The Bible
Dear Lord, Let’s Agree to Disagree
I would like to make it absolutely clear at the outset that this piece, which is mostly taken verbatim from the article in Newsweek magazine, issue dated March 30, 2009, page 16, is not a direct assault on Christianity, or on religion for that matter. Rather, it is a reflection of my long-held fascination of the phenomenon, or practice, of religion in Man’s life.
Various individuals have remarked that I am very religious though I don’t embrace any religious faith. I don’t know that observation is a compliment or not, but I do know this: I do spend a lot of time thinking about religions and metaphysics, and reading about philosophy. I know a little bit about four religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. I have thought long and hard about the issue of God. Religious beliefs fascinate me, especially when those beliefs are contrary to knowledge made possible by advances in science. When those religious beliefs are translated into daily behavior, they fascinate me even further. I often wonder if those religious adherents ever sit down and reflect on why they follow a certain religion, and not the others, in the first place. I wonder if they make a conscious effort to study other religions, sort of a comparative study, to ensure that the one they practice is the most sensible, according to them. I often ask myself that perhaps people practice a certain religion because of the early socialization and indoctrination and not because of conscious choice. Of the four religions mentioned above, Christianity has made several fascinating claims which demand acceptance on faith and not by logic. That’s where I have a problem. Although I know I am not very intelligent, but I am intelligent enough to be able to reason and to know something about common sense when it is present. Apparently, I am not alone, throughout history, ever since the appearance of the Bible, there have been individuals of the Homo sapiens species who question the consistency and even the veracity of the Book (from Greek biblos, meaning book). What bothers me a lot about Christianity is its exclusivity claim. It often presents itself as the only true way to truth and salvation. And it is very aggressive in promoting its gospel.
Theology scholar Bart Ehrman in his new book “Jesus, Interrupted” made an observation that the Bible is offered as a sacred text in U.S. churches---not as simply a historical document. But who wrote its 27 books? When were they written? What were its authors trying to do? Pastors and congregants may wish to avoid the crisis of faith that these questions provoke, but Ehrman says asking them is the only way to understand the Bible.
The Idea: The Bible is full of paradoxes. To make sense of it, you need to know who wrote it (men, not God) and why its stories---particularly the Gospels---contradict each other.
The Evidence: Jesus dies on different days in Mark and John. Luke says Jesus, en route to the cross, is calm; Mark says he is distraught. John says he performed miracles to prove his provenance; Matthew says he demurred. Most of the 27 books were written long after Christ’s death, and only eight of them were actually written by the people initially credited as authors. When the New Testament became canonical, there were lots of Gospels floating around. Why did some endure but not others? Unclear, Ehrman says, but it surely reflected contemporary biases. The Bible “did not descend from high,” he writes. “It was created, down here on earth.”
The Conclusion: Ehrman argues these subtleties don’t squash the possibility of faith. Belief isn’t just about the doctrine; it can also tell us how to live and love.
Amen!
CanNgon
August 30, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Declaration of Concerned Vietnamese regarding China's invasion of Vietnam
DECLARATION OF CONCERNED VIETNAMESE WORLDWIDE REGARDING CHINA’S CURRENT QUIET INVASION OF VIETNAM
For over two thousand years, China has pursued a policy of annexing Vietnam. The Han, the Tang, the Song, the Yuan, the Ming, and the Qing dynasties all undertook full-scale invasions of Vietnam, but Vietnam managed to eventually prevail over the invaders. However, recent events have shown that again China has undertaken a quiet but comprehensive invasion of Vietnam. The latest attempts of China to annex Vietnam involved:
1. 1974: the naked take-over of the Paracel Islands after a brief naval battle.
2. 1979: the land grabbing in the northern border region after a brief and bloody border war during which more than tens of thousands died on each side.
3. 1988: the occupation of part of the Spratly Islands after another brief naval battle.
4. Since 2007 to date: the presence of “mining” companies in the strategic central highlands of Vietnam.
5. The strangling of the economy of Vietnam, with the aim of making Vietnam too weak economically to resist the Chinese domination.
The Paracel and Spratly Islands in the East Sea have been part of Vietnam for centuries. We have legal and historical documents as well as maps to prove our claims. Only very recently when vast oil and gas deposits were discovered in the area did the Chinese brazenly claim the islands were theirs under the absurd doctrine of Cow’s Tongue (the Paracel and Spratly Islands are like the tongue of a cow extending from their Hainan Island!), and subsequently sent their naval forces to the area to back up their expansionist claims.
Recently Chinese naval forces have increased their bullying and unlawful acts of aggression against Vietnamese fishermen who ply their trade in the waters traditionally considered part of Vietnam. There have been numerous incidents in which Vietnamese fishing boats have been rammed, shot at and quite a number of Vietnamese fishermen were either killed from gunshot wounds or detained for large amount of ransom money. (http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/SouthChinaSea-blood-and-tears-TVan-07172009113941.htmlhttp://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/VietnameseNews/vietnamnews/Vietnamese-fishermen-detained-by%20chinese-sea-patrol-forced-to-pay-fine-insistently-07182009121523.html)(http://mil.news.sina.com.cn/2009-07-02/0844557400.html). (http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/another-Vietnamese-fisherboat-hit-by-a-strange-boat-on-ChinaSea-07152009103037.html)(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/9-fishermen-from-ship-hitting-in-south-china-sea-QNhu-07172009143806.html)
China’s territorial designs on Vietnam did not stop at sea. China forced the current Vietnamese government to give up land at the border and set up new demarcation posts to the advantage of China.
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/Vietnam-China-a-long-standing-grievances-historical-MLam-07022009133546.html).
China also forced Vietnam to permit Chinese mining companies to move into the strategic highlands in Central Vietnam. These mining companies ostensibly do mining work, but with a labor force consisting of tens of thousands of Chinese men of military age and their workplace being off limits even to the local Vietnamese authorities, their presence has caused deep concerns to the Vietnamese public across all walks of life. Retired General Vo Nguyen Giap, ex-Minister of Defense, and thus a man who should know about military matters, has publicly written three letters of concern to the highest Vietnamese authorities.
Further, China is pursuing an economic policy which is designed to strangle the economy of Vietnam. On top of flooding Vietnam with inexpensive consumer products, China has encouraged a massive smuggling program into Vietnam at the northern border. The result is that the Vietnamese business production has been weakened in the last few years. In addition, with the aim of destroying the rice-production capability of Vietnam in the south, China has plans for building a total of eight dams in the Langcang Jiang, the upstream of the Mekong River, which is located in Yunnan, China. Three of these dams have been completed. These dams have altered the natural flow of the river and resulted in the loss of 75% of fish population in the basin area. The rice production and agricultural activities in the Mekong Delta---the world’s second largest rice-producing region--- are being adversely affected.
We strongly protest these expansionist and unlawful acts of aggression of China against Vietnam.
We demand China:
1. Stop all expansionist and unlawful acts of aggression in the East Sea.
2. Release immediately all detained Vietnamese fishermen and their boats and repay in full the costs for the damages to the boats and the values of the confiscated catches.
3. Stop building more dams on the Langcang Jiang. Pre-treat industrial discharge and preserve water quality in the Langcang Jiang in order to prevent the Mekong River from becoming an open sewer system for the Yunnan mining industrial giants.
4. Resolve land, islands, sea disputes with Vietnam through diplomacy and arbitration, not though acts of bullying of a nuclear-armed power. These acts only increase the instability not only in the East Sea but also the whole Southeast Asia which is in need of political stability for economic development.
We, the undersigned, the concerned Vietnamese worldwide are reacting to the events in the East Sea, in the highlands and China-Vietnam border areas with increasing concern and asking for the support of the international community in our struggle to avoid being assimilated as what have happened in Xinjiang and Tibet. We are calling the world attention to China’s current quiet invasion of Vietnam and pointing out China’s long-standing policy of annexation of Vietnam.
We are asking Human Rights organizations to look into the current abuses and killings of the unarmed Vietnamese fishermen by the Chinese naval forces, and vigorously demand China to respect basic human rights with regard to the Vietnamese fishermen they are detaining unlawfully and holding for ransoms.
Attachment:
(1) The map showing various sites of attack which are clearly in the waters hitherto considered part of Vietnamese territory.
(2) Some photos of Vietnamese fishermen being terrorized by the Chinese vessels and their naval personnel.
(3) Letters of Vo Nguyen Giap:
http://bauxitevietnam.info/1933/thu-thu-3-cua-dai-tuong-vo-nguyen-giap-gui-bch-tu-bo-chinh-tri-cung-quoc-hoi-va-chinh-phu-ve-van-de-bauxite-tay-nguyen/?c
http://bauxitevietnam.info/tulieu/0904_DTVoNguyenGiap.htm
http://bauxitevietnam.info/tulieu/090114_thudaituongVNG1.htm
(4) Submission to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of Continental Shelf
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs-new/submissions-files/vnm37
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs-new/submissions-files/mysvnm33-09
If you agree with declaration, please sign up by sending your name
and those of your like-minded relatives and friends
(please include name of city and country)
to the following email address:
savevietnam09@gmail.com.
We are sending our declaration with a list of signers
to The United Nations and elected officials.
We are designing a website where we keep the declaration, the list of signers, and all relevant information concerning our fight to keep Vietnam from the hands of the expansionist and annexing-minded Chinese.
Thank you for your consideration.
Long live Vietnam!
Organizing Committee of Save Vietnam from China Campaign
Ngo Khoa Ba (MBA), Houston, TX, the United States
Le Quang Long (B.E.), Auckland, New Zealand
Nguyen Hung (B.E.), Sydney, Australia
For over two thousand years, China has pursued a policy of annexing Vietnam. The Han, the Tang, the Song, the Yuan, the Ming, and the Qing dynasties all undertook full-scale invasions of Vietnam, but Vietnam managed to eventually prevail over the invaders. However, recent events have shown that again China has undertaken a quiet but comprehensive invasion of Vietnam. The latest attempts of China to annex Vietnam involved:
1. 1974: the naked take-over of the Paracel Islands after a brief naval battle.
2. 1979: the land grabbing in the northern border region after a brief and bloody border war during which more than tens of thousands died on each side.
3. 1988: the occupation of part of the Spratly Islands after another brief naval battle.
4. Since 2007 to date: the presence of “mining” companies in the strategic central highlands of Vietnam.
5. The strangling of the economy of Vietnam, with the aim of making Vietnam too weak economically to resist the Chinese domination.
The Paracel and Spratly Islands in the East Sea have been part of Vietnam for centuries. We have legal and historical documents as well as maps to prove our claims. Only very recently when vast oil and gas deposits were discovered in the area did the Chinese brazenly claim the islands were theirs under the absurd doctrine of Cow’s Tongue (the Paracel and Spratly Islands are like the tongue of a cow extending from their Hainan Island!), and subsequently sent their naval forces to the area to back up their expansionist claims.
Recently Chinese naval forces have increased their bullying and unlawful acts of aggression against Vietnamese fishermen who ply their trade in the waters traditionally considered part of Vietnam. There have been numerous incidents in which Vietnamese fishing boats have been rammed, shot at and quite a number of Vietnamese fishermen were either killed from gunshot wounds or detained for large amount of ransom money. (http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/SouthChinaSea-blood-and-tears-TVan-07172009113941.htmlhttp://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/VietnameseNews/vietnamnews/Vietnamese-fishermen-detained-by%20chinese-sea-patrol-forced-to-pay-fine-insistently-07182009121523.html)(http://mil.news.sina.com.cn/2009-07-02/0844557400.html). (http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/another-Vietnamese-fisherboat-hit-by-a-strange-boat-on-ChinaSea-07152009103037.html)(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/9-fishermen-from-ship-hitting-in-south-china-sea-QNhu-07172009143806.html)
China’s territorial designs on Vietnam did not stop at sea. China forced the current Vietnamese government to give up land at the border and set up new demarcation posts to the advantage of China.
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/Vietnam-China-a-long-standing-grievances-historical-MLam-07022009133546.html).
China also forced Vietnam to permit Chinese mining companies to move into the strategic highlands in Central Vietnam. These mining companies ostensibly do mining work, but with a labor force consisting of tens of thousands of Chinese men of military age and their workplace being off limits even to the local Vietnamese authorities, their presence has caused deep concerns to the Vietnamese public across all walks of life. Retired General Vo Nguyen Giap, ex-Minister of Defense, and thus a man who should know about military matters, has publicly written three letters of concern to the highest Vietnamese authorities.
Further, China is pursuing an economic policy which is designed to strangle the economy of Vietnam. On top of flooding Vietnam with inexpensive consumer products, China has encouraged a massive smuggling program into Vietnam at the northern border. The result is that the Vietnamese business production has been weakened in the last few years. In addition, with the aim of destroying the rice-production capability of Vietnam in the south, China has plans for building a total of eight dams in the Langcang Jiang, the upstream of the Mekong River, which is located in Yunnan, China. Three of these dams have been completed. These dams have altered the natural flow of the river and resulted in the loss of 75% of fish population in the basin area. The rice production and agricultural activities in the Mekong Delta---the world’s second largest rice-producing region--- are being adversely affected.
We strongly protest these expansionist and unlawful acts of aggression of China against Vietnam.
We demand China:
1. Stop all expansionist and unlawful acts of aggression in the East Sea.
2. Release immediately all detained Vietnamese fishermen and their boats and repay in full the costs for the damages to the boats and the values of the confiscated catches.
3. Stop building more dams on the Langcang Jiang. Pre-treat industrial discharge and preserve water quality in the Langcang Jiang in order to prevent the Mekong River from becoming an open sewer system for the Yunnan mining industrial giants.
4. Resolve land, islands, sea disputes with Vietnam through diplomacy and arbitration, not though acts of bullying of a nuclear-armed power. These acts only increase the instability not only in the East Sea but also the whole Southeast Asia which is in need of political stability for economic development.
We, the undersigned, the concerned Vietnamese worldwide are reacting to the events in the East Sea, in the highlands and China-Vietnam border areas with increasing concern and asking for the support of the international community in our struggle to avoid being assimilated as what have happened in Xinjiang and Tibet. We are calling the world attention to China’s current quiet invasion of Vietnam and pointing out China’s long-standing policy of annexation of Vietnam.
We are asking Human Rights organizations to look into the current abuses and killings of the unarmed Vietnamese fishermen by the Chinese naval forces, and vigorously demand China to respect basic human rights with regard to the Vietnamese fishermen they are detaining unlawfully and holding for ransoms.
Attachment:
(1) The map showing various sites of attack which are clearly in the waters hitherto considered part of Vietnamese territory.
(2) Some photos of Vietnamese fishermen being terrorized by the Chinese vessels and their naval personnel.
(3) Letters of Vo Nguyen Giap:
http://bauxitevietnam.info/1933/thu-thu-3-cua-dai-tuong-vo-nguyen-giap-gui-bch-tu-bo-chinh-tri-cung-quoc-hoi-va-chinh-phu-ve-van-de-bauxite-tay-nguyen/?c
http://bauxitevietnam.info/tulieu/0904_DTVoNguyenGiap.htm
http://bauxitevietnam.info/tulieu/090114_thudaituongVNG1.htm
(4) Submission to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of Continental Shelf
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs-new/submissions-files/vnm37
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs-new/submissions-files/mysvnm33-09
If you agree with declaration, please sign up by sending your name
and those of your like-minded relatives and friends
(please include name of city and country)
to the following email address:
savevietnam09@gmail.com.
We are sending our declaration with a list of signers
to The United Nations and elected officials.
We are designing a website where we keep the declaration, the list of signers, and all relevant information concerning our fight to keep Vietnam from the hands of the expansionist and annexing-minded Chinese.
Thank you for your consideration.
Long live Vietnam!
Organizing Committee of Save Vietnam from China Campaign
Ngo Khoa Ba (MBA), Houston, TX, the United States
Le Quang Long (B.E.), Auckland, New Zealand
Nguyen Hung (B.E.), Sydney, Australia
Bản Tuyến Bố Của Những Người Việt Nam Trầm Lặng
BẢN TUYÊN BỐ
CỦA NGƯỜI VIỆT NAM TRÊN TOÀN THẾ GIỚI
VỀ SỰ XÂM LĂNG THẦM LẶNG CỦA TRUNG QUỐC
ĐỐI VỚI VIỆT NAM
Trong thời gian hơn hai ngàn năm qua, Trung Quốc đã liên tục theo đuổi sách lược thôn tính Việt Nam. Nhiều triều đại kế tiếp của Trung Quốc tử Hán, Đường, Tống, Nguyen, Minh, và cuối cùng nhà Thanh, tất cả đều có dã tâm xâm lăng và đồng hóa Việt Nam. Nhưng Việt Nam đã kiên trì vượt qua mọi hiểm nghèo, chống lại một cách thành công dã tâm của Trung Quốc và tồn tại cho đến ngày nay. Tuy nhiên những sự kiện xảy dồn dập trong những năm qua cho thấyTrung Quốc đang tiến hành trở lại âm mưu xâm lăng tuy thầm lặng nhưng không kém nguy hiểm, bao trùm cả Việt Nam.
Những sự kiện xảy ra giửa Trung Quốc và Việt Nam gồm:
1. Năm 1974, chiếm đóng quần đảo Hoàng Sa sau trận hải chiền ngắn.
2. Năm 1979, chiếm đóng mốt số lãnh địa gần biên giới phía Bắc sau trận chiến khóc liệt tại suốt khu vực biên giới Việt Trung.
3. Năm 1988, chiếm đóng một số đảo trong quần đảo Trường Sa sau trận hải chiến ngắn khác.
4. Từ năm 2007 đến nay, có sự xuất hiện đáng nghi ngờ cùa các công ty quốc doanh Trung Quốc chuyên khai thác tài nguyên khoáng sản quặng mỏ tại nhiều vùng được đánh giá rất quan trọng về mặt an ninh và chiến lược quân sự, -cụ thể như vùng Tây Nguyên của Việt Nam.
