US$37 million.
This is the amount that CCF has spent
since 2010:
“… transforming the country’s most impoverished kids into
tomorrow’s leaders, by delivering education, family support and community
development programs into the heart of Cambodia’s most impoverished
communities…
The goal, as expressed on
the CCF website is that:
“We believe
that with the right education and support, one child can lift their family out
of poverty. Today there are more than 2,400 students working towards a better
future in our award winning education program.”
The intentions are noble, but what
about the results?
US$37 million down the track how many
CCF families have been lifted out of poverty?
One would hope that quite a few would
have been for this amount of money!
Lets apply some maths to CCF’s figures:
CCF has, by its own admission, spent
$37 million since 2010 educating around 2400 children.
(Let’s leave aside, for the moment,
that these kids are, for the most part, attending free government run schools.)
$37 million divided by 2,400 =
$15,400 per child.
What has CCF got to show for this
extraordinary expenditure? You must be able to point to a few success stories,
surely, Scott! I don’t mean the kind of stories told by you on Facebook
(heart-warming photos of kids and grannies) but solid stories that sponsors,
donors and journalists can look at independently and say ”Wow, look at how these families
are powering ahead under their own steam now. Congratulations to Scott and his
team. That’s $37 million well spent!”
For $37 million there must be at
least one story you can point to, Scott! One family that you have ‘lifted out
of poverty’ and that is now totally self-sufficient – kids in
school/university, food on the table, mum and dad working in fulfilling jobs!
One family that has escaped the poverty cycle thnks to CCF?
Mind you, for $37 million one would
hope that there are dozens such families; if not hundreds!
As for ‘future leaders’ it is
understandable that none has emerged yet but there must be a few university
graduates you can point to as examples of how effective CCF programs have been
in moving towards your stated goal of creating ‘future leaders’.
How many CCF
university graduates are there?
How many CCF
students are enrolled in university right now?
Why are questions such as these so
difficult for you to answer? Shouldn’t you be accountable to sponsors and
donors for how $37 million has ben spent.
Let’s apply the maths in a different
way. These are just ballpark figures. They have to be since you keep the
figures you post in your tax returns as vague as you can in order to avoid independent
scrutiny:
You have 700 + children living in
residential care. These children come from families that are, to all intents
and purposes, homeless – if we exclude a hovel made of cloth, plastic and
scavenged materials as qualifying as a ‘home’. These families have been
rendered homeless as a result of debts accrued (often through family illness)
that they could not repay, forcing them to sell the only assets they once had – their land and home and work in the Phnom
Penh dump.
$37 million divided by 700 = $52,800
That’s $52,800 expended per child in
residential care this past 6 years.
You will complain that this is a
misuse of statistics. Fair enough.
So let’s approach these figures in a
different way.
Let’s say that CCF had decided, in
2010, to help 700 families get back on their feet; become financially
independent and that a well thought out and monitored program had been set in
place to achieve this goal.
If CCF had invested $5000 per child
towards making the child’s family self-sufficient and no longer reliant on
charity, the maths looks something like this.
700 x $5,000 = $3.5 million
For roughly, 10% of $37 million, CCF
could have kick-started the lives of the families of 700 kids. Or, if CCF
wished to invest $10,000 in the future of 700 children and their families it could have done so expending only 20% of
$37 million.
Carefully spent, wisely spent, I can’t
help but feel that $10,000 would have helped these 700 families break the
poverty cycle. I am not talking about hand-outs, but money well spent.
Some more maths:
Let’s say CCF had decided to invest
$10,000 in the future of each of 2,400 families back in 2010. That would have
cost CCF $24,000,000 – leaving $13 million, spread over 6 years to run CCF. $2
million a year! Enough, surely!
If $10,000 per child had been
invested in this way there would have been no need for children living in
Steung Meanchey to live in residential care. They could have been living with
their families. And, if necessary, out of CCF’s $2 million a year operating
costs, busses could have been acquired to pick up the kids to take them to
school and drop them off at their homes at the end of the school day. Instead
of sharing a bed with 2 or 3 other kids in a crowded dormitory they could have
slept at home with the rest of their family.
Following a scenario such as this
would result in 700+ children not suffering from the well-documented adverse
affects of institutional living.
The problem with this scenario is
that you would not have been able to be the hero on the white charger galloping
in to recue cute children. You would have had to sell the idea to sponsors and
donors that helping children within their families and communities was
infinitely superior, on every level, to institutional care.
Regarding my maths above you might
protest: “But what about our Grannies program? What about our Rice Support?”
I have no idea how much CCF spends on
its ‘Granny’ program (would you care to enlighten us?) but I do know that Rice
Support amounts to $250 a year per family.
Let’s presume that all families with
kids in residential care and/or engaged in educational programs get $250 of
rice a year. We now need to multiply that figure by $250. This is not an easy
exercise because many families have more than one child in CCF residential
care. But, for the sake of argument, let’s use the figure of 2,000.
2000 x $250 = $500,000
Of course, had CCF invested $10,000
in the future of 2,400 families back in 2010 there would be no need for rice
support.
What about CCF’s medical program? I
know nothing about the costs of this and so cannot factor it into these rough
ballpark calculations. It would certainly be helpful to know how much this
costs per year?
Whichever way an independent observer
looks at CCF’s $37 million spent over 6 years, the figures simply don’t add up.
The very kindest thing that can be said about CCFs expenditure of $37 million
is that it has been grossly inefficient.
