Q: You not only have had combat experience in Vietnam, but you were also a prisoner of war. When you look at terrorism right now, with people like Osama bin Laden, do you have any reservations about watching strikes like that?

A: You could say, Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that's depicted? Most of us have never heard of him before. And where there is a parallel with Vietnam is: What's plan B? What do we do next? We sent our troops into Vietnam to protect the bases. Lyndon Johnson said, Only to protect the bases. Next thing you know.... Well, we've declared to the terrorists that we're going to strike them wherever they live. That's fine. But what's next? That's where there might be some comparison.

There you have it folks, more of that killer McCain judgement.

I am afloat in a basket 120 km off the coast of the Vietnamese mainland. Well, it is a round, woven bamboo boat, the underside covered in pitch - a coracle. I am being rowed out to a fishing boat anchored off the bay as the tide comes in at Bay Canh Island, part of the isolated Con Dao archipelago. The lighthouse is perched 212 meters above the beach. Established by the French in 1887, the beacon sweeps the night sky at rotation intervals of 10 seconds, its 3 beams visible from 31 nautical miles away.

[caption id="attachment_50" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Tridacna Clam "][/caption]

Beginning with Japan.  I spent an entire day in and out of classrooms, speaking with the Principal, and interacting with students.  I found that Japanese children had a very conducive learning environment.  It would be easy to attribute the differences to socioeconomic conditions, however, the value (or perceived value) of education there is also important to note.  Taken together, the parental role in their child’s motivation, the facilities, and the inherent costs are all factors that contribute to the superior elementary learning experience in Japan.

In Japan, children are taught from an early age the importance of an education to their well being and upward mobility.  Notably, the mother is the primary benefactor of her child’s education.  When I stayed with the Maedo family in Kobe, Seiko’s role in Tomohiro education was very apparent.  She cleared the table (and room) every night after dinner so Tomohiro could begin his homework.  Once Tomohiro completed particular assignments, Seiko (not her husband) was the one who checked them for accuracy.  It was only after his nightly assignments were completed and checked was he rewarded and allowed to go on an evening stroll through the park.  Just as in the American system, Tomohiro is taught at an early age the importance of his education and its’ priority over other activities.  School nights are just that; time to prepare for the upcoming school day.

In contrast, Vietnamese parents hold a different attitude toward their child’s education.  Granted economic circumstances are different; most parents do not wholeheartedly support their child attending school every day.  The family usually needs their child’s monetary contribution and consequently cannot afford their child to be in school during working hours.  Children’s poor attendance is exasperated by the government’s negligent “non-compulsory attendance” policy.   Although the government does keep track of the number of school age children who attend school and encourage them to go, it is obvious this is just a superficial gesture.

The facilities in Japan are unmatched by those in Vietnam.  In the Japanese elementary school I visited, there is an expansive library filled with books written in both English and Japanese.  The classrooms are equipped with personal desks and chairs, dry erase boards, and air-conditioning.   All in all, the facilities provide a comfortable environment that facilitates learning.

The amenities in Vietnam are barren.  The classrooms are all open air and equipped with long tables, benches, and portable teaching boards.  The library, if you will, had a mere two book cases, which were filled with books donated by foreign visitors.  There is a small recreation courtyard that only accommodates half of the students at a time, and there is no cafeteria.  All things considered, the facilities are not favorable for students and do not promote learning.

In Japan, elementary education is free of charge (including books) and lunch is provided for a small fee.  Uniforms are not required, with the exception of white school slippers.  There are hardly any costs for students to attend school thanks to the government’s budget which takes into account primary education.

In Vietnam, education is only free for the first half of the school day.  Students must pay a fee to attend the afternoon session.  Eighty percent of the attendees go to school the entire day, while twenty percent only attend the morning session.  This twenty percent are exceptionally poor and cannot afford to pay the minimal fee to attend the afternoon session, not to mention the other inherent costs such as lunch, uniforms, books, and transportation.   Thankfully, an educated minority of parents organized a Parent Teacher Organization that serves as the financial backbone of the school.  Through personal donations and sponsorships, the PTA provides financial assistance to the less fortunate students.  The school I visited began with only eight rooms and increased to forty-two rooms with the financial support of the parents.  Also, the PTA pays for the air conditioning in the library and the administrative office.

