Thẻ: Vietnam War

Mass grave of 150 martyrs found in Đồng Nai

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ 1 bình luận

Update: April, 14/2017 – 17:00 vietnamnews

A sandal belonging to the Vietnamese martyrs found at the mass grave in Biên Hòa airport, Đồng Nai Province on Thursday. — Photo tuoitre.vn
Viet Nam News

ĐỒNG NAI — A mass grave containing remains of some 150 Vietnamese martyrs in the American War was discovered on Thursday in the southern province of Đồng Nai.

The Steering Committee on Search, Collection and Excavation of Martyrs’ Remains, also known as Steering Committee 1237, announced it had found the mass grave at about 10am after several days of digging at a site at the Biên Hòa airport. Tiếp tục đọc “Mass grave of 150 martyrs found in Đồng Nai” →

Hơn cả Việt Nam: Thời khắc đập tan sự im lặng

~ Phạm Thu Hương ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

HUNTERS 04/04/2017

mlk_riverside

BookHunter: Vào ngày này, đúng 50 năm trước, Linh mục Martin Luther King đã phát biểu tại nhà thờ Riverside, thành phố New York để lên án chiến tranh tại Việt Nam. Đúng một năm sau đó, ngày 4 tháng 4 năm 1968, Martin Luther King đã bị ám sát. Ông là một nhà hùng biện với nhiều bài nói chuyện gây chấn động nước Mỹ cũng như toàn thế giới. Bài phát biểu “Beyond Vietnam: A time to break silence” là một trong số đó. Chúng tôi xin được lược dịch để giúp độc giả có thêm thông tin và góc nhìn về cuộc chiến diễn ra giữa Việt Nam và Hoa Kỳ.  Tiếp tục đọc “Hơn cả Việt Nam: Thời khắc đập tan sự im lặng” →

50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Tuesday, April 4th 2017

Veterans in the U.S. remember Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” Speech on 50th Anniversary

April 4, 2017:  veterans in the U.S. and in Viet Nam acknowledge the 50th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful and courageous speech at the Riverside Church in New York, entitled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.  In that remarkable speech, Dr. King publicly spoke out eloquently and passionately in opposition to the continuing war in Viet Nam.  He confronted the deeply rooted racism, militarism and materialism of the United States. Dr. King described the United States as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.

In the U.S., in remembrance of Dr. King’s groundbreaking speech, chapters of Veterans For Peace planned public readings across the country.  In Viet Nam, later this month we plan to host a public discussion of the important message which Dr. King conveyed to the nation on that date a half century ago.  Copies of Dr. King’s speech will be made available in English and  Vietnamese.

For the past 32 years, Veterans For Peace have called for the abolishment of war as an instrument of national policy.

“U.S. global policy of endless war and filling the coffers of an already bloated military budget has merged into a global response of violence. We need a global response that meets human needs and aspirations. Militarization is not the foundation on which to build peace. U.S. efforts have proven that war is the breeding ground for more violence and hatred. We need increased spending in social programs here at home, including significant resources dedicated to our veterans who are suffering devastating effects as a result of their service. We need an increase in diplomacy to end the wars. We need to dedicate resources to helping bring relief to the refugee crisis resulting from endless war.

“We, as veterans, know that peace is possible, but only if resources are directed towards caring for one another, not perpetuating militarization across the globe.”

                     Excerpted from VFP Statement Regarding Military Budget


4 April 1967 
Beyond Vietnam** 
New York, N.Y.

View PDF

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the most distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it’s always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit. Tiếp tục đọc “50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech” →

Government taking steps to remove UXOs

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

vietnam news

Update: March, 29/2017 – 18:30

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Soldiers successfully removed a live 225kg bomb from the central province of Phú Yên last year. — VNA/VNS Photo

Viet Nam News HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) on Tuesday reported about unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination from past wars in Việt Nam and activities undertaken to mitigate its effects.

The conference was held to observe International Mine Awareness Day, which is on April 4.

The ministry said that Việt Nam has faced severe consequences of UXO, which has greatly affected the country’s development in general, and people living in bomb- and mine-polluted areas in particular. Tiếp tục đọc “Government taking steps to remove UXOs” →

US actor takes on cudgels on behalf of VN AO victims

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

vietnam news

Update: March, 30/2017 – 06:00

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Doing good: Richard Hughes and a boy who was part of the Shoeshine Boys project in Sài Gòn in the 1970s. Courtesy Photo of Dick Hughes.
Viet Nam News by Phước Bửu

THỪA THIÊN- HUẾ — What started out as a gesture of good will has become Richard Hughes’ passion and destiny as he knocks on doors and crosses oceans in search of justice for Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange.

Richard “Dick” Hughes is an American actor who gained worldwide fame for forming a gang of Sài Gòn street boys during the Việt Nam-US war and living with them.

