Takmau, Cambodia: 1957
Spirit is everything in Cambodia. Our parents tell us that on the day we are born, our spirit is flying above, summoned to land in that split second of time when our body slips into this world. They choose us; they are our first taste of the air.
We are sewing mosquito nets in the cool outdoor corridor in the middle of our two-story house. I smell magnolias and drying fish.
We are so poor. Pa rides his bike to work in the fields, a few hours journey each way. Sometimes he disappears for days at a time. There is never enough food, and when we are not at school we are working for Mae, endlessly stitching new nets to sell in the local market or in Phnom Phen. We are always waiting for holiday, once a year noodle soup and two new sets of clothes
I am maybe five or six. Already, I am angry at my spirit.
“Why you have to stop here, why this poor family?” I ask. “Why you do this to me? If you had flown a little slower, you would have landed just next door. Look how many things you would have had -- a TV, a car, lots of food.”
Then I look out in the other direction.
“Why you not fly a little slower? Even on the other side, still things would have been a little better. Why you have to land here?”
The sun is setting over the Mekong, the evening chills. The cicadas chat with birds, a dog howls. I can hear my stomach clenching with hunger, so empty it is hard to pay attention to my stitching. The babies begin to cry and Big Brother tries to distract them. Our well-seasoned ears easily weed out the sound of Ba’s bike as he turns into the alley beside our home. Now we can eat.
Everyone loves Ba. He is an artist. “Oh, your father, he so wise,” they say. Our neighbors and everyone in our family come to him for advice. He knows everything. And oh, how he loves to tell stories about Grandpa’s life in China. These are my favorite times. After dinner, I am so tired, still hungry, our sewing is folded away, the babies sleep. Only the crickets chatter as Ba begins to talk. Akmow, our black lab, curls at his feet.
Ba enchants me with bigger-than-life, true fairytales, so rich and humming with life that time and space disappear.
I am no longer just one little girl in a large poor Cambodian family. I am traveling inside Ba’s memories. I am in China, crouching outside a school with other hushed children, secretly listening to lessons only meant for rich young ears. I am dancing in the dark swollen fields, chasing down fireflies, capturing hundreds in a clear glass jar. I poke holes in the lids and read Scherazade by the light of my firefly lantern. My night sky is too rich with stars and moonlight. I sleep.
My eyes snap open as Ba settles me down in the long bamboo bed with my sisters.
“It’s okay. You were dreaming,” he whispers. I stare for a moment into his deep black eyes. I sigh and turn away into sleep. We, four sisters, side by side every night, tiny sardines packed tight in a poreless tin can. So safe.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Kou: Takmau, April 975
First, I tell you story about day our lives change forever. Hot, dusty day, a month before the rains swell Tonle Sap, fill all Cambodia rivers. Perhaps you remember?
Midday outside our house. Mae sleeping in hammock and you laughing, running circles with Amonk. So so hot I cook clams on ground; they just blister in sun.
“You hungry?” I ask Mae. She shake her head no. Too hot to eat.
I always hungry. I watch you play, eat rice and clams. But oh I ache, miss my husband. Kuan not coming home. Two days ago his friend stop by to tell me.
“Something terrible about to happen,” he say. “Kuan want me give you this.” He hands me $20 and Kuan’s army uniform. “Not safe for him here, he leave country.”
What I thinking anyway. Not like no signs. Every night, Kuan and I lie beside each other in bed, listening to battle sounds under covers.
My world so small. Kuan all I think about. I so crazy in love with him. What could be more terrible than this? I scheming how to meet in City. Yesterday, we heard that airport close. Maybe he still here. Maybe not too late.
I jump to my feet, hear bombs and gunfire. Noise too close.
“Gee, what’s going on?”
Across lake see smoke and people running. Mae sit up in hammock. You stop playing, grab at my skirt. More gunshots, bombs. In seconds, Highway just beyond front yard is crowded with people rushing towards Phnom Phen.
