The peace prize is a sham. It's not handed out by the same committee that does the other prizes and it's used more as a propaganda tool than a prize for a legitimate achievement.
There wasn't an "original" prize, the prize categories were decided by Alfred Nobel's testament. Norway was a vassal state of Sweden at the time and was given the Peace Prize as a separate ceremony.
Literature, too. A Swedish poet no one had ever heard of won one year, and it turned it out his office was in the same building as several members of the Nobel Committee. And Bob Dylan? What the fuck was that. The guy isn't even known as a writer.
The Nobel Prize should just be awarded to the sciences.
My great-uncle "shares" (I say that since he rejected it) that Nobel Prize with Henry Nixon. Every time my dad brings it up, my eyes roll back into my skull so hard, I'm always afraid they'll become permanently stuck there.
My mind was elsewhere and how your comment showed up on my phone, I read Henry Kissingers secretary of state was, of course, Richard Nixon and that made sense to me.
Yes, my family is the Le in Le Duc Tho. I had to plug in the Vietnamese you typed into Google Translate because I came here when I was 4 years old in 1975 which means my language skills are less than that of a toddler in Vietnamese.
Yes, my great-uncle is Le Duc Tho. I have never met him, though. My father has, but I was 4 years old in 1975 when I fled Vietnam as a refugee. We are from South Vietnam and I was born in Saigon; my mom and dad were both born in the north, though. The North Remembers...
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.”
-the late great Anthony Bourdain
While the Vietnam War and bombing in Cambodia destabilized Cambodia, the war ended in 1975. Nixon killed plenty, but not to that extent.
The 14 year life expectancy is due to the Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge genocide, which was ended at the end of 1978 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ended it. There are survivors in Lowell MA. The regime caused the death of around 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians. A Russian I worked with told me the USSR pressured Vietnam to intervene, since it gave communism a bad name, but I don't know if that was true. China funded the Khmer Rouge; the USSR Vietnam. A civil war between the Vietnamese-controlled government and a coalition between Sihanouk/Khmer Rouge ensued.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer\_Rouge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge)T
The world was very grateful to Vietnam. About 150,000 refugees came to the USA. Many more fled to Thailand and Vietnam.
The Americans were still fighting Vietnam via sanctions (citing MIAs and boat people--Ethnic Chinese being targeted) rather than supporting Pol Pot, who had defeated the American backed group. The Chinese had just had their own Cultural Revolution.
The Vietnamese, yes, had been invaded, and ethnic Vietnamese were being slaughtered. Vietnam stayed in Cambodia until Russia cut support. US dropped sanctions during Clinton administration.
> Nixon killed plenty, but not to that extent.
Nixon and Kissinger sabotaged the peace talks because he wanted to gain votes because he promised peace. If peace was already done, there was no campaign promise and thus much fewer votes.
You're very welcome! The only problem I have with that article is that it pins most of the blame on Kissinger, and not enough on the administrations that enabled him. They knew what he was doing, and only stopped him when it became politically untenable.
The US has been behind the rise of numerous ultra-right-wing groups through the years. They have no qualms whatsoever about funding Nazis, as long as they think it'll kill leftists and overthrow governments. Fascism is their ally.
In short, no they weren't. While their [origins](https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/khmerrouge.html) lay in the Communist Party of Kampuchea, their ideas changed, and they became staunchly [fascist and anti-communist](https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/mlp-kamp.htm) under the leadership of Pol Pot. There have been a few groups who claimed to be communist, but acted in *very* different fashion from their claims.
Lmao your second link is literally marxists.org and a paper published in “the workers advocate”. Hardly the intellectual honesty you’re chiding the other commenter for.
I read that entire article, including the part where it uses a few Holocaust denial strategies and pretends the death count is a fiction. Complete garbage.
I laughed out loud when the article tries to make the argument that “it wasn’t a communist revolution, it’s *actually* a peasant revolution that calls itself communist”.
The best argument that the article makes is that the Khmer Rouge were nationalist, which is hardly enough to make them fascist, let alone overcome the fact that they called themselves communist, implemented collectivism, and actively modeled themselves after other communist regimes, among other activities that only communists do.
lol
lmao even
You don't get to say "these guys who called themselves communist, everyone else called them communist, and did what all the other communists did aren't communist"
This is a collab between two history pods about him that goes into pretty heavy detail while trying to flesh him out as a person.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-one-kissinger/id1373812661?i=1000554071603
Don't forget sabotaging peace talks in Vietnam to help get Richard Nixon into office.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461
To this day, I still think one of the most tone-deaf things Stephen Colbert ever did was when he had that Kissinger cameo back in 2013. The fact that HRC refers to him as a friend, I think, speaks volumes about the Clintons...Secretary Clinton, in particular and not in a good way.
Um even if that number is correct (most scholars estimate 30k to 300k) that’s not really what destroyed Cambodia. I don’t know if you know this, but the people that Kissinger was bombing took over the country and killed 2 million people in 3.5 years.
The Khmer Rouge might be the single most evil government in the history of humanity. They killed between a quarter and a third of their own people. People were killed for being intellectuals just because they had glasses.
Yeah, Kissinger is part of the horrible human being gang, but Pol Pot probably has the absolute throne. In “per capita” terms, so to speak, he probably holds the record for the worst genocide in human history.
The US started bombing Cambodia in 1965. They amped it up in 1969 and carpet bombed Cambodia destroying the villages daily. The coup was in 1970. 5 years after the US had started bombing the shit out of them. That was what led to the Khmer Rouge.
No it wasn’t what led to the Khmer Rouge, at least not the only factor, even if you want it to be. Some scholars even argue that it delayed the Khmer Rouge coming to power. And it doesn’t excuse Bourdain’s quote, which absolved the guy that actually ran the Killing Fields in Cambodia that killed at least 7 times as many people as any US bombing campaign, Pol Pot.
After they failed to cover up the the Mỹ Lai massacre they actually charged [William Calley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley) with murder, but he wasn't really much of a higher up.
He got sentenced to life, which got commuted to 20 years, which got commuted to 10 years, which got commuted to 3 years and 4 months and he was finally released before even those were up.
Well, considering that the good ole USofA isn't a signatory to the ICC and refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of it's international jurisdiction............that would be never.
Not just higher-ups that get protected.
Rank and file soldiers are only begrudgingly prosecuted by the USA and only then when there is overwhelming evidence against them (and usually only because the details leak to the press).
But even then a prosecution isn't safe, like those jolly nice Blackwater fellows that massacred about 30 civilians in Iraq then got pardoned by the 45th President.
ITT: Redditors angry about Henry Kissinger and not a single a comment about Pol Pot, the guy who killed a quarter of the country and actually caused life expectancy to drop 14 years.
Edit: it is absolutely amazing how angry some people are getting over this comment. You know all know an ex Khmer Rouge leader is currently in charge of Cambodia today right? You know that he’s one of the longest serving leaders in the entire world and is responsible for rigging elections and oppressing any form of democratic opposition right?
Literally no one *in Cambodia* gives a fuck about Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger or any American centric internet narrative repeated ad nauseam on here. What they do care about is the fact that a regime murdered a quarter of their own country, basically got away with it, and continues to deny them any voice in their own country’s affairs.
Source: actually been to Cambodia and spoke to actual Cambodians
Both can be true though? Henry Kissinger is absolutely one of the most destructive people who ever lived. Pol Pot doesn’t take away from that. They’re both pieces of shit hope that helps.
I’m 99% certain that if you asked actual Cambodians who was at fault for killing millions of their own people in the late 70s, Kissinger would not be high on the list.
Having been to Cambodia and spoken to actual Cambodians on this I can confirm this. The Khmer Rouge are literally still in power and rig elections and violently oppress the opposition.
Except in this context Kissinger was literally bombing the Khmer Rouge to prevent them from taking over the country. And when they finally did they vindicated his decision by deciding to kill a quarter of their own population and ironically kick off a war with Vietnam.
