Two new articles for those who are interested. I was wrong, Bashar Al Assad isn't being held 'hostage' by his bloodthirsty family, he is in fact a child who isn't fit for political office, he doesn't care about ruling or dictatoring, he only cares about material gain-so I was sort of right, he isn't in charge, but not because he hasn't been given the chance-this was crushing for me.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/14/assad-emails-lift-lid-inner-circle
Exclusive: secret Assad emails lift lid on life of leader's inner circle
• Messages show Bashar al-Assad took advice from Iran
• Leader made light of promised reforms
• Wife spent thousands on jewellery and furniture
Robert Booth, Mona Mahmood and Luke Harding
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 March 2012 23.03 GMT
Article history
Bashar al-Assad apparently made light of reforms he had promised in an attempt to defuse the Syrian crisis. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Bashar al-Assad took advice from Iran on how to handle the uprising against his rule, according to a cache of what appear to be several thousand emails received and sent by the Syrian leader and his wife.
The Syrian leader was also briefed in detail about the presence of western journalists in the Baba Amr district of Homs and urged to "tighten the security grip" on the opposition-held city in November.
The revelations are contained in more than 3,000 documents that activists say are emails downloaded from private accounts belonging to Assad and his wife Asma.
The messages, which have been obtained by the Guardian, are said to have been intercepted by members of the opposition Supreme Council of the Revolution group between June and early February.
The documents, which emerge on the first anniversary of the rebellion that has seen more than 8,000 Syrians killed, paint a portrait of a first family remarkably insulated from the mounting crisis and continuing to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle.
They appear to show the president's wife spending thousands of dollars over the internet for designer goods while he swaps entertaining internet links on his iPad and downloads music from iTunes.
As the world watched in horror at the brutal suppression of protests across the country and many Syrians faced food shortages and other hardships, Mrs Assad spent more than £10,000 on candlesticks, tables and chandeliers from Paris and instructed an aide to order a fondue set from Amazon.
The Guardian has made extensive efforts to authenticate the emails by checking their contents against established facts and contacting 10 individuals whose correspondence appears in the cache. These checks suggest the messages are genuine, but it has not been possible to verify every one.
The emails also appear to show that:
• Assad established a network of trusted aides who reported directly to him through his "private" email account – bypassing both his powerful clan and the country's security apparatus.
• Assad made light of reforms he had promised in an attempt to defuse the crisis, referring to "rubbish laws of parties, elections, media".
• A daughter of the emir of Qatar, Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani, this year advised Mr and Mrs Assad to leave Syria and suggested Doha may offer them exile.
• Assad sidestepped extensive US sanctions against him by using a third party with a US address to make purchases of music and apps from Apple's iTunes.
• A Dubai-based company, al-Shahba, with a registered office in London is a key conduit for Syrian government business and private purchases of Mrs Assad.
Activists say they were passed username and password details believed to have been used by the couple by a mole in the president's inner circle. The email addresses used the domain name alshahba.com, a group of companies used by the regime. They say the details allowed uninterrupted access to the two inboxes until the leak was discovered in February.
The emails appear to show how Assad assembled a team of aides to advise him on media strategy and how to position himself in the face of increasing international criticism of his regime's attempts to crush the uprising, which is now thought to have left 10,000 dead.
Activists say they were able to monitor the inboxes of Assad and his wife in real time for several months. In several cases they claim to have used information to warn colleagues in Damascus of imminent regime moves against them.
The access continued until 7 February, when a threatening email arrived in the inbox thought to be used by Assad after the account's existence was revealed when the Anonymous group separately hacked into a number of Syrian government email addresses. Correspondence to and from the two addresses ceased on the same day.
The emails appear to show that Assad received advice from Iran or its proxies on several occasions during the crisis. Before a speech in December his media consultant prepared a long list of themes, reporting that the advice was based on "consultations with a good number of people in addition to the media and political adviser for the Iranian ambassador".
The memo advised the president to use "powerful and violent" language and to show appreciation for support from "friendly states". It also advised that the regime should "leak more information related to our military capability" to convince the public that it could withstand a military challenge.
The president also received advice from Hussein Mortada, an influential Lebanese businessman with strong connections to Iran. In December, Mortada urged Assad to stop blaming al-Qaida for an apparent twin car bombing in Damascus, which took place the day before an Arab League observer mission arrived in the country. He said he had been in contact with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon who shared his view.
"It is not out of our interest to say that al-Qaida is behind the operation because this claim will [indemnify] the US administration and Syrian opposition," Mortada wrote not long after the blasts. "I have received contacts from Iran and Hezbollah in my role as director of many Iranian-Lebanese channels and they directed me to not mention that al-Qaida is behind the operation. It is a blatant tactical media mistake."
