#but this president was involved in working class protests before taking the reigns so he is seen as a more favourable candidate

[pompommepurr]

[ID:

tweets by Shaun (shaunvids on bsky) @shaun_vids: liberal defenders of the status quo feel no sadness or anger when the deaths are caused by their guy, their thin platitudes about equality are contingent on which team is in office. if it is theirs they will make excuses and dehumanise the same as any open racist would

they actually feel positive about it. their ability to accept such injustices signals maturity and level-headedness to their fellow monsters. 'ah, but you see, it must be this way' - but of course if the other team were in office they would be crying injustice from the rooftops

end ID]

[aghostpost]

Can you do a Jughead x reader where the reader is Veronica's non-identical twin sister and the reader is all geeky and nerdy and stuff thank you xx

“Is there any way I could just go to the library?”

“Umm, I’m afraid not. You’ll have to spend the remainder of class here, Y/N.”

I sighed. “Alright then.” I just handed in my pre-calculus test with a whole 32 minutes left to spare in class. While I wanted to go to the library to work on my chemistry lab report, apparently I was to be detained in class. So I took out the tiny sketchbook I kept on me and started doodling. Or, at least I wanted to. I was drawing blanks any time my pencil hovered over the blank white page.

I looked at Mr. Stewing Silently one row ahead of me, three seats to the left. He had his deep thought face on. Granted he was taking a test just like everyone else, but he also had a look that he was in serious thought almost eighty percent of the time. I was staring, yes, and before I knew it my pencil was scrawling over the thick sketch paper.

“What are we, eight years old?” I asked my sister. “Gimme my sketchbook back!”

“I can not believe you have a crush on Jughead!” She laughed, an arm outstretched to me and keeping me at bay with my sketchbook open in her other hand to one page in particular. It was a sketch I managed to draw of her friend that was in my math class. “I mean, why didn’t you just tell me, Y/N? You know I woulda set you guys up-”

“-Because drawing someone doesn’t mean I like them,” I claimed, crawling across my bed to finally snatch the book from her hand. “And don’t tell him about this either.”

“Oh come on, why not?”

“Because I know you, Ronnie, and I know you’re gonna make a huge deal out of this! That or it’s just gonna sound really creepy when you tell him I was staring at him and drawing his face.”

“I think it’s sweet! Poetic, even-”

“-Jesus, Veronica-”

“-What? Is it wrong for me to be excited that you are finally showing interest in a guy?”

“I never said I was interested in him,” I reiterated with a head shake, now becoming frustrated that she was distracting me from getting my homework done.

“Plus it’s like the whole twintuition thing; you feel all happy and bubbly inside over a guy, I think I feel it, too-”

“-Earth to Veronica?? Are you hearing anything at all that I’m saying? Even more importantly, are you hearing yourself? I’m serious, don’t mention this to him or anyone else.”

“Not even B-”

“-No, not even Betty!”

I was at my locker staring at my schedule and refusing to acknowledge that I overbooked myself. Tutoring sessions for both Spanish and pre-calc, a meeting with my chemistry study group to trade notes for an upcoming test, and I still have to finish an art project when I got home. Sighing and shoving my planner back into my locker, I grabbed my lunch and closed the metal door only to be presently surprised to see my twin sister there. With guests.

“Holy- Please, don’t scare me like that!”

“Y/N, nice to see you here!”

“… You’re at my locker, Veronica.”

“Am I? Anyway, what’d you pack for lunch?”

“Uhhh, some of the… pasta salad mom made last night? And half a turkey sandwich? Why?”

“Wow, that sounds amazing. Now why didn’t I think of that?” She turned to her friends behind her, including the boy whose face was burning a hole in both my mind and my sketchbook. “She���s always thinking of things like this. This is why she is so amazing, guys.”

“Because I pack my lunch?”

“Come eat with us!” I opened my mouth to protest but she grabbed my elbow and pulled me along with her circle of friends. Betty, I was familiar with because she visited the house often. Any time her cell was to her ear, you could almost guarantee she was talking to Betty Cooper. Archie, Mr. Tall,Red and Handsome football player, was pretty hard to miss. Jughead Jones, not so much. Easy to miss, easy to forget, blended in with the background like no other.

At least that’s how everyone but me would describe him.

“Betty- Well, you already know Betty. Archie-”

“-You’re the twin sister. Nice to finally be introduced.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about you. Veronica says you’ve got some skills behind a guitar…”

“Ehh, somethin’ like that,” he responded shyly, his face threatening to burn as bright as his hair.

“You’ll have to let me hear sometime. I’ve got a real good ear.”

“According to Veronica here you’ve also got a gift with writing.” I diverted my attention to the beanie clad boy to Archie’s right, swallowing nervously at being right under his scope. “Jughead Jones. You wrote for your school paper in New York, right?”

“Uhhh, yeah. But you know, that was just a middle school paper, so…”

“What, can’t handle a high school paper? Writing about the real, important stuff?” he asked, his eyes widening mockingly at the word real.