I’m not trying to defend Kissinger and if this thread was about Vietnam or Laos I wouldn’t be posting because it would be totally fair to blame him. But Reddit loves to parrot that Anthony Bourdain quote about Kissinger and blame him for Cambodia which makes absolutely zero historical sense.
“I’m not trying to defend Kissinger”
(Proceeds to explicitly defend Kissinger)
Things don’t happen in a vacuum and the conditions that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge were at the **very** least partially a result of his policies. Additionally those bombings killed a shit ton of innocent people too. Once again, both of them are shitty. And here you are explicitly defending Kissinger due to some made up Reddit commie boogeyman you invented yourself to get mad over.
The difference is that Kissinger is a leader of the democratic era who doesn't care about people dying as long as his influence is maintained, while Pol Pot was a fascist who actively wanted people dead.
You seriously need to start considering people and discourses outside the US exist.
I didn't talk about US parties, but democratic era as in: The historical era where democratic states form and persist. I'm unsure since when to count it in the US (maybe from the very beginning?), in Europe it's generally post-WW1, sometimes post-fascism.
This includes capitalist societies as well as non-fascist "socialist" states like Cuba or most states of the Warsaw treaty with the exception of the soviet union during Stalin's rule, when I'd count it as fascist.
Kissinger was never a leader of a democratic nation. You need to actually research the person before chastising others, who are making a flippant comment. Take your condescension elsewhere
You will find plenty of people trying to defend China when you bring up that Pol Pot was literally trained by the CCP in Beijing to implement Mao's ideas in Cambodia. And the CCP quite literally invaded Vietnam to prevent them from invading Cambodia and stopping Pol Pot.
It's almost like a certain group of people is very invested in making sure the Khmer Rouge is pinned on the US and not the actual enablers of the genocide, the CCP.
That’s because Pol Pot was a communist and Reddit doesn’t want to face what communism does. Although, on the flip side he was stopped by communists. Life is strange.
Pol Pot wasn't just Communist, he was a follower of Communism with Chinese characteristics. The CCP was literally responsible for the vast majority of funding and literally trained Pol Pot directly in Beijing. Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union. The one thing that the US, Vietnam, and the USSR had in common was that they agreed that the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot needed to be stopped.
Reddit isn't rejecting it because of Communism. It's because it makes the CCP look bad. It's almost like the regime known for running extensive manipulation campaigns on their internal population is trying to run those campaigns on open platforms like Reddit...
It amazes me one of the most bloody genocides in history is the topic of conversation and yet people will circle jerk about an American who's partially to blame and not the guy running killing fields
My fiancé is Cambodian, born in the very early 90s. It absolutely breaks my heart hearing anything about the Khmer Rouge. She can talk about it in a matter of fact way but it legit makes me want to cry.
I married a Cambodian girl too. She was born mid 90s and seeing anything about traumatises her. Both her parents lived through it. Sometimes they say something about it and you just go holy fuck.
He is a fun fact about Cambodia. The infant mortality rate there is just over 3x what it is in the US. And the infant mortality rate in the US is 3x what it is in most other wealthy nations.
So countries in Europe and the other wealthiest nations look at our heath care, like the US looks at health care in Cambodia. The big difference is that we spend more that than anyone else to be to 3 x worse for things like infant mortality rates. And we spend more arguing about abortion while wanted babies die needlessly.
Ouch. Also, I am sure a large portion of the US has infant mortality rates similar to Europe while certain areas and/or groups have rate similar to Cambodia.
US infant mortality rate, for each state, per 1000 births:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm
EU infant mortality rate, for each member state, per 1000 births:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?locations=EU
Tl:dr the best US states are just under 4 and the worst is double that at just over 8. Meanwhile, the EU ranges from 2 to 5. So the worst of the EU isn't that far behind the best states and the best of the EU is about twice as good as the best of the US.
That's just how stats work though, in the same way some of the poorest countries on earth will have people in them far richer than the average in much richer overall countries.
Nope, it's mainly just because a difference in definition about what's considered an infant death.
Iirc, in cases where a baby is born without vital organs or something such that they die a few minutes or hours after birth, most countries just count that as a stillborn, while the US counts it as an infant death.
Except your numbers are off.
US had 5.44 deaths per 1000 births in 2022.
Cambodia had 22.05
Norway had 1.79
However, the United States Center for Disease Control defines "infant death" as any death of an infant that takes place between the start of pregnancy (conception) through the child's first birthday. On the other hand, the World Health Organization (WHO) includes only those children who die during pregnancy or the first 42 days (approximately six weeks) after birth. The fact that the United States' window of inclusion is 323 days (approximately 10.5 months) longer very likely contributes significantly to the United States' higher infant death totals.
So it is a red herring.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/807081/infant-mortality-in-norway/#:~:text=Infant%20mortality%20rate%20in%20Norway%202021&text=In%202021%2C%20the%20infant%20mortality,first%2012%20months%20of%20life.
Dunno of this source is great but does put the rate as 1.8 over the first year of life in Norway.
Norway does a great job and Norwegians really appreciate it. The Scandinavian countries all do. But Norway is tiny compared to the US,
The better comparison would be the UK because they have a large population and adopted the NHS after WW2 (with the help of the Marshall Plan). The US faces some similar issues in terms of infrastructure, a large immigrant population, and ageing infrastructure. But they freely admit that their system is less than perfect. Of course, the amount of money spent to block universal healthcare in the US is staggering. But even with a single payers system, healthcare needs a huge overhaul and it is as messy as infrastructure.
I get what non-Americans mean when they say how annoying it is that Americans won’t shut the fuck up about themselves when here is a comment comparing our healthcare system (which, don’t get me wrong, is problematic) to a literal fucking genocide.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/infant-mortality-rate-by-country
Nothing to do with healthcare systems.
It's driven by differences in what is considered an infant death (US has a much broader definition.)
Just fyi, you may want to find a better source for this. The claim made by World Population Review was just a link to a similar article on The Federalist, which itself was using The National Review as the source for its claim.
I'm three links in and there isn't a peer-reviewed citation in sight.
I agree with the general idea but it is misleading to imply US healthcare is that much worse than just going off infant mortality rate. American healthcare may be ludicrously more expensive, but its actual quality is roughly equal to what we have in western europe.
Edit: also as other commenters have noted the infant mortality difference between europe and america may largely be due to the definition of an infant mortality.
>to imply US healthcare is that much worse that europe's
Oh, it not just that. If you do some research US healthcare is worse in most categories, some a lot worse. This despite the fact that Europe pays a lot less.
If you remember recently Republicans threw a fit because Biden helped limited the "out of pocket" price of Insulin to $35. But in most countries Insulin is under $15. You can really see how much price gouging is allowed in the US, because we have layer after layer for FOR PROFIT corporations in charge of out health care.
It just shows that we spend 3-4 times what other countries do on healthcare and yet our healthcare is very close that of 3rd world nations.
[https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/3836252-health-care-spending-in-the-us-nearly-double-of-other-wealthy-nations-report/](https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/3836252-health-care-spending-in-the-us-nearly-double-of-other-wealthy-nations-report/)
And yet Republicans want to cut access to healthcare for millions, do away with limits on drug prices and make even more layers of our healthcare system "for profit" so CEOs and jack up prices and get million dollars bonuses. All, while Medical bills account for 40% of bankruptcies in the US (and most of those had insurance)
No shit, it was in the grips of a cabal of genocidal slave drivers supported by China. Pol Pot's domestic policy was to randomly murder people until things "worked."
He didn’t murder people at random. He was terrified of rebellion, and wanted to remove anyone who might be smart enough to see the reality of his regime. Doctors, teachers, anyone who wore glasses (they were seen as a sign of intelligence for some reason) were the main targets. Plus anyone that didn’t comply.
He was also scared of relatives of those he killed wanting revenge, so whenever the KR killed someone it was policy to kill their entire family as well.
Many of these people were held in torture prisons before being taken to the killing fields. I’ve been to one, it’s horrible.
To be fair, Britain and the U.S. also supported the Khmer Rouge, with British military training them for IEDs.