As a direct result of the educational emphasis in Japan, society is continually progressing.  As a direct result of the government’s negligence in Vietnam, social growth is virtually stagnant.  It is time that the government in Vietnam gets involved and strives to provide a primary education comparable to the one offered Japan.   Ultimately, the ambivalent parents, poor facilities, and inherent costs all detract from a Vietnamese child’s educational experience.

Delay in U.N. project approval worries Japan

ADB backs Vietnam hydropower project

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China grim on prospects for climate pact

China shying from climate obligations, adviser says

China again slams U.S. arms sale to Taiwan

Thailand Stocks, Currency Fall as Police Clash with Protesters

Delay in U.N. project approval worries Japan

The Real Crisis in North Korea? Food

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Islamic Group Gains Power in Indonesia

Indonesia raises alert level of Sulawesi volcano

India’s tricky path to industrialisation

ADB backs Vietnam hydropower project

Julia Shaw is like a warm breeze after a gentle rain... the kind that blows ashore from the sea and lulls you to dream. She had gusted into Con Dao Island to unfurl a dream, conceived through an unlikely chain of events. It had its origin with Julia's involvement in Vietnam's aspirations to field a sailing team in the Olympics and now, as a peripheral outcome, she was teaching fishermen to sail. Not so that they would become Olympic champions but rather that these diver-fishermen would have better livelihood prospects.

They had come from among the poorest in the community, supporting their families through the dangerous and destructive business of harvesting whatever could be sold from the reefs. With their newly acquired skills, there would be opportunities for jobs in leisure sailing, beach resorts or marinas... and it would keep them off the reefs. There may be arguments about Julia's program concerning it's effectiveness as a sustainable livelihood initiative, but whatever the rationale for or against her dream, I cannot help but feel that there is much more to it than the hard facts or figures... not when I see her head out to sea with these eager and smiling fishermen to catch the wind.

Today, Governor Sarah Palin, Alaska's vampire ideologue in chief, laid down the barrage of bullshit behind which she and the Scabby Old Fart that called her forth from the nether regions hope to storm the Big Beach of the US Presidency. A lot of people are going to vote in this election who weren't even around as spectators during the time when William Ayers and the Weather Underground were engaged in covert actions as American Freedom Fighters doing what they could to put an end to the illegal American war of their time by destroying things in as flamboyant and non-fatal fashion as possible.

Of course the backers of that and every other illegal American war, including the present one, want to call Ayers' actions terrorism at the same time they will characterize US efforts to destroy the elected governments of a dozen different countries by a wide variety of covert and overt, violent and non-violent means as "guerilla actions" by "freedom fighters". If its us, we're freedom fighters; if its you, you're evil-doing terrorist scum undeserving of life, you or any of your people, because "We're exceptional". After all, God is on our side. Ask us.

In Sarah Palin's looking glass world, Barack Obama is a terrorist because he shared an activist's goal of neighborhood improvement , yet her own wanna-be "first dude"  (I knew Lebowski, dude, and you're no Lebowski!), in quite a differently oriented motivation, paid dues and attended meetings in support of Alaskan secession from the United States. Obama won't wear a flag pin because he thinks it cheapens the flag. Todd Palin's hero in the secessionist crowd simply hates the "damn flag".

Then there's the Big Maverick, himself. That label may be the truest thing we have to work with among the many bullshit claims about his heroic military record, his sterling patriotic character, his human compassionate and monumental political, economic and social sagacity. There is no reason at all to get fussy here about the definition of terms where the candidacy of Loose John McCannon is concerned, because he and his running mate, the small army of lobbyists' running his campaign, the ideologues of the journalistic right, his big corporate backers and the whole gaga lipstick-and-sixpack mob, simply couldn't care less about the meaning of words. A maverick is a runaway dogey, just another minor pain in a cowboy's saddle-worn ass. McCain-Palin have the pain-in-the-ass part owned; the rest is a combination of front-office hype and wishful thinking of the most self-aggrandizing sort on McCain's part.

Theirs is the world of marketing, where you can name an automobile a galaxy and drive it among the stars, hell, be a star yourself by electing people who are your equals, in terms of intellect, character, concern for your fellow man and the future of a dying planet. "Party on, Dude. Hell, they'll eventually vote us out, but we'll have fucked it up so bad they'll have no chance to fix it, and memory length being what it is, after a couple of years we'll slither back in, blame them for making the mess in the first place, and loot and plunder at will for a few more years".