Wartime Việt Nam first impacted on the consciousness of the Pittsburgh-born actor when he was working at the Theatre Company of Boston, a year after his graduation from Boston University Graduate School of Drama in 1967. Tiếp tục đọc “US actor takes on cudgels on behalf of VN AO victims” →

Cambodia rejects paying ‘dirty debt’ to the US

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Al Jareeza March 21, 2017

Cambodia-US relations will further deteriorate if Trump insists on collecting debt incurred by an illegitimate regime.

General Lon Nol, former prime minister of Cambodia, who incurred the principal debt of $276m, attends a national solidarity rally in Cambodia on April 16, 1970 [Ian Brodie/Getty Images]
General Lon Nol, former prime minister of Cambodia, who incurred the principal debt of $276m, attends a national solidarity rally in Cambodia on April 16, 1970 [Ian Brodie/Getty Images]

By

@chheangcam

Vannarith Chheang is a Consultant at the Nippon Foundation in Japan.

The United States has renewed its demand for Cambodia to repay a war debt of $500m amid President Donald Trump’s push to improve the state budget. Such a demand has met with an outcry from Cambodian political leaders and their people, who have consistently called the debt “dirty” and “blood-stained”.

Clearly, the memory of the United States’ war in Indochina continues to shape Cambodian perceptions of and foreign policy towards the US. Cambodia is reluctant to pay the debt. However, should the US keep forcing Cambodia to service the debt, its moral high ground may be adversely affected. Tiếp tục đọc “Cambodia rejects paying ‘dirty debt’ to the US” →

Echoes of war, seeds of hope

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Harvardgazette

In visit to Vietnam, Faust stresses importance of remembrance in healing from conflict

March 23, 2017 | Editor’s Pick Popular
Drew Faust travels to Asia
By Alvin Powell, Harvard Staff Writer

Even decades after the Vietnam War, the United States and Vietnam are still surveying the conflict’s aftermath, seeking understanding and healing of wounds physical and spiritual, individual and widespread, Harvard President Drew Faust said today during a visit to the Southeast Asian nation. Tiếp tục đọc “Echoes of war, seeds of hope” →

My Lai Massacre Anniversary

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

    TĐH: Below is an article written by Mike Hastie, an American Army medic who started his service in Vietnam in 1970, two years after the Mỹ Lai Massacre happened. Mike has been raising funds to support My Lai Massacre Memorial and the last time he visited My Lai was on April 5-6, 2016. He wrote this article on the occasion of the 49th Anniversary of the Massacre.
    These articles by American veterans about Mỹ Lai have always been some education for me. They are always full of pain, anger, shame and guilt, so full and fresh as if everything has just happened yesterday. And that always amazes me about the American soul.
    We Vietnamese don’t keep things that long. We may talk about an event, but always with a distance between us and it, more like a history lesson than a fresh wound. I teach my Buddhist students non-attachment: “Do not grasp onto anything. All things – good or bad, happy or sad, rewarding or punishing – are simply fleeting clouds sailing through the blue transparent permanent sky which is our Buddha heart.” But these veterans’ letters, always fresh in anguish, show me more than often the depth and the purity in the American heart. Though I would still say: “Don’t grasp onto anything. Let go”.
    This article is about misery but also about healing.  It is a history lesson and a lesson about the human heart.
    After Mike’s article is a comment from our friend Chuck Searcy.

 

My Lai Massacre Anniversary

Today, March 16, 2017, is the 49th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre, located in Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam.

It was Saturday morning, March 16, 1968, when approximately 115 U.S. Army soldiers of the Americal Division’s Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, landed in helicopters just outside the village of My Lai 4. Over the course of the next four hours, these American soldiers, and their Military High Command, who were flying overhead in helicopters observing the massacre, took part in a horror show far beyond the human imagination. They took the term “War Crimes” and added a butcher shop to the equation of morbid extermination. In essence, they became a U.S. version of the final solution. They committed an act of barbarity that would redefine the war in Vietnam. It would take years to decipher what happened that day, as denial is the elixir that protects us from experiencing national shame. It is these two words, ” National Shame,” that continues to hide the truth of what really happened in Southeast Asia. Tiếp tục đọc “My Lai Massacre Anniversary” →

It’s payback time, America

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

e.VnExpress

By Calvin Godfrey   March 13, 2017 | 02:18 pm GMT+7

It's payback time, America

Visitors learn about the Vietnam War at a museum in Ho Chi Minh City in a file photo taken in March 2015. Photo by Minh Le

A diplomatic kerfuffle in Phnom Penh reminds us that the U.S. owes Vietnam $25.7 billion.

Last week, for seemingly no reason whatsoever, an anonymous U.S. State Department official made the strongest argument to date for Donald Trump to make good on wartime reparations promised to Vietnam by his political idol, Richard Nixon.

During Trump’s skinny days, he flew to Houston to attend a birthday party for a bankrupt Texas governor that was attended by the ex-president. Years later, Nixon wrote Trump a letter, urging him to make a play for the White House — a document Trump cherishes even today.

