VIETNAM - Joining WTO, Agent Orange, useful websites for information

From Wilfred Gluud
Danish Vietnamese Association
- Friendship and Development

Dear Friends

I am currently writing an article in danish about Vietnam joining the WTO. Therefore I have collected the most interesting articles in english, and you can see the list on our website: www.davifo.dk/Nyheder2006.htm

Please also note my Agent Orange webpage, which I keep updated with latest news: www.davifo.dk/Agent_orange.htm

And if you need more links about Vietnam, try: www.davifo.dk/VNlinks.htm
Travel-links: www.davifo.dk/VNrejsen.htm#Rejse-links
Also Laos and Cambodia: www.davifo.dk/Laos_cambodia.htm

Selected books in English on Vietnam from Amazon(UK): www.davifo.dk/Amazon_vietnam.htm

Len Aldis/Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society has a new website: www.lenaldis.co.uk

Best regards
Wilfred Gluud
Danish Vietnamese Association
- Friendship and Development

Homepage: www.davifo.dk

From Get Up!
Australia

A huge wave of change is sweeping the United States. George Bush's Republican Party has lost control of both houses of the US Congress. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a worldwide symbol of the administration's catastrophic failure in Iraq, has resigned. President Bush's Iraq policy now clings by a thread - discredited and rejected at home and abroad.

So what now for Australia?
The American people have finally forced the Bush administration to face its failure in Iraq. But the Australian Government appears to have no Iraq policy at all, other than to blindly support Bush's sinking ship.

Tell John Howard it's time for an independent Australian foreign policy plan in Iraq, including a clearly defined exit strategy.

www.getup.org.au/campaign/DemandAustralianLeadership

As the months and years tick by, the Iraq war looks more like a never-ending nightmare. Independent reports estimate more than 500,000 Iraqis have been killed; millions are refugees. Experts warn civil war could soon pass the point of no return, while last month was one of the deadliest for Coalition troops since the war began.

As Australians, we have an obligation to do more than just wait for leadership from afar. Our Government must reclaim its independent foreign policy and moral responsibility for taking us to war in the first place, and John Howard must make it clear how much longer he plans keep Australian soldiers fighting George Bush's war without a workable plan for peace.

Help seize this critical moment in the global debate on Iraq to demand our Government think for itself, and give us real leadership. Tell John Howard he must no longer delay in setting out a plan for a new way forward, including a clearly defined exit strategy - and has until December 4, when Parliament concludes for the year, to deliver.

www.getup.org.au/campaign/DemandAustralianLeadership

Blind support has led us down a failed path. With America's future in Iraq open to debate like never before, Australians want an honest conversation with our Government, so we can find an honourable path forward - and home.

Thanks for taking action,
The GetUp team

Bush’s Carnival of Blood
By Mike Whitney

This is a dark day for Americans and Iraqis alike.
Killing Saddam Hussein isn’t justice; its vengeance.
Only Bush believes the two are the same. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15525.htm


This was a guilty verdict on America as well
By Robert Fisk

So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world.
America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15520.htm


Iraq-Gate: The Secret History of How the United States Illegally Armed
Saddam Hussein.

Conversation with the journalist who broke the Iraq-gate scandal that involved President George Bush, James Baker and Donald Rumsfeld . This is a must listen
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1412.htm


Is Bush Next?
Paul Craig Roberts

The show trial of Saddam Hussein was drawn out until two days before the midterm US elections.
The death sentence imposed on the former Iraqi president may help the deluded band of Bush supporters find victory in the defeat that Bush has met in Iraq and motivate them to support the beleaguered Republicans on November 7. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15524.htm


Saddam Was Key in early CIA plot
While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2849.htm


Secret Message From James Baker to Tariq Aziz: Baker informs Aziz, whose government 13 months previously had gassed Kurdish villages, that "the United States seeks a broadened and deepened relationship with Iraq."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2265.htm


Iraq-Gate: The United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1413.htm


A Brief History: US-Iraq 1980s
Iraq uses US-supplied military intelligence “to calibrate attacks with mustard gas on Iranian ground troops....” http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=us_iraq_80s


America helped make a monster:
It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons.
But it happened.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html

The Secret Wars Of The CIA

How 6 million People Were killed in CIA secret wars.

