您的位置：首页 > 新闻中心 > 社会 > 正文

方谬神探

August 10th: Remembering a Day of Tragedy for the People of Vietnam_我的网站

捉迷藏

A |

It was a motorcade that recalled the highly protected trips Donald Trump took when he was the president of the United States. The streets had been cleared for his easy passage, law enforcement on motorcycles made sure he was safe, and the area where Trump was visiting was locked down hours before he arrived.

But this was no rally, no presidential speech. Trump was taking a grim trip – albeit one more luxurious than most in his position – to a notoriously run-down Fulton County jail, where he was formally put under arrest for more than a dozen charges that could land him behind bars for many years if he is convicted.

Most candidates would not want images of themselves being forced to appear at a jail and processed on racketeering charges. In an earlier era not so long ago, it would have spelled the end of a political campaign.

But for Trump, a man who spent his career slapping his name on everything from hotels to steaks and vodka, and who delighted in having his name in the New York City gossip columns, even the indignity of being treated like a common criminal wasn't enough to evoke the slightest embarrassment.

"From a bottom-line business perspective,” Trump wrote in his book "The Art of the Deal," referring to a controversy during the building of Trump Tower, “bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all.”

Trump's surrender Thursday was hardly designed to avoid publicity. The former president was given two weeks – with a deadline of noon Friday – to show up at the Fulton County jail for processing on more than a dozen charges related to a scheme to steal the presidential election in Georgia.

He could have come at any time in a 24-hour period. He chose to arrive at prime-time viewing hours, when much of the country would be home from work and able to watch his arrival on TV.

It wasn't the first time – by a long shot – that Trump has been in a legal conflict, and it wasn't even the first time he was indicted. But the former president's processing at a decrepit Fulton County jail Thursday brought him closest to being treated like a common criminal defendant.

It was a rare example of Trump not being somewhere largely on his own terms. He had a deadline to appear in person or face a warrant for his arrest. He had to endure the typical indignities of lesser-known accused criminals, including having law enforcement take a photo of one of the most recognizable faces in the country.

In his three previous indictments – two federal sets of charges and one in New York City, brought by the local district attorney – Trump has been given a lot more leeway.

He has had to appear in court but has not been forced in those three cases to go through the usual processing – although he has found reason to complain about his treatment, reportedly getting rankled when a federal judge during an arraignment in Washington addressed him as “Mr. Trump” after his lawyers introduced him as “President Trump.”

But while Trump's defenders say he is the victim of a two-tiered system of justice, the former president has still enjoyed special status – not just as a high-profile defendant but as a wealthy one, legal experts say.

Trump wasn't asked to turn in his passport or agree to a range of pre-trial demands often put on defendants (such as not using alcohol or drugs). He's not been told not to leave the state.

The former president hasn't had to endure the humiliation of the "perp walk" – where prosecutors build public support for a case by parading handcuffed defendants in a walk to the courthouse. Notably, the practice was elevated by one-time federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, who is now among Trump's 18 co-defendants in the Georgia case and who is free on $150,000 bond.

This booking photo provided by Fulton County Sheriff's Office, shows former President Donald Trump on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023, after he surrendered and was booked at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta. Trump is accused by District Attorney Fani Willis of scheming to subvert the will of Georgia voters in a desperate bid to keep Joe Biden out of the White House. (Fulton County Sheriff's Office via AP)Uncredited

Nor has Trump been handcuffed or jailed while awaiting posting of bail, as many defendants are. And the very fact that Trump has the resources to post bond separates him from the majority of defendants, notes Russell Gold, a University of Alabama School of Law professor who is an expert on civil and criminal procedure.

"Pre-trial detention has been the place where his treatment is somewhat exceptional," says Gold, and allows him more leeway in his case. In many cases, even innocent defendants agree to plead guilty because they can't afford bail, and so agree to a plea of time served, he says. Spending time in jail, even for an innocent defendant, can cause life-changing consequences such as the loss of a job or custody of children. Detained defendants also have a harder time meeting with lawyers to prepare their cases, Gold notes.

Between 1970 and 2015, the number of people who have been detained prior to trial increased 433% – and pre-trial detainees are the larger proportion of all incarcerated individuals, according to a 2022 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Six out of 10 defendants are behind bars before trial simply because they can't afford bail, the commission found – a problem the wealthy former president, who has raised millions for his defense, does not have.

Once at the courthouse, the Trump processing went quickly – another experience atypical for the typical defendant, says Atlanta-based attorney Chris Timmons, who was a Georgia county prosecutor for 17 years before entering private practice.

In one case, where he was defending someone in information technology, it took three hours to get him booked, Timmons said, as law enforcement searched for paperwork.

Trump has also been given more notice, and an ability to surrender on his own schedule, says Jarrett Wolf, a former prosecutor and former Drug Enforcement Agency special agent now in private legal practice in Miami. "He wasn't arrested at 6 in the morning," as is often done with people charged with crimes, Wolf says.

The former president also knew about the investigations of his behavior and was given a heads-up that charges were coming.

"It's unusual to have a warning that the government is investigating you," Gold says.

Trump's legal team has cited the massive trove of documents handed over to them as a reason to delay the federal trial on charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection until April 2026. But it's unusual for a defendant to be given papers and evidence by the prosecution at such an early stage, Gold says – another advantage Trump has over typical defendants.

