Porton Down

[peterthooper at juno.com]

Thanks, Thomas Eckhardt, for that (a wainload of data)

One probably should read more non-fiction.

Porton Down joins my mental Britain, henceforth to be numbered with Stonehenge, Bletchley Park, Fleet Street, the Venerable Bede, the White Visitation, Porlock, Edward the Confessor, Cockney rhyming slang, and Ethelred the Unready...


All these consultants running around, trying to make enough money to afford places to live outside the effects of their efforts, which in Syria involve 6 figure death toll, 11 figure cost, and millions of lost homes, bring to mind this quote from Pynchon and Sale in _Minstrel Island_ :

"All we want is someplace where every time we turn around we don’t see that idiot damn machine staring at us. We’re not hurting you people. We don’t start revolutions, we don’t preach any inflammatory doctrines. All we ask is to be left alone. Maybe by your standards we’re wrong but for crying out loud, we’re harmless. ([P] Act I, scene 2)"

(Quoted passim by p-lister Albert Rolls in a very articulate article at
https://thomaspynchon.com/thomas-pynchons-lost-science-fiction-musical-minstrel-island/ one of, apparently, a number of such he's authored)

The connection to the chemical warfare thread is tenuous - interpolating cw/globalisation/military-madness instead of "idiot damon machine", mutatis mutandis - 

but the passage reflects what the hypothetical faction I support in Syria - 

people a lot like the "moderate armed opposition" whom Whitehall support (though i guess people don't say Whitehall anymore as a synecdoche, do they?) but less armed, more moderate, and not immediately opposed to anything in particular

 - might be saying.

Is the meta-narrative "power vacuum due to the decline of Baathism" at all sapient?


-------- Original Message ----------
From: Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
To: "peterthooper at juno.com" <peterthooper at juno.com>, Pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Largely np - Nick Harkaway, fog of war, ponderous pondering
Date: Thu, 30 May 2019 07:34:14 +0200

I am certain that the CIA does covert ops in Syria. The White Helmets/CW 
attacks narrative, however, seems to be a British effort (see James Le 
Mesurier, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon) which at some point may have taken 
on a life of its own.

For the Pynchonesquely named HdBG, see:

http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Porton_Down_investigates_Syria#Hamish_de_Bretton-Gordon.27s_role_in_collecting_samples_for_MI6

The British also run the Syrian opposition's media:

"Government contractors effectively run a press office for opposition 
fighters but communications conceal UK’s role"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/03/how-britain-funds-the-propaganda-war-against-isis-in-syria



On Wed, 29 May 2019 09:47:47 GMT

  "peterthooper at juno.com" <peterthooper at juno.com> wrote:

> 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? 
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