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Post by JustJohn or JJ on May 15, 2013 2:54:54 GMT -7
This is an oppressive policy and should be stopped. Just as the UN asking the president to nullify the drug laws of several states because the laws don't agree with the UN. Screw the UN and kick their arses out of the US.
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Post by pieter on May 15, 2013 14:54:25 GMT -7
JJ,
It is not political correct, but I agree with you. I have never been a fan of the United Nations. In my opinion dictatorships, anti-democratic and anti-Western forces and things like the lady pointed at take place there. Let's say the powers that aren't my favorite dominate the UN and the in my eyes good powers have to less power in it. The USA is one of them.
Sometimes I believe it would be better to dissolve the UN. The United Nations Peace keeping missions, humanitarian organisations and diplomacy have never stopped genocides (Ruanda, Sudan [Dafur], the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodja [the Killing fields], Bosnia-Herzegovina [Srebrenica], Chechenia or where ever), civil wars and wars (Syria, Lybia, Haiti, Yemen, Somalia), Hunger or bloodshed (Lebanon, Egypt, Tunesia, Algeria, Gaza/West-bank, Northern-Ireland, Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Burma, Sri Lanka and North-Korea).
I would say kick them out of Geneva (Europe) too. The UN is a tool in the hands of China, Russia, the Arab and Muslim states, Southern-America, the dictatorships of Africa and anti-Western countries in other parts of the world. Why should the USA and Europe support it.
Okay I like the work of Unicef, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the UNESCO and the World Bank and the United Nations Economic and Social Council. But I don't think you need the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council to maintain that. Those latter two institutions are simply not acting in our interest, because they are dominated by the wrong forces and powers. I believe more in cooperation (biltaral and multilateral) between good forces than to have to deal with evil and negative forces and powers, which only cost time, energy and money, and which are counterprodcutive.
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on May 19, 2013 7:10:39 GMT -7
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Jun 6, 2013 4:53:45 GMT -7
Did you know that Americans flew Spitfires in WWll. SPITFIRE 944 Published on May 21, 2013 In 2005, an 83 year-old World War II pilot is surprised to see 16mm footage of his 1944 Spitfire crash for the first time. SPITFIRE 944 was put on YouTube as part of the Sundance Film Festival Memorial Day observance through from May 22 through June 5, 2013 (UPDATE, ShortsHD is allowing the film to stay on youtube for the moment:) The Sundance portal is here: www.sundance.org/stories/artic...
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Jun 21, 2013 4:48:49 GMT -7
The bitter legacy of the French kiss Created on 19 June 2013 Written by John Kaminski A textbook analysis of savage American hypocrisyIt's not fair to speculate on what a book doesn't contain, especially when it reveals the origins of two shameful aspects of American behavior that makes decent people everywhere shake their heads in embarrassment over how low an effort once thought to be noble can go. In undertaking to review Mary Louise Roberts' What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France (2013, University of Chicago Press), I had hoped against hope that it would contain some reference to the cruelty of recent U.S. attacks on numerous countries around the world and the deceitful explanations for undertaking them. Of course, coming from a mainstream perspective, the author made no attempt to make these connections. But she does provide a timely glimpse into the genesis of these disturbing trends that have turned the USA into a country no longer recognizable as the bastion of freedom and liberty everybody in the world once thought it was. Then again, perhaps it never was. (Deanna Spingola and I will be discussing this tragedy of the U.S. military's chaotic effect on France at the end of World War II on Thursday, June 20, at noon EDT, on her regular radio show on the Republic Broadcasting Network. You can listen at either <http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/shoutcast/shoutcast.html> or 1-800-313-9443). Exploiting desperate victims of war First off, this is not a book that ranks with Archibald Maule Ramsay's The Nameless War or James Bacque's Other Losses, which reveal the still-suppressed treachery that triggered World War II in the first place. But what it does do is show how the U.S. ransacked a nation it was supposed to be rescuing, then blamed the mayhem on soldiers it put in a position to do harm, and then sacrificed a few black soldiers to the outrage of public opinion to cover up the sexual molestation of a whole country. Roberts, a University of Wisconsin professor who took a grant-funded sabbatical to research this project, explores the carnal apocalypse of a nation already ravaged by the Germans, then subsequently savaged by the American boys who came to rescue them. "Thus GIs were emboldened to believe the nation was theirs for the taking — at an affordable price . . .", she writes; ". . . their disregard for French social norms meant they had public sex with prostitutes and assaulted women on the streets. Women's bodies became became an important means by which Franco-American relations were reordered." The lies American officials told about what happened in France in 1944-45 reinforced the horrors of both racism and sexism that were to dominate the following decades and eventually lead to the conscienceless carnage and questionable justifications that were to putrefy America's subsequent overseas military adventures right up until the present day. Turning gratitude into depravity Right after D-Day, the conditions for tragedy were perfect. The Allied bombing had killed more French than the Germans did. Most of the young men of France were in German prisons or in hiding. The country had fallen to the Nazis in an embarrassingly short time and suffered occupation for four years. Finally, in rode the American conquerers, handsome, well-armed, and rich. One look at the beautiful French girls, with their European openness and unrestrained gratitude at being rescued, and the GIs thought they were in Muslim heaven. But the honeymoon didn't last long. France was starving. American soldiers possessed an endless supply of food, and especially chocolate and cigarettes, which the deprived natives craved. Almost overnight, sex turned into currency. French women realized that providing sex was practically the only way to survive. Love turned to business. France's reputation as an immoral nation was reinforced. The Yanks regarded this ancient but defeated world power as a giant brothel. "The overwhelming excitement of superhuman heroes rescuing France and destroying it at the same time" quickly turned into "an amalgam of love, excitement and the stench of death" as scared GIs were caught "confusing the primitive openness of the peasantry with immorality." Roberts outlines the stages of this tragic relationship as beginning in romantic gratitude devolving into