Kuala Lumpur (VNA) – Vietnam and other ASEAN member countries shared regional security issues at the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Retreat (ADMM Retreat) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on November 3.

The ministers particularly touched upon cyber security and navigation security and safety in the East Sea, Major General Vu Tien Trong, Director of the Institute for Defence International Relations, told Vietnam News Agency reporters after the event.

They agreed that any disputes in the East Sea must be addressed in line with international law and regional commitments such as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and ASEAN’s six-point principles on the East Sea .

It is necessary to move towards the building of a Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC) between ASEAN and China , they said.

Major General Trong said Vietnam proposed evaluations on ASEAN collaboration over the past 10 years as well as a new cooperation roadmap for the next decade.

As scheduled, the third ADMM Plus between ASEAN defence ministers and partners from Australia, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, New Zealand, Russia and the US will take place on November 4.

Malaysian Defence Minister Hishamuddin Tun Husein told reporters at a press conference that the ministers expressed their deep concerns over terrorism, cyber crime and marine security during the ADMM Retreat.

The ministers witnessed the signing of the direct communication link (DCL) initiative – a hotline between ASEAN defence ministers to ensure quick communication in any emergency.

After the ADMM Retreat, defence ministers from Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand will have special meetings to increase their military cooperation in the Strait of Malacca.-VNA

The decision to withdraw all state capital from 10 businesses including giant brands is a strong message to confirm the determination of the Party and State in the policy "State only does what private companies can not or do not want to do".

Thus, the state sells not only loss-making enterprises but also flourishing ones. Since then, the role of the state is to create growth, and service by government will become increasingly apparent as ever.

Hitherto, Vietnam has signed and participated in 11 free trade agreements (FTAs) and bilateral areas. We have ever simultaneously engaged as many peak "playgrounds" and new generation of international trade agreements as the current.

Trans-Pacific Partnerships has successfully negotiated, the FTA with the European Union also concluded negotiations earlier, ASEAN Economic Community will also form later this year... All the playground with high level of integration requires us to have a team of businesses, including professional and strong private businesses, an institution for the development of market economy, a public transparency in management and administration. If we consider joining the regional and global "playgrounds" as the "prerequisites" then these requirements are "sufficient" for a successful integration on a large scale beyond Vietnam to the world.

The head of government, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has once stated: “It is necessary to change the thinking and approach when defining the role of the State and the relationship between state and market. We must change from State operates economy into the State creates development”. Therefore, the decision to withdraw all state capital out of 10 giant enterprises to obtain multi-billion dollar for national budget is a good sign. State resources will be more focused and professional in the vocation of a developmental state, the State does not render services but focus on building appropriate institutional framework and create necessary conditions for people develop the capabilities and creativity for the benefit of themselves and contribute to society.

We believe that divestment trend will continue and not just stop at the 10 businesses.

According to a new report on the situation of food and agriculture in the world, in poor countries, the system of social protection - especially cash flow, food, education and public projects - supplies an economic mean to help people most escape extreme poverty and hunger, as well as improve health, education and the chances of success for children.

In developing countries, the social protection programs bring benefit in many different ways for 2.1 billion people, of which 150 million individuals saved from extreme poverty. According to the report, if we want to quickly reduce the number of people living in poverty, we need to expand this program in the rural area and link these programs with the growth policy.

The FAO report published before the anniversary of World Food Day (16/10), in which this year's theme stressed the importance of social protection for breaking the vicious circle of poverty in rural areas.

“We need urgent action to assist the most vulnerable people in order to liberate the world from poverty” - FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said. "The social protection programs enable households to have access to nutrition more frequently and increase planting productivity as well as to make nutrition and their food more variety and nutritious. These programs have a positive effect on nutrition for children and mothers, reduce child labor and improve school attendance as well as a favorable factors to increase productivity”.

According to the report, only about one third of the world's poorest people receive some forms of social protection. This percentage is still very low in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the regions with the highest poverty rates.

Without social support, many poor and vulnerable people have to struggle to escape the trap of poverty, disease and lack of education, hurting future generations.

Most countries - even the poorest - can also have a certain form of social protection. According to the evaluation of FAO, about 67 billion dollars of additional revenue every year, most of which provide for the social protection program along with other forms of investment, which are intended for poor farmers to eliminate hunger by 2030. This financial accounting under 0.10% of world GDP.

Currently, many extremely poor households are forced to sell assets, children have to work and exploit land unsustainably or do low-paying jobs.

