Biased witness

[Charles Brown]

I'm not sure what I am not reporting
accurately. I understood you to use
that particular, individual person's
experience and opinion as the only one
you were relying on in that post. I don't 
recall you mentioning any other evidence
that communists are criminals in Viet Nam. 
As you
say below, it was anecdotal evidence.
It was also, no offense , biased. Not
because I say it is, but because for
some reason you put explicitly in what
you wrote that he was anti-communist
and had experience fighting the communists.
I don't ignore his life and struggle, but it
is not the type of evidence you would rely
on solely to make the levels of generalization
about modern government , communism vs
capitalism , etc. as you do in the rest of your post.

It's the same old story.
During the Viet Nam war era many Viet Namese
got on television and told Americans that
the Communists were criminals and we should
send our troops there to fight them. So, such
evidence has a suspect history.

I respect Loi as a mechanic, but not as my main 
authoritative empirical source on Viet Namese
politics.

I could believe SOME Viet Namese communists
are criminals. But all or most I am very, very
skeptical about.

You are right. This is e-mail. So, I am making
an e-mail challenge to your particular e-mail
statement and reasoning.

Charles Brown


>>> Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at tsoft.com> 07/24 12:44 AM >>>

Charles Brown notes:

It MIGHT be true, but it would be 
foolish to rely on that witness only
if you really wanted to know the
truth. Why rely on this person's
word alone ? Chuck Grimes
frames it as "he believes this
guy". So, now we proceed to
draw major political conclusions
from a source that we know has
reason to bias the reportage.

----------------

Guys,

Look, I put in the background and proviso about Loi so you would be in
more or less the same position as I was--under the theory, if you can't
report accurately, at least note the source with qualifications. This is
just antedotal and close enough for my speculations on the problems of
founding a civilian political structure under extreme duress after
fifty years of colonial and revolutionary war. This is e-mail, not a
journal. I didn't propose Loi as a sociologist. He is a mechanic.

So, for the record, no I don't expect Vietnam is completely corrupt,
but I would be fairly sure, those kinds of problems are out of control.
And this illustrates not the evilness of the vietnamese or whatever
communist planning they have managed to pull off. It does indicate to
me that creating, staffing, and running a relatively clean and
representative judicial/legal system is very difficult and was probably
not a top priority.

And, no, I am not particularly convinced that capital is the
fundamental source of all crime and corruption (apriori), although
clearly such problems are supercharged under capital exploitation. 

Chuck Grimes