VIETTHOT DOING NOTHING MADE 500$ A MONTH ON...Re: Hanoi's professors earn US$20 a month Vietnam, Leninism and capitalism (Pepe Escobar - Asia Times)

SSC income from uncle Sam !


VIETTHIET00@YAHOO.COM (VIET THIET) wrote in message news:...
> Hanoi's professors earn about US$20 a month according to this article.
> The price for a bowl of Pho Soup is about US$1 in Hanoi and Saigon.
>
> How can members of the VCP politburo, their wives and children take
> long, luxurious vacations overseas many times a year????????? How much
> do these trips cost??? Who pay for them????
>
> Comrades Tran Cu Ki, DHS, EL CHIMPO please explain!
>
> VEITTHIET
>
>
> " .... Not so with the Communist Party, say Thinh and many of his
> disillusioned
> intellectual mates at the University of Hanoi. They have a clear
> assessment of the best and the brightest of Ho's generation: "They
> were
> patriots, not communists." Now, their recurrent themes are the lack of
> freedom of expression in the press, and the corruption of the
> Communist
> Party: "They are thieves," says Thinh. His university salary is $20 a
> month. He gets a maximum of $10 for each published article in a
> magazine."
>
> *********************************
>
> "LIBERTY FLAME" wrote in message news:<715c9a19d112ad5f9767008a46bb25d3.119594@mygate.mai lgate.org>...
> > http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southea.../EH27Ae04.html
> >
> > Asia Times Online August 27, 2003
> >
> > Southeast Asia
> >
> > THE ROVING EYE
> > Vietnam, Leninism and capitalism
> > By Pepe Escobar
> >
> > HANOI - The remains of a B-52 shot down by North Vietnamese
> > anti-aircraft artillery lie in the middle of Huu Tiep Lake in northern
> > Hanoi, by the side of a busy back road. For old residents of Ba Dinh
> > district, it's a powerful reminder of what the country fought for:
> > during the American War - as it is known nationwide - the district was
> > almost razed to the ground by US bombing. For the young generation, the
> > debris is little else than conceptual art.
> >
> > The B-52s might one day be back - figuratively of course. US Defense
> > Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has officially invited Vietnamese Defense
> > Minister Pham Van Tra for a Washington visit. There has been no response
> > yet: according to diplomats in Hanoi, the Politburo is carefully
> > studying its options, considering this is a key national security issue.
> > The US rationale is a subtle variation of the classic "the enemy of my
> > enemy is my friend": the George W Bush administration's aim, using the
> > Vietnamese claim on the Spratly Islands, is once again to contain China,
> > and prevent the South China Sea from inevitably becoming a "Chinese
> > lake" - Beijing's de facto perception.
> >
> > The Pentagon's strategy is not getting much help from the US Department
> > of Commerce, whose International Trade Commission (ITC) officially
> > announced early this month that Vietnamese catfish exports would be
> > slapped with 36 and 64 percent tariffs. Frozen catfish-fillet exports
> > are a very important business for Vietnam. The Vietnamese Association of
> > Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) is furious. General secretary
> > Nguyen Huu Dung says the US decision was illogical: "America's farmers
> > have experienced losses due to adverse weather and natural disasters,
> > not due to Vietnamese production."
> >
> > But catfish fillets are one thing, and bigger fish swimming in the South
> > China Sea are another. In the mind of many a Pentagon strategist lurks
> > the siren call of Cam Ranh Bay, 50 kilometers south of Nha Trang and one
> > of the world's largest natural harbors. Cam Ranh Bay used to be a huge
> > US naval base before it was taken over by the Soviet Union. After the
> > departure of the Soviets, the port was almost deserted. But now it is
> > being developed as an export processing zone, part of the Vietnamese
> > Communist Party's drive to "accelerate the economic restructuring" and
> > increase the exports of the provinces.
> >
> > From a US point of view, Vietnam has everything to gain from a deal:
> > dollars (more foreign investment in Cam Ranh Bay) and military muscle
> > (US ships in the South China Sea as a warning to China). From a
> > Vietnamese point of view, the further encirclement of China in such a
> > blatant fashion may not be such a good move. A European diplomat in
> > Hanoi says, "The themes of preventing Chinese influence in the South
> > China Sea and forging stronger economic-military ties with the US are
> > inscribed in a much more profound logic of what vision those cautious,
> > deliberative analysts of the Vietnamese Communist Party have of the
> > future of the country."
> >
> > Ngo The Thinh, a former officer in the Vietnamese People's Army,
> > professor of geography and history and writer in Vietnamese magazines
> > such as Science and Fatherland, Historic Research and Buddhist Research,
> > is an acid critic of the communist leadership. His father, a scientist
> > living in France in the 1940s, was persuaded by Ho Chi Minh himself to
> > come back and join the maquis to fight the French. In Thinh's words, "Ho
> > Chi Minh convinced my father to come back to Vietnam and change his
> > salary from US$5,000 a month to $20 a month. As a reward, my father took
> > Ho Chi Minh for an interview with [Karl] Marx and [Friedrich] Engels."
> > Ho Chi Minh died in June 1969, Thinh's father three months later.
> >
> > Thinh is an intellectual in a Confucian culture that for a thousand
> > years has praised the role of men of learning: "Religiously we are
> > Buddhists. Culturally we are Confucian," says Thinh. For confirmation,
> > one just has to visit the Van Mieu pagoda - or Temple of Literature - in
> > Hanoi, founded in 1070 by Emperor Ly Thanh Tong and dedicated to
> > Confucius. Van Mieu soon became the intellectual and spiritual center of
> > the kingdom - as a cult of education and literature spread amongst the
> > court, the mandarins and the common people. The Confucian examinations
> > held at the Temple of Literature offered the possibility for even the
> > humblest peasant to rise to the position of mandarin. It was a question
> > of merit.
> >
> > Not so with the Communist Party, say Thinh and many of his disillusioned
> > intellectual mates at the University of Hanoi. They have a clear
> > assessment of the best and the brightest of Ho's generation: "They were
> > patriots, not communists." Now, their recurrent themes are the lack of
> > freedom of expression in the press, and the corruption of the Communist
> > Party: "They are thieves," says Thinh. His university salary is $20 a
> > month. He gets a maximum of $10 for each published article in a
> > magazine. But a Confucian intellectual never loses his sense of irony.
> > On a visit to the sublimely delicate Golden Lotus pagoda in northern
