Vietnam Courts Microsoft and Vice Versa

wbren writes "Bill Gates and Vietnam's Prime Minister Phan Van Khai have signed two 'memoranda of understanding' regarding Microsoft's presence in Vietnam, according to this AP story. They met Monday at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters for a closed door meeting and a tour of Microsoft's "home of the future". The agreement reached is expected to strengthen Vietnam's IT industry, as well as provide software training for 50,000 of the country's teachers. Khai's visit also triggered protests in Seattle, reminding everyone of Vietnam's human rights record."

Comments

Further news...

[gowen]

Microsoft vice-president Lyndon Johnson was keen to point out that the first 21,000 people that MS have sent to Vietnam were not classified as salesmen, but are merely civilian "advisors".

Re:Further news...

[statemachine]

Thanks for remembering. People aren't taught that fact (the one you referenced) in class, nor is it hardly ever mentioned in documentaries. It is definitely not common knowledge.

My father was one of those "advisors." Long before the Gulf of Tonkin meant anything, my dad was participating in a hot war in Vietnam.

Some people would still argue with me.

BTW, Eisenhower sent in the first wave of troops, not Johnson.

Heh

[kahei]

Weird, because previously the Vietnamese were known for their choice of light, modifiable systems that proved very effective against monolithic, bloated American engineering.

Now it'll be the other way around -- take that, Charlie!

Horrific

[Anonymous Coward]

As if the US hadn't already done enough terrible things to this country. ;-D

Joke aside, I don't really see the relevance of the story. MS has relationships with many governments, that the Vietnamese governemnt is now also among them doesn't strike me as exceptional.

Finally, I also don't understand what mentioning the human rights situation in Vietnam has to do with this article. Don't get me wrong, pointing this situation out is important, but why in this context?

MS and other big software houses do frequently deal with nations that have a very bad track record when it comes to human rights. (And in case you didn't notice, free software does too. Just think about China using Linux). So I again have to ask: What's the news?

Minnie Rosoft

[EzInKy]

I courted Mike Rosoft's sister Minnie for a while. She sure was pretty to look at but turned all shades of blue anytime I suggested trying something new.

Had to dump her in the end though because she was simply the most vain and jealous woman I'd ever met...always wanted to monopolize everything.

ahem...

[maeddi]

http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usa

Does this mean...

[16K Ram Pack]

... that Charlie will surf, and with Internet Explorer?

Why can't teachers at MY KIDS school get training?

[museumpeace]

...as well as provide software training for 50,000 of the country's teachers....
The US has more than 3 times the population of Viet Nam. Do we have 50000 teachers who have some IT training?
Just put this story together with yesterday's story about US students turning away from computer related careers. What does Viet Nam's government do to get something out of Microsoft that our own state and national govt won't do?

I think it

[suezz]

speaks volumes when the first time a head of a country comes to the US in over thrity years goes to Microsoft first and then Washington.

Scarry - very scarry.

Re:no sense of irony

[jcr]

Americans, like anyone else, are perfectly entitled to criticise any country's human rights record.

People whose rights are violated in the USA, unlike many other countries, have recourse to a free press and the courts; which is more than can be said for the Socialist Worker's Paradise of Vietnam.

-jcr

people look happy in Vietnam

[dario_moreno]

I just spent two weeks in Vietnam, and people look quite happy to me...and human rights do not seem to be violated anymore, especially not in shops selling bootleg MP3 and software CDs at 1$ apiece ! There even was very expensive engineering software like Patran. The good thing when you buy a Windows CD there (or DVD for 3$ ) is that when you install it, Office magically appears already configured in several languages with all extensions, as well as Photoshop or Acrobat, Norton and so on. So Microsoft is actually able to put on the market distributions competitive with Linux, usable out-of the box ! Very interesting also in Saigon-HMC : the museum of american war crimes in Vietnam (called now the Museum against war or something like that for political correctness). The very disturbing pictures of agent-orange children or torched villages help to relativize the alleged human rights violations...

Re:people look happy in Vietnam

[greendot]

Then try to say 'I want democracy, not communism.' in vietnamese and count the seconds before you're arrested.

They don't call it "Communism". That is our label. And from a political point of view, I don't know if they really see voting as that much of a benefit. The fact that you state it this way shows that you're still stuck in the 1970's.

They see their political ladder as a series of steps fueled by corruption. And guess what, they see ours the same way. And maybe they're better off because they're not dupped by lies.

I spent a year there and never once had a good argument as to why democracy was better. The only thing I could think of is that we have the freedom to protest and complain.

When you sit down with a Vietnamese person and compare notes, the USA is not the land of milk and honey. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Just start going down the list of all the different the US/state/county/city governments can enforce their will on you and I bet your list will be longer than theirs.