However, the basic social system gives the poor the ability to improve potential production as well as bring about positive benefits for the local economy, increase business opportunities, higher wages agriculture, enable the poorest people to purchase goods or invest in assets.

According to FAO, at least 145 countries now offer one or more forms of social protection, especially the unconditional cash flow which is  synonymous with subsidies for those who benefit. These countries also provide forms of conditional cash flow  associated with going to school or health care as well as public labor programs for job security. Other forms of social protection such as the natural flow form of distribution of food or food programs in schools.

However, the report also stressed that in order to completely eliminate hunger, it need to coordinate public investment in social protection for the public and private investments in agriculture and rural development. Such measures will contribute to ensuring a comprehensive economic growth, enable breaking the vicious circle of rural poverty in a sustainable way.

Part II: Benefits of firearms industries

The debate over gun control in the United States has waxed and waned over the years, stirred by a series of mass killings by gunmen in civilian settings. In particular, the killing of twenty schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 fueled a national discussion over gun laws and calls by the Obama administration to limit the availability of military-style weapons. However, compromise legislation that would have banned semiautomatic assault weapons and expanded background checks was defeated in the Senate in 2013, despite extensive public support.

Gun control advocates sought to rekindle the debate following the shooting deaths of nine people at a South Carolina church in June 2015. These advocates highlight the stricter gun laws and lower incidents of gun violence in several other democracies, like Japan and Australia.

In June 2015, President Obama made a speech lamenting the NRA’s extremely strong “grip” on Congress’s neck. Dramatic as this may sound, it’s not too far from the truth. The gun lobby has poured so much money into Congress that it’s breathtaking.

Between 2000 and 2013, the NRA, the firearms industries, and the ultramilitant organization Gun Owners of America poured over $81 million into House, Senate, and presidential races. This so far outstrips anti-gun spending as to make any comparisons seem laughable. In the first quarter of 2014, gun control groups managed to spend about $250,000 on lobbying in Washington. By contrast, the NRA alone spent over $800,000 in that time period.

This overspending has real consequences. When the issue of expanded background checks came before the Senate in 2013 in the wake of the horrifying Sandy Hook massacre, 46 senators voted down the bill. It was later revealed that 43 of them had previously received financial help from the gun lobby, with 38 of those 43 receiving over $15,000 each. However, the NRA spent literally millions to support or defeat certain individual candidates in their political races.

Money aside, the gun lobby is also good at manipulating campaigns. If a senator is pro-gun, the NRA will launch wall-to-wall attack ads against his opponent at election time. On the other hand, an anti-gun candidate will receive a level of harassment guaranteed to make their lives miserable and cost them a close election.

Some of the purported violations do, in fact, represent legitimate instances of the Obama administration’s increasingly anti-constitutional lawlessness and abuses. For example, the UN committee said U.S. government officials responsible for torture, enforced disappearances, “unlawful killings,” and similar crimes ought to be prosecuted and punished. It also blasted the Obama administration’s global mass-murder spree using drones, as well as the spying perpetrated by the National Security Agency (NSA). All of those U.S. government crimes, of course, could be dealt with simply by enforcing the U.S. Constitution as written.    

Among other supposed “human rights” violations, the UN committee identified “the overrepresentation of individuals belonging to racial and ethnic minorities in prisons and jails,” state and local law-enforcement activities such as “excessive use of force,” the death penalty, domestic violence, alleged “criminalization” of the homeless by state and local authorities, prison conditions, juvenile justice, and more. To comply with its “recommendations,” however, the U.S. government would have to go even further outside its constitutional boundaries and essentially take over state and local government. 

All of the very real problems identified by the UN committee — torture, impunity, murder-by-drone, unlawful spying, brutal forced “psychiatric” treatment, mass incarceration, and more — would not even be an issue if authorities were following the U.S. Constitution and respecting the people’s God-given rights. Many of the other alleged “problems,” though, arise from a fundamental conflict in the understanding of human rights. In the American system, rights such as self-defense and gun ownership come from God and cannot be legitimately infringed on by government, which is instituted specifically to protect those rights. So full of human rights and democracy!./.

The scheme of development and management of Vietnamese journalism to 2025, which was issued by the Ministry of Information and Communication, had made me very glad. The content, program and institution of the scheme were built to make the press develop healthily.

