In 1968, he resigned as Secretary of Defense to become President of the World Bank.

in which we intervened in a civil war

CNIC (Computerised National Identity Card)

Ngân hàng Nhà nước đẩy mạnh kiểm soát, phòng ngừa và ngăn chặn các giao dịch thẻ quốc tế không phù hợp

Với các kênh chuyển tiền qua sàn giao dịch tiền ảo, do Việt Nam chưa công nhận nên vẫn chưa có hành lang pháp lý để quản lý. Song dù có công nhận loại tiền này thì việc quản lý khá phức tạp, đòi hỏi sự vào cuộc và liên kết của nhiều bộ, ngành. 

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Doanh nghiệp Xuân Trường, đại gia Xuân Trường là ai, có sức mạnh gì mà dám làm những chuyện kinh thiên động địa, dời non lấp bể như dời cả trại giam Ba Sao để xây chùa tầm vóc quốc tế, biến vùng Bái ĐÍnh với những ngôi chùa nhỏ thành siêu chùa, biến Hồ Núi Cốc thành quần thể chùa hàng chục nghìn tỷ và mới đây nhất là đề xuất để biến vùng chùa Hương phong thủy nghìn năm thành quần thể chùa công nghiệp cùng dự án 15.000 tỷ đồng với tứ bề trạm thu phí… Doanh nghiệp Xuân Trường là ai mà có thể để cho doanh nghiệp khác vào phá nát di sản thiên nhiên thế giới nơi mình quản lý, dựng lên điện chùa giả mạo rồi phải tháo dỡ mà không hề bị liên đới trách nhiệm? Doanh nghiệp Xuân Trường là ai mà có thể đề xuất nạo vét 14km kênh Sào Khê ban đầu 72 tỷ đồng sau nhiều năm lên tới 2600 tỷ đồng từ tiền ngân sách mà làm mãi không xong, ứng tiền tới 700 tỷ về vẫn không làm nhưng vẫn chẳng mảy may bị xử lý? Một dự án nạo vét mà đại biểu Quốc hội phải thốt lên “”quá sức tưởng tượng”” còn một chuyên gia kinh tế thì kinh hoàng nói: nạo vét, xây bờ kè của một con sông dài có 14 km mà tính ra 185 tỷ đồng/km (tương đương 8 triệu đô la Mỹ) còn đắt hơn cả đường cao tốc có 4 làn xe?!”. Doanh nghiệp Xuân Trường là ai mà đám tang vợ ông có thể cấm người dân trên cả một tuyến đường dài nhiều km, chùa Tam Chúc Ba Sao đầu tư bằng dự án phần lớn là nguồn vốn nhà nước mà có thể đưa bàn thờ vợ vào thờ khi chùa còn chưa hoàn thành? Doanh nghiệp Xuân Trường là ai mà nhận tiền rất nhiều tại các dự án 1000 năm Thăng Long Hà Nội nhưng làm chậm, làm ẩu, thanh tra chỉ ra rồi để đấy chưa xử lý? Doanh nghiệp Xuân Trường là ai mà từng bất chấp quy định tài chính, in vé thu tiền du khách cao gấp mấy lần, ngành tài chính địa phương cũng chỉ thổi còi rồi…cho qua? Doanh nghiệp Xuân Trường là ai mà đất nước còn nghèo, người sống còn bao việc cần lo cơm áo gạo tiền, bao dự án điện đường trường trạm, y tế đợi chờ đồng vốn ngân sách thì lại có thể vẽ ra hàng loạt dự án hàng chục nghìn tỷ đồng cho người chết cho tâm linh như: quần thể Bái Đính – Tràng An (hiện chưa xong nhưng tầm cỡ cả chục nghìn tỷ đồng), Khu du lịch tâm linh Tam Chúc – Ba Sao – Hà Nam (11.000 tỷ đồng, có tài liệu ghi 21.000 tỷ đồng), Khu du lịch tâm linh Hồ Núi Cốc – Thái Nguyên (15.000 tỷ đồng), Khu du lịch tâm linh Cái Tráp (Hải Phòng) 9800 tỷ đồng và mới đây nhất là đề xuất dự án khu du lịch Tâm linh Hương Sơn – chùa Hương (Hà Nội) 15.000 tỷ đồng. Một chuyên gia cho biết khi phản biện dự án Hồ Núi Cốc mới hay dự án 15.000 tỷ thì doanh nghiệp chỉ bỏ ra vài trăm tỷ, còn hơn 14.000 tỷ là tiền từ ngân sách trung ương và địa phương. Dự án nào doanh nghiệp cũng xin nhà nước đầu tư làm đường, làm hạ tầng, còn xây chùa, xây khu vực tâm linh, dịch vụ để thu tiền thì doanh nghiệp đảm nhiệm…Đất nước còn nghèo mà đầu tư kiểu đó, lại rơi hết vào Xuân Trường làm toàn bộ thì quản lý đầu tư, đấu thầu để đâu? Có đáng lo ngại không?