By John Stockwell, former CIA Station Chief in Angola.
He is a very compelling speaker and the highest level CIA officer to testify to the Congress about his actions.
He estimates that over 6 million people have died in CIA covert actions, and this was in the late 1980's.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4068.htm

Vietnam, U.S. set new tone on
dioxin war legacy

By Grant McCool
Reuters
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; 8:09 AM

BIEN HOA, Vietnam (Reuters) - Doctors warn people living near the Bien Hoa military airport not to drink the water, eat the fish or grow fruit and vegetables because of wartime dioxin poisoning.

Brain-damaged babies and children with shortened limbs and other physical deformities are still being brought to hospitals for specialized care, four decades after the United States sprayed Vietnam with the highly toxic defoliant.

In recent months, Vietnam and the United States have started to overcome years of frustration in both governments about how to deal with environmental and health effects of the poison code-named "agent orange."

Americans and Vietnamese say they are perhaps just months from planning environmental clean-up and containment of dioxin, beginning at the former U.S. air base in the central city of Danang.

"Assisting Vietnam with this issue will help clear the conscience of the U.S. government," said Le Ke Son, director of "The Committee 33" working on impacts of an estimated 70 million litres of toxic chemicals used from 1961 to 1971 by the U.S. military and the South Vietnam government it supported.

The war ended on April 30, 1975......Hanoi and Washington restored diplomatic ties in 1995 and they are now cementing a friendship founded on growing trade and business ties as Vietnam introduces market reforms.

But the consequences of the toxic war remain a painful sore in the relationship that both governments and non-governmental organizations dearly wish to repair.

"There has been a lot of work on the issue," said Michael Marine, U.S. ambassador to Hanoi . "The question is very complex. What you do is in part driven by how you intend to use the site, the land, the cost for the clean-up."

HOT SPOTS

Scientists identify coastal Danang , Vietnam 's fourth largest city with about 1 million people, the south-central town of Phu Cat in Binh Dinh province and Bien Hoa in the southern province of Dong Nai as "hot spots," wartime bases where the chemicals were stored and spilled.

Bien Hoa is a bustling city of 500,000 people about 40 km (25 miles) north of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam 's industrial heart. It is a typical Vietnamese city, teeming with motorbikes, construction sites and Internet cafes alongside displays of communist hammer and sickle symbols and party slogans. But its military airport and surrounding lakes, ponds and land are toxic. The Vietnam military plans to clean up the site.

A study by Vietnamese and Canadian scientists of Hatfield environmental consultants in West Vancouver, British Columbia, measured dioxin levels in the soil that are hundreds of times higher than is acceptable in other countries.

"My dream is to conclude work on these hot spots in the next five years," said Son, a scientist at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment who serves on a joint Vietnam-U.S. panel of technical experts who met for the first time in June.

Washington has ruled out paying compensation but is willing to share technical advice with Vietnamese counterparts.

The non-governmental Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation provides expertise and the Ford Foundation, a U.S. philanthropic group, has made grants for environmental and health research.
"Part of the reason we are making these grants is so that they can develop a more accurate view of the nature of the threat," says Charles Bailey, Ford Foundation representative in Vietnam .

BUSH VISIT

The subject could come up when President Bush visits in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit.

But the issue is also legally sensitive because a Vietnamese victims group is suing 37 American chemical companies in a U.S. federal court. The class action lawsuit was thrown out in March 2005 and the group is appealing the ruling.

Americans, Australians, New Zealanders and South Koreans who served in the war were also exposed to dioxin. They have all had some success in obtaining services and care for themselves.

It is only with increasing economic prosperity that poor, under-developed Vietnam has sought to improve assistance to Vietnamese victims and to try to find out how many there are.