In Vietnam, today, people may not even move unless explicitly allowed to by the state.

I don't think that's true. I know three people who have moved within the past few years and I never heard them mention having to get cleared by the gov to do so. Maybe they did but it's such a no-brainer that it doesn't bother them.

Let alone running a successful business.

What is that supposed to mean? The business world is completely different there. There are a lot of private successful businesses... and there are successful state-run businesses. But, just like anywhere, you have to know your market. I hope you're not implying that everything is state-run.

No real criticism of the state is tolerated.

Right now, this is probably true. And to a point, it is understandable. They had a civil war. The people involved in that civil war are still alive. Most of the youth (under 30) think the government is just fine and don't complain anyway.

When sending mail to your Vietnamese friends, never send a CD-R. The government will open your mail and check for political/ideological content.

yes, this is what you are told. They're also searching for things like child pornography. But, I don't know how thorough this is. I ordered a laptop and had it shipped to VN and was told that it would have to be inspected. It never was. It was never even turned on. And, unless they're really good with repackaging thing (and I doubt they are), it was never even opened. I only had to grease some palms to get it through w/out having to pay taxes on it, but that's a whole 'nuther story.

And about every Viet would love to move to America, if he/she could.

Nope. That is not the case. Not one of the many friends I made over there wants to come to America. One girl did arrange a marriage so she could come over and work for a few years but she is going back as soon as she can.

When I was there, my wife and I asked this question a lot, just to see how they felt. She taught English and was exposed to, what I would think would be the most prone group to want to go, students in their 20's. Most of them love American products but would not want to live here.

A few do, yes. And most of the people who do want to move here view America as a big utopia where you can do whatever you want and make as much money as you want. I'm sure if you talk to somebody in the small towns, they'll wish they could. But that is the same in any country.

No, I'm not American.

I am.

I hope you're not Viet Kieu. Before I went to VN, a lot of Viet Kieu (and older Americans who lived thru the war) tried to tell me how bad it was and how it was going to be one of the hardest years of my life. How wrong they were. It turned out to be the best.

Re:no sense of irony

[guet]

People whose rights are violated in the USA, unlike many other countries, have recourse to a free press and the courts; which is more than can be said for the Socialist Worker's Paradise of Vietnam.

Actually I'm sorry to say that people just don't have those rights any more in the US. They can be imprisoned without knowing why, their lawer isn't allowed to talk about the charges, they can be deported to third countries for torture or just thrown out of the country (see recent case of an Iranian teenager) or they can be shipped off to someplace like Guantanamo Bay where you have exactly zero rights and are very deliberately dehumanized. Now you can argue about the justification for this if you like, but the US would rank well below Canada and many European countries (just for example) in a scale of civil rights or freedom right now.

Your point about it being quite possible for US citizens to criticise other nations is spot on though, whatever their govt. is doing.

Re:no sense of irony

[marsu_k]

Guantanamo Bay is a POW camp, plain and simple.

Really? How is it then that the detainees haven't been granted POW status?

Re:no sense of irony

[rben]

Actually, it isn't ironic at all. I'm one of those Americans who protests human rights abuses of other countries. I also protest the ones committed by my own government. I didn't vote for this administration and I have done what I could to make my voice heard through letters and email to my legislative representatives.

What is ironic, is when President Bush or Ms. Rice makes accusations about human rights abuses, not when U.S. citizens who honestly deplore what our own government has been doing do so.

Re:Forget

[br00tus]

Some of the nuclear missiles in Cuba at the time were armed and operational, which was not known in the US at the time. If Kennedy had had the "guts" to invade Cuba, the invading force would have probably been greeted with a few tactical nuclear missiles, which no one doubts would have resulted in a full-scale nuclear war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

As far as LBJ's "half-assed effort", LBJ never vetoed a military target, ever. LeMay wanted to bomb dikes so as to starve to death millions of civilians (like he did in Korea) and also carpet bomb Hanoi and kill the civilian population there (like he did to Pyongyang, and ever major city in North Korea, and every major city in Japan in the war before that). So if you mean an intentional massacre of civilians on the scale that the US did in Korea or Japan, yes, LBJ vetoed that because the powers-that-be in the US felt it would be politically harmful to US interests outside of Vietnam.

Re:no sense of irony

[jcr]

You want to say: "Don't worry, in theory you still have you rights."

No, I said what I wanted to say. Rights are rights, and their infringment doesn't negate them. The Japanese Americans who were put in concentration camps by Roosevelt's regime were eventually able to obtain redress in court, because their rights still exist.

The important point here, is that governments do not create rights. People create governments to secure our rights. When governments fail in that duty, then it's time to throw them out, and institute a new government in place of the one that failed. (Ex: the American Revolution, the English Civil War, the Armed Struggle against Apartheid, etc.)

-jcr