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Saturday, October 26, 2013

Marcus Garvey is still relevant today

Why Marcus Garvey is still Relevant Today



BY MELODY CAMMOCK-GAYLE


Marcus Garvey

"WE must canonise our own saints, create our own martyrs, and elevate to positions of fame and honour black men and women who have made their distinct contributions to our racial history."

As the National Heroes' Day celebrations take centre stage, and our heroes are brought to the fore, I thought this a fitting time as any to explain why for me, Marcus Garvey is as relevant today as he was 80 years ago, albeit in a different time and social context.

And I'm not suggesting that the achievements and contributions of our other heroes and heroine are less significant, because undoubtedly each, in his/her own right, has done much for our development as a people and a country.

And no, I'm not a racist, nor do I believe in emigrating to Africa. In fact, I see past colour and I do try to judge each person on the content of his/her character.  I am a Jamaican and the world is my oyster.  But Garvey stands out, because many of the dreams he wanted for the black race in the 1900s, I want for Jamaica today.

"The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself, but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity."

Born in St Ann, in 1887, Marcus Mosiah Garvey is celebrated as the first black man to lead and develop a mass movement of people. He was the first man, on a mass scale, to give millions of blacks a sense of dignity and destiny.  He was a visionary, whose teachings and philosophies are as relevant today as they were a century ago, especially for a country with a 90 per cent population of black people, though in a totally different time.

Among the main tenets of his teachings were: a sense of pride in self, as a black race; respect for each other and the idea of black enterprise and entrepreneurship.  If we would get these right, then Jamaica and the conceptual framework referred to as Brand Jamaica would be unstoppable.

Garvey taught self-belief, positive self-esteem and self-respect to black people at a time when the black race was considered less than second-class citizens.  Such a concept was revolutionary then, and in some ways still revolutionary now.

He emphasised education, and an awareness and appreciation of our rich African heritage, as avenues to locate a deep sense of self-identity, which engenders personal and national growth.  To achieve greatness, Garvey believed that a people needed to believe in themselves, understand history and arm themselves with the knowledge of how to move forward co-operatively.

"The black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness."

It is therefore surprising that, more than 70 years after Marcus Garvey's death, we are still struggling with issues of love for our black self, so much so that skin-bleaching is a near epidemic. As Jamaicans, we need to draw pride from somewhere; pride in ourselves, pride in our country, pride in our achievements. Thus my strong belief is that Garveyism should be taught in schools from the primary level. Too many of our youth have little sense of identity, no idea of their past, and no interest in their future.

Understanding that the theoretical construct of national identity is about collectivity and connectivity, Garvey's teaching will help to provide that cognitive, moral, and emotional connection, which must be made between an individual and his/her broader community or category.  With this in place, we would have created a system of meaning which allows people to feel a sense of oneness, security, inclusion, and belonging.

Collective identity guides individual action, provides a moral compass and emotional connection with other people who share similar interests and ideologies in a broader community. Self-belief affects self-image, which affects nation development. A people who love themselves don't deface their skin.  A people who love their nation don't deface national symbols, throw garbage on roads or in gullies, or urinate at every street corner or display blatant disregard for law and order.

Pride in self must overflow to respect for each other.  A people working together for the development of self and nation have no time to annihilate the brother working beside him.
 
"The Negro will have to build his own government, industry, art, science, literature and culture, before the world will stop to consider him."

Garvey also believed in economic self-sufficiency and financial independence, seeing this as the black race's only protection against discrimination.  Once this economic foundation was created, they could then move on to social and political pursuits.  Still, 50 years after Independence, Jamaica has neither economic self-sufficiency nor financial independence.

Sadly, we have not been able to curb spending, while our taste for everything foreign continues to drive us deeper into debt.  Last year the food import bill alone stood at US$959 million.  Despite the Government's campaign to 'Eat what we grow; Grow what we eat' there has been little overall traction in encouraging demand for locally produced products or injecting enthusiasm in local manufacturing. But, this is where we need to look if we are to experience any economic success as a nation. Garvey truly got it right.

