While everyone is still reeling from the State of the Union and its detractors……I will go in a different direction…..I will write about real news and leave the crap to the amateurs…..

Now on to important stuff…….

I have heard many pros and cons on climate change…..and if you bring it up the whole blogoshere explodes in finger pointing, recriminations, insults and damn right ugliness….but I read tht there is one more thing that we can blame on the issue of climate change…….SYRIA!

Say what?

(Newser) – Before the uprising against Bashar al-Assad, Syria was stuck in a four-year drought the UN reportedly called the country’s worst in decades. In 2008, a US embassy cable revealed by WikiLeaks predicted potential mass migration due to the weather—and the cable was right. “By 2010, roughly 1 million Syrian farmers, herders, and their families were forced off the land into already overpopulated and underserved cities,” writes Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. They received little help from Assad’s government, which, according to a UN rep, said economic and social issues following the drought were “beyond our capacity as a country to deal with.”

Many of those refugees became “willing recruits” for the movement against Assad, Friedman explains. Indeed, “today, you can’t understand the Arab awakenings—or their solutions—without considering climate, environment, and population stresses,” Friedman notes. The drought ended in 2010, but with the country torn by civil war, a future drought could be even more disastrous. And Syria can’t expect help from other countries facing disasters of Superstorm Sandy proportions. Friedman’s warning to Saudi Arabia and Iran, who, he notes, are “funding the proxy war”: “You’re fighting for control of a potential human/ecological disaster zone.” It’s not the first time climate change has been blamed in Syria; click for Friedman’s full column.

Then there is Israel……..

There has been a lot of back and forth with this situation……and now the world is started boycotting Israel and its goods…..

The international pressure on Israel to cease settlement-building and reach an agreement with the Palestinians is beginning to directly affect its economic prospects as European investment funds start to rethink their connections to the Jewish state.

PGGM, the second-largest pension fund in Holland, recently said it would divest its holdings in Israeli banks, citing concerns over their work in the settlements.

According to a report in the Financial Times this week, the largest Dutch pension fund, ABP, and two Scandinavian investment firms, are now considering similar steps and have asked the Israeli banks for clarifications

Business leaders at the Breaking the Impasse forum in Davos said in a statement: “We know that if Israel wants a stable economy, a good future and continued growth, we must reach an agreement. The world is beginning to lose its patience and the threat of sanctions is becoming more imminent.”

I question how serious are those about the boycott……..can economic pressure be the catalyst for a lasting peace?  Again….just how far will they go?  Or is this just another in a long line of con jobs?

Israel gets involved in the Syrian civil war……..

Explosions rocked the Syrian port of Latakia late Saturday night, and by Sunday morning local media was confirming that the target had been advanced Russian-made S-300 anti-aircraft missiles.

Israel is widely believed to have attacked Latakia in October of last year to take out advanced anti-aircraft batteries installed shortly prior to that, so the Jewish state was naturally the prime suspect in Saturday night’s air strike.

Not the first time and most likely not the last…….

My small news round-up for the Middle East……stay tuned…I will return……