yourselves: do rectification!” After many years of revolution, salaries are not equal. We have a slogan of equality---but we don’t carry it out. How many years will it take to change that? Until we become communist? This matter is not clear.”

We had our own clear headed leaders and we didn’t need to be patronized by Mao just because he had a much bigger country. If we had more resources and people, we would have done a much better job.

Remember, we are Khmer, not Chinese. Anyone or group today can join my MLP international. I always felt I would someday outdo Mao. I still think my time will come.

Super Khmer

2006-06-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

"Super Khmer to the rescue!
No reactionary is going to enslave my people and get away with it."
The leaders of Democratic Kampuchea’s ministry of culture had planned on a variety of cultural projects, including films, plays, TV shows, even Comic books. Here is a super Khmer hero, who would have rivaled Superman.

More Children of the Revolution

2006-06-02T21:50:00.000-07:00

Girls in uniform

2006-05-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

Song Writer

2006-05-27T20:29:00.000-07:00

A lot of people dont realize it, but I am an excellent song writer. While some leaders, such as Mao Zedong wasted their time with philosophy and poetry, I wrote great songs. I really feel that if I didnt get into politics, I would have become a musician. Here are the lyrics of one of my best songs.

"Our Red Flag of the revolution"

Glittering red blood blankets the earth,
Sacrificial blood to liberate the people:
Blood of workers, peasants and intellectuals;
Blood of young men, Buddhist monks, and young women.
Blood that swirls away and takes flight, twirling on highInto the sky,
Turning into the red, revolutionary flag!
Red flag! Red flag!
Now floating on high!
Now floating on high!
0 comrades, seethe with anger in order to destroy the enemy!
Red flag! Red flag!
Now floating on high! Now floating on high!
Let our fury swoop down like a tornado!
Dont spare a single reactionary, a single imperialist!
Make a clean sweep of the Kampuchean soil!
Seething with anger, let us move into the attack!
Let us wipe out all enemies of Kampuchea!
Let us grasp the Victory! The Victory! The Victory!

From a holiday in Kampuchea

2006-05-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

Be careful where you step!