> > Hanoi - now besieged by monstrous examples of property speculation - he
> > comments: "This bamboo architecture has lasted for 300 years. The Iron
> > Curtain fell in less than 50 years. Long live the bamboo!"
> >
> > When he says that "Ho gave power to the patriots; now they give power to
> > the dollar", Thinh is expressing the disgust of countless educated
> > Vietnamese revolutionaries who have made immense, unbelievable
> > sacrifices to get rid of a social system imposed by foreigners, only to
> > see the "return of the living dead": the reproduction of this system in
> > a superficial way, via a Hanoi Hilton over here, a KFC over there, CNN
> > on cable and most of all Vietnam appealing for aid from the former
> > invaders - be it Japan, France or the United States. Thinh and other
> > Vietnamese intellectuals are very much aware of the ultimate irony: what
> > the US didn't get with its powerful military, it is getting with its
> > financial muscle. Serious questions are being asked - not publicly,
> > because the press is heavily monitored - of what might have happened had
> > the Americans managed to influence and control South Vietnam as they did
> > other Asian tigers such as Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. These
> > former Asian tigers are now the very model for the Vietnamese Communist
> > Party. But the tragedy is that Vietnam cannot become a tiger by enjoying
> > the same privileges they enjoyed before the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
> > The Cold War context is gone.
> >
> > Vietnamese revolutionary leaders were practical people, and very good
> > managers. As in China, they came mostly from the intelligentsia and the
> > bourgeoisie. They didn't know anything about Marxist theory - unlike
> > their sons and grandsons, who had to study it in school. For decades the
> > Party has tried to manage a profound contradiction: theoretically it is
> > a Leninist party, but in practice it doesn't enforce the Leninist
> > concept of "democratic centralism". The party encourages self-criticism
> > from all members, but the leaders are unable to take serious criticism:
> > the same small committee of old men is always in charge. Today,
> > intellectuals in Ho Chi Minh City and even in Hanoi mercilessly
> > criticize the mediocrity of Party cadres - regarded as a bunch of
> > careerists who in many provinces far from the center have in fact become
> > a new, dictatorial rural elite.
> >
> > Unlike the simplistic recipes of the World Bank and the International
> > Monetary Fund (IMF), it's impossible to assess Vietnam's economic
> > development without taking into consideration the after-effects of the
> > Vietnam War, as well as the invasion of Cambodia in late 1978 (which
> > lasted for 10 years) and the short but vicious war with China in 1979.
> > Vietnam suffered a virtually global boycott for more than a decade.
> > There was simply no productive investment. Hyperinflation was the rule
> > in the mid-1980s. Salaries became pitiful. There were three options for
> > Party cadres: leave the state sector, die of hunger or become corrupt.
> > Most chose the third option. So the Vietnamese Communist Party entered
> > the 1990s in a situation where its authority did not depend on its moral
> > standing as the leader of a war of liberation, but on its privileged
> > network of power.
> >
> > It's fair to say that the Party's decomposition is now almost
> > universally recognized - and not only by critical Hanoi minds such as
> > Thinh's. As early as in 1994, the road ahead was clear: "The leadership
> > of the Party is the decisive factor in maintaining a socialist
> > orientation for our market economy and the entire development of our
> > country." Translation: the road to socialism is the Party plus
> > capitalism. The question is inevitable: where does this outlandish mix
> > of Leninism and capitalism go from here?
> >
> >
> > During wartime, "revolutionary morality" was a powerful antidote against
> > this same corruption that today is eating the party from within. But
> > there's no morality anymore: just no-holds-barred, IMF-sanctioned
> > capitalism. The Politburo actually hangs on the IMF's and the World
> > Bank's every word. The Politburo cannot have it both ways. It simply
> > cannot achieve a balance between greed and social peace - or between
> > aggressive accumulation of wealth and absence of corruption.
> >
> > The Party today seems to regard foreign investment as the cure for
> > everything. It may be setting itself even one more trap. The Party wants
> > foreign investors to profit from an army of cheap, educated labor. At
> > the same time it wants state-enterprise managers to show profits at any
> > cost. Who's to pay the price? The working class, whose interests are
> > supposed to be defended by the Party. Apart from that from Japan and
> > South Korea, most of this foreign investment is doing nothing but to
> > reinsert Vietnam in the Chinese diaspora business map of Southeast Asia.
> > These investors favor quick and high returns. And to top it all, most
> > indigenous Vietnamese capitalists are also Chinese: they've always been.
> > By getting too cozy with the Americans in a military way, says another
> > European diplomat in Hanoi, the Vietnamese Communist Party may fear
> > upsetting not only mainland China but most of all these key Chinese
> > diaspora investors.
> >
> > The future of Vietnam can already be glimpsed in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh
> > City. This is urban Vietnam, unequal like in any comparative parts of
> > the developing world, but overall in much better financial situation
> > than rural, poor Vietnam. This means that social problems will explode
> > in a classic scenario: poor, unskilled peasants plus the army of
> > excluded from the capitalist banquet will inevitably oppose dictatorial
> > rulers - whether they call themselves Leninist or market socialists or
> > whatever.
> >
> > Very few people outside Vietnam - and even inside, for that matter -
> > have any trust in faceless bureaucrats such as Prime Minister Phan Van
> > Khai, Permanent Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, Deputy Prime
> > Minister Pham Gia Khiem, President Tran Duc Luong, Communist Party
> > General Secretary Nong Duc Manh or National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Van
> > An. Empty rhetoric in the manner of "to gain people's trust by serving
> > them devotedly and showing a just and perceptive attitude" won't cut it
> > either - as the Politburo is increasingly regarded as 13 very mediocre
> > men who have lost contact with the masses. Because of them, Vietnam may
> > be left with the worst of both socialism and capitalism. And that will
> > be the enduring tragedy of the Vietnam War: What have 2 million
> > Vietnamese died for?

