ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Exclusive: For months, Western governments and media have accused Russia of supplying the anti-aircraft missile that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 killing 298 people. But now German intelligence has reportedly determined the missile came from a Ukrainian military base, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry The West’s case blaming Russia for the shoot-down of a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine last July appears to be crumbling as the German foreign intelligence agency has concluded that the anti-aircraft missile battery involved came from a Ukrainian military base, according to a report by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. The Obama administration and other Western governments have pointed the finger of blame at Russia for supposedly supplying a sophisticated BUK missile system to ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine who then allegedly used the weapon on July 17 to shoot down what they thought was a Ukrainian military plane but turned out to be Malaysia Airlines Fl

AFP Photo / Marwan Naamani Saudi Arabia wants to use lower oil prices to pressure Russia to change its stance on Syria, to antagonize Iran, and to force US shale gas out of the market, roving correspondent for the Asia Times Pepe Escobar told RT. RT: Russia's economy is surely being hit by the falling oil prices. But what about other oil producers like the OPEC states? Pepe Escobar: A lot of people are being hurt. There are more or less 20 nations that need oil at least for 50 percent of their budget. Among these nations we’ll find especially a mix of African countries and Persian Gulf countries, that includes Saudi Arabia and Iraq as well, Venezuela and Ecuador. So it’s very complicated, it’s not only to hurt Russia... RT: Saudi Arabia is one of the OPEC members and it is supposed to collaborate its oil price policy with other members. Why it is acting like this? PE: OPEC is not a moralistic organization. There has been a lot of speculation about what Saudi Arabia has been doing.

Submarine HNLMS Bruinvis (screenshot from youtube video) Swedish authorities reportedly searching for a Russian submarine in its waters are probably looking in the wrong direction. The sub is probably Dutch, a source in the Russian Defense Ministry told RT. Earlier Swedish media reported that the nation’s navy is looking for a submarine in the Baltic Sea, possibly belonging to Russia. Russia said there was no substance in reports of the Russian connection in the story. “On Sunday the Russian Defense Ministry provided whatever aid it could to the Swedes in their futile search,” the source commented. The source added that if the Swedish Navy wanted to spare taxpayers’ money and nerves, they should turn to The Netherlands. The country’s Walrus-class diesel-electric submarine Bruinvis was in the Baltic Sea last week, not far from Stockholm. Photos of the emergency surfacing procedure by this submarine were leaked to Swedish media and reported as an emergency surfacing by a Russian submarin

The ISIS, as we know it today, has done much to demonstrate its “Sunni” character to the world. Since the start of the conflict, a common observation has been that the ISIS has particularly been attacking “Shia” neighbourhoods in Iraq as well as in Syria. The rise of “Sunni” militancy, which is deliberately projected by the Western media as “Islamic” militancy, has as such a lot to do with wider regional and historical problem that the entire Muslim world has been facing, that is, the notorious Sunni-Shia divide. Although division in the Muslim world is not confined just to these two sects, the character it has assumed over the last few decades places it at the heart of many of the problems this so-called Muslim ‘world’ is facing today. That the “Sunni” world is bent upon eliminating the “Shia” world becomes quite evident when we take into account grand objectives of the leader of the “Sunni” world, Saudi Arabia. Some time before 9/11, the former head of the Saudi intelligence,

It is not merely hyperbole when it is said the US created terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda or the so-called “Islamic State.” It is documented fact. The current conflict in the Middle East may appear to be a chaotic conflagration beyond the control of the United States and its many eager allies, but in reality it is the intentional, engineered creation of regional fronts in a war against Iran and its powerful arc of influence. It is not Western policy that indirectly spurs the creation and perpetuation of terrorist organizations, but in fact, direct, intentional, unmistakable support. This support would manifest itself in perhaps the most overt and bizarre declaration of allegiance to terrorism to date, US Army General Hugh Shelton on stage before terrorists of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) and their Wahabist counterparts fighting in Syria, hysterically pledging American material, political, and strategic backing. MEK was listed for years by the US State Department as a foreig

Benjamin Syme Van Ameringen The western romantic imagination disinclines people to take pirates seriously (they have been portrayed in over 260 films since 1904). But the modern piracy, which made a comeback at the end of the 1990s, has become a scourge of maritime transport, with a significant human and economic cost. - UNOSAT Global Report on Maritime Piracy (1995-2013) . Maritime piracy is an age-old act that for centuries has inflicted grave economic damage on the global trade of goods and commodities. Over the centuries, the nature of piracy has evolved and the pirates of today conduct operations very differently from those of their primarily European predecessors. This article will report on the current state of global piracy and examine the current threat environment. It will also delve into piracy hotspots in Africa, new and emerging threats, their root causes, and anti-piracy countermeasures. According to UNOSAT, between 1995 and August 2013 there were a total of 6,249 repo

Anis Bajrektarevic A freshly released IMF World Economic Outlook brings (yet again, for the sixth year in a row, and for the third time this year alone) no comforting picture to anyone within the G-7, especially in the US and EU. Will the passionately US-pushed cross-Atlantic Free Trade Area save the day? Or, would that Pact push things over the edge and mark an end of unionistic Europe? Is the extended EU conflict with Russia actually a beginning of the Atlantic-Central Europe’s conflict over Russia, an internalization of mega geopolitical and geo-economic dilemma – who accommodates with whom, in and out of the Union? Finally, does more Ukrainian (and Eastern Europe) calamities pave the road for a new cross-continental grand accommodation, of either austerity-tired France or über-performing Germany with Russia, and therefore the end of the EU? For whose sake Eastern Europe has been barred of all important debates, such as that of Slavism, identity, secularism and antifascism? Why do

By Eric Margolis Back in the 1990’s, journalists used to joke, “Of course we know Iraq has chemical weapons. We have the delivery receipts to prove it!” The joke turned out to be the exact truth. While covering Iraq in 1990 – just before the first massive US bombing campaign – I discovered the US and Britain had secretly built a germ weapons arsenal for Iraq to use against Iran in the eight year-Iran-Iraq War. This while both the US and Britain were fulminating with breathtaking hypocrisy against the alleged dangers of Iraq’s supposed WMD’s (weapons of mass destruction) that never existed. Some years later, the two leading apostles of attacking Iraq, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, delivered Philippics against Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs while never mentioning that high level of western support for Iraq’s late leader. Last week the widely read “New York Times” ran a multi-page exposé entitled “Abandoned Chemical Weapons and Secret Casualties in Iraq.” The NY Times played a key rol