A city adjacent to the state line of Arizona and 80 miles off northeast of Las Vegas, Mesquite is a city that is home to the growing population of retirees, several casino resorts, as well as renowned golf courses. In the recent years, Mesquite has become the latest boomtown in Southern Nevada that has been luring foreign guests and the local settlers. This small city of dry grounds has now turned into an amazing vacation destination with 24-hour gaming, celebrity entertainment, fine dining, and spectacular views of the multi-colored canyons from the city's finest golf courses. Some of Mesquite's well visited golf layouts include the Wolf Creek Golf Club, the Chase at Coyote Springs, the CasaBlanca Golf Club, the Conestoga Golf Club, and the Canyons Course of the Oasis Golf Club.
The Wolf Creek Golf Club is a breathtaking course set above the desert floor where guests can catch the best views of the red-rock canyon walls, lush green fairways and the glistening waterfalls. Just an hour off northeast Las Vegas, golfers from across the nation often flock the city to experience spectacular 4,169 to 7,018 yards of golf. Aside from the picturesque views and impeccably conditioned course, golfers of all abilities can also get first-class amenities.
Designed by the famous Jack Nicklaus, the Chase at Coyote Springs is a 7,471-yard layout considered as the first among the series of his signature golf courses. The course features the rye-grass fairways and the deep white-sand bunkers with the picturesque mountain vistas which made the course one of the finest desert masterpieces ever conceived. The club also offers the Caddie program that gives every golfer an invaluable service.
The CasaBlanca Golf Club is an 18-hole championship course designed by Cal Olson. The entire course winds through the natural desert wetlands of the region ringed by the majestic views of the Virgin River Mountains. The course also features the challenging 5 sets of tees as well as the practice range with multiple targets and year-round grass tees. The CasaBlanca range can also cater to full shots ultimate practices.
Undulating through Nevada's finest canyons, the Conestoga Golf Club is all about challenging scenic golfing. The layout which was creatively designed by Gary Panks features the tranquil water elements and rugged rock outcroppings through its rising and falling elevations. Golfers of all ability levels can have the best tee times on the course's 18 holes all crafted to Mesquite's spectacular landforms.
The Canyons Course of the Oasis Golf Club was created to compliment the scenic Palmer Course. This meticulously designed 18-hole course features the Bermuda greens and the large fairways paving the way for a player-friendly layout. Although the course has the rugged setting, golfers from all parts of the globe often test their swinging skills on the layout's natural and serene atmosphere. While on vacation, guests can have a day on the greens and experience one of the finest tee times that no other courses in the state can offer.


HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is a virus that weakens the immune system.
HIV is covered by the definition of disability in the Disability Discrimination Act. The Act makes it against the law to discriminate against a person because of disability. There are some limited exceptions and exemptions.
Discrimination is against the law in many areas of public life including: employment, education, getting or using services, renting or buying a house or unit and accessing public places or facilities.
Example: A bank refused to offer a loan to an applicant unless they made a disclosure of their HIV status. This could be disability discrimination.
It is also against the law to discriminate against a person because of sexual orientation. There are some limited exemptions.


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These Memphis-Inspired House Goods Are A Nostalgic Nod To The '80s
By Meg Miller 1 minute Read
Designer Camille Walala's colorful, eye-popping graphic patterns can be found on the facades of buildings all over London, inside Urban Outfitters and even in a Katy Perry video. Now she's adapting them to furniture and housewares for her latest collection for the London shop Aria.
The collection includes pillows, floor cushions, plates, mugs and a selection of furniture with a dizzying array of dots and dashes, color blocks and bold geometric designs. In collaboration with Dale Kirk, Walala created a series of a modular shelves that come in square, triangle and rectangle shapes and can stand alone or stack on top of each other.
Walala's bold graphic patterns and overtly geometric shapes are a nod to the Memphis movement, which has been making somewhat of a resurgence as of late. Like many young designers taking cues from the postmodern movement, Walala grew up during its heyday. Walala was raised in the South of France in her mom's warm, colorful house, full of bright patterns and a lot of African influence. Her dad, an architect, had a style that was much more minimal, but the angles of his work intrigued her.
While influenced by Memphis Group, Walala works to bring her own aesthetic edge to anything she produces. "I think it's a cycle–you always come back to a trend without realizing. We don't really create anything, nothing is new, we forget about it and bring it back with more push," she says. "I'm respectful of these guys–Ettore Sottsass and Nathalie du Pasquier–they are geniuses to me, but I'm trying to push it in my own way with my own influence."
You can check out the entire collection Walala designed for Aria here.
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Home / Latest Updates / Social media for women's rights advocacy
Social media for women's rights advocacy
admin October 3, 2015	Latest Updates, Nation Leave a comment 110 Views
By Akhtar M. Nikzad-It has not been a long time that social media's popularity graph gone upward. Social media has become popular in Afghanistan in the last five years.
The number of social media users has reach to 1.3 million. The figure tells the fact that number of social media networks (SMN) users is gradually growing in the country.
Easy access to internet and cheaper China-made smart phones in the markets paved the ground for people to have access to SMN in every corner of the country. But still lack of a particular regulation to monitor activities of the SMN users is main problem.
A huge portion of the SMN users is comprised of women and girls. They made too many groups and pages to advocate for women's rights through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking sites. Social media truly enabled them to make a huge consensus against injustices, violence against women and struggle for protection of their rights in the governmental departments.
Despite restrictions, insult and harassment by opportunist and fanatic users of the social media, girls are using SMN, though, with a lot of problems. They cannot post their photos on Facebook. They post pictures of different brands so that no one will know about them.
In a country where many girls and women are not allowed by their families to go to work or school, a Facebook account that allows them to link up with male users may pose problems. Many women use a pseudonym on social networking sites, and most of them never post pictures of themselves or their female friends.
Najiba Rukhsar, a 22 years old girl, said that first she did not know about Facebook and other social media sites but some of her friends spoke about its significance. "I created a Facebook account with a pseudonym. Many boys sent friend requests to me, though they did not know that whether I am a boy or girl. In fact the social media site has helped me to have contacts with my friends whom I have not seen for long time," she said.
Rukhsar has 500 friends on Facebook. Every day she shares information about women's rights and Islamic edicts about human rights.
"I don't feel myself alone. Now I am part of a large community that is working for protection of women's rights. Facebook persuaded me to have good communication not only with women but also with intelligent boys who are playing significant role for positive change in society. When some girls say that they do not have Facebook account, I feel strange and tell them that how they live without Facebook," she giggled.
Razia is another young girl using social media. For the last two years she uses Facebook but her parents don't know.
She said that use of social media is not allowed for girls in her family. Razia says that girls are considered inferior and denied the right to speak or write about their rights, particularly on social media because when some boys know that the user is a girl, they send irritating pictures or write love messages.
"Instead of my own photo, I have posted a picture of a flower as my profile photo. However, boys know that picture of flower is used by girls and they send friend request. Some of them use abusive language when I block them. I always write poems and stories about the problems that women are facing. It is a good way to advocate for women's rights," she said.
Najia Sultani, a student, termed social media as a good medium to share ideas, news and general information. She said that social media is a new phenomenon in Afghanistan but many young people have access to it.
"Social media has empowered women to some extent and united them. They can speak about their rights with one voice. Whenever they want to express their concerns over an important issue, they can use social media to organize protests," she pointed out.
The new information technology provided too many facilities. Today, majority of the high-ranking officials have social media accounts and are in contact with people. They share their achievements and activities through this medium. Some political and religious leaders, who earlier showed serious reaction against social media use, are now active social media users.
Facebook played significant role in reflecting Farkhunda's brutal killing. Social media users posted the video showing killing of Farkhunda on their Facebook walls and unveiled the culprits.
Hamida Arzo, a women's rights activist, said that when Farkhanda was killed she was unaware because she could not watch news channel due to power outage but when logged into her Facebook account she saw several videos and pictures about the brutal killing.
Information technology has grown fast in Afghanistan since fall of the Taliban's de facto regime. In 2001, there were around 15,000 telephone lines in the country. Now 18 million people use cell phones.
Noor Ahmad, a resident of Kabul City, said that social media has broken the taboos. He said that girls and boys could interact now more easily than the past, though, everyone does not use Facebook for love.
According to a report of the GIZ, 37.8 percent of women in compare to 75.8 percent of men post their photos on Facebook wall. Afghan women accept friend requests of only those whom they know.
Chief of Nai, an organization supporting free media, Mujibullah Khilwatgar said that 1.3 million Afghans use social media. One million people use Facebook, 200,000 Twitter and the remaining 100,000 use other social media sites.
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Motorcycles hit the road every summer. However, in order to spend your summers atop your prized motorcycle, you need to have motorcycle insurance. Whatever type of motorcycle you have, you need protection for it. After all, it would not be easy buying a replacement in case it breaks down. Nonetheless, you don't have to break your budget with your motorcycle insurance. Here are some tips that you can do just to slash your insurance costs.
Be careful when choosing your motorcycle.
The rule of thumb is the more expensive your bike, the more expensive its insurance will be! Thus, take care not to buy something too expensive if you think you won't be able to handle its insurance costs. Larger engines usually result in large insurance premiums. Moreover, bikes that have lots of chrome also tend to have higher insurance cost. Also, sports bikes may cost the highest as insurers usually classify them as high-risk.
When it comes to discounts, one of the best ways to get one is to take a safety class for driving motorcycles. If you have enough knowledge of driving safety, you can save money for your motorcycle insurance now. This would benefit you as it could help you ride better while keeping your insurance record claim-free.
If you install an anti-theft device in your motorcycle, it will be a win-win situation for you and the insurance company. An anti-theft device may include locks and chains as well as an alarm. It may also include a GPS tracking system. Your insurance company may specify certain devices that they can approve for discounts, so it is better to consult with your insurer first.
Join a motorcycle riding club.
If you join a motorcycle club, one of its benefits is that you might be able to save up to 10 percent off when it comes to your insurance premiums. The thing is that you should ask around which of the listed motorcycle clubs have the best offers when it comes to benefits. Aside from the American Motorcycle Association, there are many more clubs with which you can get affiliated.
Owning a motorcycle definitely requires insurance but you have to do what you can to think of the best way to slash insurance costs. The most important thing is to think twice before buying a high-risk and expensive motorcycle. The wise decision is to consult with your insurer first even before buying a motorcycle.
At AllRisk Auto Insurance, we aim to provide comprehensive insurance policies that make your life easier. We want to help you get the insurance that fits your needs. You can get more information about our products and services by calling our agency at (360) 693-4044. Get your free quote today by CLICKING HERE.


