"We're not supposed to be in Cambodia, but that's where I'm going."

Schmawy and I have a secret agenda. That's all I can tell you for now. I'll let you know more once we're in Cambodia.

In reply to this comment by gorgonheap:
What's with the cheese head? Don't tell me your a Packer fan.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'dead kennedys, serj tankian, foo fighers, holiday in cambodia' to 'dead kennedys, serj tankian, foo fighers, holiday in cambodia, cover' - edited by gorgonheap

I believe we can add:

Cambodia
Indonesia
Philippines
Egypt
Afghanistan

Would be nice to have a comprehensive list.

And congrats, special_ops. Want to join me on special ops in Cambodia? Lots of nice mangos there.

"Poor rougy, I'd hate to live your life."

You are not smart enough to live my life.

You can barely think for yourself, and you know that. You can memorize a thousand lines of rules, but you don't know what the hell it means until an officer yells it at you.

Nobody is attacking America.

America is attacking the poor and the weak overseas.

You Marines are usually the worst example of a bully. You are loud and sadistic when you are winning; you are loud and pathetic when you are losing.

America, the home-land, has not been truly attacked for decades, no thanks to you.

But you have killed countless civilians in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Grenada, Panama, and many other places. It's happening in east-Africa right now. There's no liberation. There's no democracy. It's a trick-out slaghter.

And almost every time you have brutalized people who could not fight back.

"One can only guess as to what your childhood was like to have you end up in such a state today."

That's the shit somebody used on you at camp, isn't it? What does my, or your, childhood have to do with this?

It's not fake. That's a B40, Vietnamese knockoff of a Russian RPG2.
You can do that and throw grenades and shoot rifles in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. There are tons of videos on youtube with that same mud pit.

I just think it's sad that it's become a tourist attraction.

Re Chomsky: on Pol Pot, etc:

http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/chomsky/chomsky/5/6.html

" The Pol Pot Affair

Collaborators once more, Chomsky and Edward Herman published The Political Economy of Human Rights in 1979. In the second volume of this two-volume work, After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, they compared two sites of atrocity ­ Cambodia and Timor ­ and evaluated the diverse media responses to each. It embroiled Chomsky in an entirely new controversy.

In a 7 November 1980 Times Higher Education Supplementarticle called "Chomsky's Betrayal of Truths," Steven Lukes accused Chomsky of intellectual irresponsibility. He was contributing to the "deceit and distortion surrounding Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia," Lukes charged, because, "obsessed by his opposition to the United States' role in Indochina," he had "lost all sense of perspective" (31). Lukes concluded that there was "only one possible thing to think" : Chomsky had betrayed his own anarchist-libertarian principles. "It is sad to see Chomsky writing these things. It is ironic, given the United States' government's present pursuit of its global role in supporting the seating of Pol Pot at the [United Nations]. And it is bizarre, given Chomsky's previous stand for anarchist-libertarian principles. In writing as he does about the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, Chomsky betrays not only the responsibilities of intellectuals, but himself" (31).


The Obscure History of East Timor

Lukes makes no mention here of the subject of the book, which is clearly stated in the introduction to volume 1, which is entitled "Cambodia: Why the Media Find It More Newsworthy than Indonesia and East Timor." It is an explicit comparison between Cambodia and Timor ­ the latter being the scene of the worst slaughter, relative to population size, since the Holocaust. Now if the atrocities perpetrated in Timor were comparable to those perpetrated by Pol Pot in Cambodia (and Chomsky claims that they were), then a comparison of Pol Pot's actions to those committed in Timor could not possibly constitute an apology for Pol Pot. Yet somehow Lukes suggested that it did. If such comparisons cannot be made without the intellectual community rising up in protest, then the entire issue of state-instigated murder can become lost inside the polemics of determining which team of slaughterers represents a lesser evil.