In another email Mortada advised the president that the regime needed to take control of public squares between 3pm and 9pm to deny opposition groups the opportunity to gather there.
Iran and Hezbollah have been accused throughout the year-long uprising of providing on-the-ground support to the regime crackdown, including sending soldiers to fight alongside regime forces and technical experts to help identify activists using the internet. Iran and Hezbollah both deny offering anything more than moral support.
Among those who communicated with the president's account were Khaled al-Ahmed who, it is believed, was given the task of advising about Homs and Idlib. In November Ahmed wrote to Assad urging him to "tighten the security grip to start [the] operation to restore state control in Idlib and Hama countryside".
He also advised Assad that he had been told European reporters had "entered the area by crossing the Lebanese borders illegally". In another mail he warned the president that "a tested source who met with leaders of groups in Baba Amr today said a big shipment of weapons coming from Libya will arrive to the shores of one of the neighbouring states within three days to be smuggled to Syria".
This little gem of an article is for those who are interested in the sectarian and religious fascist factors in the revolution
Apparently, the government started the sectarianism by paying agitators to stand in crowds and shout things like 'Alawites to the graves and Christians to Beirut' as well as graffiti, arming Alawites, forcing government employees to counter-protest, brainwashing people to become assassins and generally spreading fear among minorities. How cynical and exploitationist these elites are to create sectarianism to use it for their own survival.
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/03/01/eyewitness-from-homs-an-alawite-refugee-warns-of-sectarian-war-in-syria/Eyewitness from Homs: An Alawite Refugee Warns of Sectarian War in SyriaRead more:
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/03/01/eyewitness-from-homs-an-alawite-refugee-warns-of-sectarian-war-in-syria/#ixzz1pQKIeqJAUp until a few months ago, Hassan Ali, a 29-year old fabric merchant in the Syrian city of Homs, rarely gave politics much thought. His life was pretty good under the reign of President Bashar Assad, and he saw no reason to rock the boat. As a businessman, he was happy that Assad had brought in Internet and mobile phones. Like Assad, Ali was a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, but since he was in private business, the connection wasn’t worth much. Sure, he had the same gripes as most people about corruption in the regime, but when protesters started taking to the streets a little less than a year ago, he had no intention of joining them. After all, Assad had promised reform, and state TV said that the protests were organized by religious fundamentalists and foreign infiltrators trying to destabilize the country. “They said the protesters were Israeli collaborators and armed terrorists, and I believed them,” he says.
But then Assad’s security forces killed his best friend.
Mohammad, 29, was neither a terrorist nor an Israeli spy. He was a Sunni dentist who decided to close his practice one day to attend a protest. He was shot in the neck on April 15, and died within hours.
State TV crowed that the army had killed a couple of armed religious fundamentalists, fomenting sectarian violence in the city. “That’s when I realized they were lying,” says Ali. “Mohammad and I grew up together, we never cared about Sunni or Alawite. Nobody does in Homs.” (PHOTOS: Images from the frontlines of the battle for Homs.)
It’s never easy to watch a stranger, a grown man, cry. Especially not one who slicks back his hair and wears a tough’s leather jacket. As Ali tells his story he takes his emotions out on an emptied paper cup of Starbucks espresso that he turns obsessively in his hands. By the time we finish our conversation, it will be twisted into a coffee-stained spear. Ali fled Homs for Beirut the day before we met. He won’t say how he escaped a city that is now on the verge of total annihilation, only that it wasn’t easy, and that families burdened with children and old people could never make it out. His family has taken shelter in a nearby Alawite village unlikely to be attacked. His name, he says, is common enough that he doesn’t have to worry about repercussions. But he won’t give out Mohammad’s last name, just in case.
The Syrian regime has barred all but a few journalists from entering the country, so Ali’s story could not be independently verified. Nevertheless, his account of a former regime supporter turned dissenter offers insights into the thorny question of how, exactly, the Syrian crisis will end. Reports on Thursday said rebel fighters had beaten a hasty retreat from Bab Amr, one of the more beleaguered — and bombed — neighborhoods in Homs. As the U.N. pushes forward with a resolution for aid, as Saudi Arabia and Qatar contemplate arming the rebels, as Syrian opposition groups beg for a no fly zone, or international intervention, or simply a humanitarian corridor, the reality is that the regime will not fall unless its hundreds of thousands of supporters, and millions more Syrian citizens sitting on the sidelines, take a stand. What is holding them back, largely, is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of losing their livelihoods, and, for the estimated 25% of the population made up of religious minorities, fear of a sectarian war.
