On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 10:12:15 -0700, Joerg
wrote:
On 2017-09-10 18:15, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 10 Sep 2017 07:27:16 -0700, Joerg
wrote:
On 2017-09-09 21:28, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 09 Sep 2017 07:50:11 -0700, Joerg
wrote:
On 2017-09-08 20:39, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 08 Sep 2017 11:48:38 -0700, Joerg
wrote:
On 2017-09-07 18:10, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 07 Sep 2017 07:19:58 -0700, Joerg
wrote:
On 2017-09-06 16:50, John B. wrote:
[...]
... Given Vietnam's history
since, say the 1850's, the average Vietnamese is probably as happy
under the present government as they were under previous regimes.
Having met a lot of Vietnamese people, including people where not all
relatives made it out, I do not think this is true. I also had relatives
who had to live in a former communist country. They would have been shot
if they had tried to leave. Nobody will ever tell me there is nothing
wrong with communism.
As a general statement, those who escaped from Vietnam were people
with a certain amount of money. Call them the middle class.
Not the ones I met. They didn't have much more than the shirt on their
backs and most didn't own real estate over there or had much in terms of
other wealth. A simple bicycle was already considered a luxury.
And tell us, how did these penniless people buy the boat, provision
the boat, acquire sufficient fuel, pay the bribes to the coast guard
and navy necessary to start the voyage?
The same way they do it in Mexiko, North Africa or the Middle East.
Scraping money and tradeable goods such as bicyles, rickety motorcycles
and whatever together. Which unfortunately also meant that not everyone
in a larger family could get a boat ticket, it was only enough for some.
Talk to people that went through this. Sometimes tears will well up in
their eyes. For example, because they had to leave mom, dad and a lot of
others behind.
Or at least read up on it.
http://www.complex.com/life/2015/12/...es-vietnam-war
Quote "He ate rice with salted potatoes most nights". Is this the fare
of a rich guy?
Then, quote "In order to pay for his spot on the boat, my dad sold his
bicycle and organized a small group of people to escape on the same
trip. He said asking his mother for money was out of the question
because "if she knew, she wouldn't let me go.""
Later, quote "But by the fourth week, they were running out of bartering
goods, so my dad and other refugees stopped along China's uninhabited
shores to search for food in the jungle. They found guava trees and
loaded up on the fruit—which ended up making everyone constipated. "Back
on the boat, everyone was helping each other poop," he said".
Ah yes, you are describing the events told by a person who, describes
herself as "a writer, speaker, creative producer, and entrepreneur"
and wasn't born when the events took place which were told to her long
after they occurred.
Are you implying they lied?
They usually don't term it "lying" but still it is adding a
connotation that implies something that wasn't true.
You do not know that yet you are accusing her.
Not so. I do not know her and I am accusing her story as not including
all the facts.
In fact I believe that I said that she was repeating a story about
events that took place before she was born.
I've often told the story about my grandfather saying that when he and
my grandmother first moved to town he worked as a carpenter for $1,.00
a day. Which was true.
But he told the story of an example of how hard he worked and how poor
they were which wasn't true. But the facts are dollar a day was a more
or less a normal workingman's salary in the 1800's.
The Vietnam war wasn't in the 1800's.
Her father was described as, "My dad, who lived in North Vietnam's
capital of Hanoi, remembers the government rationing food stamps for
every citizen. He ate rice with salted potatoes most nights. After the
war, there was no freedom of speech, no freedom to travel, no freedom
to protest."
Interesting, but I wonder, really, as N.Vietnam had been governed by
the Communist government of Ho Chi Minh since 1945. But your site says
that "After the war, there was no freedom of speech, no freedom to
travel, no freedom to protest."
Do you suppose that 35 years after Ho Chi Minh had beaten the French,
and more recently chased the Americans out of his country, and sorted
out the Southerners that suddenly without notice things in Hanoi got
worse? Truly?
They did. The new government started a "cleansing action". Talk to
people from there. But ones that got out, the others may be afraid to
speak freely because that can have nasty results under communist regimes.
In the North? That had supplied the soldiers to fight the war? I find
no evidence that it happened. But even more revealing, they were the
people who were the victors. They had beaten both the French and the
Americans and "freed their country".
