March 14, 1883: Death of Comrade Karl Marx, founder of scientific socialism.
On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep — but for ever.
An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.
But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.
Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated — and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially — in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.
Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.
For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorwarts (1844), the Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and, in addition to these, a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men’s Association — this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.
And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers — from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America — and I make bold to say that, though he may have had many opponents, he had hardly one personal enemy.
His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.
Former reporter for the New York Times and Daily News; taught Political Science at NYU
Posted: 03/06/2015
One-hundred-seventy-six civilians were killed by police in January and February, according to news clippings collected by killedbypolice.net.
Of course, the greatest outrage of all is that no one really knows how many people are killed by police annually. FBI Director James B. Comey said last month, “You could tell me how many people, the absolute number, bought a book on Amazon. It’s ridiculous I can’t tell you how many people were shot by police in this country last week, last year, the last decade.”
Most people killed by police are not armed with a gun. Only a small fraction of perpetrators are killed during or after a gunfight.
The people killed by police are generally not nice guys. They are deranged with mental problems, drug addicts, drunks, car thieves, shoplifters, vagrants, wife beaters–punks of all kinds and generally up to no good. But, they don’t deserve to die.
A typical example is the shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes, a depressed father of two who worked in an orchard near Pasco, Wash. A few weeks ago, police got a 911 call of a man throwing rocks at cars. When they arrived, the suspect ran away.
The video is very clear and shows three cops chasing him for a while, yelling for him to stop. Finally, Zambrano-Montes becomes exhausted after running in circles and eluding the cops. He stops and turns back to the chasing cops, as if to give up, raising his hands–no weapon in sight. The three cops are about 20 feet away and shoot Zambrano-Montes six times in the chest.
The video, which shows that he was clearly not an immediate danger to the police, is shocking. But, cases like this are almost always ruled as justifiable homicide.
Last Sunday, another video of a police killing emerged. A dozen cops converge on a drunk, homeless man in the Skid Row section of Los Angeles. The man, who had been diagnosed with mental illness, flails his arms, apparently after being shot with a Taser, and falls to the ground. Six cops jump on him, beating him with their fists and billy clubs. He is on the ground.
Five burly cops are on top of the frail homeless man.
The next thing you hear is six shots tearing into his chest. The LAPD later said that the homeless man tried to get a policeman’s gun. No weapon was found on the dead man, and the crowd becomes incensed. You can hear a man on the video screaming:
“I remember when one cop was all it took to subdue a homeless man without anyone being hurt or harmed. Now?!…… It takes half the police force and a scud missile to subdue a homeless broken down old drunk………. They can capture a man alive after he blows away half a grade school with an arsenal of weapons but they can’t handle a homeless man? They can capture a man after he kills people at a Batman movie but the homeless drunk?…. He’s a home grown terror cell so we better blow him away. Get the picture?”
Even if all the police accounts are accepted without question (the next day they released a picture of an officer’s gun still strapped into its holster and a claim that the homeless man had his hand on it), the triviality of the crime compared to the ultimate deadly result is shocking.
Police in other developed countries deal with many of the same problems: large number of immigrants, joblessness, alcoholism, mental health issues, domestic disputes and Islamic terrorism. Yet, they kill a fraction of what police in the United States do, who killed about 1,200 civilians in 2013 (or so was reported). The difference is shocking.
Police in countires like England, Wales, Australia and Germany kill, on average, about two to three people per year.
We have an epidemic of police murders in this country. It’s not that cops are bad people. But, there is a brutal, unconscious culture in almost every police department in America. This unprofessional culture was highlighted in the emails released in a recent report by the Department of Justice.
If policies conflict with the existing culture, behavior will not change. Consistent enforcement of rules that conflict with a military-style (police) culture, is nearly impossible, Meares said. Behavior is more likely to conform to culture than rules.
“Why are we training police officers like soldiers?” asked the Presidential Task Force’sinterim report. Although police officers wear uniforms and carry weapons, the similarity ends there. The missions and rules of engagement are completely different. The soldier’s mission is that of a warrior: to conquer. The police officer’s mission is that of a guardian: to protect. The rules of engagement evolve as the incident unfolds. Soldiers must follow orders. Police officers must make independent decisions. Soldiers come into communities as an outside, occupying force. Guardians are members of the community, protecting from within.
