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  1. #1
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    Making A Killing In Cambodia

    While most Cambodians spend their lives struggling against poverty, a spoilt, young elite enjoy all the privileges of vast wealth—and they aren’t ashamed to flaunt it. By Andrew Marshall


    “I AM going to drive a little fast now. Is that okay?”

    There is one place in Cambodia where you can hold a cold beer in one hand and a warm Kalashnikov in the other, and 21-year-old Victor is driving me there. We’re powering along Phnom Penh’s airport road with Oasis on his Merc’s sound system and enough guns in the trunk to sink a Somali pirate boat. Victor is rich and life is sweet. His father is commander of the Cambodian infantry. He has a place reserved for him at L’Ecole Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr. And, in his front passenger seat, there is a thin, silent man with a Chinese handgun: his bodyguard.

    “His name is Klar,” says Victor. “It means tiger.”

    Devastated by decades of civil war, Cambodia remains one of the world’s poorest nations. A third of its 13m people live on less than a dollar a day, and about 8 out of every 100 children die before the age of five, but Victor — real name Meas Sophearith — was raised in a very different Cambodia, where power and billions of dollars in wealth are concentrated in the hands of a tiny ruling elite. They prefer to conceal the size and sources of their money — illegal logging and smuggling, land-grabbing and corruption — but their children like to spend it.

    I first met Victor at a fancy Phnom Penh restaurant called Cafe Metro. Outside, Porsches, Bentleys, Cadillacs, Mercedes and Humvees fight for parking spaces. The Khmer Rouge are dead; the Khmer Riche rule. The son of a powerful general, Victor has his future mapped out for him. He went to school in Versailles, speaks French and English, and now studies politics at the University of Oklahoma. “My mother wanted us to get a foreign education so we could come back and control the country,” he says. The shooting range is where Victor and his friends go to relax. “I’ve grown up with guns and soldiers all around me,” he says. Victor and his generation are Cambodia’s future. Will they use their education and wealth to lift their compatriots out of poverty, or continue their parents’ fevered pursuit of money and power?

    Making A Killing In Cambodia | Andrew Marshall - Reporting from Asia on conflict, human rights and climate change



  2. #2
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    good2bhappy's Avatar
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    the latter probably

  3. #3
    Newbie unclesiam's Avatar
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    Sounds scary to me!

  4. #4
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    Is really true? Too terrible

  5. #5
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    a country where Socialism is long overdue,

  6. #6
    Nostradamus
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    Cambodia is more f*cked as Thailand, but it is early days and still a lot to play for.

    Thailand is too far down the well trodden path to change now.

  7. #7
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    For possible future leadership of Cambodia, having the Cambodian upbringing with a western education with a sense of responsibility might be good for for the country. Having money, being of the upper crust, and enjoying some of the finer things that life has to offer in itself is not bad. To critisize mearly on the fact that they have is not necessaariy good. Now grant it, there does need to be a social sense of responsibility and should take place in the form of education, job skill training, infrastructure development, and providing the tools for those with some sort of work ethic to advance in standing.
    "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff....and it is all small stuff"

  8. #8
    Nostradamus
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    Quote Originally Posted by SEA Traveler
    For possible future leadership of Cambodia, having the Cambodian upbringing with a western education with a sense of responsibility might be good for for the country.
    If only that were the case.

    The vast majority of Western educated Khmers are little spoilt rats that have no interest in the betterment of their peers. They are indignant, ignorant and dangerous (having had a couple of run ins with them personally).

    They use their power and influence to ride roughshod over fellow Cambodians, much like in the days of King Sihanouk and Lon Nol where the elite were Western educated and supported while the poor struggled, thus gaining popularity for groups like the Khmer Rouge.

    Cambodia is thoroughly corrupt but the business model remains Thai.

  9. #9
    Thailand Expat
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nostradamus View Post
    ...... If only that were the case......... Cambodia is thoroughly corrupt but the business model remains Thai.
    yes, if it were the case that the well to do and western educated Cambo's would use their influence in good ways to set up training programs, job skill opportunities, infrastructure improvements, education opportunities, then not bad. Socializing is not the answer though.

    Corrupt and Thai as business model syndrum?.... no argument there.

  10. #10
    I am in Jail

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    Quote Originally Posted by hillbilly
    Victor and his generation are Cambodia’s future. Will they use their education and wealth to lift their compatriots out of poverty, or continue their parents’ fevered pursuit of money and power?
    I have another more important question : will they re-open multiple heads blow job bar Sophie or not ?

  11. #11
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    Pol Pot was educated in France, look at the killing he made in Cambodia.

  12. #12
    Dislocated Member

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    So Cambodia has a spoiled elite, big fcuking news. Welcome to the real world.

  13. #13
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    Seems like I have read this story here before quite a while ago. Is this story actually new to TD?

  14. #14
    Elite Mumbler
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eggroll
    Seems like I have read this story here before quite a while ago. Is this story actually new to TD?
    I believe it was posted here before.

    Are you actually new to TD?

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Butterfly View Post
    a country where Socialism is long overdue,
    To extend social and familial models, not political ones. As political philosophies and attached identities don't change a bloody thing for the better.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by ItsRobsLife View Post
    So Cambodia has a spoiled elite, big fcuking news. Welcome to the real world.
    Historically, doesn't every society have this spoiled elite class? The real disparity between rich and poor is becoming quite apparent throughout those cultures one would least suspect, less the ones expected.

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