Children of people exposed to dioxin during the war have also been sickened or deformed, but researchers say no one can yet accurately quantify the total number of victims. The National Academy of Sciences in the United States found that up to 4.8 million people "would have been present" during spraying.

In another recent development, the United Nations has become involved for the first time.

The United Nations Development Programme in Hanoi proposes the establishment of a transparently governed trust fund where international donors, companies and governments could put money for dioxin-related environmental and health work.

"The stars really are aligned. I think we are getting there," says Koos Neefjes, senior advisor at UNDP in Vietnam .

DOCTORS AND VICTIMS

The doctors who work daily with the victims or live with environmental and health impacts welcome the progress being made toward reducing contamination and eventually ridding the country of dioxin.

"I don't hold any grudges or anger and I am of a view of letting the past go and if we can do something now then we should do what we can to help," said Nguyen Thi Phuong Tan, head of the " Peace Village " for the disabled in Ho Chi Minh City , one of 12 nationwide.

Every day, Tan and her staff of doctors and nurses provide care to 339 patients from infancy to 25 years old. They include children with enlarged heads or shortened limbs and one with skin covering the face where there should be eyes.

Some of the patients lie in a vegetative state in cots, others are teenagers reading and writing and wrestling playfully with students who come to visit the hospital.

The doctor's "let bygones be bygones" attitude is typical of Vietnamese, who are known for being pragmatic.

Even in Bien Hoa, where toxicity levels are highest and health authorities say there are 465 people with dioxin-related disabilities or illnesses such as cancer, a doctor speaks in a matter-of-fact way about the calamity.

"We have a few solutions, including warning residents against using the water from ponds and lakes near the airport," said Tu Thanh Chuong, director of Dong Nai province health department.

"We told people not to eat fish from this area and we banned the production of fruit and vegetables in the contaminated land."


(Additional reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam and Nguyen Van Vinh)
© 2006 Reuters

AGENT ORANGE COURT CASE
IN NEW YORK

Letter from Len Aldis
Secretary Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society

3rd October 2006

The Honourable Judges of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
40 Centre Street
New York, New York 10007USA

Ref: Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin
Et al. V. Dow Chemical Co., et al,. Docket No 05-1953-cv

Your Honours,

I am neither a scientist, nor a man of medicine. I do not have any medical experience or knowledge at all but write to you as a person who has travelled to Vietnam on many occasions, and visited many of its provinces. It is because of my visits and what I have seen that I write and ask to make a submission to the Court in favour of the plaintiffs in the appeal before you.

One of the weapons used by American forces in the war on Vietnam was chemicals. It has been established from research carried out by a team from Columbia University led by Jeanne Mager Stellman and Steven D. Stellman - published in Nature Magazine of April 2003 – of the logbooks of the pilots that 82 million litres of chemicals were sprayed over a vast area of South Vietnam. Many scientists from a number of countries have also carried out research on the effects of the use of these chemicals.

However, I wish to draw the attention of the Court to the visits I have made to Vietnam, the first in 1989, and each year since. My travels within the country have taken me to many of the provinces north, south, east and west. In the seventeen years I have been able to meet and speak to many hundreds of people, young and elderly, suffering from various illnesses and disabilities as a result of the chemicals. I have met the people affected at clinics, in schools, hospitals and in their homes. In many cases it has not been easy for me to see the terrible disabilities suffered by young adults, teenagers, and in particular children.

You will know that the War on Vietnam ended in 1975, but the use of the chemicals that included Agent Orange/Dioxin over a period from 1961 – 1972 has affected millions, many thousands of whom were born long after the war ended.

To see, as I have, seen a child of six years born with no eyes, slowly making his way around a room by touch. A young girl of eight, her body twisted by Spina Bifida, sitting at her school desk writing her times table. Youngsters minus limbs, be they an arm or a leg, for some minus either legs, or both arms. Hundreds of thousands died in the womb of their mothers, some shortly after their birth. These too I have seen in the special room at Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

Born in 1930, I know of no war in my lifetime that has left such a legacy to those born after its end.

