ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

About 100 ISIS members have been killed since the start of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) operation against the terrorist group’s cells in the area of al-Safa at the administrative border between the provinces of al-Suwayda and Rif Dimashq in late July, accordign to pro-government soruces. Up to 25  ISIS members were killed last weekend when the SAA ambushed an ISIS unit withdrawing from al-Safa . The rest were mostly eliminated in artillery and airstrikes by Syrian forces. Meanwhile, the Syrian state media reports that SAA units are working to strengthen their positions in the al-Safa hills thus increasing pressure on the remaining ISIS cells in the area. Click to see the full-size image

Written by  Brian Kalman   The Big Profits Driving Online Censorship This summer we have witnessed the increasing demand by mainstream media, Democratic Party legislators, and even former disgraced intelligence agency heads, for the silencing of dissenting viewpoints. Although the most recent wholesale ban on Alex Jones and Infowars on just about every social media platform out there is the most glaring and chilling example of outright censorship, the efforts of the Deep State to silence any voices of dissent or for presenting a narrative counter to that being peddled by the almost complete monopoly of social and mainstream media that serves them has been building in intensity for quite some time. The claims that the big tech companies that control all social media platforms through virtual monopoly are not required to meet the constitutional protections of the 1 st  amendment, because they are not governmental agencies, but private businesses, is patently false. I...

Illustrative image Written by  J.Hawk   At the time it happened and shortly after its conclusion, the brief war between Georgia, the breakaway republics, and Russia, has had relatively limited international political consequences, commensurate with the conflict’s brevity and comparatively low level of violence which can hardly be compared with the prolonged and far bloodier wars in Libya, Syria, or even the NATO quagmire in Afghanistan which continues to claim far more lives every year. In retrospect, it proved to be a preview of far worse things to come, in the process also illustrating the respective roles played by Western governments and local “political entrepreneurs” of countries around Russia’s periphery in the forming of West-Russia relations. Before the West Went Insane The single most striking feature of the war is the aforementioned limited international consequences. Today, cases like the MH17 shoot-down, chemical attacks in Syria, elections “meddling”,...