Highbrow Magazine - Saigon https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/saigon en Dissidents Imprisoned as Crackdown Continues in Vietnam https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5719-dissidents-imprisoned-crackdown-continues-vietnam <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 04/03/2016 - 14:40</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumvietnam_1.jpg?itok=LQl5iH1m"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumvietnam_1.jpg?itok=LQl5iH1m" width="480" height="320" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From Vietnam Right Now and republished by our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2016/04/four-dissidents-jailed-as-crackdown-continues-in-vietnam.php">New America Media</a></strong>:</p> <p> </p> <p>Vietnam is continuing its crackdown on dissents, with four more people sentenced to terms of imprisonment for challenging state authority.</p> <p> </p> <p>Three women farmers were jailed for up to four years for displaying flags of the old government of South Vietnam during protests against land seizures.</p> <p> </p> <p>A blogger, best known by his pen name, Nguyen Ngoc Gia, also received a four-year term for carrying out “propaganda against the state”.</p> <p> </p> <p>He was the third blogger to be sent to jail in a week, following a long period when the government refrained from legal action and relied more on physical intimidation to silence its critics.</p> <p> </p> <p>The United States and international human rights groups have called on Vietnam to stop persecuting peaceful activists and to fulfill its commitment to respect freedom of speech.</p> <p> </p> <p>Gia was arrested in Ho Chi Minh City more than a year ago, and like Ba Sam, the other well-known blogger convicted in March, was held for well over a year before facing trial.</p> <p> </p> <p>He became known to readers in Vietnam through his writings on human rights and democracy for the independent news portal, Dan Lam Bao (Citizen Journalism), which is based overseas.</p> <p> </p> <p>According to the indictment, on December 25, 2014, the HCMC public security agency received a denunciation from the Saigon Postal Corp (SPT), a local Internet service provider, that its client had been “spreading articles online defaming the party and the state.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Gia was arrested two days later and little was heard of him until his court appearance on Wednesday March 30.</p> <p> </p> <p>He was convicted and sentenced in a two-hour trial, with the verdict saying that he had received a degree of leniency because he had pleaded guilty and his grandmother had been a “heroic Vietnamese mother”.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/vietnamdissident.jpg" style="height:351px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>The three farmers were convicted on the same charge, under Article 88 of the penal code, which is often used to suppress government critics.</p> <p> </p> <p>Ngo Thi Minh Uoc received a four-year term, while the other two, Nguyen Thi Tri and Nguyen Thi Be Hai received three-year sentences.</p> <p> </p> <p>The women were accused of waving the banned flag of the former Republic of Vietnam in front of the US consulate in Ho Chi Minh City.</p> <p> </p> <p>One of the women said that she had been persuaded by an unnamed person that carrying the flag would help their cause for the return of land appropriated by the local government.</p> <p> </p> <p>State media said their action was described by the judge as “very serious, infringing on national security, distorting, instigating, causing suspicion and mistrust of the people in the party and state.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Some activists believe the women were badly advised and naive to carry the flags. They appeared to believe it would draw attention to the desperation of their situation and help achieve a solution.</p> <p> </p> <p>Displaying symbols of the defunct Saigon regime is illegal and relatively rare in a country where, for the bulk of the population, memories of the war and national division faded long ago.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From Vietnam Right Now and republished by our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2016/04/four-dissidents-jailed-as-crackdown-continues-in-vietnam.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnamese-dissidents" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">vietnamese dissidents</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/censorship" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">censorship</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/saigon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Saigon</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/freedom-press" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">freedom of the press</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Vietnam Right Now</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media; SGGP</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 03 Apr 2016 18:40:59 +0000 tara 6793 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5719-dissidents-imprisoned-crackdown-continues-vietnam#comments The Vietnam War 40 Years Later: How Capitalism Trumped Ideology https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4981-vietnam-war-years-later-how-capitalism-trumped-ideology <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 05/01/2015 - 13:54</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1vietnam40_0.jpg?itok=UeqHt8Gl"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1vietnam40_0.jpg?itok=UeqHt8Gl" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2015/04/vietnam-40-years.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> <p> </p> <p>Forty years have passed since the Vietnam War ended, and a parade was staged in Ho Chi Minh City, formally Saigon, to commemorate that date. Yet despite the fanfare debates rage on both sides of the Pacific as to who really won and who lost that war. While the hammer and sickle and Uncle Ho’s image may still adorn T-shirts it sells to foreign tourists, Vietnam’s heart throbs for all things American, especially Apple. In 2014, in fact, Vietnam became its hottest market. In the first half of the 2014 fiscal year alone, iPhone sales tripled in this country, far surpassing sales growth in India and China.</p> <p> </p> <p>But it is not just iPhones, of course, that exemplify America’s powerful presence in Vietnam 40 years after the war ended. Facebook entered Vietnam’s market four years ago and at one point was adding a million signups a month. As of October, it had 30 million users, and that’s out of 40 million Vietnamese who have access to the Internet.</p> <p> </p> <p>On television too, America has managed to seduce its former enemy. One of the country’s favorite shows is “Vietnam Idol” (in addition to “The Voice of Vietnam” and “Vietnam’s Got Talent”). You don’t need to understand Vietnamese to follow the plot. A rural teenager appears; she’s nervous, full of self-doubt. When she sings, however, we hear a golden voice. Judges swoon. Soon, a few weeks later, she has been transformed, grows in confidence and beauty. See her studied gesture of shyness, the chic skirt, the professional hair and makeup and the flawless performance. </p> <p> </p> <p>From corporate investments to tourism, from military engagements to products, from social media to entertainment media, from the Vietnamese-American expats who return in droves to invest heavily in their homeland to a horde of Vietnamese foreign students coming to the U.S. for a much coveted American education, Vietnam is falling quickly back into America’s orbit. In 2014 the U.S. overtook the European Union to become Vietnam’s largest export market, buying nearly $29 billion worth of goods, and it sold more than $5.5 billion worth of products to Vietnam.