ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

WhoWhatWhy WhoWhatWhy exists in good part to serve as a kind of reality check. Its goal is to step outside the echo chamber, in which, no matter how improbable the “official” story, the media and the public reflexively accept it. WhoWhatWhy exists to remind us that the powerful — whether corporations or presidents or national security agencies — often exaggerate, cherry-pick facts, and even construct total falsehoods in service of their agenda. We see that again and again, with Vietnam, with Watergate, with Iraq, with the claimed reasons for invading Afghanistan , Libya and, through surrogates, Syria . The examples are legion. Each time the propaganda machine comes up with a new story, our society’s default response is to accept it. And the bigger the story, the harder it is for people to imagine they are being lied to. And the more discomfort it causes, the more cognitive dissonance kicks in. Then we rally around the flag — and lash out at the skeptics. Most recently, we encounte...

A journalist who infiltrated a cell of Isis supporters as they planned a terror attack in France said he found “lost, frustrated, suicidal, easily manipulated youths”. The man, who is using the pseudonym Said Ramzi to protect his identity, said he “easily” contacted the group who called themselves the Soldiers of Allah on Facebook. Embedded with the extremists for six months between summer 2015 and January, he filmed their meetings with a hidden camera as they plotted an attack on a nightclub. The footage was broadcast by French network Canal + in a documentary called Allah’s Soldiers on Monday. A Canal + reporter secretly filmed Isis supporters planning a terror attack (Canal +) The network consisted of 10 members led by a 20-year-old man called Ossama, who had been refused by the French army and been a Satanist and alcoholic before discovering radical Islam online, the broadcaster said. Having being caught attempting to join Isis, he was jailed for five months in France but set up...