Why Image Recognition Is the Tech World’s ‘Next Big Thing’

As social networks, apps, and websites strive to make the most of the vast amounts of data users share with them, and deliver smarter, better services to the people who use them, there’s one approach that many of them have in common. It draws on methods of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and in just a few years we could see its sophisticated methods improving our search results, or making our social networks smarter. The next big thing in Silicon Valley? Image recognition.

Let’s start, as many stories in the tech world do, with the recent acquisition of a startup. TechCrunchreported in August that Google acquired the team behind Jetpac, an app that uses public Instagram data to create “Jetpac City Guides” to determine things like the happiest places in a town, or compile guides to scenic hikes or popular food trucks. Jetpac’s system looks for visual cues to determine contextual information about the area where a photo was taken, and reviews that visual information to determine what’s actually happening in a given location.


Jetpac’s chief technology officer, Pete Warden, is an expert in computer vision, an artificial intelligence subfield that encompasses the discipline of teaching computers to see, and interpret images. Jetpac’s “city guides” for more than 6,000 destinations relied on neural network technology developed by Warden to process images. Neural networks mimic the way that the human brain processes information, and can be trained with large datasets to recognize objects and identify their presence or absence.

Jetpac’s technology uses automated processes to provide customized geographic information, which could be useful in Google’s efforts to build a superior personal assistant, drawing on Google Now, Google+, and Google Maps, and CNET reports that the Jetpac team is joining Google’s Knowledge team, which is working to build more sophisticated knowledge into Google Search. But that’s far from the limit of Google’s efforts to use image recognition and related methods to improve its services for users. Google announced in 2013 that it used computer vision and machine learning, another subfield of artificial intelligence, to enable users to search their Google+ images within Google Search, and Jetpac has achieved real-time object recognition, which could be useful for enhancements to Google Glass.

In a post on Google’s Research Blog, software engineer Christian Szegedy recently detailed Google’s latest research in image recognition, which placed first in the classification and detection tasks at the ImageNet Large-Scale Visual Recognition Challenge, the largest academic challenge in computer vision. The classification tasks measure an algorithm’s ability to assign correct labels to an image. The classification with localization tasks assess how well an algorithm models the labels of an image and the location of underlying objects. The task is similar, but with more stringent criteria, and images with “tiny objects” that are difficult to recognize.

Google’s research involved an algorithm, called GoogLeNet, for a “radically redesigned” convolutional network with increased depth and width, which enabled the system “to perform inference with low memory footprint.” (GoogLeNet was named in honor of Yann LeCun, who popularized convolutional networks, and recently joined Facebook, where he’s leading the company’s new artificial intelligence lab.)

Convolutional networks are a type of deep learning architecture, widely used for image recognition. As the MIT Technology Review explains, referencing the SuperVision algorithm that won the ImageNet challenge in 2012, convolutional neural networks consist of layers of “neuron” collections, which each evaluate a small section of an image. The results yielded by all of the collections in a layer overlap to create a representation of the whole image, and the layer below repeats the process on the new image representation. The Technology Review considers the unveiling of SuperVision a turning point for the field of computer vision, and for its submission to the challenge, Google built on SuperVision and other implementations of convolutional networks to achieve an error rate of only 6.7 percent.

Google will be able to use the technology developed for the challenge to build better image understanding, and Szegedy notes that “the progress is directly transferable to Google products such as photo search, image search, YouTube, self-driving cars, and any place where it is useful to understand what is in an image as well as where things are.” Those implementations could also be helped by the talent acquired with DeepMind and DNNResearch, two of Google’s other recent purchases.

Google’s focus on deep learning, and explorations of its potential for image recognition, runs parallel to what other companies in Silicon Valley are researching. Pinterest recently acquired a startup called VisualGraph, which focused on identifying elements of images and making connections between images, so that users can find interesting images.

Twitter acquired Madbits, a deep learning startup focused on visual intelligence technology that can understand and organize information from raw media, whether that information consists of the content of an image or the tags associated with it. Yahoo-owned Tumblr is partnering with Ditto Labs to analyze photos for brand-related data, so that brands can understand the nature of Tumblr’s collective conversations about them. Facebook has implemented a facial recognition system, called DeepFace, that uses neural networks to detect and identify faces in photos. Even Amazon, with the launch of its Fire Phone, uses a version of image recognition software to identify books, DVDs, bar codes, phone numbers, addresses, and more.