So, as the great visionary Marcus Garvey said: "We Are arbiters of our own destiny. God and nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own creative genius we make ourselves what we want to be." So, I guess the question is what do we want to be?

"Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden."

Melody Cammock-Gayle is the director — business development and marketing at Communications & Business Solutions (CBS) Limited. cbsmarketingja@gmail.com

October 21, 2013

 Jamaica Observer

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Value-Added Tax (VAT) in The Bahamas ...and its “positive” impact on the Bahamian economy’s growth and employment prospects ...in the medium-term

Idb Study Shows Vat 'Positive' For Jobs, Growth



Value-Added Tax Bahamas


By NEIL HARTNELL


Tribune Business Editor
Nassau, The Bahamas


An Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) study has shown that Value-Added Tax (VAT) will have a “positive” impact on the Bahamian economy’s growth and employment prospects in the medium-term, a senior official said last night.

John Rolle, the Ministry of Finance’s financial secretary, said that despite the IDB study being incomplete, the ‘preliminary results’ showed the Government’s tax reform centrepiece would also result in reduced inflationary pressures.

“While the IDB study is ongoing, we have seen the preliminary results, which attest to the projected positive economic impact of the fiscal reforms (growth and employment over the medium term), and to the reduced inflationary pressures to which the budgetary consolidation would contribute,” Mr Rolle told Tribune Business.

“Additional historical data is being added to the economic model, which will allow the researchers to fine-tune their results.  Afterwards the results of the study will be published.”

Mr Rolle was commenting after the IDB used its October quarterly bulletin on the Caribbean to confirm it is working with the Government on implementing VAT in the Bahamas.  It said its study on the new tax’s impact on the economy and wider society was only “underway”.

“The IDB has been working with the Government of The Bahamas to assist with Value-Added Tax (VAT) implementation,” the Bank’s October missive said.

“Using an econometric model, the IDB has provided specific input on the effects of the changes in revenue of the proposed VAT rates and the base on which the VAT will be charged.

“An economic impact study that assesses the effect on prices, economic growth, poverty and income distribution is currently underway.  Consultations on the creation of the Central Revenue Agency, which will administer the VAT and select the IT system, are currently underway.”

Despite Mr Rolle’s assurances, the IDB’s comment is still likely to raise eyebrows in the private sector, as it indicates that the true ‘number crunching’ on VAT’s impact on the wider Bahamian economy and society has yet to be completed, and with implementation of the new tax now less than eight-and-a-half months away.

It is also unclear whether the Government internally, via the Ministry of Finance, has completed ‘VAT economic impact’ studies of its own, or whether this work has been done by other agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF, or external consultants.

A Ministry of Finance press statement earlier this year referenced work done by the IMF and its regional affiliate, CARTAC, on a Bahamian VAT, although no specifics about the nature of their work were released.

One observer who raised such questions was Rick Lowe, an executive with the Nassau Institute economic think-tank, whose own study on VAT’s likely impact on The Bahamas has been belittled by various government officials.

Suggesting that the Government’s moral authority to do this was diminished by the absence of any completed studies of its own, Mr Lowe argued that the burden of VAT collection/administration was being placed on those companies that were already 100 per cent compliant with their taxes.

And, noting the contents of the 2010-2011 Auditor General’s Report, which found that another $95 million in unpaid real property tax was added to the existing ‘sum owing’, taking this to over $500 million, Mr Lowe questioned how the Government expected to collect everything due to it under a VAT.

“It’s a basket case, it really is,” Mr Lowe told Tribune Business.  “How do we expect to implement a more convoluted tax system if we can’t administer the basics?”

He added that the experience of other countries that had implemented VAT was that new taxes did not stop there, often being followed by income taxes and other revenue-raising measures.

“It’s a never-ending way to tax people,” Mr Lowe added.  “It’s the thin end of the wedge.  If we’re not capable of collecting basic taxes, heaven knows, not to mention the underground economy.”

He added that VAT would likely drive more Bahamians to online shopping and trips to Miami, and said of the IDB’s comments on the economic impact study, or lack of it: “How can they [the Government] stand up there and berate anyone who has concerns based on the impact of VAT on other countries in the region, and they’ve not done a study yet? It speaks volumes.

