https://journal-neo.org/2021/04/05/respect-for-a-real-system-of-international-law-long-overdue/
James O’Neill, again dissects the words versus the realities of life for people the U.S.A. on human rights and the “Rules based order”, while he calls it for what it is – hypocrisy.
Review
The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen
The People vs Agent Orange Dateline SBS 23 March 2021 (On Demand)
Only occasionally do we get a glimpse of world affairs from outside the U.S. prism. The hegemon’s soft power projection is vast. Basically the formula is Americans good – Asians, Muslims, Russians and people of colour bad. The factual and fictional narratives consumed in Australia from Hollywood or via Netflix inevitably portray Western colonial figures as heroes or even anti-heroes or perhaps a little crazy. We need look no further than films like Apocolypse Now or Full Metal Jacket to find these stereotypes. Viet Thanh Nguyen, author and son of Vietnamese refugees in America provides a devastating critique in his novel The Sympathizer, of the Hollywood views of the American war on Vietnam.
He writes in The Sympathizer,
“nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.” How else to characterise the founding of the US, built on land stolen from Native peoples?
In an interview with The Guardian he says
I too wanted to question noble fantasies of heroism and war, to show that they are inseparable from cruelty and hatred – to force the reader to see what patriots and politicians too often deny. My aim was to attack an American exceptionalism that 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”.
The Guardian April 3 2021
While Viet Thanh Nguyen’s work concerns the propaganda war used to cover and obscure massive atrocities of the U.S. war in Vietnam. SBS Dateline has examined the massive long-term effects of the use of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese people, over 50 years ago in the U.S. military operation called “Ranch hand”.
Agent Orange was a herbicide produced by the Dow Corporation (now owned by Monsanto). Twenty million gallons of agent orange was sprayed from planes, helicopters and trucks over Vietnam to deny cover for the liberation forces fighting the U.S.A
This operation poisoned the land , water and people of Vietnam. The type of agent orange used was also knowingly contaminated with dioxin a known mutagen and tetragen which to this day has produced and is still producing generations of people with horrific deformities.
A former liberation fighter, Tran To Nga was covered with agent orange while in the jungle and later lost her daughter to Agent Orange’s terrible genetic effects. Tran has been a fearless fighter for the rights of other victims and she is taking Dow Corporation to court. Previous attempts to seek justice from the U.S. government in courts have failed. Tran now in her 70’s, has united with U.S. veterans to uncover the dark and dirty secrets of Agent Orange. The U.S.A always talks big about human rights but its ugly history demonstrates otherwise.
