User talk:Ionius Mundus

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Welcome!

Hello, Ionius Mundus, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  Karmafist 01:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Republic of South Vietnam

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. As a member of the Wikipedia community, I would like to remind you of Wikipedia's neutral-point-of-view policy for editors, which you appear to have violated at Republic of South Vietnam. In the meantime, please be bold and continue contributing to Wikipedia. Thank you! (No more bongos 02:11, 24 July 2006 (UTC))

Would the Fall/Liberation of Saigon be better? However, it was renamed within 24 hours of its capture. Thank you for notifying me. --Ionius Mundus 02:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I won't change that, someone else might - but go for it. Thanks for being flexible and not getting into a war of changing back and forth :)

(No more bongos 02:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)) Yes, you are welcome, and suggestions to improve my edits are always welcome. --Ionius Mundus 02:17, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I need you to do a favor?

Can you please do me a little favour by editing all the NVA terms to VPA terms on some important battles? I'm a Vietnamese so "NVA" is like a pain in my butt, and VPA is the official name as well. If Americans call our troops NVA, why don't they call the South Vietnamese Army "SVA"? I'm just 13 so I need your help. Anyway, nice picture of President Ho Chi Minh! Thank you151.202.11.188 21:14, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I am very busy lately, but I will try to clear some time to do this within a week. Last time I tried it, it was reverted, so I can not guarantee it will stay, but I can try. I am glad to find some agreement on the topic. --Ionius Mundus 01:55, 29 November 2006 (UTC) (Nguyện Chí Luộng)

[edit] Ho Chi Minh

You might like to check out whats going down there. - FrancisTyers · 22:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

No problem, also see the stuff added by User:CJK. - FrancisTyers · 23:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] stalinism and nk

hello ionius mundus. thanks for the question about nk and stalinism. as for a reference, go to bruce cumings' works. a couple of books would be "koreas place in the sun" and "nk: another country."

his basic point, and i agree, is that stalinism is particular form of communism (though i think a heck of a stretch) that emphasizes consolidation of all control into a central state appartus, pursues forced industrializtion that privleges heavy industry, and contends that the state leads the people. on the last one, the "mass line" (relationship between the state and the masses, basically) is clearly a "top-down, to the masses, end of discussion" sort of relationship.

and as one quick reference here, for mao and china, the mass line was offically "from the masses to the masses." meaning that inspriation and leadership lay with the masses, who would then communicate their ideas to the state, who would then rework it and return it to the masses. rather democractic really.

now then, lets look at juche and nk. they did NOT emphasize heavy industrialization to the exclusion of other sectors of the economy, though the did industrialize rapidly. next, juche distains the "vanguard" idea and sees the mass line like this... "from the state, to the masses, to the state." plus, they do NOT see socialims in one state, which was a key point in stalinism.

for nk, this means, the state comes up with an idea, then send it to the masses to check and see if it works, then they get feed back from the masses, tinder with the idea, and then send it back down for implementatin.

this is really not far off from how nk worked for a long time. look at all the pix of the now dead as a doornail leader daddy kim. he is ALWAYS doing some sort of visit to some hydroplant or pig farm. he goes there, listens to the people, and then gives "on the spot guidance." the really this gets big play is because THAT is what their mass line is about. the leadership talks with the masses, then give them plans, ideas, etc.

finally, look at the symbol of nk. it has a scyth, hammer, and PEN all crossed over each other. in nk, intellectuals are highly valued and take their place right next to workers and peasants. did stalin do that as part of his official policies? nope. did mao? nope, he never trusted the intellectual class.

so, does that help you see some of the differences between nk's system and stalinism?

the problem, as you noted, is that most western writers know diddly squat about communism and even less about nk. so, they like to seize upon images that both over simplify and demonize nk. and if they all engage in pack journalism and keep repeating something, it becomes a truism.

so, thanks again for the question. i hope i did not swamp you with this response.Hongkyongnae 18:39, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] p.s.

p.s. i like your politics. Hongkyongnae 18:39, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. --Ionius Mundus 19:02, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] more thoughts on nk