“They berate anyone who stands up and raises questions, and those questions result from government’s lack of information. We’re beeped down as if we’re dummies.

“They’ve [the Government] been forging ahead as if it’s a fait accompli, and haven’t done a cost benefit analysis.  Have they considered the impact on businesses close to the edge?  Obviously they haven’t.  Is it going to destroy the economy and they get less revenue?  Is that the Government’s intention?

“If they haven’t done the basics yet, how can they just think they can throw their hands up and say: ‘We can take more money from the citizens?’ It’s unconscionable. I weep for our country.”

Questioning why the Government had allowed “this large swathe” of non-real property tax payers to exist, Mr Lowe said VAT would impose an even greater tax burden on those who were already paying their bills.

“To say we can’t collect the taxes already on the books, and to tax more people who legally do what’s right and pay the taxes they ought to pay, something’s wrong with that reasoning,” he added.

October 21, 2013

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Latin American communications routed through the United States, affirms Assange


THE journalist and creator of the Wikileaks website, Julian Assange, affirms that virtually the totality of communications from Latin America are routed through the United States, and that this country intercepts them in order to consolidate its influence in the world.

It is a fact that 98% of telecommunications from Latin America to the rest of the world, including text messages, telephone calls, emails etc, pass through the U.S, Assange noted, in an interview with Russia Today conducted within the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where he has been granted refuge.

Washington’s objective is to obtain information on how Latin America is behaving, where it is making economic transactions and the activities of leaders and major players, the Australian activist added.
 
In Assange’s opinion, this espionage allows the U.S. to predict, to a certain degree, the conduct of Latin American leaders and interests, and also to exert coercion on almost any significant person.
 
He explained that the United States had aggressively tried to disprupt economic exchange through intervention and its control of Swift, Visa, MasterCard or monies sent to Latin America via the Bank of America.
 
The United States is appropriating economic and telecommunications interactions and this poses a threat to national sovereignty, he observed.
 
In relation to the former CIA technician Edward Snowden, who is living in exile in Russia after having revealed mass espionage on the part of U.S. secret services, Assange noted that Wikileaks was formally and informally implicated in Snowden’s requests for asylum made to approximately 20 countries.
 
Assange believes that Snowden had a genuine possibility of gaining asylum in several countries and Wikileaks noted others to inform the public of rejections and thus generate debate, and to report how governments were responding to Snowden’s applications for asylum.
 
The Wikileaks founder recalled that Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador were the Latin American countries which indicated interest in granting asylum to Snowden.
 
The activities revealed by the former CIA analyst include espionage on Latin American leaders such as Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who cancelled a visit to Washington, scheduled for October 23, since she considered the explanations offered by her counterpart Barack Obama insufficient.
 
According to these leaks, U.S. secret services also spied on Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. (EFE)
 
October 17, 2013
 
 
 

Friday, October 18, 2013

NO SMOKING ALLOWED at Her Majesty’s Prisons (HMP) ...soon to be renamed The Bahamas Department of Correctional Services

 Smoking To Be Eliminated At Prison




by Macushla Pinder
Jones Bahamas
Nassau, The Bahamas




Prison inmates who smoke will soon be forced to kick the habit, saving taxpayers a “considerable” amount of money.

Once passed, the Corrections Services Bill will eliminate smoking at Her Majesty’s Prisons (HMP), soon to be renamed The Bahamas Department of Correctional Services.

Wrapping up debate on the proposed legislation in the House of Assembly yesterday, Prime Minister Perry Christie acknowledged that while such a change may present some initial concerns for some inmates, over time, it will aid in saving more lives and promoting better health.

“Provisions will be put in place to ensure that those inmates who may be addicted to smoking are provided with every measure to assist them to quit, as there is clear evidence that smoking and second hand smoke are injurious to one’s health,” he said.

“So, insofar as people who are confined at Her Majesty’s Prisons, they are not going to be allowed to smoke and so the tradition of being able to trade cigarettes or get cigarettes will be eliminated because the cost to the taxpayer increases considerably.”

Mr. Christie said in the long term, inmates would be better prepared to re-enter society as productive citizens, thereby reducing the prison’s recidivism rate.

At last count, there were more than 1,500 Bahamians imprisoned at HMP, twice as many as the Fox Hill compound is designed to hold at capacity.

According to National Security Minister Dr. Bernard Nottage, there are 800 inmates in the prison’s Maximum Security wing.

Of that figure, 92 people are awaiting trial for murder, 200 inmates are under the age of 17, 44 of whom are 16-years-old.

Commenting the issue of persons on bail, Mr. Christie acknowledged that it is a matter of urgency that these people be tried more quickly.

“We need to prevent the haemorrhaging. We need to prevent these people from being out on bail, so we need to have better trials, a more effective disposition of justice,” he said.

“At the same time, I think it is clearly understood that…our won children are going into those facilities….We have an obligation to recognise that we must constantly work at ensuring that the punishment matches the crime. But in the process, there must be a corresponding effort on a sustained basis to expose these young men in particular to the conditions that ought to pertain in our country, in their lives. We have to condition them to somehow understand that they made a mistake, but they can recover from that mistake and education, training and exposure helps that.”

Government officials stress that the proposed legislation reflect the realities of a modern day correctional facility.

This includes the composition of prison officers.

Once passed, the head of the prison will be recognised as the commissioner of corrections.

The bill was left in committee stage.

October 17, 2013

The Bahama Journal

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

A Response to David Jessop, Managing Director of the London-based Caribbean Council ...on Bahamian Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell’s handling of the allegations ...of beating of Cuban detainees ...at the Carmichael Detention Centre in The Bahamas

 How Not To Damage A Country's Reputation



Tribune242
Nassau, The Bahamas



“WHAT stands out as a lesson to other governments is how reaction, if not thought through, can actually exacerbate a situation and, turning it into a matter unlikely to be forgotten and which in this case, may, in time, come to affect Bahamas-US relations.”
 
So wrote syndicated columnist David Jessop, Managing Director of the London-based Caribbean Council, in commenting on Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell’s handling of the allegations of beating of Cuban detainees at the Carmichael Detention Centre several months ago. The investigation has retreated behind closed doors, although even the accused marines’ defence attorney has urged that the trial be open to the public.
 
According to Mr Mitchell, there will be no fall-out from this unhappy affair on our tourist industry. “The universal experience,” he said, “has been that of a destination which looms large in the popular imagination as a place for fun and relaxation.”
 
However, Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe, closer to our tourism industry than Mr Mitchell, had other views. In his opinion, the Bahamas will, in the end, suffer from the Cuban-American boycotts in Miami in retaliation for the treatment of their fellow Cubans in our detention centre here. In Mr Wilchcombe’s opinion, “the impact of this on our economy will not be good”.
 
And although National Security Minister Dr Bernard Nottage was confident that the matter would be satisfactorily resolved, he too saw that it was a incident that could not be brushed aside. “We cannot ignore it because cumulatively, if the matter is not resolved in a matter consistent with good relations, then we will suffer the results of it,” he said.
 
Nor did Mr Jessop think that the issue would easily evaporate without leaving a stain. He used the Bahamas’ mishandling of the Cuban affair as a lesson on what a country should not do in the delicate arena of foreign relations. Mishandling, as in the case of the Bahamas, can do untold damage to a “nation’s image and reputation.” he said
 
And wrote Mr Jessop, in a cautionary note to the rest of the Caribbean: “Throughout, the issue has not been helped by the response of The Bahamas government which went from denial, to seeming misinformation, to anger, to announcing a public enquiry, to returning the detainees who might have given evidence, to unfortunately voiced exasperation on the part of government about what to do next: all against a background of representations from the US Government, the deepening involvement of human-rights NGOs, and opposition criticism then support.”
 
In Miami, a group of anti-Cuban, Cuban-American activists had organised a boycott outside the Bahamas consulate, at the airport and docks from which tourists leave for the Bahamas. They have presently called off the boycotts as they tentatively await the outcome of the promised investigation of the accused defence force officers.
 
