The Ringworm Children

I just read about the film "The Ringworm Children", released in 2004. Directed by David Belhassen and Asher Hemias, it won the prize for "best documentary" at the Haifa International film festival:

In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr. Chaim Sheba, flew to America and returned with seven x-ray machines, supplied to him by the American army.

They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year. The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today.

To fool the parents of the victims, the children were taken away on "school trips" and their parents were later told the x-rays were a treatment for the scourge of scalpal ringworm. 6,000 of the children died shortly after their doses were given, while many of the rest developed cancers that killed thousands over time and are still killing them now. While living, the victims suffered from disorders such as epilepsy, amnesia, Alzheimer's disease, chronic headaches and psychosis.

Apparently the motivation was eugenics, which is the theory that people can improve the quality of future genes by weeding out unhealthy and undesirable traits. Only Sephardi children received the x-rays: "I was in class and the men came to take us on a tour. They asked our names. The Ashkenazi children were told to return to their seats. The dark children were put on the bus."

Sephardi Jews originate in the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) and also North Africa. They are contrasted with Ashkenazi Jews (literally, German Jews) who are Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities of the Rhineland in the west of Germany.

Giora Yoseftal (1912 – 1962) and one time Development Minister, Minister of Labour and Minister of Housing and Construction, called the Moroccan Jews "primitives" and "backward". Levi Eshkol (1895-1969) who served as the third Prime Minister of Israel called them "human rubbish" and "defective people". Nachum Goldman (1895–1982), a Polish-born Zionist and founder and longtime president of the World Jewish Congress, described North African Jewry "a catastrophic immigration". Dr Chaim Sheba, then director of the health ministry, believed in the genetic supremacy of the Ashkenazi Jews.

Jewssansfrontieres asks if Dr Sheba is Israel's Dr Mengele. Joseph Mengele was a doctor at the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau who was hated for his cruelty. In one instance, he drew a line on the wall of the children's block between 150 and 156 centimeters (about 5 feet or 5 feet 2 inches) from the floor, and sent those whose heads could not reach the line to the gas chamber. (I have to pipe up here since I fall into that category of shorties: Being short has its advantages, otherwise it would have been naturally weeded out by now. What advantages? Having a lower centre of gravity means shorter people can change direction faster. Just look at Maradona, best footballer ever, who is only 5'5". And I'm thinking of all the pint-sized East European champion gymnasts...)

In the film, a Moroccan lady is shown saying: "It was a Holocaust, a Sephardi Holocaust. And what I want to know is why no one stood up to stop it."

The passage I quoted is from a review of the film and you can read it in full here on infowars.

Angkor Wat, Killing Fields, now the Tonle Sap boat tour

Is there nothing the Cambodian government will not privatise?

I once met an engineer from mainland China who was sent by the Chinese government to restore some temples at Angkor Wat. He found it puzzling that "the Cambodians have no pride" [his words, not mine - and I am saying this upfront because I am sure I will be flamed for this entry by overseas Khmers, as I do every time I am critical of this country]. The engineer said this because he believes China would never "sell" the Great Wall and other national treasures to foreigners, unlike Cambodia, where the main tourist sites are privatised to foreign in addition to local companies.

In fact, most Cambodians are extremely proud of their heritage (misplaced pride, as I've written here, and here on nationalism). However, it is true that for some Khmers, these objects have less significance than money which is why Cambodia is in the situation it is.

In May, I took my aunt and her friend on the Tonle Sap boat tour to see the floating villages here in Siem Reap. The place has changed remarkably since I was last there a couple of years ago. It is now organised and you get the tickets from a ticket booth and get assigned a boat.

I found out why it was so organised. The tours are now operated by a single company, a Korean one. The company is Sou Ching Investment Co. Ltd, part of a large investment fund established by two major Korean companies - SK Securities and Golden Bridge Asset Management.

"SK Securities asset manager, Yim Yeo Ngijin, was quoted as saying that the companies were expecting returns on their investment of up to $1 trillion. He described the Sou Ching Port Investment as part of a "cultural exchange package." [yeah, right.]

"According to an April 2007 tourism working group meeting at the Ministry of Tourism (MoT), about 60,000 tourists now visit the Chong Kneas area each month in high season. By charging $1 dollar per tourist, the working group estimated that revenues of $120,000 every two months could be achieved rapidly.

"Sou Ching requested the rights to invest in road construction, channel restoration and to charge a toll fee, parking fee, and pier fee. The company also asked to charge an entrance fee to the Tonle Sap. The MoT said these requests, especially the entrance fee, were "a problem."