pragmatic pandering, and finally winding up as unrestrained sexual assault. What Soldiers Do is really a microcosm of what the U.S. military (or any conquering army) wreaks on countries it conquers or rescues. The liberators' sexual prerogative "French men were in prison or in hiding and French women were ecstatic over the arrival of their handsome liberators." One Frenchman opined, "With the Germans, the men had to camouflage themselves, but when the Americans arrived, we had to hide the women." Roberts notes that this was an American problem; Canadians and British did not behave in this way. France had become a child unable to care for itself. The French crisis of masculinity, demonstrated by its impotence in the face of the enemy, caused irreparable wartime gender damage. It was exacerbated by the public shaming of women who had collaborated with the Germans, shaving their heads and forcing them to march down streets amid the jeers of their neighbors. Chocolate and cigarettes and chewing gum and Coca Cola became the currency du jour as French women eagerly traded their bodies for them. Turning the sacred sex act into a primary commodity became the shame of a conquered people. These commonplace treats that cemented friendship between the Yanks and the natives were to become tools of corruption because, for French women, they bought survival. Sex for a pack of chewing gum The French came to be regarded as an immoral, subservient people. In the summer of '44, all the women of France became prostitutes for the benefits the practice brought, and to stay alive. Americanization had turned the hungry females into hookers, something that readily shows today throughout the world in the cynically liberated manner of styles and behaviors. Roberts writes that France became "a culture that turned its back on itself in the rush for the gaudy American future." GI sex began as a gift, free for the asking, but it became a commodity linked to corruption and bad faith. The American soldiers who faced death every day came to regard it as 'get it while you can because we might not be here tomorrow', and their superiors regarded the phenomenon with sarcastic indifference. The generals looked the other way American military authorities tried their best to ignore both the disastrous effects on French society and the skyrocketing incidence of venereal disease among their troops. The Army believed sex was good for fighting men, but had little regard for the women who were providing this illicit relief to their soldiers. What was most important to them was "VD was a threat to the war effort." About the best the Army could do was declare "the sex act cannot be made unpopular." 'Going all the way' had become permissible in the 1920s, Roberts writes. By the 1940s, the experience in France turned it into an ugly epidemic. It occurred to me as I was reading this part that I wish someone would analyze the reasons countries — and particularly America — go to war with as much precision and depth as Roberts used to to investigate the debasement of French womanhood and the tacit approval of the trend by both U.S. and French authorities. Finding a convenient scapegoat By the time the U.S. soldiers went home, the big question had become "what to do with all the sick women in France"? The blame was placed on a familiar target. One hundred and thirty nine of the 152 American soldiers tried for rape during and after the war were African-Americans. Twenty-five of the 29 GIs actually hung for their alleged offenses were black. Roberts called this "the racialization of rape" in the U.S. Army. Operating on traditional racial stereotypes, the author writes, "they sacrificed blacks to appease the French [. . .] Accusations of violence against black GIs gave French civilians the illusion of control." Robert concludes this tactic demonstrated "how vital sex was to the maintenance of white supremacy." "By making rape at every level a "Negro" problem rather than an "American" problem, the U.S. military engaged in racial scapegoating to deflect the impact of GI violence." Accusations of rape undermined the myth of heterosexual romance grounding the myth of the American rescue. They turned the noble warrior into a sexual predator. Unnoticed in all spin, trying to prevent reports of this Caligulan orgy from reaching the folks back home, was the story of one GI who was caught raping a goat. He was white. U.S. officials tried to contain the damage by scapegoating black GIs and proclaiming rape to be a black crime. The French, shellshocked by all that had happened to them, readily agreed with this policy, as both nations tried to save face by covering up the truth of a nasty story of systemic lust and exploitation that was condoned and abetted by the people in charge. The delight and innocence of the liberation of France that quickly turned to sexual anarchy and lasting resentment became the suppressed paradigm of covered-up military gang rape that continues to plague the world today in every country that is overrun by one army more powerful than another. To say that war has always been this way is only to continue the legacy of the French kiss turned rancid, and judging by the more recent stories from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, has turned into grievances far worse than what the prostituted women of France ever experienced. Nearly 70 years have passed since American GIs liberated much of Europe, and today the world is a different place, much less moral than these comparatively innocent trysts in the ruined byways of France. Seven decades and countless wars later, with authorities looking the other way and saying 'boys will be boys' and 'sex makes better soldiers', a thoughtless trail of needless tears falls across much of the world, and turned the insides of those who fight into a rotting numbness. Today, drug-fueled mercenaries plundering helpless countries for contrived reasons dismember the bodies of their underage rape victims in the dusty rubble of Iraq, or indiscriminately bomb wedding parties in Afghanistan, continuing the ignored carnage that began on a day in June with grateful girls innocently welcoming handsome and heroic American soldiers in the once-flowering fields of France. John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, constantly trying to figure out why we are destroying ourselves, and pinpointing a corrupt belief system as the engine of our demise. Solely dependent on contributions from readers, please support his work by mail: 6871 Willow Creek Circle #103, North Port FL 34287 USA. - See more at: therebel.org/kaminski/656596-the-bitter-legacy-of-the-french-kiss?tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default#sthash.rmXOXKFe.dpuf
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Jul 9, 2013 5:44:18 GMT -7
To bad that nobody listened. We could have saved thousands of lives.
BBC News Magazine
8 July 2013 Last updated at 19:58 ET
Viewpoint: Could one man have shortened the Vietnam War?
Konrad Kellen was an unknown defence analyst who might have changed the course of the Vietnam War if only people had listened to him, argues Malcolm Gladwell.
Listening well is a gift. The ability to hear what someone says and not filter it through your own biases is an instinctive ability similar to having a photographic memory.