Everywhere stench of gunpowder. Things happening so fast, camera going snap, snap, snap, only each picture frozen in slow motion like trapped in nightmare where you scream and no sound.
Gunfire, explosions, smoke closer and closer. Friends and neighbors speed past on motorcycles and trucks.
“Leave, leave!”.
Ba arrive on his bicycle.
“Get in house,” he yell. “Khmer Rouge attack. Hide, hide.”
I grab you and we run upstairs.
“We go to Phnom Phen,” I say. “Why we stay here? Everyone leaving.”
Ba not listen. “We safe here. Enough food for three months.”
I o angry. Want to go with everyone else to City. Maybe Kuan still there. We stay with his family.
But Ba in charge and so we stay.
We lock all doors, close windows. People running by just outside, pounding on the door “Get out! Get out!” Instead, we hide under the bed in the back room.
We here for long time. You want your favorite toy. I run toward front room to fetch it,suddenly hear loud noise. Scramble back under bed. Knock on door downstairs, friend of Ba’s calling up: “Are you still there? A bomb has fallen on your house. Is anyone in there?”
Sun setting. We still under bed when we hear someone kicking open downstairs door. We so quiet, even Amonk know no make noise. We hear people knocking things off shelves, throwing things around rooms. Now they climb stairs. Three pair shoes enter. Rubber shoes made from tires. Khmer Rouge. We so quiet as they move through room, throwing open cabinets, scattering everything on floor.
But Ba too tall. One of soldiers see his feet.
“Get out, get out from under there,” he order. We crawl out. We so frightened. I hold you in my arms so tight.
Three rifles point at us.
“Do you have guns here? Any army hiding in house?”
You sit on floor, playing with roll toilet paper while Ba talks.
"No, no, we not army. Just let us stay here. No problem."
Soldiers say we have to leave. No time to take anything with us. We not safe here. Americans going to bomb city. We leave now. In three days things safe, we return.
Out. Out. So quick we wrap clothing in sarongs, Ba stuffs big suitcase. We pushed at gunpoint out onto street. Soldiers everywhere. Now everyone rush away from Phnom Phen – cars, trucks, tuk-tuks overflowing with people, bicycles and motos carry whole family. Gunshots. Small boys in big black clothing scarves wrapped around heads carry guns as big as they are. Their eyes crazy with power. Bombs explode, gun battles rage. Fear so heavy you can smell it.
“Go, go, go.” Armed soldiers alongside road urge us onward, only allowing us to stop to drink from large buckets of water sitting along road.
We walk all night. Hundreds seeking shelter under trees when bullets come too close.
Ba, Mae and I take turn carrying you, your little feet tire so quickly. I so angry at Ba. Why he not see this? Why he not take us away sooner?
Finally, morning. Rest in small farm. Farmer come over with food for you. Banana leaf wrapped around sbrown rice and tiny dried fish.
Do you remember that morning, Shrey Mom, that tiny offering food? It meal for four of us.
I still haunted by way that farmer look at us. He know what in store for us. He sorry. Oh, how I hate that man because when I look at him I know. I know old life over. Life never again be normal. I know this, but I no idea three days really mean four years.
In that moment it just like they say happen before you die. My whole life flash fast before my eyes, like star shoot across sky. Like that for you, Shrey Mom? When you die, your star not have long to travel. Only five year. In my death moment, path 24 year long. My life slip away in second, not enough time even for me to reach out and capture even tiniest picture. It all gone before I finish one breath.
Midday outside our house. Mae sleeping in hammock and you laughing, running circles with Amonk. So so hot I cook clams on ground; they just blister in sun.
“You hungry?” I ask Mae. She shake her head no. Too hot to eat.
I always hungry. I watch you play, eat rice and clams. But oh I ache, miss my husband. Kuan not coming home. Two days ago his friend stop by to tell me.
“Something terrible about to happen,” he say. “Kuan want me give you this.” He hands me $20 and Kuan’s army uniform. “Not safe for him here, he leave country.”
