Pham Gia Khiemhas, 64,  a PhD from Czechslovakia in Metallurgy, taught Mechanical Engineering and “electrics” at University level, before entering public life.

He made significant contributions in developing science and technology in Vietnam and eventually became head of the Department of Science, Education and Environment. October 1997, Member of the Party Central Committee and Minister in charge of Science and Technology till July 2006, when he became Deputy Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, eventually taking over also the Foreign Ministry. His foreign languages are Czech and English.

The event at the Asia Society came about because of Vietnam moving on to become an important US trading partner and Asia Society intends to have a large conference in Hanoi, in 2009.

Today, Vietnam’s growth is 6% and they are applying for WTO membership. This year they are a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council and they would like to emulate the China model of economic development. Nevertheless, while in the US the Vietnamese met also Allan Greenspan. Their intent is to build a capitalistic economy with a socialist distribution.

Inflation was 7% in 2007, increased to 16% in 2008 and is expected to reach 20% by the end of the year - this is the price they pay for rapid development. They want to work on reducing inflation by tightening expenditures and asking the people to join the government in tightening expenditures - this tu curb the deficit. It was 3% in the first quarter - increased to 5% and now they expect to bring it back to 3% per month. This while foreign investments increase “exponentially.”

Labor strikes? - Yes. The reasons demand for larger pay, decreasing working hours, “equal pay - for equal hours.”

To the question if they want to be a new China and what they want to do differently? He Answered that China was very good with liberal investment policies but do not delegate to lower levels. Vietnam learned to decentralize by delegating authority to lower levels in economic issues. This so they have even freer relations with investors. There are environmental problems and we take measures in this respect.

Asked about the US elections he said that he hopes work will continue with developing nations and that more technological assistance will be forthcoming.Relations on the base of mutual respect. McCain was shot down in Vietnam - but we forget the past and look to the future.

He spoke of freedom of religion in Vietnam, the X5 increase of tourism, with 5-6 million tourists in the near future - from the present 4 million/year. On the relation with the US, he was reminded by a question that Budha says - “If you do not fight among yourselves you will not get to know each others.

On the nuclear issue - he said Vietnam is against nuclear weapons but wants nuclear power.

He is very much interested in ASEAN and sees in it a turning point for his region - he wants to see it strengthened by 2015, rather te 2020, and he wants to see Vietnam become a more active member. He wants to stabilize the Vietnamese population by a two children family. Vietnam is the only country in Asia that got the World Population Gold designation for its policies.

Asked to describe the Vietnam of 2050, he said this is not easy as they move from a planned economy to a fully market economy as per a 1986 decision.

World Economic Forum: “Dire Situations Call for Bold Measures.”

The World Economic Forum on East Asia wrapped up this week with Ahn Ho-Young, South Korea’s Deput  Minister for Trade, saying it was dominated by “the three F’s”: food, fuel and finance.

A forum survey of the 55 business leaders who attended the two-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, showed that an overwhelming 81% voted for “addressing growing global concern over environmental challenges such as climate change and water” as the top issue facing Asia.

Also of concern were “preventing political and economic instability linked to rising food and energy prices” and “managing the social, environmental and infrastructural implications of rapid urbanization.”
The survey also revealed that the price of rice had more than tripled in Thailand since January. During the same time, diesel prices have risen over 26% in Vietnam.
Water is another issue rising to the fore, with Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman of the Board, Nestle, Switzerland, repeating his dire warning: “We will be running out of water long before we run out of oil.”

He lamented that more of the world’s GDP was not being allocated to water: “One out of every five children is dying every 20 seconds because we haven’t been able to solve the problem of clean water today.”

Mr. Ho-Young (South Korea)  urged Asia to do three things: “First, it is important for Asian countries to maintain their open market policies which will enable us to maintain the momentum of economic growth,” he said. Second, he urged Asian countries to pay more attention to the economic and social impacts imposed by the global economic uncertainties. Third, “Asian countries should and must play a more active role in solving global issues,” he said (Xinhua).
In his opening remarks, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah bin Ahmad Badawi referred to fundamental questions, primary assumptions, and revered assumptions, that had to be reviewed and re-evaluated. “Unless we are prepared to address these questions sincerely and take necessary remedial measures,” he said, “our economies and the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people will continue to be vulnerable. Dire situations call for bold measures” (The Toronto Star).

