ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By:  Sorcha Faal A curious Ministry of Finance ( MoF ) report circulating in the Kremlin today says that the Central Bank of Russia ( CBR ) has “accepted for protection” 3 million ounces of gold worth over $3.5 billon from US banking and financial services giant Citigroup along with a further nearly $100 billion in cash. According to this report, 1.4 million ounces of this now protected gold in the vaults of the CBR were shipped directly from Venezuela after this past April’s complex agreement between that South American nation and Citigroup, with the remaining 1.6 ounces coming from various countries this banking and financial service giant has cut ties with in the past year and a half. Of the 11 nations, including Japan , that Citigroup has cut ties with, this report explains, even in the face of Western sanctions Citigroup has refused to sever its Federation relationship with its chief financial officer, John Gerspach, simply telling the Obama regime “ We are not leaving ...

President and Chairman of the Board of JSC Rosneft Igor Sechin (R). © Mikhail Voskresensky / RIA Novosti Energy deals between Russian oil major Rosneft and Chinese partners will be worth more than $500 billion in the next 20 years, according to Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin. "Taking into account mutual trade and the existing contracts, the total value of cooperation of our company [with Chinese partners – Ed.] through 2035 will amount to $500 billion at current prices," Sechin said during the Eastern Economic Forum on Friday. Moscow and Beijing are negotiating an increase in Russian oil supplies to China, said the chairman of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) Wang Yilin. "China currently imports 15 million tons of crude oil from Russia through a pipeline. Now we are working on building a separate pipeline to increase the supply of crude oil to China,” said Yilin. He added that the two companies are cooperating and expressed hopes that the goal of increasing crude...

Thousands of Yazidi women have been enslaved by ISIS. Does paying their captors for their freedom fund the terrorist organization? ERBIL, Iraq—In a crowded room in an undisclosed location in Northern Iraq, a Yazidi father is begging an American woman for money to buy back his daughters from the so-called Islamic State. Via a translator the man says he has been in contact with a broker—a middleman used as a go-between from ISIS to grieving Yazidi families—who for a high fee will return his children after they were taken and sold as slaves among the jihadis just over a year ago in the ISIS blitz of Northern Iraq. The man is desperate and low on cash, and says he’s considered selling his truck to pay for the girls’ release. In a haze of cigarette smoke and in between rounds of tea, the American, 66-year-old Amy Beam, tells him he shouldn’t sell his truck, but still needs to renegotiate with the broker. The asking fee is too high she says, and the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Childre...

To take down the so-called Islamic State in Syria, the influential former head of the CIA wants to co-opt jihadists from America’s arch foe. Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus. The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast. The heart of the idea stems from Petraeus’s experience in Iraq in 2007, when as part of a broader strategy to defeat an Islamist insurgency the U.S. persuaded Sunni militias to stop fighting with al Qaeda and to work with the American military. The tactic worked, at least temporarily. But al Qaeda in Iraq was later reborn as ISIS, and has become the sworn enemy of its parent...

Russia has begun its military intervention in Syria, deploying an aerial contingent to a permanent Syrian base, in order to launch attacks against ISIS and Islamist rebels; US stays silent. Alex Fishman Russian fighter pilots are expected to begin arriving in Syria in the coming days, and will fly their Russian air force fighter jets and attack helicopters against ISIS and rebel-aligned targets within the failing state. According to Western diplomats, a Russian expeditionary force has already arrived in Syria and set up camp in an Assad-controlled airbase. The base is said to be in area surrounding Damascus, and will serve, for all intents and purposes, as a Russian forward operating base. In the coming weeks thousands of Russian military personnel are set to touch down in Syria, including advisors, instructors, logistics personnel, technical personnel, members of the aerial protection division, and the pilots who will operate the aircraft. A formation of Russian Mig 31's (Photo: R...

From Reuters) The White House is considering applying sanctions against companies and individuals in China it believes have benefited from Chinese hacking of United States trade secrets, the Washington Postreported Sunday (Aug 30). The White House is considering applying sanctions against companies and individuals in China over cyber theft The newspaper, citing several unidentified Obama administration officials, said a final determination on whether to issue the sanctions was expected soon, possibly as early as the next two weeks. Suspicions that Chinese hackers were behind a series of data breaches in the United States have been an irritant in relations between the world’s two largest economies as President Xi Jinping prepares to make his first visit to the United States next month. Obama administration officials have said China is the top suspect in the massive hacking of a US government agency that compromised the personnel records of at least 4.2 million current and former govern...

By Pepe Escobar BANGKOK — China continues to grow at a not too shabby 7%. And yet, because of the yuan devaluation and the sharp drop in the stock market, in most Western capitals the narrative switched to Armageddon descended over an economic model that generated, over the years, six-fold growth in Chinese GDP. Few are aware that Beijing, simultaneously, is engaged in a thrice titanic task; to shift its growth vector from exports and massive investment to services; to tackle the negative and/or self-satisfied role of state-owned enterprises; and to deflate at least three bubbles — debt, real estate speculation and the stock market — in the context of a virtual global economic stagnation. All this while there is virtually no Western coverage of the China-led Eurasian trade integration push, which will help to eventually consolidate the Middle Kingdom as the largest economy in the world. And that brings us to a crucial subplot in the Big Picture: Southeast Asia. Four months from now, th...

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...