Tam Toa Crisis in Vietnam

Tam Toa church is an old Catholic church built during the late 1800s in the province of Quang Binh in central Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, the church was destroyed by American bombs in 1968. As part of the current communist government propaganda, it remains undisturbed as a war relic.

Tam Toa parish is one of the oldest Catholic parish in VN with its root date back to the mid 1600s.

There have been on going dispute between the government and the rebuilding of the church. The Diosce of Vinh and the Archdiosce of Hue have been trying to reclaim the church (what left of it and its ground) since 1996 when it was taken back by the local government in an attempt to turn into a war symbol of American aggression. Up until 1996, mass was celebrated weekly in front of the church's tower.

In February of this year, after years of unfruitful negotiation, 14 parish priests and Bishop Cao of Vinh Disosce decided to concelebrated mass on the property without obtaining permission.

Recently, rumor was spreading that the local government will build a tourist resort next to the church. The parish people in response started building an alter and erecting a giant cross on the property. On July 21, the government finally had enough and sent in police to disperse the crowd who were gathering to continue their construction and also to protest. A dozen people were arrested and some were beaten badly by the police. The situation made worse when the police attacked two priests from other parishes who went to Vinh Diosce to show support. The two are in critical conditions.

Some of the Vietnamese Catholics in Vietnam (about 10 million strong or 12% of the population) responsed by holding vigil masses and silent protests all weekend long in central Vietnam. This is a direct challenge to a dictatorship government.

Even though the situation is view as conflict between the Catholic Church and the Vietnamese government by the rest of the country, the issue of confiscated land and the rights of land ownership have been a flashing point between government and the general public for many years. Whether the Tam Toa crisis will lead to major changes in the government or force the government to take harsh actions against those who challenge its absolute authority is remained to be seen.

Here are some pictures of the many vigil masses and open peaceful demonstration by the thousands (some estimate to be in the hundreds of thousands) against the government in VN last week.

Maggie Q visiting Vietnam

Maggie Q, a hot actress starrring in many well known Hong Kong action movies (Gen Y Cop, The Naked Weapon, Three Kingdoms - Resurrection of the Dragon, etc...), recently visited Vietnam to promote a new bear rescue center in Tam Dao, Vinh Phu. The one acre center is the first in its kind in Vietnam to rescue moon bear and other bear species in Vietnam. She is hoping to change the Asian culture of hunting bear for organs using in traditional Chinese medicine / herbal tonic.

Maggie Q, 30, is an American actress of mixed heritage (her mom is Vietnamese, her dad is Polish-Irish), resides in Southern California and has an aunt living in San Jose. Besides her successful movie career in Hong Kong, she has starred in some of the well known US movies such as Deception, Mission Impossible III, Live Free or Die Hard, Balls of Fury and Around the World in 80 Days.

She is a vegan and a spokewoman for PETA Asian Pacific.

Ho Chi Minh and His-tory

There are a number of interesting documentary video about Ho chi Minh and his legacy. Here are two excellent video that are currently on the Web. They provide opposite views of who HCM really was. Ultimately, the often debate by his admirer and foes alike is around the question "Was he a nationalist who tried his best under difficult circumstances or basically an instrument of Comintern and their goal of spreading communist ideology."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1RUPAkMWSc

http://freevietnews.com/video/viewvideo.php?id=223

The latter documentary is made by a group of activists from the Viet diaspora who wanted to have the name Ho Chi Minh City reverts back to its original name of Saigon.

The Challeng of Pham X Quang

With the decision to enter the race for CD 47 as a Republican a month ago, Quang X Pham is now facing the first test – Can he raise enough money to make his campaign credible?

For the Republican primary race in June against current State Assemblyman Van Tran, he will need to raise about $500,000 to be competitive. With Tran raised about $175,000 so far for the primary, Pham is a pragmatist and he will no doubt either meet the challenge or drop out.

Tran raised $250,000 but about $75,000 is for the general election against Sanchez. A lot of his long time supporters and family members (Tran’s siblings who are in the medical fields) gave $4,800 per person with half to the primary, the other half to the general election.

Quang X Pham has the credibility as an ex-Marine pilot, an author, a successful businessman and has a natural Vietnamese-American base from the many Vietnamese-American veterans (his dad was a pilot) and the Vietnamese-American voting base of County Supervisor Janet Nguyen. Even though he had often expressed of his desire to run for congress, some congressional Republican leaders would prefer that he declared his intention to them as early as April - May when Tran was heavily recruited by them.

