ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

As negotiations between the major state actors in the Syrian conflict continue without a solid solution; Turkey has used the confusion on the ground to continue military actions to gain territory. The targets include both US and Russian allies – the two leading nations in the Syrian negotiations – leaving Turkey in an increasingly lonely quest to retain dominance. The “cessation of hostilities”, opening besieged areas to humanitarian aid and facilitating talks between the Assad regime and Syrian opposition are agreed to be the first plausible stepping stones of negotiations taking place in Munich . Still; even this low bar seems out of reach with recent counterproductive actions by military actors in and around Syria. The United States and Russia; still in disagreement over visions for the future Syrian government, have agreed that the nation’s best hope is to be kept intact to restore control and order . The largest roadblock – the future of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad – continu

By Justin King  -    Langley, Virginia -  As more and more evidence mounts that the US government was secretly assisting the Islamic State, it might be time to point out a few instances when the Central Intelligence Agency created secret armies. The current  theory  suggests the US secretly supported the Islamic State so the Islamists would destabilize the government of Syrian President Assad. If that seems out of the question, remember the CIA once started a war over bananas… literal bananas. Cuba:  Probably the best known secret army. Castro nationalized the assets of western companies after his government took power,  so the US decided to overthrow the government of Cuba and install a puppet regime. As with most of the armies backed by the US intelligence establishment, it failed. Miserably. The Bay of Pigs invasion saw  1400 US-trained Cubans  surrender to Castro’s forces within 24 hours. El Salvador:  The US-supported Salvadoran government faced opposition from communist rebel

In his January 2016 State of the Union Address, US President Barack Obama proudly declared that «We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined», which is a startling and indeed repulsive boast. What is less surprising is the US decision to refocus military spending, thus boosting shares in military industry companies. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) calculates that spending was higher than the next seven countries, rather than eight, but the message is still there: Following the President’s statement, on February 2 his Defence Secretary Ashton Carter gave a speech on defence affairs at the Economic Club in Washington. The Economic Club is proud of the fact that «For over 25 years [it] has provided a forum for prominent business and government leaders who have influenced economic and public policy both here and abroad. Members represent over 600 businesses and organizations [in Washington, DC] that are at the forefront of the private

By Finian Cunningham Less than five months after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered military intervention in Syria, the five-year war has been completely transformed. Peace is far from certain as a tentative truce this week will attest. The conflict may even escalate. But what Russia’s intervention has certainly achieved is to squeeze out into the open the poisonous forces of regime change that have brought Syria to its dire condition. Not only is the Syrian state pulled back from the brink of collapse into a terrorist-run failed entity, as befell «NATO liberated» Libya, but the Russian air strikes like a surgical operation have lanced the noxious inflammation festering in Syria. All sorts of poisons are now oozing and being exposed, primarily the nefarious roles played by Western powers, their regional allies, and the toxic lies propounded by the Western news media to cover for crimes against peace. If it were not for the gravity of human suffering, the situation could be seen a

Moon of Alabama In March 2014 tape recordings of a meeting between the Turkish then Foreign Minister Davutoglu, the chief of the Turkish intelligence MIT Hakan Fidan and others leaked to the public. They talked about a false flag attack on Turkey to be used as a justification form a Turkish attack on Syria. The new was mostly ignored by the "western" main stream media. As I wrote about the tape: The major points from my view: Turkey has delivered 2,000 trucks of weapons and ammunition to the insurgents in Syria. There are plans for false flag attacks on Turkey or Turkish property to justify an attack from Turkey on Syria. The Turkish military has great concerns going into and fighting Syria. The general atmosphere between these deciders is one of indecisiveness. Everyone seems to be unclear what Erdogan wants and is waiting for clear orders from above. Shortly before the meeting the U.S. military presented fresh plans for a no-fly zone over Syria. Consider those 2014 plans

By Moon Of Alabama The Syrian Arab Army and the YPG troops of the Syrian Kurds are making good progress in the Azaz pocket. The pocket formed after the Syrian army cut through the "rebel" corridor between Aleppo city and the Turkish border. The aim now is to push all foreign proxy forces who are still in that pocket (green) back north into Turkey and to get full control of the border. The Syrian-Russian command decided to let the YPG (yellow) have the fun of cleaning the pocket only to taunt the Turkish President Erdogan. Erdogan has a serious domestic policy problems when the Kurdish forces gain control in parts of Syria that the wannabe Sultan Erdogan regarded as sacred neo-Ottoman ground. His court jester, the Prime Minister Davutoglu, announced that his country would not allow the town of Azaz to fall to Kurdish fighters. He will have to eat a flock of craws over that. The Turks are firing artillery from Turkish ground in the north onto Kurdish position in the po

Share Tweet Email   2 Don't panic! Don't panic! BBC The UK's Ministry of Defence saw a significant spike in security breaches last year, the government has confirmed. Figures released in Parliament on Friday revealed that security incidents—including "cyber attacks"—had rocketed almost 40 percent in 2015. Defence minister Mark Lancaster said that the MoD had recorded 2,145 breaches last year, compared with 1,547 in 2014. Enlarge / Table shows number of security breaches at the UK's Ministry of Defence, sans breakout figures for "cyber attacks." MoDLabour MP Kevan Jones asked the under-secretary of state, in a written parliamentary question, to disclose unauthorised entries to military bases, thefts or losses of classified material, other security breaches, and successful Internet-based attacks on the Whitehall department. However, on that final request, the minister declined to offer a breakdown. "I am withholding the informatio

By Dan Seitz It’s popular, in media, to depict governments as vast machines that know exactly what they’re doing. The truth, though, is a government is just a group of people, with the same weaknesses and fallacies of people. The NSA is no different, whether it’s making AT&T do all the work or blatantly violating your privacy for laughs . And that would be fine if one of the NSA’s methods of blowing off work wasn’t using what amounts to a marketing algorithm to decide who’s getting killed by drone strikes. And it’s a badly engineered one, to boot. Ars Technica has a detailed breakdown of the NSA’s SKYNET program . Which is an apt name, because SKYNET is a “big data” application that pulls metadata from cell phones, like where you called and who you talked to, and puts it to a machine-learning algorithm. It’s built on some questionable assumptions, as well: If you turn off your phone or let your buddy borrow it, the algorithm marks it as an attempt to avoid surveillance. Ba