From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer comes a moving and unflinchingly personal meditation on the literary forms of otherness and a bold call for expansive political solidarity. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures Born in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1975. The Nguyen family would… Read More Viet Thanh Nguyen -To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other
The Real Costs of the War on Iran and the Continuities of American History Kabir Rao – Navigating the Nuclear Age The involvement of the United States across the Global South or, in older parlance, the Third World, has a long and tragic history. Its encounters with Third World Countries have generally involved the practice… Read More What Has America Lost?
Patrick Wintour n a 1965 speech justifying the war in Vietnam, Lyndon B Johnson argued that the goal was to ensure “every country can shape its own destiny” since only in such a world could the US secure its own freedom. However, he also admitted “such were infirmities of man that force must often precede… Read More Could Trump’s Iran ‘excursion’ be a bigger global turning point than Vietnam?
Tom Engelhardt ( Tom Engelhardt Substack) – I recently drove to a gas station in Massachusetts to fill my tank with regular gas, the cheapest around, and, to my surprise, given what’s going on, it was only $4.59 a gallon. Okay, okay, I take back that “only” and admit it. It’s not good to joke about the nightmare… Read More America’s Imperial Wars, from Korea to Iran
NB: A gripping and very informative account of the intertwined crises that led to war and global confrontation in 1970-1971. I was a small witness to it from the Indian side of the border; and was caught up in the political cyclone which became the central theme for my novel Revolution Highway. Indeed, it was… Read More The Vortex
At a time when Black military history is being rewritten under Trump officials, new book The War Within a War provides a vital reminder Martin Pengelly Wil Haygood’s new book, his 10th, is The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home. Meeting in Washington DC to discuss it, he produces from… Read More ‘A white man’s war, a Black man’s fight’: the eye-opening story of Black soldiers in Vietnam
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