You could, of course, counter this by
pointing to examples that demonstrate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this
$37 million has been well spent.
Please do. This is what transparency and accountability is all about. And
transparency and accountability are two things that the generous donors and
sponsors who have entrusted $37 into your care have a right to expect.
You won’t, Scott, because you don’t
have the evidence. In the place of evidence you have Facebook – a place where
you can post heartwarming stories and photos and create the illusion that CCF
is achieving its stated goals. You are not. CCF is failing to achieve its
stated goals.
Fortunately for you, at present
anyway, Cambodia’s sycophantic media will not ask you to provide any evidence
at all that CCF is achieving the goals it claims to be achieving. Your press releases are all they need. Fortunately
also, for the time being at least, no human rights groups are prepared to
challenge your use of illegal contracts with the parents of children in CCF
care. The same applies to the non-disclosure contracts you force CCF employees
to sign. You may be lucky. The media and human rights groups may well turn a
blind eye for some years to come. They certainly did with Somaly Mam. However,
Somaly Mam’s run of good luck came to an end eventually. And so will yours –
unless you re-invent yourself and CCF, abandon your illegal contracts and stop
acting as if CCF is all about you.
Despite the huge amount of money at
your disposal (or which used to be at your disposal) CCF is in deep financial
trouble. You are ‘encouraging’ kids to leave CCF institutions and return to
their families. The less mouths to feed the better.
Do you have reintegration programs in
place for these children? Will you sell Black Bamboo to help pay CCF’s mounting
bills? And when CCF is no longer a money spinner for you, will you sell the
World Housing land and homes or will you, as a final act of generosity, give
the families living in these 360 homes legal tenure?
So many questions, so few answers.
Correction: NO ANSWERS. Accountability and transparency are foreign to you.
They are merely words to be trotted out to impress donors and sponsors.
Scott, your house of cards is
collapsing. If you want it to keep standing you need to move fast to do
so. You need to radically re-invent
yourself and CCF; turn it into a model of how NGOs can help children within
their families and communities to grow into self-sufficient adults who neither
want nor need paternalistic hand-outs that provide too many NGOs with both
their funding model and the sense of satisfaction that comes from being
‘needed’ by impoverished brown people who are incapable of making decisions for
themselves; incapable of taking care of themselves. You need these families to
be helpless and hopeless so that you can ride in on your white chargers, rescue
them, and post interminable photos of you in rescue mode on Facebook – with cute
smiling kids for the most part but with the occasional smiling granny thrown in.
No dads, though. Never a dad. Part of your PR schtick is that these kids have
no dad to care for them and if it were not for you…
Time to re-invent yourself, Scott,
and start answering questions.
And something more...
Every day I receive one of these sponsored ads in my Facebook feed. I wonder how much each one of them costs the Cambodian Children's Fund? And I wonder what the message is that Scott Neeson thinks he is transmitting to the Facebookers who he is targeting? At least in this photo Neeson has, for a change, left himself out of it - which is a small blessing of sorts, I suppose!
And something more...
Every day I receive one of these sponsored ads in my Facebook feed. I wonder how much each one of them costs the Cambodian Children's Fund? And I wonder what the message is that Scott Neeson thinks he is transmitting to the Facebookers who he is targeting? At least in this photo Neeson has, for a change, left himself out of it - which is a small blessing of sorts, I suppose!
 |
| HOW MUCH DO THESE SPONSORED POSTS COST, SCOTT? |
Scott Neeson is the wrong person to be reinventing as you suggest. He is a high-school dropout and, as he has proven, should have nothing to do with children or education programs! Why isn't the press involved in asking questions of Scott Neeson??
ReplyDeleteAs far as the press is concerned, no English language newspaper in Cambodia is prepared to ask Scott Neeson questions or to conduct anything approaching investigative journalism when it comes to CCF.
DeleteI had hoped that the Cambodia Daily might do so. It seems not. I wrote the following five days ago. I received no response.
"Dear Colin, Matt and Peter
As I read,in the Cambodia Daily, front page beat ups about pedophiles who are not pedophiles and listen to the deafening silence surrounding Scott Neeson's scams and the illegal contracts he forces the parents of 700+ kids to sign, I can only shake my head in wonder!
18 months ago I was told, off the record, that a certain Daily journalist, no longer working for the newspaper had told him that "The Daily will never publish an article that is critical of Neeson."
I didn't pay much attention to this. However, over the past 18 months I have heard the same story from two other sources - with the same name attached; the name of a journalist who is, yet again, working for the Daily.
Of course, this may be scuttlebutt.
However, I do think it worth asking if the Cambodia Daily, at either an editorial or publisher level, has entered into either a formal or informal agreement with Scott Neeson and the Cambodian Children's Fund not to write articles that are in any way critical of CCF?
cheers"
The lack of a response does not necessarily mean that the rumours I have heard are true. However, with the passage of time, it becomes more and more difficult to understand why the Daily gives Neeson a free pass!
I supported CCF for many years. I believed that CCF was helping kids and their families. I didn't mind seeing photos of Mr Neeson with kids but wondered why they were always girls. When Mr Ricketson contacted me via Facebook I thought he was just a mad fool with an axe to grind but I kept my mind open and took a closer look at CCF. I no longer sponsor a kid, not because I don't want to help but because I don't see any evidence that my kid and his family were being helped to get out of long term poverty. This photo of a cute little girl makes me angry. I want to know that she and her family are being helped. I want to know that she is getting a good education. I want her to have a future. A photo of a cute girl with a puppy doesn't tell me anything. Wait a minute, yes it does. It tells me that Mr Neeson is selling images. He is appealing to the thing in all of us that cant help but love kids and puppies. I am very disappointed that I have given close to $1000 to CCF but don't know if it did any good or if it was spent posting photos of cute kids on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteMore poverty porn from Scott Neeson.