VIETTHIET00@YAHOO.COM (VIET THIET) wrote in message news:...
> EL is stupid and unprincipled.
>

God I Love Vietnamese People!

> el_chinoboatconscience@yahoo.com (EL CHINO) wrote in message news:<2b8b88c2.0308270744.45982229@posting.google.com>...
> > SSC income from uncle Sam !
> >
> >
> > VIETTHIET00@YAHOO.COM (VIET THIET) wrote in message news:...
> > > Hanoi's professors earn about US$20 a month according to this article.
> > > The price for a bowl of Pho Soup is about US$1 in Hanoi and Saigon.
> > >
> > > How can members of the VCP politburo, their wives and children take
> > > long, luxurious vacations overseas many times a year????????? How much
> > > do these trips cost??? Who pay for them????
> > >
> > > Comrades Tran Cu Ki, DHS, EL CHIMPO please explain!
> > >
> > > VEITTHIET
> > >
> > >
> > > " .... Not so with the Communist Party, say Thinh and many of his
> > > disillusioned
> > > intellectual mates at the University of Hanoi. They have a clear
> > > assessment of the best and the brightest of Ho's generation: "They
> > > were
> > > patriots, not communists." Now, their recurrent themes are the lack of
> > > freedom of expression in the press, and the corruption of the
> > > Communist
> > > Party: "They are thieves," says Thinh. His university salary is $20 a
> > > month. He gets a maximum of $10 for each published article in a
> > > magazine."
> > >
> > > *********************************
> > >
> > > "