Martin Luther King had a dream, and I reckon I'm entitled to one of my own, and it is this: The Democrats win in 90% of their 2008 electoral contests because the voters overnight miraculously gained an extra 50 points of social, historical and political IQ. They went to the polls and put the Republican Party so far out of power that even if everyone could forget their corrupt venality during the last half of the 20th Century and the first decade of the next one, it would take a generation for them to recover. The Democrats, unwilling to forgive and forget, and cognizant at last that the people are only a little bit less pissed off at them for letting it get so bad without doing anything to slow it/them down, let alone arrest it/them, take the necessary legislative steps to end the Republican Party as it has been known in all its moral squalor. They rewrite the Constitution of the United States to countenance three, four, many political parties based on shared interests, and set about rebuilding the material, moral and social capital so horribly wasted by a two-party system that rarely rises above the level of team sports, in terms of how much good they do for the country.

It would be a new country, and a new country needs capital to make it work. Here's my plan: Identify the wealthiest 5% of the American people. Wait to do it until steps are taken to criminalize capital flight, because the buggers always take off with the loot if they have advance warning. Once the names are known, attach the numbers that go with them, i.e. the value of their assets and incomes. Seize half in the name of the New America. Do it with smiles and toasts all around, knowing that it is mostly the same money that went missing during every Republican and too many Democratic administrations since the beginning of the Union. If it looks like we might still be a little short, make it the top 10%, wealth-wise. Seize these riches with a clear conscience, knowing that the "contributors" will still be left with more than a middle class family with two earners are able to make over the course of their entire lives.

Take steps to make of the political process something vastly more dignified than the current money-driven mud-wrestling contest to which our sound-bite, fast-food, instant-gratification, self-serving and altogether superficial lifestyle has reduced it.

Make it official that war will no longer be on the list of first things tried, where human and political  relations with those outside our borders are concerned. Dismantle the military industrial complex, or at the very least, turn it over to the Quakers. De-militarize space and every other militarized part of the globe. End poverty by acknowledging that this planet and its resources are wholly and equally the property of every living creature that inhabits it. Every godless microbe, sponge, beetle, starling, cloned poodle, transvestite, fur seal, harpy eagle and harpy governor deserves its little piece of paradise here, and it should not be considered for sale. Those who would profit by the destruction of a single natural organism must be forced to make realistic calculations of the cost, and that includes everything living that must die or be displaced by development.

If that means that humankind must step down from those Hummers and StarCraft and start learning. Learning will occur by virtue of a vastly improved and bullshit-immune education system, stripped of the pedagogy of religious and other spurious expressions of natural causality, and the idea that every person has the right to become absolute ruler of anything beyond his or her own skin will be ridiculed, and if necessary, slapped around by whoever is handy as witness to such claims.

William Ayres was right to attempt to wake up the citizenry with explosions. The idea that you shouldn't do such things to warn against criminal undertakings wasn't motivating Joe 6-pack McCain, off bombing that  power station in the middle of a civilian Hanoi neighborhood. He's lucky all they blew off was his wing. If it was an Iranian pilot bombing Fairbanks, and the locals brought him down, the prospects of surviving for five years before being sent home to a heroes welcome, I leave readers to calculate for themselver. As far as I'm concerned, by keeping him alive, the Vietnamese showed more character than McCain did by bombing their homes, and yet, in the curious blood sport that is Republican political campaigns, he's the one called hero.

What we know about the Phú Mỹ bridge

• Construction started on 9/9/2005
• Total length 2031 metres
• Width 27.5 metres
• Load capacity of 100,000 vehicles per day
• Built on 45 metre deep water
• Height of 162.5 metres
• Budget of 1806.52 billion VND
• 26 year payback prediction
• Builders are Freyssinet International et companie (france)
• and Arcadis (France)
• Investors include Bilfinger Berger (Germany)
• and Baulderstone Hornibrook (Australia)
• BOT Phu My VN, (group of Vietnamese investors)

From the District 7 side. Taken 5/oct/2008

5/oct/2008

4/oct/2008

5/oct/2008

5/oct/2008

4/oct/2008

jeg tulla ikke, altså.

Written in response to this

In June 2006, I was living in Hanoi and I wrote this piece detailing the hard work we were putting into cleaning up KOTO’s new restaurant - the facility I was fundraising for in my former VSO post.

At the time I wasn’t blogging for funds, or no more than any one would whose waking hours were spent wondering where they hell we’d find $80,000 dollars to save a wonderful organisation.

But someone read that post. By chance they'd eaten in the KOTO restaurant that was to close and which we were trying to replace. It dawned on them that while they were eating their beautiful lunch we were scrubbing and cleaning.