International scientists have carried out tests, have investigated the soil and forests on which the chemical were used. You will no doubt have seen the evidence presented to you from people on whom the chemical was sprayed, and are ill or disabled, or from young adults whose parents served in the Vietnamese forces during the war and were born with disabilities.

I should point out that due to the nature and severity of their illnesses and/or disabilities many of the Vietnamese affected by the chemicals would not able to travel even within their own town, city, country, let alone travel to New York to present their case before you. Documentary films have been produced showing many of these tragic victims. I would hope that the Court before coming to its decision would have seen these.

Your Honours, you will be aware that members of the U.S. forces who served in Vietnam have also been affected by the same illnesses and disabilities transmitted to their children as have occurred on the Vietnamese. Further, in a lawsuit brought by these veterans in 1984 against some of the same companies before you in this appeal, you will know that it was settled out of court for a sum of $184m.

Veterans from Australia and New Zealand are suffering from the effects of the chemicals. In a settlement announced by a high Court in South Korea, the chemical companies that included Monsanto, were told to pay compensation.

At an international conference on Agent Orange held in Hanoi earlier this year, I was pleased to meet a number of veterans from Australia, Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam and the United States. I listened with great interest to their speeches recalling their time served in Vietnam and the part that some played in spraying the chemicals. It was very moving to hear an American speak of the death of his young son in his arms when his life support was turned off. His death was undoubtedly due to his father’s experiences in Vietnam.

His story can be repeated many thousands of times by the Vietnamese who went through the same tragic experience and who, today, are witnessing their children suffering from the consequences of chemicals used over thirty years ago.

The youngsters I see in my visits are those of the third generation, how many more generations will be born remains to be seen.

In Mid-December I will be in Ho Chi Minh City having been invited to the wedding of Nguyen Duc - a victim along with his brother Viet of the chemical - both were born conjoined in 1981, ten years after the spraying ended. They were separated in 1988 and I first saw them in 1989. Viet unfortunately remains very ill and requires constant medical attention.

The best wedding present that Duc and his fiancée Thanh Tuyen can receive is for the court to rule in favour of the Vietnamese victims.

Let Justice be done.

Yours sincerely

Len Aldis.
Secretary
Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society
Flat 2, 26 Tomlins Grove
London E3 4NX.
UK

Telephone: 0208 980 7146
Intl: 44+ 208 980 7146

SOLIDARITY WITH VENEZUELA
AGAINST BUSH REGIME SABOTAGE!

From: Student Friends of Venezuela

Since the election of President Hugo Chavez in 1998, Venezuela has undergone enormous positive change. Chavez' policies and a new constitution guaranteeing social and political rights, have been repeatedly endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the Venezuelan people in ten national elections.

Alongside this expansion of democracy, Venezuela's rich oil wealth is being directed into providing for the vast majority of Venezuelans for the first time.

Free healthcare has been extended to the majority of Venezuelans, tens of thousands have had their eyesight restored through Operation Miracle, and subsidised food is guaranteeing nutrition to the eight in ten Venezuelans who previously lived in poverty.

Social equality is also at the heart of the changes taking place. A Women's Development Bank is improving women's employment opportunities; homophobia is being challenged with the pro-government Mayor of Caracas working to make the capital city a 'homophobia free zone'. The Black, indigenous, and mixed race Venezuelan majority are benefiting from strong anti-racist measures.

In the field of education alone the achievements are formidable. Illiteracy, which previously afflicted 2 million adults, has been declared by UNESCO to be eradicated. Millions of adults have returned to education, from which they were previously excluded by fees and poverty, as free education - including up to university level - is now enshrined as a constitutional right. As a result seven in ten Venezuelans are now involved in some form of education.

To put this into practice, education spending has increased threefold to over 7% of GDP - a greater proportion than in Britain - providing for the refurbishing of 8,750 schools, the building of 700 new schools, and opening up free higher education to more than 400,000 new students.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has responded to these measures with a campaign to isolate Venezuela - showing it has no concern for either democracy or the welfare of Venezuelans. There is evidence of US involvement in the failed attempt to undemocratically remove Chavez through a military coup in 2002.