Trump, however, isn't acting like a typical defendant, either. Instead of trying to keep his legal problems private – or walking into a courthouse or jail with his jacket pulled over his face – the former president is reveling in the attention, which riles up his political base and feeds his contention that he is being persecuted for political reasons.

"I think there is a sort of political logic in his mind here, the argument that he is being targeted by the liberal state," says David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College. "So I think rather than act like he is ashamed of it – which I don't think he is, anyway – the strategy is to court the attention and to frame yourself as if the attacks you are experiencing are symbolic of the attacks on your supporters."

That approach seems to be working for the former president, so far: A Des Moines Register/NBC poll this week found that support for Trump among Iowa Republicans hardened after the Georgia indictments. Before the Fulton County charges, 55% of Iowa Republicans favored or were “actively considering Trump." After the fourth indictment, that number went up to 67%, the poll found.

Next year, however, political rhetoric may become legal reality for Trump, who could face several trials during his campaign for president. With a daunting campaign schedule competing with court appearances, the former president may find that there is, indeed, such a thing as bad publicity.

。 Some three million Vietnamese were affected by direct contact with dioxin in that decade.,14% of the territory of South Vietnam was exposed to this toxin, causing severe consequences for the land and nature. Five thousand square kilometers of mangrove forests were almost completely destroyed; about 10,000 square kilometers of jungle and more than a thousand square kilometers of lowland forests were affected. American troops destroyed 70% of the coconut plantations and 60% of the Gewea plantations; they also changed the ecological balance of Vietnam.,The affected areas lost 18 out of 150 bird species; nearly all amphibians and insects disappeared; the number of fish in rivers decreased, and their composition changed. The microbiological composition of soils was disturbed. Changes in the fauna resulted in the replacement of black rats, which are safe for humans, with other species that were plague carriers. Alterations in the mosquito species composition led to the introduction of malaria-carrying ones. Dioxin: A Permanently Exploding Bomb The large-scale US use of chemical warfare in Vietnam lasted until late 1971. But this war was not over for Vietnam itself, said Professor Andrei Kuznetsov, director general of the Russian Division of the Joint Russo-Vietnamese Research and Technology Tropical Center, in an interview with Sputnik.,“This is because dioxins, once inside the human body, begin to work like an HIV infection. If a person is completely healthy, they do not affect him. As soon as the human immune system weakens and any disease begins, dioxins immediately get integrated into the disease chains and start working in their own way. No one knows just how. They can cause cancer, damage to the liver, skin, respiratory system, and much more. Dioxin pathology is very diverse. And the most tragic thing is that it is inherited through mother's milk. More than a million and a half Vietnamese in the three postwar generations have suffered from it. For an extremely long time, for many generations, dioxins will continue to be passed on from women to their children. Moreover, there is no minimum permissible dose for dioxins,” says Andrei Kuznetsov.,Today, Vietnam faces the ever-present threat that children will be born with a wide variety of defects. To this day, several villages there are closed to the public, where children are born into families with various deformities. There are several specialized boarding schools where children with genetic defects live. Scientists from different countries have been studying the effects of dioxin on soil for a long time, but only in temperate and northern climates. No one has studied its impact in the tropics. There have been no studies on what happens when dioxin molecules enter the soil under tropical conditions, continued Professor Kuznetsov.,“The Joint Russo-Vietnamese Research and Tropical Technology Center is the first and only one to address this issue. It was commonly believed that dioxin molecules were insoluble. Supposedly, humus binds them and they remain in the top layer of the soil. One could bulldoze or even shovel it and burn it. But it turns out that things are different in the tropics. Dioxin molecules bind with various acids in the soil, forming new dioxin-containing molecules that become water-soluble and water-permeable. They mix with rainfall streams, sink into the soil, get transported by subsurface water, and subsequently enter wells, lakes, rivers, and seas hundreds of kilometers away from where they were sprayed. This situation persists in Vietnam to this day. There are several ‘hot spots’; places where, during the aggression, the Americans stored barrels with chemical agents. When they left Vietnam, they shot these barrels with large-caliber machine guns and left them there. For example, this happened in Da Nang, which was one of the largest US military bases. And the same happened at the US military base in Bien Hoa. These two former bases are still the largest and scariest hotbeds of contamination,” said Andrei Kuznetsov.,The expert also noted that the Americans recently have conducted a demonstrative action in Da Nang – and have now begun it in Bien Hoa – to decontaminate the soil to a depth of two meters in those places where barrels with warfare agents were stored. But they don`t check the level of dioxin contamination even within the radius of 200-300 meters from the storage sites. Meanwhile, subsurface water transports pesticides far beyond those limits.,The Mission of Joint Tropical Center The Joint Russo-Vietnamese Research and Technology Tropical Center has been studying the consequences of the US chemical war in Vietnam since its founding. In fact, it was established precisely for this work, noted Professor Kuznetsov.,“We were tasked with determining whether contact with dioxin leads to genetic changes in humans and has a detrimental effect on soil, flora, and fauna. Our conclusion - yes, it does. The results of our work were published and reported to the leadership of Vietnam’s Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Health, together with our scientific and practical recommendations on combating various dioxin-related effects. At the same time, we noted that the most effective, global way to prevent dioxins from damaging people is to take maximum care of their health. That is, Vietnam needs to invest much more in health care than countries that have not been exposed to this toxic chemical. We cannot yet say when the effects of US chemical warfare will cease in Vietnam. After all, Vietnam is the first and only country to have been exposed to such massive amounts of poisonous substances,” Kuznetsov concluded.。