Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book and national best seller, Guns, Germs, and Steel is an epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer the biggest question of world history. Why is the world so unequal? The answers he found were simple yet extraordinary. Our destiny depends on geography and access to: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Weaving together anthropology and science with epic historical reenactments, Guns, Germs, and Steel brings Diamond's fascinating theories to life, and moves beyond the book to bring his ideas into the present day.

Vietnam War - "The Impact of Media" explores in detail the 'media distortions' due to television's misrepresentations during the Vietnam War. It rebuts the view promoted by PBS's 13-part documentary series, "Vietnam: A Television History". The rebuttal also applies to "The Ten Thousand Day War" series. "The Impact of Media" is a must-see for historians and politicians alike. The late president Ronald Reagan lauded this rebuttal video when he watched it and said that it's "something all Americans should see". The Vietnam War was the longest military conflict in U.S. history. The hostilities in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans. Another 304,000 were wounded. The Vietnam War was a military struggle fought in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975, involving the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front (NLF) in conflict with United States forces and the South Vietnamese army. From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese had struggled for their independence from France during the First Indochina War. At the end of this war, the country was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and who aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. The South was controlled by Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French. In 1965 the United States sent in troops to prevent the South Vietnamese government from collapsing. Ultimately, however, the United States failed to achieve its goal, and in 1975 Vietnam was reunified under Communist control; in 1976 it officially became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. During the conflict, approximately 3 to 4 million Vietnamese on both sides were killed, in addition to another 1.5 to 2 million Lao and Cambodians who were drawn into the war.

Paint it Black

I see a red door and I want it painted black

No colors anymore I want them to turn black

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes


I see a line of cars and they're all painted black

With flowers and my love both never to come back

I see people turn their heads and quickly look away

Like a new born baby it just happens ev'ry day


I look inside myself and see my heart is black

I see my red door and it has been painted black

Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts

It's not easy facin' up when your whole world is black


No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue

I could not foresee this thing happening to you


If I look hard enough into the settin' sun

My love will laugh with me before the mornin' comes


I see a red door and I want it painted black

No colors anymore I want them to turn black

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes


Mmm-mmm...



I wanna see it painted, painted black

Black as night, black as coal

I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky

I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black


Yeah!

Agent Orange is the code name for a powerful herbicide and defoliant used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War, an estimated 80 000 m³ of Agent Orange were deployed in South Vietnam. Agent Orange's usage from 1961 to 1971 was by far the most used of the so-called "Rainbow Herbicides" used during the program. Degradation of Agent Orange (as well as Agents Purple, Pink, and Green) released dioxins, which have caused health problems for those exposed during the Vietnam War. Agents Blue and White were part of the same program but did not contain dioxins. Studies of populations exposed to dioxin, though not necessarily agent orange, indicate increased risk of various types of cancer and genetic defects; the effect of long-term low-level exposure has not been established. Since the nineteen-eighties, several lawsuits have been filed against the companies which produced agent orange, among them; Dow Chemical, Monsanto, and Diamond Shamrock (which produced 5%). U.S. veterans obtained a $180 million settlement in 1984, with most affected veterans receiving a one-time lump sum payment of $1,200. American veterans of the Vietnam war were seeking recognition of agent orange syndrome, compensation and treatment for diseases that they and their children suffered from; many exposed to agent orange have not been able to receive promised medical care through the Veterans Administration medical system, and only with rare exception have their affected children received healthcare assistance from the government. Vietnam veterans and their families who brought the original agent orange lawsuit 25 years ago alleged that the government "is just waiting for us all to die". They alleged that most of those still alive would succumb to the effects of toxic exposure before the age of 65. In Australia, Canada and New Zealand, veterans obtained compensation in settlements that same year. In 1999, South Korean veterans filed a lawsuit in the Korean courts. In January 2006, the Korean Appeal Court ordered Monsanto and Dow to pay US$62 million in compensation. However, no Vietnamese have received compensation, and on March 10, 2006, Judge Jack B. Weinstein of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Vietnamese victims of agent orange against the chemical companies which produced the defoliants and herbicides.

From 1974, by Peter Davis. Essential viewing if you want to escape history. "This film recounts the history and attitudes of the opposing sides of the Vietnam War using archival news footage as well as their own film and interviews. A key theme is how attitudes of American racism and self-righteousness militarism helped create and prolong this bloody conflict. The film also endeaveors to give voice to the Vietnamese people themselves as to how the war has affected them and their reasons why they fight the United States and other western powers while showing the basic humanity of the people that US propaganda tried to dismiss.

From the 1880s until World War II (1939-1945), France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina, which also included Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam was under the nominal control of an emperor, Bao Dai. In 1940 Japanese troops invaded and occupied French Indochina. In May 1941 Vietnamese nationalists established the League for the Independence of Vietnam, or Viet Minh, seeing the turmoil of World War II as an opportunity to overthrow French colonial rule. The Viet Minh, a front organization of the Indochinese Communist Party, sought popular support for national independence, as well as social and political reform. The United States demanded that Japan leave Indochina, warning of military action. The Viet Minh began guerrilla warfare against Japan and entered an effective alliance with the United States. Viet Minh troops rescued downed U.S. pilots, located Japanese prison camps, helped U.S. prisoners to escape, and provided valuable intelligence to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ho Chi Minh, the principal leader of the Viet Minh, was even made a special OSS agent.