Nhập nhèm phía sau ngôi chùa lớn nhất thế giới

Đã đến lúc các bộ ngành, đặc biệt là Bộ Kế hoạch và Đầu tư phải siết chặt việc này. Công bố công khai, minh bạch các dự án khu du lịch tâm linh đâu là phần vốn của nhà nước, đâu là phần vốn của doanh nghiệp. Việc giao diện tích đất lớn cho doanh nghiệp cũng phải làm rõ".

Dư luận cũng mong sự điều phối tỷ lệ giữa doanh nghiệp và Nhà nước về phí tham quan vì Nhà nước đầu tư cải tạo, nâng cấp các hạng mục trong khu vực Tràng An là rất lớn cho nên với 10% phí danh thắng Nhà nước được hưởng thì quá nhỏ so với tổng vốn đầu tư ở nơi này. Doanh nghiệp Xuân Trường chỉ là đơn vị trúng thầu khai thác dịch vụ chở đò cùng một số công việc khác, song lại được hưởng tới 90% (trong số 80 nghìn đồng/vé) phí danh thắng là điều bất hợp lý khi biết rằng Nhà nước đã phải đầu tư vào đây gần ba nghìn tỷ đồng. Qua đây, thấy cần có sự chấn chỉnh và điều chỉnh lại để phí danh thắng phải được thu vào ngân sách của địa phương với tỷ lệ hợp lý.

Quạnh vắng bất thường ở Quỳnh Lâm tự - chốn đệ nhất danh lam cổ tích

DIY Air Purifier Bedroom Test (with real person)

Tin nóng: Chính phủ Việt Nam chính thức thua kiện Trịnh Vĩnh Bình tại Tòa án Quốc tế

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In fact, hundreds of new-to-science species of plants and animals have been discovered in Vietnam during the last three decades, and more are recorded each year. The antelope-like saola, for example. Its gentle, streaked face looks as if it has just escaped from a jungle-dream painting by Henri Rousseau. Heralded as “the last unicorn” for its rarity, the saola is the largest land-dwelling animal discovered anywhere since 1937.

Despite long and tragic wars with the Japanese, the French, the Chinese and the United States during the last century, Vietnam is a treasure house. It is one of the world’s hot spots of biological diversity, according to the science research. There are 30 national parks in a country a bit larger than New Mexico, and about as many kinds of animals as in those pre-eminent safari destinations, Kenya and Tanzania.

Vietnam’s Empty Forests

Cổ Loa: Liệu có thể cứu vãn?

Theo bà Ngô Phương Lan, năm 2017, Việt Nam đạt 3.250 tỷ đồng trong lĩnh vực điện ảnh. Trong đó, doanh thu từ phim Việt chiếm 28% nhờ quy định số suất chiếu phim Việt ở mỗi rạp phải chiếm 20% trên tổng số (theo nghị định 54). Tuy vậy, phim trong nước vẫn bị phim ngoại lấn át về sức cạnh tranh.

