April 30, 14:58
50 years ago the fascist regime fell in Saigon.
On April 30, 1945, the red flag was raised over the Reichstag. And exactly 30 years later, on April 30, 1975, it was raised over Saigon. Its color is the best reminder to the current forgetful generations, journalists, governments and various bosses about what idea always defeats fascism.
Objections that the US invasion of Vietnam "is different" are not accepted. The foreign policy of the leading empire of the West has remained and remains the continuer of the cause of dreamers of world domination and "great nations" with the right to be "above all". This is a completely ideological project, which cannot be resisted without crystal clarity of ideas and values.
The wars of the USSR and Vietnam were not against the peoples, languages or cultures of Germany and the USA, but for the possibility of equality of all peoples, languages and cultures. Only such wars can be called sacred.
Today's Europe was kidnapped not by Zeus, but by fascism. I think it is becoming increasingly obvious that this is no longer some abstract, half-fake "neo-fascism", but the same thing that smoked us from the ovens of concentration camps less than a century ago. As long as the world's factories for producing people who do not like to think are working, the deadly virus of fascism will continue to devour countries. One of the main symptoms of the disease is the inability to distinguish the colors of the flags over the Reichstag and Saigon.
(c) Oleg Yasinsky
https://t.me/olegyasynsky - zinc
This applies not only to modern Europe or Ukraine, but also to Israel, which is committing genocide against the Palestinian population.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9811779.html
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Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of the End of the Vietnam War
By Scott Camil - April 28, 2025
Scott Camil in Vietnam. [Source: Photo courtesy of Scott Camil]
This week marks the 50-year anniversary of the end of the U.S. war against the country and people of Vietnam. Americans refer to the war as the Vietnam War, but it was actually an American war.
This war had a huge impact on me, my generation and, of course, the Vietnamese.
Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s during the Cold War, we were inundated with anti-communism. I didn’t really know what a Communist was but I knew that they were bad and we were made to feel threatened by them. I believed that it was okay to kill the Communists before they could come to my country.
Anti-communist rally at the Hollywood Bowl, 1961. [Source: reddit.com]
I was raised to believe that I lived in the best country in the world and, as a male, I owed my country military service. I knew that I would be joining the military after I graduated high school.
During this time, the U.S. had a military draft. Military recruiters came to my school and all of the senior males went to the gymnasium to hear them.
They told us that most of us would be drafted and sent to Vietnam right after graduation. They said if we signed up now in the Delayed Enlistment Program, we would receive more benefits.
More benefits sounded good to me so I joined the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and three days after graduation I was at Parris Island boot camp, being trained to be a Marine.
The training was unlike any experience that I ever had. The purpose was to beat the civilian out of us and forge us into Marines. It was very taxing but how are you to survive in war if you can’t survive the training?
We prayed every night: “Another day in the Corps Sir, for everyday is a holiday and every meal is a feast. Pray for War, pray for war, God bless the Marine Corps, pray for war, God bless the drill instructors of 353, pray for war.”
Boot camp training, in South Carolina’s Parris Island, during the Vietnam War. [Source: vintag.es]
After boot camp, I went to Camp Geiger (North Carolina) for infantry training. Then I went to Camp Lejeune where I volunteered to go to “Nam.” During the training, I was taught that the job of a Marine “is to destroy the will of the enemy to resist the authority of the United States of America.”
The way that you destroy their will is to make the price that they have to pay more than they can afford, no quarter.
Next I went to staging at Camp Pendleton, California. There I had training in guerrilla warfare, mountain climbing, many different weapons, explosives, escape and evasion, first aid, tactics and, of course, much more physical training. Then to Okinawa for more of the same.
[Source: flickr.com]
During this training we were conditioned to see the Vietnamese as less than human, they were referred to as: Gooks, Slope-heads, Slant-eyes and Commies. At the time I did not realize that this was really racist.
The conditioning for war is such that you do not want to see the enemy as human, deserving of empathy, because that might cause you not to react as quickly as you should when encountering others.