When the Japanese formally surrendered to the Allies on September 2, 1945, Ho used the occasion to declare the independence of Vietnam, which he called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). Emperor Bao Dai had abdicated the throne a week earlier. The French, however, refused to acknowledge Vietnam’s independence, and later that year drove the Viet Minh into the north of the country. There they regrouped as the Lien Viet Front, which sought a broader base of support, including moderates; it was replaced in 1955 by the Fatherland Front, which served as the Communist-front organization of the DRV. (The NLF later served as the southern front.) However, the term Viet Minh continued to be commonly used for supporters of the movement for a unified Vietnam. Also in 1951 some Vietnamese nationalists created the Lao Dong (Workers’ Party) as the successor to the Indochinese Communist Party, which had been operating clandestinely since 1945 in the war against the French. The Lao Dong was conceived as a nationwide, united party, and it was formally based in the DRV capital of Hanoi. By 1953 most Viet Minh were members of the Lao Dong.

Immediately after Ho declared the formation of the DRV, he wrote eight letters to U.S. president Harry Truman, imploring him to recognize Vietnam’s independence. Many OSS agents informed the U.S. administration that despite being a Communist, Ho Chi Minh was not a puppet of the Communist-led Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and that he could potentially become a valued ally in Asia. Tensions between the United States and the USSR had mounted after World War II, resulting in the Cold War.

The foreign policy of the United States during the Cold War was driven by a fear of the spread of Communism. After World War II Communist governments came to power in Eastern European nations that had fallen under the domination of the USSR, and in 1949 Communists took control of China. United States policymakers felt they could not afford to lose Southeast Asia as well to Communist rule. The United States therefore condemned Ho Chi Minh as an agent of international Communism and offered to assist the French in reestablishing a colonial regime in Vietnam.

From: Wikipedia

The Vietnam War was the longest conflict in which Australians have been involved; it lasted ten years, from 1962 to 1972, and involved some 60,000 personnel. A limited initial commitment of just 30 military advisers grew to include a battalion in 1965 and finally, in 1966, a task force. Each of the three services was involved, but the dominant role was played by the Army. In the early years Australia’s participation in the war was not widely opposed. But as the commitment grew, as conscripts began to make up a large percentage of those being deployed and killed, and as the public increasingly came to believe that the war was being lost, opposition grew until, in the early 1970s, more than 200,000 people marched in the streets of Australia’s major cities in protest. By this time the United States Government had embarked on a policy of ‘Vietnamisation’ - withdrawing its own troops from the country while passing responsibility for the prosecution and conduct of the war to South Vietnamese forces. Australia too was winding down its commitment and the last combat troops came home in March 1972. Involvement in the war cost more than 500 Australian servicemen their lives, while some 3,000 were wounded, otherwise injured or were victims of illness. The South Vietnamese fought on for just over two years before the capital, Saigon, fell to North Vietnamese forces in April 1975, bringing an end to the war which by then had spilled over into neighbouring Cambodia and Laos. Millions lost their lives, millions more were made refugees and the disaster that befell the region continues to reverberate today. For Australia the Vietnam War was the cause of the greatest social and political dissent since the conscription referenda of the First World War.

The distant origins of the Vietnam War lie in the nineteenth-century colonisation of Indochina (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) by France. French rule lasted until 1940 when the Japanese, embarking on a series of conquests in Southeast Asia and eventually war against Western powers, occupied Vietnam. Japan’s defeat in 1945 saw France seeking to regain control of her erstwhile colonies. Establishing the state of Vietnam, France installed the former emperor, Bao Dai, as head of state. For many Vietnamese, however, the end of the Japanese occupation meant the chance for independence, duly proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh, leader of Vietnam’s Communist Party, in September 1945. France refused to accept the declaration, and eight years of war followed, ending with the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The peace settlement, known as the Geneva Accords, divided the country; the North under the communist Ho Chi Minh, and the South under President Ngo Dinh Diem who had deposed Bao Dai and proclaimed the Republic of Vietnam in October 1955.

The Geneva Accords mandated that a Vietnam-wide election, aimed at reunifying the divided country, be held in 1956. Diem claimed that the people of the North could not vote freely, and with the backing of the United States, he refused to participate. Relations between the two Vietnams grew increasingly tense and in 1960 the North, aiming to overthrow Diem and reunite the country under communist rule, proclaimed the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. Known as the Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communists) and hoping to foment a general uprising, the Front embarked on a guerilla campaign throughout the South. The South Vietnamese Army proved unable to counter the insurgents’ tactics and the United States, alarmed at the prospect of communism spreading throughout South-East Asia, began to significantly increase what had been a limited amount of assistance to the South. By 1962 more than 11,000 United States military advisers had arrived in the country. They represented the beginning of a build-up in United States troop numbers that would peak at more than 500,000.

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