From Vietnam to Gaza, strategies to keep power accountable.

• The Vietnam War ended in 1975, marking 50 years of reunification between the North and South.

• The U.S. entanglement in South East Asia began in 1955, fearing a communist takeover by North Vietnam.

• Anti-war protests began to grow in the mid and late 1960s due to growing disenchantment with the war effort and rising numbers of the dead.

The Pentagon Papers Leak

• Journalist Seymour Hersh and Daniel Ellsberg uncovered atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam.

• Hersh’s book, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and its Aftermath, reveals over-reach and the killing of women and babies without warning.

• The Pentagon Papers, commissioned in 1967 by then Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, revealed the U.S. administration’s disastrous war.

Bearing Witness

• Philosopher Bertrand Russell brought together prominent cultural and political personalities to “bear witness” to unrestrained American military action in Vietnam.

• Clive Webb brought to light the peace activism of literary figures like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Peter Weiss to end the war.

The Gaza Tragedy

• Journalist Omar El Akkad questions why the U.S. and the West have been largely immune to the suffering of civilians in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attack.

• Akkad’s book, One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, explores the Gaza tragedy, highlighting the lack of reaction to the suffering of civilians in Gaza.

• The antidote is to “slip the leash” and record the annihilation he witnessed after the atomic bombing.