East Asia (generally consisting of Japan, North and South Korea, China, Taiwan, with Vietnam and Singapore) has come to the realization that it is now in a position to react positively, with the best interests of the region in mind, to the world’s economic challenges.

Shooting the messenger - that is the Press.
May 22nd 2008 from the safe distance of BANGKOK.
From The Economist print edition

The press fights back as two graft-busting reporters are arrested.

THE leaders of Vietnam’s Communist Party say they are conducting a “no holds barred” crackdown on corruption in public life. They implore the country’s newspapers to sniff out and expose the fiddles of officials. In February the party chief, Nong Duc Manh, praised the press for unmasking graft and thereby fulfilling “the people’s desires”. The most notable case was a scandal at the transport ministry in 2006 in which newspapers revealed how officials had gambled around $750,000 of public money on the outcomes of football matches. In the clean-up that followed, the head of a road-building department at the ministry was jailed, along with seven others.

But recent events have cast doubt on the sincerity of the leadership’s claim to be fighting corruption at all levels. The main charges against Nguyen Viet Tien, a former deputy transport minister, who was the highest-level official to be arrested over the scandal, have been dropped. More worrying still, the two leading investigative reporters who exposed the scandal have been arrested, along with two former policemen who were among their sources, on vague charges of “abuse of power” and publishing false information.

Vietnam’s news media, despite an appearance of diversity, remain tightly controlled: their editors have to be approved by the party and are called in for restrictive “guidance” on what they can report. In recent years they have nonetheless been allowed to publish an increasing amount of criticism of government policy—though it always falls short of questioning the party’s “right” to rule. The arrested reporters work for two newspapers, Thanh Nien and Tuoi Tre, that were especially fearless in exposing official corruption.

In an unprecedented show of defiance, both newspapers are standing by their reporters. Thanh Nien has run an editorial demanding: “Free the honest journalists.” It says it has been “swamped” with messages of support from the public and some National Assembly members. It challenges the authorities to explain why, if the offending articles had been so inaccurate, none of the police, prosecutors and the ministry of public security had got around to pointing out the errors at any time in the past two years.

It remains unclear why the authorities have suddenly turned against the graft-busters. Were they getting too close to an even bigger scandal? Are party bosses trying to send a message that those above a certain level in the hierarchy are untouchable? Or could it be a visible symptom of strife between reformers and hardliners in the party hierarchy? “People feel that the journalists are maybe the pawns in some larger game but it’s not clear what that might be yet,” says Catherine McKinley, a media analyst in Hanoi.

The Communist Party, like its Chinese counterpart, seems to have won the people’s grudging acceptance for having delivered impressively rapid economic development since ditching collectivism over 20 years ago. Now, however, it is battling against roaring inflation and an incipient balance-of-payments crisis. It may need to take unpopular but vital measures; and economic growth may have to be sacrificed temporarily to restore stability. So the party’s bosses will need the public’s forbearance. One good way to forfeit it is to victimise those who have spearheaded the fight against corruption.

Aeschylus wrote the original play eight years after having participated in the sea battle of 480 BC, in which 310 Greek Ships under Themistocles beat off the attacking 1200 Persian ships lead by King Xerxes, son of the late King Darius. Xerxes mother appears in the show, Darius’s ghost is acting up also. Aeschylus was on the winning side, so was large part of the audience that saw the play. The Play probes the losers ambitions, the idea of empire, and was probably intended to off-warn similar development in Aeschylus’ own Athens. He achieves his goals of forewarning Athens by presenting a remorseful Xerxes, and by showing his demotion in his openness post-factum, Aeschylus tells generations to come of how war is misery. Dr. Mahmood Karimi-Hakkak explains in the program that in his Siena version, he punctuates scenes with contemporary sounds and imagery, so that by relying on what we know, we can then understand the misery and horrors that Xerxes caused, and how he concludes about himself as “a sad hollow, born to bring home …/ sorrow, sorrow … my heart howling from its bony cage.” But then, on the other hand, to bring the drama even more home to us, when Xerxes finally vanishes under the weight of the shields of the dead, those shields’ backsides turn to us as mirrors - now think - you folks how things are right here in our times!

We see The Persian as a man whose life is devastated by his actions and the effect the fall of his people had to cause his fall, which then effected even further his surviving people. The Editor of this version, Michael Sham, reminds us that Herodotus, the historian, was keen at saying that the World, history itself, as embodied by the Gods, mitigate against imperial designs, an overreaching grasp, an arrogant spirit.