A wide variety of web companies — including some of Silicon Valley’s biggest — can envision ways that deep learning and image recognition capabilities could improve their platforms, and the services that they offer to users. Olga Russakovsky, a Stanford PhD candidate who reviewed the annual results of the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge in a recent paper, wrote that while current computer vision algorithms still struggle to identify objects that are small or thin in photographs, or images distorted with filters, it won’t be long before the technology is more efficient at analyzing images than we are. “It is clear that humans will soon outperform state-of-the-art image classification models only by use of significant effort, expertise, and time.”

Tech-savvy Internet users should expect to hear more about image recognition methods and tools in the near future — and to see their favorite websites and apps growing smarter and more sophisticated in the way they handle images and all of the information contained within them.

Credit to Tech Cheat sheet

Russia Holds Massive Military Drill: 155,000 Troops, 4,000 Tanks, 632 Aircraft, 84 Ships

At what point is a drill more than just a drill? Maybe when it is so massive it could be confused for an invasion force, involving a mindblowing 155,000 troops, more than the armies of most sovereign nations, 4,000 armoured vehicles, 632 planes and helicopters and 84 vessels. Those are the staggering numbers taking part in the Vostok-2014 strategic exercises, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, and whose main priority is ti "demonstrate that the degree of combat preparedness in Russian troops has risen." One almost wonders why...

Photos via Itar-Tass:

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu praised the troops' combat readiness. Official results, however, will be summed up later

The drills are the final stage of a series of command and staff, and special exercises, drills, and surprise inspections in 2014

The troops drilled anti-landing defence in Primorsky and Kamchatka Territories

Missiles were fierd from the Varyag cruiser during the anti-landing defence operation

Aviation went on operational duty in Russia's Arctic zone

And the commentary from RIA:

The recent large-scale military exercise in Russia's Far East, Vostok-2014, demonstrated that the degree of combat preparedness in Russian troops has risen, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday.

The minister said that although "final conclusions are yet to be made," the troops involved have demonstrated efficient command and "a better degree of combat preparedness."

Shoigu said that the Vostok-2014 exercise is nearly complete. "This large-scale event of operational and combat training of the Eastern Military District was a logical continuation of an unannounced combat readiness check carried out on the orders of the Supreme Commander Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin," the minister said.

Addressing the servicemen who distinguished themselves in battle maneuvers in Cape Skalistii, Shoigu said: "You have actually demonstrated great skill, professionalism and the ability to ensure the military security of the Russian Federation in the eastern region."

The Vostok-2014 strategic military exercise in the Eastern Military District is taking place from September 19 to 25. The exercise was preceded by unannounced combat readiness checks.

One can only hope that the above "combat preparedness" is completely unrelated to what is now an invasion of sovereign territory by "US-led alliances" on a weekly if not daily basis.

Credit to Zero Hedge

"United Nations Sets A New World Path"

When Should We Start Forcibly Resisting Police Tyranny?

Justin King | TheAntiMedia

A 17-year-old kid was tased into a coma and suffered brain damage after Officer Tim Runnels arrested him for a traffic ticket that was associated with the car he had borrowed. It was not his ticket. The window was broken and the minor could not roll the window down completely when ordered. Therefore the officer used force to enforce an unlawful order. The departmenthas stated that Runnels acted within policy and placed the officer on paid vacation. The minor is the son of another police officer. Since it deals with one of their own, the FBI has launched a probe. 

If putting a child in a coma for someone else’s traffic ticket is within policy, where does it end?

 “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.”

-President John F. Kennedy

Weeks of peaceful protests and outright riots in Missouri have accomplished nothing. The government has chosen to protect its enforcement class rather than its citizens. If peaceful requests for a redress of grievances, as guaranteed in the US Constitution, fail to work, do people have the right to engage in violence to protect their life and the lives of their loved ones?

