Dilip Simeon's blog

The horrifying photograph of children fleeing a deadly napalm attack has become a defining image not only of the Vietnam War but the 20th century. Dark smoke billowing behind them, the young subjects' faces are painted with a mixture of terror, pain and confusion. Soldiers from the South Vietnamese army's 25th Division follow helplessly behind.  Taken outside the village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972, the picture captured the trauma and indiscriminate violence of a conflict that claimed, by some  estimates , a million or more civilian lives. Though officially titled "The Terror of War," the photo is better known by the nickname given to the badly burned, naked 9-year-old at its center: "Napalm Girl". The girl, since identified as Phan Thi Kim Phuc, ultimately survived her injuries. This was thanks, in part, to Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, who assisted the children after taking his now-iconic image. Fifty years on from that fateful day, the pair ...

Throughout the long, documented  history  of the United States illegally overthrowing governments of foreign lands to build a global empire there has emerged three ways Washington broadly carries out “regime change.”  From Above . If the targeted leader has been democratically elected and enjoys popular support, the C.I.A. has worked with elite groups, such as the military, to overthrow him (sometimes through assassination). Among several examples is the first C.I.A-backed  coup d’état , on March 30, 1949, just 18 months after the agency’s founding, when Syrian Army Colonel  Husni al-Za’im  overthrew the elected president,  Shukri al-Quwatli.    Chilean presidential palace during U.S.-backed coup, Sept 11, 1973.  Library of the Chilean National Congress/Wikipedia) The C.I.A. in 1954 toppled the elected President  Jacobo Árbenz   of Guatemala, who was replaced with a military dictator. In 1961, just three days before the ...

"This body is not me; I am not caught in this body, I am life without boundaries, I have never been born and I have never died… Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out. Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek. So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye." Thích Nhất Hạnh shared that lullaby for "the person who is nearing their last breath" in his 2002 book  No Death, No Fear . The Vietnamese Buddhist monk died early Saturday at the age of 95. The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism  announced  in a statement that their "beloved teacher" passed away peacefully at Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế, Vietnam. The author, poet, peace activist, and spiritual leader was called "Thay" by his students. The Plum Village statement said in part: Thay has been the most extraordinary teacher, whose peace, tender compassion, and bright wisdom has touched the lives of millions. Whether we have encountered him on ...

NB : Aaron Sorkin's film The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a tribute to the people of conscience who resisted the imperialist war on Vietnam. I salute the comrades of our generation for whom the struggle of the Vietnamese people was an emblem of human solidarity against injustice. Over 3 million Vietnamese were killed, and over 58,000 Americans. It is time to launch an international campaign against militaristic culture and the glorification of warfare. It is time to work for peace.  DS Hear my voice, hear my dreams Let us make a world, world, in which in I believe Hear my words, hear my cries Let me see a change through these eyes You may think I won't be heard Still I raise this hand, spread this word These words of fire, of hope and desire And now I'll let them free Hear my voice, hear my dreams Let us make a world in which in we believe In which we believe Hear my words, hear my choice Hear my voice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnY9_DXMBis Daniel J. Berrigan, Defia...

American exceptionalism pretends that it has nothing to do with European-style colonialism. But the US is a colonising country. The difference is that Americans call their colonialism “the American Dream”.  American mythology casts white settler violence as “regenerative”, versus the “degenerative” violence of Native peoples, enslaved black people, and their descendants. In this mythology, a black man with a gun is a threat, even if it is only a 12-year-old black boy with a toy gun, as in the case of  Tamir Rice, killed by police . A white man with a gun – coloniser, settler, cowboy, soldier, or cop – is a hero.     On 16 March eight people were killed in Atlanta, Georgia, by a 21-year-old white man: all but one were women, and six were Asian. The shootings take their place in a much longer story of anti-Asian violence. The Covid pandemic has given us a particular insight into this phenomenon: verbal and physical assaults against Asians have accelerated in the U...

