VC Speech - Cambodian Genocide

Hello, This is Joel Witt live from Cambodia, continuing our discussion regarding the Cambodian Genocide. Within days of overthrowing the government, Pol Pot and his army known as the Khmer Rouge began a ruthless campaign to reconstruct Cambodia. This mission is known in Khmer as “Kampuchea”, and the goal of Khmer Rouge was to create a model of Maoist China, and to force the whole population to become laborers working on a series of farms throughout the country. All basic rights of the Cambodian people were stripped from them, and everyone living in the cities were forced from their homes and taken away to labor camps or even prisons like the one I am currently standing in. Those who refused to leave or did not leave fast enough were murdered. Schools, universities, and even hospitals were closed. Scientists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and virtually all educated Cambodians were killed along with their families. Religious practice was forbidden, and many leading Buddhist monks in Cambodia were executed. The Khmer Rouge banned all music and radio, and they were known to shoot people for simply wearing glasses, laughing, or crying. Minority groups also became victims of the Khmer Rouge’s racism and hate. Those who had Chinese, Thai, or Vietnamese ancestry were killed as well as Christians and Muslims. Those who were able to avoid death were forced to work on farms for no pay, very little food, and for extremely long hours. Within a short amount of time the laborers fell ill from starvation and overwork, and eventually died due to lack of treatment. Despite all of these killings, the Khmer Rouge leaders such as Pol Pot were paranoid that they might lose their power, and therefore began to question, imprison, and execute their own Khmer Rouge members on the smallest suspicions of treason. The death toll of this period in Cambodian history is well over 2 million people. This has been Joel Witt reporting live from Cambodia. Back to you Sameet.

AF Movie Response

To be honest I liked the book Animal Farm much more than the movie. I think that the movie ruined some key points of the book and there were some unnecessary differences between the book and movie. Also, in the movie it seems like they are trying to make it seem like a happier story then it is supposed to be. The movie has a very happy and warm ending when it is not supposed to be like that. The point of the book was to show how grim the situation was.

There were many differences between the AF book and movie. One of the noticeable differences was that the dog had a much more important part in the movie than in the book. Also, the book states that a storm destroyed the windmill, while in the movie a desperate Mr. Jones blows up the windmill with explosives. Another difference is that in the movie they took the television from the farmhouse and brought it to the barn. This never happened in the book. One final difference between the book and movie is that the cat which appears in the book is not at all in the movie.

Overall I feel that the Animal Farm book is much better than the movie especially because of the differentiating plot at the end of the movie, and because of some of the skewed facts in the movie that change the point of the story.

Out of all the characters in Animal Farm I associate most with the character Snowball. The reason I say this is because I am usually quite good at coming up with plans, and so is Snowball (Orwell p. 26-27). Snowball plans the defense of Animal Farm very well, and that is why the animals were successful against the humans in the Battle of the Cowshed. They fought with very good strategy and Snowball himself had divided the animals into their own posts (Orwell p. 27). I also think that I can take leadership of things when people don’t know what to do, and Snowball also exhibits this quality throughout the book when he convinces the animals to work (Orwell p. 16)

Sources Cited

Orwell, George. Animal Farm: Centennial Edition. New York: Plume, 2003.

I am a citizen of the USA and my country does not have rules for mandatory military service. However, a draft can be put into place if needs be where the government will select people to serve in the military. I'm glad that I am not forced to join the military. I think that as long as there are enough volunteer soldiers the government shouldn't need to make unnecessary forced service to those who don't want to join. On the other hand, I would join the military if I knew that we were in danger and didn't have enough volunteer soldiers to fight.