Vietnam's forgotten Cambodian war

40 Years Ago, Vietnam Steamrolled the Genocidal Khmer Rouge of Cambodia in a Lightning War

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Động thái một loạt ông lớn như Vingroup, Viettel, FPT, VNPT, Phenikaa… công bố các dự án thúc đẩy đầu tư cho khoa học, công nghệ trùng hợp với sự kiện 100 nhân tài trẻ nước ngoài trở về tham gia Chương trình Kết nối mạng lưới đổi mới sáng tạo Việt Nam 2018 đã thổi bùng niềm tin về một công cuộc vĩ đại đánh thức các tiềm lực mới cho phát triển kinh tế.

Even in central Ho Chi Minh City, top-end properties are priced US$3,000 to US$5,000 per square metre, well below Bangkok where equivalent properties can cost up to US$7,000 to US$9,000 per square metre, and 5 per cent the price of Hong Kong. Annual rental yield for some high-end apartments in major cities at currently at 7 to 8 per cent, which is 1.5 to 2.5 per cent higher than those in Hong Kong, Bangkok and Singapore, according to Vina Capital.

China in Vogue, But Vietnam Still Hun Sen’s Lifeline

Some basic foundations are clearly important. Wages are still low and demographics are favorable. About half the population is below the age of 35, and Vietnam has a large and growing workforce. The country is also politically stable and geographically close to major global supply chains. But this is not necessarily what sets Vietnam apart. Instead, we would argue that Vietnam managed to capitalize on its strong foundations through good policies. Vietnam has achieved its success the hard way. First, it has embraced trade liberalization with gusto. Second, it has complemented external liberalization with domestic reforms through deregulation and lowering the cost of doing business. Finally, Vietnam has invested heavily in human and physical capital, predominantly through public investments. These lessons—global integration, domestic liberalization, and investing in people and infrastructure—while not new, need reiteration in the wake of rising economic nationalism and anti-globalization sentiments.

This success is a symptom of a broader trend that defies global norms. While global trade has stagnated, Vietnam’s trade has soared to 190 percent of GDP in 2017 from 70 percent in 2007. While premature de-industrialization sweeps through the world economy, Vietnam’s manufacturing sector has steadily expanded, adding an estimated 1.5 million new manufacturing jobs between 2014 and 2016 alone.

Vietnamese 15-year-olds do as well in maths and sciences as their German peers. Vietnam spends more on schools than most countries at a similar level of development, and focuses on the basics: boosting enrolment and training teachers. The investment is pivotal to making the most of trade opportunities. Factories may be more automated, but the machines still need operators. Workers must be literate, numerate and able to handle complex instructions. Vietnam is producing the right skills. Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia lag behind, despite being wealthier.

Most obviously, openness to the global economy pays off. Vietnam is lucky to be sitting on China’s doorstep as companies hunt for low-cost alternatives. But others in South-East Asia, equally well positioned, have done less. Vietnam dramatically simplified its trade rules in the 1990s. Trade now accounts for roughly 150% of GDP, more than any other country at its income level. The government barred officials from forcing foreigners to buy inputs domestically. Contrast that with local-content rules in Indonesia. Foreign firms have flocked to Vietnam and make about two-thirds of Vietnamese exports.

Allied to openness is flexibility. The government has encouraged competition among its 63 provinces. Ho Chi Minh City has forged ahead with industrial parks, Danang has gone high-tech and the north is scooping up manufacturers as they exit China. The result is a diversified economy able to withstand shocks, including a property bust in 2011.

The missing middle: A political economy of economic restructuring in Vietnam

Now the relationship is set to become even deeper, with the wide-ranging EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) on track to be signed in 2018. The FTA will eliminate more than 99% of tariff lines, and partially liberalise the remaining number, in some cases through quota increases. Vietnam will eliminate 65% of its import duties on EU products before or on the date of the FTA entering into force, with the remainder lifted over the following 10 years. The EU will eliminate duties on 71% of products before or on the FTA’s commencement, and lift others over a seven-year period.