“I thought you guys didn’t have a school paper…”

“I’m changing that,” Betty chimed in happily. “With everything going on with Jason, all the speculation around it, I thought now’s the best time to revive the Blue & Gold.”

“I see. Well, I can show you guys a few samples of my writing if you want. If you think it’s good enough-”

“-Hi,” Veronica raised a hand and interjected with a nervous smile on her face. “I may or may not have… already shown them your writing?”

“Geez, Veronica- What articles??”

“Don’t worry, no fluff pieces were involved. Trust me, if it caught my attention I was colored impressed,” Jughead smugly stated. He bit into his burger and I rushed to drink my cranberry juice, hoping the momentary distraction would lessen the burning feeling of the spotlight on me. I couldn’t distract myself from the feeling of knowing Jughead acknowledged and even complimented my writing, however.

I cleared my throat. “I’ll have to see if I can fit it into my schedule.”

“I told them you were a busy bee, queen of extracurriculars.”

“Anything you didn’t tell them, Ron??”

“Honestly, you’re a machine, Y/N.” I chuckled, looking up at the foot of my bed where Jughead was reading an article I’d written on my laptop. “Do you ever stop for one second, take in life around you?”

I nodded. “Yeah, of course. For exactly one second. Then it’s back to work.”

“Yes, of course. So what is it today? Fix the nation’s budget? End world hunger? Launch your campaign for presidency?”

“That’s Monday’s schedule,” I said with a smile. “It’s the weekend and I take my weekends very seriously which mean I unwind.”

“And this is how you unwind?” he asked, tapping the top edge of my sketchbook. I was reclined against my pillows coloring a landscape drawing I did recently.

I shrugged casually. “Sometimes. Draw, write… read anatomy textbooks.”

“Of course you read anatomy textbooks,” he commented dryly with a signature eyeroll as he climbed up next to me. I held the open sketchbook to my chest. Surprisingly my drawing wasn’t something I shared with too many people and possibly was the one thing I was sensitive about. “Well c’mon, lemme see it.”

“Uhhhh-”

“-I won’t judge. Hell, if you’re as good at drawing as you are at literally everything else you do, I’m sure I’ll be looking at the next Picasso.”

“O’Keeffe, actually.”

“Oh but of course. Y/N O’Keeffe. Silly me.”

I laughed, shoving him playfully. “Shut up. Promise you won’t say anything.”

“Cross my heart.” I hesitated and stared him down, still contemplating if this was a good idea. “I promise!” he urged.

“Okay!” I sighed and paused dramatically before handing him the sketchbook. It was a very unfamiliar feeling, like handing someone my diary and giving them free reign to read what they will. He started from the beginning and slowly flipped through, carefully pouring over each page quietly. Moments went by and still not a word, not an expression his face, just absolute silence and stillness.

“Okay this is killing me. I don’t know if you’re silent because it’s really bad or because you just don’t know what to say.”

“I’m silent because you made me promise not to say anything.”

“Nothing bad!”

He chuckled to himself, shaking his head. “I have nothing bad to say. You already know you’re good at this, what does my opinion matter?”

“It matters to me…” I pulled the book from his hands and turned to the page I went to that one day in math class, the page Veronica found flipping through my sketchbook. “What do you have to say about this?”

I braced myself for the worst as he turned and twisted his head as he stared at his own face on that page. “When did you draw this?”

“Umm, in pre-calc. Our last test.”

“The one you finished a year early? I got a C on that test, by the way.”

“Jug…”

He sighed and looked at me. “I think I look a lot better on this paper than I do off it.”

“Really? You don’t think it’s weird? I mean, I was staring at you for a long time trying to get this right; you have a distinct glare that’s hard to capture on paper.”

“I take that as a compliment. And no, I don’t think it’s weird. I’m flattered, actually. I don’t get flattered often.”

“Well in that case…” Quickly I scribbled a signature on the bottom corner of the page and tore it from my sketchbook, handing it over to him. “Somethin’ for your fridge.”

“Oh this is much too good for the fridge,” he said, accepting the drawing. “This one is getting framed. I’ll look at it every day for inspiration, hoping someday I will look at good as this pencil drawing of myself.”

I felt my ignite and rushed to change the subject. “So, did you really get a C on that test? You should come to a study group with me or… I don’t know, if you want, I could help you out. I do math tutoring after school sometimes.”

He sighed and leaned back against my pillows. “Or, as exhilarating as that sounds, we could just go to Betty’s Valentine’s Day event.”

“Oh yeah. I said I’d go to get some coverage for the newspaper; it’s supposed to be a good time, Josie and the Pussycats are even gonna perform.”

“Right, well, I meant we go together. As in to enjoy ourselves, not to do extracurriculars.”

“Oh. O-oh! You mean like… together together. As in…”

“A date. Yes.”

So much for extinguishing the fire in my face. “Right. A date. W-With you. Me and you together.”

“Yes, that usually makes a date, two people together. Are you short-circuiting up there?” he asked, playfully tapping the top of my skull.