That Lukes could ignore the fact that Chomsky and Herman were comparing Pol Pot to East Timor "says a lot about him," in Chomsky's opinion:

By making no mention of the clear, unambiguous, and explicit comparison [of Pol Pot and East Timor], he is demonstrating himself to be an apologist for the crimes in Timor. That is elementary logic: if a comparison of Pol Pot to Timor is apologetics for Pol Pot, as Lukes claims (by omission of the relevant context, which he could not fail to know), then it must be that the crimes in Timor were insignificant. Lukes, then, is an apologist for the worst slaughter relative to population since the Holocaust. Worse, that is a crime for which he, Lukes, bears responsibility; uk support has been crucial. And it is a crime that he, Lukes, could have always helped to terminate, if he did not support huge atrocities; in contrast, neither he nor anyone else had a suggestion as to what to do about Pol Pot. (13 Feb. 1996)

The vigor of Chomsky's remarks reflects the contempt that he feels for this kind of by-now-familiar tactic. Decorum must not take precedence over decrying slaughter and falsity, and Chomsky is compelled to demonstrate this: "Let us say that someone in the us or uk . . . did deny Pol Pot atrocities. That person would be a positive saint as compared to Lukes, who denies comparable atrocities for which he himself shares responsibility and knows how to bring to an end, if he chose. That's elementary. Try to find some intellectual who can understand it. That tells us a lot . . . about the intellectual culture" (13 Feb. 1996). The point of course goes beyond Lukes, and extends into a general discussion concerning the intellectual community, which itself, in Chomsky's opinion, "cannot comprehend this kind of trivial, simple, reasoning and what it implies. That really is interesting. It reveals a level of indoctrination vastly beyond what one finds in totalitarian states, which rarely were able to indoctrinate intellectuals so profoundly that they are unable to understand real trivialities" (14 Aug. 1995).

Within weeks, two long and lucid replies to Lukes's piece were sent in to the Times Higher Education Supplement, accusing him of selective reading, of missing the entire point of both volumes of Political Economy, of ignoring the first volume, of trivializing the moral potency of Chomsky's thesis, of cold-bloodedly manipulating the truth, of misrepresenting Chomsky and Herman's work, and of disrespect. Neither reply came from Chomsky; one was from Laura J. Summers, the other from Robin Woodsworth Carlsen.

Though bolstered by the support of those sympathetic to his position and his larger aims, Chomsky knew that a smear campaign could be much more effective and have a much wider dissemination than rational argumentation. In Herman's opinion,

the Cambodia and Faurisson disputes imposed a serious personal cost on Chomsky. He put up a diligent defence against the attacks and charges against him, answering virtually every letter and written criticism that came to his attention. He wrote many hundreds of letters to correspondents and editors on these topics, along with numerous articles, and answered many phone enquiries and queries in interviews. The intellectual and moral drain was severe. It is an astonishing fact, however, that he was able to weather these storms with his energies, morale, sense of humour and vigour and integrity of his political writings virtually intact. ( "Pol Pot" 609)


Cambodia today: continuing carnage

As ever, Chomsky is quick to point out that being the subject of such treatment did not make him unique. But the ferocity of the attack on him does reveal something about the power of popular media, the lengths to which endangered elites will go to eliminate dissent, and the nature of what passes for appropriate professional behavior. In a letter he wrote to the Times Literary Supplement in January of 1982 ­ a reply to an article by Paul Johnson in that same publication in which he, like Lukes, accused Chomsky and Herman of sympathizing with the Khmer Rouge ­ Chomsky examined one of the tactics used against him: "[A] standard device by which the conformist intellectuals of East or West deal with irritating dissident opinion is to try to overwhelm it with a flood of lies. Paul Johnson illustrates the technique with his reference to my `prodigies of apologetics . . . for the Khmer Rouge' (December 25). I have stated the facts before in this journal, and will do so again, not under any illusion that they will be relevant to the guardians of the faith." Chomsky asserted that the smear campaign was a side issue; the larger concern was, of course, the intellectual apologists' ability to forgo reasonable analysis when their own government was at fault:

The context was extensive documentation of how the mainstream intelligentsia suppressed or justified the crimes of their own states during the same period. This naturally outraged those who feel that they should be free to lie at will concerning the crimes of an official enemy while concealing or justifying those of their own states ­ a phenomenon that is, incidentally, far more significant and widespread than the delusions about so-called "socialist" states that Johnson discusses, and correspondingly quite generally evaded. Hence the resort to the familiar technique that Johnson, and others, adopts. ("Political Pilgrims")

Otero even goes so far as to describe (in a note he added to Language and Politics) the reaction to Chomsky's positions on Faurisson and Pol Pot as a coordinated attempt to undermine his credibility and thereby sabotage his powerful critique of policies on Indochina:

The major international campaign orchestrated against Chomsky on completely false pretexts was only part ­ though perhaps a crucial part ­ of the ambitious campaign launched in the late 70s with the hope of reconstructing the ideology of power and domination which had been partially exposed during the Indochina war. The magnitude of the insane attack against Chomsky, which aimed at silencing him and robbing him of his moral stature and his prestige and influence, is of course one more tribute to the impact of his writings and his actions ­ not for nothing he was the only one singled out. (310)

Such commentary assigns to the ruling elite a uniformity that is based on the values shared by its members. Evidence for this may be found in the heavy media coverage given to the Lukes camp and the general reluctance to allow Chomsky space for rebuttal (particularly in France)."