</p> <p> </p> <p>Last October, to deepen ties, Washington eased a ban on weapons sales to its former enemy, mainly to upgrade Vietnam’s naval defenses. It also performed its fifth joint military exercise with the Vietnamese military, despite China’s objections. China has reasons to be nervous. It now claims 90 percent of the South China Sea, all the way to Borneo, amid international protests. This vast stretch of water provides shipping lanes for more than half of world trade. And for the U.S. alone in 2012, an estimated $1.2 trillion worth of goods transited through it. Under that sea, too, lie untold oil pockets and natural gas, the stuff that could make or break an empire for the next 100 years. But by claiming control over this international body of water, Beijing is spurring a warming of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam.</p> <p> </p> <p>Much of that cozy relationship can be attributed to Hillary Clinton who, as secretary of state, visited Hanoi in July 2012. “Clinton’s visit paved the way for the establishment of the US-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership, which was formally laid out a year later in Washington at the July 2013 summit meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang,” noted The Diplomat, an Asia-focused news website.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2vietnam40_0.jpg" style="height:625px; width:416px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>How important is this breakthrough? Very. Less than a decade ago, Hanoi had considered China as its strategic ally, but not anymore. Vietnam is asking to buy more weapons from the U.S. so it can defend itself from China. Clinton, who’s running for president in 2016, considers the Pacific region the top priority.</p> <p> </p> <p>In “America’s Pacific Century,” an essay written for <em>Foreign Policy</em> in 2011, she noted, “One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will … be to lock in a substantially increased investment — diplomatic, economic, strategic and otherwise — in the Asia-Pacific region.” All this is to say Vietnam will continue to be a big blip on America’s radar for years to come.</p> <p> </p> <p>But beyond geopolitics, the Vietnamese have for decades been fascinated with America, thanks in large part to Vietnamese-Americans. An unexpected but crucial consequence of the Vietnam War was the subsequent mass exodus of its people in the aftermath. The largest, wealthiest and most educated Vietnamese overseas population now resides in North America, and in the post–Cold War period, they began to exert powerful influences in Vietnam’s economic and cultural life.</p> <p> </p> <p>Remittances sent from the Vietnamese Diaspora average about $12 billion a year, that’s almost double compared with the average $7 billion annually sent by international donors. On top of remittances, however, “overseas Vietnamese have invested in about 2,000 projects, generating about $20 billion annually” notes the Voice of Vietnam, the national radio broadcaster. The combination of overseas Vietnamese remittances and investment amounts to about 18 percent of Vietnam’s GDP.</p> <p> </p> <p>What this means on the ground is that a sizable population of Viet Kieu — Vietnamese expats, former boat people and their children — now wield considerable leverage in their homeland. From opening wine shops to creating startups, from running high-tech companies to working as executives for major foreign companies in Vietnam, from starting art centers to making movies or teaching at universities, expats have become active agents in changing Vietnam’s destiny.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3vietnam40_0.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Epitomizing the trend is Henry Nguyen, 41, who fled Vietnam as a child with his parents and spent months in a refugee camp in Thailand. Eventually he became a Goldman Sachs associate in Virginia. Now he is back in Vietnam, famous for bringing McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and venture capital to his homeland. To top it off, the former boat person who became an U.S. entrepreneur married the daughter of Vietnam’s prime minister in 2006. The war “forced people who shared common values and culture to pick sides,” Nguyen told Reuters recently. “It’s kind of like a tragicomedy.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Tragicomedy, indeed. The 6000 or so marchers who walked about downtown Saigon to celebrate North Vietnam’s victory over the capitalistic South and its imperialist U.S. ally forty years ago, also marched by an array of Starbucks, McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King and Apple stores that line the streets. Military victories aside, it sort of gives the spectator an idea as to who is actually winning the peace.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Andrew Lam is editor at New America Media and author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora," "East East West: Writing in Two Hemishperes," and "Birds of Paradise Lost."  Another version of the above story appeared in Al Jazeera.</em></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2015/04/vietnam-40-years.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/anniversary-vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">anniversary of vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ho-chi-minh-city" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ho chi minh city</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnamese" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnamese</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/americans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">americans</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/saigon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Saigon</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 01 May 2015 17:54:03 +0000 tara 5962 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4981-vietnam-war-years-later-how-capitalism-trumped-ideology#comments The Many Casualties of LBJ’s Gulf of Tonkin Resolution https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4196-many-casualties-lbj-s-gulf-tonkin-resolution <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 08/06/2014 - 10:48</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/3LBJ%20%28wiki%29.jpg?itok=gmS2K8PP"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/3LBJ%20%28wiki%29.jpg?itok=gmS2K8PP" width="480" height="321" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From <a href="http://punditwire.com/2014/08/04/war-liberalism-trust-in-government-the-many-casualties-of-lbjs-gulf-of-tonkin-resolution/">PunditWire.com</a></strong>:</p> <p> </p> <p>Fifty years ago, on August 10, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed what is known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution#mediaviewer/File:Tonkin_Gulf_Resolution.jpg" style="line-height: 1.6em;">Gulf of Tonkin Resolution</a>. It is a day that should live in infamy.