COMBINED
In a June-7 editorial praising Mao Tse-tung as "the radiant sun lighting our minds," the Liberation Army Daily said: "Mao Tsetung's thought is our political orientation, the highest instruction for our actions; it is our ideological and political telescope and microscope for observing and analyzing all things."
TO THE PEOPLE OF VIETNAM
[The following is the text of a message to the people of Vietnam broadcast over Radio Hanoi and released May 24 by Bertrand Russell, “the, well-known philosopher and pacifist. ]
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I, greet, you, the people of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, from Hanoi.
+t ‘know that as I speak, American bombs are falling on hospitals and schools and helpless women and children are dying. I know that napalm and fragmentation bombs and enormous half-ton explosives are saturating the beautiful valleys and forests of your country.
These crimes weigh heavily on our consciences. They fill us with determination to resist, in every way available to us, the brutal rulers of the United States and their puppets in Britain.
Above all, I pay tribute: to the heroism you have shown. The mighty air force of the United States has suffered great losses because of. the astonishing determination of the people of the Democratic Republic.
Along with others, I am preparing a War Crimes Tribunal to bring to justice those responsible for these crimes. Johnson, McNamara and Rusk stand condemned before the world. The day is not far off when the people of the United States themselves will deal with then.
. I extend my warm regard and full solidarity for President Ho Chi Minh and for the people of Vietnam. I convey my great wish | that the day may not be far off when a united and liberated Vietnam will celebrate its victory in a free Saigon.
TO THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN SOUTH VIETNAM
[The following is the text of a speech made by Bertrand Russell, the well-known philosopher and pacifist, which was taped in England and broadcast over the radio of the National Liberation Front in south Vietnam. The text was released by the Russell Peace Foundation May 24.]
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This is Bertrand Russell speaking to you on the radio of the forces of the National Liberation: Front of South Vietnam. I am speaking to you American soldiers, in order to explain how your Government has abused your rights:in sending you to occupy a ‘country
whose people are united in their hatred of the United States as a foreign aggressor.
It is not difficult to understand why it is that the Vietnamese hate Americans. The people of Vietnam have been fighting for 25 years to secure their independence. They first fought against the Japanese, who were very cruel, and later against the French, who had set up guillotines in villages throughout Vietnam and who beheaded all those suspected of being opposed to foreign occupation.
Not many of you may know that the United States government financed more than 80 percent of the cost of the French war and supplied France with all modern weapons, in order to assist France in her evil task of killing and subduing the people of Vietnam.
When the United States first began to intervene militarily in south Vietnam, the pretense was made that the United States was merely helping a government in Saigon put down subversion from outside. But you American soldiers have seen for yourselves what kind of governments have existed in Saigon. They are brutal, corrupt, dictatorial and completely despised by the people.
Why is it that these governments have been able to continue, one after another, in Saigon, despite the fact that the students, the women, the villagers, everyone risks life itself to overthrow them? The sole @nswer is that the United States is using its enormous military force to impose on the people of Vietnam puppet governments which do not represent them.
Let us now consider together why the U.S. government does this. The excuse that they are protecting the Vietnamese against the Vietcong or the north Vietnamese can be seen by all of you to be the disgusting lie it is. Vietnam is one country. Even the Geneva agreements acknowledge that it is one country. The north Vietnamese and the south Vietnamese are not merely the same people, but the wives and children of men living in the north are in the south and many of those who live in the south were born in.the north.
You may not know that between 1954 and 1960 more Vietnamese died than since 1960. Think hard about that. The Vietcong had not taken up arms until 1960, and yet more Vietnamese died in the six years before that time than since the National Liberation Front began to struggle.
The reason is simple. The government of Ngo Dinh Diem killed, tortured, imprisoned and mutilated hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and was able to do this solely because of the military support and direction of the United States. Can any of you forget the brutality of Ngo Dinh Diem, which moved Buddhist priests to burn themselves in protest? It ought to be clear that the National Liberation Front, which you know as the Vietcong, took up arms to defend their people against a tyranny more brutal than the Japanese occupation itself,
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for more died under. Diem than. under the Japanese. This is the responsibility of the United States government.
» iIn 1950,. The New York Times stated in an editorial: cgi "Indo-China is a prize worth a large gamble. In the North are exportable tin, tungsten, manganese, coal, lumber and rice; rubber, tea, pepper and hides. Even before World” War II Indo-China yielded dividends estimated at 300 million. dollars per year."
: One year later, an adviser to the United States State Department said the following: 7
"We have only partially exploited Southeast Asia's resources. Nevertheless, Southeast Asia supplied 90 per cent of the world's crude rubber, 60 per cent of its tin and 80 per cent of its copra and coconut oil. It has sizable quantities of sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco, sisal, fruits, spices, natural resins and Gums 5” ‘petroleum, iron ore and bauxite.
And in 1954, while the French were still in Vietnam fighting with American backing, President Eisenhower said:
- "Now let us assume we lost Indo-China. If Indo-China goes, the tin and tungsten . we so greatly value would cease coming. We are:after the cheapest way to prevent the occurrence of something terrible -- the.doss of our ability to get what we want from the riches of the Indo-Chinese territory and from