ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

To many, the anecdote described below will sound far-fetched, and logical minds may suspect that the Vietnam vet in the story created the “incident” himself. But as those who lived through that period may remember, representatives of the covert side of government did far worse — and often. Infiltration, intimidation, framing, and more were all part of the arsenal against the “disloyal.” No method was deemed too severe. Today, we may find ourselves in a comparable period. Incidents covered by WhoWhatWhysuch as the fiery death of journalist Michael Hastings and the open statements that Edward Snowden should be assassinated remind us to take nothing for granted. (To see our stories on these threats, please go here here , here, here, here, and here.) The essay below is by the father of “Deep Politics” analysis, Peter Dale Scott . It reminds us that, too often, it is not the wild-sounding that is the fiction — but the constant assurances that everything is a-ok, that our soci

The Paris and Brussels attacks are blowback from what Islamic State terrorists see as betrayal by Western benefactors who thought using jihadists could bring “regime change” in Syria, says Pakistani analyst Nauman Sadiq. By Nauman Sadiq France under President Nicolas Sarkozy played a lead role in fomenting the insurgency against the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011, and Sarkozy’s successor, Francois Hollande, has been on the forefront of supporting the Sunni militants in Syria against the Alawite-Shi’a regime of Bashar al-Assad. This arrangement of an informal pact between the Western powers and the Sunni jihadists of the Middle East against the Shi’a-Iranian axis worked well – at least for the Western powers and the Sunni jihadists – up to August 2014, when Obama Administration made an about-face on its previous “regime change” policy in Syria and started conducting air strikes against one group of Sunni jihadists battling against the Assad regime, the Islamic State. Journalist James

Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) militants have reportedly used poisonous gas in an attack on a Syrian military airbase located in Deir Ez-zor, the largest city in the eastern part of the country, RIA Novosti cited a military source as saying. “The Daesh [derogatory Arabic name for IS] militants attacked the military airfield in Deir Ez-zor with shells containing a poisonous chemical substance. The defenders of the airbase have reported that a number of soldiers were choking,” the source said. This latest report adds weight to previous evidence implicating IS in using various forms of poisonous gas to attack targets. Kurdish deputies in the Turkish parliament have previously accused Turkey of supplying Islamic State and other jihadist groups inside Syria with chemical weapons to fight the Syrian government. In an interview with RT, a spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia said that Turkey had provided a clear transit route for the chemical weapons that were deployed against th

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and capitalist corporations that support the loosening of foreign employment are at the bottom ladder of evolving into yet another cultural wipeout. Indeed, one only needs to visit major cities in Europe including Brussels and Paris to know that yesteryear seems like a distant dream. After all, issues related to crime, the breakdown of the social fabric in certain parts of these cities, the specter of terrorism, issues related to narcotics, and other important negative factors – all point to deterioration and increasingly divided areas. In other words, exclusive zones are in a short-distance of “no-go areas.” Therefore, it could well be that certain mega-capitalist corporations and sectors, along with the current leader of Japan, are on the crest of following an uncertain cultural and ethnic future based on the European disease that is dividing many nations. If Japan needs to follow the multi-ethnic reality of certain European nations like Belgium,

Like many conflicts, it shows the weakness of the current international system that obsesses over arbitrary borders that date back a hundred years. Over the weekend, fighting erupted in the Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. As many as 30 soldiers were killed on both sides and there were also civilian casualties. An Azerbaijani helicopter was reported to have been shot down and reports noted the involvement of heavy artillery and tanks in the battle over a contested region that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but functions as an autonomous Armenian-run self-declared republic. This is an incredibly complex situation that threatens to draw in Turkey and Russia, as well as other regional powers, such as Israel and Iran, all of whom have relations and interests in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and long and convoluted histories with both. For some, the conflict has echoes of a Muslim-Christian confrontation, but others will see echoe

K.N. Pandita In October 1993, I was in Brussels attending the Socialist Group of European Parliament’s seminar on Kashmir. Dr. Farooq Abdullah and Prof. Bhim Singh were also there. A group from PoK lead by Amanullah Khan of JKLF was also attending. Around midnight, my telephone rang and a local friend on the other end said that Amanullah Khan had been arrested. The Indian government had issued a red-corner letter to Interpol wanting his arrest for the murder of Indian diplomat Mhatre in London. The next day, the British Parliament passed a resolution demanding the Belgian government release Amanullah Khan forthwith. Belgium obliged. I asked my Belgian friend, who, I knew, had close contacts with the Pakistanis how the release came about that soon. She said,” Brussels is the hotbed of jihadis in Europe.” During the past year, terrorist attacks have occurred in many places, including Paris, Turkey, San Bernardino, Israel, Toronto, Ivory Coast, Pathankot, and more recently Belgium. These

Every time we tweet, retweet, write a blog post, or publish an article about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, we become unwilling combatants in a decades long war that, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we know very little about. The so-called ‘frozen conflict’ (a cleverly configured yet analytically useless oxymoron if there ever was one) is less about the contested territory that spawned it, and more about deflecting attention away from two illiberal regimes that have grown disparagingly repressive and inattentive to the needs of their people. In this sense, the attention we give it, void any meaningful details about the conditions on the front, or developments leading to its resolution, end up boosting, in one way or another, these regime’s efforts to one-up each other in the world of social media and world opinion. Both the Azerbaijani and Armenian governments have spent enormous sums on building up their armed forces, while their economies have grown increasingly fragile, and th

Exclusive: Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal remains a top global security threat, as Islamic jihadists penetrate many of the nation’s political, educational and military institutions, says Jonathan Marshall. By Jonathan Marshall Dozens of world leaders are arriving in Washington, D. C. for the fourth Nuclear Security Summit, a biennial event dedicated to minimizing the threat of loose nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations. The summit couldn’t be more timely in view of recent revelations that militants linked to the Islamic State recruited two employees at a Belgian nuclear plant where an insider in 2014 drained thousands of gallons of lubricating oil, severely damaging its turbines. A nuclear test detonation carried out in Nevada on April 18, 1953. The summit also comes just days after North Korea released a video threatening a nuclear first strike against Washington — an unrealistic but unsettling boast from one of the world’s most repressive and impenet