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."

Honouring the memory of Greek Jews murdered by the Nazis

history > memory
Since yesterday was a day of rememberence of the holocaust, let me link (as a small tribute) to two sites about the holocaust in Greece:
The first about the deportation of the Salonica Jews, is titled "The trains of death" and it describes the evacuation of the city from its Jewish population.
The second is an online exhibition of the US holocaust memorial museum, about the Holocaust in Greece. Here's the site in pdf format.
A thorough review of the fate of the Greek Jewish population under the axis occupation can be found in Mark Mazower's book: "Inside Hitler's Greece" along with a detailed account of how EAM saved Athens' 8000 Jewish residents.

We know who you are, consumer

things of the past > privacy
Minority Report-like developments paving the way to a market dystopia:

"Once you buy your RFID-tagged jeans at The Gap with RFID-tagged money, walk out of the store wearing RFID-tagged shoes, and get into your car with its RFID-tagged tires, you could be tracked anywhere you travel. Bar codes are usually scanned at the store, but not after purchase. But RFID transponders are, in many cases, forever part of the product, and designed to respond when they receive a signal. Imagine everything you own is 'numbered, identified, catalogued, and tracked.' Anonymity and privacy? Gone in a hailstorm of invisible communication, betrayed by your very property."

Iraqi Whispers Mull Repeat of 1920s Revolt Over Western Occupation

Iraq > 1920 > 2004
This is a great article, an exception to the mainstream ahistorical (or pseudohistorical) coverage, as it looks at before 1979, into Iraq's anti-imperial history to draw parallels to and motivations for the resistance to US occupation. Excerpt:

"To many Iraqis, today's U.S. occupation reads like an old play with modern characters: America as the new Britain, grenade-lobbing insurgents as the new opposition, and Ahmad Chalabi and other former exiles on the Governing Council as the new kings."

The Saddam Hussein Sourcebook

iraq > saddam > uncle sam
Declassified Secrets from the U.S.-Iraq Relationship, display a definite ambivalence, to say the least, towards the "Butcher of Baghdad", leading us simple folk to the conclusion that it ain't who you butcher - it's when and under whose patronage that counts...

In a disimilar vein, the fine fiends at the faux WTO, have come up with a fun regime change game.

Furl - Your web page filing cabinet

web apps > killer
Yes! I always wanted one of these! I'm putting the furl script on the side bar too.
From the site:

"Furl is a new web browsing tool that lets you save and organize thousands of useful web pages (you know, the ones you want to save for future reference but then can never find again) in a personal "web page filing cabinet".
Once saved, you can effortlessly find any page again later using a powerful full text search tool. With Furl you can forget trying to save and organize dozens of bookmarks, forget saving web pages to your desktop, in fact forget everything except how to find a useful web page again next time you need it. "

(via Metafilter, a treasure, always)

Iraqi Press Monitor

iraq > news

"The Institute for War & Peace Reporting today launched the Iraqi Press Monitor, a daily survey of the main stories in Iraq's newspapers.

It will feature the top 7 stories of the day, along with a political cartoon, and include details of the newspapers they appeared in."

Here is the latest issue....

World Economy Historical Statistics [warning .xls file!]

economy > statistics >historical

This large table contains basic estimates of Population, GDP and GDP per capita for most countries since, umm... 1 AD, but getting more detailed from 1500 onwards and dense by 1900. Use it as a reference, a source for an (obscure) argument about economics, or to create hardcore trivia questions (I'll take "Asian Economy in the year 1500 for 1000, Alex").
Found through following successive links from nationmaster, which has added historical world economy data to its statistics (see this for example) and is quickly developing into the internet statistics benchmark.

The mysterious Voynich manuscript: an elaborate hoax?

rennaissance > hoaxes
For those that have not heard of the Voynich manuscript and its legend here's a brief summary (from the initial linked article):

The Voynich manuscript is often described as the world's most mysterious book. It is hand-written in a unique alphabet, about 250 pages long, and contains pictures of unrecognizable flowers, naked nymphs and astrological symbols.

The manuscript first appeared in the late 1500s, when Rudolph II bought it in Prague from an unknown seller for 600 ducats - about 3.5 kilograms of gold, worth more than US$50,000 today. The book passed from Rudolph to noblemen and scholars, before disappearing in the late 1600s.

It surfaced again around 1912, when US book dealer Wilfrid Voynich bought it. The manuscript was donated to Yale University after Voynich's death.

More can be found at Philip Neal's Voynich pages, or René Zandbergen's, to mention just two among the thousands of web pages (6280 according to google), on the subject...
Now Gordon Rugg, a computer scientist seems to prove that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by the use of a "Cardan Grille" (the page is in French, but the application is illuminating even for non-French speakers), by a shady English alchemist, scryer and lawyer and renaissance con-man Edward Kelley.

If you're really interested, here's an extensive bibliography.

Balkanalysis.com - The Olympic terror threat: some conceptions and misconceptions

olympic > threats > bogus and real
Balkanalysis has a level-headed assessment of security threats for the Athens 2004 olympics, which exposes another piece of shoddy coverage - from the Guardian this time. Instructive and informed, as usual.