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Florida Criminal Defense
An Overview Of Criminal Law Cases In The State Of Florida
Interviewer: What are some of the most common types of crimes that you represent people for?
Michael Golub: Mostly, either domestic violence or drug crimes. I do mostly family law, so a lot of times, I deal with the domestic violence as part of that. And then, obviously there's a lot of people that have the drug issues as well.
A Step by Step Breakdown of a Typical Criminal Process Following an Arrest in the State of Florida
Interviewer: What is the process that an Individual goes through once he or she have been arrested for a crime?
Michael Golub: Yes. I mean what happens is a person can be arrested or for some lesser crimes, typically a person is arrested and they're brought to jail. Sometimes if it's a very minor crime, they're just given a notice to appear in court although they're still charge criminally but typically, what happens is law enforcement would do the initial arrest. At that point in time when the person is in custody, that's when their rights are attached to them. They've got a right to remain silence and the officers have to read those rights to them, which is called what we typically refer to as the "Miranda Rights". You've right to remain silent, you've right to an attorney. If you can't afford an attorney, the one will be provided to you and so on. So, you know, those rights are read at that point.
If a Person is Arrested , they're Brought to Jail and Processed and a Bond is Set
Typically what happens if a person is arrested, they are brought to jail and within 24 hours - well pretty much after a few hours, they're processed and they - a bond is usually set and a person can go abruptly go to their bondsmen or post the bond themselves and bond out of jail if they have the money. Typically what happens is a person, if it's not too serious of a crime, they can be released on their own recognizance or usually what will happen is there'll be a bond set on the case. And you can post the bond yourself if it's $1,000, you know, what you do is you have somebody bring $1,000 down at the jail give it to them and then you get out and they hold the money and tell you to make sure you show at the court, or you go to your bondsman and the bondsman puts up - you pay the bondsman 10 per cent and the bondsman puts up the bonds for you and ensure that you make it to court.
Within 24 Hours of Being Incarcerated a Person is Called Before a Judge for the Initial Appearance
If you're not out of jail, you'll see a judge usually within 24 hours for what's called an initial appearance if you're still in jail. If you are released to bond it out, then you're going to be - the first court date that you're going to have is called the arraignment and that's usually a couple of weeks after the initial arrest. The purpose of the arraignment is so you - basically the state attorney, after somebody's arrested, the police will arrest you for a certain crime and that's what you'll be held on and that will be written on the police report. What happens after that is all of the police reports and information then go to the state attorney's office and then, that's where an attorney, a prosecutor is going to review that information and they're going to make a charging decision as to what they feel the crime actually is from the circumstances and what they think they can actually prove against the person.
Typically a Defendant Has to Enter a Plea of Guilty or Not Guilty on the Charges Brought at the Arraignment
In other words, what happens is a lot of times you'll find a situation where the police will arrest somebody and charge them and then, they get to arraignment. And when they're at arraignment, they may be actually formally charged with either a different crime or a greater crime or a lesser crime or there's a lot of times that you will see a difference in it when it gets to that point because the police officers are not attorneys, it's the attorneys that are going to be trying the case that know what they can prove when they go to court. So, the arraignment is when the state attorney is going to file the formal charging document, which is called "An Information", and that's going to basically layout exactly what they're going to charge you with. Typically at an arraignment, then a person has to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty on the charge.
Judges Do Not Normally Accept Pleas for Felonies at the Arraignment
Now, if I am representing a person, normally what I'm going to do is I'm going to automatically enter a not guilty plea for them prior to the arraignment and they will not actually go to the arraignment, I'll enter written pleas for them of not guilty. The judge will accept that plea and then, there'll be some court dates that will be set further into the future. On the arraignments, judges do not normally accept pleas in felony cases. Sometimes in the misdemeanor cases, the misdemeanor judges will accept pleas and people come in but typically when I represent somebody I, don't ever go to an arraignment. Normally we are going to enter a plea of not guilty prior to that, which will then allow us to then figure out a little bit more about the case, give us more time, so we can figure out what's the best course of action for the person.
Defense Attorneys Often File a Notice of Intent to Participate in Discovery
Normally, at that time, the first thing that I file in the case is what's called a Notice of Appearance, a waiver of arraignment and plea of not guilty. Then, with that, I'm going to file a notice of intent to participate in discovery. And basically what that means is that the state attorney, if they charge somebody, they're going to have to provide copies of what we call a discovery which is basically any evidence that they have that they intend to bring forth at trial. They have to list the names of any witnesses. If there are documents, witness statements, photographs, lab records anything that can be construed, you know, as evidence that can be used against the person at trial has to be produced and we have a right to see it.
An Additional Demand for Exculpatory Evidence is Filed to Procure Evidence from the State that is Helpful in Defending the Accused
Additionally, we file a demand for exculpatory evidence. This means that basically if the state attorney has evidence which tends to help the defense, the state attorney has to produce that for us as well, so we'll get the feel of the evidence and everything that can be used and names and addresses of any of the witnesses. We then have a right to talk to witnesses, we can basically either talk to them, call them up and talk to them or normally what we will do is we will do what's called a deposition where we subpoena the witness and put them under oath with a court reporter present and then, we can ask them questions about what happened in the case. So, that's what we call the discovery process.
The Defense Attorney Has to File Special Notices Regarding Alibi Witnesses
There is a reciprocal requirement as well where if the client has defense witnesses or other types of evidence that we want to produce, we have to notify the state attorney of those witnesses. Also, if they're alibi witnesses, we have to file notices, special notices pertaining to the alibi witnesses as well. So, basically, the first stage that we really go into is the recovery stage where we're going to find out what evidence is and then, we're going to look at it and see based on the evidence; are there any dispenses that we have and what is the likelihood of, you know, prevailing a trial or not prevailing a trial. The state attorney always has the burden of proving the case against somebody and the burden is beyond the reasonable doubt and you have a right to a jury trial which is going to depend upon the amount of the jurors and upon what type of case. Typically, it's you know six jurors unless it's a capital case, then it's 12 jurors.
Motions to Suppress Evidence Obtained through Illegal Means may also be Filed by the Defense Attorney
After that, we kind of get familiar with all the evidence and look at may be some other motions that need to be filed, pre-trial motions such as one motion that may be filed would be a motion to suppress evidence. In other words, if there is a situation where the evidence that the state attorney has, has been illegally obtained such as, f the person was pulled over and they're driving the car and they didn't have probable cause to pull them over, then we can file a motion to suppress evidence that flows from that legal stop. Or if a person's arrested and they read them Miranda Rights and then, the officer starts questioning them and they say "I don't want to; they ask for an attorney and they say "I don't want to talk" and they keep talking and then, they say something, then those statements may be suppressible.
Negotiating With the State Attorney is One of the Major Duties of a Defense Attorney
There are all kinds of things that can happen on a pre-trial level. And sometimes, we can do a thing called a motion to dismiss where if we look at the evidence and if we assume all of the evidence to be true even if the evidence are true that it does not amount to the offense that the person's being charged with and sometimes, a case can be dismissed at that level. So, those things kind of pre-trial motions are filed at that point. And then, along the way also what we're going to be doing is negotiating with the state attorney. Typically, most cases are negotiated, there is a negotiated settlement entered in pretty much, in probably 90 per cent or more of criminal cases. Very rarely do you ever see a case that actually goes to a jury trial. Most of them, there is some sort of a negotiated plea or, the state attorney reduces charges and drops charges or agrees to a certain type of sentence in a case.
Sometimes Defense Attorneys Can Negotiate a Pre Trial Intervention for First Time Offenders
So, there's a lot of bargaining and wheeling and dealing that goes on there. And basically, we try to get the person the best case scenario given the facts what they have. Typically, what I do is I'm going to talk to the person about what their priorities in the case are, okay, and what their goals are. Usually, most people's no. 1 priority is to stay out of jail, so that's our first goal to keep a person out of jail. Usually, the second goal is to try and keep the person's record clean if possible. So, typically in a lot of cases in terms of negotiation, we can negotiate some sort of a probationary type of sentence you know that doesn't involve jail time, that's good in most cases. Sometimes, we can negotiate a thing called pre-trial intervention, which is what happens with 1st offenders, depending upon the crime of course but a lot of times that program will be available for them. And what they do there is it's similar to probation. But what happens is when they complete certain things and they complete the program, then the state attorney then goes in and drops all of the charges. So, then at the end of the day, there is not a finding of guilt there, everything is dropped.
In Felony Charges a Court Can Either Withhold Adjudication of Guilt or Adjudicate a Person Guilty
That person also may or may not be let able to go back in afterwards and expunge that and have that taken off the record. The other thing that can happen especially in felonies is that a court can either withhold adjudication of guilt or they can adjudicate a person guilty. The problem is if a person is adjudicated guilty, then there are certain rights that they lose. They're going to lose their civil rights, they won't be able to vote, they won't be able to carry firearms or possess firearms, and they won't be able to run for the public office. So, that's an important thing that we have to be concerned about in felony cases. Also, in those cases, if a person is adjudicated guilty of a felony, they will not be able to go back later and have that charge expunged and taken off of their records where they may be able to if there was a withhold of adjudication.
Misdemeanors & Felonies
Judge-Issued Warrants
Diversionary Programs
Common Client Mistakes
Timeframe Of Resolution
Advantages Of Retaining A Private Attorney
Talk To An Attorney Today.
Michael E. Golub, P.A. 819 West Main Street, Suite B Tavares, FL 32778 Phone: 352-508-1637 Tavares Law Office Map
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Title: On Vietnam
Author: Ngô Văn Xuyết
Topics: libertarian communism, Vietnam
Source: Retrieved on 2020-05-01 from https://libcom.org/library/vietnam-0
Ngô Văn
On Vietnam
1. The La Lutte Group and the Workers' and Peasants' Movement (1933–37)
2. The Sects and the Vietminh
3. August 1945, The Coming of Ho Chi Minh
4. The Saigon Insurrection
Erupted
The text below is extracted from Sur le Vietnam, a series of articles published in Informations et Correspondences ouvrières from the end of 1967 and the beginning of 1968, at the height of the movement against the Vietnam war in Europe and North America. Whilst this description as a whole has not hitherto appeared in English, the final chapter, The Saigon Insurrection of 23 September 1945, was the only account of the events available in Britain for many years, having been first translated by Chris Pallis and printed in Solidarity, Volume 5 no.5, 27 October 1968, pp.3–6, 16. It was subsequently reproduced in the United States as a leaflet by the Spartacist West group of the movement now known as the ICL, and later by S Pirani (ed.), Vietnam and Trotskyism, Australia 1987, pp.56–60.
This account was largely written from memory, without the advantage of an extensive documentation to hand. Comrade Van's more extensive treatment of the same period is to be found in Le Mouvement IVè Internationale en Indochine, 1930–39 in the Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no.40, December 1989, pp.21–60.
The author, Ngo Van Xuyet, was a member of the League of Internationalist Communists for the Fourth International, formed in Saigon in 1935; like Ta Thu Thau's organisation this group supported the Fourth International, but did not participate in the La Lutte front, concentrating instead on the publication of the journal Le Militant. He was jailed for a year in 1936, continued political activity on his release, participated in the 1945 Saigon insurrection, and has lived in exile in France since 1947.
South Vietnam in the 'thirties: we have seen how the world economic crisis reverberated in Vietnam in essentially peasant revolts and in the awakening of the working class movement momentarily decapitated by the repression at the beginning of the 'thirties.
Some Vietnamese students who had been trained in France organised themselves into the two main tendencies that divided the Third International: Stalinism and Trotskyism. Some of them had been expelled from France after their demonstrations against the sentences following the Yen-bay rebellion in 1930. [1] Moscow trained some of the militants who were assigned to reconstruct the Communist Party in illegality; the kernel of this new illegal party fell under the blows of police repression in 1935, and when one of its leaders, Tran Van Giau, now in Ho Chi Minh's information services, was before the court in Saigon being questioned about his occupation, he declared that he was a professional revolutionary. Along with his companions he joined those who had been sentenced in 1933 in the hard-labour camp of Poulo-Condore. Also born in clandestinity round about 1932 were the small Trotskyist groups under the leadership of some of those expelled from France. Bulletins run off with gelatine disseminated in secret the theoretical discussions of the Vo-san (Proletarian) group of Ta Thu Thau and the Thang-muoi (October) group of Ho Huu Tuong and others amongst some of the awakened city workers. The second of these groups charged the first with a conciliatory tendency towards the Stalinists. Inspired by the Permanent Revolution, these disciples of Trotsky advocated a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' in alliance with the peasantry in order to accomplish this 'permanent revolution,' the foremost tasks of which would be national liberation through anti-imperialist struggle and agrarian reform through the abolition of private ownership and the division of the land amongst the peasants, whereas the Stalinists were planning on a 'democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry' that would realise the same objectives. The secret political influence of the Trotskyists was essentially urban; the Stalinists rooted themselves in the countryside on account of the origins of their movement, where they propagated the notion that the Trotskyists were the enemy of the peasantry.
But very soon the three Trotskyist groups – the third being the Ta doi lap tong tho (Publications of the Left Opposition) – were broken up; in August 1932 the police arrested 41 militants and sympathisers in Saigon and in the provinces. The first trial of the Trotskyists took place in Saigon on 1 May 1933, and 16 out of the 21 accused were condemned to between three months' and five years' imprisonment.
At the time of the Saigon municipal elections in 1933 both Stalinists and Trotskyists attempted to carry out joint legal action by putting together a single electoral list, the 'workers' list' (so lao-dong). In order to stand in elections you had to be either a proprietor or, at least, pay business tax, so the Trotskyist teacher Ta Thu Thau became a carpet seller in Lagrandière Street, whereas the Stalinist journalist Nguyen Van Tao became a lemonade seller in the Old Market. Electoral meetings began to be held in the Thanh-xuong, a small local theatre. Coolies, commercial employees, Saigon workers and young people were for the first time openly exhorted to struggle for the eight hour day, for trade union rights and for the right to strike by the candidates to the municipal council who were seeking the votes of the citizens in order to 'represent' them. The success of these meetings alarmed the police, who closed the Thanh-xuong theatre along with the theatres in the suburbs (Khanh-hoi and Tan-dinh), but meetings rendered impossible by this police intervention were transformed into street demonstrations. The bourgeois electoral list of the Constitutionalist Party was defeated, and the workers' list gained a majority of those seats upon the municipal council that were set aside for the Vietnamese. It was at the time of this legal agitation that La Lutte first appeared, a weekly newspaper in French of the United Front between the Saigon Stalinists and Trotskyists (you should bear in mind that no paper in the native language was allowed to appear without the prior authorisation of the colonial administration, so La Lutte could only cater for a thin layer of the urban population, that which could read French; even then it was often the victim of seizures and searches, but in the Vietnamese language it would not even have been allowed to appear). A French journalist, old Ganofsky, who lived in poverty on the margins of colonial circles, gave his name as manager of La Lutte. This free spirit was afterwards interfered with on several occasions and he paid the consequences of his disinterested act right up to his death.
This local United Front that was dictated by the necessities of the struggle against strong colonial oppression soon became disrupted by the evolution of the politics of the Russian Communist Party, and consequently the politics of the French party. The France-Soviet Pact of May 1935 converted France into an ally of Russia, and the French Communist Party now had the duty of defending 'French democracy' against Fascism. The Stalinist group dutifully dispensed with its usual jargon of 'French Imperialism,' no longer talked about national independence, and imparted a purely reformist direction to its slogans. Deep differences arose within La Lutte, but the Ta Thu Thau group still did not break its formal unity with the Stalinists. The wave of strikes that was followed by the factory occupations and the formation of the Popular Front in France in June 1936 had an immediate echo in the peninsula of Indochina, where the reformist current grew stronger. A Popular Front known under the name of the Indo Chinese Congress Movement (Phong-tiao-Dong-duong-Dai-hoi) was formed on the initiative of the La Lutte group with the bourgeois Constitutionalist Party, in order to draw up demands relating to the political, economic and social reforms that were to be presented to the Popular Front government of the metropolitan country. At the end of 1935 a small secret Trotskyist group was set up, the Internationalist Communist League, which launched the slogan of 'action committees' amongst the workers and peasants by means of a leaflet in the Vietnamese language, but its militants were immediately thrown into prison. The Stalinists urged respect for the law to the peasants who had begun to agitate in a violent manner against direct and indirect taxes and for a reduction in ground rent.
