May 7, 1954: Vietnamese Defeat French At Dien Ben Phu.

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This is an important day in history, but not many people in the U.S. know it, care about it, or think about its significance. On May 7, 1954, the Vietnamese defeated the French in a famous battle and rout called Dien Ben Phu.

Before World War II, France claimed Vietnam as a colony, used its people as slave labor or servants, and stole its resources. The French fled the advancing Japanese during World War II, and the Vietnamese people, under the leadership of the Viet Cong, fought against the Japanese.

After World War II was over, the leaders of the allied forces met on several occasions to congratulate each other on defeating fascism, and to divvy up the world among themselves. Vietnam sent a delegation to one of those meetings, and told the powerful leaders that they wanted their independence. They were told no. They were told that their nation "belonged" to the French, and that was that. Except it wasn't.

The Vietnamese just kept fighting, this time against the French. French public sentiment turned against the war (other French colonies such as Algeria were also rising up in wars of independence) but the Americans provided aide and advisors to the French to help them maintain their Vietnamese colony. On May 7, 1954, it all collapsed, the French were defeated, and the Vietnamese were successful.

Except that the war was not over, because the U.S. decided it would step in, begin taking over from the French, and the U.S. would beat this poor peasant nation. After all, we've got the strongest military in the world, right? Of course the U.S. stayed and stayed, killed and killed, but eventually were forced out of Vietnam after murdering 2 million of their people and dumping poisonous chemicals all over their nation which has created a tragedy of cancer and birth defects in the civilian population. The U.S. has not done a thing to help those poor people.

Some of the idiots in this country insist we should have stayed longer, killed more. They feel personally demeaned because their government did not just nuke the whole country.

Now we're in another war. Actually lots of them. Among others, we're in a war against Afghanistan, one of the poorest nations in the world, a country where our own top military leaders have admitted there are about 100 members of al Queda. So we send in hundreds of thousands of Americans to fight about 100 al Queda.

People hoped Obama would end this tragic war, but he has instead escalated it. There is no rational explanation for that escalation except the one suggested by the war's opponents from the outset: the western oil corporatoins want to run pipelines across the nation of Afghanistan, but the only way they can do that is if the U.S. keeps its military there to protect the oil pipelines, to be used in stealing the oil and gas from Afghanistan's neighbors.

We have 104,000 mercenary contractors in Afghanistan working for the U.S., being paid enormous salaries by the bankrupt and unemployed taxpayers of the U.S. Don't we deserve an honest answer about why we have 104,000 private mercenary contractors occupying Afghanistan?

We have about 100,000 military troops in Afghanistan. Total military and private contractor mercenaries inside Afghanistan is over 200,000. For what?

Now we hear that the U.S. is focusing on new nations. First, Pakistan. The U.S. is directing Pakistan to attack regions of its own nation, and is receiving quite a bit of resistance to those orders. The U.S. continues to threaten to attack Iran. For what? Iran helps other people in the middle east who are fighting against the U.S., or so we are told. Which one of these does not belong: Iran? Or the U.S. We don't belong there. It's not our oil, they are not our nations. We need to end these wars.

Or, Obama may simply keep them all going, permanent war. Keep the defense corporations rich, keep the working people with an unemployment level over 10%, do nothing. Make sure the Democrats don't get blamed to ending a war, God forbid, what a terrible reputation that would be.

Many Democrats believe they lost elections because they eventually supported ending the war in Vietnam. It was too little too late by too few politicians, first. And second, if it was true, which it is not, they should be proud to be called peacemakers. Instead, the Democrats push war and cause killing for no legitimate reason. Much like the Republicans.

End the Wars. All of them. Bring the troops home. Now.

"Songs My Mother Taught Me," by Antonin Dvorak

Songs my mother taught me
in the days long vanished
Seldom from her eyelids
were the tear drops banished.

Now I teach my children
each melodious measure.
Often tears are flowing
from my memory's treasure.

Happy Mother's Day (Sunday). The Righteous Mothers: Old Fat Naked Women for Peace.

Mother's Day didn't really start as just a day for breakfast in bed. Its origins lie in the decision by Julia Ward Howe to issue a public proclamation and demand that the carnage and brutality of war, in her case the U.S. Civil War, be ended, and that women take up the role as an anti-war force in societies throughout the world, since they seem to be the only ones with enough sense to realize that war must end.

