Tác giả: Trần Đình Hoành

I am an attorney in the Washington DC area, with a Doctor of Law in the US, attended the master program at the National School of Administration of Việt Nam, and graduated from Sài Gòn University Law School. I aso studied philosophy at the School of Letters in Sài Gòn. . I have worked as an anti-trust attorney for Federal Trade Commission and a litigator for a fortune-100 telecom company in Washington DC. I have taught law courses for legal professionals in Việt Nam and still counsel VN government agencies on legal matters. I have founded and managed businesses for me and my family, both law and non-law. I have published many articles on national newspapers and radio stations in Việt Nam. In 1989 I was one of the founding members of US-VN Trade Council, working to re-establish US-VN relationship. Since the early 90's, I have established and managed VNFORUM and VNBIZ forum on VN-related matters; these forums are the subject of a PhD thesis by Dr. Caroline Valverde at UC-Berkeley and her book Transnationalizing Viet Nam. I translate poetry and my translation of "A Request at Đồng Lộc Cemetery" is now engraved on a stone memorial at Đồng Lộc National Shrine in VN. I study and teach the Bible and Buddhism. In 2009 I founded and still manage dotchuoinon.com on positive thinking and two other blogs on Buddhism. In 2015 a group of friends and I founded website CVD - Conversations on Vietnam Development (cvdvn.net). I study the art of leadership with many friends who are religious, business and government leaders from many countries. I have written these books, published by Phu Nu Publishing House in Hanoi: "Positive Thinking to Change Your Life", in Vietnamese (TƯ DUY TÍCH CỰC Thay Đổi Cuộc Sống) (Oct. 2011) "10 Core Values for Success" (10 Giá trị cốt lõi của thành công) (Dec. 2013) "Live a Life Worth Living" (Sống Một Cuộc Đời Đáng Sống) (Oct. 2023) I practice Jiu Jitsu and Tai Chi for health, and play guitar as a hobby, usually accompanying my wife Trần Lê Túy Phượng, aka singer Linh Phượng.

South Korean court confirms impeachment of President Park

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ChannelNewsAsia

  • Posted 10 Mar 2017 10:22  Updated 11 Mar 2017 00:09

SEOUL: South Korean President Park Geun-hye was fired on Friday (Mar 10) as a court upheld her impeachment over a corruption scandal that has paralysed the nation at a time of mounting tensions in East Asia.

The unanimous decision brought to a climax months of political turmoil that saw millions of people take to the streets in weekly protests, and triggers a new presidential election to be held within 60 days.

That will offer South Korea a chance to draw a line under the scandal, which has occupied its attention for months, even as the North has unleashed new missile launches and threats that have raised international alarm. Tiếp tục đọc “South Korean court confirms impeachment of President Park” →

Seoul finding looming THAAD deployment a hot potato politically, economically

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Protesters shout slogans during a rally to oppose the plan to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, in front of the Defense Ministry in Seoul Tuesday. U.S. missile launchers and other equipment needed to set up the controversial missile defense system have arrived in South Korea, the U.S. and South Korean militaries said Tuesday, a day after North Korea test-launched four ballistic missiles into the ocean near Japan. | AP

japan  times AP Mar 8, 2017

SEOUL – As South Korea begins the deployment of an advanced U.S. anti-missile system that it says will allow it to better cope with North Korean threats, the reaction from its belligerent rival is hardly its only concern.

The plan to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, this year has angered not only North Korea, but also China, South Korea’s largest trade partner, which considers the system a security threat.

Residents in a rural South Korean town where THAAD is planned to sit have furiously protested over rumored health hazards they link to the system’s powerful radar, and some of the country’s potential presidential candidates have vowed to walk back on the deal if they win office. Tiếp tục đọc “Seoul finding looming THAAD deployment a hot potato politically, economically” →

British man on mission for justice after wife gunned down in Philippines

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ 1 bình luận

Guardian

Stuart Green’s wife Mia, a lawyer, was killed in a barrage of bullets that narrowly missed his children in a hit he blames on gangsters linked to one of her cases

Stuart Green with his wife Mia and their three children. ‘They know every move that we make,’ he says of the people he believes were responsible for her death.
Stuart Green with his wife Mia and their three children. ‘They know every move that we make,’ he says of the people he believes were responsible for her death. Photograph: Supplied

  Southeast Asia correspondent

Wednesday 8 March 2017 00.30 EST Last modified on Wednesday 8 March 2017 22.11 EST

The two gunmen flanked the modest, family-sized Toyota at a busy intersection. Aiming at the driver, they fired a barrage of bullets, nine of which fatally hit Mia Mascariñas-Green in her head and neck.

