|
 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, during his visit to Vietnam and under the watchful eyes of an Ho Chi Minh's statue described that country's war against the United States, which ended with the country's union and full independence, as a "victory of the oppressed."
The Brazilian leader and his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Minh Triet, also pledged to support each other in the bid for greater representation of developing nations in the global political and trade arenas.
On a one-day visit to Vietnam after attending the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Japan, when he met with US president, George Bush, Lula visited the mausoleum of the late President Ho Chi Minh and laid a wreath at the war veterans' memorial.
"What Vietnam did was much more than winning the war and deserves the respect of all of mankind. What you've done here was much more than winning a war. It was a life lesson that taught all human beings that when we want something and are determined to get it, we will be invincible," the former union leader said after he was received with full military honors.
"Your victory was a victory of the oppressed and we feel proud of it," he added.
Lula also praised the post-war economic recovery of the unified Vietnam, which has seen annual growth rates of more than 7% for the past decade and rapidly reduced poverty to less than 20% of its population.
"The Vietnamese people have always known how to defend their sovereignty and independence," Lula said.
"With the same perseverance with which it achieved its independence, Vietnam distinguishes itself with the good performance and the high growth rates of its economy."
President Triet thanked the Brazilian leader for supporting Vietnam's 2007 World Trade Organization (WTO) accession and non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, which it chairs this month.
He also reaffirmed Vietnam's support for Brazil's bid for a permanent seat on the Security Council. Lula said he was certain "that Vietnam shares with us the vision that global problems cannot be solved only by the main industrialized countries".
On global trade talks, where Brazil has led calls for a fairer regime for poor countries, Lula called Vietnam "an important ally in the struggle to put an end to distortions in international trade."
Mercopress/Bzz
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj).
on two seperat ocations the north was going to quit but the press in the states made the military look like baby killers
and the bombing was stoped and they started up again .read the to top north generals books about the war , HO BY THE WAY THEY BOOTH LIVE IN THE US !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
like in the first gulf war stoping the bombing after 100 hours as the press was reporting only the negative side .
never showed the hundreds of kuaits killed by the sadams men , all the theft , rapes , and people hung butterfly style to get info from them and to this day over 1000 are still missing !!!
and did any one see what the new castro asid in his speach
cuba needs to get read for true comminsum , looks like china has made a home there and with chaves
LULA WILL BE THE NEXT , or at leas brasil
another thing a war run by politicans looking for votes can never be a good thing as they only see what the press tells them about what the press reports , and a body count for the US not the other side