It moved them. It moved them enough to get in touch and to let us know of a fund that they helped administer. The told me I should apply. We did.

In time we received several thousand much-needed dollars.

However, one of the problems with fundraising for a specific item is that day-to-day needs will also continue to swallow money. It’s hard to say no when often the need is just as vital and potentially far more urgent.

How do you balance the need for a new facility with that of urgent health care?

Strictly speaking if you adhere to international charity guidelines this is illegal. If you tell people you want money for a specific project – then that is where there money has to be spent.

At KOTO we found a way off-setting those costs by ramping up the sponsorship programme. A total of $80 a month would cover housing, feeding, healthcare and an allowance for each trainee.

That is not cheap. We knew we had to give so much back.

A newsletter was good. PDFed and emailed. Better still was when we hit on the idea of Flickr.

Before it had been impossible, due to poor internet, to send photos out individually but we could upload them. We photographed everything including lessons, field trips, sports activities and ultimately graduation ceremonies.

Tech savvy sponsors could follow us virtually day by day. For the rest – a regular email included a link to the best of the photos.

Increasing media interest in KOTO lead to visits from both the American and Australian first ladies. The BBC visited. So did CNN. The media had access to all our photos and used them.

We gained further sponsors just for those field trips. We even used Flickr to send postcards drawn by the kids themselves.

Meanwhile my blog was growing in popularity and I was getting requests to write for the local media.  I, of course, wrote about KOTO and the money we needed.

And on a wonderful day when we finally opened that new KOTO our sponsors could see where the money had gone.

I’ve since left Hanoi but I understand the new restaurant is always full and the cash continues to be ploughed back into the project. The possibility of a new KOTO in Saigon has been mentioned.

So KOTO is, potentially, now sustainable – the restaurant is generating revenue for the organisation.

However, this is also a cautionary tale because I look at what I set up and the Flickr account has lapsed.

Despite my promptings no one took over my blogging. The website was, up until recently, neglected.  As much as I tried to pass on these skills no one took them up. In that respect I failed.

Fast forward a few years and here I am in Cameroon.

AIDS in Africa might be less “saleable” than cute streetkids in Vietnam but the need is, if anything, more acute.

Further context – Asia is taking off while conditions in Africa, if anything, get worse.

The internet is even slower and less widespread. I told a friend recently that in Asia even streetkids had email addresses and used cyber cafes.  Here I find office colleagues don't know how to email.

But...

I believe that means there is an even greater need here for getting the Web2.0 side up and running. To the developed world Africa spells corruption. Business who want to invest here demand transparency. Charity donors are no different.

While fund holders may want to see our books, the man or woman on the street just want to get a sense of the problem and see where the money is going. Even more they want to see the progress their donation prompts.

They don't want to see hunger and disease but they do want to see smiles.

They want to see progress. In particular they want to see people being enabled to help themselves.

Emails can be used to update but better still if they become so involved that they follow my employer’s progress across several platforms – Flickr for pics, a blog for news and comment, Twitter for urgent updates or simply for networking.

And they can interact and ask questions too.

In Hanoi a great deal of money was raised from tourists and expats.  Here we have neither - we are forced to look internationally for donors.

It is soul destroying to have 30 pictures take a working day to upload but that should be put into context. The post system here means that it might take two weeks for me to send to a letter to a village one hour away.

And conditions here might be getting worse but technology has a habit of bucking that trend.

I do expect internet speed to improve and in time we will be able to use the likes of YouTube to further reinforce our messages. Podcasts would be fabulous.

Of course there are important Web2.0 nuances. Your blog is not a place to put your press releases. Your blog posts can’t be signed off by the board. They should be emotive and they should be descriptive. They should be a first person account. They cannot be written by committee.

My KOTO experience tells me that it is not enough to put a blog in place you have to train local people to keep it going in your absence. They are the authentic voices but they do have to know how to write for an international audience.

Nobody who gives money to any charity – whether they are an organisation or an individual – expects nothing in return. At most they want evidence of how it is spent, at the very least they want to feel good about themselves.

Technology can help us meet these expectations.

If everything goes to plan here, in the long term you won’t read too much about COPAAP, my current employers on this blog.

This week I am going to help set up a “training blog” for my colleague Atam to let him get a feel for blogging.

In time I want there to be a COPAAP blog, Twitter feed and Flickr.