“No. I-I mean yes. No, I’m not having a brain short-circuit and yes, I will go with you. A little short notice seeing that the event is tonight.”

“Good thing you already have a dress, right?” he asked smugly, hopping up from my bed and pulling his coat on.

“Wait, how do you know I have a dress?”

“Because you went shopping with Veronica. Who do you think gave me the idea to ask you? Admittedly I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t think to ask you myself.” He picked up the drawing and leaned across the bed and to my surprise kissed my jaw. “See you tonight, Georgia O’Keeffe.” Once my shock dissipated I mumbled a weak “See you later” but of course he was already making his way downstairs.

When I heard the front door close I fell back on my pillows and reeled in for a moment before yelling what was really on my mind. “Veronica I’m gonna kill you!”

[queernuck]

The Worker, The Quarterback

Largely, when leftists discuss sports, it is in providing an example of affinity groups around capitalist intensities: the city, the state, the stadium, and the sport above them all. Teams such as the Packers and Steelers harken back to a certain working-class life, and in fact the symbolically public ownership of the Packers presents a model through which socialized sport can eventually be realized. Conversely, reactionary names such as the Patriots, or the use of a racial slur by Washington’s team, shows the way in which filiation around reactionary culture is not terribly uncommon and must be considered if one is putting credence into Laclau’s notions of Radical Democracy, or into Maoist notions of organizing backwaters, the postmodern peasant classes, not uncultured but rather subcultural, metacultural. However, another line of critique may be made around the concept of sport and the particularities of leagues such as the NFL. The figuration of a subjectivized celebrity off of the field through their action on it is indeed an operation of capital that is similar to the way in which it treats actors, singers, artists.

Indeed, just as the three latter groups often retain some liberal trappings of radical consciousness in late stages of their career, there is indeed some radical consciousness among athletes at certain moments. Colin Kaepernick is a phenomenal example of this, as well as many of the players who joined in protest with him. Marshawn Lynch demonstrated a radical process of silence when refusing media attention in the face of mandatory media engagement, specifically adhering in an ironic fashion to rules on press conferences by offering a non-answer whenever asked a question. And a recognition of the specifically fascist character of American governance at this moment can be glimpsed in the decision of Patriots players to defer on the usual White House visit, and do so publicly.

But this is not the primary place in which a leftist critique of sports lies. Massumi provides an interest grounds on which to describe the intensities of sport, but these are about the sport itself, toward an aesthetic-topological account of sports as extending from the body that harkens to more basic questions about sport. These questions will become useful in exploring sport in a radical context, but first I must establish another line of critique. The way in which Marxist concepts of labor are in fact rather plainly articulated by sport, often on the parts of athletes and owners themselves, is part of what makes them such a fertile avenue for critique. Moreover, the particular labor involved in football as a sport involves a deployment of the body that deals with intensities of labor far more directly than almost any other profession, leading to the way in which one considers it compensated to become eminently problematic.

To establish a basic critique, one must conceive of players as workers. There are bosses, managers, Mao’s well-to-do-peasants within the ranks of the league, most often found at the position of Starting Quarterback. Tom Brady is the preeminent example, others being Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers, and to a certain degree even Cam Newton (although the considerations one must make to deal with the implicit, or often explicit, antiblackness in critique of Newton’s play and personae is another issue entirely). The figuration of Tom Brady, particularly, becomes interesting when one remembers his status as a backup for the Patriots, behind Drew Bledsoe, a skilled quarterback in his own right. Bledsoe went down with an injury late in the season, Brady took over and won his first game in relief. He started the next week and lost, but was given another chance. The Patriots went on to win the Super Bowl that year. Bledsoe soon fell by the wayside as Brady, coached by Belichick, went on to become one of the most accomplished quarterbacks in NFL history. Tom Brady is, in short, the dream. And his supposed apoliticism, while on a team called the Patriots, is distinctly humorous while stunningly unfunny: after displaying a “Make America Great Again” hat in his locker before Trump was even a frontrunner within the GOP, later questioning about the now-President was answered by a bewildered Brady who did not understand why a friendship was of interest to the media. In the days following Trump’s reactionary restrictions on immigration and travel, Brady was asked about “recent events” at a Media Availability conference and responded by saying that he had not been paying attention to “recent events” and that he was merely a “positive person” with the implication being that he would prefer to avoid potential distraction in engaging with unhappy news.

Tom Brady is a perfect subject for the NFL. For our consideration he is far less perfect, but still part of a useful line of critique. Brady’s success is impossible without the team surrounding him, both in an aesthetic and in a literal sense. The producing of a productive offense relies on having a strategy that can adapt to different defensive weaknesses while avoiding the opposing team’s strengths. Atlanta had one of the best defenses during the regular season as well as the playoffs, but in the second half of Super Bowl LI, they were decimated. Touchdown Tom was, on any given play, in a state of crisis. The Patriots, in playing from so far behind, were given free reign to take strategies of desperation, of causing dramatic ruptures, and were able to do so for an entire half of a football game. The Patriots were playing Deleuzean football usually reserved for the last 5 minutes of a game for a full 30. And it worked, the whitest team in the NFL completing an unprecedented comeback to win the Super Bowl. While Brady’s play was unmistakably vital to structuring that comeback, it involved linesmen, cornerbacks, linebackers, running backs. Players who risk far more in the conflict of intensities that constitute any given play, for far less than Brady.

