ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

In the 1980s and early 1990s the mantra was holy warriors in Afghanistan against the evil Soviet Union. Of course, not much was holy about these Takfiri Islamist sectarian warriors because soon they would slaughter the Shia, enslave women, support killing homosexuals, threaten to kill all apostates, whip women if not fully covered up and a host of other evils. The logical conclusion was an international jihadist network that was brought together with the help of the CIA, MI6, ISI and other interested parties in the Gulf region. Of course, once this barbaric year zero Takfiri Islamist reality came into being in Afghanistan then the end result was opium,, backwardness, terrorism, enforcement of women into the shadows of society and so many other brutal realities. Yet, the usual Western and Gulf powers – supported by Turkey and Pakistan in several conflicts depending on geopolitics, would continue to destabilize in Iraq, Libya and Syria. In other words, the madness created by the usual pl

Jax Jacobsen For all the crackdowns on civil society throughout the post-Soviet sphere and Middle East, we’ve heard surprisingly little about Azerbaijan, ruled by Ilham Aliyev since he inherited the position from his father Heydar in 2003. His latest move to silence opposition from international groups is to have police raid the office of US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Dec. 26, detaining journalists for hours. Former journalists of the station have also been questioned by police. According to Jeffery Gedmin, former president of RFE/RL and currently at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, at least 10 RFE/RL journalists in Baku were compelled to the prosecutor’s office for additional questioning. The station had also been shut down in 2009, along with the BBC and Voice of America, but listeners were able to access broadcasts via internet and satellite. U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Committee for Foreign Affairs, called on “leaders in Ba

Felix Imonti It is Greece against the Troika of the IMF, the EU, and the European Central Bank. The election on January 25th is only the beginning of Greece’s problems; voters are not prepared to grant to any one party the power to implement policies that will satisfy the people at home and creditors abroad. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras gambled and lost. Nominating a new candidate for the figurehead presidency of Greece should have been a simple matter that would have passed with little conflict, except that it was seized on by the opposition as a chance for a vote of no confidence. By failing to confirm the new candidate, it forced the prime minister to call a national election in the midst of widespread discontent. Now, as Antonis Samaras and Alexis Tsipras seek to sway Greek voters, the real subject of political skirmishing is Chancellor Angela Merkel. Whoever wins the approval of the electorate will have to win the approval of the Iron Lady in Berlin. Neither candidate is showing

 In a famous speech to the US Congress in March 1991, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the US Gulf War victory over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a triumphant US President George H.W. Bush proclaimed the dawn of a “New World Order.”1 The term, with its ominous freemasonic connotations, raised many an eyebrow and Bush never again publicly used the term. However, what he meant became starkly clear to the world in the two decades following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Now that very US globalisation strategy is in a shambles and the outlines of possible alternative orders are slowly emerging. The US financial crisis that exploded on the world with a vengeance in March 2007 was the beginning of the end of the Old New World Order as Bush had envisioned in 1991, even though US elites were in denial of that reality. The sole superpower after the end of the Cold War had embarked on a quest of global empire disguised under the rubric of “globalisation.” The Clinton presidency from 1

In many ways, America has become the anti-empirical empire, a superpower where many political leaders divorce themselves from facts. Few examples are more glaring or dangerous than the continued denial of global warming despite the latest evidence of impending catastrophe, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains. By Paul R. Pillar The graphic that was on the front page of the New York Times on Saturday is striking. It accompanied a story about how 2014 was Earth’s hottest year on record. There is a bar chart showing how average global temperatures have been rising over the past century and markedly so since the 1970s, and how the ten warmest years have all occurred since 1997. But just as eye-catching is a world map that uses color to depict how temperatures in different areas of the globe in 2014 differed from the average for each area: red for hotter and blue for colder, with the intensity of the color indicating how much of a divergence there was from the average. As would be exp

The last three decades have witnessed a remarkable rise in xenophobic, deeply conservative, and even extreme right-wing parties across much of Europe.[1] Whereas thirty years ago most xenophobic parties failed to even pass the 5% minimum voter threshold that is typically required to enter government, it can be argued that they now constitute as much as ~28% of the parliament in countries like Austria, and arguably have reached the ~70% level in Hungary.[2] By 1999, the Austrians—who traditionally tout themselves as the “first victims” of the Third Reich—had elected the prominent nationalist and accused Holocaust denier[3] Jörg Haider as the governor of Carinthia and given his Freedom Party more than 26% of the vote in the national elections. Haider proceeded to personally help dismantle multilingual street signs that were erected for the local Slovene minority.[4] The Golden Dawn party, which now has more than ~7% of the national vote in Greece, often marches in the streets of Athens w

The head of Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau of Japan's Foreign Ministry and the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister are going to hold their first meeting on a wide range of issues, concerning North Korea. © AFP 2015/ JUNG YEON-JE Head of Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau of Japan's Foreign Ministry Junichi Ihara is to discuss a whole range of problems, regarding North Korea with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov, a source in Japan's Foreign Ministry told RIA Novosti Thursday. "The whole range of problems, regarding North Korea, will be discussed. It will really be a talk about everything, about all existing problems. As far as I know, it is the first meeting of Morgulov and Ihara, and they will exchange opinions on all matters," the source told RIA Novosti. © AP Photo/ Shizuo Kambayashi According to a statement issued by Japan's Foreign Ministry earlier Thursday, Ihara will visit Moscow on January 22-23 to discuss the "North Korea issue"

An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, January 5, 2014.(Reuters / Bill Ingalls) 51179 Russia’s design bureau NPO Energomash is to deliver 60 RD 181 engines for the Antares rocket first stage to American space technology manufacturer Orbital Sciences Corporation. The total cost of the deal is about $1 billion. “We are committed to deliver 60 engines. Three options have been signed, each for 20 engines,” Vladimir Solntsev, executive director of Energomash, told the Izvestia newspaper. “There is a firm contract for 20 engines, which we have started fulfilling, as we are due to supply the first two engines next June.” According to Solntsev, Russia’s government has already issued all the permits required for the deal. The contract envisages restrictions for the use of RD-181 engines in military programs as those rockets cannot be used for military goals. Following an engine failure and subsequent explosion during the Antares launch in October,