I often wonder what today's population of South(ern)......
Vietnam thinks of the USA after thirty years of communist rule.
Ironically Vietnam is presently one of the safest nations and probably the friendliest that an American can visit these days. While American tourists are removing their American flag patches and some replacing them with Canadian ones during a trip to Europe or actually being arrested in Venezuela and accused of being a spy for the white house, in Vietnam you will be in fashion wearing the American flag because there the youth wear American flag T-shirts, face bandanas(sp) when riding their motorbikes in the Saigon traffic and you'll see them being sold in the streetside markets. How do they feel about the party that managed to get the rest of the country to abandon them?
Although long ago I had known this, just last week a friend told me that many people question (at home only)the successes and failures of the present government and feel that Saigon would have surpassed Hong Kong in the world regarding its status in the world if the North was not allowed to take over.
How does the VN government filter the news from America? FoxNews is available in selected cable companies in selected hotels. For the people (and they do have cable tv) cnn and Fox news is available in the next package above the basic. That would cost an extra $20 a month for the additional channels.
If you dont have the premium cable channels, then you get the government news and international news via France.
Is there enough Internet there to make any difference?
While it's not even close to the numbers of internet connections in American homes, many in Vietnam do have the internet at home. There are Internet Cafes through-out Saigon and the other cities of Vietnam which are often full.
After sharing websites with my friends for more than a year I have not seen any hint of internet censorship. Certainly I cannot say that about China (though I've never been to China). My friends in Vietnam often visit Freerepublic and most of the news links I send are from places politically center or to the right.
One other thing. I hear many focus on Vietnam's freedom of religion (which is always good to focus on for any nation) but I must say that coming from Portland, Maine where I've seen crosses on historic buildings covered by the city, I was amazed to see school children in a city just north of Saigon playing around their school which had a huge statue of jesus on the roof. It was a public school. Granted the statue was there long before the building had become a school but atleast they did not cover it as they would have in my city.
The people of Vietnam are not allowed to speak negatively about their government and it is not done in cafes in the schools or at work. That would and is only done within the walls of ones home.
Capitalism is catching on fast in Vietnam. I dare say that today's vietnam supresses the people about the same as today's Chavez in Venezuela.
With all of it's problems, compared to North Korea, Vietnam would appear more like San Francisco regarding freedom. I'm not saying that's how free Vietnam is...it's an example of just how bad it is in North Korea.