Free Republic

Dong Jingwei, who has been rumored to be a high-ranking defector to the United States, attended a meeting in Beijing on June 23, according to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS). The MPS announced on its website that Dong participated in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) security meeting in Beijing on Wednesday, as a member of the China team which was led by Zhao Kezhi, China’s public security minister. In the announcement, the ministry released a photo, in which Dong was sitting at the right end of the table. This is the first time that the Chinese regime has...

Cambodia continued construction work at its Ream naval base in August and September, advancing projects that the US suspects could support a Chinese military presence in a strategically valuable corner of Southeast Asia. Satellite photos taken by Maxar and Planet Labs and published by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative show that two new buildings were built on the north end of the base... ... work took place near the former site of the Tactical Headquarters of the National Committee for Maritime Security, a US-funded building that was officially opened in 2012 and unexpectedly demolished in September 2020...

Latest leftist to demand Trump supporters be forcibly re-educated 'It's time to deprogram the cult leaders' A blog posting that offers support to President Trump warns that "deprogrammed" and "re-educated" are words that almost always are connected to violence.

After five years of sniffing out land mines and unexploded ordnance in Cambodia, Magawa is retiring. The African giant pouched rat has been the most successful rodent trained and overseen by a Belgian nonprofit, APOPO, to find land mines and alert his human handlers so the explosives can be safely removed. Last year, Magawa won a British charity's top civilian award for animal bravery - an honor so far exclusively reserved for dogs. "Although still in good health, he has reached a retirement age and is clearly starting to slow down," APOPO said. "It is time."

The ancient Cambodian capital of Angkor Wat, had a staggering 900,000 inhabitants before it was abandoned in 1431, according to a new study. An international team, led by the University of British Columbia, examined three decades of data to create a demographic model of the Medieval city. Their model revealed that the capital of the long-gone Khmer Empire housed between 700,000 and 900,000 people during its zenith in the 13th century.

By studying what was once an iron smelting site in Cambodia, archaeologists and earth scientists unveiled a sharp change in Earth’s geomagnetic field direction and strength that occurred about 10 centuries ago. The new data, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, marks the first archaeomagnetism records from southeastern Asia. The researchers believe it will fill gaps in scientists’ understanding of Earth’s past magnetism, illuminating how the planet’s protective sheath may change in the future... Tauxe worked with Mitch Hendrickson, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was excavating an iron-smelting...

About two years ago I visited Cambodia. While there I wrote this January 2019 post, which focused on the “killing fields” genocide that swept Cambodia in 1975-79, during the rule of the Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot. In connection with my trip, I bought the Ben Kiernan history titled “The Pol Pot Regime,” which I have just now gotten around to reading. Why my fascination with Cambodia in the day of the Khmer Rouge? It is one of the clearest modern instances of leftist/socialist ideology put into practice and then pushed to its logical conclusion. Highly educated elitists...

The idea behind Year Zero is that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded and a new revolutionary culture must replace it, starting from scratch. All of the history of a nation or people before Year Zero is largely deemed irrelevant, because it will ideally be purged and replaced from the ground up. In Democratic Kampuchea, so-called New People—intellectuals and members of the old governments—were especially singled out and executed during the purges accompanying Year Zero.

Democrats and liberal media have already dismissed the concept of radical leftists or Antifa being at the Capitol protest, that all the people there were Trump supporters. But as we reported, that’s not exactly true. What is true was there was at least some radical leftist presence there among the Trump supporters. What they did or what influence they may have had in the action is not clear. BLM protest organizer John Sullivan who frequently posted with BLM and Antifa hashtags was there at the doors to the Speaker’s Lobby next to Ashli Babbitt when she was shot. In fact,...

The former chief interrogator and top torturer for Cambodia's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime died early Wednesday in hospital in Phnom Penh. He was 77.Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his alias Duch, had served as the head of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison and was later convicted of crimes against humanity by a UN-backed war crimes tribunal for his role in the "Killing Fields" regime.

On National Day for the Victims of Communism, we solemnly remember the more than 100 million lives claimed by communism in the 20th century. We commit ourselves to stopping the spread of this oppressive ideology that, without fail, leaves in its wake misery, destruction, and death. As proud Americans who cherish the blessings of freedom and democracy, we promise to support the more than one billion people currently captive within communist regimes and denied their unalienable rights to life and liberty. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the decisive Polish victory against Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks in the Battle of...