Some still pay for doubting the mainstream news media

2006-05-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

Pol Pot is probably one of the most discredited revolutionary Marxist leaders of the 20th Century. His four year government is now considered a disaster. Outside of Cambodia, he has few, if any admirers. His crimes are almost unanimously acknowledged, although the scope and numbers are still debated by some people. No one doubts that Poll Pot, under his Communist Party of Kampuchea, unnecessarily executed innocent people, overworked some of them, starved some of them, even tortured some. These crimes may have caused up to a million unnecessary deaths.With that in mind, it would seem a dead subject to debate the merits of Pol Pot’s government. But it isn’t. There seems to be a chorus of people from both the right and the left, who want to castigate, ridicule and discredit anyone who wrote anything positive about the Pol Pot years, regardless of when they wrote it. That would include myself for an article I published opposing Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia and occupation lasting through the 1980s. The article is outdated by now, (see below) but don’t tell anti-Pol Pot hardliners who continue to trash Noam Chomsky and many other academic and political activists who originally defended Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea.Typical are the following:The Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979: http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/cambear1.htm
The Standard Total Academic View on CambodiaSophal Ear:”-most effective apologists in the West”“-an unequivocal record of complicity existed between a generation of academics who studied Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge.”The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/may03/chomsky.htm
by Keith Windschuttle:“Although information was hard to come by, Chomsky suggested in an article in 1977 that post-war Cambodia was probably similar to France after liberation at the end of World War II when thousands of enemy collaborators were massacred within a few months. This was to be expected, he said, and was a small price to pay for the positive outcomes of the new government of Pol Pot. Chomsky cited a book by two American left-wing authors, Gareth Porter and George Hildebrand, who had “presented a carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies.”By this time, however, there were two other books published on Cambodia that took a very different line. The American authors John Barron and Anthony Paul called their work Murder of a Gentle Land and accused the Pol Pot regime of mass killings that amounted to genocide. François Ponchaud’s Cambodia Year Zero repeated the charge.Chomsky reviewed both books, together with a number of press articles, in The Nation in June 1977. He accused them of publishing little more than anti-communist propaganda. Articles in The New York Times Magazine and The Christian Science Monitor suggested that the death toll was between one and two million people out of a total population of 7.8 million. Chomsky mocked their total and picked at their sources, showing some were dubious and that a famous photograph of forced labor in the Cambodian countryside was actually a fake.”"Averaging Wrong Answers: Noam Chomsky and the Cambodia Controversy"
http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm
By Bruce Sharp:“A peculiar irony is at the heart of this controversy: Noam Chomsky, the man who has spent years analyzing propaganda, is himself a propagandist. Whatever one thinks of Chomsky in general, whatever one thinks of his theories of media manipulation and the mechanisms of state power, Chomsky's work with regard to Cambodia has been marred by omissions, dubious statistics, and, in some cases, outright misrepresentations. On top of this, Chomsky continues to deny that he was wrong about Cambodia. He responds to criticisms by misrepresenting his own positions, misrepresenting his critics' positions, and describing his detractors as morally lower than "neo-Nazis and neo-Stalinists."(2) Consequently, his refusal to reconsider his words has led to continued misinterpretations of what really happened in Cambodia. Misconceptions, it seems, have a very long life.”
And:
“The first evidence of this is apparent in December 1972, in Chomksy's introduction for Cambodia in the Southeast Asia War by Malcolm Caldwell and Lek Tan. In the introduction, Chomsky writes, quite rightly, "The misery and destruction for which Nixon and Kissinger bear direct responsibility are crimes that can never be forgotten…..It is a rather drastic jump to move from remembering the crimes of Nixon and Kissinger, to suggesting that the Khmer Rouge would be "liberators" who would usher in "economic development and social justice." By 1972, there was already disturbing evidence of the brutality of the Cambodian communists, and only a naive romantic would have seen them as just and noble freedom fighters. Caldwell, however, was a devout Marxist, and not surprisingly his book makes no mention of the reports of Khmer Rouge brutality.This, in essence, was a sign of things to come. Unlike the crimes of the West, the crimes of the Khmer Rouge were not to be illuminated. They were to be obfuscated.”It’s not hard to see why the right wants to discredit left-wing academics. Such academics are critical of the U.S. Empire and its democratic illusions. The right also want to create a constant connection between Pol Pot and other Marxists of any kind.But what is surprising is the leftist who have gotten on the bandwagon. According to these liberals, leftists, etc, we were supposed to accept the reports of atrocities revealed to us by members of the press who regularly lied to us (and still do today). Their reports were based onrather flimsy evidence at the time, the testimony of a few refugees. Chomsky pointed out in his own article these kinds of claims were used in Central America against leftist guerrillas."Chomsky: more on Atrocities in Cambodia"
http://www.zmag.org/forums/chomcambodforum.htmZ-Mag:“There is a doctrine to be established: we must focus solely on the (horrendous) crimes of Pol Pot, thus providing a retrospective justification for (mostly unstudied) US crimes, and an ideological basis for further "humanitarian intervention" in the future -- the Pol Pot atrocities were explicitly used to justify US intervention in Central America in the '80s, leaving hundreds of thousands of corpses and endless destruction.”Chomsky also brings up President Richard Nixon’s meddling in Cambodia. That action contributed to a bloody civil war. Nixon secretly sent to Cambodia 30,000 US troops, and US planes dropped a quarter-of-a-million tons of bombs in the eastern part of the country in 140 days. That not only killed a lot of people, but left much of the farmland useless. The CIA, under Nixon, overthrew the nationalistic Norodom Sihanouk regime and replaced it with the corrupt and incompetent right-wing-military leader Lon Nol. By 1974 most of Cambodia’s countryside was under the control of the National United Front of Kampuchea, a coalition that was mostly Norodom Sihanouk, a few of his supporters, and Pol Pot’s Communist Party of Kampuchea. The CPK (called the Khmer Rouge in the press) made up 90 percent of the NUFK, while Sihanouk served as a figure head, for recruitment purposes. Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic government, was so corrupt that his generals fought with “ghost troops” (names on paper so military officers could collect and pocket their pay). Lon Nol’s army quickly lost control of the country and controlled little more than the capitol, Phnom Penh.Chomsky said:“The CIA (in its postwar demographic study) estimates deaths in the first phase of the "decade of genocide" at 600,000 (of course, they don't regard the US as responsible). In 1975, just before the Khmer Rouge takeover, Western doctors in Phnom Penh were estimating deaths at 8000 a month -- what was going on in the countryside, where the bombing was in progress, no one tried to estimate. They also predicted that there would be a "lost generation," as a result of the horrendous attack on the countryside. The only extensive study of this that I know is Gary Porter and George Hildebrand's book, but since it is a heavily documented study of US atrocities, it is undiscussable here. Progressives, like "Progressive" editor Matthew Rothschild, regard it as outrageous even to say that the book is well-documented (though it transparently is); written in 1976, it is mostly devoted to US crimes, therefore even to cite it is criminal. We have to agree that before the KR takeover, Cambodia was a "gentle land" of happy people: to question that is another outrage, according to standard doctrine, going as far to the dissident side as Rothschild and "In These Times."In my book Memoirs Of A Drugged-up, Sex-crazed Yippie ---Tales from the 70's Counterculture: Drugs, Sex, Politics and Rock and Roll, I discussed my illusions about Pol Pot’s revolution and what I later found out to be the truth about the four year period of Democratic Kampuchea. It was a nationalist peasant revolution, badly blundered by its leaders. Pol Pot believed he would somehow be seen in the future as being more important and greater than Mao (毛泽东). Today there seems a rise in Maoism, world-wide, while Pol Pot is largely forgotten or dismissed as a fluke.I still feel Vietnam took advantages of Cambodia when they invaded and many scholars now believe Democratic Kampuchea wanted war with Vietnam to avoid seeing their government on the verge of collapse. They would have been overthrown anyway. And today, there is no socialist program in Cambodia of any kind.So even with this issue behind us, I suppose there are those who will condemn me to academic damnation for ever doubting our own bourgeois news services. Even though they lied in the past and lie today, I was supposed to believe what they said on Cambodia. I haven’t been to Cambodia, but I have been to El Salvador and Nicaragua. I did find two different countries than those I read about in our news media. I also doubted the credibility of Vietnam's and the Soviet Union’s news media as well – another crime according to some leftist thinkers.

