Vietnam News 101

[Ho Lam Di Duc]

Only extreme traitors like Ho Chi Cho and VCs have badly damaged VN strength and land integrity.
These mofos are the worst enemies in VN history, they stole the land the freedom of Viet people to give to their master Chinese!
http://news.tialia.com/nguoi_viet_4_phuong/19...

[OC Refugee]

US Ambassador upbeat about future cooperation with Vietnam
00:29' 21/01/2009 (GMT+7)
VietNamNet Bridge - The US Ambassador to Vietnam, Michael Michalak, has spoke optimistically of the expansion and deepening of US-Vietnam cooperation in 2009.


The US Ambassador to Vietnam, Michael Michalak.

Speaking with the press in Hanoi on Jan. 20, the Ambassador said that 2008 "is a very good year for the relationship between Vietnam and US." He said that the year was highlighted by the visit of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to Washington, taking their bilateral relationship to a new level.

He went on to say that 2008 also saw Vietnam’s continued integration into the global community and it doing an outstanding job in serving as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council and becoming a major partner of the US in both the region and the world.

According to Michalak, the economic and trade relationship has continued to grow even during a very difficult 2008. He said that many US companies have come to Vietnam to seek investment and trade opportunities, and that more would follow.

The Ambassador viewed Vietnam’s stimulus package of 1 billion USD as a proper reaction and that the country has taken the necessary measures to overcome the economic difficulties.

Regarding educational relations, Ambassador Michalak said that during 2007, Vietnam was ranked 20th among countries sending students to the US to study, and in 2008, it had risen to the 13th place.

He added that his goal is "to double the number of students going from Vietnam to the US", and he hopes that some time in the near future, he would be able to say that he "finally reached that goal".

Answering question regarding the foreign policies of the US ’ newly-elected President, Barack Obama, the Ambassador said he believed that the US would expand and deepen its relations with Vietnam across all fields.

http://english.vietnamnet.vn/politics/2009/01...

[Hektor]

yes..vietnam need to send more thiefs and hookers oversea!!! please open your border ppl let them in ;)

[Ryan Boston]

***US - VIETNAM RELATION***

For Which It Stands: Vietnam, Matt Steinglass - GlobalPost

URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/vietnam/09...

The U.S. and Vietnam share a war, a hopeful future and a touch of skepticism.

HANOI, Vietnam — They hated the Americans.
A famous photograph from the war years shows the words "Giet My" — Kill America — carved into a tree along the Ho Chi Minh Trail like lovers' initials. Downed U.S. pilots were beaten by crowds of furious civilians. In Bao Ninh's celebrated novel, "The Sorrow of War," the former North Vietnamese soldier wrote of comrades haunted by visions of African-American GIs roaming the jungle, of female soldiers raped and killed by American troops, of civilians killed in B-52 bombing raids.

It has been 33 years since North Vietnam won the war, and Bao Ninh, now 57, said the hatred is long forgotten.

"Time is a miracle that heals all spiritual wounds," said Ninh.

Today, the U.S. is Vietnam's biggest export market. Nike and Intel are among the country's major employers. U.S. warships call at Vietnamese ports, and Vietnamese heads of state pay regular visits to Washington. USAID spends tens of millions of dollars a year to help Vietnam fight AIDS. Hollywood movies pack the multiplexes in Saigon's new shopping malls, and "Made in Vietnam" labels line the racks at chain stores in New York. At Hoan Kiem Lake in central Hanoi, the kindly faces of two white-bearded men gaze down from billboards: on one side, Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. On the other, Kentucky Fried Chicken's Colonel Sanders.

The U.S. and Vietnam are now wary friends, drawn together the past 15 years by a strange confluence of nostalgia, economics and strategic self-interest. But as Barack Obama takes office in Washington, the relationship will be tested.
On some issues — military cooperation, political liberalization — the U.S. wants Hanoi to move faster than the Vietnamese Communist Party is prepared to. On other issues — boosting demand for Vietnamese exports, offsetting growing Chinese power — Vietnam may want the U.S. to do more than a country weakened by recession and military overreach can.

"Vietnamese people think that we should lean to the U.S. side, to counterbalance China," said literary critic and gadfly Pham Xuan Nguyen, 53. But "the U.S. seems not to be as strong a country as it was in 2000. It seems the U.S. doesn't dare believe in its own strength."

The rapprochement between the two countries began in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The U.S. sought friends and commercial partners among former Soviet client states. U.S. leadership had passed to the baby boom generation, whose political identities were forged in the Vietnam War. Vietnam veterans such as Sens. John F. Kerry and John McCain, each with strong sentimental commitments to closing the book on the war, played key roles in lifting the longstanding commercial embargo of Vietnam and normalizing relations in 1995.

