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"Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but what's worse I think, is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about ho

by wz1000 9y ago

"Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but what's worse I think, is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad. America making a movie about what Vietnam did to their soldiers is like a serial killer telling you what stopping suddenly for hitchhikers did to his clutch." - Frankie Boyle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZwuTI-V8SI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZwuTI-V8SI

gadders 9y ago
The same Frankie Boyle that makes rape jokes about disabled kids.
- khhh35575544 9y ago
  Yeah he's a lovely chap. I remember him making hateful comments about a British swimmer called Rebecca Adlington's face a while back. She won a gold medal at the Olympics - so wtf does it matter if she has a big nose, and who tf is he to criticise her? Somehow his lefty fans choose to overlook the misogyny and hatred when it's mixed in with enough politically correct, anti-Trump etc. material.
adventured 9y ago
Is there a category for a serial killer that's trying to prevent another dramatically worse serial killer from killing and enslaving a nation for generations? The US didn't try to conquer North Vietnam. It didn't try to annex the nation. It got involved in an existing civil war - on the premise of fighting Communism's spread - and tried to keep North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam for exactly the same reason it acted to keep North Korea from conquering South Korea. The US left Vietnam, the North went on with its conquering anyway. The US killed vast numbers of North Koreans in the Korean War as well, in the defense of the South. Why isn't that treated exactly the same way that the Vietnam War is? A curious inconsistentcy of popular sentiment: it's because to either wish the US had failed in Korea, or never got involved at all, is to be ok with the idea that South Korea would very likely look like North Korea today and that the South's people would have had the same horrific history the past six decades. Let's see how things turned out. South Korea: GDP per capita of Spain & Italy, ~$30,000. Vietnam: GDP per capita of East Timor & the Solomon Islands, ~$2,300.
- wz1000 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Role_of_the_United_States_in_the_rise_of_President_Diem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Role_of_the_Un... CHOMSKY: As far as the opinion makers are concerned, they have been doing exactly what it was obvious they would do. Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how — while it may have been a “mistake” or an “unwise effort” — the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That’s standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam. The real invasion of South Vietnam which was directed largely against the rural society began directly in 1962 after many years of working through mercenaries and client groups. And that fact simply does not exist in official American history. There is no such event in American history as the attack on South Vietnam. That’s gone. Of course, It is a part of real history. But it’s not a part of official history. And most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early ’60’s — the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam’s rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that’s part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it’s fabrication. But it’s “official truth” now. QUESTION: This question of who the United States was fighting in Vietnam is pretty basic in terms of coming to any understanding of the war. But why would the U.S. attack South Vietnam, if the problem was not an attack from North Vietnam? CHOMSKY: First of all, let’s make absolutely certain that was the fact: that the U.S. directed the war against South Vietnam. There was a political settlement in 1954. But in the late ’50’s the United States organized an internal repression in South Vietnam, not using its troops, but using the local apparatus it was constructing. This was a very significant and very effective campaign of violence and terrorism against the Vietminh — which was the communist-led nationalist force that fought the French. And the Vietminh at that time was adhering to the Geneva Accords, hoping that the political settlement would work out in South Vietnam. [The Geneva Accords of 1954 temporarily divided Northern and Southern Vietnam with the ultimate aim of reunification through elections. — editor’s note] And so, not only were they not conducting any terrorism, but in fact, they were not even responding to the violence against them. It reached the point where by 1959 the Vietminh leadership — the communist party leadership — was being decimated. Cadres were being murdered extensively. Finally in May of 1959 there was an authorization to use violence in self-defense, after years of murder, with thousands of people killed in this campaign organized by the United States. As soon as they began to use violence in self-defense, the whole Saigon government apparatus fell apart at once because it was an apparatus based on nothing but a monopoly of violence. And once it lost that monopoly of violence it was finished. And that’s what led the United States to move in. There were no North Vietnamese around. Then the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam was formed. And its founding program called for the neutralization of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. And it’s very striking that the National Liberation Front was the only group that ever called for the independence of South Vietnam. The so-called South Vietnamese government (GVN) did not, but rather, claimed to be the government of all Vietnam. The National Liberation Front was the only South Vietnamese group that ever talked about South Vietnamese independence. They called for the neutralization of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as a kind of neutral block, working toward some type of integration of the South with North Vietnam ultimately. Now that proposal in 1962 caused panic in American ruling circles. From 1962 to 1965 the US was dedicated to try to prevent the independence of South Vietnam, the reason was of course that Kennedy and Johnson knew that if any political solution was permitted in the south, the National Liberation Front would effectively come to power, so strong was its political support in comparison with the political support of the so-called South Vietnamese government. And in fact Kennedy and later Johnson tried to block every attempt at neutralization, every attempt at political settlement. This is all documented. There’s just no doubt about it. I mean, it’s wiped out of history, but the documentation is just unquestionable — in the internal government sources and everywhere else. And so there’s just no question that the United States was trying desperately to prevent the independence of South Vietnam and to prevent a political settlement inside South Vietnam. And in fact it went to war precisely to prevent that. It finally bombed the North in 1965 with the purpose of trying to get the North to use its influence to call off the insurgency in the South. There were no North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam then as far as anybody knew. And they anticipated of course when they began bombing the North from South Vietnamese bases that it would bring North Vietnamese troops into the South. And then it became possible to pretend it was aggression from the North. It was ludicrous, but that’s what they claimed. https://chomsky.info/198210__/ https://chomsky.info/198210__/
wrigby 9y ago
I could understand this if "America" was a singular entity. In reality, it's much more complicated than that. It's American filmmakers creating a movie about how a war, which American politicians chose to fight, effected American soldiers. Attributing the collective actions of every single person from the US to a single entity called "America" and then pointing out that these actions are inconsistent is a silly reductionist argument. Edit: I should also add that I strongly think the world would be better if the filmmakers were creating movies about the effects of war on the _other_ side, not just their country's side.
- nickik 9y ago
  One should also not that this was said because these movies are incredibly popular and get made about pretty much every war. They are also used by American pop culutre to understand the war and they absolutly do influnce how people view the conflict.
- scotty79 9y ago
  They are not independent. If you want to make a movie about army it's hard to do without filming their gear. And army will help you with that but only if you praise it. To get critical movies about US army we need to wait for full CGI. Although I bet Army will retailiate then through copyright law.
golergka 9y ago
Oh, I'm sure Cambodians are happy that America didn't invade it and the same intellectuals that blamed US for Vietnam praised Pol Pot as champion of peace and enlightened socialist leadership.
- nickik 9y ago
  It is almost certain that the US helped the coup in vietnam and the insured that it succeeds. It was the North Vietnam Communist army that stopped the insane regime in Cambodia. That communist and leftist had widly positive views of any regime that called itself 'communist' or 'socialist' is well known. Even if it is today often ignored.
- wz1000 9y ago
  The Cambodians were even happier when the US dropped more ordinance(specifically cluster munitions) on their country than was dropped by the allies on Japan during WWII. Unexploded ordinance dropped by the US on Cambodia and Laos has rendered large swaths of land unproductive, and still leads to hundreds of deaths and injuries every year to this very day. Cambodia has an entire cottage industry devoted to recycling and neutralising American bombs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mines_in_Cambodia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mines_in_Cambodia
a3n 9y ago
The point isn't what "Vietnam" did to our soldiers. It's what America did to our soldiers in the Vietnam War. Our soldiers were a different kind of victim than the victims in Vietnam, but victims nonetheless. Vietnam was a vile deception, and a tragic example of focusing on unfounded methodologies (McNamara, running War as a business, body counts), rather than on the why, whether and how.
- scotty79 9y ago
  So that's what happened to his clutch...

by wz1000 9y ago

gadders 9y ago

The same Frankie Boyle that makes rape jokes about disabled kids.

khhh35575544 9y ago
Yeah he's a lovely chap. I remember him making hateful comments about a British swimmer called Rebecca Adlington's face a while back. She won a gold medal at the Olympics - so wtf does it matter if she has a big nose, and who tf is he to criticise her? Somehow his lefty fans choose to overlook the misogyny and hatred when it's mixed in with enough politically correct, anti-Trump etc. material.

adventured 9y ago

Is there a category for a serial killer that's trying to prevent another dramatically worse serial killer from killing and enslaving a nation for generations? The US didn't try to conquer North Vietnam. It didn't try to annex the nation. It got involved in an existing civil war - on the premise of fighting Communism's spread - and tried to keep North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam for exactly the same reason it acted to keep North Korea from conquering South Korea. The US left Vietnam, the North went on with its conquering anyway. The US killed vast numbers of North Koreans in the Korean War as well, in the defense of the South. Why isn't that treated exactly the same way that the Vietnam War is? A curious inconsistentcy of popular sentiment: it's because to either wish the US had failed in Korea, or never got involved at all, is to be ok with the idea that South Korea would very likely look like North Korea today and that the South's people would have had the same horrific history the past six decades. Let's see how things turned out. South Korea: GDP per capita of Spain & Italy, ~$30,000. Vietnam: GDP per capita of East Timor & the Solomon Islands, ~$2,300.