DeleteGreat post from a Ricketson troll (or Ricketson himself). My guess is that he has never sponsored a child at CCF and if he is bragging that he gave nearly $1,000 in support to CCF over many years it certainly was not for long term child sponsorship. Just think a little before you post such obviously stupid comments. James, you should pay a little more and then you might get some trolls with some intelligence
DeleteLike you for example Anonymous 11:37?
DeleteDear Scott Neeson Troll (aka Anonymous 11.37)
DeleteYour efforts to shoot the messenger are becoming increasingly lame. If you want to destroy my credibility there is a very easy way to do it - address each of the points that I make here (and in countless other such blogs) and demonstrate that I have my facts and figures wrong. Or, if I do not have them wrong, that the way i am interpreting them is wrong? This option has been open to you for the past 18 months but instead of availing yourself of it you (and others) continue to make lame remarks such as this one to deflect attention away from the real issues.
A few days ago Scott Neeson posted a link on Charity Navigator, asking people to take a look at how well CCF ranks. Only 3 people made a comment on his post. And only 76 people like to the post . Considering that CCF has around 150k in page likes, that's a very very low number of people who are paying attention. However, and here’s where it gets interesting, if Neeson posts a photo of a cute kid (with a puppy, for instance) he gets around a 1k in likes and lots of comments.
ReplyDeleteThe question is: “Do these ‘likes’ translate into dollars in the bank for CCF or are these ‘likers’ just page sitters? People who have nothing better to do with their time than trawl Facebook looking for things to like?”
This is why Neeson’s always asking people to like and share. It’s those ‘likes’ he is looking for. And, of course, the occasion ‘liker’ who will declare him to be an ‘angel’ and give his ego a boost. But are they giving CCF’s bank balance a boost? Given that the bulk of these ‘likers’ are Khmer and given that CCF is getting rid of kids as fast as it can, I suspect that the answer is no. It is all about ego boost; not bank balance boost.
I received an email a few days ago from someone regarding how much it costs to promote themselves on Facebook: “
“I posted a pic on our XXX page and promoted it . And included Cambodia as the targeted area. It cost me $30 aud . I got 14,000 likes. To get that number of likes in any other country I would have had to spend $100s and maybe even more than $1,000. I guess Facebook considers Cambodia as a worthless market so it's very cheap to promote yourself here. But for outsiders they would look at Neeson pages and think wow he has a massive amount of followers.”
So, if you live in Cambodia, and are on Facebook and are bombarded with cute sponsored photos from Scott Neeson bear in mind that these are an exercise in “It’s all about me; my transformation” and have nothing to do with raising money for CCF.
Perhaps some FACTS about Neeson should be posted on FB as Neeson does! Please tell me where to send my $30!!
ReplyDeleteFrom the CCF website:
DeleteMAY 3, 2016
Every day at CCF we see children who once faced bleak futures flourishing through our support and their own hard work. It’s why we do what we do. We want the world to hear these extraordinary tales and who better to tell them than the students themselves? Welcome to our new regular feature: Transformation Tuesdays.
When I read this I thought to myself, “Great, Scott is opening CCF’s doors on Tuesdays to let the outside world hear for themselves what goes on at CCF.
No such luck!
The story being told is accompanied with a photo of the girl telling it, holding a photograph of herself when younger. The post smacks of precisely the sort of public relations spin that it was Ryan Witcombe’s job to churn out. Now that he is gone someone else is doing it. I wonder if they are also earning $75,000 a year?
“My parents sold snails in Kandal province, but we didn’t have enough money so my father decided to move to Phnom Penh to find work. But he could only find work as a garbage scavenger. Not long after we moved to Phnom Penh, my parents separated and my father couldn’t afford to rent a room for us to live in. We lived in a tiny hut on my grandmother’s land. He had to work very hard from morning until night. My brother and I stayed alone in the shack while my father worked every day.
“It was really one lucky day that I was accepted into CCF’s program. CCF provides me with study materials, school uniform, food, transport and health care. Here, I can study English and Computer and I am now studying at public school. I enjoy my life here. Everything is getting better from day to day.”
I do not dispute the fact that this girl’s story (at least as far as her background is concerned), is true. As for the complimentary things she has to say about CCF, what else is the girl going to say? If, that is, the words were not put in her mouth?
The only way that stories such as this can be verified to be true (credible) is for CCF to open its doors to outside scrutiny; for Scott Neeson to allow journalists to talk with any CCF children and young adults – if, of course the kids want to talk with journalists. There should be no force either way. It should not be up to Neeson to select which kids get to talk with journalists. And if a journalist wants to talk to a particular boy or girl s/he should be under no obligation to talk to the journalist.
I have been in lots of situations in which, after some conversation, it is clear that there is a particular young person who is confident and articulate and clearly well-like by their friends. There have been occasions when I have wanted to interview this young person and they have said ‘no’. Fair enough. And plenty of situations in which they have said ‘yes’. It is up to the young person to decide. It is not up to CCF or a journalist to apply any pressure at all.