The military officers who murdered South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm in 1963 and the Americans who urged them on subsequently propagated a view of this man that has become a cliché in virtually every book written about the Vietnam War: he was a tyrant with obscure and self-absorbed ideas whose autocratic and repressive policies provoked an insurgency against his own government - he was the architect of his own demise. This idea served the purposes of nearly everyone: the rulers of North Vietnam, the Americans, and the South Vietnamese who justified their rule by having overthrown him. Duy Lap Nguyen.  The Unimagined Community: Imperialism and Culture in South Vietnam.    Reviewed by  Keith Taylor  http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=55242 During the past twenty years, scholars have published studies that portray Ngô Đình Diệm in a somewhat less dismal light. But the thoughts and aims of both the man and his domes...

May 1968 and June 1989 are two of the most significant months of the historical period after the second World War. In fact 1968 and 1989 in their entirety witnessed a sequence of world changing events. They were both the high watermark of the cold war and the beginning of its end, with the re-ordering of the global balance of power. They saw unmanageable political crises unfold in the Western capitalist world as well as in the Soviet bloc and the People’s Republic of China. 1968 was the height of the Vietnam war, that most deeply affected my generation, and 1989 was when both the PRC and the USSR were shaken to their foundations.  And here is a description of  America today: It's been five decades since 1968, and things are somehow worse These events were crowded and there is much to say. One term that I have used to describe them is  ideological implosion -  this is also linked to the collapse of legitimacy .  In this sense the events of '68 led inex...

NB :  On April 30, 1975, after listening to the news on radio, I went to the DRV embassy in New Delhi and embraced the first diplomat I saw; saying: We won!   Even now I get deeply moved by the memory of Vietnam. To the heroic Vietnamese people: Salaam. You will never know how much the word Vietnam meant to our generation. Respect and solidarity.   DS JAMES SPRINGER: Remembering the Fall of Saigon, 45 years on When I think back to Vietnam in April 2019, Reunification Day opened with a bang across the country. For a week prior, Saigon’s District 1 was abuzz with activity. Stages and booths lined the promenade in front of the Rex Hotel as far as the eye could see from the hotel’s rooftop bar, filled with the echoes of five o’clock follies tinkling in the background. The last helicopter: evacuating Saigon 30 April, 1975. Newsweek In the week following 30 April 2019, I travelled up to Hanoi. There, the ring road surrounding Hoan Kiem Lake had closed to become a am...

Amid the UK’s dire shortage of personal protective equipment ( PPE ) for health workers,  two children in Vietnamese capital  Hanoi  have apparently funded a gift of 20,000 facemasks which have been sent to Britain. Truong Thi Linh Nhan and Truong Cao Khoi used their “lucky money” saved over several years to donate the masks to help the UK tackle the  Covid-19  pandemic. The masks were sent successfully by the British embassy in Hanoi  last week on commercial flight which also repatriated 100 British nationals. The embassy tweeted a letter from Gareth Ward, British ambassador to  Vietnam , alongside a picture of Nhan and Khoi near Tower Bridge in London. He wrote: “I am glad that you, who are at very young ages, care about the world and have contributed to the fight against the virus. Lucky money is a Vietnamese tradition in which children are given money in a red envelope to mark the lunar new year. It is a symbol of health, peace and happ...

By the summer of 1968, Americans were dying at a rate of more than 1,000 per month in the bloodiest year of the Vietnam war Where the National Guard once stood in formation with bayonets fixed, a line of stands for rental bikes now stretches away along South Michigan Avenue. Where protestors against the Vietnam War once massed, chanting “the whole world is watching”, sun shines on formal flower beds filled with purple hostas and golden lilies. Across the street, the facade of the Hilton Chicago looms, four towers of brick rising above war-like stone carvings of figures carrying shields and axes. There are few clues, but 50 years ago, this spot was a crucible of violence, which exposed fault lines in a divided and traumatised nation. A tumultuous season of assassinations, riots and war, 1968 was the year that changed America, in ways that still unfold today. And part of that momentous drama played out on summer nights in Chicago when blood ran in the streets and police orchestr...