Monthly Archives: April 2015

Not the Independence and Socialism the Revolutionary Vietnamese Thought They Won

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 [That Vietnam won a world-shaking and -inspiring victory against US imperialism 40 years ago, is a fact that is celebrated and studied by all people seeking liberation and revolution everywhere.  But there have been significant problems, renascent bourgeois and ambitiously corrupt officials, united under a phony “socialist” banner, have relentlessly pursued a course of servicing foreign imperialism.  In growing areas, mass protests brew, as early indicated when, in in one such case,  “Security forces cracked down harshly on protestors from the Kim No village outside Hanoi who were protesting the … decision to confiscate their farmlands and hand it over to foreign developers to build a golf course.”  Clearly, new resistance will grow, and a more clear-sighted revolutionary course is debated.  —  Frontlines ed.]
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A family at the opening ceremony for Vietnam’s first McDonald’s restaurant, in Ho Chi Minh City in February 2014. Commerce and globalization have trumped ideologies. Le Quang Nhat/AFP

The fall of Saigon: How Vietnam ended up in the US orbit

Analysis: 40 years after war, Asian ‘tiger’ draws close to old adversary with geopolitical, cultural and economic ties
April 29, 2015
by Andrew Lam, Al Jazeera

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Two stores in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, still popularly known as Saigon, told the story of modern Vietnam one Sunday morning in March.

In a souvenir shop foreign tourists haggled over some of Vietnam’s most iconic T-shirts: Those with the image of Ho Chi Minh, the country’s long-dead father of communism, for instance, and those with the hammer and sickle icon. But down the street in a newly opened Apple store, a crowd of young locals all vied to ask questions about the outlet’s most coveted item: the iPhone 6. And a lucky few with disposable income walked out with their new mobile devices in hands, beaming.

While the hammer and sickle and Uncle Ho’s image may still adorn T-shirts it sells to foreign tourists, Vietnam’s heart throbs for all things American, especially Apple. In 2014, in fact, Vietnam became its hottest market. In the first half of the 2014 fiscal year alone, iPhone sales tripled in this country, far surpassing sales growth in China and India.

But it is not just iPhones, of course, that exemplify America’s powerful presence in Vietnam 40 years after the war ended. Facebook entered Vietnam’s market four years ago and at one point was adding a million signups a month. As of October, it had 30 million users, and that’s out of 40 million Vietnamese who have access to the Internet.

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Rural Nepal Angry With Slow Aid: More Than 70,000 Houses Destroyed: 2.8 Million People Displaced

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By Countercurrents.org, 30 April, 2015

Anger, frustration and tension are growing in parts of rural Nepal over the slow pace of relief efforts. Kathmandu also found protests over bus arrangement for going back to rural homes. Badly-affected villages are yet to receive any assistance. Survivors broke into government offices in Dolakha district to demand relief supplies. Survivors confronted prime minister Sushil Koirala in a Kathmandu hospital. There are long queues for food and water around Kathmandu.

Official death figure during afternoon of 30 April 2015 reached more than 5,500 people, and injured at least 11,000. Only 14 survivors have been saved from the rubble till now.

Media reports said:

Nepal’s prime minister Sushil Koirala was confronted by survivors desperate for relief deliveries when he visited a hospital in Kathmandu. Many survivors gathered in front of the prime minister to request to water, food and tents.

About 200 people blocked traffic in Kathmandu after many faced huge queues for free bus rides out of the city. The protesters confronted police and there were minor scuffles. But no arrests were made. Continue reading →

Pennsylvania State Prison Killing Mumia by Medical Neglect and Denial

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Mumia Abu-Jamal Needs Medical Care NOW!
Mumia remains critically ill and needs our support to get lifesaving medical care immediately. Watch this gripping short video and find out how.

One Year After the Police Abduction of Professor GN Saibaba

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Anti operation green hunt front calls for building peoples movement, demands Prof Saibaba` release

BATHINDA: Anti operation green hunt front on Monday held a massive convention at Teachers Home Bathinda.

Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba, political prisoner

The convention presided over by revolutionary Telgu poet and Maoist sympathiser Varavara Rao marked the first anniversary of detention of eminent human rights activist and Delhi University professor Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in April 2014.

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the poet Varavara Rao

Varavara Rao, who is in Punjab for the last two days, given a clarion call to build a peoples` movement against the operation green hunt and asked the persons subscribing left leanings to oppose the arrests of human rights activists in the name of such operations.

