They organized a bunch of activity to start the week. You know that was already a little difficult for the scheduling this week. DeMille was frankly exhausted from attempting to supervise the election coverage, the one in which some members of the Creative Staff had been warned not to disclose any unfavorable opinions about people serving today in what is generally the same government they did only two decades ago.

So you can see Monday morning meeting (MMM) was tough. Phil passed this one from the other Coast from Diana about satellite imagery of the Syrian port facility at Tartus. This is where some of the confusion starts. Tartus was important because it was the prime Soviet East Med operating base when some of us were operating there and the Cold War was wrapping up. Diana is using CUI, we think, since there are private satellites pumping out imagery similar but not identical to what we used at the same time we went to the Moon (the first time).

Diana said Syrian rebels have seized Damascus, marking the end of the Assad family rule that started 50 years ago. Rebel leader Mahmed Al-Julani made his way to one of the oldest mosques in Damascus for a public appearance as leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group that has changed names. It had started out as an al Qaeda affiliate with which we are still at war- we think- but it operated under the name of the “Nusra Front.”

The leader of that group is on his third name, so that lead to a Boomer conference on the Patio to discuss the Pentagon’s decision to launch a new name for things that should clear things up. This is the origin of the new acronym ‘CUI’: Controlled Unclassified Information. This term appears to be a new means of classifying the un-classified stuff that used to be the part of our business where we started to try to figure things out.

To reduce confusion.

The Communist Russians, not the current ones, are who we used to worry about on a different patio with our friends in Cyprus, looking east across blue Med waters to Tartus exactly as we did with the view from Key West to Havana. It was too far to distinguish whether the new group is the one previously designated as terrorists or what they claim is the one that just liberated everything.

So, no confusion there. That announcement came with the material the Girls had produced based on a garbled story from the Boomer section who had exercised a marvelous reprieve from the bitter cold with an impromptu aloha-style gathering outside in the late afternoon.

The common CUI about what kinds of aircraft were used in the Syrian incursion- old, peppy reliable ones- had veered into the local matter that had been of interest, briefly, out on the Patio and involved an initial traffic citation picked up by Vic in 1970.

Which led to a discussion of decades, and DeMille had left things like this when he went to holy services yesterday followed by what he said was a fact finding trip to Freddie’s Beach Bar in Crystal City across from the big Five Sided Building where he used to work:

This was the slide intended to go with that bit, but it was a little off balance. You would need Collin’s perspective, since he is a dog-walker and one of the new tech gear heads, Bernie has the leaning tower of Pisa perspective and Grace is the sort of woman who has a vibrancy in person you can almost feel in the image. And how that is related to the smashed Dodge Charger, same name and tradition as the car Vic got his first ticket in and a reflection on the 440 RT engine in the one and the Hellcat in the other. And a comment on electric cars that are having some issues and ones that go fast as hell. And who owns the one down by the HQ entrance.

Actually, that confusion got sorted out for AM posting since there is more stuff happening in Advent Arlington and it is going on already!

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