luna--oi

[luna--oi]

How do Vietnam and Cuba treat each other?

Vietnam’s official call to end the sanctions on Cuba and the reactions of Vietnamese on facebook:

“Nowadays in Latin America, our Cuba brother is still suffering from economic sanctions. This goes against the equality of the international laws, against the common awareness of the international community and against the conscience of the progressive humanity. These sanctions DO NOT BRING ANY BENEFITS to anyone with a kind and honest heart. These sanctions need to end as soon as possible. Once again, Vietnam urges all sides to end sanctions on Cuba to start dialogue, raise mutual understanding to reduce differences and start a mutual-benefiting cooperation between all sides. This is the new vision in a new era in order to build a new force and shared power and highten our responsibility in dealing with global issues.”

Vietnamese’s reaction: “I always have a strong love and respect to Cuba!” “Vietnam and Vietnamese people strongly oppose to the sanctions on Cuba. We demand it to be ended immediately for our mutual prosperity and development” “Vietnam Cuba, forever green, forever unshakable!”

“I hope the sanctions will be lifted soon” “For Vietnam, Cuba is willing to sacrifice its blood - Late President Fidel Castro” “Justice will always triumph. Hope justice will come to Cuba and to other oppressed peoples.”

“Vietnamese people love Cuban people. I demand the US to lift the sanctions on Cuba.” “Justice will always win. I hope all oppressed nations will have freedom and independence!” “Vietnam went through sanctions and we overcame it. I hope Cuban brothers will overcome all hardship.”

“We, Vietnamese people, always love and respect the people of Cuba, our long-distance brother. We hope Vietnamese government to comprehensively support Cuba, give them priority in all of our foreign affair policies to Cuba.”

[luna--oi]

Even the bigots admit Vietnamese are accepting of LGBTQ+ (BIGOTS: STAY OUT OF VIETNAM)

[luna--oi]

How reactionary Vietnamese journalist reports about their own country?

Sen Nguyen is a "professional journalist" who used to work for many anticommunist propaganda newspapers (BBC, Reuters...) and received a CIA award for her work a few years ago.

This is such a self-own. Yes, countless party members are farmers and come from farming families, and yes, studious people tend to earn degrees. Where is the contradiction? These comprador propagandists are so deceitful and have to attack any and all happy news of our own people.

70% of Vietnamese are farmers and the party hs almost 6 million members. You have to be either completely out of touch with your own people or a liar to imply it’s contradictory or shocking that an athlete could come from a farming family, have a masters, and be a party member.

Btw I will say what the 3stripes can't: CONGRATULATIONS TO NGUYEN THI OANH!

[luna--oi]

Ten ASEAN nations will be ditching the dollar for local currencies

Huge news - ten ASEAN nations including Vietnam will be ditching the dollar for local currencies for international trade, following the lead of BRICS. This will significantly strengthen our local currencies!

Source:

[luna--oi]

Want to understand Vietnam relations with the USA?

Check out these 4 screenshots. First 3 show USA is keen on upgrading from "comprehensive" to "strategic" relationship. This has been going on for years -USA can't help but insult VN every time. VN sticks to comprehensive level.

Vietnam has a tiered system of diplomatic relationships with foreign nations, and the USA is on the lowest tier. (There is actually one higher level not mentioned here called "Special Solidarity" - the highest level - which only Laos shares with Vietnam)

Western press likes to portray Vietnam's reason for so far refraining from upgrading the relationship from Comprehensive to Strategic as fear of China

but Vietnam policy has always been very clear and firm that VN will not take a side or form an alliance against any foreign nation, as I explain in this thread:

The USA and Western journalism make it very clear that one of the key reasons USA wants to upgrade foreign relations is to use Vietnam as a pawn against China, which flies in the face of one of the keystones of Vietnamese foreign policy - not allying against other nations.

It's true that Vietnam has a complex relationship with China which includes some tensions, but overall our nations have very good relations today and we have no interest whatsoever in allying against China. That very notion - pivotal to the USA strategy - is absurd.

Western media and politicians also often talk about the war with the USA becoming a "distant memory" but the war is still very present in our minds. As I often explain, Vietnamese forgive but we will never forget our history. Left: Western article, right: Vietnamese:

The internal relations of the USA lead it to the brash, bullying, interventionist positions with Vietnam. As the seat of global capitalism it can't truly respect a socialist nation. It can only view Vietnam as a resource to be exploited in its belligerence against China.

And as it must project an image of a "liberator" which "spreads freedom and democracy" around the world the USA will never take full responsibility for its genocidal invasion of Vietnam.

