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Peace activist Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan dies at 94

2018-06-30T23:18:48Z

GregorioHollars:

NEW YORK (AP) - His defiant protests helped shape Americans' opposition to the Vietnam War. And they landed The Rev. Daniel Berrigan behind bars. The Roman Catholic priest, writer and poet, who became a household name in the U.S. in the 1960s after being imprisoned for burning draft files in a protest against the war, died Saturday. He was 94. Berrigan died after a "long illness" at Murray-Weigel Hall, a Jesuit health care community in New York City according to Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province. File-This Feb. 16, 1981, file photo shows Daniel Berrigan, ex-priest, now political activist on NBC-TV�s �Today� show in New York. The Roman Catholic priest and Vietnam war protester, Berrigan has died. He was 94. Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, says Berrigan died Saturday, April 30, 2016, at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. (AP Photo/Dave Pickoff, File) "He died peacefully," Benigno said. Berrigan and [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] his younger brother, the Rev. Philip Berrigan, emerged as leaders of the radical anti-war movement in the 1960s. The Berrigan brothers entered a draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, on May 17, 1968, with seven other activists and removed records of young men about to be shipped off to Vietnam. The group took the files outside and burned them in garbage cans. The Catonsville Nine, as they came to be known, were convicted on federal charges accusing them of destroying U.S. property and interfering with the Selective Service Act of 1967. All were sentenced on Nov. 9, 1968 to prison terms ranging from two to 3.5 years. Berrigan wrote about the courtroom experience in 1970 in a one-act play, "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine," which was later made into a movie. When asked in 2009 by "America," a national Catholic magazine, whether he had any regrets, Berrigan replied: "I could have done sooner the things I did, like Catonsville." Berrigan grew up in Syracuse, New York, with his parents and five brothers. He joined the Jesuit order after high school and taught preparatory school in New Jersey before being ordained a priest in 1952. Berrigan began writing poetry as a seminarian. His work captured the attention of an editor at Macmillan who referred the material to poet Marianne Moore. Her endorsement led to the publication of Berrigan's first book of poetry, "Time Without Number," which won the Lamont Poetry Prize in 1957. Berrigan credited Dorothy Day, a social activist and founder of The Catholic Worker newspaper, with introducing him to the pacifist movement and influencing his thinking about war. Much later, while visiting Paris in 1963 on a teaching sabbatical from LeMoyne College, Berrigan met French Jesuits who spoke of the dire situation in Indochina. Soon after that, he and his brother founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship, which helped organize protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Berrigan traveled to North Vietnam in 1968 and returned with three American prisoners of war who were being released as a goodwill gesture. He said that while there, he witnessed some of the destruction and suffering caused by the war. While he was teaching at Cornell University, Berrigan's brother asked him to join a group of activists for the Catonsville demonstration. Philip Berrigan was at the time awaiting sentencing for a 1967 protest in Baltimore during which demonstrators poured blood on draft records. "I was blown away by the courage and effrontery, really, of my brother," Berrigan recalled in a 2006 interview on the Democracy Now radio program. After the Catonsville case had been unsuccessfully appealed, the Berrigan brothers and three of their co-defendants went underground. Philip Berrigan turned himself in to authorities in April 1969 at a Manhattan church. Four months later, the FBI arrested Daniel Berrigan at the Rhode Island home of theologian William Stringfellow. Berrigan said in an interview that he became a fugitive to draw more attention to the anti-war movement. The Berrigan brothers were sent to the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Daniel Berrigan was released in 1972 after serving about two years. His brother served about 2.5 years. Long after Catonsville, the Berrigan brothers continued to be active in the peace movement. Together, they began the Plowshares Movement, an anti-nuclear weapons campaign in 1980. Both were arrested that year after entering a General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and damaging nuclear warhead nose cones. Philip Berrigan died of cancer on Dec. 6, 2002 at the age of 79. Daniel Berrigan moved into a Jesuit residence in Manhattan in 1975. In an interview with The Nation magazine on the 40th anniversary of the Catonsville demonstration, Berrigan lamented that the activism of the 1960s and early 1970s evaporated with the passage of time. "The short fuse of the American left is typical of the highs and lows of American emotional life," he said. "It is very rare to sustain a movement in recognizable form without a spiritual base." Berrigan's writings include "Prison Poems," published in 1973; "We Die Before We Live: Talking with the Very Ill," a 1980 book based on his experiences working in a cancer ward; and his autobiography, "To Dwell in Peace," published in 1987. File-This July 25, 1973, file photo shows Rev. Fr. Daniel Berrigan and some friends [http://pixabay.com/en/new-zealand-waterfall-nature-participating/ participating] in a fast and vigil to protest the bombing in Cambodia, on the steps of St. Patrick�s [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] Cathedral in New York City. The Roman Catholic priest and Vietnam war protester, Berrigan has died. He was 94. Michael Benigno, a spokesman [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, says Berrigan died Saturday, April 30, 2016, at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. (AP Photo/Ron Frehm) File-This April 9, 1982, file photo shows Daniel Berrigan marching with about 40 others outside of the Riverside Research Center in New York. The [http://www.travelwitheaseblog.com/?s=Roman%20Catholic Roman Catholic] priest and Vietnam war protester, Berrigan has died. He was 94. Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, says Berrigan died Saturday, April 30, 2016, at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler, File) This is a Dec. 1968 photo of the Rev. Daniel Berrigan at an unknown location. The Roman Catholic priest and Vietnam war protester, Berrigan has died. He was 94. Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, says Berrigan died Saturday, April 30, 2016, at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. (AP Photo/File) Advertisement