Such scenarios are never going to occur for as long as Neeson maintains his tight control on the lives of the young people in CCF’s care. And such scenarios are not going to occur for as long as the media, collectively, gives Neeson a free pass and does not hold him in any way accountable for the way he runs CCF.
Whilst there are many questions that need to be asked, the most pressing have to do with the ‘contracts’ Neeson forces parents to sign and the ownership of the land upon which the 360 ‘gifted’ homes are being built. And it would be interesting to find out if Neeson does, in fact, own ‘Black Bamboo’ and if so whose money was spent acquiring it?
So many questions and no answers! The media is asleep at the wheel when it comes to Neeson.
Hey, Mr Neeson, can you give us an update on the Neeson Cripps Academy? Is it still going ahead as planned or was it just an idea you floated in the hope that the Velcro family would caught up more dough to keep CCF afloat?
ReplyDeleteOh fuck off
ReplyDeleteI was sent the following this morning. A post that appeared on Khmer440. As I am banned by Scott Neeson from Khmer440, I cannot respond to it there but will do so here indue course - when time permits. In brief, however, I have never met Scott Neeson and do not hate him.
ReplyDeleteA question about James Ricketson
Postby alanclarke72 » Fri May 06, 2016 9:51 am
I have to admit I'm a voracious reader of his blog, not because of his arguments - they're nonsense and the ravings of a possessed lunatic - but because of the sheer energy he puts into his all consuming hatred of Scott Neeson. I know neither man and find the whole thing fascinatingly awful to watch - like a car crash.
But here's what I'm wondering. What is the history behind Ricketson's hatred of CCF and Neeson? Is there some personal history? Professional jealousy? There has to be something there - it's impossible a man can be so consumed by his obsession of one individual like this without a juicy background story.
I think Ricketson is a righteous man who abhors the harm that Neeson does to children and the impoverished. Does he need more reason than that to fight against Neeson's corruption? Poster on Khmer 440, do YOU support taking children from families or stealing homes from the impoverished?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the endorsement, Anonymous 1.54, but I am not a righteous man. I am merely doing what any journalist should do under the circumstances - ask questions, do a little basic research and publish the results. I would almost certainly not be going to such lengths to get information about Neeson out into the public domain if regular (by which I mean 'paid') journalists were asking questions and publishing their results. They are not.
DeleteMembers of Team Neeson will complain that I am not a journalist; that I am merely a blogger. I really don't see any difference between what a journalist does and what a blogger does - other than the fact that a blogger does not get paid for his/her work.
Scott Neeson's scams are, of course, a problem, but even more importantly they are symptomatic of a much greater underlying problem - namely that NGOs make up their own rules and are accountable to no-one. There are plenty of other NGOs engaged in their own versions of Neeson's scams - raking in tax-deductible dollars as they harvest impoverished families for children to harvest.
In private conversation, off the record, there is not one expatriate I meet who works in Cambodia who will not agree that 'orphanage' and other 'rescue' scams are rife. Unfortunately these same expatriates do not get together as a group and say "Enough is enough; this has to stop." And so the scams continue.
Even worse, in my view, is the fact that human rights organizations turn a blind eye to these scams - especially those that involve children.
Whilst the damage being inflicted on the human rights organizations by the Cambodian government right now is outrageous, so too, in my view, is it outrageous that these same organizations have remained silent, year in, year out, about human, legal and constitutional rights abuses perpetrated by NGOs.
A response to alanclarke72, Fri May 06, 2016 9:51 am - a member of Team Neeson, if not Neeson himself:
ReplyDeleteScott Neeson, as owner of Khmer 440, has clearly decided that it is a good idea to open up for discussion just why it is that I supposedly hate him. There must be a juicy story, right?
Alas, there is no juicy story. For anyone interested in the whole story, however, (at least as far as my first encounter with Scott is concerned), is laid out on the following blog:
http://cambodianchildrensfund.blogspot.com/2014/05/is-scott-neeson-knight-in-shining.html
In brief:
Back in 2007 and 2008, whilst filming in the old Phnom Penh rubbish dump, I encountered a family – the father of which was Chuan, the mother, Ka. They had two daughters living with them in the dump at the time – Sokayn and Sokourn. (These are my phonetic spellings)
Over a period of a couple of years I did a good deal of filming with this family. Each time I did so I made a modest contribution to it in the way of food and money. I was very poor myself at the time (in Australian terms) but promised them that when I was able to do so I would help the family out.
When I asked how best I could help, Ka and Chuan told me that they would like to buy a block of land and a house back in their province, Prey Veng. This would cost $1,500. I told them I would do this for them when I had the money.
It would be a few years before I was in a position to fulfil my promise to Ka and Chuan but by the time I was, I had lost contact with the family. Ka and Chuan were still working in the dump but the new dump was closed to people such as myself so I could not enter it to find them. I knew that Sokayn and Sokourn were now in residential care with CCF so I sought assistance from CCF in finding the family. I was thwarted in my attempts.
CCF’s initial reservations about putting me in contact with the family were understandable. Who was I? Why did I want to make contact? Did I present a danger to the young girls in the family? Caution on the part of CCF was appropriate. It soon became apparent, however, that Scott Neeson had taken complete and total control of the family and that he would not even pass on my message to Ka and Chuan – my message being that I now had the money to fulfil my promise to them to buy then land in Prey Veng.
As it happens, I did not have too much trouble finding Ka and Chuan. They were living in what can best be described as a box, just a couple of hundred meters from the new dump. They were still working in the dump but Sokayn and Sokourn were now in residential care with CCF and they rarely saw their daughters. They were not happy about this and wanted their daughters returned to their care.