</p> <p> </p> <p>On that day, the President gave himself the power “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed forces,” to fight the spread of communism in Southeast Asia and assist our ally in South Vietnam “in defense of its freedom.” Or as former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it decades later, it gave “complete authority to the president to take the nation to war.”</p> <p> </p> <p>History has shown that the resolution was built on a foundation of misinformation, fabrication, and willful evasion of the truth. Contrary to what the President claimed, there was no unprovoked “act of aggression” against the American destroyers that were patrolling the Tonkin Gulf, and a second alleged incident never even took place.</p> <p> </p> <p>But the Johnson administration was looking for a pretext to escalate the war. “We don’t know what happened,” National Security Adviser Walter W. Rostow told the president after Congress passed the resolution, “but it had the desired result.”</p> <p> </p> <p>The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution may have had the desired result, but the war it unleashed didn’t.</p> <p> </p> <p>By the time Lyndon Johnson left office more than four years later, we had amassed over half a million troops in Vietnam, lost nearly 37,000 soldiers, dropped more bomb tonnage than we had in all of World War II, released chemical weapons – Napalm and Agent Orange – throughout Southeast Asia, and burned thousands of South Vietnamese homes and villages to the ground. Yet it was increasingly clear by then that we could not win the war.</p> <p> </p> <p>Rather than stopping any dominoes from falling in Southeast Asia, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution set in motion a series of dominoes in our own country that would profoundly alter our politics, economy, and culture for years to come.</p> <p> </p> <p>Perhaps the most significant decision President Johnson made beyond using his newly authorized power to escalate the war was to hide the cost of the war and resist any tax increase to pay for it. Johnson feared that any congressional debate over funding the war would come at the expense of his Great Society program.</p> <p> </p> <p>He wanted both guns and butter, but he worried that Congress would choose guns over butter. So once again he resorted to obfuscation and deception to get his way.</p> <p>What resulted was a cascading series of economic consequences that would transform our nation and undermine the Great Society he so dearly wanted to protect.</p> <p> </p> <p>To pay for the war without gutting his robust domestic agenda, Johnson resorted to deficit spending, which fueled an already overheating economy that was now being asked to divert its productivity away from consumer goods and toward the war effort.</p> <p>Consumer demand began to outstrip supply, and that let the inflation genie out of the bottle. Less than five years after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed, <a href="http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/HistoricalInflation.aspx" target="_blank" title="http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/HistoricalInflation.aspx">inflation more than quadrupled.</a></p> <p> </p> <p>Johnson couldn’t hide the rising cost of the war for long, and by 1968 he asked for a 10 percent tax surcharge on all but the poorest Americans. But it came at a cost: Congress demanded, and he had to accept, a 10 percent reduction in domestic discretionary spending. Barely three years after birthing the Great Society, he began to starve it to pay for the war. It never fully recovered.</p> <p> </p> <p>To middle and working-class Americans, the backbone of the New Deal coalition, the war’s economic impact was taking a toll. Though inflation meant pay raises once a year, prices for food and consumer goods were rising every month, which then ate away at any increase in their wages.</p> <p> </p> <p>Their standard of living began to stagnate. Nor were taxes indexed to inflation in those years, so every pay increase risked pushing them into a higher tax bracket, which took even more money from their pockets in addition to the tax surcharge they would have to pay.</p> <p> </p> <p>These were largely Democratic voters who generally supported the president and the war – many had their own boys fighting in Vietnam – so if they were looking for blame they weren’t about to point the finger at a deceptive and misguided war policy.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/4war%20%28wiki%29.jpg" style="height:533px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Instead, they saw higher taxes, higher domestic spending, and lots of fanfare for a Great Society that didn’t seem to include them. They also saw domestic unrest and urban riots.</p> <p>To them, they were hard-working Americans who played by the rules yet were now forced to tread water just to keep from falling behind while government seemed to be giving everything away to the poor. That domestic programs themselves were getting squeezed by the war was a detail that got lost in the heat of the moment.</p> <p> </p> <p>Couple these growing resentments with the fact that it was their boys, not the children of the well-educated, who were being sent off to war. From their perspective, the liberal elites were taxing them to coddle the poor, yet when it came to defending our nation these same liberal elites sheltered their sons in colleges and universities.</p> <p> </p> <p>Those seeking to understand the rise of Reagan Democrats and white working-class Republican populists – and the corresponding demise of the New Deal majority – need look no further. The cultural and political divide that began in the Sixties was a direct result of the deceit that brought us the Vietnam War.</p> <p>And what was then a still fragile liberal consensus that government could mitigate the hardships of poverty – a consensus that enabled passage of the Great Society legislation – began to erode.</p> <p> </p> <p>That an administration could dissemble us into war would lead to another cultural and political repercussion of Vietnam: our growing and seemingly permanent distrust of government.</p> <p> </p> <p>Trust in government peaked at 76 percent in 1964, not coincidentally the same year as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and declined precipitously in the years thereafter, reaching what was then a low of 25 percent in 1980, according to the University of Michigan’s <a href="http://www.electionstudies.org/nesguide/toptable/tab5a_1.htm" target="_blank" title="http://www.electionstudies.org/nesguide/toptable/tab5a_1.htm">National Election Studies</a>.</p> <p> </p> <p>Not all of this decline is due to Vietnam, but a war built on the original sin of deception, fiction, and illusion deserves a good deal of the blame.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/1antiwar.jpg" style="height:625px; width:455px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Almost daily, Americans were treated to an official version of the war that had us winning. The  Johnson administration trumpeted body counts and bombing raids and assured us, in the famous words of General William Westmoreland, that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.”