And I think we have a great deal of trouble with people who have this gift. There is something about all of us that likes the fact that what we hear is filtered through someone's biases.
There are many examples of this phenomenon, but I want to focus on the story of Konrad Kellen, a truly great listener.
During the Vietnam War, he heard something that should have changed the course of history. Only it didn't. And today no-one really knows who Kellen was - which is a shame because his statue should be in the middle of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC.
Kellen was born in 1913. His full name was Katzenellenbogen - one of the great Jewish families of Europe. They lived in splendour near Berlin's Tiergarten. His father was a prominent industrialist and his stepmother was painted by Renoir, a family friend.
Kellen was tall, handsome and charismatic. He loved Ferraris. He could quote long sections of Thucydides from memory. One of his cousins was the great economist Albert O Hirshman. Another was Albert Einstein.
He lived one of those extraordinary 20th Century lives. When he was quite young, he left Berlin and moved to Paris where he became friends with Jean Cocteau. On a ship, the America, he was offered a job by the gangster Dutch Schultz. And when he got to the US, he met the author Thomas Mann and became his private secretary. Then he joined the US Army during World War II.
After the war was over, a young woman came up to him in a Paris cafe and asked if he'd do her a favour: "My father is an artist and I need someone to take his work back to America." He agreed. The woman was Marc Chagall's daughter.
Kellen was the kind of person that people went up to unannounced in cafes and asked great favours of. He had that gift.
After the war, the army sent him back to Berlin where his job was to interview German soldiers to find out why they kept fighting for Hitler long after it was clear that the war was lost. Then he went to work for Radio Free Europe. Again he had the job of a listener, asked to interview defectors from behind the Iron Curtain to get a flavour of what life was like under the Soviet regime.
And finally, in the early 1960s, he joined the Rand Corporation, a prestigious think tank in California started by the Pentagon after the war to do top-level defence analysis. And there he faced the greatest challenge of his career - the Vietnam Motivation and Morale Project.
The morale project was started by Leon Goure, who was also an immigrant. His parents were Mensheviks. They escaped from the Soviet Union during one of Stalin's purges. Goure was brilliant, charismatic, incredibly charming and absolutely ruthless, and he was Kellen's great nemesis.
The morale project grew out of the Pentagon's great problem in the early part of the Vietnam War. The US Air Force was bombing North Vietnam because they wanted to stop the North Vietnamese communists from supporting the insurgency in South Vietnam led by the Viet Cong.
The idea was to break the will of the North Vietnamese. But the Pentagon didn't know anything about the North Vietnamese. They knew nothing about Vietnamese culture, Vietnamese history, Vietnamese language. It was just this little speck in the world, in their view.
How do you know that you're breaking the will of a country if you know nothing about the country? So Goure's job was to figure out what the North Vietnamese were thinking.
He came into Saigon and took over an old French villa on Rue Pasteur in the old part of the city. He hired Vietnamese interviewers and sent them out into the countryside.
The job was to find captured Viet Cong guerrillas and to interview them. Over the next few years, they came up with 61,000 pages of transcripts. Those transcripts were translated into English and summarised and analysed.
Goure took those analyses and he gave briefings to all the top military brass in the American military establishment. And every time he gave a presentation on the Vietnam Motivation and Morale Project, he said the same things:
that the Vietcong were utterly demoralised that they were about to give up that if pushed a little bit more, if bombed just a little bit more, they'll throw up their hands in despair and run screaming back to Hanoi
It's hard to overestimate just how seriously Goure was taken in those years. He was the only man who understood the mind of the enemy. When dignitaries came to Saigon, their first stop would be the villa in Rue Pasteur, where Goure would hold forth at cocktail parties with insights into this strange, mysterious enemy they were fighting.
He'd be picked up by helicopter and whisked to aircraft carriers off the coast of Vietnam, so he could brief the top military brass who had flown in from Washington. They used to say that Lyndon Johnson would walk around with a copy of Goure's findings in his back pocket. What Goure said formed the justification for US policy in Vietnam.
Everyone believed what Goure said, with one exception - Konrad Kellen. He read the same interviews and reached the exact opposite conclusion.
Years later, he would say that his rethinking began with one memorable interview with a senior Vietcong captain. He was asked very early in the interview if he thought the Vietcong could win the war, and he said no.
But pages later, he was asked if he thought that the US could win the war, and he said no.
The second answer profoundly changes the meaning of the first. He didn't think in terms of winning or losing at all, which is a very different proposition. An enemy who is indifferent to the outcome of a battle is the most dangerous enemy of all.
Now why did Kellen see this and Goure did not? Because Goure didn't have the gift.
Goure was someone who filtered what he heard through his own biases. His biases were that this was 1965. The US was the most powerful country in the history of the world. North Vietnam was a speck that had barely entered the Industrial Revolution.
In just the first bombing campaign of the war, Operation Rolling Thunder, the US dropped as many bombs on this tiny speck as the RAF dropped on all of Germany throughout WWII.
Goure looked at the numbers and he could not believe that anyone could stand up in the face of that kind of assault. So he read that second sentence in the interview and he stopped listening.
Kellen was different. He had the gift. He was 20 when Hitler took over in Germany and he immediately packed his bags and didn't return until after the war was over. When asked why he left when he did, he would always say the same thing: "I had a feeling."
Hitler made it perfectly plain what his attitude towards the Jews was in those years, but most people didn't listen. Kellen did. That doesn't sound like a great accomplishment, but it was.
Listening is hard because the more you listen, the more unsettling the world becomes. It's a lot easier just to place your hands over your ears and not listen at all.
So Kellen stood up and said that Goure was wrong, that the Vietcong were not giving up and were not demoralised. It was not, he said, a battle the US could win - not today, not tomorrow and not the day after tomorrow.