Myanmar restricts used car imports

2018-06-30T00:20:52Z

GregorioHollars:

Myanmar has restricted imports of right-hand drive used cars [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] in a bid to boost local production, draw foreign investment -- and phase out notoriously chaotic driving habits. Almost all of the cars on Myanmar's road are second-hand, 90 percent of them from Japan, even though the two nations drive on different sides of the road. Used car imports surged after the government liberalised restrictions in 2012, the year after breaking from half a century of isolationist military rule. Almost all of the cars on Myanmar's road are second-hand, 90 percent of them from Japan, even though the two nations drive on different sides of the road �Soe Than WIN (AFP/File) But until recently Western trade sanctions blocked imports of left-hand drive cars from Europe and the US, forcing motorists to turn to Japanese vehicles. As a result horn-beeping drivers routinely veer into the centre of the road to guage whether it is safe to overtake and buses unload passengers into the middle of busy streets. But that is set to change after the government banned imports of right-hand drive cars from this month. The move aims to [http://Www.answers.com/topic/boost%20local boost local] manufacturing and attract much-needed foreign investment, top priorities for Myanmar's newly elected government. Foreign automakers are now eyeing the largely untapped market of some 55 million consumers as a potential bright spot at a time of lacklustre sales in Southeast Asia. Only seven out of 1,000 people own cars in Myanmar, compared to 200 in neighbouring Thailand, said Nissan regional senior vice president Yutaka Sanada. "Out of the ASEAN countries, Myanmar, in terms of the opportunity, is bigger than our neighbours," he told AFP on Wednesday at the launch of the Japanese giant's first locally manufactured car. Ang Bon Beng, senior regional director of Indochina at Nissan's partner Tan Chong Group, predicted annual sales would grow 5-10 percent in the next few years. "If you look at the current market of Myanmar, 95 percent are used cars," he said. "But this country has decided it wants to liberalise" Myanmar has been the top market for Japanese second-hand car exports [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] for the past three years, according to the Japan External Trade Organisation. Safety campaigners say the ban on imports of used right-hand drive cars will save lives and mean rickety old bangers are taken off the streets. Others hope it will ease the daily gridlock that chokes the streets of the commercial capital Yangon, home to most of the country's cars. But many locals complain the ban has simply driven up the cost of second-hand cars and they cannot afford to buy new. Prices have risen 20-30 percent since it was announced in November and U Soe Tun, chair of industry body MAMDA, said they could double this year. "If I'm buying a car, I want to buy a car imported form Japan like Toyota and Nissan," said rice shop owner Soe Nyut Aung. "I have a limited budget and second-hand cars are cheap." Advertisement

