ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Philip Weiss January 13, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " Mondoweiss " - Last fall Secretary of State Kerry met privately with anti-Assad Syrian activists at the U.N. The meeting was secretly taped, and you can listen to the tape here:   The New York Times got a hold of the tape back in September and wrote a story about it . So did CNN . More on their accounts later. The thrust of the conversation was the mutual frustration of Kerry and the Syrians that Bashar al-Assad was still in power and able to commit atrocities with the support of the Russians, who don’t adhere to international law the way we Americans do. I’d recommend listening to the whole tape; but the conversation went something like this: The Syrians complained we aren’t helping enough. Kerry and his associates said we and the Saudis and Qatar and Turkey had provided huge amounts of aid to the rebels, who unfortunately were sort of aligned with extremists. “Nusra makes it hard,” Kerry said...

Source: alwaght.com Written by Evgeny Satanovsky; Originally appeared at VPK When Islamists become European constituent body The defeat of jihadi forces in Aleppo and the recapture of Palmyra by the Islamic State (ISIS) put into question the threats that Islamic fundamentalists pose not only in the Middle East, but also to Russia and the EU. First of all, there is the question of the continuation of the struggle by Islamists receiving support and orders from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey against Moscow. (We leave the hopes for a long term cooperation with Turkey to the “experts” that are trying to substantiate such thesis to the Russian government). Then, one may ask about the flow of jihadists leaving highly dangerous zones – where their lives are threatened – for the European “alternate airfield”. We will discuss the current situation in non-Middle Eastern countries and regions that were touched by radical Islamism by using the article specially written by F.O. Pleshunov and Y. B. S...

A photo of the first guidebook. Source: novayagazeta.ru The Russian daily ‘Novaya Gazeta’ has released photos of two Syria guideboocks allegedly distributed among members of battalion “Sever” (“North”), a chechen battalion from the Natonal Guard of Russia. The guidebooks were reportedly leaked to the daily by a member of the battalion. The first brochure appeares to be a kind of survival guidebook. It provides info on Syria in general, translation of common and military phrases from Russian to Arabic, and some common tips (for example about drinking water and avoiding to use social networks). The guidbook is heavily illustrated. Indeed, its credibility is questionable. There are serious doubts that Russian military servicemen need illustrations of common military equipment (battle tanks, pickups, armoured vehicles etc) and weapons (AK-47, RPG-7, mortar shells etc) to understand what is it. A photo of the first guidebook. Source: novayagazeta.ru The cover of the first guideboo...

C-SPAN’s regular footage was replaced by RT’s newscast from Moscow for 10 minutes, switching from their live coverage of proceedings in the House of Representatives on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  Follow Timothy Burke   ✔ @bubbaprog Here's the moment Russia Today took over the C-SPAN1 feed. Unclear what happened. RT aired for about ten minutes before C-SPAN1 came back. 8:49 PM - 12 Jan 2017     11,091 11,091 Retweets     8,310 8,310 likes The incident took place in the middle of a speech of Representative Maxine Waters (D-California) at 2:30pm ET. The situation was likely result of a common technical mistake, but speculation and conspiracy theories went viral afte the event. Some people even claimed that it was a kind of cyber attack. C-SPAN’s statement on the topic also contributed to the idea of the cyberwarfare. View image on Twitter  Follow CSPAN   ✔ @cs...

FOR 21 MONTHS, a coalition of nations led by Saudi Arabia has been relentlessly bombing Yemen, using U.S.- and U.K.-produced weapons and intelligence in a war that has devastated Yemen and killed well over 10,000 civilians . There is abundant evidence that the high civilian death toll in Yemen is the result of deliberate — not accidental — strikes by Saudi Arabia. During its air campaign, Saudi Arabia has bombed endless civilian targets — including homes, farms , markets , factories , water infrastructure , hospitals , and children’s schools — and has even gone so far as to use internationally banned cluster weapons, which are designed to inflict damage over a wide area and often remain lethal years after being dropped. But when secretary of state nominee and former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson was asked about Saudi Arabia’s use of cluster weapons during his confirmation hearing Wednesday, he declined to answer, and suggested that the way to discourage Saudi Arabia from hitting civilians...

By Glenn Greenwald In January, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further. This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.” Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, mu...

Written by Valentin Vasilescu; Originally appeared at Algora Blog Translated by Alice Decker Attempting to deduce the reasons behind Russia’s involvement in the conflict in Syria, we run into a number of unknowns. First, why were Russian planes in Syria that could have been equipped with 8–24 missiles or bombs furnished with only two bombs or missiles, all of them “smart” (KAB-250 S/LG, KAB-500 L/Kr, KAB-KAB-1500 L, 1500 K, Kh-29 L/T, Kh-25 T), guided by laser beam, GPS and TV/IR? These weapons are accurate to within 2–5 m. It is also unknown why the Russian fighter-bombers were sometimes kept in the air for an hour until the last Syrian civilian was removed from the target area. Don’t forget that the American B-52 bombers carpet bombed Vietnam, burying combatants along with the inhabited localities around them, and the US A-1 Skyrider, F-100, F-105, F-4, F-8, a-4, a-6, a-26 and B-57 planes dumped thousands of loads of napalm on Vietnamese villages. The procedure used by the Russians ...