Nothing happened. Goure had cocktail parties and entertained visiting dignitaries and helicopters whisked him off to aircraft carriers, and Kellen wrote long, detailed reports that were ignored and then forgotten. The war went on and things got worse and worse.
In 1968, a colleague of his went to see Henry Kissinger, who was then the incoming architect of the Vietnam War, and he urged Kissinger to meet Kellen.
But Kissinger never did. Maybe if he had, the course of history would be different. But that's the great irony of being a great listener. The better listener you are, the less people want to listen to you.
Kellen retired to a small cliff-top house overlooking the ocean in Los Angeles with a Chagall on the wall. He had a long and sad decline.
In his old age, he would wake up in the middle of the night and imagine that the Nazis were coming up the hill to get him. It was the only time he was ever wrong.
This piece is based on an edited version of Malcolm Gladwell: Listening in Vietnam on BBC Radio 4
You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Jul 28, 2013 7:08:45 GMT -7
Children from Reunion were transported to rural France during the 1960s and forced to work as slave labourers by the French government.
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Post by karl on Jul 28, 2013 13:10:11 GMT -7
Children from Reunion were transported to rural France during the 1960s and forced to work as slave labourers by the French government. J.J. A terrible injustice to these youngsters now adults. For as it would appear, a lack of enforeable standards were not given to the host farmer families, with this, the greed of free labour in using these young children as little more then draft animals. With the above, is a conflict of reality to the spoken excuses of: Too few goverment supperviser emplyees and too many {200} children to check. Then the weak excuses of: The children would not complain..Ok fine, but how were the suppervision officials to get their enitial information as the being a problem of abuse? I am sorry, but these French officials are making excuses for their own lack of action, and as so, a party to the fact and guilty by vertue of knowledge. An extremey deplorable situation that holds not to the reputaion of a Democracy such as France. Karl
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Jul 29, 2013 20:36:41 GMT -7
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Aug 4, 2013 7:08:04 GMT -7
In 1776, the American colonies declared independence from the British. Then in 1789, George Washington was elected the first President of the United States -- but it turns out, the Virginian may not have been the first president. The problem with the version we all know is that it ignores over a decade of American history. The Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, but the Constitution of the United States was written in 1787, and Washington's presidency of course started in 1789. In those intervening years, America was run by governments that preceded the Constitution, and it was during those governments that other 'first presidents' lead the country. The first 'first president' was John Hancock. In 1776, he served as the President of the Continental Congress, the American colonies' national government at the time. When he signed the Declaration of Independence, he was instantly promoted to President of the United States. The second 'first president' was Samuel Huntington, but he is often overlooked because he earned his title on a technicality. He happened to be the President of Continental Congress in 1781 when the Articles of Confederation were ratified. The first president elected under the Articles and to serve his full term in office was John Hanson of Maryland. Many historians argue that this fact means that Hanson was America's true first president. "It's a matter of record that Washington himself spoke of John Hanson as the nation's first president," Peter H. Michael, author of Remembering John Hanson, said. main.aol.com/2013/08/02/george-washington-was-not_n_3697219.html?1375474862&icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl7%7Csec1_lnk1%26pLid%3D351297
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Aug 13, 2013 7:12:54 GMT -7
A very interesting presentation
The History Place - Vietnam War
Seeds of Conflict 1945 - 1960
____________________________________________________
1941
Communist activist Ho Chi Minh secretly returns to Vietnam after 30 years in exile and organizes a nationalist organization known as the Viet Minh (Vietnam Independence League). After Japanese troops occupy Vietnam during World War II, the U.S. military intelligence agency Office of Strategic Services (OSS) allies with Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh guerrillas to harass Japanese troops in the jungles and to help rescue downed American pilots.
1945
March 9, 1945 - Amid rumors of a possible American invasion, Japanese oust the French colonial government which had been operating independently and seize control of Vietnam, installing Bao Dai as their puppet ruler.
Summer - Severe famine strikes Hanoi and surrounding areas eventually resulting in two million deaths from starvation out of a population of ten million. The famine generates political unrest and peasant revolts against the Japanese and remnants of French colonial society. Ho Chi Minh capitalizes on the turmoil by successfully spreading his Viet Minh movement. ADVERTISEMENT
July 1945 - Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, World War II Allies including the U.S., Britain, and Soviet Union, hold the Potsdam Conference in Germany to plan the post-war world. Vietnam is considered a minor item on the agenda.
In order to disarm the Japanese in Vietnam, the Allies divide the country in half at the 16th parallel. Chinese Nationalists will move in and disarm the Japanese north of the parallel while the British will move in and do the same in the south.
During the conference, representatives from France request the return of all French pre-war colonies in Southeast Asia (Indochina). Their request is granted. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia will once again become French colonies following the removal of the Japanese.
August 1945 - Japanese surrender unconditionally. Vietnam's puppet emperor, Bao Dai, abdicates. Ho Chi Minh's guerrillas occupy Hanoi and proclaim a provisional government.
September 2, 1945 - Japanese sign the surrender agreement in Tokyo Bay formally ending World War II in the Pacific. On this same day, Ho Chi Minh proclaims the independence of Vietnam by quoting from the text of the American Declaration of Independence which had been supplied to him by the OSS -- "We hold the truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This immortal statement is extracted from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. These are undeniable truths."
Ho declares himself president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and pursues American recognition but is repeatedly ignored by President Harry Truman.
September 13, 1945 - British forces arrive in Saigon, South Vietnam.
In North Vietnam, 150,000 Chinese Nationalist soldiers, consisting mainly of poor peasants, arrive in Hanoi after looting Vietnamese villages during their entire march down from China. They then proceed to loot Hanoi.
September 22, 1945 - In South Vietnam, 1400 French soldiers released by the British from former Japanese internment camps enter Saigon and go on a deadly rampage, attacking Viet Minh and killing innocent civilians including children, aided by French civilians who joined the rampage. An estimated 20,000 French civilians live in Saigon.