In my opinion, the scheme has shown the principle of the Party’s absolute leadership to the press, the rightness in the press’s management and been suitable with the urgent demand of the time, as well upholding the traditional values of Vietnam’s revolutionary press and accessing the modern press’s values. This is necessary exchange to develop the press on a solid cultural foundation with the unique and universal nature of a modern nation.

In the internationalization process, the press is developing almost spontaneous, unhealthily. Therefore it’s very necessary and crucial to put the press’s development under control, unity and healthiness, avoiding bad effects to the public community. Besides, the implementation of the press’s management will give the basic principles of the revolutionary press that is suitable with the movement of the international press.

In fact, in the recent process, the development of Vietnamese press has been focusing on the quantity not the quality. Presses are everywhere from associations to companies... Many reasons for “the representing voice” of offices were given to establish newspapers. Universities, colleagues are even competing to establish the journalism – communication faculty, training and quickly certifying dozens of future reporters. And then thousands of students are in favor of journalism as an elite job. But unfortunately a lot of them were made redundant afterward. This leads to ugly competition and inadequate products of the press.

Therefore, in recent time, Vietnamese press has not only the achievements but also problems. A lot of journalists are underestimating the leading role of the press to the public opinions and thoughts. They are just focusing on the negative sides of the society, issuing ranges of articles about robbery, killing and raping. These journalists haven’t longer been the spiritual instructors and even become the dark points in the press forums in some cases.

Facing the problem, the Party and State have to strengthen the management of the press, restructuring and pointing out clearly the principles in the press’s activities, especially with the breakthrough in science and technology, Vietnamese press has transformed strongly. The press is not only the soldier on the spiritual and cultural front of the Party, a mean of edification to meet diverse cultural needs of the public, a propagandizing tool, but also the forum of the people, the place of exchange, showing the will and desire of the people and the multicast informative place of the society.

Although there are still controversial debates… the scheme of managing is the new structure, adjusting the press agencies, creating a healthy order of the press.

I believe that the scheme will help the press to improve itself and raise its efficiency; putting the press’s agencies back on the right track as a informative mean, a propagandizing tool, the important spiritual weapon of the Party and State, and the forum of the people./.

France, the United States and other Western countries have issued laws, measures to control which they call the freedom of the Internet...

The law has been touted by the government as a vital update to ageing regulations dating back to pre-Internet days, and was overwhelmingly passed by lawmakers from both left and right, though with dissident voices among almost every political group. Although it had been in the pipeline for some time, the proposed law gained added support in the wake of the jihadist attacks in Paris in January that left 17 people dead. But it has been criticized by rights groups such as Amnesty International, which has described it as taking France "a step closer to a surveillance state".

France remains on high alert and is struggling to monitor the hundreds of young Muslims leaving to fight with jihadists in Syria and Iraq, as well as keep tabs on potential attacks at home. The vote came at an awkward time for French lawmakers, less than 24 hours after leaked documents appeared to prove the US had spied on President Francois Hollande and his predecessors between 2006 and 2012, sparking a diplomatic spat between the two countries. France expressed outrage at the "unacceptable" US spying on President Francois Hollande and his two predecessors that was detailed in leaked documents.

The new French law allows authorities to spy on the digital and mobile communications of anyone linked to a "terrorist" inquiry without prior authorization from a judge, and forces Internet service providers and phone companies to give up data upon request.

Intelligence services will have the right to place cameras and recording devices in private dwellings and install "keylogger" devices that record every key stroke on a targeted computer in real time. The authorities will be able to keep recordings for a month and metadata for five years.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls has fiercely defended the bill, saying that to compare it to the mass surveillance "Patriot Act" introduced in the United States after the 9/11 attacks was a "lie". He has pointed out that the previous law on wiretapping dates back to 1991, "when there were no mobile phones or Internet," which makes the new bill crucial in the face of extremist threats.

But Amnesty's Europe director Gauri van Gulik said earlier this year that "this bill is too vague, too far-reaching and leaves too many unanswered questions. Parliament should ensure that measures meant to protect people from terror should not violate their basic rights."

Perhaps the most controversial of the bill's proposals are so-called "black boxes" -- or complex algorithms -- that Internet providers will be forced to install to flag up a pattern of suspicious behavior online such as what keywords someone types, what sites they consult, who they contact and when.

A poll published in April showed that nearly two-thirds of French people were in favor of restricting freedoms in the name of fighting extremism.

