ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

The real reason Russia and Syria are being targeted right now. Contrary to popular belief, the conduct of nations on the international stage is almost never driven by moral considerations, but rather by a shadowy cocktail of money and geopolitics. As such, when you see the mouthpieces of the ruling class begin to demonize a foreign country, the first question in your mind should always be "what is actually at stake here?" For some time now Russia, China, Iran, and Syria have been in the cross hairs. Once you understand why, the events unfolding in the world right now will make much more sense. The U.S. dollar is a unique currency. In fact its current design and its relationship to geopolitics is unlike any other in history. Though it has been the world reserve currency since 194 this is not what makes it unique. Many currencies have held the reserve status off and on over the centuries, but what makes the dollar unique is the fact that since the early 1970s it has been, wit

By Stephen Dinan -      The Washington Times               Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, speaking in New York, said that while the U.S. hasn’t learned of any Islamic State plans to attack the U.S. itself, the terrorists are intent on killing Americans they encounter overseas. (Associated Press)   There is no current intelligence suggesting Islamic State militants are plotting attacks on the U.S., Homeland Security officials told Congress on Wednesday, but they acknowledged the dangers of a terrorist trying to sneak across a porous southern border or a lone wolf attack inspired by the insurgents’ advances in Iraq and Syria . Hours before President Obama made his case for an expanded military response to combat the Islamic State — also known as ISIL or ISIS — top Homeland Security intelligence officials said the terrorists have the potential to develop into a direct danger to the U.S., but for now it’s a remote threat.

By Susan Jones  (CNSNews.com) - NBC News Correspondent Richard Engel, reporting live from Kurdistan in northern Iraq Wednesday night, said U.S. troops are on the ground in Iraq and avoiding reporters. "I know there are already American boots on the ground where I am now," Engel told MSNBC. "They are not necessarily firing their rifles or kicking down doors, and we're not going on embeds with these troops. "They are troops who are staying away from reporters, they are embedded with local fighters trying to guide in air strikes, gathering intelligence -- the kind of thing you would have thought the Green Berets would have done many years ago, and which are now being done by Navy SEALS and Delta Force and other Special Operations Forces.  "Can you conduct a secret war like this, a war by remote control to dislodge ISIS, to dislodge this terrorist group, this militant murderous group from large parts of Iraq and large parts of Syria? We will see. It is an open

Russia could use ballistic missiles, such as the Yars , with conventional warheads to counter CPGS.(RIA Novosti / Vadim Savitskii) A highly-placed Defense Ministry official says that Russia may be forced to match the US Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) doctrine, which prescribes that a non-nuclear US missile must be able to hit any target on Earth within one hour. “Russia is capable of and will have to develop a similar system,” Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said during a public discussion of the Russian rearmament program for the decade of 2016 through 2025. “But mostly we will concentrate on countering CPGS, as our military doctrine is a defensive one.” But the official denied that the Kremlin was setting off for another Cold War-style arms race with the West. “This is not in these plans, and I hope will never happen,”said Borisov. “We simply want to protect our civilian population from outside threats.” Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov.(RIA Novosti / Micha

Fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) stand guard at a checkpoint in the northern Iraq city of Mosul.(Reuters / Stringer) The Central Intelligence Agency believes the Islamic State militant group “can muster between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters” throughout both Iraq and Syria, CNN reports. If true, that would mean the Islamic State’s numbers have more than doubled compared to the agency’s last estimate, which pinned the group’s total amount of fighters at roughly 10,000. "This new total reflects an increase in members because of stronger recruitment since June following battlefield successes and the declaration of a caliphate, greater battlefield activity, and additional intelligence," a CIA spokesperson told CNN. In addition to updating its estimates regarding the Islamic State’s fighting force, a separate US official also told the news channel that the US government is already conducting surveillance flights within Syria’s borders. The United States is

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