It is interesting to note that we had no training in Vietnamese language or culture.
I arrived in Vietnam on March 24, 1966. The Marines had landed there in September 1965. My attitude was that we were going to kick ass and be home in six months.
My new unit was called Alpha North. As a new guy I was assigned to guard duty. On the night of April 18, 1966, while I was on guard, we were attacked and overrun by Viet Cong sappers. Out of 89 men, 5 of us were killed (KIA) and 28 wounded (WIA) and our base was devastated. The sappers lost about 40 men.
Scott Camil pictured in a cemetery in Dai Loc, Vietnam, in 1967. [Source: edition.cnn.com]
There were ponchos covering the dead Marines. I looked under each poncho and, to my surprise, my first friend in the unit, William Terry Main, was dead. Main was from Florida as I was.
William Terry Main [Source: vvmf.org]
My perspective changed that day. I realized that I was in a place where it was people’s job to kill me and my friends. There would be no timeout or do-overs; if I got killed that would be the end.
I now hated the Vietnamese and I was going to get them back. There would be no empathy from me; I hated them all and I would kill as many of them as possible. The women were just Communist baby factories and their children would be a threat to my children. They were all just like rats and we would kill them all.
We operated in our “TAOR,” Total Area of Responsibility.
A battalion has four companies. Ours were Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta. As a Forward Observer I was attached to Charlie Company. Our designation was C-1-1, Charlie Company First Battalion First Marines, the first of the first.
Our TAOR consisted of company areas and battalion headquarters. The company areas were: the Horseshoe, the Mud Flats (Dai Loc), the Island and the Sand Dunes. Each month we would rotate from one company to the next with one company rotating into the battalion headquarters.
Our Official Tactics were based on three things:
1) We measured success by “Body Count.” We were taught that we would win if we killed ten Vietnamese for each American killed. We wanted to win so we killed as many as possible. When we killed or when we lost men we would say “We wasted” ___ Gooks today, or the Gooks wasted ___ of our guys today. I never realized how profound the word “wasted” was.
2) We operated in “Free Fire Zones” where we were allowed to kill everyone we encountered.
3) Our method of Operation was call “Search and Destroy.”
Search-and-destroy operation in Vietnam. [Source: oeta.pbslearningmedia.org]
On February 18, 1967, in Operation Stone, I was wounded for the first time by a “Bouncing Betty” mine in the Mud Flats. Just shrapnel that was not life threatening.
On August 15, I lost my good friend Doug Dickerson. Doug was a tall, lanky Black Marine from New Jersey. He was a very nice person and we became close. We were on the Island. Doug had been wounded a few days before and was recuperating.
Doug Dickerson [Source: vvmf.org]
On a 20-man patrol on the island, we lost nine KIA and eight WIA. The choppers could not get in to take people out so they dropped stretchers and told us to carry the people out. We did not have enough men to do that so they sent more men out to help us. Doug heard that we needed help so, even though he was recuperating, he volunteered to go out and help us. Doug was killed helping us. That was a really hard day for me.
While I was at battalion, I was walking to the mess hall and someone said “Hey Scotty.” I was Sergeant Camil; no one called me Scotty. I turned around and there was John Richard Berrios, from high school. We hugged and I was surprised to see him. I did not know that he had joined the Marines.
John was a year younger than me. He was the nicest person. Unlike me, he made good grades, didn’t skip school or get into fights.
I wrote his parents and told them that I would take care of him.
John was shot by a sniper on August 26 and died on November 27. I was really devastated. My Survivor Guilt is linked to John.
John Richard Berrios [Source: vvmf.org]
When my tour was up, I extended it. The way that I was raised, I learned that a real man would never leave his friend in a fight, even if we were outnumbered. I didn’t want to leave my friends.
I was wounded a second time on October 12, 1967, by a grenade, again just shrapnel that was not life threatening.
In November it was time for me to come home but again I felt that that would be leaving my friends in a fight. I went to see the First Sergeant to extend. The first sergeant said “Sergeant Camil, you have had enough and you are going home.” I was so glad to be leaving Nam. I knew that I had had enough but I didn’t have the courage to admit it.