What I thinking anyway. Not like no signs. Every night, Kuan and I lie beside each other in bed, listening to battle sounds under covers.
My world so small. Kuan all I think about. I so crazy in love with him. What could be more terrible than this? I scheming how to meet in City. Yesterday, we heard that airport close. Maybe he still here. Maybe not too late.
I jump to my feet, hear bombs and gunfire. Noise too close.
“Gee, what’s going on?”
Across lake see smoke and people running. Mae sit up in hammock. You stop playing, grab at my skirt. More gunshots, bombs. In seconds, Highway just beyond front yard is crowded with people rushing towards Phnom Phen.
Everywhere stench of gunpowder. Things happening so fast, camera going snap, snap, snap, only each picture frozen in slow motion like trapped in nightmare where you scream and no sound.
Gunfire, explosions, smoke closer and closer. Friends and neighbors speed past on motorcycles and trucks.
“Leave, leave!”.
Ba arrive on his bicycle.
“Get in house,” he yell. “Khmer Rouge attack. Hide, hide.”
I grab you and we run upstairs.
“We go to Phnom Phen,” I say. “Why we stay here? Everyone leaving.”
Ba not listen. “We safe here. Enough food for three months.”
I o angry. Want to go with everyone else to City. Maybe Kuan still there. We stay with his family.
But Ba in charge and so we stay.
We lock all doors, close windows. People running by just outside, pounding on the door “Get out! Get out!” Instead, we hide under the bed in the back room.
We here for long time. You want your favorite toy. I run toward front room to fetch it,suddenly hear loud noise. Scramble back under bed. Knock on door downstairs, friend of Ba’s calling up: “Are you still there? A bomb has fallen on your house. Is anyone in there?”
Sun setting. We still under bed when we hear someone kicking open downstairs door. We so quiet, even Amonk know no make noise. We hear people knocking things off shelves, throwing things around rooms. Now they climb stairs. Three pair shoes enter. Rubber shoes made from tires. Khmer Rouge. We so quiet as they move through room, throwing open cabinets, scattering everything on floor.
But Ba too tall. One of soldiers see his feet.
“Get out, get out from under there,” he order. We crawl out. We so frightened. I hold you in my arms so tight.
Three rifles point at us.
“Do you have guns here? Any army hiding in house?”
You sit on floor, playing with roll toilet paper while Ba talks.
"No, no, we not army. Just let us stay here. No problem."
Soldiers say we have to leave. No time to take anything with us. We not safe here. Americans going to bomb city. We leave now. In three days things safe, we return.
Out. Out. So quick we wrap clothing in sarongs, Ba stuffs big suitcase. We pushed at gunpoint out onto street. Soldiers everywhere. Now everyone rush away from Phnom Phen – cars, trucks, tuk-tuks overflowing with people, bicycles and motos carry whole family. Gunshots. Small boys in big black clothing scarves wrapped around heads carry guns as big as they are. Their eyes crazy with power. Bombs explode, gun battles rage. Fear so heavy you can smell it.
“Go, go, go.” Armed soldiers alongside road urge us onward, only allowing us to stop to drink from large buckets of water sitting along road.
We walk all night. Hundreds seeking shelter under trees when bullets come too close.
Ba, Mae and I take turn carrying you, your little feet tire so quickly. I so angry at Ba. Why he not see this? Why he not take us away sooner?
Finally, morning. Rest in small farm. Farmer come over with food for you. Banana leaf wrapped around sbrown rice and tiny dried fish.
Do you remember that morning, Shrey Mom, that tiny offering food? It meal for four of us.
I still haunted by way that farmer look at us. He know what in store for us. He sorry. Oh, how I hate that man because when I look at him I know. I know old life over. Life never again be normal. I know this, but I no idea three days really mean four years.
