Epstein Secrets

which large numbers of people are permitted to assemble-have spread from Deraa to at least a dozen other cities including Baniyas and Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, as well as to the northern city of Homs and some suburbs of Damascus. * With the Alawi-dominated regime under threat, the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_0300

her cities including Baniyas and Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, as well as to the northern city of Homs and some suburbs of Damascus. * With the Alawi-dominated regime under threat, the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030083 --- PAGE BREAK --- 25 struggle is showing ominous sectarian overtones. At Baniyas, where

In truth, it covers up a regime dominated by religious fanaticism against the minorities. Do French leaders want the Muslims to have control over the Alawi people in order to throw them into misery? • We can sense today how the Muslim citizens of Damascus force the Jews who live among them to sign a docu

tting the 2010 flotilla go ahead and putting Turkish lives in harm's way. If Kilicdaroglu were brave enough, said Erdogan, he would "criticize the Mediterranean pirates instead of being a sycophant." (Kilicdaroglu has replied in kind, criticizing Erdogan for accepting a prize from a U.S.-based Jewish group.

choose their friends from all communities, sectarianism remains a real problem in Syria. The ruling family was born into the historically oppressed Alawi community. The Ottomans regarded Alawis as heretics rather than as "people of the book," and Alawis -- unlike Christians, Jews, and mainstream Shi

March, Syrian friends have told me, its shabiha militia tried to spark social breakdown in Latakia by pretending to be a Sunni mob while it shot up Alawi areas and an Alawi mob as it terrorized Sunni neighborhoods. Syrians say the regime is arming Alawi villages and wishfully thinking of a repeat of

s in Syria are to strengthen the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) vis-à-vis Iran and to undermine Russia's power and influence in the Middle East and Mediterranean. Israel shares the U.S. interest in cutting off Iran and Russia's reach into the Levant. However, security considerations surrounding the unknown v

e a rat out of his drainage pipe in Libya? Or something profoundly cruel, such as the YouTube video of a Syrian man buried alive by shovel-wielding Alawi thugs taunting the victim to recite "There is no God but God and Bashar is his Prophet"? Or, alternatively, will we look back and see photos of Sau

o in which an old ally takes a bullet. Nor does it want radical Islamists to take over the Arab state that hosts the last Russian naval base in the Mediterranean. Hence, Lavrov says, the Kremlin is not supportive of regime change in Damascus. But it may have no choice. Moscow considers the uprising in Syria

some extent, the handiwork of the United States and its European allies. This perception is fundamentally wrong: Assad's is an oppressive, minority-Alawi regime. It came to power via a 1970 coup. In 1982, the current dictator's father, then president Hafez al- Assad, brought artillery and killed over