Is waterboarding a torture? Asked Nicholas Kristof
I came back from Cambodia to hear some of the Republican Presidential candidates endorse waterboarding in their debate and say that it’s not torture. I’m glad Obama pushed back today, for I find their view unfathomable — partly because in Cambodia the Genocide Museum has displays of tortures used by the Khmer Rouge, and one...
Is buying sex a better way to help Cambodian women than buying a T-shirt?
Punishing conditions and low pay in Cambodia’s clothing factories are giving sex work a halo of practicality, if not respectability. Sleazing through the hostess bars of Phnom Penh, Ken Silverstein speaks with women about the brutal calculus that led them to prostitution. Are sex workers exploited? Absolutely. But so are textile workers. When I was...
Back to the drama of Diamond Island
Real estate investment for urban projects in Phnom Penh This article aims to reconsider the death following a stampede that took place November 22, 2010, over 350 people on the deck of a large private urban project currently under construction in Phnom Penh. It will be for us, from this landmark drama, to highlight some...
Cambodia’s Rupert Murdoch to launch nation’s first sattelite
The local paper Phnom Penh Post has the report: Royal Group receives right to launch first Cambodian satellite. Kith Meng said the satellite will offer Cambodia some autonomy, allowing the Kingdom to operate its own satellite rather than lease services from other providers. And with Thailand and Vietnam having their own, and Laos intending to...
Exploiting Cambodian sex workers through arts
When D’Agata exploits women to make art, he can no longer be called a “social documentarian.” Instead, he is negligently contributing to, and even profiting from, the same system of sexual abuse, exploitation and poverty he’s supposedly trying to expose. French artist Antoine D’Agata’s photographs of himself having sex with Cambodian sex workers. More: The...
Pot calling the kettle black: tweets about NGO development versus private sector in Cambodia
@ChrisInCambo Phnom Penh, Cambodia Software Developer / General Technology Junky http://www.upstarthq.com Bored of hearing NGO’s complaining about nepotism, conflict of interest and abuse of power in Cambodia. Pot calling the kettle black. You can’t say it’s true of all NGO’s the same way you can’t say it’s true of all government officials. But it’s no...
US$1040000 for Phnom Penh streets’ signage
The Phnom Penh Post’s Buth Reaksmey Kongkea reported that Phnom Penh is currently home to more than 260,000 families. And soon every family would be required to pay US$4 each to cover the costs of labelled numbers, made of aluminum, for their houses. The overall cost is approximately US$1040000. A Chinese company, Chung Hong, has...
Cambodia’s 1997 grenade attack and FBI’s investigation result
Boston-based journalist Michael Morisy has a blog post about “Secrecy conference: In countries like Romania and Cambodia, illegal leaks can be transparency’s only hope”. Desperate times, creative measures In 1993, Cambodia saw its own revolution in the form of free elections, which also ushered in the creation of a free press. But while things were...
Cambodia frustrated by St. Valentine’s Day