Only 32 percent of those surveyed in the CSA poll for the Atlantico news website said they were opposed to freedoms being reduced, although this proportion rose significantly among young people.

However, the national digital council, an independent advisory body, has come out against the proposed legislation.

The group said it was akin to "mass surveillance" which has "been shown to be extremely inefficient in the United States".

It also said it was "unsuited to the challenges of countering terrorist recruitment" and "does not provide sufficient guarantees in terms of freedoms"

Remembering that, just a few months ago, the US Communications Commission (FCC) adopted a historic measure to manage Internet more closely. The new rules have sparked strong debates in the United States.

The new regulations were based on the principle of "net neutrality" (neutrality of the internet), to bring about equal opportunities for Internet speed and access to the website. Accordingly, the exclusive Internet-providers shall be able to block some websites or just provide high-speed Internet for the customers that have enough money to pay.

It seems that the Western countries are really confused and cannot find out a perfect solution./

                                                             Professor Angus Deanton,

Angus Deaton, the Professor from Princeton University and the owner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 2015, believes that the foreign aid brings more negative impacts than the positive ones. This conflicting view has turned him into “the enemy” of many people from the United Nations to Bill Gates.

Deaton is now 69 years old and he has been thought to be the winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for a long time. However, the professor has been criticized strongly for his theory. “I feel like being crashed by a “memory train””, he said. The security unit of Princeton university had to give him a “burner phone” (kind of a cheap phone, equipped with a SIM card to use in a short time). Deaton has always been strictly protected.

It has been 12 years since the last time a British economist was awarded the Nobel Prize. The Nobel committee awarded him the honor “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare”. His work “linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes” was praised for having helped to “transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics”. Nevertheless, the aspects that close to the normal life, are important to Deaton’s success.

For example, in Deaton’s theory, the answer of the question “how do people spend their money?” is to use a questionnaire to ask everyone rather than finding a theoretical question from dozens of data of Government statistics. This approach is considered a revolution.

He also found mistakes in definition of the poor. There a simple truth that a poor person in the US could be a rich one living in the rural area of India.

In recent years, these controversial views have attracted the public attention and turned Deaton into “the enemy” of many people such as the UN, Bill Gates or Bono the singer of U2 band.

In 2013, Deaton published the book named “the Great Escape” which pointed out that the foreign aid is worthless. The donation of giving money and food for poor people even hurts them.

After two year of protecting the book from the strong public criticism, Deaton has always affirmed his rightness. And now with the honor of the winner of the Nobel Prize, Deaton will have more basics to defend his viewpoint.

“The problem is out of the prediction. Pouring money into poor countries will negatively affect the political system in those countries. On the other hand, people will stop paying the taxes if the basic services are provided by the foreign aid”.

Deaton said that there are two effective ways to help the poor countries’ people. First, moving to the country that needs help and living and working there for advocating. Second, trying to persuade the Western countries to change their commercial policies, to pay more for medicine and strictly control the global trade of weapons.

"There are beautiful girls come here and say 'I want to help the people of Rwanda’. I told them that just marrying a coffee-raising farmer in Rwanda and moving to live here. Then they said that they were unlikely to be able to do so ".

Deaton is a big guy, he has to use a walking stick. His wife, Mrs. Anne Case, is a colleague at Princeton university. She said that everyone hardly saw him smile because there had been a matrix of ideas “dancing” in his brain.

Long before the French economist, Thomas Piketty published his book about the gap between the rich and poor, named “The imperialism in the 21^st century”, Deaton had studied about this aspect.

The Deaton’s viewpoint might make people to the simplest measure of solving the global poverty is to send the British army to conquer the undeveloped countries. Explaining this point, Deaton said: “The poverty is not only about money, but also the social position. The measure that I suggested is not to send the foreign army to conquer any country. This is the thinking of the Scottish about the Britain for a long time. I myself can realize it clearly because I had lived in this process.”

“When you get older and live in a world that has no definitions of the social welfare for the old, you would realize that 1 million of dollars are not that much. When I were a boy and study at Cambridge, if someone told me that I got a prize of 1 million of dollars, I would think I will never have to work. However 1 million doesn’t make me happy”, he said.

Reading and understanding about the Deaton’s analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare will help us more understand about the ways that capitalism are using to control the world. The ways that make the world turn to bring benefits, special rights, privileges for the rich and the poor will live in hardship and deprivation./.