I've been at this exact pond. It's in Cambodia about 30 mins from Phnom Penh. There's lots and lots of weapons left over from the Khmer Rouge era, and no control over who uses them or how. There's also booming tourism from people who live in countries where these weapons are illegal, and somebody put the two together. (Here's a vid I shot of my buddy throwing a nade there). Anybody can drive up and, within a couple of minutes of arriving, throw a grenade or shoot any of a variety of guns, even a rocket launcher. They used to let us shoot cows with the rocket launcher, but apparently too much heat started coming down, so now you can only shoot at a nearby mountain.

The "reception" area is a folding table underneath a tin roof, right behind where this camera man and I were shooting from, so it's unlikely that anybody has ever dropped a grenade that didn't get kicked into the water in time.

I couldn't believe how lax they were about safety. I shot a fully automatic AK-47. The guy just handed it to me, pointed it downrange, then nonchalantly walked downrange to set up my target with this loaded AK pointed right at his back. He didn't even look back to check.

I also shot a clip from a 9mm handgun. He asked me if I needed to be shown how to use it. I said no, and he let me shoot. Then I handed it off to another friend I was with for the last few rounds. She had never shot a gun before, but he didn't ask, just let her go to it.

Criticism about information dissemination from someone who thought the US was fighting the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia? Who believes we found WMD in Iraq? I think it's time you explore the facts...

But why bother right? Watch Fox News and let them make your opinions for you

In reply to this comment by deedub81:
When it comes to my standards, morals, ethics, and ideals you better believe I'm "staunch" and "stubborn". I've seen and heard enough by now to know which side of the line I want to stand.

It's not my fault that I could take 10 - 15 excerpts from the Bin Laden transcripts and 10 - 15 lines from a Far Left Blog and you wouldn't be able to tell me which was which.

BTW: Good luck with that "Selective" Information Dissemination.

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
My sole interest is information dissemination.

But if you must know, I disagree with those comments because its telling when we let Bin Laden let us turn against one another politically, his usage of democrats and Iraq does two things, first placate the Democrats into not arguing for a withdrawl and feed into Bush's desire to sustain a war in Iraq thus letting him ride out in the sunset in January 2009 and hand this war over to which ever candidate gets elected.

The criticism of equaiting the Left with Bin Laden thus means anyone on the left is a homicidal luncatic, which is right considering we had nothing but lies about the war perpetuall from the white house. Who only gladdly accept the flak war between the left and right as it lets them go about their business undettered, mainly by limiting consititutional freedoms, escalating a war based on false pretences.

You have proven to be a staunch at times stubborn supporter of the right wing. So it's not suprising you pose this question to me.

In reply to this comment by deedub81:
I just wanted to clarify the reason why you have a problem with Brooks:

Is it because he calls the Far Left Bloggers "childish people", or that he points out the fact that Bin Laden is quoting them in his most recent video(therefore, Bin Laden obviously reads and agrees with said bloggers)?

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
CNN did the same thing equating progressives with terrorists.

Am sorry you need to go back and read a history book.

The US goverment 'illegally' bombed VC positions in the Cambodian border, this not even mentioning the fact that these bombings a) attacks on a sovereign nation b) were kept secret until the press found out; B-52s would take off on bombing missions in Vietnam, and get re-diverted to different targets, this was all handled by Henry Kissinger. It was not bombing the Khmer Rouge.

"Kissinger played a key role in a secret American bombing campaign of Cambodia to target PAVN and Viet Cong units launching raids against South Vietnam from within Cambodia's borders and resupplying their forces by using the Ho Chi Minh trail and other routes, as well as the 1970 Cambodian Incursion and subsequent widespread bombing of Cambodia. The bombing campaign inadvertently contributed to the chaos of the Cambodian Civil War, which saw the forces of dictator Lon Nol unable to defeat the growing Khmer Rouge insurgency that would emerge victorious in 1975."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger#Vietnam_and_Cambodia

This lead to a larger movement against the ineffective goverment in Cambodia which wanted more then anything to stay out of the Vietnam war, leading to rise of the Khmer Rouge by garnering support from the peasantry affected by the bombing. In case you misread that...