After Nam, I had two years left in the Corps. I went to Europe, the Caribbean and schools such as Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Warfare school, Embarkation school and Riot Control.
I got out in July of 1969, started junior college in September and graduated with an AA degree in pre-law in December of 1970. Then I transferred to the University of Florida (UF) and started classes in January 1971.
In January, Jane Fonda came to UF and spoke. I went to see her because she was a famous and attractive person. She said that we live in a democracy and, in order to function properly, the public needs access to the truth. She said that the public was being lied to by the government about the true nature of the war in Vietnam and that it was the duty of patriotic Vietnam veterans to inform the public of the truth.
Jane Fonda speaking at anti-Vietnam War protest. [Source: thedaysforward.com]
I thought, “I believe in democracy, I know they are lying about what we are doing in Nam and that the public is entitled to know what is being done in their name with their tax money in Nam,” so I went forward and gave them my name, my rank, branch of service and phone number.
A few days later, I received a call from Michael T. Oliver and was invited to come to Detroit for the Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI) in which soldiers testified about their commission of war crimes in Vietnam.
American soldiers testifying at Winter Soldier hearings. VVAW stands for Vietnam Veterans Against the War. [Source: reddit.com]
It is important to note that, when I was invited, they had no idea about what my experiences in Nam were.
The experience at Winter Soldier made me realize that the war was wrong.
Scott Camil testifying at the Winter Soldier hearing in Detroit. [Source: antiwarsongs.org]
Until this time, I hated the anti-war movement. When I was in Nam I read a story in the Sea Tiger (a Navy publication). The story was about Joan Baez and her friends having a concert, collecting blood and sending it to North Vietnam through Canada. I was incensed that I could get killed by a Commie that had American blood in him.
When I started college, I would wear my Marine Corps tropical shirt and I would purposely bump into demonstrators and try to pick fights.
At the end of the Winter Soldier Investigation, Mike Oliver called a meeting of all of the veterans. At the meeting he said, “Well, what are we going to do about this?” We decided to make Vietnam Veterans Against the War a national organization. We divided the country into 28 regions and I became the Regional Coordinator for Florida, Alabama and Georgia.
We worked very hard to write our objectives and I am including a screenshot below and a link to them because they are as important today as they were in 1971 (https://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=897my):
[Source: vvaw.org]
Playboy magazine ran a free full-page ad about us and our membership swelled.
Playboy ad for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). [Source: vvaw.org]
I started organizing anti-war demonstrations and teach-ins. All of a sudden, I was getting arrested. At the end of six months, I had been arrested numerous times and was facing death plus 120 years in prison. It was the government’s aim to intimidate us so we would stop our anti-war activities.
Trying to intimidate combat veterans did not work very well, in fact their attacks made us stronger. When you are working against a war and it continues, there is not a lot of positive reinforcement for your efforts. Getting arrested became my positive reinforcement. I thought that if they are trying to shut us up, then we must be on the right track.
In 1975, the war finally ended and I started having a less controversial life, even though I was shot in the back by federal agents—there was a memorandum by J. Edgar Hoover calling for my “neutralization” as a threat to national security. I survived and seem to be very resilient.
J. Edgar Hoover [Source: archive.kuow.com]
I was wounded twice in Nam, believing that I was defending the Constitution. And then I came home from “exercising those constitutional rights,” for which I bled.
I had an opportunity to go back and visit Vietnam in 1990. I was able to visit my old battlefields. I went to Dai Loc, where I had been wounded the first time. In Dai Loc, there is a memorial for the 292 people we killed in Operation Stone.
The people there knew that I was one of the Marines responsible for the deaths of those 292 people. There were no dirty looks, no animosity, nothing negative. I was treated like an old friend. The Vietnamese culture sure was different from my culture. I spent the day on my hands and knees putting three sticks of incense on each grave. Then I shot pool with a Vietnamese man in the village that had once been a Free Fire Zone.