The 'first trial of the Fourth International,' the trial of the Internationalist Communist League, opened in Saigon on 31 August 1936. Following a plea submitted by their lawyers with regard to the tortures and maltreatment they had undergone at the hands of the police, a complaint that raised an echo in the Depêche d'Indochine and La Lutte, Lu Sanh Hanh and seven of his comrades were sentenced to light prison sentences of between six and 18 months. [2]
The ferment among the workers manifested itself in partial strikes that culminated in the general strike of 1937 that included workers in the arsenal at Saigon, of the Trans-Indo Chinese Railway (Saigon-Hanoi), the Tonkin miners and the coolies of the rubber plantations, the mass of the proletariat, in other words. They were demanding an eight hour day, trade union rights, the right to strike and convene, a free press, etc. It was during this struggle that the workers, assisted by the militants, organised their strike and support committees and their contacts throughout the country. There was something spontaneous in this wave of demands and chain explosions, and in the limited understanding of the workers and peasants. They were fed on the illusion of the possibilities of freedom and social reform offered by the Popular Front of the metropolitan country. Agitation and propaganda and the legal and underground activities of the organised political groupings, whose members could be counted on the fingers, are not enough to explain this vast movement.
It was then that Brévié, who had been appointed governor of the colony by the Popular Front government, resorted to repression. Not only was the skeleton of working class trade unions formed during the General Strike banned, and its militants sent to prison (October 1937), but even the Movement of the Indochinese Congress was itself dissolved. Trotskyist and Stalinist papers that had sometimes been able to appear in the Vietnamese language were banned once more, and the labour legislation remained a dead letter. It now became difficult for the Stalinists to continue their defence of the Popular Front, which had in no way changed fundamentally France's imperialist colonial policy.
The Moscow Trials were now at their zenith, and the French Communist Party sent the MP Honel to give the local Stalinists the order to break with the Trotskyists. Abandoning La Lutte to the Trotskyists, the Stalinists employed the same venomous methods against them as those of their masters in the Kremlin. In their new paper Le Peuple (later Dan-chung) they were to represent their erstwhile comrades as spies for the Mikado and provocateurs. The period of methodical murders will be described when we come to the 1945–46 period. The utter and immediate obedience of the Stalinist group to the orders of Moscow can only be explained by their blind fanaticism. Young men, driven by an ideal, were transformed overnight into wolves, howling to the death with the other wolves against their brothers in the fight, with whom they had still been elbow to elbow only the day before, in struggle as well as in prison. Regimentation had corrupted them, along with the Vietnamese workers' and peasants' movement, which was thus sacrificed from birth to Russian foreign policy. As we were later to see, the exploited were to forge new chains for themselves under the leadership of these 'professional revolutionaries,' when they thought that they were struggling for their emancipation – those of the industrial world, where production is not a requirement of true and vital human needs, but those of state capitalism as the 'revolutionary vanguard' inevitably turned into a bureaucracy possessing the state.
Obviously, French imperialism breathed freely and easily during this period of relative support by the Stalinists for the integrity of the empire. The calm was broken by the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 23 August 1939, followed by the declaration of war on 3 September. The decree of 26 September, which dissolved all organisations "relating to the Third International", was the prelude to the mass arrests of militants of all tendencies, Stalinists, Trotskyists, nationalists and the leaders of the magico-religious sects in October 1939, and then were to close upon them the sinister doors of the prisons and the camps for the "special training of workers", the death camps that were established in unhealthy regions, in which few survived. In a declaration of November 1939 in conformity with Stalin's foreign policy the Indochinese Communist party at one and the same time denounced the 'imperialist' war of France against Germany as well as the Japanese plans for aggression against Russia. This sudden shift translated itself in 1940 into a concealed peasant insurrection fomented by the Indochinese Communist Party in Cochin China, which was drowned in blood.
[We omit here the section dealing with the expression of peasant discontent through sectarian Buddhist consciousness, and extract merely what deals with the movements during the Second World War.]
The young Marxists carried their dream of "transforming the imperialist war into a civil war" into the prisons, but the words pronounced at Zimmerwald coming from far-off Europe, and their illustration in the Russian events of 1917, were nonetheless to continue to sound in their hearts. A Communist Party song composed about 1935 that called for civil war remained deep in their hearts: "We will take the opportunity of the war between the imperialisms and when Soviet Russia shall be attacked, we will engage in civil war" ("Thua luc de-quoc tranh-chien, voi luc danh So-viet lam noi-chien mau"). It was upon propaganda in favour of this same idea in an illegal Trotskyist duplicated sheet, the Vanguard (Tien-dao) that the Prosecutor attached to the Saigon court had supported his indictment at the time of the trial of the Internationalist Communist League in September 1936.
Pre-emptive arrests did not prevent the peasants of Cochin China from rising in December 1940, and in the same year an upsurge broke out at Bacson in Tonkin. Repression caused thousands of deaths, and courts martial sent those who were captured to death and to the prisons. The prisons were so full that a certain number of prisoners were locked up in barges berthed near Saigon, where they perished like flies.
[Here we omit more material upon the beliefs and history of the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao.]
It should be remembered that after the French defeat in Europe the Japanese occupied Indochina, and in agreement with Vichy preserved the French administrative and repressive apparatus, together with a new colonial governor henceforth at their service. The policy of the Japanese attempted to eliminate the Stalinist tendency and to search for a compromise of collaborating with the nationalist tendencies and the sects; in 1942 the 'mad bonze' who had been exiled in Laos was liberated by them, and when on 9 March 1945 the Japanese brought the French colonial administration to an end, they armed the devotees of these two sects, hoping to be able to use them as military auxiliaries in the event of an American landing.
Let us return to the Stalinists and to their activities up to their seizure of power in 1945. In May 1941 Ho Chi Minh, who was living in Kwangsi in China, convened a conference that brought together Vietnamese elements of all origins and formed along with them an organisation under the unassuming title of Viet Minh (an abbreviation of Viet-nam dot-lap dong minh, The League for the Independence of Vietnam), whose effective leadership belonged to his own followers.
The Chinese generals of the Guomindang now convened a second conference of the Vietnamese political refugees in China at Lieou-tcheou on 4 October 1942, with the intention of brushing aside the Communist tendency and of setting up the Dong-minh hoi, the Association for National Liberation, presided over by Nguyen Hai Tha, an old pro-Chinese emigré. Ho Chi Minh was imprisoned for 18 months. However, at the conference of March 1944 at Lieou-tcheou, in the course of which a programme for a 'provisional republican government of Vietnam' was elaborated, the Vietminh was represented, and had a portfolio. This programme consisted of two points: the liquidation of the domination of the French and Japanese, and independence for Vietnam with the assistance of the Guomindang; but whereas the nationalists of this government remained in China, where they waited for the intervention of the Guomindang to assure them of power in Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh group, under the banner of the Vietminh, came back into Tonkin and established itself in the region of Thai-nguyen. When the Japanese coup of 9 March 1945 put an end to French rule in Indochina, the Vietminh found itself practically master of the highlands. Orientating himself towards the Allies (Russia, Nationalist China, Great Britain and the United States), Ho Chi Minh organised a few skirmishes against the Japanese, made contact with the Americans at Kun-ming, and from them obtained weapons with which to struggle on the side of the Allies. After the surrender of the Japanese on 15 August 1945, the Ho Chi Minh group (the Vietminh) was already an organised military force, however hastily armed and numerically weak.
Here we shall examine the situation that permitted the seizure of power by Ho Chi Minh and his Vietminh followers in August 1945.
The first cannon shots in Europe that began "the continuation of politics" in the blood of the slaves opened up for Japanese imperialism, which had been engaged upon a full-scale war of conquest in China since 1937, a perspective of realising the Greater Asia Plan of Tojo for the ousting of the old Western masters from South-East Asia. When the French refused to allow their troops to penetrate into Tonkin in 1940, the Japanese went over to the attack at Lan-son and Dongdang in the evening of 22 September, and on the 24th landed at Haiphong after having bombarded the port. So began the Japanese occupation of Indochina; it maintained the administrative apparatus of French colonialism with a Vichy admiral in charge who largely collaborated with the Japanese general staff. The systematic plunder of the produce of the country for the needs of war plunged the population into increasing misery; more than ever the peasant masses lived in destitution. American bombing, typhoons and exceptional cold all added up to disaster, culminating in the great famine of March to May 1945, with about a million deaths in the north, including deaths in the streets of Hanoi.
In the south of the country the religious sects that had been persecuted by the French cherished a hope in Japan. The Cao-daists, whose Pope Pham Cong Tac was living in exile at Nossi-lava (Madagascar), were counting on the return of Prince Cuong-de, who was a refugee in Japan, and the devotees of the 'Mad bonze,' the Hoa-Hao, had obtained from the Japanese the return of their master Huynh Phu So, who had been exiled to Laos by the French. From 1943 onwards some pro-Japanese nationalist groups were formed, and their members were utilised in the Japanese propaganda and police services.
Round about 1943 in the mountain region of Tuyen-quang near the Chinese frontier in the north, Ho Chi Minh organised his guerilla centre and made contact with the Americans to ask them for weapons, whilst proclaiming himself to be on the side of the 'democratic Allies against Japanese Fascism'; his 'people's army' was officially inaugurated in the resistance starting from 22 December 1944.
Faced with the American offensive in the Pacific and the threat of ruin for the Berlin-Tokyo-Rome Axis, the Japanese put an end to the authority of the French over the whole peninsula by a coup starting from 9 March 1945. The French troops were disarmed and confined to their barracks, and the commanders were either imprisoned or put to death; the population was concentrated and strictly controlled. The Japanese effected a proclamation of independence by the Emperor Bao Dai and by means of Tran Trong Kim created a 'national government' at Hué on 2 March. The leaden cover that had weighed down upon the country was now split. The popular masses felt relieved, since of the two brigands who had been plundering them, one had fallen under the blows of the other, and they were filled with a feeling of satisfaction over the one that was impotent, along with the illusion that with 'national independence' something positive was going to be done about their condition. The arrogant policemen of the French regime were no longer in the streets of Saigon questioning workers and clerks returning from work in order to verify their personal identity cards (giay thne than). No longer were French colons to be heard threatening to kick the backsides of rickshaw boys who were claiming what was owed them. The members of the pro-Japanese nationalist groups received key posts in the administration. The youth of country, town and village was paramilitarily organised to serve as an auxiliary force for the Japanese army in the event of an American landing; this movement was known under the name of the Youth Vanguard (Thank-nien tied-phong). The Cao-daists formed their own armed groups, whereas the Hoa-Hao were forging sharp-edged weapons whilst "waiting upon events", in other words, the opportunity for seizing power. The militants of the Stalinist group who had escaped the repression or who had been freed from the concentration camps after 9 March were working – mobilised after a fashion – for the 'national government' and the peasants, and were operating underground within the Youth Vanguard. All this political ferment in the South during the five months that preceded the defeat of the Japanese was escaping from their control, whereas in the regions of Upper Tonkin the zone of the armed groups of Ho Chi Minh was spreading; they, also, were waiting upon 'events.'
The bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki followed by the surrender of Japan on 15 August 1945 marked another bloody era for this corner of Asia, intended by the imperialist powers (the Potsdam agreement between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt) to be occupied to the north of the seventeenth parallel by Chinese troops and to the south of it by British troops. This new partition of the world wiped French imperialism from the map of Indochina, and through the mediation of Chiang Kai-Shek's Chinese the Americans were counting on including Northern Vietnam within their sphere of influence in South East Asia.
Faced with the political gap created by the Japanese surrender, and preceding the Chinese troops who were bringing with them the pro-Chinese nationalists of the Dong-minh-hoi and the Viet-nam quoc dan-dang, Ho Chi Minh brought together his supporters in the village of Tantrao (province of Thai-nguyen) and created a Committee for the National Liberation of Vietnam (Uy-ban giai-phong dan-toc Viet-nam), the majority of which was composed of about 10 former members of the Communist Party. In this way he broke with the 'government in exile' in China, and therefore with the pro-Chinese nationalists. After some spectacular demonstrations organised by his emissaries in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh made his entrance there at the head of his 'people's army' around 18 August. Without further ado the representative of Bao Dai's pro-Japanese government in Hanoi, Phan Ke Toai, withdrew. Thus the de facto power of the Vietminh was set up with the indifference of the Japanese, who had received instructions from the Allies to maintain order until the arrival of the Chinese troops. It should also be said that the Japanese released some 400 political prisoners who had been incarcerated in the Shell buildings who were claimed by the Vietminh, and that they allowed them to get hold of weapons. At the same time the 'people's committees' took control of the administration in the provinces, and the Mandarins disappeared or submitted. A provisional Vietminh government was formed in Hanoi on 25 August, presided over by Ho Chi Minh; in Hue, after the resignation of the Tran Trong Kim government, Bao Dai also abdicated, and was designated as a 'supreme counsellor' by Ho Chi Minh.
What happened in the South of the country after 15 August? The same absence of power as in the North made itself felt in Saigon; the Japanese troops seemed to be frozen into immobility whilst awaiting the arrival of the British, whereas ever since 9 March the disarmed French had been waiting for their 'liberation' and their return to power. The supporters of Ho Chi Minh (some emissaries who had come from Tonkin had joined the Stalinist group of Cochin China) went around in cars provided with loudspeakers calling out "defend the Vietminh" ("ung-ho Viet minh"), the 'Vietminh' being a name hitherto unknown around Saigon having all the attraction of a mystery, and then they distributed leaflets claiming themselves to be "on the side of the Russian, Chinese, British and United States Allies for independence". The 'United National Front' which in a few days had collected together the Party for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet-nam quoc gia doc lap dang), the Vanguard Youth, the Group of the Intellectuals, the Federation of Civil Servants and the Tinh do cu Buddhist sect along with the Hoa Hao and the Cao Dai, appealed to the population to demonstrate for independence in the presence of an uncertain and threatening situation. On 21 August 1945, for the first time in the political life of the country, from the morning onwards, veritable masses of people assembled like ants and filled the Norodom Boulevard, then the Botanical Gardens near the governor's palace, and then crossed the major arteries in order chanting slogans: "Down with French imperialism!" ("Da dao de quoc phap"), "Long live the Independence of Vietnam!" ("Vietnam hoan toan doc lap'", whilst the flags and banners floating above this moving army indicated the presence of the Vanguard Youth, who had been a pro-Japanese organisation only yesterday, peasants led by Stalinist militants who had come from the environs of Saigon, workers of Saigon-Cholon, Cao-daists, Buddhists of various sects grouped around their bonzes, the Hoa Hao, and the militants of the Trotskyist La Lutte and Internationalist Communist League groups. The latter, under the flag of the Fourth International, raised the slogans of "the land and ricefields to the peasants, the factories and enterprises for the workers!". Some demonstrators were armed with sharpened bamboo poles. Banners were seen with the unusual inscriptions such as "Murder Assault Groups" ("Ban am sat xung phong") raised by bare-chested and tatooed men, who were carrying sharpened weapons and old rifles. The Vietnamese police at the service of the occupation no longer knew from where to take its orders: it remained passive in the presence of the procession crossing the city on strike, and the crowd only disappeared in the afternoon. This demonstration, which owed its initiation to the Vietminh, was the classic tactic preparatory to the seizure of power – it represented the seal of general approval. But in fact everybody went down into the street with different aspirations. The only common but overwhelming sentiment was "never to see the French back in power, long live the end of the colonial regime!"
This first awakening of these masses, who had been forever in "chains . and gags", emanated an electric tension amid an unusual calm, the brooding calm that preceeds a storm. All constraint was broken, and everybody seemed to live a moment of total liberty, where the absence of the state and the bankruptcy of the police allowed everyone to prepare himself in his own way for the eventuality of a terrible conflict. What darkness upon the horizon of a fundamental change! Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had decided our fate at Yalta and Potsdam. We were now to be cast body and soul into a future without a tomorrow. Faced with the perspective of the imminent arrival of the British troops, and faced with the threat of the return of the old colonial regime (Colonel Cédile, the special envoy of the 'New France,' was already in the Governor-General's palace in Saigon), everybody decided to look for and obtain weapons; everyone lived in the same explosive atmosphere.
