In August 1965, Morley Safer, a reporter for "CBS News," accompanied a unit of U.S. marines on a search-and-destroy mission to the Vietnamese village of Cam Ne. Using cigarette lighters and a flamethrower, the troops proceeded to burn down 150 houses, wound three women, kill one child and take four men prisoner. Safer and his crew caught it all on film. The military command later claimed that the unit had received enemy fire. But according to Safer, no pitched battle had taken place. The only death had been the boy, and not a single weapon had been uncovered.

In describing the reaction, Safer would later say that the public, the media and the military all began to realize that the rules of war reporting had changed.

The New Yorker's Michael Arlen dubbed Vietnam the "living room war." The images of the war - viewed on evening news shows on the country's three networks - enabled the public to understand the war's human costs. In this sense, media coverage contributed to the flow of information that's vital to any functioning democracy, and pushed Americans to either support or oppose U.S. involvement in the conflict.

However, in the country's myriad military conflicts since Vietnam, this flow of information has been largely transformed, and it is now more difficult to see the human consequences of military operations. Despite a digital revolution that's created even more opportunities to transmit images, voices and stories, the public finds itself further removed from what's really happening on the front lines.

The rise and fall of empires throughout recorded history were periods of volatility and conflict. When plotting a historical timeline showing the 'life-span' of consecutive empires, each empire forms a sinusoidal peak. The decline of the prevailing empire and the rise of the emerging empire intersects at a point, depicting a transition period. That transition is a multiyear process ushering in the 'changing of the guards', which results in a tectonic shift of economy and culture. This trend of transitions has similar parallels pertaining to war and reserve currency status.

Let us examine the past 400 years of world reserve currencies. The first cycle marks the rise and fall of the Dutch Empire which was dominated by the use of a gold/silver backed guilder standard. The second cycle began with the rise of the British Empire where it crossed with the decline of the Dutch Empire marking an intersection point. One of the major events at that point was the 4th Anglo-Dutch war during the 1780's. This second cycle of the British Empire cycle at its peak, was dominated by the use of a gold/silver backed sterling pound standard. The third cycle began with the rise of the American 'liberal democracy' hegemony which then intersected with the decline of the British Empire. The transition at this intersection point is marked by WWI and WWII, with the USD gold backed at its peak.

Please note, the previous paragraph is considerably simplified. This article focuses more on economic power and world order dominance. After the fall of the Spanish Empire in the 17th century, the Spanish silver Real remained a trading currency in the American colonies. Prior to the 4th Anglo-Dutch War, the gold/silver backed French Livre was a dominant trading currency during the 18th century. This currency failed, in the late 18th century due to debasement. After the 4th Anglo-Dutch War, the gold/silver backed French germinal Franc was a dominant trade currency during the 19th century. During the rise of the British Empire, France was also rising as a military superpower. Both the British and French were vying for economic dominance during that era. The British Empire won and became a world power.

Archaeologists in Guatemala have discovered the oldest evidence of the Maya calendar on record: two mural fragments that, when pieced together, reveal a notation known as "7 deer," a new study finds.

The two "7 deer" fragments date to between 300 B.C. and 200 B.C., according to radiocarbon dating done by the research team. This early date indicates that this Maya divination calendar, which was also used by other pre-Columbian cultures in Mesoamerica, such as the Aztecs, has been in continuous use for at least 2,300 years, as it is still followed today by modern Maya, the researchers said. (Notably, this is not the Long Count calendar that some people used to suggest the world was going to end in 2012.)

After having shown that the war in Ukraine was prepared by the Straussians and triggered on February 17 by Kiev's attack on the Donbass, Thierry Meyssan returns to the secret history that links the Anglo-Saxons to the Banderites since the fall of the Third Reich. He sounds the alarm: we have not been able to see the resurgence of Nazi racialism in Ukraine and in the Baltic States for thirty years, nor do we see that many of the Ukrainian civilians we welcome are steeped in Banderites' ideology. We are waiting for Nazi attacks to begin in Western Europe before we wake up.

WESTERN SUPPORT FOR NAZISM (1933-1940)

The massive support of the United States and its allies for the Ukrainian Banderites against Russia is comparable to the support of the same side in the early days of Hitler's Germany against the USSR. Let us remember that absolutely all Western states without exception believed, at one time or another, that the Nazis were the solution to the economic crisis of 1929. Only they seemed to offer a credible alternative to capitalism. Of course, almost all of these people changed their minds when the Nazi danger turned against them.