At a vital level, football follows Massumi’s reading of Deleuzean concepts of intensity onto the body, in a fashion far more direct than that seen in the soccer that Massumi describes within Parables for the Virtual. While concussions are relatively rare, football would not produce such dramatic brain damage if they were more common. Rather, the meeting of intensities at the line during play, the blocking and evading that constitutes the game itself, produces brain damage through lower levels of trauma sustained and repeated over a course of years and years. Even a short stay in the NFL requires of most players a long course of preparation that begins in High School, and continues through the NCAA. The NCAA’s exploitation is racialized, is comprehensive, and lies beyond the scope of a discussion on labor in the NFL, in that it in fact follows so many of the same norms but in fact is even more directly exploitative. A great deal of the NCAA’s justification comes from the promise of a career in the NFL, or in coaching, or in some way connected to the sport. To return to the point at hand, most positions in football require triangulating the body in a certain Oedipal relationship between the coach, the team, and oneself, such that it reflects the larger capitalist organization of the workplace rather directly.

Football asks of its players that they subject themselves to traumatic injuries not as an accident or as ancillary to their occupation, but rather as the main characterizing factor within their labor. Football players are at risk of injury in a manner far different than other workers, in that it is not whether injury is included in their job, but how often and to what degree. Season-ending and even career-ending injuries are incredibly common, even celebrated when they lead to the discovery of a player such as Brady. Conversely, the pay that many players get is enormous, into the ranges of multiple millions of dollars. A sort of Faustian bargain occurs between the players and their teams, a slow sacrifice of the body and the way in which that body can be considered human, rather than as a prosthetic extension of the coach’s body, a transformation into Oedipal subjects upon the field.

The labor in question, a hallowed game that is more clearly becoming constituted by traumatic injury upon a Body without Organs on the gridiron, is well-compensated, but the question of if such labor can be tolerated is at its base the question facing the NFL as well as its fans. Can a sport that so deeply involves trauma to a fully realized body be continued? The way in which this particular sort of labor involves articulations of, striations upon, the Body without Organs entirely constituted by injury and decay compared with the structure of compensation provides dramatic relief within the consideration of players as laborers, as workers. The sort of naturalized concept of worker that is employed by many tendencies of Marxism, rather than the shifting concept of worker influenced by postmodern vocabulary creeping into Marxism-Leninism, or the considered, differentiated, and particular worker-peasant-intellectual-so-on of Maoism, is both called into question and able to be examined in relief through the NFL and its larger cultural presence. Considering the possibility of a worker-quarterback, a radical critique of an often reactionary cultural structure, is an exercise with allows a great deal of freedom and examination of the definitions employed by one’s critique of labor, its artifice, and its significance.

[jeremyhodge2]

Syria’s Cersei Lannister Is Back and Now She Wants Revenge

The Daily Beast: 11 May 2020

By Jeremy Hodge

GAZIANTEP, Turkey—Last February, at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London, David Hockney’s iconic 1966 painting “The Splash” was sold to an unidentified buyer for a record-setting price of £23.1 million ($28.6 million). News quickly surfaced that the mystery buyer was billionaire entertainment magnate David Geffen, who decided to splurge shortly after selling his Beverly Hills mansion to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for $165 million. Geffen had owned the painting previously, but sold it in 1985 to another private buyer. 

Why are we telling you this in a story about Syria?

Amid the chaos and carnage there, news of the secretive “Splash” purchase was used to fuel a wholly separate tale of intrigue among the ranks of a very different, and very sinister international elite. In this version of events, picked up throughout the region’s press outlets and social media, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad bought the painting as a gift for his British-born wife, Asma, once dubbed “The Desert Rose” by Vogue magazine, but now emerging more like the Cersei Lannister of her devastated country.

Whatever the truth of the Hockney sale, for many in the Middle East the notion that the Assads would make such a selfish purchase at a time when their country lies in ruins seemed perfectly believable. 

When Asma was celebrated in Vogue nine years ago (the article has since been deleted), she and her husband were portrayed as a dynamic young couple (he was 46, she was 36) and potential reformers among the retrograde dictatorships and monarchies of the Arab world. She was attractive, well educated and comfortable in her well-cultivated, upper-middle-class London accent (more so than her local Arabic), and it was easy to imagine her capable of curbing her husband’s worst authoritarian tendencies while steering Syria toward greater openness. They had cute kids. She was espousing worthy causes and working with non-profit NGOs. 

So, if she was known for spending lavishly on jewelry and clothes, nobody much cared outside the country’s borders, and for Vogue, so much the better. 