Events were about to unfold in these crucial moments of general crisis with the speed of lightning. The nationalist groups and sects that had been pro-Japanese remained armed, but incapable of taking the initiative: their time was finished with the fall of Japan. The Vietminh, politically reinforced by the coming of Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi, and having already taken control of the movement of the Youth Vanguard, whose leaders has joined it, also having been strengthened by the monster demonstration of 25 August, in which it saw the approval of the masses for its policy of collaboration with the 'Allies' for national independence, was about to impose its rule.
In fact, a proclamation signed by the 'Southern Provisional Executive Committee' ('Uy-ban hanh chanh lam-thoi Nambo') soon appeared on the walls of the city. The Committee appealed to the population to range itself behind it with a view to obtaining the independence of the country by negotiation with the 'Allies,' and promised the formation of a democratic parliamentary republic. At the same time as this poster announced the 'taking of power' by the Vietminh, a list of the members of the Provisional Government, presided over by the Stalinist Tran Van Giau, was put up in front of the Saigon town hall, fastened to an imposing column covered with red cloth; another Stalinist, Nguyen Van Tao, who had been a Saigon municipal councillor, was assigned to the Ministry of the Interior, and in order to give their committee the appearance of a national union that would be acceptable to the Allies in an eventual negotiation, the Stalinists secured the governmental collaboration of a doctor, some non-Stalinist intellectuals, and even a landowner. This Nam-bo committee sat in the town hall, guarded by militiamen in white uniforms. The police and cops had joined them, and the commissariats were controlled by Tran Van Giau's comrades; the pirates of Le Van Vien, called the Bay Vien, had been enlisted as policemen and as agents for the future Stalinist assassinations (they had been well known under the French under the label of the 'bands of Binh xuyen,' the name of a hamlet situated between Saigon and Cholon).
The activity of the Nam-bo Committee extended out towards the provinces, where they set up their own provisional committees that took control of the people's committees that had spontaneously arisen in the villages and of the old Vanguard Youth. The arrival of the Allied Commission was announced for the beginning of September. In the streets of Saigon floated immense banners bearing inscriptions of greeting in English, Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese: "Welcome to the Allied Forces!" Some demonstrative actions marked the intentions of the Nam-bo Committee to have done with French colonialism: the Saigon streets changed their names. The Rue Catinat, the luxurious artery of the city, famous for its police offices, jails and torture chambers, was baptised 'The Street of the Paris Commune,' and the Norodom Boulevard was called 'The Boulevard of the Republic' ... The statues of the 'heroes' of the conquest (the Bishop of Adran holding the young prince Canh by the hand in front of the cathedral, Admiral Rigault de Genouilly at the side of the Saigon river, and Bonnard in front of the Municipal Theatre) and other monuments of the colonial era were destroyed.
On the morning of 2 September a large official procession was organised by the Nam-bo Committee. The newly armed militia opened the march in uniform. In the afternoon some shots were fired in the cathedral square, no-one knows from where, provoking a general outburst; the demonstrators flung themselves upon the French houses, and the demonstration ended late at night with dead and wounded on both sides.
Soon the Gurkhas of the Twentieth Indian Division arrived by plane under the command of the British general Gracey. From the moment of his arrival Gracey had leaflets spread all over the city by Japanese fighter planes proclaiming that he had charged the Japanese with the maintenance of public order, and that he forbade the population to keep any weapons under threat of severe punishment. An immense poster repeating this proclamation was stuck on the city walls. The haughty tone of this Allied military representative was the equivalent of a formal notice, addressed not only to the armed groups of the religious sects who had held onto quantities of Japanese weapons, but also to the Nam-bó Committee, whose armed militia was more or less held responsible for the 'disorders' of 2 September. Gracey installed his headquarters in the small palace of the governor of Cochin China. A feverish activity agitated the groups and sects. The Hoa Hao assumed the name of the Social Democratic Party (Dang dan-xa), and it seems that they, along with the Cao-daists, were invited to a few subordinate ministerial posts of social affairs by the Vietminh. The Trotskyists of the La Lutte group pronounced in favour of support to the Stalinist Vietminh in this phase of the struggle for national independence and for the formation of a democratic republic, but declared that they reserved the right to criticise; another Trotskyist tendency denounced as an illusion fostered among the masses the possibility of obtaining national independence by negotiation with the imperialist brigands whose alliance was being solicited by the Vietminh. Advocating the arming of the people (which was against the intentions of the Nam-bo Committee to control all the armed groupings) and the preparation of an armed insurrection and against the return of the old regime, they organised some tens of workers and clerks in a 'People's Revolutionary Committee' ('uyban nhan-dan cach-mang') in the Tandinh suburb of Saigon, and a similar people's committee was formed at Bien-hoa, some 30 kilometres from Saigon. But the activity of such committees, in a duality with the de facto power of the Stalinists, was a stain that could spread, and the arrest and incarceration of their members by the police put a stop to it. We should note that the militants of Tan-dinh allowed themselves to be disarmed without protest, for they feared that if they fired upon the police they would only foster the accusations of provocation that had been launched against them by those in charge in the town hall, and they would be misunderstood by the masses. The leaders of the sects who were also the victims of police searches disappeared, along with their armed groups. The repression of the Vietminh was already aiming at controlling all its opponents.
The Nam-bo Committee, to whom Gracey had accorded some polite acknowledgements without giving them formal recognition, still operated in the town hall; on the other hand Cédile, who was feverishly plotting with the British to "re-establish colonial order", had also entered into a dialogue of the deaf with this same Committee. The leaflets of the Committee of 17 September called for a general strike against the French, but always in the hope of a possible negotiation with the British, and recommended calm to the population. Three days afterwards, on the 20th, the Vietnamese press was banned by the British, and the proclamations of the Committee were torn down and removed from the walls of the city. On the 22nd the British were controlling the prison, and were rearming some 1,500 French soldiers who had been shut up by the Japanese in the barracks of the second Indo Chinese Regiment. Finally, during the night of 22–23 September, the French, assisted by the Gurkhas, reoccupied the police stations, the political police headquarters, the Tax Office and the Post Office. The Vietminh Committee left the town hall and withdrew into the neighbourhood of Cholon; that same night the Saigon insurrection broke out.
One of the main concerns of the Vietminh Committee was to ensure its 'recognition' by the British authorities as a de facto government. To this end the committee did everything it could to show its strength and demonstrate its ability to "maintain order".
Through its press it ordered the dissolution of all the partisan groups that had played an active role in the struggle against Japanese imperialism.
All weapons were to be handed over to the Vietminh's own police force. The Vietminh's militia, known as the 'Republican Guard– (Cong hoa-ve-binh) and their police thus had a legal monopoly in the carrying of weapons.
The groups aimed at by this decision were not only certain religious sects (the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao) but also the workers' committees, several of which were armed.
Also aimed at were the Vanguard Youth Organisation and a number of 'self-defence groups,' many based on factories or plantations. These stood on a very radical social programme but were not prepared to accept complete control by the Vietminh.
The Trotskyists of the Spark group (Tia Sang), anticipating an imminent and inevitable confrontation with the military forces of Britain and France, started to distribute leaflets calling for the formation of Popular Action Committees (tochuc-uy-ban hanh-dong) and for arming of the people.
They advocated the creation of a popular assembly, to be the organ of struggle for national independence.
Workers of the big Tramway Depot of Go Vap (about eight kilometres from Saigon), helped by Tia Sang militants, organised a workers' militia. The militia issued an appeal to the workers of the Saigon-Cholon area to arm themselves and to prepare for the inevitable struggle against the forces of British and French imperialism. By now General Gracey had prolaimed martial law.
Before it abandoned the centre of Saigon, the Vietminh Committee plastered the walls with posters, inviting the population to "disperse into the countryside", to "avoid confrontation", and to "remain calm, because the Committee hopes to open negotiations".
A sense of insecurity hovered over the town, which slowly drained itself of parts of its Vietnamese population.
During the night of 22–23 September 1945 French troops, supported by Gurkhas commanded by British officers, reoccupied various police stations, the Post Office, the Central Bank and the Town Hall. They met no immediate resistance. The news spread like a trail of gunpowder and triggered off a veritable insurrection in the working class districts of the town. Explosions were heard in widely separate areas. The movement had broken without anyone giving any kind of directive.
The Vietminh had certainly not called for insurrection. Their one preoccupation was 'law and order' and their own accession to power – following negotiations.
In all the outlying suburbs trees were cut down, cars and lorries turned over, and primitive furniture piled up in the streets. Elementary barricades were set up to prevent the passage of French and Gurkha patrols, and the taking up of strategic positions by the imperialist forces. The centre of the town rapidly fell under the control of the French and Japanese troops, supported by Gurkhas. But the poorer suburbs of Khanh Hoi, Cau Kho, Ban Co, Phu Nhuan, Tan Dinh and Thi Nghe were firmly in the hands of the rebels.
The rebels themselves were not a homogenous lot. Among them were members of the Popular Committees, of the Vanguard Youth, Cao-daists, and even 'off the line' groups of Stalinist Republican Guards.
In areas where the popular forces were in control Frenchmen were shot: the cruellest functionaries of the old regime, the hated policemen, known by the population to have participated in torture, were sought out, killed and thrown in the canals. Racialism, fed by 80 years of imperialist domination, and by the contempt of the white man for the yellow man, left its imprint on the violence of the masses, which erupted at moments like these. The massacre of a hundred French civilians in the Heraud Estate, at Tan Dinh, was a painful reminder of this fact. The threats of certain French colons to "skin the Annamites alive to make leather sandals" rebounded back against all whites.
The occupation forces feverishly searched the whole centre of town. This did not prevent the insurgents from setting fire to various important buildings, such as the Manufactured Rubber Company, and to warehouses.
During the night of 23–24 September, guerillas attacked the port without respite. The following day revolutionary groups openly paraded in the Rue de Verdun and marched up the Boulevard de la Somme, converging on the Market Place, which they later burnt down.
In Saigon there was neither water nor electricity. Supplies were breaking down. Each day the French sought to extend the area under their control, while various armed groups organised themselves as guerillas in the periphery of the city.
The Vietminh Committee produced a leaflet: "The French ... seem to take pleasure in murdering our people. There is only one answer: a food blockade." While seeking to 'starve out' the French (a futile hope, as the British ships controlled the access to the harbour) the Vietminh clung to its hope of starting negotiations with the British.
Talks with Gracey did at last start ... and a truce was announced on 1 October. On 5 October General Leclerc, head of the French Expeditionary Force, arrived. His mission was to "restore order" and to "build a strong Indochina within the French Union". He landed his troops. The commandos of the battleship Triomphant paraded down the Rue Catinat. The hated Tricolour again fluttered from various windows.
The 'negotiations' between the Vietminh and the British continued. The only result was that British and Japanese troops were allowed "free and unmolested passage" through zones occupied by the insurgents. The Vietminh Committee, continuing its policy of appeasement towards the imperialist Allies, had consciously taken this decision.
The Gurkhas and the Japanese moved out further detachments occupying strategic points on the periphery of Saigon. On 12 October French troops, supported by Gurkhas, launched a general attack towards the north-east. The miserable peasant huts burnt from Thi Nghe to Tan Binh. The encirclement of the town by the rebels was gradually broken, in desperate fighting. The leader of the Bay Vien group of guerillas refused to undertake underhand police work against other tendencies not affiliated to the Vietminh. He proclaimed his independence in relation to the latter. His was not the only armed band to refuse the authority of the Stalinists. The biggest of such 'dissident' groups was known as the Third Division, de-tam-su-doan. It was led by an erstwhile nationalist, who had for a while placed his faith in Japan.
A few hundred armed men organised sustained resistance to the French, in the Plaine des Joncs, but they surrendered a few months later, and the group disbanded.
The Vietminh would not tolerate any tendency that dared formulate the least criticism of it. It dealt with such tendencies by physically liquidating them. The militants of the Trotskyist group La Lutte were the first victims of the Stalinist terror, despite their proclamations of "critical support to the Vietminh government".
Gathered in a temple in the Thu Due area, and while preparing the armed struggle against the French on the Gia Dinh front, they were surrounded one morning by the Vietminh, arrested and interned shortly afterwards at Ben Sue in the province of Thu Dau Mot.
There they were all shot – together with some 30 other prisoners – at the approach of the French troops.
Among those murdered was Tran Van Thach, one-time municipal councillor for Saigon, elected in 1933 on a Stalinist-Trotskyist list, and a few months earlier released from the penal settlement at Poulo Condore.
Ta Thu Thau, also released from Poulo Condore, had gone to Tonkin Province to help organise assistance to the famine-stricken areas. He was murdered by supporters of Ho Chi Minh, on his way back, in central Annam.
In this atmosphere of Vietminh terror, the workers' militia of the Go Vap tramway depot, some 60 strong, participated in the insurrection, on its own initiative. The 400 workers and employees of the Tramway Company were well-known for their militancy and independent frame of mind.
Under French imperialist rule there had been no trade union rights. After 9 March 1945, when the Japanese had replaced the French at the head of this particular enterprise, the workers had immediately constituted their own workers' committee and put forward a series of demands.
Japanese soldiery, led by Colonel Kirino, had come to threaten them, but confronted by their militant and united stand, had eventually been obliged to grant them a wage increase and even to recognise 11 delegates elected by the 11 categories of workers: electricians, carpenters, metal workers, etc.
In August 1945, when foreign technicians had momentarily abandoned the enterprise, the depot had been taken over and managed by the workers themselves, until the time of the insurrection.
All those insurgents who did not rally immediately to the Vietminh flags were denounced by the Vietminh as traitors. Workers who didn't identify with the 'patriotic cause' were called 'saboteurs' and 'reactionaries.'
The southern CGT was presided over by the arch-Stalinist Hoang Don Van. Its function was to control the workers of the Saigon-Cholon area, by nominating their 'representatives' for them, from above.
In this atmosphere of violent ideological totalitarianism, the workers of the Go Vap tramway depot, although affiliated to the southern CGT, refused the label of Cong-nhan cuu-quoc (Worker Saviours of the Fatherland). They insisted on remaining a proletarian militia, and rejected the Vietminh flag (yellow star on red background), saying they would continue their fight under the red flag, the flag of their own class emancipation.
The tramway men then organised themselves into combat groups of 11 men under elected leaders … and under the overall command of Tran Dinh Minh, a young Trotskyist from the north who had published a social novel in Hanoi, under the pseudonym of Nguyen Hai Au, and who had come south to participate in the struggle.
At this stage the local Stalinists, under the command of Nguyen Dinh Thau, seemed far more concerned at arresting and shooting their left critics – and in fact all whom they saw as potential rivals for the leadership of the movement – than at prosecuting the struggle against the French. Terrorist acts became the rule. They left a deep imprint on the 'state-in-embryo' which the maquis was soon to become. The emergence of the Vietminh as the dominant force, in the years to come, was only possible after a lot of working class and peasant blood had been shed.
Refusing to accept the authority of Nguyen Dinh Thau, the tramwaymen's militia sought to regroup in the Plaine des Joncs, towards which it had opened a way, fighting meanwhile against the Gurkhas and the French at Loc Giang, Thot Not and My Hanh.
In the Plaine des Joncs the tramwaymen established contact with the poor peasants. And it was here that, in a fight against the imperialist forces, Tran Dinh Minh was killed, on 13 January 1946. Some 20 other tramway workers had already lost their lives in the course of battles waged on the way.
The intolerance of the Vietminh in relation to all independent tendencies, the accusations of treachery combined with threats of murder and the numerical weakness of the tramwaymen's militia eventually forced its members to disperse. Three of them, Le Ngoc, Ky and Huong, a young worker of 14, were stabbed to death by Vietminh bands.
The Saigon explosion reverberated into the countryside and into the more distant provinces. The peasants seized the local officials who had most distinguished themselves by their cruelty or their extortions, and many were put to death. But in the countryside, as in the towns, the pretext of popular anger against the exploiters was everywhere used by the Vietminh to settle accounts with political dissenters.
[1] For the Yen Bay incident, cf nl1, see below Ngo Van Xuyet's account of Ta Thu Thau.
[2] Apart from 'Lucien,' the writer, Ngo Van Xuyet, was also jailed at this time.