In that moment it just like they say happen before you die. My whole life flash fast before my eyes, like star shoot across sky. Like that for you, Shrey Mom? When you die, your star not have long to travel. Only five year. In my death moment, path 24 year long. My life slip away in second, not enough time even for me to reach out and capture even tiniest picture. It all gone before I finish one breath.
Kou Tree
Oh, the world you would have known, Shrey Mom. There are still times now, thirty years after you left us, when I look up from whatever I am doing and search for some sign from your spirit. Is that you, that slight soothing pressure on my face? Are you hiding in the clear fresh water I use to clean my client’s feet? Did you slip into that little girl’s giggle? For just a minute, she sounds so much like you.
So many times I ask my husband, “Where are the spirits of all the children who starved to death during the Khmer Rouge? Are they still waiting in Cambodia for their families to come home? Do they know we are here in America?”
He says he does not know. I never tell him how I wait for you. How I worry.
The women who come into my salon, Shrey Mom, carry huge leather satchels that probably cost more money than all the rice we harvested during five years at Pou Chrey. Sometimes they bring their children with them, pale little children in fancy soccer uniforms and hundred dollar sneakers. They will never know the joy of playing a simple game of Leak Kanseng in their dirty bare feet. The dogs that wait for them in cars much grander than the Anghar tanks go to special shops for shampoos. Akmow would not be welcome here, with his dusty black coat and half an ear.
What stories I could tell you about this strange world of America, daughter. But there are no words in the Khmer language to describe such things. It is like a story I once heard about a very old tribe who had never seen a boat before. And so, when they looked out over the ocean, where many, many enemy boats were arriving, they only saw the water. What did they know of something besides a bird that could float?
As much as I want to tell you about my life in America, things are so very different here that there is no space in your little mind for you to even imagine their existence. I can tell you that I own a small shop in a very, very rich town in America, that I clean people’s hands and feet and paint their nails different colors. Sometimes I grind fake nails for them and paste them on their fingers. Every day fancy women come here and I put rich creams on their faces to make them look younger or use hot wax to strip hair from their body. Not sexy in America to have hair on your body.
I do these things to make them happy but they are not happy, Shrey Mom. Always they have problems. I am sorry with them. I remember to ask them how things are when they return. But deep inside, as I bend over their hands, I am saying to myself: “You think your life is a sad story? You have everything. A home. Food. A job. Education. Why you so sad?”
Sometimes I think, “If only you knew my story. You would understand what sorrow really is.” But I say nothing. They are my customers and I have bills to pay.
I will tell you what their lives remind me of, though. It is another story. Some Buddhist monks came to the largest city in America, a city bigger than twenty Phnom Phen's with buildings that rise so high into the sky you cannot see where they end. The monks went every day to a famous building where very important paintings and other art is kept, and they carved a very, very big and beautiful sculpture. It took them weeks and weeks to finish. The sculpture was so big it was the size of a small rice field. When they were done they just left it there, and pretty soon this beautiful piece of art started to melt. The days were too hot. But the monks had known all the time that what they had worked so hard to create would not last. They had done it this way on purpose. They had made the sculpture out of butter.
This is what America is like, Shrey Mom. It is not a real place. What they call beauty here is just what they use to cover up what is real. It will not last.
But the story of our lives? Ah, this will never melt, this will last forever. Yes, this is the story I will tell you
So many times I ask my husband, “Where are the spirits of all the children who starved to death during the Khmer Rouge? Are they still waiting in Cambodia for their families to come home? Do they know we are here in America?”
He says he does not know. I never tell him how I wait for you. How I worry.
The women who come into my salon, Shrey Mom, carry huge leather satchels that probably cost more money than all the rice we harvested during five years at Pou Chrey. Sometimes they bring their children with them, pale little children in fancy soccer uniforms and hundred dollar sneakers. They will never know the joy of playing a simple game of Leak Kanseng in their dirty bare feet. The dogs that wait for them in cars much grander than the Anghar tanks go to special shops for shampoos. Akmow would not be welcome here, with his dusty black coat and half an ear.