</p> <p> </p> <p>But there was no light. The dark reality we saw every night on television contradicted what our leaders were telling us. We saw bloodied soldiers, troops burning villages, body bags, fear and despair and little of the triumphalism that was emanating from the Pentagon.</p> <p> </p> <p>When the Vietcong launched their Tet Offensive in January 1968, striking at the U.S. Embassy and other key sites in the heart of Saigon, Americans had a hard time reconciling the official version with what they were witnessing.</p> <p> </p> <p>Thus was born the credibility gap between the American government and its citizens.</p> <p> </p> <p>And nowhere did it grow wider than among journalists, who were greeted with untruths during the daily military briefings in Vietnam – known as the Five O’clock Follies – and saw through such euphemisms as “pacification,” which in truth meant torching Vietnamese huts and shooting those who resisted, and “collateral damage,” which in reality meant civilian deaths.</p> <p> </p> <p>Reflexive skepticism of government remains a defining characteristic of contemporary journalism.</p> <p> </p> <p>Watergate, which calcified the credibility gap, also grew out of Vietnam when President Richard Nixon authorized his secretive White House Plumbers to retaliate against Daniel Ellsberg, whose leak of the Pentagon Papers laid bare the duplicity behind the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the U.S. prosecution of the war.</p> <p> </p> <p>Years later Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of two who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/13/pentagon-papers-daniel-ellsberg" target="_blank" title="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/13/pentagon-papers-daniel-ellsberg">told Ellsberg</a> that if members of Congress had seen the evidence from the Pentagon Papers in 1964, “the Tonkin Gulf Resolution would never have gotten out of committee, and if it had been brought to the floor, it would have been voted down.”</p> <p> </p> <p>What Lyndon Johnson saw as a ploy to grant him war powers ended up harming so many and transforming our nation in ways the President surely never intended. It would end up engulfing the liberalism he so loved. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the hubris behind it were the linchpins of Johnson’s Shakespearean Vietnam tragedy – and ours as well. </p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2nixon%20%28wiki%29.jpg" style="height:390px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p><em>Also published in the</em> <em><a href="http://hnn.us/article/156384" target="_hplink">History News Network</a>.</em></p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p><em><strong>Author Bio:</strong></em></p> <p> </p> <p><em><strong>A former speechwriter and strategist for causes, candidates, and members of Congress,</strong></em> <em><strong><a href="http://punditwire.com/contributors/leonard-steinhorn/" target="_blank">Leonard Steinhorn</a></strong></em> <em><strong>has written on American politics and culture for major print and online publications, and is currently a professor of communication at American University.</strong></em></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From <a href="http://punditwire.com/2014/08/04/war-liberalism-trust-in-government-the-many-casualties-of-lbjs-gulf-of-tonkin-resolution/">PunditWire.com</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tonkin-resollution" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">tonkin resollution</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/gulf-tonkin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gulf of tonkin</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/lbj" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">LBJ</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/lyndon-johnson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lyndon Johnson</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/communism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">communism</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/north-vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">north vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/saigon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Saigon</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Leonard Steinhorn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Wikipedia Commons; Google Images</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 06 Aug 2014 14:48:30 +0000 tara 5042 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4196-many-casualties-lbj-s-gulf-tonkin-resolution#comments Vietnam: A Country of Contrasts https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/3885-vietnam-country-contrasts <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 04/07/2014 - 10:59</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1vietnam40.jpg?itok=pN28eArz"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1vietnam40.jpg?itok=pN28eArz" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2014/04/foreword-vietnam-40-years-later.php">New America Media</a>:</p> <p> </p> <p>As the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, photographer Robert Dodge offers us a compelling new view of Vietnam, my homeland, in his new book of photography: <em>Vietnam 40 Years Later</em>. Below is the foreword that I wrote for that book.</p> <p> </p> <p>Four decades have passed since the last U.S. helicopter carrying refugees flew away from a Saigon in smoke, but still the ember smolders. Vietnam is no longer a war, of course, but it remains for many Americans a scar and a haunting metaphor for political disasters and tragic consequences. It evokes memories of napalm, carpet-bombings, burnt-out houses, dead civilians in black pajamas and army helicopters hovering over wounded GIs in rice paddies. And gripped by that ignominious past, Americans often regard my homeland through the eyes of the culpable.</p> <p> </p> <p>The country called Vietnam, on the other hand, has freed itself from that historic moment. Its population has passed 90 million, more than doubling since the war ended. Fading from living memory and into history, the war is a subject barely talked about. Vietnam, in any case, waged another war in Cambodia in 1979 and occupied that country for the next 10 years. It also fought against the Chinese in 1979 and won. A few years ago, when I asked a young man on the streets of Hanoi how he felt about "the war," he looked perplexed. "Which war, uncle?" he asked. "We had around six last century."</p> <p> </p> <p>Vietnamese, in fact, don't like to talk about wars. They'd rather talk about business and job opportunities, and the goings-on of their families. Full of young, energetic people, the country is rushing at breakneck speed toward modernity, and its gaze is relentlessly forward.</p> <p> </p> <p>In a sense, Robert Dodge's <em>Vietnam 40 Years Later</em> is a counterbalance to the long-held American view of my country. Dodge, who visited Vietnam nine times in the last decade, has witnessed an enormous change there: rice paddies replaced by condos and golf courses, sleepy fishing villages turned into luxury resorts, old markets transformed into slick, marbled shopping malls.