Proper training is clearly not a priority right now. Politicians and police brass figure that most people just want the bad guys taken care of–and don’t much care how. And public mindset is what sometimes gives them a 007 license to kill. For the most part, the rest of us law-abiding citizens all understand the people the police are killing are not angels.
The police haven’t been trained to not take things personally. They want civilians to respect them. They think the only way to get this respect is with fear and the threat or use of physical violence.
When they are, even minimally, trained, the results can be nothing short of miraculous. In NYC, police kill people at one-third the rate that they do in Miami or Los Angeles. Decades ago, NYC police were banned from shooting at fleeing cars (too dangerous for bystanders). This order dramatically cut down police killings of civilians, from an average of 71 dead from 1970 to 1972 to an average of 11 from 2011 to 2013.
If simple regulations similar to those in NYC were put in place nationwide–like don’t shoot at fleeing felons–we could probably save up to 500 lives per year.
The idea that brutal police conduct is justified by the dangers they confront, is an obvious pretext. Contrary to popular belief, police work is not among the most dangerous occupations.
No policemen have been killed in the line of duty by a gunman so far in 2015. Five policeman died in ordinary auto accidents. Four died of heart attacks. One died by accidental gunfire from another cop at a shooting range.
Inevitably, there will be some policemen shot down by criminals this year — the recent deaths of officers, notably the two NYPD detectives who were shot execution-style in Brooklyn, are stark reminders of the risks officers face — but so far this year it hasn’t happened.
The Presidential Task Force took notice of the statistics. A large proportion of officer injuries and deaths are not the result of interaction with criminal offenders, but the outcome of poor physical health due to poor nutrition, lack of exercise, sleep deprivation, and substance abuse.
Traffic accidents have been the number one cause of officer fatalities in recent years. An FBI report from 2003 to 2012, on police killed in the line of duty, showed that 49 percent of officer fatalities were a result of vehicle-related accidents.
Nearly half of those officers were not wearing seat belts, although the Task Force “recommends” that all officers be required to wear them. It remains a law for the rest of us citizens.
Another factor that proves fatal to many police officers is their unhealthy weight, often a result of sitting in a patrol car all day. Eight out of every 10 law enforcement members nationwide are overweight, a recently released report by the FBI said.
Researchers found that law enforcement personnel are 25 times more likely to die from weight-related cardiovascular disease than from the actions of a criminal.
Officer suicide is also major problem. A national study using data of the National Occupational Mortality Surveillance found that police died from suicide 2.4 times as often as from homicides.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Laurence Miller testified before the Presidential Task Force, saying supervisors would not allow an officer to go on patrol with a deficient vehicle, an un-serviced weapon, or a malfunctioning radio–but pay little attention to the maintenance of what is all officers’ most valuable resource: their brains.
“Dien Bien Phu” is a classic in all the best, juiciest ways. Not only did it demonstrate a high level of over-confidence on behalf of a French general in Vietnam, but the huge pile of complete “fuck-uppidness” resulted in the Americans later getting involved, and we all know how that turned out. I’m not saying that Dien Bien Phu caused the Vietnam war, but it sure as shit did not help, so in many ways, this little turd-blossom helped pave the way for over 200,000 dead and wounded Americans, and fifty years of world shaping history after it.
But why the hell were the French here anyway, and why did they care enough about Vietnam to be willing to go to war over it?
Our story starts back in the 17th Century and … *drumroll* … religion.
Back then there was a Jesuit missionary called Alexandre de Rhodes, and de Rhodes decided – because of the whole missionary gig, I imagine – that the fledgling Vietnam – all the way on the other side of the world – needed a little TLC in the form of Jesus.
Now this was kind of informal, but as trade grew over the next century, so did interest in spreading the Lord’s good name to the heathen hellspawn. So by the time we hit 1787 – a time when the Vietnamese are having all sorts of dynasty disagreements – France has the country littered with priests waving pamphlets around. Which was really fortunate for a 15 year-old prince trying to escape armies hellbent on removing his head: Prince Nguyễn Ánh ran into the arms of a welcoming Catholic priest: Pigneau de Béhaine.
Now I’m not saying that Pigneau had ulterior motives, but buddying up with a prince, restoring him to power, and perhaps converting him to Christianity along the way, sure seems like a compelling reason to help out. The two became the broest of bros, and Pigneau took the young prince under his wing. So much so, that when warfare escalated all over the region, Pigneau helped Nguyễn secure grenades, Portuguese ships, and all manner of foreign aid.