Police officer deaths are at an all time low, yet cases of police brutality are at an all time high. More importantly, officers are not held accountable for their actions and are allowed to walk free even when a video is available that shows them murdering someone who is begging for their life. What are the American people to do when the protests, politicians, and courts have failed them?

Americans have been told that their freedom rests on four boxes: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

People have exercised their right to stand on soap boxes and speak against the corruption and brutality that is plaguing the American justice system for decades and nothing has been done.

The ballot box has been proven pointless as special interests, police unions, and corrupt elected officials protect law enforcement in exchange for preferential treatment.

The jury box is also pointless as prosecutors and law enforcement work hand in glove to cover up the misdeeds of their fellow law enforcers.

The first three boxes have been used and proved to be useless against the machine of general mayhem that is known as the “thin blue line.” The only box left available to the American people is the cartridge box. Objections to shooting a cop are so ingrained in the American psyche that I can visualize many readers wincing as the subject is openly discussed. The discussion of uncomfortable ideas is the only path to reform; but to avoid sending the gentlereader into a shock-induced coma faster than Runnels’ taser, allow me to phrase the question differently:

If an organization displayed a pattern of assault, rape, murder, theft, home invasion, andracketeering would a person coming in contact with members of that organization have a reasonable expectation that they would be harmed if they did not act to preserve their own life?

All of a sudden the question seems almost ridiculously easy to answer. Of course, a person would have the right to defend their life and property when confronted with such an organization. So why are those that wear blue uniforms instead of blue bandanas immune from this judgment of guilt?

The answer is simple: propaganda. Much like those that turned a blind eye to totalitarian police forces throughout history, the average American sees these people as heroes out defending democracy against the threat of lawlessness. The problem, of course, is that the United States is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy.

Some readers probably retracted in horror from the screen at the idea that the United States is not what was told to them in their high school civics class. The term oligarchy gets thrown around and sometimes people aren’t clear on exactly what it means. Provided below is thedefinition.

Full Definition of OLIGARCHY

1:  government by the few

2:  a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also :  a group exercising such control

3:  an organization under oligarchic control

Does that seem more like the government we have today, or does the government represent the will of the people, as it would in a republic or a democracy?

Knowing those in government are out to pursue corrupt and selfish interests, makes it a lot easier to view the cop who is beating homeless people to death as the Sheriff of Nottingham and the government as Prince John. So where are Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men?

Where are those that are willing to stand up to injustice and fight those that would kill your child or maim them with a grenade to please the ruling class? Is it time to meet force with force in cases of police brutality? Is it time to stop demonizing the term “cop killer?”

The police watchdog group Cop Block put out video pondering this very question before the topic became the subject of national debate.

While I make it a point to never advocate violence, I will say that I can’t wait to go to Sherwood Forest and cover the story.

I openly posed this question on my personal Facebook account; these are some of the responses I received. It should be noted that at the time of writing not a single person indicated they believed it was wrong to use violence against law enforcement officers that were overstepping their bounds.

I pose the question to the reader: Is it time to start resisting police with violence?

Credit to Common Sense

Canada is on Islamic State's hit list

The federal government refused Monday to be specific about its efforts to neutralize the growing threat of Islamic extremism both at home and abroad -- even in the face of an ominous new threat levelled directly at Canada.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is calling for supporters to kill westerners, be they military or civilian, from countries involved in the battle against ISIL in northern Iraq -- including Canadians.

Canada's decision to send special forces "advisers" to join the fight against ISIL is likely what prompted its inclusion on the global hit list, observers said, though the prime minister noted that such threats have been on the radar of security agencies for a long time.

Though the government has readily said they believe more than 130 Canadians are involved in terrorism abroad, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander cited privacy concerns in refusing to say how many passports he has revoked to prevent would-be attackers from moving around the globe.But there were calls Monday for far more disclosure about what exactly the government plans to do about it.

The government also refused to disclose the status of a military mission it is joining in northern Iraq.

Canada is sending 69 special forces personnel to serve as advisers to Iraqi forces battling ISIL militants, in addition to humanitarian assistance. That mission is only supposed to last 30 days, although it remains unclear when that time frame began -- or even whether the clock has indeed started running.