I like to say that I learned my conflict-resolution skills in the rice paddies of Vietnam. I work hard to keep them in abeyance. The person I am today stands on that foundation. I like the person I have become but I feel bad that my confidence was gained by the killing of people who were defending their families, their homes and their way of life from me, the foreign invader.
In the end, 58,220 Americans died in Nam and 304,000 were wounded. According to Vietnam, more than three million Vietnamese died.
There was a project called “Letters to the Wall.” You can read my letter here: Scott Camil: Country didn’t learn from sacrifices in Vietnam.
There will be documentaries for the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. One of those documentaries is a six-part series for Apple TV about the Vietnam War called VIETNAM: The War That Changed America. Exact release date TBA. I am a participant in that series.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/0 ... etnam-war/
American Diplomats Dismissed Vietnamese Scientists Who Reported on Horrific Health and Environmental Effects of Agent Orange as Late as the Early 2000s
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - April 30, 2025 0
[Source: sbs.com.au]
Called them “propagandists” and “communists trying to discredit the U.S.”
[This article continues CAM’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.—Editors]
Got off the plane in Vietnam;
It didn’t seem like war.
With all I saw, I started to wonder
What I had come there for.
Oh, the Army tried some fancy stuff,
To bring them to their knees;
Like Agent Orange defoliants,
To kill the brush and trees.
We’d hike all day on jungle trails,
Through clouds of poison spray;
And they never told me then,
That it would hurt my health today.
This Agent Orange from Vietnam,
We carry it with us, still;
It stays inside for years and years,
Before it starts to kill.
You might get cancer of the liver;
You might get cancer of the skin;
You can file for disability,
But you might not live to win.
Vietnam veteran calling himself Bohica, 2013.
Dr. Ton That Tung was a world-renowned doctor who performed the first heart surgery in Vietnam in 1958 and invented a new liver surgery method that minimized internal bleeding by shortening the operation to only four to eight minutes.
When Dr. Ton and his colleagues raised alarms about the pernicious effects of Agent Orange and its connection to liver disease during the Vietnam War, U.S. diplomats called him and his colleagues “propagandists, liars and communists seeking to discredit the United States.”
Dr. Ton That Tung [Source: thesmartlocal.com]
Chinese scientists who reported on U.S. biological warfare in the Korean War were branded in a similar way, though definitive proof has come to light indicating they were right—like Dr. Ton.
George Black, author of The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023), says that smears directed against Dr. Ton and other Vietnamese scientists knowledgeable about Agent Orange lasted into the 2000s.
Black was a featured speaker at a November 14, 2024 webinar hosted by the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee, which aims to educate the public about the horrors of the Vietnam War and noble efforts of the peace movement to end it.
The Long Reckoning[Source: penguinrandomhouse.ca]
[Source: penguinrandomhouse.ca]
Black started his talk by explaining that Agent Orange was one of a number of chemical herbicides used by the U.S. military in Vietnam; others included Agent White, Purple and Blue.[1] The U.S. military sprayed 20 million gallons of herbicides during the war, 62% of which was Agent Orange.
The three main purposes for herbicidal spraying were to: a) defoliate and remove forest cover to help expose the Vietcong (National Liberation front-southern based guerrilla movement) so they could be attacked from the air; b) destroy the Vietcong’s food crops and starve them and elements of the population that supported them; and c) defoliate the edges of roads, railways, waterways and U.S. military bases so they could not be ambushed.
[Source: nytimes.com]
The spraying of U.S. military bases explains why so many non-combat veterans of the Vietnam War (more than 80% of all U.S. veterans from that war) were affected by Agent Orange.
Drums of Agent Orange that would be used in Vietnam. [Source: gao.com]
Dr. Arthur H. Westing, a pioneer in the study of the environmental effects of war, wrote about his visit to Kampong Cham Province in southeast Cambodia in 1969 where Agent Orange spraying resulted in the destruction of 45,000 jackfruit trees, creating profound hardship for the local population whose yearly crop was wiped out.[2]
Dr. Arthur Westing [Source: vietnamfulldisclosure.org]
Because of its perceived military value, the Pentagon ramped up Agent Orange production as the Vietnam War went on, resulting in a decline in quality control and an increase in dioxin levels.