September 24, 1945 - In Saigon, Viet Minh successfully organize a general strike shutting down all commerce along with electricity and water supplies. In a suburb of Saigon, members of Binh Xuyen, a Vietnamese criminal organization, massacre 150 French and Eurasian civilians, including children.
September 26, 1945 - The first American death in Vietnam occurs, during the unrest in Saigon, as OSS officer Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey is killed by Viet Minh guerrillas who mistook him for a French officer. Before his death, Dewey had filed a report on the deepening crisis in Vietnam, stating his opinion that the U.S. "ought to clear out of Southeast Asia."
October 1945 - 35,000 French soldiers under the command of World War II General Jacques Philippe Leclerc arrive in South Vietnam to restore French rule. Viet Minh immediately begin a guerrilla campaign to harass them. The French then succeed in expelling the Viet Minh from Saigon.
1946
February 1946 - The Chinese under Chiang Kai-shek agree to withdraw from North Vietnam and allow the French to return in exchange for French concessions in Shanghai and other Chinese ports.
March 1946 - Ho Chi Minh agrees to permit French troops to return to Hanoi temporarily in exchange for French recognition of his Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Chinese troops then depart.
May-September - Ho Chi Minh spends four months in France attempting to negotiate full independence and unity for Vietnam, but fails to obtain any guarantee from the French.
June 1946 - In a major affront to Ho Chi Minh, the French high commissioner for Indochina proclaims a separatist French-controlled government for South Vietnam (Republic of Chochinchina).
November 1946 - After a series of violent clashes with Viet Minh, French forces bombard Haiphong harbor and occupy Hanoi, forcing Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh forces to retreat into the jungle.
December 19, 1946 - In Hanoi, 30,000 Viet Minh launch their first large-scale attack against the French. Thus begins an eight year struggle known as the First Indochina War. "The resistance will be long and arduous, but our cause is just and we will surely triumph," declares Viet Minh military commander Vo Nguyen Giap. "If these [people] want a fight, they'll get it," French military commander Gen. Etrienne Valluy states.
1947
October 7- December 22 - The French conduct Operation Lea, a series of attacks on Viet Minh guerrilla positions in North Vietnam near the Chinese border. Although the Viet Minh suffer over 9000 causalities, most of the 40,000 strong Viet Minh force slips away through gaps in the French lines.
1949
March 8, 1949 - The French install Bao Dai as puppet head of state in South Vietnam.
July 1949 - The French establish the (South) Vietnamese National Army.
October 1949 - Mao Zedong's Communist forces defeat Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Army in the Chinese civil war. Mao's victory ignites American anti-Communist sentiment regarding Southeast Asia and will result in a White House foreign policy goal of "containment" of Communist expansion in the region.
1950
January 1950 - The People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union recognize Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
China then begins sending military advisors and modern weapons to the Viet Minh including automatic weapons, mortars, howitzers, and trucks. Much of the equipment is American-made and had belonged to the Chinese Nationalists before their defeat by Mao. With the influx of new equipment and Chinese advisors, General Giap transforms his guerrilla fighters into conventional army units including five light infantry divisions and one heavy division.
February 1950 - The United States and Britain recognize Bao Dai's French-controlled South Vietnam government.
February 1950 - Viet Minh begin an offensive against French outposts in North Vietnam near the Chinese border.
February 7, 1950 - In America, the era of 'McCarthyism' erupts as Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin gives a speech claiming the U.S. State Department harbors Communists. As a consequence of McCarthyism, no U.S. politician is willing to appear to be 'soft' on Communism.
June 30, 1950 - President Harry S. Truman orders U.S. ground troops into Korea following Communist North Korea's invasion of the South. In his message to the American people, Truman describes the invasion as a Moscow-backed attack by "monolithic world Communism."
July 26, 1950 - United States military involvement in Vietnam begins as President Harry Truman authorizes $15 million in military aid to the French.
American military advisors will accompany the flow of U.S. tanks, planes, artillery and other supplies to Vietnam. Over the next four years, the U.S. will spend $3 Billion on the French war and by 1954 will provide 80 percent of all war supplies used by the French.
September 16, 1950 - General Giap begins his main attack against French outposts near the Chinese border. As the outposts fall, the French lose 6000 men and large stores of military equipment to the Viet Minh.
September 27, 1950 - The U.S. establishes a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Saigon to aid the French Army.
1951
January 13, 1951 - 20,000 Viet Minh under Gen. Giap begin a series of attacks on fortified French positions in the Red River Delta (extending from Hanoi to the Gulf of Tonkin). The open areas of the Delta, in contrast to the jungle, allow French troops under the new command of Gen. Jean de Lattre to strike back with devastating results from the 'De Lattre Line' which encircles the region. 6000 Viet Minh die while assaulting the town of Vinh Yen near Hanoi in the first attack, causing Giap to withdraw.
March 23-28 - In the second attack, Giap targets the Mao Khe outpost near Haiphong. But Giap withdraws after being pounded by French naval gunfire and air strikes. 3000 Viet Minh are killed.
May 29-June 18 - Giap makes yet another attempt to break through the De Lattre Line, this time in the Day River area southeast of Hanoi. French reinforcements, combined with air strikes and armed boat attacks result in another defeat for Giap with 10,000 killed and wounded. Among the French causalities is Bernard de Lattre, the only son of General De Lattre.
June 9, 1951 - Giap begins a general withdrawal of Viet Minh troops from the Red River Delta.
September 1951 - Gen. De Lattre travels to Washington seeking more aid from the Pentagon.
November 16, 1951 - French forces link up at Hoa Binh southwest of Hanoi as Gen. De Lattre attempts to seize the momentum and lure Giap into a major battle.