Victory day for the Khmer Revolution

2006-04-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

The Communist Party of Kampuchea marched into Phnom Penh in April 1975.

Songs From Democratic Kampuchea

2006-04-20T18:43:00.000-07:00

Always Remember our Revolutionary Living Tradition
Best Wishes to the Great Kampuchean Revolution
Best Wishes to the Victory Day of April 17
Bravery of Construction Revolutionary Soldiers
Children's Letter
Commitment to Follow Great Bravery of Kampuchean People
Do not Forget the Fresh Blood of our Soldiers
Estranged Wife
Fighting Morality of Kampuchean Revolutionary Youth
Flying a Flag above the Mekong River
Harvest the Rice Democratic Kampuchea National Anthem

Khieu Ponnary

2006-04-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Khieu Ponnary, (លោកខៀវ ប់នណារី) the wife of Po Pot, may have been one of the most astute Marxist women in the Marxist Leninist nation world. She was his mentor when he was in Paris and had joined the Marxist circle that would later become the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. She was considered one of the more intellectual members of the inter circle. She as born 1920 in Phnom Penh, died July 1, 2003 in Pailin.
She became the spouse of Pol Pot in 1956. Khieu Ponnary was the first female Cambodian to graduate from high school, and the first Khmer woman to earn a bachelor's degree from Phnom Penh's elite Lycee Sisowath. She was the first Khmer woman to receive a bachelor's degree in Paris, France.
She probably wrote a lot of articles for the Party’s paper, but she never signed them. She was head of the national women's association of Democratic Kampuchea.
She had mental problems that began right before the CPK took control of the country and she went to a hospital, in Beijing, with mental illness. Her husband left her in the 1980s for a younger wife, Meas.
Whether she would have had a good impact or a bad one is still unknown. Since she wasted away in a mental hospital until after the demise of the Democratic Kampuchea rebel movement. She lived with relatives until she died. We may never know if she could have improved the way things were going. Few today held her responsible for Democratic Kampuchea’s crimes because she can’t even remember that period of time.

Khmer money

2006-04-12T08:42:00.000-07:00

Money wasn’t used but it was printed.