</p> <p> </p> <p>Indeed, this volume's cover photo itself captures something of the current motif of Vietnam: movement and change. A lone baguette vendor in a strikingly red jacket sits immobile against a blurry river of people on motorcycles. But her immobility is deceptive. Despite her traditional conical hat, despite her stillness, the bread-seller wears modern clothing, down to her Western-style purse. She too, in a sense, wants to move forward. And given that there are 145 million cellular phones for Vietnam's 90 million people -- or about two for every adult -- it wouldn't be at all surprising if she, in the next frame, were to take one out from that purse.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2vietnam40.jpg" style="height:625px; width:416px" /></p> <p>Modernity, that is to say, seeps in. You can see it as a river of motorcyclists rushing by while above them looms a Starbucks sign. Or take a look at the farmer standing in his bare feet on the verdant slope: Two oxen graze nearby, but he is preoccupied with chatting on his cell. Or consider the new cityscape of Saigon, my birthplace, now renamed Ho Chi Minh City, with its high-rises being constructed -- and see the once-sleepy town of villas and lycees and tree-lined boulevards transforming itself into a bona fide 21st-century metropolis.</p> <p> </p> <p>What can we discern from <em>Vietnam 40 Years Later</em>? That first and foremost, Vietnam is an active verb. In it, people work and they work hard. In the following pages, you will see Vietnam as a country powered by backbreaking labor -- factory workers, fishermen, farmers, market vendors and cyclo drivers -- something that has never changed. And women, more often than not, work even harder than men: See them carry baskets of salt, see them row boats to the market, see them sell fish and flowers, see them harvest rice.</p> <p> </p> <p>But to the discerning eye, there is a growing schism between the haves and have-nots. There's a Vietnam that is moving toward a conspicuous consumerist culture, a new upper class living a grand life with armies of servants waiting on them hand and foot. Then there's a Vietnam that remains mired in poverty, one in which millions live hand to mouth.</p> <p> </p> <p>The photo of the young woman in red stilettos walking past the Chanel store in downtown Saigon, for instance, stands in contrast to the image of the tribal woman making sticky rice in her ramshackle mountain home. A purse in that Chanel store could easily purchase 10 impoverished children in the Mekong Delta, where desperate parents have been known to sell their daughters across the borders to human traffickers -- for a mere $400. Indeed, despite enormous changes and economic progress, there's a gigantic gap between those who work to survive and those who own villas and fly overseas to shop 'til they drop. In the age of raging red capitalism, Vietnam is a country of humiliating poverty and extraordinary if increasingly unwarranted wealth.</p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3vietnam40.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" /></p> <p>What else? Vietnam is a world in motion, in flux. You can see this simply by looking at Dodge's gorgeous photograph of the gigantic billboards that line the bank of the Bach Dang River. They have phone numbers on them; they are waiting for potential marketers -- Tiger Beers, Starbucks Coffee, Sanyo -- to place their ads. You can see it in the fashion show that the upper class enjoys, the nouveaux riches applauding the model flourishing her red skirt into a blossoming hibiscus on the catwalk. You can see it in the gigantic crane at the dock lifting a forklift truck to shore. And you can see it in the stylish entrance of the brand new Melbourne-based RMIT university campus, which recently opened in Vietnam to offer programs from business and management to design and micro-engineering.</p> <p> </p> <p>Yet still, in Dodge's photos, I am heartened to see that my homeland remains as much a breathtaking beauty as she ever was. She's made of majestic mountains shrouded in the morning fog, of sand dunes under tropical sunlight, of limestone karsts and isles, and she's shaped by the eternal sea lapping at her shore. And she is not always about work: She's also made of smiles and laughter, of leisure and of celebrations. The temples and churches are always full of worshippers on religious holidays. Over food and drinks, fishermen gossip and chat after a hard day's catch. For Tet, the Lunar New Year, parents and children dress up and walk the streets in jubilation. And it is a statement on Vietnamese spirituality and a deep sense of aesthetics and religiosity that flowers are always in high demand at the market.</p> <p> </p> <p>My two favorite photos: A Buddhist monk sits on the tile floor, smoking a cigarette. He peers out to a bright world through a door ajar, the smoke drifting lazily. Part of his saffron robe, lit by sunlight, seems like it is made of fire itself. And there's the gorgeous image of the oxen race of Chau Doc in the Mekong Delta. The oxen are harnessed together in pairs. Team 45 is leading, team 44 catching up from behind. The muddy water splashes upward, a rising curtain in blistering sunlight; see the enviable joy on the racer's face.</p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/4vietnam40.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" /></p> <p>For Dodge, no doubt, it is a difficult task to pick from the thousands of images he took in my country. What to leave out? Gay lovers? Internet cafes? Sidewalk prostitutes? Street protests against an authoritarian regime? Luxury resorts and beaches? What about the new McDonald's that just opened? Or that beauty weight-lifting contest? After all, anyone who wants to describe Vietnam knows that one cannot fully chronicle a raging river. The complexity of Vietnam will always elude efforts to capture her.</p> <p> </p> <p><em>Vietnam 40 Years Later</em> is people-centered, however, to its credit, and thereby manages to depict a new historical moment: a country at a crossroads, one that is part of the global society and yet, like the farmer talking on the cell phone, one that still has its feet in the mud.</p> <p> </p> <p>That a book of photographs narrates the human dimension of Vietnam at an important historical juncture is, therefore, very welcome. No doubt it will help loosen the grip that wartime memories have on those who still hold tightly to the "What we did to them" lens. At the very least, <em>Vietnam</em><em> 40 Years Later</em> should help expunge images of napalm and burnt-out villages and dead soldiers. Let it be known that after the B-52 bombs fell, life goes on -- indeed, thrives. The craters have, after the monsoons, turned into ponds in which farmers raise fish, and in which ducks and children swim; the broken wings of a downed airplane have become rusty bridges across small rivers, connecting neighbors and villages.</p> <p> </p> <p>Franz Schurmann, well-respected historian, sociologist and world traveler, once observed that you cannot fully understand a society unless you watch "lives lived every day." That is, the way to understand the dynamic of nations is not simply to eavesdrop in the corridors of power, but to chronicle and detail the energy and movements on the street. "The collective soul of the people gives direction to the nation," he said.</p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/5vietnam40.jpg" style="height:403px; width:605px" /></p> <p>Applaud the photographer, then, for his unwavering curiosity as he navigates the neighborhoods and streets and cities and landscapes of Vietnam. Admire these photos, and see them as snapshots of an unfolding epic. See them, if you will, as an invitation to travel, to see Vietnam of the here and now, and as a topography of a once-wounded nation, now healed; a barely discovered country.