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As pressure grows for military intervention in Syria, we are now hearing that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is behind alleged widespread rape in his country. Didn’t we hear the same thing about Muammar Qaddafi, followed by mounting Western calls for his ouster? As before, when you read the fine print, it gets more complicated.
A campaign to make sure Susan Rice does not become the next Secretary of State tells us a lot about how things really work—in foreign policy, in the establishment, and in the media. ### NEWS FLASH ###, December 13: Susan Rice withdraws name from consideration—this article provides relevant background.
The federal government’s grip on information about the Boston Marathon Bombing investigation and prosecution gets ever more vise-like. A federal judge has rejected the ACLU’s attempt to file a friend of the court brief raising serious constitutional questions about the government’s proceedings against the accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. And his defense attorneys have charged that the government continues to withhold investigatory details that Tsarnaev needs to get a fair trial. A civil liberties attorney tells WhoWhatWhy that the judge is acting like “a tool of the U.S. Department of Justice.”
U.S. banks are summarily canceling accounts of some customers with Islamic surnames. Why? They won’t say. And the trend is happening coast to coast, according to a Muslim advocacy group. Is the government behind it?
The old argument goes that conspiracies can’t happen because someone would eventually talk. The flaw in that logic is that people involved in plots rarely speak up—even if they want to—because when they do they nearly always pay a price. Edward Snowden, anyone? So as you read this ClassicWHO repost from two years ago, consider how much relevance it still has in the case of Edward Snowden.
FBI statistics show violent crime is down, but politicians keep funding more cops, lavishing them with military equipment, and training and encouraging them to act like soldiers instead of peace officers.
In the final part of our series, the story of the color film of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that was locked and hidden from Americans—and even the Japanese—for decades. Frame by frame, the footage captured the horrors. If not for certain people, almost no one would have ever seen it.
A quick look back at some of the groundbreaking reporting WhoWhatWhy has done on the Boston bombing case—why we’ve done it, and why we believe it matters.
A poll in Boston turned up a surprising finding—42 percent of those polled are unsure if Boston Marathon Bombing suspect Dzohkhar Tsarnaev is guilty. That’s a shock given the dominant media narrative that says he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet the case is still full of lots of contradictions and unanswered questions that beg for answers.
There’s a rush to judgment about who shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. That’s clearly dangerous with Ukraine a flashpoint in what appears to be turning into a new Cold War. Here are some things to think about as we try to separate fact from speculation and even outright fiction.
When looking at the aggressive, almost military police response to unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, a big dose of collective amnesia makes it easy to forget that the United States has been here before. And may yet be there again.
An update on the strange one-car crash involving ex-FBI chief Louis Freeh. He nearly took out several motorists. An unidentified FBI man materialized quickly at the rural scene. And more curiosities.