Nick Harkaway has a memory of John Cleese. And Kubrick is here too.

[Mark Kohut]

<https://mobile.twitter.com/Harkaway>
·
4m <https://mobile.twitter.com/Harkaway/status/1133691073124077568>
Harkaway Replying to
@Harkaway <https://mobile.twitter.com/Harkaway>
I couldn’t understand why Kubrick would leave him standing there in the
rain. I couldn’t understand why Cleese would stand there, in this attitude
of respect. They were both remarkable people. It was absurd.


On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 7:07 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> <https://mobile.twitter.com/Harkaway>
> ·
> 1m <https://mobile.twitter.com/Harkaway/status/1133690685784297472>
> I came out of the cafeteria and looked towards the main gate, and saw
> Cleese folded downward to listen at the open window of Stanley Kubrick’s
> limousine.
>
>
> On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 5:49 AM peterthooper at juno.com <
> peterthooper at juno.com> wrote:
>
>> _Gnomon_ by Nick Harkaway, heck of a read! Saw it on the "librarians
>> recommend" table, devoured it like nothing recent except that weird
>> baseball criminal justice doorstop somebody here recommended awhile back
>> (for which, thanks!)
>> (_Lost Empress_)
>>
>> If you like that sort of thing. Still not GR, obviously, but what is? But
>> darn it's got some spin on the ball. Comparisons are odious, but if you
>> liked Cryptonomicon you might like this. Similar in that it's a honking
>> long potboiler but with even more storylines, a little more evolved simply
>> because written after more developments,
>> He's the offspring of John LeCarré, although both names are pseudonyms,
>> which was news to me.
>>
>>
>> Fog of War -
>> Thomas Eckhardt quoted
>> Robert Fisk on Douma:
>>
>> https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/douma-syria-opcw-chemical-weapons-chlorine-gas-video-conspiracy-theory-russia-a8927116.html
>>
>> Robert Fisk is the real deal, isn't he?
>> Not long on details in that article, but if he's looking into it then
>> there's a chance that he'll find out if there's anything to it.
>>
>> Iceland Spar -- two views of the CIA, admiration inculcated by the Bond
>> oeuvre, and one of the men in our Presbyterian church was a Company
>> retiree. Never talked about it. Gracious wife, beautiful daughter, so he
>> must've had some good points.
>> OTOH overturning elected governments and installing autocrats is bad form
>> and hard to admire.
>> In AtD, the school for spies didn't serve fish, because fish is brain
>> food!
>>
>> All of that isn't necessarily to suggest CIA covert ops in Syria. Didn't
>> someone recently report that they don't have a lot of traction gaining
>> in-country recruits anymore, so a lot of their activities now are
>> intelligence gathering via various remote methods? Which would mean not as
>> many covert ops? One can only hope - so...
>>
>> If not they, then who?
>>
>> Douma is 10k from the center of Damascus. Less than Disney World is from
>> Orlando.
>>
>> People are trying to raise their families in the middle of this!
>>
>> They have a civil war going on, so this Assad Junior character for whom
>> there were high hopes has been hanging on since the year 2000, a year for
>> which I remember also having high hopes.
>>
>> 30 countries sent observers to the 2014 elections. And said they were
>> fair. And, unlike earlier Syrian elections, there was an opposition
>> candidate. But that is just what they said.
>>
>> Western powers are backing the rebels.
>>
>> So is this Assad a really bad guy like Idi Amin or Saddam?
>>
>> What do Western powers hope to gain by backing the rebels? Or, less
>> cynically, on what basis do they justify intervention?
>>
>> Do they really think the rebels will govern more effectively?
>>
>> What of these rebels? Originally a non-violent outgrowth of the Arab
>> Spring, somebody armed them, right?
>>
>> What are their goals?
>>
>> Do they have as many sub-headings, factions, and goals as there are
>> Democratic Presidential candidates in this country? Yes, they appear
>> to...including a group of "Assyrians in Syria" - Yossarian's people!
>>
>> Kind of like the shadow governments in GR's London, although (some of)
>> these aspirants and claimants control (some) territory in Syria.
>>
>> Instead of states, provinces or communes, they have governorates.
>> One of them is the Latakia Governorate, partially under rebel control -
>> latakia tobacco mentioned in GR as one of the luxury items Pirate got doled
>> out a whiff of every so often.
>> Now produced mainly in Cyprus, though (and wasn't there a huge
>> flustercluck there awhile ago also?)(and a good cyberpunk novel about a
>> dude who formed a 7 girl rock band there?)(what the heck was the name of
>> that?!)
>>
>> Emergence of a dominant rebel leader? Not that I find yet, although that
>> may be the point, getting rid of the autocrat and governing by coalition?
>>
>> Wikipedia said people were hoping for reforms, but all Assad implemented
>> were some free market measures. Like that's going to make him popular -
>> sheesh!
>>
>> May heaven help us all!
>>
>>
>>
>> - yeah yeah
>> Oi oi
>> Put your hand up for tea
>> For separation of church and state and me!
>> (Aldous Snow)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ____________________________________________________________
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>>
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