November 20, 1951 - Stricken by cancer, ailing Gen. De Lattre is replaced by Gen. Raoul Salan. De Lattre returns home and dies in Paris two months later, just after being raised to the rank of Marshal.
December 9, 1951 - Giap begins a careful counter-offensive by attacking the French outpost at Tu Vu on the Black River. Giap now avoids conventional warfare and instead wages hit and run attacks followed by a retreat into the dense jungles. His goal is to cut French supply lines.
By year's end, French causalities in Vietnam surpass 90,000.
1952
January 12, 1952 - French supply lines to Hoa Binh along the Black River are cut. The road along Route Coloniale 6 is also cut.
February 22-26 - The French withdraw from Hoa Binh back to the De Lattre Line aided by a 30,000 round artillery barrage. Casualties for each side surpassed 5000 during the Black River skirmishes.
October 11, 1952 - Giap now attempts to draw the French out from the De Lattre Line by attacking along the Fan Si Pan mountain range between the Red and Black Rivers.
October 29, 1952 - The French counter Giap's move by launching Operation Lorraine targeting major Viet Minh supply bases in the Viet Bac region. But Giap outsmarts the French by ignoring their maneuvers and maintains his position along the Black River.
November 14-17 - The French cancel Operation Loraine and withdraw back toward the De Lattre Line but must first fight off a Viet Minh ambush at Chan Muong.
1953
January 20, 1953 - Dwight D. Eisenhower, former five-star Army general and Allied commander in Europe during World War II, is inaugurated as the 34th U.S. President.
During his term, Eisenhower will greatly increase U.S. military aid to the French in Vietnam to prevent a Communist victory. U.S. military advisors will continue to accompany American supplies sent to Vietnam. To justify America's financial commitment, Eisenhower will cite a 'Domino Theory' in which a Communist victory in Vietnam would result in surrounding countries falling one after another like a "falling row of dominoes." The Domino Theory will be used by a succession of Presidents and their advisors to justify ever-deepening U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
March 5, 1953 - Soviet leader Josef Stalin dies. The outspoken Nikita Khrushchev succeeds him.
July 27, 1953 - The Korean War ends as an armistice is signed dividing the country at the 38th parallel into Communist North and Democratic South. The armistice is seen by many in the international community as a potential model for resolving the ongoing conflict in Vietnam.
November 20, 1953 - The French under their new commander Gen. Henri Navarre begin Operation Castor, the construction of a series of entrenched outposts protecting a small air base in the isolated jungle valley at Dien Bien Phu in northwest Vietnam.
Gen. Giap immediately begins massing Viet Minh troops and artillery in the area, sensing the potential for a decisive blow against the French. Giap's troops manually drag 200 heavy howitzers up rugged mountain sides to target the French air base. The French, aware of Giap's intentions, mass their own troops and artillery, preparing for a showdown, but have grossly underestimated Giap's strength.
1954
March 13, 1954 - Outnumbering the French nearly five-to-one, 50,000 Viet Minh under Gen. Giap begin their assault against the fortified hills protecting the Dien Bien Phu air base.
Giap's artillery pounds the French and shuts down the only runway, thus forcing the French to rely on risky parachute drops for re-supply. Giap's troops then take out their shovels and begin construction of a maze of tunnels and trenches, slowly inching their way toward the main French position and surrounding it.
March 30-May 1 - The siege at Dien Bien Phu occurs as nearly 10,000 French soldiers are trapped by 45,000 Viet Minh. French troops soon run out of fresh water and medical supplies.
The French urgently appeal to Washington for help. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff now consider three possible military options: sending American combat troops to the rescue; a massive conventional air strike by B-29 bombers; the use of tactical atomic weapons.
President Eisenhower dismisses the conventional air raid and the nuclear option after getting a strong negative response to such actions from America's chief ally, Britain. Eisenhower also decides against sending U.S. ground troops to rescue the French, citing the likelihood of high casualty rates in the jungles around Dien Bien Phu. No action is taken.
May 7, 1954 - At 5:30 p.m., 10,000 French soldiers surrender at Dien Bien Phu. By now, an estimated 8000 Viet Minh and 1500 French have died. The French survivors are marched for up to 60 days to prison camps 500 hundred miles away. Nearly half die during the march or in captivity.
France proceeds to withdraw completely from Vietnam, ending a bitter eight year struggle against the Viet Minh in which 400,000 soldiers and civilians from all sides had perished.
May 8, 1954 - The Geneva Conference on Indochina begins, attended by the U.S., Britain, China, the Soviet Union, France, Vietnam (Viet Minh and representatives of Bao Dai), Cambodia and Laos, all meeting to negotiate a solution for Southeast Asia.
July 21, 1954 - The Geneva Accords divide Vietnam in half at the 17th parallel, with Ho Chi Minh's Communists ceded the North, while Bao Dai's regime is granted the South. The accords also provide for elections to be held in all of Vietnam within two years to reunify the country. The U.S. opposes the unifying elections, fearing a likely victory by Ho Chi Minh.
October 1954 - Following the French departure from Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh returns after spending eight years hiding in the jungle and formally takes control of North Vietnam.
In the South, Bao Dai has installed Ngo Dinh Diem as his prime minister. The U.S. now pins its hopes on anti-Communist Diem for a democratic South Vietnam. It is Diem, however, who predicts "another more deadly war" will erupt over the future of Vietnam.
Diem, a Roman Catholic in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country, encourages Vietnamese Catholics living in Communist North Vietnam to flee south. Nearly one million leave. At the same time, some 90,000 Communists in the south go north, although nearly 10,000 Viet Minh fighters are instructed by Hanoi to quietly remain behind.
1955
January 1955 - The first direct shipment of U.S. military aid to Saigon arrives. The U.S. also offers to train the fledgling South Vietnam Army.
May 1955 - Prime Minister Diem wages a violent crackdown against the Binh Xuyen organized crime group based in Saigon which operates casinos, brothels and opium dens.
