NB: This book changed my life. I read it when I was seventeen. Along with Palestine, Vietnam’s valiant struggle against American imperialism was the epic of our generation. I will salute the Vietnamese people till the end of my days. DS “There are few parallels with the war in Vietnam. It has lasted nearly two… Read More Against the crime of silence: Bertrand Russell’s War Crimes in Vietnam (1967)
We’re Right Again. Now that it is too late, it’s no longer forbidden to use the word “genocide” in polite company. Now, as Gazans starve, as they are shot by soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces while seeking food aid at sites run by the farcically-named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the world has decided it is, after all, “against this.” Only recently,… Read More For Once in Our Lives
First posted June 16, 2016 NB: Two perceptive comments on Modi in America: Kesavan notices his pathetic yearning to be accepted at the high table of the Anglophone powers; Chatterjee sees through to the symbolism of his homage to US soldiers killed during the Vietnam war. For those who may not know it, the RSS referred to the American intervention as… Read More Mukul Kesavan: Speaking in tongues – Narendra Modi & the Anglosphere / Garga Chatterjee: Modi salutes US military casualties in the Vietnam War (2016)
This impeccably sourced account of the secretive agency during a period of global turmoil deserves a Pulitzer John Simpson In 1976 when we were both based in Brussels, my BBC mentor, the great Charles Wheeler, came back to the office from a grand US embassy party one evening and remarked: “The cleverest and most entertaining… Read More The Mission by Tim Weiner: Unmasking the CIA
Based on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling history of the American war on Vietnamese civilians. Turse’s central aim in Kill Anything that Moves is to expose the unparalleled obscenity of the Vietnam War: unparalleled both in terms of the devastating scale and variety of harm done and the diabolical levels of premeditation on the part of the… Read More Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam
The reports on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction decided that the US invasion of Iraq could start. Today, we know that these weapons were fiction, an image produced to justify the war. Discussing Hannah Arendt and the Viet Nam war, Cathy Caruth shows that this type of political imagery has a long tradition in the… Read More Lying and history: Hannah Arendt and the Viet Nam war (2009)
“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam” – M. L. King “Civil disobedience arises when a significant number of citizens have become convinced either that the normal channels of change no longer function, and grievances will not be heard or acted upon, or that, on the contrary the government… Read More Seyla Benhabib: Breaking Silence, Hannah Arendt, and Martin Luther King
Thousands of Vietnamese have waved red flags and sang patriotic songs as a grand military parade held in Ho Chi Minh City concluded Vietnam’s 50th anniversary celebrations of the end of war with the United States. Wednesday’s event commemorated the first act of the country’s reunification on April 30, 1975, when communist-run North Vietnam seized… Read More Vietnam celebrates 50th anniversary of victory against US imperialism
For vast numbers of Americans, disproportionately young, the monstrous warfare overseen by Presidents Johnson and Nixon caused the scales to fall from their eyes about the character of U.S. leadership. And like President Donald Trump now, President Joe Biden showed that nice-sounding rhetoric could serve as a tidy cover story for choosing to enable nonstop horrors without… Read More How the Vietnam and Gaza Wars Shattered Young Illusions About US Leaders
The myth that news coverage turned Americans against the war persists. In fact, it was largely complicit in perpetuating the conflict Norman Solomon The last helicopter liftoff from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon on 30 April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam war. Fifty years later, mythology about US media coverage of… Read More The US left Vietnam 50 years ago today. The media hasn’t learned its lesson
After the truth-shower 