What stories I could tell you about this strange world of America, daughter. But there are no words in the Khmer language to describe such things. It is like a story I once heard about a very old tribe who had never seen a boat before. And so, when they looked out over the ocean, where many, many enemy boats were arriving, they only saw the water. What did they know of something besides a bird that could float?
As much as I want to tell you about my life in America, things are so very different here that there is no space in your little mind for you to even imagine their existence. I can tell you that I own a small shop in a very, very rich town in America, that I clean people’s hands and feet and paint their nails different colors. Sometimes I grind fake nails for them and paste them on their fingers. Every day fancy women come here and I put rich creams on their faces to make them look younger or use hot wax to strip hair from their body. Not sexy in America to have hair on your body.
I do these things to make them happy but they are not happy, Shrey Mom. Always they have problems. I am sorry with them. I remember to ask them how things are when they return. But deep inside, as I bend over their hands, I am saying to myself: “You think your life is a sad story? You have everything. A home. Food. A job. Education. Why you so sad?”
Sometimes I think, “If only you knew my story. You would understand what sorrow really is.” But I say nothing. They are my customers and I have bills to pay.
I will tell you what their lives remind me of, though. It is another story. Some Buddhist monks came to the largest city in America, a city bigger than twenty Phnom Phen's with buildings that rise so high into the sky you cannot see where they end. The monks went every day to a famous building where very important paintings and other art is kept, and they carved a very, very big and beautiful sculpture. It took them weeks and weeks to finish. The sculpture was so big it was the size of a small rice field. When they were done they just left it there, and pretty soon this beautiful piece of art started to melt. The days were too hot. But the monks had known all the time that what they had worked so hard to create would not last. They had done it this way on purpose. They had made the sculpture out of butter.
This is what America is like, Shrey Mom. It is not a real place. What they call beauty here is just what they use to cover up what is real. It will not last.
But the story of our lives? Ah, this will never melt, this will last forever. Yes, this is the story I will tell you
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
The Sham: Broad Education Rants
I suppose it shouldn’t be all that difficult to actualize how the US can continue to claim its actions in the Middle East are dictated by their refusal to work with governments who support terrorists. These governments by virtue of their affiliations are terrorist nations in and of themselves. Right.
Who among our ‘elected’ officials and their incipient power machine needs be called to task for the US support of MEK in Iraq, or the Pakistani militant group Jundullah, or the most recent reports that our policy in Iraq (win at all costs) now involves supporting insurgent Sunnis in al Anbar who have turned on Al Qaeda jihadists. (I believe I must have missed a news cycle or two at the time when Al Qaeda morphed into the full blown instigator of the insurgency, please feel free to fill me in here). Nothing different here, the US never has no qualms about funding both sides in regional conflicts: it’s all about the need to be on the receiving end of lucrative, invasive bleeding of natural resources, global control and growing new markets for big business anyway. (Or at least that’s my hit on it.) The only one who ever wins regardless of outcome is the US. Everyone just accepts it.
Robert Fisk’s recent Independent article regarding MSMs abject failure to report on the reality on the ground in the MidEast. Once again, the power of AIPAC. The blind fidelity to Israel, our 51st state.
“it's really all about shutting the reality of the Middle East off from us. It's to prevent the British and American people from questioning the immoral and cruel and internationally illegal occupation of Muslim lands. And in the Land of the Free, this systematic censorship of Middle East reality continues even in the country's schools. Now the principal of a Connecticut high school has banned a play by pupils, based on the letters and words of US soldiers serving in Iraq. Entitled Voices in Conflict, …compiled the reflections of soldiers and others - including a 19-year-old Wilton High graduate killed in Iraq - to create their own play. To no avail."