But that was before Assad treated protests as rebellion, responded with savagery, and a civil war began that to date has killed some 500,000 people, even as half the country’s population is displaced internally or has fled to exile as refugees. The conflict spawned huge migration flows to Europe in 2015 that massively disrupted its politics, feeding into the hateful xenophobia of the far right. The chaos, and to some extent Bashar al-Assad’s cynical tactics, also helped nurture the rise of the barbarous little terror empire that called itself the Islamic State.

Inside Syria there had always been skepticism about the fawning international coverage of Asma, which even before the hard times served to strengthen the perception that despite her charitable enterprises, the First Lady lacked any real connection to ordinary citizens. It was clear to anyone who dared look that the regime her husband led was structured to serve a shrinking class of ever more wealthy elites, and Asma was no paradigm, she was a problem.

Certainly that’s the way her husband’s mother saw things.

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

Anissa Makhlouf, wife of the dynasty’s founder, Hafez al-Assad, grew up in humble rural surroundings in a nation where members of the Alawite sect that she and her husband and his closest allies belonged to were regarded as heretical peasants, even after Hafez, an air force general, seized power in 1970. Following the death of Hafez in 2000, and the succession of Bashar, Anissa became very much a power in her own right. She did not trust her son’s London born wife, and she used her influence to marginalize Asma’s public role as well as Asma’s access within the regime.

But Mother Anissa died in February 2016 at the age of 86, and since then Asma, now only 44, has seen her star rise considerably, cultivating an independent power base for herself and her immediate family that challenges other more established members of the extended Assad clans.

Once upon a time, many in the West thought that Asma could help restrain Syria’s crony capitalism and brute backdoor dealings, but Bashar’s wife has proved herself highly skilled—indeed, among the most adept and potentially deadly—at navigating the country’s maze of rival cliques for her own benefit. 

Anissa Makhlouf’s dislike for her daughter-in-law was a reflection of her concern about Bashar al-Assad’s own lack of popular support within the ruling family and the highest echelons of the regime. Known for being meek and underappreciated with a distinct inability to look people in the eye, prior to 1994 Bashar had never been considered for the role of President. His father had groomed his far more charismatic and handsome older brother, Bassel, as heir apparent. But Bassel died in a car crash in 1994. 

Even then, Bashar kept a low profile in London, studying optometry in Britain, where he first met Asma, far from palace intrigues. 

In the BBC documentary, A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad, a British tutor hired by the family to teach English to the late Bassel remembered his first experience with Bashar as an entirely unremarkable exchange. “I once met Bashar as he was coming into the home, and he didn't make eye contact with me,” the tutor said. “He just, kind of was looking down at my hand, and stuck out his own hand, and that was it. I remember thinking that the father certainly made a good choice in choosing Bassel as his successor.” 

After Bassel’s death, Anissa pushed Hafez to select Bashar’s younger brother, Maher, to take Bassel’s place as the next President of Syria. But Hafez knew Maher’s reputation as a hothead prone to violence. Bashar’s other brother, Majid, was purportedly a heroin addict who suffered from a mental disability and could not be trusted to lead. This left Bashar, much to the chagrin of Anissa, the disapproving mother, to take the reins. 

Following Hafez’s death in 2000 and Bashar’s appointment as President, Anissa used her influence to strengthen the position of her other relatives to become the true centers of power within Syria, operating around Bashar rather than through him. 

Maher al-Assad, the favorite, was given control of key military units such as the Republican Guard and 42nd Tank Battalion, which oversaw and controlled profits from key oil wells in the country’s eastern Deir Ezzor province. 

Anissa’s brother, Muhammad Makhlouf, and his sons, Hafez, Ayyad and Rami, already towering figures within the regime, significantly expanded their influence beginning in 2000, following Bashar’s appointment. 

That year, Rami Makhlouf founded and became CEO of Syriatel, one of only two telecommunications companies in Syria that would go on to dominate 70 percent of the domestic market. Makhlouf and his father Muhammad eventually would build a massive business empire and net worth estimated to top $5 billion, while Hafez and Ayyad Makhlouf exerted increased dominance over state security apparatuses. Asma meanwhile, remained largely on the sidelines. 

“Before the revolution, regime censors wouldn’t even let us journalists refer to Asma as ‘First Lady,’” according to Iyad Aissa, a Syrian opposition journalist who has written extensively about the inner workings of the Assad family, speaking on an Arabic language broadcast. “We were only allowed to describe Asma as ‘the President’s wife,’ unlike Anissa, Bashar’s mother, who was always known as ‘First Lady’ during the reign of the father, Hafez.”

Over the years, rivalries within rivalries developed. Maher al-Assad saw Muhammad Makhlouf, who chaired Syria’s Euphrates Oil Company, as a threat to his de facto control of petroleum resources in Deir Ezzor. 

The Makhloufs would also develop increasingly close ties to the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), a secular ultranationalist political party founded in 1932. Hafez al-Assad had built his power through the revolutionary Arab nationalist Baath party, which first seized power in 1963, and the SSNP over the years was seen sometimes as a rival, sometimes an ally. But it had a strong base of popular support, especially in the Alawite heartlands, including the Makhlouf’s hometown of Bustan Basha.