But the war for the duo really didn’t go well, and they were chased from island to island, country to country, until in the end Nguyễn asked Pigneau to golden words: “Do you think France would help restore me to power?”
A-ha! Now we’re getting to the bottom of it.
France, to be fair, was reluctant to get involved, but when he started to regale them with stories of how they’d be able to control the seas of China and the archipelago from Vietnam, eyebrows were raised with muted interest.
The duo met with King Louis XVI, Minister of the Navy de Castries and Minister of Foreign Affairs Montmorin in May 5, 1787, the young prince sporting a very stylish hairdo (true story). He absolutely wowed the court, played with the Kings son – as they were of similar age – and an agreement was struck: the Treaty of Versailles between France and Cochin China, gave Nguyễn four frigates and 1650 fully equipped badass French soldiers in exchange for harbor access. Which – BOOM! – is going to have those bitches back home all kinds of jelly!
Nguyễn put out his arms, shouted “that’s what I’M talking about,” grabbed his crotch, did a weird thing with his tongue, and strutted out of court.
Of course, France was not far away from a complete upheaval in the form of La revolution!So enthusiasm for actually following through on this deal was … how shall I put this … somewhat low. Long story short, they kinda completely back pedaled.
In the end, the entire expedition had to be paid for by funds raised by Pigneau, and while he certainly helped consolidate southern Vietnam and modernize its army, navy and fortifications, the total official French military presence in Vietnam was just 14 officers and 80 men.
Pigneau went on to die (spoiler alert: we all do. Except for me, I’m going for the whole frozen head thing), but he restored the young prince, and the Nguyễn dynasty was born again. The elephant in the room? France got him there, and France popped out missionaries like a very busy Parisian whore working the docks one night.
This immediately caused some problems for the Nguyễn Dynasty, because this whole “Christianity thing” really wasn’t what their entire culture was about. They started to try to drive them out, and this had France’s knickers in a bunch. So much so, France authorized an admiral to protect the missionaries, and that particular admiral saw it as authorization to do a land grab.
France attacked the port of Tourane (present day Da Nang) with fourteen gunships and 3,300 men. They occupied the city, shouted “yeah, mother fuckers!” and then went on to snag Saigon as well, ultimately bending the Vietnamese government into ever increasing uncomfortable positions, until they finally shouted “okay, enough, leave us alone!” and were forced to cede the provinces of Biên Hòa, Gia Định and Định Tường.
Now keep this in mind, because 100 years later you kinda start to understand why shit would kick off.
France said “sorry,” and vowed to not take any more territory. Which proved to be a big fat lie, because four years later they kicked it off again and went on another land-grab, all under the guise of “protecting missionaries.”
Before the end of the 19th Century, France was punching everyone in the face in that part of the world – including China – and in 1887 they formed French Indochina: Annam, Tonkin, and Cochinchina were all merged to form the modern Vietnam, and – getting a bit bored – they added the Kingdom of Cambodia and Laos later on. As far as France was concerned, all of this shit was now theirs:
Which kinda brings me to this:
And if you are looking at this thinking “wow, that just looks like Western assholes dividing up land that doesn’t belong to them,” you would be correct.
Naturally, the Vietnamese were a tad irked (and who could blame them?) Nationalist sentiments spread all over the country and uprisings were common, but as we head into the 20th Century and through WWI, France concedes not one jot. France is trying to be a Great Britain.
In 1930, a major uprising by Vietnamese soldiers in the French colonial army’s Yên Bái garrison heralded in the largest disturbance yet, but it failed to spark the fire of a broader rebellion and France knocked it back into place with some ease.
Then WWII kicked off, and things got … messy.
Back home, France was fucking mauling the crap out of the Germans. They’re all “yeah kraut, we’ve got your measure!” and are laying down some good old fashioned Renault R35 smackdown. They’re impregnable, they’re invincible, they’re … oh … apparently the Maginot Line didn’t do shit.
France fell. France had a German fist rammed very much up its backside.
Thus new Vichy France regime was born, and over in Vietnam – ‘cos they don’t have their home country now, lolz – they decided that Japan wasn’t so bad, and they gave them access to French Indochina, and thus better access to China.
But we’re talking “Japan” here … what the fuck do you think happened? Japan kinda liked the whole area, and ultimately they took it all. But they weren’t complete dicks; they let the Vichy French hang around to run things, it’s just that they had to run things according to how Japan told them to.
As far as Vietnamese nationalists were concerned, this was a double-puppet government and was all kinds of fucked up, so it’s no surprise that the previous 100 years of subjugation and ever-increasing nationalist pride finally swelled up into the formation of the Viet Minh.
These guys wanted one thing: France needed to get the fuck out.
Wait, two things: when the Japanese took over, they wanted them the fuck out, as well.
To get help in this endeavor, they looked to America, China, and Russia, and these guys were all falling over themselves to do secret service, political shit. Training, equipment, pirated computer games, you name it, it flooded into Viet Minh hands.
By 1944, the Viet Minh membership was 500,000 strong and was a significant movement, so when WWII ended and Japan had to hand control of the area back, they gave public buildings and Vichy French weaponry to … the Viet Minh.
And then to ensure that they knew how to use it all, 600 Japanese soldiers stuck around to help train the Viet Minh in the use of all of that lovely weaponry. Now you have half a million nationalists, with guns, and enough knowledge to point them in the right direction.
It’s no wonder then that they proclaimed the independence of Việt Nam and a new name o fDemocratic Republic of Vietnam. Notice the “Democratic.” That makes it legit.
The catch? No one actually gave a fuck, and they didn’t really control anything; it was a bunch of dudes with some guns. So they were forced to the negotiation table with China and France, where the three of them came to an agreement: France would give up certain rights in China, the Việt Minh agreed to let the French return – as long as they had independence within the union – and the Chinese agreed to get the fuck out, because no one was quite sure how they got there in the first place.
And immediately, France and the Việt Minh set upon each other like rabid fucking dogs, because as far as the Việt Minh were concerned “if Japan can beat you, so can we!”
Now, you have to imagine this as a school playground really, because with China and Russia helping the Việt Minh, the rest of the world was chanting on for France to “get stuck in” and “kick their faces in.” France was kinda getting egged on.
France threw itself into the fray, all fists flying, but they had no freaking plan. They literally fought day-to-day, battle-to-battle, so while there were some early gains, ultimately the war started to go against them. By 1953, the whole shebang was all turning to shit and six successive French generals could not turn things around.
The French had to start getting creative.
They drafted in Henri Navarre, and Navarre and a fucking plan. Not a plan, but the motherfucking plan.
It was called: the Hedgehog.
Stick with it folks, it gets better.
Simply put, the “hedgehog” was a drop of men deep behind the front, right on the enemy’s supply lines. They set up a firebase, buckle down, and effectively screw up the enemy’s ability to resupply and reinforce, while meanwhile provoking a full-frontal assault. The enemy – used to guerrilla warfare in the jungles – ends up throwing themselves on your barbed wired defenses. Navarre was going to coax the Việt Minh into fighting a battle where the French superior equipment and air power could make a difference. It was fucking genius.
It also wasn’t just made-up shit, this had worked only years before in 1952 at the Battle of Na San, during which the Việt Minh threw 3,000 guys into the path of machine gun bullets, before they realized that it was silly and they ran away.
Navarre wanted that type of big-balled, skull-busting action right here, and he pointed to an area on the map to make it happen: Dien Bien Phu. A valley completely surrounded by steep, jungle covered mountains and connected to the outside world only by winding trails. All he had to do was plop his behemoth sized manhood into that valley, and the peasantry would run away in fear.
Now I’m going to pause here for a moment, because I want the gravity of what happened next to sink in.
When Navarre announced his plan and circled the spot on a map, every single major subordinate officer protested; they knew that it was a disastrous plan.
Why was it a stupid, stupid idea?
Well, there are a few reasons.
For starters, Na San – the successful hedgehog some years prior – had been on a hill. You know … the whole “defensive” thing; Na San had that in spades.
Dien Bien Phu? It’s this:
That’s right, it’s a fucking river valley. In fact the Việt Minh general – Vo Nguyen Giap – compared Dien Bien Phu to a “rice bowl”, with his troops on the outside rim. And – frankly – you don’t have to be a military historian to know that if the enemy has the high ground, and surrounds you, then he probably has an advantage.
Secondly, the French hedgehog relied on the ability to be able to resupply the defendant, so there has to be an airstrip in the middle of the base. Both Na San and Dien Bien Phu had that covered, but Na San’s was HALF THE DISTANCE to the French airbase at Hanoi; Dien Bien Phu was located ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY MILES AWAY, thus meaning that resupplying Dien Bien Phu would take some serious logistical capabilities. And, frankly, the French just didn’t have the infrastructure to make that happen.