Vietnam’s trade with the EU in the first 11 months of 2016 totalled $40.76bn, according to Vietnam Customs. The bloc was Vietnam’s second-biggest export market, worth $30.72bn (up 9% on the same period of 2015, and accounting for 19.2% of the total), and its fourth-biggest source of imports ($10bn, up 9.7%, and 6.4% of the total). Machinery and appliances accounted for just over half of Vietnam’s exports to the EU, 50.1%, with telecommunications equipment comprising 33.5% of all exports. Footwear and hats accounted for 12.1%, and textiles and textile articles 10.4%. Vietnam’s imports from the EU, meanwhile, included machinery and appliances (27.4% of the total), chemicals (17.8%) and manufactured goods (11.3%).

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Vietnam; from golden age to golden oldies

ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA MỸ THUẬT TRUYỀN THỐNG TRONG MỸ THUẬT HIỆN ĐẠI

Những họa sĩ nổi tiếng của Việt Nam

Those who thought he might use his enormous prestige to political effect, as Vietnam's communist leaders failed to deliver the economic benefits of peace, were disappointed

Giap had his critics, too, most notably over his willingness to suffer casualties which would be politically unacceptable in anything other than a war for national liberation.“In the final analysis, victory in any war is determined by the willingness of the masses to shed blood on the battlefield,” Giap once wrote.

In a biography, Peter MacDonald, a retired British brigadier, argues that Giap combined a strategic depth of vision with a mastery of guerrilla warfare and an outstanding grasp of logistics, seen most dramatically in the creation of the Ho Chi Minh trail to supply the south during the American War.

But poised for what? The initial plan, endorsed by Giap’s Chinese military advisers, called for an early mass assault before the French could further strengthen their positions. On January 26, with six hours to go before the first attack was to be launched, Giap called it off, causing a near mutiny among his staff.“We chose to strike and advance surely,” he wrote later, “and to strike to win only when success is certain.” Giap redeployed his artillery to higher ground, ordering his men to begin steadily digging an extensive trench network towards the French positions where they could pick off the French forts one by one. At the same time, he continued diversionary movements into Laos and in the Mekong Delta, aimed at preventing Navarre from concentrating more of his forces on Dien Bien Phu.

In March 1972, the North Vietnamese carried out the Easter offensive on three fronts, expanding their holdings in Cambodia and Laos and bringing temporary gains in South Vietnam. But it ended in defeat, and General Giap again bore the brunt of criticism for the heavy losses. In summer 1972, he was replaced by Gen. Van Tien Dung, possibly because he had fallen from favor but possibly because, as was rumored, he had Hodgkin’s disease.Although he was removed from direct command in 1973, General Giap remained minister of defense, overseeing North Vietnam’s final victory over South Vietnam and the United States when Saigon, the South’s capital, fell on April 30, 1975. He also guided the invasion of Cambodia in January 1979, which ousted the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge. The next month, after Hanoi had established a new government in Phnom Penh, Chinese troops attacked along the North Vietnamese border to drive home the point that China remained the paramount regional power.

General Westmoreland relied on superior weaponry to wage a war of attrition, in which he measured success by the number of enemy dead. Though the Communists lost in any comparative “body count” of casualties, General Giap was quick to see that the indiscriminate bombing and massed firepower of the Americans caused heavy civilian casualties and alienated many Vietnamese from the government the Americans supported.With the war in stalemate and Americans becoming less tolerant of accepting casualties, General Giap told a European interviewer, South Vietnam “is for the Americans a bottomless pit.”

“Every minute, hundreds of thousands of people die on this earth,” General Giap is said to have remarked after the war with France. “The life or death of a hundred, a thousand, tens of thousands of human beings, even our compatriots, means little.”

“He learned from his mistakes and did not repeat them,” Gen. Marcel Bigeard, who as a young colonel of French paratroops surrendered at Dien Bien Phu, told Peter G. Macdonald, one of General Giap’s biographers. But “to Giap,” he said, “a man’s life was nothing.”

But his critics said that his victories had been rooted in a profligate disregard for the lives of his soldiers. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who commanded American forces in Vietnam from 1964 until 1968, said, “Any American commander who took the same vast losses as General Giap would not have lasted three weeks.”

