In honor of Henry Kissinger’s impending 100th birthday, our friends over at The Intercept put together a helpful collection of works relating to his direct role in destroying South East Asia. Kissinger, you’ll recall, was one of the architects of death during the war in Vietnam, and experts say he bears significant responsibility for attacks in Cambodia that killed as many as 150,000 civilians, which would be about six times more ‘noncombatants’ than the US has killed in airstrikes since 9/11.
According to military documents and some groundbreaking new interviews with Cambodian survivors, Henry Kissinger is responsible for more civilian deaths in Cambodia than was previously known. The archive of military information offers previously unpublished and underappreciated evidence of hundreds of civilian casualties that were kept secret during the war in Vietnam and remain almost entirely unknown to the American people.
In a just world, Kissinger would be long gone; the only remaining memory of his name being a cautionary tale for children to remember what corruption looks like. Instead, we exist in a strange society that revers his destructive contributions and allows him to celebrate 100 years infecting this planet, without consequence for his crimes.
Side Items
Catholic Guilt: The Illinois attorney general’s office released a report yesterday detailing their investigation which found that 451 Catholic clergy sexually abused nearly 2,000 children in the state over a nearly 70-year period. These numbers are more than four times the 103 individuals that the church named when the state began its review in 2018. AG Kwame Raoul said at a news conference that investigators found that Catholic clergy abused 1,997 children in Illinois between 1950 and 2019, though he also acknowledged that the statute of limitations has expired in many cases and that many abusers “will never see justice in a legal sense.” If this were a movie, this is the moment where Denzel would start loading up on weapons and making plans for doling out justice in the non-legal sense
Jailbreak Failbreak: Authorities down in Florida claim to have foiled the escape plan of a creepy old perv trying to get out of a Florida jail and return to France where he’d previously fled in an attempt to avoid child pornography charges. John Manchec, 78, a multimillionaire with dual US and French citizenship, was arrested back in 2014 on 49 child pornography charges. He fled the country to avoid prosecution after posting a half million dollar bond, and moving to his medieval estate in southern France, the Chateau Pechrigal (I would’ve prosecuted him off the name of his medieval estate alone)
Itty Bitty Teeny Tiny Ronny D: Florida governor and general waste of life Ron DeSantis plans to announce his candidacy for president live on Twitter later today alongside Elon Musk. The real question is why? I personally look forward to DeSantis drenched in sweat and stammering on stage as he gets verbally assaulted by Teflon Don in some debate. DeSantis’ allies are planning a $200 million push for him. Such a waste of money