Here's a nifty little tale about that time the United States government worked with Nazis -- actual Nazis, not the hyperbolic "Obama is just like Hitler" kind.
In the decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government’s ties to some still living in America, newly disclosed records and interviews show.
At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,” declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich.
The agency hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of “minor war crimes.”
That must have been quite the moral dilemma for the human resources department at the CIA. On the one hand, this job applicant is probably guilty of participating in a massive genocide. But on the other hand, maybe he can type fast! If that makes you a bit queasy, this will make you completely nauseous:
The wide use of Nazi spies grew out of a Cold War mentality shared by two titans of intelligence in the 1950s: Mr. Hoover, the longtime F.B.I. director, and Mr. Dulles, the C.I.A. director.
Mr. Dulles believed “moderate” Nazis might “be useful” to America, records show. Mr. Hoover, for his part, personally approved some ex-Nazis as informants and dismissed accusations of their wartime atrocities as Soviet propaganda.
What does a "moderate" Nazi believe? That killing 3 million Jews was okay, but those extremist Nazis really went too far? Oh, but wait. There's more.
In 1968, Mr. Hoover authorized the F.B.I. to wiretap a left-wing journalist who wrote critical stories about Nazis in America, internal records show. Mr. Hoover declared the journalist, Charles Allen, a potential threat to national security.
In Hoover's America, you weren't allowed to say bad things about Nazis, apparently. Nice place, the good old days, huh? But then, maybe casually calling someone a Nazi isn't such an insult after all. As long as they're the "moderate" kind.
If you're thinking "Sexy Ebola Containment Nurse" for Halloween, let us stop you right there:
As the deadly Ebola virus trickles its way through the United States, fighting its disease is no reason to compromise style. The short dress and chic gas mask will be the talk of Milan, London, Paris, and New York as the world's fashionistas seek global solutions to hazmat couture. Ending plague isn't the endeavor of a single woman, so be sure to check out our men's Ebola Containment Costume for a great couple's costume idea.
No. Just ... no.
Two words: beer spa.
The Beer Spa in Prague allows guests to have a dip in a bath filled with the all-natural ingredients used for beer brewing, including barley, hops and yeast, kept at a steady 37 degrees celcius and continuously bubbling to 'promote dissolution of ingredients', releasing vitamins, carbohydrates and proteins, the company claims.
During a 30-minute bar and bath session spa-goers can pour as much of the company's home-brewed Beer Bernard as they can consume from tub-side tap before continuing their relaxation session on a heated bed or with a 20-minute massage.
Want to improve your memory? You should eat chocolate. It's science!
Science edged closer on Sunday to showing that an antioxidant in chocolate appears to improve some memory skills that people lose with age.
In a small study in the journal Nature Neuroscience, healthy people, ages 50 to 69, who drank a mixture high in antioxidants called cocoa flavanols for three months performed better on a memory test than people who drank a low-flavanol mixture.
On average, the improvement of high-flavanol drinkers meant they performed like people two to three decades younger on the study’s memory task, said Dr. Scott A. Small, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center and the study’s senior author. They performed about 25 percent better than the low-flavanol group.
“An exciting result,” said Craig Stark, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the research. “It’s an initial study, and I sort of view this as the opening salvo.”
He added, “And look, it’s chocolate. Who’s going to complain about chocolate?”
Who among us can't relate to this?
I absorbed anything and everything Star Wars... it was my life.
But not all of us have made these COMPLETELY AMAZING photographs to honor our childhood memories. Go look at them. They are amazing.
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You Know Who Else Worked With The Nazis? America, That's Who.
I recognized Toronto from the first couple of pictures- or as Star Wars fans call it, Toronto-Gosh!
One Halloween I borrowed a hazardous material suit and a full face filter mask from work. I carried a mop around asking people if they smelled anything funny. Some people have no sense of humor.