ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

A general view shows a deserted street filled with debris of damaged buildings in Deir al-Zor March 5, 2014. Picture taken March 5, 2014. REUTERS/STRINGER BEIRUT - Islamic state militants killed dozens of people execution style in attacks on government-held areas in Syria's city of Deir al-Zor on Saturday, a source and a monitoring said. A source close to the Syrian government side said the Islamic State fighters killed at least 250 people, including pro-government fighters and their families when they attacked the neighborhoods of Begayliya and Ayash in the city. He said some of the casualties were beheaded. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the violence in the country through a wide network of local sources, said the militants killed dozens. "We have 60 people confirmed killed, but the number is big. The details are hard to get so far but the deaths are in dozens," the Observatory's head Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters. The Observatory said earli

CHINA is set to plunge the world into an economic crisis sending stock markets crashing by 75 per cent - with devastating consequences for the US and UK, a leading city expert has warned. By Lana Clements The sinking value of the Chinese currency is already crippling British industry as it can’t compete with China’s cheap exports. Other Western nations are also feeling the strain. And with even more to come experts have predicted an 'ice age' for the world’s economies – including Britain’s. Global deflation is going to wipe around 75 per cent in value off the American S&P stock market, as western firms will be unable to compete with cheap Chinese exports, according to analyst Albert Edwards from french bank Societe Generale. He gave the stark warning in an investment note to clients. And he blamed the upcoming 'carnage' on American central bank (the Fed) and its British and European counterparts for inflating prices in the first place. American Quantitative Easing (

By Dan Sanchez Before the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror, Louis XV predicted , “After me, the Deluge.” Before being overthrown, Libya’s secular dictator tried to warn the West of a new Reign of Terror, essentially foretelling, “After me, the Jihad.” This was disclosed with the recent release of phone conversations from early 2011 between Muammar Gaddafi and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The West was then gearing up to use unrest in Libya as a pretext for military intervention and regime change. Gaddafi desperately tried to convey through Blair the folly of such a war, pleading that he was trying to defend Libya from Al Qaeda, which had set up base in the country. He said: “They have managed to get arms and terrify people. people can’t leave their homes… It’s a jihad situation. They have arms and are terrorising people in the street.” Gaddafi’s warning went unheeded, and NATO, led by the U.S. and France, launched an air war that toppled Libya’s government. Later

Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test may be a last-ditch effort to get on the U.S. agenda before Obama leaves office and a hawkish new president comes in. By Christine Ahn (Photo: Gabriel Britto / Flickr) North Korea announced recently that it had successfully detonated its first hydrogen bomb. “This test is a measure for self-defense,” state media announced, “to firmly protect the sovereignty of the country and the vital right of the nation from the ever-growing nuclear threat and blackmail by the U.S.-led hostile forces.” South Korea, Japan, and China were swift to respond with condemnation, as was the UN Security Council, which issued a statement that North Korea’s test was a “clear violation of Security Council resolutions” and resolved to take “further significant measures.” Many observers, however, including nuclear weapons experts and government officials, doubt whether North Korea really did test a hydrogen bomb. “I don’t think this was a hydrogen bomb,” said Bill Richardson , a fo

When nuclear weapons become user-friendly, they will be used. By Russ Wellen The B-61-12 is a “dial-a-yield,” weapon, which means the explosive power can be tailored to its target. (Photo: Visokio.com) The B-61 is 12-foot-long, 700-pound thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb that has been a stalwart of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal since the 1960s. (Hey, at least it’s not as old as the B-52 bomber, which first flew in — you guessed it — 1952.) Its re-design, which now makes it the B-61-12, has generated even more controversy than nuclear weapons in general. Here are three of the sticking points. First, the cost of refurbishing the U.S. nuclear weapons program: Up to $1 trillion over 30 years, it does — under the department of thank-goodness-for-small favors — lend credence to those who think that the program will die a slow death due to budgetary attrition. Second, the B-61-12’s re-design: Is it actually a new weapon or just “modernization,” in accord with the administration’

Our wildly inflated fear of terrorism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. By Peter Certo State of the Union screen grab by Steve Baker / Flickr. One in 3.5 million: That’s your annual risk of dying from a terrorist attack in the United States, at least according to Cato analyst John Mueller. Rounded generously, that comes out to roughly 3 one-hundred thousandthsof a percentage point, or 0.00003 percent. And this, according to a recent Gallup poll cited by The New York Times , is the percentage of Americans “worried that they or someone in their family would be a victim of terrorism”: 51. So that’s 51 percent of Americans who think a terrorist attack against themselves is sufficiently likely to warrant their personal concern, versus a 0.00003 percent chance it might actually happen. If you’ll forgive my amateur number crunching, that means Americans are overestimating their personal exposure to terrorism by a factor of approximately 1.7 million. It’s no wonder people play the lottery. A pub

By Ian Sinclair The language and framing we use to speak about an issue can either illuminate and help to explain or it can obfuscate and limit our understanding, and thus keep possible solutions out of reach. Driven by the media’s McCarthy-style witch hunt of anyone who does not publicly denounce Islamic State (IS) in the strongest terms humanly possible, politicians and commentators have fallen into the dangerous habit of simplistically defining and dismissing IS. They are an “evil death cult”, the Prime Minister told parliament in December 2015. Following her leader’s example, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan called them a “murderous death cult” on BBC Question Time. Not to be outdone, the neutral BBC’s Andrew Neil named them “A bunch of loser jihadists” and “Islamist scumbags” carrying out “Beheading, crucifixions, amputations, slavery, mass murder, medieval squalor… a death cult barbarity that would shame the Middle Ages.” The Left has scarcely been better. Appearing on the BBC

By Pepe Escobar Just like Lazarus, there were reasons to believe the Afghan peace process might have stood a chance of being resurrected this past Monday in Islamabad, as four major players – Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and China – sat together at the same table. The final communiqué though was not exactly ground breaking: “The participants emphasized the immediate need for direct talks between representatives of the Government of Afghanistan and representatives from Taliban groups in a peace process that aims to preserve Afghanistan’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.” A week before the Islamabad meeting, while in the Persian Gulf, I had an extremely enlightening conversation with a group of Afghan Pashtuns. After the ice was broken, and it was established I was not some Sean Penn-style shadowy asset with a dodgy agenda, my Pashtun interlocutors did deliver the goods. I felt I was back in Peshawar in 2001, only a few days before 9/11. The first groundbreaker was that two