"With any credible terrorist threat, the government must take appropriate security measures, but this must not become an excuse for rubber-stamping the Conservatives' ill-defined military mission in Iraq," MP Jack Harris said Monday during question period as he asked the government for more detail on the time frame.

None was forthcoming.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper suggested the government was still exploring further contributions to that mission and is also looking at what more it can do domestically.

The House passed legislation last year making it a criminal offence to leave Canada for the purpose of committing terrorism -- a law the United Nations Security Council said Monday it now wants all of its members to copy.

But when asked specifically what more Canada was doing, Harper demurred.

"We have, as you know, strengthened laws in this country to deal with these kinds of threats," Harper told a news conference on Parliament Hill.

"We are currently in the process of examining these laws and examining other means we may have to monitor and to take action against both organizations and individuals who may undertake activities that are potentially threatening to Canadians."

The ISIL statement, contained in an audio recording, was released in Arabic by the group's media arm, Al-Furqan, and appeared on militant sites used by the group.

The Associated Press reported the speaker sounded like that of previous recordings attributed to Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani.

In the 42-minute recording released online late Sunday, al-Adnani called on Muslims everywhere to kill anyone whose country takes part in the attack.

"If you can kill a disbelieving American or European -- especially the spiteful and filthy French -- or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that joined a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be."

The global reach of ISIL through social media is what makes threats like these particularly chilling, said Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former Canadian intelligence officer who now heads up an Ottawa-based cybersecurity company.

"They have been capable (of recruiting) young people without speaking directly to them face to face," Jueau-Katsuya said.

"If they've been capable ... through the Internet to reach them, I wouldn't be surprised that they convince some of these people that instead of travelling to the Middle East to stay here and simply attack us here."

Canadians need to know more about how far the government is willing to go to counter potential terrorism, said Liberal MP Wayne Easter, who was once the minister responsible for national security.

"We have defined a way of ensuring we protect ourselves against these radicalized individuals, but we also have to find a way to make sure that justice prevails in terms of a person's right to fair play," Easter said.


Credit to CTV
Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canada-is-on-islamic-state-s-hit-list-but-tories-mum-on-plans-1.2019038#ixzz3E5urwZKl

SYRIA: How World War 3 Unfolds

This Is About As Good As Things Are Going To Get For The Middle Class And It’s Not That Good

The U.S. economy has had six full years to bounce back since the financial collapse of 2008, and it simply has not happened.  Median household income has declined substantially since then, total household wealth for middle class families is way down, the percentage of the population that is employed is still about where it was at the end of the last recession, and the number of Americans that are dependent on the government has absolutely exploded.  Even those that claim that the economy is "recovering" admit that we are not even close to where we used to be economically.  Many hope that someday we will eventually get back to that level, but the truth is that this is about as good as things are ever going to get for the middle class.  And we should enjoy this period of relative stability while we still can, because when the next great financial crisis strikes things are going to fall apart very rapidly.

The U.S. Census Bureau has just released some brand new numbers, and they are quite sobering.  For example, after accounting for inflation median household income in the United States has declined a total of 8 percent from where it was back in 2007.

That means that middle class families have significantly less purchasing power than they did just prior to the last major financial crisis.

And one research firm is projecting that it is going to take until 2019for median household income to return to the level that we witnessed in 2007...

For everybody wondering why the economic recovery feels like a recession, here’s the answer: We’re still at least five years away from regaining everything lost during the 2007-2009 downturn.

Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicts that real median household income — perhaps the best proxy for middle-class living standards — won’t reach the prior peak from 2007 until 2019. Since the numbers are adjusted for inflation, that means the typical family will wait 12 years until their purchasing power is as strong as it was before the recession. That would be the longest period of stagnation, by far, since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Of course that projection assumes that the economy will continue to "recover", which is a very questionable assumption at best.

Meanwhile, total household wealth has been declining for middle class families as well.

According to the New York Times, the "typical American household" is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago.

That is a pretty substantial drop.  But you never hear our politicians (especially the Democrats) bring up numbers like that because they want us to feel good about things.

So why is all of this happening?

The biggest reason why the middle class is struggling so much is the lack of good jobs.

As the chart posted below demonstrates, the percentage of the working age population that is actually employed is still way, way below where it was prior to the last recession...