Clive James's 2007 book titled Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts is a collection of artists and thinkers. They are largely concerned with responses to "threats against freedom, mostly in the 20th century." As I leaf through it, I am astonished at the echoes of my own qualms as this country stands on the precipice of either remaining free or not. I see Democrats and leftists invoking Nazism to describe conservatives in America, and I am reminded of Jean-François Revel's words that "one insults the memory of the victims of Nazism if one uses them to bury...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The Khmer Rouge’s chief jailer, who admitted overseeing the torture and killings of as many as 16,000 Cambodians while running the regime’s most notorious prison, has died. Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, was 77 and had been serving a life prison term for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The communist Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-79 was accused of genocide for causing the deaths of so many of their countrymen from executions, starvation and lack of medical care due to its radical policies. Only after neighboring Vietnam pushed the Khmer Rouge from...

Cambodian archaeologists have unearthed a large centuries-old statue of a turtle in an excavation at the famous Angkor temple complex in the country's northwest. The 56-by-93 centimeter (22-by-37 inch) carved stone turtle believed to date from the 10th century was discovered Wednesday during digging at what was the site of a small temple that had been built on Srah Srang, one of Angkor's several reservoirs. Researchers pinpointed where the temple had been and workers drained water off to enable the dig, which began March 16, said Mao Sokny, head of the excavation team of the Apsara Authority, a government agency...

"If our workers don't die from coronavirus, they'd die of starvation." This is the stark assessment of how the pandemic is impacting the clothing industry from garment factory owner, Vijay Mahtaney, the chairman of Ambattur Fashion India. In normal times, Vijay Mahtaney and his partners Amit Mahtaney and Shawn Islam employ a total of 18,000 workers in three countries - Bangladesh, India and Jordan. But the outbreak has forced them to shut down the majority of the business, with just one factory, in Dhaka, partially operational.

A US citizen who arrived in Malaysia after disembarking in Cambodia from the MS Westerdam cruise ship has tested positive for the new coronavirus, the Malaysia Health Ministry said on Saturday. The 83-year-old American woman flew to Malaysia on Friday from Cambodia along with 144 others from the ship, said Malaysian health ministry, adding that her 85-year-old husband had tested negative. The MS Westerdam, which had 1,455 passengers and 802 crew on board, had been stranded at sea for two weeks after being turned away from five countries – the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Thailand – over coronavirus...

A tenacious Brit convinced that missing flight MH370 is in the Cambodian jungle says he will resume his search - even though a previous attempt nearly proved deadly. Ian Wilson believes he spotted the Malaysia Airlines plane when looking at Google Maps. He travelled to the area with brother Jack last year - and Jack was lucky to survive a sudden fall after ground gave way underneath him. Despite this Ian is keen to return to the mountainous terrain... However the Aviation Safety Network (ASN) is certain that the aircraft was captured mid-flight. Evidence is mounting that the crash, which...

An epidemic of African Swine Fever is sweeping through China's hog farms, and the effects are rippling across the globe, because China is a superpower of pork. Half of the world's pigs live in China — or at least they did before the epidemic began a year ago. "Every day, we hear of more outbreaks," says Christine McCracken, a senior analyst at RaboResearch, which is affiliated with the global financial firm Rabobank. McCracken and her colleagues now estimate that by the end of 2019, China's production of pork could be cut in half. "That's roughly 300 million to 350 million...

UK: Holocaust memorial removes references to Jews, highlights Muslim role in saving people OCT 7, 2019 4:30 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER What did you expect in today’s shattered, staggering, dhimmi Britain, where the next Prime Minister could be openly antisemitic and pro-jihad? The UCU has apologized, but would it have done so if no one had said anything? “Why did UK’s Holocaust memorial events remove references to Jews?,” by Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, October 4, 2019: The University College Union in the United Kingdom sent an email to branches that excluded mention of Jews among the groups persecuted during...

Asian American groups are objecting to the Trump administration’s efforts to step up deportations of Cambodians, as dozens of refugees with criminal convictions are being ordered to report to federal officials next week for removal. At least 20 people in California have been served notices to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to begin the deportation process, according to Ny Nourn, a San Francisco-based community advocate with the Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus. The state is home to the largest population of Cambodians in the U.S. In Massachusetts, the state with the nation’s second largest Cambodian community, at...