"As a people, Americans are coming to the realization that they are the most lied-to people on the face of the Earth, and that while our schools may propagandize us to assume everyone is truthful, the reality is that only the workers are predisposed to tell the truth, and everyone else, corporate leadership, politicians, academics, TV newscasters, lie to us so much and so constantly that Americans are just as much in the dark as to the true nature of their society as were Medieval serfs or Roman slaves." -- Michael Rivero

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On Sunday morning, Nov. 30, 1941, U.S. Army Private Paul Brown decided to slip out of his bed early at the Schofield Barracks Base Hospital on the island of Oahu, and head to the latrine.

Assigned to the 52nd Field Artillery Battalion, he had been involved in an accident, and, because of the severity of his injuries, he was confined to a wheelchair and wanted to clean up early to avoid being in the way of the other patients.

In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News initiated an extended series of articles linking the CIA’s “contra” army to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles. Based on a year-long investigation, reporter Gary Webb wrote that during the 1980s the CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua’s leftist government through sales of cut-rate cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross. The series unleashed a storm of protest, spearheaded by black radio stations and the congressional Black Caucus, with demands for official inquiries.

Every major economic downturn of the last 110 years bears the mark of the Federal Reserve.

In fact, as long as the Fed has been around, it has swung the economy between inflation and recession. Yet Americans, surprisingly, have tolerated it.

The 1921--1924 hyperinflation happened mainly because of three things: the ongoing internal political instability in the country, the occupation of the Ruhr district by foreign troops, and when the Weimar (modern-day Germany) government printed too much banknotes to pay reparations after the 1923 French invasion. Because the banknotes were not matched by Germany's production, their value fell.

You probably remember the 1980 movie The Blue Lagoon, which starred then-14-year-old Brooke Shields and 18-year-old Christopher Adkins as scantily clad castaways on a deserted tropical island. The film, with its gratuitous teen nudity and bewildering sex scenes, was generally panned by critics and even earned Shields a Razzie Award for Worst Actress, but it did receive an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. It was that camera work that also proved to be noteworthy for wildlife biologists.