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The Unz Review •�An Alternative Media Selection$
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
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Syria has been disintegrated and pillaged in the name of ‘liberating’ Syrians from the threat of ISIS, which they – Washington – had installed in the first place. James Jeffrey, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, in a March 2021 interview with PBS Frontline, laid out very plainly the template for what has just... Read More
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Israelis generally are celebrating their ‘victories’. Will this euphoria weigh with U.S. business élites? Syria has entered the abyss – the demons of al-Qa’eda, ISIS, and the most intransigent elements of the Muslim Brotherhood are circling the skies. There is chaos, looting, fear, and a terrible passion for revenge scalds the blood. Street executions are... Read More
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Syrian land will be annexed into “Greater” Israel
My former CIA colleague Larry Johnson has a real ability to clarify the significance of the constantly growing deep dark hole that Joe “Mumbles” Biden, he of failing mental capacity, has hurled the American people into. Larry wrote on December 12th that “There is still plenty of time before Donald Trump is inaugurated for Joe... Read More
Discussing Mideast chaos with Richie Allen
Rumble link Bitchute link I have been debanked by Stripe, so please: Donate through Paypal Donate through Spotfund Richie Allen, a leading candidate for best host in international talk radio, has returned from his sabbatical refreshed and well-informed. (He must not have been on a news fast!) Below is a transcript of our conversation. -KB... Read More
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When westerners see ‘enemy’ governments fall, or civil wars erupt, they are led to think they are the geopolitical equivalent of a natural event. Nothing could be further from the truth The long-harboured aspirations of the US, Turkey and Israel to topple the Syrian government, mainly through their rebranded al-Qaeda allies, succeeded at lightning speed.... Read More
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Of the 50-or-so mainstream articles on the fall of the Syrian government, not one bothered to mention the fact that the Sunni militia that toppled Bashar al-Assad is currently on the US State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Nor did they mention that the same jihadist group is on the United Nations list of terrorist... Read More
For years, Zionists have backed the most radical elements in Syria
Zionist apologists commonly present support for Israel as a necessary extension of opposition to radical Islam and the threat of Jihadi terrorism. “Support us fighting them here, so you don’t have to fight them there” is a common plea to the West from Zionist spokespeople within Israel. Yet when it comes to the Syrian Civil... Read More
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A truly seismic change in the Middle East appears to be happening very fast. At its heart is a devil’s bargain – Turkey and the Gulf States accept the annihilation of the Palestinian nation and creation of a Greater Israel, in return for the annihilation of the Shia minorities of Syria and Lebanon and the... Read More
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In a matter of days, a small army of battle-hardened jihadists have swarmed across Syria shattering a fragile truce and threatening the regional balance of power. The surprise Blitz has sent the stunned Syrian Army into full retreat while mostly foreign militants have seized the country's industrial hub, Aleppo, and its fourth largest city, Hama.... Read More
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Syria is an indispensable part of Israel's ambitious plan to remake the Middle East. The country sits at the heart of the region and serves as both a critical landbridge for the transport of weaponry and foot-soldiers from Iran to its allies, as well as the geopolitical center of the armed resistance to Israeli expansion.... Read More
It's all part of the Oded Yinon divide-and-conquer project
Rumble link Bitchute link Spotfund donations Paypal donations The Syrian Army is pressing ahead with its operations to confront and expel foreign-backed terrorists from the country's north and northwestern provinces. Reports on the ground say that the Syrian military backed by the Russian Air Force struck the terror groups in villages of Hazarin and Al-Raqeya... Read More
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What exactly did Ayman al-Zawahiri do?
I often complain that Washington’s heavily lopsided relationship with Israel is an arrangement that brings absolutely no benefit to the American people, and even less to our national security as it has involved the US in an endless series of completely avoidable conflicts. But there is one exception to that generalization, though one hesitates to... Read More
It is unsettling to see a democratic government like the United States beating its chest over the high-tech murder of a retired jihadist, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. The 71-year-old al-Zawahiri succeeded the assassinated Osama bin Laden as chief of the anti-US underground group, al-Qaeda. The mild-mannered, Egyptian had been a local doctor in Cairo, when the... Read More
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After years of having his case hung up in federal courts, Abu Zubaydah could finally be given the opportunity to tell his story. The Supreme Court is currently hearing the cause of United States v. Abu Zubaydah, which deals with the largely known details of a Palestinian man who was captured in Pakistan by the... Read More
For decades, state officials in nations like Iran and Syria have publicly held that Al Qaeda, ISIS and other Salafist terrorist groups are agents of chaos trained and armed by the United States and Israel. Now finally, there's a smoking gun. Two weeks ago, Major General Abdulqader Al-Shami, the deputy security chief of the Houthi... Read More
Al-Qaeda is creating its most powerful stronghold ever in north-west Syria at a time when world attention is almost entirely focused on the impending defeat of Isis in the east of the country. It has established full control of Idlib province and of a vital Syrian-Turkish border crossing since July. “Idlib Province is the largest... Read More
On Friday, the Director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, used his first trip abroad to present Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef with the CIA’s highest award for fighting terrorism, the George Tenet Medal. Although the ceremony wasn’t covered by any of the major media, it was picked up on various blogsites where the... Read More
They have done it again. The US, Britain and regional allies led by Saudi Arabia have come together to intervene in another country with calamitous results. Instead of achieving their aims, they have produced chaos, ruining the lives of millions of people and creating ideal conditions for salafi-jihadi movements like al-Qaeda and Islamic State. The... Read More
The Islamist group is receiving support from Sunni tribes, and offering a sanctuary for Western jihadists such as the...