5. Bóp nghẹt nền kinh tế Việt Nam nhằm mục đích làm cho Việt Nam trở nên suy yếu về kinh tế và hậu quả tai hại là Việt Nam sẽ không thể chống cự lại được mọi khống chế của Trung Quốc.
Từ nhiều thế kỷ nay, Quần đảo Hoàng Sa và Trường Sa trên Biển Đông là lãnh thổ của Việt Nam. Nhiều thế hệ người Việt Nam đã xây dựng cơ chế xã hội và quân đội trên hai quần đảo này. Việt Nam có nhiều tài liệu cũng như các bản đồ do các triều vua Việt Nam từ nhiều thế kỷ trước thực hiện, chứng minh rõ ràng chủ quyền của Việt Nam. Chỉ mới gần đây, khi nhiều quặng mỏ dầu và khí đốt được tìm ra, Trung Quốc bắt đầu đơn phưong tuyên bố chủ quyền các quần đảo này qua –tài liệu lãnh hải hình “Lưỡi Bò” tiếm nhận toàn bộ vùng biển bao gồm Hoàng Sa và Trường Sa trong lãnh hải kéo dài từ phía nam đảo Hải Nam - và sau đó Trung Quốc điều động lực lượng hải quân của họ đến kiểm soát toàn khu vực.
Thời gian mới đây hải quân Trung Quốc gia tăng hành động bạo lực phi pháp đối với ngư phủ Việt Nam trên Biển Đông. Nhiều sư kiện liên tục xảy ra, trong đó tàu thuyền đánh cá của ngư phủ Việt Nam bị tàu hải quânTrung Quốc đụng chìm, bắn phá, ngư dân bị bắn chết, bị thương vong và bị bắt làm con tin đòi tiền chuộc mạng.
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/SouthChinaSea-blood-and-tears-TVan-07172009113941.html)
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/VietnameseNews/vietnamnews/Vietnamese-fishermen-detained-by%20chinese-sea-patrol-forced-to-pay-fine-insistently-07182009121523.html) (http://mil.news.sina.com.cn/2009-07-02/0844557400.html)
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/another-Vietnamese-fisherboat-hit-by-a-strange-boat-on-ChinaSea-07152009103037.html)
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/9-fishermen-from-ship-hitting-in-south-china-sea-QNhu-07172009143806.html
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/Vietnam-China-a-long-standing-grievances-historical-MLam-07022009133546.html).
Trung Quốc vừa dùng tiền của, vật chất vừa áp lực nhà nước Việt Nam để các công ty quốc doanh chuyên khai thác tài nguyên khoáng sản quặng mỏ được vào vùng Tây Nguyên độc quyền dài hạn khai thác quặng kim loại quan trọng như Titanium, Nhôm, vân vân. Những công ty Trung Quốc này không thu dụng công nhân Việt Nam nhưng lại đem hàng ngàn thanh niên Trung Quốc trong lứa tuổi phục vụ quân đội sang làm việc và sinh sống biệt lập trong các khu vực giành riêng của họ. Ngay cả các cơ quan nhà nước Việt Nam cũng không được phép vô kiểm tra những nơi này.
Dân chúng Việt Nam nghi ngờ và rất lo lắng về dã tâm đen tối của Trung Quốc, lợi dụng việc khai thác khoáng sản quặng mỏ để bí mật cài đặt tiềm lực quân sự cùa họ, nhất là vùng Tây Nguyên.
Đại tướng Võ Nguyên Giáp, nguyên bộ trưởng Bộ Quốc Phòng Việt Nam, là người dày dặn kinh nghiệm và có nhiều thẩm quyền về các vấn đề liên quan đến an ninh quốc phòng, đã ba lần công khai lên tiếng đến các cấp lãnh đạo cao cấp nhất của đảng và nhà nước Việt Nam, bày tỏ nỗi lo lắng sâu xa trước sự có mặt của Trung Quốc trong khu vực Tây Nguyên, vùng rất quan trọng về mặt chiến lược trong việc giữ gìn an ninh toàn vẹn lãnh thổ của Việt Nam.
Đồng thời, Trung Quốc còn lũng đoạn kinh tế Việt Nam bằng cách cho tràn ngập và phá giá thị trường Việt Nam với nhiều loại hàng hóa tiêu dùng không đủ tiêu chuẩn an toàn vệ sinh, và chuyển vận bất hợp pháp nhiều loại hàng hóa, - vật liệu xuyên qua toàn vùng biên giới Việt Trung. Hậu quả của ý đồ thâm độc này là các ngành sản xuầt của Việt Nam đang bị suy yếu chết dấn mòn.
Ngoài ra, với âm mưu nhằm hủy hoại khả năng sản xuất lúa gạo của vùng đồng bằng miền Nam của Việt Nam, Trung Quốc đang thực hiện kế hoạch xây 8 đập thủy điện lớn trên khu vực thượng nguồn của sông Cửu Long trong vùng Van Nam. Trung Quốc vừa hoàn tất ba đập thủy điện lớn. Những đập này đã thay đổi dòng chảy tự nhiên của sông Cửu Long và gây thiệt hại đến khoảng 75% số lượng thủy sản trong khu vực hạ lưu sông Cửu Long. Mức độ sản xuất lúa gạo và các hoạt động nông nghiệp trong vùng châu thổ sông Cửu Long của Việt Nam - khu vực sản xuất lúa gạo lớn nhất thế giới - bị suy giảm nghiêm trọng.
Chúng tôi cực lực chống lại những hành động bành trướng phi pháp và bá quyền cùa Trung Quốc đối với Việt Nam. Chúng tôi đòi hỏi Trung Quốc:
1. Thả tự do lập tức và vô điều kiện tất cả ngư phủ Việt Nam hiện đang còn bị bắt giữ trái phép cùng với tàu thuyền của họ và bồi hoàn đầy đủ những chi phí chi trả cho việc sửa chữa những hư hại gây ra cho những tàu thuyền, và bối thướng toàn bộ thiệt hại cho số hải sản bị tịch thu trái phép.
2. Ngừng ngay những hành động bạo lực bá quyền phi pháp đối với ngư phủ Việt Nam trên Biển Đông.
3. Ngừng xây thêm đập thủy điện trên khu vực Langcang Jiang. Xử lý toàn bộ nuớc phế thải kỹ nghê đúng tiêu chuẩn quốc tế để bảo vệ chất lượng nước trong vùng để sông Cửu Long không bị trở thành một hệ thống thoát nước phế thải của các tập đoàn kỹ nghệ Yunnan.
4. Giải quyết các tranh chấp về lãnh thổ, biển đảo và lãnh hải bằng đuờng lối ngoại giao và tuân hành các qui ước quốc tế, không qua hành động áp chế bằng bạo lực. Những thái độ và hành động bạo lực chỉ làm gia tăng tình trạng bất ổn định không những cho vùng Đông Á mà còn cho vùng Đông Nam A, khu vực rất cần sự ổn định chính trị, giúp cho công cuộc phát triển kinh tế trong khu vực.
Chúng tôi, người Việt Nam trên toàn thế giới ký tên dưới đây đặc biệt quan tâm và lo ngại đến những biến cố dồn dập xảy ra ngoài Biển Đông, trên vùng Tây Nguyên và vùng biên giới Việt Trung. Sống cạnh Trung Quốc, như kinh nghiệm của người Tây Tạng , nguời Uighurs tại Tân Cương, chúng tôi biết rõ chủ trương lâu đời cùa Trung Quốc là xâm chiếm và đồng hóa các nước láng giềng có ít dân.
Chúng tôi kêu gọi những tổ chức bảo vệ nhân quyền tiến hành điều tra những sự ngược đãi và giết hại ngư phủ Việt Nam không võ trang và không ai bảo vệ, do hải quân Trung Quốc đang gây ra trên Biển Đông, và khẩn thiết đòi hỏi Trung Quốc tôn trọng quyền căn bản của con người đối với ngư phủ Việt Nam đang bi họ bắt giữ phi pháp và đòi tiền chuộc mạng.
Đính kèm:
(1) Bản đồ Biển Đông ghi lại những địa điểm thuyền đánh cá Việt Nam bịTrung Quốc tấn công và bắt giữ, cho thấy rõ rang họ đang ở trong vùng lãnh hải Việt Nam.
(2) Một số hình chup cảnh ngư phủ Việt Nam bị đối xử tồi tệ và bị khủng bố, hạ nhục nhân phẩm và hình lính hải quân Trung Quốc đang khủng bố ngư dân Việt Nam.(3) Thư của Đại Tướng Võ Nguyên Giáp lên tiếng về việc khai thác Bauxite và hiểm họa Trung Quốc tại Tây Nguyên:
http://bauxitevietnam.info/1933/thu-thu-3-cua-dai-tuong-vo-nguyen-giap-gui-bch-tu-bo-chinh-tri-cung-quoc-hoi-va-chinh-phu-ve-van-de-bauxite-tay-nguyen/?c
http://bauxitevietnam.info/tulieu/0904_DTVoNguyenGiap.htm
http://bauxitevietnam.info/tulieu/090114_thudaituongVNG1.htm
(4) Hồ sơ Việt Nam nộp lên Cao Ủy Liên Hiệp Quốc Đặc Trách Cứu Xét Ranh Giới Thềm Lục Địa:
http://freelecongdinh.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/vnm2009n_executivesummary.pdf
http://freelecongdinh.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/mys_vnm2009excutivesummary.pdf
Đây là Bản Tuyên Bố của những Người Việt Thầm Lặng
không đảng phái chính trị, vẫn thường xuyên quan tâm đến tình hình đất nưóc.
Nếu quí vị đồng ý với những lời kêu gọi trong bản Tuyến Bố này xin vui lòng ký tên bằng cách gửi tên họ tuổi nơi cư ngụ về địa chỉ điện thư dưới đây:
mailto: savevietnam09@gmail.com
savevietnamfromchina@yahoo.com.au
wissai@yahoo.com
hungthuoc@yahoo.com
Nhóm chủ trương sẽ gửi bản Tuyên Bố này đến các cơ quan liên hệ của Liên Hiệp Quốc,
các vị dân cử trên khắp mọi quốc gia trên thế giới và các cơ quan truyền thông
Chúng tôi cũng đang soạn một Website để phổ biến biến dự án này trên hệ thống Internet.
Trong tình trạng Tổ Quốc lâm nguy trước nạn Bắc Thuộc, chúng ta không thể tiếp tục im lặng chờ đợi vào nhà nước Việt Nam và các đảng phái chính trị trong cũng như ngoài nưóc.
Xin hãy cùng góp một tay để lên tiếng kêu gọi lương tâm thế giới trước nạn Bắc xâm.
Trân Trọng
Nhóm Người Việt Thầm Lặng Chống Nạn Bắc Thuôc.
Ủy Ban Đaị Diện
Nguyen Hung (B.E.) Sydney, Australia
Le Quang Long (B.E.) Auckland, New Zealand
Ngo Khoa Ba (MBA) Houston, Texas, U.S.A
CỦA NGƯỜI VIỆT NAM TRÊN TOÀN THẾ GIỚI
VỀ SỰ XÂM LĂNG THẦM LẶNG CỦA TRUNG QUỐC
ĐỐI VỚI VIỆT NAM
Trong thời gian hơn hai ngàn năm qua, Trung Quốc đã liên tục theo đuổi sách lược thôn tính Việt Nam. Nhiều triều đại kế tiếp của Trung Quốc tử Hán, Đường, Tống, Nguyen, Minh, và cuối cùng nhà Thanh, tất cả đều có dã tâm xâm lăng và đồng hóa Việt Nam. Nhưng Việt Nam đã kiên trì vượt qua mọi hiểm nghèo, chống lại một cách thành công dã tâm của Trung Quốc và tồn tại cho đến ngày nay. Tuy nhiên những sự kiện xảy dồn dập trong những năm qua cho thấyTrung Quốc đang tiến hành trở lại âm mưu xâm lăng tuy thầm lặng nhưng không kém nguy hiểm, bao trùm cả Việt Nam.
Những sự kiện xảy ra giửa Trung Quốc và Việt Nam gồm:
1. Năm 1974, chiếm đóng quần đảo Hoàng Sa sau trận hải chiền ngắn.
2. Năm 1979, chiếm đóng mốt số lãnh địa gần biên giới phía Bắc sau trận chiến khóc liệt tại suốt khu vực biên giới Việt Trung.
3. Năm 1988, chiếm đóng một số đảo trong quần đảo Trường Sa sau trận hải chiến ngắn khác.
4. Từ năm 2007 đến nay, có sự xuất hiện đáng nghi ngờ cùa các công ty quốc doanh Trung Quốc chuyên khai thác tài nguyên khoáng sản quặng mỏ tại nhiều vùng được đánh giá rất quan trọng về mặt an ninh và chiến lược quân sự, -cụ thể như vùng Tây Nguyên của Việt Nam.
5. Bóp nghẹt nền kinh tế Việt Nam nhằm mục đích làm cho Việt Nam trở nên suy yếu về kinh tế và hậu quả tai hại là Việt Nam sẽ không thể chống cự lại được mọi khống chế của Trung Quốc.
Từ nhiều thế kỷ nay, Quần đảo Hoàng Sa và Trường Sa trên Biển Đông là lãnh thổ của Việt Nam. Nhiều thế hệ người Việt Nam đã xây dựng cơ chế xã hội và quân đội trên hai quần đảo này. Việt Nam có nhiều tài liệu cũng như các bản đồ do các triều vua Việt Nam từ nhiều thế kỷ trước thực hiện, chứng minh rõ ràng chủ quyền của Việt Nam. Chỉ mới gần đây, khi nhiều quặng mỏ dầu và khí đốt được tìm ra, Trung Quốc bắt đầu đơn phưong tuyên bố chủ quyền các quần đảo này qua –tài liệu lãnh hải hình “Lưỡi Bò” tiếm nhận toàn bộ vùng biển bao gồm Hoàng Sa và Trường Sa trong lãnh hải kéo dài từ phía nam đảo Hải Nam - và sau đó Trung Quốc điều động lực lượng hải quân của họ đến kiểm soát toàn khu vực.
Thời gian mới đây hải quân Trung Quốc gia tăng hành động bạo lực phi pháp đối với ngư phủ Việt Nam trên Biển Đông. Nhiều sư kiện liên tục xảy ra, trong đó tàu thuyền đánh cá của ngư phủ Việt Nam bị tàu hải quânTrung Quốc đụng chìm, bắn phá, ngư dân bị bắn chết, bị thương vong và bị bắt làm con tin đòi tiền chuộc mạng.
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/SouthChinaSea-blood-and-tears-TVan-07172009113941.html)
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/VietnameseNews/vietnamnews/Vietnamese-fishermen-detained-by%20chinese-sea-patrol-forced-to-pay-fine-insistently-07182009121523.html) (http://mil.news.sina.com.cn/2009-07-02/0844557400.html)
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/another-Vietnamese-fisherboat-hit-by-a-strange-boat-on-ChinaSea-07152009103037.html)
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/9-fishermen-from-ship-hitting-in-south-china-sea-QNhu-07172009143806.html
(http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/Vietnam-China-a-long-standing-grievances-historical-MLam-07022009133546.html).
Trung Quốc vừa dùng tiền của, vật chất vừa áp lực nhà nước Việt Nam để các công ty quốc doanh chuyên khai thác tài nguyên khoáng sản quặng mỏ được vào vùng Tây Nguyên độc quyền dài hạn khai thác quặng kim loại quan trọng như Titanium, Nhôm, vân vân. Những công ty Trung Quốc này không thu dụng công nhân Việt Nam nhưng lại đem hàng ngàn thanh niên Trung Quốc trong lứa tuổi phục vụ quân đội sang làm việc và sinh sống biệt lập trong các khu vực giành riêng của họ. Ngay cả các cơ quan nhà nước Việt Nam cũng không được phép vô kiểm tra những nơi này.
Dân chúng Việt Nam nghi ngờ và rất lo lắng về dã tâm đen tối của Trung Quốc, lợi dụng việc khai thác khoáng sản quặng mỏ để bí mật cài đặt tiềm lực quân sự cùa họ, nhất là vùng Tây Nguyên.
Đại tướng Võ Nguyên Giáp, nguyên bộ trưởng Bộ Quốc Phòng Việt Nam, là người dày dặn kinh nghiệm và có nhiều thẩm quyền về các vấn đề liên quan đến an ninh quốc phòng, đã ba lần công khai lên tiếng đến các cấp lãnh đạo cao cấp nhất của đảng và nhà nước Việt Nam, bày tỏ nỗi lo lắng sâu xa trước sự có mặt của Trung Quốc trong khu vực Tây Nguyên, vùng rất quan trọng về mặt chiến lược trong việc giữ gìn an ninh toàn vẹn lãnh thổ của Việt Nam.
Đồng thời, Trung Quốc còn lũng đoạn kinh tế Việt Nam bằng cách cho tràn ngập và phá giá thị trường Việt Nam với nhiều loại hàng hóa tiêu dùng không đủ tiêu chuẩn an toàn vệ sinh, và chuyển vận bất hợp pháp nhiều loại hàng hóa, - vật liệu xuyên qua toàn vùng biên giới Việt Trung. Hậu quả của ý đồ thâm độc này là các ngành sản xuầt của Việt Nam đang bị suy yếu chết dấn mòn.
Ngoài ra, với âm mưu nhằm hủy hoại khả năng sản xuất lúa gạo của vùng đồng bằng miền Nam của Việt Nam, Trung Quốc đang thực hiện kế hoạch xây 8 đập thủy điện lớn trên khu vực thượng nguồn của sông Cửu Long trong vùng Van Nam. Trung Quốc vừa hoàn tất ba đập thủy điện lớn. Những đập này đã thay đổi dòng chảy tự nhiên của sông Cửu Long và gây thiệt hại đến khoảng 75% số lượng thủy sản trong khu vực hạ lưu sông Cửu Long. Mức độ sản xuất lúa gạo và các hoạt động nông nghiệp trong vùng châu thổ sông Cửu Long của Việt Nam - khu vực sản xuất lúa gạo lớn nhất thế giới - bị suy giảm nghiêm trọng.
