Aaron Monopoli visits the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and discovers the story of the Vietnam War — as told by a people resisting colonialism and imperialist invasion.
Vietnam War
Lifelong activist Harry van Moorst will be remembered for his generosity in helping working-class communities fight bureaucrats, politicians and companies, writes Sue Bolton.
Jim McIlroy argues that the lesson of Saigon in 1975 and Kabul in 2021 is that imperialist invasion and domination lead to disaster.
At the height of the US invasion of Vietnam, about 500,000 United States military personnel were involved in the conflict. Of those, more than 50,000 lost their lives — and the US lost the war.
Two new books illustrate the enormous breadth, depth and courage of the soldier (GI) movement against the war.
Waging Peace in Vietnam is an ideological hand grenade thrown at the war mongers. Winter Warrior, for its part, uses a graphic, comic-book style to show the terrible personal cost inflicted on at least one anti-war Vet.
Greta Thunberg delivers her thoughts on next steps for the School Strike 4 Climate movement with precise accuracy. Her call for a "concrete plan” and “not just nice words” reveals how all climate activism should be rooted in mass action, rather than rhetoric.
August 18 is Vietnam Veterans’ Day in Australia. Every year we can rely on right-wing commentators to trot out the now-familiar stories of Vietnam vets being abused when they returned to Australia.
Fifty years ago, the Vietnamese resistance turned the tide against the United States war on their nation.
One of the most hyped "events" of American television, The Vietnam War, has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films, "They will inspire our country to begin to talk and think about the Vietnam war in an entirely new way".
Toxic sites in Australia are not well known or well managed. One such site is the old Nufarm chemical factory site in Melbourne’s northern suburb, Fawkner.
The factory operated from 1957 to 1974, making a wide range of noxious chemicals including dioxins; DDT; toluline-based emulsifiable concentrate; phenoxyacetic acid herbicide; 2,4-D; 2,4,5-T; esters; dichlorophenol and trichlorophenol and arsenic-based sheep dip.
R&R: A Novel
By Mark Dapin
Viking, 2015, 287 pp, $32.99
Mark Dapin is a rising star of Australian writing, having first made his mark as a journalist with a string of newspapers. He is a knock-about sort of working-class bloke, who brushed up against the British socialist movement before migrating, a bit of a boxer as well as a writer.
Interviewing the light welterweight world champion Kostya Tszyu for the Sydney Morning Herald, Dapin famously persuaded Tszyu to let him spar with him in the ring. Tszyu didn’t muck about, breaking three of Dapin’s ribs.
Robert Menzies achieved many things in his long political career. To remain prime minister as long as he did, Menzies kicked the communist can for as much as it was worth.
He also benefited from a split in the Australian Labor Party and the ALP’s remarkable talent for shooting itself in the foot. By choosing ineffectual leaders — Doc Evatt was brilliant but erratic, while Arthur Calwell was dour, dull and unelectable — the ALP was putty in Menzies’ clever political hands.
The 40th anniversary of the end of Vietnam War, which claimed the lives of millions of Vietnamese as a result of the United States aggression against the country, was marked on April 30.
The war lasted from 1955 to 1975. Ending in Vietnamese victory with the forced US withdrawal. It is known in Vietnam as the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation”.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War on April 30, US rapper Marcel Cartier released the track "The Guns Of The Viet Minh".