One wonders what Trump might make of another Nixon correspondence, one he penned at the height of his powers, to Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong promising roughly $4.7 billion in wartime reconstruction aid without political conditions.

Tiếp tục đọc “It’s payback time, America” →

Fury in Cambodia as US asks to be paid back hundreds of millions in war debts

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ 3 bình luận
    I forwarded this first to a delegation of Veterans For Peace who are now touring Viet Nam for 17 days, and I am accompanying them. They have seen some of the terrible legacies of the war in Viet Nam — consequences very similar to what neighboring Laos and Cambodia have experienced.  So this article has special resonance for them.

    It is also a reminder of the hard bargain the U.S. insisted upon during negotiations with Viet Nam which led to normalization of diplomatic relations in 1995.  The current government of Viet Nam was required to repay an old debt of the Saigon regime which collapsed in 1975, loans which had been provided during the war totaling some $145 million US dollars.  The Vietnamese eventually agreed, and repaid the first installments totaling about $15 million before then-Sen. John Kerry and Sen. John McCain intervened (and rightly so, in the opinion of many veterans) with congressional action which converted that debt to an “education” fund to provide study opportunities for Vietnamese students in the U.S. and American students in Viet Nam.  That was better than an outright repayment, of course — particularly when U.S. humanitarian assistance at that time was less than $4 million a year, for efforts related to UXO cleanup and disability programs that might bring some relief to families facing the awful consequences of Agent Orange.

    Sometimes simple fairness and justice, common decency, and morality must take precedence over the U.S. government’s bookkeeping requirements.  (It might occur to some of us that the U.S. Ambassador in Cambodia should be reminded of that.)
    CS

MARCH 11 201

Fury in Cambodia as US asks to be paid back hundreds of millions in war debts

 

Lindsay Murdoch

Half a century after United States B-52 bombers dropped more than 500,000 tonnes of explosives on Cambodia’s countryside Washington wants the country to repay a $US500 million ($662 million) war debt.

The demand has prompted expressions of indignation and outrage from Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

Over 200 nights in 1973 alone, 257,456 tons of explosives fell in secret carpet-bombing sweeps – half as many as were dropped on Japan during the Second World War.

The pilots flew at such great heights they were incapable of discriminating between a Cambodian village and their targets, North Vietnamese supply lines – nicknamed the “Ho Chi Minh Trail.” Tiếp tục đọc “Fury in Cambodia as US asks to be paid back hundreds of millions in war debts” →

CƠ SỞ DỮ LIỆU VỀ BOM CÓ ÍCH CHO CHIẾN TRANH TRONG QUÁ KHỨ VÀ HIỆN TẠI

~ Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Hợp ~ 1 bình luận

English: Bomb database useful for past, present wars

Lieutenant Colonel Jenns Robertson’s project is aiding efforts to spot unexploded bombs that still endanger civilians.

MEG MCKINNEY FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Dự án của Trung tá Colonel Jenns Robertson đang hỗ trợ các nỗ lực định vị các quả bom chưa phát nổ vẫn đang gây nguy hiểm cho người dân.

Cách đây 6 năm, dường như là một ý tưởng ngây thơ khi Trung tá Colonel Jenns Robertson, 45 tuổi, một người bản xứ ở Minnesota đeo kính hạng ngoại hạng thậm chí hơn cả các tiêu chuẩn của quân đội, đã bắt đầu một sở thích khá bất thường: ghi lại dữ liệu về bom của không lực Mỹ trong một thế kỷ – từng quả bom một Tiếp tục đọc “CƠ SỞ DỮ LIỆU VỀ BOM CÓ ÍCH CHO CHIẾN TRANH TRONG QUÁ KHỨ VÀ HIỆN TẠI” →

Project Renew: Ridding Vietnam of Unexploded Ordnance

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
I was invited by the editors of The VVA Veteran, publication of Vietnam Veterans of America, to submit an article reviewing the history of mine action efforts in Viet Nam, including the role of American veterans and U.S. veterans organizations. Over the past couple of decades of cooperation with our Vietnamese colleagues, and with support from the U.S. government and other international donors and project partners, we are coming very close to the reality of “making Viet Nam safe” from the daily threat of cluster bombs and other ordnance left from the war. CS
The VVA Veteran
January/February 2017
Project RENEW: Ridding Vietnam of Unexploded Ordnance

BY CHUCK SEARCY

For most Americans, the Vietnam War ended in 1975. But for too many Vietnamese, the war didn’t end then. They continued to suffer death, injury, and lifetime disabilities from munitions that remained on the surface or just under the soil. These weapons posed a constant danger to unsuspecting residents throughout the country—but especially along the former demilitarized zone.

Tiếp tục đọc “Project Renew: Ridding Vietnam of Unexploded Ordnance” →