ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Stephen Ennis BBC Monitoring Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky: US is training "a new generation of killers" in the Middle East and Ukraine Russia is the target of a global plot orchestrated by the United States and involving fighters from the self-styled Islamic State (IS) and nationalist Ukrainian troops - that is the latest conspiracy theory broadcast on Russian state TV. "America is everywhere, the West is everywhere, Nato is everywhere. Everything is organised against Russia," the veteran Russian nationalist MP Vladimir Zhirinovsky railed during a talk show on Channel One, Russia's most popular TV station. There was a "certain link", he hinted, between Ukrainian troops "raiding our western regions" and IS, which he said was being armed by the US. Joining the studio discussion by video link, pro-Moscow Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov alleged that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was a "CIA employee". He suggested tha...

by Pierluigi Paganini Using the proper surveillance systems available on the market it is easy and quick to track cellphone and the movements of targets everywhere on the globe. We recently discussed about the decision of Wikileaks to publish copies of the criticized surveillance software FinFisher , highlighting the dangers for the militarization of the cyberspace and in particular for the use of spyware to track users. The principal vendors of surveillance platforms defend their business declaring that the solutions are only for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Unfortunately the reality is quite different, because many threat actors worldwide use surveillance malware to track individual for different reasons. The Washington Post published an interesting article a few weeks ago on surveillance technology that can be used to track individuals anywhere in the world through the localization of their mobile devices. The post explains that surveillance vendors using the SS...

Photos published by the journalist Erich Möchel in a blog post seems to confirm the presence of an NSA surveillance infrastructure, mentioned in the Snowden’s leaked documents “Vienna Annex”, in the attics of IZD Towers next to the UNO-City.   In the head of this film, the NSA “Vienna Station” and the “Vienna Annex” are explicitly mentioned. One of the acronyms that are listed right under “FORNSAT” must stand for the king waiting. Under “FORNSAT” are to be understood spy satellite stations which are not operated by the NSA itself. According to the journalist the NSA has deployed a monitoring station in Vienna used for listening in on what’s happening at the UN complex, the structure in fact is not far from the UN headquarters. The photos show a hut on the roof, which cannot be seen from the street, that is enclosed by solid steel bars and protected by a significant video surveillance system equipped with a ten cameras. Möchel explains that the hut appears like “a...

By Sharon Weinberger For almost two years, an unmanned space plane bearing a remarkable resemblance to NASA’s space shuttle has circled the Earth, performing a top-secret mission. It’s called the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle — but that’s pretty much all we know for certain. The Pentagon’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. Officially, the only role the Pentagon acknowledges is that it’s used to conduct experiments on new technologies. Officially, the only role the Pentagon acknowledges is that the space plane is used to conduct experiments on new technologies. Theories about its mission have ranged from an orbiting space bomber to an anti-satellite weapon. The truth, however, is likely much more obvious: According to intelligence experts and satellite watchers who have closely monitored its orbit, the X-37B is being used to carry secret satellites and classified sensors into space — a little-known role once played by NASA’s new retired space shuttle. For a decade between the 1980...

Soldiers of Ukrainian army ride on a tank in the port city of Mariupol, southeastern Ukraine, Friday, Sept. 5, 2014. The Ukrainian president declared a cease-fire Friday to end nearly five months of fighting in the nation’s east after his ...  By Maggie Ybarra The Pentagon has dispatched more than a dozen military personnel to Kiev this week to provide tips to Ukrainian security forces on counterinsurgency and military planning tactics. Military staff will share with the Ukrainians some of the Pentagon ’s planning tactics, techniques and procedures while collecting data on the needs of its security forces, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez . Staff arrived in Kiev, the country’s capital, on Thursday and Friday and are beginning to assess the operations of the Ukraine Ministry of Defense, Ms. Lainez told The Washington Times. The eight military personnel have been split up into two teams, according to Ms. Lainez . One team has been told to assess the security need...

James Corbett Last week we attempted to dispel some of the confusion surrounding the World Bank and the IMF, how the two are differentiated, and what the World Bank actually does. As you’ll recall, Bretton Woods architect John Maynard Keynes admitted that the confusion over the bodies was embedded in their names; the World Bank should rightly be referred to as a fund (for development projects) and the International Monetary Fund as a bank (to help countries cover balance of payment deficits and ensure financial stability). The World Bank itself is a body that ostensibly provides long-term low interest or no interest loans secured on the global bond market to fund sectoral reforms and infrastructure development projects in some of the poorest countries in the world. As we saw last week, however, the Bank is used as a weapon by the economic hitmen identified by John Perkins and others, directing infrastructure development funds to crony corporations and forcing countries into debt obli...

RT Image from Twitter‏ @Vieze_Freddy Irregular armed forces have to rely on their ingenuity to arm themselves. And while rifles and mortars can be bought on the black market, getting hold of a tank or two can be a bit tricky. But you can always make a DIY version with your own hands. At least that’s what fighters of the Kurdish militias in northern Syria do. Called People's Protection Units, or YPG, they have been dedicated to protecting Kurds from whatever the three-year-long war in the country may throw at them. Lately it’s been the Islamic State, the terrorist group that proved to be worthy of being bombed by America itself. The People’s Protection Units don’t have killer drones or stealth bombers. They are mostly armed with small arms, with some heavier weapons such as mortars and rocket launchers, pickup trucks turned into mobile gun turrets and an occasional piece of artillery. #jazza #ypg controlled rocket launcher pic.twitter.com/8tIEYbjyLB — Coldkurd™ (@ColdKurd) August ...

RT U.S. President Barack Obama (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst) Publicly announcing that US intelligence agencies “underestimated” the presence and activity of Islamic State militants in Syria, US President Barack Obama in an interview with CBS called the country a “ground zero” for international jihadists. “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos,” Obama said in an interview made on Friday but aired on Sunday. “And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world,” he added. Obama echoed comments previously made by James Clapper, US director of national intelligence which acknowledge how IS in Syria had been underestimated. At the same time, Obama admitted that the Iraqi army’s capabilities in dealing with militant groups were also overestimated. Clapper made similar comments to a Washingt...