He'll always have Pyongyang

Michael Moynihan on Tom "Yes, he's still alive" Hayden's pilgrimage to Vietnam:

All of this growth, Hayden writes, "has come at the price of rising inequalities." Rather than the whole country living in grinding poverty, now only some do. ... Poverty has been significantly reduced as a result of Vietnam's partial embrace of markets and introduction of mild economic reforms. But behind every silver lining, Hayden finds a dark cloud: "[G]rowth has created catastrophic problems of infrastructure, traffic congestion and pollution." Traffic congestion? Recall that in 1979 Joan Baez, supported by concerned antiwar activists like Allen Ginsberg and Norman Lear, took out full-page advertisements in five major American papers appealing to the government of Vietnam to stop brutalizing, torturing and "reeducating" its citizens. Hayden and [Jane] Fonda refused to sign the document. And now he's bitching about traffic congestion and pollution.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at February 27, 2008 03:45 PM