Political Biography of Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh 1890-1969 - "He Who Enlightens"

Ho with Vo Nguyen Giap [left] whose gift for military strategy enabled Ho to put his ideas into actions. Before gaining fame, Giap had been a history teacher and known to have admired Napoleon Bonarpart of France. In this respect, just like Ho who quoted Wilson's and America's famous declaration of independence, both Giap and Ho would subsequently make the nations of their idols [France and America] pay dearly for their imitations and 'adorations' [School of Vice]

“I don’t know of any other leader of his stature having done this kind of masquerading under different guises, or having had to change his name so many times which makes me wonder whether this was just a necessity, or was it the sense of the drama in the man that prompted him to do this?”

“His achievements required the effort of a man who was part Lenin, part Ghandi, part Confucius, and all Vietnamese”

Written out of History: sub plot in Uncle Ho's dream for an “Independent, Free and Happy” Vietnam

“Over time, the world has come to recognize the claims of the party that came later and used brute force to establish its claim.”

Trial of Tim Sakhorn

Hanoi-backed CPP cop lays into protesting Khmer Krom buddhist monks

Cruelty and violence meted out to Buddhist monks are considered acts of the utmost sacrilegious nature in most Buddhist cultures; arguably even more ‘reprehensible’ than similar acts committed against one's own parents, for example, given the clergy's self-renunciation and its monastic role in guiding humanity along the path of peace and non-violence. One of these Khmer Krom monks was later found with his throat slit, but government authorities insisted the victim committed suicide! - School of Vice

“Sakhorn's arrest and deportation sparked a wave of Khmer Krom demonstrations in Cambodia, with clashes in Phnom Penh between Khmer Krom monks and monks loyal to Tep Vong. Hun Sen warned after the street fights in a speech broadcast on national television in February 2008 that he would provide "free coffins" to anyone who attempted to reclaim Khmer Krom lands and "help bury their corpses".

The Khmer Krom maintain their cause is about human rights, not independence or the return of their lands to Cambodia. They claim to only want some say in their future, and for Vietnam to stop falsifying their history. In 2007, the Vietnamese Communist Party disseminated a freshly written history of southern Vietnam that asserted that the Khmer were not its indigenous inhabitants.

Shawn McHale, an Asia studies professor at George Washington University, says the fundamental problem in the historical dispute over the Khmer Krom's lands is using modern notions of sovereignty for pre-colonial situations that were ambiguous. He said a Khmer prince ceded Khmer Krom to Vietnam in 1757, but that not all branches of the royal families agreed.

In 1864, France made Cochinchina a colony, but Cambodia was merely a protectorate. When Hanoi and Phnom Penh both claimed the area in 1945, the French ultimately sided with the Vietnamese in 1949.

"So the Khmer Krom today are an ethnic minority greatly outnumbered in their land, they insist that their territory was seized by an enemy, and that this enemy does not have a legitimate claim to the area, but most of the world simply can't believe that such an account is true," McHale told Asia Times Online by e-mail. "Over time, the world has come to recognize the claims of the party that came later and used brute force to establish its claim."

Craig Guthrie is a correspondent for Asia Times Online based in Thailand. He has covered Cambodian affairs since 2004.” 

PS: with thanks to anonymous poster for sharing - School of Vice