Rainbow Genocide

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Friday 7 December 2012

Killing Fields of Cambodia

Cambodia is a country located in South East Asia, it is said to be just under half the size of California and twice the size of Scotland. Before Pol Pot’s Genocide which ranged between early 1975-1979, Cambodia held a strong population of 7 million due to the gain of independence from the French rule in the 1950’s.
In 1970 Prince Sihanouk was deposed in a military coup. The leader of the new right-wing government was lieutenant-general Lon Nol, who was made president of the 'Khmer Republic'. Prince Sihanouk and his followers joined forces with a communist guerrilla organisation founded in 1960 and known as the Khmer Rouge. They attacked Lon Nol's army and civil war began.

A very small fraction of child victims.

Once again Cambodia was caught up in another country’s war. Cambodia’s Eastern neighbour Vietnam, who also had fought against the French to gain Independence. As we know after the French were defeated, Vietnam split into nations: Communist North Vietnam and Pro Western South Vietnam who were strongly backed by the USA. Civil war has immediately broken out between these two nations. The Viet Cong, a group of Vietnamese communist guerrillas, whom were backed by China and North Vietnam, based themselves in the shrouded jungles of South Vietnam. From this chosen position they fought the South Vietnamese army from a short distance pushing them back. In 1964 the United States Of America entered the Vietnam war in style, assisted with the power of flight, firepower and a selection of tested poisonous defoliants. Sadly, the Americans could not push back the determined Vietnamese communists.
Under the rule of Prince Sihanouk, up until this point during the Civil war, Cambodia has managed to remain neutral by contributing to both sides. The Vietnamese Communists gained access to the harbours and Ports to collect supplies from its supporting countries. Whilst in secrecy, the Americans were given the go ahead by Cambodia to bomb the harbour and Viet Cong hideouts - illegitimately of course. Cambodia had become part of the Vietnam battlefield. During the next four years, American B-52 bombers, using napalm and dart cluster-bombs, killed up to 750,000 Cambodians in their effort to destroy suspected North Vietnamese supply lines. The inconclusive war in Vietnam cost many American and Vietnamese lives, devastated the country, and achieved nothing but misery for anyone caught up in it, including the Cambodians.
Khmer Rouge Guerrilla leader, Pol Pot.
The Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement in 1970 was small. Their leader, Pol Pot, had been educated in France and was an admirer of Maoist (Chinese) communism; he was also suspicious of Vietnam's relations with Cambodia. The heavy American bombardment, and Lon Nol's collaboration with America, drove new recruits to the Khmer Rouge. So did Chinese backing and North Vietnamese training for them. By 1975 Pol Pot's force had grown to over 700,000 men. Lon Nol's army was kept busy trying to suppress not only Vietnamese communists on Cambodian territory but also Cambodia's own brand of communists, the Khmer Rouge


On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge armies defeated the Lon Nol regime and took the capital, Phnom Penh, immediately dispersing almost all of its more than 2 million inhabitants to a life of hard agricultural labor in the countryside. Other cities and towns were also evacuated. The Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kâmpŭchéa (DK), and for the next four years the regime, headed by Pol Pot as prime minister and other members of the Standing Committee of the CPK Central Committee, terrorized the population. Almost 1.7 million Cambodians were killed, including members of minority and religious groups, people suspected of disagreeing with the party, intellectuals, merchants, and bureaucrats. 25 % of the urban Khmer population had perished. 
The most horrific slaughter took place during the second half of 1978 in a purge of the Eastern Zone on the Vietnam border, where resistance to the Khmer Rouge was strong. At least 250,000 people were killed in the worst single massacre of the Khmer Rouge period. Religion in Cambodia was also affected by the Khmer Rouge regime. Buddhism was completely suppressed from 1975 to 1979; many monks were defrocked and sent into forced labour, while others were killed. The Khmer Rouge also attacked the neighbouring countries of Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos in an attempt to reclaim territories lost by Cambodia many centuries before.


Cambodia's Flag








Thursday 6 December 2012

Bhopal Tragedy

Bhopal Tragedy 



"When I saw the leaves on the trees curl and turn black and birds fall dead out of the sky, I knew that this was death" - Survivor

December, 3rd, 1984.