Scott Neeson refused to return them. He told me that the parents had signed a contract that gave him control of the girls’ lives. Ka and Chuan told me that they had signed no such contract. I asked Neeson to produce the contract and he refused to do so.
...to be continued...
...continuing...
DeleteMy attempts to help Ka and Chuan have their daughters returned to their care failed. (This is all documented in detail on the blog) I put the money I had set aside for them in the bank. When next I tried to find the family Ka and Chuan were no longer living in ‘the box’. Ka was now working at CCF – soon to be joined by Sokayn, as a teacher. I hoped that one day I would find the family again regardless of Scott Neeson’s determination that I not do so.
A few years later I met Mr David Fletcher by chance and discovered that he had been in jail for close to five years (now more than six years) without even the semblance of a fair trial. I need not go over the details of this here but suffice it to say Scott Neeson played a very significant role in the pursuit, persecution and prosecution of Mr Fletcher. (This is all well documented on this blog)
So, from a personal perspective I have no respect at all for any man who kidnaps the children of impoverished Cambodian parents and who goes out of his way to have jailed a man whom he saw as a competitor in the Phnom Penh rubbish dump.
From a professional point of view, as a filmmaker and journalist, I believe that frauds such as Scott Neeson should be exposed for what they are – con men taking advantage of the lack of a rule of law to behave as they wish with impunity in Cambodia and to exploit the vulnerability of impoverished Cambodian families to enrich themselves. CCF’s World Housing scam is the most blatantly obvious of the various Neeson scams.
Fortunately for Scott Neeson, as present at least, most of the sycophantic Cambodian press will not publish anything about him or CCF other than cut and paste versions of his press releases. I know that certain journalists within both the Phnom Penh Post and the Cambodia Daily are frustrated by the fact that they cannot write truthful articles about Neeson. This will change. The evidence that Neeson is a con man will one day be so overwhelming that it will be impossible to ignore – except in the case of the Phnom Penh Post which, given that it is part-owned by Neeson, will persist with its undiplomatic silence for as long as possible.
Neeson is foolish if he believes that he has insulated himself against public criticism. Somaly Mam probably felt the same way right up until she was exposed as a liar. Along with others I had written about Somaly Mam’s lies well before the mainstream media did. It was common knowledge that Somaly Mam was a liar for years before she was exposed. And so it will be with Neeson. It will not be me or this blog that causes his CCF house of cards to crash. This will only occur when Newsweek, Time or some other major mainstream media organisation asks the kinds of questions I ask and will not be put off by the short of childish ‘shoot-the-messenger’ responses I have come to expect from Team Neeson.
I suspect that the beginning of the end will come when disgruntled former CCF children, having been ejected by CCF in its current cost-cutting phase, find themselves no better off than they were before they joined the CCF ‘family’; when they find out that $37 million has been spent ‘helping’ them and their families this past six years. No longer intimidated by CCF’s fraudulent ‘contract’ some of these kids will speak out. And when a few do, more will do so and so will begin the unravelling of CCF.
...to be continued...
...continuing...
DeleteAs I am banned by Khmer440 from commenting the discussion there will take place without any input from me. No doubt I will be sent whatever comments are made and I will include those here and respond to them.
Within the next couple of days I will publish, in full, the fraudulent ‘contract’ that Neeson forces parents to sign. This is a contract that parents are not allowed to retain copies of. And it is a contract that Neeson uses to exert control over the families of CCF kids. They have no idea what is in the contract so Neeson can tell these very poor and often illiterate mums and dads whatever he likes. And the beauty of this form of intimidation, abuse of the legal, human and constitutional rights of these poor mums, dads and children, is that it is all occurring with the tacit approval or human rights organisations such as LICADHO and ADHOC and a media that does not believe the illegal detention of 700+ children by CCF is a story worthy of being told.
CCF staff are walking around barefoot. Wondering if they are walking ng in the raw sewage by the "gifted homes" to the impoverished?
ReplyDelete"Scott Neeson, as owner of Khmer 440"
ReplyDeleteJames, you know that is completely untrue. Making patently false claims that you know are false destroys your credibility. The worst that could be said to this point was that you hold a very unpopular position and advocate in an annoying, repetitive way, but this wild and obviously false claim makes you look like a liar or crazy. Why would you self-sabotage like this?
Dear Anonymous 1.10
DeleteSince you seem to be privy to a lot of information about the inner workings of CCF and Khmer440, who is the owner of Khmer440 if not Scott? Part owner, that is.
And is Scott a part owner, or not, of the Phnom Penh Post?
As for my "very unpopular position" I repeat what I have said many times now, I am not out to win a popularity contest.And nor should any journalist. The moment any journalist (or blogger) seeks to make him or herself 'popular' is the moment they lose all credibility.
Again, as I have written before, Scott's part ownership of the Phnom Penh Post is not a problem. Or, rather, wouldn't be if the journalists working for it were free to treat him and CCF in the same way they should be free to treat anyone else in a position of power and influence - namely, without fear or favour.
The Phnom Penh Post's coverage of the current Hun Sen manufactured 'crisis' surrounding Kem Sokha's alleged 'affair' has been excellent and I am sure that there are journalists at the Post who would love to be free to write as freely and as honestly about shonky NGOs as they do about a shonky government. Incidentally, I imagine that the journalists covering this Hun Sen generated 'crisis' are not too popular with the Cambodian authorities. Good. Nor should they be.
