Arab oil-producing nations created an embargo of shipments to the U.S.; the cutoff precipitated an energy crisis in the industrialized world. Worldwide inflation helped to cause dramatic increases in the cost of fuel, food, and materials; economic growth slows to near zero in most first-world nations.

Watergate and impeachment reached a climax in 1974 in what is the most significant resolution to a political scandal in the U.S. in the 20th Century. Several White House aids were convicted and sentenced in the Watergate cover-up and Nixon resigned as President in August 1974. Through Watergate, the press became the de facto fourth branch of the American governmental system of checks and balances.

Inspired by Mao Tse Tung's cultural revolution, an attempt by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot to form a Communist peasant farming society in Cambodia resulted in the deaths of 25 percent of the country's population from starvation, overwork and executions over a four year period.

1975 was declared year zero and Pol Pot announced that society was about to be "purified." Capitalist cultures, Westerner's, city life, religion, and all foreign influences were to be expunged in favor of an extreme form of peasant Communism; Cambodia was literally shut off from the entire world.

Work life under the regime was restriced, controlled, and by almost any standard, insane; a typical worker started work at 4 A.M. only to retire from labor at 10 P.M. "Anyone suspected of disloyalty to Pol Pot, including eventually many Khmer Rouge leaders, was shot or bludgeoned with an ax. 'What is rotten must be removed,' a Khmer Rouge slogan proclaimed."(6)