GN Varavara Rao said “It is learnt that the union government in next few days is trying to put heavy arsenals in the Dandakarnia area with 1.5 lakh Army Men to put the area under its total control. The various governments have already snatched jungles, land, mines from the adivasis to handover to the big corporates and the poor adivasis are treated as second rate citizens in their own country”.

When people raise voice in the favour such persons are branded as anti national and they are put in jail as has been done with Prof Saibaba, who is handicapped. The present Narendra Modi government was also pursuing the same policies.

He said the union government working on the diktats of US and other Western forces is allowing the corporates and multi national companies to indulge in open loot in the areas where adivasis somehow are making both ends meet. The all present in a resolution demanded release of Saibaba and another rights activist Hem Mishra.

 

What to Do When Officer Frankenstein Just Can’t Stop Killing Us

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[The major media, led by CNN, works to turn attention away from the epoch of police killing blacks, and focus instead on keeping protesters non-violent in their appeals to the system.  This article, from the left-liberal The Nation, considers the effectiveness of non-violence vs the effectiveness of breaking glass, in winning attention and reforms from the system.  The article does not address the more substantial issue, of breaking from the system and building permanent community-based collective self-defense networks, which is a course many are beginning to consider.  —  Frontlines ed.]

On the Baltimore Uprising: Toward a New “Broken Windows” Theory

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

By Mychal Denzel Smith, The Nation | Op-Ed
Volunteers working to clean debris around a burned out CVS store are reflected off a smashed window the morning after the uprising in west Baltimore, April 28, 2015. (Photo: Gabriella Demczuk / The New York Times)

Volunteers working to clean debris around a burned out CVS store are reflected off a smashed window the morning after the uprising in west Baltimore, April 28, 2015. (Photo: Gabriella Demczuk / The New York Times)

 

Whenever there is an uprising in an American city, as we’ve seen in Baltimore over the past few days in response to the police-involved death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, there always emerges a chorus of elected officials, pundits, and other public figures that forcefully condemn “violent protests.” They offer their unconditional support for “legitimate” or “peaceful” protests, but describe those who break windows and set fires as thugs, criminals, or animals. And eventually someone invokes the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement, reminding us that non-violence brought down Jim Crow segregation and won voting rights.

There’s something that needs to be cleared up: the Civil Rights movement was not successful because the quiet dignity of non-violent protests appealed to the morality of the white public. Non-violent direct action, a staple employed by many organizations during the Civil Rights movement, was and is a much more sophisticated tactic. Organizers found success when non-violent protests were able to provoke white violence, either by ordinary citizens or police, and images of that brutality were transmitted across the country and the rest of the world. The pictures of bloodied bodies standing in non-violent defiance of the law horrified people at home and proved embarrassing for the country in a global context.

So anyone who calls for protestors to remain “peaceful,” like the Civil Rights activists of old, must answer this question: what actions should be taken when America refuses to be ashamed? Images of black death are proliferating beyond our capacity to tell each story, yet there remains no tipping point in sight—no moment when white people in America will say, “Enough.” And no amount of international outrage diminishes the US’s reputation to the point of challenging its status as a hegemonic superpower.

What change will a “peaceful” protest spark if a “peaceful” protest is so easy to ignore?

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Another predatory design in Nepal: Israeli “Aid” and the Fraudulent Claim of Humanitarian Credibility

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Israel criticized for touting Nepal rescue while Gaza is still in ruins

by Ali Abunimah on Mon, 04/27/2015

Carrying the flag: A photo published by the Israeli army shows its personnel preparing to deploy to Nepal (via Twitter).

The director of Human Rights Watch has criticized Israel for touting its emergency aid efforts for earthquake-devastated Nepal while it continues to block reconstruction in Gaza.

“Easier to address a far away humanitarian disaster than the nearby one of Israel’s making in Gaza,” Kenneth Roth tweeted in reference to Israel’s announcement that it was flying 260 Israeli army medical and military personnel to Kathmandu.

“End the blockade!” Roth demanded. Earlier this month, 46 international aid agencies urged sanctions on Israel if it did not end the tight siege on Gaza that has prevented the rebuilding of a single home in the eight months since Israel’s devastating assault last summer.

“The blockade constitutes collective punishment; it is imposed in violation of [international humanitarian law] and, according to the UN, may entail the commission of war crimes,” the report, signed by Oxfam and Save the Children, among others, states.

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