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Russian Team To Not Compete In Rio Olympics This Year
ItimesUpdated on Jul 22, 2016, 18:33 IST
Russia has reacted strongly with anger after its petition to have the ban on its track and field athletes lifted to allow them to compete at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, ended in failure.
Russia was banned from the track and field events by the International Association of Athletics Federations (known as the IAAF) back in November 2015. Russian Sports Minister has called for disbanding of the 'World's Athletic Governing Body' when the appeal made by the Russian Olympic Committee and 67 athletes on Thursday was rejected by the Court of Arbitration of Sport.
His point was simple and clear over his tweets, that it is unfair to kill the dreams of athletes who were clean and had no involvement in the doping scandal!
Elena Isinbayeva, a two-time Olympic pole vault champion, has called on the IOC to have the final say, according to her the verdict is purely political and she also stated that it's the funeral of athletics.
Sebastian Coe, president of the IAAF, on this added that the committee is not formed to exclude but include and the intention is not to exclude the clean athletes and beyond RIO, IAAF will continue to work with Russia to help bring the clean athletes to the fore and helping them return to international recognition and competition.
This said, whilst doping scandal stands as the most shocking report as presented by WADA (World Anti-Drug Agency) the reports hasn't yet been produced by the organisation. Also, we support Russian team. It is completely unfair to many levels to exclude the sportsmen true to their profession and working hard to achieve their goals.
Such decision sure bring the spirit of a sportsman down and it does seem that we cannot help but agree with Isinbayeva thought - It does feel like a funeral to Athletics.
What do you think? Do let us know in the comments below!


We got our hands on another obscure physical PSVR release: Paranormal Activity Lost Soul.
Well, at least it's obscure if you can't visit a BestBuy in the US.
According to online lore (Reddit, etc), this game is a timed BestBuy retail exclusive (retail shops only, not available in their online shop). It may or may not become available from other (online) retailers later. We have reached out to the publisher through various Social Media channels to confirm this but unfortunately, we never got a reply.
Unfortunately, since we are in Europe our only chance was eBay.com in this case.
See below pic for proof.


text:
The wage-penalty effect: The hidden cost of maternity leave
Australian women suffer a 'wage penalty' when they return to work after having a child, according to new research by the Australia Institute.
In the first year back at work, women can expect to earn around four per cent less per hour on average than they would if they had not had a child, the research shows; this equates to $1,566 a year in foregone wages per person. Mothers are losing about $126 million per year in foregone wages across the workforce as a result.
A new report published by the Australia Institute, The wage penalty effect: The hidden cost of maternity leave, confirms the findings of overseas research demonstrating that incomes grow less quickly among women returning to the workforce.
PB 24 The wage-penalty effect_4.pdf
David Baker


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The art of Twin Peaks: 10 incredible David Lynch inspired posters
Lee Thomas-Mason March 10, 2019
The Mondo Gallery, a permanent art space in Austin, Texas, features a curated mix of original artwork and limited edition screen prints and is welcoming some David Lynch inspired work.
A new exhibition is opening in time for the ever popular Austin's SXSW Film Festival. 'The Art of Greg Ruth – A Twin Peaks Interpretation' will see over 60 original prints inspired by David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks series.
"Twin Peaks changed everything in the spring of 1990, and I was mesmerised by its weekly soap-opera format and brilliant dance between mystery, comedy and romance and a kind of horror that had never before existed on the small screen," said artist Greg Ruth. "It influenced a generation of admirers and later inspired me to use it as a short series of portraits of the various keys characters as I tested my new love of graphite work under the umbrella of my self-assigned weekly drawing series, The 52 Weeks Project."
"It is a wellspring of totems, symbols, storytelling and character that is unmatched by any other contenders out there. Twin Peaks continues to be a deep inspiration for me personally, and it is nothing short of the most insanely fantastic honour imaginable to be able to launch this print series and gallery show. If I could only whisper in my ear 27 years ago with the promise of this…"
Here is a little look inside the exhibition…
(All images via Greg Ruth)


The LG G3 is LG's 2014 flagship device, and one of the first smartphones on the market with LG's 5.5-inch 2560 x 1440 display. It features a Snapdragon 801 chipset clocked 2.5GHz, 2GB or 3GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, a 13 megapixel camera with a 2.1 megapixel front camera, and more.
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Sprint has confirmed that the company is working on releasing the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update to users of the LG G3, but have no update as to when the software will be rolling out.
T-Mobile and AT&T are seemingly preparing for the mass release of Android 6.0 Marshmallow for the LG G3, bringing the device closer to the latest version of Android.
Verizon is coming out swinging today. The company has unleashed Android 6.0 Marshmallow updates for three of their top phones. Both the LG G3 and LG G4 are in line today, while the HTC One M9 is also getting some love.
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"When I grow up I want to be Robin Hood I'll go into the mysterious forests in Sologne with my donkey and I'll sleep in a wooden cabin".
Accommodation: Out of the ordinary overnight stay at the L'heureux hasard campsite in a wooden cabin.
Weekend "Reconnect with your inner child"
Our little explorers, accompanied by their pack donkey will discover the plants and animals to be found in our woods and meadows and their mission will be to discover the animals tracks in the forest (handbook provided).
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From small puddles to dikes and large ponds, our adventurers in the making will discover the aquatic world!
+ 2 extra days "Hidden treasures"
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text:
Q: Can comments come before `use strict;`? I've seen a few places around the internet passively stating 'use strict;' must come on the first line of the functional scope for which you want the behavioral directive to apply.
However, in my experience, it doesn't matter if there are comments before it.
/* some comment */
'use strict';