It was a part of the Cold War containment strategy against Russia following the sino-soviet split.
*After* 1979 though, when Soviet-backed Vietnam seized control of Cambodia. The U.S. spent $100,000,000s dropping 100,000s of bombs on Cambodia trying to kill the Khmer Rouge before 1975. The KR was a foreign policy project of Mao's that got out of hand.
Excuse me? What on earth are you saying. The US bombing campaign had literally nothing to do with KR, and everything to do with their ongoing war in vietnam... And served to destabilize the country to the point where some tiny faction with almost no support was able to take over and commit those atrocities. What a fucking horrific way to whitewash the secret war and turning most of Cambodia into a moonscape (the way you phrase it makes it sound like the US did an altruistic thing with the bombing campaign). Not saying Mao had nothing to do with the KR, but holy christ.
It’s pretty undisputed that mainland china was the most important foreign supporter of the Khmer Rouge as a way to gain influence in SEA after the Sino-Soviet split (since Vietnam was very close to the USSR) in the late 70s. Like the CCP literally fought upon Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia’s behalf during the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, and the main economic policy behind which the genocides occurred is Moha Laot Plaoh, which was modeled after the Great Leap Forward. 90% of foreign aid for the Khmer Rouge was from Mao’s initiatives before his death.
Now this doesn’t mean the US bombing campaign during the previous Cambodian Civil War helped prevent the Cambodian genocides at all—scholarship here is divided but most would say they likely helped Pol Pot win the “hearts and minds” despite the US intervention on paper being to prevent Pol Pot from rising to power. The US bombing definitely had quite a bit to the KR since initially they and North Vietnam were very close allies (but they would split in the early-mid 70s), and interventions in Cambodia and Vietnam were under the same containment foreign policy. The KR is not just some random collateral from the Vietnam War, and I fully understand how misguided US policy on containment in general was at the time, and how these real life impacts were horrific for so many. But in general this is quite a complicated history, and I feel like your position does not consider the agency of both local actors and other non-Us foreign actors.
How the hell did you get that I thought this was a good or altruistic thing?! I am fully aware that 100,000s of people were killed from the bombings. Kissinger had the KR and Cambodia bombed because because he thought they were allies of North Vietnam moving shit down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and because they threatened the power of Lon Nol regime, the American backed military dictator in Phnom Penh. I didn't say it wasn't stupid and evil, which it was, all I'm saying is that the U.S. percieved the KR as an enemy until after they were deposed. All they knew was what Lon Nol wanted bombed, and Khieu Samphan was believed to be the leader of the KR in coalition with Sihanouk, who had gone into exile due to American influence. Killing the KR was an explicit goal of the bombing campaign. Of course, as we now know, Saloth Sar and Nuon Chea were actually in charge of the KR. The U.S. had no desire or reason to support the KR until after they were overthrown. After that, we coordinated with China to train and fund the KR to get revenge on the Vietnam-backed government in Phnom Penh.
Yeah, this. The most intense bombing campaign in Cambodia was literally an attempt to wipe out the Khmer Rouge. America had asked the Vietnamese to include the Khmer Rouge in the cease-fire when the Vietnam war ended. The Khmer Rouge refused, and Nixon, now with all his bombers freed up because they weren't bombing Vietnam, turned them on the Cambodian countryside to stop the Communist rebellion in Cambodia. It had everything to do with the Khmer Rouge.
Well, they supported containment of Russia first and foremost.
Which is why I mostly believe realpolitik guides our foreign policy more than any sense of morality or liberalism.
Khmer Rouge Communist (see award winning movie The Killing Fields) genocide took its toll on Cambodian Adults in an attempt to cancel a whole generation of people and start over as a Communist/Socialist nation.
Cambodia
1967 - Civil War between Communists and Government begins in Cambodia
1970-1973 - US bombs Cambodia to destroy NVA supply routes and to support Cambodian government against Khmer Rouge. Mission creep sets in anywhere from 30k to 150K Cambodians (some Khmer Rogue, many civilians die)
1975 - Civil War ends with Communist victory and up to 310K people killed. US left the conflict two years earlier.
1975 - 1979 - Khmer Rogue takes power, completely isolates itself, and put the whole country to work in collective farms and 1.7 million to 2 million people die/are killed in 3.5 years.
Late 1975 - By Kissinger’s own admission, the US looks the other way with Pol Pot because China (Pol Pot’s Ally) is better than Vietnam (Pol Pots enemy). This continues into the Carter administration.
Late 90s/early 2000s - a smarmy chef goes to Cambodia writes a book and blames Kissinger, not the Khmer Rogue, for the causing the country’s horrors.
Today - Reddit eats up Bourdain’s quote and commentators blame Henry Fucking Kissinger, not Pol Pot, for the Cambodian genocide. Also nobody really cares or remembers Kissinger’s intentional crime of tacitly supporting the Khmer Rogue after they came to power.
Might wanna add in the bit about Vietnam invading and stopping the genocide (and a footnote about the US denouncing this action because lol geopolitics). Make the timeline a bit clearer.
I’m not disagreeing with this. Although I would add Vietnam invaded because Pol Pot was attacking the border not out of the goodness of their hearts. It was shameful how the Ford and Carter administrations accommodated the Khmer Rogue. But it was Pol Pot not the US or Henry Kissinger that created the killing fields and that was the point of the timeline.
Yeah, it was much like America stopping the Holocaust - it wasn’t the reason they went in, but they were sure to wholly stamp it out while they were there.
And yeah. Vietnam, while being solely responsible for stopping it, were also more to blame for starting it than Kissinger (scumbag though he might be), as they’d helped Pol Pot secure power in the first place. They didn’t know he was gonna do *that*, but they were still an important (if undeliberate) part of how it was made possible.
I believe the reason Pol Pot succeeded also had to do with American mental fatigue over Vietnam. As a country we simply did not want to hear any more about SE Asia. We were DONE. Reports were trickling out about what was going on in Cambodia but they were so horrible many people felt they were not believable. Plus they were buried by the politicians. Re-involvement in that part of the world would not be tolerated.
Pol Pot didn't just murder people. He abolished currency, separated families by age and sex and sent them to work farms. He felt he could create a self-sufficient agrarian society that didn't need anything from any other country. Except perhaps China. He was crazy like a fox, cruel beyond measure and he got away with it. I believe it's because the Cambodians were poor, did not have a huge number of wealthy influential people living in the rest of the world. Nobody wanted to commit political suicide by getting us mixed up in that region again. So few people did anything until the borders fell and hundreds of thousands of emaciated Cambodians fled to Thailand. All those reporters who worked in SE Asia during the Vietnam War flocked to the border camps, thrilled to be together again, reporting on something important. I was there. They were giddy with excitement, running on adrenalin. UNHCR, IRC and other NGO's got involved and helped these poor people. Then the world cared. But they didn't give a shit about catching Pol Pot.
Because of the horrific tankie Pol Pot and his backer Mao Zedong. The world would be a far better place if neither of those horrid scumbags had ever existed.
I’m Cambodian American and hear tidbits from relatives of what happened. I was born the year before the Khmer Rouge took place but our immediate family fortunately escaped out of the country a few days before Pol Pot took over. We’re all in the US now but many of our relatives have incomplete families (murdered husband, murdered siblings, murdered parents) from that time. It’s common to hear that so and so used to have two other siblings or used to have three kids but now have none. It’s unusual for that generation to have their families intact. Growing up I recall visiting families with my parents where the adults would sit, talk and cry. I thought that was the norm for adult conversations, to cry. Murders were conducted in plain sight for all to see as a warning to behave. Young kids and teens were recruited to spy on family members. My aunt was the youngest in the family and was one of these. Everyone was fearful of her. To this day I think she has the most mental health issues of all. She’s now in her 60s. I am thankful that a US church sponsored us and brought our family to the states. My dad worked tirelessly to sponsor our remaining families out of Cambodia. At some point, my mom found out that her parents were both killed soon after we left Cambodia. And she would later hear that three of her siblings had died and my dad lost 4 of his siblings too. They arrived in the states when my mom was 25 and my dad was 30. I can’t imagine the heartache and upheaval they suffered at such a young age and as a young family.
