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Vietnam

Vietnam: A Victory Never To Be Forgotten

It’s a historic anniversary that the U.S. ruling class and its allies around the world wish we would forget. Fifty years ago, on 30 April 1975, U.S. imperialism suffered the worst military defeat in its history as troops of the North Vietnamese Army and South Vietnam National Liberation Front took complete control of Ho Chi Minh City (then called Saigon) and the few scattered areas of the south that had not yet been liberated. The Vietnamese victory was the culmination of more than three decades of struggle against Japanese, British, French and American imperialism. At the time, the United States was, as it still is today, the world’s leading military power. And yet that incredible power was defeated by a small, underdeveloped, mostly rural society.

How US Atrocities In Vietnam Aroused A Lifetime Of Resistance

It was in March 1971 when I walked into the penitentiary in Lompoc, California. We were stripped naked, and this big cop got right in my face with details about me on my I.D. card that he had to process. And he said, “So you’re the motherf–king Po–ck hippie that hijacked that ship.” And I walked up to him, and I was just butt naked, and I got right in his face. And I said, “Number one, I don’t know about no mf Po−ck hippie that hijacked the ship. If you’re asking me if I’m the guy that mutinied and is sentenced to mutiny, then you have the right person.” That was the very first day.

Ukraine Resembles The Fall Of Saigon In 1975

The governing regime in Kiev is desperately trying to maintain its US support, as a defeat of the US-led, NATO proxy war in Ukraine looms. It is citing the collapse of the government in South Vietnam in April 1975 as a warning, saying that something similar could happen in Ukraine. At the time, the US defeat in Vietnam was a huge blow to the image and standing of US imperialism in the world. Such pronouncements by the Kiev regime reveal a recognition that ‘its’ Ukraine has become a satellite of the United States – much as South Vietnam was widely recognized to be half a century ago. Then as now, Washington and its allies are desperately seeking to maintain their economic and military dominance over the world and to stop rising movements of liberation by the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

This Is Why Trump’s Tariffs Will Fail

In his first term as president of the United States, Donald Trump launched a trade war against China. In his second term, he has expanded that trade war to many countries around the world. In a ceremony outside the White House on April 2, which the US president dubbed “Liberation Day”, Trump announced sweeping new tariffs on dozens of countries, including high taxes on imports from top US trading partners: 54% on China, 46% on Vietnam, 25% on South Korea, 24% on Japan, and 20% on the European Union. Trump falsely claimed that these tariffs were “reciprocal”, but they were actually unilateral.

BRICS Adds 13 New ‘Partner Countries’ At Historic Summit In Kazan, Russia

The Global South-led organization BRICS is growing. More and more countries support the group’s mission: to build a multipolar world, with alternative economic institutions that are more representative and democratic, not dominated by the Western powers. BRICS held a summit in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, where 13 new “partner nations” were accepted. At this historic meeting, China’s President Xi Jinping referred to BRICS as “a vanguard for advancing global governance reform” and “reform of the international financial architecture”. Bolivia’s left-wing President Luis Arce argued that “the shield of BRICS and multipolarity” can protect formerly colonized nations, helping them resist “Western unipolarity and the tyranny of the dollar”.

War And The Constitution

Can the president fight any war he wishes? Can Congress fund any war it chooses? Are there constitutional and legal requirements that must first be met before war is waged? These questions should be addressed in a national debate over the U.S. military involvement in Ukraine and Israel. Sadly, there has been no debate. The media are mouthing what the C.I.A. is telling them, Congress is in lock-step, and only a few websites and podcasts — my own, “Judging Freedom” on YouTube, among them — are challenging the government’s reckless, immoral, illegal and unconstitutional wars.

Why Would Anyone Kill One’s Self In An Attempt To Stop A War?

Four years ago in 2018, after returning from a Veterans For Peace trip to Viet Nam, I wrote an article called “Why Would Anyone Kill One’s Self In an Attempt to Stop A War?” Now, four years later, in the past three months, two persons in the United States have taken their own lives in an attempt to change U.S. policies on Palestine and call for a Ceasefire and stop US funding to the State of Israel that would be used to kill in the Israeli genocide of Gaza.   A yet unidentified woman, wrapped in a Palestinian flag,  set herself on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia on December 1, 2023. 

Popular Enforcement Of International Law From Vietnam To Gaza

In a decision issued January 31, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California found that there is a credible case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and that the US is supporting its actions.[1] It called on the Biden administration to “examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.” While it said it had no authority to order the US to stop, it called on ordinary individuals to “confront the current siege in Gaza.” This Commentary is offered as a starting point for thinking about the implications of this decision for all of us.

