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Off the keyboard of Geoffrey Chia

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Published on the Doomstead Diner on October 8, 2016

Discuss this article at the Geopolitics Table inside the Diner

Many commentators have sought explanations and solutions for the Syrian debacle. Only by accurately identifying the underlying cause(s) of a situation can we begin to craft workable solutions, if any solutions are possible at all.

To me, this is akin to making an accurate diagnosis when faced with a complex pathological condition, then trying to shape a management plan to achieve a cure (or at least to aim for symptomatic relief and palliation, if the situation is irredeemable). As I have stated before in my essay "How to cure Terrorism" 1 it is essential to identify not only the underlying cause(s) of a situation and any predisposing factors, but should also (in the case of sudden collapse), identify any proximate triggers.

How do we know a diagnosis is accurate? Because the correct paradigm bears all the hallmarks of Truth, viz:

It is supported by the best evidence It is coherent (internally and externally consistent), with plausible underlying mechanisms operating within its framework It offers the best explanation for the situation It may have useful predictive value for future outcome(s) ie it can offer a prognosis The elimination/resolution of properly identified underlying cause(s), predisposing factors(s) and proximate trigger(s) will offer the best prospect of a cure.

Again, I have used these principles in past essays when outlining the epidemiological truth that smoking causes lung cancer (even though it is impossible to demonstrate a one-to-one cause and effect relationship in any individual lung cancer case). I also used these principles to prove that the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 had nothing to do with WMDs or the pursuit of "freedom" or "democracy" nor was it about deposing a tyrant "for the sake of the Iraqi people". The truth was that the invasion of Iraq was about OIL: specifically about the US pursuit of oil related economic, political and military global power. The ideology of US neoconartist global dominance mediated by the control over the flow of oil and the enforced continuity of the petrodollar scheme.

I cannot delve into the Syrian situation in detail here, which would require a lengthy Phd type thesis. Instead I will simply outline various useful lenses through which the Syrian situation may be viewed. Lenses are meant to help us see better. They may help us see clearly various portions of a jigsaw puzzle which make up our "big picture" of Truth. However some lenses may be fabricated for political purposes and cause complete distortion. They are contrived propaganda, crafted to serve the agenda of the angloeurozionist "GIMME" (Government, Industrial, Military, Media & Economic) establishment. Intellectual Kool Aid to keep the masses brain dead (to mix several metaphors).

Let us first cast aside a couple of blatantly bogus paradigms:

The Syrian situation is a revolution against tyranny by the common Syrians who are clamouring for democracy and freedom, which was what the "Arab Spring" was all about.

This utterly bullshit paradigm was best demolished by Tom Lewis with his inimitable wry manner in a podcast I have referenced in t he past. 2

The Syrian situation is a religious civil war, mainly a domestic Sunni versus Alawite/Shi'ite conflict. As I mentioned in a previous essay, Bashar Al-Assad, nominally an Alawite, was a member of the Baathist secular party and he himself married a Sunni lady. There are NO clearcut religious lines here. Nor is it a particularly domestic dispute. The so-called Syrian Sunni rebel groups include among their numbers many foreign intruders. ISIS is a foreign invasion force. The most effective fighters against ISIS are the Kurds and most of those in Syria are indeed Syrian. Kurds are nominally Sunni and may be genuinely religious, but their outlook is fairly progressive and they take pride in their courageous female soldiers who do not wear headscarves. ISIS claim to be pious Sunni Muslims, which is a complete lie. ISIS are fake Muslims, they are primarily terrorists, rapists and gangsters who hide behind the bogus banner of a religion to legitimise their anti-human activities in pursuit of their unrestrained lust for power. This is identical to how the US corporate owned politicians hide behind the bogus banner of "freedom" or "democracy" to legitimise their anti-human agenda of global ecocide, in pursuit of their unrestrained lust for power. ISIS was in fact the creation of the US GIMME establishment. The "religious civil war in Syria" paradigm ignores the numerous external operators who are major players. The so-called "moderate" Sunni rebels in Syria are deeply intertwined with many Salafist extremists including the notorious Jabhat Al Nusra (who are Al Qaeda in Syria). US State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau admitted this fact at a press conference on 3 October, which was held to announce the breakdown of discussions between Russia and the US over Syria. Trudeau said the US had been unable to "demarble" (her word) the "moderate" Sunni rebels from entities such as Al Nusra, who she admits are Al Qaeda terrorists. Hence by their own admission, ongoing US support for these rebels represents support for terrorist criminals. I have provided other references for these facts in previous essays.

