Cambodia

"In Cambodia, or Indo-China, Buddhism conspired with Hinduism to provide the religious framework for one of the richest ages in the history of Oriental art."

"Is a holiday in Cambodia Where people are dressed in black A holiday in Cambodia Where youll kiss ass or crack Its a holiday in Cambodia Where youll do what youre told Its a holiday in Cambodia Where the slums got so much soul"

"…Cambodia has gotten a damaging reputation as a country of scammers—a “scam-state”, if you like. …Cambodia’s authoritarian political system, which isn’t about to open up, has denied space for ordinary people to express themselves as citizens. The next best thing would be to empower [the ordinary Cambodian nationals] as consumers."

"[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesnt want to hear anything about it. Its an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves."

"The Nazis burned the works of Jews and other authors of whom they ideologically disapproved, but even more dreadful, it seems to me, was the action of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, at the start of the insane destruction of their country (including, in the end, the physical destruction of something like one-seventh of the entire population); in the sack of Phnom Penh which marked the beginning of their holocaust they burned every example of the printed word they could lay their hands on, from ancient Buddhist scriptures to hospital record-cards."

"On 17 April 1975 the capital finally fell to the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot — ruling with a tiny clique of comrades such as Nuon Chea (Pol Pots right hand man, regimes chief ideologist),Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan under the anonymous cover of ‘The Organization’ — declared that 1975 was “Year Zero’ and started to purge Cambodia of all non-communist influences. All foreigners were expelled, newspapers were outlawed and large numbers of people with the merest taint of association with the old regime — including all religious leaders, whether Buddhist, Christian or Muslim — were executed. There were even reports of people being killed because they wore spectacles — a sign of ‘bourgeois intellectuals’."