Feds: Ex-UN official s relatives indicted in bribe scheme

2018-06-26T20:48:58Z

GregorioHollars:

NEW YORK (AP) - Two relatives of former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were charged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday with plotting to bribe a Middle East official to influence the $800 million sale of a building complex in Vietnam. Ban's nephew, Joo Hyun Bahn, was released on $250,000 bail over the objections of prosecutors, who sought to deny bail on the grounds that he is a flight risk and a financial threat to his community. Though charged, Bahn's father, Ban Ki Sang, was not in custody. Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Noble told U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin Nathaniel Fox that Bahn was willing to do anything to succeed in business, including trying to pay $2.5 million in bribes to rescue the failed $800 million real estate deal. Joo Hyun Bahn, nephew of former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, leaves federal court in New York, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017. Federal prosecutors in New York have charged two relatives of Ki-moon with plotting to bribe a Middle East official to influence the $800 million sale of a building complex in Vietnam. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister) According to the indictment, Bahn and his father plotted from March 2013 to May 2015 to induce a foreign official to try to persuade his country's sovereign wealth fund to rescue the real estate deal. It said a $500,000 bribe paid to a local businessman to arrange [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] a $2 million bribe of the foreign official was instead wasted on lavish expenses by the businessman, who did not have the connections he boasted about. The indictment alleged that Bahn's father, a senior executive at Keangnam Enterprises Co. Limited, a South Korean construction company, went to his son for help in 2013 when Keangnam was experiencing a liquidity crisis. The indictment said Bahn would earn a commission of at least $5 million if he could secure an investor for Landmark 72, the Vietnam building complex, which included a 72-story commercial office building that was then the tallest building in the Indochina Peninsula and had cost Keangnam more than $1 billion to construct. Prosecutors said Bahn [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] repeatedly lied to Keangnam and its creditors about the status of the potential deal, making them think the Vietnam complex was about to be bought. When the sale never materialized, Keangnam was forced to enter court receivership in South Korea, the indictment said. Noble said a nine-count indictment including charges that Bahn, also known as Dennis Bahn, violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, engaged in money laundering and committed wire fraud could result in a prison sentence of between nine and 10 years. "He's a liar. He is a master of deceit and we believe poses a very high risk of flight," Noble said. The [http://Www.ourmidland.com/search/?q=prosecutor prosecutor] said Bahn, a New Jersey resident, made incriminating statements after his arrest to FBI agents about a case in which he is accused of paying a $500,000 bribe to a local businessman, forging documents and stealing over $200,000 from one of his clients. Defense lawyer Julia Gatto cast her client's statement to the FBI in a positive light, saying Bahn was cooperative after his arrest. She argued that her 38-year-old client had deep roots in the New York area, where he has lived for the past 18 years, attaining lawful permanent resident status and raising young children with his wife while earning $9,000 monthly through his work in commercial real estate. She said he has opened his own firm with a partner. She said he also teaches undergraduate students at New York University and needed to prepare for the start of classes later this month. [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] Fox agreed to a bail package that required the posting of $10,000 in cash or property. He also rejected the government's request for electronic monitoring of Bahn. Advertisement

Believe it or not 1968 was worse

2018-06-25T06:18:22Z

GregorioHollars:

By Maurice Isserman July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving. This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete. Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission. I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.") "Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years." I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged. Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, [http://search.usa.gov/search?affiliate=usagov&query=hugging hugging] the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'" Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America? And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible. If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again? Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable. In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age. Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today. Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades. It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes. Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run. His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation. History was not on a loop in the 1860s. Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life. "I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution." Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience. Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman) Advertisement

User:GregorioHollars

2018-06-23T20:24:46Z

GregorioHollars: Created page with "I'm Gregorio and I live in a seaside city in northern Switzerland, Premier. I'm 31 and I'm will soon finish my study at Arts and Sciences. My web blog :: [http://www.vt..."

I'm Gregorio and I live in a seaside city in northern Switzerland, Premier. I'm 31 and I'm will soon finish my study at Arts and Sciences. My web blog :: [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm]