A former police commander from Tajikistan was featured in an ISIS video recently where he admitted he was trained by the U.S. State Department and former military contractor Blackwater all the way up until last year. At a Blackwater facility in North Carolina, Col. Gulmurod Khalimov received “counter-terrorism training.” “From 2003-2014 Colonel Khalimov participated in five counterterrorism training courses in the United …
Islamic State Timeline Shows How ISIS Expanded In One Year From Two Countries To Ten By Alessandria Masi
When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took the podium at a mosque last June to deliver his first public Friday sermon, the world got a glimpse of the man who led an obscure extremist group from Syria to storm across the border into Iraq and took over the second-largest city in that nation to establish itself as the most serious menace to …
ISIS Is The Child Of Chaos, Not Religion By Justin Podur
In the third week of May, ISIS took the city of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria, in two, big, high-profile victories. Though ISIS has constantly been in the news for years now, these two cities seem to return the sense of an unstoppable march of Islamist forces across the Middle East. As the beheadings began almost immediately in …
How Western Press Spreads ISIS Propaganda: The Case For a Media Blackout – Adam Johnson
This past weekend, several media outlets ran a story about how ISIS is seeking a nuclear weapon: ISIS Claims It Could Buy Its First Nuclear Weapon From Pakistan Within a Year [3] —International Business Times ISIS to Smuggle Its First Nuclear Weapon From Pakistan, Mulls Attack on US: Report [4] —Economic Times ISIS Boasts It ‘Could Buy First Nuclear Weapon in Less Than …
A Prehistory of Violence – George Monbiot
Do you want to know the real reason for the advances by Isis in Iraq and Syria? Changing lightbulbs in America. This is the explanation given by John McCain, Republican chair of the Senate armed services committee. At the weekend he blamed Barack Obama’s inability to magic away Islamic State on the president’s belief that climate change is “the biggest enemy we …
Kiev’s Repression of Anti-Fascism in Odessa – ERIC DRAITSER
There is a common misconception in the West that there is only one war in Ukraine: a war between the anti-Kiev rebels of the East, and the US-backed government in Kiev. While this conflict, with all its attendant geopolitical and strategic implications has stolen the majority of the headlines, there is another war raging in the country – a war …
Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion’ – Nafeez Ahmed
A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these …
DIA Docs: West Wants A “Salafist Principality In Eastern Syria” – Robert Barsocchini
Newly-declassified US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents from 2012: In Syria: THE SALAFIST [sic], THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA. AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq, which became ISIS: “ISIS, once called AQI”] SUPPORTED THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION FROM THE BEGINNING, BOTH IDEOLOGICALLY AND THROUGH THE MEDIA… …OPPOSITION FORCES ARE TRYING TO CONTROL THE EASTERN AREAS (HASAKA AND …
Stop Feeding the Troll: The Case for an ISIS Propaganda Blackout – Adam Johnson
The London Express (5/22/15) unsubtly juxtaposed ISIS militants with an atomic explosion. This past weekend, several media outlets ran a story about how ISIS is seeking a nuclear weapon: ISIS Claims It Could Buy Its First Nuclear Weapon From Pakistan Within a Year —International Business Times ISIS to Smuggle Its First Nuclear Weapon From Pakistan, Mulls Attack on US: Report —Economic Times ISIS …
Secret Intel Reports on Syria & Iraq Revealed – RICK STERLING
Almost three years ago the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the U.S. Dept of Defense accurately characterized the conflict in Syria and predicted the emergence of the Islamic State. This stunning revelation has emerged as a result of a Freedom of Information Act law suit filed by Judicial Watch in connection with the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The heavily redacted August 2012 …