An 8 part tweet stream by Pepe Escobar and posted with his permission Pepe has two requests as follows: Please retweet as much as possible Please alert the Saker community – because at least parts of this thread may be “disappeared”, post-Allende-style, in no time. These are the parts that totally destroy the official narrative. 9/11: A U.S. DEEP STATE INSIDER SPEAKS Old school. Top clearance. Extremely discreet. Attended secret
By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times Massoud leaving Bazarak in the Panjshir after our interview in August 2001, roughly three weeks before his assassination. Photo: Pepe Escobar It’s impossible not to start with the latest tremor in a series of stunning geopolitical earthquakes. Exactly 20 years after 9/11 and the subsequent onset of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the Taliban will hold
A wiser, better-traveled and social media-savvy Taliban will strive to avoid the many dire mistakes of its 1996-2001 rule By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times The announcement by Taliban spokesman Zahibullah Mujahid in Kabul of the acting cabinet ministers in the new caretaker government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan already produced a big bang: it managed to enrage both woke NATOstan and the
Internal Taliban divisions come to the fore as squabbling hinders the formation of Afghanistan’s new Islamic Emirate By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times It looked like everything was set for the Taliban to announce the new government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after this Friday’s afternoon prayers. But then internal dissent prevailed. That was compounded by the adverse optics of a ragtag “resistance”
by Pepe Escobar for The Saker Blog and friends Dear reader: this is very special, a trip down memory lane like no other: back to prehistoric times – the pre-9/11, pre-YouTube, pre-social network world. Welcome to Taliban Afghanistan – Talibanistan – in the Year 2000. This is when photographer Jason Florio and myself slowly crossed it overland from east to west, from the Pakistani border at Torkham to the Iranian
by Pepe Escobar and first posted at AsiaTimes It was 20 years ago today. Asia Times published Get Osama! Now! Or Else…The rest is history. Retrospectively, this sounds like news from another galaxy. Before Planet 9/11. Before GWOT (Global War on Terror). Before the Forever Wars. Before the social network era. Before the Russia-China strategic partnership. Before the Dronification of State Violence. Before techno-feudalism. Allow me to get a little
The Kabul Airport bombing shows there are shadowy forces in Afghanistan, willing to disrupt a peaceful transition after US troops leave. But what about US intel’s own ‘shadow army,’ amassed over two decades of occupation? Who are they, and what is their agenda? by Pepe Escobar with permission and special and first posting for the new website The Cradle. So we have the CIA Director William Burns deploying in
ISIS-Khorasan aims to prove to Afghans and to the outside world that the Taliban cannot secure the capital By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times The horrific Kabul suicide bombing introduces an extra vector in an already incandescent situation: It aims to prove, to Afghans and to the outside world, that the nascent Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is incapable of securing the capital. As it
Whoever bought Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and other US defense stocks made a literal killing By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times After 20 years and a staggering US$2.23 trillion spent in a “forever war” persistently spun as promoting democracy and benefiting the “Afghan people,” it’s legitimate to ask what the Empire of Chaos has to show for it. The numbers are dire. Afghanistan
By Pepe Escobar: The Saker Blog and cross-posted at the Unz Review. The first Taliban press conference after this weekend’s Saigon moment geopolitical earthquake, conducted by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, was in itself a game-changer. The contrast could not be starker with those rambling pressers at the Taliban embassy in Islamabad after 9/11 and before the start of the American bombing – proving this is an entirely new political animal. Yet
The US ‘loss’ of Afghanistan is a repositioning and the new mission is not a ‘war on terror,’ but Russia and China By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first published at Asia Times Wakil Kohsar Wait until the war is over And we’re both a little older The unknown soldier Breakfast where the news is read Television children fed Unborn living, living, dead Bullet strikes the helmet’s head And
August 12, 2021 will go down as the day the Taliban avenged America’s invasion and struck the blow that brought down its man in Kabul by Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times August 12, 2021. History will register it as the day the Taliban, nearly 20 years after 9/11 and the subsequent toppling of their 1996-2001 reign by American bombing, struck the decisive blow against
By Pepe Escobar and Quantum Bird – Special for The Saker Blog The Empire of Chaos could never be accused of deploying Sun Tzu subtlety. Especially when it comes to dealing with the satrapies. In the case of Brazil, former BRICS stalwart reduced to the status of a proto-neo-colony under an aspiring Soprano-style “captain”, the Men Who Run the Show applied standard procedure. First they sent the Deep State, as
City after city have fallen from government to Taliban control but Afghanistan’s end-game is still unclear by Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted atAsia Times The ever-elusive Afghan “peace” process negotiations re-start this Wednesday in Doha via the extended troika – the US, Russia, China and Pakistan. The contrast with the accumulated facts on the ground could not be starker. In a coordinated blitzkrieg, the Taliban have subdued
By Pepe Escobar and cross posted with insideover.com You don’t argue with the Tatmadaw – the Myanmar Armed Forces. It’s always their way, or the highway. Since the mid-20th century, the Chinese have come to understand it quite well. How Beijing approaches the Myanmar maze is conditioned by four variables: natural gas; water; the drug trade; and the fractious clashes between the Tatmadaw and a dizzying patchwork of over 135
by Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in as the 8th president of Iran this Thursday at the Majlis (Parliament), two days after being formally endorsed by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei. Representatives of the UN secretary-general; OPEC; the EU; the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU); the Inter-Islamic Union; and quite a few heads of state and Foreign Ministers
China and Russia will be key to solving an ancient geopolitical riddle: how to pacify the ‘graveyard of empires’ By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times So this is the way the Forever War in Afghanistan ends – if one could call it an ending. Rather, it’s an American repositioning. Regardless, after two decades of death and destruction and untold trillions of dollars, we’re faced
by Pepe Escobar with permission and widely cross-posted Assaulted by cognitive dissonance across the spectrum, the Empire of Chaos now behaves as a manic depressive inmate, rotten to the core – a fate more filled with dread than having to face a revolt of the satrapies. Only brain dead zombies now believe in its self-billed universal mission as the new Rome and the new Jerusalem. There’s no unifying culture, economy or geography knitting
The race is already on to build and extend Afghanistan’s shattered infrastructure as rival powers advance competing initiatives by Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times Over a week ago the excruciatingly slow Doha peace talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban resumed, and then they dragged on for two days observed by envoys from the EU, US and UN. Nothing happened. They could not even