 

Part I: Gun politics and mass shootings

In 2014, the United Nations pseudo-“human-rights” bureaucracy released another report attacking Americans’ self-defense rights, “Stand Your Ground” statutes passed at the state level, and the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment protection of the people's God-given right to keep and bear arms without government infringement. Agreeing with the Obama administration and the most extreme anti-Second Amendment members of Congress, the UN “Human Rights Committee” also claimed that the U.S. government needed to expand the unconstitutional background-check regime to include even private firearms sales.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has given the U.S. a series of failing grades on human rights, including failing to meet international human rights standards on gun violence; the uneven implementation of controversial Stand Your Ground laws; violating personal privacy; and doing a poor job of caring for victims of gun violence.

“We have such easy access to guns, instruments that can easily take a human’s life. Gun violence, and the ways it plays out especially around Stand Your Ground laws, has disproportionately impacted people of color…particularly Black communities. In some places, it’s easier to buy a gun than a fresh vegetable,” said Ejim Dike, executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network, a national network of organizations working on a variety of human rights issues in the United States.

Gun politics is a controversial area of American politics that is primarily defined by the actions of two groups: gun control and gun rights activists. These groups often disagree on the interpretation of laws and court cases related to firearms as well as about the effects of gun control on crime and public safety.

Since the 1990s, debates regarding firearm availability and gun violence in the U.S. have been characterized by concerns about the right to bear arms, such as found in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the responsibility of the government to serve the needs of its citizens and to prevent crime and deaths. Gun control supporters say that broad or unrestricted gun rights inhibit the government from fulfilling that responsibility.^[2]:1–3[3] Gun rights supporters promote firearms for self-defense, hunting, sporting activities, and security against tyranny.^[4]:96[5] Gun control advocates state that keeping guns out of the hands of criminals results in safer communities, while gun rights advocates state that firearm ownership by law-abiding citizens reduces crime.^[6] A 2003 study by the Centers for Disease Control called for further study because there was insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of firearms laws with regards to violent outcomes.

The public policy debates about gun violence include discussions about firearms deaths - including homicide, suicide, and unintentional deaths - as well as the impact of gun ownership, criminal and legal, on gun violence outcomes. In the United States in 2009 there were 3.0 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants. The U.S. ranks 28 in the world for gun homicides per capita.

With 5% of the world's population, U.S. residents own roughly 50% of the world's civilian-owned firearms.^[162] According to the UNODC, 60% of U.S. homicides in 2009 were perpetrated using a firearm.

Port Arthur, Aramoana, Erfurt, Hungerford . . . for many people, these names still bring back chilling memories of violence and bloodshed. As senseless massacres committed in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and England (respectively), each of these tragedies led to new gun control laws. Generally, this is the case in the developed world, with one exception. The US is the only advanced nation to respond to massacres by relaxing gun laws.

While the Hungerford and Port Arthur massacres caused the UK and Australia to become two of the most restrictive societies for gun owners, the contemporaneous 1991 Texas diner massacre had the opposite effect. In the Texas tragedy, a local man crashed his pickup into a diner, stepped out of the vehicle, and gunned down 22 people. Instead of restricting gun usage, the state responded by pushing through concealed carry laws. In the immediate aftermath of Sandy Hook, 27 states passed 93 laws allowing citizens to do everything from carry firearms in churches and schools to use guns in self defense while drunk.

A few days before the Virginia TV shooting, US criminal justice researcher Adam Lankford released the results of his study on global mass shootings, a term defined by the FBI as at least four individuals killed in a single spree that isn’t related to gang violence. Lankford’s study analyzed 171 countries and 292 mass killers operating between 1966 and 2012. His findings showed that mass shootings are as American as apple pie.

There’s one unassailable truth about living somewhere with more guns. It makes you much more likely to die from a gunshot wound. Multiple studies have found that living in a country with liberal gun laws increases your chances of both being murdered and dying during a suicide attempt.

Before the 1996 Port Arthur massacre triggered stricter gun control laws, Australia averaged one mass shooting a year. Since the laws were enacted, there have been no mass shootings. Homicide and suicide rates have also plummeted 50 percent.

Although the media tends to focus on homicides, suicide is the number one type of firearm-related death, far outstripping homicides, mass shootings, gang violence, and accidents. Studies have shown that states with stricter gun control laws have lower rates of suicides using guns. Surprisingly, these states also have fewer suicides overall, suggesting that the people who killed themselves with guns might not have used other methods if those guns had not been available. (to be continued)