The vast majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, many of whom eventually became sympathetic to the the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist groups. Secular parties like the SSNP and Baath became especially attractive for ambitious religious outsiders, including Christians as well as Alawites. Although the religious-ideological dynamic changed when the Islamic Republic of Iran forged a Shi’a-Alawite alliance with Hafez al-Assad in the 1980s, the party structures remained.

Throughout the 2000’s, Rami Makhlouf and other members of the family regularly drew on the SSNP to cultivate an independent source of support for themselves outside the scope of the ruling Baath, and before long the SSNP came to be called, only half jokingly, “Rami’s party.” After the popular uprising began in 2011, SSNP cadres would serve as the core of pro-regime militias specifically loyal to the Makhlouf clan. 

In the first decade of Bashar al-Assad’s presidency, the British-born Asma, whose roots are among Sunni merchant families from Homs and Damascus, was not a significant player. Hacked emails published in 2012 quoted her saying, “I am the real dictator”. But after Anissa’s death, Asma would take the opportunity to involve herself and her relatives more directly in Syria’s politics and economy, going after her rivals in the Makhlouf clan, and in particular it’s leading mogul, Rami Makhlouf. 

ASMA’S REVENGE

On May 4, 2020, Rami Makhlouf went missing. 

Guernica37, an international law and human rights NGO based in the UK, issued a press release that day claiming Makhlouf fled to the United Arab Emirates, but it is unclear whether Makhlouf, sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department since 2008, is truly in the UAE or seeking refuge elsewhere. That same day, Syrian Republican Guard units seeking to arrest Makhlouf raided his villa on the outskirts of Damascus, failing to turn up evidence of his whereabouts. 

Previously, security forces stormed the offices of Syriatel, arresting 28 high-ranking officials, and arrested Wadah Abd al-Rabu, editor in chief of the al-Watan newspaper, one of Syria’s most prominent pro-regime media mouthpieces, which Makhlouf has owned since 2006. 

As the showdown took shape, Rami Makhlouf issued a series of stunning rebukes to President Bashar al-Assad and his regime in two videos uploaded to his personal Facebook page on April 30 and May 3. “Can you believe it?” Makhlouf asked in the second video, “Security services have stormed the offices of Rami Makhlouf, their biggest funder and supporter, most faithful servant, and most prominent patron throughout the whole of the war… The pressure being put on us is intolerable, and inhumane.” 

The crux of the dispute is control of Syriatel, a joint public-private partnership half owned by the state, which is entitled to roughly 50 percent of the company’s profits in addition to taxes and other state fees. On April 27,  Syria’s Telecommunications and Post Regulatory Authority (TPRA) announced that Syriatel and the country’s only other telecommunication service, MTN, collectively owed $449.65 million to the country’s treasury in annual profits required to be shared with the state.  MTN has announced that it intends to pay its $172.9 million share, but Makhlouf has remained defiant. 

“The state has no right to this money, and it’s turning its back on previous agreements made years back,” Makhlouf declared. “I'll soon be releasing documents that I've already submitted to the relevant authorities clearly demonstrating why they have no right to this money,” he added. 

In a state known for carrying out the wholesale slaughter of those who test its authority, Makhlouf’s audacity addressing the president like that sent shockwaves throughout the country. But it’s not surprising. This is the culmination of explicit efforts by Asma, Maher and Bashar al-Assad over the last year to strip Rami Makhlouf and his relatives of their power in Syria. 

These maneuvering began last August, following Russian demands that the Syrian regime pay back between $2 billion and $3 billion in past due loans, at which point regime security forces put Rami Makhlouf under house arrest in an attempt to force the telecoms mogul to foot the bill.  

By September, Asma and a cadre of loyal officials who previously worked in her network of NGOs launched a hostile takeover of the Bustan Cooperative, a charitable organization run by Makhlouf through which the salaries of SSNP and other militiamen loyal to Rami had been paid. 

In October 2019, it was also announced that Asma would be establishing a third telecommunications company in Syria that aimed to seize market share from Syriatel. Lastly, Syria’s Ministry of Finance issued two separate orders on December 24 and March 17 to freeze assets owned by Rami Makhlouf’s Abar Petroleum Services company that were later used to plug budget deficits within the country’s General Customs Directorate. 

The targeting of Makhlouf’s assets meanwhile comes as those belonging to a number of Asma’s Sunni relatives have grown significantly.

Beginning in 2016, shortly after the death of Anissa al-Makhlouf, members of Asma’s family reportedly took control over significant parts of the market for basic goods in Syria. This followed the introduction of a smart card program to purchase products including rice, gas, bread, tea, sugar and cooking oil. 

The contract allegedly was given to Takamal, a company run by one of Asma’s brothers and Muhannad al-Dabagh, Asma’s cousin via her maternal aunt. Local media investigations of the company have alleged that a percentage of proceeds reaped from the purchase of goods using smart cards are re-deposited into accounts owned by Takamal’s governing board, run by Asma’s relatives. 

