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A little backgrounder first about a Jane Fonda relationship:
Once married to Tom Hayden.
Thomas Hayden is a California based veteran of the “progressive” movement. Hayden was one of the “Chicago Seven” of the Weather Underground Organization in the 1960s and 70s.[1]
The “Chicago Seven,” tryptichally photographed by Richard Avedon, Sept. 25, 1969. L-R: Lee Weiner, John Froines, Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, and David Dellinger
He now teaches at the Claremont Colleges and is the author of numerous books, including Reunion: A Memoir.
Tom Hayden is the former husband of Actress Jane Fonda and is the father of actor Troy Garity.
Students for a Democratic Society
Tom Hayden was a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society in 1961, and author of its visionary call, the Port Huron Statement.
He later moved to Atlanta where he reported on the southern civil rights movement for SDS. He was elected president of SDS 1962 and in 1964 went to work in the Newark ERAP project where he remained until 1967.
He was a leading opponent of the Vietnam War, helped lead demonstrations against the war at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, and directed the Indochina Peace Campaign.
More about Hayden here……
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Now Jane Fonda’s Statement: ‘I Have Never Done Anything to Hurt My Country’
July 16, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey
Jane Fonda at the Cannes Film Festival in France on May 14, 2011. (AP photo/Joel Ryan)
(CNSNews.com) – Actress Jane Fonda said in a statement posted on her website today that the QVC television channel cancelled an appearance they had scheduled with her today to promote her new book “Prime Time,” blaming the cancellation on what she called “well funded and organized political extremist groups.”
In the same statement Fonda said, “I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us.”
In 1972, during the Vietnam War, Fonda took a two-week trip to North Vietnam, where she was photographed sitting on an antiaircraft gun that North Vietnamese forces otherwise used for shooting at American planes.
When she returned from her sojourn in Vietnam, as Time Magazine reported at the time, she accused U.S. forces of deliberately trying to bomb and destroy dikes, whose destruction could have caused the death of many civilians.
“The outcry was joined by Actress-Activist Jane Fonda,” Time reported in its August 7, 1972 edition. “Returning from a two-week trip to Hanoi, where among other things she interviewed several American prisoners of war, she presented a 20-minute film of the visit at a New York press conference that purported to show several recent bomb craters in dikes near Nam Sach, 40 miles southeast of Hanoi, and further damage near the provincial capital of Nam Dinh.
“Hardly a dispassionate witness,” Time continued, she said: ‘I believe in my heart, profoundly, that the dikes are being bombed on purpose.’ From firsthand observation and from pictures shown her by the North Vietnamese, she concluded: Not only the dikes are being bombed, but hydraulic systems, sluice gates, pumping stations and dams as well. The worst damage is done by bombs that fall on both sides of the dikes, causing deep fissures that weaken the base of the dikes.'”
A New York Times review of Fonda’s 2005 memoir reported that Fonda apologized in the book for being photographed on the North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun.
“As she has before, Ms. Fonda apologizes for being photographed laughing and clapping while sitting on an antiaircraft gun in Hanoi,” says the New York Times review. “(She writes that she absent-mindedly sat down in a moment of euphoria with her North Vietnamese hosts, and adds, ‘That two-minute lapse of sanity will haunt me until the day I die.’)”
In her statement today, Fonda said QVC had received calls criticizing her on her “opposition to the Vietnam War.”
[…snip]
“Bottom line, this has gone on far too long, this spreading of lies about me! None of it is true. NONE OF IT!” said Fonda. “I love my country. I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us. I do not understand what the far right stands to gain by continuing with these myths. In this case, they denied a lot of people the chance to hear about a book that can help make life better, easier and more fulfilling. I am deeply grateful for all of the support I have been getting since this happened, including from my Vietnam Veterans friends.”
LINK
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Saving the BEST for LAST here:
Keep in mind Jane Fonda’s statement above about “lies” and that she “wouldn’t do anything to hurt her country”
Source: http://www.1stcavmedic.com/jane_fonda.htm
Several requests from students and other visitors have asked if the photos depicting Jane Fonda sitting on an NVA anti-aircraft gun were really her or not. The answer to this question is YES. Jane Fonda has expressed her regrets for having her picture taken while sitting on the anti-aircraft gun and for the pain that her action has caused many American Veterans.
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 Jane Fonda sitting on a seat of an anti-aircraft gun |
 Jane Fonda looking admiringly at an NVA gun crew |
 Jane Fonda applauding an NVA anti-aircraft gun crew. These guns were used to shoot down American planes and contributed to the deaths of American Airmen. |
 Notice the anti-aircraft shells that are ready to be used to shoot down American planes by Jane Fonda’s foot |
 Close up of Jane Fonda wearing a steel pot from the Communist NVA. gun crew |
 Color photo of Jane Fonda sitting in the gun seat |
 Jane Fonda smiling with NVA gun crew |
 Jane Fonda laughing with an NVA gun crew |
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Another student had requested the transcript of Jane Fonda’s radio address which she had broadcast in North Vietnam. This transcription, dated August 22, 1972 was made from her Hotel Especen broadcast in Hanoi at 7:11 p.m.
The following was submitted in the U.S. Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile Areas. [HR16742, 19-25 September 1972, page 761]
[Broadcast]
This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I’ve had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life- workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women’s union, writers.
I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.
In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me- the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.
I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam- these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.
I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets- schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.
As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble- strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly- and I pressed my cheek against hers- I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America’s.
One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I’ve been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he’ll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo- colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist. I’ve spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.
But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created- being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools- the children learning, literacy- illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.
And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders- and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism- I don’t think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.
[recording ends]
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Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda being interviewed after their return from North Vietnam. Jane Fonda tells the world press that the American Prisoners of War were being well treated and not tortured. |
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