ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

by James Corbett The hysteria over the supposed threat posed by the Islamic State (IS) is now undeniable. Every day new stories emerge focusing on the group’s brutality, its resources, its capabilities and its intention to strike out at the West. The US Defense Secretary, Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ranking Senators have all delivered somber assessments of the group’s evil aims in recent weeks, and have they been joined in that effort by a host of counterparts in foreign nations. The mainstream media, for their part, report these pronouncements without question, and with only a bare minimum of context to help their audience understand the group. An open source investigation is desperately needed to sort through the hype to determine the facts behind this shadowy terror group. In this article we will examine the background, current status and future aims of the group, as well as the numerous facts that have been carefully omitted from the officially-san

Everything you ever wanted to know about the 9/11 conspiracy theory in under 5 minutes. (Watch French , German , Spanish , Italian , Hebrew or Portuguese translations of this video.) TRANSCRIPT: On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor. These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol , snort cocaine , and live with pink-haired strippers , managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn’t handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot de

By Ali Ahmed India’s new government has sprung two back-to-back surprises on Pakistan: the first was inviting Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to the swearing-in of Prime Minister Narendra Modi; the second was the about-face on foreign secretary level talks upon the resumption of dialogue. The first of these was seemingly couched in Indian regional diplomacy, but was mainly directed at Pakistan. The message was that with a new right-leaning government in New Delhi, Pakistan could expect bolder movement on the outstanding issues between the two. However, the second stemmed from the new government’s reluctance to be brought to the negotiating table under Pakistani pressure. There were an estimated 95 incidents along the Line of Control (LoC) this summer , with 25 on the international border (or “working boundary,” according to Pakistan). A strategic view of the increase in action along the LoC is that it is the Pakistani military’s attempt to get India to engage meaningfully. A po

Image Credits: scobleizer / Flickr by RT.com A database of what appears to be some 5 million login and password pairs for Google accounts has been leaked to a Russian cyber security internet forum. It follows similar leaks of account data for popular Russian web services. The text file containing the alleged compromised accounts data was published late on Tuesday on the Bitcoin Security board. It lists 4.93 million entries, although the forum administration has since purged passwords from it, leaving only the logins. The accounts are mostly those of Google users and give access to Gmail mail service, G+ social network and other products of the US-based internet giant. The forum user tvskit, who published the file, claimed that 60 percent of the passwords were valid, with some users confirming that they found their data in the base, reports CNews, a popular Russian IT news website. Google Russia said it is investigating the alleged leak, adding that it advises customers to use

by Paul Joseph Watson President Barack Obama is set to announce his plan to combat ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Syria by arming so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels despite the fact that such militants have openly aligned themselves with Islamic State fighters. “Obama has told congressional lawmakers that he has the authority to proceed with much of his plan without their formal approval,” reports the Associated Press . “However, he is seeking authorization from Congress for the train-and-equip operation for Syrian rebels, a request he first made earlier this summer.” Obama is expected to unveil the plan to send weapons to FSA fighters during a prime time speech later tonight. The lunacy of such a policy is illustrated by the fact that Bassel Idriss, commander of an FSA-run rebel brigade, recently admitted that Washington-backed “moderate” rebels are still collaborating with ISIS. “We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings

China has created a fifth branch of the People’s Liberation Army devoted to space operations, a Japanese newspaper is reporting. Last month, Yomiuri Shimbun — one of Japan’s national papers — carried a report that said that China had recently ordered the PLA to establish an Aerospace Force. The branch, which is expected to focus on military operations in space, would be the military’s fifth branch after the PLA Ground, Air, Naval, and the Second Artillery (in charge of China’s nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles) Forces. It will be complemented by an Aerospace Office under the Central Military Commission. The Diplomat cannot confirm the validity of the report, and it’s notable that Yomiuri Shimbun appears to have taken the original article down in the last few days (a cached version can be found here ). The Pentagon also refused to comment on the article, referring The Diplomat instead to the PLA. Still, the claim seems plausible on the face of it. As The Diplomat previously noted

The downfall of its oil and security tsar gives China a chance to salvage relations with its Muslim minority. By Yo-Jung Chen After years of living under the threat of the likes of Al Qaida, Taliban and other Islamic extremists, the world is discovering a new and much more fearsome brand of terror in the fast-spreading Islamic State, or IS, in the Middle East. Few people in East Asia would feel directly concerned by the gruesome accounts of the battles and atrocities involving IS in the remote Middle East. But is the threat really all that distant? In an August 11 article in Foreign Policy, Alexa Olesen observed how China (or at least segments of the Chinese media) is taking seriously a July 4 speech by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in which he called for a jihad against countries that “seized Muslim rights.” China tops the list of the dozen such countries for the way it is accused of treating the minority Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. The IS chief even seemed to have threatened to o

The missile brigades of Russia’s Ground Forces will be equipped with advanced weaponry and hardware, including the 9K720 Iskander (SS-26 Stone) theater ballistic missile systems, as part of the 2020 state rearmament program, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu recently said. “In order to bring Iskander missiles into use, the army needs adequate infrastructure,” the minister added. In 2008, Russia launched the most extensive reorganization of its armed forces in its history. The army command system experienced a major transformation, with the overall size of the army reducing, and an increased proportion of professional troops compared to conscripted recruits. There has been a significant increase in the salaries of officers, who are also seeing their housing problems resolved. Still, the main outcome of the reform is the unprecedented army re-equipment program. The percentage of advanced weapons in the army has already hit 16 percent and is expected to reach 70 percent before 2020.