ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By HELENE COOPER TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — Kilo Company of the Third Battalion, Second Marines was deep in a simulated firefight on a recent morning here in the high California desert. A group of Marines on the aptly named Machine Gun Hill unleashed round after round of live fire as another group of Marines tried to seize the surrounding valley from an imaginary enemy. “They’re dug in,” shouted Brian Somers, the chief warrant officer of Kilo Company, describing the “enemy” forces, supposedly supported by a real state with real resources and who were theoretically returning fire. “This is conventional warfare.” After 15 years of fighting terrorists, the United States military is learning how to fight big armies again. From the Middle East to South Asia to Africa, American forces for the past decade and a half have fought counterinsurgency and counterterrorist campaigns — essentially smaller-scale guerrilla warfare — rather than the large land wars of the past. But Russia’s invas

by Tarek Fatah, The Toronto Sun Western media have fawned over Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, and others seeking to shift blame for the mass murder away from radical Islamism. In the wake of the Islamic terrorist attack on a Florida gay nightclub, the media's coverage has been almost apologetic. To go by the coverage, it's as if an Islamist jihadi didn't just massacre 49 Americans, and the West bombed Mecca instead. Despite the apologetic tone of the media, the words of a spokesman for the Florida mosque attended by ISIS-inspired jihadist Omar Mateen, were inadvertently insightful. This mosque wasn't only frequented by Mateen. Another congregant blew himself up in Syria while serving ISIS. Asked by Erin Burnett on CNN what was being preached at this mosque that would motivate two young men in the congregation to become ISIS jihadi terrorists, its spokesman was succinct: "It's like any other mosque, it's simple.&

By Robert J. Burrowes There is a long history of social critics and progressive thinkers offering critiques of human society. Among those who are better known, Karl Marx offered a critique of capitalism, anarchists have critiqued the state, Mohandas K. Gandhi offered a critique of industrial society, Sigmund Freud and Herbert Marcuse offered critiques of civilization, and feminists have critiqued patriarchy. In addition, critiques of colonial/industrial society by indigenous people, critiques of white society by people of color, critiques of modern industrial society by environmentalists and cultural historians as well as critiques of technocratic society by a succession of scholars have been presented. While these and other critiques have much to offer, if we want to trace the origin of the dysfunctional and violent human behaviours that now threaten human extinction, I believe it is necessary to examine what has been happening since the Neolithic (agricultural) revolution some 12,000

By Andre Vltchek These days you may get hugs from many common people in the Middle East or Latin America when you say that you are Russian, but such emotional outbursts are mainly intuitive. After being bombarded by extremely effective and negative Western propaganda for years and decades, people of the world still know very little, if anything, about two enormous countries that have been proudly resisting the Western imperialism – Russia and China. I recently spent five weeks in Latin America, where the West openly supports the entire wide spectrum of counter-revolutionary movements, literally overthrowing one progressive government after another. I worked alongside the left-wing intellectuals there, helping to define the way forward, to rescue the Process. But I was shocked by how little is known there about both Russia and China – for decades two natural allies of the patriotic Latin American Left. “Are you for Putin or against?” And: “Is China really as capitalist now as we read?”

France and Belgium are facing a fresh wave of “imminent” terrorist attacks by the Daesh Takfiri terrorists returning from the conflict zones in the Middle East, Belgian security and intelligence sources say. The note from Belgium's anti-terror unit to police, which was published by Derniere Heure newspaper, warned on Wednesday, "Fighters travelling without passports left Syria about a week and a half ago in order to reach Europe by boat via Turkey and Greece." French police officers observe a minute of silence during a ceremony in memory of a French police officer and his wife, killed on June 13 by a man claiming allegiance to the Daesh Takfiri terrorists, at the Eveche police station in Marseille on June 16, 2016. (AFP photo) "These people are thought to have split into two groups - one for Belgium, the other for France in order to commit terror attacks in groups of two," the memo sent to police and security services across Belgium said, adding, &q

Beirut: Shooting incident at the Pulse night club in Orlando Florida was condemned in every corner of the world, while in another part of the world nobody cares to take note of the massacre happening in Syria. People around the world have got so used to hearing about civilian deaths in war ravaged Syria, that they have even lost count on the number of casualties but recently the conflict has intensified. In the first week of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, 224 people were killed. Majority of these deaths are blamed on the bombings by Syrian and Russian warplanes, an allegation Russia has denied. Between 6 and 12 June – the first week of the Islamic holy month of fasting – at least 148 civilians, including 50 children and 15 women, were killed as helicopters dropped “explosive barrel” bombs, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The situation has further worsened with the presence of ISIS and other anti-government forces who are fighting against each other for cont

Video Orlando shooting victim says he played dead for 3 hours to stay alive. A witness who survived the terrorist attack inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando recounts his interactions with the terrorist who held hostages on ABC's 20/20 Posted June 14, 2016 First, the man tells how the terrorist confiscated everyone's cell phones. "Then he asked, ‘Are you guys black?’ And a couple of them said ‘Yes,’" the victim recalled. "And he said, ‘I don’t have an issue with the blacks.’" "He got on the phone, I don't know if it was with the news or the police, telling them that America needs to stop bombing ISIS, he called somebody on the phone. Stop bombing ISIS in Syria," the witness reported. "And then he called somebody else that he knew, and he mentioned that he was the fourth shooter, and there were three others, one with I believe a female name, who was playing dead, and she had a bomb vest." The witness says that he played dead for thre

By Tracy Connor and Erik Ortiz The gunman who opened fire at a gay Florida nightclub early Sunday, shooting over 100 people, had called 911 moments before to pledge allegiance to the leader of ISIS, law enforcement sources told NBC News. But as investigators try to determine if extremism motivated Omar Mateen, 29, to attack the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, his family believes he was pushed over the edge by pure hate against the LGBT community. Various law enforcement officials have identified the shooter as Mateen, who was born in New York and lived in Port St. Lucie on Florida's eastern shores. The attack, which claimed at least 50 lives, is considered the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. While authorities are still investigating what motivated the gunman, the shooting is being considered an act of terrorism. Mateen, who was carrying a handgun and AR-15-type rifle, died after a SWAT team stormed the club, police said. The shooter, who worked in security, according to the fa