It is a big undertaking but, I believe, it is relatively straightforward compared to many challenges we face. Blogging is easy.  Training volunteers to look after AIDS sufferers in remote villages is hard.

Watch this space

*Pic is of my desk here in Cameroon.

Secondly, an urban rail system in Saigon is good news and all, but given the rate at which most construction happens in Vietnam, I think 12 years is optimistic. I've watched (and listened to) the new home construction taking place on both sides of my house for about a month now, and I'm not terribly impressed. The work ethic is there, to be sure, but the technical end is still a little out of date. The scaffolding, for example, is made of wood. I'm not talking about two-by-fours, either, but pieces of wood recently ripped from trees - limbs, branches and such. I do not kid. Also, if you think government contractors are slow in America, you should see them move in a Communist nation. It's like watching crippled snails procrastinate.

Finally, whether this will actually solve the traffic woes in HCMC is debatable. There are 80 million people in Vietnam and 40 million motorcycles - in a nation the size of California. Assuming the rate of population growth is greater than the annual rate of death by motorbike (a family of four was killed on a motorbike near where I live last week, and twice in the last three days I watched crowds of spectators form as two-wheelers burned in the middle of the roadway), those numbers will be a lot higher in 12 years. Maybe our beloved leader knows something I don't, but I plan to keep my expectations firmly in check. If Dung has any sense, he will, too. Otherwise he could find himself in deep doodoo.

Vietnam plans $15 billion for city railway systems

The Vietnamese government said today it plans to spend billions building two urban railway networks to help ease the ever-worsening traffic congestion in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung approved a US$14.8 billion plan to build commuter railway networks inside traffic-choked Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City over the next 12 years.

Hanoi will receive $7.3 billion to build seven railway lines, including sky trains and subways, according to a statement released on the government's website on Sunday. Of the total cost, $5.5 billion will come from foreign investment.

Ho Chi Minh City will receive $7.5 billion, of which $6.3 billion will be foreign invested, to build six urban railways and metro lines.

Prime Minister Dung has asked officials to speed up preparations for the elevated and underground railway systems and focus on attracting overseas aid and loans for the projects, according to the statement.

“The project will help to ease congestion which happens everyday in the cities and has become chronic,” Nguyen Van Cong, chief administrator at the Ministry of Transportation said in a phone interview with Bloomberg Monday. “It will also help limit traffic accidents and improve cities' environments.”

An ancient cai luong play

Main traits. Cai luong is more or less similar to Western operettas, yet easier to depict the characters’ feelings. It has about 20 main songs, but each may be retuned with different emotional tempos, making various versions. The principal supporting songs in cai luong is the vong co - (literally, “nostalgia for the past”) - a special type of singing with the background music of either the “dan tranh” (16-chord zither) or the guitar. Cai luong owes much of its success to the sweet voices of the cast, much appreciated by the audiences. Upon hearing the first bars of the desired vong co, the audience reacts with gasps of recognition and applause.

Perfomance. There are normally two types, independent song performance and play performance. A Cai luong performance always includes dances, songs and music, whose influences is originally drawn from southern folk one. The music of Cai luong has so far been enriched with hundreds of new tunes. A cai luong orchestra mainly consists of guitars with concave frets. Regarding a Cai luong play, the scenes are changed frequently throughout the play. In a typical play, the actresses and actors would use a combination of regular spoken dialogues and “vong co” to express their thoughts and emotions.

Cai luong types. There are mainly two types of Cai luong: ancient cai luong and modern cai luong. The latter consists of stories of modern Vietnamese society. Its plots refer to romantic love stories blended with family or social relationships. The stories also explore cultural norms, social norms and other aspects of Vietnamese society. This type can be somehow described as tragedy but happy ended.

If you watch a play in which the actors and actresses dress old fashioned costumes, it is ancient cai luong. The plot is based on tales, legends or historical stories of the feudal system with ancient kings and warriors, while the plots come from numerous Chinese historical or ancient legends. Watching a vong co play, you may see that, in addition to regular speeches, several melodies are incorporated into the play. These melodies are reused through different plays; however the words are changed to fit the context.

Up to now, although cai luong had passed through the bright period but it still has a lot of loyal listeners. Throughout one hundred years of development, cai luong had claimed its important role in the Vietnamese traditional art cradle!

Should you are fond of tradition and culture, listening and exploring Cai luong is such an ideal way to have good understanding. You can enjoy a cai luong play in the Ho Chi Minh Theatre or on the TV art programs.