“Xerxes’ recognition that he has gone too far and has angered the gods does not necessarily imply a reclaimed nobility; there is too little time for that.” The cruel end of Xerxes’ monologue reminds us of Oedipus taking the brooches and plunging them into his eyes. That is the spirits lowest ebb. The entropy or time’s arrow, has no return or forgiveness. The Greek tragedy is unidirectional. The play was a warning to the Athenians and to us. We are reminded that we lost our ways in Vietnam, in Iraq, and in Darfur. So, what is our future relation to Iran? Whose posturing in this arena is now tending to reach to the brink?

Again, based on the production’s program - “The Siena production attempts to create a bridge that spans our leaders unquenchable thirst for power and history of their arrogance. It is staged in the tradition of Persian Ta’ziyeh, an annual ritual performed on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Hussain, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, to help us remember how swiftly we forget the past and thus allow history to repeat itself. The method uses a theater in the round - with actors occupying the central space. In this form the actors at times break the dramatic illusion and speak directly to the audience.”

The Persians invade Greece - We Watch the Persian court:

Will they come home ? - Time Stretches Thin.
The Whole Fleet Went Down:  No War - Peace Now.

Never Again Silence.
Home Again.

Something Not Human Has Cut Our Forces Down.  The TV camera rolls in.  It was the Greek ship that opened the fight and every Persian ship went down.
Our men died of thirst and hunger.
He closed the Bosphorus and had them cross the sea.
How can this not be sickness of the mind that moved your son? Asks the old King that was resurected to hear the chant as happened.

The gate to the underworld is closed.

Q. Where are they now?
A. The sorrow is mine!

Q. My son too. I am stunned. The few that followed your carriage are back.
A. I am the leader - I mispaced.

Q. You Sped of defeat - Ships went down!

They are Gone, Gone, Gone.
They are Dead
They are Gone.

And the women hang on his neck the photos of their dead sons.
The music in the background is from Africa.
The photos weigh him down and they put on him their masks on his shield.

Before entering the enclosed round space of the show, we had the chance to look over stacks of statistics of the unhumanity of man-to-man.

I will just bring one of the 70-80 pages Mahmood allowed me to take with me:

After the show, while waiting for the Director, I spoke with a gentleman connected to the College, whose son was in the cast. The father was in Albany all his life and went to school also at Siena College.
He was here in the sixties. His generation at Siena protested the Vietnam war - Now his son protests the Iraq war. The father is now an environmentalist and gave me the reference to someone else who is                                             now an environmentalist active at the UN. He told me that the war is about oil and this is the wrong war. Is this going to war similar to the Persian King who went for an unexplained war against the Greeks?

This production was entered in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) and we hope that it will be given the chance to be seen outside its College home.

The results of the 4th Global Oceans Conference on the Internet:

From the 4th Global Conference on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands:  Advancing Ecosystem Management and Integrated Coastal and Ocean Management in the Context of Climate Change, April 7-11, 2008, Hanoi, Vietnam

The 4th Global Conference brought together 430 ocean and coastal leaders from 71 countries, representing all sectors, including governments, intergovernmental and international organizations, non-governmental organizations, the business community, ocean donors, and scientific institutions.  The conference assessed essential issues in the governance of the world’s oceans, with a focus on moving toward an ecosystem-based and integrated approach to oceans governance at national, regional, and global levels.  For the first time, a concerted effort was made to bring oceans policy together with climate change, which, as indicated in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will have profound effects on ecosystems and coastal populations around the world, especially among the poorest people on Earth and in small island developing States.

The conference focused especially on assessing the progress that has been achieved (or lack thereof) on the global oceans targets established by the world’s political leaders at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development:  Achieving ecosystem-based and integrated ocean and coastal management by 2010, reducing marine biodiversity loss and of establishing networks of marine protected areas by 2012, restoring fishery stocks by 2015, among others.

The conference underlined that ocean and coastal managers are at the front line of climate changes.  The climate issues that ocean and coastal leaders around the world will need to face will ineradicably change the nature of ocean and coastal management, introducing increased uncertainty, the need to incorporate climate change planning into all existing management processes, the need to develop and apply new tools related to vulnerability assessment, and the need to make difficult choices in what in many cases will be “no win” situations, involving adverse impacts to vulnerable ecosystems and communities.  Conference participants underlined that we must begin this process now, including altering coastal development that is already in the pipeline–we don’t have the luxury of waiting 10 years before we consider the implications and before we act.

