In business, count the costs before you act. The moon now in Capricorn suggests keeping practical values in mind. Tomorrow is rather too energetic for comfort, but that may be because everybody is on the move.
—A late August horoscope
Syndicated horoscopes, many of them from abroad, are popular features in many South Vietnamese newspapers, but last week the government banned them, presumably on the theory that some star-minded dissident might be moved to try a coup on an astrologically auspicious day. In South Viet Nam everybody was indeed on the move, but where they were moving was no clearer than the zodiac. The U.S. was increasingly unhappy with President Ngo Dinh Diem (Capricorn), and after what the U.S. officially called his "brutal" crackdown on the Buddhists, Washington obviously could not string along with him as if nothing had happened.
So the U.S. made noises designed to encourage opposition to Diem. But South Viet Nam being what it is, potential rebels did not want to move without virtually a written contract for U.S. support. Meanwhile the U.S. tried to place the odium of the crackdown on Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu (Libra),* and new Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge (Cancer) managed to suggest, without saying anything publicly, that he did not like what was going on.
The Siege. A week after the government's crackdown, Saigon looked like a city under siege. Heavily armed Special Forces units guarded all key installations. Mobile "anti-suicide" squads patrolled the streets, ready to douse any further Buddhist attempts at self-immolation. An antiaircraft battery was rolled into position outside Saigon's presidential palace; since the Communist Viet Cong have no planes, the government evidently feared an attack from its own force.
Having jailed most Buddhist leaders, the regime moved to silence other vocal opposition—Saigon's seething student population. In the city's crowded marketplace and near Saigon University, rifle-toting combat police in camouflage uniforms arrested all youths of high school and college age in sight and hauled them off to detention camps on the outskirts. Throughout the city, blue-uniformed members of Nhu's Republican Youth Organization made door-to-door calls, warning against public criticism of the government on pain of arrest. Schools were closed until further notice, and scheduled elections for the normally rubberstamp, 123-member National Assembly were postponed.
Over Radio Saigon, Thich Tinh Khiet, 80, head of the General Buddhist Association, pledged his loyalty to the government, but a newspaper picture cleared by inattentive censors showed the aged monk with a black eye and bruises all over his face. The government explained that he had fallen down. In other respects, censorship was stringent. In outgoing cables from newsmen, the word Catholic was blue-penciled; after passing the censors, one story referred to "Roman President Ngo Dinh Diem."