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Syria: News Roundup
Back from traveling here are some links to recent developments around Syria.
There is some background on a video that shows a Saudi al-Nusra fighter executing 12 captured and bound men. There is also new information on al-Mesreb village where locals clashed with al-Nusra terrorists who killed villagers and burned down houses.
Two suicide bombers opened an all out attack on the central prison in Aleppo which houses some 4,000 prisoners. I interpret this attack as an attempt to free prisoners to urgently get more personal for the insurgency. The attack was repelled by prison guards with significant losses for the attackers.
There are more reports of civilians clashing with insurgents as well as of fighting between various insurgency groups.
The Syrian army is still preparing to liberate the city of Qusayr which is situated on one of the main supply routes for both the insurgency as well as for the army. Civilians fleeing the surrounded city report that about a thousand insurgents in the city are digging in but are low on ammunition.
Anonymous U.S. intelligence people claim that Russia delivered a new version of anti-ship missiles to Syria. There is no mentioning of when exactly that is supposed to have happened. Last month, last year or three years ago? It also not clear why that is supposed to be a change. Syria already has able coast defense forces that would make a supply of the insurgents via a sea route quite dangerous. Additionally, as U.S. media only now note, there is new permanent Russian navy force in the Mediterranean that could challenge any attempts of a coastal siege or even a no-fly zone. The "new weapons" story seems to be a plant (to "Iraqi WMD" reporter Michael Gordon) to allege recent Russian delivery of arms to Syria even if there is no proof for such. But the claim can be used to justify the delivery of U.S. weapons to the insurgents.
The exiled Syrian opposition is now demanding new arms as a condition for agreeing to peace talks. The seem to understand that the current losing state of the insurgency does not give them any leverage in negotiations.
For the third time insurgents have abducted UN observers in the Golan height zone and looted their observation post. The Syrian government claims to have an email that prove contacts between the Qatari government and the UN kidnappers in one of the earlier cases. Qatar is said to have invested about $3 billion to keep the insurgency in Syria going and to be disliked by every side.
"Western" pro-insurgents "experts" claim that Syria is breaking up into various parts. As the facts on the ground would not yet agree to that, this campaign suggest that such a breakup is the aim of the "expert's" sponsors.
Obama met with the Turkish sultan Erdogan. There seems to be no agreement between them on how to continue their onslaught on Syria. The only point they agree on is a meaningless "Assad has to go" which would then be a starting point for "something". Zionist lobby "experts" urge the U.S. to further intervene with a no fly zone to save Erdogan's endangered political position and U.S. "credibility". In the run up to World War I it was Germany's "credibility" towards a misbehaving ally that had to be saved. That did not end well.
I just finished reading Jennet Conant’s A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS, a book about Julia Child’s years in the OSS during WWII and the post-war decade or so. The OSS was where she met her future husband, Paul Child, who was brought into the OSS for his art skills; Julia parlayed her Smith College history education into a clerical position which led to her being the manager of all the reports, records, and communications internally and between the OSS and Washington, allies, potential agents in SE Asia. She was known as being unmovable by the gossips who wanted to know what was going on; she kept confidences and secrets.
The book also is about the horror of the McCarthy years and the attacks he launched on purported Communists in the State Department after WWII, as well as on others not connected with the government. Paul Child, working for State, spent a long and anxiety ridden time of more than half a year fearing he would be tarred with “guilt by association” and lose his job or even be charged with espionage. The person who was the “guilty associate” was a woman name Jane Foster, the daughter of a wealthy California doctor and businessman who was also a staunch conservative Republican. Paul had worked with Jane and they had been friends during their work in SE Asia. Jane, perhaps in reaction to her father’s politics, was attracted to the US Communist Party, artistic people, bohemians in general. She was also a talented artist, accomplished flirt, and general bon vivant.
Because of her language skills and having lived in the Dutch East Indies while married to a Dutch businessman (who, she learned at the end of the war, turned out to be a Dutch intelligence agent), the OSS hired her to work to keep Indonesia and other Southeast Asian colonies in the US camp, both during the war, but also going forward. Jane was something of a party girl — flibbertigibbit* seems to fit her to a “T,” as she was extremely talkative, often not editing herself very well, very emotional in her reactions, sexually active, and tended to drink too much. She had trouble making plans, but could pull things together when necessary. She also had very good skills in understanding others, and, when in Indonesia, seemed to develop a very good relationship with Sukarno, the nationalist who wanted independence. She was the OSS manager for its Indonesian propaganda activities and developed a network of native agents.
She wrote what could be called “white papers” about how the feeling for independence, cultivated by FDR and supported by the OSS’s work, was deep and widespread in SE Asia, that it was not a Communist inspired plot but very much indigenous to the various populaces, and that the US should not work with their European allies to reinstall their colonial powers if it wanted to be a leader for these nations and have their support going forward.
When she returned to the US, she met with high level people at State and tried to persuade them of her understanding that the US could do nothing worse than work with the Europeans to try to recolonize their former colonies. State, and Truman by then, felt it was of utmost importance to support Europe and keep Communism out of Europe and out of the former colonies.
Jane quit the OSS, already being dismantled (and disrespected) by the Truman administration, and returned briefly to CA, where she made her white paper on Indonesia (it had never been received formally by the OSS bosses) and Viet Nam public, wrote a long letter-to-the-editor summarizing her findings which was published in the NYTimes, and gave speeches to try to activate the public against the move to assist the French in taking over Viet Nam again or help the Dutch in keeping Indonesia as the Dutch East Indies. Jane was not alone in her conclusions, but both government intel people and journalists were hounded if they supported these findings.
She eventually went back to NYC, where, it appears, she may have been enlisted as a spy by the USSR. However, those who accused her were also known to lie to please their own USSR spy masters, so their accusations may have been based more on needing to provide information to either their spy masters and, then, to the FBI to get lighter sentences than actual knowledge. When documentation became available out of Russia, it still was not clear she had been turned or that she did anything which meant she had been a spy. But her name was mentioned by the Russian spy runner in the US as someone they might want to try to turn. And she was close enough to actual spies that Hoover and the John Foster Dulles felt she must be guilty. She managed to get out of the US to avoid being sucked into criminal trials and spent the remainder of her life in France.
She married and accompanied her husband to his post in Austria, where she also managed US Information Services radio. Except for a harrowing year or so in the US, where she had returned to visit her very sick mother but was not allowed to return to her home and husband in Paris and had her passport taken away, Jane lived the rest of her life in France. Since her parents were wealthy and supported her, she did live well, but in constant fear of the FBI.
Jane’s life after being a target for the FBI drained her spirit and she spent several different sessions in sanitariums for her mental health. But she loved her art and continued to paint; however, once macular degeneration destroyed her vision, she simply gave up on living.
The part of the whole narrative I found most depressing is the US seems to continually ignore those in its intelligence agencies, as well as outside experts, who warn against “foreign adventures,” and almost all of them end badly for the US. There is a deep and abiding sense among those in power that the US can do what it wants to do and with its might simply overpower and prevail. And, as Viet Nam showed so clearly, that does not always happen. But, memories are short and when the Powers That Be scream about “security” most people withdraw from public action and simply accept that they can do nothing but try to hunker down and stay safe, from both the outside “danger” and the retaliation of the PTB’s.
Overall, it was a good read, but so depressing. Our nation seems to learn so little. Or, rather, when people rise in rank and gain power, they are so easily co-opted that the essential power base remains the same. A John Kerry can say to a Congressional committee prior to the end of the Viet Nam War “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake,” and then become a Secretary of State who talks about asking many more to die for the mistaken calculations of the US. Probably a mistake, but not to the PTB’s.
*Flibbertigibbet — Wiki:
Flibbertigibbet is a Middle English word referring to a flighty or whimsical person, usually a young woman. In modern use, it is used as a slang term, especially in Yorkshire, for a gossipy or overly talkative person. Its origin is in a meaningless representation of chattering.
Urban Dictionary (spelled flibberty jibbet) :
A north west England name for someone who is flashy and female,flaunting sexually. The term comes from the way someone “dances” about when being hung… hence the reference to “jibbet”, or gallows.
Posted by: jawbone | May 18 2013 16:26 utc | 43
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