On the Vietnamese side, the fall of the Soviet Union meant the loss of its superpower patron. With the end of support from Moscow, the impoverished, isolated country was forced to open its economy. On the political side, dynamic new leaders like then-Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet spearheaded a broad effort to reconnect with the non-Communist world, but faced resistance from conservative factions. The successful American relationship, along with years of strong economic growth, helped Kiet win that argument.
In 2000, President Bill Clinton visited Hanoi and was met by throngs of spontaneous, cheering well-wishers. It was as if the American president symbolized the country's escape from the isolation and poverty of the 1980s.

[Ryan Boston]

The U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement Clinton signed that year kick-started eight years of spectacular economic growth. By 2004, Vietnamese seafood exports to the US had jumped from $50 million to over $2 billion a year. In garments, footwear and wood products, the story was the same, as U.S. consumers helped lift tens of millions of Vietnamese out of poverty.
But the very success of Vietnam's export-oriented economy — 70 percent of its GDP comes from exports — has exposed it to the shock of the economic recession in the U.S. In early January, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung called for businesses to refocus on the domestic market.
"Vietnam's economy is very vulnerable," said Nguyen Quang A, an economist who has advised Prime Minister Dung. "In the future Vietnam should emphasize exports to other markets like China, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia."

Besides being its largest export market, the U.S. has influenced Vietnamese economic thinking. A new generation of Vietnamese economists, many trained at American universities on grants from the Fulbright program or the Vietnam Education Fund, have pushed for a less state-centered economy and for reforms in commercial law and corporate governance.

But such influence has its limits, says Quang A.

"Vietnam can learn from the U.S'.s economic model in areas like transparency, competitiveness, reducing protectionism, corporate governance, and mechanisms to discover wrongdoing," the economist said. "The aspect Vietnam should avoid is that the government should have a better role in running the economy."

Vietnam's government intervenes heavily in its banking sector, and supports strategic industries with huge state-owned companies, like shipbuilding. Its model resembles the state-coordinated industrial policies that were successful in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The U.S. has generally stood for a more laissez-faire economic philosophy, but its own massive government interventions in recent months have muddied that image.

One area where Vietnamese respect for America has never wavered is military prowess. But their attitude towards that prowess has shifted with circumstances.

As a 10-year-old boy in 1965, literary critic Nguyen watched captured American pilots being paraded through his village in Ha Tinh province.

"The daily perception of the U.S. was one of bombs, killing, death, bleeding, extermination," Nguyen said.

More recently, the Vietnamese overwhelmingly opposed America's military intervention in Iraq, which they found uncomfortably familiar.

"I was surprised to find American administrations in fact had not changed their views at all, even after the Vietnam War," said Bao Ninh.

Like Ninh, most Vietnamese view the Bush administration negatively, despite the improvement in bilateral relations over the past eight years and Bush's support for Vietnam's accession to the World Trade Organization and its election to a rotating seat on the UN Security Council.

The election of Barack Obama has generated a modest level of enthusiasm in Vietnam, and some hope for a more multilateral U.S. foreign policy. But Vietnamese businesses also fear a Democratic administration may turn to protectionism to preserve American manufacturing jobs, hurting Vietnamese exports.

Most Vietnamese think an improving Vietnamese-American relationship is inevitable, regardless of who is in the White House. Both sides need each other to counterbalance China, and Vietnamese assume that the cheap sneakers they produce for Nike, and the Boeing 777s Vietnam Airlines buys, must benefit the U.S. as much as they do Vietnam.

As for those who are hoping for a dramatic shift in American policy, they, like Bao Ninh, are skeptical.

"We have heard Americans say lots of right and good things, especially in the presidential elections," Ninh said. "But let’s see what they are doing in 2009."

[ditme HCM va VC]

http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/Duo-Le...
toi nghi CS se xup do? neu' chung' ta dau' tranh quyet' liet. trong va ngoai nuoc'

Ryan Boston wrote:

The U.S.-Vietnam "We have heard Americans say lots of right and good things, especially in the presidential elections," Ninh said. "But let’s see what they are doing in 2009."

[Ryan Boston]

***THE U.K.- VIETNAM RELATION IN 2009***

URL: http://www.vnbusinessnews.com/2009/01/two-way...

Two-way enthusiasm to push UK-Vietnam trade, investment: official

Vietnam’s economic resilience and its government’s enthusiastic emphasis on reform are likely to woo more British investors and boost bilateral trade this year, a top UK trade official said.