Giap's political timidity came as a crushing disappointment to many. His last years were spent polishing his image as the "red Napoleon". He adored giving interviews, charming his hagiographers and fawning journalists with the same gestures and stories told in a fluent but outdated French of which he was immensely proud. He was always careful to avoid the real questions that hung over his increasingly contested career. He could not, however, stop many people from reconsidering his versions of history and heroism. Many Vietnamese also began to question whether the sacrifices of war had been worth it. Others saw too many moments in Giap's career where he had refused to stand up to hardliners or had failed to capitalise on his popular support to force through political and economic changes.

In 1986, in the runup to a Communist party congress, a group of officers urged Giap to take control and launch sweeping changes to the economy and political system. Giap refused, terrified of what might happen if he failed. Bui Tin, an army colonel who had been a protege, urged him again in 1990 to take over and provide a new direction for Vietnam. Giap demurred, preferring a comfortable retirement. Tin later condemned him bitterly, quoting an old Chinese saying that "the reputations of generals are built on the bodies of 10,000 men".

General William Westmoreland, commander of the American forces, once remarked that any US general that suffered Giap's losses would have been sacked instantly. His skills lay less in military tactics and more in managing the logistics and politics that were so vital to sustain the war in the south. His diplomatic skills kept open supply lines from China and the Soviet Union, while at home he organised the movement of troops and material down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a vast web of tracks stretching into Laos and Cambodia. "People should not be overawed by the power of modern weapons," Giap wrote. "It is the value of human beings that in the end will decide victory."

Dien Bien Phu "was the first time that a non-European colonial independence movement had evolved through all the stages from guerrilla bands to a conventionally organized and equipped army able to defeat a modern Western occupier in a pitched battle," wrote British historian Martin Windrow, the author of “The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam.”

For the French, however, the Viet Minh victory marked not just the end of their dominance in Indochina but the beginning of their decline as a colonial power. Inspired by the Viet Minh, many Algerians, a few of whom had even fought next to the French in Vietnam, began demanding their own independence. About six months later, Algerians would begin their own successful independence movement, through a bloody war that lasted over seven years. Julian Jackson, a historian, wrote for the BBC: "The French army held so desperately on to Algeria partly to redeem the honor it felt had been lost at Dien Bien Phu. So obsessed did the army become by this idea that in 1958 it backed a putsch against the government, which it believed was preparing what the generals condemned as a 'diplomatic Dien Bien Phu.'"

Vietnam, therefore, stands at a consequential juncture. If it can pull up its GDP growth to the peak rates of 9% or thereabouts, then it can realistically aim to become an industrialized nation within a generation – with income levels equaling those of Korea today. On the other hand, if it continues on recent-year growth rates of just over 5 percent, then that will take its average income to levels slightly above those of Thailand, Brazil or Egypt today.

Vietnam’s long-term growth performance: A comparative perspective

Vietnam’s trade resilience to the country’s success in diversifying its exports towards electronics and garment manufacturing.Apart from the types of goods produced, Vietnam also has diversification in terms of export markets, said Mr Glenn Maguire, ANZ’s chief economist for Asia-Pacific.

This means that undiversified commodity exporters are bearing the brunt of the regional trade and growth slowdown such as Indonesia and Malaysia

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But to focus on the advantages of Vietnam’s geographical location would be to downplay the commitment of the ruling Communist Party’s investment in its own people, with the backing of international development organizations. Since the 1990s the country has borrowed more than $14 billion to revolutionize its national infrastructure, creating the conditions for rapid and sustained growth. This has included rural electrification schemes ensuring that more than 97 percent of households in the countryside have access to mains power – up from less than 50 percent in 1998 – and the extension of the nation’s road transport network. These innovations have supported the huge expansion of the country’s industrial base, powered by workers who have benefited hugely from the government’s investment in education. In standardized math and science testing, Vietnam’s youth now outperform those in the United States and United Kingdom.