Mr Jessop warned the Caribbean: “News and comments are now instant and global, and social media, 24-hour rolling news channels, and the Internet, have enabled cross-border citizen activism.
 
“For the most part,” he continued, “Caribbean governments seem transfixed by this, unable to respond in real time, or to recognise that opinions and news items on YouTube or Twitter can go viral in hours, and that their traditional and often pedestrian response, let alone an entrenched desire to brush aside bad news, is no longer adequate.”
 
This was Mr Mitchell’s pitfall.
 
From the moment it was determined that the “fake” tape of the beatings went viral from Miami, Mr Mitchell clutched to the “fake” tape straw, refusing to accept that the video was actually a recreation of what was meant to have taken place in the detention centre on that fateful night. Mr Mitchell insisted that the tape was not recorded at the centre. As it turned out, the re-enactment was filmed at the centre with one of the Cuban actors wearing a uniform loaned him by one of the Bahamian guards. But to the bitter end, Mr Mitchell clung to his broken reed and the statement that a friendly Bahamian government never beat anyone — as if the government were ever accused.
 
In the end, he was sucked down in the quagmire of his own oft contradictory words railing against treasonous Bahamians and enemies of the country. His pathetic show torpedoed the country’s cause. Let’s hope that he will now leave the conclusion of this matter to safer hands.
 
It is probably too early to estimate what damage, ­if any, this long drawn-out fiasco has had on our tourist figures. However, we understand that there has been a critical fall-off in tourist arrivals, both by air and by sea.
 
It has been a long time since these figures have been published. It is now time for reporters to start asking questions. Bahamians have a right to know the state of our tourist industry.
 
In case our readers missed Mr Jessop’s column commenting on the Cuban situation in the Bahamas, it was published in The Tribune on Monday, October 7, in the Insight column under the heading “Reputational Damage.”
 
October 10, 2013
 
 
 

David Jessop, Managing Director of the London-based Caribbean Council ...on Bahamian Foreign Affairs Minister, Fred Mitchell’s handling of the allegations ...of beating of Cuban detainees ...at the Carmichael Detention Centre in The Bahamas

Reputational Damage





By DAVID JESSOP
Managing Director of Caribbean Council:
 


ALL Caribbean nations have well-developed contingency plans in the event of a natural disaster. However, few have established procedures to address the issue of the damage caused to a nation’s image and reputation.
 
Yet, that is just what is required if the Caribbean is not to experience long-term economic and political damage from the type of campaign that is under way against The Bahamas over the alleged mistreatment of detainees.
 
What follows is not to seek to minimise the ill treatment of anyone; or to question the importance of freedom to comment; or to avoid suggesting that nations in the region need to get their houses in order and observe international norms. Rather, it is to make clear that the need for reputational management has changed absolutely and governments need to consider how politically, and better, they should react.
 
News and comments are now instant and global, and social media, 24-hour rolling news channels, and the Internet, have enabled cross-border citizen activism.
 
For the most part Caribbean governments seem transfixed by this, unable to respond in real time, or to recognise that opinions and news items on YouTube or Twitter can go viral in hours, and that their traditional and often pedestrian response, let alone an entrenched desire to brush aside bad news, is no longer adequate.
 
Neither do those in the region who seek to manipulate situations for domestic political advantage appear to recognise that in some cases what may appear usefully self-serving in relation to sensitive domestic issues such as the probity of the police service or matters relating to migrants, also have an external dimension that may have wider political and economic consequences.
 
The case of The Bahamas is informative. In March of this year, protests began in Miami about the need for better treatment of a group of Cuban women being held in a detention centre previously the subject of concern and investigation by Amnesty International. Later, in June, the protests escalated after a video circulated in Miami showed, it was alleged, Cuban detainees being beaten by guards at the same detention centre.
 
In response, a group of anti-Cuban, Cuban-American activists, the Democracy Movement, began to organise demonstrations outside The Bahamas consulate in Miami and began to take other actions to obtain publicity. Their cause was supported by Cuban-American politicians, who not only have significant influence in the US Congress, but include in their number a future US presidential candidate. More recently, their protests have escalated to include representations to the cruise-ship companies and demonstrations in front of departing cruise-ship passengers.
 