Chúng tôi cực lực chống lại những hành động bành trướng phi pháp và bá quyền cùa Trung Quốc đối với Việt Nam. Chúng tôi đòi hỏi Trung Quốc:
1. Thả tự do lập tức và vô điều kiện tất cả ngư phủ Việt Nam hiện đang còn bị bắt giữ trái phép cùng với tàu thuyền của họ và bồi hoàn đầy đủ những chi phí chi trả cho việc sửa chữa những hư hại gây ra cho những tàu thuyền, và bối thướng toàn bộ thiệt hại cho số hải sản bị tịch thu trái phép.
2. Ngừng ngay những hành động bạo lực bá quyền phi pháp đối với ngư phủ Việt Nam trên Biển Đông.
3. Ngừng xây thêm đập thủy điện trên khu vực Langcang Jiang. Xử lý toàn bộ nuớc phế thải kỹ nghê đúng tiêu chuẩn quốc tế để bảo vệ chất lượng nước trong vùng để sông Cửu Long không bị trở thành một hệ thống thoát nước phế thải của các tập đoàn kỹ nghệ Yunnan.
4. Giải quyết các tranh chấp về lãnh thổ, biển đảo và lãnh hải bằng đuờng lối ngoại giao và tuân hành các qui ước quốc tế, không qua hành động áp chế bằng bạo lực. Những thái độ và hành động bạo lực chỉ làm gia tăng tình trạng bất ổn định không những cho vùng Đông Á mà còn cho vùng Đông Nam A, khu vực rất cần sự ổn định chính trị, giúp cho công cuộc phát triển kinh tế trong khu vực.
Chúng tôi, người Việt Nam trên toàn thế giới ký tên dưới đây đặc biệt quan tâm và lo ngại đến những biến cố dồn dập xảy ra ngoài Biển Đông, trên vùng Tây Nguyên và vùng biên giới Việt Trung. Sống cạnh Trung Quốc, như kinh nghiệm của người Tây Tạng , nguời Uighurs tại Tân Cương, chúng tôi biết rõ chủ trương lâu đời cùa Trung Quốc là xâm chiếm và đồng hóa các nước láng giềng có ít dân.
Chúng tôi kêu gọi những tổ chức bảo vệ nhân quyền tiến hành điều tra những sự ngược đãi và giết hại ngư phủ Việt Nam không võ trang và không ai bảo vệ, do hải quân Trung Quốc đang gây ra trên Biển Đông, và khẩn thiết đòi hỏi Trung Quốc tôn trọng quyền căn bản của con người đối với ngư phủ Việt Nam đang bi họ bắt giữ phi pháp và đòi tiền chuộc mạng.
Đính kèm:
(1) Bản đồ Biển Đông ghi lại những địa điểm thuyền đánh cá Việt Nam bịTrung Quốc tấn công và bắt giữ, cho thấy rõ rang họ đang ở trong vùng lãnh hải Việt Nam.
(2) Một số hình chup cảnh ngư phủ Việt Nam bị đối xử tồi tệ và bị khủng bố, hạ nhục nhân phẩm và hình lính hải quân Trung Quốc đang khủng bố ngư dân Việt Nam.(3) Thư của Đại Tướng Võ Nguyên Giáp lên tiếng về việc khai thác Bauxite và hiểm họa Trung Quốc tại Tây Nguyên:
http://bauxitevietnam.info/1933/thu-thu-3-cua-dai-tuong-vo-nguyen-giap-gui-bch-tu-bo-chinh-tri-cung-quoc-hoi-va-chinh-phu-ve-van-de-bauxite-tay-nguyen/?c
http://bauxitevietnam.info/tulieu/0904_DTVoNguyenGiap.htm
http://bauxitevietnam.info/tulieu/090114_thudaituongVNG1.htm
(4) Hồ sơ Việt Nam nộp lên Cao Ủy Liên Hiệp Quốc Đặc Trách Cứu Xét Ranh Giới Thềm Lục Địa:
http://freelecongdinh.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/vnm2009n_executivesummary.pdf
http://freelecongdinh.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/mys_vnm2009excutivesummary.pdf
Đây là Bản Tuyên Bố của những Người Việt Thầm Lặng
không đảng phái chính trị, vẫn thường xuyên quan tâm đến tình hình đất nưóc.
Nếu quí vị đồng ý với những lời kêu gọi trong bản Tuyến Bố này xin vui lòng ký tên bằng cách gửi tên họ tuổi nơi cư ngụ về địa chỉ điện thư dưới đây:
mailto: savevietnam09@gmail.com
savevietnamfromchina@yahoo.com.au
wissai@yahoo.com
hungthuoc@yahoo.com
Nhóm chủ trương sẽ gửi bản Tuyên Bố này đến các cơ quan liên hệ của Liên Hiệp Quốc,
các vị dân cử trên khắp mọi quốc gia trên thế giới và các cơ quan truyền thông
Chúng tôi cũng đang soạn một Website để phổ biến biến dự án này trên hệ thống Internet.
Trong tình trạng Tổ Quốc lâm nguy trước nạn Bắc Thuộc, chúng ta không thể tiếp tục im lặng chờ đợi vào nhà nước Việt Nam và các đảng phái chính trị trong cũng như ngoài nưóc.
Xin hãy cùng góp một tay để lên tiếng kêu gọi lương tâm thế giới trước nạn Bắc xâm.
Trân Trọng
Nhóm Người Việt Thầm Lặng Chống Nạn Bắc Thuôc.
Ủy Ban Đaị Diện
Nguyen Hung (B.E.) Sydney, Australia
Le Quang Long (B.E.) Auckland, New Zealand
Ngo Khoa Ba (MBA) Houston, Texas, U.S.A
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Homo Sapiens
HOMO SAPIENS
Facts:
I always have a keen interest in the human species, of the species’ survival in general, and of the survival of my Vietnamese people in particular. I know a little bit, from reading, about various human species prior to the emergence of Modern Man, the Homo sapiens. Apparently all those Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo egaster, Homo erectus, Homo nearnderthalensis, etc… all died out, except for the latest arrival, the Homo sapiens. What interested me the most was that the Homo sapiens also almost died out.
The following was taken from Heart of Dryness by James Workman (New York: Walker Publishing Company, Inc., 2009) pp 36-37, and Wikipedia.
A human is a member of a species of bipedal primates in the family Hominidae (taxonomically Homo sapiens—Latin: "wise man" or "knowing man"). Mitochondrial DNA and fossil evidence indicates that modern humans evolved in east Africa about 200,000 years ago. When compared to other animals and primates, humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection and problem solving. This mental capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees the forelimbs (arms) for manipulating objects, has allowed humans to make far greater use of tools than any other species. Humans are distributed worldwide, with significant populations inhabiting most land areas of Earth.
Like most higher primates, humans are social by nature. Humans are particularly adept at utilizing systems of communication—primarily spoken, gestural, and written language—for self-expression, the exchange of ideas, and organization. Humans create complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families to nations. Social interactions between humans have established an extremely wide variety of traditions, rituals, ethics, values, social norms, and laws, which together form the basis of human society. Humans are distinctive as a species on the Earth by having a perception of beauty and aesthetics at least to a point which results in a material culture. This, when combined with the desire for self-expression and a proportionally large brain-size, has led to innovations such as art, written language, music and science.
Humans seek to understand and influence the environment around them by trying to explain and manipulate natural phenomena through philosophy, art, science, mythology, and religion. This natural curiosity has led to the development of advanced tools and skills. Although humans are not the only species to use tools, they are unique in building fires, cooking their food, and clothing themselves; as well as using other advanced technologies. Humans pass down their skills and knowledge to the next generations and so are regarded as dependent upon culture.
The scientific study of human evolution encompasses the development of the genus Homo, but usually involves studying other hominids and hominines as well, such as Australopithecus. "Modern humans" are defined as the Homo sapiens species, of which the only extant subspecies is known as Homo sapiens sapiens. Homo sapiens idaltu (roughly translated as "elder wise human"), the other known subspecies, is now extinct.[5] Homo neanderthalensis, which became extinct 30,000 years ago, has sometimes been classified as a subspecies, "Homo sapiens neanderthalensis", but genetic studies now suggest a divergence of the Neanderthal species from Homo sapiens about 500,000 years ago[6]. Similarly, the few specimens of Homo rhodesiensis have also occasionally been classified as a subspecies, but this is not widely accepted. Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000 years ago, and studies of molecular biology give evidence that the approximate time of divergence from the common ancestor of all modern human populations was 200,000 years ago.[7][8][9][10][11] The broad study of African genetic diversity headed by Dr. Sarah Tishkoff found the San people ( formerly known as the Bushmen) exhibiting the greatest genetic diversity among the 113 distinct populations sampled, making them one of 14 "ancestral population clusters".The research also located the origin of modern human migration in south-western Africa, near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola.[12]
The closest living relatives of humans are gorillas and chimpanzees, but humans did not evolve from these apes: instead these apes share a common ancestor with modern humans.[13] Humans are probably most closely related to two chimpanzee species: Common Chimpanzee and Bonobo.[13] Full genome sequencing has resulted in the conclusion that "after 6.5 [million] years of separate evolution, the differences between chimpanzee and human are ten times greater than those between two unrelated people and ten times less than those between rats and mice". Suggested concurrence between human and chimpanzee DNA sequences range between 95% and 99%.[14][15][16][17] It has been estimated that the human lineage diverged from that of chimpanzees about five million years ago, and from that of gorillas about eight million years ago. However, a hominid skull discovered in Chad in 2001, classified as Sahelanthropus tchadensis, is approximately seven million years old, which may indicate an earlier divergence.[18]
Human evolution is characterized by a number of important morphological, developmental, physiological and behavioural changes, which have taken place since the split between the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. The first major morphological change was the evolution of a bipedal locomotor adaptation from an arboreal or semi-arboreal one,[19] with all its attendant adaptations, such as a valgus knee, low intermembral index (long legs relative to the arms), and reduced upper-body strength.
Later, ancestral humans developed a much larger brain – typically 1,400 cm³ in modern humans, over twice the size of that of a chimpanzee or gorilla. The pattern of human postnatal brain growth differs from that of other apes (heterochrony), and allows for extended periods of social learning and language acquisition in juvenile humans. Physical anthropologists argue that the differences between the structure of human brains and those of other apes are even more significant than their differences in size.
Other significant morphological changes included: the evolution of a power and precision grip;[20] a reduced masticatory system; a reduction of the canine tooth; and the descent of the larynx and hyoid bone, making speech possible. An important physiological change in humans was the evolution of hidden oestrus, or concealed ovulation, which may have coincided with the evolution of important behavioural changes, such as pair bonding. Another significant behavioural change was the development of material culture, with human-made objects becoming increasingly common and diversified over time. The relationship between all these changes is the subject of ongoing debate.[21][22]
The forces of natural selection have continued to operate on human populations, with evidence that certain regions of the genome display directional selection in the past 15,000 years.[23
Around the turn of the twenty-first century, affordable computerized data systems of biotechnology could break down, sequence, and unlock the secret code retained in the molecules of human cells---specifically cells embedded within female mitochondrial DNA and male Y chromosomal DNA. Genetic mapping projects began to test the bloodlines of global residents for definite scientific links, seeking mutations---the spelling errors found in all “genetic markers”---to trace our ancestry. Once testing began, researchers could reel back through time, tracking who begat whom, racing along family tree tops and branches to family tree trunks to our deepest blood roots, right down to our earliest human origins.
Homo sapiens appeared about 200,000 BP, in the Middle Paleolithic. By the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic 50,000 BP, full behavioral modernity, including language, music and other cultural universals had developed. The out of Africa migration is estimated to have occurred about 70,000 years BP. Modern humans subsequently spread to all continents, replacing earlier hominids: they inhabited Eurasia and Oceania by 40,000 BP, and the Americas at least 14,500 years BP.[24] They displaced Homo neanderthalensis and other species descended from Homo erectus (which had inhabited Eurasia as early as 2 million years ago) through more successful reproduction and competition for resources.[25]
Evidence from archaeogenetics accumulating since the 1990s has lent strong support to the "out-of-Africa" scenario, and has marginalized the competing multiregional hypothesis, which proposed that modern humans evolved, at least in part, from independent hominid populations.[26]
Geneticists Lynn Jorde and Henry Harpending of the University of Utah propose that the variation in human DNA is minute compared to that of other species. They also propose that during the Late Pleistocene, the human population was reduced to a small number of breeding pairs – no more than 10,000, and possibly as few as 1,000 – resulting in a very small residual gene pool. Various reasons for this hypothetical bottleneck have been postulated, one being a cataclysmic drought had swept across the African continent, wiping out humanity until scarcely a few thousand of our species endured. Another megadrought had scattered off many of our human ancestors to populate the earth in a mass exodus. Only the hardiest survivors remained in small, isolated pockets on the continent of Africa.
By sifting through that shrinking African pool of diverse DNA samples, researchers traced back 150,000 years (according to Workman, 200,000 years according to article in Wikipedia above) until a single female bloodline emerged from a primordial Eden. From that anthropological Eve, all humanity had descended, over two thousand generations, to the 6.7 billion of us as of February 2009. Apparently Eve existed, but she was not blond and fair-skinned, plucked from Adam’s rib. Instead she more closely resembled a savvy, wise, and wrinkled light red-skinned forager old woman in the Kalahari.
Conclusions/Theorizing:
1. We are all interrelated. Being racist is being ignorant since after all, we are the descendants of no more than 10,000 people (and could be as few as 1,000 people).
2. No wonder if you look at photos or watch on TV, people of a certain region or “race” look remarkably similar. For example, Southern Chinese and Vietnamese look very similar (re: Bách Việt). All the Middle Eastern peoples look the same to me. The Nordic peoples look the same. The Mediterranean peoples do likewise. Answers: few genetic variety and inbreeding due to very small population size. Thus, it is no surprise that offspring of mixed “races” are usually very smart. In the past, humans raided neighboring tribes for wives to avoid inbreeding.
3. Notwithstanding point #1 above, it is important to cling to “racial” identity and culture because of the feelings of tribalism (group consciousness: us versus them). For this reason, Vietnamese must vigorously resist Chinese attempt of assimilation. After all, the Vietnamese at the very beginning must have been very few, probably no more than 50 individuals. From this small number, we somehow have managed to survive and retain our language for over 4,000 years. Now we are more than 87 million strong, it would be a damned shame if we lose the will to resist and want to roll over and play dead when China wants to take over our country. Are today Vietnamese a bunch of cowards and defeatists?
Wissai
August 29, 2009
Notes: (as references taken from Wikepedia)
5^ Human evolution: the fossil evidence in 3D, by Philip L. Walker and Edward H. Hagen, Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, retrieved April 5, 2005.
6^ Green, R. E., Krause, J, Ptak, S. E., Briggs, A. W., Ronan, M. T., Simons, J. F., et al. (2006) Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA. Nature, 16, 330–336. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7117/abs/nature05336.html
7^ http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=102968
8^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4269299.stm
9^ The Oldest Homo Sapiens: - URL retrieved May 15, 2009
10^ Alemseged, Z., Coppens, Y., Geraads, D. (2002). "Hominid cranium from Homo: Description and taxonomy of Homo-323-1976-896". Am J Phys Anthropol 117 (2): 103–12. doi:10.1002/ajpa.10032. PMID 11815945.
11^ Stoneking, Mark; Soodyall, Himla (1996). "Human evolution and the mitochondrial genome". Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 6 (6): 731–6. doi:10.1016/S0959-437X(96)80028-1.
12^ BBC World News "Africa's genetic secrets unlocked", 1 May 2009; the results were published in the online edition of the journal Science.
13^ a b Wood B, Richmond BG (July 2000). "Human evolution: taxonomy and paleobiology". J. Anat. 197 ( Pt 1): 19–60. doi:10.1046/j.1469-7580.2000.19710019.x. PMID 10999270.
14^ Frans de Waal, Bonobo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. ISBN 0-520-20535-9 [1]
15^ Britten RJ (2002). "Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5%, counting indels". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99 (21): 13633–5. doi:10.1073/pnas.172510699. PMID 12368483. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/21/13633.
16^ Wildman, D., Uddin, M., Liu, G., Grossman, L., Goodman, M. (2003). "Implications of natural selection in shaping 99.4% nonsynonymous DNA identity between humans and chimpanzees: enlarging genus Homo". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100 (12): 7181–8. doi:10.1073/pnas.1232172100. PMID 12766228. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/100/12/7181.
17^ Ruvolo M (01 Mar 1997). "Molecular phylogeny of the hominoids: inferences from multiple independent DNA sequence data sets". Mol Biol Evol 14 (3): 248–65. PMID 9066793. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/14/3/248.
18^ Brunet, M., Guy, F., Pilbeam, D., Mackaye, H., Likius, A., Ahounta, D., Beauvilain, A., Blondel, C., Bocherens, H., Boisserie, J., De Bonis, L., Coppens, Y., Dejax, J., Denys, C., Duringer, P., Eisenmann, V., Fanone, G., Fronty, P., Geraads, D., Lehmann, T., Lihoreau, F., Louchart, A., Mahamat, A., Merceron, G., Mouchelin, G., Otero, O., Pelaez Campomanes, P., Ponce De Leon, M., Rage, J., Sapanet, M., Schuster, M., Sudre, J., Tassy, P., Valentin, X., Vignaud, P., Viriot, L., Zazzo, A., Zollikofer, C. (2002). "A new hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad, Central Africa". Nature 418 (6894): 145–51. doi:10.1038/nature00879. PMID 12110880. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v418/n6894/full/nature00879.html.
19^ Vančata1 V., & Vančatová, M. A. "Major features in the evolution of early hominoid locomotion". Springer Netherlands, Volume 2, Number 6, December 1987. pp.517–537.