You can, if you like, continue to make an issue about whether or not Scott Neeson is part-owner of Khmer440 but there are much more important questions - the current one being Neeson's use of a shonky (and illegal) contract to control the lives of children in CCF care. I will publish the full contract tomorrow. it will be interesting to see/hear what your take on it is, though I imagine you will find some way to shoot the messenger rather than deal with the message.
The important question at this point is how badly you have damaged your arguments about CCF and Fletch by blatantly fabricating claims about Khmer440 ownership here. If you are willing to lie here, what else have you lied about in this blog? It is one thing to argue an unpopular position. Like you say, it may make you unpopular, but doesn't make you wrong. But fabrications and lies rob you of credibility. There is no point for anybody to listen to you if you lie.
DeletePS - It is the Daily, not the Post the does the 'without fear or favor' thing. And, no, it would not be different, because the journalists are free to treat Neeson, his NGO and other NGOs the same as "anyone else in a position of power and influence." The young journo crew that is here in Cambodia love the NGOs and what they are doing and are not inclined to attack any of them, even those that might be involved in dubious dealings, for fear of tainting them all. It has nothing to do with supposed ownership
What a line of bullshit that is about the journalists being free to treat Neeson and CCF the same as any other person of power and influence! They fare not print anything that Neeson didn't write!!
DeleteAnonymous 2.04 AM
DeleteIs Scot (Daddy) Neeson a part owner of The Phnom Penh Post
Yes or no ?
It seems that he is , human nature being what it is the survival instinct , would take precedence over printing anything thay reflects badly on CCF.
Why the fuck would money bags Neeson want to be part owner of a money losing operation like the PPP? Simple. One newspaper that is not going to call him on his bullshit or expose him as a con man.
DeleteRicketson's credibility was gone long ago but just to prove a point, even the retards on Khmer440 seem to think he is a nut.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.khmer440.com/chat_forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=55096&sid=08aa18fcc4bf985b5cb90faa7f0fc598
I won't bother to read what the 'retards' on Khmer440 have to say about me. They are entitled to their opinion and my guess is that there is nothing I can present to them in the way of facts that will alter that opinion.
DeleteProblem now is that we can't tell when you are presenting facts and when you are just making things up. Why would you damage yourself and your arguments like that?
DeleteDear Anonymous 2.13
DeleteThe way you can tell if I am presenting facts or just making things up is to do a little research yourself. Take, for instance, what I refer to as the world Housing scam. All of the information upon which I base my allegation that this is a scam can be found online. I have documented it in forensic detail. Check it out. If you can find the flaw in my argument, point it out to me.
All the facts point to the fact that Scott Neeson spent well over a year lying about 'gifiting' houses to poor families when CCF was, in fact, renting the 'gifted' houses to impoverished families. So, the sponsors and donors who believed that they were giving houses to poor families were lied to. Simple as that. And ow the houses, 360 or them, are owned by whoever owns the land upon which they have been built. Depending on how you want to do the maths, the owner of the land now owns between $500,000 and $1 million worth of houses -'gifted' to them by Scott Neeson's World Housing scam.
But your 'young' journalists should not write about this because it might 'taint' other NGOs!!!
I hope that there are some 'young' journalists reading this who will leap to their own defence. I too love NGOs that do a good job and which are not corrupt and exploiting the Cambodian people. It is to their advantage,ultimately, that corrupt and inefficient NGOs are exposed so that precious financial resources are spent as they should be - on helping solve Cambodia's multiple problems and not on enriching NGOs.
So you are assigning your readers research assignments to try to figure out when you are lying and when you are not? Like some sort of game of catch-me-if-you-can? In what world is this way to make a persuasive argument? You have made whatever may or may not be true about Fletch and CCF secondary to you and your willingness to present falsehoods as facts. You are killing your case against CCF here James.
DeleteDear Anonymous 2.39
DeleteAny reader of any article written by a journalist (or blogger) should remain skeptical and ask: "Does the writer have an agenda? Has s/he manipulated the facts to suit his or her own purposes? Has s/he done adequate research?"
And so on. This applies to what I present here as much as to what any journalist writes.
So, using my World Housing scam blog entires, for instance, i can assure you that I have researched what I have written very thoroughly and stand by it all. If, however, you were to double check what I have written and find that I have certain facts wrong or have manipulated certain facts you should expose me for having done so.
I wonder if you were brought up by Jesuit priests? I ask because you are engaging here in a rather amateur form of casuistry.
As for my 'case' against CCF, I have presented it. You can believe what I have presented, in terms of facts, or you can disbelieve. This is up to you. If my facts are wrong,point this out to me and destroy my credibility.
it will certainly be interesting to see how you respond, tomorrow, to the full contract that Scott Neeson forces parents of kids in CCF care to sign and which he will not give a copy of to the parents. This contract is a fact. It stands as a fact regardless of my opinion. You and others (and I hope a few human rights lawyers) will be able to look at it and determined for yourselves if the contract is in breach of the human, legal and Constitutional rights of Cambodian parents forced to sign it. But, to follow the logic of your argument, 'young' journalists will not write about this because it might 'taint' other NGOs.
Really, Anonymous 2.39!
"Any reader of any article written by a journalist (or blogger) should remain skeptical and ask: "Does the writer have an agenda? Has s/he manipulated the facts to suit his or her own purposes? Has s/he done adequate research?""