In December 2019,while many of Rami Makhlouf’s assets were being frozen, those of Asma’s paternal uncle, Tarif al-Akhras, were being thawed.  Syria’s Ministry of Finance had had them locked down for more than a year. 

Al-Akhras, who owned a small trucking business in Homs prior to 2000, used his niece’s connection to the ruling family to expand his networks. He then began taking part in shipments of food and other goods that ran through Syria into Iraq as part of the Oil for Food Program prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion. Ever since, al-Akhras’ work has expanded into the maritime shipping, construction, real estate and meat packing sectors. Currently, he and other members of Asma’s inner circle stand to see their fortunes continue to improve.  

Asma’s move into the economic sphere has coincided with her victory over a year long struggle with breast cancer. The First Lady formally announced her recovery in August, just before security services put Rami Makhlouf under house arrest. Since then, Syria’s Desert Rose has continued if not increased her prolific media appearances documenting her seemingly tireless charitable work across the country. 

With her newfound economic foothold in place, Asma appears most focused on grooming her children to take their place in the 50 year Assad-Baath party dynasty, often bringing young Hafez, Zain and Karim al-Assad on frontline trips to visit wounded soldiers and inaugurate the opening of new facilities from children’s hospitals to newly built schools for the gifted. 

As the war winds down, and Asma’s oldest, Hafez, begins his 18th year, talk has already emerged in pro-regime news outlets and on social media discussing his qualifications to succeed Bashar. Taking the lead himself, recently Hafez has begun conducting his own visits to sites across the country, following clearly in his mother’s footsteps.

The Russians who saved Bashar’s regime over the last five years, have grown weary of his corruption and wary of his Iranian allies. Maybe Asma imagines they would be open to new faces, albeit with the same name.

The Russians who saved Bashar’s regime over the last five years, have grown weary of his corruption and wary of his Iranian allies. Maybe Asma imagines they would be open to new faces, albeit with the same name.

More than ever, since her recovery from cancer, Asma has been keen to re-cultivate the image of the savior queen that she held and then lost in 2011, one ready and poised to bring up the next generation of Syrians, a woman whose soft touch can heal the country’s wounds. 

Some world leaders, having long ago succumbed to grim fatigue where Syria is concerned, may be willing to pay lip service at least to this charade. Following a near 10 year lapse, Syria’s Desert Rose could be looking to bloom once more.

[char27martin]

Meet Nic Stone, Debut Author of Bestselling Novel ‘Dear Martin’

Nic Stone’s poignant and timely Dear Martin hit the ground running on Amazon this past week, trending #1 in the YA literature category. A student of Jodi Picoult, Stone crafted what reviewers are calling a “gripping” tale that is loosely based on recent events surrounding the shooting deaths of unarmed black teens. The book, which tells the story of a young man who begins a journal of letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after he is racially profiled, is touching hearts and stirring conversation in light of current events and America’s contentious political landscape. Here, we talk with Stone about the book, her process and her advice for writers.

  interview by J.D. Myall

What was your life like, pre-book? 

I’ve done a lot of different things. I went to college in Georgia Tech and hated it. My major was international affairs … I dropped out. I, like, decided I was going to try to become a model. I did a pageant. I eventually transferred to Spellman. After Spellman, I traveled and worked. I worked in West Palm Beach. I managed a formal gown store—that was fun, because it was during prom season. I went to Israel for the summer. I went to find God, and I met this guy. I eventually married him. I was a tour operator in Israel. I designed Holy Land tours. Then, I had a baby, and I was mothering and writing.

What is something about you that people would be shocked to find out?

I was a cheerleader, and I was also my school’s mascot. The mascot was a big, burly dude-type character, so that was fun.

Favorite writers as a child?

I loved Judy Bloom, and the Encyclopedia Brown books by Donald J. Sobol.

Is there a book that inspired you to be a writer or that has a particular influence on the characters you create today?

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. This was the first book that I picked up in my life where I felt like I understood the characters and the characters understood me. It was the strangest thing, because this was a book about five white girls that live in this very white world. They were sisters that committed suicide during the course of one year. It’s super morbid, and it’s really dark. When you’re sixteen and full of angst and you want the protection of your parents but you’d never admit it … you’ll understand this book. I was a teenager and I was like, “I get this book and it gets me.” It was kind of a coming of age story. It opened my eyes to the possibility of fiction involving teenagers. My debut novel is about a teen.

Tell us about this novel. What is the genre? What’s the release information?

Y.A. Literary. The publisher is Crown Books for Young Readers. It’s a Random House Imprint. The book [was] released on October 17th.

Describe this novel, Dear Martin.

It’s about a 17-year-old African-American boy grappling with his place in the world. He’s a good kid that gets racially profiled one night while trying to help his drunk ex-girlfriend get home without driving. As a result of the profiling experience, he starts a journal of letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Basically, he’s trying to see if Dr. King’s teachings can work in modern America.

