Khmer440 (and pals)
Took a quick look yesterday at a site a lot of people are linking to, Khmer440.com. Some amusing articles covering expat life in Cambodia – if you enjoy reading Bayon Pearnik with a Beer Lao by the riverside (or Tales of Asia) this is your cup of tea for expat amusement.
However something marred the mix: a while back they ran an article on accused pedophile Clinton Betteridge titled “Clint Betteridge: Australia’s Scapegoat?”, written by Brian Rothery, “a widely published book author and journalist living in Ireland.”
http://www.khmer440.com/cambodia/expat_life/clint_betteridge_australias_scapegoat.html
Mr. Rothery doesn’t seem to have any other articles on Khmer440.com, and I doubt he has a deep interest in Khmer culture. My guess is he offered the article and someone posted it.
Mr. Rothery runs http://www.inquisition21.com/, a thinly veiled apology site for pedophiles, posing as a civil rights site, which has contributions from “Writers and correspondents in New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia, Thailand, France, Holland, Belgium, Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, and the US, including a number of women.” Take a look at the site. It’s flat out creepy, and not the sort of content I think a reputable commercial site would want to be associated with.
Khmer440.com does offer a disclaimer below the article that it “does not necesserily [sic] condone or have any responsibility for the content of outside weblinks.” Fair enough, but it’s a bit of a mixed message to see the “Scapegoat” article below a banner from World Vision’s “Stop Child Sex Tourism”. http://www.stopchildtourism.org/
In the absence of Mr. Rothery becoming a regular contributor to Khmer440.com I’d look at this as a rather regrettable one time lapse in judgement. The articles are informative, the forums are funny and turning into a bit of a local web-community. Another article like this though and I’d tell people to reconsider their ad placement.
