This partial Canon offers a glimpse into the assumptions and logic, evidence and arguments that a generation of Western scholars used to defend the Khmer Rouge or rationalize their policies during the mid-to-late 1970s. Together, they created the standard total academic view. This glimpse, whether representative or not, is in and of itself a testament to Khmer Rouge's charm over academia.

...

In chapter 3, the Chomsky-Lacouture Controversy is reconstructed. It is more a Ponchaud- Barron-Paul-Lacouture-Chomsky-Herman Controversy, to be sure, but that would sound tediously long. In early 1977, François Ponchaud wrote the first book detailing the struggle, under socialism, of the Cambodian people. That year, Barron and Paul published their own book, Murder of a Gentle Land (1977) an equally if not more damning broadside against the Khmer revolution and the Khmer Rouge. Ponchaud and Barron-Paul were among the first to see to sound the alarm on Cambodia. In 1976, Ponchaud had written in Mondes Asiatiques about the nature of the Khmer revolution.[19] After publishing his book, it was reviewed favorably by Jean Lacouture, but that review got a broadside from the leading, most intellectually formidable member of the antiwar movement, Noam Chomsky. At the May Hearings in 1977 on Human Rights in Cambodia, Gareth Porter trashed Ponchaud his uncritical use of refugees in Cambodia: Year Zero. A polemical exchange ensued among Chomsky, Lacouture, Ponchaud, and Bob Silvers, then editor of the New York Review of Books which had translated the Lacouture review titled "The Bloodiest Revolution."

...

The Porter-Chomsky-Herman objections were numerous, but still Chomsky and Herman admitted that Ponchaud's book was "serious and worth reading" though full of discrepancies and unreliable refugee reports which were contradicted by other refugees (who, for instance, had said that they had walked across the country and seen no dead bodies). This was vindication of the Khmer Rouge--reports of having seen no evil nor heard any evil. The Porter-Chomsky-Herman logic in a nutshell: Refugees are run away because they are displeased, thus will exaggerate, especially over time, if not lie about "alleged atrocities" altogether. Chomsky and Herman call for "care and caution," nothing short of patronizing to today's refugees from Guatemala, or El Salvador, or yesterday's from Auschwitz. Chomsky and Herman latched onto a number of media mistakes which include three fake photographs, a fake interview with Khieu Samphan, and a handful of misquotations. A little more fairly treated was Ponchaud's book, but the erratas first discovered by Ben Kiernan were blown out of proportion in Chomsky and Herman's review of the Ponchaud book for the Nation and repeated verbatim two years later in After the Cataclysm (1979).

The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia

Welcome to ProtestWarrior.com, a website created to help arm the liberty-loving Silent Majority with ammo -- ammo that strikes at the intellectual solar plexus of the Left.

Encouraged by our successful crashing of the February 16th San Francisco anti-war protest, we decided it was time for the Left to put down their megaphones, peel off their bumper stickers, and listen to the people who believe in the core values of this country. It's time to start making a little noise...

ProtestWarrior.com - fighting the left... doing it right

Legal reference for the "Guy Arrested in Mall with Peace T-Shirt".. looks like the US Supreme Court is on his side. Basic summary is they rule that shopping centers are public forums and that people have a right to petition people politically within them. Wow, whoda thunk it.

quoted:
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We postponed jurisdiction of this appeal from the Supreme Court of California to decide the important federal constitutional questions it presented. Those are whether state constitutional provisions, which permit individuals to exercise free speech and petition rights on the property of a privately owned shopping center to which the public is invited, violate the shopping center owner's property rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments or his free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Appellant PruneYard is a privately owned shopping center in the city of Campbell, Cal. It covers approximately 21 acres -- 5 devoted to parking and 16 occupied by walkways, plazas, sidewalks, and buildings that contain more than 65 specialty shops, 10 restaurants, and a movie theater. The PruneYard is open to the public for the purpose of encouraging the patronizing of its commercial establishments. It has a policy not to permit any visitor or tenant to engage in any publicly expressive activity, including the circulation of petitions, that is not directly related to its commercial purposes. This policy has been strictly enforced in a nondiscriminatory fashion. The PruneYard is owned by appellant Fred Sahadi.

