Common wisdom says that after Donald Trump got elected in the United States, Vietnam should be in panic.
True, there could be some ‘objective’ reasons for alarm, if one is truly obsessed with the ‘free’ trade agreements.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership may soon go to the dogs and at least one sizeable part of the Vietnamese leadership was counting on it, hoping that it would boost the economy, particularly its garment and agricultural sectors.
Many years ago, Fidel declared:
Men do not shape destiny. Destiny produces the man for the hour.
When the dust settled on the November 8 election, we learned that a completely unpredictable, egomaniacal, narcissistic buffoon would inherit the White House and the vast powers that go along with it.
America is a Haunted House.
– Peter Levenda, author of Sinister Forces
To be white and from money is to live a life of largely unrecognized privilege, bequeathed as it is from one’s first wet, howling breath. In the affluent socio-economically partitioned town of Saratoga Springs, NY where I’m from there was actually a railroad track serving as the demarcation line between affluent whites residing on one side and the other side of which nothing was known because you just didn’t go there, ever. It was literally the “wrong side of the tracks”.
The missile attack on a US ship off the coast of Yemen was a major news event, but the subsequent follow up story, that it may never have happened, was either ignored by mainstream media or intentionally covered up. The whole thing has the same odor as the Gulf of Tonkin incident that never occurred.
Does history repeat itself? Sure does seem like it. That is if you compare America’s entry into the Vietnam civil war, with America’s latest entry into the war in Yemen.
Adam Curtis’ new, near three-hour documentary HyperNormalisation, showing on BBC iplayer, is being garlanded with predictable praise from liberal commentators. As ever, Curtis joins the dots in interesting, and sometimes compelling, ways. But HyperNormalisation also continues a trend by Curtis of using his insights to present a deeply conservative, disempowering and ultimately false impression of the world.
The preposterous ironies of President Obama’s unapologetic visit to Laos on September 6 have not yet generated the attention they deserve, but they provide an excellent measure of the self-righteousness of the monstrous continuity of American violence inflicted on the world from Viet Nam in the 1950s to Yemen more than sixty years later.
US empire building depends on regional regimes’ support, especially in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. These proxy regimes fulfill valuable military roles securing control over neighboring regions, populations and territory.
In recent times, however, we witness the same proxies developing their own tendency toward expansionist policies – in pursuit of their own mini-empires.
US President Barak Obama took to three former enemy targets in Asia this year.
His mission in Vietnam was to sell “lethal weapons”. This comes after a 50 year embargo of selling it weapons, and after the US weapons industry had scored billions selling death tools to its government so that it could conduct the un-provoked war (1960-75). The cost in human lives: between 1.5 and 3.9 three million Vietnamese and 58,000 US aggressors.
Weapon sales are conditioned, naturally, on Vietnam respecting US-defined human rights.