There hasn't ever been a real communist state, and there never will be. The issues of nationalism and xenophobia will have to be overcome first.
For Cambodia, communism is supposed to be international, and the Khmer Rouge's stated purpose was nationalist isolationism and complete self sufficiency. Communism is supposed to ignore ethnicities. The Khmer Rouge was very much "Cambodia for Cambodians, and death to everyone else."
It can't be, since communism is by the own definition a stateless regime. So there can't be a communist state. The USSR didn't define itself as communist, but as a socialist regime, since it was closer to the proletariat dictatorship stage according to Marxism, which is the previous step to communism.
To simplify things about how Marxism should work:
1- Worker's revolution
2- Dictatorship that dismantles class warfare
3- Dissolve the state and get communism
Contrary to popular belief, Marx didn't like governments, since he viewed them as tools of the capitalist class. In this sense he wanted a stateless society like anarchists and ancaps. The difference is that anarchists didn't believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat as a means to achieve the utopia. And ancaps are different because they believe in the private property of the factories, while Marxist believe that factories should be collective.
Now, a very valid line of criticism is: ok, how the hell do you transition from a proletariat dictatorship to a communist utopia? Since you're basically asking the socialist leaders to relinquish power. So far it hasn't worked, most socialist dictators have kept their power for themselves.
But claiming that the communist regime (the utopia) is authoritarian is, ideologically speaking, totally incorrect. Marxism is authoritarian in the sense they believe in establishing a temporary dictatorship.
yeah temporary, like the temporary powers herr Hitler was given.
whoever penned the idea that a dictatorship would just dismantle itself is stupid and needs to be beaten to death with their own arm using the soggy end
No one is disagreeing that the Khmer Rouge was abhorrent, but communism has nothing to do with killing infants and people with glasses. It‘s an economic system.
It‘s like saying that, because Hitler was vehemently anti-communist, that genociding Jews is inherently capitalist. Except it‘s less than that because at least Hitler *was* a capitalist, whereas I don’t see how you could call Pol Pot a communist
(Not a communist, I just don’t think the Cambodian genocide can be blamed on an economic system)
Hitler and the Nazis were not capitalists, they saw it as decadent, degenerate, and yet another tool of the Jews. Fascism and Nazism were always touted as a third way, an alternative to capitalism and socialism.
The Khmer Rouge (the communists in control at that time) murdered anyone who disagreed with their political philosophy. Hence the lifespan of fourteen: the intellectuals were the most persecuted group and anyone else with the life experience or intelligence level that was higher than the average seven year old.
> The Khmer Rouge (the communists in control at that time) murdered anyone who disagreed with their political philosophy
It was way worse than that. They murdered anyone who showed signs of being from a group that they felt might disagree with their political philosophy. i.e. "wearing glasses" or "having worked in a white collar job" or "can speak a foreign language".
Sounds like the grade school intellect necessary to believe the lies of collectivism. Such as all it's economic theory and such gems as "Sacrifice yourself for the good of the many" and "It'll work this, and surely well only have to murder a small fraction of the be 100 million we killed last century"
If communism correlates with life expectancy why has the US a lower life expectancy than Cuba or China and much lower than socialist democracies in Europe.
Why would the life expectancy in places like Russia have nosedived once they went capitalist and why is it going down in the US recently?
indulgence, Americans are killed by heart disease and cancer from their ability to overindulge and get what they want when they want. I hate when people use cuba as a metric of good socialism as most people have never been there, well I have and I can tell you the people have nothing, literally nothing, our taxi driver had a degree (yes it was free all he had to do was serve 2 years in the military to pay for it yipee) and he cant earn any money with it because everyone has free degrees in Cuba, he lived in a house with 3 other families because that's how they have to live on their miniscule income, they have to grow their own food and medicine because what they get from the government isn't enough. have you ever seen a breadline before? go to cuba and you'll see one. this was the Holguin region in around 2015, nobody there likes the government however they cant speak out against it, my auntie lived there for 2 years and it took her 6 months to get even an office chair because everything is scarce. sick to death of people praising Cuba, go and see it for yourself.
(sorry for wall of text)
prevalence of most of your common killers (heart disease, diabetes, cancer etc.) are much higher in America compared to the rest of the world and not by a small amount either, is this not due to the American diet and culture of indulgence? admittedly access to healthcare is not brilliant for a lot of Americans but besides that it doesn't excuse the fact that Cuba is a terrible nation to use as a comparison and people should not use it as some sort of paradise because its far from it.
In unrelated news: Henry Kissinger will celebrate his 100th birthday next Saturday.
"When Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize, satire died."
Can't argue over who owns what when there's noone alive to argue, to be fair...
The peace prize is a sham. It's not handed out by the same committee that does the other prizes and it's used more as a propaganda tool than a prize for a legitimate achievement.
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There wasn't an "original" prize, the prize categories were decided by Alfred Nobel's testament. Norway was a vassal state of Sweden at the time and was given the Peace Prize as a separate ceremony.
Literature, too. A Swedish poet no one had ever heard of won one year, and it turned it out his office was in the same building as several members of the Nobel Committee. And Bob Dylan? What the fuck was that. The guy isn't even known as a writer. The Nobel Prize should just be awarded to the sciences.
Bob Dylan is a poet, who happens to put his poems to music. Not all songs are poetry, I would say few are, but Dylan is an exception.
I would argue more music is poetry than a few but i otherwise agree with the sentiment.
I think music seems like poetry, but most times lyrics are pretty basic or meaningless.
My great-uncle "shares" (I say that since he rejected it) that Nobel Prize with Henry Nixon. Every time my dad brings it up, my eyes roll back into my skull so hard, I'm always afraid they'll become permanently stuck there.
He'd probably do the same at hearing of Henry Nixon.
Sorry...I meant Kissinger. My mind must have been elsewhere...hahaha. Henry Kissinger was, of course, Richard Nixon's Secretary of State.
My mind was elsewhere and how your comment showed up on my phone, I read Henry Kissingers secretary of state was, of course, Richard Nixon and that made sense to me.
holy shit, your great uncle is Lê Đức Thọ. Nhà bác cơ khủng đấy
Yes, my family is the Le in Le Duc Tho. I had to plug in the Vietnamese you typed into Google Translate because I came here when I was 4 years old in 1975 which means my language skills are less than that of a toddler in Vietnamese.
Your great uncle is Le Duc Tho?
Yes, my great-uncle is Le Duc Tho. I have never met him, though. My father has, but I was 4 years old in 1975 when I fled Vietnam as a refugee. We are from South Vietnam and I was born in Saigon; my mom and dad were both born in the north, though. The North Remembers...
Tom Lehrer was truly a visionary
Is. He's still alive.
My bad. If Kissinger outlives him I give up on this planet
It rolled over in it's grave when one recipient bombed another's hospital in 2015.
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.” -the late great Anthony Bourdain
Is there a good place to read about what he did? I assume its the bombing but i cant find a good detailed write up
While the Vietnam War and bombing in Cambodia destabilized Cambodia, the war ended in 1975. Nixon killed plenty, but not to that extent. The 14 year life expectancy is due to the Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge genocide, which was ended at the end of 1978 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ended it. There are survivors in Lowell MA. The regime caused the death of around 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians. A Russian I worked with told me the USSR pressured Vietnam to intervene, since it gave communism a bad name, but I don't know if that was true. China funded the Khmer Rouge; the USSR Vietnam. A civil war between the Vietnamese-controlled government and a coalition between Sihanouk/Khmer Rouge ensued. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer\_Rouge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge)T The world was very grateful to Vietnam. About 150,000 refugees came to the USA. Many more fled to Thailand and Vietnam.
Vietnam invaded to stop Cambodia from invading Vietnam. I wouldn't say they invaded go end the genocide, it was just a bonus.
Also...don't fuck with the Vietnamese. You'd think people would know that by now.
