An invitation to originality at the National Pop Music and Song Festival 2011

‘We should not let the music sector suffer from negative actions and copy almost everything from abroad which has become a bad habit that makes us lose our national spirit and become dependent on foreigners.’ (PM Hun Sen)

Kep City. The words of the Cambodian Premier are meaningful of what we all expect from this kind of events like the National Pop Music and Song Festival 2011 that gathers this year more than 30 groups. Cambodia is, first of all, a nation with a long and standing culture and civilization. One way to underline it is precisely by art. I expect to create soon a school of fine arts at the side of this inspiring national park, just because we have to awake the ancient spirits of the Cambodian sensitivity for beauty and harmony.

If you dream to be like a smart American politician… be like this one

Every time we approach political elections in any part of the globe (like this part), I read this interesting text about the American president Harry Truman by Mark M Lichterman. Too many people around the world would like to imitate the American life, but just in wealth and doing whatever (corruption?) to get it. However, they are far from the very solid principles of the American democracy and ethics. Let’s read this…

‘Harry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as many, or more important decisions regarding our nation’s history as
any of the other 42 Presidents preceding him. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House.

US-Cambodian negotiations on Lon Nol debt

On March 1970 General Lon Nol assumed the power in a troublesome Cambodia, moving prince Sihanouk from his position of head of state and putting Cambodia at the side of Washington. Technically it is not possible to say that Lon Nol introduced Cambodia in the War of Vietnam, because the situation was already unsustainable, but his goverment opened widely the doors to the worst Cambodian decades in the 20th century. He is so far in history the only president of a millennial kingdom. The Nixon’s administration, by its part, drop over Cambodia about 2,756,941 tons of bombs, a cost that historians like Kiernan and Taylor estimates in 7 billion US dollars. Besides it, the Lon Nol administration received from Washington a loan of 445 million US dollars for programs of agriculture and development in a country that was being bombarded ! Now US wants its loan back.

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Cambodia-US: Who Might Pays to Whom

The recent visit to Cambodia of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought out old ghost of the Cambodian history. We say ‘Cambodian history’, however, it belongs also to the US history in a very special way. The US Congress is enabling a new trade act for Cambodia under the code H.R. 5320. Now well, it happens that Congressmen Dana Rohrbacher and Bill Delahunt (find them in the collage I did with some prominent historical figures, down Lon Nol and at the side of Pol Pot) stated that ‘United States may not reduce or forgive any debt owed by Cambodia to the United States.’ (see csis.org.)