finally good news from raoul. he is packing it in, calling it quits. no longer will the buffoon's tortured, improbable and inaccurate analysis be posted to this newsgroup. in one sense perhaps, it is a pity, because raoul jennar's example was a shining guide for what anyone trying to really analyze politics should avoid.
pompous, self-serving and contrary to the point of being criminally dishonest, raoul jennar chose to ignore the most blatant realities of the current cambodian situation to offer aid and comfort to a person and a political party that deserved a much more critical approach. , raoul jennar was a willing mouthpiece for one, and only one, part of the cambodian equation. his ceaseless cheering for hun sen and the cpp was and is nothing short of insulting to the brave men and women, some of them opposition figures, some of the journalists, but most of them human rights workers, who were trying in vain to bring a semblance of justice and democracy to a country that over the past 30 years has been savaged almost to the point of utter collapse.
raoul believed that his enemies, the press, the human rights workers, etc. were shamelessly promoting the opposition. in this belief, he was utterly wrong in only the way that a pea-brained non-intellect could be. however, starting from that belief, raoul jennar committed the most egregious sin of anyone hoping to be respected as an analyst. he took sides. and not only did he take sides, he took such a partisan approach in writing his half-baked analyses that he blinded himself to any wrongdoing the cpp and hun sen may have committed. we all know there are no heroes in cambodia, but raoul jennar tried to create one. his biography of hun sen reads like an official north korean biography of kim il sung. his descriptions of sam rainsy and others in the opposition read like, well hun sen's descriptions of sam rainsy and others in the opposition -- but more critical.
for raoul jennar, until very recently, hun sen could do no wrong. hun sen's concept of justice was right on. ranariddh alone was guilty of colluding with the khmer rouge, rainsy was a khmer rouge terrorist. the un center for human rights was a pawn of the opposition. the fact that no political killing had been punished in at least four years was testament to the fact that the opposition was killing itself in order to blame the government and hun sen was too lenient to arrest the real culprits.
what utter crap. it was "the big lie." i hope everyone understands that reference.
perhaps more than any other one single person, raoul jennar distorted and attempted to destroy the entire effort to rebuild cambodia. after radically absurd and pathetic remarks (which revealed the depth of this pathetic human being's paranoia) cost him a lucrative position with the european union for the election (see pppost), jennar began to lash out at anything and anyone, including ghost conspiracies, that he saw in what can only be described as an increasingly delusional state. in reality, no such conspiracies existed. but unfortunately for all of us, raoul continued his rants. who can forget the entire analysis he turned over to an unbalanced, failed un human rights worker whose sole legitimate complaint was the fact that he did not fit in at the office. who can forget that first crc report which explained that the raison détre for his little venture was that the world was being inundated with misinformation about cambodia at the hands of american journalists working on behalf of washington. how low can one go? well, lower in raoul's case. it went lower.
in one of his earlier pieces, jennar described an opposition demonstration at the independence monument as a "humiliation for cambodia." why a humiliation? well for raoul it was a humiliation because hun sen had allowed it to go forward. the monument is a hallowed place, raoul wrote, and as such should not be used for such ends. and yet, when government supporters would do the same thing for equally political reasons, there was not a peep from this grand defender of democracy, freedom of assembly and the press. how revolting.
one might ask how and why this pitiful little belgian arrived at such a tragic point. the reason is that with little hope for gainful employment at home, raoul jennar decided to try to buy his way into what he saw as the strongest and winning side in cambodia. raoul, using an insight that even the most casual angkor wat tourist comes to instantly, observed that cambodia is for the most part still a feudal society. he willingly became a cpp serf, offering not gold for his tithes, but rather his name (such as it is) on crc reports, in cpp newspapers, on cpp television, etc. in all of these venues, raoul jennar unstintingly toed the cpp line. from ranariddh's trial, to the opposition's attempts to try to level the electoral playing field, to problems with the actual election process once it had begun, raoul jennar never once veered from the cpp party line. he was a puppet in the worst sense of the word, i.e. a puppet not because he was being pulled by strings held by someone else, but because he was pulling himself, all the while aware of what he was doing. for this pinocchio, it was not his nose that grew, but rather his blatant lies which grew worse and worse as the election drew near and was finally held. worse to the point that when several independent poll watching ngos said the parliamentary seat allotment had been changed, raoul, without even hearing the lame government explanation, accused the ngos of lying. when it in fact turned out that the formula had indeed been changed there was not a peep again from the fraud raoul.
well, now we come to the end of the line. having discovered that he could never really make it into the cpp inner circle and having had the hero he created let him down, raoul, claiming that his funding has dried up, is calling it quits."the budget today is exhausted"??? i find this claim dubious indeed. first of all what ngo would fund support a rabid, know-nothing, sellout of an ass like jennar??? the serbian defense league?? maybe jennar refers to the money he was making at unesco before he was dumped by them for attacking the un center for human rights??? second of all how much could it have cost to produce the crc?. virtually nothing. internet subscription is about the only overhead the crc has. how much can that be?? of course, there would also be raoul's rent, his bills, food, his subscription to the cambodia daily and cambodge soir, etc. but one would imagine that this is not that much. someone could probably make this much by begging small amounts from groups that surely have better uses for their money. which is exactly what this fraud is doing.
raoul is looking for a handout to keep living in cambodia because he has ruined himself professionally with his big gamble on the cpp, a gamble that anyone with a brain, anyone who wanted to see the khmer rouge brought to justice, anyone who wanted to retain a shred a human dignity, decency and intellectual pride, would have seen was a loser. raoul would like to think his critics all bet on the opposition, but they didn't. most of them, true to their calling, remained staunchly independent, able to call a spade a spade, able to condemn cpp abuses in the same breath as condemning those committed by the opposition. i would now like to quote a small bit from jennar's (hopefully) last crc piece and make a small response.
>> The CRC also thanks all of those people in Asia, North America and Europe who, on more than one occasion, expressed their trust and support, particularly when its main writer was under attack; attack which he has always refused to respond to, as one should only show contempt for what is despicable. The insults and the slanderous allegations are methods that discredit their authors. Not their victim.>>
thanks for reading