DeleteAgreed. If the reader finds lean, slant and bias, he should work to understand it and read past it for the meat. But he keeps reading. On the other hand, if the reader finds deliberate falsehoods and lies, he should dismiss the writer out-of-hand, because then it is all about the writer, not the issue.
Dear Team Neeson member (aka Anonymous 3.01)
DeleteHow do I know you are a Team Neeson member? Because no-other person would bother to go to so much trouble to try and shoot the messenger. It is imperative to Team Neeson that the messenger must be shot. If he can be shot, if his credibility is seriously called into question, Scott Neeson and the CCF board can use my lack of credibility as an excuse not to answer any questions I ask. Mind you, other journalists may well ask these questions in the future - in which case ore shooting of the messenger will have to take place.
So, given your propensity NOT to answer questions, let's take this one question at a time:
"Is Scott Neeson a part owner of the Phnom Penh Post?"
When we've cleared this one up we can move onto the next question - to do with ownership of Khmer440
"Because no-other person would bother to go to so much trouble to try and shoot the messenger."
DeleteCiting the fallacy of "shooting the messenger" as a counter-argument is only meaningful if the messenger is being shot merely for delivering uncomfortable or unwanted messages. If the messenger is delivering false messages, then there is nothing wrong in shooting him. He is a liar. In fact, he's not even really a messenger at that point since he is not conveying anything. He's just lying all on his own.
This is not about "shooting the messenger" or information being presented with a slant or bias. This is about James Ricketson deliberately and knowingly presenting falsehoods as facts, and how that impacts the rest of what he has said.
Dear Alan Lemon
DeleteYou are Alan Lemon, right, Anonymous 3.39? Or someone channeling Alan Lemon?
I think I was wrong in my reference to Jesuit casuistry. it is lawyer's casuistry that I am dealing with here. Why answer a question when you can use what you think to be clever words to avoid answering it?
The question was:
"Is Scott Neeson a part owner of the Phnom Penh Post?"
Rather than answer this (a very simple question requiring merely a 'yes' or a 'no) you launch, lawyer-like, into a brief dissertation about the expression 'shooting the messenger'.
Just answer the question Alan. Or Alan clone. Once we have secured an answer to this question we can turn to the ownership of Khmer440, since you seem to think this to be much more important than the dodgy (and illegal) contract CCF gets parents to sign or Scott's World Housing scam.
"Just answer the question Alan. Or Alan clone. Once we have secured an answer to this question we can turn to the ownership of Khmer440, since you seem to think this to be much more important than the dodgy (and illegal) contract CCF gets parents to sign or Scott's World Housing scam."
DeleteNo, I don't think the the ownership of 440 is more important than a potential NGO scandal of this sort. But when the sole source telling me about the NGO scandal is caught not just advocating but lying, it calls into question whether there is any real information here or anything to discuss. You can't tell falsehoods and then tell us it is our responsibility to catch you, or that some question or concern of yours takes precedence when in may in fact be based in a lie. This is not how good journalism or reasoned discussion works.
-mornon
Dear Mornon
DeleteSInce you seem to have inside information, why not answer the question: "Is Scott Neeson a part-owner of the Phnom Penh Post?"
And, since you know the answer, here's questions number 2: "Is Neeson the co-owner of Khmer440?"
Simple 'yes', 'no' or 'I don't know' answers will suffice.
You call into question my talents as a journalist. Fair enough. ANd you call into question my integrity as a journalist. Again, fair enough. Now present me with your evidence.
Take the World Housing scam, for instance. I spent a lot of time and energy researching this and my results are spread over four or five blog entries. This was good journalism. Now, if you want to say, "No, it's bad journalism," you have every right to do so but no-one will take you seriously if you don't present a case in support of your argument. Since all the facts I came up with are available to anyone on the internet, you could do your own research and come back to me and say, "James, I have found the flaws in your research." And if you do I will either look like an idiot or be forced to amend what I have written and apologise.
The same applies with all the figures I have quoted relating to CCF expenditure. They are all available on the internet for anyone who wishes to to look at. Yes, Neeson has done a fairly good job of hiding the figures but with a bit of effort it is not too hard to figure out where the money is being spent. ANd not spent. Again, if I have misinterpeted figures, made figures up, misunderstood or made wrong assumptions, you can take a look at the figures and come back to me with, "James, you are quite wrong about x, y and z." And you should do so. And anyone who thinks that I have played fast and loose with the truth should do so.
It is not enough to simply call me a liar without presenting me (and others reading this) with evidence that I am. You make yourself look foolish.
My prediction is that you will not take this opportunity to answer the questions I have asked you. My prediction is that you will not take the time or put in the effort to prove that I have my facts wrong. Your mantra is "James is a liar," and you hope that if you say it often enough there are some who will believe it. And there probably are. Fair enough.
If you are not going to answer questions or if you are not in a position to do so or have no interest in proving me wrong this dialogue is, from my point of view, a waste of time. Ground Hog Day.
The important question at this point is how badly you have damaged your arguments about CCF and Fletch by blatantly fabricating claims about Khmer440 ownership here. If you are willing to lie here, what else have you lied about in this blog? It is one thing to argue an unpopular position. Like you say, it may make you unpopular, but doesn't make you wrong. But fabrications and lies rob you of credibility. There is no point for anybody to listen to you if lie.
ReplyDeletePS - It is the Daily, not the Post the does the 'without fear or favor' thing. And, no, it would not be different, because the journalists are free to treat Neeson, his NGO and other NGOs the same as "anyone else in a position of power and influence." The young journo crew that is here in Cambodia love the NGOs and what they are doing and are not inclined to attack any of them, even those that might be involved in dubious dealings, for fear of tainting them all. It has nothing to do with supposed ownership.