Gareth Thomas, Minister of State, UK Trade and Investment and Department for International Development, said he was convinced that the bleak economic forecasts facing Viet Nam this year would not scare away UK companies.

“What British businesses have been saying to me is actually they are not going to pull out. They want to stay here for the long term,” Thomas told Thanh Nien Daily during his visit to Viet Nam last week.

The Asian Development Bank forecasts Vietnam’s 2009 economic growth at 5% while the World Bank estimated the figure at 6.5%. Viet Nam posted an economic growth rate of 6.23% last year against the original target of 7%.

“They [British investors] recognize that it may be more difficult this year but they still believe there is going to be economic growth in Vietnam and there is still going to be an opportunity here to grow their businesses,” Thomas said.

Thomas was the second UK senior official over the last three months to stress that UK businesses in Viet Nam had long-term plans here. In another interview with Thanh Nien Daily last November, Ambassador Mark Kent also said UK firms would focus on Vietnam’s long-term potential.

[Ryan Boston]

UK investors in Viet Nam and outside the country are equally enthusiastic about business here, according to Thomas.

“British businesses not yet based in Viet Nam are still going to be trying to set up British arms in Viet Nam in the course of the next 12 months,” Thomas said.

He cited the example of betting firm Ladbrokes, which has been looking to offer services in Vietnam since the country began considering the legalization of football betting in 2006.

Thomas also said he was impressed by the confidence British businesses had about expanding their operations here. As an example, he cited the opening of HSBC Bank (Viet Nam) earlier this month, which is the first wholly foreign-owned subsidiary in the country.

“I am struck as well by the enthusiasm of the ministers and other representatives from the British government,” Thomas said. He recalled many high-level bilateral visits last year, including the UK visit of Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in March.

**GOVERNMENT SUPPORT**

One reason UK companies were confident in Vietnam was “the enthusiasm of the Vietnamese government (to improve the business environment) for foreign direct investment (FDI),” according to Thomas.

Thomas said that in a meeting with PM Dung last week, the Vietnamese leader had expressed his commitment to creating a business environment conducive to foreign investment.

Thomas said PM Dung had made clear his desire to discuss the European Chamber of Commerce report on business environment improvement with Vietnamese officials and ministers.

“I hope from that we’ll take a series of measures to improve the business environment in Viet Nam,” said Thomas.

He said the country could see more FDI as a result.

Vietnam attracted record quantities of FDI last year, both in pledges and disbursement, the Ministry of Planning and Investment said. Investors promised more than US$64 billion to Viet Nam in 2008, according to the Foreign Investment Department.

Thomas said he was confident bilateral trade would increase this year given the enthusiasm from both the Vietnamese government and British companies.

Thomas also revealed plans to go back to Brussels and argue for Europe to implement free trade agreements with individual economies in the ASEAN region like Vietnam or Singapore before signing similar deals with the whole region.

The UK is now the third largest European investor in Viet Nam. UK exports to Viet Nam were up 50 percent year on year by the end of September last year while Vietnam's exports to the UK were up 17% over the same period.

**TET MESSAGE FROM THE UK**

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson sent their New Year’s greetings to Viet Nam on the first day of Tet (Lunar New Year), January 26.

Both Miliband and Ferguson, who spoke through a video on Ambassador Mark Kent’s blog (http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/kent/ ), fondly referred to the huge support that Vietnamese fans have given to the Manchester United football club.

“I know that Manchester United has more fans in Vietnam than any other club in Britain. I do celebrate the fact that MU speaks for the best of Britain,” Miliband said. Ferguson said:“I just can’t wait to bring my team to Vietnam because I was told that we have more than 20 million fans there... We will be there soon.”

Miliband also said he was delighted that millions of British people are now seeing Vietnam’s development not only on television but also through the increasing numbers of tourists to Vietnam.

“I know 2009 is going to be an important year for Vietnam and I hope through the medium of sport we’ll be able to get closer and closer together,” he said.(TN)

[trinhnpt]

Phiengung wrote:

<quoted text>
Phiengung trich bao Nhan dan,
trinhnpt phan,(bao Nhan dan) "hoang duong"!
ellen xem thay cam hon,
Noi guong To Huu, "Keu no ve, bat ngay" *
*Trich Hoi ky Nguyen Dang Manh
http://www.scribd.com/doc/5624134/Hi-K-Nguyn-...

phiengung oi la phiengung...co' ai sinh ra mi khong hay mi chui tu dong shit len....no'i ro cho thien ha nghe coi!

[Giohu]

Toa tuong bay chet het sau tran lut nam xua o Hanoi roi, ai ngo dau tui may con song ca do hi! Chac la Phiengung khong chet chay o Uc chu?