35 Years Ago Today

Some of us are old enough to remember this picture. Some of us were exposed to it in our history books in school. For many this picture has come to symbolize a dark period in not only American history but Vietnamese history as well.

It is a picture taken 35 years ago today in Saigon the day before the Viet Cong entered the city and signaled the downfall of the South Vietnamese government. For those in this picture that helicopter represented life or death. Those that were not able to make out of the country were soon to become part of the statistics of the estimated 2 million people who would be killed in the wake of the American withdrawal from that country. It has been the dirty little secret that the liberals don't want you to know about, after having fought so hard to end American involvement, they claim no responsibility for the massacre that happened in it's aftermath.

Here is a nice human interest story about one of those who made it out on that helicopter.

Marvin Myers of the Georgia Vietnam Veterans Alliance in Doraville knows Huynh and other Vietnam army vets. They remain anti-Communist and proudly pro-American, he said.

“They feel like they were steamrolled and wiped off the face of the earth,” Myers said. “There ain’t no blue dogs among them, that’s for sure.”

"Freedom has a taste, and for those who have fought for it, the taste is so sweet the protected will never know..." General George S Patton

Last Week He Was a Terrorist, Today He's an Activist

The Associated Press last week said this fellow was being tried on terrorism charges, but now today he's being called an activist by Reuters after being convicted following a one-day sham trial. Usually they apply the activist label to real terrorists, but since he's an American citizen, they gleefully applied the terrorist label to him.

Whatever the case, he'll be deported this weekend.

An American-Vietnamese political activist was sentenced to six months jail in a one-day trial, but he will be deported at the weekend as he had already served the time, U.S. embassy officials and his party said on Tuesday.

Nguyen Quoc Quan, 54, an engineer from Sacramento, California, was arrested last November along with several other activists of the Viet Tan (Vietnam Reform Party) who were preparing to distribute leaflets opposed to one-party rule.

In Tuesday's trial in Ho Chi Minh City People's Court, Quan and a Thai citizen and one Vietnamese national were charged with "terrorism". The Hanoi government describes Viet Tan as a terrorist group, but the party says it does not support the use of violence and that pamphlets seized by police at the time of last November's arrests promoted peaceful democratic change.

"We welcome his release and return to the United States," a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Hanoi said in a statement. "We remain disappointed by the decision of the Government of Vietnam to charge Dr. Quan with 'terrorism.'

"We are not aware of any information that would support charges of 'terrorism'. We object to the detention and prosecution of any individual for peacefully expressing his or her own views."

Das Kapital Didn't Stick

Deals in Balkans, Vietnam and Russia highlight firms' growing influence abroad

The nation’s energy companies are successfully elbowing out competitors to expand their interests across Central and Eastern Europe. ČEZ, the country’s dominant energy utility, made history last month with the largest-ever foreign investment by a domestic company, at 1.4 billion euros (39.6 billion Kč/$1.9 billion). It beat the record set in March by Zentiva, the largest generic drug manufacturer in the Czech Republic, of 460 million euros.

The deal is a joint venture with Elektroprivreda Republika Srpska (ERS) to modernize the Gacko I power plant and construct a new coal-fired power plant, Gacko II, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ČEZ will own a 51 percent stake in the enterprise, called Nove Elektrarne RS (NERS), which is also the largest direct foreign investment in the Serb Republic.

“The planned investment into the construction of the plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina is another step toward the fulfillment of our vision of becoming the leader in the electricity market in Central and Eastern Europe,” Martin Roman, ČEZ’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.
It is the company’s fifth foreign agreement. ČEZ has already acquired three distribution companies and the Varna power plant in Bulgaria, a majority stake in the distribution company Electrica Oltenia of Romania and two Polish power companies, Elcho and Skawina.

Capitalism trumps the others at any time and any place; limp-wristed neocoM theories and practice notwithstanding.

Reverence for Vietnam

It's a wonder why the Left takes such pride in their cherished memories of Vietnam.

Read this and then ask why they're so proud.

Next door in Cambodia, a man by the name of Pol Pot capitalized on the vacuum of America's abrupt military withdrawal and precipitous rejection of funding for democratic governance. Pol Pot instituted one of the most vicious and swift genocides of the modern era. Killing as many as 3 million people, Cambodia instituted one of the most bizarre spectacles of human hatred, wherein even children were forced to perform the execution of their own parents under the supervision of the Khmer Rouge state. Though American and international media provided front row seats to the carnage, the outcry for international action was easily subdued by political movements for "peace" in Southeast Asia and an end to "American imperialism." The American left helped seal the deal on yet another dark chapter of brother abandoning brother into the outrageous public celebrations of human hatred immortalized by the Khmer Rouge.

And so today, many of us are still wondering what academics and intellectuals are speaking of when they say the magical word of 'Vietnam.' Is this the world that you speak of? When you speak of "peace" and the end of "imperialism," do you mean to confirm the world of abandonment and unmitigated ethnic hatred ? Is the world that looks less like Bagdad, a world that looks more like Rwanda or Darfur? What do your words mean? I would really like to know.

Vietnam Flashbacks

Rich Lowry says it's Howard Dean's party.

The Democrats are in the throes of a full-fledged Vietnam flashback. Even if the Bush "surge" works, Democrats will stay committed to ending the war -- just as Democrats cut off the war in Vietnam in the mid-1970s, even as it had been put on a more sustainable footing. The party has regressed all the way to its McGovernite roots. The centrist Clintonite interlude of the 1990s is almost entirely washed away, with the Clintonite candidate -- Hillary -- trying not to get washed away with it.

This McGovernite tendency is pacificist and isolationist. Even as Democrats give way to it, they still style themselves idealistic internationalists. Calls to end the genocide in Darfur were applauded here, although no one said how it was going to be done, nor why ending the savagery in the Sudan is such a priority when it is fine to abandon Iraq to its near-genocidal furies.

The Vietnam Syndrome made Democrats allergic to the use of force for two decades. The Iraq Syndrome will be a reprise. Anyone who, like Rahm Emanuel, wants to see the Democrats occupy the sensible center must be dismayed. Howard Dean, however, can only be pleased. He's chairman of this party for a reason.

Meanwhile, Christopher Hitchens reminds up problems in Iraq existed long before 2003, though you wouldn't know that if you still paid any attention to the liberal media and the leftwing lunatics.