"Historians have cited the U.S. intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965-1973) as a significant factor leading to increased support of the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. Historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen have used a combination of sophisticated satellite mapping, recently unclassified data about the extent of bombing activities, and peasant testimony, to argue that there was a strong correlation between villages targeted by U.S. bombing and recruitment of peasants by the Khmer Rouge.

Kiernan and Owen argue that "Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began. In his study of Pol Pot's rise to power, Kiernan argues that "Pol Pot's revolution would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilisation of Cambodia" and that the U.S. carpet bombing "was probably the most significant factor in Pol Pot's rise."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Path_to_power

And finally, Bush using the rise of the Khmer Rouge as in some way connected with the withdrawal of US forces after General Westmoreland was given everything he needed to win the war is a fallacious argument that borders on the surreal.

"Not one of the religious types have been able to offer a compelling rebuttal using evidence and logic to support their reasoning." To your points:

1. Atheists are more annoying than Christians.

I tend to agree with you that this argument matters little and is tangential to the whole topic. However, you've supplied a fair amount of evidence for this point including inflammatory phrases such as "magical teapot believers", "nutjobs", "full of shit", "I think you know where you can store your advice", etc.

2. Atheists are more evangelical than Christians.

Again, I don't see it being too central to the original discussion. It is interesting, though, that you stated "Militant, in your face, logical, rational atheism is the only chance we have of salvaging the shambles you religious wingnuts have made of this planet." Sounds like you're out to "evangelize" change in the world then? Perhaps even applauding where militant atheism is applied? More on that in point #4.

3. All humans, both atheistic and religious, are irrational beings ruled by emotions with their beliefs as thinly veiled icing on a primordial cake.

A strawman argument that is so over simplified and incorrect that it isn't worth addressing.


4. Christians have not been responsible for mass genocide.

Nobody denies the crusade, inquisition, etc. took place, but the issue is whether these people are "Christian" or not. Did they call themselves Christian? Yes. Were their actions aligned with the words and example Jesus laid out for his followers and, therefore, what Christians are supposed to be like? No. You are assuming that all those who claim to be Christian are truthful representatives of Jesus and not self-centered, power-hungry, opportunists who saw it was fashionable to call themselves "Christian" given the power structure of the day. You are attempting to equate two vastly different entities and, therefore, the logic fails.

Is it fair to level the same charges against atheism by equating the actions of atheistic states to represent all atheists? 26.3 million killed in China under Mao Tse Tung, 66 million in the Soviet Union under Lenin/Stalin/Khrushchev, 2.5 million under Pol Pot in Cambodia, etc. If you are going to make the claim that Christians are genocidal monsters, it would seem that atheists are in the same boat. If you want to talk about current events, communist regimes with atheistic tenants (e.g. China, North Korea, etc.) continue to be highlighted for human rights abuses as they target those purely because of religious beliefs (do a search on hrw.org for examples). The problem here is that it is hard to argue that these leaders are not following the "beliefs" laid down by what you portray of atheism -- religious people are "nutjobs" and there is work to do in "salvaging the shambles you religious wingnuts have made of this planet".


5. God wants us to have free will.

Free will is a core point used against the logical "problem of evil" or "problem of hell" arguments. You've had your own ad hominem arguments to try and avoid it -- "That's some good old fashioned bullshit religious guilt if I've ever heard it."or "More rhetoric and no substance." You also attempt to claim that free will can't exist in the Christian view -- "And the Christian set of rules by which you must live is most certainly NOT free." You are trying to change the definition of free will with freedom from consequence -- again, another logical fallacy. Along your line of argument, free will should include the ability to choose to go to heaven. However, if heaven is a "perfect place", would it be perfect if anyone and everyone could be there? Free will cannot make logical impossibilities true -- can I choose to make myself invisible? score 5000 on the SAT test? etc.


6. Atheists use "old arguments" that have do not hold water.

Old argument? Yes. The core argument of the cartoon is "The Problem of Hell", a variant of "The Problem of Evil"/Epicurus' Riddle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_Hell) which is a logical argument that has been around for a long while.

Hold water. Not bad. You could say the same of the theistic ontological argument too. Atheists and Christians have used these for some time and, as such, it is apparent that neither side considers the other's logical "proof" so compelling as to concede defeat. I expect that you'd claim this to be more "bullshit", as you are fond of saying, so I'll be more direct. "Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent." is not true. Free will and yet being unable to choose evil are logically inconsistent. On one hand, you have free will with the potential for evil while on the other, no evil but no free will.


