ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Eric Margolis Hong Kong is at a gentle boil. As of this writing, tens of thousands of students have been politely demonstrating, calling for the Beijing-appointed chief executive, C.Y. Leung, to resign and be replaced through free elections. Politics don’t often divert Hong Kong’s manic obsession with business and finance, but the upsurge of youthful discontent has presented China with one of its biggest popular challenges since the 1989 Tiananmen uprising – which China insists never happened. So far, China’s Communist Party and its tough new boss, Xi Jinping, have stood back and taken no serious action to curb the peaceful demonstrations. Now, however, protest leaders are threatening to seize government buildings unless Beijing drops plans to select Hong Kong’s new government in 2017. This is a direct challenge to Beijing’s national authority. Considering that Beijing is ruthlessly crushing protests by Uighur Muslims in its strategic westernmost province of Xinjiang, Hong Kong’s de

One might think that by now even Americans would have caught on to the constant stream of false alarms that Washington sounds in order to deceive the people into supporting its hidden agendas. The public fell for the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan are terrorists allied with al Qaeda. Americans fought a war for 13 years that enriched Dick Cheney's firm, Halliburton, and other private interests only to end in another Washington failure. The public fell for the lie that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" that were a threat to America and that if the US did not invade Iraq Americans risked a "mushroom cloud going up over an American city." With the rise of ISIS, this long war apparently is far from over. Billions of dollars more in profits will pour into the coffers of the US military security complex as Washington fights those who are redrawing the false Middle East boundaries created by the British and French after WW I when the British

By Fred Reed  I read that Apple and Google have begun encrypting the data of customers so that nobody, including Apple and Google, have plaintext access to it. This of course means “so that the government will not have access to it.” The FBI is terribly upset about this, the first serious resistance against onrushing Orwellianism. God bless Apple and Google. But will they be able to stand up to the feds? Here is a curious situation indeed. The government has become our enemy, out of control, and we have to depend on computer companies for any safety we may have. NSA spies on us illegally and in detail, recording telephone conversations, reading email, recording our financial transactions, on and on. TSA makes air travel a nightmare, forcing us to hop about barefoot and confiscating toothpaste. The police kick in our doors at night on no-knock raids and shoot our dogs. In bus stations we are subject to search without probable cause. The feds track us through our cell phones. Laws make

Exclusive: For the past three years, Official Washington has viewed the Syrian civil war as “white-hatted” rebels against “black-hatted” President Assad, but finally some of the “gray-hatted” reality is breaking through, though perhaps too late, Robert Parry reports. By Robert Parry In late summer 2013, Official Washington was rushing to the judgment that the “evil” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had launched a barrage of missiles tipped with Sarin gas to slaughter hundreds of civilians in rebel-held neighborhoods near Damascus. It was inconceivable to virtually every person who “mattered” in Washington that there was any other interpretation of the events on Aug. 21, 2013. Washington Post national security columnist David Ignatius even explained the “big picture” reason why President Barack Obama needed to launch punitive bomb strikes against Assad’s government for crossing Obama’s “red line” against using chemical weapons. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “What does the world look

All the disinformation being spread about Ebola by the U.S. government and the complicit mass media will unfortunately make the Ebola pandemic far worse. That's because the public isn't being told the truth about how Ebola spreads and how individuals can help prevent transmission of the disease. At every level of media and government, protecting the financial interests of drug companies appears to be far more important than protecting public health. So people aren't told the truth about how Ebola spreads and how they can increase their ability to survive a global pandemic. Here are five of the biggest lies being spread about Ebola right now. Once you've reviewed the lies, learn the truth at www.BioDefense.com Lie #1) Ebola won't ever come to the United States This lie was shattered just this week when the CDC confirmed Ebola in a hospital patient in Dallas, Texas. Not only has Ebola already spread to America, but a top scientist who used to work for the FDA now

By James Bamford The tone of the answering machine message was routine, like a reminder for a dental appointment. But there was also an undercurrent of urgency. “Please call me back,” the voice said. “It’s important.” What worried me was who was calling: a senior attorney with the Justice Department’s secretive Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. By the time I hung up the payphone at a little coffee shop in Cambridge, Mass., and wandered back to my table, strewn with yellow legal pads and dog-eared documents, I had guessed what he was after: my copy of the Justice Department’s top-secret criminal file on the National Security Agency. Only two copies of the original were ever made. Now I had to find a way to get it out of the country—fast. It was July 8, 1981, a broiling Wednesday in Harvard Square, and I was in a quiet corner of the Algiers Coffee House on Brattle Street. A cool, souk-like basement room, with the piney aroma of frankincense, it made for a perfect hideout to sort

A guide to the spin, empty gestures, and behind-the-scene players that will determine the fate of America's re-entry into Iraq. By Peter Van Buren AC  Obama’s new war in Iraq and Syria will fail. Why? As events tumble forward in Iraq, here are 10 things to keep an eye on that will tell the tale. 1) “Inclusive” Government A cornerstone of any longer-term resolution in Iraq is the formation of an inclusive government, one that addresses the needs of Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds, gives each a sense of substantive participation, equitably shares oil revenues, creates safety for each, and allows future decision-making to take place while assuring the Shias do not slink back into dominance. Since the new prime minister, ostensible handmaiden to the U.S. and approved by Iran, is a Shia and former colleague of Maliki and member of the same political party, inclusiveness falls to appointments to key ministries and the delegation of real power to those ministers. The ministries to watch are

By Rick Sterling - The following six photographs confirm that a favorite “moderate rebel” leader, Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, is allied with ISIL. The first photograph is from Spring 2013 and shows Okaidi with the American who has been the principal coordinator of US policy on Syria. The last two photographs are from a meeting days ago when Congressmen Adam Kinzinger (Rep Illinois) and George Holding (Rep. North Carolina) met with Okaidi and other “moderate rebels” in Turkey. Other photos show Okaidi with ISIL fighters and being interviewed about his relationship with ISIL. The photographs are from videos identified at bottom. Photo 1 / May 2013/ Okaidi with Robert S. Ford, US Ambassador and Coordinator of the “Friends of Syria” Photo 2 / August 2013 / Okaidi with ISIL fighters at Menagh Air Base, Syria. ISIL leader is Abu Jandal to Okaidi’s left. Photo 3. / August 2013 / ISIL Leader Abu Jandal at Menagh Air Base, Syria. Photo 4 / November 2013 / Interview with Okaidi “My rela