Yes, in the North. As I said, talk to people from there.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/o...ement-too.html
Quote "The dreaded security police rounded up hundreds of North
Vietnamese citizens, including party officials, senior military
officers, journalists, lawyers, writers and artists".
I am a bit confused in reading your undoubtedly factual newspaper
report as it refers to Ho Chi Minh being exiled to Beijing when I can
find no other reference to this "fact" anywhere.
I do read that " Ho Chí Minh died at 09:47 on the morning of 4
September 1969 from heart failure at his home in Hanoi, aged 79.
As for Vơ Nguyên Giáp, also reported in your article as exiled, again
I find no record of this. I do, however, read that:
"He finally retired from his post at the Defense Ministry in 1981 and
retired from the Politburo in 1982. He remained on the Central
Committee and Deputy Prime Minister until he retired in 1991."
And:
"On 4 October 2013, a Vietnamese government official announced that
Giáp had died, aged 102, at 18:09 hours, local time, at Central
Military Hospital 108 in Hanoi, where he had been living since 2009."
And a diet of rice and potatoes? As the writer was raised, as far as I
can tell, in the U.S. "potato" is probably intended to mean "white
potato" which as far as I know is not raised in Vietnam in commercial
quantities... but certainly makes for a good story.
And, again the implication is only rice and potatoes... when I was in
Vietnam people ate quite a variety of things, many of which while
possibly cultivated, also grew wild.
I agree that your story is a real tear jerker" but I suspect that like
many stories that parents tell children is that there is a limited
amount of truth and a whole lot of "how we did it in spite of all the
problems".
I believe the people I talked to and their stories were similar to this one.
And I have no doubt of it. But equally, we have the "guest workers"
who came to Germany to work in the factories and when their contracts
ended they stayed as if they went back to Turkey they wouldn't get
the"big money" that they were paid in Germany.
That's got nothing to do with it. In Turkey they wouldn't have been
rounded up by secret police and vanished back then. They could freely
visit relatives even if they stayed in Germany (and yes, most did that
for economic reasons). Nowadays I am not so sure about not being rounded
up anymore for people who have voiced too much of a "dissident opinion".
"During that time, Vietnamese refugees sailed to neighboring countries
where they could stay in refugee camps, while waiting for sponsorship
to resettle in countries like the United States."
Ah, the penny drops. If we can get to a refugee camp we'll be fed,
clothed and sheltered, and won't have to work, while we are waiting to
go to America where everything is wonderful.
Wouldn't you do the same if you lived in an oppressed country and in
poverty that is most likely to become worse? I sure would, I'd try
everything to get out if there is no hope in changing the status quo.
And yes, then I'd try to find out what the most promising destination
could be.
Well, to an extent I live in countries that are repressed. If you were
to speak disrespectfully about the King of Thailand you will probably
be sentenced to a number of years in jail.
Probably the same would happen if you'd anger the junta.
Not so far. What happens seems to be that you are charged with what
would amount in the U.S. to defamation, in a civil court and if
convicted either fined or imprisoned. If the charges cannot be proved
then of course you are turned loose.
And guess what, the average Thai hardly thinks about it. Why should
he? It has always been that way, there is no material benefit in doing
it, so why bother?
I rather live in countries where such restrictions on free speech are
not imposed.
But you don't live in a country that has "free speech". Quite the
opposite in fact, even a quick search shows that there have been
innumerable cases where an individual was penalized for their "free
speech".
In Singapore, if you were to get up on your orange box and advocate
communism you won't even be tried in court. They will simply lock you
up under the "Emergency Laws" that have been in force since 1948.
Do the Singaporean worry? Well, I've been living in or visiting the
country for 50 years and I've never heard one mention it.
I doubt they'd make you disappear though.
When I lived in Indonesia if you loudly objected to the government you
could be "disappeared" and I personally know of at least one case
where it did happen.
The Indonesian population wasn't leaving the country in droves. Not at
all.
I lived in the Netherlands and two large immigrant groups back in the
80's were people from the Caribbean and Indonesians.