A revolution of children

2006-04-11T06:22:00.001-07:00

We formed an army of children and young people because they were uncorrupted by the past and they did not have so many attachments to the old ways of doing things. Young people are always more open to new ideas. Old people may become set in their ways. It is much easier to retrain younger people, the younger the better. As we often said: "It is easier to mold clay when it is still soft and wet."

T. Rex - Children Of The Revolution
YeahWell you can bump and grindIt is good for your mind
Well you can twist and shout let it all hang out
But you won't fool the children of the revolution
No you won't fool the children of the revolution, no no no
Well you can tear a plane in the falling rain
I drive a rolls royce 'cos it's good for my voice
But you won't fool the children of the revolution
No you won't fool the children of the revolution, no no no - yeah!
But you won't fool the children of the revolution
No you won't fool the children of the revolution
No you won't fool the children of the revolution
No you won't fool the children of the revolutionNo way, yeah, wow!

The Black Papers

2006-04-06T19:22:00.000-07:00

This is one of the few books the Communist Party of Kampuchea (កម្ពុជា) allowed to be released to the public.

Democratic Kampuchea inspired a punk band

2006-04-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

CPK soldiers

2006-04-05T07:16:00.001-07:00

Some still pay for doubting the mainstream news media

2006-04-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

Pol Pot is probably one of the most discredited revolutionary Marxist leaders of the 20th Century. His four year government is now considered a disaster. Outside of Cambodia, he has few, if any admirers. His crimes are almost unanimously acknowledged, although the scope and numbers are still debated by some people. No one doubts that Poll Pot, under his Communist Party of Kampuchea, unnecessarily executed innocent people, overworked some of them, starved some of them, even tortured some. These crimes may have caused up to a million unnecessary deaths.With that in mind, it would seem a dead subject to debate the merits of Pol Pot's government. But it isn't. There seems to be a chorus of people from both the right and the left, who want to castigate, ridicule and discredit anyone who wrote anything positive about the Pol Pot years, regardless of when they wrote it. That would include myself for an article I published opposing Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia and occupation lasting through the 1980s. The article is outdated by now, but don't tell anti-Pol Pot hardliners who continue to trash Noam Chomsky and many other academic and political activists who originally defended Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea.Typical are the following:

The Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979:
The Standard Total Academic View on CambodiaSophal Ear:
"-most effective apologists in the West""-an unequivocal record of complicity existed between a generation of academics who studied Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge."

The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky by Keith Windschuttle:

"Although information was hard to come by, Chomsky suggested in an article in 1977 that post-war Cambodia was probably similar to France after liberation at the end of World War II when thousands of enemy collaborators were massacred within a few months. This was to be expected, he said, and was a small price to pay for the positive outcomes of the new government of Pol Pot. Chomsky cited a book by two American left-wing authors, Gareth Porter and George Hildebrand, who had "presented a carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies."By this time, however, there were two other books published on Cambodia that took a very different line. The American authors John Barron and Anthony Paul called their work Murder of a Gentle Land and accused the Pol Pot regime of mass killings that amounted to genocide. Franois Ponchaud's Cambodia Year Zero repeated the charge.Chomsky reviewed both books, together with a number of press articles, in The Nation in June 1977. He accused them of publishing little more than anti-communist propaganda. Articles in The New York Times Magazine and The Christian Science Monitor suggested that the death toll was between one and two million people out of a total population of 7.8 million. Chomsky mocked their total and picked at their sources, showing some were dubious and that a famous photograph of forced labor in the Cambodian countryside was actually a fake."

"Averaging Wrong Answers: Noam Chomsky and the Cambodia Controversy"
By Bruce Sharp:

"A peculiar irony is at the heart of this controversy: Noam Chomsky, the man who has spent years analyzing propaganda, is himself a propagandist. Whatever one thinks of Chomsky in general, whatever one thinks of his theories of media manipulation and the mechanisms of state power, Chomsky's work with regard to Cambodia has been marred by omissions, dubious statistics, and, in some cases, outright misrepresentations. On top of this, Chomsky continues to deny that he was wrong about Cambodia. He responds to criticisms by misrepresenting his own positions, misrepresenting his critics' positions, and describing his detractors as morally lower than "neo-Nazis and neo-Stalinists."(2) Consequently, his refusal to reconsider his words has led to continued misinterpretations of what really happened in Cambodia. Misconceptions, it seems, have a very long life."

And:

"The first evidence of this is apparent in December 1972, in Chomksy's introduction for Cambodia in the Southeast Asia War by Malcolm Caldwell and Lek Tan. In the introduction, Chomsky writes, quite rightly, "The misery and destruction for which Nixon and Kissinger bear direct responsibility are crimes that can never be forgotten..It is a rather drastic jump to move from remembering the crimes of Nixon and Kissinger, to suggesting that the Khmer Rouge would be "liberators" who would usher in "economic development and social justice." By 1972, there was already disturbing evidence of the brutality of the Cambodian communists, and only a naive romantic would have seen them as just and noble freedom fighters. Caldwell, however, was a devout Marxist, and not surprisingly his book makes no mention of the reports of Khmer Rouge brutality.This, in essence, was a sign of things to come. Unlike the crimes of the West, the crimes of the Khmer Rouge were not to be illuminated. They were to be obfuscated."It's not hard to see why the right wants to discredit left-wing academics. Such academics are critical of the U.S. Empire and its democratic illusions. The right also want to create a constant connection between Pol Pot and other Marxists of any kind.But what is surprising is the leftist who have gotten on the bandwagon. According to these liberals, leftists, etc, we were supposed to accept the reports of atrocities revealed to us by members of the press who regularly lied to us (and still do today). Their reports were based onrather flimsy evidence at the time, the testimony of a few refugees. Chomsky pointed out in his own article these kinds of claims were used in Central America against leftist guerrillas."

"Chomsky: more on Atrocities in Cambodia"
Z-Mag:

"There is a doctrine to be established: we must focus solely on the (horrendous) crimes of Pol Pot, thus providing a retrospective justification for (mostly unstudied) US crimes, and an ideological basis for further "humanitarian intervention" in the future -- the Pol Pot atrocities were explicitly used to justify US intervention in Central America in the '80s, leaving hundreds of thousands of corpses and endless destruction."Chomsky also brings up President Richard Nixon's meddling in Cambodia. That action contributed to a bloody civil war. Nixon secretly sent to Cambodia 30,000 US troops, and US planes dropped a quarter-of-a-million tons of bombs in the eastern part of the country in 140 days. That not only killed a lot of people, but left much of the farmland useless. The CIA, under Nixon, overthrew the nationalistic Norodom Sihanouk regime and replaced it with the corrupt and incompetent right-wing-military leader Lon Nol. By 1974 most of Cambodia's countryside was under the control of the National United Front of Kampuchea, a coalition that was mostly Norodom Sihanouk, a few of his supporters, and Pol Pot's Communist Party of Kampuchea. The CPK (called the Khmer Rouge in the press) made up 90 percent of the NUFK, while Sihanouk served as a figure head, for recruitment purposes. Lon Nol's Khmer Republic government, was so corrupt that his generals fought with "ghost troops" (names on paper so military officers could collect and pocket their pay). Lon Nol's army quickly lost control of the country and controlled little more than the capitol, Phnom Penh.Chomsky said:"The CIA (in its postwar demographic study) estimates deaths in the first phase of the "decade of genocide" at 600,000 (of course, they don't regard the US as responsible). In 1975, just before the Khmer Rouge takeover, Western doctors in Phnom Penh were estimating deaths at 8000 a month -- what was going on in the countryside, where the bombing was in progress, no one tried to estimate. They also predicted that there would be a "lost generation," as a result of the horrendous attack on the countryside. The only extensive study of this that I know is Gary Porter and George Hildebrand's book, but since it is a heavily documented study of US atrocities, it is undiscussable here. Progressives, like "Progressive" editor Matthew Rothschild, regard it as outrageous even to say that the book is well-documented (though it transparently is); written in 1976, it is mostly devoted to US crimes, therefore even to cite it is criminal. We have to agree that before the KR takeover, Cambodia was a "gentle land" of happy people: to question that is another outrage, according to standard doctrine, going as far to the dissident side as Rothschild and "In These Times."

The Japanese tried to occupy Kampuchea during World War II.

