American False Flags That Started Wars

In this March 13, 1964 file photo, President Lyndon Johnson, right, talks with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, center sitting, after McNamara returned from a fact-finding trip to South Vietnam, at the White House in Washington. Fifty years ago Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014, reacting to reports of a U.S. Navy encounter with enemy warships in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam, reports long since discredited, Johnson signed a resolution passed overwhelmingly...

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Israel Is Building A Wall To Keep Syrian Refugees Out

Photo shows the Israeli West Bank Barrier, which surrounds much of the occupied territory, as it passes through Bethlehem Aida refugee camp. (Photo/The Advocacy Project via Flickr) Amid a growing humanitarian crisis in Europe and the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday refused calls to admit non-Jewish refugees from Syria and announced plans to build a “security fence” to shut out people fleeing war—directly...

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Brazilian Wasp’s Venom Kills Cancer Cells Without Harming Healthy Ones

Wasps, with their annoying manner to fly around your food and readiness to bite you at any moment, definitely don’t fall into the category of cute creatures like bees and butterflies. However, it turns out that they may be much more useful than we thought. New research published in the Biophysical Journal reveals that the venom of the Brazilian social wasp Polybia paulista contains a powerful anticancer ingredient. The...

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"Desperate" Chicago Schools Need Half Billion To Avoid Mass Layoffs, Partial Shutdown

Last month, we noted with some incredulity that Illinois is now paying lottery winners in IOUs. Long story short, the state’s inability to pass a budget means big winners will have to wait on their prize money, a ridiculous situation which prompted one Illinoisan to remind state officials that “if we owed the state money, they’d come take it and they don’t care whether we have a roof over our head; our budget wouldn’t be a factor.” State...

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Did Facebook Influence Verdict In Tsarnaev Trial?

 Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Tim Evanson / Flickr WHO: Lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev WHAT: Requested a new trial at a different venue. WHY: Jurors were exposed to “inflammatory” information on their social media feeds. When convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers filed a motion last month requesting a new trial, at a different venue, a key reason was generally overlooked in superficial media coverage....

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War Drums Beating: Bulgaria Blocks Russian Access To Its Airspace For Syria Flights

On Monday we flagged a notable escalation in the build up to the geopolitical “main event” in Syria where, thanks largely to the West’s ambition to break Gazprom’s leverage over Europe, the US and Russia are one “accidental” run-in away from taking the “proxy” out of the term “proxy war.”  With the Kremlin now ramping up its military presence around the Assad stronghold of Latakia, the US is scrambling to do anything and everything...

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Here Is a Government Surveillance Device Disguised as a Baby's Car Seat

Image via Privacy International Spend enough time investigating the global surveillance industry, and you'll come to realize that reality is far stranger than fiction. A previous Motherboard investigation into the cache of documents leaked after the hack of Hacking Team revealed a huge network of companies reselling spyware around the world. But the Italian firm, which makes the governmental hacking suite Remote Control System, is barely...

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4th unexplained explosion rocks China

The latest incident will likely raise more questions about safety standards in China, where industrial accidents are all too common following three decades of fast economic growth. A blast at an auto-parts factory killed 75 people a year ago An explosion shook a chemical plant in the Chinese province of Zhejiang, state media said on Monday, though there were no immediate reports of casualties in a country on edge after blasts killed more than...

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A Distillation of DOD Funding Priorities for August 2015

DOD spent $37,886,446,686+ on 238 individual contracts in August 2015 The Pentagon issues a jumbled list of contractsevery business day around 5:00PM local time. Our project distills an entire month of these contracts into an accessible form. The Department of Defense (DOD) spent at least $37,886,446,686 on 238 individual contracts during August 2015. This amount does not include 21 Foreign Military Sales contracts worth $1,154,298,804. Note:...

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