The primary manufacturers of Agent Orange were Dow Chemical and Monsanto, the latter of which also manufactured napalm, a jellied gasoline that burns the flesh to the bone.
Campus protest against Dow Chemical in the 1960s. [Source: madison.com]
Matthew Meselson, a geneticist from Harvard, was among the first scientists sent to Vietnam to study the ecological impact of Agent Orange, according to Black. Subsequently, he lobbied the Nixon administration to suspend chemical and biological weapons production in the U.S. and got Nixon to phase out herbicide operations in Vietnam.
When Meselson interviewed General Creighton Abrams, the Supreme Commander of American Forces in Vietnam, Abrams told him, ironically, that Agent Orange was useless on the battlefield.
Matthew Meselson [Source: en.wikipedia.org]
General Creighton Abrams [Source: historica.fandom.com]
General Douglas Kennard was told by a group of fellow generals that spraying Agent Orange was “like dropping a postcard on enemy held territory” because it helped advertise U.S. military operations in advance, allowing the enemy time to run away.
Meselson’s assessment was confirmed by Dr. Ton, who published articles in The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, and was appointed to a Vietnamese government commission in 1980 to study Agent Orange’s effects.
Another member of that commission (the so-called 10/80 Committee), Dr. Le Cao Dai, treated Agent Orange victims as director of a North Vietnamese Army field hospital in the western highlands of Central Vietnam south of the demilitarized zone and published a book on Agent Orange with the Vietnamese Red Cross. Another member, Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, received the Nobel Prize for Asia and was Vice Chair of the National Assembly and chaired Vietnam’s Foreign Relations Committee.
Dr. Le Cao Dai treating children affected by herbicidal sprays at a North Vietnamese Army field hospital during the Vietnam War. [Source: vvaw.org]
Dr. Nguyen said that she first encountered Agent Orange in the late 1960s as a medical intern when she helped deliver babies with severe birth defects as a result of the lingering effects of the highly toxic chemical, which was sprayed by the U.S. military under the Operation Ranch Hand inaugurated by President John F. Kennedy in 1962.
Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong [Source: oldasiahands.blogspot.com]
A group of Canadian scientists with expertise in chemical dioxins working for a Vancouver-based company (Hatfield Consultants) in the 1990s examined fish, beef, chicken and vegetables eaten by people in the heavily sprayed A Shau Valley, where Hamburger Hill, the site of a famous battle during the war, was located.
They determined that Agent Orange residue was transmitted to babies through breast milk, explaining high rates of deformities in heavily sprayed areas during the Vietnam War and among some offspring of American Vietnam veterans.
Vietnamese protest against dioxin sprays and their lingering effects. [Source: dailymail.co.uk]
The second speaker at the webinar, Heather Bowser, whose father Bill Morris, served in Vietnam in 1968-1969, believes that she is among those to have been handicapped as a result of her exposure to Agent Orange dioxins.
Bowser was born prematurely in 1972 missing several fingers and without a right leg and big toe on her left foot (her other toes were webbed). Bowser noted that, before her father died in 1998, he had said that, “if I had known I was taking my children to war, I would have dodged the draft.”
Heather Bowser [Source: thepeoplevsagentorange.com]
A counselor living in Poland, Ohio, Bowser considers herself to be an Agent Orange activist. She showed viewers of the webinar a picture of her protesting outside Monsanto in the 1980s with a sign that read: “Monsanto Killed My Dad and Maimed Me.” (She believes her dad died prematurely of health ailments linked to his exposure to Agent Orange).
Bowser noted that U.S. pilots who were part of Operation Ranch Hand were given instructions to “return without any Agent Orange in their tanks.”
Consequently, they would drop their excess supply into a creek that ran right through the middle of the Long Binh military base and into the water supply where it infected people.
