Citizen-Supported Journalism

Our coverage of only receipts found in Tamerlan’s pockets were receipts for his self-incriminating bomb-making materials

Columnist’s Suspension Highlights Boston Globe’s Poor Marathon Bombing Coverage

The Boston Globe recently suspended without pay one of its longest-tenured and most-vaunted columnists, Kevin Cullen, due to inaccuracies uncovered in his reporting on the Boston Marathon Bombing.

Is the Globe finally owning up to its own sensationalist Marathon Bombing coverage that reeked of pro-law enforcement boosterism?

Nope.

But the paper did inadvertently shine a spotlight on some of its most jingoistic Marathon Bombing reporting by throwing one of its popular columnists under the View article …

Mark Zuckerberg

Who Should Censor Online Speech?

There are few First Amendment issues more pressing today than how online speech should be governed. It impacts our interpersonal relationships, our views of almost every aspect of society, and of course our politics. Now, absent an easy solution, Congress wants to dive in and claim that they actually have a clue.

 

The internet was supposed to set a million voices free… It didn’t work out quite that way. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast we talk to David Kaye, a UC Irvine law professor and the United Nations’ leading voice on freedom of expression and human rights. He serves as View article …

FBI, Lone Wolf

FBI Version of NY/NJ Bombing Story Sounds Very Familiar

There are some striking similarities between the recent New York/New Jersey bombings and the Boston Marathon bombing, including the use of pressure cooker bombs. But the similarity that really should be ringing everyone’s alarm bells — yet apparently has not — is the revelation that the FBI had prior connections with both bombing suspects.

 

A number of contradictions and discrepancies in the FBI’s account of those contacts prompts troubling questions about whether the FBI is coming clean about its interest in Ahmad Khan Rahami.

 

And just as the Bureau did with the purported Marathon bombing mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev View article …

Bush, Reagan, Trump, Cheney, Nixon

Dark Shadows: Iran-Contra, Secret Wars & Covert Operations, Part 3

INTRODUCTION:

 

This is the third of a five-part series exploring the Iran-Contra Affair and its consequences. Part 1 described the Reagan Administration’s secret wars and illegal arms deals exposed in the scandal. Part 2 explained how the constitutional crisis unfolded as a result of Congress’s failure to address the CIA’s power to wage secret wars in the name of avoiding a world-ending nuclear confrontation between the Superpowers. Part 3 exposes the roots of Iran-Contra in the Watergate scandal, but congressional abdication of responsibility and judicial deference backfired in the restoration of the Imperial Presidency, suppressing civil View article …

Monday Morning Skeptic: Questioning Authority in the Sprawling Boston Bombing Case

SWAT teams enter a suburban neighborhood to search an apartment for the remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings in Watertown

A glib article published in the Boston Globe on July 27 suggested that those who question the opaque law enforcement narrative about the Boston Marathon bombing have a screw loose.

“There are those,” the writer begins, ”who believe the bombs and blood were staged, the amputees and others injured were actors in some kind of Hollywood production designed to justify martial law.”

David Abel’s lead is a splendid Straw Man ploy: dismiss View article …

Four in Ten Bostonians Skeptical of Official Marathon Bombing Account

A recent poll conducted by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team, part of an effort to force a change of venue for his trial, found that a majority of Bostonians—58 percent—are already convinced the accused Marathon bomber is “definitely guilty.”

That may be persuasive to the presiding judge. But what’s perhaps more interesting is that the poll found a sizable number of Boston residents—42 percent—are still “unsure,” indicating that even the population with the closest proximity to the April 15, View article …

Exclusive: Oklahoma City Bombing Breakthrough, Part 2 of 2

Not So Fast, ATF

 

As noted in Part 1 of this 2-part series, in early 1995, Tulsa Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents were eagerly preparing for a highly anticipated raid on the radical right-wing enclave of Elohim City—and the arrest of the shadowy figure Andreas Strassmeir, aka “Andy the German.”

 

Then, suddenly those plans were dramatically and suddenly halted. The View article …

Boston MIT Cop Cover-Up

Sean-Collier-Red-Sox-4-20-13All one has to do is consider the eyewitness accounts of the shootout in Watertown to realize that the Tsarnaev brothers were almost certainly not—as a surprisingly large number of people posting comments on this site and around the Internet seem to believe—harmless naïfs who did nothing wrong. Whether or not they planted the bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon, whether or not they acted alone or in concert with others, whether they were ideologues or dupes, it seems evident that they were involved in some kind of violent adventure View article …

Libya: Connect the Dots-You Get a Giant Dollar Sign

Article summary: THE FAKE ARAB SPRING

 

It’s true that Arab Spring is a good thing. It’s true Qaddafi is a bad guy. But connect the dots, and you will see that he is being set up. The evidence points to a plan to create an “Arab Spring” for the Good Old Boys—CIA, banks, oil companies. Read and see if you don’t agree.

 

In an earlier article, we posed the question, “Why are we in Libya?” We offered some thoughts.

Now, more pieces View article …

Last Secret of the Atom Bomb

In August 2005, the New York Police Department, with the Department of Energy, conducted an anti-terrorism radiation flyover survey. The survey was intended to provide a baseline of radiological activity, in order to catch a suspicious construction of a dirty bomb.

 

They didn’t find a dirty bomb—but there was plenty of radiological activity. Surveyors found 80 radioactive locations in the city—one of them being Great Kills Park in Staten Island, one of the city’s five boroughs. The Park is a popular place near a suburban enclave inhabited by cops, firefighters and other unsuspecting residents. The Park, View article …

The Marathon Bombing: What the Media Didn’t Warn You About

During a meeting on Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours after the bombings at the Boston Marathon, a well-meaning person asked me whether I thought we could assume that the usual suspects were behind the mayhem, or whether there was “more to it.” When I explained doubts about the conventional rush to judgment—and where those doubts came from—I was told I was on dangerous ground. This person, it seemed, was quite steadfast that View article …