Word: nam
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Nguyen Van Linh is, in a sense, the Mikhail Gorbachev of Viet Nam. Named last December to replace Truong Chinh as General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party, the 72-year-old economist has initiated a series of broad economic reforms, while encouraging citizens to voice their complaints and offer suggestions for change. Unlike the aging guard that led the wars against France and the U.S., then allowed the country to stagnate in poverty, Linh plans to raise his country's standard of living by streamlining the bureaucracy, cracking down on corruption and expanding trade with the West...
...Gary Hart did four years ago. No candidate has been able to gain traction through such themes as radically reversing the role of Big Government, as Ronald Reagan did eight years ago, or appealing to anti-Washington populism, as Jimmy Carter did before that. There is no Viet Nam War, no polarizing social or civil rights crusades that can divide the candidates and shape the debate. Although there are issues ranging from the Robert Bork nomination to the contras to Star Wars that distinguish the two parties, they do little to distinguish those battling within them...
...many do believe there is something in Asian culture that breeds success, perhaps Confucian ideals that stress family values and emphasize education. Sociologist William Liu, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, argues that immigrants from Asian countries with the strongest Confucian influence - Japan, Korea, China and Viet Nam - perform best. "The Confucian ethic," he says, "drives people to work, excel and repay the debt they owe their parents." By comparison, San Diego's Rumbaut points out, Laotians and Cambodians, who do somewhat less well, have a gentler, Buddhist approach to life...
Their successors, on the other hand, abandoned letters in favor of obfuscating memos when it came to discussing, say, the Viet Nam War. Some of the most candid records of that period come from times when a few of the old statesmen were called in for counsel and then, as was their wont, exchanged letters about what they had discussed...
...became involved in an unauthorized plan for a 1981 raid into Laos to find Americans thought to be missing in action since the Viet Nam War. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was so incensed that he ordered the Army's secret intelligence unit disbanded, but it survived to collect information on terrorists in Lebanon, among other activities...