ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

BEIRUT: ISIS fighters killed 26 Syrian soldiers on Monday west of Palmyra, a monitoring group said, after days of advances by government forces backed by Syrian and Russian air cover. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that the Syrian army would soon recapture Palmyra from ISIS, which has held the desert city for nearly a year. Palmyra has both symbolic and military value as the site of ancient Roman-era ruins – mostly destroyed by the ultra-hard line Islamist group – and because of its location on a highway linking mainly government-held western Syria to ISIS's eastern stronghold. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting took place about 4 kilometers (2 miles) west of Palmyra. It was not possible to independently verify the death toll. Syria's state news agency SANA said the army and allied forces, backed by the Syrian air force, carried out "concentrated operations" against ISIS around Palmyra and the ISIS-held town of a...

By Lawrence Davidson  What is the difference between a textbook publisher giving into pressure from Christian fundamentalists seeking to censor the teaching of evolution, and a publisher giving in to Zionists seeking to censor awareness of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine? Neither phenomenon is a matter of opinion or perspective. One act of censorship denies facts established by scientific research. The other denies the documented violation of international law (for instance, the Fourth Geneva Convention) and multiple UN resolutions. So the answer to the question just asked is – there is no difference. In early March 2016 executives at McGraw-Hill took the extreme step of withdrawing from the market a published text, Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World, and then proceeded to destroy all the remaining books held in inventory. (Did they burn them?) Global Politics, which had been on the market since 2012, was a text designed by its authors to “offer students a number of lense...

After ISIL rocket attack killed US soldier, Pentagon announces more Marines will be deployed on the ground in Iraq. ISIL declared a 'caliphate' spanning from northwestern Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad in 2014 [Reuters] The US announced on Sunday it will put more troops on the ground in Iraq after a Marine was killed in an ISIL rocket barrage. Troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit will add to American forces already in Iraq battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), the Pentagon said. It was unclear exactly how many Marines would be deployed, but the move was made to bolster security at a coalition base near Makhmur on the frontlines with ISIL in northern Iraq. A US Marine was killed in an ISIL rocket attack at the base on Saturday, the Pentagon said, the second American combat death in the fight against the group. The rocket barrage occurred in the autonomous Kurdish region, where Baghdad has recently been deploying forces to pr...

By Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Fishman and David Miranda (Para ler a versão desse artigo em Português, clique aqui .) THE MULTIPLE, REMARKABLE crises consuming Brazil are now garnering substantial Western media attention . That’s understandable given that Brazil is the world’s fifth most populous country and eighth-largest economy; its second-largest city, Rio de Janeiro, is the host of this year’s Summer Olympics. But much of this Western media coverage mimics the propaganda coming from Brazil’s homogenized, oligarch-owned, anti-democracy media outlets and, as such, is misleading, inaccurate, and incomplete, particularly when coming from those with little familiarity with the country (there are numerous Brazil-based Western reporters doing outstanding work ). It is difficult to overstate the severity of Brazil’s multi-level distress. This short paragraph yesterday from the New York Times’s Brazil bureau chief, Simon Romero, conveys how dire it is: Brazil is suffering its worst econom...

Secretary of State Kerry urged President Obama to launch secret missile attacks inside Syria without admitting the U.S. role, a plan that Obama rejected, according to a new report cited by Gareth Porter. By Gareth Porter Jeffrey Goldberg’s newly published book-length article on Barack Obama and the Middle East includes a major revelation that brings Secretary of State John Kerry’s Syrian diplomacy into sharper focus: it reports that Kerry has sought on several occasions without success over the past several months to get Obama’s approval for cruise missile strikes against the Syrian government. That revelation shows that Kerry’s strategy in promoting the Syrian peace negotiations in recent months was based on much heavier pressure on the Assad regime to agree that President Bashar al-Assad must step down than was apparent. It also completes a larger story of Kerry as the primary advocate in the administration of war in Syria ever since he became Secretary of State in early 2013. Secre...

SANAA: Saudi-led air strikes on a market killed 119 people this week in northern Yemen’s rebel-held Hajja province, the United Nations said Thursday, nearly three times the previously reported death toll. Among those killed in Mastaba district on Tuesday were 22 children, while another 47 people were wounded, the UNICEF children’s agency said. It is one of the highest death tolls since the Saudi-led coalition launched a bombing campaign in support of the internationally recognised government against Huthi rebels and their allies in March last year. Medics and tribal sources had previously reported 41 people killed in the strikes, and a health official in Hajja said the dead were civilians. But a tribal chief close to the rebels on Wednesday told AFP that 33 of those killed were fighters of the Iran-backed Huthis. A coalition spokesperson said the strikes targeted “a militia gathering” in a place for buying and selling qat, a mild narcotic that is chewed throughout Yemen. “We strongl...

By Pepe Escobar Let’s start with some classic Russian politics. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov is drawing up Russia's economic strategy for 2016, including the government budget. Siluanov – essentially a liberal, in favor of foreign investment - will present his proposals to the Kremlin by the end of this month. So far, nothing spectacular. But then, a few days ago, Kommersant leaked that Russia's Security Council asked presidential aide Sergei Glazyev to come up with a separate economic strategy, to be presented to the council this week. This is not exactly a novelty, as the Russian Security Council in the past has asked small strategy groups for their economic assessment. The Security Council is led by Nikolai Patrushev, the former head of the Federal Security Service. He and Siluanov are not exactly on the same wavelength. And here’s where the plot thickens. Glazyev, a brilliant economist, is a Russian nationalist – sanctioned personally by the US. Glazyev is arguably going...

While Russia is withdrawing most of its forces from Syria, they could be deployed there again in a matter of hours if such a need arises, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated. He added that the Russian bases in Syria are well-protected. “Of course, if such a need arises, Russia can, in several hours, build up its forces in Syria to a size capable of dealing with an escalating situation and use the entire range of means at its disposal,” Putin said. “We wouldn’t like that. A military escalation is not our choice. We hope the parties involved would show common sense and that both the government and the opposition will stick to the peace process,” he added. Putin was summarizing the results of the Russian five-month-long anti-terror campaign in Syria at a solemn ceremony in Moscow. The Russian president said Moscow was open in saying from the start of the operation that it was a limited campaign with a set deadline. “We have created the conditions for a peace process. We have establish...