Plus – and here’s the kicker – Vo had learned his mistakes at Na San, and he had zero intention of making them again. This time he intended to lace the surrounding hills with these guys:
And that’s the type of metal-hurling punch to the nut-sack that takes any amount of planes out of the air before they can ever reach the airstrip. Not planes? No resupply. Sucks to be you.
And – of course – there’s the whole “I can shoot your airstrip from up on these hills with my artillery” thing, which, in some kind of amazing brain fart, Navarre didn’t think of. Navarre clearly thought that the Việt Minh were armed with sticks, or something.
Which introduces the last major blunder: Navarre was completely under estimating his enemy. He assumed that they had little by way of supplies, equipment, ammunition, and artillery, but the simple truth is that they had gobs of everything.
The previous 10 years of warfare with the French – plus Chinese provided training camps – had started to hone the Việt Minh into a pretty mean fighting force. Then add Russian supplied AK’s, rifles, AA-guns, and artillery, and you have a pretty mean assed force that also happens to be armed to the fucking teeth.
The Việt Minh were not going to be the pushover Navarre was expecting.
This is what his officers were pointing out to him, but all Navarre could see was that the region provided 40% of the rice that the Việt Minh ate, and that was good enough for him.
On the morning of November 20th, 1953, 9,000 French hardnuts and a bulldozer were dropped into Dien Bien Phu. They buffed up the airstrip, flew a few more guys in, plopped down some buildings, parachuted in some more hard cases, and added a little barbed wire. Things were pretty much “easy street,” and it was clear that Navarre had been correct: the Việt Minh were a bunch of ass bandits.
Except: no.
Vo Giap was fucking firing on all cylinders, because from this point forward he played this thing like a fucking game of chess.
He realized that if the French were pressed at Lai Chau, that they’d abandon that province and would retreat to this ever increasing fortification of Dien Bien Phu. He also recognized all of his mistakes from a couple of years prior (and he was probably thinking “you’re setting up base in a river valley? Really? Okay …”)
Vo started meticulously stockpiling ammunition in the surrounding hills, placed heavy artillery and anti-aircraft guns in blast proof dug outs, and – quite literally – had food and supplies carried in by foot or cycle. For months on end the Việt Minh carried in individual artillery shells one at a time, burying them away into the area all around the French base.
Wooden artillery pieces were built as decoys and the real guns were set up so that they could be moved between salvos, thus preventing the French from being able to deliver effective counter-battery fire (remember this bit, it’s significant later).
Vo had just put a noose around the French army’s neck and all he had to do now was pull on the rope.
In December, the French started to transform the fortress with seven satellite positions, with the fortified headquarters in the center, and to all intents and purposes it was looking like a bad assed base, but the commander assigned to it was one Colonel Christian de Castries, and Castries was a cavalryman and he knew SHIT about base defense and the trench warfare-like brawl this was about to turn into.
Vo now had his 316th Việt Minh Division move on Lai Chau, and – exactly as he predicted – the French withdrew to Dien Bien Phu. And he was waiting for them: en route the French were attacked and fucking a-n-n-i-h-i-l-a-t-e-d. I’m talking 2,100 left Lai Chau on December 9th, 185 staggered into Dien Bien Phu 13 days later. They were heard to be muttering “oh, my arse …”
And now Vo pulled on that rope.
On base there were 16,000 French troops, numerous aircraft, ten Chaffee light tanks, artillery, elite paratroops, Foreign Legionnaires, Algerian and Moroccan tirailleurs, and locally recruited Indochinese infantry. If they weren’t sitting in the middle of a valley, surrounded by instant death, then they’d probably look pretty imposing.
The Việt Minh had 50,000 dudes sitting in those hills, including the 351st Heavy Division, which was made up entirely of heavy artillery. Their artillery and anti-aircraft outnumbered the French by FOUR TO ONE.
The rain season came, as Vo knew it would, and the French air support means shit. The valley floor turned to mud, and those lovely little tanks sank up to their chassis, becoming nothing but immobile pillboxes.
And NOW the Việt Minh moved in and surrounded the base.
The assault started on March 13th, 1954. Outpost “Beatrice” got the first kick to the tender parts on the end of a righteous artillery bombardment that left the French command station as a large crater, and the commanding officer a fine red mist.
Then came the infantry assault, and while the French managed to kill more of the attackers than their own, resistance ultimately collapsed just after midnight and the outpost fell under Việt Minh control.
This pattern would be repeated over the forthcoming weeks: shell the living crap out of the French positions, then assault the crap out of it at the end of a bayonet.
During the shelling, it became evident that the Việt Minh were pointing their artillery pieces directly at what they intended to destroy (vs. the usual indirect fire). This was only possible, because they could dig in and could point-fire from a veritable ant’s nest in the hills. It played havoc with the French trying to counter-battery fire, so much so that two days into this assault the French artillery commander, Colonel Charles Piroth, took himself into a nearby building and took himself out with a fucking hand grenade.
Seriously … a hand grenade? That’s some serious shit. And this, boys and girls, is some grade-A demoralization at work.
Just one day in – ONE – and the key feature of this whole tactic fell like a drunk on pay day: the air field was locked the fuck down. But what do you expect when it is surrounded by artillery and AA-guns on all sides? French supplies would now have to come in via parachute … as the day wore on, resupply drops had to come in at higher and higher altitudes … and men? Yeah … men would come … Foreign Legionnaires and volunteers wanting to help out the stricken garrison … and all of them would have to parachute down into a hail of fucking lead. The landing strip became a deathzone.
On the 14th, “Gabrielle” was assaulted. It was preceded with hours of shelling, then two regiments of very upset Việt Minh, and finally – the following morning – a shell also took out the command station here and the French were forced to abandon it.
With “Beatrice” and now “Gabrielle” gone, nothing stopped the Việt Minh from being able to completely close down the airport and to bring pinpoint artillery fire to anywhere that they liked. Parachuting reinforcements quite literally came down right into the thick of it.
On the 17th, “Anne-Marie’s” defenders all fucked off into the night. That base had been defended by members of a Vietnamese ethnic minority loyal to the French. What the French didn’t know, was that Vo Giap had been feeding them leaflets for weeks prior, telling them that this wasn’t their fight. With shit going wrong all around them, they tended to agree and buggered off.
Over the next couple of weeks – and this is some serious shit to be in folks – the Việt Minh further tightened the noose around the French center, cutting off “Isabelle” and 1,800 troops. Meanwhile, the French commander – in all seriousness – had a fucking breakdown; he isolated himself in his bunker and stopped giving out orders. Which, um, I’m sure didn’t help the situation going on out there.
From the end of March and into April, “Elaine” and “Dominque” came under heavy pressure from massed Việt Minh forces. “Dominque 1 & 2” fell on March 30th, making “Dominque 3” the last outpost between the Việt Minh and the general headquarters. But the French were fighting hard and they were not giving up. Their own artillery at this point lay the pieces down at zero level and started blasting huge fucking holes in the Việt Minh ranks, finally forcing them back.
Fierce push and shove, attack and counter-attack, roiled for the next several nights, until Vo decided that his guys were suffering too heavily, and he switched up tactics. On April 5th, the Việt Minh started digging in trench warfare style, and moved to sapping tactics to overrun the French defenses east of the river.
April 10th, “Elaine 1” became the center of attention again, as the French retook it, were shoved out, and retook it again. Morale among the Việt Minh started to waiver; heavy casualties were being sustained, medical supplies were for shit (and who likes watching a friend suffer?), orders were disregarded, officers started to threaten execution of the troops … and the attack was beginning to waiver.
Vo called in fresh reinforcements from Laos and managed to keep things from completely falling apart. Entrenchments started to encircle French positions, and the battle dragged on; French counter attacks started to now wear them down, and outpost by outpost, they were running out of water, ammunition, and the ability to maintain their ground.
On May 1st, a massive Việt Minh attack overran “Elaine 1,” “Dominque 3,” and “Huguette 5.” This assault lasted a solid 5 days, with Katyusha rockets all up in it, and the final “fuck you” being a detonated mine shaft under “Elaine 2.” Blood, explosions, noise, havoc, mayhem … it was everywhere.
On May 7th there was an all-out attack with 25,000 Việt Minh infantry; TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND. Facing them? Just 3,000 Frenchmen.
The French commander radioed into French headquarters:
De Castries: “The Viets are everywhere. The situation is very grave. The combat is confused and goes on all about. I feel the end is approaching, but we will fight to the finish.” Cogny: “Of course you will fight to the end. It is out of the question to run up the white flag after your heroic resistance.”
By the end of that day, the French positions were completely overrun. No … worse than that … they were taken apart, destroyed, mauled, and fucked the hell over.
“The enemy has overrun us. We are blowing up everything. Vive la France!”
~ French radio operator
The following day, the Việt Minh counted 11,721 prisoners and almost 5,000 dead or missing. The Việt Minh had to pay a heavy price for this victory, with 4,000 dead and 9,000 wounded of their own, but this had been against 10% of the total French forces in Vietnam, and the sheer volume of prisoners they took was their highest ever.
Of the prisoners taken, only 3,290 were ever repatriated, which leads to an interesting story about Georges Boudarel, a Frenchmen accused of torturing his own countrymen while serving as Gaoler in a prison camp. But perhaps we’ll do that another time.
The Geneva Conference opened – quite literally – the day after the Việt Minh victory. The French had planned on being all boss at the meeting, but as headlines ran around heralding in their defeat, it was Ho Chi Minh who entered, strutting his stuff, looking sharp, and with a whole bag of “I have you by the balls” in hand.
The resulting agreement temporarily split Vietnam into two, until general elections could be held in a couple of year’s time. The Việt Minh got the north, and the “State of Vietnam” got the south. But the French withdrew, leaving the south – under emperor Bao Dai – with the backing of the United States, which was doubtlessly due to the fact that the north had China and Russia in its corner. And around this point, the south started accusing the north of all sorts of bad shit … and that temporary split started to guide history in a whole different direction.
Imperialist intervention and sectarian conflict are at the heart of the violence in the Middle East today, but any challenge to the status quo must address questions of social and economic justice, writes Adam Hanieh, author of Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East, in an article published at Middle East Monitor.
An opulent shopping mall in Dubai (Walid Mahfoudh)
OVER FOUR years since mass uprisings ousted sclerotic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, it can seem that the initial hopes represented by these movements lie in tatters. Libya, Syria, Yemen and Iraq remain mired in bloody armed conflicts that have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and displaced millions more within and across borders. In the pivotal case of Egypt, military rule has returned through the violent crushing of protests, the arrests of an estimated 40,000 people and the rebuilding of the repressive structures of the Mubarak era. Elsewhere, autocratic governments look more secure in their rule today than they have for many years.
In assessing the current moment, though, we need to look beyond the headline coverage of war, displacement and sectarianism. The Arab uprisings were not simply struggles against authoritarian rule; they were ineluctably wrapped up with a decades-long stagnation in living conditions and profound inequalities in wealth and power. Without addressing these socio-economic roots of the region’s malaise, there is no way out of the current impasse.
Even prior to the 2008-9 global economic crisis, the Arab world ranked near the bottom of the world in numerous development indicators. Average unemployment rates for Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia were higher than any other region in the world, while labor force participation rates were the lowest (less than half of the population).[1] For the Arab world as a whole, youth and female participation rates also ranked at the bottom of the globe.[2] In addition, those actually in employment tended to be in precarious, low-paid informal jobs; the countries of North Africa, for example, had one of the fastest-growing informal sectors anywhere on the planet.[3] There are many other statistics like these that could be recounted for poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy and other measures of social conditions; these are trends that have remained virtually unchanged for over two decades.
Key to explaining these outcomes are the IMF and World Bank-sponsored economic policies pursued by Arab governments since the 1980s. Of course there were important variations in pace and scale, but virtually all Arab states moved to implement the standard menu of neoliberal policies: cutbacks to social spending, privatization of land and other state assets, labor market deregulation, financial and trade liberalization, and so forth. These policies were focused upon the promotion of private-sector growth, while shifting more and more people into a reliance on the market and simultaneously eroding forms of collective social support. Western states applauded and drove these moves; indeed, the poster child of Arab neoliberalism, Mubarak’s Egypt, was anointed the world’s “top reformer” by the World Bank in 2008.[4]
Not everyone, however, lost from these policies. Indeed, for several key countries, growing poverty levels occurred in tandem with high economic growth rates, demonstrating that wealth was flowing towards some and away from others. In Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan, for example, real GDP per capita rose consistently from 2003 up to the onset of the global crisis in 2008, while stock markets boomed.[5] With reference to Egypt, the United Nations has puzzled recently over the co-existence of these two trends–growing wealth on one side and growing poverty on the other–claiming that this constitutes a “paradox” and an unexpected outcome of standard economic models.[6]
The supposed paradox, however, disappears once we reject positive-sum, mutually beneficial assumptions about how markets operate. As social and economic life become more deeply embedded in market relations, those who hold the most power in those markets tend to benefit. The result is polarization and inequality, not a uniform downward spiral (or, indeed, a steady upward climb) felt alike by all. In this regard, the neoliberal experience in the Arab world has been completely unexceptional; the same pattern can be seen replicated across the globe.