Dear Anonymous 1.53
DeleteYes, I know that the Daily does the 'without fear or favour' thing. This is as it should be for all journalists; for all newspapers. Incidentally, the daily has also done a great job reporting on Hun Sen's manufactured 'crisis' which it appears he will now solve (because he is looking like a fool) by getting the King to start granting pardons again. This is an old and very familiar tactic and I am sure journalists from both newspapers will allude to it.
As for what you say about journalists 'loving' NGOs and not feeling inclined to 'attack' them, for 'fear of tainting them all' is (if it is true) an abrogation of the role of journalist. Why shouldn't corrupt, incompetent or inefficient NGOs be exposed? Are you seriously suggesting that journalists (young or otherwise) shouldn't write about Scott Neeson's World Housing scam because it might taint "them all"? So, to follow through on the line of thinking you seem to be advocating here, if I want to set up an NGO with the express intention of exploiting poor and powerless Cambodians I can rest assured that 'young' journalists who 'love' NGOs will not expose me as a con man, a corrupt fraud, because this might 'taint' other NGOs?
If I have misunderstood you here, please correct me, but if you are right in the presumptions I am making about what you are suggesting, the NGO free-for-all will continue forever.
I really do hope that I have misunderstood you. Please clarify.
I think that you understood me, except that I did not suggest that this is what journalists here should do, but it is in fact what they do, (with a couple notable exceptions.) Just look at the Daily. You'd be hard pressed to find an article about a local/regional topic that does not cite/quote some NGO in a positive/confirming light. And I think that you are correct that in light of this "the NGO free-for-all will continue forever," or at least for the foreseeable future.
DeleteI think Scott Neeson is a POVERTY PIMP that goes to great lengths to control the media!! Look what he has done on the Great Nonprofits site. He gets honest, though not flattering comments removed, isn't allowing any new comments (since January), and leaves up comments that he knows to be untrue!! Yes, he reminds me of SCUM!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 1.53 A M
ReplyDeleteIf you want to have any credibility answer the questions
Did Scot (Daddy) Neeson lie when he told the donors he was giving the houses to poor families ?
Does Scot Neeson evict these same poor families if they fall a little behind in their rent ?
Are the contracts that CCF asks the illiterate and impoverished families to thumbprint before taking their children away legal ?
These questions are profoundly more important than the ownership of Khmer 440
I do not expect any answers to these very important questions .
As you have shown before when challenged with facts as in the Liam Miller case , you adopt the cowards retreat silence .
Ricketson is a nut - end of story! And because his credibility is shot, because he has been caught lying and fabricating information to generate his blog, because he has falsely attacked so many people, his blog is known as a laughable comic piece. A handful of people (aka Ricketson supporters) give him praise but if you were to look at who they are you would find that they too have a hidden agenda driven by an opaque and questionable history. Its not only Cambodian newspapers that wont listen or engage with Ricketson, its every newspaper around the world including all newspapers from Australia. Now Ricketson will reply to this message with "show me where i have defamed anyone, give me an example of my lying" - its his common response, but surely even the dumbest, craziest nut job could see that if not one journalist, not one news agency will engage with you, wont pickup your story, then perhaps its you that is wrong and the rest of the world. And just to stop your stupid counter response that I am Team Neeson - I dont rate the guy, I think he is a creep and definitely has some serious social issues, but your blog and constant lies are a joke.
ReplyDeleteIs Ricketson nuts because he takes children from their families? I don't think so. Is he nuts because he steals houses from the impoverished? I don't think so. Is he nuts because he hires corrupt ex-policemen to protect children? I don't think so. When you speak of opaque and questionable history, are you talking about himself and McCabe and Lemon?
DeleteWhy, Anonymous 5.40, if you think I am a 'nut' with no credibility, do you bother to read this blog at all? Why have you got your knickers so much in a twist? Reading this blog is in no way compulsory. I would certainly not bother to waste my time reading a blog by a 'nut' whom I believed had no credibility. I have better thing to do with my time. Don't you? Or, if you really do think this blog is a "laughable comic piece', all I can say is you have a very weird sense of humour. But it takes all kinds I guess!
ReplyDeleteAs for other journalists, other newspapers, you would have to be somewhat blind and very naive not to realise that there are a whole host of reasons why newspapers will not run with one story but run with another; why Rupert Murdoch (for instance) makes sure that his newspapers reflect his own political views.If he wants to go after a particular government in power, or to destroy the credibility of an Opposition party, he will use his newspapers to do so. And, right now, if you look at how the mainstream US media is dealing with Bernie Sanders you will see (unless you are blind to such things) that there is a clear media bias. The US mainstream media, owned for the most part of large corporations, do not want Sanders to beat Hillary Clinton. Simple as that.
In Cambodia Scott Neeson has sought to replicate this dynamic though his part purchase of the Phnom Penh Post. Given that the newspaper loses money hand over fist why would Neeson want to buy into it? Think about that? Could it be that he wants to control the newspaper's editorial policy - at least as far as reporting on himself and CCF is concerned?
No doubt, given that you seem to have no better way to spend your leisure time, you will let me know yet again that I am a nut,not to be taken serious; that this blog is a joke etc. Go for it. You are merely re-inforcing, in the minds of readers who are interested in facts and dialogue, that you have nothing to offer here other than low level abuse.