Throughout, the issue has not been helped by the response of The Bahamas government which went from denial, to seeming misinformation, to anger, to announcing a public enquiry, to returning the detainees who might have given evidence, to unfortunately voiced exasperation on the part of government about what to do next: all against a background of representations from the US Government, the deepening involvement of human-rights NGOs, and opposition criticism then support.
 
While hopefully an enquiry commissioned by The Bahamas government will be thorough and honest, the allegations, as Amnesty International’s involvement indicates, are serious and, irrespective of the political complexities surrounding the nationality of those involved, should be answered sooner rather than later.
 
What stands out as a lesson to other governments is how reaction, if not thought through, can actually exacerbate a situation and far from closing down an issue, can add fuel to the fire, turning it into a matter unlikely to be forgotten and which in this case, may, in time, come to affect Bahamas-US relations.
 
In its own way, the event is a tip of an iceberg of potential damage that the Caribbean has the capacity to self-inflict, unaware that the world is watching or that, whether the region likes it or not, tourism and the tourism industry are its Achilles heel; one that will become subject to constant external attack if the region fails in meeting international norms in everything from human rights to health and safety.
 
At the heart of the issue is a failure to understand what tourism, brand creation and reputation now mean in a world in which perhaps unfortunately, perception has come to matter more than reality.
 
Tourist boards, governments and the industry across the world spend millions of dollars to create a positive picture of “The Caribbean Experience”: a sense that all is well in a country and that a destination and a vacation will be a happy and memorable experience.
 
But recently, damaging coverage about the unfortunate reality of crime, sexual assault, and the behaviour of some police and immigration officers has led pressure groups and the media in key feeder markets to begin to question safety, disseminating messages that cannot be controlled and, if inaccurate, are hard to refute.
 
Incidents apart, one element of the problem lies in the fact that increasing numbers of visitors are coming to expect the politics, the judicial system, personal safety, and the rule of law to be equivalent to where they reside, and for their government or embassy to afford them the same protection and treatment as they might receive at home.
 
This is particularly the case when it comes to North American and European travellers who, in a sometimes oversimplistic manner, travel the world expecting the same behaviour, basic rights, responses, norms and safety to match what they have in the wealthy developed nations from which they have come.
 
But beyond this, and more alarmingly for a tourism-dependent region, has been the appearance of the first social media campaigns mounted by NGOs that actively aim to turn visitors against specific countries. For example, in the case of the Maldives, there is a global campaign which has near to two million supporters, including Sir Richard Branson, proposing a tourism boycott, and raising funds to develop an advertising campaign which, it says, will aim to “threaten the islands’ reputation”.
 
The point here is not to suggest that governments should hide or find ways to exonerate themselves from the consequence of their responsibilities; it is to indicate that apart from ensuring that abuses do not occur, that only a well-considered, fair, rapid, appropriate and measured response will avoid such situations becoming potent and damaging.
 
(David Jessop, Managing Director of the Caribbean Council, writes a weekly column providing a European perspective on Caribbean events).
 
October 07, 2013
 
 
Tribune 242
 
 

Monday, October 14, 2013

Death of the 20th century General

 

• Given his victories in the field of battle, the legendary Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap was called the Red Napoleon by his enemies, and by his compatriots, Volcano under the Snow




A press report from Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, notes that the legendary General Vi Nguyen Giap, one of the most eminent figures in Vietnamese history and a great friend of Cuba and revolutionary causes, died at the age of 102 on October 4.

Ge Luo means Volcano under the Snow; the name given by his compatriots to this exceptional man, who defeated the Japanese, then the French at Dien Bien Phu and, decades later, forced the U.S. army to flee from Saigon, thus completing the reunification of Vietnam.

His life is indissolubly linked to the struggle for national liberation, to the history of the training, growth and development of the Vietnam People’s Army. For his victories the French themselves nicknamed him the Red Napoleon.