Evidence-based "lenses" with good explanatory power, which confer better understanding of the Syrian situation:

The events leading up to the collapse of Syria were manifestations of the Limits to Growth . In a previous essay I outlined the problem of declining Syrian petroleum production which intersected with their increased domestic oil consumption (Peak Oil combined with the ELM) which resulted in zero oil income and hence contributed to their economic demise. 3 A smaller Syrian population of the past could have been sustained by fewer resources, but the large population of 23 million by 2011 faced severe per capita shortfalls of everything. The worst drought in living memory from 2006 to 2010, which was aggravated by climate change, led to agricultural collapse, the mass migration of impoverished farmers to the cities, food shortages, conflicts and the breakdown of society.

The LtG re-ignited old tribal and sectarian conflicts which were greatly magnified by the post colonial legacy of egregious gerrymandering (Sykes-Picot "treaty") 3 . Each sect is largely motivated by their own self interest, irrespective of whatever religious banner they may claim live under, whether they be the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood (who have a long history of striving to gain power in Syria), the Kurds (who are struggling for an independent homeland), the Alawites (who initially hoped to maintain control over Syria but are now engaged in an existential struggle for survival) and so forth.

Syria is a proxy war in the new Great Game . The US has more than 800 overseas military bases 4 around the world. In contrast, Syria is the last remaining foreign outpost of Russian military influence in the world, with the port of Tartus and the airfield at Latakia ho sting Russian warships and planes. Since the end of the Cold War, the unbridled US hegemonic agenda of complete global dominance has been characterised by their mindless and destructive policy of foreign regime change to install puppet leaders under US control. This agenda was exemplified by the US / NATO covert regime change imposed on Ukraine with resultant civil war and the ongoing encirclement of Russia by US nuclear missles. Ukraine, formerly the bread basket of Europe, has now become the basket case of Europe. Let is not even delve into Iraq or Libya. In the case of Syria, the US have been trying to get rid of Russian ally Bashar Al-Assad and replace him with a US puppet. Why did Russia begin their foray into Syria by dramatically launching low flying, contour hugging "under the radar" cruise missiles from ships far, far away in the Caspian sea? Why not just use their bombers based in Latakia? ISIS may have copped the cruise missiles, but the Russians were primarily sending a message to Uncle Sam: your super expensive high tech US aircraft carrier fleets are now completely obsolete. Russia these days is able to deploy unstoppable massive conventional force from a distance which the US cannot possibly counter (the same capability is certainly true for China, who spend far more on their military than Russia). The USA is now railroading the entire world into a possible Hot War which can easily turn into a global thermonuclear war, for no reason other than their crazed hunger for power.

Apart from Russia and the US, there are other "lesser puppet masters" who have their own reasons for meddling in Syria. In the "Russian" camp there are Iran, Shi'ites from Iraq and Hezbollah. In the "US" camp there are Saudi Arabia and Qatar (and to a lesser extent other Gulf players such as Kuwait), who have also employed foreign mercenaries such as Chechens.

