Almost all Cambodian homes have a red cloth talisman, called a yantra (or yo-an in Khmer) hanging in their house. It is covered with all sorts of symbols, the most common of which is a squiggly spiral called an ounalome. Yantra with dozens of ounalome spirals The ubiquitous ounalome is a well-known and revered symbol in […]
Author: whatimnothearing
WHAT I’M NOT HEARING ABOUT JUDGE DUGAN
Did she obstruct justice or not? The media have been eerily quiet about the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, the judge who ushered a defendant out the back door of the courtroom while ICE agents were waiting to arrest him at the front door. The government then arrested Dugan for obstructing justice. That arrest seems, […]
“He hates the same people we hate.”
Anyone outside the US would think that Trump is in serious trouble. His promise to reduce the price of eggs on day one has backfired, and even his most hard-headed cultists are beginning to see that the tariffs are raising prices, not lowering them. His promise to end the Ukraine war within 48 hours has […]
TRUMP’S TARIFF FORMULA AND CAMBODIA
Trump slapped Cambodia with one of the highest tariffs, because, he claimed, Cambodia poses 97% tariffs on the US. When you look at a list of Cambodian tariffs on US imports, you see meats and food products at 15%, with other products at 7-15%, nowhere near the 97% calculated by the Trump team. So I […]
THE CONTINUING SIGNALGATE COVER-UP
The media continue to focus on trivial questions such as “What is the definition of ‘classified’?” The Trump administration, with media complicity, has done a masterful job of steering discussion away from the central issue — that of posting sensitive information over unsecured platforms. I have yet to hear anyone ask either of the following […]
SIGNAL-GATE — THE REAL QUESTION
I’m quite amused to watch the Trump team squirm to lie, downplay, cast blame, etc., to get off the hook for the egregious leak of secret information. The media are going berserk painting the administration as a bunch of incompetent bumblers. However, the Trump team is craftier than that. They have managed to focus the […]
CREATIONISM DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T EAT PORK
Christians have framed the religious argument as one of creationism versus science. They point to the increasing confusion in science and the weirdness of quantum theory, as opposed to the clear observation that this complex universe couldn’t have created itself. So for the sake of argument, let’s accept that the universe was created. First question, […]
A CAMBODIAN PERSPECTIVE ON TRUMPISM
I’m watching the Trump circus from afar here in Cambodia. I am observing a couple of Trump actions in light of my experiences in Cambodia. First, I have witnessed NGOs that purport to help disadvantaged people. Some of them (not all) spend 20-30% on the people, and 70-80% on themselves. The people, who don’t […]
TRUMP’S ECONOMIC WARFARE AGAINST SMALL COUNTRIES
There has been a hue and cry from economists that consumers will pay for Trump’s tariffs in the form of higher prices. China does not pay the tariff on Chinese products. Parenthetically, I note that since the introduction of tariffs on China, the Chinese stock market has been going up, while Wall Street has been […]
I USED TO WORK FOR USAID
Foreign aid has always had its detractors. Many people feel either, “Why should we be giving aid to those ungrateful shithole countries?”, or else, “USAID is such a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy, it’s just another big, wasteful black hole for tax dollars.” Well, I want to share my experience working for USAID some years ago […]