20^ Brues, Alice M. & Snow, Clyde C. "Physical Anthropology". Biennial Review of Anthropology, Vol. 4, 1965. pp. 1–39.
21^ Boyd, Robert & Silk, Joan B. (2003). How Humans Evolved. New York: Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-97854-0.
22^ Dobzhansky, Theodosius (1963). Anthropology and the natural sciences-The problem of human evolution, Current Anthropology '4 (2): 138–148.
23^ Wade, N (2006-03-07). "Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/science/07evolve.html. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
24^ Wolman, David (2008). "Fossil Feces Is Earliest Evidence of N. America Humans" National Geographic
25^ How Neanderthals met a grisly fate: devoured by humans. The Observer. May 17, 2009.
26^ Eswaran V, Harpending H, Rogers AR (July 2005). "Genomics refutes an exclusively African origin of humans". J. Hum. Evol. 49 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2005.02.006. PMID 15878780.
Facts:
I always have a keen interest in the human species, of the species’ survival in general, and of the survival of my Vietnamese people in particular. I know a little bit, from reading, about various human species prior to the emergence of Modern Man, the Homo sapiens. Apparently all those Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo egaster, Homo erectus, Homo nearnderthalensis, etc… all died out, except for the latest arrival, the Homo sapiens. What interested me the most was that the Homo sapiens also almost died out.
The following was taken from Heart of Dryness by James Workman (New York: Walker Publishing Company, Inc., 2009) pp 36-37, and Wikipedia.
A human is a member of a species of bipedal primates in the family Hominidae (taxonomically Homo sapiens—Latin: "wise man" or "knowing man"). Mitochondrial DNA and fossil evidence indicates that modern humans evolved in east Africa about 200,000 years ago. When compared to other animals and primates, humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection and problem solving. This mental capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees the forelimbs (arms) for manipulating objects, has allowed humans to make far greater use of tools than any other species. Humans are distributed worldwide, with significant populations inhabiting most land areas of Earth.
Like most higher primates, humans are social by nature. Humans are particularly adept at utilizing systems of communication—primarily spoken, gestural, and written language—for self-expression, the exchange of ideas, and organization. Humans create complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families to nations. Social interactions between humans have established an extremely wide variety of traditions, rituals, ethics, values, social norms, and laws, which together form the basis of human society. Humans are distinctive as a species on the Earth by having a perception of beauty and aesthetics at least to a point which results in a material culture. This, when combined with the desire for self-expression and a proportionally large brain-size, has led to innovations such as art, written language, music and science.
Humans seek to understand and influence the environment around them by trying to explain and manipulate natural phenomena through philosophy, art, science, mythology, and religion. This natural curiosity has led to the development of advanced tools and skills. Although humans are not the only species to use tools, they are unique in building fires, cooking their food, and clothing themselves; as well as using other advanced technologies. Humans pass down their skills and knowledge to the next generations and so are regarded as dependent upon culture.
The scientific study of human evolution encompasses the development of the genus Homo, but usually involves studying other hominids and hominines as well, such as Australopithecus. "Modern humans" are defined as the Homo sapiens species, of which the only extant subspecies is known as Homo sapiens sapiens. Homo sapiens idaltu (roughly translated as "elder wise human"), the other known subspecies, is now extinct.[5] Homo neanderthalensis, which became extinct 30,000 years ago, has sometimes been classified as a subspecies, "Homo sapiens neanderthalensis", but genetic studies now suggest a divergence of the Neanderthal species from Homo sapiens about 500,000 years ago[6]. Similarly, the few specimens of Homo rhodesiensis have also occasionally been classified as a subspecies, but this is not widely accepted. Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000 years ago, and studies of molecular biology give evidence that the approximate time of divergence from the common ancestor of all modern human populations was 200,000 years ago.[7][8][9][10][11] The broad study of African genetic diversity headed by Dr. Sarah Tishkoff found the San people ( formerly known as the Bushmen) exhibiting the greatest genetic diversity among the 113 distinct populations sampled, making them one of 14 "ancestral population clusters".The research also located the origin of modern human migration in south-western Africa, near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola.[12]
The closest living relatives of humans are gorillas and chimpanzees, but humans did not evolve from these apes: instead these apes share a common ancestor with modern humans.[13] Humans are probably most closely related to two chimpanzee species: Common Chimpanzee and Bonobo.[13] Full genome sequencing has resulted in the conclusion that "after 6.5 [million] years of separate evolution, the differences between chimpanzee and human are ten times greater than those between two unrelated people and ten times less than those between rats and mice". Suggested concurrence between human and chimpanzee DNA sequences range between 95% and 99%.[14][15][16][17] It has been estimated that the human lineage diverged from that of chimpanzees about five million years ago, and from that of gorillas about eight million years ago. However, a hominid skull discovered in Chad in 2001, classified as Sahelanthropus tchadensis, is approximately seven million years old, which may indicate an earlier divergence.[18]
Human evolution is characterized by a number of important morphological, developmental, physiological and behavioural changes, which have taken place since the split between the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. The first major morphological change was the evolution of a bipedal locomotor adaptation from an arboreal or semi-arboreal one,[19] with all its attendant adaptations, such as a valgus knee, low intermembral index (long legs relative to the arms), and reduced upper-body strength.
Later, ancestral humans developed a much larger brain – typically 1,400 cm³ in modern humans, over twice the size of that of a chimpanzee or gorilla. The pattern of human postnatal brain growth differs from that of other apes (heterochrony), and allows for extended periods of social learning and language acquisition in juvenile humans. Physical anthropologists argue that the differences between the structure of human brains and those of other apes are even more significant than their differences in size.
Other significant morphological changes included: the evolution of a power and precision grip;[20] a reduced masticatory system; a reduction of the canine tooth; and the descent of the larynx and hyoid bone, making speech possible. An important physiological change in humans was the evolution of hidden oestrus, or concealed ovulation, which may have coincided with the evolution of important behavioural changes, such as pair bonding. Another significant behavioural change was the development of material culture, with human-made objects becoming increasingly common and diversified over time. The relationship between all these changes is the subject of ongoing debate.[21][22]
The forces of natural selection have continued to operate on human populations, with evidence that certain regions of the genome display directional selection in the past 15,000 years.[23
Around the turn of the twenty-first century, affordable computerized data systems of biotechnology could break down, sequence, and unlock the secret code retained in the molecules of human cells---specifically cells embedded within female mitochondrial DNA and male Y chromosomal DNA. Genetic mapping projects began to test the bloodlines of global residents for definite scientific links, seeking mutations---the spelling errors found in all “genetic markers”---to trace our ancestry. Once testing began, researchers could reel back through time, tracking who begat whom, racing along family tree tops and branches to family tree trunks to our deepest blood roots, right down to our earliest human origins.
Homo sapiens appeared about 200,000 BP, in the Middle Paleolithic. By the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic 50,000 BP, full behavioral modernity, including language, music and other cultural universals had developed. The out of Africa migration is estimated to have occurred about 70,000 years BP. Modern humans subsequently spread to all continents, replacing earlier hominids: they inhabited Eurasia and Oceania by 40,000 BP, and the Americas at least 14,500 years BP.[24] They displaced Homo neanderthalensis and other species descended from Homo erectus (which had inhabited Eurasia as early as 2 million years ago) through more successful reproduction and competition for resources.[25]
Evidence from archaeogenetics accumulating since the 1990s has lent strong support to the "out-of-Africa" scenario, and has marginalized the competing multiregional hypothesis, which proposed that modern humans evolved, at least in part, from independent hominid populations.[26]
Geneticists Lynn Jorde and Henry Harpending of the University of Utah propose that the variation in human DNA is minute compared to that of other species. They also propose that during the Late Pleistocene, the human population was reduced to a small number of breeding pairs – no more than 10,000, and possibly as few as 1,000 – resulting in a very small residual gene pool. Various reasons for this hypothetical bottleneck have been postulated, one being a cataclysmic drought had swept across the African continent, wiping out humanity until scarcely a few thousand of our species endured. Another megadrought had scattered off many of our human ancestors to populate the earth in a mass exodus. Only the hardiest survivors remained in small, isolated pockets on the continent of Africa.
By sifting through that shrinking African pool of diverse DNA samples, researchers traced back 150,000 years (according to Workman, 200,000 years according to article in Wikipedia above) until a single female bloodline emerged from a primordial Eden. From that anthropological Eve, all humanity had descended, over two thousand generations, to the 6.7 billion of us as of February 2009. Apparently Eve existed, but she was not blond and fair-skinned, plucked from Adam’s rib. Instead she more closely resembled a savvy, wise, and wrinkled light red-skinned forager old woman in the Kalahari.
Conclusions/Theorizing:
1. We are all interrelated. Being racist is being ignorant since after all, we are the descendants of no more than 10,000 people (and could be as few as 1,000 people).
2. No wonder if you look at photos or watch on TV, people of a certain region or “race” look remarkably similar. For example, Southern Chinese and Vietnamese look very similar (re: Bách Việt). All the Middle Eastern peoples look the same to me. The Nordic peoples look the same. The Mediterranean peoples do likewise. Answers: few genetic variety and inbreeding due to very small population size. Thus, it is no surprise that offspring of mixed “races” are usually very smart. In the past, humans raided neighboring tribes for wives to avoid inbreeding.
3. Notwithstanding point #1 above, it is important to cling to “racial” identity and culture because of the feelings of tribalism (group consciousness: us versus them). For this reason, Vietnamese must vigorously resist Chinese attempt of assimilation. After all, the Vietnamese at the very beginning must have been very few, probably no more than 50 individuals. From this small number, we somehow have managed to survive and retain our language for over 4,000 years. Now we are more than 87 million strong, it would be a damned shame if we lose the will to resist and want to roll over and play dead when China wants to take over our country. Are today Vietnamese a bunch of cowards and defeatists?
Wissai
August 29, 2009
Notes: (as references taken from Wikepedia)
5^ Human evolution: the fossil evidence in 3D, by Philip L. Walker and Edward H. Hagen, Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, retrieved April 5, 2005.
6^ Green, R. E., Krause, J, Ptak, S. E., Briggs, A. W., Ronan, M. T., Simons, J. F., et al. (2006) Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA. Nature, 16, 330–336. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7117/abs/nature05336.html
7^ http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=102968
8^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4269299.stm
9^ The Oldest Homo Sapiens: - URL retrieved May 15, 2009
10^ Alemseged, Z., Coppens, Y., Geraads, D. (2002). "Hominid cranium from Homo: Description and taxonomy of Homo-323-1976-896". Am J Phys Anthropol 117 (2): 103–12. doi:10.1002/ajpa.10032. PMID 11815945.
11^ Stoneking, Mark; Soodyall, Himla (1996). "Human evolution and the mitochondrial genome". Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 6 (6): 731–6. doi:10.1016/S0959-437X(96)80028-1.
12^ BBC World News "Africa's genetic secrets unlocked", 1 May 2009; the results were published in the online edition of the journal Science.
13^ a b Wood B, Richmond BG (July 2000). "Human evolution: taxonomy and paleobiology". J. Anat. 197 ( Pt 1): 19–60. doi:10.1046/j.1469-7580.2000.19710019.x. PMID 10999270.
14^ Frans de Waal, Bonobo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. ISBN 0-520-20535-9 [1]
15^ Britten RJ (2002). "Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5%, counting indels". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99 (21): 13633–5. doi:10.1073/pnas.172510699. PMID 12368483. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/21/13633.
16^ Wildman, D., Uddin, M., Liu, G., Grossman, L., Goodman, M. (2003). "Implications of natural selection in shaping 99.4% nonsynonymous DNA identity between humans and chimpanzees: enlarging genus Homo". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100 (12): 7181–8. doi:10.1073/pnas.1232172100. PMID 12766228. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/100/12/7181.
17^ Ruvolo M (01 Mar 1997). "Molecular phylogeny of the hominoids: inferences from multiple independent DNA sequence data sets". Mol Biol Evol 14 (3): 248–65. PMID 9066793. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/14/3/248.
18^ Brunet, M., Guy, F., Pilbeam, D., Mackaye, H., Likius, A., Ahounta, D., Beauvilain, A., Blondel, C., Bocherens, H., Boisserie, J., De Bonis, L., Coppens, Y., Dejax, J., Denys, C., Duringer, P., Eisenmann, V., Fanone, G., Fronty, P., Geraads, D., Lehmann, T., Lihoreau, F., Louchart, A., Mahamat, A., Merceron, G., Mouchelin, G., Otero, O., Pelaez Campomanes, P., Ponce De Leon, M., Rage, J., Sapanet, M., Schuster, M., Sudre, J., Tassy, P., Valentin, X., Vignaud, P., Viriot, L., Zazzo, A., Zollikofer, C. (2002). "A new hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad, Central Africa". Nature 418 (6894): 145–51. doi:10.1038/nature00879. PMID 12110880. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v418/n6894/full/nature00879.html.
19^ Vančata1 V., & Vančatová, M. A. "Major features in the evolution of early hominoid locomotion". Springer Netherlands, Volume 2, Number 6, December 1987. pp.517–537.
20^ Brues, Alice M. & Snow, Clyde C. "Physical Anthropology". Biennial Review of Anthropology, Vol. 4, 1965. pp. 1–39.
21^ Boyd, Robert & Silk, Joan B. (2003). How Humans Evolved. New York: Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-97854-0.
22^ Dobzhansky, Theodosius (1963). Anthropology and the natural sciences-The problem of human evolution, Current Anthropology '4 (2): 138–148.
23^ Wade, N (2006-03-07). "Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/science/07evolve.html. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
24^ Wolman, David (2008). "Fossil Feces Is Earliest Evidence of N. America Humans" National Geographic
25^ How Neanderthals met a grisly fate: devoured by humans. The Observer. May 17, 2009.
26^ Eswaran V, Harpending H, Rogers AR (July 2005). "Genomics refutes an exclusively African origin of humans". J. Hum. Evol. 49 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2005.02.006. PMID 15878780.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Tiếng Nói Của Người Việt Thầm Lặng
Tiếng Nói của Người Việt Thầm Lặng
Hiền Vy, thông tín viênRFA
2009-08-27
Trong vài tuần qua, một bản Tuyên Bố bằng Anh Ngữ và Việt Ngữ đã đuợc đăng tải trên nhiều trang mạng Internet, tố cáo âm mưu xâm lược Việt Nam của Trung Quốc qua các biện pháp quân sự cũng như kinh tế.
Photo: RFA
Ngư dân VN nay thường đi chung 2, 3 tàu và không dám đánh cá xa ngoài khơi sợ bị TQ thu tàu bắt đóng thuế
Bản Tuyên Bố nhằm kêu gọi người Việt cùng ký tên để gửi đến Liên Hiệp Quốc. Được biết những lời kêu gọi thiết tha này xuất phát từ một số trong nhóm trí thức, chuyên gia, từng là cựu sinh viên du học tại Úc Châu trước 1975 và đang sống lưu vong tại hải ngoại. Bản tuyên ngôn của“Người Việt Thầm Lặng”Bản tuyên bố được ký tên là của một nhóm “Người Việt Thầm Lặng”, đã được nhiều người Việt trong cũng như ngoài nước ủng hộ.
Được hỏi về lý do đưa ra bản Tuyên Bố này, ông Nguyễn Hùng, một thành viên của nhóm, hiện đang cư ngụ tại thành phố Sydney, thuộc nước Úc cho biết:
“Chúng tôi là những người Việt Nam sống tại ngoại quốc, đọc báo biết được nhiều tin tức, thấy hành vi của Trung Quốc đối với người Việt Nam và đối với nước Việt Nam rất là ngang ngược và họ đang có những hành động muốn xâm chiếm Việt Nam. Chúng tôi là người Việt nên thấy cần phải lên tiếng nói, do đó chúng tôi tập họp với nhau để viết lên một bản tố cáo Trung Quốc trước thế giới để hy vọng ngăn chận được hành vi của Trung Quốc”
Một thành viên khác là ông Ngô Khoa Bá, đang cư ngụ tại Houston, nói rằng họ không thuộc vào một đảng phái chính trị nào cả, nhưng trước nguy cơ Bắc Thuộc quá rõ ràng họ thấy cần phải lên tiếng báo động cùng cộng đồng quốc tế.
“Chính quyền Việt Nam hiện tại đã tỏ ra rất nhân nhượng với Trung Quốc về mọi vấn đề. Chúng tôi phải vạch trần mọi âm mưu thôn tính toàn diện ViệtNam của Trung Quốc. Không những Hoàng Sa, Trường Sa mà ở sông Mekong họ còn xây những đập thủy điện ở Vân Nam để bóp chẹt đồng bằng sông Cửu Long ở miền Nam Việt Nam để ViệtNam nghèo, không còn sức chống cự”
Hàng ngàn người Việt trên thế giới ủng hộ
Ông Nguyễn Hùng cho biết trong vòng khoảng 2 tuần lễ qua mà nhóm Người Việt Thầm Lặng đã nhận được sự ủng hộ nồng nhiệt của người Việt khắp nơi trên thế giới, và nhóm này sẽ chính thức gửi bản Tuyên Bố với danh sách người ủng hộ lên các cơ quan liên hệ đến lãnh hải, môi sinh, nhân quyền của Liên Hiệp Quốc:
“Cho đến nay chúng tôi đã thâu thập được trên dưới một ngàn người tham gia. Cuối tháng 8 này chúng tôi sẽ gửi đợt đầu. Trước hết là sẽ gửi đến ông Tổng Thư Ký Liên Hiệp Quốc và các cơ quan trực thuộc trong LHQ để nói lên sự phản đối của tất cả người Việt trên khắp thế giới, sau đó chúng tôi sẽ lần lược gửi đến những vị nguyên thủ của các quốc gia và các vị thượng nghị sĩ, dân biểu để họ biết được tình trạng của đất nước Việt Nam chúng tôi …”
Ông Ngô Khoa Bá nhấn mạnh là mục đích của Bản Tuyên Bố là nhằm khơi dậy lòng yêu nước và tinh thần độc lập bất khuất của người Việt trong và ngoài nước:
“Việc làm của chúng tôi là gợi lại lòng yêu nước của đồng bào, và cái tánh tự cường, tánh độc lập, tánh quật cường, tánh không muốn làm nô lệ của người Việt ở hải ngoại cũng như trong nước”.
