Early Episode: Khmer Rouge Part 2: Year Zero

Not-at-all-fun Khmer Rouge animal fact: Music like the preview at the beginning of each episode was locally played through speakers placed on trees, early in the morning, to drown the screams of children and people being killed outside in the killing fields. So when you hear to the song when the episode starts, keep in mind that what you are hearing was also heard by countless innocent people who knew right there and then they were slated to be murdered.

Nicholas Malouin

Since I took away the one animal fact, here’s another: wombats poop square! And engineers are trying to study how they do it for possible applications when molding square products.

Thanks for doing this important story. I cannot imagine what it was actually like for people who were in that situation. I have to take away your fun animal fact though—-the fact that rats laugh and sought out researchers to be tickled is part of a big ethical discussion—rats have been identified as having empathy and will rescue other rats in distress. I’m not equating rats with humans and we do Need to run experiments but most labs stopped primate experiments for the same reasons. However there are more ethical standards that could be used. Here’s an article on rat intelligence and rat empathy—-which brings up A lot of uncomfortable research that perhaps we as humans should think about: https://aeon.co/essays/why-dont-rats-get-the-same-ethical-protections-as-primates

That position is quite unfair. Yes, Gunnar Bergström was President of the SKFA (Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association) and visited Kampuchea with three other Swedes. However, he was not present as an official representative of the Swedish government in power (who, for once, was not Palme's Social-Democrats but a centre-right coalition around the Centre Party which was nowhere sympathetic to Pol Pot's regime). The dude was a young, naive idealist who was exploited as the useful idiot that he was by Pol Pot as a propaganda coup. That said, when he discovered how horrible the KR regime through first-hand accounts, Bergström recanted everything and recognized how wrong he had been.

Nicholas Malouin

I took my students on a trip to Cambodia about ten years ago. We did visit Tuol Sleng (the S-21 murderprison) which was chilling. Actually the strangest thing which really brought home the reality of the genocide was that there were visibly fewer older people just among the general populace of Phnom Penh than you might expect because a large chunk of those generations got slaughtered.

Sweden sent a brotherly socialist delegation to Kampuchea in 1978; they reported great progress on building communism. Pol Pot's Smile is a horrifying book recounting the journey.

lal

I too am curious as to what their fuck their endgame is other than "If we don't have a country we don't have to work hard on policy"

jackson macpherson

Philip Short wrote a biography called Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare for anyone who wants to know more.

Matt

We get another military animals episode after this right like you did after the Kent state episode

Perturabo The Angry Artisan

JOE, I NEED AN ANIMAL FACT! I NEED THEM NOW AND YOU MUST GIVE THEM TO ME!

LACE ARRGAR what is Darius Jonna in the comments

Me: Sweet! Patreon notification! Also me: LLBD! Sick!! Also also me: ah fuck genocide

obliteron