The beauty and the butcher

[airiefairie]

Everyone is talking about Bashar al-Assad, the butcher of Syria. But as the wisdom goes, behind every politician there is often a very powerful and influential woman. So what about Asma al-Assad, the first lady of Syria? Is she just like the unscrupulous cold-blooded appendix to a bloody tyrant? Or is she the liberal first lady who is helplessly

Comments

[johnny9fingers]

Apt for Valentine's day.

Sometimes you pick a husband that does you no good and before you know it you are more addicted than he is. (q.v. Whitney Houston, Amy, etc etc.) Sometimes it's the chap of the male gender that comes off worse. (Kurt springs to mind.)

[nairiporter]

I am afraid she might have sold her soul to the regime already.

[oportet]

If she's smart, she figured him out before she moved with him to Syria - and is okay with him and the way he handles things.

If she's stupid, and she didn't figure him out before moving to Syria, her stance could be that butterflies would look cute with hats on, and nothing deeper.

[telemann]

A news commentator suggested Ashad isn't nearly as bad as his dear ole dad, who killed over 20,000 in less than a few months, and the son doesn't have the same level of blood thirst. But that was years ago, without the world watching as intently, and certainly before the advent of cell phone videos and the Internet. So they weren't sure why he's being less blood thirsty. But one thing is for sure, he's a marked man:

As I posted earlier in my journal this morning:

[htpcl]

Bashar al-Assad who came to power in 2000 after a decades long rule of his father, had started to slowly open up the economy, but still his administration remained very conservative. The political prisoners in Syria are thousands, and all larger opposition formations are banned. The government has blocked access to some internet websites and is exerting a strict control on the media.

From almost a year ago. We have prophets among us!

[telemann]

And we also had a lot of nay-sayers nothing would come to pass with that crazy social media stuff too.

[ford_prefect42]

.... "very conservative"....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad
Bashar al-Assad (Arabic: بشار حافظ الأسد‎, Baššār al-ʾAsad; born 11 September 1965) is the President of Syria and Regional Secretary of the Ba'ath Party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27ath_Party_(Syrian-led_faction)
"The party's ideology is Ba'athism, which means it supports Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, and Pan-Arabism.[1]"

"The party slogan "Unity, Freedom, Socialism" is enshrined in the constitution of the Syrian Arab Republic."

Which he inherrited from his father...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez_al-Assad
Political party
Arab Ba'ath Movement (1946-1947)
Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (1947-1966

[ddstory]

She is so beautiful... Please, please Allah or whatever, let it be a bird in a cage scenario rather than a newly crafted monster!