1970s
1975: The Mayaguez Affair
Historian Howard Zinn's account of the brief but disatrous invasion of a Cambodian island by a small US force which suffered massive casualties.
1957-1975: The Vietnam War
Howard Zinn's short history of the war in Vietnam from the beginning of the Communist insurgency in 1957 until the defeat of US and South Vietnamese forces in 1975.
Following the partitioning of Vietnam into the pro-independence Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North, and the US puppet state the Republic of Vietnam in the South in 1954 (see our short history of Vietnam from 1945 to 1957) elections were due to be held on re-unification.
1968-1990: The invasion of Panama and US intervention
Noam Chomsky's account of the US invasion of Panama, its intervention over the previous twenty years and its backing of drug-trafficking dictarator Manuel Noriega.
Panama has been traditionally controlled by its tiny European elite, less than 10% of the population. That changed in 1968, when Omar Torrijos, a populist general, led a coup that allowed the black and mestizo [mixed-race] poor to obtain at least a share of the power under his military dictatorship.
1970-1987: The contra war in Nicaragua
Noam Chomsky's account of the US-backed “contra” counter-insurgency in Nicaragua against the left-wing government brought to power on the back of a popular mass movement from below.
It wasn't just the events in El Salvador that were ignored by the mainstream US media during the 1970s. In the ten years prior to the overthrow of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, US television - all networks - devoted exactly one hour to Nicaragua, and that was entirely on the Managua earthquake of 1972.
1970-1990: The war of counter-insurgency in El Salvador
Noam Chomsky on the ultra-violent war of the right-wing regime in El Salvador against grassroots resistance of workers, peasants and liberation theologists – socialist clergymen and women.
The crucifixion of El Salvador
For many years, repression, torture and murder were carried on in El Salvador by dictators installed and supported by the US government, a matter of no interest in the US. The story was virtually never covered. By the late 1970s, however, the government began to be concerned about a couple of things.
1978-1979: The Iranian Revolution
A history and analysis of the revolution in which socialists aligned themselves with Islamists to overthrow the West-backed Shah.
Following the success of the revolution, the Islamists instituted a theocratic dictatorship and wiped out the workers' movement and the left.
21. Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus
Halfway through the twentieth century, the historian Richard Hofstadter, in his book The American
Political Tradition, examined our important national leaders, from Jefferson and Jackson to Herbert
Hoover and the two Roosevelts—Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. Hofstadter
20. The Seventies: Under Control?
In the early seventies, the system seemed out of control—it could not hold the loyalty of the public. As early as 1970, according to the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center, "trust in
government" was low in every section of the population. And there was a significant difference by
19. Surprises
Helen Keller had said in 1911: "We vote? What does that mean?" And Emma Goldman around the
same time: "Our modern fetish is universal suffrage." After 1920, women were voting, as men did,
and their subordinate condition had hardly changed.
18. The Impossible Victory: Vietnam
From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a
maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist
revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country-and failed. When the United States fought in
Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human
beings won.