Is there a functional deficiency with having comments come before the directive, or is it purely a matter of style? Is this defined anywhere in the ECMAScript specification?
I'm asking not only for V8 (node.js) environments, but for browsers as well.

A: According to MDN, use strict; must be the first statement in a script or function.  Comments aren't statements.

A: Yes you can add comments before "use strict";--it just must appear before any statements.
See this example from MDN
// Whole-script strict mode syntax
"use strict";
var v = "Hi!  I'm a strict mode script!";

A: According to the ECMAScript 262 5th edition standard section 14.1:

. . . the initial SourceElement productions of a Program or FunctionBody and where each ExpressionStatement in the sequence consists entirely of a StringLiteral token followed a semicolon

Emphasis mine
and the ECMAScript 262 6th edition standard section 14.1.1:

A Directive Prologue is . . . the initial StatementListItem or ModuleItem productions of a FunctionBody, a ScriptBody, or a ModuleBody.

Emphasis mine

Perhaps more simply put, section 7.4 of the ECMAScript 5th ed. standard (section 11.4 of the ECMAScript 6th ed. standard) states:

Comments behave like white space and are discarded

Since comments are not statements and are ultimately discarded, use strict; can come after them as it is the first effective statement in the body.

An update years later - more or less, more context.
Most parsers have a lexing step and a parsing step. The first, lexing, breaks down the textual source code into more palpable tokens (such as left angle bracket, identifier, comma, string literal, etc) and the parsing step actually does something with them - in many cases (and certainly in the case of Javascript), turning it into what's called an Abstract Syntax Tree (or AST for short).
Two things make this "allowed", especially as per this comment - one is the fact that comments are to be discarded, which generally happens during lexing, and the 'use strict'; has to be the first statement, which is generally checked during parsing.
Since lexing comes before parsing, therefore the check for 'use strict'; will never actually see the comments to even be given the chance of having a problem with them.

A: Yes. Comments may be placed before the "use strict" declaration. JavaScript engines just skip over comments, so for all intents and purposes the "use strict" statement is at the top of the functional scope.

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