Al-Qaeda in Yemen is becoming more powerful because it provides the troops for a Sunni community that feels under increasing threat from a Shia insurgency that has seized much of the country. Its increased strength has nothing to do with foreign jihadists like Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, who killed 12 people in Paris last weekand... Read More
Exhaustion could end Syria's bloody civil conflict, so long as foreign backers really want it
It has been a good week for those who like their hypocrisy neat and straight from the bottle. There was US Secretary of State John Kerry condemning the Syrian presidential election in which Bashar al-Assad was re-elected for a third time against nominal opposition as "a great big zero". But at the same time, the... Read More
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Our foreign correspondent's investigation into the jihadi resurgence
Twelve and a half years after 9/11, al-Qa’ida-type organisations control an area the size of Britain in western Iraq and eastern Syria. Include Afghanistan, Libya and Somalia and the territory they rule is larger in size than the UK. What is so extraordinary – and blameworthy – is that this vast expansion of jihadist groups... Read More
In the final part of his series, Patrick Cockburn explains how Sunni fundamentalist groups are successfully winning...
Since 9/11, the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s GCHQ have justified their mass interception of their citizens’ private communications by claiming that this helps them to identify “terrorists”. At the same time, the US Treasury has made great efforts to detect and block financial donations to al-Qa’ida-type movements across the world. But, given... Read More
In the fourth of his series about the resurgence of al-Qa’ida, Patrick Cockburn examines how Islamists have turned the...
Just after the sarin poison gas attacks on rebel-held districts of Damascus in August last year, I appeared on an American television programme with Razan Zaitouneh, a human rights lawyer and founder of the Violations Documentation Centre, who was speaking via Skype from the opposition stronghold of Douma in East Damascus. She gave a compelling,... Read More
In the third part of his series, Patrick Cockburn looks at the growing influence of Isis, al-Qa’ida’s force in Iraq,...
Events in Iraq are not always what they seem: take two occurrences over the past year illustrating the difference between appearance and the reality in Iraq. The first event took place outside Fallujah after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), formerly known as al-Qa’ida in Iraq, aided by tribal militias, took over... Read More
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The role of Saudi Arabia as the jihadists’ greatest ally – will the kingdom be forced to change tack in the face of...
It is a chilling five-minute film made by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), showing its fighters stopping three large trucks on what looks like the main highway linking Syria and Iraq. A burly bearded gunmen takes the ID cards of the drivers who stand nervously in front of him. “You are... Read More
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In 2014 al-Qa’ida-type groups are numerous and powerful… In other words, the ‘war on terror’ has demonstrably failed
It is now 12-and-a-half years since the September 11 attacks that put al-Qa’ida firmly on the map of global terrorism. The US has spent billions of dollars on its ‘war on terror’ to counter the threat and succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden three years ago. And yet al-Qa’ida-type groups are arguably stronger than ever... Read More
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How did al-Qaida, a tiny anti-Communist group in Afghanistan that had no more than 200 active members in 2001 become a supposed worldwide threat? How can al-Qaida be all over the Mideast, North Africa, and now much of black Africa? This after the US spent over $1 trillion trying to stamp out al-Qaida in Afghanistan... Read More
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The White House is pushing hard to keep a significant number of American soldiers in Afghanistan contrary to President Barack Obama’s earlier pledge to have then all out by the end of 2014. As the United States President has demonstrated himself to be a habitual liar that failure to connect promises made in 2008 with... Read More
It was 12 years ago today. Historians will register that, according to the official narrative, 19 Arabs armed with box cutters and minimal flying skills pledged to a transnational Terror Inc turned jets into missiles to attack the US homeland, fooling the most elaborate defense system on Earth. Fast forward to 2013. Here's a 15-second... Read More
When the going gets tough, count on the Ministry of Truth to get going. The end of Ramadan was imminent. The jihadi chattering classes of that fuzzy entity, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), went on overdrive. It was jailbreak galore from Libya to Pakistan via Iraq. And all this in perfect synch with two... Read More
Hi, my name is Mostafa and I'll be your moderate insurgent today. I'm addressing you all because we badly need your help. We could have started a Facebook page, like We Need Your Weapons or something, or ask the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights to make a YouTube video, but I prefer to speak straight... Read More
PARIS - And now some breaking news coming from the Islamic Emirate of Syriastan. This program is brought to you by the NATOGCC corporation. Please also tune in for a word from our individual sponsors, the United States government, Britain, France, Turkey, the House of Saud and the Emir of Qatar. It all started early... Read More
And the winner of the Oscar for Best Sequel of 2013 goes to... The Global War on Terror (GWOT), a Pentagon production. Abandon all hope those who thought the whole thing was over with the cinematographic snuffing out of "Geronimo", aka Osama bin Laden, further reduced to a fleeting cameo in the torture-enabling flick Zero... Read More