The schizophrenic involvement of a particular proxy player, Turkey: Turkey, as a NATO member, nominally claims to be on the US side and against ISIS. However under the wily maneuvering of the duplicitous Recep Tayyip Erdogan, t he reality is much more complex. What Erdogan says and does are often contradictory and discordant. One fact is crystal clear however: Erdogan's actions are always in the service of his own self interest and in that sense he cannot be regarded as a true US puppet. Recent events in Turkey have been thoroughly fascinating and warrant detailed analysis far beyond the scope of this short essay. Some examples:

Erdogan had been buying cheap oil illegally from ISIS, oil which had been stolen from Iraq. This oil entered Turkey via road trains through the (intentionally) porous Turkish-Syrian border. Erdogan was therefore in fact financing ISIS, his nominal enemy. This fact was patently obvious to the USA from satellite images, which America chose to ignore, which adds credence to the view that the US actually supports ISIS while pretending to oppose it. This illegal oil trade was abruptly terminated by Russian bombing, in response to which Erdogan petulantly shot down a Russian plane, a reckless act of despicable bastardry which could have triggered wider scale war if not for Russian restraint. Last year, Turkish media exposed the fact that the Erdogan government had been illegally supplying weapons to extremist insurgents across the (intentionally) porous Turkish-Syrian border. Such a domestic media expose will not happen again, not because Erdogan has changed his ways, but because he has now muzzled the Turkish media. Erdogan regards his primary enemy as the Kurds because the Turkish Kurds threaten to secede from his neo-Ottoman aspirational empire to form an independent Kurdistan in conjuction with the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds. Therefore he does not hesitate to use a secondary enemy, ISIS, as a tool against his primary enemy. This explains his partial support for ISIS, even as he fights against ISIS at other times and in other places that suit him. Note that the Turks, Kurds and ISIS are all supposedly Sunni, hence none of this has anything to do with religion. We do not know for sure who masterminded the recent "failed coup" in Turkey, but we do know who has benefited the most from it. Erdogan has since been able to cast aside any pretence of due process and has summarily purged more than a hundred thousand potential dissidents and opponents from all positions of influence in Turkey. He has thoroughly entrenched his power and is essentially now a totalitarian dictator. He embarrassed the US with the accusation that America was harbouring and supporting the purported coup organiser Fetullah Gulen. It is true that America will stand to gain by installing a more US compliant puppet leader in Turkey, hence this accusation is not one which can be easily dismissed by US propaganda, given America's well known repetitive policy of foreign regime change. Being irate (or pretending to be irate) with the US, Erdogan then decided to kiss and make up with Putin, who then allowed the resumption of Russian tourism into Turkey, an extremely valuable source of income for Ankara. That, as well as the future possibility of a Russian gas pipeline through Turkey to Europe, another money spinner. It is true that Turkey has taken on more than its fair share of Iraqi and Syrian refugees, now harbouring more than three million 5 . On the other hand, Erdogan has cynically used the Syrian refugees as human bargaining chips to get what he wants from the EU. He has shown he is willing and able to open and close the floodgates of refugees from Turkey into Europe and thereby has been able to extort money from the EU and prise out freedom of movement privileges for Turks into the EU. By offering Turkish citizenship to more than 2 million Syrian Sunni Muslims, Erdogan will be able to increase his support and power base in Turkey, as he is aligned with the Sunni fundamentalists. Erdogan opposes and is opposed by secular Turks (especially those in the military who had traditionally been faithful to the secular principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk). The Machiavellian Erdogan has repeatedly demonstrated a nimble ability to have his cake and eat it (that is, until such future time when an jackal can find a way to penetrate his security detail and assassinate him). Any serious coup organiser worth their salt would have commenced their operation by assassinating the incumbent. The fact that Erdogan escaped such a fate indicates that either the coup planners were utterly incompetent or that it may indeed have been a false flag event engineered by Erdogan himself.

