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Phnom
Penh (Ah!)
- US
POLITICS HAS CAMBODIA LOOKING IN THE MIRROR
James Loving - National Radio Text Service
Some NGO's in Cambodia disrespect the Cambodian people and their culture. Many NGO's are about putting on a good show, writing copious notes and reports, make themselves a good salary, drink a lot of beer and wine and dine at the best restaurants while very little gets done with the millions of US taxpayer and donor dollars that these NGO's take in every year and waste.
Monday September 29, 2008 US TAXPAYER MONEY GOING DOWN THE TUBES Flush it if you want but where will this $#1t go? It's no wonder the world question the intelligence of US politicians. The remark made by presidential candidate Barack Obama regarding putting lipstick on a pig comes down to a matter of interpretation. The McClain campaign took a lot of time interpreting the statement as being derogatory remark about the Republican's Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. In the world of to some a glass is half EMPTY and to others HALF FULL, our interpretation is that Palin is the lipstick on the Republican Party pig. On the surface the presidential choices represent more war or perhaps a chance of getting out of a war that the US shouldn't be in. Did someone mention Vietnam? US politics came into focus this past week during the presidential debates between candidates Barack Obama and John McCain The event took place during an American economic crisis and the US government proposing issuing a US $700 Billion loan of US taxpayer money to bailout Wall Street after they bungled funds resulting in the biggest financial crisis the country has seen since the Great Depression of 1929. The way the US government pisses away money as well as questionable practices such as the Custer Battle controversy where they paid $23 billion to the company that hired sub contractors to support the war in Iraq. It was government officials who approved doing business with the company whose officials are now elusive and are non transparent as indicated by a BBC television investigative report BBC Uncovers Lost Iraq Billions. During the recent presidential debate host Jim Lehrer asked the candidates: Much has been said about the lessons of Vietnam. What do you see as the lessons of Iraq? OBAMA: Well, this is an area where Senator McCain and I have a fundamental difference because I think the first question is whether we should have gone into the war in the first place. Now six years ago, I stood up and opposed this war at a time when it was politically risky to do so because I said that not only did we not know how much it was going to cost, what our exit strategy might be, how it would affect our relationships around the world, and whether our intelligence was sound, but also because we hadn't finished the job in Afghanistan. We hadn't caught bin Laden. We hadn't put al Qaeda to rest, and as a consequence, I thought that it was going to be a distraction. Now Senator McCain and President Bush had a very different judgment. And I wish I had been wrong for the sake of the country and they had been right, but that's not the case. We've spent over $600 billion so far, soon to be $1 trillion. We have lost over 4,000 lives. We have seen 30,000 wounded, and most importantly, from a strategic national security perspective, al Qaeda is resurgent, stronger now than at any time since 2001. We took our eye off the ball. And not to mention that we are still spending $10 billion a month, when they have a $79 billion surplus, at a time when we are in great distress here at home, and we just talked about the fact that our budget is way overstretched and we are borrowing money from overseas to try to finance just some of the basic functions of our government. So I think the lesson to be drawn is that we should never hesitate to use military force, and I will not, as president, in order to keep the American people safe. But we have to use our military wisely. And we did not use our military wisely in Iraq. MCCAIN: I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict. Our initial military success, we went in to Baghdad and everybody celebrated. And then the war was very badly mishandled. I went to Iraq in 2003 and came back and said we've got to change this strategy. This strategy requires additional troops, it requires a fundamental change in strategy and I fought for it. And finally, we came up with a great general and a strategy that has succeeded. This strategy has succeeded. And we are winning in Iraq. And we will come home with victory and with honor. And that withdrawal is the result of every counterinsurgency that succeeds. MCCAIN: And I want to tell you that now that we will succeed and our troops will come home, and not in defeat, that we will see a stable ally in the region and a fledgling democracy. The consequences of defeat would have been increased Iranian influence. It would have been increase in sectarian violence. It would have been a wider war, which the United States of America might have had to come back. So there was a lot at stake there. And thanks to this great general, David Petraeus, and the troops who serve under him, they have succeeded. And we are winning in Iraq, and we will come home. And we will come home as we have when we have won other wars and not in defeat. But what's most important in Cambodia is the way American taxpayers money is being used to fund NGO's which exist in Cambodia. One NGO chief that is supposed to fight human