Frontline Communities On Hunger Strike Against Plastics Giant Formosa

Fishers, organizers, and concerned citizens in Texas, Vietnam, and Louisiana — areas that are home to existing or proposed Formosa plants — have supported each other’s efforts to mobilize against the Taiwan-based firm, forming the organization International Monitor Formosa Alliance (IMFA). Now the alliance is launching a hunger strike to demand that the victims of a 2016 environmental disaster in central Vietnam caused by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation, a subsidiary of the Formosa Plastics Group, be compensated for their losses, that the polluted area be restored, and that those who have been jailed for protesting be released.

Hamas Campaign Recalls Tet Offensive: Could This Also Be A Turning Point?

If you stand back just far enough, history repeats itself. And we might just learn something from the outlines. The lesson comes from the Vietnam War. On January 30, 1968, during the Vietnamese New Year festival, approximately 85,000 combatants from the National Liberation Front (the so-called “Viet Cong”) and North Vietnam staged a surprise attack all across South Vietnam. The scale and the audacity of the campaign was unprecedented. But more than that, it was the surprise element that stood out. The offensive targeted over 100 locations, including cities, towns and military installations, and the capital of South Vietnam, then known as Saigon, hitherto immune from large-scale fighting.

Remembering Vietnam: Poet Doug Rawlings On The War

Doug Rawlings found poetry in 1970 after returning from his tour of duty in the Vietnam War. Over fifty years later, he returned to Vietnam for the first time. In conversation with Chris Hedges, Rawlings looks back on his experience of the war with unflinching honesty on the many crimes of the US military, and shares some of the poems he’s written to process these experiences. Doug Rawlings is a veteran of the Vietnam War who has published several volumes of poetry, including In the Shadow of the Annamese Mountains (2020). He is a cofounder of Veterans for Peace.

MLK: Beyond Vietnam To Ukraine

In April 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an eloquent and stirring denunciation of the Vietnam War and US militarism. The speech titled “Beyond Vietnam” is relevant to today’s war in Ukraine. In the speech at Riverside Church, King talked about how the US had supported France in trying to re-colonize Vietnam. He noted, “Before the end of the war we were meeting 80% of the French war costs.” When France began to despair in the war, “We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war.” King went on to recall that after the French finally left Vietnam, the United States prevented implementation of the Geneva Accord which would have allowed Ho Chi Minh to unite the divided country. Instead, the US supported its preferred South Vietnamese dictator. The U.S. has played a similar role in blocking compromise solutions and international agreements to the Ukraine conflict.

How Activists Sailed Into A War Zone

A navy warship was waiting for us when our sailing ship Phoenix came close to Da Nang, South Vietnam. It was October 1967, during a recently-escalated hot war in Vietnam. The 50-foot ketch-rigged Phoenix was loaded with medical supplies for civilians wounded by the U.S. war. I’d already been to the South Vietnamese capitol of Saigon, now named Ho Chi Minh City, in order to negotiate this trip with the government. We weren’t surprised that warships would be looking out for us. The surprise was the word from Vietnamese officials when they came up next to us. “Turn around and go back to Hong Kong,” they said. “Your visas are no longer valid; your mission is denied.” I quickly convened a meeting of our crew to decide what to do.

Lessons From Vietnam For Ukraine

Learning no lessons from the failure and mass slaughter of the Korean War in the previous decade, the US military commenced widespread bombing of Vietnam and sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers. At the time, spring 1965,  about 400 US soldiers had died in the conflict. The war was not yet  widely unpopular. Americans who protested against the Vietnam War were a small minority. It would be two years before Martin Luther King’s famous denunciation of the war. Years later, after hundreds of thousands had been drafted into the military with the deaths of tens of thousands, the war became widely unpopular. Ultimately, over 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese civilians and soldiers died in the war. The cost in human lives and wasted resources was immense.

Vietnam Veterans Descended On The Capitol 50 Years Ago This Week

On Sunday, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” profiled the Oath Keepers, a white-supremacist veterans’ group founded when President Barack Obama assumed office. The program traced the group’s history from its 2009 formation to its armed support of Cliven Bundy in 2014 to its open plotting of sedition in December 2020. Then CBS showed some cell-phone footage of the 40 members of the group on Jan. 6, 2021, as they breached the U.S. Capitol in perfect military formation. That insurrection’s aftereffects are still being felt, with 400 participants having been arrested by the Justice Department. Now, as indictments loom, at least one Oath Keeper is openly cooperating with the Department of Justice, and the country’s two political parties are broadcasting dueling narratives about Jan. 6.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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