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THIS POLARIZATION of wealth and power is critical to unpacking the social roots of autocracy in the Middle East. As the handmaidens of neoliberal reform, autocratic rulers not only enriched themselves and allied elites but also moved to quash any domestic opposition to these policies. Simultaneously, they acted as dependable partners for Western policy in the region, receiving ample financial, political and military support in return. The problem is thus not simply “political”; that is, the existence of corrupt and nepotistic rulers. Rather, these forms of political rule reflect, protect and reinforce differences in socio-economic power. Politics and economics are fused.
Widening gaps of power and wealth are not only apparent within the borders of individual Arab states; they are also manifest at the regional level, most notably between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states on one hand, and other Arab countries on the other. These regional hierarchies have grown larger in the wake of recent multiple political, social and economic crises, illustrating once again that the impact of crisis also needs to be disaggregated between winners and losers.
According to an October 2014 report by the Institute of International Finance, net foreign assets (gross foreign assets minus external debt) of the GCC states rose from $878 billion in 2006 to a forecast $2.27 trillion by end-2014.[7] This compares to a decline in the net foreign assets of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and Morocco, from a surplus of $11 billion in 2006 to a forecast deficit of $46.7 billion by end-2014.[8] Likewise, in 2014, the six states of the GCC were estimated to have a total current account surplus of just under $300 billion (17 per cent of their GDP), more than four times where they stood in 2009.[9] During the same period, the current account balance of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and Morocco reached an estimated total deficit of $25.9 billion in 2014 (-4.6 per cent of GDP), compared to a deficit of $18.8 billion in 2009 (-4.3 per cent of GDP).[10]
Within the GCC, privately held wealth grew by 17.5 percent each year from 2010 to 2014, with the total dollar amount doubling from $1.1 trillion to $2.2 trillion over this period.[11] Up to 5,100 Gulf families are estimated to hold more than $500 million per household in liquid assets; their combined total assets exceed $700 billion.[12] This figure, it should be noted, does not include so-called “illiquid” assets such as real estate holdings, business equity or collectible items like works of art.
Once again, we find evidence of the mutually reinforcing trends of growing inequality and growing wealth, this time duplicated at the regional level. While the consequences of the recent drop in global oil prices remains to be seen, the very real potential for further downturn in the core zones of the world economy–most notably in Europe–means that this regional polarization will likely remain an ever-present feature of the contemporary situation.
These inequalities in power and wealth are essential to understanding the counter-revolutionary moment and have provided a fertile ground for the growth of sectarianism. Of course, the varied forms of foreign and regional intervention–political, economic and military–would always seek to block any fundamental challenge to the regional order. The predictable outcomes of the Western destruction of Iraq over the past two decades helped nurture the rise of sectarian groups and Islamist irredentism. In Syria, the bloody hand of the Assad regime fomented these processes deliberately, and appears to have won tacit support from the West.
However, throughout all of these events, left and progressive voices have remained largely marginal and too easily swayed by a Manichean geopolitical worldview or illusions in their own “patriotic bourgeoisie.” Without addressing questions of social and economic justice and presenting an alternative to the market-led policies of recent decades, there is little hope of building a progressive pole that is opposed to both existing elites and the disastrous course of sectarianism. This is not simply an economic question, but is in essence profoundly political; one that must involve challenging the coterie of high-ranking political and military officials, wealthy businessmen and large corporations who continue to benefit from the status quo.
This blog is devoted to legal, historical and human rights matters, in which issues of general concern are addressed freely and spontaneously. It is intended to further an informal exchange of views in the democratic spirit of freedom of opinion and respect for the opinions of others, in an effort to understand rather than condemn, to propose constructive solutions rather than grandstand. The perspective is both from inside and outside the box and the added value lies more in the questions than in the answers.
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