Times of elsewhere,

times of the present,

time of a glance. 

 Orange act 1

16 December 1961 : 15.000 US soldiers invade Vietnam and take part to the conflict opposing the North to the South.  Vietnam, in state of war since 1957, is torn between the Viet-Congs, faithful to the Communism, and the South Vietnamese, faithful to the Americans.   With his approval of the deployment of the troops, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, then young president of the United States, was making official the anti-communism hunt in Asia, and was giving a concrete expression to the Cold War, creating a conflict through interposed states. The operation "Ranch Hand" is launched.

How murderous was that operation, as its purpose was the spreading of the "orange agent" (chemical defoliant with dioxin, TCDD, the most toxic agent used during the war),   The aim was not only the destruction of the harvests, the woods, the soldier's installations, but also of countless innocent victims..  Ten years during which 80 million litres weedkiller, out of which 42 million litres of orange agent have been sprayed on the Vietnamese population, provoking the absolute horror, the death, the destruction.

35 years after, the third generation of Vietnamese is still suffering from serious genetic pathologies, after effects of this inhuman and barbarous war, of which we can observe terrific new developments in the current events.

Now that the Americans are sinking in Irak, now that it is envisaged to spray weedkillers on the poppy cultures in Afghanistan in order to stop the drug traffic, pure profit for the Talibans, but also to impoverish a whole population and make it still more vulnerable, the Vietnamese, on their side, try to take care of their ill children, victims of a war they have never known.

16 December 1961 : 15.000 US soldiers invade Vietnam and take part to the conflict opposing the North to the South.  Vietnam, in state of war since 1957, is torn between the Viet-Congs, faithful to the Communism, and the South Vietnamese, faithful to the Americans.   With his approval of the deployment of the troops, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, then young president of the United States, was making official the anti-communism hunt in Asia, and was giving a concrete expression to the Cold War, creating a conflict through interposed states. The operation "Ranch Hand" is launched.

How murderous was that operation, as its purpose was the spreading of the "orange agent" (chemical defoliant with dioxin, TCDD, the most toxic agent used during the war),   The aim was not only the destruction of the harvests, the woods, the soldier's installations, but also of countless innocent victims..  Ten years during which 80 million litres weedkiller, out of which 42 million litres of orange agent have been sprayed on the Vietnamese population, provoking the absolute horror, the death, the destruction.

35 years after, the third generation of Vietnamese is still suffering from serious genetic pathologies, after effects of this inhuman and barbarous war, of which we can observe terrific new developments in the current events.

Now that the Americans are sinking in Irak, now that it is envisaged to spray weedkillers on the poppy cultures in Afghanistan in order to stop the drug traffic, pure profit for the Talibans, but also to impoverish a whole population and make it still more vulnerable, the Vietnamese, on their side, try to take care of their ill children, victims of a war they have never known.

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