</p> <p> </p> <p><em>To contact Robert Dodge: <a href="mailto:Robert@RobertDodge.com">Robert@RobertDodge.com</a>. Copyright: Robert Dodge <a href="http://www.RobertDodge.com">www.RobertDodge.com</a>. He's also fundraising to pay for it. </em></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><em>Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and author of the "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora," and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His latest book is "Birds of Paradise Lost," a short story collection, was published in 2013 and won a Pen/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2014 and is a finalist in the California Book Award 2014.</em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/saigon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Saigon</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ho-chi-minh-city" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ho chi minh city</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/robert-dodge" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">robert dodge</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/modernized-vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">modernized vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnamese-americans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">vietnamese americans</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Robert Dodge</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 07 Apr 2014 14:59:38 +0000 tara 4551 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/3885-vietnam-country-contrasts#comments Popularity of American Fast Food Leads to Rise of Obesity in Asia https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1274-popularity-american-fast-food-leads-rise-obesity-asia <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/food" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Food</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 07/08/2012 - 17:00</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumfastfoodasia.jpg?itok=IdvCzYio"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumfastfoodasia.jpg?itok=IdvCzYio" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/07/obesity-in-asia-american-fast-food-is-fare-for-the-rich.php">New America Media</a>:</p> <p>  </p> <p> Each time I visit my homeland, Vietnam, I find that many of my relatives have gotten wealthier and progressively fatter, especially their overly pampered children. One cousin in Saigon [Ho Chi Minh City] in particular is raising an obese child. When asked why she was feeding him so much she simply shrugged and said, “Well, we barely had enough to eat during the Cold War. Now that I have money, I just let my son eat what he wants.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Unfortunately what that entails for her boy is access to an array of American-owned chains like KFC, Pizza Hut, Carl Jr.’s, and most recently, Burger King. His favorite meal? “Pizza and Coke,” the boy answered with glee.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Besides the tasty draw of fatty foods and sweet sodas, there’s another reason why such establishments are making inroads in countries that are otherwise known for their excellent culinary traditions. Unlike in the U.S., where fast food is perceived as time saving and cheap and often the preferred meal of the working poor, in Asia places like Burger King and Pizza Hut are the fare of choice for those with dispensable incomes. For a regular factory worker in Vietnam who makes a few dollars a day, eating at KFC is completely out of the question. For those who can afford to eat at one of Pizza Hut’s air-conditioned restaurants in a chic sparkling shopping mall in Hanoi or Saigon, however, eating is only part of the experience. The other part is equally, if not more, important: Consuming American fast food is the proof of one’s economic status in the world.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The writer Ha Jin captured this modern tendency in a hilarious short story called “After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town.” It’s about a family of nouveau riche who book their wedding at a brand new fast food chain called “Cowboy Chicken” -- never mind that the Chinese know 150 better ways to cook the bird -- to celebrate their new wealth in capitalistic China. If the story is hilarious, it is also a sad statement as to how quickly a thousand years of culinary expertise is thrown out for the new – which in this case, is deep- fried chicken and steamed corncobs served up in a paper box.</p> <p>  </p> <p> And if common sense and taste are often the first casualties in a world where western fast food and brand name sodas proliferate at an alarming rate, the ultimate casualty is health itself. According to the World Health Organization, one billion people are malnourished in the world and another billion – many in developing countries—are overweight. At least 300 million of them are clinically obese, and the economic costs of related illnesses are staggering.</p> <p>  </p> <p> While the overall obesity rate in China is somewhere around 5 percent, that number jumps dramatically to around 20 percent in the big cities. Despite the relative small ratio of obese people when compared to that of the U.S., given the size of China’s population (1.35 billion), that 5 percent accounts for about 70 million overweight Chinese.</p> <p>  </p> <p> It would seem that not only are the Chinese catching up with the American economy, but with the American size as well. According to the Chinese Health Ministry, Chinese city boys age 6 are 2.5 inches taller and 6.6 pounds heavier on average than their counterparts 3 decades ago. "China has entered the era of obesity,” Ji Chengye, a leading child health researcher told USA Today. “The speed of growth is shocking." Almost 100 million Chinese now suffer from diabetes.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2mediumfastfoodasia.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 450px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> In this regard, Vietnam too is catching up with China. While 28 percent of rural children suffer from malnutrition, according to the National Institute of Nutrition, 20 percent from urban areas suffer from the opposite: obesity. “The number of overweight and obese kids is increasing at a fast pace in Ho Chi Minh City [formerly known as Saigon] where the highest ratio of children with the problem is recorded,” Do Diep, deputy direct of the Ho Chi Minh City Nutrition Center, told Tien Phong newspaper two years ago.</p> <p>  </p> <p> For many Vietnamese, the irony is all too obvious. Previous generations known as boat people fled out to sea on rickety boats to escape starvation and extreme austerity under communism during the cold war. But they are quickly being replaced by a new generation, one that needs to go to the gym or a fat farm to drop excess weight -- or if they can afford it, “flee” abroad to shop for the latest brand name items like Hermes belts and Louis Vuitton Bags.