RE:Syria , the real story behind the atrocities quebecnord wrote: The problems began for the Syrian government in 2009, the day they rejected the Qatar natgas pipeline that would link southern Turkey with the Qatar gas condensate field. The world's largest nat gas deposit lies smack in the middle of Quatar but it cannot reach it's end market without passing though Syria. Quatar's populace is largely Sunni. Natural gas has increasingly become the energy source of choice for eco conscious countries in Europe with coal and nuclear energy losing traction. Turkey's pipelines have the immediate capacity to transport natgas to the all important European markets. Russia has been a steadfast ally of Syria since the 1950's, when Assad's father was in power. Assad instead chose to give preference to Russia's Gazprom nat gas network and develop Syria's domestic natgas basin near Homs. Europe also has a strong interest in reducing it's energy reliance on Russia and the USA has a strong interest in sustaining commodity trades based in $US ( hence the term petro currency). We know that both Libya and Iraq were trying to transact energy outside the "petro currency " rules and look where that got them, an instant bombing and looting of their gold. Saudi Arabia is a strong ally of the USA and performs all duties of transacting in $US. It is not outside the realm of possibilities that Saudi Arabia is intentionally flooding the market with cheaper oil to weaken the Russian/Iranian/Syrian triangle. Next time you hear Europeans and USA saying " Assad must go" you know why. It's not about the huge human tragedies of refugees and their hunger, it's about power and control. It's best for Canada to stay out of this geo-political cluster fuc&. It's not Canada's sphere of interest and we got lots of oil at home. Not our problem.
Great post.