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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/19/ho-chi-minh-city-nguyen-thai-binh-street/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/19/ho-chi-minh-city-nguyen-thai-binh-street/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Ho Chi Minh City: Nguyen Thai Binh
Street</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/ron-jacobs/"
rel="nofollow">Ron Jacobs</a> - April 19, 2019</span></div>
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<p>There’s a street in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City called
Nguyen Thai Binh Street.</p>
<p>The United States had intensified its bombing of both
northern and southern Vietnam earlier in April. 1972.
Nixon, Kissinger and their henchmen in the Pentagon
called the campaign Operation Freedom Porch. The
northern cities of Hanoi and Haiphong were carpet-bombed
with wave after wave of United States Air Force B-52s
dropping their explosives across both metropolises.
Meanwhile, the US Navy was preparing to mine Haiphong
Harbor.</p>
<p>On April 20th, 1972 a rally against the US bombing
northern Vietnam and the mining of its harbors took
place in Seattle, Washington at the University of
Washington. It was one of hundreds such protests against
the US actions taking place that week around the world.
I attended one in Frankfurt am Main, Germany that ended
up being broken up by police with truncheons and water
cannons. People I knew in Maryland and DC wrote to me
about similar police attacks at protests in DC and at
the University of Maryland. Following their stories
about the bombing raids, the military’s daily newspaper
<em>Stars & Stripes</em> (published for men and
women stationed overseas) provided its readers with a
brief summary of demonstrations against the latest US
attacks. So did the <em>International Herald Tribune</em>
and various European newspapers available at the
newsstands in downtown Frankfurt.</p>
<p>Anyhow, back to that rally in Seattle. One of the
reasons for the protest there was unique to that city.
It involved a student at the University who was being
threatened with deportation because of his antiwar
activities. That student’s name was to become the name
of the street I opened this story with: Nguyen Thai
Binh. Born in southern Vietnam, Binh was attending the
university on a scholarship provided by the US Agency
for International Development (USAID). Now, despite the
claims made by the agency and many of its staffers,
USAID was (and is) essentially a branch of the CIA. It
is the carrot that operates along with the stick; the
good cop who works with the bad cop.</p>
<p>Nguyen Thai Binh was studying agriculture at the
school. After living and studying for a couple years, he
became involved in the movement against the US war on
the Vietnamese. As the date for his graduation neared,
he described his studies in an open letter: “A
‘leadership’ scholarship of the US Agency for
‘International Development’ brought me to this country
four years ago. During that time, besides gaining some
technical knowledge which is useless to serve my country
in this war situation, I have studied the massive
social, economic and cultural damage caused by the war
of US aggression in Vietnam….”</p>
<p>Nguyen Thai Binh was learning the true nature of his
host and sponsor. In response, he spoke at teach-ins,
rallies and other protests against the war. Indeed, he
spoke at the April 20, 1972 rally in Seattle.
Furthermore, he and several other Vietnamese students
from around the United States occupied the Saigon
government’s consulate in New York in early February
1972. Binh and the others were arrested. According to
documents composed and filed by the US Immigration and
Naturalization Services (INS), Binh stepped up his
antiwar activities after the arrests. His role in the
movement in Washington state was drawing the notice of
the authorities. Binh graduated with a degree in
fisheries management on June 10, 1972. He was given
deportation orders around the same time. The US
government was not going to allow him to tell the truth
about their war, especially since those truths were
coming from a Vietnamese citizen who they had believed
was on “their side.” Binh was unbowed. He continued his
activities while he readied himself for his trip back to
Vietnam.</p>
<p>Binh began his journey back to Vietnam on July 1, 1972.
His plane from San Francisco stopped in Honolulu, Guam
and Manila. It was on the final leg of the journey from
Manila to Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) that Binh passed
a note to a flight attendant demanding the plane be
flown to Hanoi. When the pilot refused to acknowledge
the first note, Binh wrote another. When the plane
landed on the tarmac in Vietnam, the pilot and a retired
police officer on board wrestled Binh to the floor of
the plane and killed him. They then threw his body out
of the plane. Binh’s anger and despair at the death and
destruction perpetrated on his country and its people
had sent him to the edge. His antiwar speeches and
activities seemed to have no effect on those who ran and
profited from the war machine. Like those antiwar US
citizens who crossed the rubicon into violent
resistance, the never-ending butchery and slaughter of
the imperial war machine had claimed another.</p>
<p>Antiwar activists memorialized Binh at rallies and in
print after his death. Friends in Seattle enlisted
others, including the Yale chaplain Reverend William
Sloane Coffin, to form the Friends of Nguyen Thai Binh.
His papers are in the University of Washington Archives.
The Vietnamese memorialized Nguyen Thai Binh by naming
the aforementioned street in his honor.</p>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
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