by Ted Rall - Common Dreams

When [Republican Presidential candidate and Senator John] McCain was shot down during his 23rd bombing sortie, he was happily shooting up a civilian neighborhood in the middle of a major city. Vietnamese locals beat him when they pulled him out of a local lake; yeah, that must have sucked. But I can’t help think of what would have happened to Mohammed Atta had he somehow wound up alive on a lower Manhattan street on 9/11...Maybe he would have made it[?]...But I do know this: no one would ever have considered him a war hero.

by Michael Byers - Wednesday, June 04, 2008

The steady stream of maimed or killed soldiers is but one of many increasingly disturbing parallels between Afghanistan and the Vietnam War.

Police in Vietnam have started surrounding hundreds of peasants who have been demonstrating in Ho Chi Minh City for almost a month over land disputes, a demonstrator said overnight. About 200 demonstrators, most of whom are women, have been encircled by "many police, both in plain clothes and uniform"...

During March, there were 35 strikes in Vietnam, of which 33 were at...Foreign Direct Investment companies...[T]he Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs is drafting [a] law to prevent strikes...Under current [Industrial Relations] law, nearly no strike is legal, because none is organised by state-run unions.