In the back seat, her 10-year-old daughter and 23-month-old twins watched. Their nanny – who was sitting in the third row – jumped over the divide to shield the children with her body. One of the attacker’s guns jammed and they fled on motorbikes.

Stuart Green, a marine biologist from Hertfordshire in the UK, relates the last moments of his wife’s life with a mixture of anger and extraordinary grief. Tiếp tục đọc “British man on mission for justice after wife gunned down in Philippines” →

Isis militants disguised as doctors kill 38 in Kabul hospital attack

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Guardian

Gunmen dressed as medics fought security forces for hours in assault on military hospital in Afghan capital

@safimichael

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a Kabul military hospital by gunmen disguised as doctors who entered the facility and battled security forces for hours.

At least 38 people died and dozens more were injured, the hospital said.

The attack began with a suicide bombing at the rear of the hospital complex in the Afghan capital. Officials said at least three gunmen dressed as medical staff then entered the 400-bed Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan facility and took up positions on the upper floors. Tiếp tục đọc “Isis militants disguised as doctors kill 38 in Kabul hospital attack” →

Multi-nation patrol to target ISIL-linked Abu Sayyaf

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Al Jazeera

Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia to patrol common seas against armed group, carrying out kidnappings and beheadings.

The Abu Sayyaf are holding 31 foreign and local Filipinos hostages including six Vietnamese seamen [EPA]

The Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia will within months launch joint patrols in piracy-plagued waters, after a wave of attacks that saw armed groups affiliated to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) kidnapping and murdering their victims.

Philippine defence chief Delfin Lorenzana announced on Thursday that he and his counterparts in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta had agreed to patrol a sea lane where commercial vessels could pass with protection from the three nations’ navies. Tiếp tục đọc “Multi-nation patrol to target ISIL-linked Abu Sayyaf” →

‘Parched’ Chinese city plans to pump water from Russian lake via 1,000km pipeline

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Guardian

Urban planners in Lanzhou have drawn up proposals to pipe water into the chronically dry region from Siberia’s Lake Baikal.

Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake on earth. Photograph: Kirill Shipitsin/TASS

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in Beijing

Tuesday 7 March 2017 00.45 EST Last modified on Tuesday 7 March 2017 17.00 EST

China is reportedly considering plans to build a 1,000km (620 mile) pipeline to pump water all the way from Siberia to its drought-stricken northwest.

According to reports in the Chinese media, urban planners in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, have drawn up proposals to pipe water into the chronically parched region from Russia’s Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake on earth.

Li Luoli, an academic who is one of the plan’s cheerleaders, claimed the mega-project – roughly the equivalent of pumping water from Lake Como to London – was both theoretically feasible and “certainly beneficial” to China. Tiếp tục đọc “‘Parched’ Chinese city plans to pump water from Russian lake via 1,000km pipeline” →

Violence against Rohingya may amount to ‘crimes against humanity’: UN rights chief

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ChannelNewsAsia

  • By May Wong
  • Posted 08 Mar 2017 20:55
  • Updated 09 Mar 2017 01:33

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. (Photo: AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)

YANGON: The severity of the reported violations against the Rohingya in Myanmar warrants the attention of the International Criminal Court, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Wednesday (Mar 8).

Mr Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said the violations, “against a backdrop of severe and longstanding persecution”, amount to the “possible commission of crimes against humanity”.

He was addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where he highlighted the current major human rights issues in more than 40 countries. Tiếp tục đọc “Violence against Rohingya may amount to ‘crimes against humanity’: UN rights chief” →

US rebuffs China over North Korea talks

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ChannelNewsAsia

  • Posted 09 Mar 2017 02:39
  • Updated 09 Mar 2017 06:19

UNITED NATIONS: The United States on Wednesday (Mar 8) rebuffed China’s appeal for talks with North Korea, saying leader Kim Jong-Un was behaving irrationally and that it was reassessing its approach to dealing with Pyongyang.

