ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Roberto Savio Reprint In this column, Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and publisher of Other News, writes that the purpose of Greece’s third bailout is clear – all but seven percent of the 86 billion euros will go to pay debt with the other European governments, recapitalize Greek banks, pay interest on Greece’s debt and pay the debt of the state with Greek enterprises, while the country’s citizens will see none of it. SAN SALVADOR, Aug 20 2015 (IPS) - The long saga on Greece is apparently over – European institutions have given Athens a third bailout of 86 billion euros which, combined with the previous two, makes a grand total of 240 billion euros. Roberto Savio There is no doubt that the large majority of European citizens are convinced that this is a great example of solidarity, and that if Greece is not now able to walk on its own feet, the responsibility will lie solely with Greek citizens and their government. But thi...

The New York Times has called on South Korea and the United States to cautiously respond in dealing with the crisis on the Korean Peninsula with an emphasis on restraint. The U.S. daily said in its editorial “A Perilous Moment at the Korean Border,” that given North Korea’s nuclear weapons arsenal and its erratic leader, Kim Jong-un, any inter-Korean confrontation must be taken seriously and managed carefully. The report said that the recent inter-Korean exchange of artillery firing is another reminder that the world’s major powers have failed to find a durable solution to one of the world’s most durable security threats, the nuclear-armed North. The daily urged the United States and China to play key roles in urging restraint. It added that it is an encouraging sign that the two Koreas held high-level talks, easing tensions at least temporarily.

South Korea and the United States stepped up their intelligence and surveillance status for North Korea’s possible provocation although the two Koreas started inter-Korean high-level talks on Saturday. The South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command on Sunday raised their five-level Watch Condition alert system, or WATCHCON, from level three to level two. The South Korean military is closely watching the movements of North Korean troops and mobilizing all available reconnaissance assets. The South Korean military and U.S. troops also remain ready to immediately respond in case the North attacks South Korea’s loudspeakers on the border. The South Korean military is said to have detected 72-point-two millimeter field guns, which were used for the North’s artillery provocation on Thursday, being deployed at some parts of the front-line areas. Some North Korean soldiers were also observed conducting a firing drill.

Daesh is close to taking control of the largest oil refinery in Iraq after clashes with the army in Baiji on Sunday, Anadolu has reported. The city is in the north of Salahuddin Province. "Daesh has tightened its grip on the Abu-Jra'a area which links the city and the refinery," Captain Ghazwan Al-Jubouri told the Turkish news agency. According to Al-Jubouri, the militants wounded at least four civilians in an attack on the village of Albu Tohme. "They are now attacking Aharijah neighbourhood, in the centre of the area, and fighting continues in other districts," he added. The Iraqi army said that the security forces have stopped an attack by Daesh militants with a number of bombed cars in Baiji. "But battles continue in the region." The army's statement did not give further details. The Popular Mobilisation Forces are holding the Joint Operations Room responsible for allowing the militants to advance towards Baiji, claiming that the Iraqi air fo...

LONDON: ISIS militants are looting ancient sites across Iraq andSyria on an industrial scale and selling on treasures to middlemen to raise cash, Irina Bokova, the head of the U.N. cultural agencyUNESCO said Thursday. One fifth of Iraq's about 10,000 official world-renowned sites were under ISIS control and heavily looted, and it was unclear what was happening in "thousands more" areas, Bokova told a meeting of experts in London. Some sites in Syria had been ransacked so badly they no longer had any value for historians and archaeologists, and UNESCO was also increasingly worried about Libya, she said. ISIS' self-declared caliphate contains some of the richest archaeological treasures on earth in a region where ancient Assyrian empires built their capitals, Graeco-Roman civiliszation flourished, and Muslim and Christian sects co-existed for centuries. The militants, whose strict Salafi interpretation of Islam deems the veneration of tombs and non-Islamic vestiges to b...

An ISIS fighter reads out a death sentence in front of 25 Syrian soldiers in the site of the amphitheater in Palmyra, Syria (Video grab) The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on Saturday released a grisly video showing 25 Syrian government soldiers being executed by teenagers in the ancient amphitheater in the city of Palmyra. The video documented an execution that reportedly happened shortly after the group captured the city on May 21. A crowd look on as the death sentence is read to the 25 Syrian soldiers in the ancient Palmyra amphitheater (Video grab) The 10-minute clip, which begins with a recitation of the Quran, then cuts to shots of the conflict, and then chained-together soldiers being led out of a cell onto a courtyard. The captives are then transported by a convoy of pickup trucks to the site of the Palmyra ruins, where they are made to kneel in a line in the amphitheater. A man waves an ISIS flag as the crowd look on (Video grab) As the death s...

This was posted by Anonymous source ALEPPO, SYRIA: We didn't sleep all the night. The attacks of yesterday 2nd July started around afternoon and continued up till today 8:30 am 3rd July. They said that 3-4 civilians died, but 87 civilians injured. The ambulance voices didn't stop all night long. You had to hear the people over here in Aleppo. Aren't they Syrians? After all these years and after all these attacks on them and after they lost their income sources and family members, they are asking the Syrian army to terminate the terrorist attackers and their nests, which have become like cancer in Syria's body. They don't care if that termination happens by chemical weapons, bombs, or whatever. Yet, around the world and in the mainstream media, they dare to demonize the Syrian Army with the so-called "barrel bombs" and refer to dead terrorists as peaceful moderate Syrian opposition who had been killed by dictator! I don't swear, and I'm fasting this...

U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman (L-3rd L) meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (2nd R) at a hotel in Vienna, Austria June 28, 2015 (Reuters / Carlos Barria) Forget the mad spinning. Here it is, in a nutshell, what it really takes for Iran and the P5+1 to clinch a game-changing nuclear deal before the new July 7 deadline. Iran and the P5+1 agreed in Lausanne on a “comprehensive plan of action,” taking into account delicate constitutional considerations in both the US and Iran. A crucial part of the plan is the mechanism to get rid of sanctions. Lausanne – and now Vienna – is not a treaty; it’s an action plan. There will be a declaration when a deal is reached. But there won’t be a signing ceremony. The next important step is what happens at the UN Security Council (UNSC). All the concerned parties at the UNSC will endorse a declaration, and a resolution - which is st...