Syria is a proxy war over natural gas pipelines: In order to understand the geopolitical considerations about this proxy pipeline war, it is essential to understand the physical properties of natural gas, which render it a far inferior source of energy (and source of money) compared with petroleum. Nevertheless if sold in vast quantities to a vast market, the money to be made can be mind boggling. Key considerations:

If a natural gas field straddles a political border and is "shared" by two parties, the party which extracts the gas first and fastest will be able to harvest most, if not all the wealth from that field, because the gas will rapidly move through the field towards the extraction point. Contrast that characteristic with viscous crude oil, which can only sluggishly migrate at a maximum rate of 6% per year through porous rock. Early gas extraction is of no value unless you have an immediate market to offload the gas. Natural gas is just too energy sparse to economically store above ground in significant quantities for any length of time. The optimal market for the gas is one close to the gas field. The further away the market, the more expensive it is to transport the gas and hence the lower the profit margin. Even if the market is thousands of kilometers away however, profit margins can still be good, so long as the gas can be transported by pipeline in gaseous form. Export to far distant locations (eg another continent) is only feasible by liquefaction to render it far more energy dense. Making energy dense liquid natural gas requires refrigeration down to about minus 163 degrees Celsius, cryogenic storage and transportation in highly insulated, massive, purpose built LNG tankers which require continuous refrigeration. Refrigeration energy requirements are particularly high when the tankers sail through the tropics. Any power failure will be catastrophic. The LNG trade requires special facilities at the importing port which can accept and process this tricky commodity. All those factors amount to huge energy expenditure, huge capex, custom construction of port facilities and tankers and also requires a cashed up customer with advanced infrastructure. If the market price for natural gas falls, the whole system collapses financially, hence LNG schemes can be likened to unconventional oil scams. LNG export in lifecycle analysis has very poor EROEI compared with piped gas export.

The above considerations form the foundation for an understanding of the Syrian pipeline proxy war. The South Pars / North Dome gas field is the largest conventional natural gas field in the world. It is mostly located under the seabed of the Persian Gulf and straddles the borders of Iran to the NorthEast and Qatar to the SouthWest who are bitter enemies. Even though it has been in production for more than a decade, the party who accelerates their extraction will effectively steal most of that remaining resource away from the other party. However that gas cannot be quickly harvested without first ensuring there is a big market for it. A big market cannot be assured unless there are pipelines in place to supply that market. Qatar does export LNG (mainly to East Asia), but this is subject to the substantial constraints outlined above, with limited profit margins. The most prized gas market from the view of both Qatar and Iran, is Western Europe. The party that can establish a pipeline to Europe first will win that prize. The critical territory the pipeline must cross, determined by geography, is Syria. In 2009 Qatar, a Sunni client state of the US, approached Bashar Al Assad proposing such a pipeline through Aleppo province. Not surprisingly, Assad knocked back Qatar's proposal because it ran counter to his political alliances. A Qatari pipeline would undermine the price of Russian gas exported to Western Europe and would scuttle Iran's chance of benefiting from South Pars. When Iran subsequently approached Assad about such a pipeline, economic circumstances in Syria had by then greatly deteriorated. This new pipeline proposal from Iran, a Shi'ite state and ally of both Syria and Russia, came with the promise they would turn Syria into an energy processing, money making hub. Assad was therefore ready to proceed with Iran's deal. Shortly thereafter, the "civil war" in Syria broke out, instigated by so-called "Syrian" rebel groups which actually consisted of many foreign mercenaries funded largely by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

At the time of writing of this essay in early October, Aleppo city is on the verge of being recaptured from ISIS by Syrian government forces with the help of Russia. That did not stop Turkey from moving troops into Aleppo province last month under operation "Euphrates shield", Turkey's proposal being to create and occupy a "neutral" buffer zone. Of course, it is nonsensical to regard such a zone in Northern Syria as neutral: if defacto occupied by Turkey, it is defacto neo-Ottoman empire annexed territory. Perhaps we should rename Erdogan's country "Vulture" rather than "Turkey", or perhaps Turkey Vulture. Of course such an occupation will also mean that Turkey Vulture may benefit financially in future by renting a gas pipeline corridor in Aleppo province to the highest bidder. No mention about that lucrative prospect from Turkey Vulture though, whose motives, so we are told, are purely altruistic, as is true for all Vultures.