The "employment recovery" (the tiny little bump at the end of the chart) has been so miniscule that it is hardly even worth mentioning.

At the moment, we still have 1.4 million fewer full-time jobs than we did in 2008 even though more than 100,000 people are added to the U.S. population each month.

And a lot of the workers that have lost jobs since the start of the last recession have never been able to find a new one.

According to a brand new survey conducted by Rutgers University, more than 20 percent of all workers that have been laid off in the past five years still have not found a new job.

Meanwhile, the control freak bureaucrats that run this country continue to kill off small businesses.

In recent years we have seen large numbers of small businesses fail, and at this point the rate of small business ownership in the United States is at an all-time low.

As a result of everything that you have just read, the middle class is shrinking and dependence on the government is soaring.

Today, there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity, and Americans received more than 2 trillion dollars in benefits from the federal government last year alone.

For many more statistics just like this, please see my previous article entitled "30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed".

Without a doubt, things are not that good for the middle class in America these days.

Unfortunately, the next great wave of financial trouble is rapidly approaching, and once it strikes things are going to get substantially worse for the middle class.

Yes, the stock market set record high after record high this summer.  But what we have observed is classic bubble behavior.  So many of the exact same patterns that occurred just prior to previous stock market crashes are happening once again.

And it is interesting to note that September 22nd has marked important market peaks at various times throughout history...

For traders, September 22 is one of those days with a notorious history. UBS's Art Cashin notes that September 22 marked various market highs in 1873, 1929, 1980, and even as recent as 2008.

Could the coming months be the beginning of the next major stock market decline?

Small-cap stocks are already starting to show signs of real weakness.  In fact, the Russell 2000 just hit a "death cross" for the first time in more than 2 years...

The Russell 2000 has been diverging from the broader market over the last several weeks, and now technicians point out it has flashed a bearish signal. For the first time in more than two years, the small-cap index has hit a so-called death cross.

A death cross occurs when a nearer-term 50-day moving average falls below a longer-term, 200-day moving average. Technicians argue that a death cross can be a bearish sign.

None of us knows what the market is going to do tomorrow, but a lot of the "smart money" is getting out of the market right now while the getting is good.

So where is the "smart money" putting their assets?

In a previous article, I discussed how sales of gold bars to wealthy clients is way up so far this year.

And CNBC has just reported that the ultra-wealthy "are holding mountains of cash" right now...

Billionaires are holding mountains of cash, offering the latest sign that the ultra-wealthy are nervous about putting more money into today's markets.

According to the new Billionaire Census from Wealth-X and UBS, the world's billionaires are holding an average of $600 million in cash each—greater than the gross domestic product of Dominica.

Why are they doing this?

Are they concerned about the potential of a market crash?

And if we do see another market crash like we witnessed back in 2008, what is that going to mean for the rest of us?

2008 certainly did not destroy our economy.

But it did cause an immense amount of damage that we have never recovered from.

Now the next wave is approaching, and most people don't even see it coming.

Credit to Economic Collapse

US admits there is a much scarier terrorist group than ISIS

New intelligence has emerged warning Washington that its upcoming confrontation with the Islamic State may leave it blind to a more sinister and direct threat from a much lesser known terrorist group that has arisen from the ashes of the Syrian war.

Very little information is being released at the moment by anyone within American intelligence circles, but the group calling itself Khorasan is said by officials to have concrete plans for striking targets in the United States and Europe as a chosen modus operandi – more so than the Islamic State (IS), formerly known as ISIS.

The first ever mention of the group occurred on Thursday at an intelligence gathering in Washington DC, when National Intelligence Director James Clapper admitted that “in terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State.”

According to the New York Times, some US officials have gone as far as saying that, while the Islamic State is undoubtedly more prominent in its show of force in the Middle East, it is Khorasan who's intent on oversees campaigns in a way Al Qaeda usually is.

In this sense, the US air strike campaign and the coming actions by the anti-IS coalition might just be what coaxes the IS into larger-scale attacks on American and European soil – what Khorasan is essentially all about.