China, Pyongyang’s main ally, earlier called on North Korea to suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for a halt to the annual US-South Korean military drills.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Beijing that the proposal could help bring the United States and North Korea back to negotiations and avert what he termed a “head-on collision”.

After a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council, US Ambassador Nikki Haley said North Korea’s actions called for a different response. Tiếp tục đọc “US rebuffs China over North Korea talks” →

US deploys missile defence system to South Korea

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Al Jazeera

China is warning it will take measures against a US missile defence system deployed in South Korea, with the stated objective of countering threats from North Korea.

The equipment needed to set up Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence system (THAAD), a missile defence system, have arrived in South Korea, according to American and South Korean defence forces.

The deployment announcement was made on Tuesday, a day after North Korea test-launched four ballistic missiles into the sea near Japan.

Admiral Harry Harris, head of the US Pacific Command, said in the statement that “continued provocative actions by North Korea, to include yesterday’s launch of multiple missiles, only confirm the prudence of our alliance decision last year to deploy THAAD to South Korea”. Tiếp tục đọc “US deploys missile defence system to South Korea” →

The Enduring Darkness of International Women’s Day

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FP

Women have gotten screwed for millennia, and that’s not a legacy that can be shaken off in a few short decades.

By Rosa Brooks March 8, 2017

The Enduring Darkness of International Women’s Day

About a week before the election that swept Donald Trump into the White House, I was sitting at home with my two girls, listening with half an ear to their after-school chatter. “Michael is so mean,” declared my seventh-grader, showing her phone to her sister. “He sent my friend Hannah” — not her real name — “a text with bad words in it.”

“Is that a screenshot? May I see?” I asked. I was curious to know what counted as a “bad word” to a 12-year-old girl. Butthead? Poop brain?

I was way off. Michael had called my daughter’s friend — also 12 — a “cunt” and a “whore.” He asserted that she “wanted dick” and accused her of giving blow jobs to another boy in the class.

Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t this sexualized vitriol — not from a nice middle-class boy at a nice middle-class school. Tiếp tục đọc “The Enduring Darkness of International Women’s Day” →

Freedom House – Freedom in the World 2017 Report

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Vietnam (below) is ranked as “not free” country, with political rights at 7 (least free), civil Liberties at 5 (close to least free), Freedom rating at 8 (close to least free), aggregate score at 20 (close to least free, 0 being least free and 100 being most free).
Read full report here 

Table of Country Scores

PR = Political Rights
CL = Civil Liberties
CL, PR, Freedom Rating Explanation: 1 = most free and 7 = least free
Aggregate Score Explanation: 0 = least free, 100 = most free
* denotes territories, as opposed to independent countries

Show
entries
Freedom Status PR CL Freedom Rating Aggregate Score Trend Arrow
United States Free 1 1 1.0 89
Uruguay Free 1 1 1.0 98
Uzbekistan Not Free 7 7 7.0 3
Vanuatu Free 2 2 2.0 80
Venezuela Not Free 6 5 5.5 30
Vietnam Not Free 7 5 6.0 20
West Bank * Not Free 7 5 6.0 28
Western Sahara * Not Free 7 7 7.0 4
Yemen Not Free 7 6 6.5 14
Zambia Partly Free 4 4 4.0 56 ↓
Zimbabwe Partly Free 5 5 5.0 32
Showing 201 to 211 of 211 entries
PreviousNext

Key Findings

  • With populist and nationalist forces making significant gains in democratic states, 2016 marked the 11th consecutive year of decline in global freedom.
  • There were setbacks in political rights, civil liberties, or both, in a number of countries rated “Free” by the report, including Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Tunisia, and the United States.
  • Of the 195 countries assessed, 87 (45 percent) were rated Free, 59 (30 percent) Partly Free, and 49 (25 percent) Not Free.
  • The Middle East and North Africa region had the worst ratings in the world in 2016, followed closely by Eurasia.

