Syria

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Submitted by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

• Growing numbers of Belgian Muslims live in isolated ghettos where poverty, unemployment and crime are rampant. In Molenbeek, the unemployment rate hovers at around 40%. Radical imams aggressively canvass in search of shiftless youths to wage jihad against the West.

Submitted by Shelley Kasli via OrientalReview.org,

Russia’s decision to greatly reduce its military presence in Syria, coming as it did with little warning, has left the world struggling for explanations. Russia is to maintain a military presence at its naval base in Tartous and at the Khmeymim airbase. In fact Russia is “withdrawing without withdrawing”.

The partial withdrawal is seen by many as a message to the Assad government to not take Russia’s military aid for granted, and to be more flexible in the upcoming peace negotiations.

Israeli politicians including Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu would be happy if the Kurds in the Middle East carved out a State of their own. The Israelis are not shy about supporting a Kurdish State although the countries where the Kurds live- Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, strongly oppose the idea. Sputnik reports: Surprising as it may seem, Israel has long promoted cordial relations with the Kurds, particularly the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq (KRG).

Leaked Hillary Clinton emails from 2012 reveal that Google had sought to help insurgents overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.  Jared Cohen, Google’s head of “Google Ideas”, liaised with Clinton on how Google could get involved in helping the U.S. government to overthrow Assad. “Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool … that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from,” Cohen wrote in a July 2012 email to the Clinton team.