Vo Nguyen Giap was one of so many sons and daughters of campesinos who became figures thanks to socialism, not without much personal sacrifice. In 1926 he became a member of student organizations involved in the underground struggle. He joined the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) and quickly grew close Ho Chi Minh, a personal friend.

At the end of 1941, Giap left for the Vietnamese mountains in order to create the first guerrilla groups. There he established an alliance with Chu Van Tan, the leader of Tho, one of the fighting formations created by a national minority in northeast Vietnam. At Christmas 1944 he captured a French military post, after having trained the first battalions of his armed forces.

By the middle of 1945 he already had 10,000 men under his command, and could move onto the offensive against the Japanese, who had invaded the country.

The French police arrested his wife and sister-in-law, using them as hostages to put pressure on Giap and force him to surrender. The repression was ferocious: his sister-in-law was guillotined and his wife sentenced to life imprisonment. She died in prison after three years as a result of torture. The French also killed his newborn son, his father, his two sisters and other family members.

But Giap was resolute. He defeated the French during the Dien Bien Phu campaign, which was the first great victory of a colonized and feudal people, with a primitive agricultural economy, against an experienced imperialist army sustained by a vigorous and modern military industry. The most eminent French generals (Leclerc, De Lattre de Tasigny, Juin, Ely, Sulan, Naverre) failed one after the other facing troops who were poor campesinos, but determined to fight to the death for their country and for socialism. Vietnam was divided and Giap was appointed Minister of Defense of the new government of North Vietnam which, while the people’s war continued, made every effort to build a new socialist society.

As the Commander of the new people’s army, Giap led the struggle in the Vietnam War against the U.S. invaders in the south of the country, a struggle which, once again, began as a guerilla war. The first U.S. soldiers died in Vietnam when, on July 8, 1959, the Vietcong attacked a military base at Bien Hoa, northeast of Saigon.

Four U.S. presidents, one after another, fought against Vietnam, leaving behind a bloody trail of 57,690 dead American troops. In 1975 the country was reunified, when a tank of the revolutionary army charged the protective barrier of the U.S. embassy, while the last imperialists fled precipitously in a helicopter from the roof of the building.

General Giap was not only a maestro in the art of directing revolutionary warfare, but also wrote a number of valuable books about it, such as his famous work People’s War, People’s Army, a manual on guerilla war based on his own experience. In the manual, he established three basic fundamentals which a people’s army must possess to attain victory in the struggle against imperialism: leadership, organization and strategy. The leadership of the Communist Party, an ironclad military discipline and a political line adapted to the country’s economic, social and political conditions.

He defined the people’s war as "a war of combat for the people and by the people, while the war of guerrillas is simply a method of combat. The people’s war is a more general concept. It is a synthesized concept. It is simultaneously military, economic and political." The people’s war is not just made by an army, however popular this might be, but is one made by all the people because it is impossible for a revolutionary army, alone, to achieve victory against reaction. All of the people have to participate and help in a struggle, which necessarily, must be prolonged."

As a good guerrilla fighter, Giap knew that military success, when there is such a large disproportion of forces, is based on initiative, audacity and surprise, which demands that a revolutionary army has to constantly displace itself. He stood out as a genius of logistics, capable of constantly mobilizing troop contingents, following the principles of the war of movement. He acted in this way against the French colonialists in 1951, infiltrating an entire army across enemy lines in the Mekong Delta and again by bringing forward the Tet offensive in 1968 against the U.S. forces, when he placed thousands of men and tons of provisions for a simultaneous attack on 35 strategic centers in the south.

Both his followers and adversaries considered Vo Nguyen Giap as one of the great military strategists of history.

Marcel Bigeard, the most decorated general in the French army, who was his prisoner, has said of the Vietnamese military chief: "Giap victoriously commanded his troops during more than 30 years. This constitutes an unprecedented feat (...) He extracted lessons from his errors and never repeated them"

William Westmoreland, commander in chief of the U.S. army in Vietnam and an adversary of Giap, stated that the qualities which make a great military chief are the aptitude to make decisions, moral strength, capacity for concentration, without forgetting the intelligence which unifies all of the foregoing. Giap possessed them all. (SE)
October 09, 2013