The Vietnamese-American voters will no doubt play a role in the upcoming primary. Even though they are about 8% to 10% of the total voters in the CD 47, they represent about 20% of the Republican voters in CD 47.

Janet Nguyen has been silent about the race. Her district is 40% overlap with CD 47 and her Vietnamese American constituent is considerable. On the other Tran’s assembly district is 20% overlap with CD 47. However, Nguyen has no desire to run for congress at this point in her career. Just from the name recognition along, she would be a better bet in the CD 47 race than Tran against Sanchez. Only one out of the 5 major PACs in OC so far has committed to Tran (The Family Action PAC).

While most of the mainstream voters don’t really care at this early in the primary race, a number of observations are worthwhile sharing as LSI met up with the local Vietnamese-American news media last week.

- Both Pham and Tran have the name recognition in the community.

- The major sentiment of the community is neutral at the moment but with curiosity for Pham.
- Tran is a polarizing figure in the community with his many bitter fights against Janet Nguyen in the last 3 years.

- Janet Nguyen’s name keep popping up on whether she would run for something in 2010. There have been rumor of her possibly running against Lou Correa.

FREE ENERGY SAVING LIGHT BULBS.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 13, 2009

CONTACTS: Fiona Chan, PG&E, External Communications (415) 973-7835
Lingxia Meng/Gwendolyn Mitchell, County of Santa Clara,
Office of Public Affairs (408) 299-5130


This Saturday July 18, from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM

PG&E and Santa Clara County will distribute free energy saving fluorescent bulbs at the following two locations

Ocean Supermarket, 2 S. Park Victoria Dr, Milpitas

Lion Supermarket 1710 Tully Road, San Jose.

Van Tran for Senate in 2012

LSI received this URL last week but was travelling so did not have a chance to post it.

http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/PDFGen/pdfgen.prg?filingid=1429460&amendid=0


Apparently State Assemblyman Van Tran is planning to run for State Senate in 2012. This is a recently filing of Form 410 by Tran and and David Bauer (his treasurer) on 7/7/09.

Tran is a very calculated politician so it is not suprising that he is covering all of the bases just in case. Rumor since last Friday that Tran already raised $250,000 for his war chest against Sanchez and Pham.

Quang X Pham For Congress

According to the tipster at the OC GOP Flag Day Dinner a little more than a couple weeks ago, State Assemblyman Van Tran approached Quang X. Pham and told Quang that he had no business of running for Congress. Tran emphasized strongly that this is not his seat and he would not win. It was quite a heated conversation and caught some guests by surprise.




This would be the third time in less than a month that Tran had personally approached the ex-Marine pilot trying to dissuade him from running.





And now it is official, Quang X. Pham will be running against Van Tran in the Republican primary next June and whoever wins will face Congresswoman Sanchez in Nov. 2010.


Both were born in 1964 one month apart. One nurtured a political ambition ever since he was in college while the other was just following his father foostep to be a soldier. And now their paths collide for better or for worse.


The news was swift and well publicized in the Vietnamese-American media. The majority of the people in the community welcome a fresh political face who has instant credibility as an ex- marine major, an author and a successful entrepeneur.

In the last 3 years, the community has been forced fed by the barrage of personal politics by Van Tran. The sentiment of the community is curently quite clear - the voters are very uncomfortable with the divisive politics. Tran's political machine is still intact but the "Trannie" and their supporters finally realize that they could not bully the community at will as they had in the past.



Tran has everything to lose in the 2010 election. If he lost to Quang X. Pham, his political career is very much done in OC. If he lost to Sanchez by a large margin, his political career is certainly would also be over.


Tran so far has demonstrated the fact that he cannot raise money within his own community and the stake is very high for him at the moment.


Pham on the other hand has an uphill battle to climb. He is truly a political outsider and not a professional politician like Tran. Without any experience in running a campaign he will have to catch up with Tran in every which way. Nevertheless his base in the Vietnamese-American community is very strong, especially with the Vietnamese-American veterans for his dad (also a pilot) was a war hero who spent twelve years in communist prison. In addition, Janet Nguyen's supporters would love the chance to get back at Tran for his bruising attacks on her in the last two elections. Many people in the community questioned Tran's leadership when he waged his political war against Nguyen in her re-election bid last year. To them, it shows Tran's determination to destroy his political enemy at the cost of the community's unity and interest.


It is too early to predict but if the Vietnamese-American community has a high turn out in the primary, Tran will be in for a tough fight against Pham.