Recalling Pol Pot's Terror, But Forgetting His Backers

history > killing fields > a reminder
John Pilger reminds us of the events that transpired to bring the dreaded Pol Pot regime in power - and who supported it after it was ousted by communist Vietnam...:

"The genocide in Cambodia did not begin on April 17 1975, 'Year Zero'. It began more than five years earlier when American bombers killed an estimated 600,000 Cambodians. Phosphorous and cluster bombs, napalm and dump bombs that left vast craters were dropped on a neutral country of peasant people and straw huts. In one six-month period in 1973, more tons of American bombs were dropped on Cambodia than were dropped on Japan during the second world war: the equivalent of five Hiroshimas. The regime of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger did this, secretly and illegally.
Unclassified CIA files leave little doubt that the bombing was the catalyst for Pol Pot's fanatics, who, before the inferno, had only minority support. Now, a stricken people rallied to them. In Panh's film, a torturer refers to the bombing as his reason for joining 'the maquis': the Khmer Rouge. What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot completed. And having been driven out by the Vietnamese, who came from the wrong side of the cold war, the Khmer Rouge were restored in Thailand by the Reagan administration, assisted by the Thatcher government, who invented a 'coalition' to provide the cover for America's continuing war against Vietnam."

Papandreou: The dynasty continues
greece > politics > hereditary
This is happenning at home:

"PASOK, which began its political career as a party that was profoundly critical of US policy, both in Greece and internationally, has gradually become the "American" party of some contemporary Greeks, and not only thanks to the communication skills of George Papandreou."

The whole media blitz that Papandreou's nomination as party leader has entailed, reminds me of American elections, only worse. The private TV channels in Greece, owned in their majority by big business interests which have made a killing under the self-styled socialists, are playing day in and day out more and more pictures of Papandreou the third: a messianic thrill has overtaken the pundits, after the scare of what seemed like the spectre of certain electoral defeat this spring. Now with the force of the biggest Greek political brand-name behind them they are marching forward hoping to con everyone into giving them four more years of plunder.
The socialists have overseen the greatest upward redistribution of income in living memory and have created an ubiquitous system of corruption that makes the Andreas' Papandreou era seem pristine in comparison. They have allowed a handful of magnates to run the country as their own personal feudal property. They have sold off (or are trying to sell off) utilities and public lands, while changing the laws as to allow the destruction of most of Greece's forests. Yet, at the same time they have nothing but friends among TV channel owners who shape public attitudes and distract the populace by showing nothing but the most vile and insignificant gossip as news. Still PASOK was on the way for a major defeat, as the opinion polls were showing a gaping 8-10% between them and the (equaly abominable) New Democracy conservative party, which, however, is not considered by our ruling oligarchs capable of handling the further upward redistribution of income without creating serious social tensions.
Thus the bearer of the name was called so that a PR coup d' etat could be staged and the battle renewed. I doubt if it will work in the near term, but one can safely bet that George Papandreou will be Prime Minister of Greece sometime in the next four years...

And to make the whole thing more surreal, the most "Anti-American" European country will soon have the most pro-American Prime Minister in Europe.