Homs is Syria’s third largest city, and the country’s most religiously diverse. Intermarriage was common for all but the most conservative, and it was considered gauche to discuss sect. In the months leading up to the revolution, Ali and Mohammad, who were both engaged to be married, spoke endlessly about saving up enough money to have a joint wedding. “We dreamed that our children would play together, and that they too would be best friends,” says Ali.
But as pressure mounted against the regime, Assad resurrected old sectarian tensions in order to bolster support from the country’s religious minorities. “The regime was trying to create fear among the Alawites and the Christians,” says Ali. “He [Assad] said to us, if the Islamists take over, they will kick you out of Syria.” Many of Ali’s Alawite friends, who hold government jobs, were offered extracurricular stipends—as much as $500 a month— to fan those fears through a graffiti campaign. “The Christians to Beirut, the Alawites to the grave” was one of the more common ones. Another friend was told to shout sectarian slogans at anti-government rallies. Ali says he doesn’t blame his friends for participating in the propaganda campaign. “They are poor, and were terrified that they would loose their jobs if they didn’t do it.”
But what was once propagandistic myth making on the part of the regime now seems to be coming true. In May, the government started handing out weapons to Alawite citizens. Nominally it was for self-defense, but if folks wanted to take the law into their own hands, well, that wasn’t discouraged either. Ali, who never publicly discussed his change of heart, took his government-issued AK-47 and gas mask and gave them to Mohammad’s younger brother, who had just defected from the army in order to join the rebels. The Free Syrian Army, as the defected soldiers call themselves, say that they only defend protesters, but enough videos of FSA attacks on government soldiers and armed Alawites has emerged to make it clear that the opposition can be equally brutal, if given the opportunity. One of Ali’s Alawite friends was caught by the FSA shouting sectarian slogans at an anti-government rally. He was beaten until he confessed that he had been sent by the regime. He was allowed to go free, but the damage was done. “It’s a problem when that happens,” says Ali, “The government can make a big propaganda, they can say that the FSA kidnaps and tortures Alawites, and because there is a grain of truth, people believe it more.”
Ali estimates that only a few Alawites have joined the opposition. Most, he says, are still with the regime with some on the sidelines. Of his Alawite friends still in Homs, he says that they feel trapped between the opposition and the regime. Whenever a pro-government demonstration is planned, he says, a memo goes out to all the regional Baath political offices asking that all government employees join. “Those who don’t go are considered as traitors to the regime, they will lose their jobs, or worse,” says Ali. That forced demonstration of Alawite support for the regime brings the sectarian divide into sharp relief, and is likely to set the stage for sectarian reprisals should the regime collapse precipitously.
Ali is ambivalent about Saudi and Qatari plans to arm the FSA. He knows how he feels about Mohammad’s death, and knows enough about Syrian codes of honor to understand that revenge killings are inevitable. “If a person is killed, his brothers, his family must take action.” As he contemplates Syria’s future, his face twists into a pained grimace. “It will be chaos. If the situation continues, Syria will see sectarian war.” He also knows that such a war will mean the end of the Alawites. And for that, he blames Assad. “Even if it’s not true, most Syrians believe that all Alawites are with the regime. So if it comes to war, they will take revenge. The regime is committing suicide in slow motion, and taking everyone with it. Assad is a traitor. A traitor to both the Syrians and the Alawite people.”
(PHOTOS: After Homs, Syrian rebels regroup.)
The only way to avoid such a fate, says Ali, is if the Alawites themselves rise up against the regime. It is, he admits, a Catch 22. Because they are so afraid, because their jobs are so deeply tied to the regime, they are only likely to do so if they believe that the regime is over. “Then they will come back and try to fix things. But by then it will be too late.”
Ali, for his part, is trying to do what he can. He came to Lebanon, he says, because he thought he would have a better chance to convince other Alawites to turn against the regime without fear of being targeted himself. He also admits that there was another reason for fleeing Homs: Mohammad’s mother. “Mohammad was like my brother, so she was like my mother. And I just couldn’t stand to see her pain anymore.” His voice thickens with anguish. “I hope someone will revenge his death. But what I want more is justice. What I hope is that anyone involved in shedding the blood of Syrians, despite their sect, will go on trial. Because revenge never ends.”
Read more:
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/03/01/eyewitness-from-homs-an-alawite-refugee-warns-of-sectarian-war-in-syria/#ixzz1pQJWgEiM 
Topic: Syria.....President Bashar Al-Assad