I live in ‘blue state’ country, one of those small pockets of America regularly lambasted for its radical liberal viewpoints. I don’t know anyone who isn’t shamed by our government’s Mideast policy as well as control over the skys, airways and trade agreements. But I become increasingly terrified by the failure of mainstream America to take a hard look at what is occurring in our education system. Again, while the US continually publicizes the anti-American textbooks and the madrassas on the other side of the Atlantic, no one is screaming out about this administration’s subversive battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of our children.
Sure, there is mention of the swelling number of home schoolers in America, but little report on how the government voucher program pays enough to make home schooling a family of 3 kids a highly profitable endeavor. Enter stage right the dominionist movement and the insurgent Joshua Generation (is Obama calling forth his J generation to merge with these genetically engineered airheads?)
So what skill sets can we expect from the products of No Child Left Behind? If not the military, then perhaps future employees of Blackwater. By the time this administration completes its mission to privatize the military, job demand will be such that Blackwater can easily offer its employees a minimum wage as they assume control of military training bases and hire returning Vets as trainers…. already they are recruiting mercenaries from developing countries whom they hire for extremely low wages.
What I propose undoubtedly has all the ingredients of a paranoid conspiracy theory … but is anybody thinking about this? Is anyone putting all the pieces together? The propaganda campaign raging in America right now for the ‘hearts and minds’ of OUR children brings to mind the campaign the British Colonialists waged to cover up the brutal torture and internment of over 100,000 peasants; that, too, was about winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the British public over to support the re-education of indigenous peoples.
There is no doubt in the educational community about what constitutes the most effective processes to promote the emergence of a young population with highly developed critical thinking skills, a finely honed ability to transfer knowledge between domains, an ability to work collectively and productively, and generate new knowledge. Unfortunately, however, NCLB promotes 'teaching to the test', a paradigm based on highly uncontextualized simplistic rote learning guaranteed to create a generation of humanoid robots.
Are we offering our children any other cognate for beauty other than the biblical image of the rapture?
Lifelong learning experiences:
Why would someone as conservative as Rupert Murdock, someone who is championing the symbiotic relationship between the religious right and the government be at the same time the owner of ultra conservative media outlets and control shares in the porn channels available in homes and hotels across America? The stone throwers create, sustain and condemn. They fabricate our reality. Amazing how Janet Jackson’s boob gave the FCC license to even further remove us from actually experiencing reality as it happens. To enlarge, distort and saturate our consciousness for news cycle after news cycle with images they would have us believe have no rightful place in our public domain ….
Guns to Caviar
We are no longer playing in the same ballgame. As Naomi Klein says, we have now entered into an era where the peace incentive is no longer a viable option. Chaos promotes privatization.
“…there's an index called the Guns-to-Caviar index, which for seventeen years has been measuring an inverse relationship between the sale of fighter jets and executive luxury jets. And for seventeen years, this index, the Guns-to-Caviar index -- the guns are the fighter jets, the caviar are the executive jets -- has found that when fighter jets go up, executive jets go down. When executive jets go up, fighter jets go down. But all of a sudden, they're both going up, which means that there’s a lot of guns being sold, enough guns to buy a hell of a lot of caviar. And Blackwater is, of course, at the center of this economy.”
And for more about Blackwater, a Harper’s magazine reveals that Blackwater’s founder and former Navy Seal Erik Prince has contributed roughly $200,000 to Republican coffers; as if that isn't enough now the news that Cofer Black, former Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U. S. State Department, and former Director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, is now serving as Vice Chairman.
Monday, March 19, 2007
The Straussians & Iraq
Glenn Greenwald has a particularly cogent commentary today (click on it to bypass Salon’s homepage) at his new home on Salon. Yes I know it requires clicking through an ad (though it is quite painless) but for Glenn it is well worth the time.
Irving Kristol (Himmelfarb’s husband) has written in the past about the need to exploit religious and moral concepts in order to manipulate the masses, and his intellectual North Star, Leo Strauss, has advocated — as Strauss scholar Shadia Drury documented — that “those in power must invent noble lies and pious frauds to keep the people in the stupor for which they are supremely fit” — a view Kristol has endorsed. One can see that dynamic powerfully at work in the interaction between these neoconservatives and the President. They have seized upon the President’s evangelical fervor and equated his “calling” to wage war for Good in the world with the neoconservative agenda of endless wars in the Middle East.