Welcome to the Post-Human Rights World

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
FP
Geopolitical realignments and the rise of populist nationalism have unleashed a global backlash against human rightsBy Sebastian Strangio March 7, 2017

Welcome to the Post-Human Rights World

Less than two months in, President Donald Trump is already shaping up as a disaster for human rights. From his immigration ban to his support for torture, Trump has jettisoned what has long been, in theory if not always in practice, a bipartisan American commitment: the promotion of democratic values and human rights abroad. Tiếp tục đọc “Welcome to the Post-Human Rights World” →

Thanh Hoa whale temple

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ 1 bình luận
Last update 13:00 | 30/12/2016 vietnamnet

People in a village in the northern central province of Thanh Hoa have contributed money to build a temple to worship a whale skeleton.

The temple to worship the whale skeleton

Most of the households in Hung Thanh Village, Hau Loc District have lived on fishing for many generations.

In early 2004, while fishing at sea, some villagers found a dead whale drifting to the shore, after preserving the carcase for seven months, they brought to its skeleton to the village to clean it.For Vietnamese fishermen, the whale is seen a guardian angel for their voyage. When finding the dead whale, people in Hung Thanh Village thought that the fish wanted to take permanent rest.

Early 2012, villagers contributed their money to build a VND1 billion (USD47,600) temple for worshiping the whale. The skeleton is now being kept in a glass house with the close watch by security guards.

People in the village take the first day of the lunar December every year is the anniversary of the whale’s death. Lots of people from other localities came to the village to see the skeleton and burn incense. They call the whale Ngai Nam Hai or Ca Ong. Tiếp tục đọc “Thanh Hoa whale temple” →

Hà Nội xây mới 250 nhà vệ sinh công cộng

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Thứ ba, 7/3/2017 | 18:09 GMT+7 VnExpress

Giám đốc Sở Xây dựng Hà Nội cho hay, thành phố đang triển khai dự án 1.000 nhà vệ sinh công cộng mới, trong đó có 250 nhà vệ sinh làm trong năm 2017.

Chiều 7/3, Giám đốc Sở Xây dựng Hà Nội Lê Văn Dục cho biết, trong năm 2017 thành phố sẽ hoàn thành xây dựng mới 250 nhà vệ sinh công cộng bằng nguồn vốn xã hội hóa.

ha-noi-xay-moi-250-nha-ve-sinh-cong-cong

Giám đốc Sở Xây dựng Hà Nội Lê Văn Dục. Ảnh: Võ Hải.

Hiện Hà Nội có 371 nhà vệ sinh công cộng. Trong đó, 113 nhà vệ sinh bằng thép, hầu hết được xây dựng trong giai đoạn 2003-2010, nằm ở một số mặt phố, khu vực vườn hoa công cộng. Còn lại 258 nhà vệ sinh bằng gạch, nằm trong các khu dân cư được xây từ những năm 1990.

Theo lãnh đạo Sở Xây dựng, năm 2012, Hà Nội có chủ trương xây dựng mới một số nhà vệ sinh công cộng bằng thép, nhưng trước ý kiến chi phí xây dựng quá cao, thành phố đã cho dừng lại.

Tiếp tục đọc “Hà Nội xây mới 250 nhà vệ sinh công cộng” →

Phó thủ tướng: Mở đợt cao điểm tấn công ‘cát tặc’

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VNExpress Thứ ba, 7/3/2017 | 21:00 GMT+7

Tình trạng khai thác cát sỏi trái phép diễn ra nhức nhối ở nhiều địa phương trên cả nước, tuy nhiên đến nay mới duy nhất thành phố Hà Nội truy tố hình sự được một vụ vi phạm.

Ngày 7/3, phát biểu tại cuộc họp về tình hình khai thác cát sỏi trái phép, Phó thủ tướng Trương Hòa Bình yêu cầu các lực lượng chức năng mở đợt cao điểm tấn công trấn áp tội phạm trong lĩnh vực này từ ngày 15/3 đến 1/6… Các bộ ngành liên quan cần tạm dừng cấp phép xuất khẩu cát nhiễm mặn tận thu từ các dự án xã hội hoá.

Tiếp tục đọc “Phó thủ tướng: Mở đợt cao điểm tấn công ‘cát tặc’” →