The Monroe Doctrine occupies an unusual place in American political discourse. It is often invoked as though it announced a permanent rule of hemispheric governance, capable of being revived or enforced by later administrations. In contemporary usage, it is frequently treated as a declaration of American authority over the Western hemisphere or as a justification for intervention against foreign powers and regional governments.

This understanding does not reflect the document as written, the circumstances that produced it, or the limits its authors assumed.

The Monroe Doctrine was not a standing policy. It was a situational proclamation issued in response to a narrow set of geopolitical concerns in the early nineteenth century. Once those conditions passed, the doctrine lost its operative meaning. What remains today is not a living policy, but a historical text repeatedly repurposed to justify authority it never conferred.

The doctrine originated in President James Monroe's annual message to Congress in December 1823. At the time, the political landscape of the Americas was rapidly changing. Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821. The Central American provinces, including what would become Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, declared independence that same year. South America had been in revolt for more than a decade. These movements were largely complete by the early 1820s, though their political stability remained uncertain. In Europe, the Napoleonic Wars had recently ended, and conservative monarchies organized under the Holy Alliance asserted a right to suppress liberal revolutions and restore traditional regimes. France intervened militarily in Spain in 1823, raising concerns that European powers might assist Spain in reclaiming its former colonies. Russia, meanwhile, was advancing territorial claims along the Pacific coast of North America.

December 23rd marked the 35th anniversary of an independence referendum in Slovenia, then a Yugoslav republic. In all, 88.5% of registered voters - 95.7% of participants - said "da" to secession. The plebiscite prompted Ljubljana's formal declaration of independence, and ensuing Ten Day War between Slovene territorial defence forces and the Yugoslav federal army. This was the spark that triggered bitter, bloody inter-ethnic conflicts throughout Yugoslavia over the subsequent decade, and the multi-ethnic socialist federation's ultimate destruction.

In May 2000, Britain's Observer exposed how in the Ten Day War's leadup, London secretly supplied Slovenia with tactical military communications equipment worth millions, to assist Ljubljana's impending battle against the Yugoslav military. The disclosure elicited outcry, as London was officially at the time committed to preserving Yugoslavia, leading international efforts to prevent the country descending into fractious civil wars. The clandestine provision was at direct odds with this public-stated policy, which included unbending support for an arms embargo on the region.
Responding to the news, former British Foreign Secretary David Owen, who served as the EU's lead peace negotiator during the Bosnian war, said he was "surprised" London covertly undermined her formal commitment to keeping Yugoslavia "together". He nonetheless downplayed the assistance, noting what Britain supplied "was not aggressive" - "radios not guns". Owen therefore argued the shipment "sails close to the border but does not cross it." By contrast, the Observer reported the communications equipment "played a vital role" in Slovenia's victory over Yugoslav forces.

This was because Ljubljana won the Ten Day War not via conventional military means, but a wide-ranging, devastatingly effective international propaganda campaign. In physical terms, the brief conflict consisted exclusively of minor skirmishes, and was largely bloodless, with just 44 Yugoslav soldiers and 18 Slovene territorials killed. One would not have known this from contemporary Western media reporting though, which relentlessly portrayed Slovenia as fighting countless grand military engagements against Belgrade's barbarous invaders, and pluckily prevailing.

In 2013, two local Iraqis handed over two inscribed clay cylinders to the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. Subsequent analysis and translation of the inscriptions published in Iraq revealed them to belong to King Nebuchadnezzar II (604 — 562 BC), with their text relating to the restoration of the remains of the ziggurat in the ancient city of Kish. These cylinders represent the first foundation text documenting the construction works of King Nebuchadnezzar II to restore the ziggurat, thus confirming what had previously only been inferred from stamped bricks found in archaeological excavations.

The two cylinders

The two clay cylinders were recorded by the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in December of 2013. They had been found on the surface of Tell Al-Uhaimir, which includes the ruins of a ziggurat belonging to the ancient city of Kish.

They were made in the common style of foundational documents often found in the Neo-Babylonian period and the time of Nebuchadnezzar II (the famous biblical king of Babylon). The contents of the cylinders relate to the restoration of the ziggurat dedicated to the worship of the god Zababa and the goddess Ishtar.

Dr. Ahmed Ali Jawad, one of the authors of the study, elaborated on the gods, saying, "Zababa is the god of war, his wife Ishtar is the goddess of war and love, most gods and their wives in ancient Mesopotamia [were] worshiped in the same temple, [additionally,] Ishtar [was] worshiped in Uruk as the main goddess of the city and worshiped in several cities."

Washington orchestrated dozens of regime changes in the region in the 20th century alone, including via direct military invasions

The US operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is just the latest chapter in a long list of interventions and regime changes staged by Washington throughout Latin America over the past century.

With the adoption of the Monroe Doctrine in the 19th century, the US essentially declared the Western Hemisphere to be its own backyard. Under this policy, the US played a role in staging dozens of coups and government overthrows in the 20th century alone, including several cases of direct military intervention and occupation, reaching a peak during the Cold War.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, told a press conference on Saturday that the operation to capture Maduro had been "meticulously planned, drawing lessons from decades of missions." According to the general, "there is always a chance that we'll be tasked to do this type of mission again."

The tracks date to the late stages of the Triassic Period.

A wildlife photographer who was exploring a remote pocket of the Italian Alps has discovered thousands of dinosaur footprints preserved in the vertical face of a mountainside.

In September, Elio Della Ferrera was looking for deer and vultures in Stelvio National Park, near the Swiss-Italian border, when he noticed a rock face riddled with unusual depressions through his binoculars. After hiking cross-country for half a mile through thick terrain, Della Ferrera arrived at the site and photographed it, sending the images to Cristiano Dal Sasso, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Milan, whom he knew from earlier collaborations.

Scientists have now confirmed that Della Ferrera has uncovered the largest dinosaur track site in the Alps. The footprints date back 200 million years to the late stages of the Triassic Period, a time when the Italian region of Lombardy had a tropical climate and bordered the Tethys Ocean with tidal flats stretching for hundreds of kilometers. Over the course of millions of years, the same tectonic forces that lifted the Alps tilted this ancient sedimentary layer upright.

For centuries, merchants, generals, and statesmen contemplated how to connect the eastern and western parts of the Eurasian landmass. This dream led to the creation of the first Silk Road system in the late second century BCE to mid-third century CE. This system proved to be quite stable and lucrative, buoyed by Han China, Parthian Persia, and Rome. But long before this land-based bridge was built, the ancient Egyptians developed a much more efficient bridge that connected Eurasia, primarily by the sea. In the late second millennium BCE, the Egyptians built the first of several versions of a canal that connected the Red Sea to the Nile River. An examination of the classical historians and archaeological sources shows that the Egyptians primarily built the canal for trade purposes and that numerous versions of the canal were built, sometimes by non-Egyptians.

A newly invented cipher may shed light on how the mysterious Voynich manuscript was made in medieval times.
A unique cipher that uses playing cards and dice to turn languages into glyphs produces text eerily similar to the glyphs in the Voynich manuscript, a new study shows. The finding suggests that an equivalent cipher could have been used to create the mysterious medieval manuscript.

The new cipher — called "Naibbe," from the name of a 14th-century Italian card game — does not decode the medieval Voynich manuscript, but it offers an idea for how the manuscript was made.

The Voynich manuscript, which has been radiocarbon-dated to the 15th century, contains roughly 38,000 words written in glyphs that have never been translated. Despite more than a century of intense scrutiny, the manuscript has not been explained conclusively. However, it continues to intrigue people, with its bizarre and inexplicable illustrations of plants, astrology and alchemy, including supposedly "biological" depictions of bathing naked women.

In the new study, published Nov. 26 in the journal Cryptologia, science journalist Michael Greshko investigated one way the manuscript may have come together. He told Live Science that he got the idea for the Naibbe cipher while researching stories about the Voynich manuscript. "It is this fascinatingly mysterious medieval artifact," he said.

Naibbe first uses the number from the throw of a die to break a block of Italian or Latin into single and double letters — so "gatto" (Italian for "cat") could become "g","at" and "to." The cipher then uses the draw of a playing card to determine which of six different tables is used to encrypt the letters into "Voynichese" — the strange and undeciphered glyphs that are apparently grouped into words in the manuscript. The tables are "weighted" by the corresponding number of cards so that the statistical occurrence of the mock-Voynichese glyphs is the same as seen in the manuscript itself.

Greshko's effort is among the leading attempts to explain how the manuscript was made. But it still only approximated Voynichese text, rather than fully replicating it, he said.

The truth about that killing, long suppressed, will never come to light, if the CIA succeeds in using "social media" (i.e., Meta) to make sure that this invaluable book remains unadvertised

Of all the murders managed by the CIA and FBI to crush the (real) left after the Fifties, most of us know only of those few that have "iconic" status: JFK in 1963, and both MLK, Jr. and RFK in 1968. Malcolm's, carried out by NOI gunmen in 1965, is not so well-known (although there's a rich literature about it), since he was not so towering a figure.

Over the course of the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff.

The notion of human beings as consumers first took shape before World War I, but became commonplace in America in the 1920s. Consumption is now frequently seen as our principal role in the world.

People, of course, have always "consumed" the necessities of life — food, shelter, clothing — and have always had to work to get them or have others work for them, but there was little economic motive for increased consumption among the mass of people before the 20th century.

Quite the reverse: Frugality and thrift were more appropriate to situations where survival rations were not guaranteed. Attempts to promote new fashions, harness the "propulsive power of envy," and boost sales multiplied in Britain in the late 18th century. Here began the "slow unleashing of the acquisitive instincts," write historians Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb in their influential book on the commercialization of 18th-century England, when the pursuit of opulence and display first extended beyond the very rich.

The roughly 11,000 inscriptions preserved by Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 C.E. offer a glimpse into everyday life in the Roman Empire

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae bustled with merchants, farmers and families going about their daily lives. Unbeknownst to them, Mount Vesuvius, a still-active volcano that rises above the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, was beginning to stir. A catastrophe was brewing in the Pompeians' backyard.

To the locals, however, it was just another morning in 79 C.E.

On the day of the infamous disaster, Vesuvius started erupting around noon, sending a towering column of gases, ash and rock fragments into the sky. Author and administrator Pliny the Younger, who was living in the port city of Misenum with his uncle, the naturalist Pliny the Elder, at the time, recorded one of the few eyewitness accounts of the devastation. In his view, the volcanic plume "more closely resembled a pine tree than anything else."