Appellees are high school students who sought to solicit support for their opposition to a United Nations resolution against "Zionism." On a Saturday afternoon they set up a card table in a corner of PruneYard's central courtyard. They distributed pamphlets and asked passersby to sign petitions, which were to be sent to the President and Members of Congress. Their activity was peaceful and orderly and so far as the record indicates was not objected to by PruneYard's patrons.

Pruneyard Shopping Center vs Robins

(EDIT : use cpunk/cpunk for login)

quoted:
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INTERESTING TIMES, By Saul Singer: The fall of pacifism

Advertisement

Men can only be happy when
they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945

These are words to live by, if there ever were. But they are equally true regarding peace as they are about happiness. Peace, in a way, is a form of happiness; a positive state of being that paradoxically becomes more remote the more it is set up as an absolute.

There is a related paradox. The masterfully synchronized demonstrations last weekend seemed, particularly after the floundering of the anti-globalization movement, to be a show of strength for the "peace movement." In reality, this dramatic attempt to prevent the liberation of Iraq could end up being the greatest blow to pacifism since World War II.

INTERESTING TIMES, By Saul Singer: The fall of pacifism

quoted:
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by JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, February 27, 2003 (02-27) 18:24 PST SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --

The California Highway Patrol settled a major racial profiling lawsuit by agreeing to extend a ban on some car searches and requiring that officers articulate a reason for each drug-interdiction traffic stop, instead of offering a hunch the driver may be running contraband.

Under the settlement, filed Thursday in federal court, the CHP effectively foregoes policing practices that the U.S. Supreme Court has deemed legal but state officials have concluded, on balance, aren't worth it.

The settlement also requires the agency to track all stops and review that database to ensure no officer is pulling over a disproportionate number of black or Hispanic motorists. It requires CHP to pay $875,000 in legal fees and damages.

California Highway Patrol settles major racial profiling lawsuit

quoted:
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So don't think you can fool me with your political tricks
Political right, political left, you can keep your politics
Government is government, and all government is force
Left or right, right or left, it takes the same old course

Oppression and restriction, regulation, rule and law
The seizure of that power is all your revolution's for
You romanticize your heroes, quote from Marx and Mao
Well their ideas of freedom are just oppression now

Nothing's changed for all the death that their ideas created
It's just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren't clearly stated

Nothing's really different cos all government's the same
They can call it freedom, but slavery's the game
There's nothing that you offer but a dream of last year's hero
The truth of revolution, brother.....................is year zero.

BLOODY REVOLUTIONS - By Crass, 1980

Transcript of Bill Moyers interview/expose on Patriot II from PBS's show "NOW"..

quoted:
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MOYERS: The Patriot Act was passed six weeks after 9/11. We know now that it greatly changed the balance between liberty and security in this nation's framework. What do you think — what's the significance of this new document, called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003?

LEWIS: I think the significance is it just deepens and broadens, further extends the first Patriot Act. That act in 2001, they had six weeks, which was not a lot of time to throw something together. Now there's been 18 months of all kinds of things that have happened and court decisions that have tried to roll back some of the Patriot Act.

NOW: Bill Moyers interviews Chuck Lewis (ed- re: patriot act II)| PBS

How much is three to four minutes of your time worth-- especially when you're waiting for the latest "Lord of the Rings" movie to start?

That question was posed in two lawsuits filed Tuesday against movie theaters that claim in their ads they'll show movies at a certain time, but, instead, show on-screen commercials at the advertised time, delaying the movie's start.

Theaters are committing consumer fraud when they claim in advertising that a movie starts at a certain time but it really starts a few minutes later because of the ads, said Mark Weinberg, a Chicago attorney who filed the two suits.

"They deceive you into thinking a movie starts on time in order to create a captive audience,'' Weinberg said. "People are actually paying good money to watch commercials.''

Pre-movie ads rip off theatergoers, suits claim