No-Fly Zone over Syria

DAMASCUS/BERLIN/WASHINGTON (Own report) – German government advisors are calling for intensifying the military engagement in the Syrian war. According to an article published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), western countries “must seriously re-think their original strategy” for overthrowing the Assad government, because it had placed too much emphasis on the “promotion of civilian structures.” The establishment of a no-fly zone over the entire Syrian airspace would be one of the necessities. At the same time, demands are being raised in the USA to cooperate with the Assad government and Iran in the war against IS. The US once had even “allied with Stalin to fight Hitler,” reasons an influential US foreign policy expert. The demand is being opposed, not only in Germany but also in the USA, where a former CIA analyst is calling for the establishment of a conventional Syrian exile army in a neighboring country, which, in two to three years, should intervene in Syria.

Collateral Beneficiary

LONDON/BERLIN (Own report) – Despite the “No” in the Scottish secession referendum, experts predict that the vote will, in the long run, have far-reaching geopolitical consequences. Given the high proportion of secession supporters, London will have to begin reorganizing its state structures. Some of the measures now in discussion are drastic and raise the question “of where power lies in the UK.” Over the next few years, Great Britain will be preoccupied with itself and its global role will shrink in the medium – perhaps even in the long – term. The “special relationship” between London and Washington will therefore become “less special,” concludes the president of the influential US think tank “Council on Foreign Relations.” The shift in US global policy from the Atlantic to the Pacific could be accelerated: “Europe” is no longer “the center of geopolitical competition.” However, Germany will be the beneficiary of British weakness.

How the U.S. Is Vulnerable to Terrorism in Space

Space terrorism is a growing threat to U.S. national security, according to a new report.

And an attack on a U.S. satellite—or damage to one from another country’s debris—could have astronomical effects on national security, says the report from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Putin’s KGB/FSB Converging with New IMF Banking FSB

The veterans of Russia’s KGB/FSB were chuckling to themselves, no doubt, as Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) announced his pleasure at Russia’s assumption of the presidency of the Group of Twenty (G20)* nations for 2013. Putin’s “strategic agenda proposed by Russia for the G20 in 2013” is loaded with favorable references to the FSB. The FSB acronym in Putin’s “strategic agenda” is not a reference to the dreaded Russian secret police (successor to the Soviet KGB and its earlier incarnations as the NKVD and the Cheka), however; it is a reference to the Financial Stability Board, a new institution created by the G20 leaders in 2009, ostensibly to deal with the economic crisis.

Nevertheless, the “coincidence” of choosing a name for this new, secretive global financial police with the same acronym as the Putin’s feared agency is oddly apropos. The G20’s FSB is a shadowy financial power that is headquartered inside another even more secretive, shadowy global financial powerbase, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland.Despite repeated appeals to accountability and transparency in the FSB Charter, the FSB — like the BIS and the Central Banks whose heads compose the Plenary that governs the FSB — operates in murky opaqueness, outside the controls of the U.S. Congress, national parliaments, or any constitutional constraints.

Chinese Hackers Suspected in Cyber Attack on Council on Foreign Relations

Computer hackers traced to China carried out an advanced cyber espionage attack against one of America’s most elite foreign policy web groups – the website of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

According to private computer-security forensic specialists, the hacking incident involved a relatively new type of ploy called a “drive-by” website cyber attack that was detected around 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday.

The specialists, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the attack involved penetrating the computer server that operates the New York City-based CFR’s website and then using the pirated computer system to attack CFR members and others who visited or “drove by” the site.