You are kindly invited to view the proceedings of the conference through multiple media, including the following:

*
The Global Forum, the World Ocean Network, and the World Ocean Observatory have created a special GOC2008 website and YouTube channel designed specifically to inform audiences across the world about the context and work of the Global Forum using rich media.

GOC2008 Website
 http://www.thew2o.net/goc2008<https:/…;

GOC2008 YouTube Channel
 http://www.youtube.com/globaloceans2008&…;

Here, you will be able to:
–Explore the proceedings of the Conference and each major ocean issue being addressed.
–View the reports, recommendations, and Policy Briefs of the Global Forum’s 12 Working Groups, involving about 250 experts from 68 countries, which have been mobilizing to provide recommendations on priority next steps that the international community should take on major ocean issues.
–See short video interviews and podcasts of ocean and coastal experts from various sectors around the globe as well as the presentations and movie clips illustrating major ocean issues.

*
The International Institute for Sustainable Development – Reporting Services provided daily coverage of conference proceedings.  As the publisher of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, IISD Reporting Services (RS) is recognized for its objectivity and issue expertise in the field of international environment and sustainable development policy.  In past Global Ocean Conferences IISDRS has helped the Global Forum to disseminate conference reports containing recommendations on advancing the development of integrated oceans policies worldwide to their mail lists which include 45,000 subscribers.

To read more details about the work of the Conference please see the attached document.

For further information please contact Kateryna Wowk ( kmw at udel.edu<mailto:kmw@udel.edu&g…)

Attachment

–Detailed Conference Coverage

EU aid chief says rising food prices risk African ‘humanitarian tsunami:’ As food riots sweep the developing world, the EU’s foreign aid chief has warned that sky-rocketing food price rises threaten a “humanitarian tsunami” in Africa, and has promised a boost in aid to support food security.

“A global food crisis is becoming apparent,” said EU humanitarian aid commissioner Louis Michel after a meeting with African Union Commission President Jean Ping, “less visible than the oil crisis, but with the potential effect of a real economic and humanitarian tsunami in Africa.”

By Leigh Phillips, April 9, 2008, the EUobserver, Brussels.

The commissioner said that the EU would boost emergency food aid from the European Development Funds from its current €650 million to €1.2 billion.

In recent weeks, food riots have swept the developing world as UN World Food Programme officials warn that a ‘perfect storm’ of poor harvests, rising fuel prices, the growth of biofuels and increased pressure from a growing middle class in China and India is rapidly increasing world hunger.

Elsewhere, China, Vietnam, India and Pakistan are introducing restrictions on rice exports.

The UN’s undersecretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, John Holmes, on Tuesday said that rising food prices are threatening political stability throughout the developing world.

“The security implications [of the food crisis] should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe,” said Mr Holmes, speaking at the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development (DIHAD) Conference, according to the Guardian. “Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity,” he added.

Kanayo Nwanza, vice president of the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said on Tuesday: “Escalating social unrest as we have seen in Cameroon, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and in Senegal could spread to other countries,” reports AFP.

African finance ministers met last week in Addis Ababa to consider the food crisis. In a statement, the ministers warned that food price rises “pose significant threats to Africa’s growth, peace and security.”

Last month, the head of the UN World Food Programme, Josette Sheeran, said that high oil prices, low food stocks, growing demand from China and the push for biofuels are causing a food crisis around the world.

“We are seeing a new face of hunger,” she said. “We are seeing more urban hunger than ever before. We are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it.”

Kevin Rafferty was editor of “The Universe,” Britain’s Catholic newspaper. He wrote for The Japan Times of February 11, 2008, an article about the election of Adolfo Nicolas, a 71-year-old Spaniard who went to Japan as a young man 46 years ago and never left Asia except for going to Rome for further theological studies, as the new “father general” of the Jesuit order.

His choice is potentially of historic significance. Nicolas takes over as Pope Benedict is getting into his stride in his task of bringing erring priests and people back into line, with the zeal of someone who was the Vatican’s theological watchdog before becoming pope. The Vatican gets more conservative!

In the last few months the Vatican issued a warning against the writings of a Vietnamese-born U.S.-based theologian whose writings have tried to bridge the gap between Catholicism and Asian religions. It also refused to accept a divorced man as Argentina’s ambassador.

Pope Benedict weighed in with specific warnings to the Jesuits, and wrote to Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the outgoing Dutch father general, who at 80 asked to retire, even though the job is for life. The pope urged the Jesuits to accept “total adhesion to Catholic doctrine.” He singled out “those neuralgic points which today are strongly attacked by secular culture, as for example the relationship between Christ and religions; some aspects of the theology of liberation; and various points of sexual morality, especially as regards the indissolubility of marriage and the pastoral care of homosexual persons.”

Just in case that was not clear enough, Cardinal Franc Rode, who delivered the homily at the opening mass of the Jesuit congregation, expressed “sadness and anxiety” regarding aspects of Jesuit life and urged them to “think with the Church.” The cardinal told the National Catholic Reporter that he showed his text in advance to “superior authority,” a reference to the pope.

But the new father general Nicolas is no lightweight. On the one hand, in a prophetic paper prepared for the Asian Catholic bishops in 1990, he showed he was a man ahead of his time. He lamented secularization and feared the assault on wisdom from “bias, nonsense and the infinite varieties of selfish or group interests.”

But on the other hand, at the time, he also called for “A new justice for all humans regardless of age, race, gender, physical, financial or social capabilities, also a new justice for the Earth and all its living creatures and their habitats. This translates into a new justice for the coming generations of Asian peoples who will want to encounter the living God and his marvelous creation in the glorious beauty he so laboriously elaborated through billions of years: and not to be abandoned to a boring search for him through the devastated and exploited wastelands we are multiplying at present.” Rafferty remarks that his plea came almost a generation before it became fashionable to be green.

The real importance of Nicolas is that although raised in Europe, his formative years as a man and a Catholic priest were in Japan, which has few Catholics but much experience in religious thinking. Where the pope seems increasingly concentrated on obedience to the Church and toeing the line, Nicolas stresses the importance of listening and learning.

Further, we write about this because of the concluing remarks by Rafferty: Nicolas said that Japan “has changed me and helped me to understand others, to accept what is different and try to understand why it is different, in what lies the difference and how I can learn from that difference.”

Japan, he added, “has taught me to smile at the difficulties, at human imperfection, the human reality. In Spain I was a little intolerant, thinking in terms of order, of commands, because I thought of religion as fidelity to religious practices, and in Japan I learned that true religiosity is more profound, that one must go to the heart of things, to the depths of our humanity, whether we are speaking of God or of ourselves and human life. Human life is this way, we people are this way; imperfections are so natural that it is necessary to accept them from the very beginning.”

Put his way, Nicolas seems more truly Catholic — in its original meaning of “universal.” His election could offer a marriage of black and white made in heaven. But it remains uncertain whether the wholly Roman pope will tolerate such diversity on Earth.

Comparing the above with the positions of the present Pope - the Germanic Benedict XVI - the Pope being considered historically the “white pope” because of his white robes, and the father general being considered the “black pope” because of his traditional simple black garb - one is left wondering about who is more appropriate to our times, and who has learned a thing or two by having been exposed to Eastern (that is now Asian, not Bizantine) cultures.

The reaction to father Nicolas’ elections are telling: Enter Adolfo Nicolas as the new leader. The first amazing thing about his election was the happiness that greeted the news, sheer joy from Rome to Japan and the Philippines. An elector from Europe asked, “Have we elected a saint?” Another described him as “the wise man from the East.” A Hong Kong woman working with the Jesuits in Cambodia exclaimed, “There is hope for the Jesuits!”

In the Philippines, where Nicolas had worked from 2004 as moderator of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia and Oceania, Bishop Francisco Claver said he was at supper with priesthood students and, “When we got the news, everyone cheered like we were winning a basketball game.”

From Japan, where Nicolas spent most of his priestly life, a nun, Sister Filo Hirota praised Nicolas as “almost perfect, a very fine theologian, very human, with a wonderful sense of humor, prophetic in his vision, but he knows how to dialogue.” She added that he does a very fine impression of Charlie Chaplin.

How very different from the pope, almost a difference between black and white. It is hard to see the austere, stern pope gaining such applause or being called affectionately “Father Nico,” as many call the new Jesuit general.

Our question is now - Will father Nicolas follow up by becoming the GREEN POPE?

Jan. 13, 2008, The Japan Times, Kyodo News: Japan to give ¥6 billion in aid to four Mekong River nations - Former Indo-China’s Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Komura will hold bilateral talks with the foreign ministers of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos on Wednesday, and with the foreign ministers of Myanmar and Thailand on Thursday.