trafficking said, "It's all bullshit man. Some taxpayer in the United States from Arkansas is paying for all of this," as he surveyed his equipment including several Land Cruisers and employees spread around a field. The individual is British but he was revealing his attitude to an American. That set the tempo of my viewpoint on the attitude of NGO's in Cambodia as well s their disrespect for the Cambodian people and their culture. Many NGO's are about putting on a good show, writing copious notes and reports, make themselves a good salary, drink a lot of beer and wine and dine at the best restaurants while very little gets done with the millions of US taxpayer and donor dollars that these NGO's take in every year and waste. John Perry Barlow had a point of view when he visited the Foreign Correspondents Club of Cambodia a few years ago addressing a crowd of NGO staff and news media. His opinion was that the mission of getting the job done would mean that THERE WOULD BE NO JOB. Shock waves went around the room as many who were in attendance were probably being faced with looking in the mirror. INTERNET THEFT? In researching the findings we have found that search engines Yahoo, Google and MSN are all guilty of misleading the public. They have linked our story information to other sites without our permission. Those sites include Thai Visa, Washington University in the USA and UNESCO. We have tried to contact Yahoo regarding this matter but there was no response. For our story on Digital Divide Data titled Bridging The Digital Gap Yahoo linked our information to UNESCO and Washington University web sites as noted below. Cambodia (PDF) 13 James Loving, "DDD - Bridging the Digital Gap of Have and Have. Notes," (by James Loving, National Radio Text Service, 8 April 8, ... www.unescobkk.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ict/Metasurvey/CAMBODIA.PDF - 117k - View as html The questions are: 1. Why would a company that is valued at billions of dollars employ dishonest practices? 2. Who is responsible for manipulating information that is misleading to the public? 3. Who is responsible at UNESCO in permitting the practice? Yahoo used the same story to mislead the public to the Washington University (USA) web site as noted below: Cambodia (PDF) 13 James Loving, "DDD - Bridging the Digital Gap of Have and Have. Notes," (by James Loving, National Radio Text Service, 8 April 8, ... www.com.washington.edu/ict4d/upload/2004052712430458_03760155.pdf - 117k - View as html WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Our Roman Wanderaugh columns have been linked to other web sites by all three search engines without our permission. The most flagrant violator is Thai Visa. We have contacted them in the past but they have ignored our request to take our stories off their site. All three of the mentioned search engines have used our story information and linked it to Thai Visa without our permission. Thai Visa actually stole our story and posted it on their site. In the past they not only stole our Cambodia By Land & Sea story but also used our photo. Since that time the photo is not on our story on their site. Google provides advertising for the site. The question is why would a company that is worth billions of dollars resort to supporting a web site that steals? The information of our information page on the Google site also had the following endorsing going to the Thai Visa site. ©2007 Google - Google Home - Advertising Programs - Business Solutions - About Google FRONT PAGE WITH THAI VISA MSN did the same. They listed incorrect information and linked our work to Thai Visa as noted below: Thaivisa.com The latest updated Thai visa immigration news; work permit and residence permit in ... Friday, 15 December 2006 Cambodia visa trip "TRAVELING AROUND" by Roman Wanderaugh o www.thaivisa.com/344.0.html o ˇ¤ 7/14/2007 o ˇ¤ Cached page Cambodia visa trip "TRAVELING AROUND" by Roman Wanderaugh "AN INEXPENSIVE TRIP from BANGKOK to CAMBODIA by LAND & SEA" If you're an adventurous traveler the trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia from ... o www.thaivisa.com/border-run/page_2.html o ˇ¤ Cached page o +Show more results from www.thaivisa.com MSN also listed the headline TRAVELING AROUND on the Cambodia Land & Sea story. It raises the question why was it necessary to make two listings on the same story to link to the Thai Visa site? Roman Wanderaugh and any other National Radio columns are only legally available on the Internet on National Radio. We DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION for any other web site to use our material including soliciting our photos to the public. We negotiate directly with interested parties for use. We are published in print in five languages. We do not approve of Thai Visa using our material and all of the search engines misleading the public to other web sites using National Radio information. Isn't a search engines job to lead the public to the information they seek? It is clearly stated on our National Radio web site: © Copyright: National Radio. Any use of these materials, whole or in part, is prohibited unless authorized in writing by National Radio. Contact: nationalradio@yahoo.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
© Copyright: National Radio. Any use of these materials, whole or in part, is prohibited unless authorized in writing by National Radio. Contact: nationalradio@yahoo.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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