"Maine veterans disappointed with Gagetown report" Portland Press Herald / March 17, 2013
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine veterans are expressing disappointment with a new federal report that concludes that Agent Orange and other herbicides at a Canadian military base posed no health risks to thousands of National Guard members from Maine and other states who trained there. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s report agrees with a Canadian study that concluded that contaminants at the Gagetown base in New Brunswick didn’t pose a health threat. Thousands of Maine soldiers trained at Gagetown from 1971 to 2006, and more than 100 have unsuccessfully sought disability benefits for health problems believed linked to the base."
Yes, even then this government didn't give a shit about you, soldier. If you are not a useful tool on the battlefield, you are of no use at all.
As for the place we dumped the those chemicals:
"Forty years later, US to begin cleaning up Vietnam dioxin" by Thomas Fuller | New York Times, August 10, 2012
DA NANG, Vietnam — In the tropical climate of central Vietnam, weeds and shrubs seem to grow everywhere — except here.
Forty years after the United States stopped spraying herbicides in the jungles of Southeast Asia in hopes of denying cover to Vietcong fighters and North Vietnamese troops, an air base here is one of about two dozen former American sites that remain polluted with an especially toxic strain of dioxin, the chemical contaminant in Agent Orange that has been linked to cancers, birth defects, and other diseases.
Will it take forty years to clean up the depleted uranium in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc, etc, etc, and how many will die before then and thus miss out on any chump-change compensation (if there ever is any)?
On Thursday, after years of rebuffing Vietnamese requests for assistance in a cleanup, the United States inaugurated its first major effort to address the environmental effects of the long war.
“This morning we celebrate a milestone in our bilateral relationship,” said David B. Shear, the US ambassador to Vietnam. “We’re cleaning up this mess.”
Well, I'm not celebrating anything regarding this war crime. You are guilty of using chemical weapons, AmeriKa, over another war based on false flag lies!
The program, which will cost $43 million and take four years, was officially welcomed with smiles and handshakes at the ceremony.
Well, I suppose it's better than not cleaning it up, and I have no problem with the cosy, 'kay?
But bitterness remains here.
Oh, I can't imagine why.
Agent Orange is mentioned often in the news media and is commemorated annually on Aug. 10, the day in 1961 when it was first tested in Vietnam.
Yes, they were nothing more than guinea pigs -- just as the Japanese were in 1945.
The government objected to Olympic sponsorship this year by Dow Chemical, a leading producer of Agent Orange during the war. Many here have not hesitated to call the US program too little — it addresses only the one site — and very late....
Standard operating procedure for the empire, sorry.
Over a decade of war, the United States sprayed about 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, halting only after scientists commissioned by the Agriculture Department issued a report expressing concerns that dioxin showed “a significant potential to increase birth defects.”
Yes, we have ALL SEEN the PICTURES!!
By the time the spraying stopped, Agent Orange and other herbicides had destroyed 5.5 million acres of forest and cropland, an area roughly the size of New Jersey.
It was a MASSIVE WAR CRIME for which none were ever charged.
Nguyen Van Rinh, a retired lieutenant general who is now chairman of the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin, has vivid memories of hearing US aircraft above the jungles of southern Vietnam and seeing Agent Orange raining down in sheets on him and his troops.
And now new generations of those in Iraq and Afghanistan know the joy of liberation.
Plants and animals exposed to the defoliant were dead within days. Many of his troops later suffered illnesses that he suspects were linked to the repeated exposure to Agent Orange, used in concentrations 20 to 55 times that of normal agricultural use.
“I would like to have one message sent to the American people,” Rinh said. “The plight of Agent Orange victims continues. I think the relationship would rise up to new heights if the American government took responsibility and helped their victims and addressed the consequences.”
They have SO MUCH TOO OWN UP TO to SO MANY PEOPLE!!
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It's about time they cleaned up the place.
More important victims based on the amount of Boston Globe coverage:
Vietnam memorial draws large crowd
Vietnam War memorial in South Boston rededicated
Carolyn Arond, teacher at Vietnam War camp
"In Vietnam, crackdown on blogs benefits bloggers" by Chris Brummitt | Associated Press, September 14, 2012
HANOI — Vietnam’s government has vowed to crack down on three dissident blogs, a move that appeared to backfire Thursday as record numbers of people visited the sites and the bloggers pledged to keep up their struggle for freedom of expression.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s order for police to arrest those responsible for the websites reflects growing unease within the Communist Party over the emergence of blogs and social media accounts that publish dissenting views, independent reporting, and whistle-blowing.
Translation: We have an intelligence agency operation and intelligence agency assets inside Vietnam.
The party does not allow free media and it fears criticism or discussion of its failings on the Internet could lead to social instability and ultimately, the loss of its power.
And thank God that will never happen in AmeriKa!
“Nobody can shut our mouth or stop our freedom of expression,” said a member of the team that administers one of the targeted blogs, Danlambao. The blogger chatted over the Internet with the Associated Press on condition his name and location not be published because of the risk of arrest.
Danlambao, or Citizens’ Journalism, is one of the most prominent of several dissident blogs that have started in the last two years.
It has attracted thousands of viewers in recent weeks because of its reporting on suspected power struggles among the ruling elite that it says may have been behind the arrest of a banking tycoon last month. It has speculated that the detention of Nguyen Duc Kien, said to be close to the prime minister’s daughter, was the result of tensions between the premier and the president.
Late Wednesday, the government said Danlambao and two other sites had been ‘‘publishing distorted and fabricated articles’’ against the leadership. It said that Vietnamese state employees were forbidden from visiting the sites.
Take it from an AmeriKan newspaper reader, you get used to it.
It is not illegal for Vietnamese to visit the targeted sites, and the government’s firewall blocking many sensitive websites is fairly easy to get around.
It's like the newspaper and blog relationship here in AmeriKa!
‘‘This is a wicked plot of the hostile forces,’’ a government statement said, adding that the prime minister had ordered police to arrest those associated with the sites.
The statement led to a surge in visitors to the sites as curious Vietnamese wanted to see what they had been publishing.
That always happens. Tell someone not to do something or go somewhere, and they do exactly that. Two Live Crew!
The Danlambao blog said it was on course to have more than 500,000 page views Thursday, more than double its normal amount, thanks to what it called the unintended public relations coup handed to it by the government.
Yeah, ours here lied for so long and so much that no one believes anything they say anymore.
Another targeted site, Quanlambao, or the Officials’ Journalism blog, said Dung’s threat was meant to lay the legal groundwork for a campaign of arrests against bloggers.
‘‘They provide us the bullets and we shoot — because they can’t,’’ the blogger said.
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Related:
‘‘First critics, then bloggers, then poets, and now musicians!’’ Phil Robertson, deputy director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, said in a statement. ‘‘The international community can no longer stand by quietly as these free-speech activists are picked off one by one by Vietnam’s security apparatus.’’
I can't tell you how sad I found it that Human Rights Watch was just another agenda-pushing front. I was a member once, but never again!
"Vietnam police arrest dissident lawyer" AP, December 29, 2012
HANOI — Vietnamese police have detained a well-known dissident lawyer, escalating a crackdown on those who speak out against the country’s one-party, authoritarian rule.
Only difference between them and AmeriKa is we have a two-headed war party that rules.
Le Quoc Quan was arrested on his way to drop off his children at school Thursday in Hanoi, according to the Vietnamese Redemptorist Church’s website. The state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper reported Friday that Quan was detained for alleged tax evasion.
Quan, 41, had recently complained of harassment by authorities and required hospital treatment in August after being beaten by men he said were sent by the state.
Since that attack, he had taken to carrying a golf club with him for self-defense.
Neither authorities nor Quan’s family were available for comment.
Quan, who was detained in 2007 for three months on his return from a US government-funded fellowship in Washington, is one of Vietnam’s better-known dissidents and maintains a popular blog that highlighted human rights abuses and other issues that are off-limits to the state media.
C'mon, readers of the world, use your brain. This guy is an AmeriKan agent!
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
Oh, now my newspaper makes perfect sense! I guess it would be too much to expect the intelligence agency operation that is newspaper to fully disclose and out their agent. Instead I get shitty half-truths and outrageous omissions and obfuscations passing itself off as news.
In an interview in September, Quan said that he was under constant surveillance and that he, his family, and staff received frequent warnings and pressure from authorities.
We call it freedom.
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"Vietnamese activists sent to prison" by Seth Mydans | New York Times, January 10, 2013
BANGKOK — The defendants are bloggers, writers, and political and social activists who were accused of links to a banned prodemocracy group based in the United States that the government accuses of seeking to overthrow it....
Yeah, AmeriKan media really concerned about their plight. Meanwhile, I got a one-day wonder about Agent Orange.
Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said the defendants had been charged after attending a training course in Bangkok held by Viet Tan, an organization that in the 1980s led a resistance movement against the Vietnamese Communist government, but that for the past few decades has declared that it is committed to peaceful political reform, democracy, and human rights in Vietnam.
So smells of a U.S. intelligence operation.
The US Embassy in Hanoi said in a statement that it was ‘‘deeply troubled’’ by the convictions and called them ‘‘part of a disturbing human rights trend in Vietnam.’’
Related: Hunger strike grows to 25 detainees at Guantanamo
Yeah, things are getting worse at the U.S. torture chamber, but.... !!!!
A number of the defendants are members of the Redemptorist group in the Roman Catholic Church, which has been engaged in community service and has taken up the causes of land seizures and corruption. Redemptorist activists have become increasingly assertive in Vietnamese movements for democracy and human rights, and some churches and parishes have become centers of dissent.
It's no secret that governments have often used religious institutions as cover.
Some defendants have participated in peaceful protests in support of other dissidents who were on trial or in relation to China.
Protests have grown in recent years over China’s claims to disputed territory in the South China Sea and over a major bauxite plant run by China in Vietnam’s central highlands. The government has cracked down on demonstrations and Internet commentary for fear they could veer out of control and because of an antigovernment tone in many of them....
Vietnam's own Occupy movement?
As the Vietnamese economy grows fitfully and its expanding middle class becomes more lively and engaged, the government has carried out vigorous campaigns to police the Internet and curb public demonstrations.
Meanwhile, your middle class is shrinking, 'murkn! The elite are doing great.
In a New Year’s address that assessed the gains and shortcomings of Vietnam’s leadership, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung restated the government’s concern that conspirators continued to threaten to undermine it.
“We are regularly challenged by conspiracies to spark sociopolitical instability and violate our national sovereignty and territorial integrity,’’ he said....
Oh, wow, the Vietnam government is led by a conspiracy theorist. That pretty much confirms the intelligence agency involvement I keep citing.
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"Hanoi releases activist from US" by Chris Brummitt | Associated Press, January 31, 2013
HANOI — Vietnamese officials on Wednesday released and deported an American prodemocracy activist detained since April, a move that contrasts with the long prison terms given to Vietnamese activists who are members of the same US-based dissident group.
They want the CIA asset out of the country.
The release of Nguyen Quoc Quan, 59, came after US diplomatic pressure and removes an obvious thorn in relations between the countries. Both countries are trying to strengthen their ties in large part because of shared concerns over China’s emerging military and economic might, but American concerns over human rights in Vietnam are complicating this.
Can't we just drop the altruistic crapola when we are the world's biggest human rights violator?
Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry said Quan had ‘‘confessed to his crime’’ and asked for leniency to be reunited with his family. His wife, Huong Mai Ngo, suggested that Hanoi was seeking a face-saving way of allowing him to go home....
Who is saving face here?
Quan, an American citizen, was arrested at Ho Chi Minh City’s airport in April after arriving from the United States, where he has lived since fleeing Vietnam as a young man. He is a leading member of Viet Tan, a nonviolent prodemocracy group that Vietnamese officials have labeled a terrorist group. He was detained in 2007 in Vietnam for six months, also on charges relating to prodemocracy activities.
Authorities initially accused Quan of terrorism, but he was later charged with subversion against the state....
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said it had no higher priority than the safety and security of American citizens abroad.
Especially when they are intelligence assets.
Related: A Diplomatic CIA
You didn't know US embassies had been turned into CIA stations?
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At least the kids are taken care of:
"US senator hopeful Vietnam adoptions will resume" by Chris Brummitt | Associated Press, February 22, 2013
HANOI — Vietnam and the United States are close to an agreement allowing Americans to adopt Vietnamese children again, five years after a ban was imposed amid allegations of baby-selling and babies offered without parents’ consent, a visiting US senator said.
Vietnam was a popular destination for prospective adoptive parents before Washington imposed the ban in 2008 following a US investigation....
Demand for inter-country adoptions has risen in recent years, especially by prospective parents in the United States.
But programs in several developing countries like Haiti and Guatemala have been beset by scandals and allegations of baby-selling....
And yet you read so little about them.
Of course, if you investigate further you find awful things under the surface -- and are free to wonder about the elite media cover-up in this case.
Partly as a result of fears over baby-selling scandals, the number of international adoptions has fallen to its lowest point in 15 years....
Related: The Kids Are All Right in Russia
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Also see: Starbucks to open 1st Vietnam cafe
Would you like some Agent Orange in your coffee?