Where do you write from, home or a coffee shop?

Honestly, whenever I can. Most of Dear Martin was written in my bedroom at home. Like, actually on my bed. Most of my second book was written at Starbucks.

Tell me the story behind the story. How did Dear Martin come to be?

I was in Israel when Trayvon Martin was killed. And so I heard about it, but there was a distance there, because of the ocean. My new life and geographical distances made a bit of an emotional distance. I came back shortly after the death of Jordan Davis, who was killed in the parking lot of a convenience store, basically after an argument over loud music. That story hit me really hard, because by that point I had a five-month old little boy. All of it together just got under my skin. My father was a police officer. I saw them as heroes, as somebody there to protect me. So for a police officer to kill a child who was unarmed was really jarring. Then, the Black Lives Matter protests kicked off. I kept seeing all these misused or misappropriated quotes of Dr. King used to put him in opposition to Black Lives Matter. That didn’t set well with me. I started to wonder, What would Dr. King have to say now? I wanted to address the notion that Dr. King would be opposed to non-violent protest. I started to explore these questions. After all of Dr. King’s hard work and the work of Joe Lewis, Rosa Parks and some of the lesser-known heroes of the civil rights movement … I wondered, What would they have to say now? I have a son, so I tried to imagine what he may face in his future. So I made this character that asked the question, “What would Dr. King do if he was alive in the 21st century?”

How long did it take to write?

This is a fun story. It sold on proposal. Then, I had the first draft done in seven weeks. I spent nearly two months almost sobbing in tears or raging as I researched and wrote. Then, we worked it and reworked it. Overall, from the time it sold to the time we got it completely finished, it was about two years.

How did you get your agent?

My first agent I got through my mentor, Jodi Picoult. Jodi came to Spellman. I met her there when she came to interview the president of the college. She was researching Small Great Things. She is a master of research. She taught me how to research. I helped with her book. She introduced me to her agent. However, her agent had never worked with YA before, so we eventually parted ways. My second, and current, agent, Rena Rossner, I found through the querying process.

[Related: What Color Are Your Ideas?]

  How did you cope with rejection during the querying process?

I kept writing.

What were your biggest learning experiences or surprises throughout the publishing journey?

The surprise was how long it took. It takes a long time. Learning the process—the marketing, the other books the big publishers are working on, the turnover. It’s exciting and surprising. It’s super slow on the back end … but when you’re launching things go super fast.

Looking back, what do you think you did right that helped you break in?

I kept working. This was my third book. We submitted a different book to the editor that bought Dear Martin on proposal. She liked my style, but she wasn’t completely sold on the story we presented her. So we submitted a proposal for Dear Martin—and she bought that.

Is there anything you wish you could do differently?

No. Looking back, I can see how the past has lead me to where I am now. I am thrilled. I learned a lot from the books I have written. I have a few novels that may or may not be published, and I have two books being published. Through it all, I learned a lot about writing. I’m getting a lot of support and a good marketing push. I am happy.

Hardest sentence to write: first or last?

Neither. It’s all the stuff in the middle. I know the first line before I start, and I know how I want it to end, too, so the middle is the most work. You want to foreshadow without having spoilers.

What is the most important part of a novel: plot, characters, or setting?

Characters. I hope my books read that way.

How do you know when a novel is finished?

When I write the end.

Best advice you have heard on writing?

In high school, a teacher told me to write like a reader and read like a writer. I also love a Toni Morrison quote: “The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power. “

Any advice for aspiring writers?

Keep writing. Hone your skill. Figure out how you work best. Most people I know didn’t get their first books published. Some didn’t get their first four books published. You have to keep writing if your goal is to be novelist. Even while you’re on submission, or even while you’re getting rejections, keep writing. Maybe your first book won’t get published, maybe your second will, or your fourth. Just keep writing.

What’s up next for you?

Dear Martin [came] out October 17th. I am writing a middle grade novel about a little black boy on a road trip with his white grandmother, but the road trip isn’t what he thinks it is. It’s gonna be a great read. I also have a trilogy of novellas coming out a year from now. It’s about three friends trying to grapple with sexuality, romance, friendship, and things like that. It’s about two girls and a boy, but it’s not your typical love triangle. The girls are trying to figure out how they feel about each other, too. That book will be out next year, but we haven’t released the title. It’s super messy, and I love it.

How can people connect with you?

On my website, nicstone.info, or on Twitter @getnicced.

J.D. Myall is a self-proclaimed literary lunatic, crazy about reading and writing is like breathing to her. Myall earned her BA in criminal justice from West Chester University, and has worked as a counselor for crime victims, addicts and the mentally ill. She is currently co-writing Crimson Reign, an exploration of race and class tucked neatly inside a feminist fairy-tale for the modern age. For more info. go to http://www.jdmyallbooks.com

Live Webinar: How to Write a Young Adult Novel That Can Sell

Live Webinar Date: Thursday, October 26, 2017

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