ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

All-out war is coming to Libya, as rebel militias and a government-in-hiding begin a battle for control of the country. By Bel TrewBel TRIPOLI, Libya — Zeina, 27, was hanging out her washing when the first Grad rocket smashed into a neighbor’s house at the end of her dusty street. The deafening boom was followed by the telltale buzz of more incoming rockets. Libya’s civil war had landed on her doorstep. “It started as a normal day — then we heard the sound of shelling and rockets,” said the young mother. “Without warning, they hit our houses. We fled with just the clothes we were wearing.” Zeina is now crammed together with seven other people in a cinderblock outhouse that is part of Tripoli’s zoo. They are just a handful of the more than 400,000 people who are currently displaced inside Libya, which is witnessing its worst crisis since the 2011 NATO-backed revolt that toppled dictator Muammar Qaddafi. For three years, Libya has been without a functioning government, police force, or ...

Protesters build a barricade on February 21, 2014 at the Independent square in Kiev.(AFP Photo / Bulent Kilic) The armed coup in Kiev is painfully similar to CIA operations to oust unwanted foreign leaders in Iran, Chile and Venezuela, said US filmmaker Oliver Stone after interviewing Ukraine’s ousted president for a documentary. Stone spent four hours in Moscow talking to Viktor Yanukovich, who was deposed from power during the February 2014 coup, the filmmaker wrote on his Facebook page. “Details to follow in the documentary, but it seems clear that the so-called ‘shooters’ who killed 14 police men, wounded some 85, and killed 45 protesting civilians, were outside third party agitators,” he said.“Many witnesses, including Yanukovych and police officials, believe these foreign elements were introduced by pro-Western factions – with CIA fingerprints on it.” The filmmaker added that the events in Kiev, which led to collapse of the Ukrainian government and imposition of a new one hostil...

By Larry Chin Almost all wars begin with false flag operations. The coming conflicts in North Korea and Russia are no exception. Mass public hysteria is being manufactured to justify aggression against Moscow and Pyongyang, in retaliation for acts attributed to the North Korean and Russian governments, but orchestrated and carried out by the CIA and the Pentagon. - The false flagging of North Korea: CIA weaponizes Hollywood The campaign of aggression against North Korea, from the hacking of Sony and the crescendo of noise over the film, The Interview, bears all the markings of a CIA false flag operation. The hacking and alleged threats to moviegoers has been blamed entirely on North Korea, without a shred of credible evidence beyond unsubstantiated accusations by the FBI. Pyongyang’s responsibility has not been proven. But it has already been officially endorsed, and publicly embraced as fact. The idea of “America under attack by North Korea” is a lie. The actual individuals of the mys...

TOM BOGGIONI A US Blackhawk army helicopter flies over the mountainous area of Gorbuz district, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan [AFP] Drawing information from top secret documents spirited away by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, Der Spiegel reports that the “kill list” used by NATO forces in Afghanistan included low-ranking members of the Taliban along with drug dealers suspected of supporting them. As the war in Afghanistan draws to a close after 13 years, new information is becoming available describing NATO conduct in the war-torn nation. According to the newly released documents, NATO maintained an extensive list — including up to 750 names at times – of Afghans (found here ) slated for death, including mid- and lower-level Taliban operatives along with drug dealers who allegedly supported the insurgents. Drawing on field reports and internal documents, Der Spiegel documents an attempted attack on a Taliban member named Mullah Niaz Mohammed — nicknamed “Doody...

Main Street is going broke. Wall Street is cashing in. By Paul Buchheit The Merriam-Webster definition of 'steal' is to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice. Much of our country's new wealth has been regularly taken by individuals or corporations in a wrongful manner, either through nonpayment of taxes or failure to compensate other contributors to their successes. 1. The Corporations As schools and local governments are going broke around the country, companies who built their businesses with American research and education and technology and infrastructure are paying less in taxes than ever before. Incredibly, over half of U.S. corporate foreign profits are now being held in tax havens , double the share of just twenty years ago. Corporations are stealing from the nation that made them rich. There are many examples of greed among individual firms. Based largely on 2014 SEC documents submitted by the companies themselve...

Did the U.S. and the Saudis Conspire to Push Down Oil Prices? By Mike Whitney “Saudi oil policy… has been subject to a great deal of wild and inaccurate conjecture in recent weeks. We do not seek to politicize oil… For us it’s a question of supply and demand, it’s purely business.” – Ali al Naimi, Saudi Oil Minister “There is no conspiracy, there is no targeting of anyone. This is a market and it goes up and down.” – Suhail Bin Mohammed al-Mazroui, United Arab Emirates’ petroleum minister “We all see the lowering of oil prices. There’s lots of talk about what’s causing it. Could it be an agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to punish Iran and affect the economies of Russia and Venezuela? It could.” – Russian President Vladimir Putin Are falling oil prices part of a US-Saudi plan to inflict economic damage on Russia, Iran and Venezuela? Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro seems to think so. In a recent interview that appeared in Reuters, Maduro said he thought the United States a...