NEW YORK - In David Cronenberg's awesome Cosmopolis (France/Canada, 2012), based on the homonymous novel by Don DeLillo, young billionaire Eric Packer (Robert Pattison) slowly cruises New York in his white limo, installed in a cushy leather throne with incrusted screens. He feels … nothing; he essentially sucks up the world into his own inertia.... Read More
Once upon a time, early in the previous century, a line in the sand was drawn, from Acre to Kirkuk. Two colonial powers - Britain and France - nonchalantly divided the Middle East between themselves; everything north of the line in the sand was France's; south, it was Britain's. Many blowbacks - and concentric tragedies... Read More
His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the Middle East might have, but few in the West and across the world would have heard of him. Time to catch up. Because the story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter... Read More
It may be comforting to learn - once again thanks to WikiLeaks - that the United States State Department knows as much as any AfPak informed observer has known for years; that private donors, non-governmental organizations, madrassas and businesses from Saudi Arabia are ATMs for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. But... Read More
Anyone aware enough to think that Washington's goal is not to "win" the unwinnable AfPak quagmire but to keep playing its bloody infinite war game forever is now eligible for a personal stimulus package (in gold). Let's review the recent evidence. All of a sudden, the White House, the Pentagon and the United States House... Read More
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it … For the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state. - Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels On the same day that United States... Read More
One may be tempted to evaluate American foreign policy as concocted by some deviant disciple of cinema exploitation genius Russ Meyer - of Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill! fame - minus the profusion of breasts, of course. And so as that self-appointed court stenographer Bob Woodward reveals in his latest court opus Obama's Wars - conveniently... Read More
Intricate shadowplay surrounds the (failed) smoking sports utility vehicle Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. Earlier in 2010, the Central Intelligence Agency warned al-Qaeda might try an attack inside the US "within the next six months". It did happen - like clockwork - with the added bonus that the alleged perpetrators are even more convenient than... Read More
They were two Chechen “Black Widows” with dark hair, Caucasus features, not older than 25. They were trained by al-Qaeda Arabs, led by Abu Hanifah, in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan, alongside a bunch of Chechens and Uzbeks who came from Turkey - all part of a long-range al-Qaeda plan to wreak permanent... Read More
Like an ever-profitable horror B-movie franchise, the al-Qaeda myth simply refuses to die. United States intelligence has now focused its lasers on the alleged 300 al-Qaeda jihadis concealed in Yemen's craggy, rural Maarib province - as much as the Pentagon has deployed infinite might to find those maximum 100 prowling the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan.... Read More
HONG KONG - One's got to hand it to failed underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab. He is the real Man of the Year. With a single twitch of his lower parts, the now iconic young Nigerian single-handedly not only forced the Barack Obama administration to unleash tight airport security measures, a new virtual striptease craze... Read More
The United States is in the midst of the most serious unemployment crisis since the Great Depression, and US President Barack Obama is following George W Bush in lavishing trillions of dollars on a few big banks. American taxpayers got nothing. Now, they get the cherry in the cheesecake; Obama escalating his war in Afghanistan.... Read More
Is United States President Barack Obama telling it like it is as far as his new strategy for the Afghanistan and Pakistan war theater - AfPak, in Pentagonspeak - is concerned? There are reasons to believe otherwise. Obama's relentless media blitzkrieg stressed the new strategy is refocusing on al-Qaeda. Washington, we got a problem. Why... Read More
Afghanistan is not only the graveyard of empires; it's a graveyard of misconceptions. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden believed that the mujahideen single-handedly defeated the Soviet empire; so a more compact mujahid band, al-Qaeda, would be the vanguard in defeating the American empire. It was never that simple. In the United States, the myth rules... Read More
WASHINGTON - Seven years after bringing down steel buildings with jet fuel - using planes as missiles - and outwitting the most high-tech air force and the most protected airspace in the world for nearly two hours, the historic al-Qaeda leadership is "celebrating" 9/11 with an hour-and-a-half video special titled "Seven Years of Crusades". Washington,... Read More
WASHINGTON - Seven years after bringing down steel buildings with jet fuel - using planes as missiles - and outwitting the most high-tech air force and the most protected airspace in the world for nearly two hours, the historic al-Qaeda leadership is "celebrating" 9/11 with an hour-and-a-half video special titled "Seven Years of Crusades". Washington,... Read More
WASHINGTON - Al-Qaeda is back - with a vengeance of sorts. Listen to Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed - a senior al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, in a very rare interview with Pakistan's Geo TV, shot in Khost, in eastern Afghanistan. "At this stage this is our understanding - that there is no difference between the American people... Read More
PastClassics
Analyzing the History of a Controversial Movement
The evidence is clear — but often ignored