"Thank you very much. I have only a few more questions, if you don't mind. Do you think Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung have actually cared for the North Korean people? Why are North Koreans so severely restricted from traveling? And why are they so incredibly secretive, probably beyond the secrecy of any other country? It is these restrictions and this secrecy that had led me to generally trust the American word on North Korea (not something I do very often). Sorry to flood you with questions. Respectfully, 완원용(阮願龍)/Ionius Mundus 20:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC)"

no problem with questions, i love to talk about this sort of thing. do i think kim ilsung and kim jongil care about the people in nk? for kim ilsung, absolutely 100% yes. his history is interesting. born in 1912 (the same day the titanic sank!) by the 1930s he was living in the mountains of manchuria, joining/organizing anti-japanese guerrillas, being chased by vey deadly efficient japanese police/military. he fought like this for about a decade. eventually, the japanese military, using korean collaborators, destroyed his small guerrilla group and a few reminants ran away to russia to live. what sort of person would sacrifice and suffer so much if he did not love his country?

you can say what you want about daddy kim's policies, but dont doubt that he loved his country, including its people. after the experience of the korean civil war, to the end of his life he fought to make sure nk did not become dependent on foreign technology, oil, resources, etc. that is the main point of juche ideology, to make his country independent and strong so that foreign nations could not invade as the japanese and americans and UN did. and he did not want china or russia telling him and nk what to do.

daddy kim gained power in the north in 1946 because he, unlike others, worked with the people in the countryside, organizing them. he believed in the spirit of socialist revolution and the role of the people in a way similar to ho chi minh. stalin did not.

the desire for national independence from foreign influences has combined with the history of US invasion/threats to make nk scared of being attacked again. their main defense is to present a solid, monolithic, strong image to the rest of the world. to convince the world that nk is a unified country. plus, nk demands that every other country in the world treat them with respect as an equal. many people in the US dont like that.

by the way, in the 1990s, bill clinton almost attacked nk. that is the sort of thing that convinces the nk people and leaders that only complete national unity and resolve can save them. they believe that without secrecy and strength and economic/military self-reliance other nations will attack them or control them.

another point on daddy kim, unlike the leaders of romania, the phillipines, iran, south vietnam, albania and elsewhere, kim did not bankrupt his country building palaces and wealth for himself.

by the way, until 1975 nk was the second most industrialized nation in asia. by the 1990s a combo of bad policy decisions and the inherent limits of juchi ideology and 5 years of terrible, terrible weather pushed nk into economic disaster. their answer to this disaster is not to invite foreigners in and let them control nk through loans, "advisors" etc unless it is absolutely necessary. and once aid builds them up, they will tell the foreigners to leave.

wow, this is too long now. i dont think baby kim has the same love for nk people that his dad had. sorry to drone on, but i am happy to find someone asking good questions about nk for a change.

[edit] North Korean Central Bank

The foreign exchange certificates were issued by Bank of Trade (무역은행). I corrected the article of North Korean won. --Chochopk 04:29, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] North Korea's System of Government

Please visit Talk:North_Korea#System_of_Government before changing the entry. Thanks! crazyeddie 04:35, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Have replied to your comment at Talk:North_Korea#System_of_Government. I won't revert again until this has been settled. It might be nice to wait for more comments, perhaps have some sort of straw poll. I've seen Communist, Socialist, Socialist state, Communist state, Authoritarian state, etc. It would be nice to come to some sort of firm consensus that we could reference in the future. And after becoming more aware of the issues, I retract my earlier laize faire attitude :-) I still don't think it's worth fighting over, but I'd rather hash it out now than have to continually deal with it for the next eon. At any rate, The Daily Show is about to come on, so I'm about to shut it down for the night. crazyeddie 04:45, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Dear Ionius Mundus, sorry, could not work out how to send a private message to you. You asked about citation for my "claims" about NK elections. Well, I lived in NK and other Communist countries long enough to smile when you call it "claims" (a bit like "Mr.X claims that the sky is blue"). But FYI you might check the KCNA web pages, they regularly report the 100% support. If you read Korean and have access to Nodong Sinmun or other official crap, just open the front page next day after elections. Re 1-candidate-per-1-seat, it's a universal Communist principle, and they do not make secret of it. As far as I remember, lists of all candidates (one per voting distric of course) are published in papers few weeks before elections.