7. Well over 90% of the world is religious.

Arguing over a relatively small percentage seems to be silly -- the point that the vast majority of the population is religious isn't impacted by the difference. It seems equally ridiculous to claim that a majority is proof of something -- I'm sure that Christian and Atheist alike can site a majority opinion either now or in the past that we consider incorrect.


And to sum up what we've heard outside of these points:

1. Then I suppose Jesus and the old testament God are full of crap as well. Which I happen to agree with.
2. But it doesn't change the fact that the Bible is rife with examples of God threatening eternal damnation and hellfire to anyone who doesn't follow his rules.

For all of the times you've bashed people for lacking logic or evidence, where is it when you make these assertions? You've read what Jesus did/said and can comment specifically how he is full of crap then?


Although it has been interesting to watch the comments go back and forth on this and to jump in from time to time, I find the following quotation by Elbert Hubbard appropriate, "Logic: an instrument used for bolstering a prejudice." As this string of comments (along with hundreds like it scattered about the internet) shows, God is not going to be proved or disproved by logical arguments alone.

brknphoenix wrote in my profile: "Sorry, I guess I forgot to add the bias. I suppose if I had added "the war sucks, just look at what a terrible president Bush is, those poor people" you would have deemed it unoffensive and not down-voted?"

But I think it's more appropriate to respond here.

You are assuming that my opposition to war is a partisan 'repugnocrat vs demagoglican' issue - which in itself is quite disturbing, and yet instructional. The truth is when I read your "boom" tagline and your chipper "get ready for explosions!" I felt like vomiting. So I have no choice but to inform you how it is that some people have never stopped being keenly aware, since the horrible day this new US war began, that there are real men, women, and children suffering in Iraq. There were countless thousands of children terrified out of their wits cowering in terror beneath the fangs of those wretched bombs. Many of them will be blown to pieces while your fireworks go off. Many are witnessing their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters getting shredded by shrapnel and debris.

There's a reason new wars are reported the way they are; in the 21st Century the television viewer is either "brought into the theatre" through the eyes and ears of the "embedded" reporter, and thereby separated from those dangerous moments of critical thought (think eg. Cambodia and Vietnam), by the artificial nature of this sense of involvement, or alternately, the viewer is presented, at a safe distance, with a display of fireworks reminiscent of the 4th of July, with all of the shallow latent emotionalism of that spectacle. Other's suffering has become entertainment.

Now there's a skateboard to nuts for you, brknphoenix...

President Johnson sabotaged the war? Am sorry but you need to re-do your American history course. The CIA backed the extermination of thousands of people in East Timor. The Gulf Of Tonkin incident was a gross lie, the administration operated on the assumption of the domino theory whereas in reality Vietnam and China hate each other for thousands of years.

The Paris peace plan was nearly signed by both sides with Nixon exiting office, Kissinger sabotaged it and peace was eluded because someone was playing a 19th century diplomacy game using American lives. Then they proceeded to have the largest bombing operation ever to prove to the South Vietnamese that they fucking meant to stay.

Kissinger then tried to lie to the American people and expanded the war into Cambodia facilitating the rise of Khmer Rouge regime due to destabilization in the country side. B-52s would take off and have target corrections going into the Cambodian border, when they landed the logs of course showed operations within Vietnam.

The Vietnam war ended not because of hippies, or war vets or anything like that. It ended because the American people did not want it, nor did they support it.

Your comments make the people who got shot by the National Guard at universities across the country seem insignificant and trivial, this was the time of the draft and people didn't want to go killing another race of people half across the world for dubious reasons.

Amazing. Let's compare the crimes, OK?

Nixon: Ordered his goons to break into the offices of his political opponents to dig up dirt. Illegally bombed Cambodia.

Ford: Pardoned Nixon and goons. Otherwise harmless.

Reagan: Traded arms to our enemies to finance an illegal war.

Bush I: Pardoned Reagans goons to cover up his involvement in the scheme.

Clinton: After the most extensive and expensive Presidential investigation in history, he lied about the one thing every single person on the planet lies about...sex.

Bush II: Lied in the State of the Union speech to get the US into a pointless and expensive war, and in his eagerness to do so let our real enemy get away.

The Clinton persecution was so egregious because his predecessor had a mistress throughout his entire Presidency - Jennifer Fitzgerald.