Where in my post did I suggest rat is considered a delicacy. Reuters did I didn't. You are disagreeing with article you yourself posted not my post. I agree Cambodians would rather eat beef, but rat is not the last resort food one may think. Rat like dogmeat is a poor man's food much like rabbit is considered in England. Eating rat does not have the social stigma it does in the west.
Regarding "increased corporatization", my point was in response to denu pointing out that foreign aid gets stolen and asking "what other recourse could there be". I suggested foreign investment not aid. Almost every government in the world, including my own England, seeks to attact foreign investment so I am not surprised Cambodia is also. I never suggested the Cambodian government wasn't. I was suggesting western governments could encourage multinationals to open factories there to provide jobs and stimulate the economy as an alternative to aid. You disagree that increased capitalism is a solution for Cambodia. Well it works for America and Europe and worked for the Asian Tigers and newly devloped nations. What alternative do you see, surely not peasant farmers and smallholdings.
I didn't follow your leap from foreign investment instead of foreign aid to who is cutting down trees. I know who is cutting down the trees and never suggested it was the peasants. The reuters report attributed the increase in rat eating to floods and rats being easies to catch coupled with the increase in the price of beef. What is the relationship between deforestation and beef price increase. Deforestation has been going on for years. It has not suddenly increased. I was suggesting that just as the sharp increase in food prices in America is due to oil prices the same is true in Cambodia, but the effects are far greater in Cambodia than America.
You find it "hilarious" that a government official says the kids are happy hunting rat. I find nothing a hilarious in kids having to hunt rat to support their family. I would find nothing hilarious in a corrupt government official from a third world country misleading people. no more than I if the American President did. I do believe that South East Asian rural children find it fun catching rats just as Americans find it find to go raccoon hunting. But, if you read the report you posted you will note the official did not say they the kids were happy rat hunting, he said they were happy "making some money" and I am sure that is true. Are you telling me that american kids aren't thrilled to make money.
Your post seemed to have a mocking air to it, which disturbed me and prompted my reply. You suggest that misappropriated foreign aid will "eventually find its way into the g-strings of Cambodian prostitutes". This seems to promote the sterotype that all South East Asian countries have is prostitutes. It's they have prosititutes and it's true cheap prostitutes is the reason many westerners are "in need of a holiday in Cambodia" but I didn't see the reason for that mocking jibe. America has prostitutes and US politicians aren't averse to using them as Governor Spitzer recently demonstrated. Somehow I don't think the prostitutes' g-strings are big enough to hold the millions of dollars stolen from aid. I find it more probable those stolen millions are in America invested in american bluechips or in the hands of american arms manufacturers.
And for your information I have lived, not vacationed, many years in South East Asia and have eaten rat, dog and even pussy!