Trong số những người Việt đã ký tên vào bản Tuyên Bố có anh Charlie Vương, cư ngụ tại Houston, nói rằng anh hoàn toàn ủng hộ việc làm này của nhóm NVTL và anh đã nói lên sự quan tâm của mình về Hoàng Sa và Trường Sa:
“Trước năm 1975, Việt Nam Cộng Hòa đã khẳng định là Hoàng Sa, Trường Sa là thuộc về lãnh thổ ViệtNam thì không biết tại sao sau năm 1975 thì hai đảo Hoàng Sa Trường Sa lại là của Trung Quốc”
Charlie Vương cũng tỏ ra quan ngại về việc Trung Quốc khai thác Bauxit tại Tây Nguyên:
“Nhà nước Việt Nam không nên để Trung Quốc đưa quân hay là đưa công nhân vào trong lãnh thổ ViệtNam để khai thác. Thứ nhất là liên quan đến vấn đề an ninh của quốc gia, thứ hai là vì ảnh hưởng tới vấn đề môi trường”
Cô Hoài Anh, một cư dân khác tại Houston, tỏ lời cảm ơn những người đã đứng ra làm việc này vì theo cô, rất nhiều ngươì muốn lên tiếng phản đối Trung Quốc nhưng không có cơ hội, thì bản Tuyên Bố này đã tạo cơ hội cho mọi người cùng lên tiếng:
“Em rất cám ơn những người đã đứng ra làm chuyện đó. Riêng về cá nhân em thì em có nghe nhiều tin về việc Trung Quốc có kế hoạch lâu dài muốn xâm lăng Việt Nam nhưng mà em không biết cách nào để làm được một cái gì. Khi mà em đọc được bản tuyên bố đó thì em cũng thấy vui vì biết là mình cũng có cách để làm”
Chỉ là hành động của người Việt Nam có cùng nguyện vọng
Theo Cô Hoài Anh, kết quả của cuộc vận động này còn tùy thuộc vào sự tham gia của nhiều người để có thể gây được sự quan tâm của những chính khách có khả năng gây được ảnh hưởng chính trị, ngoại giao quốc tế, để họ thông cảm được những ưu tư và nguyện vọng của dân Việt:
“Làm sao mà cho những dân biểu, thượng nghị sĩ,.. những người có thể làm thay đổi được sự việc, mà họ biết đây là mối quan tâm hàng đầu của người Việt Nam thì như vậy họ sẽ chú ý …”
Ông Nguyễn Lương Bình, một cư dân tại Dallas, cũng lên tiếng tán thành việc làm của những người đưa ra bản Tuyên Bố,vì theo ông vấn đề này cần được đưa ra công luận quốc tế:
“Bảng Tuyên Ngôn như vậy nói lên tinh thần của dân tộc Việt, những ưu tư và phản khán của người Việt khắp nơi trước những lấn áp và những âm mưu đồ đen tối của đế quốc Trung Hoa. Phải nói cho thế giới biết những âm mưu của Trung Quốc, mình phải làm lớn, làm rùm beng lên … và Kháng Thư này là một thí dụ điển hình”
Đề cập đến diễn đàn Đặc Trưng, nơi có đăng tải kháng thư Tố Cáo Âm Mưu Xâm Lược của nhóm Người Việt Thầm Lặng, có nick Bò Kho viết rằng việc làm này là do Việc Cộng giật dây, và đây chỉ là chiêu bài kêu gọi đoàn kết yêu nước chống ngoại xâm của nhà nước Việt Nam, ông Ngô Khoa Bá cho biết:
“Chúng tôi là những người sinh viên ngày xưa đi du học ở Tân Tây Lan. Chúng tôi có lòng yêu nước. Chúng tôi theo dõi thời cuộc, chúng tôi thấy có bổn phận phải làm một Kháng Thư như vậy. Chúng tôi không thuộc một đảng phái nào cả, chúng tôi không có một tham vọng chính trị nào cả. Ông ấy có quyền phê bình, có quyền nghi ngờ nhưng tôi nghĩ là những lời phê bình của ông ấy không có dựa vào một bằng cớ nào cả. Chúng tôi làm việc rất là minh bạch, trắng đen rõ ràng. Tôi tin là người Việt Nam rất thông minh, sáng suốt họ nhìn thấy công việc của chúng tôi làm sẽ biết rõ ràng không phải là do đảng cộng sản Việt Nam giật dây gì cả mà biết chúng tôi là những người độc lập chỉ là do lòng yêu nước mà làm thôi”.
Và ý kiến của ông Nguyễn Hùng là:
“Tôi thông cảm sự nghi ngờ của đồng bào mình, nhưng chúng tôi xin bảo đảm với mọi người, nhất là những người ở trong nước là hành động của chúng tôi chỉ hành động của người Việt, chúng tôi không trực thuộc một đảng phái hay một tổ chức chánh trị nào trong cũng như ngoài nước”.
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Hiền Vy, thông tín viênRFA
2009-08-27
Trong vài tuần qua, một bản Tuyên Bố bằng Anh Ngữ và Việt Ngữ đã đuợc đăng tải trên nhiều trang mạng Internet, tố cáo âm mưu xâm lược Việt Nam của Trung Quốc qua các biện pháp quân sự cũng như kinh tế.
Photo: RFA
Ngư dân VN nay thường đi chung 2, 3 tàu và không dám đánh cá xa ngoài khơi sợ bị TQ thu tàu bắt đóng thuế
Bản Tuyên Bố nhằm kêu gọi người Việt cùng ký tên để gửi đến Liên Hiệp Quốc. Được biết những lời kêu gọi thiết tha này xuất phát từ một số trong nhóm trí thức, chuyên gia, từng là cựu sinh viên du học tại Úc Châu trước 1975 và đang sống lưu vong tại hải ngoại. Bản tuyên ngôn của“Người Việt Thầm Lặng”Bản tuyên bố được ký tên là của một nhóm “Người Việt Thầm Lặng”, đã được nhiều người Việt trong cũng như ngoài nước ủng hộ.
Được hỏi về lý do đưa ra bản Tuyên Bố này, ông Nguyễn Hùng, một thành viên của nhóm, hiện đang cư ngụ tại thành phố Sydney, thuộc nước Úc cho biết:
“Chúng tôi là những người Việt Nam sống tại ngoại quốc, đọc báo biết được nhiều tin tức, thấy hành vi của Trung Quốc đối với người Việt Nam và đối với nước Việt Nam rất là ngang ngược và họ đang có những hành động muốn xâm chiếm Việt Nam. Chúng tôi là người Việt nên thấy cần phải lên tiếng nói, do đó chúng tôi tập họp với nhau để viết lên một bản tố cáo Trung Quốc trước thế giới để hy vọng ngăn chận được hành vi của Trung Quốc”
Một thành viên khác là ông Ngô Khoa Bá, đang cư ngụ tại Houston, nói rằng họ không thuộc vào một đảng phái chính trị nào cả, nhưng trước nguy cơ Bắc Thuộc quá rõ ràng họ thấy cần phải lên tiếng báo động cùng cộng đồng quốc tế.
“Chính quyền Việt Nam hiện tại đã tỏ ra rất nhân nhượng với Trung Quốc về mọi vấn đề. Chúng tôi phải vạch trần mọi âm mưu thôn tính toàn diện ViệtNam của Trung Quốc. Không những Hoàng Sa, Trường Sa mà ở sông Mekong họ còn xây những đập thủy điện ở Vân Nam để bóp chẹt đồng bằng sông Cửu Long ở miền Nam Việt Nam để ViệtNam nghèo, không còn sức chống cự”
Hàng ngàn người Việt trên thế giới ủng hộ
Ông Nguyễn Hùng cho biết trong vòng khoảng 2 tuần lễ qua mà nhóm Người Việt Thầm Lặng đã nhận được sự ủng hộ nồng nhiệt của người Việt khắp nơi trên thế giới, và nhóm này sẽ chính thức gửi bản Tuyên Bố với danh sách người ủng hộ lên các cơ quan liên hệ đến lãnh hải, môi sinh, nhân quyền của Liên Hiệp Quốc:
“Cho đến nay chúng tôi đã thâu thập được trên dưới một ngàn người tham gia. Cuối tháng 8 này chúng tôi sẽ gửi đợt đầu. Trước hết là sẽ gửi đến ông Tổng Thư Ký Liên Hiệp Quốc và các cơ quan trực thuộc trong LHQ để nói lên sự phản đối của tất cả người Việt trên khắp thế giới, sau đó chúng tôi sẽ lần lược gửi đến những vị nguyên thủ của các quốc gia và các vị thượng nghị sĩ, dân biểu để họ biết được tình trạng của đất nước Việt Nam chúng tôi …”
Ông Ngô Khoa Bá nhấn mạnh là mục đích của Bản Tuyên Bố là nhằm khơi dậy lòng yêu nước và tinh thần độc lập bất khuất của người Việt trong và ngoài nước:
“Việc làm của chúng tôi là gợi lại lòng yêu nước của đồng bào, và cái tánh tự cường, tánh độc lập, tánh quật cường, tánh không muốn làm nô lệ của người Việt ở hải ngoại cũng như trong nước”.
Trong số những người Việt đã ký tên vào bản Tuyên Bố có anh Charlie Vương, cư ngụ tại Houston, nói rằng anh hoàn toàn ủng hộ việc làm này của nhóm NVTL và anh đã nói lên sự quan tâm của mình về Hoàng Sa và Trường Sa:
“Trước năm 1975, Việt Nam Cộng Hòa đã khẳng định là Hoàng Sa, Trường Sa là thuộc về lãnh thổ ViệtNam thì không biết tại sao sau năm 1975 thì hai đảo Hoàng Sa Trường Sa lại là của Trung Quốc”
Charlie Vương cũng tỏ ra quan ngại về việc Trung Quốc khai thác Bauxit tại Tây Nguyên:
“Nhà nước Việt Nam không nên để Trung Quốc đưa quân hay là đưa công nhân vào trong lãnh thổ ViệtNam để khai thác. Thứ nhất là liên quan đến vấn đề an ninh của quốc gia, thứ hai là vì ảnh hưởng tới vấn đề môi trường”
Cô Hoài Anh, một cư dân khác tại Houston, tỏ lời cảm ơn những người đã đứng ra làm việc này vì theo cô, rất nhiều ngươì muốn lên tiếng phản đối Trung Quốc nhưng không có cơ hội, thì bản Tuyên Bố này đã tạo cơ hội cho mọi người cùng lên tiếng:
“Em rất cám ơn những người đã đứng ra làm chuyện đó. Riêng về cá nhân em thì em có nghe nhiều tin về việc Trung Quốc có kế hoạch lâu dài muốn xâm lăng Việt Nam nhưng mà em không biết cách nào để làm được một cái gì. Khi mà em đọc được bản tuyên bố đó thì em cũng thấy vui vì biết là mình cũng có cách để làm”
Chỉ là hành động của người Việt Nam có cùng nguyện vọng
Theo Cô Hoài Anh, kết quả của cuộc vận động này còn tùy thuộc vào sự tham gia của nhiều người để có thể gây được sự quan tâm của những chính khách có khả năng gây được ảnh hưởng chính trị, ngoại giao quốc tế, để họ thông cảm được những ưu tư và nguyện vọng của dân Việt:
“Làm sao mà cho những dân biểu, thượng nghị sĩ,.. những người có thể làm thay đổi được sự việc, mà họ biết đây là mối quan tâm hàng đầu của người Việt Nam thì như vậy họ sẽ chú ý …”
Ông Nguyễn Lương Bình, một cư dân tại Dallas, cũng lên tiếng tán thành việc làm của những người đưa ra bản Tuyên Bố,vì theo ông vấn đề này cần được đưa ra công luận quốc tế:
“Bảng Tuyên Ngôn như vậy nói lên tinh thần của dân tộc Việt, những ưu tư và phản khán của người Việt khắp nơi trước những lấn áp và những âm mưu đồ đen tối của đế quốc Trung Hoa. Phải nói cho thế giới biết những âm mưu của Trung Quốc, mình phải làm lớn, làm rùm beng lên … và Kháng Thư này là một thí dụ điển hình”
Đề cập đến diễn đàn Đặc Trưng, nơi có đăng tải kháng thư Tố Cáo Âm Mưu Xâm Lược của nhóm Người Việt Thầm Lặng, có nick Bò Kho viết rằng việc làm này là do Việc Cộng giật dây, và đây chỉ là chiêu bài kêu gọi đoàn kết yêu nước chống ngoại xâm của nhà nước Việt Nam, ông Ngô Khoa Bá cho biết:
“Chúng tôi là những người sinh viên ngày xưa đi du học ở Tân Tây Lan. Chúng tôi có lòng yêu nước. Chúng tôi theo dõi thời cuộc, chúng tôi thấy có bổn phận phải làm một Kháng Thư như vậy. Chúng tôi không thuộc một đảng phái nào cả, chúng tôi không có một tham vọng chính trị nào cả. Ông ấy có quyền phê bình, có quyền nghi ngờ nhưng tôi nghĩ là những lời phê bình của ông ấy không có dựa vào một bằng cớ nào cả. Chúng tôi làm việc rất là minh bạch, trắng đen rõ ràng. Tôi tin là người Việt Nam rất thông minh, sáng suốt họ nhìn thấy công việc của chúng tôi làm sẽ biết rõ ràng không phải là do đảng cộng sản Việt Nam giật dây gì cả mà biết chúng tôi là những người độc lập chỉ là do lòng yêu nước mà làm thôi”.
Và ý kiến của ông Nguyễn Hùng là:
“Tôi thông cảm sự nghi ngờ của đồng bào mình, nhưng chúng tôi xin bảo đảm với mọi người, nhất là những người ở trong nước là hành động của chúng tôi chỉ hành động của người Việt, chúng tôi không trực thuộc một đảng phái hay một tổ chức chánh trị nào trong cũng như ngoài nước”.
Copyright © 1998-2009 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved
My Nostrums
My Nostrums
A skeptical reader sent me a query after reading my profile in my blog. She wondered if I really knew that many languages as I claimed. The answer is I do have a passing acquaintance with all of them. The operative words are “passing acquaintance”. I don’t know them intimately. I don’t get a passing grade with all of them. I merely made a pass (and I am still doing so) at them. I like to flirt with them. I am a big flirt when it comes to languages. I suppose it is one of my nostrums for dealing with the speech impediment I have suffered ever since I learned to speak. I stutter and I stammer. I slur my words. I don’t enunciate. I mumble and grumble until all my audience crumbles under the onslaught of my inarticulateness.
I listed all those languages in there, in public, in broad daylight, as a challenge to my own probity. The act of such brazen ostentation forced me to hit the books daily so I would not embarrass myself if some curious reader would test me one day. There is some truth in the saying, fake it until you make it.
I also claim that I like to write short stories, but the truth is that I have written only seven stories so far, and none is any good. Some of my poems are much better. For the last three months, I have not written a single story, nor have I even come up with any arresting lines of verse; I have been wasting my time writing stupid essays to vent my frustrations at human stupidity, crassness, hypocrisy, and plain sickness. I used to be quite sick myself. That is how now I can spot sickness in humans a mile away. The more I know humans, the more they fascinate me. In fact, there are no more interesting animals on this planet. I love to vivisect them, figuratively speaking – of course. I am no Jeffrey Dahmer. I love to bring into the sunlight their quivering, shivering quiddity of poses and flights of fantasy. I love to expose their moral leprosy in order to move them towards an edifice of understanding that life has no meaning unless one lives and cares more for others than for oneself. During the act of giving oneself to others, one discovers the common humanity and bond that gives rise to poetry.
I suppose I have missed my calling. I should be a fumigator. I like to fumigate hypocritical humans with massive doses of unadulterated facts until they pass out from shame. I like to fulminate their chicanery with the strength of my logic and the unassailability of my arguments.
CanNgon
August 28, 2009
A skeptical reader sent me a query after reading my profile in my blog. She wondered if I really knew that many languages as I claimed. The answer is I do have a passing acquaintance with all of them. The operative words are “passing acquaintance”. I don’t know them intimately. I don’t get a passing grade with all of them. I merely made a pass (and I am still doing so) at them. I like to flirt with them. I am a big flirt when it comes to languages. I suppose it is one of my nostrums for dealing with the speech impediment I have suffered ever since I learned to speak. I stutter and I stammer. I slur my words. I don’t enunciate. I mumble and grumble until all my audience crumbles under the onslaught of my inarticulateness.
I listed all those languages in there, in public, in broad daylight, as a challenge to my own probity. The act of such brazen ostentation forced me to hit the books daily so I would not embarrass myself if some curious reader would test me one day. There is some truth in the saying, fake it until you make it.
I also claim that I like to write short stories, but the truth is that I have written only seven stories so far, and none is any good. Some of my poems are much better. For the last three months, I have not written a single story, nor have I even come up with any arresting lines of verse; I have been wasting my time writing stupid essays to vent my frustrations at human stupidity, crassness, hypocrisy, and plain sickness. I used to be quite sick myself. That is how now I can spot sickness in humans a mile away. The more I know humans, the more they fascinate me. In fact, there are no more interesting animals on this planet. I love to vivisect them, figuratively speaking – of course. I am no Jeffrey Dahmer. I love to bring into the sunlight their quivering, shivering quiddity of poses and flights of fantasy. I love to expose their moral leprosy in order to move them towards an edifice of understanding that life has no meaning unless one lives and cares more for others than for oneself. During the act of giving oneself to others, one discovers the common humanity and bond that gives rise to poetry.
