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Vietnam seeks support for maritime freedom

2018-06-29T15:28:46Z

SwenBordelon377:

France and other countries should help to keep the peace in the disputed South China Sea, Vietnam's president told AFP Wednesday, as unease grows over China's increasingly muscular approach in the key waterway. China claims most of the sea where it has built up reefs capable of hosting military equipment, sparking ire from competing claimants, including Vietnam, and raising fears of potential armed [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] conflict. Speaking to AFP ahead of a visit by French leader Francois Hollande next month, Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang said he hopes France and others will help to diffuse regional tensions in the waterway, which it calls the East Sea. Vietnamese president Tran Dai Quang speaks during an interview with AFP at the presidential palace in Hanoi on August 24, 2016 �Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP) "We highly welcome the cooperation from France and other nations in the process of maintaining peace and stability in the region and the world and on the East Sea," he said, speaking from the [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] presidential palace, the former residence of the Indochina governor during French colonial rule. Hanoi and Beijing have traded diplomatic barbs over [http://Www.Nuwireinvestor.com/results.aspx?searchwords=disputed%20island disputed island] chains and waters in the South China Sea and in 2014 China moved a controversial oil rig into contested territory, prompting riots in Vietnam. The strategic waterway, also claimed by the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan, is rich in energy reserves, fishery resources and is a busy shipping route. Quang's comments come after French Defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in June he would ask European countries to conduct coordinated patrols in the South China Sea. France and the United States have sent naval ships to the sea in recent months and have vowed to send more, angering Beijing. The Vietnamese president, whose role is mostly ceremonial, said Hollande's visit would help to boost military ties between the former colonial foes, as Hanoi has rapidly increased its defence budget in the last decade. "Several directions for cooperation will be strengthened and opened, like... ensuring security, safety and freedom of maritime and aviation," Quang said in a statement to AFP after the interview. He added that Vietnam wants more unity in the regional 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has failed to forge a unified front against Beijing's militarisation in the sea. "We have been active together with countries in the ASEAN community to increase unity, considering this an important structure to contribute to maintaining regional peace," he said. Last month Manila won its case against Beijing at a UN-backed tribunal in the Hague which rejected China's claims to most of the sea. Beijing boycotted the hearing, and has refused to recognise the ruling, and ASEAN has sidestepped the issue, failing to comment directly on it at a meeting of ministers last month. Diplomats say Beijing has deftly courted Laos and Cambodia to split the bloc and blunt unified criticism. France and Vietnam signed [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm] a strategic partnership agreement in 2013, which included boosted defence cooperation. Filipino and Vietnamese protesters display anti-China placards during a call on China to respect their rights in the disputed South China Sea, in front of the Chinese consular office in Manila on August 6, 2016 �Ted Aljibe (AFP/File) Advertisement

Prince Henrik husband of Danish monarch dies aged 83

2018-06-29T08:32:06Z

SwenBordelon377:

Prince Henrik, the French-born husband of Danish monarch Queen Margrethe, has died at the age of 83, Denmark�s palace has said. A statement on the royal house�s website said the prince died in his sleep late on Tuesday, [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] with the queen at his side. Henrik, who publicly vented his frustration at not being the social equal of his wife or their son, was made prince consort when Margrethe acceded to the throne in 1972. The flag at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen flies at half-mast (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix/AP) The jovial prince was known for being frank and forthright. The palace said last week that his health had �seriously worsened� and that Olympic official Crown Prince Frederik was rushing home from the Winter Games in South Korea. He had been transferred earlier on Tuesday from a Copenhagen hospital to the family�s residence north of the capital, �where he wishes to spend his last moments,� the royal palace had said. A later statement said Henrik, who had been diagnosed with dementia last year, died in his sleep at 11.18pm and that his two sons were also at his side. In one of the world�s oldest kingdoms that prides itself on having a stable royal house with no scandals, Henrik caused one in August 2017 by announcing that when he died he did not want to be buried next to Margrethe in the cathedral where the remains of Danish royals have gone for centuries. Denmark�s Prince Henrik pictured in 2011 (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File) The queen already had a specially designed sarcophagus waiting for the couple. Born on June 1 1934, in south-western France to parents with the noble titles of count and countess, Henri Marie Jean Andre de Laborde de Monpezat married Denmark�s future queen in 1967. Henri became Henrik and converted to Denmark�s state Lutheran Church. However, he found it difficult to fit in with Denmark�s egalitarian lifestyle. He was titled prince consort, the husband of a reigning queen but not a king, and he was not in the line of succession - his oldest son Frederik being the heir. In the mid-1980s, Henrik publicly said he wanted a pay cheque instead of relying on the queen, who gets annual allowances. The law was eventually changed to give him roughly 10% of the annual allocation Parliament makes to royals each year. In a 2002 interview, Henrik again stunned Danes by saying he felt he had been pushed aside in his own home, not only by his wife but also by his son. This followed the annual royal new year�s reception for foreign diplomats, where Frederik had been host because his mother was unavailable due to a broken rib. �For many years I have been number two,� Henrik told Danish tabloid BT. �I have been satisfied with that role, but after so many years in Denmark I don�t suddenly want to become number three and become some kind of wearisome attachment.� Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik of Denmark with Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of [http://www.Europeana.eu/portal/search.html?query=Edinburgh Edinburgh] after the Danish couple�s arrival at [https://www.academia.edu/people/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Windsor%20Castle Windsor Castle] (PA) Henrik lived his first five years in French Indochina. He graduated from universities in Paris, learned Mandarin and Vietnamese and spent a year at the Hong Kong University from 1958-1959. After his move to Denmark, Henrik, a keen pianist, was active in different organisations and wrote poetry, memoirs and books, including a coffee table book on French gastronomy in 1999. Margrethe and Henrik also owned a chateau in south-western France where they retreated every summer. As a member of Denmark�s royal family, he held honorary ranks of general in the Danish army and air force, and was an admiral in the navy. In September 2017, the palace announced that Henrik had undergone tests at Copenhagen�s university hospital. The diagnosis was dementia and �the extent of the cognitive failure is greater than expected,� the palace said. In January, he was admitted to a hospital with a lung infection. Henrik is survived by his wife, sons Crown Prince Frederik and Prince Joachim, and [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] eight grandchildren. Advertisement

Believe it or not 1968 was worse

2018-06-27T09:10:01Z

SwenBordelon377:

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 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, 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 [http://Www.Search.com/search?q=police%20officers 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 [http://search.Huffingtonpost.com/search?q=international&s_it=header_form_v1 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 [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] 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 [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm] 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 turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman) Advertisement

Peace activist Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan dies at 94

2018-06-27T04:45:44Z

SwenBordelon377:

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 his younger brother, the Rev. Philip Berrigan, [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] 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 [http://Blogs.Realtown.com/search/?q=federal%20charges 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 [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] 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 participating in a fast and vigil to protest the bombing in Cambodia, on the steps of St. Patrick�s Cathedral in New York City. 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 [http://Data.gov.uk/data/search?q=Fordham%20University 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 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

User:SwenBordelon377

2018-06-23T03:47:27Z

SwenBordelon377: Created page with "I'm Swen and I live in a seaside city in northern Italy, Massa. I'm 31 and I'm will soon finish my study at Optometry. Also visit my site; [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-na..."

I'm Swen and I live in a seaside city in northern Italy, Massa. I'm 31 and I'm will soon finish my study at Optometry. Also visit my site; [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh]