Largely np - Nick Harkaway, fog of war, ponderous pondering

[rich]

there are no answers for Syria. nor are there easy decidings on who to
back. the west has bungled from the beginning, exacerbated by the
disastrous iraq war which lit the whole region up. Obama's red line stance
wasnt much more than that. He's producing movies now. Russia saw an opening
and grabbed it; the Iranians would always be in Assad's corner via
Hezbollah and other proxies. they're used to fighting this type of war--how
long did the fires of the Lebanese civil war burn? Assad will get away with
brutality on a large scale. the refugee problem festers. no one is losing
vacation time outside the Zone. Look at Bosch's The Haywain. Times haven't
changed. where am I where are you, where are we? all i know is man does
that big blot of yellow hay sure remind me of something.

rich

https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-haywain-triptych/7673843a-d2b6-497a-ac80-16242b36c3ce


On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 5:49 AM peterthooper at juno.com <peterthooper at juno.com>
wrote:

> _
> 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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