I suppose I have missed my calling. I should be a fumigator. I like to fumigate hypocritical humans with massive doses of unadulterated facts until they pass out from shame. I like to fulminate their chicanery with the strength of my logic and the unassailability of my arguments.
CanNgon
August 28, 2009
Thoughts on the way to the bathroom and back
Thoughts on the way to the bathroom and back:
I hate to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. You are sound asleep. You are totally oblivious to your surroundings. You might just as well be dead. In fact you look like you are dead, except the color of your face is not pallid and you are breathing deeply. All of a sudden some long drawn out weird dream takes place and then it occurs to you that you have to drag your tired, lethargic body to the bathroom in answer to the call of nature. Most people go right back to sleep and wake up fresh as a daisy in the morning. Not me. I have weird thoughts from my way to the bathroom and back. And I just had several a few minutes ago.
I would scream bloody murder and swear to …God? No, I can’t. I am an atheist. OK, I would swear on …my dog’s grave and to… the stately beautiful oak tree outside my house that if I see another diatribe about “Chổng” (slang for lonely, invented by Vietnamese students studying in New Zealand) in this forum, I would shave not only my head but all the heads I meet in the streets because I would like to get rid of all the lice in this world so I would no longer experience feelings of puking lousiness. The truth is I cannot stand to see yet another sophomoric attempt to make the banal sublime, the trivial momentous, the meaningless meaningful. Maybe the writer of diatribes about loneliness cannot make art out of life, so he tries to make his life into art.
It could be true at one time in that faraway land we once were lonely because we were suddenly cut off from our families, because the Kiwis didn’t want to hang out with us, making us feel very much the strangers in a strange land. But we are no longer teenagers. We all have spouses and families, and thus all these harpings about loneliness sound so tiresome and artificial. That reminds me of an old cliché that you are what you write. Le style, c’est l’homme. We can pretty safely guess a man’s character by what and how he writes. If all he can offer is trivia, then we must reach the inescapable conclusion that he is trivia incarnate or at least his mind is full of nothing but trivialities. I would rather see a dog pissing at a tree or a monkey scratching at its armpit than reading yet another diatribe from a man in his 6o’s yelping about loneliness. I would rather read about why a man believes in God or how he develops herpes or what attracts him and what repulses him in a woman than listening to a grown man moaning about loneliness. It is not dignified to cry, sincerely or not, about loneliness. It is simply not decent, just like one does not walk around in public with a shirt on, but is bare below the navel. It is frankly obscene and out of place.
I also don’t like needless cryptic oracular pronouncements. If one wants to say something, just spell it out. There is no need to appear more profound than one already is. Also, endless pontification is bad. And so is posting sex materials on the Internet, especially when you are in your 60’s. Maybe you cannot get it up anymore without the aid of Viagra, so you have to compensate. Mind you, I am not a prude. I believe in eroticism and I do have a sense of aesthetics, but I find indulging in the titillation of prurient thoughts quite crass. I don’t find the image of a female human urinating funny or sexy.
I am not saying because I’m getting old and thus don’t find the female form appealing anymore. Quite the contrary, I don’t have any thrombus in my heart. I still find succor in the female beauty as long as it is not commercialized or obscenely posed. I still find the following lines smotheringly charming:
Phải chi đêm ấy đừng mưa
Phải chi đêm ấy đừng đưa em về.
I wish there had been no rain that night
I wish that night I had not walked you home
CanNgon
August 27, 2009
I hate to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. You are sound asleep. You are totally oblivious to your surroundings. You might just as well be dead. In fact you look like you are dead, except the color of your face is not pallid and you are breathing deeply. All of a sudden some long drawn out weird dream takes place and then it occurs to you that you have to drag your tired, lethargic body to the bathroom in answer to the call of nature. Most people go right back to sleep and wake up fresh as a daisy in the morning. Not me. I have weird thoughts from my way to the bathroom and back. And I just had several a few minutes ago.
I would scream bloody murder and swear to …God? No, I can’t. I am an atheist. OK, I would swear on …my dog’s grave and to… the stately beautiful oak tree outside my house that if I see another diatribe about “Chổng” (slang for lonely, invented by Vietnamese students studying in New Zealand) in this forum, I would shave not only my head but all the heads I meet in the streets because I would like to get rid of all the lice in this world so I would no longer experience feelings of puking lousiness. The truth is I cannot stand to see yet another sophomoric attempt to make the banal sublime, the trivial momentous, the meaningless meaningful. Maybe the writer of diatribes about loneliness cannot make art out of life, so he tries to make his life into art.
It could be true at one time in that faraway land we once were lonely because we were suddenly cut off from our families, because the Kiwis didn’t want to hang out with us, making us feel very much the strangers in a strange land. But we are no longer teenagers. We all have spouses and families, and thus all these harpings about loneliness sound so tiresome and artificial. That reminds me of an old cliché that you are what you write. Le style, c’est l’homme. We can pretty safely guess a man’s character by what and how he writes. If all he can offer is trivia, then we must reach the inescapable conclusion that he is trivia incarnate or at least his mind is full of nothing but trivialities. I would rather see a dog pissing at a tree or a monkey scratching at its armpit than reading yet another diatribe from a man in his 6o’s yelping about loneliness. I would rather read about why a man believes in God or how he develops herpes or what attracts him and what repulses him in a woman than listening to a grown man moaning about loneliness. It is not dignified to cry, sincerely or not, about loneliness. It is simply not decent, just like one does not walk around in public with a shirt on, but is bare below the navel. It is frankly obscene and out of place.
I also don’t like needless cryptic oracular pronouncements. If one wants to say something, just spell it out. There is no need to appear more profound than one already is. Also, endless pontification is bad. And so is posting sex materials on the Internet, especially when you are in your 60’s. Maybe you cannot get it up anymore without the aid of Viagra, so you have to compensate. Mind you, I am not a prude. I believe in eroticism and I do have a sense of aesthetics, but I find indulging in the titillation of prurient thoughts quite crass. I don’t find the image of a female human urinating funny or sexy.
I am not saying because I’m getting old and thus don’t find the female form appealing anymore. Quite the contrary, I don’t have any thrombus in my heart. I still find succor in the female beauty as long as it is not commercialized or obscenely posed. I still find the following lines smotheringly charming:
Phải chi đêm ấy đừng mưa
Phải chi đêm ấy đừng đưa em về.
I wish there had been no rain that night
I wish that night I had not walked you home
CanNgon
August 27, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Love, Anger, Action, and a News Analysis thrown in for free
LOVE, ANGER, ACTION AND A NEWS ANALYSIS THROWN IN FOR FREE
Chaque homme a son destin
The same for a nation
Love and Anger are two of the most powerful emotions a human can have. Together they drive most of his actions.
I originally wrote this piece using the pronoun we, but upon rereading it, I decided to switch to first person singular since I didn’t wish to come across as presumptuous. I only could speak for myself and not for my two colleagues. I saw the way the Chinese Navy personnel mistreated our Vietnamese fishermen who were working in the same areas they had done for generations. And I experienced both love for my fellow countrymen and anger at the Chinese. So, being a simple human with emotions not yet overridden by other concerns such as apathy, selfishness, and fear, I acted. Maybe I was impetuous and amateurish, but I felt that I had to do something instead of rationalizing away the intolerable situation in the East Sea. I did some more thinking and realized that the East Seas incidents were part of the grand scheme of Chinese planned take-over of Vietnam. I raised the alarm, drafted a declaration to bring to the attention of the world and especially the Vietnamese back home about the invasion. I got a support of a precious few who did not regard my actions as “infertile” and quixotic. I did what I did because our heart told me so. To me, silence was not an option. I wanted to be able to sleep at night. I wanted to look at myself in the mirror every morning and not to feel ashamed of myself for doing nothing or mouthing off negative comments in order to dissuade others from doing something for Vietnam. I wanted to do something for our people back home and our country because I felt I had to respond to the call of duty as an educated and caring son of Vietnam. I just simply did what the responsible forefathers of ours had done over four thousand years of our long history. I didn’t feel self-righteous although I certainly felt that I did the right thing. I did the only way that was within my power: using words to raise the consciousness of those who still care about Vietnam. All fights begin in the minds.
I didn’t feel I was an alarmist, raising hue and cry over nothing. I have seen with increasing clarity the danger China is posing for the survival of Vietnam as a sovereign state and possibly for other states in Southeast Asia as well. Let me back up my assertion with some news and news analysis against the backdrop of some formal education in Political Science and some knowledge in world history and understanding of the nature of Man as an aggressive, expansionist-minded animal.
China recently conducted a military exercise involving sea, air, and ground forces. The exercise involved amphibious landing. I don’t think the exercise which cost a lot of money was done for showing off. Nor do I think the exercise was carried out as a preparation for an invasion of Taiwan. So, which country was the target? Which country did China conduct a limited border invasion in early 1979 and received a humiliating clobbering? The clobbering occurred for two main reasons: One, the failure to engage the Chinese air force due to its rather primitive aircraft fleet. China didn’t want to risk having its fighter planes shot down by the Vietnamese vaunting sophisticated anti-aircraft missile systems maintained and supplied by the Soviet Union. Two, Vietnamese artillery was deadly effective against Chinese troops (source: Wikipedia. The Sino-Vietnamese border war of 1979). The war taught China a valuable lesson and ever since it has modernized its forces and vows when the next full-scale invasion comes (and it is coming sooner than you think), it will not lose face again.
Alarmed by the increasingly bellicose posture of China in the East Sea and the Indian Ocean, countries such as Indonesia and Australia have increased their defense expenditures.
Vietnam has ordered a purchase from Russia six submarines. These submarines, once delivered, will be trained by India.
Vietnam has mobilized its forces. It has called men from eighteen to fifty years of age for military service; it also ordered its veterans back to duty. It has conducted training exercises. Relatives of high-position cadres of the Vietnamese Communist Party have taken part in an exodus as tourists to overseas.
The Vietnamese state-controlled newspapers have begun vociferously condemning China for its actions in the East Sea.
In a few weeks, India and the United States will have a joint military exercises. The United States a few months ago has entered a formal agreement to transfer nuclear technology to India.
South Korea successfully launched a satellite into space from its own soil. A few months ago, Vietnam had a satellite launched into space. Both countries declared that the satellites were for weather and communication purposes, but we knew better. Satellites are very useful to observe troop buildup and movements.
The Obama administration, unlike its myopic predecessor, has certainly recognized China as the rival and the threat to the United States. While coping with the massive economic problems at home and fighting two wars, it is vigorously conducting a full-court press of foreign policy within merely the first eight months of its existence. Obama went to a Muslim country and made the case that his administration would be vastly different than the Bush administration. He extended his hand to Iran. He dispatched Hillary Clinton to Southeast Asia confirming and affirming that “America is back” and then to Africa where China has made tremendous inroads due to the neglect of the Western powers, the U.S. included. He sent Bill Clinton to talk with North Korea, ostensibly to win the release of two Asian-American journalists. He sent Jim Webb, a freshman senator with a Vietnamese wife and a former marine in Vietnam as well as a former Secretary of Navy, to a tour of five Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam where in a period of twenty fours he met various highest members of the Vietnamese Communist Party and government. It is also important to note that Senator Webb chairs a Senate subcommittee dealing with East Asia and Pacific Affairs. I have sent him a letter and an accompanied declaration but have not received a reply nor do I expect to receive any, since I am not his constituent. I wrote to him just to stress the point, as if he didn’t know already, that the East Sea disputes over the Paracel and Spratly Islands could be the ignition that started war in the region
Ladies and gentlemen, do we need more facts to realize that we are living in an “exciting”, history-making time in Southeast Asia? Today, China is behaving like the Nazi Germany did in the late 1930’s. With Russia being busy building up its shattered economy and the United States bogged down in two (could be three, if you consider Pakistan) wars and mired in economic troubles, China with its rising economic prosperity, is flexing its muscles and carrying out its Greater Han expansion. It is supporting Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in order to encircle India. It is trying to displace Vietnam as a decision maker in Laos and Cambodia. It is encouraging cooperation in military matters between Myanmar and North Korea. Simply put, China is expanding its zone of influence under the belief that the 21st century belongs to it and it is behaving in a manner befitting its rising stature.
It is human nature for the strong to attack the weak, for a strong and bigger country to swallow up a smaller, weaker country. To China, Vietnam has been a tempting meal for thousands of years. At one time, China had Vietnam inside its mouth for a thousand years. It thought it could chew and swallow up Vietnam as it did to other lands south of the Yangtze River, but somehow the Vietnamese forced it to throw up Vietnam. Ever since 939 AD, China has tried many times through naked invasions to defeat and assimilate Vietnam once and for all. Today, thanks to Vietnam being weakened after a long, brutal civil war instigated and encouraged by the Chinese, China has its best chance for two centuries. The take-over of the Paracel and the Spatly Islands, the grabbing of land at the border, the construction of dams in the upper reaches of the Mekong River, the presence of estimated 100,000 “laborers” in Vietnam, Vietnam huge trade deficit vis-à-vis China, and the flooding of Chinese goods in Vietnam are all part of the plan to conquer and assimilate us. Wake up and stop diddling around with nonsensical diatribes. Be serious for a change. Our country is becoming like Austria in 1938. Once Vietnam falls, Cambodia and Laos will follow. Thailand and Myanmar will be next. It is in the genes of humans to wage wars of conquest, as witnessed by historical events since the emergence of Man on this planet. A lack of knowledge of history will ensure a repeat of past mistakes. If we (with the world’s help, but we must bear the main burden) don’t stop the Chinese now, soon India, the United States, Australia, and Indonesia will have to fight to stop China from taking over the whole Southeast Asia. In peace, we have to prepare for war. During war, we have to plan for peace.
Sooner or later, we, the Vietnamese people have to fight the Chinese, unless we are willing to roll over and become slaves and get assimilated in the process; unless we are willing to let the Chinese take all our women, grab all our natural resources, destroy our books and all evidence that we are different from them, and rewrite history and tell our future generations that the Vietnamese are really Chinese. By that time, the assimilation in Vietnam is complete as it was in South China.
Ladies and gentlemen, Vietnam is in dire traits. It has no friends nor does it have allies. It has no defense treaty with any country that I know of, except with China! Its leaders are busy lining up their pockets with ill-gotten monies. The Vietnamese are sick and tired of the corrupt ruling clique and hungry and thirsty for a regime change. China is planning to do that and is aiming to supplant the Vietnamese Communist Party as the new ruler of Vietnam. When I think of the situation in Vietnam, I wonder how one can be chortlingly habituated to cheap jokes and sex-laden materials. I cannot derive any exquisite caloricity or pleasure from reading those jokes or viewing those materials.
Wissai
August 26, 2009
Chaque homme a son destin
The same for a nation
Love and Anger are two of the most powerful emotions a human can have. Together they drive most of his actions.
I originally wrote this piece using the pronoun we, but upon rereading it, I decided to switch to first person singular since I didn’t wish to come across as presumptuous. I only could speak for myself and not for my two colleagues. I saw the way the Chinese Navy personnel mistreated our Vietnamese fishermen who were working in the same areas they had done for generations. And I experienced both love for my fellow countrymen and anger at the Chinese. So, being a simple human with emotions not yet overridden by other concerns such as apathy, selfishness, and fear, I acted. Maybe I was impetuous and amateurish, but I felt that I had to do something instead of rationalizing away the intolerable situation in the East Sea. I did some more thinking and realized that the East Seas incidents were part of the grand scheme of Chinese planned take-over of Vietnam. I raised the alarm, drafted a declaration to bring to the attention of the world and especially the Vietnamese back home about the invasion. I got a support of a precious few who did not regard my actions as “infertile” and quixotic. I did what I did because our heart told me so. To me, silence was not an option. I wanted to be able to sleep at night. I wanted to look at myself in the mirror every morning and not to feel ashamed of myself for doing nothing or mouthing off negative comments in order to dissuade others from doing something for Vietnam. I wanted to do something for our people back home and our country because I felt I had to respond to the call of duty as an educated and caring son of Vietnam. I just simply did what the responsible forefathers of ours had done over four thousand years of our long history. I didn’t feel self-righteous although I certainly felt that I did the right thing. I did the only way that was within my power: using words to raise the consciousness of those who still care about Vietnam. All fights begin in the minds.
I didn’t feel I was an alarmist, raising hue and cry over nothing. I have seen with increasing clarity the danger China is posing for the survival of Vietnam as a sovereign state and possibly for other states in Southeast Asia as well. Let me back up my assertion with some news and news analysis against the backdrop of some formal education in Political Science and some knowledge in world history and understanding of the nature of Man as an aggressive, expansionist-minded animal.
China recently conducted a military exercise involving sea, air, and ground forces. The exercise involved amphibious landing. I don’t think the exercise which cost a lot of money was done for showing off. Nor do I think the exercise was carried out as a preparation for an invasion of Taiwan. So, which country was the target? Which country did China conduct a limited border invasion in early 1979 and received a humiliating clobbering? The clobbering occurred for two main reasons: One, the failure to engage the Chinese air force due to its rather primitive aircraft fleet. China didn’t want to risk having its fighter planes shot down by the Vietnamese vaunting sophisticated anti-aircraft missile systems maintained and supplied by the Soviet Union. Two, Vietnamese artillery was deadly effective against Chinese troops (source: Wikipedia. The Sino-Vietnamese border war of 1979). The war taught China a valuable lesson and ever since it has modernized its forces and vows when the next full-scale invasion comes (and it is coming sooner than you think), it will not lose face again.
Alarmed by the increasingly bellicose posture of China in the East Sea and the Indian Ocean, countries such as Indonesia and Australia have increased their defense expenditures.
Vietnam has ordered a purchase from Russia six submarines. These submarines, once delivered, will be trained by India.
Vietnam has mobilized its forces. It has called men from eighteen to fifty years of age for military service; it also ordered its veterans back to duty. It has conducted training exercises. Relatives of high-position cadres of the Vietnamese Communist Party have taken part in an exodus as tourists to overseas.