The Indonesians were probably largely Christians from the Ambon
Islands who had served in the Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) and had
been evacuated to Holland when Indonesia became independent.
Subsequently quite a number immigrated back and the company I worked
for employed a number of them. Very different people from the Javanese
:-)
I might point out that in the mid 1800's the Chinese who came to the
U.S. already referred to it as "The land of fat pork" which is
probably a synonym for "Heaven" to a Chinese peasant who likely ate
meat once a year.... or less.
In short a story intended to elicited sympathy but very weak on truth,
or perhaps I should say, "replete with innuendos eliciting sympathy".
Nonsense. Talk to Vietnamese of your generation.
I have. In fact I met and had several long conversations with a N.
Vietnamese, or at least he was from Hanoi, and this would have been in
the 1990's. A young chap, he was in Thailand looking into the computer
business with the intent of importing computers from Thailand to
Vietnam and had been introduced to me as some sort of computer expert
as at the time I was writing a weekly newspaper column about
computers.
Strangely he gave no indication of being unhappy to live in Vietnam.
Talk to older chaps around your age. They know.
Vietnam has meantime adopted a lot of what Hungarians used to call
"gulash-communism", named after a rich and very delicious national dish.
A watered down version of communism where some enterpreneurial
activities are tolerated as long as that doesn't displease the local
communist party bosses. If you otherwise click your heels on demand and
behave compliantly you can have a life. At least somewhat. Would I want
to live there? Nope.
Yes, the Viets are not a stupid people and they saw what happened in
other countries in the region. Singapore, Thailand and later China
went from very primitive countries to a largely developed country in
less then a lifetime. Why not Vietnam?
But you know, anyone who has ever worked for the government or a large
company can see that the fiction espoused by pure communism is only
that, fiction.
A couple of the people I've worked with over the years since the
1970's were married to Vietnamese women who had, with their American
husband's help, gotten their parents out of Vietnam. I never heard
them talk about oppression. They talked about how much better life was
here, largely because they were married to Americans who made a lot of
money.
Most won't talk about details until they know you really well. There is
still a large residual of the fear that was drilled into them by the
regime. This is why Vietnamese over here almost rebelled when an old law
forbidding members of communist parties from running in public office in
California was about to be abolished. Having known people who were
tortured under communism I understand their fear.
It all sounds like a good story but frankly I doubt it. I knew a
number of couples - Vietnamese wife and American husband and I never
knew the wives to be a bit "close mouthed". Quite the opposite in
fact.
I distinctly remember the wife of the Project Manager I worked for in
West Java. His wife made several trips to Vietnam shortly after the
war in order to get her mother and father out to the U.S. and she
talked about it quite openly with no mention at all of any oppression.
But of course, her mom and dad hadn't fought against the North and so
weren't war criminals at all. Just regular folks.
Remember what the "Allies" did to loyal Germans who had never broken a
German law? They hung or imprisoned them.
I would emphasis that in the, admittedly few, cases where I personally
knew the facts the "poor improvised boat people" had money, and
offered to pay for supplies. One in gold bullion.
None of them I met falls into that category. They were simple workers.
I've got a good friend who "escaped" from Hungary. He grew up and was
educated, served in the Hungarian army and graduated from collage,
under the communist government. I've asked him about live under the
communists and he had no complaints at all. His reason for leaving the
country? Well when he graduated from collage with a degree as a
chemical engineer the government had a job for him as a "food chemist"
and he wanted to work in the oil business.
In fact I firmly believe that the reason most people fled the
communists was primarily a financial one.... Ooooo I can make the big
money in the West.
That doesn't jibe with what I heard. One family fled communist
oppression from Hungary. One of them didn't make it, was shot while
crossing over. The fact alone that they made "fleeing the republic" a
crime punishable by immediate death speaks volumes.
I can only comment on what I was told by the Hungarian friend I've
mentioned. I asked him about the so called "Iron Curtain" and he
laughed. He said that anyone with any sense could simply walk out of
Hungary as he did. He told me that he walked for two days through what
he said was dense forest and never saw or heard of any "Iron Curtain"
and went on to say that it was fairly common knowledge how to get out
of the country.
--
Cheers,
John B.