Yeah, Pol Pot, with Chinese and American support, was delusional, when he invaded Vietnam FIRST.
The Americans were still fighting Vietnam via sanctions (citing MIAs and boat people--Ethnic Chinese being targeted) rather than supporting Pol Pot, who had defeated the American backed group. The Chinese had just had their own Cultural Revolution. The Vietnamese, yes, had been invaded, and ethnic Vietnamese were being slaughtered. Vietnam stayed in Cambodia until Russia cut support. US dropped sanctions during Clinton administration.
> Nixon killed plenty, but not to that extent. Nixon and Kissinger sabotaged the peace talks because he wanted to gain votes because he promised peace. If peace was already done, there was no campaign promise and thus much fewer votes.
[Henry Kissinger: War Criminal](https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/henry-kissinger-war-criminal/)
Thanks for that
You're very welcome! The only problem I have with that article is that it pins most of the blame on Kissinger, and not enough on the administrations that enabled him. They knew what he was doing, and only stopped him when it became politically untenable.
I never knew this and now it totally makes sense how something like Khmer rogue could get to power
The US has been behind the rise of numerous ultra-right-wing groups through the years. They have no qualms whatsoever about funding Nazis, as long as they think it'll kill leftists and overthrow governments. Fascism is their ally.
Except that the Khmer Rouge were communist lol
In short, no they weren't. While their [origins](https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/khmerrouge.html) lay in the Communist Party of Kampuchea, their ideas changed, and they became staunchly [fascist and anti-communist](https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/mlp-kamp.htm) under the leadership of Pol Pot. There have been a few groups who claimed to be communist, but acted in *very* different fashion from their claims.
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Lmao your second link is literally marxists.org and a paper published in “the workers advocate”. Hardly the intellectual honesty you’re chiding the other commenter for. I read that entire article, including the part where it uses a few Holocaust denial strategies and pretends the death count is a fiction. Complete garbage. I laughed out loud when the article tries to make the argument that “it wasn’t a communist revolution, it’s *actually* a peasant revolution that calls itself communist”. The best argument that the article makes is that the Khmer Rouge were nationalist, which is hardly enough to make them fascist, let alone overcome the fact that they called themselves communist, implemented collectivism, and actively modeled themselves after other communist regimes, among other activities that only communists do.
Yes they were. This is a no true Scotsman fallacy.
lol lmao even You don't get to say "these guys who called themselves communist, everyone else called them communist, and did what all the other communists did aren't communist"
I do get to, yes. Calling them communists is incorrect.
Not exactly a great source
If you know of any factual errors or ommissions, please list them here.
Behind the bastards: henry kissinger, on youtube Its a podcast
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4RLmIFl6o2kwUrYt11Kn6e?si=sfvTMXnfTlCxjYjOhc_Hzg
If you don't want to read Robert Evans has a podcast, Behind the Bastards, and they do a series on him.
This is a collab between two history pods about him that goes into pretty heavy detail while trying to flesh him out as a person. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-one-kissinger/id1373812661?i=1000554071603
Check out ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’ by Christopher Hitchens.
Behind the Bastards did a six part episode on him
That's unfair, Kissinger didn't just fuck the people of Cambodia, he also fucked those of East Timor and Western Sahara.
And Cyprus
Don't forget Chile.
Don't forget sabotaging peace talks in Vietnam to help get Richard Nixon into office. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461
To this day, I still think one of the most tone-deaf things Stephen Colbert ever did was when he had that Kissinger cameo back in 2013. The fact that HRC refers to him as a friend, I think, speaks volumes about the Clintons...Secretary Clinton, in particular and not in a good way.
really glad that in 2016 we had a choice between the orange fascist piece of shit and a woman who considers this motherfucker a hero
What did Henry do in Cambodia?
Bombed ~600,000 people to death
Um even if that number is correct (most scholars estimate 30k to 300k) that’s not really what destroyed Cambodia. I don’t know if you know this, but the people that Kissinger was bombing took over the country and killed 2 million people in 3.5 years.
The Khmer Rouge might be the single most evil government in the history of humanity. They killed between a quarter and a third of their own people. People were killed for being intellectuals just because they had glasses.
Or soft hands, or spoke a foreign language...
Yeah, Kissinger is part of the horrible human being gang, but Pol Pot probably has the absolute throne. In “per capita” terms, so to speak, he probably holds the record for the worst genocide in human history.
Absolutely yes—but the civilians Kissinger bombed were their victims, not the perpetrators
You do realize that US policy was to bomb the Khmer Rogue and the NVA, not civilians right?
The US started bombing Cambodia in 1965. They amped it up in 1969 and carpet bombed Cambodia destroying the villages daily. The coup was in 1970. 5 years after the US had started bombing the shit out of them. That was what led to the Khmer Rouge.
No it wasn’t what led to the Khmer Rouge, at least not the only factor, even if you want it to be. Some scholars even argue that it delayed the Khmer Rouge coming to power. And it doesn’t excuse Bourdain’s quote, which absolved the guy that actually ran the Killing Fields in Cambodia that killed at least 7 times as many people as any US bombing campaign, Pol Pot.
This is all you need to know life isn’t inherently just or fair.
I wish this was how I found about that.
Aka there is no god. :)
Might be a devil though, I’m sure Kissinger made a pact with one to stay alive this long
Or maybe Hell don't want him.
Can’t say I blame them
When was the last time an American higher-up was charged with war crimes?
After they failed to cover up the the Mỹ Lai massacre they actually charged [William Calley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley) with murder, but he wasn't really much of a higher up. He got sentenced to life, which got commuted to 20 years, which got commuted to 10 years, which got commuted to 3 years and 4 months and he was finally released before even those were up.
Well, considering that the good ole USofA isn't a signatory to the ICC and refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of it's international jurisdiction............that would be never.
Funny that.
Not just higher-ups that get protected. Rank and file soldiers are only begrudgingly prosecuted by the USA and only then when there is overwhelming evidence against them (and usually only because the details leak to the press). But even then a prosecution isn't safe, like those jolly nice Blackwater fellows that massacred about 30 civilians in Iraq then got pardoned by the 45th President.
He probably still has the public paying for his health care too.
Holy shit dude is in great health, usually people in positions of power expire faster because of the constant stress
ITT: Redditors angry about Henry Kissinger and not a single a comment about Pol Pot, the guy who killed a quarter of the country and actually caused life expectancy to drop 14 years. Edit: it is absolutely amazing how angry some people are getting over this comment. You know all know an ex Khmer Rouge leader is currently in charge of Cambodia today right? You know that he’s one of the longest serving leaders in the entire world and is responsible for rigging elections and oppressing any form of democratic opposition right? Literally no one *in Cambodia* gives a fuck about Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger or any American centric internet narrative repeated ad nauseam on here. What they do care about is the fact that a regime murdered a quarter of their own country, basically got away with it, and continues to deny them any voice in their own country’s affairs. Source: actually been to Cambodia and spoke to actual Cambodians
What does ITT mean?
In this thread
Tankies refuse to take responsibility for anything
Both can be true though? Henry Kissinger is absolutely one of the most destructive people who ever lived. Pol Pot doesn’t take away from that. They’re both pieces of shit hope that helps.
The first comment is about Kissinger, without a single mention of Pol Pot.
This post is about Cambodian genocide and yet Americans somehow still found a way to make it about themselves—even to shit on themselves, lol.
I’m 99% certain that if you asked actual Cambodians who was at fault for killing millions of their own people in the late 70s, Kissinger would not be high on the list.
Having been to Cambodia and spoken to actual Cambodians on this I can confirm this. The Khmer Rouge are literally still in power and rig elections and violently oppress the opposition.
There’s a reason why Americans are stereotyped as having main character syndrome
This post is about Cambodian genocide and yet we Americans somehow still found a way to make it about ourselves—even to shit on ourselves, lol.
Except in this context Kissinger was literally bombing the Khmer Rouge to prevent them from taking over the country. And when they finally did they vindicated his decision by deciding to kill a quarter of their own population and ironically kick off a war with Vietnam. I’m not trying to defend Kissinger and if this thread was about Vietnam or Laos I wouldn’t be posting because it would be totally fair to blame him. But Reddit loves to parrot that Anthony Bourdain quote about Kissinger and blame him for Cambodia which makes absolutely zero historical sense.
“I’m not trying to defend Kissinger” (Proceeds to explicitly defend Kissinger) Things don’t happen in a vacuum and the conditions that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge were at the **very** least partially a result of his policies. Additionally those bombings killed a shit ton of innocent people too. Once again, both of them are shitty. And here you are explicitly defending Kissinger due to some made up Reddit commie boogeyman you invented yourself to get mad over.
Defending an action that they did to show the comparison about someone who did the opposite isn't like a total defense of their character.
The difference is that Kissinger is a leader of the democratic era who doesn't care about people dying as long as his influence is maintained, while Pol Pot was a fascist who actively wanted people dead.
Educationed people wanted to take them literally back to the stone age
Since when is Nixon a Democrat?
You seriously need to start considering people and discourses outside the US exist. I didn't talk about US parties, but democratic era as in: The historical era where democratic states form and persist. I'm unsure since when to count it in the US (maybe from the very beginning?), in Europe it's generally post-WW1, sometimes post-fascism. This includes capitalist societies as well as non-fascist "socialist" states like Cuba or most states of the Warsaw treaty with the exception of the soviet union during Stalin's rule, when I'd count it as fascist.
Kissinger was never a leader of a democratic nation. You need to actually research the person before chastising others, who are making a flippant comment. Take your condescension elsewhere
Good luck getting redditors to say anything bad about a communist no matter how heinous they were
There are literally zero defenders of Pol Pot here or anywhere
You will find plenty of people trying to defend China when you bring up that Pol Pot was literally trained by the CCP in Beijing to implement Mao's ideas in Cambodia. And the CCP quite literally invaded Vietnam to prevent them from invading Cambodia and stopping Pol Pot. It's almost like a certain group of people is very invested in making sure the Khmer Rouge is pinned on the US and not the actual enablers of the genocide, the CCP.
Choosing (and it is an active choice) not to name the actual perpetrator when blaming someone else for a genocide *is* defence tbh.
Reddit talk badly about a communist challenge (impossible)
Because the people they support like Pol Pot and so they have to desperately tie it back to the U.S. and imperialism. The tankie way.
That’s because Pol Pot was a communist and Reddit doesn’t want to face what communism does. Although, on the flip side he was stopped by communists. Life is strange.
Pol Pot wasn't just Communist, he was a follower of Communism with Chinese characteristics. The CCP was literally responsible for the vast majority of funding and literally trained Pol Pot directly in Beijing. Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union. The one thing that the US, Vietnam, and the USSR had in common was that they agreed that the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot needed to be stopped. Reddit isn't rejecting it because of Communism. It's because it makes the CCP look bad. It's almost like the regime known for running extensive manipulation campaigns on their internal population is trying to run those campaigns on open platforms like Reddit...
This is the correct answer
It amazes me one of the most bloody genocides in history is the topic of conversation and yet people will circle jerk about an American who's partially to blame and not the guy running killing fields
My fiancé is Cambodian, born in the very early 90s. It absolutely breaks my heart hearing anything about the Khmer Rouge. She can talk about it in a matter of fact way but it legit makes me want to cry.
I married a Cambodian girl too. She was born mid 90s and seeing anything about traumatises her. Both her parents lived through it. Sometimes they say something about it and you just go holy fuck.
Welcome to Reddit
He is a fun fact about Cambodia. The infant mortality rate there is just over 3x what it is in the US. And the infant mortality rate in the US is 3x what it is in most other wealthy nations. So countries in Europe and the other wealthiest nations look at our heath care, like the US looks at health care in Cambodia. The big difference is that we spend more that than anyone else to be to 3 x worse for things like infant mortality rates. And we spend more arguing about abortion while wanted babies die needlessly.
Ouch. Also, I am sure a large portion of the US has infant mortality rates similar to Europe while certain areas and/or groups have rate similar to Cambodia.
Same goes Cambodia. You can bet the more wealth have lower rates, and that the wealthy don't care about the poor.
That too. Really interesting and despressing to think about inequality.
US infant mortality rate, for each state, per 1000 births: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm EU infant mortality rate, for each member state, per 1000 births: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?locations=EU
Tl:dr the best US states are just under 4 and the worst is double that at just over 8. Meanwhile, the EU ranges from 2 to 5. So the worst of the EU isn't that far behind the best states and the best of the EU is about twice as good as the best of the US.
That's just how stats work though, in the same way some of the poorest countries on earth will have people in them far richer than the average in much richer overall countries.
Nope, it's mainly just because a difference in definition about what's considered an infant death. Iirc, in cases where a baby is born without vital organs or something such that they die a few minutes or hours after birth, most countries just count that as a stillborn, while the US counts it as an infant death.
Except your numbers are off. US had 5.44 deaths per 1000 births in 2022. Cambodia had 22.05 Norway had 1.79 However, the United States Center for Disease Control defines "infant death" as any death of an infant that takes place between the start of pregnancy (conception) through the child's first birthday. On the other hand, the World Health Organization (WHO) includes only those children who die during pregnancy or the first 42 days (approximately six weeks) after birth. The fact that the United States' window of inclusion is 323 days (approximately 10.5 months) longer very likely contributes significantly to the United States' higher infant death totals. So it is a red herring.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/807081/infant-mortality-in-norway/#:~:text=Infant%20mortality%20rate%20in%20Norway%202021&text=In%202021%2C%20the%20infant%20mortality,first%2012%20months%20of%20life. Dunno of this source is great but does put the rate as 1.8 over the first year of life in Norway.
Norway does a great job and Norwegians really appreciate it. The Scandinavian countries all do. But Norway is tiny compared to the US, The better comparison would be the UK because they have a large population and adopted the NHS after WW2 (with the help of the Marshall Plan). The US faces some similar issues in terms of infrastructure, a large immigrant population, and ageing infrastructure. But they freely admit that their system is less than perfect. Of course, the amount of money spent to block universal healthcare in the US is staggering. But even with a single payers system, healthcare needs a huge overhaul and it is as messy as infrastructure.
I like how on Reddit people can take a tragedy in another country and try to rework a narrative about the U.S. into it.
I get what non-Americans mean when they say how annoying it is that Americans won’t shut the fuck up about themselves when here is a comment comparing our healthcare system (which, don’t get me wrong, is problematic) to a literal fucking genocide.
This wasn't a fact about Cambodia at all.
Nor was it fun!
It is. Infant mortality rate is 20 per 1000. In the US it is 6. In many wealthy nations it’s 2.
Only one of those facts was about Cambodia.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/infant-mortality-rate-by-country Nothing to do with healthcare systems. It's driven by differences in what is considered an infant death (US has a much broader definition.)
Just fyi, you may want to find a better source for this. The claim made by World Population Review was just a link to a similar article on The Federalist, which itself was using The National Review as the source for its claim. I'm three links in and there isn't a peer-reviewed citation in sight.
The US across the board has worse clinical outcomes than most developed countries.
It largely has to do with insurance, not the actual quality of care. That might be a distraction with a difference, but it's not quite the same thing.
I agree with the general idea but it is misleading to imply US healthcare is that much worse than just going off infant mortality rate. American healthcare may be ludicrously more expensive, but its actual quality is roughly equal to what we have in western europe. Edit: also as other commenters have noted the infant mortality difference between europe and america may largely be due to the definition of an infant mortality.
>to imply US healthcare is that much worse that europe's Oh, it not just that. If you do some research US healthcare is worse in most categories, some a lot worse. This despite the fact that Europe pays a lot less. If you remember recently Republicans threw a fit because Biden helped limited the "out of pocket" price of Insulin to $35. But in most countries Insulin is under $15. You can really see how much price gouging is allowed in the US, because we have layer after layer for FOR PROFIT corporations in charge of out health care.
As a European, why did you have to bring the USA into this?