For the first time Iran’s army has tested a suicide drone able to hit aerial and ground targets, as well as ships, said the army's chief commander of ground forces amid the third day of massive drills at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The unmanned aircraft is "a mobile bomb" that can be used for “hitting aerial and ground targets and can carry out an attack when it identifies a suspicious target,” commander Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan told journalists on Saturday. Local media reports indicated that the drone is called Yasir. It’s a domestically produced combat drone that was unveiled in September. Yasir is equipped with state-of-art, light cameras for reconnaissance. It can fly for eight hours with a range of 200 kilometers and reach an altitude of 4,500 meters. The drone was tested as part of a six-day exercise code-named Mohammad Rasoulallah (Mohammad, the Messenger of God) that started on Thursday, involving all branches of Iran’s military. The second stage of the ma...

A country’s armed forces are centered on its government-sponsored defense, fight and military organizations. Their purpose is to protect the nation from internal and external aggressors, and always be prepared to battle against unexpected attacks. A country’s army services have immeasurable benefits, one of the most obvious being to keep the people safe from internal conflicts and foreign threats. Over the past couple of years, the armed forces have served an emergency civil support role in all sorts of circumstances, mainly post-disaster. One of the world’s most complex continents, Europe, has managed to survive numerous political conflicts between countries over the centuries. It survived many international revolutions, independence wars, and even two world wars. It’s the 21st century and Europe’s most powerful countries reckon the importance of the armed forces for the well-being and political safety of their people. That being said, here are 7 of Europe strongest armies. THE RUSSIA...

Basic services such as water and rubbish collection are failing and residents are struggling to find food Isis’s vaunted exercise in state-building appears to be crumbling, as living conditions deteriorate across the territories under its control, exposing the shortcomings of a group that devotes most of its energies to fighting battles and enforcing strict rules. Residents say services are collapsing, prices are soaring and medicines are scarce in towns and cities across the “caliphate” that Isis proclaimed in Iraq and Syria, belying the group’s boasts that it is delivering a model form of governance for Muslims. Slick videos depicting functioning governing offices and the distribution of aid fail to match the reality of growing deprivation and disorganised, erratic leadership, the residents say. A trumpeted Isis currency has not materialised, nor have the passports the group promised. Schools barely function, doctors are few and disease is on the rise. In the Iraqi city of Mosul, the...

Their town may be destroyed but the residents' spirit is strong Keeping the night watch at a border outpost at the edge of Kobani, one member of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic People's Units (YPG) stands surveying the surrounding area, despite the near total darkness of the city's wartime blackout. The triangular yellow flag of the YPG flutters on a small pole above him, a red star at its centre. "Islamic State [also known as Isis] are over there," he says, pointing south-east, "less than a kilometre away." He adds that the first coalition air strikes came at a crucial moment. "We only had one or two days left when they started bombing," he explains. "We were out of ammunition, everything." Now, whenever an air strike lands, people happily shout "Obama!" and several newborn babies in Kobani have been named in honour of the American President. Mortar strikes and gunfire can be heard throughout the day but, compared to the earl...

The country's dictatorship says it has nothing to do with the attack and has criticised the US for spreading rumours North Korea has threatened military strikes against the White House, the Pentagon, and the “whole US mainland, that cesspool of terrorism”. The warning was made by the country’s National Defence Commission late on Sunday night in response to accusations by the United States government that North Korea was behind a recent hacking incident. United States officials have accused North Korea of having links to hackers who leaked private information from Sony Pictures Entertainment and who managed to postpone the release of the film The Interview. The cyber-attackers had threatened violence against cinemas showing the film, leading to large numbers of theatres dropping it from their schedules and to Sony claiming the launch was unviable. The plot of The Interview focuses on the assassination of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un. The country’s government ...

Participants hold up their mobile phones during a demonstration called by anti-immigration group PEGIDA, a German abbreviation for "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West", in Dresden December 8, 2014. (Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke) Islamophobia we see now in Germany has nothing to do with classical neo-Nazi ideology, it is partly fueled by right-wing extremists and populists who impose on the locals the idea of a threat coming from Muslims, Daniel Koehler from EXIT-Germany told RT. German police have established there is a considerable rise in far-right extremism and violence against foreigners in Germany. The attacks seem to be a backlash against the sharp increase in the number of refugees arriving in Germany. It remains the strongest EU economy and attracts thousands of migrants and asylum-seekers. At the same time the Muslim community in Germany is sounding the alarm over rising Islamophobia in the country. RT: The migrants themselves say Germany is a grea...