Enter another player, Israel, into this sorry saga of greed. In December 2010 a gas field off the Levantine coast was discovered so massive that Israel called it "Leviathan". Whereas there is little risk of another country tapping into that field, there is a risk that either Qatari or Iranian gas piped through Syria to Europe will seriously undermine the price of gas exported to Western Europe. And what will be the natural market for gas from the Leviathan field? Why Western Europe of course. It is obvious that Israel will stand to benefit from ongoing chaos in Syria, chaos which will ensure that both Qatar and Iran cannot establish a pipeline to Europe, thus allowing Israel to develop its own Leviathan field for export to Europe at a premium price (expected start of production is 2017). America's failed agenda of "regime change" in Syria has resulted in nothing but chaos, however Israel is more than happy to support and maintain that chaos. Let us recall Netanyahu's squealing insistence that the US should bomb the crap out of Syria during his rabid rant to an insane Republican audience at the US congress in March last year. Who gives a shit about 23 million Syrian lives anyway if there is gas money to be made.

The gas story does not quite end there however. Get ready for an anticlimax. Only last year, an even larger offshore gas field, much bigger than Leviathan, possibly even larger than South Pars, was discovered off the coast of Egypt, the Zohr field 6 . Due to Egypt's greater experience with the fossil fuel and gas industries, they have good prospects of fast tracking the gas production which will offer stiff competition with Israel's fledgling gas industry and severely blunt Israel's expected economic windfall. Oy vey, enough already!

CONCLUSION:

Any astronomer will tell you that to properly study the true nature of a star, it is necessary to examine it using all the different electromagnetic spectra available to us, whether radiowave, microwave, infrared, visible light, UV, Xrays or gamma rays. That is the best way for us to build up a comprehensive and accurate overall picture of that star. Furthermore it is necessary to eliminate or compensate for other factors which may distort or falsify our interpretation, such as atmospheric interference or doppler shifts or gravity distortions by dense bodies (eg black holes) which may bend the incoming electromagnetic beams.

Similarly in order to properly understand Syria, we must view the situation through all evidenced based lenses available to us, while simultaneously discarding bent and bogus paradigms fabricated by the Murdoch/mainstream media and their fee-for-opinion prostitute talking heads, even though they may hold "impeccable" ivy league "qualifications".

US and Australian rightwing nuts will undoubtedly accuse me of being a greenie commie freedom hating eco-terrorist. Anyone who has read my articles will know I strongly support open, liberal democratic processes which must be guided by evidence, reason and fairness with particular emphasis on transparency and accountability. I strongly support responsible free speech based on facts and reason. I strongly oppose irresponsible deceitful speech based on blatant lies such as Holocaust denial or global warming denial. Opposing and suppressing such deceitful Neonazi or Orwellian speech does NOT contradict the principle of free speech, it removes noise and promotes the process of constructive dialogue and the transmission of useful information. I strongly support the original stated ideals of America; the ideals of Abraham Lincoln, of Franklin Roosevelt and of Martin Luther King. I view Americans (or Australians or any other nationality) with similar values as my natural allies, my friends. The America of Lincoln, FDR and MLK that I admired, with all the promise it held, no longer exists. It has been replaced by a perverse mockery of what might have been. The beacon on the hill has been extinguished, not from without, but from within.

The voices of ordinary Syrian people have been drowned out in all these proceedings. We can only imagine what they must want, be they Sunni, Alawite, Christian, Druze, Yazidi or any other group. Is it so difficult to imagine that they simply want peace, security, shelter, food, clean water, education for their children, health care? That they simply want what we, in more stable societies take for granted? Simple human requirements that the so-called "leaders of the free world", through their despicable foreign policy, have deprived them of? The best thing the USA can do, to allow any prospect of any beneficial outcome for the Syrian people, is for the USA and its client states to fuck off.

G. Chia, October 2016

FOOTNOTES: