Word: dais
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...into serious trouble. He was caught in an ambush set by the discredited but still powerful rearguards of his country's past-feudal warlords, religious fanatics and big-city hoodlums, with French colonials hovering indistinctly in the background. About 30,000 well-armed troops of the Cao Dai, Hoa Hao and Binh Xuyen sects (long subsidized by the French) were out in coalition against Diem's national government, lobbing mortar shells into peasant villages to demonstrate their lethal potentialities. Hostile Vietnamese politicians in Europe were trying to persuade Riviera-loving Bao Dai, the absentee chief of state...
...moved step by step more deeply into Camau-the towns first, then the villages, then out by powered boats along the bayous. They had been carefully briefed (with U.S. assistance). No French were anywhere to be seen, and no mention was made of the absentee chief of state, Bao Dai. Communist agents had urged villagers not to listen to Diem's Nationalist talk, not to accept his food parcels, not to put their fish on the market, thereby forcing prices up. Yet Diem's confident beginning soon showed remarkable gains. The Hoa Hao sect, outnumbered, lay quiet...
...parade in Saigon. ¶ Reached agreement that the U.S. would start training a 100,000-man Vietnamese army, plus a reserve of 150,000 men. The necessary funds would be transmitted through a new Vietnamese (not French) bank. ¶ Accepted the allegiance of 8,000 troops of the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao religious sects, whose hostile private armies were thereby reduced by about one-third. ¶ Started proceedings against wealthy Phan Van Giao, onetime Vice Premier and business manager for Chief of State Bao Dai, accusing him of misappropriating 5,650,000 piasters...
...Vietnamese government about $10,000 in "taxes," and gets in return the monopoly control of Saigon's brothels, gambling casinos and opium dens (which are called "clinics of disintoxication"). The Binh Xuyen's enterprises are one of the main sources of revenue for Chief of State Bao Dai, who lives in luxury on the French Riviera. The Binh Xuyen is greatly feared in Saigon: its policemen recently beat a Vietnamese army contingent in pitched street fighting. The Binh Xuyen is also respected for its efficiency. One day last fall the mob closed down the city's small...
...Dai, however, was now angling for U.S. support, and the U.S.'s man is Diem. The State Department considers Hinh a competent soldier but no man to run the country. Besides, Hinh's French training and his French wife hamper his effectiveness with Vietnamese National ists. Last week Bao Dai fired the general. Or, as Bao Dai's spokesmen put it: "General Hinh having made some regrettable statements, His Majesty . . . came under the imperious obligation of withdrawing his assignment...