Darkness fell over the city of Bhopal, India; parents kiss their children goodnight, the city slept soundly, unaware of the approaching poisonous gas which slowly crept its way into their homes.
The Union Carbide Corporation faced nuclear emergency as water inadvertently entered the MIC storage tank, resulting in an extreme rise in temperature. This caused a rapid chemical reaction which resulted in the breaching of the containment tank. The chemical manifestation was 500 times more toxic than cyanide. Both liquid and vapour forms leaked out of the plant into the atmosphere and pipelines.

On the streets of Bhopal, the sun dawned across the city, a photographer named, Raghu Rai, walked amongst the corpses of civilians. Raghu, recalls one father in particular burying his daughter in a nearby graveyard. The father, unable to bear the pain of parting from her, brushed the earth from her face to see her one last time. Many parents were never presented with this opportunity as they suffocated along with their children as they slept.

Over 3,000 civilians died by the immediate exposure to the poisonous gas but it is estimated that between 200,000 and 500,000 have been affected in terms of injuries, the figure continues as reports of damaged births are still occurring today. A large percentage of the injured civilians, known by Bhopal doctors as "Gaisees", suffer from kidney problems, diabetes and some newly formed cancers.

The plant owner, Dow Chemical, to this day, denies the responsibility of the accident and refuse to clean out the factory.

In Bhopal today, monsoons (26) in total have washed the toxins from the plant into the nearby rivers and crop fields. The Bhopal disaster was the result of a combination of legal, technological, organisational human errors. The lack of communication in terms of raising the alarm is another key factor which could have saved many lives. The factory still remains closed to this day.

Woman Gives Birth To Stone Baby

Woman gives birth to stone baby


Known scientifically as Lithopedion the foetus is calcified in the womb. The baby is basically encased in this substance so that the immune system can sustain itself and prevents the the body from causing a severe reaction which may harm the baby.

This case is extremely rare nowadays but does still happen, in Zahra Aboutalibs case, it was  simply unfortunate. In Morocco, 1955, (26) year old Zahra was rushed to the emergency room to deliver her child, after 48 hours of agony and excruciating labour, the doctors failed to deliver the baby without having to resort to cutting into the mother. Zahra was offered a Caesarean to save her baby, the mere thought of dying during child birth scared her to the point that she fled the vicinity of the hospital, still with child. After a few days her labour pains stopped. 

The belief of "sleeping babies" in Moroccan myth was strongly believed in those days. Zahra, therefore believed that her baby was protected by " black" and "white" magic,  this enforced the belief that the child would remain unharmed and could live in the mothers womb, meaning the baby would be born under Normal terms alive and well.



Around 47 years later, Zahra Aboutalibs, gave birth to what scientists are calling a 'stone baby'. Due to the hard shell which has formed around the foetus it bears a strong resemblance to a mummified baby.Our Facebook Page

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LOADS of interesting new untold facts to come your way!

The real sleeping beauty

Encased in a Glass Coffin for over 90 years.. Damn

The Real Sleeping Beauty




This little girl, known better as Rosalia Lombardo lies in the catacombs of Palermo, Italy. Rosalia died of pneumonia in 1920, she appears to be merely dozing but she has in actual fact been preserved in the glass 
coffin for over 90 years after her death.

She is considered one of the world’s greatest preserved bodies. Morbid as this might seem, many have been fascinated by the secret formula once proposed by, Dario Piombino Mascali, an Anthropologist from the institute for mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano.

The chemicals consisted of Zinc Salts, Alcohol, Formalin, Salicylic acid and glycerin. The Zinc Salts in particular proved the most successful in preserving the flesh.
- Sally.


Russian woman poses for a picture whilst a trail of blood leads us it a horrific sight


Smile For The Camera


A young Russian woman poses happily and calmly in front of a pile of dead bodies. The bodies were dragged to the end of the train and are victims of the 2010 Moscow metro bombing where over forty people were killed and over a hundred injured.

Just a normal day for the Russia train line clearly....



Flower Power! 


Bernard Norman Boston died Tuesday Jan. 22, 2008. His 1967 photo “Flower Power,” a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize, was perhaps the most iconic photo of the turbulent 60s, showing a long-haired antiwar protestor shoving carnations into the gun barrels of MPs during an anti-Vietnam protest at the Pentagon.