An international team of researchers has found evidence of a megathrust earthquake occurring approximately 3,800 years ago off the coast of what is now Chile. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the team describes evidence they found of the ensuing tsunami and its impact on the people who lived in the area at the time.

In 1966, a massive earthquake shook the ground in southern Chile. Seismographs showed it to be 9.5 on the Richter scale — the strongest earthquake in recorded history. In this new effort, the researchers have found evidence of an equally strong earthquake occurring in roughly the same area approximately 3,800 years ago — one that set off a massive tsunami that wreaked havoc on the early hunter-gatherers who were living along the coast.

One of the great mysteries of late medieval history is why did the Norse, who had established successful settlements in southern Greenland in 985, abandon them in the early 15th century?

The consensus view has long been that colder temperatures, associated with the Little Ice Age, helped make the colonies unsustainable. However, new research, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and published recently in Science Advances, upends that old theory. It wasn't dropping temperatures that helped drive the Norse from Greenland, but drought.

A species of giant two-humped camel, Camelus knoblochi, is known to have lived for approximately a quarter of a million years in Central Asia. A new study in Frontiers in Earth Science shows that C. knoblochi's last refuge was in Mongolia until approximately 27,000 years ago. In Mongolia, the last of the species coexisted with anatomically modern humans and maybe the extinct Neanderthals or Denisovans. While the main cause of C. knoblochi's extinction seems to have been climate change, hunting by archaic humans may also have played a role.

"Here we show that the extinct camel, Camelus knoblochi, persisted in Mongolia until climatic and environmental changes nudged it into extinction about 27,000 years ago," said Dr. John W Olsen, Regents' professor emeritus at the School of Anthropology of the University of Arizona, Tucson, US.

Today on MindMatters we are joined by Gordon M. Hahn, Russia analyst and author of essential books on Russia's revolution from above in the 90s, Russian jihadism, the history of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and his latest: The Russian Dilemma: Security, Vigilance, and Relations with the West from Ivan III to Putin. While many have observed the ebb and flow of Russian relations with the West - from periods of Westernization and openness, to anti-Western revivals of Russian traditionalism - Hahn's is the first systematic analysis of Russia's security culture and vigilance norm in the context of relations with the West.

The West is an integral part of Russian identity, yet it has also been the source of invasion and political interference on and off for over 400 years. These threats have formed the Russian security vigilance norm: vigilance against possible military threats, fear of internal division and instability, and strong responses against foreign collusion with internal dissidents. To understand modern Russia, you have to understand its history - not just the pathological aberration of the Communist era.


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With the approval of the government, a renowned sexologist ran a dangerous program. How could this happen?

In 2017, a German man who goes by the name Marco came across an article in a Berlin newspaper with a photograph of a professor he recognized from childhood. The first thing he noticed was the man's lips. They were thin, almost nonexistent, a trait that Marco had always found repellent. He was surprised to read that the professor, Helmut Kentler, had been one of the most influential sexologists in Germany. The article described a new research report that had investigated what was called the "Kentler experiment." Beginning in the late sixties, Kentler had placed neglected children in foster homes run by pedophiles. The experiment was authorized and financially supported by the Berlin Senate. In a report submitted to the Senate, in 1988, Kentler had described it as a "complete success."

Marco had grown up in foster care, and his foster father had frequently taken him to Kentler's home. Now he was thirty-four, with a one-year-old daughter, and her meals and naps structured his days. After he read the article, he said, "I just pushed it aside. I didn't react emotionally. I did what I do every day: nothing, really. I sat around in front of the computer."

Scientists in Chile say they have unearthed a rare cemetery with well-preserved bones of ancient flying reptiles that roamed the Andean country's Atacama desert more than 100 million years ago.

The remains belong to pterosaurs, scientists determined, flying creatures that lived alongside dinosaurs that had a long wingspan and fed by filtering water through long thin teeth, similar to flamingos.

The group of scientists, led by Jhonatan Alarcon, an investigator at the University of Chile, have been searching for pterosaurs for years, but this discovery surpassed their hopes.