wz1000 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Role_of_the_United_States_in_the_rise_of_President_Diem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Role_of_the_Un... CHOMSKY: As far as the opinion makers are concerned, they have been doing exactly what it was obvious they would do. Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how — while it may have been a “mistake” or an “unwise effort” — the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That’s standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam. The real invasion of South Vietnam which was directed largely against the rural society began directly in 1962 after many years of working through mercenaries and client groups. And that fact simply does not exist in official American history. There is no such event in American history as the attack on South Vietnam. That’s gone. Of course, It is a part of real history. But it’s not a part of official history. And most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early ’60’s — the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam’s rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that’s part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it’s fabrication. But it’s “official truth” now. QUESTION: This question of who the United States was fighting in Vietnam is pretty basic in terms of coming to any understanding of the war. But why would the U.S. attack South Vietnam, if the problem was not an attack from North Vietnam? CHOMSKY: First of all, let’s make absolutely certain that was the fact: that the U.S. directed the war against South Vietnam. There was a political settlement in 1954. But in the late ’50’s the United States organized an internal repression in South Vietnam, not using its troops, but using the local apparatus it was constructing. This was a very significant and very effective campaign of violence and terrorism against the Vietminh — which was the communist-led nationalist force that fought the French. And the Vietminh at that time was adhering to the Geneva Accords, hoping that the political settlement would work out in South Vietnam. [The Geneva Accords of 1954 temporarily divided Northern and Southern Vietnam with the ultimate aim of reunification through elections. — editor’s note] And so, not only were they not conducting any terrorism, but in fact, they were not even responding to the violence against them. It reached the point where by 1959 the Vietminh leadership — the communist party leadership — was being decimated. Cadres were being murdered extensively. Finally in May of 1959 there was an authorization to use violence in self-defense, after years of murder, with thousands of people killed in this campaign organized by the United States. As soon as they began to use violence in self-defense, the whole Saigon government apparatus fell apart at once because it was an apparatus based on nothing but a monopoly of violence. And once it lost that monopoly of violence it was finished. And that’s what led the United States to move in. There were no North Vietnamese around. Then the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam was formed. And its founding program called for the neutralization of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. And it’s very striking that the National Liberation Front was the only group that ever called for the independence of South Vietnam. The so-called South Vietnamese government (GVN) did not, but rather, claimed to be the government of all Vietnam. The National Liberation Front was the only South Vietnamese group that ever talked about South Vietnamese independence. They called for the neutralization of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as a kind of neutral block, working toward some type of integration of the South with North Vietnam ultimately. Now that proposal in 1962 caused panic in American ruling circles. From 1962 to 1965 the US was dedicated to try to prevent the independence of South Vietnam, the reason was of course that Kennedy and Johnson knew that if any political solution was permitted in the south, the National Liberation Front would effectively come to power, so strong was its political support in comparison with the political support of the so-called South Vietnamese government. And in fact Kennedy and later Johnson tried to block every attempt at neutralization, every attempt at political settlement. This is all documented. There’s just no doubt about it. I mean, it’s wiped out of history, but the documentation is just unquestionable — in the internal government sources and everywhere else. And so there’s just no question that the United States was trying desperately to prevent the independence of South Vietnam and to prevent a political settlement inside South Vietnam. And in fact it went to war precisely to prevent that. It finally bombed the North in 1965 with the purpose of trying to get the North to use its influence to call off the insurgency in the South. There were no North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam then as far as anybody knew. And they anticipated of course when they began bombing the North from South Vietnamese bases that it would bring North Vietnamese troops into the South. And then it became possible to pretend it was aggression from the North. It was ludicrous, but that’s what they claimed. https://chomsky.info/198210__/ https://chomsky.info/198210__/

wrigby 9y ago

I could understand this if "America" was a singular entity. In reality, it's much more complicated than that. It's American filmmakers creating a movie about how a war, which American politicians chose to fight, effected American soldiers. Attributing the collective actions of every single person from the US to a single entity called "America" and then pointing out that these actions are inconsistent is a silly reductionist argument. Edit: I should also add that I strongly think the world would be better if the filmmakers were creating movies about the effects of war on the _other_ side, not just their country's side.

nickik 9y ago
One should also not that this was said because these movies are incredibly popular and get made about pretty much every war. They are also used by American pop culutre to understand the war and they absolutly do influnce how people view the conflict.
scotty79 9y ago
They are not independent. If you want to make a movie about army it's hard to do without filming their gear. And army will help you with that but only if you praise it. To get critical movies about US army we need to wait for full CGI. Although I bet Army will retailiate then through copyright law.

golergka 9y ago

Oh, I'm sure Cambodians are happy that America didn't invade it and the same intellectuals that blamed US for Vietnam praised Pol Pot as champion of peace and enlightened socialist leadership.

nickik 9y ago
It is almost certain that the US helped the coup in vietnam and the insured that it succeeds. It was the North Vietnam Communist army that stopped the insane regime in Cambodia. That communist and leftist had widly positive views of any regime that called itself 'communist' or 'socialist' is well known. Even if it is today often ignored.
wz1000 9y ago
The Cambodians were even happier when the US dropped more ordinance(specifically cluster munitions) on their country than was dropped by the allies on Japan during WWII. Unexploded ordinance dropped by the US on Cambodia and Laos has rendered large swaths of land unproductive, and still leads to hundreds of deaths and injuries every year to this very day. Cambodia has an entire cottage industry devoted to recycling and neutralising American bombs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mines_in_Cambodia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mines_in_Cambodia

a3n 9y ago

The point isn't what "Vietnam" did to our soldiers. It's what America did to our soldiers in the Vietnam War. Our soldiers were a different kind of victim than the victims in Vietnam, but victims nonetheless. Vietnam was a vile deception, and a tragic example of focusing on unfounded methodologies (McNamara, running War as a business, body counts), rather than on the why, whether and how.

scotty79 9y ago
So that's what happened to his clutch...