Open Sources, October 11, 2012

WHAT? STATE’S EAST ASIA BUREAU COLLABORATING WITH CHINESE OFFICIALS who unjustly imprison and torture a U.S. citizen? Say it aint so.

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DON’T TELL ME SANCTIONS CAN’T WORK; they’re certainly exceeding my expectations in Iran. Iran, unlike North Korea, has a functioning market economy. That means that its economy has more international exposure, but also that it’s more difficult to isolate. And yet we seem to have had enough success to threaten the stability of its regime.

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AS YE SOW, SO SHALL YE REAP. I found this morsel near the bottom of a news story about a suicide bombing in Damascus that killed or wounded 100 people at a Syrian Air Force intelligence service building:

Opposition sources said the al-Nusra Front is made up mostly of Syrian Salafists who had ties to intelligence agencies before the revolt and were allowed to use Syria as a launchpad against the then U.S.-backed, Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad. The United Nations says the front is affiliated to al Qaeda.

Every day that goes by seems to show more evidence that Al Qaeda is gaining strength in Syria. There are a lot of secular Syrians — their protest movement started as pro-democratic, and renounced violence for a lot longer than I’d have — but it seems that those who are the closest to our views are the least likely to get external support.