ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

On April 2, terrorists committed one of the worst terrorist attacks in Kenya. Up to 150 people were murdered by masked al-Shabaab terrorists who raided the Garissa University College campus. (1) A few dozen people were wounded. Hundreds of hostages were freed as a result of special operation conducted by government security forces. A wave of terrorist attacks hit Kenya after Somalia collapsed as a unified state with large swathes of its territory going out of government control. Al-Shabab is a leading Somalian terrorist group. On September 21, 2013, its gunmen attacked the upmarket Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. The attack resulted in at over 80 deaths. The Garissa attacks in many respects resemble the Nairobi terrorist act. The al-Shahab militants killed only those who said they were Christians while letting go the people who said their faith was Islam. The Nairobi slaughter was organized on the eve of Catholic Good Friday. Al-Shabab (2) is a Wahhabi terroris

The world of private defence contractors, the modern version of the fabled Condottiere without the flags and the city-state veneration, received a blow with the handing down of stiff sentences on four former Blackwater operatives. Last year, the four in question, part of Blackwater’s Support Team Raven 23, were convicted in the Washington, D.C. federal court for killing 17 Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisour square in 2007. The sentences of Paul A. Slough, Dustin L. Heard, Nicholas A. Slatten, and Evans S. Liberty, damn a certain form of warfare, but they do not reverse it. The convictions have, instead, been taken as justification about a certain type of warfare, one waged in the US courtroom in the name of pleasing others and soothing consciences. “This verdict,” argued US attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr., “is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the rule of law, even in times of war.”[1] In other words, killing must be executed with principle, and such a mass

Enlarge Noam Chomsky (Credit: AP/Nader Daoud) This article originally appeared on Jacobin . Earlier this month, Dan Falcone and Saul Isaacson, both high school educators, sat down with Noam Chomsky in his Cambridge, MA office. In a brief conversation, edited and condensed here for clarity, they covered a wide range of topics — the projection of US power abroad and the stories told to justify it; COINTELPRO and domestic repression; the failures of the mainstream media; the West’s posture toward Putin; and much more. As always , we’re happy to publish Professor Chomsky’s invaluable insights. Dan Falcone I was recently in correspondence with a good friend of yours, Richard Falk , and we were discussing Juan Cole ’s idea of “essentialism” as it pertains to the Muslim world. And this led me to think about how essentialism is present in liberal education. For instance, take a good and appropriate cause like education for Muslim girls and how they face Taliban oppression. This is important t

Reuters/Ints Kalnins There was a sharp increase the intensity of the training of NATO troops near the borders of Russia last year, Russian General Staff said. “In 2014, the intensity of NATO’s operational and combat training activities has grown by 80 percent,” said Lieutenant General Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Main Operation Directorate of General Staff. The leadership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization made no effort to hide the clear anti-Russian orientation of these activities, he added. “During this period, NATO created a grouping of its member states’ forces in the Baltic States, consisting of over 10,000 troops, about 1,500 armored vehicles, 80 planes and helicopters and 50 warships,” Kartapolov said during the IV Moscow Conference on International Security. Read more Iran urges India, China & Russia to counter NATO missile system According to the Lieutenant General, strategic bombers from the US Air Force were used to perform strategic tasks during those exercise

USS Higgins with Aegis interceptor systems (Reuters / Atef Safadi) Iran has announced its readiness to cooperate with Russia, China and India on the issue of NATO’s missile shield and related threats from the military bloc, the head of its defense ministry said in Moscow. “I'd like to support the idea of developing multifaceted defense cooperation between China, Iran, India and Russia to counter NATO eastwards expansion and installing a missile shield in Europe,” Hossein Dehghan said on Thursday, at an international security conference in Moscow. Hours later Dehghan was cited by RIA Novosti as saying that Russia, China and Iran may hold tri-party defense talks. "We discussed certain aspects of regional security. It was proposed to hold a trilateral meeting of Russia, Iran and China,"Dehghan said after meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu. Despite a deal on Tehran's nuclear program, the US is still going to site its missile defense installations in Europ

By Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu The Houthi rebellion in Yemen that was already in existence more than five years ago had recently turned into a full-blown conflict that escalated into an international crisis in the first week of April of 2015 when Houthi rebels in Yemen deposed President Abed Rabou Mansur Hadi, throwing him out of the helm of Yemeni government. Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia while the Houthis effectively captured the capital Sana’a. Thereafter, Saudi Arabia, has initiated massive aerial bombings against the de facto Houthi government in Sana’a and in various strategic areas of Yemen that are now being occupied by the Houthi militia. Saudi Arabia, together with its allies in the Arabian Peninsula has justified its invasion into another sovereign territory by claiming that they want the Houthis to return the reins of power back to the erstwhile government of President Hadi. However, it is really interesting to notice that the unilateral Saudi interventionism in the interna

The United Nations Security Council votes in an attempt to halt the escalating conflict in Yemen in New York April 14, 2015. (Reuters/Lucas Jackson) The UN arms embargo on Houthis in Yemen is designed not to stop war but to assign blame to those targeted by Saudi bombing, Brian Becker, from the Answer Coalition told RT. To achieve peace foreign powers should stop attacking Yemen, he added. The UN Security Council has imposed an arms embargo on the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Russia was the only abstention out of the Security Council members. RT: How will this decision by the UN Security Council affect the conflict? Brian Becker: The United Nations Security Council resolution on Yemen, the so-called arms embargo resolution is not a prescription for peace. It is not designed to stop the war. It is designed to assign blame to those who are the targets of the Saudi and other royal families of the Gulf region bombing. You see that the US and its allies in particular Saudi Arabia an

Oleg Kalashnikov (image by http://glavpost.com) ​A former Ukrainian MP and active anti-Maidan activist, Oleg Kalashnikov, has been killed in his flat in Kiev. His killing is the latest in a series of odd deaths plaguing former government officials and ex-President Yanukovich’s party members. The 52-year-old was found dead at his residence in Kiev on Wednesday evening. His death was “caused by a gunshot,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement announcing a police inquiry. Ukraine’s criminal investigation chief Vasily Paskal, took the investigation under personal control and promised to share motives and the preliminary results of the probe with reporters as soon as they become available. The investigation is focused on five possible motives for the crime, according to Interior Minister’s senior adviser, Anton Gerashchenko. So far the investigation considers the primary possible motive behind the killing to be Kalashnikov’s “political activity”linked with his “participation in the org