Bowser said: “If you showered at Long Binh, you showered in Agent Orange; if you wore clothes, you wore Agent Orange; if you drank coffee, tea, water, juice or even milk, you drank Agent Orange; if you ate any vegetables, you ate Agent Orange.”
Operation Ranch Hand patch. [Source: alchetron.com]
According to Bowser, barrels containing Agent Orange had to be reused by the ever-frugal U.S. Army to contain and dispense water to the troops at Long Binh.
The barrels containing Agent Orange residue that were never properly sanitized or cleaned were refilled with water and left out in the sun, awaiting “the eager victims who queued up to take turns being exposed to a premier cancer risk.”
Susan Hammond, founder of the Legacies of War Project, which raises awareness about the lingering health and environmental consequences of the Indochina War, highlighted her experience working with children who were severely disabled because of Agent Orange.
Hammond pointed out that the U.S. Air Force carried out extensive Agent Orange spraying in Laos due to its proximity to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, by which the North Vietnamese sent supplies down to the southern guerrillas.
Today, Laos is less equipped than Vietnam to treat victims because of a dearth of doctors and lack of access to transportation of people living in rural areas. Some mothers have to spend all their time caring for badly disabled kids and receive almost no public support.
At the end of her talk, Hammond detailed the efforts of now-retired Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to help secure more than $500 million in U.S. government funding to assist Agent Orange and other war victims. The Pentagon has committed $15 million to cleaning up a heavily sprayed area around the Bien Hoa military base, though this is a fraction of what it should be doing, and is jeopardized by the Trump administration’s sweeping foreign aid cuts.
Jacqui Chagnon followed Hammond by discussing her experience working with the International Voluntary Services (IVS), a version of the Peace Corps during the Vietnam War.
Early in her time in Vietnam, Chagnon said she noticed that the grass outside the IVS building in Saigon where she was working was filled with liquid. Soon, she realized that the U.S. Army was dumping Agent Orange there.
Jacqui believes her daughter Miranda was contaminated by Agent Orange when she breastfed her, as Miranda got ill three times as a baby and almost died (thankfully today she is okay).
Jacqui was stationed during the war in Sakong district along the heavily bombed Ho Chi Minh Trail and encountered many mothers at the local hospital whose babies were getting sick; one woman had five of her kids die within a few months of each other.
Jacqui Chagnon, left, and Susan Hammond measuring the head of a two-year-old boy named Sodsai, who gets severe headaches and has hearing difficulties. They strongly suspect that he has hydrocephalus, associated with exposure to dioxin. [Source: nytimes.com]
The webinar ended with remarks by Tim Reiser, an aide to former Senator Leahy and now to Senator Peter Welch in Vermont who has worked to get more government funding for projects that assist Agent Orange victims, and Charles Bailey, who helped raise funds for the same purpose while working for the Ford Foundation.
Senator Patrick Leahy, left, and Tim Reiser, right. [Source: baoquocete.vn]
These latter efforts have certainly been beneficial; however, the victims of U.S. chemical warfare have never on the whole been adequately compensated; only a fraction today receive the medical aid or community support that they require.
The latter is hardly surprising as, after the Vietnam War ended, the U.S. imposed a harsh embargo on Vietnam and Laos in an attempt to punish its people for supporting communist leaders and delivering to the U.S. the most humiliating military defeat in its history.
The horrific long-term health effects of Agent Orange appear somewhat analogous to those associated with the atomic bombs deployed over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which resulted in the spread of radiation sickness and cancers and high child deformity levels, which the residents still suffer from 79 years later.
In both cases, Asians were used as human guinea pigs in the testing of experimental weapons that were supposed to secure a Pax Americana but did nothing of the sort.
1.Agent Orange was used about 62% of the time compared to the others. ↑
2.Arthur H. Westing, “The U.S. Food Destruction Program in South Vietnam,” in Frank Browning and Dorothy Forman, eds., The Wasted Nations: Report of the International Commission of Enquiry into United States Crimes in Indochina (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 24, 25. ↑
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/0 ... rly-2000s/