Assads to the people of Syria: Fuck You I've got my Fondue Set

Dead Man Walking?

The Guardian has a series of reports today on emails hacked from the private inbox of the Assads. While Assad has ordered the murder of thousands of his own people, he and his British wife Asma live a gilded life.

On 5 February 2012, the day after Assad's artillery had pounded Homs, killing several hundred civilians and blowing up a makeshift hospital,Assad, using the pseudonym Sam,  sent his wife the lyrics of a country and western song by the US singer Blake Shelton, and the audio file downloaded from iTunes.
: "I've been a walking heartache / I've made a mess of me / The person that I've been lately / Ain't who I wanna be."

The emails appear to show how tens of thousands of dollars were spent in internet shopping sprees on handmade furniture from Chelsea boutiques. Tens of thousands more were lavished on gold and gem-encrusted jewellery, chandeliers, expensive curtains and paintings to be shipped to the Middle East. While the country was rocked by Assad's crackdown on dissent, his inner circle was concerned about the possibility of getting hold of a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, or a new chocolate fondue set.

On 19 July 2011, Asma al-Assad could be found placing orders with her cousin Amal for jewellery made by a small Paris workshop. She requested four necklaces: "1 turquoise with yellow gold diamonds and a small pave on side" as well as a cornaline, "full black onyx" and "amethyst with white gold diamonds" of similar design. Amal replied that she would "launch" the order in mid-August with a view to getting it done "by mid-September". On 23 July 2011 Asma said she didn't mind the delay and added self-deprecatingly: "I am absolutely clueless when it comes to fine jewellery!" She signed off as "aaa" with: "Kisses to you both, and don't worry, we are well!"

  Dead Woman Walking?

Others items that caught the fancy of Syria's first lady included a vase priced £2,650. On 17 June 2011 she sent details to the family's London-based fixer Soulieman Marouf, and added: "Pls can abdulla see if this available at Harrods to order – they have a sale at the moment." Marouf replied with good news: "He bought it. Got 15% discount. Delivery 10 weeks." He added: "Today you should be receiving an Armani light … If you need anything else please let me know."

The emails suggest a woman preoccupied with shopping – but also with an eye for a bargain. She was eager to claw back VAT on luxury items shipped to Damascus, it emerges, and complained when a consignment of table lamps went missing in China. Emails sent from her personal account also concern the fate of a bespoke table, after it arrived with two "right" panels instead of a right and a left one. More than 50 emails to and from the UK deal with shopping.

Some of Asma al-Assad's prospective purchases arouse polite comment from her friends. On 3 February 2012, she was browsing the internet for luxury shoes, according to an email titled "Christian Louboutin shoes coming shortly".

She wrote to friends sharing details of new shoes on offer, including a pair of crystal-encrusted 16cm high heels costing £3,795. She asked: "Does anything catch your eye – these pieces are not made for general public." One friend replied dryly: "I don't think they're going 2 b useful any time soon unfortunately."

Most jarring were the occasions when the world was hearing news of the worst incidents of violence and bloodshed and the Assad family could be found shopping or joking online, often using pseudonyms. An adviser to the Assad inner circle, Lamis Omar, appeared to acknowledge that the first couple risked seeming too detached and sent Assad a link to an article in the US magazine Businessweek that described the president's "life in a cocoon".
Emails from the Syrian first lady's account are typically signed off with "AAA" – corresponding to Asma al-Assad – or "Alia Kayali", which is the name of the company secretary whose identity activists believe Asma hid behind. In email correspondence with shops in Paris and London, the signoff "Alia" predominates.

In July, "Alia" is found placing an order for about £10,000 worth of candlesticks, tables and chandeliers to be shipped from a Paris designer through a state company in Dubai. In early November, as protests continued, a London art dealer received a message asking about the availability and price of works costing between £5,000 and £35,000 each. In late January "Alia" unpacked a pair of bedside tables shipped from a Chelsea cabinet maker, only to discover a mistake. She complained they had "different finishes and they have different colour draws!?".

In Britain, suppliers said they were unaware that the woman behind the email account was in fact Syria's first lady. Tony Carpenter, who runs a bespoke furniture firm in Billingshurst, West Sussex, sold "Alia" a designer Baxter Gilbert table in November. The table cost £6,257. "I had no idea," Carpenter said. "She gave me a London address. The furniture went to Dubai. I assumed the job was in Dubai."

Carpenter added: "She was a very charming lady to deal with. I spoke to her once or twice, though it was mostly by email. She paid the bill very promptly." The table was oval-shaped and marble-topped, he added.

Sometimes he searched the internet for video clips that impressed him, on one occasion sending her a clip from America's Got Talent of "the best illusion of all time" – a man appearing to saw another man in half and then putting him back together again, to the delight of the judges David Hasselhoff, Sharon Osbourne and Piers Morgan. Link to this video
Assad's emails reveal his inner fears and suspicions. On 16 October, as the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, called for international action to avoid "full-blown civil war" in Syria, Assad circulated from his iPad an article to a list of undisclosed recipients an article alleging that the US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, was responsible for "recruiting Arab 'death squads' from al-Qaida-affiliated units in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Chechnya to fight against Syrian military and police".
He sent another rabid article to his wife on 23 July that described Rupert Murdoch as a Jew and an Israeli citizen and "pretty much" Satan.

