t byfield wrote:
>
> > "Thus for the rural 80-90 percent of the Cambodian people arbitrary
> > justice, sudden violent death, political oppression, exploitive use of
> > religion and anti-religious reaction, both violent and quiescent, were
> > common facts of life long before the war and revolution of the 1970's.
> > The creations of Pol Pot-ism were all there in embryo." Vickery p 17
>
> it's quite interesting to watch the shifting standards here.
>
> on the one hand, 'brutal violence' is dismissed as a 'continuity'
> and present 'in embryo' prior to the rise of the KR, whereas the
> nature of the evidence of KR atrocities is treated as problematic
> --rather than, say, similarly endemic to cambodian society prior
> to and during the rule of the KR.
Not quite. We're trying to explain the brutal violence of the KR. That Cambodia had a long tradition of political violence prior to 1975 is a factor in the explanation. The most important factor is the U.S. bombing and invasions from 1963 to 1975. Some like Malcolm Caldwell (Btitish Marxist Asia scholar murdered by the Khmer Rouge in 1976.) think US interventions began in 1953 when Cambodia was granted independence and began a policy of neutrality, joined the non-aligned nations, voted with China, Albania and the DPRK at the UN etc.
> but the problem doesn't really stem from the heterogeneous nature
> of evidence in different places and times; rather, it stems from
> the gesture, inspired by normative methodologies, of diagnosing
> evidence as inadequate.
>
What counts as sufficient evidence to demonstrate the truth of a particular proposition?
Sam Pawlett
> cheers,
> t