[edit] The Vietnam War

Hi, in response to your question the reason I deleted China because I felt that they didn't belong in that catergory, yes they were in VietNam but they didn't fight. At least from my knowledge. As for VPA vs. NVA, I think VPA is appropriate because that is the official name for the Vietnamese army.Canpark 06:33, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Warning

This is the second time I've seen you switching over articles, against policy. If I see it again, I'm going to block you. Raul654 20:36, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, you may want to take a good long look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Sortan#Preferred_styles Raul654 20:40, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] nk and defining standards

hello IM. your last note had me thinking, which is good. i did not mean to leave you with the message that "since all peoples have different definitions of freedom, justice, blah, blah no one can judge them but themselves." certainly we would be missing a crucial point if we only used western standards to view ourselves, nk, or anyone. what seems to make more sense to me is this. maybe, use the standards of THAT people to look at them. how and what do nk ideals say their country SHOULD be. and then look at them. i hope that helps you a bit. Hongkyongnae 14:08, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] National_League_for_Democracy.svg removed from your user page

-- tariqabjotu 15:41, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request

Since you are obviously knowledge about Vietnamese topics, can you please write me an article on the T'ai ethnic minority mentioned in the Dien Bien Phu article? Raul654 02:03, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kim Il-sung

Hey, what you added (김일성장군의 노래) means "song of general Kim Il-sung". Why are you adding it there? -- Amorette 04:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Passing away of Uncle Hồ

I don't think one will likely ever find an explicit admission of coverup by communists. Nevertheless, the change now to September 2 is a tacit admission (you will see the English version of the same article still claims September 3). I will ask in the Vietnamese Wikipedia for sources, since they have done more research in this matter (have more access to Vietnam-made material). DHN 18:19, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

It was definitely changed. As recently as 1997, the government still claims 9.47 a.m on September 3, 1969 [[1]. DHN 18:39, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

He wanted to be cremated, with his ashes scattered in the whole country. Instead, they deified him. See vi:Thảo luận:Hồ Chí Minh#Về việc sửa đổi di chúc của Hồ Chí Minh. In a recent article in An ninh thế giới (published by the People's Police of Vietnam), Vũ Kỳ, HCM's secretary, the person who directly trascribed his will, described how the will was censored. He still has a copy of the original in his house. He said that it was his biggest regret. Also a new book published in Vietnam entitled Di chúc Hồ Chí Minh has a copy of each version of his will. These articles (published in Vietnam) mention the sensored part of the will [2][3] DHN 18:54, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about his time of death, but according to [4] he died at 9:47 AM on September 2. The uncensored version of his will wasn't made public until very recently. DHN 19:17, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I think I remember seeing that picture in a postcard in a bookstore while I was in HCMC last month. I don't remember what it was, but it was probably him waving to some schoolchildren. If you'd like to know more, you can ask at the Vietnamese Wikipedia (you can use English or Vietnamese). The death time is probably Vietnam time. DHN 19:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure all the pics are public domain since they were published in a communist country during the 1950s-1960s (where no copyright laws exist). I tried to use this pic in the HCM article but it was deleted because I couldn't prove that it was public domain (despite the fact that it's used in every single public location in Vietnam). Maybe you should try the "fair use" way...DHN 19:37, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk page

I get it, sorry for the confusion, page now deleted per your request. NawlinWiki 15:09, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

For your contributions to articles that I would've edited myself if you hadn't already done the work for me. You have my full support and appreciation. Cloudreaver 19:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

It's a well known picture. One foreign journalist had taken the photograph while Ho Chi Minh was saying goodbye to a group of foreign guests (including the photographer) after a meeting, in a quite natural way (not arranged photo, Ho Chi Minh was looking at those guests not for a photo, but for saying goodbye). It was possibly at the ground of en:Presidential Palace, Hanoi, where Ho Chi Minh usually received foreign guests. This picture later was a gift of the photographer to the government of Vietnam, so I guess public domain applies here. But you have to read those Vietnamese newspapers where I think I got these information from, before taking my words into account. - Trần Thế Trung | (thảo luận) 17:04, 6 tháng 9 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kinyarwanda

Muraho Ionius,

Where did you learn Kinyarwanda? Have you been in the country or just taking an interest from outside? Re your question about 'hello', there are several different forms. Muraho (or uraho in the singular/informal) is a form used if you've never met the person before, or not for a long time (it means literally "you're alive".) If you have seen them recently then you say Mwaramutse/Waramutse (good morning) or Mwiriwe/Wiriwe (good afternoon), depending on the time of day. Amakuru means news, but is also a very common greeting, usually following the hello. A typical conversation might be:

Muraho. (hello)

Muraho neza. (hello a lot)

Amakuru? (what's the news?)

