Half a century ago, on the spurious grounds that extreme sacrifices were required in the battle to prevent a communist takeover of the world, the US government decided to use the citizens of Nevada as nuclear guinea pigs.

Although atomic testing was pursued there for several years in the 1950s, notification would have alarmed area residents. As a result, they weren't even advised to go indoors. Yet, according to declassified documents, some scientists studying the genetic effects of radiation at the time were already concerned about the health risks of fallout. For most of those committed to the US nuclear program, the need to keep this type of research secret was a no-brainer.

After all, if the public realized that the technology used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki had led to experiments at home, early nuclear research - not to mention weapons deployment - might have met stronger opposition. The government badly wanted its nukes, and the scientists yearned to unlock the secrets of human mutation. Thus, an unholy alliance was struck.

US citizens, and the thousands of soldiers who took dangerous doses of radiation as part of other studies, haven't been the only victims of science run amuck. Between 1964 and 1968, for example, at least a dozen covert tests of nerve and chemical agents were carried out on servicemen in the Pacific Ocean, then concealed and denied for more than 20 years. Crews were used to gauge how quickly various poisons could be detected, how rapidly they would disperse, and the effectiveness of protective gear and decontamination procedures.

A curious cargo airlift operation recently took place at the Daniel Oduber Quiros International Airport (LIR), in the northern province of Guanacaste. According to a news report by Alvaro Sanchez from online news daily CRHoy, nearly 24 tons of cocaine were loaded onto a United States Air Force transport aircraft. The destination of the controversial payload? Miami, a city that once held the infamous title of "Cocaine Capital of the World."

The public affairs office of the Organization of Judicial Investigations (OIJ in Spanish) in Costa Rica explained to CRHoy that the 23 tons and 780 kilograms of powder cocaine hydrochloride were the result of two years of interdiction work by the National Coast Guard Service, the OIJ, the Border Police, and Fuerza Publica (the national police force in Costa Rica). This does not include seizures made by the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy as part of the Joint Patrol Agreement between Costa Rica and the U.S.

Reports this week of the radical Islamist opposition in Syria massacring Kurds in the northern Syria is a disturbing development, but not nearly as disturbing as the strategic silence on the issue by the US and European government-media complex.

According to reports from the village of Tal Abyad near the Turkish border on Monday, jihadist terror brigades massacred some 450 residents, including 330 women and elderly, along with 120 youths and elderly near the Turkish border.

For nearly a year now, this Saudi and Qatari-financed armed opposition, known as Al-Nusra Front, or Jabhat Al-Nusra, has been enabled by its benefactors to run rampant in and around Syria. Because of the US and Britain's cozy relationship with both their gulf allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, very little, if any, condemnation has come from the political ring leaders of the Syrian reformation project based in Washington and London. The same goes for the Western media, who do not want to run any news that might further expose their political leaders' own shaky history with Syria since the conflict began.

Any US congressional hearings or British parliamentary inquiries into the matter might just reveal too much information about the illegal flow of arms, or the presence of CIA, MI6, Mossad agents, along with any other undeclared special forces currently involved in operations around the conflict zone there. Given the current political climate, any such revelations would be a political disaster, especially for Washington.

President Barack Obama on Friday called for "a pause" in US relations with Russia, even as both countries stressed that cooperation is crucial to their mutual interests and to the world despite sharp differences on a broad range of issues.

"It is probably appropriate for us to take a pause, reassess where it is that Russia is going, what our core interests are, and calibrate the relationship so that we're doing things that are good for the United States and, hopefully, good for Russia as well," Obama told a White House news conference Friday.

The comments came two days after the White House announced it had canceled Obama's planned summit next month with Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing lack of prospects for progress in the bilateral agenda as well as Moscow's harboring of accused US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

In the early hours of June 18, Michael Hastings was found dead in the flaming wreckage of his car. The 33-year-old journalist was, perhaps, best known for the 2010 Rolling Stone cover story that ended the career of Army General Stanley McChystal.

According to initial press reports, Hastings was driving south on Los Angeles' North Highland Avenue when he "apparently lost control of [his car] near Melrose Avenue and crashed into palm trees in the median about 4:20 a.m."

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was unusually eager to announce that there had been no evidence of "foul play" surrounding the reporter's death. Typically, police departments withhold such judgments until after there has been an investigation -- including a coroner's report and toxicology tests, which can take days, if not weeks.

Those who knew and worked with Michael Hastings are questioning the "official story."

According to Hastings' friend, Staff Sgt. Joe Biggs, Army brass had threatened Hastings after his reporting lead to General McChrystal's resignation. "He had been told, 'If we don't like what you write, we will hunt you down and kill you," Biggs said. "For him to say something like that -- those are his own words -- that's pretty intense."

Once upon a time, the police were one of the most respected institutions in America, but now most Americans fear them. Almost every single day there are multiple stories of police brutality or misconduct that make the national news.

Just this week, there have been stories about police killing a baby deer at an animal shelter, about police killing a 95-year-old World War II veteran in a retirement home, and about police using legal technicalities to "legally" steal massive amounts of money from innocent citizens.

Why are police acting like this? Why have police in America turned into such ruthless thugs? In the case of the baby deer that was killed, 13 armed agents stormed the animal shelter up in Wisconsin where it was being cared for. Is this really the kind of country that we want our children to grow up in? A country where Bambi is hunted down by armed thugs working for the government?

During the past few days, the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe have published stories citing evidence that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a 9/11 truth supporter. However, they failed to mention the obvious implication: Tsarnaev was an innocent patsy who was framed for a bombing he did not commit.

The Boston Globe said of Tsarnaev: "He believed that 9/11 was an inside job and that the government had pulled it off." The source: Donald Larking, a friend of Tsarnaev and member of the Cambridge, Massachusetts Islamic community.

Why would a Muslim who knew that 9/11 was an anti-Islam PR stunt - and a disaster for Muslims - want to stage another 9/11-style attack on US civilians? (Especially since Islam prohibits attacks on civilians.) Obviously, Muslims, who are aware that 9/11 served the Zionist agenda, benefitted the military-industrial complex, and damaged the cause of Islam, wouldn't stage such attacks.

The government-media narrative is that Tamerlan was a "radical Chechen Muslim." But wait a minute - why would a "radical Chechen Muslim" want to attack the United States? The United States has supported and funded radical Chechen Muslims in their struggle against Russia.

Friends of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, including Donald Larking, say Tamerlan was a kind, gentle person. None of the Tsarnaev's family and friends believes Tamerlan or Dzokhar committed the bombing. (Unless we count Uncle Ruslan the CIA asset.)

If Tamerlan had been a violent person, a "freedom fighter," perhaps he might have attacked one of the Zionist Islamophobes he believed guilty of the slaughter of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Or if he were a partisan of the Chechen freedom struggle, he might have accepted CIA money to fight against Russia, as so many Chechens have.

A Department of Defense document declassified in 1997 shows that the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Armed Forces had drafted and approved a plan to attack and kill Americans and to blame it on Cuba.

The original document is stored at the National Security Archives at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and is available in PDF form HERE. (HTML version).

The plan was rejected by President John F. Kennedy, after it was presented by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General of the Army Lyman Lemnitzer, to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962. The plan was intended to "provide justifications for US military intervention in Cuba."

How much is 1,000,000,000,000,000 yen worth? Well, a quadrillion yen is worth approximately 10.5 trillion dollars. It is an amount of money that is larger than the "the economies of Germany, France and the U.K. combined". It is such an astounding amount of debt that it is hard to even get your mind around it.

The government debt to GDP ratio in Japan will reach 247 percent this year, and the Japanese currently spend about 50 percent of all central government tax revenue on debt service. Realistically, there are only two ways out of this overwhelming debt trap for the Japanese. Either they default or they try to inflate the debt away.

At this point, the Japanese have chosen to try to inflate the debt away. They have initiated the greatest quantitative easing experiment that a major industrialized nation has attempted since the days of the Weimar Republic.

Over the next two years, the Bank of Japan plans to zap 60 trillion yen into existence out of thin air and use it to buy government bonds. By the time this program is over, the monetary base in Japan will have approximately doubled. But authorities in Japan are desperate. They know that the Japanese debt bomb could set off global panic at any time, and they are trying to find a way out that will not cause too much pain.

Unfortunately, the only way that this bizarre quantitative easing program will work is if investors in Japanese bonds act very, very irrationally. You see, the only way that Japan has been able to pile up this much debt in the first place is because they have been able to borrow gigantic piles of money at super low interest rates.