Mother’s Day Proclamation (1870) (Julia Ward Howe)

Arise then ... women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the voice of a devastated
Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace ...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God—

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

She was right then, and she's still right now. Men start wars, grab the children from the arms of their mothers and send them to foreign countries to kill or be killed so that some few leaders can grab more riches for themselves. Who can stop this madness except women?

Here are some Old Fat Naked Women who are committed to the cause of peace:

Democracy Now's Interview of Danny Schechter - Excerpts Of His Film "Plunder."

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The DVD and book "Plunder," both by Danny Schechter, are available at this website: http://plunderthecrimeofourtime.com/

Happy Cinco de Mayo (5th of May)

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(Painting of the Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862)

"Cinco de Mayo" means the fifth day of May in Spanish: "Cinco" is five, "Mayo" is May. It is not a national holiday in Mexico. I was in Mexico City one year on the fifth day of May and looked forward to what I assumed would be a city-wide party. Instead, there was nothing. No party, no celebration, nada.

It seems that Cinco de Mayo is more an American invention. Who knows why this day was picked, but it is celebrated in the United States as kind of a day of celebration of Mexican heritage: costumes, music, dancing, food.

Technically, the apparent basis for the holiday is the Battle of Puebla, which was a battle between the Mexican Army and the French Army in 1862. The Mexicans won.

Tennessee Waltz by Eva Cassidy

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May 4, 1970: Four Dead In Ohio (Kent State)

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(Pulitzer Prize-winning photo taken by John Filo of Mary Ann Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway, kneeling over the body of student Jeffrey Miller, who had been shot dead by the National Guard at Kent State, Ohio.)

In the spring of 1970, despite massive nationwide marches, demonstrations, teach-ins, protests, letter-writing, petitioning of the government and demands from the citizens that the U.S. War Against Vietnam be ended and the troops be brought home, Richard Nixon decided to expand the war by starting a war against another country, Cambodia. When the nation learned that the war had been expanded, and the United States was attacking Cambodia, all hell broke loose all across the country.

(National Guard with riot gear, rifles up, bayonettes in fixed position, ready to "confront" unarmed college students in anti-war demonstrations at Kent State, Ohio).

Students from law schools, colleges, high schools and junior high schools walked out of their classrooms and gathered on their campuses and in the streets to protest the war. Not only students and hippies marched in the streets, but also mothers, fathers, children, car-dealers, veterans, CPAs were out demanding that this illegal, immoral, disastrous war be ended.

The response of the Republicans who were in charge was to get tough and send in the National Guard to any area where there was any possibility of a disturbance of the peace through peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins, mass rallies or otherwise. The National Guard has never been so dispersed in modern times among the civilians, told to raise their weapons against the citizens of this country, in such a broad manner, for the purpose of preventing the citizens from protesting the actions of the national government. If anyone wonders how Fascism would come to this country, it would likely start by the government turning the National Guard against the people of their own communities such as happened in 1970.

(Kent State students being gassed by National Guard - streams show cannisters being lobbed at students)

One college which had protests and demonstrations and teach-ins and sit-ins was Kent State in Ohio. The National Guard was sent in and told to disperse the students (although they went to school there, and there was no legitimate reason they should not or could not have been there). But the National Guard nonetheless went in and ordered all the students to leave.

(Kent State students, "armed" only with their bookbags, teen-agers, almost still children, after being shot and killed by the National Guard which had been sent to their college to stop them from publicly protesting against the Nixon government.)

The National Guard, in full riot gear, rifles up, bayonnettes in a fixed and ready position, began moving on the students in one long line, shoving them back, yelling, and threatening. Chaos was the inevitable result. Then the National Guard began lobbing cannisters of tear gas into the middle of the crowd of students, blinding the students, causing a stampede with some shoved to the ground. Some of the students picked up rocks and threw them at the National Guard.

As the students moved back, away from the line of the National Guard, the National Guard also began to retreat but stopped at one point, turned, faced the retreating students. Someone in the National Guard gave the clear order to "Fire," and the National Guard fired directly into the crowd of unarmed students -- 67 shots in total. Four students were killed. No one was ever held accountable. This was murder.

Kent State was followed by police shootings ten days later at another college named Jackson State, in Mississippi, where African-American students demonstrating against the war were shot, two killed and 12 wounded. There was also a shooting by the National Guard-occupied campus at the University of California in Santa Barbara, where one student was killed.

Neal Young wrote the song "Ohio" ("Four Dead in Ohio") as a tribute to the murdered students and a rallying cry for the anti-war movement:

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.