Holiday in Cambodia

2006-04-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

Dead Kennedys › Holiday in Cambodia

So you been to school
For a year or two
And you know you’ve seen it all
In daddy’s car
Thinkin’ you’ll go far
Back east your type don’t crawl

Play ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Braggin’ that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slums got so much soul

It’s time to taste what you most fear
Right guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear

It’s a holiday in cambodia
It’s tough, kid, but it’s life
It’s a holiday in cambodia
Don’t forget to pack a wife

You’re a star-belly sneech
You suck like a leach
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch
So you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you

Well you’ll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake

Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son.

Is a holiday in cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in cambodia
Where you’ll kiss ass or crack

Pol pot, pol pot, pol pot, pol pot, etc.

And it’s a holiday in Cambodia
Where you’ll do what you’re told
A holiday in cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul

The Dazzling Victory of Victory of 17 April

2006-04-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

Translation:

One of the most important Democratic Kampuchean songs

2006-03-31T14:16:00.000-08:00

President Richard Nixon: Pol Pot couldn’t have done it without him

2006-03-30T09:44:00.000-08:00

President Richard Nixon’s meddling in Cambodia contributed to a bloody civil war. Nixon secretly sent to Cambodia 30,000 US troops, and US planes dropped a quarter-of-a-million tons of bombs in the eastern part of the country in 140 days. That not only killed a lot of people, but left much of the farmland useless. The CIA, under Nixon, overthrew the nationalistic Norodom Sihanouk regime and replaced it with the corrupt and incompetent right-wing-military leader Lon Nol. By 1974 most of Cambodia’s countryside was under the control of the National United Front of Kampuchea, a coalition that was mostly Norodom Sihanouk, a few of his supporters, and Pol Pot’s Communist Party of Kampuchea. The CPK (called the Khmer Rouge in the press) made up 90 percent of the NUFK, while Sihanouk served as a figure head, for recruitment purposes. Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic government, was so corrupt that his generals fought with “ghost troops” (names on paper so military officers could collect and pocket their pay). Lon Nol’s army quickly lost control of the country and controlled little more than the capitol, Phnom Penh.

Nixon may well have presided over more death and destruction than any other president since World War II.

Democratic Kampuchea: Women

2006-03-28T06:14:00.000-08:00

Young women fought as combatants for Khmer Rouge and served as cadre. Women were given a degree of political and military authority, though it seems to have lessened as one rose within the DK hierarchy (there were two women in the top leadership of the CPK, the wives of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary). There are many stories of women who betrayed their husbands to the DK authorities. The degree to which this actually happened is unclear, but the stories reflect the theme of reversal and chaos – women would even turn on their husbands!

Top: Khieu Ponnary, in her older years and when young.

Democratic Kampuchea: Hierarchy/Egalitarianism and Pol Pot : Source.

Pol Pot in 1979

2006-03-27T02:02:00.000-08:00

1979: Pol Pot leads the Khmer Rouge back into the jungle after the Vietnamese invasion

Pol Pot’s Adventures in Wonderland

2006-03-26T19:15:00.000-08:00

“The debate over Vietnam's occupation of Kampuchea has divided many people on the Left. The Vietnamese position, which many people in the U.S. and Canadian Left support, is that the present Kampuchean government is an independent nation. In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on October 21, 1981, concerning a negotiated settlement to the Kampuchea problem, the Vietnamese claimed that there was no "Kampuchea problem" and hence there could be no "comprehensive settlement." With this statement the Vietnamese were trying to ignore the real situation in Kampuchea.Since that time, the Vietnamese have made a few proposals of their own for a negotiated settlement. These include negotiations with the non-Khmer Rouge members of the Democratic Kampuchea Coalition, a dialogue with China, and a proposal to allow some Khmer Rouge members to enter the government, provided they come in as individuals and not as a group. They still refuse to negotiate with the Khmer Rouge. This indicates that the Vietnamese now realize that the "Kampuchea problem" is no longer a problem they can afford to ignore.”
-Steve Otto, “Kampuchea Today:A Response to Hoang Tung,”Contemporary Marxism, no. 12 – 13, Spring 1986.

I wrote this in 1986, under the illusion that the Chinese position was the least imperialist of the two other major super-powers, The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. As with the old Lewis Carroll story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, things were not what they appear to be. China had no real international policy other than pure self interest. Deng Xiaoping, China’s leader and an ardent supporter of Pol Pot, was a self absorbed egotists interested in his countries economic development and little else. China supported no outside Marxist groups unless they had something to offer. And Pol Pot was not part of the Chinese international, nor was he a Maoist.

In my book Memoirs Of A Drugged-up, Sex-crazed Yippie ---Tales from the 70's Counterculture: Drugs, Sex, Politics and Rock and Roll, I discussed my illusions about Pol Pot’s revolution and what I later found out to be the truth about the four year period of Democratic Kampuchea. It was just a nationalists peasant revolution, badly blundered by its leaders, who believed they would somehow be seen in the future as being more important and greater than Maoism.
Here is an excerpt from Chapter 17- “1979 - A changed world”:

The one thing I could always count on with Ian was a good political conversation, when he wasn’t trying to pick up women. On this particular winter day, I walked into the Bier Stube and found Ian and one of his friends talking about the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia, now called Kampuchea.“I agree with Henry Kissinger,” Ian said. “The Vietnamese did not go into Cambodia for humanitarian reasons. They went in to take advantage ofthe instability of Pol Pot’s government and then install a regime that would benefit them.”“I can agree with that,” I said.This was one of the few times that I did agree with Ian. It was ironic because I had discussed this matter with Shokrollah (an Iranian student) about a week earlier and he also agreed with Ian and me. Of course we agreed for different reasons.In December of 1978 Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea and overthrew its leaders. By January of 1979, they installed a new government, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, headed by Heng Samrin. Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea government was over. His organization was pushed out into Thailand. He and his followers formed a guerrilla army of resistance. The Vietnamese kept troops and advisors in Kampuchea to help establish the new government.
My discussion with Ian reminded me of a conversation I had had with Shokrollah about the Khmer revolution of 1975. We had just left a Friends of the Iranian People’s meeting. “I refused to just believe what a lot of reporters in the main-stream Western press are saying,” He said.“There may be some truth to those reports, but I won’t just take their word for it. And I don’t believe they are just real vicious as the reports say. That sounds like propaganda to me.”I finally had to agree with him that the reports deserved some skepticism. The Western press was biased enough that if no one had been killed during that government, I seriously believe the press reports would have been almost the same. I had learned to be skeptical of foreign reporting. Shokrollah was even more so. At first, I took the press reports for their face value; that Pol Pot was really mean. He killed a lot of people and banned just about anything a person, as myself, would like to do, such as listening to rock music. But after talking to Shokrollah, I began realizing that people from third world countries might see things differently. I decided to try to see the other side. I too began to question all the horror stories and noticed that certain leaders were singled out as brutal and evil who just happened to be opponents of US foreign policy. The Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) of Iran and Chile’s (Augusto) Pinochet were rarely, if ever, singled out for their torture and murder of political prisoners. Only opponents of US foreign policy were. Many foreign students told me Uganda’s (Idi ) Amin was brutal, but he also took a stand against imperialism. It was for that stand, they said, that Western journalists and politicians focused on his human rights abuses. After gaining an appreciation for Maoist philosophy, I was intrigued with the idea of a miniature Maoist revolution in Kampuchea. I began to notice the far-left tendencies of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, which the press called the Khmer Rouge. It was the only other Maoist revolution to succeed in the world at that time. Kampuchea’s rulers eliminated money and private property. Democratic Kampuchea seemed fiercely independent, even though it got some military aid from China. For some time, I had mixed feelings about Pol Pot. On one hand, his movement seemed to be far to the left and yet there was no justification for those executions. I was also puzzled. I was so impressed with the philosophy of Mao, I couldn’t understand how a government that tried to imitate it could produce such a disaster. It was during the Cultural Revolution that Mao and Chiang Ching broke with Marx’s view that everything is based on economics. They insisted that ideas are more important than material things. That was a view that I agreed with. How could Kampuchea go so terribly wrong?What I didn’t realize at the time was that the Kampuchea regime was not Maoist. It had an alliance with China but the CPK considered itself an ideological rival rather than having fraternal ties with the Chinese Communist Party. China simply needed Democratic Kampuchea to counter Vietnam’s expansion. The CPK’s views on Marxism were muddled and poorly developed. Most of the ideological documents of Pol Pot and his CPK were kept secret from all those outside the party, both inside and outside the country. They began leaking out of the country starting in 1979. Most of their ideology was summed up in two documents, Decisions of the Central Committee on a Variety of Questions and The Party’s Four-Year Plan to Build Socialism in All Fields, 1977 - 1980.
By 1979, both Shokrollah and I began to see that Democratic Kampuchea had some serious problems.“They made a lot of mistakes,” Shokrollah said one night after our meeting. “They didn’t tolerate any of the nationalist bourgeoisie, which they may have needed in the short run. They should not have arrested (Norodom) Sihanouk, who was progressive and had a popular following. The fact that they fell so fast showed they lacked popular support. But that was no excuse to invade the country and occupy it as Vietnam did.”Vietnam was clearly in the Soviet camp by now, which he considered “socialist imperialists” and “state capitalists.” Shokrollah was good at analyzing politics. I was surprised to find that he and some of the Marxist Iranians had read Sartre, which they considered important reading. Sartre’s ideas of pleasure had some similarities to that of the Cyrenaics, while other Marxist writers the Iranians read had more puritanical views on sex and drugs.Ian and Shokrollah were polar opposites when it came to politics. Ian’s politics were also the opposite of mine. However he did like to drink and chase women, which was one thing we had in common.

Pol Pot Journals

Summer read—I Am Pol Pot--ខ្ញុំ ប៉ុលពត

Recent Comments on I Am Pol Pot

Fall reading: the fictional biography I Am Pol Pot

Here is a short summery of the novel:

By Steve Otto

Here are some more excerpts from I Am Pol Pot:

Chapter 5

Here are some excerpts from I Am Pol Pot:

Chapter 1

I Am Pol Pot

New Pol Pot book

The Pol Pot Journals are no longer at LuLu.com

The weeds of the US

Important information about The Pol Pot Journals

The Making of Democratic Kampuchea

My new book: The Pol Pot Journals is out

ខ្ញុំ a poem

Excerpts from The Pol Pot Journal – soon to be realeased

New Excerpts from The Pol Pot Journals

Al JAzeer on Pol pot

Films from the regime

A major writing project comes to an end

Kent State after the invasion of Kampuchea

Excerpts from The Pol Pot Journals

Happy May Day

Khmer lesson

Buddhist Stupa Tributes Khieu Ponnary

Masters of War

My book is progressing

Armed forces day Jan. 17

Jan. 5 Birth of the Consitution Day

No December holidays

Scary monsters

In the US, the First Amendment protects books on Pol Pot

Everyone needs humor from time to time

Freedom – yes –Theocracy NO!

the Mayagüez

It seems that Pol Pot still has supporters in Cambodia

Some organizations still support Pol Pot

A younger Ponnary

The name Pol Pot or ប៉ុលពត

Coming soon The Pol Pot Journals

Merchandising

From the Pol Pot Journals

Khmer language.

May celebrations in Democratic Kampuchea

Happy New year

Pol/ប៉ុល vs. Mao/毛

International Women's Day

Democratic Kampuchea National Anthem

Where Pol Pot got his name

Chidren of The Revolution

CPK always needed musicians

How to sell a book

ប៉ុលពត has a following

Apocalypse Now

More excerpts from the Pol Pot Journals

New Years Day 31

New Pol Pot book to come out

CPK Maxims

Attacking Buddah

Casino Rouge

Dissalusionment with Democratic Kampuchea

The Indochina war spilled over into the streets of the USA

Another the Communist Party of Kampuchea song

Top leadership

Book by Khieu Samphan

The end of reason

ដំណាក់កាលប្រវត្តិសាស្ត្រ

Atrocity theme park? Cambodia's "genocide trail" attracting tourists -- and criticism

Kent State – The war came to the streets of the US

More pictures of Khieu Ponnary

Khmer (ភាសាខ្មែរ) Beer

The Angkar

Seal of Democratic Kampuchea

Working in Democratic Kampuchea

Khmer (ខ្មែរក្រហម) Rouge Cartoon

Pol Pot pop art

The Communist Party of Kampuchea turned against the Soviet Union