The Vietnamese state-controlled newspapers have begun vociferously condemning China for its actions in the East Sea.
In a few weeks, India and the United States will have a joint military exercises. The United States a few months ago has entered a formal agreement to transfer nuclear technology to India.
South Korea successfully launched a satellite into space from its own soil. A few months ago, Vietnam had a satellite launched into space. Both countries declared that the satellites were for weather and communication purposes, but we knew better. Satellites are very useful to observe troop buildup and movements.
The Obama administration, unlike its myopic predecessor, has certainly recognized China as the rival and the threat to the United States. While coping with the massive economic problems at home and fighting two wars, it is vigorously conducting a full-court press of foreign policy within merely the first eight months of its existence. Obama went to a Muslim country and made the case that his administration would be vastly different than the Bush administration. He extended his hand to Iran. He dispatched Hillary Clinton to Southeast Asia confirming and affirming that “America is back” and then to Africa where China has made tremendous inroads due to the neglect of the Western powers, the U.S. included. He sent Bill Clinton to talk with North Korea, ostensibly to win the release of two Asian-American journalists. He sent Jim Webb, a freshman senator with a Vietnamese wife and a former marine in Vietnam as well as a former Secretary of Navy, to a tour of five Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam where in a period of twenty fours he met various highest members of the Vietnamese Communist Party and government. It is also important to note that Senator Webb chairs a Senate subcommittee dealing with East Asia and Pacific Affairs. I have sent him a letter and an accompanied declaration but have not received a reply nor do I expect to receive any, since I am not his constituent. I wrote to him just to stress the point, as if he didn’t know already, that the East Sea disputes over the Paracel and Spratly Islands could be the ignition that started war in the region
Ladies and gentlemen, do we need more facts to realize that we are living in an “exciting”, history-making time in Southeast Asia? Today, China is behaving like the Nazi Germany did in the late 1930’s. With Russia being busy building up its shattered economy and the United States bogged down in two (could be three, if you consider Pakistan) wars and mired in economic troubles, China with its rising economic prosperity, is flexing its muscles and carrying out its Greater Han expansion. It is supporting Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in order to encircle India. It is trying to displace Vietnam as a decision maker in Laos and Cambodia. It is encouraging cooperation in military matters between Myanmar and North Korea. Simply put, China is expanding its zone of influence under the belief that the 21st century belongs to it and it is behaving in a manner befitting its rising stature.
It is human nature for the strong to attack the weak, for a strong and bigger country to swallow up a smaller, weaker country. To China, Vietnam has been a tempting meal for thousands of years. At one time, China had Vietnam inside its mouth for a thousand years. It thought it could chew and swallow up Vietnam as it did to other lands south of the Yangtze River, but somehow the Vietnamese forced it to throw up Vietnam. Ever since 939 AD, China has tried many times through naked invasions to defeat and assimilate Vietnam once and for all. Today, thanks to Vietnam being weakened after a long, brutal civil war instigated and encouraged by the Chinese, China has its best chance for two centuries. The take-over of the Paracel and the Spatly Islands, the grabbing of land at the border, the construction of dams in the upper reaches of the Mekong River, the presence of estimated 100,000 “laborers” in Vietnam, Vietnam huge trade deficit vis-à-vis China, and the flooding of Chinese goods in Vietnam are all part of the plan to conquer and assimilate us. Wake up and stop diddling around with nonsensical diatribes. Be serious for a change. Our country is becoming like Austria in 1938. Once Vietnam falls, Cambodia and Laos will follow. Thailand and Myanmar will be next. It is in the genes of humans to wage wars of conquest, as witnessed by historical events since the emergence of Man on this planet. A lack of knowledge of history will ensure a repeat of past mistakes. If we (with the world’s help, but we must bear the main burden) don’t stop the Chinese now, soon India, the United States, Australia, and Indonesia will have to fight to stop China from taking over the whole Southeast Asia. In peace, we have to prepare for war. During war, we have to plan for peace.
Sooner or later, we, the Vietnamese people have to fight the Chinese, unless we are willing to roll over and become slaves and get assimilated in the process; unless we are willing to let the Chinese take all our women, grab all our natural resources, destroy our books and all evidence that we are different from them, and rewrite history and tell our future generations that the Vietnamese are really Chinese. By that time, the assimilation in Vietnam is complete as it was in South China.
Ladies and gentlemen, Vietnam is in dire traits. It has no friends nor does it have allies. It has no defense treaty with any country that I know of, except with China! Its leaders are busy lining up their pockets with ill-gotten monies. The Vietnamese are sick and tired of the corrupt ruling clique and hungry and thirsty for a regime change. China is planning to do that and is aiming to supplant the Vietnamese Communist Party as the new ruler of Vietnam. When I think of the situation in Vietnam, I wonder how one can be chortlingly habituated to cheap jokes and sex-laden materials. I cannot derive any exquisite caloricity or pleasure from reading those jokes or viewing those materials.
Wissai
August 26, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Knowlege and Silence
Knowledge and Silence
I received an email forwarded from a friend, in which there was a series of exchanges about knowledge concerning Vietnamese culture, meditation, and Buddhism. I read the email with keen interest and amusement. However, by the time I reached the end of the exchanges, I stopped feeling amused. Instead, I experienced a strange mixture of sobering humility and self-awareness.
The subjects discussed in the email are familiar with me since they have been the areas of interest to me for a long time. I don’t fancy that I am an expert of these subjects but I think I know more than an average person. In fact, I am perusing a book which touches on religion, God, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, logic, language, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. Some of the materials covered are tough going for me, but I am not totally lost. I fancy that I am in good company and on the right path to an understanding of where I am in relation to life around me and my place in the universe. What I need to guard myself is not to heap scorn on those who love to show off their meager knowledge and pretend that they know more than they actually do. What I need to control is not to have feelings of nausea and disgust when I see amateurish attempts of pontification and poor reasoning skills displayed in the forum of which I am a member. What I need to do is to practice silence and not be like those who make me want to puke whenever I read their words; in other words, I need to write only when silence is no longer necessary and I only write for the common good, for the sake of my home country, and not to satisfy my ego.
CanNgon
August 24, 2009
I received an email forwarded from a friend, in which there was a series of exchanges about knowledge concerning Vietnamese culture, meditation, and Buddhism. I read the email with keen interest and amusement. However, by the time I reached the end of the exchanges, I stopped feeling amused. Instead, I experienced a strange mixture of sobering humility and self-awareness.
The subjects discussed in the email are familiar with me since they have been the areas of interest to me for a long time. I don’t fancy that I am an expert of these subjects but I think I know more than an average person. In fact, I am perusing a book which touches on religion, God, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, logic, language, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. Some of the materials covered are tough going for me, but I am not totally lost. I fancy that I am in good company and on the right path to an understanding of where I am in relation to life around me and my place in the universe. What I need to guard myself is not to heap scorn on those who love to show off their meager knowledge and pretend that they know more than they actually do. What I need to control is not to have feelings of nausea and disgust when I see amateurish attempts of pontification and poor reasoning skills displayed in the forum of which I am a member. What I need to do is to practice silence and not be like those who make me want to puke whenever I read their words; in other words, I need to write only when silence is no longer necessary and I only write for the common good, for the sake of my home country, and not to satisfy my ego.
CanNgon
August 24, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The Beast Within
The Beast Within
The post of a fellow member of this forum on the death of My Lai massacre hero Hugh Thompson Jr., a former U.S. military helicopter pilot who helped stopped one of the most infamous massacres of the Vietnam War, triggered the following rambling memories and thoughts.
1. Emile Zola, a French writer of naturalism, talked about the beast within Man’s heart. Humans are somewhere between angels and devils, between full-fledged homo sapiens with complete developed higher consciousness and incomplete brutes with sole preoccupation with lower, crude desires such as sex, cheap and infantile humor, survival at all costs, and turning their backs on their fellow countrymen who need help. Hugh Thompson Jr. was a true homo sapiens. Richard Nixon who commuted Lt. William Calley—the architect of the massacre, from life sentence to three months of house arrest, Calley himself, and the congressman who told Thompson that he was the only American who should be punished over My Lai incident, were true animals. I wonder how some men turned out to be real men and others were merely humans in disguise. Was it upbringing, genetics, or a simple failure of one’s heart to respond to the calling of higher consciousness?
2. I recall leafing through the pages of Life magazine in a classroom of Faculty of Pedagogy in Saigon sometime in late 1968. A classmate had brought the magazine to the class. In the magazine were pictures of the massacre. Children and babies along with their mothers were shot dead. Blood rushed to my head and I was consumed with anger and hatred. But then I told myself no matter how I hated my enemy combatants, I would not do the same thing to their innocent loved ones because it was simply unfair. Fairness has been the over-arching principle by which I conduct myself.
3. I live in the comfort and safety in the United States, far away from the land of my birth where my fellow countrymen live under a totalitarian regime that does not respond to the needs of the people, and, worse still, seems to cater to the needs of our historical enemies, the Chinese. I ask myself a question: since I fancy myself as a fair-minded individual, what should I do? Armed with only some felicity with words, all I can do is to expose the injustice, the unfairness, and the quiet but comprehensive step-by-step take-over of Vietnam by China, currently under way, aided by the inept, corrupt, and totally selfish Vietnamese Communist Party leadership. Hopefully, somehow my words reach my fellow countrymen back home and they realize there are people like me out there who have not forgotten them. Hopefully, they find solace and strength and hope in my words and somehow decide that change is possible and to fight for survival is an option instead of rolling over and playing dead while China is taking over the country.
4. At this moment, as I am typing these reflections, my esteemed friend and comrade, Mr. HC, is laboriously typing almost a thousand of names of Vietnamese who find resonance in my words. Mr. HC has spent his own money to put an ad in the local Viet paper in Sydney, Australia to print the Declaration of the concerned Vietnamese worldwide regarding the quiet but comprehensive invasion of Vietnam by China. The ad should be out sometime next week. The act of Mr. HC is an act of unadulterated love, an act of true homo sapiens. His act reflects a man of real fire, and not of smoke, a man of true music, and not of banal noise.
Can Ngon
August 22, 2009
The post of a fellow member of this forum on the death of My Lai massacre hero Hugh Thompson Jr., a former U.S. military helicopter pilot who helped stopped one of the most infamous massacres of the Vietnam War, triggered the following rambling memories and thoughts.
1. Emile Zola, a French writer of naturalism, talked about the beast within Man’s heart. Humans are somewhere between angels and devils, between full-fledged homo sapiens with complete developed higher consciousness and incomplete brutes with sole preoccupation with lower, crude desires such as sex, cheap and infantile humor, survival at all costs, and turning their backs on their fellow countrymen who need help. Hugh Thompson Jr. was a true homo sapiens. Richard Nixon who commuted Lt. William Calley—the architect of the massacre, from life sentence to three months of house arrest, Calley himself, and the congressman who told Thompson that he was the only American who should be punished over My Lai incident, were true animals. I wonder how some men turned out to be real men and others were merely humans in disguise. Was it upbringing, genetics, or a simple failure of one’s heart to respond to the calling of higher consciousness?
2. I recall leafing through the pages of Life magazine in a classroom of Faculty of Pedagogy in Saigon sometime in late 1968. A classmate had brought the magazine to the class. In the magazine were pictures of the massacre. Children and babies along with their mothers were shot dead. Blood rushed to my head and I was consumed with anger and hatred. But then I told myself no matter how I hated my enemy combatants, I would not do the same thing to their innocent loved ones because it was simply unfair. Fairness has been the over-arching principle by which I conduct myself.
3. I live in the comfort and safety in the United States, far away from the land of my birth where my fellow countrymen live under a totalitarian regime that does not respond to the needs of the people, and, worse still, seems to cater to the needs of our historical enemies, the Chinese. I ask myself a question: since I fancy myself as a fair-minded individual, what should I do? Armed with only some felicity with words, all I can do is to expose the injustice, the unfairness, and the quiet but comprehensive step-by-step take-over of Vietnam by China, currently under way, aided by the inept, corrupt, and totally selfish Vietnamese Communist Party leadership. Hopefully, somehow my words reach my fellow countrymen back home and they realize there are people like me out there who have not forgotten them. Hopefully, they find solace and strength and hope in my words and somehow decide that change is possible and to fight for survival is an option instead of rolling over and playing dead while China is taking over the country.
4. At this moment, as I am typing these reflections, my esteemed friend and comrade, Mr. HC, is laboriously typing almost a thousand of names of Vietnamese who find resonance in my words. Mr. HC has spent his own money to put an ad in the local Viet paper in Sydney, Australia to print the Declaration of the concerned Vietnamese worldwide regarding the quiet but comprehensive invasion of Vietnam by China. The ad should be out sometime next week. The act of Mr. HC is an act of unadulterated love, an act of true homo sapiens. His act reflects a man of real fire, and not of smoke, a man of true music, and not of banal noise.
Can Ngon
August 22, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Regression Analysis
Regression Analysis
One of my mottos to live by is: “We don’t know who we are until we are tested.” I certainly didn’t know I was capable of deep feelings of anger and disgust and repulsion until I saw the way I reacted to a certain individual recently. I thought I could practice forgiveness and overlooked his infantile behavior, but I was wrong. Instead, I felt viscerally and physically revolted by his recent words which I found to be infantile, inane, insane, ignorant and plainly stupid. I wondered who was suffering the regression to second childhood, me or him? I then concluded it had to be him because he was blithely ignorant of his shortcomings whereas I am eternally vigilant to mine.
The bastard has an ego but very little talent to back it up. Just because he managed to go to college, he fancies that he is educated and intelligent. His reasoning is infantile and has no sequacity. He does not know Jack shit about anything of substance and yet he is not shy of mouthing off his opinions just about everything under the sun. He is a strange animal indeed. In fact, his pen name is that of an animal. How apt, how fitting, and how ridiculous! As I put it in my recent email to the forum of which I am a member, after reading his nonsensical and jejune diatribes, I could not help but wonder about his mindset, his taste, and his upbringing. I was kind when I used the word upbringing because I didn’t think he had any. He must have been a bastard, an unwanted and abandoned child who grew up in the orphanage and later in the streets, because he has no manners of a civilized, cultured human. His behavior is that of a thug, a brute, an animal. No wonder many members of the forum treat him as if he were a leper. They stay far away from him and practice silence to everything he brings up. Some felt so disgusted that they left the forum altogether.
Wissai
August 19, 2009
One of my mottos to live by is: “We don’t know who we are until we are tested.” I certainly didn’t know I was capable of deep feelings of anger and disgust and repulsion until I saw the way I reacted to a certain individual recently. I thought I could practice forgiveness and overlooked his infantile behavior, but I was wrong. Instead, I felt viscerally and physically revolted by his recent words which I found to be infantile, inane, insane, ignorant and plainly stupid. I wondered who was suffering the regression to second childhood, me or him? I then concluded it had to be him because he was blithely ignorant of his shortcomings whereas I am eternally vigilant to mine.
The bastard has an ego but very little talent to back it up. Just because he managed to go to college, he fancies that he is educated and intelligent. His reasoning is infantile and has no sequacity. He does not know Jack shit about anything of substance and yet he is not shy of mouthing off his opinions just about everything under the sun. He is a strange animal indeed. In fact, his pen name is that of an animal. How apt, how fitting, and how ridiculous! As I put it in my recent email to the forum of which I am a member, after reading his nonsensical and jejune diatribes, I could not help but wonder about his mindset, his taste, and his upbringing. I was kind when I used the word upbringing because I didn’t think he had any. He must have been a bastard, an unwanted and abandoned child who grew up in the orphanage and later in the streets, because he has no manners of a civilized, cultured human. His behavior is that of a thug, a brute, an animal. No wonder many members of the forum treat him as if he were a leper. They stay far away from him and practice silence to everything he brings up. Some felt so disgusted that they left the forum altogether.
Wissai
August 19, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Nietzsche and I
Fiction, Essay, Nietzsche and I once more. Another Manifesto.
On a beautiful day like this when an unexpected cold front from the North brought cool fresh air and relief to the scorching South, I feel expansive and uninhibited and thankful to be alive.
Yesterday, the weather was just the opposite. I came home from a long trip and as the twilight began to come on, the sky was turning black and my car hissed into a wall of rain. I put the wipers on full strength and slowed down the car. Cars driven by idiots and maniacs passed me by and sprayed my car and blinded me for a second or so. The rain peppered the windshield and the roof and the tires made a hissing sound as they went through a thin layer of water. I felt strangely relaxed. Water is life. I drove for hundreds of miles and my mind was groping for the meaning of why I kept punishing myself.
Today, the rain was long gone. Everything is crisp and clear, trees and grass are in their luxuriant green, and flowers and butterflies are everywhere. I went for a walk, the morning was awash with sunlight, and I felt every molecule in my body dancing. On the day like this, I feel like writing some fiction, but lying (creation) is an art, and few do it well to the point that the readers are transported and transformed by the words of the creator. It’s much easier to write nonfiction, to state one’s opinions in a straightforward manner without allusions, without a framework of a story.
So, Nam Le got another award for his marvelous book of stories. Every Dick, Tom, and Harry can appreciate popular music and rhapsodize on the transcendental beauty of roses and orchids, but it takes a rare and thus more evolved sensibility to appreciate literature, painting, and sculpture. It is no wonder writers and poets and painters and sculptors feel they are very special, far above the coarse common crowd who make mere noise and nothing else. The more mediocre a person, the more noise he makes. Maybe I am myself one of those guys. Anyway, the following are words mostly taken verbatim from Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo (I’ve read the book at least 10 times and every time I read it, my mind soars and my heart sings). Occasionally I throw in my own words to confuse the reader as to who is speaking here. [(I believe I once said that N and I shared the same birthday as that of a Prussian king. In fact, N’s first and middle names derived from the king. N’s father was a pastor and for a few years lived in the castle of Altenburg and taught the four princesses there. Sometimes I have an inkling that N lives within me although I am far luckier than he was in the department of love. He lived in a household full of women and so did I (I have six sisters and one brother), but he could not find a wife. Throughout my life, my best friends have always been women and some of them were more than friends]. Without further ado, let us plunge into the world of N, but I do feel obligated to warn those of tender or jealous sensibilities to stay away, because N’s words (and mine, too) are only for the strong and the not jealous. N had a mental breakdown a few months after writing the book. He lingered on for almost twelve years until he died in August 1900 without regaining consciousness of the fact that he once wrote books that he rightly predicted that they would make a big impact for generations, if not centuries, to come. It was poignant to note that the breakdown occurred when he rushed to the street in order to restrain a coach driver from whipping the horse. Walter Kaufmann, the authority on N, surmised that N he suffered from consequences of untreated syphilis contracted during his student days. N was in poor health and was almost blind during most of his adult life; yet in spite of this, he wrote books after books. He celebrated the will to power and advocated a robust approach to life as a revolt against and a sublimation of his own poor health. One only philosophizes from one’s own experiences.
I live on my own credit; it is perhaps a mere prejudice that I live.
Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else. But how could you? My contempt is so transparent; my disgust so palpable; and my disappointment immense. No matter how hard you try to hide, I can see through you. I have keen eyesight and you are not that difficult to read.
Those who can breathe the air of my writings know that it is an air of the heights, a strong air. One must be made for it. Otherwise there is no small danger that one may catch cold from it. The ice is near, the solitude tremendous—but how calmly all things lie in the light! How freely one breathes! How much one feels beneath oneself!
How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? Error (faith in the ideal) is not blindness, error is cowardice.
Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.
Among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself. With that I have given mankind the greatest present that has been made to it so far. Here no “prophet” is speaking, none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power whom people called founders of religion. Above all, one must hear aright the tone that comes from this mouth, the halcyon tone, lest one should do wretched injustice to the meaning of its wisdom.
It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thought that come on doves’ feet guide the world.
The figs are falling from the trees; they are good and sweet; and, as they fall, their red skin bursts. I am a north wind to ripe figs.
Thus, like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends: now consume their juice and their sweet meat. It is fall around us, and pure sky and afternoon.
It is no fanatic that speaks here; this is not “preaching”; no faith is demanded here: from an infinite abundance of light and depth of happiness falls drop upon drop, word upon word: the tempo of these speeches is a tender adagio. Such things reach only the most select.
Not only does Zarathustra speak differently, he also is different.
The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends.
One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath?
Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you
On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life?—and I so I tell my life to myself.
All pathological disturbances of the intellect, even that half-numb state that follows fever, have remained entirely foreign to me to this day. A physician who treated me for some time as if my nerves were sick finally said: “It’s not your nerves, it is rather I that am nervous.”
A well-turned-out person pleases our senses, he is carved from wood that is hard, delicate, and at the same time smells good.
I am warlike by nature. Attacking is one of my instincts. I attack falsehood masqueraded as truth and ignorance presented as knowledge; I attack hypocrisy, envy, jealousy, and cowardice; I attack reasoning without sequaciy; and I attack pettiness within myself and of others. Bragging, pride, and arrogance, no matter how distasteful or obnoxious, don’t bother me since they have something to do with truth. A person is allowed to feel good about himself as long as what he feels good about is factual and true.
I have never reflected on questions that are none—I have not wasted myself. “God”, ‘immortality of the soul’, “redemption”, “beyond”—are concepts to which I never devoted any attention or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough for them?
I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: it is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. (Ich bin zu neugierig, zu fragwurdig, zu ubermutig, um mir eine faustgrobe Antwort gefallen zu lassen). God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers—at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: thou shall not think!
When I seek another word for music, I always find only the word Venice. I do not know how to distinguish between tears and music—I do not know how to think of happiness, of the south, without shudders of timidity.
At the bridge I stood
lately in the brown night.
From a far came a song:
as a golden drop it welled
over the quivering surface.
Gondolas, lights, and music—
drunken it swam out into the twilight.
My soul, a stringed instrument,
sang to itself, invisibly touched,
a secret gondola song,
quivering with iridescent happiness.
-- Did any one listen to it?
Wissai
June 6, 2009_
On a beautiful day like this when an unexpected cold front from the North brought cool fresh air and relief to the scorching South, I feel expansive and uninhibited and thankful to be alive.
Yesterday, the weather was just the opposite. I came home from a long trip and as the twilight began to come on, the sky was turning black and my car hissed into a wall of rain. I put the wipers on full strength and slowed down the car. Cars driven by idiots and maniacs passed me by and sprayed my car and blinded me for a second or so. The rain peppered the windshield and the roof and the tires made a hissing sound as they went through a thin layer of water. I felt strangely relaxed. Water is life. I drove for hundreds of miles and my mind was groping for the meaning of why I kept punishing myself.
Today, the rain was long gone. Everything is crisp and clear, trees and grass are in their luxuriant green, and flowers and butterflies are everywhere. I went for a walk, the morning was awash with sunlight, and I felt every molecule in my body dancing. On the day like this, I feel like writing some fiction, but lying (creation) is an art, and few do it well to the point that the readers are transported and transformed by the words of the creator. It’s much easier to write nonfiction, to state one’s opinions in a straightforward manner without allusions, without a framework of a story.
So, Nam Le got another award for his marvelous book of stories. Every Dick, Tom, and Harry can appreciate popular music and rhapsodize on the transcendental beauty of roses and orchids, but it takes a rare and thus more evolved sensibility to appreciate literature, painting, and sculpture. It is no wonder writers and poets and painters and sculptors feel they are very special, far above the coarse common crowd who make mere noise and nothing else. The more mediocre a person, the more noise he makes. Maybe I am myself one of those guys. Anyway, the following are words mostly taken verbatim from Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo (I’ve read the book at least 10 times and every time I read it, my mind soars and my heart sings). Occasionally I throw in my own words to confuse the reader as to who is speaking here. [(I believe I once said that N and I shared the same birthday as that of a Prussian king. In fact, N’s first and middle names derived from the king. N’s father was a pastor and for a few years lived in the castle of Altenburg and taught the four princesses there. Sometimes I have an inkling that N lives within me although I am far luckier than he was in the department of love. He lived in a household full of women and so did I (I have six sisters and one brother), but he could not find a wife. Throughout my life, my best friends have always been women and some of them were more than friends]. Without further ado, let us plunge into the world of N, but I do feel obligated to warn those of tender or jealous sensibilities to stay away, because N’s words (and mine, too) are only for the strong and the not jealous. N had a mental breakdown a few months after writing the book. He lingered on for almost twelve years until he died in August 1900 without regaining consciousness of the fact that he once wrote books that he rightly predicted that they would make a big impact for generations, if not centuries, to come. It was poignant to note that the breakdown occurred when he rushed to the street in order to restrain a coach driver from whipping the horse. Walter Kaufmann, the authority on N, surmised that N he suffered from consequences of untreated syphilis contracted during his student days. N was in poor health and was almost blind during most of his adult life; yet in spite of this, he wrote books after books. He celebrated the will to power and advocated a robust approach to life as a revolt against and a sublimation of his own poor health. One only philosophizes from one’s own experiences.
I live on my own credit; it is perhaps a mere prejudice that I live.
Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else. But how could you? My contempt is so transparent; my disgust so palpable; and my disappointment immense. No matter how hard you try to hide, I can see through you. I have keen eyesight and you are not that difficult to read.
Those who can breathe the air of my writings know that it is an air of the heights, a strong air. One must be made for it. Otherwise there is no small danger that one may catch cold from it. The ice is near, the solitude tremendous—but how calmly all things lie in the light! How freely one breathes! How much one feels beneath oneself!
How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? Error (faith in the ideal) is not blindness, error is cowardice.
Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.
Among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself. With that I have given mankind the greatest present that has been made to it so far. Here no “prophet” is speaking, none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power whom people called founders of religion. Above all, one must hear aright the tone that comes from this mouth, the halcyon tone, lest one should do wretched injustice to the meaning of its wisdom.
It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thought that come on doves’ feet guide the world.
The figs are falling from the trees; they are good and sweet; and, as they fall, their red skin bursts. I am a north wind to ripe figs.
Thus, like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends: now consume their juice and their sweet meat. It is fall around us, and pure sky and afternoon.
It is no fanatic that speaks here; this is not “preaching”; no faith is demanded here: from an infinite abundance of light and depth of happiness falls drop upon drop, word upon word: the tempo of these speeches is a tender adagio. Such things reach only the most select.
Not only does Zarathustra speak differently, he also is different.
The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends.
One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath?
Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you
On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life?—and I so I tell my life to myself.
All pathological disturbances of the intellect, even that half-numb state that follows fever, have remained entirely foreign to me to this day. A physician who treated me for some time as if my nerves were sick finally said: “It’s not your nerves, it is rather I that am nervous.”
A well-turned-out person pleases our senses, he is carved from wood that is hard, delicate, and at the same time smells good.
I am warlike by nature. Attacking is one of my instincts. I attack falsehood masqueraded as truth and ignorance presented as knowledge; I attack hypocrisy, envy, jealousy, and cowardice; I attack reasoning without sequaciy; and I attack pettiness within myself and of others. Bragging, pride, and arrogance, no matter how distasteful or obnoxious, don’t bother me since they have something to do with truth. A person is allowed to feel good about himself as long as what he feels good about is factual and true.
I have never reflected on questions that are none—I have not wasted myself. “God”, ‘immortality of the soul’, “redemption”, “beyond”—are concepts to which I never devoted any attention or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough for them?
I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: it is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. (Ich bin zu neugierig, zu fragwurdig, zu ubermutig, um mir eine faustgrobe Antwort gefallen zu lassen). God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers—at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: thou shall not think!
When I seek another word for music, I always find only the word Venice. I do not know how to distinguish between tears and music—I do not know how to think of happiness, of the south, without shudders of timidity.
At the bridge I stood
lately in the brown night.
From a far came a song:
as a golden drop it welled
over the quivering surface.
Gondolas, lights, and music—
drunken it swam out into the twilight.
My soul, a stringed instrument,
sang to itself, invisibly touched,
a secret gondola song,
quivering with iridescent happiness.
-- Did any one listen to it?
Wissai
June 6, 2009_
Stumbling, mumbling, numbling, crumbling, crummy thoughts
Stumbling, mumbling, numbing, crumbling, crummy thoughts
So he wants to talk about the mystery of women. Ah, what does he know about women? (Just kidding, my friend. I took a liberty here. I hope I was granted a liberty.) Oh, I forgot. He once made a grand pronouncement that he was a champion in the love department. I didn’t know if the pronouncement was made in zest or jest. I suspected that it was made in earnest. Anyway, it was a gesture of self-confidence. Congratulations to him! I must confess that I don’t know anything about women except that they are mysterious and hard to figure out. The more I know about them, the lonelier I feel. That’s why I write poetry to alleviate my sense of existential loneliness. I would like to ask him question: What part(s) of the male anatomy the women find most sexually attractive and why? He must answer the question on his own without consultation with his wife and/or his numerous female friends. Come to think of it, the question should be extended to those males who are interested in this rather practical matter.
As regards the line from TCS, I find it beautiful and romantic and erotic since I interpret it as the girl’s wish for rain so her blouse would get wet and reveal her female form more transparently as she was heading home. I suspected what she hoped for was not a mere drizzle, but a downpour, so she would look like a Venus in the rain and all men in the vicinity would pant with unstoppable excitement.
Now, allow me to share with you in the paragraphs below, the words of Raymond Tallis, an emeritus professor of geriatric medicine and a poet and novelist and philosopher, from a book with a lofty title The Kingdom of Infinite Space. I sometimes would jump in and offer my own sophomoric comments
“Man”, Hazlitt said (citing Aristotle) ‘is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.” This quote resonates deeply with me because so many times I find myself both weeping and laughing at the same time over what women have done to me. I weep for my stupidity and naivety and I laugh over the absurdity of the thing called love. In the name of love, I have done so many stupid and irrational things. And I am sure the women, and there are so many of them, are laughing at me now, at my stupidity.
They laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian and a writer. Well, I became a comedian and a writer of sorts. They are not laughing now. But I am laughing, hence this compendium of stumbling, mumbling, numbing, crummy, crumbling thoughts.
We laugh sometimes so that we shall not cry. And sometimes we laugh until we cry tears of laughter.
Speech is conscious of itself. When I speak, I know that of which I speak, why I speak, to whom I am speaking, what I hope to achieve through speaking, and that I am speaking.
Speech, which uses abstraction, says how things are, denies how they are, says how they might or ought to be and, most fundamentally, say that they are. It accompanies us from morning to night, from the end of infancy to the end of dotage. And when we are not speaking out loud, we are speaking to ourselves in the windless speech of thought. We even speak in dreams and dream that we are speaking.
We are explicit animals. The propensity to transform expired air into sounds that are used to refer to other things, to possibilities that may or may not be realized, presupposes an explicit sense of oneself, of the material world, and of other humans.
Speech is a compendious, elaborate, folded, oceanic expression of what is there. In saying what is there, we are saying something about ourselves: we say what we are; we exhibit ourselves, we put into circulation and image of ourselves. Speaking involves a mixture of air and history, breath and memory, beyond our consciousness. We make the language we have on loan our own possession, the most immediate and intimate expression of ourselves. The choice of words, the structure of our sentences, the games we play with accents and sounds, and so on—all mark the common language as our private property. Beyond the distinctive pattern of kindness or cruelty, helpfulness or obstructiveness, ignorance and knowledge, gloom and joy, there is a special inflection of the semantic breeze, an idiosyncratic mix of imitations and echoes that mark it out as ours.
Yet much of what others say bores us. Speech descends to wittering; and conversation is merely a “vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.”
Now, I have to catch my breath. It’s your turn to speak. Please speak with sense and sensibility and beauty and music.
Now, you know why I am interested in language and languages. I am a talker, a maker of speech, not a speech-maker. I put words together and fall in love with their magic. Through talking and thinking aloud in words, I discovered my humanity and what a humanity it is!
I typed this “speech” today with confidence, without any sudorific anguish or anxiety. I came close to the line, but I didn’t cross it.
Wissai
June 8, 2009
So he wants to talk about the mystery of women. Ah, what does he know about women? (Just kidding, my friend. I took a liberty here. I hope I was granted a liberty.) Oh, I forgot. He once made a grand pronouncement that he was a champion in the love department. I didn’t know if the pronouncement was made in zest or jest. I suspected that it was made in earnest. Anyway, it was a gesture of self-confidence. Congratulations to him! I must confess that I don’t know anything about women except that they are mysterious and hard to figure out. The more I know about them, the lonelier I feel. That’s why I write poetry to alleviate my sense of existential loneliness. I would like to ask him question: What part(s) of the male anatomy the women find most sexually attractive and why? He must answer the question on his own without consultation with his wife and/or his numerous female friends. Come to think of it, the question should be extended to those males who are interested in this rather practical matter.
As regards the line from TCS, I find it beautiful and romantic and erotic since I interpret it as the girl’s wish for rain so her blouse would get wet and reveal her female form more transparently as she was heading home. I suspected what she hoped for was not a mere drizzle, but a downpour, so she would look like a Venus in the rain and all men in the vicinity would pant with unstoppable excitement.
Now, allow me to share with you in the paragraphs below, the words of Raymond Tallis, an emeritus professor of geriatric medicine and a poet and novelist and philosopher, from a book with a lofty title The Kingdom of Infinite Space. I sometimes would jump in and offer my own sophomoric comments
“Man”, Hazlitt said (citing Aristotle) ‘is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.” This quote resonates deeply with me because so many times I find myself both weeping and laughing at the same time over what women have done to me. I weep for my stupidity and naivety and I laugh over the absurdity of the thing called love. In the name of love, I have done so many stupid and irrational things. And I am sure the women, and there are so many of them, are laughing at me now, at my stupidity.
They laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian and a writer. Well, I became a comedian and a writer of sorts. They are not laughing now. But I am laughing, hence this compendium of stumbling, mumbling, numbing, crummy, crumbling thoughts.
We laugh sometimes so that we shall not cry. And sometimes we laugh until we cry tears of laughter.
Speech is conscious of itself. When I speak, I know that of which I speak, why I speak, to whom I am speaking, what I hope to achieve through speaking, and that I am speaking.
Speech, which uses abstraction, says how things are, denies how they are, says how they might or ought to be and, most fundamentally, say that they are. It accompanies us from morning to night, from the end of infancy to the end of dotage. And when we are not speaking out loud, we are speaking to ourselves in the windless speech of thought. We even speak in dreams and dream that we are speaking.
We are explicit animals. The propensity to transform expired air into sounds that are used to refer to other things, to possibilities that may or may not be realized, presupposes an explicit sense of oneself, of the material world, and of other humans.
Speech is a compendious, elaborate, folded, oceanic expression of what is there. In saying what is there, we are saying something about ourselves: we say what we are; we exhibit ourselves, we put into circulation and image of ourselves. Speaking involves a mixture of air and history, breath and memory, beyond our consciousness. We make the language we have on loan our own possession, the most immediate and intimate expression of ourselves. The choice of words, the structure of our sentences, the games we play with accents and sounds, and so on—all mark the common language as our private property. Beyond the distinctive pattern of kindness or cruelty, helpfulness or obstructiveness, ignorance and knowledge, gloom and joy, there is a special inflection of the semantic breeze, an idiosyncratic mix of imitations and echoes that mark it out as ours.
Yet much of what others say bores us. Speech descends to wittering; and conversation is merely a “vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.”
Now, I have to catch my breath. It’s your turn to speak. Please speak with sense and sensibility and beauty and music.
Now, you know why I am interested in language and languages. I am a talker, a maker of speech, not a speech-maker. I put words together and fall in love with their magic. Through talking and thinking aloud in words, I discovered my humanity and what a humanity it is!
I typed this “speech” today with confidence, without any sudorific anguish or anxiety. I came close to the line, but I didn’t cross it.
Wissai
June 8, 2009
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