ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Moon Of Alabama Last night Elijah J. Magnier tweeted a small essay about the mistakes the Islamic State leader and his predecessor made in Iraq and Syria. Then followed a shorter essay about Jabhat al-Nusra and the development in Syria. As he is one of the most knowledgeable experts on the war in Syria and Iraq his thoughts deserve a wider discussion. This is my summary of his tweets on the Islamic State : Abu Mus'ad al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), ignored directives from Aymen al-Zawaheri, the operational leader of al-Qaeda central, to not attack the Shia in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi attacked Shia and Sunnis who disagreed with him and ignited a sectarian war. Had he only attacked the U.S. occupiers the Shia of Iraq, and the anti-U.S. states around Iraq (Iran, Syria) would have been with him. He could have gained much influence over all Iraq but for his (bloody) mistake. The leader of the Islamic State (the former AQI) Abu Bakr al Baghdadi made more than one...

By Jeremy R. Hammond The New York Times tosses previously reported facts down the memory hole, whitewashing the US’s role in Syria leading ultimately to the rise of ISIS. The Media’s Longstanding Propaganda Narrative I have written repeatedly about how the Times‘ reporting serves as propaganda, manufacturing consent for a US interventionist policy in Syria, as the Times has repeatedly advocated. For instance, in “ NYT’s Bill Keller’s Propaganda Case for War with Syria ” (May 2013), I wrote: I find myself commenting again and again and again and again and again on how the U.S. media (following the lead of America’s “newspaper of record”) is being willfully dishonest with the public and attempting to whitewash the actual U.S. role in the Syrian conflict by tossing relevant facts down the memory hole; namely, the facts that (1) the CIA has already been coordinating the flow of arms to the rebels, and (2) most of those arms have indeed ended up in the hands of Islamic extremists. My p...

By Mike Whitney The UN-sponsored Syrian peace talks, which began on Friday in Geneva, will be boycotted by the main Syrian opposition group which has insisted that Russia stop bombing its positions while negotiations are conducted. To appreciate how ridiculous these demands are, one would have to imagine a similar scenario taking place in the United States. Let’s say, for example, that Ammon Bundy, the crackpot leader of the armed militia that seized the federal wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon, demanded that the FBI and all other federal agents vamoose while the UN convened negotiations between his representatives and the Obama administration for the establishment of a transitional government that would remove Obama from power after 18 months while rewriting the constitution so it better reflected the far-right political and religious convictions of Bundy and his gaggle of ne’er-do-well followers. Does that seem like a reasonable proposition to you? This is the context in whi...

Finally serious economists are considering a position I have been maintaining and writing about since the 2008 financial meltdown. Whatever its name— erasure, repudiation, abolishment, cancellation, jubilee—debt forgiveness, will have to eventually emerge forefront in global efforts to solve an ongoing systemic financial crisis.  The US Rothschild Controlled Media (RCM) has completely BLACKED OUT/CENSORED any news about Iceland’s DEBT FORGIVENESS. If you Google “ICELAND FORGIVES ENTIRE POPULATION OF MORTGAGE DEBT” you will get ‘About 359,000 Results’. Not one of them is a Media Outlet in the US. Not one single Major or Minor news outlet in America has mentioned a single word about this story.  This is TOTAL MEDIA CENSORSHIP and a TOTAL MEDIA BLACKOUT, and it should tell you who owns and runs the Media in America. We are allowed to see a tortured, bleeding, dying Gaddafi anywhere, but we are not allowed to know about Debt Forgiveness.  If you Google “DEBT FO...

Japan says it has deployed two Patriot missile interceptors in Tokyo to counter North Korea’s activity. The deployment comes amid reports that Pyongyang is preparing for a space rocket launch. Two ground-to-air Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) launchers were installed near the Defense Ministry’s headquarters on Saturday morning, according to the Japan News website. The Ministry said they had been set up as a safeguard in case it became necessary to shoot down a North Korean missile or any debris that might fall from one onto Japanese territory. #Japan again deploys PAC-3 interceptors in case #DPRK launches ballistic missile. https://t.co/jc5nXIcJ9n #VOAalert pic.twitter.com/O2R2OQG6MQ — Steve Herman (@W7VOA) January 29, 2016 The ground-to-air units are to be placed mainly in the Okinawa Prefecture and Tokyo metropolitan area, as there are fears that these are the two locations North Korean missiles might hit. Earlier this week, Japan’s Defense Minister, General Nakatani, ann...

A former Oxford schoolboy has denied reports he has joined Isis in an exclusive interview with The Independent – but labelled David Cameron "an evil creature"and described the US-led bombing of Syria as a “diseased” plot designed to kill off all Muslims "one by one". In his first interview since reports accused him of becoming the first white British man to travel to Syria and join the jihadist group, Jack Letts insists he has travelled to the so-called Islamic State to spread the word of Allah and help "take down" the government of Bashar al-Assad. "I can speak Arabic and English," he said. "That’s like my only skill. I’ve spent efforts to take down the Syrian government." In the interview, conducted over messaging app Telegram, Mr Letts, who has been widely dubbed "Jihadi Jack", confirms he is still in Syria and admits he will probably be put in prison if he tries to return to the UK. He also calls on British people to con...

Kurdish forces, close to sealing the border, must beware - President Erdogan is unpredictable A month before Turkey shot down a Russian bomber which it accused of entering its airspace, Russian military intelligence had warned President Vladimir Putin that this was the Turkish plan. Diplomats familiar with the events say that Putin dismissed the warning, probably because he did not believe that Turkey would risk provoking Russia into deeper military engagement in the Syrian war. In the event, on 24 November last year a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian bomber, killing one of the pilots, in an attack that had every sign of being a well-prepared ambush. Turkey claimed that it was responding to the Russian plane entering its airspace for 17 seconds, but the Turkish fighters made every effort to conceal themselves by flying at low altitude, and they appear to have been on a special mission to destroy the Russian aircraft. The shooting-down – the first of a Russian plane by a Nato po...

The IS attack on the neighbourhood was carried out early Saturday, with several suicide bombers blowing themselves up at government forces' positions, the TV report said . The terrorist militia IS has arranged a massacre in Syria - the jihadists killed 85 civilians near the town of Deir al-sor included. A Russian air force cargo plane drops off humanitarian aid in the region around Deir al-Zor. "And Prime Minister Al-Halqi stressed that these defeated groups carry out these massacres to cover up their repeated defeats, and that their days on Syrian territory are numbered". The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring body, said people were taken from areas in the north-west of the city. Isis  casualties have been reported as 42 by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The state-run SANA news agency said that most of those killed in day-long attacks on Deir el-Zour Saturday were elderly people, women and children . Reuters was unable to independ...