Stop the Hogs!

Forty Years Ago, April 30, 1975. Who Won the Vietnam War?

[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-won-th ... am-war/172 ]

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, April 17, 2015

April 1975 marks the official end of the Vietnam War. Yet today, Vietnam is an impoverished countries. The Hanoi government is a US proxy regime. Vietnam has become a new cheap labor frontier of the global economy. Neoliberalism prevails.

In a bitter irony, Vietnam which was a victim of US war crimes has become a staunch military ally of the US under Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” which threatens China.

In 1994, I undertook field research in Vietnam with the support of Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture, which enabled me to visit and conduct interviews in rural areas in both the North and South.

This article was written twenty years ago, initially published on April 30th 1995 in the context of the 20th anniversary of the Liberation of Saigon. A more in-depth analysis focusing on Hanoi’s neoliberal reforms was subsequently published as a chapter in my book, The Globalization of Poverty, first edition 1997, second edition, 2003. [ http://www.amazon.ca/The-Globalization- ... 0973714700 ] - Michel Chossudovsky, April 17, 2015

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On April 30, 1975, the Vietnam War ended with the capture of Saigon by Communist forces and the surrender of General Duong Vanh Minh and his cabinet in the Presidential palace. As troops of the People’s Army of Vietnam marched into Saigon, U.S. personnel and the last American marines were hastily evacuated from the roof of the U.S. embassy. Twenty years later a fundamental question still remains unanswered: Who won the Vietnam War?

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[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-won-th ... am-war/172 ]

Backward bill passed, but Vietnamese-Canadians move forward

[ http://www.embassynews.ca/opinion/2015/ ... ward/47036 ]

Dai Trang Nguyen, Embassy , 04/30/2015 12:08 am EDT

How would Canadians feel if July 1 was called Black July Day?

What would happen if fictitious governments that no longer exist–such as the old Saigon regime–continue to be recognized in Canadian legislation?

Bill S-219 is a very troubling precedent. [ http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications ... 230&File=4 ] Any unhappy faction can not only celebrate its own private version of right and wrong, in parades and heritage societies and the like, but also in actual legislation.

We understand the importance of recognizing the heritage of ethnic groups in Canada. But Bill S-219 is not about commemorating the exodus of refugees, not about showing appreciation to Canada for accepting them, or acknowledging their contribution to this country. This bill is to get votes for the Conservatives in the upcoming election.

Bill S-219 does not add anything good to the community, and it will continue to divide it. How backward that the bill still has a we-were-victims mentality rather than focusing on moving forward. Furthermore, this bill is an obstacle for Canadians who work in sectors or are interested in promoting Canada’s Global Markets Action Plan, International Education Strategy, or aid effectiveness agenda in Vietnam.

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Canadians who are interested in freedom and democracy might want to take a look at our community. The few thousand South Vietnamese who fled in 1975 seek to impose their old Saigon political view on the refugees and immigrants who came later. All other voices are suppressed using threats of red-baiting. Members who are not outspoken about their anti-communist view or who have any contact with the government of Vietnam are singled out and labelled “communist.”

But because of Bill S-219, many members who have put up with this old group for so long, now for the first time in 40 years, have mobilized among themselves and become active in their political life.

On April 30, we will celebrate our own journey to freedom day as we understand it. We understand that even in a democratic country like Canada, the Senate can deny opposing views to be heard; that our community has been imposed a political view by a small group for 40 years.

But after 40 years, our journey has reached a critical point to achieve the freedom we look for. We will celebrate this day as the day when we feel free to have our own views, despite the Conservative government’s attempt to take the side of the old Saigon group with this vote-grabbing bill.

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Dai Trang Nguyen is a co-founder and director of the Canada-Vietnam Trade Council and a representative of the Canada-Vietnam Association. She is a college professor in international business and international development in Toronto.

Agent Orange: Terrible Legacy of the Vietnam War

[ http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3051 ... ietnam-war ]

Marjorie Cohn, Truthout: As we mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese people continue to suffer horrific diseases and birth defects from the US military's spraying of Agent Orange/dioxin. Although the United States has never compensated the Vietnamese for their suffering, a bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives to do just that. [ . . . . ]

Memories of Empire: Remembering the Fall of Saigon

[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/selective- ... on/5446666 ]

By Binoy Kampmark Global Research, May 01, 2015

Despite sharing the same diplomatic table as the United States, and forging ahead with trade agreements, Vietnam still remembers. Remembers, that is, those “countless barbarous crimes,” as the country’'s prime minister calls them, committed by the United States during the long wars of the 1960s and 1970s. On April 30, 1975, Saigon was stricken by scenes of evacuation and panic. “Our homeland,” explained Nguyen Tan Dung, “had to undergo extremely serious challenges.”

Both countries provided mirrors of violent change, a form of toxic exchange that seemed (to) share more with disease than nutrition. A distant country that was supposedly off the radar of American homes became a round-the-clock transmission feast of gore and depravity. Then came the battlefield traumas and the counter-cultural response.

The words from President Gerald R. Ford a week before the fall of Saigon before an audience at Tulane University spoke of America regaining “the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam, but it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.” The crowds began gathering for the evacuation – 130,000 Vietnamese leaving the South that April, a projection that made State Department predictions woefully inadequate. Bing Crosby'’s White Christmas did the rounds on radio on April 29, triggering the airlift evacuation “Operation Frequent Wind”.

An all to(o) quiet theme behind the commemorations has been one of waste. Waste of life, of resources. In Tim O’Brien'’s words on the fall of Saigon and a slew of images, it was “the waste of it all. The dead, the wounded, the money, the psychic energy and the moral energy [...] just everything.” Poor planning for the evacuation also saw a prolonging of suffering – the separation of families, the special, God-like power of who would join in the evacuation and who could not. “We separated families in a wink,” remembers Frank Snepp, one of the CIA’'s top strategists working in Vietnam, “because we hadn't planned adequately.” Refugees arising from the conflict chose the sea as a means of passage. They were the “boat people” snaking their way in danger via the Mekong and the South China Sea to make it to countries like Australia. Many were ethnic Chinese that formed the bulk of those expelled by the Vietnamese government in 1979. Government policy to them from Australia, an ally of the southern government, resisted cultural and racial angst. There was no Pacific or extra-territorial repulsion, despite the fear in some circles that white purity was being muddied. But tens of thousands would languish for years in refugee camps in Southeast Asia.

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Even now, as the fall of South Vietnam is being remembered, it is providing moments of selective reflection. Whatever happens at these points, the strategists and the dream factory merchants should be kept away from the planning rooms about military interventions. Any reference to Vietnam as precedent is bound to be foolish and misguided, because the wrong questions are bound to be asked.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

[i]Notes:

40 Years After the Fall of Saigon, We’re Still Spinning Wartime Nightmares Into Fairy Tales (April 30, 2015)[/i]
[1] [ http://billmoyers.com/2015/04/30/turn-n ... airy-tale/ ]
[2] [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christian ... 51968.html ]