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Years of struggle against imperialism resulted in an odd defeat: Anything western is automatically deemed superior, no questions asked. It is a situation that one intellectual in Vietnam coined as, “Selling the entire forest to buy a stack of paper.” A case in point: When asked what he wanted from the USA, a cousin in Hanoi didn't hesitate: “Starbucks coffee.” Yes, he’s quite aware that Vietnam is the second largest coffee producer in the world, second only to Brazil; and yes, on practically every block in the city there’s a coffee shop. “But no one has tasted Starbucks coffee in Vietnam,” the cousin explained. “Everyone wants to know what it tastes like.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> These days one reads quite a few articles about the decline of the American empire and the rise of Asia, and in the same breath, how the Chinese are gaining the upper hand in the global economy. But one wonders if that’s true. Because even if declining, America still manages to sell its "superior" lifestyles to the rest of the world in ingenious ways, from food to movies, from musci to fashion -- and in the area of food, as least, our obesity problems as well.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>Andrew Lam is author of </em>East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres <em>and </em>Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora<em>. His next book, </em>Birds of Paradise Lost<em>, a collection of short stories, will be published next year.</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/">New America Media</a></p> <p>  </p> <p> <em><strong>Photos: New America Media; Creative Commons, Flickr. </strong></em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/fast-food-asia" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">fast food in asia</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/starbucks" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">starbucks</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mcdonalds" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mcdonalds</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/kentucky-fried-chicken" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">kentucky fried chicken</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/burger-king" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">burger king</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/saigon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Saigon</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/china" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">China</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/japan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Japan</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tokyo" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Tokyo</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/obesity" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">obesity</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/overweight" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">overweight</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/weight-gain" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">weight gain</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/pizza-hut" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">pizza hut</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/coke" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">coke</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 08 Jul 2012 21:00:51 +0000 tara 1222 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1274-popularity-american-fast-food-leads-rise-obesity-asia#comments Vietnam Promises ‘La Dolce Vita’ Only for Those Who Can Afford It https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1058-vietnam-promises-la-dolce-vita-only-those-who-can-afford-it <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/travel" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Travel</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Tue, 03/20/2012 - 20:53</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumvietnam.jpg?itok=djQtfabV"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumvietnam.jpg?itok=djQtfabV" width="480" height="320" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/news/">New America Media</a> and <a href="http://nguoi-viet.com/nv2_default.asp">Nguoi Viet</a></p> <p>  </p> <p>  It has been months since Le Thi Nu has had breakfast. A street vendor who travels around Hanoi on a bicycle selling plastic slippers, high prices have forced her to cut spending on eating, even though a baguette would cost 15 cents.</p> <p>           </p> <p> Standing outside a crowded restaurant on Quan Su Street, where a bowl of soup would cost more than half her monthly income, she finds it difficult to come to terms with the spending of the rich.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “The money they spend on a meal here may be enough for my family live on for a month,” she said.</p> <p>            </p> <p> Cao Huy Binh and his friends, on the other hand, are unfazed by the high prices as they enter the crowded restaurant. They order beer, grilled shrimp, fried cuttlefish and chicken hotpot after finding the only empty table near the window.</p> <p>            </p> <p> In the hot and crowded kitchen, a chef pours more sauce into a big wok full of appetizing beef chunks. Binh, who has made it to the restaurant after being stuck for nearly an hour in a traffic jam in light drizzle, says he meets and eats with his friends at such restaurants every Friday evening.</p> <p>          </p> <p>  “It is a way of relaxing after a week of hard work. If I do not dine out with them, I would do it with my wife and children,” he said.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  Binh, the director of a trading company, also often invites his business partners to restaurants to enjoy a meal and discuss work. “I could not cut back on dining out, even if everything is more expensive,” he said.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  With a basic monthly salary of $1,000 in a country where the annual per capita income is $1,200, Binh and his friends do not mind that their dinner costs nearly $200.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  This is good news for restaurants, and shows why they have been able to take inflation and recession very lightly, especially in big cities like Hanoi and Saigon.</p> <p>  </p> <p> According to the General Statistics Office, consumer prices, which increased 18.58 percent in 2011, climbed 16.44 percent in February from a year earlier. However, there are no signs of gloom in the food and beverage market in Vietnam. Luxury restaurants serving choice French baguettes, Italian pizza and pasta, Japanese sushi or Thai curries are crowded with customers, especially during weekends or other holidays.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The representative of a five-star hotel in Hanoi said, “We are not finding that people are spending less. They are spending more.</p> <p>   </p> <p>  “Vietnamese people are very rich. It is nothing for them to splurge $1,000 to $2,000 for a feast for several people,” she said. “On Valentine’s Day, all of our restaurants were full, and most of the customers were Vietnamese.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Over half of her hotel’s food and beverage customers are Vietnamese, who are often businesspeople or those with well-paid jobs in foreign companies or powerful state-owned enterprises in banking, finance, information technology and insurance sectors.