Now covert support has become open military backing for a rebel movement split into over 1,000 groups and increasingly dominated by jihadist fighters, as atrocities have multiplied on all sides.
Instead, these amorphous, unpredictable meetings have become open invitations for interest groups and grass roots campaigns to capture the public dialogue.
Similar temples of excess have sprung up in Myanmar where some border towns – often outside of central government control – have become open markets renowned for selling rare animals, sex and gambling trips to Chinese visitors.
So much so, that during the warm season vast areas of previously solid ice have become open waters, creating opportunities for new trade routes and exposing the Arctic's enormous reserves of oil and natural gas.
In New York, many of the historic districts she helped save from the Lower Manhattan Expressway, such as SoHo's cast-iron district, have become open-air museums or malls for tourists that are just as soulless as the cultural centres and high-rises she so abhorred.
Madison County, along with Jefferson County, Mississippi, and the state of West Virginia, has become an open vault for trial lawyers pursuing legally vulnerable rich companies.
Although the New York City Department of Homeless Services told me in an email that "providers are constantly monitoring shelters for K2 usage" and that users aren't allowed to stay there, anyone with eyes could see that the dirt patch around the shelter has become an open market for different varieties of K2 and that people in the throes of its effects are stumbling around its perimeter.
The results have been disastrous--our electoral process has become an open market place for politicians to be bought by billionaires' Super PACs.
