Trade Wars: Monsanto’s Return to Vietnam
Weekend Edition May 8-10, 2015
The Push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, “Liberation Day” Celebrations, and New Initiatives in the Struggle Over the Toxic Legacy of Agent Orange
Trade Wars: Monsanto’s Return to Vietnam
by DESIREE HELLEGERS
Ho Chi Minh City.
This past week, as activists gathered in Washington, D.C. for the conference on “Vietnam: the Power of Protest,” in Viet Nam’s Ho Chi Minh City, a delegation led by Veterans for Peace (VFP) Chapter 160 was quietly wrapping up a two week tour. The tour was timed to coincide the VFP’s national “Full Disclosure Campaign”. The VFP initiative, like the D.C.-based conference over the weekend, is geared to counter a Department of Defense (DOD) campaign, funded by the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), to produce commemorative events and historical accounts, including school curriculum, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War.
Set against the backdrop of the Obama administration’s push for fast track authority to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), this year’s VFP 160 tour raised troubling questions not only about the ongoing effects of the war on Viet Nam, but about Monsanto’s introduction of genetically modified (GMO) seeds onto the Vietnamese market. The text of the TPP, which would be the largest trade deal in history, impacting 40% of the world’s economy, remains shrouded in secrecy. But leaked passages indicate that the TPP will heighten the growing income inequality in both Viet Nam and the United States and override local and national laws and policies geared toward protecting the environment and public health. Monsanto, one of the single largest producers of the estimated 20 million gallons of Agent Orange sprayed in Viet Nam between 1961 and 1971, is among the corporations that stand to garner windfall profits if the TPP is passed.
Widespread contamination from the dioxin-laced defoliant Agent Orange (AO), and a landscape littered with unexploded ordinance (UXO)—including landmines and cluster bombs—are among the legacies of what’s known in Viet Nam as the “American War.” One of many troubling aspects of the Pentagon’s 50th anniversary campaign is its Orwellian spin on a high tech war that bathed Vietnamese jungles and waterways in toxic defoliants in one of the largest, most reckless scientific experiments in human history. Among five objectives outlined in the NDAA is the mandate that the DOD history celebrate “advances in technology, science and medicine related to military research conducted during the Vietnam War”.
The leaders of the VFP tour, including Chapter 160 President Suel Jones, Vice President Chuck Searcy, Don Blackburn, Chuck Palazzo, and David Clark, all served in the American War in Viet Nam and each returned, drawn by their memories of the war and their desire to help support Vietnamese NGOs working to address the suffering engendered by the war. With the leadership VFP Chapter 160 ranging from their late sixties to early seventies, the vets anticipate that, at best, they’ll have another five years to lead the tours, their primary fundraising vehicle to cover their limited administrative expenses and provide support for their partner organizations.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/08/trade-wars-monsantos-return-to-vietnam/
