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- Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!paladin.american.edu!auvm!CS.BU.EDU!PHAN
- Message-ID: <9301260136.AA06692@csa.bu.edu>
- Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
- Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 20:36:28 -0500
- Sender: "The Bitnet feed for the soc.cuture.vietnamese newsgroup on
- USENET." <VIETNET@USCVM.BITNET>
- From: Hai Phan <phan@CS.BU.EDU>
- Subject: Our Scarce Resources Are Being Wasted
- Lines: 64
-
- Dear SCVers,
-
- I hope you all enjoyed the New Year's Day abroad, I had a great
- time at the New Year Festival organized by the Intercollegiate
- Vietnamese Students Association at Massachusttes (not sure that's the
- right official name).
-
- Please correct me if I am wrong, most of SCVers are sick and
- tired of the verbal wars that are commonplace on this net. How are we
- going to rebuild Vietnam if we are destroying everything that we have
- left? Of course all of us want what we think is best our country and our
- people, but does that give us the right to insult everyone who disagrees
- with us? Definitely not. I have been lucky enough to stay out of this
- mess and follow the discussion on whether or not we should go back to
- Vietnam to help unemotionally and unbiasedly, I would like to pose some
- questions for the participants in order to make peace, or at least stop
- the verbal warfare.
-
- 1-Rebuilding Vietnam is an extremely difficult task, it requires
- cooperation from every Vietnamese, especially those who are lucky enough
- to have the potential to contribute more than the average person, namely
- those who are lucky enough to have a college education. If you think you
- can achieve your full potential without cooperating with others,
- consider this: You and a few friends of yours just wrote a new operating
- system that you predict (correctly) will enable the Vietnamese software
- industry (and your company/group) to be a dominant player in the market
- for sometime, if you have the capital to market and distribute it (you
- don't). Now, suppose the guys you had been calling all sort of names
- since you began the discussion years ago own a large chain of software
- stores throughout Vietnam, have a sizable amount of surplus money, and
- have good joint venture partnership with their former employers who have
- international software distributing power. Wouldn't you wish that you
- didn't behave in a such self-defeating manner in the past? Of course,
- the guys who own the store in this hypothetical, but not unlikely,
- situation would wish that they didn't call you any name too because they
- would miss such a knockout hit. This is only one of thousands and
- thousands of similar situations that we are likely to encounter in the
- future.
-
- 2-Brain power and time are our most potent resources, we must to
- use them wisely. Wouldn't our fellow countrymen/women be much better of
- if we spend time writing softwares, business plans, or do something
- concrete that forces the Viet Cong to honor human rights instead of
- spending hours thinking of names to call our opponents and those who
- disagree with us?
-
- 3-Why do we keep thinking that helping our fellow Vietnamese
- economically has to be incopatible to helping them politically? Why
- don't those who want the Viet Cong to honor human rights do their best
- to make sure that the Communist government wouldn't dare to harrass
- those who come back to Vietnam to help people there so that they can
- inspire the people at home to demand for human rights and freedom the we
- all cherish here? We need one another, don't we?
-
- I would like to stop here because the message is getting long
- now and I believe that everyone can find at least ten more reasons that
- we should not go on with the verbal warfare. My only purpose in this
- message is to give a wrong turn signal so that we can stop wasting our
- scarce resources and put them to work for a free and prosperous Vietnam
- immediately.
-
- Best wishes,
-
- Ha?i Phan
-