There is deep concern that further interventions and sabotage will take place ahead of December's Presidential elections, where Hugo Chavez is extremely likely to be re-elected.

Now is a critical time to show solidarity.

Please email us on students@vicuk.org and pass this letter on to anyone else who might be interested.

We look forward to hearing from you,

Gordon Hutchison,
Secretary, Venezuela Information Centre
www.vicuk.org

The Western world has been sold the notion that Israel's bombardment of Lebanon was justified by an "unprovoked kidnapping" of two Israeli soldiers on July 12.
The reality now appears to be quite different: that U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signed off on the war almost two months earlier and then sought a pretext.
Surprise! Surprise!
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/080806.html

On the US-Israeli Invasion of Lebanon

By Noam Chomsky

The standard Western version is that the July 2006 invasion was justified by legitimate outrage over capture of two Israeli soldiers at the border. The posture is cynical fraud.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14681.htm

"Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions."

- Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, in his opening statement to the tribunal.


Crime Against Peace: A basic provision of the Charter is that to plan, prepare, initiate or wage a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances, or to conspire or participate in a common plan to do so is a crime.

- Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DocJac14.htm


"It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy. Power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy ... The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States."

- Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former Sec.-Gen. of the United Nations.

American War Crimes in Viet Nam

Official documents show troops who reported abuse in Vietnam were discredited even as the military was finding evidence of worse.

Now, declassified records show that while the Army was working energetically to discredit Herbert, a US soldier who had exposed war crimes, military investigators were uncovering torture and mistreatment that went well beyond what he had described.

The abuses were not made public, and few of the wrongdoers were punished.

Investigators identified 29 members of the 173rd Airborne as suspects in confirmed cases of torture. Fifteen of them admitted the acts. Yet only three were punished, records show. They received fines or reductions in rank. None served any prison time.

The accounts of torture and the Army's effort to discredit Herbert emerged from a review of a once-secret Pentagon archive.

The collection — about 9,000 pages — was compiled in the early 1970s by an Army task force that monitored war crimes investigations. The files, examined recently by the Los Angeles Times, include memos, case summaries, investigative reports and sworn witness statements.

Those and related records detail 141 instances of detainee and prisoner abuse in Vietnam, including 127 involving the 173rd Airborne.

The Army task force, created after journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the 1968 My Lai massacre, served to give military brass and the White House early warning about potentially damaging revelations.

The war crimes records were declassified in 1994 and moved to the National Archives in College Park, Md., where they went largely unnoticed.

The Times examined most of the files before officials removed them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns, 78, a Vietnam veteran who served on the task force, said the files provided important lessons for dealing with the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq:

"If we rationalize it as isolated acts, as we did in Vietnam and as we're doing with Abu Ghraib and similar atrocities, we'll never correct the problem."

Read the full story!

Los Angeles Times
Sunday August 20, 2006.

A Tortured Past (and the sidebar article by Nick Turse.)
These are explosive pieces!

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-vietnam20aug20,0,1765272,full.story

A Letter From Chomsky and Others on the Recent Events in the Middle East

http://www.chomsky.info/letters/20060719.htm

Wednesday 19 July 2006

The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza.

An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press.

The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.

That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land alloted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.

Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?

Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.

This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted.

Tariq Ali
John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Eduardo Galeano
Naomi Klein
Harold Pinter
Arundhati Roy
Jose Saramago
Giuliana Sgrena
Howard Zinn

Agent Orange 'caused gene damage'

New Zealand troops who served in the Vietnam War suffered significant genetic damage from exposure to Agent Orange, a study suggests.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5224690.stm

The Crime of Lebanon and Palestine
By Stephen Lendman

The fate of the corrupted neoliberal model may be what's now at stake.
That model is already unraveling in Latin America where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is proving his alternate Bolivarian participatory democracy is overwhelmingly popular and working.
It's based on a government serving the people by providing essential social services, especially to the poor and desperate ones most in need of it.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14242.htm

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.
Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."
Samuel P. Huntington