This brings up another issue seen in the current Western stance on terrorism: it is so focused on the terror spread by the IS that it’s beginning to forget that the destruction and mayhem of civil war across the Middle East is spawning a number of hard-to-track terrorist factions with distinct missions.

“What you have is a growing body of extremists from around the world who are coming in and taking advantage of the ungoverned areas and creating informal ad hoc groups that are not directly aligned with ISIS or Nusra,” a senior law enforcement official told the NY Times on condition of anonymity.

The CIA and the White House declined to give comment.





According to government sources, the Al-Qaeda offshoot group is led by a former senior operative – 33-year-old Muhsin al-Fadhli, reportedly so close to Bin Laden’s inner circle he was one of the few who knew of the 9/11 Twin Tower attacks in advance.

He had reportedly fled to Iran during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda’s story goes hazy after the campaign: many operatives are said to have traveled to Pakistan, Syria, Iran and other countries, forming splinter groups.

In 2012, al-Fadhli was identified by the State Department as leading the Iranian branch of Al-Qaeda, controlling “the movement of funds and operatives” in the region and working closely with wealthy“jihadist donors” in his native Kuwait to raise money for the Syrian terrorist resistance.

Although the first public mention of the group was only this Thursday, American intelligence is said to have been tracking it for over a decade. Former President George W. Bush once mentioned the name of its leader in 2005 in connection with a French oil tanker bombing in 2002 off the coast of Yemen.

Khorasan itself is shrouded in mystery. Little is known publicly apart from its being composed of former Al-Qaeda operatives from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. The group is said to favor concealed explosives as a terror method.

Like many other groups taking up the power vacuum in war-torn Syria, Khorasan has on occasion shifted its alliances.




Fighters of the jihadist group Al-Nusra Front stand on the top of a pick-up mounted with a machine gun during fightings against the regime forces on April 4, 2013 in the Syrian village of Aziza, on the southern outskirts of Aleppo. (AFP Photo)

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri at one point ordered the former ISIS to fight only in Iraq, but cut all ties with it when it disobeyed and branched out. The result was that the Nusra Front became Al-Qaeda’s official branch in Syria. It’s said that Khorasan is to Al Nusra Front what the latter was to Al-Qaeda.

When The Daily Signal spoke to James Phillips, a Middle East expert at The Heritage Foundation, he outlined some American intelligence views on the group: they see their mission in “[recruiting] European and American Muslim militants who have traveled to Syria to fight alongside Islamist extremist groups that form part of the rebel coalition fighting Syria’s Assad regime.”

“The Khorasan group hopes to train and deploy these recruits, who hold American and European passports, for attacks against Western targets,” he said.

He believes Khorasan to be Al-Qaeda’s new arm in attacking America, its “far enemy.” While they are Al Nusra’s allies in Syria, their role is believed to be to carry out terrorist attacks outside the country.

The group reportedly uses the services of a very prominent Al-Qaeda bomb maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, whose devices previously ended up on three US-bound planes. He is known to be a true pioneer of hard-to-detect bombs.

Phillips believes that the next step is taking those bombs and pairing them with US-born and other foreign jihadists returning home.




Militant Islamist fighters take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province (Reuters)


In this respect, Phillips views the Khorasan threat to the US to be much more direct compared to the Islamic State’s more regional ambitions. And since President Obama’s upcoming anti-IS strategy reportedly does not include Al Nusra, this potentially frees Khorasan’s hands.

What sets Al Nusra apart from the many other groups is that it’s now the only faction with active branches throughout Syria.

Syria analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, Jennifer Cafarella, told the NY Times “there is definitely a threat that, if not conducted as a component of a properly tailored strategy within Syria, the American strikes would allow the Nusra Front to fill a vacuum in eastern Syria.”

Because of al-Zawahiri’s current weakened position in terrorist cricles, both Al Nusra and Khorasan by extension are less prominent than the IS. But these things have a way of changing unpredictably, and because the plans of these more traditional terrorist groups in Syria aren’t yet clear, a danger arises.

The volatile conflict zone that is Syria, with its lax borders and an increasing number of distinct, armed Islamist groups, the US may be surprised by how difficult it soon may be to pinpoint the origin of the next threat.

Credit to RT

China's New World Order Challenges Western Hegemony