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Foreign customers often come here to work and they don’t want to spend much money on food, she said. The higher earnings from food and beverage help offset the reduction of room bookings because of a lower number of foreign visitors amid the global economic recession. Food and beverage revenues account for 30 percent of her hotel’s turnover, she said.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Not affected</strong></p> <p> Explaining big spending on dining out amid high inflation, economist Nguyen Minh Phong of the Hanoi Socioeconomic Research Institute said whether it is inflation, war or some other crisis, there are still people who are not affected and even earn much money in such situations. These people still have a demand for consumption, and particularly for dining out.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “The state does not ban it, so their spending is legal,” he said. “This is also a sign of the expanding middle class.”</p> <p>   </p> <p> Nguyen Thuy Hoa, manager for the Korean restaurant chain Sochu, which has two outlets in Hanoi, said inflation only affects common and poor people, not the middle and higher-income ones like her customers. “The number of customers has not gone down. We still receive 300 to 500 customers every day.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Dining out has become an indispensable activity for many urban middle-income people.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “I like to escape from cooking and washing up at least once a week. Dining out with family helps me really relax,” said Le Thu Trang, staff of a Hanoi-based commercial bank, as she waited to be served at another upscale restaurant in Hanoi.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “We don’t want to save money by giving up the habit of dining out. If necessary, we would cut spending on some luxurious consumer products.”</p> <p>   </p> <p> According to results of the Nielsen Global Online Survey done for the fourth quarter of 2011, 6.7 percent of consumers’ total monthly budget is allocated for dining out.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Like other industries, we would expect consumers to react and adjust their budget accordingly to inflation. Similar to other developing markets, inflation would impact the lower-class segment or laborers much more relative to the upper-middle class group who have more flexibility with their budgets,” the Nielsen report said. The survey also found that consumers would slightly cut back on dining out if their monthly budget decreased by 10 percent.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Big potential</strong></p> <p>  It is clear that the restaurant industry has managed to avoid the worst of the tough economic situation, which has hit most businesses hard. Instead many new restaurants are springing up and existing ones are expanding.</p> <p>   </p> <p>  “It’s a trend the food and beverage industry is hoping continues for some time to come,” said one industry insider who did not want to be named. Baskin-Robbins, the world’s largest chain of ice cream specialty shops, recently opened three shops in Saigon through its Vietnamese partner, Blue Star Foods. Since its first store opened in Vietnam in 1997, the number of KFC restaurants in the country increased to 100 late last year and is expected to double by 2015. Many other restaurant chains, including famous foreign brands like Pizza Hut, Lotteria, Subway and Domino’s Pizza also have expanded operations in Vietnam.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “With a young population, Vietnam in general and Saigon in particular, presents a big potential for brands like Domino’s and we target the younger crowd,” said Di Nguyen, marketing manager for Domino’s Pizza in Vietnam.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Currently we have five shops in Saigon and anticipate rapid growth to over 25 nationwide in the next five years.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Said economist Phong, “With a population of nearly 90 million and an expanding middle class, Vietnam is a consumption market with large potential, especially in restaurants and luxurious products.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Le Bich Diep, marketing and communication manager of Golden Gate, which owns more than 40 dining outlets nationwide, including the Kichi Kichi hotpot restaurants, said the market is very big and people are ready to spend a lot on eating out.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Demand for dining out is very large. I myself see no restaurants shutting down due to having no customers,” she said. Late last year, her company opened one more restaurant in Hanoi, and is seeking sites to open more in the near future, Diep said.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Widening gap</strong></p> <p> While plastic slipper vendor Nu ruminates over her plight and wonders how others have so much to spend, economist Phong says the gap between the rich and the poor is rising in the country.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  “The rich can spend millions of dollars on a car, while it is difficult for the poor to afford a bicycle. This is an issue not only in Vietnam, but worldwide.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> “However, the big gap is a matter of concern in a tough economic situation,” he said. “The government should implement more social welfare policies for the poor, strengthen anti-corruption measures, and levy special consumption taxes on some luxurious items to ensure a measure of fairness in the society.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/03/inflation-and-the-good-life-in-vietnam-if-you-can-afford-it.php">New America Media</a></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/saigon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Saigon</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/hanoi" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hanoi</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/poor" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poor</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/rich" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">rich</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/poverty-gap" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poverty gap</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/restaurants" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">restaurants</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/high-prices" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">high prices</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/food" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Food</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/street-vendors" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">street vendors</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Nguoi Viet</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Bao Tri Nguyen, Flickr</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:53:37 +0000 tara 665 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1058-vietnam-promises-la-dolce-vita-only-those-who-can-afford-it#comments