Ans so on and so forth.... Clearly they are either in denial about the situation in their nation or they simply don't give a shit, If they have put their heads into a noose then I will shed few tears even if I oppose the death penalty, THe only shame is that, as a British citizen, Asma has the absolute right of return to the UK.

Has Syrian first lady fled to London?

She’s recently been feted in Vogue in a sickeningly sycophantic article but it may be the case that she is no longer safe in the country her vile husband rules through violence and murder.

There are rumours that Asma Assad may now be living in a safe house in or near London. British-born she has not been seen in public since the start of the Arab Spring.

As the violence in Syria increased, Mrs Assad is said to have been warned “to get out as soon as you can.”

Being British the obvious bolt hole is London – her parents still live in Acton in west London but there have been no signs of her father, Fawaz Akhras or her mother Sahar Otri at the family home

This could be a load of hooey but if she has left Syria then the UK is the obvious choice. As a citizen she has every right to return but it will surely be a huge embarrassment for the Government if she has.

Given her choice of husband and his brutal repression of protestors she is one citizen that this country would be well rid of: unless she has severed all contact with him and openly condemns his brutality.

Vogue to Syrians: Eat Shit continued

Joan Juliet Buck goes on to demonstrate absolutely that she has the political nous of a maggot. There is no way she was being ironic here:

The presidential family lives in a modern apartment in Malki. On Friday, the Muslim day of rest, Asma al-Assad opens the door herself in jeans and old suede stiletto boots, hair in a ponytail, the word happiness spelled out across the back of her T-shirt. At the bottom of the stairs stands the off-duty president in jeans—tall, long-necked, blue-eyed. A precise man who takes photographs and talks lovingly about his first computer, he says he was attracted to studying eye surgery “because it’s very precise… and there is very little blood.”

The old al-Assad family apartment was remade into a child-friendly triple-decker playroom loft surrounded by immense windows on three sides. Asma al-Assad likes to say, “You’re safe because you are surrounded by people who will keep you safe.” Neighbors peer in, drop by, visit, comment on the furniture. The president doesn’t mind: “This curiosity is good: They come to see you, they learn more about you. You don’t isolate yourself.”

There’s a decorated Christmas tree. Seven-year-old Zein watches Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland on the president’s iMac; her brother Karim, six, builds a shark out of Legos; and nine-year-old Hafez tries out his new electric violin. All three go to a Montessori school.

Asma al-Assad empties a box of fondue mix into a saucepan for lunch. The household is run on wildly democratic principles. “We all vote on what we want, and where,” she says. The chandelier over the dining table is made of cut-up comic books. “They outvoted us three to two on that.”

I don’t think there is any need to go on

Anna Wintour - ugliness goes deep

As for the American Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour, the not-wife has a few choice words to describe her (primarily due to Wintour’s pro-fur stance)… Most of them rhyme with bunt, shunt and stunt. In relation to his article, she her words for Wintour and Buck were “A pair of callous bitches”.

On the evidence of this piece of fawning drivel I can only agree.

Vogue to Syrians: Eat Shit

This is old news but still worth a rant:

Okay so you don’t buy Vogue for its insightful political analysis but there must surely be times when even the producers of such a piece of glossy fluff like Vogue must wonder if they are utterly out of tune with reality.

I wonder what Anna Wintour and the Vogue editorial board were thinking when they put the March edition together.I doubt they gave a single jot of care for the situation in the Middle East in general or the people of Syria in particular.

Joan Juliet Buck

The issue in question  included the following Asma Al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert , written by socialiite ,former French Vogue editor in chief and palpable are arselicker Joan Juliet Buck.

Here are some selected excerpts:

Asma al-Assad, Syria’s dynamic first lady, is on a mission to create a beacon of culture and secularism in a powder-keg region—and to put a modern face on her husband’s regime.

Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies….She is the first lady of Syria.

Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East, possibly because, as the State Department’s Web site says, “the Syrian government conducts intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Syrian citizens and foreign visitors.”

The Assads

It’s a secular country where women earn as much as men and the Muslim veil is forbidden in universities, a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings, but its shadow zones are deep and dark.

Asma’s husband, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president in 2000, after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, with a startling 97 percent of the vote. In Syria, power is hereditary.


The first impression of Asma al-Assad is movement—a determined swath cut through space with a flash of red soles. Dark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace. No watch, no jewelry apart from Chanel agates around her neck, not even a wedding ring, but fingernails lacquered a dark blue-green. She’s breezy, conspiratorial, and fun. Her accent is English but not plummy. Despite what must be a killer IQ, she sometimes uses urban shorthand: “I was, like. . . .”

Asma Akhras was born in London in 1975, the eldest child and only daughter of a Syrian cardiologist and his diplomat wife. She grew up in Ealing, went to Queen’s College. She studied computer science at university, then went into banking..

She started dating a family friend: the second son of president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar, who’d cut short his ophthalmology studies in London in 1994 and returned to Syria after his older brother, Basil, heir apparent to power, died in a car crash.


The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen, encourage them to engage in what she calls “active citizenship.” “It’s about everyone taking shared responsibility in moving this country forward, about empowerment in a civil society. We all have a stake in this country; it will be what we make it.”


Blah, blah blah, Louboutin, Chanel and other expensive brands the Killer comes in the next post

But clearly Joan Juliet Buck has the political nous of a maggot.