Well, I guess the entrance fee is no longer "a problem". And USD1? Well, we were charged USD15 - each, a scam, I later found out. For the real price and advice of the trip read my Tonle Sap boat scam. [Note from a pissed off customer: Get your act together Sou Ching Port Investment Co. If you want monopoly rights to manage the tours at least do it properly.]

Find these quotes and how the villagers tried to protest the bulldozing (with no success, as usual -- I'll upload photos later so you know what I mean) here on the Tonle Sap database. The article is a Phnom Penh Post report dated Dec 14, 2007.

The Killing Fields is licensed to a Japanese company, JC Royal Company, which has a 30-year contract starting in 2004 for USD15,000 a year, with graduated increases. The Cheung Ek killing field was the main execution site for prisoners from Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, about seven miles away. Says the New York Times:

Based on figures provided by an official here, the company stands eventually to earn about $18,000 a month in entrance fees. The profits are to go to a fund that is half owned by Cambodian government officials. The company has agreed to clean up and organize the site. Some fear that will dull the raw immediacy that gives the area its haunted.

And of course, there is Angkor Wat, which earned Sokimex (or Sok Kong Import Export Company) , a Cambodian conglomerate, an estimated USD50 million in 2007 alone. Sokimex apparently pays the Cambodian government USD10 million a year for the right to operate and manage Angkor Wat.

Here I have to re-iterate that Sokimex, also Cambodia's largest petroleum company and owner of the upmarket Sokha Hotels is a Cambodian company and NOT a Vietnamese company. All the tuk tuk drivers and tour guides will tell you the money goes to Vietnam. It does not. The money stays in Cambodia (the bulk, if not all of it vis-a-vis Vietnam. How much ends up in Swiss or Singapore bank accounts I do not know), only it goes private individuals instead of to the national treasury.

The allegations are made by Cambodians because the owner Sok Kong is Cambodian, born to ethnic Vietnamese parents. And if you think that makes him Vietnamese, then you must consider me a mainland Chinese instead of a Singaporean, and a Malay born in Singapore to be Malaysian instead of Singaporean, and a Polish person born in France to be Polish, and an African American to be from whatever African country instead of the USA. If you do, you're ignorant at best, racist at worst. And if you don't, yet consider an ethnic Vietnamese born in Cambodia to be Vietnamese, then you're just a hypocrite.

Our True Colours

A great article pointing out that Indians who accuse Australia of being racist should take a look at themselves. Racism Indian Style:

- A Madurai sessions court sentences Farook Batcha to two years' RI ["Rigorous Imprisonment" apparently, whatever that means in India] in 2008 for harassing his wife so much about being dark that it drove her to suicide.

- The information and broadcasting ministry issues a notice to Nimbus Communications for a racist ad during the 2007 India-West Indies series. The promo featured a West Indian running around for water after eating spicy food. No Indian comes to his help. The ad's punchline: "It's tough being a West Indian in India."

- Bilyaminu Ibrahim, a Nigerian student at an engineering college in Greater Noida, is spat at by one of his Indian seniors.

- Robert, a Kenyan student in Pune, is denied entrance to a pub. He is asked to return on Tuesday for an "all-black" night.

- A controversial ad for Fair & Lovely cream features a father who is unhappy because his daughter is dark and unsuccessful. The cream changes her complexion and lands her a glamorous job.

One of my close Cambodian friends, a woman around 30, was pursued by an African man. She went out with him for a while, but could never really accept him, even though she tried her best to, "as a good Christian". She kept saying he is a "black man". They soon broke up. I have no idea which country in Africa, since my friend herself did not know.

Cambodians in general are racist towards black people. It's not hard to believe, since even among Cambodians, darker-skinned people are discriminated against. Just ask Knila who writes: "When I was in primary school, my friends called me 'black' because of my skin color. "Black" was said instead of "brown"; I guess, their parents didn't teach them to distinguish between colors very well. Very sad. Half-blood chinese children were proud of their white or pale skin color. Some of them behaved superior to others in the class."

"Many women told me that to have white skin is to show a wealthy status in Cambodian society," she continues. "I thought, 'Oh, so Cambodians have disliked Cambodians themselves and 'brown' means dirty or of low status.'

It's a great article and I encourage you to read it yourself.

I know one Cambodian father who calls his daughter Srey Mao as a nickname, "K'mao" being the Cambodian word for "black" because he says, she is dark. Like Cambodia, Thailand too, stigmatises dark skinned people. One common insult I learnt from this article is "tua dam," or black body, a rude term to degrade someone of lower social standing. Also "e dam" (black girl) or "dam tap pet" (black like a duck’s liver).

So obsessed are Cambodians with skin colour you can find questions like "What is the actual descendant of a Cambodian who have white skin?" and Light Skin Vs Dark Skin Cambodian at groups and forums online.

Cambodian women use skin-whitening products, some of which are harmful. This led the Ministry of Health to declare in 2008 that it would control powders and lotions that promote skin whitening especially those that contain hydroquinone. Although commercial whitening products are widely available in Cambodia, they are also sold on the black market where they are incorrectly labelled or not labelled at all.

Of course the women do this also to attract men. Chhun Hy always tells me he wants to marry a girl with "white-skin". He categorises every girl he knows - me and Chantou are "white skinned", Rath and Thyda are "black skinned" etc.

In India, Cambodia, the whole of Asia really, people admire fairness. In a survey carried out in June 2004 by Synovate, 61 percent of respondents in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan said they felt they looked younger with a fair complexion. Half of Filipino women, 45 percent of Hong Kong women and 41 percent of Malaysian women said they were currently using a skin-whitening product. I am sure the percentages are higher now, not lower. In the last few years in Singapore, I have noticed magazines carrying advertisements for *more* whitening products.

The Taiwanese show "Meteor Garden 2" featured a Singaporean actress, Michelle Saram, of Indian-Chinese parentage (we say "Chindian" in Singapore). She was slammed by Taiwanese netizens for "looking like a Filipino maid" because of her darker skin. She has Indian blood, what do you expect? She is still a very pretty girl, but apparently not enough for Taiwanese audiences who expect their leading ladies to be snow-white.

Argh! I have to stop now. Just writing this makes my blood boil. People are just so stupid.

Domestic terrorists

I watched on CNN this morning an 88 year old White Supremacist opened fire at visitors to Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum. A black security guard was shot at close range and died and the culprit was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with police.

I recently posted a video on the Ruby Ridge incident, after stumbling upon it when watching the BBC documentary "How mad are you?". The same poster also put up the Ruby Ridge documentary, which I found a revealing example of the US government's excessive use of force.

From there I watched another documentary, part of National Geographic's "Inside" series, called Inside American Skinheads. I found this one hard to watch.

I wonder how much the US government spends on suppressing these terrorists who are breeding and plotting on home ground, since it focuses so much on the "war on terror". How much money and effort does the US government spend cleaning up its own backyard vis-a-vis the rest of the world?

I was also interested to watch on CNN that it is not true hate groups in the US are mostly in the mid-west or deep-south. Rather, the groups correspond to population density. There are many in Florida and California for instance. This map shows the spread and concentration.

Today's incident comes just a few days after a Christian, Scott Roeder, murdered Dr. George Tiller, a physician from Wichita, Kansas, who performed late term abortions. And these people are terrorists, according to the USA PATRIOT Act:

Under current United States law, set forth in the USA PATRIOT Act, acts of domestic terrorism are those which: "(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended— (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States."

I struggle to understand people like these and can only conclude that the human species is a pretty pathetic one. Despite having the faculty of reason, there are still many people (perhaps most) who are just plain stupid, ignorant, superstitious, weak and despicable. I don't know what else to say.

How warfare shaped human evolution

I am an insomniac so I'm still up at 4am Cambodian time. One last post and I'm off to bed, or I'll fall asleep in the shop tomorrow!

This one is from www.newscientist.com. I've always thought it is part of our nature to regard people who look and act different as "others", that racism or prejudice is a primal instinct that we have to be constantly vigilant against. You only need to observe a football match to see how primal we human beings are.

Quoted from the article:
"Warfare has been with us for at least several tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years....In fact several fossils of early humans have wounds consistent with warfare."

"Studies suggest that warfare accounts for 10 per cent or more of all male deaths in present-day hunter-gatherers."

"Anthropologist Mark Flinn of the University of Missouri at Columbia found that cricket players on the Caribbean island of Dominica experience a testosterone surge after winning against another village. But this hormonal surge, and presumably the dominant behaviour it prompts, was absent when the men beat a team from their own village..."

"Our warlike past may have given us other gifts, as well. "The interesting thing about war is we're focused on the harm it does," says John Tooby, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "But it requires a super-high level of cooperation." And that seems to be a heritage worth hanging on to."

Thanks to zeitgeiber via reddit.

F.I.L.T.H.

"Failed-In-London,-Try-Hongkong".

I was reminded of this acronym after reading a blog post from a young Cambodian woman who follows my blog. Knila is 20 years old and a student of Communications/Media. This is what she wrote on her blog whisper-from-heart.blogspot.com

I met a ridiculous man!
The ridiculous man I mentioned used to be my teacher of English writing for communication. He is such a kind of 'difficult' man, a word Cambodians call a person who has difficulties thinking well. What you can be very annoyed about this man is that he always speaks highly of himself, gets you to appear so stupid and pathetic and beats you in every conversation without giving solutions to any matter he raises during the conversation.
He said he wanted to live in Cambodia forever, well, without telling us why he wanted to live in Cambodia. He tried to shoot you all the critical comments about Cambodia but at last he whispered," I love living in Cambodia", smiling at us.
I don't wanna sound so critical in this situation but I want to question how many foreigners in Cambodia behave like him. How many are taking advantage of this country mired by poverty and corruption? I think the matter should now be taken into Cambodians' hands.

This is the comment I left her:
"As an Asian I do know what you are talking about. These Westerners are found everywhere in Asia, not just in poor Cambodia. The Hong Kongers call them F.I.L.T.H (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong).

Don't worry too much about these idiots. Study hard and have a good education which will allow you opportunities. As they say, living well is the best revenge. Your loser teacher will never amount to anything, which is why he is here teaching in the first place--he can stand out in a place where there is no competition. You're different--you'll contribute to your society and be a somebody one day."

It used to drive me crazy listening to Western expats in Singapore brag about how they get good service by shouting and intimidating local staff. I have also met Westerners who say they don't give a toss about Singapore or Singaporeans; they are just in the country to make money for their retirement homes and nest eggs.

I also remember a time when air stewardesses from our national airlines, Singapore Airlines, got some flack for supposedly providing better service to Westerners than their own people. The argument provided by the SIA stewardesses was that Westerners are friendlier to begin with, so it inspires the stewardesses to be friendly back. Westerners, it seems, also say "please" and "thank you" more frequently. I don't want to get into an argument about this because obviously there are friendly and rude people from every nationality and generalisations like this will not get us nearer the truth.

Discrimination happens everywhere for all sorts of reasons, and it is not going to go away. I have a theory that Asians who kowtow to Westerners do it because they respect money. Money talks, no, money rules in this world. All you have to do is act like you are wealthy and you'll get respect. In the case of Westerners, they don't even have to act, just skin colour is signal enough (even though, clearly, there are also poor Westerners).

I have a common-law husband who is white (he's a Scot) so I do know that discrimination works both ways. We get "white man price" for everything in Cambodia whenever I am with Alan. So people who appear to adore Westerners and give them the rock-star treatment in this country are, at the same time, on the lookout to rip them off. (So if you think Cambodians adore you, be aware the adoration may last only as long as your money. In fact, Khmers have a saying: "There is no point loving a barang (foreigner), because will a barang come to your funeral?")

This is why at Bloom, we sell things at fixed prices. I do not care where you come from or what you look like. Everyone pays the same, fixed prices at our shop.

To youn or not to youn

I left a post on another website detailsaresketchy on how some of the Cambodian Bloom women would refuse to sell used aluminium cans to Vietnamese rubbish collectors, saving them only for a Cambodian collector (when I had the cafe, I would give the cans to the Bloom women to sell for them to buy fruit or snacks to share). When I asked why, these women would tell me because "youn ot-la-or" ("Vietnamese no good") or "m'nu koick" ("bad people").

Anyway, this post led to a response from a person (obviously Khmer) who blustered on about "hate" and how "youn" is just a descriptive term and different languages have different words for the same object and stop picking on the word "youn" as used by Cambodians.

It's not worth going into. The only thing worth pointing out is intent and context is important is determining Hate Speech--speech intended to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence or prejudicial action against a person (definition from wikipedia).

The word "youn" is not racist in itself (I have been told it comes from the Vietnamese word that refers to the Vietnamese rice hats). Words are just words until they are used in context, when intention comes into play. The word "bitch" as it occurs in a dictionary is just a word, until it is spat by a man at a woman. This is why it is ok for a black (African or African American) person to use "the N-word" when addressing another black person, but not acceptable for a person from another race to address a black person in this manner. It is because in the latter instance, the intent is suspect.

In the example I used, I say clearly the context: not selling the cans to one group of people versus another. The intent is referred to when I said the Cambodian women told me why they would not sell the cans, because Vietnamese are "ot la-or".

So if a Cambodian uses the word "youn", make sure you know what context it is in and also his/her intention. And hand on heart, dear Cambodian reader, when you use the word "youn", are you sure it is not a loaded term for you?