My encounters with Oz

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Don't be afraid, open the door

b. Intentional
1. Hello (Mr.) (Mrs.)
Good evening
Good night
2. Don't be afraid. We are friends.
3. We will not harm you. Trust us.
4. We wish to talk with (1) you (2) master of the house (3) father of the family (4) your husband (5) your son (6) your father (7) your mother (8) your older sister or brother (9) your brother-in-law (10) your sister-in-law.
5. Come with me (1) outside (2) to the backyard (3) to the orchard (4) to the garden.
6. Open the door or we will force it.
[the Vietnamese is actually, Open the door, else we destroy the door, Mở cửa, không thì chúng tôi phá cửa.]
7. Move a little further away from the house so that we can talk undisturbed.
8. Have a (1) cigarette (2) candy (3) chocolate.



[from pages 7-9 of a Vietnamese phrase book published in 1962 by the US Army]





Photos from Iraq by US Army paratrooper Tony Erskine, USAF Airman First Class Kurt Gibbons and US Army Sgt. Luis R. Agostini. Tony Erskine explains the first image on his blog, "Kicking in Doors. I wish this was a picture of me, but it's not. It's SSG Amsden, but he didn't budge this metal door. I said, 'Let me give it a shot,' and kicked it right open. I also kicked open the metal door next to it that was pad locked. I love kicking in doors. It's my favorite! Boys never do grow out of that destructive phase."


Posted by Linh Dinh at 6:41 PM

Labels: Iraq, language, Vietnam


2 comments:

Oz said...

Friend,

The pictures you posted here are copyrighted. You are violating that copyright.

I am Tony's father. His brother married a Viet Namese girl and my grandson is half Viet Namese.

Your post denigrates my son's service to this country and I ask you to remove the copyrighted materials immediately.

Thank you.

October 14, 2007 1:30 PM


Oz said...

Also to be found on Ton's Blog...

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Teddy Roosevelt; CITIZENSHIP IN A REPUBLIC; Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, France; April 23, 1910

October 15, 2007 5:06 PM


.....

Monday, October 8, 2007

Let's Talk

The shit knowledge gets stuck
In between the eloquent teeth,
Anchors those haloed thoughts.

My chain of minty abstractions trip
Over the titty bumps, get hoovered
Into the scalloped ever pink. Your
Jazzy jibes sidestep that rude rod.

Each utters in euphemisms, the hate
And fuck fuck creases ironed away.



Posted by Linh Dinh at 3:55 PM

Labels: human-made poetry


3 comments:

Oz said...

My dick bleeds
to the tune of morons.

I die and hate
at the same time.

Morons, why do I suffer them?
Why not kill the fools?

Is this poetry?
or arrogance?

Go fuck yourself.


October 14, 2007 7:03 PM


Oz said...

Oh, Hero...
Oh! Fucking hero...

Oh! Gawd, my Vietnamese Hero.
Your poetry is non-existant.

You delude your self...
You think yourself a poet...

but you are only a fool.

Sadly.

Sadly.

Sadly.

You pray to accept the hospitality
of a place not your home..

You accept that hospitality and
insult it in the same moment?

Are you ah hypocrite
or are you a hero?

The poet wants to know...

Eat shit and bark at the moon.


October 14, 2007 7:40 PM


Oz said...

So there you see it...

Any idiot can write this shit and the shit you write is not poetry.

Get over yourself dude.


October 14, 2007 7:42 PM


.............

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

The State Dept.’s Murderous Guardians

By Robert Scheer
Posted on Truthdig, Oct 2, 2007

How did it come to be that the ostensibly best-educated and most refined representatives of the United States in Iraq are guarded by gun-toting mercenaries who kill innocent civilians? More urgently, why did State Department employees and their bosses in Washington tolerate—and pay to conceal—the wanton murder conducted on their watch?

That’s the real scandal of the more than $832 million the U.S. State Department paid Blackwater, investigated this week by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, headed by Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). The issue is not simply that of the Blackwater forces’ horrid behavior but, more important, why the mayhem they unleashed upon innocent Iraqis was approved and covered up by the Bush administration. For example, why did a top State Department official initially suggest a payment of $250,000 of American taxpayers’ money to conceal the uncontested fact that, as the House committee report states, “a drunken Blackwater contractor killed the guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi”?

The State Department enabled the Blackwater shooter to be spirited out of the country within 36 hours, and although Blackwater subsequently fired him, he has never faced any criminal charges. Nor have any of the others involved in the 195 shooting incidents Blackwater officials admitted have occurred in the past two years, incidents in which 84 percent of the time Blackwater contractors fired first. According to Blackwater’s own documents, the congressional committee reports, “in the vast majority of incidents ... Blackwater shots are fired from a moving vehicle and Blackwater does not remain on the scene to determine if their shots resulted in casualties.” During one trip U.S. diplomats made to the Ministry of Oil, 18 different Iraqi civilian vehicles were smashed by the fast-moving motorcade. Those hit-and-runs were conducted in full view of the escorted State Department officials without any of them forcing a subsequent investigation.

[...]

Posted by Linh Dinh at 9:33 AM

Labels: Iraq, too late late capitalism, war


1 comments:

Oz said...

Are you an American? Duh, no, you are a Viet Namese. Why did you come to America? If it sucks so badly, why aren't you in Viet Nam?

You know my father died in Viet Nam, yep, that's right. He died there but he did not know it for another twenty years. He died because he had been exposed to Agent Orange.

I talked to a Viet Namese fellow on line shortly after 9/11. We understood each other, expecially when I explained that my father believed in what he was doing.

What do you believe? What do you know? Why are you such an idiot?


October 14, 2007 6:56 PM


.........
[from my blog, Detainees]