Nguyen Huu An, 5 years old, in Huang Xuan near Hue. The father of this boy has lived for a long time in the agent-orange-infected province Song Be. When his second disabled child was born he comitted suicide.

xxx

Politicians and the war makers make me want to PUKE!!!!!!!!

This picture made me cry. I'm Vietnamese but came to America when I was young. I don't ever see pictures like this.

You should public a book with all these beautiful but terrible and incredibly tragic shots, so that more people can see. This photograph triggered so much anger inside me. The more I grow up and see things the more I have to fight not to get depressed by what happens around me. I lived in the States for a while and, especially there, people have changed in the last ten years and things are getting out of hand. The same arrogance, uncaring attitude and general indifference to the serious problems that our "modern and civilized" society is facing are spreading to Europe and even to Eastern Europe. Most people get loans in order to buy a BMW and the latest innovation of portable telephony, showing how mad we have become. They spend thousands of euros every year to go on vacation and where do they go... they go to Sharm el-Sheikh and hag out in the resort. There is a diffuse sense of uncertainty and people want to live beyond their means, regardless of the fact that life is becoming more and more expensive. "Life is short" you hear often. I hate that phrase because people use it to justify how selfish and indifferent they are. The Greeks invented and tried Democracy over two-thousand years ago and it didn't last very long. No matter how we want to call our form of government, there'll always be few people that make decisions and all the others (us) that follow wanting or not. They force us to follow their rules by making us feel accomplished and safe, giving us the (stupid) ideal of "The American Dream", feeding us with trash music-tv-technology and lowering the average level of education in order to better control us. Today's average teenager is not very far from a monkey. I believe we have not found the perfect type of government, maybe it doesn't exist and I more and more believe that the future of the human being is not a happy one. Many of my friends tell me how pessimist I am but I think I am just a very realistic person. I wish you could make a book with all these beautiful pictures you have (not that it would change anything...). We know history and the controversy about Vietnam but people tend to forget.

Sources of dioxin in Vietnam are greater from their own misuse of low quality coal for many home and industrial needs. The Soviet Union and the UN both did studies on the results of mining and oil drilling and the widespread use of low quality coal in home and industry. Homes in Vietnam use vast amounts of low quality coal for heating and cooking. As in China Vietnam uses low quality coal to fire ovens for food cooking and home heating. The transfer of furans and dioxin readily flows from oils in the cooking process absorbing them, transferring them directly to the food. This builds up in fatty tissues in human beings.

Records show that US usage of dioxin tainted Agent Orange was used exclusively in unpopulated areas. Dioxin readily sediments into clays and soils. After 40 years that sediment is beneath human activity. as shown in ancient forest sedimentation of natural occurring dioxin in forest decay.

Electrical generation, smelting, industrial glass making all generate vast amounts of dioxin because Vietnam hand mines low quality coal as their main source of energy. 

The largest increases in dioxin poisoning occurs in densely populated areas in new births quite the opposite of dioxin poisoning during the Vietnam war. Dioxin does not spread over large areas and it is expunged from the human body within 7 years of poisoning. 

I have learned never trust anything the Vietnamese government says especially if they advocate that they are concerned about their own people's welfare. 

 

 

 

... Paul, and all the American Agent Orange victims, former GIs who have fought in Vietnam and their descendants. Are they also affected by cheap Vietnamese coal?