And the more unpopular the President becomes as a result, the more of a failure these policies are, the more strongly they tell him to ignore all of that, that none of it matters, that his God and history will conclude that he did The Right Thing, provided that he continues steadfastly to pursue their agenda. And the President believes that. That is why nothing will stop him in pursuing the path he created years ago when, in January, 2002, he became convinced to name not only Iraq, but also Iran, as standing members of the “Axis of Evil” (even though our relations with Iran were rapidly improving at the time) and cited the 9/11 attacks in order to all but vow war on those countries, despite their having nothing to do with those attacks. The President’s “lessons” at the feet of neoconservatives continue, and he is as faithful a student as ever.
As incoherent and scattered as bush administration policy and implementation may appear to rational people on the outside looking in the fact is he’s been remarkably consistent on this approach from the beginning, using the Straussian “noble lies and pious frauds” to keep the less observant distracted.
Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973), was a German-born Jewish political philosopher who specialized in the study of classical political philosophy. He spent most of his career as a Political Science Professor at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of devoted students, as well as publishing fifteen books. Since his death, he has come to be regarded as an intellectual source of neoconservatism in the United States.
The Power of Nightmares
In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.
The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.
In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.
The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.
In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.
The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.
Parrot's Beak
... the southeast corner of Cambodia known as the “parrot’s beak” for the way it juts out into Vietnam
A history of conflict in Parrot's Peak, Cambodia
The rivalry between Cambodia and Viet Nam started centuries ago, fueled by religious differences and by economic competition over the Mekong River basin, and has never ceased. Common cause against the South Viet Nam regime and the U.S. merely dampened mutual hatreds; even in the midst of war, there were incidents between them. In 1973 the Khmer Rouge attacked North Vietnamese who were maintaining a wartime supply line through the Parrot's Beak, where Cambodian territory protrudes into Viet Nam. The Cambodians suspected—justifiably, as it turned out—that the Vietnamese were holding Chinese arms meant for Khmer Rouge fighters.
Our third choice is to go to the heart of the trouble. That means cleaning out major North Vietnamese and Vietcong occupied territories - these sanctuaries which serve as bases for attacks on both Cambodia and American and South Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam. Some of these, incidentally, are as close to Saigon as Baltimore is to Washington. This one, for example [indicating], is called the Parrot's Beak. It is only 33 miles from Saigon. (from Richard Nixon's Speech regarding North Vietnamese and Cambodia)
Parrot's Peak Today
Friday, February 16, 2007
Chemtrails Defined
The chemtrail theory is a group of conspiracy theories regarding allegedly unnatural vapor trails purporting to hold 'chemicals.' They are said to be found behind certain aircraft (in certain places and at certain times), leaving behind the distinct trails thought to be laden with so-called 'chemicals.' Conversely, contrails are formed by condensation of water vapor in the aircraft's exhausts. Proponents of the theories maintain that some trails have an appearance and quality different from those of normal water-based contrails, i.e. that chemtrails are not consistent with the known properties of contrails. The general unifying factor is the generally conspiratorial belief that some kind of chemical or biological agent is being secretly released. The term "chemtrail" should not be confused with other forms of aerial dumping (e.g. crop dusting, cloud seeding or aerial firefighting). It specifically refers to systematic, high-altitude dumping of unknown substances for some undisclosed purpose resulting in the appearance of these supposed chemtrails.
Among the theories proposed for the purpose of the alleged "chemtrails" are: atmospheric and weather modification, biological warfare, mind control or occult purposes. They are also theorized to be part of a system to counter the effects of global warming, to create a cheap wireless communications network for the military, or to create a more sophisticated radar system (for both defensive and scientific application).[1]
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