July 1955 - Ho Chi Minh visits Moscow and agrees to accept Soviet aid.
October 23, 1955 - Bao Dai is ousted from power, defeated by Prime Minister Diem in a U.S.-backed plebiscite which was rigged. Diem is advised on consolidating power by U.S. Air Force Col. Edward G. Lansdale, who is attached to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
October 26, 1955 - The Republic of South Vietnam is proclaimed with Diem as its first president. In America, President Eisenhower pledges his support for the new government and offers military aid.
Diem assigns most high level government positions to close friends and family members including his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu who will be his chief advisor. Diem's style of leadership, aloof and autocratic, will create future political problems for him despite the best efforts of his American advisors to popularize him via American-style political rallies and tours of the countryside.
December 1955 - In North Vietnam, radical land reforms by Communists result in land owners being hauled before "people's tribunals." Thousands are executed or sent to forced labor camps during this period of ideological cleansing by Ho Chi Minh.
In South Vietnam, President Diem rewards his Catholic supporters by giving them land seized from Buddhist peasants, arousing their anger and eroding his support among them. Diem also allows big land owners to retain their holdings, disappointing peasants hoping for land reform.
1956
January 1956 - Diem launches a brutal crackdown against Viet Minh suspects in the countryside. Those arrested are denied counsel and hauled before "security committees" with many suspects tortured or executed under the guise of 'shot while attempting escape.'
April 28, 1956 - The last French soldier leaves South Vietnam. The French High Command for Indochina is then dissolved.
July 1956 - The deadline passes for the unifying elections set by the Geneva Conference. Diem, backed by the U.S., had refused to participate.
November 1956 - Peasant unrest in North Vietnam resulting from oppressive land reforms is put down by Communist force with more than 6000 killed or deported.
1957
January 1957 - The Soviet Union proposes permanent division of Vietnam into North and South, with the two nations admitted separately to the United Nations. The U.S. rejects the proposal, unwilling to recognize Communist North Vietnam.
May 8-18 - Diem pays a state visit to Washington where President Eisenhower labels him the "miracle man" of Asia and reaffirms U.S. commitment. "The cost of defending freedom, of defending America, must be paid in many forms and in many places...military as well as economic help is currently needed in Vietnam," Eisenhower states.
Diem's government, however, with its main focus on security, spends little on schools, medical care or other badly needed social services in the countryside. Communist guerrillas and propagandists in the countryside capitalize on this by making simple promises of land reform and a better standard of living to gain popular support among peasants.
October 1957 - Viet Minh guerrillas begin a widespread campaign of terror in South Vietnam including bombings and assassinations. By year's end, over 400 South Vietnamese officials are killed.
1958
June 1958 - A coordinated command structure is formed by Communists in the Mekong Delta where 37 armed companies are being organized.
1959
March 1959 - The armed revolution begins as Ho Chi Minh declares a People's War to unite all of Vietnam under his leadership. His Politburo now orders a changeover to an all-out military struggle. Thus begins the Second Indochina War.
May 1959 - North Vietnamese establish the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN) to oversee the coming war in the South. Construction of the Ho Chi Minh trail now begins.
The trail will eventually expand into a 1500 mile-long network of jungle and mountain passes extending from North Vietnam's coast along Vietnam's western border through Laos, parts of Cambodia, funneling a constant stream of soldiers and supplies into the highlands of South Vietnam. In 1959, it takes six months to make the journey, by 1968 it will take only six weeks due to road improvements by North Vietnamese laborers, many of whom are women. In the 1970s a parallel fuel pipeline will be added.
July 1959 - 4000 Viet Minh guerrillas, originally born in the South, are sent from North Vietnam to infiltrate South Vietnam.
July 8, 1959 - Two U.S. military advisors, Maj. Dale Buis and Sgt. Chester Ovnand, are killed by Viet Minh guerrillas at Bien Hoa, South Vietnam. They are the first American deaths in the Second Indochina War which Americans will come to know simply as The Vietnam War.
1960
April 1960 - Universal military conscription is imposed in North Vietnam. Tour of duty is indefinite.
April 1960 - Eighteen distinguished nationalists in South Vietnam send a petition to President Diem advocating that he reform his rigid, family-run, and increasingly corrupt, government. Diem ignores their advice and instead closes several opposition newspapers and arrests journalists and intellectuals.
November 1960 - A failed coup against President Diem by disgruntled South Vietnamese Army officers brings a harsh crackdown against all perceived 'enemies of the state.' Over 50,000 are arrested by police controlled by Diem's brother Nhu with many innocent civilians tortured then executed. This results in further erosion of popular support for Diem.
Thousands who fear arrest flee to North Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh will later send many back to infiltrate South Vietnam as part of his People's Liberation Armed Forces. Called Viet Cong by Diem, meaning Communist Vietnamese, Ho's guerrillas blend into the countryside, indistinguishable from South Vietnamese, while working to undermine Diem's government.
December 20, 1960 - The National Liberation Front is established by Hanoi as its Communist political organization for Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam.
Next Section: 1961-1964 America Commits Return to Vietnam Index The History Place Main Page Color version of this page
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Aug 16, 2013 5:25:54 GMT -7
August 15, is the national feast day of the Acadians.============================================================================ . In 1881... August 15, the feast of the Assumption, was adopted as the national feast day of the Acadians. // The Expulsion of the Acadians, also known as the Great Upheaval, the Great Expulsion and Le Grand Dérangement, was the forced removal by the British, of the Acadian people from the present day Canadian Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and also part of the US state of Maine—an area also known as Acadie/Acadia .[4] The Expulsion (1755–1764) occurred during the French and Indian War (the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War) and was part of the British military campaign against New France. The British first deported Acadians.... to the Thirteen Colonies, and after 1758 transported additional Acadians to France. In all, approximately 11,500 Acadians were deported.[5] After the British conquest of Acadia in 1710, the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht allowed the Acadians to keep their lands. Over the next forty-five years, however, the Acadians refused to sign an unconditional oath of allegiance to Britain. During the same period, they also participated in various military operations against the British, and maintained supply lines to the French fortresses of Louisbourg and Fort Beauséjour.[6] As a result, the British sought to eliminate any future military threat posed by the Acadians, and to permanently cut the supply lines they provided to Louisbourg, by removing them from the area.[7][8] Without making distinctions between the Acadians who had been neutral, and those who had resisted the occupation of Acadia, the British governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council, ordered them to be expelled.[9] In the first wave of the expulsion, Acadians were deported to other British colonies. During the second wave, they were deported to England and France, from where they migrated to Louisiana. Acadians fled initially to Francophone colonies such as Canada, the uncolonized northern part of Acadia, Isle Saint-Jean and Isle Royale. During the second wave of the expulsion, these Acadians were either imprisoned or deported. Throughout the expulsion, Acadians and the Wabanaki Confederacy continued a guerrilla war against the British, in response to British aggression which was continuous since 1744 (see King Georges War and Father Le Loutre's War).[10] Along with the British achieving their military goals of defeating Louisbourg and weakening the Mi'kmaq and Acadian militias, the result of the Expulsion, was the devastation of both a primarily civilian population and the economy of the region. Thousands of Acadians died in the expulsions, mainly from diseases and drowning when ships were lost. On July 11, 1764, the British government passed an order-in-council to permit Acadians to legally return to British territories, provided that they take an unqualified oath of allegiance. ....(....) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ExpulsionThe Acadians (French: Acadiens, IPA: [akadjɛ̃]) are the descendants of the 17th-century French colonists who settled in Acadia, a colony of New France. The colony was located in what is now Eastern Canada's Maritime provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island), as well as part of Quebec, and present-day Maine to the Kennebec River. Although today most of the Acadians and Québécois are French speaking (francophone) Canadians, .... Acadia was a distinct colony of New France, and was geographically and administratively separate from the French colony of Canada (modern day Quebec), which led to Acadians and Québécois developing two rather distinct histories and cultures.[3] The settlers whose descendants became Acadians, came from "all the regions of France but coming predominantly directly from the cities".[4] Prior to the British Conquest of Acadia in 1710, the Acadians lived for almost 80 years in Acadia. After the Conquest, they lived under British rule for the next forty-five years. / 1710-1755.... the Acadians refused to sign an unconditional oath of allegiance to Britain. // During the French and Indian War, British colonial officers and New England legislators and militia ...carried out the Great Expulsion of 1755–1763.// The Acadians were deported throughout the British eastern seaboard colonies, from New England to Georgia. // They deported approximately 11,500 Acadians from the maritime region. Although one historian compared this event to contemporary ethnic cleansing, other historians suggested that the event is comparable with other deportations in history.[5] Many later settled in Louisiana, where they became known as Cajuns. Others were transported to France,[6] though some of those were resettled to Louisiana, by Henri Peyroux de la Coudreniere. ....(....) Acadians still live in and around the area of Madawaska, Maine, where the Acadians first landed and settled in what is now known as the St. John Valley. .... Since 1994, Le Congrès Mondial Acadien / Acadian World Congress / has united Acadians of the Maritimes, New England, and Louisiana. August 15, the feast of the Assumption, was adopted as the national feast day of the Acadians at the First Acadian National Convention, held in Memramcook, New Brunswick in 1881. On that day, the Acadians celebrate by having the tintamarre, which consists mainly of a big parade, where people can dress up with the colours of Acadia, and make a lot of noise...... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadian ................ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Congrès_Mondial_Acadien .... // 2014 Acadian World Congress : www.cma2014.com/fr/... and www.cma2014.com/en/ ... *** The first capital of Acadia, established in 1605, was Port-Royal. A British force from Virginia attacked and burned down the town in 1613 but it was later rebuilt nearby, where it remained the longest serving capital of French Acadia, until the British conquest of Acadia in 1710.[3] Over seventy-four years there were six colonial wars, in which English and later British interests, tried to capture Acadia, starting with King William's War in 1689. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadia // en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajun // Zachary Richard, CM is a Cajun singer/songwriter and poet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Richard .. ..https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Notable_People_Related_to_Cajun_Music ....
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Aug 16, 2013 8:59:13 GMT -7
Part 1
Tsar Bomba (Russian: Царь-бомба) is the nickname for the AN602 hydrogen bomb, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Also referenced as Kuz'kina Mat (Russian: Кузькина мать, Kuzka's mother), in this usage meaning "something that has not been seen before".
Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb was originally designed to have a yield of about 100 megatons of TNT (420 PJ); however, the bomb yield was reduced to 50 megatons in order to reduce nuclear fallout. This attempt was successful, as it was one of the cleanest (relative to its yield) nuclear bombs ever detonated. Only one bomb of this type was ever built and it was tested on October 30, 1961, in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.
The remaining bomb casings are located at the Russian Atomic Weapon Museum, Sarov (Arzamas-16), and the Museum of Nuclear Weapons, All-Russian Research Institute of Technical Physics, Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk-70). Neither of these casings has the same antenna configuration as the actual device that was tested.
Part 2
Part 3
Scary, isn't it !!!!!
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Post by Jaga on Aug 16, 2013 10:27:27 GMT -7
John,
very interesting documentary about American hydrogen bomb. I wish there was also a documenraet about the Soviet one in Nova Zemlia, which you write about in your post. Probably info about it is still secret
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Post by Jaga on Aug 16, 2013 10:28:57 GMT -7
Actually I found it, It is in Russian, I can understand it, not sure how many of you can, except Eric. But this is a short movie and the video shows a lot!
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