While most people here might roll their eyes at Paul Harvey preachy stories, he did have a way of capturing his listeners' attention and ultimately imparting just a little extra bit of knowledge. Now that he is gone, not even his small drops of knowledge find their way into the public discourse. FOX News has replaced "the rest of the story" with "we report, you deceived".
So it's no big surprise that to find the back story on Syria, it's necessary to scour the foreign press. And maybe better to look past the BBC and Agence France, or any of the news outlets of the former colonial powers. Join me below the hyperlemniscate for
.....the REST of the story.
Where the story starts is back in 2006, when climate change turned the breadbasket of Syria into a desert.
Unable to make a living, over 1.5 million destitute farmers moved to the suburbs of Damascus and other cities, living in makeshift tents and scrounging a living. Massive shortfalls in production turned a net exporter of wheat into a major importer. Food prices skyrocketed, punishing the mostly Sunni farmers who once fed the nation. Their plight, ignored by Syria's Alawite rulers, stoked anger and planted the seeds for conflict.
What's that you say? You were never told this by MSNBC or CNN or even the BBC? No, you weren't. If you want to read more, you're just going to have to go to
The Times of India to find out, for I have quoted as much fair use as I am going to.
And after you come back from reading Mr. Chanda's piece, maybe then we can discuss how Obama's saber rattling is going to fix the problem.