Reading Time: < 1 minute Can somebody explain the difference between an American going to Saudi Arabia, getting radicalized and shooting innocent people in California, and an American getting radicalized by listening to right-wing talk radio and GOP presidential candidates and then shooting innocent people in Colorado? Why did so many media people discuss after the shooting whether it was Read More
Reading Time: < 1 minute It was a bombshell of a story. One of Australia’s most wanted fugitives, alleged to have run one of the world’s largest money laundering operations for the international drug trade on behalf of the CIA, was discovered living under a different name in the United States after remaining underground for over 30 years. The story Read More
Reading Time: < 1 minute For 6 days, Brussels was on a lockdown as police hunted a suspected accomplice (Salah Abdeslam) in the Paris attacks. The lockdown, which cost the Belgian city an estimated €51.7 million a day, failed to locate Abdeslam. Now, reports have emerged indicating that Abdeslam “might have been taking his ease in a public place in Read More
Reading Time: < 1 minute As world leaders convene today in Paris for a “pivotal” conference on climate change, we thought we would take the occasion to post several photos that one of our readers, Mary Lou Dauray, took while flying over Greenland. Mary Lou writes: “Sometimes one is lucky to be able to catch a glimpse of nature in Read More
Reading Time: < 1 minute Tensions are running high following Turkey’s decision to shoot down a Russian jet near the Turkish-Syrian border. Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, has stated that “by shooting down a Russian plane on a counter-terrorist mission of the Russian Aerospace Force in Syria, and one that did not violate Turkey’s airspace, the Turkish government has in effect sided with ISIS.” Lavrov’s comments Read More
Reading Time: < 1 minute WhoWhatWhy readers are familiar with the tale of the $43 million gas station in Afghanistan and the $800 million Task Force for Stability and Business Operations (TFBSO) that was supposed to oversee it but that nobody at the Pentagon seems to know about. It turns out that somebody at the Department of Defense not only Read More
Reading Time: < 1 minute Like clockwork, terrorist attacks in western countries are followed by immediate calls for greater powers for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Yet, time and again, these same law enforcement and intelligence agencies are later found to have failed to act on information–sometimes glaringly obvious–that could have helped them prevent the terrorist attack with the tools Read More
Reading Time: < 1 minute Russian President Vladimir Putin recently made headlines at the G-20 Summit when he suggested that ISIS was operating its extensive oil smuggling operations in a curiously open manner. Putin stated: “I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products. Read More
Reading Time: < 1 minute Is giving up civil liberties in exchange for more “security” from terrorists a good deal? Here’s a surprisingly candid take from former New York State homeland security adviser Michael Balboni, who was interviewed by New York radio station WNYC on November 17 : “One of the things that is very disturbing about what happened in Read More
Reading Time: < 1 minute Shortly after the carnage of Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, unnamed officials reported that a Syrian refugee’s passport was found next to one of the suicide bombers. News that one of the terrorists had posed as a refugee served as a rallying call for those fearing that “terrorists [are] inserting themselves into some of these Read More