The best the USA can hope for are propaganda victories, simultaneously defaming Vietnam while convincing Westerners that Vietnam is their "close ally" against China. Their material agenda will never be met so they fall back on spurious narrative-building and lies.

If Vietnam ever does upgrade the relationship with the USA, it will be on Vietnam's terms and not as an alliance against China, and certainly not because the war in which the USA killed millions of our people in cold blood has been forgotten, no matter what USA propaganda says.

[luna--oi]

🧵 Debunking rightwing propaganda.

I keep seeing this popping up in defense of Donald Trump as "representing the working class." Here's a thread on why this is total BS, along with some advice on how communists in the USA and other Western countries might agitate farmers.

First, where does this data come from? The graphic is credited to Statista, which cites "Farm Journal"/"Wall Street Journal" as sources. The data itself comes from "Farm Journal Pulse" surveys conducted by AgWeb, owned by FOR-PROFIT company Farm Journal. Farm Journal is registered as a lobbying client at the Department of Agriculture according to OpenSecrets:

Anyway, Farm Journal's report doesn't have much info on methodology, but it's sent via text message "to approximately 5,000 farmers and ranchers." WSJ and Statista both say 5k were surveyed; in fact only 1,100 actually responded. Piss poor journalism!

We aren't given a definition of "farmer" or "rancher" (more on that later) nor are we given any other info at all. The only info we have on the methodology is that 5,000 people were text messaged and about 1,100 people responded. No info otherwise.

For the record, the other survey Wall Street Journal cites was done by Farm Progress, which is a FOR-PROFIT COMPANY which is owned by Informa, a large British media/data broker.

Interesting to note that the true source of this survey is buried so deeply: Statista credits Wall Street Journal which credits Farm Futures which is a program of Farm Progress.

Farm Progress has been linked to lobbying activities including secret dinner parties which bring together executives of large agricultural corporations together with state agriculture officials behind closed doors:

Now, let's look at THIS survey. According to Farm Progress, "the nationwide poll was conducted in late July via email and reaped 1,044 responses." I can't find a definition of "farmer," nor survey methodology. But their policy editor seems biased based on this quotation:

Here is the Farm Progress article on the survey... I'm not a stats expert but this doesn't strike me as a particularly scientific survey?

Again, definitions. Does the definition of "farmer" include the 70% of farm workers who are foreign born (63% from Mexico)? Was either survey conducted in English only? 29% say they could not speak English “at all." Were THEY represented in said surveys?

Anyway, let's talk about workers (farmers or otherwise) who DO support Trump (or Biden). Any such worker is clearly a victim of false consciousness. The solution for communists is not to embrace false consciousness, but to build CLASS consciousness and educate our fellow workers.

Neither Farm Progress, which hosts fancy dinner parties to bring state officials together with big ag execs, nor the lobbying corp Farm Journal have the best interests of farm laborers in mind, and that makes me immediately dismiss any surveys or data they might present but even IF most agricultural workers DO support Trump and his pro-capitalist, anti-worker positions, that just means USA communists have a lot of work to do fighting the false consciousness of your fellow workers. The same goes for workers who support Biden, obviously.

When Ho Chi Minh was building solidarity among Vietnamese workers in the 1940s, he wasn't asking them if they supported the Japanese or the French oppressors and then opportunistically supporting one enemy or the other. He built a party of communist people with communist values.

Ho Chi Minh once said: "An ignorant people is a weak people." Based on my time visiting the USA, I believe that the people of the USA are overall good and kind and want to do what's right, but people in the USA are also unfortunately heavily plagued with false consciousness.

This was true of Vietnamese people at the beginning of the 20th century. The French Colonialists intentionally withheld education from Vietnamese - over 90% of Vietnamese were illiterate during the beginning of our revolution! This is why education was such a huge early priority.

Ho Chi Minh also said this: "The Party must adhere to the Party’s principles and must be closely associated with the people... Otherwise, we cannot educate the people, and we will also never know the opinions of the people." It IS important to get to know our fellow workers but that doesn't mean we become tailists, blindly following the most reactionary tendencies of fellow workers. We must intimately know our fellow workers so we can know their opinions but also so WE CAN EDUCATE THEM. We associate with the people but we ADHERE TO OUR PRINCIPLES.

So if you are a communist in the USA or another imperial core country, you have a lot of work to do. I hope you can follow Ho Chi Minh's guidance and associate with the people: learn from them, yes, but also EDUCATE the people while ADHERING to our communist principles.

[luna--oi]

18th century Vietnamese costume