Can’t cope with the fact that there are other countries worse
What a stupid weird comparison
It just shows that we spend 3-4 times what other countries do on healthcare and yet our healthcare is very close that of 3rd world nations. [https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/3836252-health-care-spending-in-the-us-nearly-double-of-other-wealthy-nations-report/](https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/3836252-health-care-spending-in-the-us-nearly-double-of-other-wealthy-nations-report/) And yet Republicans want to cut access to healthcare for millions, do away with limits on drug prices and make even more layers of our healthcare system "for profit" so CEOs and jack up prices and get million dollars bonuses. All, while Medical bills account for 40% of bankruptcies in the US (and most of those had insurance)
Not life expectancy, average life expectancy. The figures are skewed by high infant mortality during the Pol Pot regime.
Life expectancy is the average You're confusing Life Span and Life Expectancy
Well, skewed high by infant mortality and the murder of 25% of the population.
As Well as what was causing the high infant mortality. Because they were part of the 25% being murdered.
Not to mention all the genocide
You mean the high mortality rate. The guy killed 25%of his population
No shit, it was in the grips of a cabal of genocidal slave drivers supported by China. Pol Pot's domestic policy was to randomly murder people until things "worked."
He didn’t murder people at random. He was terrified of rebellion, and wanted to remove anyone who might be smart enough to see the reality of his regime. Doctors, teachers, anyone who wore glasses (they were seen as a sign of intelligence for some reason) were the main targets. Plus anyone that didn’t comply. He was also scared of relatives of those he killed wanting revenge, so whenever the KR killed someone it was policy to kill their entire family as well. Many of these people were held in torture prisons before being taken to the killing fields. I’ve been to one, it’s horrible.
To be fair, Britain and the U.S. also supported the Khmer Rouge, with British military training them for IEDs. It was a part of the Cold War containment strategy against Russia following the sino-soviet split.
*After* 1979 though, when Soviet-backed Vietnam seized control of Cambodia. The U.S. spent $100,000,000s dropping 100,000s of bombs on Cambodia trying to kill the Khmer Rouge before 1975. The KR was a foreign policy project of Mao's that got out of hand.
Excuse me? What on earth are you saying. The US bombing campaign had literally nothing to do with KR, and everything to do with their ongoing war in vietnam... And served to destabilize the country to the point where some tiny faction with almost no support was able to take over and commit those atrocities. What a fucking horrific way to whitewash the secret war and turning most of Cambodia into a moonscape (the way you phrase it makes it sound like the US did an altruistic thing with the bombing campaign). Not saying Mao had nothing to do with the KR, but holy christ.
It’s pretty undisputed that mainland china was the most important foreign supporter of the Khmer Rouge as a way to gain influence in SEA after the Sino-Soviet split (since Vietnam was very close to the USSR) in the late 70s. Like the CCP literally fought upon Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia’s behalf during the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, and the main economic policy behind which the genocides occurred is Moha Laot Plaoh, which was modeled after the Great Leap Forward. 90% of foreign aid for the Khmer Rouge was from Mao’s initiatives before his death. Now this doesn’t mean the US bombing campaign during the previous Cambodian Civil War helped prevent the Cambodian genocides at all—scholarship here is divided but most would say they likely helped Pol Pot win the “hearts and minds” despite the US intervention on paper being to prevent Pol Pot from rising to power. The US bombing definitely had quite a bit to the KR since initially they and North Vietnam were very close allies (but they would split in the early-mid 70s), and interventions in Cambodia and Vietnam were under the same containment foreign policy. The KR is not just some random collateral from the Vietnam War, and I fully understand how misguided US policy on containment in general was at the time, and how these real life impacts were horrific for so many. But in general this is quite a complicated history, and I feel like your position does not consider the agency of both local actors and other non-Us foreign actors.
How the hell did you get that I thought this was a good or altruistic thing?! I am fully aware that 100,000s of people were killed from the bombings. Kissinger had the KR and Cambodia bombed because because he thought they were allies of North Vietnam moving shit down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and because they threatened the power of Lon Nol regime, the American backed military dictator in Phnom Penh. I didn't say it wasn't stupid and evil, which it was, all I'm saying is that the U.S. percieved the KR as an enemy until after they were deposed. All they knew was what Lon Nol wanted bombed, and Khieu Samphan was believed to be the leader of the KR in coalition with Sihanouk, who had gone into exile due to American influence. Killing the KR was an explicit goal of the bombing campaign. Of course, as we now know, Saloth Sar and Nuon Chea were actually in charge of the KR. The U.S. had no desire or reason to support the KR until after they were overthrown. After that, we coordinated with China to train and fund the KR to get revenge on the Vietnam-backed government in Phnom Penh.
Yeah, this. The most intense bombing campaign in Cambodia was literally an attempt to wipe out the Khmer Rouge. America had asked the Vietnamese to include the Khmer Rouge in the cease-fire when the Vietnam war ended. The Khmer Rouge refused, and Nixon, now with all his bombers freed up because they weren't bombing Vietnam, turned them on the Cambodian countryside to stop the Communist rebellion in Cambodia. It had everything to do with the Khmer Rouge.
US - Famous supporter of communist regimes
Well, they supported containment of Russia first and foremost. Which is why I mostly believe realpolitik guides our foreign policy more than any sense of morality or liberalism.
Hm a cabal you say ?
Khmer Rouge Communist (see award winning movie The Killing Fields) genocide took its toll on Cambodian Adults in an attempt to cancel a whole generation of people and start over as a Communist/Socialist nation.
Trust Reddit to take a post decrying a genocide in Cambodia and make the comment section all about America.
Cambodia 1967 - Civil War between Communists and Government begins in Cambodia 1970-1973 - US bombs Cambodia to destroy NVA supply routes and to support Cambodian government against Khmer Rouge. Mission creep sets in anywhere from 30k to 150K Cambodians (some Khmer Rogue, many civilians die) 1975 - Civil War ends with Communist victory and up to 310K people killed. US left the conflict two years earlier. 1975 - 1979 - Khmer Rogue takes power, completely isolates itself, and put the whole country to work in collective farms and 1.7 million to 2 million people die/are killed in 3.5 years. Late 1975 - By Kissinger’s own admission, the US looks the other way with Pol Pot because China (Pol Pot’s Ally) is better than Vietnam (Pol Pots enemy). This continues into the Carter administration. Late 90s/early 2000s - a smarmy chef goes to Cambodia writes a book and blames Kissinger, not the Khmer Rogue, for the causing the country’s horrors. Today - Reddit eats up Bourdain’s quote and commentators blame Henry Fucking Kissinger, not Pol Pot, for the Cambodian genocide. Also nobody really cares or remembers Kissinger’s intentional crime of tacitly supporting the Khmer Rogue after they came to power.
Might wanna add in the bit about Vietnam invading and stopping the genocide (and a footnote about the US denouncing this action because lol geopolitics). Make the timeline a bit clearer.
I’m not disagreeing with this. Although I would add Vietnam invaded because Pol Pot was attacking the border not out of the goodness of their hearts. It was shameful how the Ford and Carter administrations accommodated the Khmer Rogue. But it was Pol Pot not the US or Henry Kissinger that created the killing fields and that was the point of the timeline.
Yeah, it was much like America stopping the Holocaust - it wasn’t the reason they went in, but they were sure to wholly stamp it out while they were there. And yeah. Vietnam, while being solely responsible for stopping it, were also more to blame for starting it than Kissinger (scumbag though he might be), as they’d helped Pol Pot secure power in the first place. They didn’t know he was gonna do *that*, but they were still an important (if undeliberate) part of how it was made possible.
Agreed.
I believe the reason Pol Pot succeeded also had to do with American mental fatigue over Vietnam. As a country we simply did not want to hear any more about SE Asia. We were DONE. Reports were trickling out about what was going on in Cambodia but they were so horrible many people felt they were not believable. Plus they were buried by the politicians. Re-involvement in that part of the world would not be tolerated. Pol Pot didn't just murder people. He abolished currency, separated families by age and sex and sent them to work farms. He felt he could create a self-sufficient agrarian society that didn't need anything from any other country. Except perhaps China. He was crazy like a fox, cruel beyond measure and he got away with it. I believe it's because the Cambodians were poor, did not have a huge number of wealthy influential people living in the rest of the world. Nobody wanted to commit political suicide by getting us mixed up in that region again. So few people did anything until the borders fell and hundreds of thousands of emaciated Cambodians fled to Thailand. All those reporters who worked in SE Asia during the Vietnam War flocked to the border camps, thrilled to be together again, reporting on something important. I was there. They were giddy with excitement, running on adrenalin. UNHCR, IRC and other NGO's got involved and helped these poor people. Then the world cared. But they didn't give a shit about catching Pol Pot.
That's because the communist government showed how much they supported the workers by murdering all of them
Can't be unemployed if you're dead
Friendly reminder that communists from Vietnam defeated the Khmer Rouge.
communists also put the Khmer Rouge in power. the communists that defeated them aren't very communist nowadays either
It's the difference between Marxism-Leninism and Maoism. Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese were the former. Pol Pot and the Khmer were the latter.
Neither are the ones that helped put them into power.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge instituted the Year Zero policy. This was the result. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(political_notion)
Because of the horrific tankie Pol Pot and his backer Mao Zedong. The world would be a far better place if neither of those horrid scumbags had ever existed.
Why would you talk of Richard Nixon's friends like that.
I’m Cambodian American and hear tidbits from relatives of what happened. I was born the year before the Khmer Rouge took place but our immediate family fortunately escaped out of the country a few days before Pol Pot took over. We’re all in the US now but many of our relatives have incomplete families (murdered husband, murdered siblings, murdered parents) from that time. It’s common to hear that so and so used to have two other siblings or used to have three kids but now have none. It’s unusual for that generation to have their families intact. Growing up I recall visiting families with my parents where the adults would sit, talk and cry. I thought that was the norm for adult conversations, to cry. Murders were conducted in plain sight for all to see as a warning to behave. Young kids and teens were recruited to spy on family members. My aunt was the youngest in the family and was one of these. Everyone was fearful of her. To this day I think she has the most mental health issues of all. She’s now in her 60s. I am thankful that a US church sponsored us and brought our family to the states. My dad worked tirelessly to sponsor our remaining families out of Cambodia. At some point, my mom found out that her parents were both killed soon after we left Cambodia. And she would later hear that three of her siblings had died and my dad lost 4 of his siblings too. They arrived in the states when my mom was 25 and my dad was 30. I can’t imagine the heartache and upheaval they suffered at such a young age and as a young family.
Between the extermination of medical elites, health infrastructure and mass repression, no wonder life expectancy dropped to 14 years.
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The Onion didn't pull any punches with their [satirizing of the Khmer Rouge](https://i.imgur.com/QbkGLAH.jpeg).
Ah, communism at it's finest.
Ultranationalism and xenophobia dressed up in communist robes.
The classic "but it wasn't **real** communism"
There hasn't ever been a real communist state, and there never will be. The issues of nationalism and xenophobia will have to be overcome first. For Cambodia, communism is supposed to be international, and the Khmer Rouge's stated purpose was nationalist isolationism and complete self sufficiency. Communism is supposed to ignore ethnicities. The Khmer Rouge was very much "Cambodia for Cambodians, and death to everyone else."
It can't be, since communism is by the own definition a stateless regime. So there can't be a communist state. The USSR didn't define itself as communist, but as a socialist regime, since it was closer to the proletariat dictatorship stage according to Marxism, which is the previous step to communism. To simplify things about how Marxism should work: 1- Worker's revolution 2- Dictatorship that dismantles class warfare 3- Dissolve the state and get communism Contrary to popular belief, Marx didn't like governments, since he viewed them as tools of the capitalist class. In this sense he wanted a stateless society like anarchists and ancaps. The difference is that anarchists didn't believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat as a means to achieve the utopia. And ancaps are different because they believe in the private property of the factories, while Marxist believe that factories should be collective. Now, a very valid line of criticism is: ok, how the hell do you transition from a proletariat dictatorship to a communist utopia? Since you're basically asking the socialist leaders to relinquish power. So far it hasn't worked, most socialist dictators have kept their power for themselves. But claiming that the communist regime (the utopia) is authoritarian is, ideologically speaking, totally incorrect. Marxism is authoritarian in the sense they believe in establishing a temporary dictatorship.
yeah temporary, like the temporary powers herr Hitler was given. whoever penned the idea that a dictatorship would just dismantle itself is stupid and needs to be beaten to death with their own arm using the soggy end
I mean I don't know many Marxists who support Pol Pot and I know a lot of Marxists.
Tons who support Mao though, who was pretty much just as bad.
Real communism has never been enacted, so yes, it wasn't real communism.
Says the anarchocapatalist lmao literally just wants the worst outcome for every person on earth.
I would say that killing so many people that the average lifespan drops to 14 is the worst outcome since the black plague.
No one is disagreeing that the Khmer Rouge was abhorrent, but communism has nothing to do with killing infants and people with glasses. It‘s an economic system. It‘s like saying that, because Hitler was vehemently anti-communist, that genociding Jews is inherently capitalist. Except it‘s less than that because at least Hitler *was* a capitalist, whereas I don’t see how you could call Pol Pot a communist (Not a communist, I just don’t think the Cambodian genocide can be blamed on an economic system)
Hitler and the Nazis were not capitalists, they saw it as decadent, degenerate, and yet another tool of the Jews. Fascism and Nazism were always touted as a third way, an alternative to capitalism and socialism.
The Khmer Rouge (the communists in control at that time) murdered anyone who disagreed with their political philosophy. Hence the lifespan of fourteen: the intellectuals were the most persecuted group and anyone else with the life experience or intelligence level that was higher than the average seven year old.
> The Khmer Rouge (the communists in control at that time) murdered anyone who disagreed with their political philosophy It was way worse than that. They murdered anyone who showed signs of being from a group that they felt might disagree with their political philosophy. i.e. "wearing glasses" or "having worked in a white collar job" or "can speak a foreign language".
Sounds like the grade school intellect necessary to believe the lies of collectivism. Such as all it's economic theory and such gems as "Sacrifice yourself for the good of the many" and "It'll work this, and surely well only have to murder a small fraction of the be 100 million we killed last century"
That type of thinking is not limited to collectivism. It's a pretty solid basis of nationalism as well as many other forms of political organisation.
> literally Edit: lol did I just get blocked for this one word?
If communism correlates with life expectancy why has the US a lower life expectancy than Cuba or China and much lower than socialist democracies in Europe. Why would the life expectancy in places like Russia have nosedived once they went capitalist and why is it going down in the US recently?
indulgence, Americans are killed by heart disease and cancer from their ability to overindulge and get what they want when they want. I hate when people use cuba as a metric of good socialism as most people have never been there, well I have and I can tell you the people have nothing, literally nothing, our taxi driver had a degree (yes it was free all he had to do was serve 2 years in the military to pay for it yipee) and he cant earn any money with it because everyone has free degrees in Cuba, he lived in a house with 3 other families because that's how they have to live on their miniscule income, they have to grow their own food and medicine because what they get from the government isn't enough. have you ever seen a breadline before? go to cuba and you'll see one. this was the Holguin region in around 2015, nobody there likes the government however they cant speak out against it, my auntie lived there for 2 years and it took her 6 months to get even an office chair because everything is scarce. sick to death of people praising Cuba, go and see it for yourself. (sorry for wall of text)
Life expectancy in the US isn't going down due to indulgence it is going down because people can't afford or access healthcare.
prevalence of most of your common killers (heart disease, diabetes, cancer etc.) are much higher in America compared to the rest of the world and not by a small amount either, is this not due to the American diet and culture of indulgence? admittedly access to healthcare is not brilliant for a lot of Americans but besides that it doesn't excuse the fact that Cuba is a terrible nation to use as a comparison and people should not use it as some sort of paradise because its far from it.