IB: The Americas

'This weekend is Henry Kissinger’s 100th birthday. To celebrate, Mehdi Hasan says, “I want to talk about some of the many, many people around the world who didn’t get to live till 100, or even 60, 70, or 80, *because* of Henry Kissinger.”'

'On May 4, 1970, after days of unrest over America's invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, student protesters at Kent State University clashed with Ohio National Guardsmen. The guardsmen opened fire, killing four students and wounding nine others. It was a pivotal moment in America's anti-war movement.'

'Several days after Salvador Allende’s history-changing November 3, 1970, inauguration, Richard Nixon convened his National Security Council for a formal meeting on what policy the U.S. should adopt toward Chile’s new Popular Unity government. Only a few officials who gathered in the White House Cabinet Room knew that, under Nixon’s orders, the CIA had covertly tried, and failed, to foment a preemptive military coup to prevent Allende from ever being inaugurated.'

'Storyline: In 1959, at the height of the Cold War, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev embarked on a two-week public relations tour across the US. Americans emerged from fancy new bomb shelters for a glimpse of a Communist dictator visiting their landmarks and experiencing local hospitality. Greeted by angry mobs and celebrity gawkers, Khrushchev turned on his charm and quick wit. By the time he hit the West Coast, the US was enthralled by his presence, chasing him along the whistle-stops of his tour. As current East-West relations become strained, this is a timely reflection on super power maneuvering. Every moment of this fleeting love affair was recorded and preserved from both Soviet and American perspectives, creating a treasure of visual material ripe for revision. Playing with didactic documentary form, Tim Toidze weaves the humour, hysteria and surreal qualities of this state visit into a profile of the political propaganda that permeated both sides of the Iron Curtain.'

Castro and Africa.

'Part of ABC News' "The Eagle and the Bear" documentary series. Describes election to power of Salvador Allende on a socialist platform; the nationalisation of U.S. owned copper and telephone industries (Anaconda and ITT); Castro's visits in 1971 and 1972; Nixon's opposition to the perceived rise of Marxism in Latin America; the suspension of loans to Chile; the loss of popular Chilean support; the arrest, by the Chilean Army, of Allende supporters; the death of Allende and an estimated 30,000 of his followers; the funeral cortege of Pablo Neruda; and the rise of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.'

'In fact, U.S. administrations have been pursuing roughly the same agenda in Latin America since at least the early 20th century: maintaining U.S. hegemony throughout the region.'

1972 sporting rivalry: basketball, USA vs USSR, and ice hockey, Canada vs USSR. 

The Quiet Mutiny (1970). John Pilger's return to Vietnam. Useful for understanding the US defeat. 

Country Joe McDonald, I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag (1965)

Dwight D. Eisenhower

'The second of a two part Reputations special, originally aired on BBC 2 in 2000. This episode reveals Nixon's conspiracy to sabotage the 1968 peace talks with Vietnam in order to extend the war, allowing a Nixon election victory later that same year at the cost of thousands of preventable deaths.'

Rich Hall's Red Menace.

John Pilger on Nicaragua.

'One autumn night in 1991, I stood on the rooftop terrace of a tacky villa in Saranda once owned by Albania’s Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha, beside three elderly former SOE officers who were returning to Albania for the first time since 1945. In an image that summed up the waste and the horror of the Cold War, David Smiley stared out over the dark water at the lights of Corfu, from where, on a similar night in October 1949, he had sent a group of dissidents, code-named the ‘Pixies’, to launch an insurgency — and wiped his eye in silence.'

Bob Dylan's Cold War vision of the apocalypse. 

How Rocky Balboa ended the Cold War. The final speech from Rocky IV, made in 1985.

The Quiet Mutiny (1970). John Pilger's return to Vietnam. Useful for understanding the US defeat. 

'When George W Bush declared that America "has never been an empire,” he elided a half century of colonial rule over its overseas dependencies. But American expansionism has manifested in other forms too, says A G Hopkins, imperial historian and author of a panoramic new work of American history.'

'On 15 July 1971, onetime arch-Cold Warrior Richard Nixon went on television to make the stunning announcement that he would visit the People’s Republic of China, at the time the United States’ bitterest enemy, in early 1972.'