Ni meza. (it's good)

I've not heard of nakuru before, except as a town in Kenya, though it could have some more obscure meaning I don't know about!

I have a small English-Kinyarwanda dictionary which was given to us when we first arrived. I don't know if its published or widely available anywhere though. It also lacks a lot of words. I believe there are people actively working on a dictionary right now, but it probably won't be out until next year. Doing a quick websearch, it seems Emmanuel Habumuremyi (who seems to have created his own Wikipedia vanity article!) is actively involved in this, so if you've not already done so you could contact him on emmahab "at" mail "dot" rw. I'm very interested in this myself, both from the point of view of compiling a glossary of computing terms and for use in the spell checker on OpenOffice.

If you speak French, I think there's a lot more available. I have a book at home called "Twige Ikinyarwanda" (Let's speak Kinyarwanda) which offers a course in Kinyarwanda through French. It uses rather odd spellings though, often putting double vowels which don't exist anywhere else, possibly to indicate pronunciation.

Hope that helps! SteveRwanda 16:55, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Burundi Bwacu

(I really should remember to add quesitons that I want added to the user's user page as well, I can't always assume eveyone's constantly visits the article page to check for followups to that talk page):

I posted the following to the Burundi Bwacu talk page earlier:

That [the fact that the title translates to "Our Burundi" rather than the stated "Beloved Burundi"] could very well be (Wikipedia's, and your, knowledge of Kinyarwanda is better than my own), however, the translation could still use "Beloved Burundi" depending on which language is translated in the translation, French or Kirundi (and is Kirundi the same as Kinyarwanda?) The French lyrics begin "Cher Burundi", which does translate to "Beloved Burundi", and the rest of the translation looks like a translation of the French, rather than the Kirundi. Is there someone out there whose knowledge of Kirundi is such that they can determine if the rest of the translation is faithful to the Kirundi?--Canuckguy 23:50, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Orphaned fair use image (Image:Prachanda Poster.jpg)

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[edit] Image:National League for Democracy.svg

Hello Ionius Mundus, an automated process has found an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, such as fair use. The image (Image:National League for Democracy.svg) was found at the following location: User:Ionius Mundus/NSEPA Main. This image or media will be removed per statement number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media will be replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. The image that was replaced will not be automatically deleted, but it could be deleted at a later date. Articles using the same image should not be affected by my edits. I ask you to please not readd the image to your userpage and could consider finding a replacement image licensed under either the Creative Commons or GFDL license or released to the public domain. Thanks for your attention and cooperation. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 01:49, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vietnam WikiProject

I am told you might be interested in a separate WikiProject for Vietnam, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Southeast Asia, I have posted the proposal at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Vietnam_WikiProject Chris 04:16, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] November 2007

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Pol Pot, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. RolandR 22:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pol Pot "Vandalism"?

I'm sorry. On my browser, at least, the Khmer characters did not appear (and still do not, after your latest revision), just a row of question marks. There was no way that I could know that your intention was to add the name in Khmer. I don't know whether this is a problem specific to me, or whether other users also see an incorrect rendering; I am using Firefox, with UTF-8 Unicode character rendering. RolandR 20:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I have now looked at other pages , and see the the same problem occurs wherever Khmer script is used. However, on some pages (eg Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk), the Khmer name is inserted as a png image, which appears correctly. This suggests that it is indeed a common problem, and also offers a workaround. RolandR 21:39, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy deletion of Template:User Proaungsansuukyi

A tag has been placed on Template:User Proaungsansuukyi requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:23, 20 February 2008 (UTC)