We haven’t poked Bashar in the ribs for a while. It’s way past time. Here’s a little something, something we threw together today. This is a book detailing the many, many wonderful things Bashar has done for his country and its people. There is no leader more empathetic and tender towards his subjects. What a wonderful man.
Syria’s a clustermuck and Bashar’s still in power. According to a U.N. report two months ago, over 70,000 people have been killed due to the ongoing conflict. 70,000! And there’s no end in sight. Keep in mind that this is a combined total on both sides, proving that the Syrian government is more than willing to sacrifice thousands of its own people to continue vomiting forward an indulgent, corrupt, and anti-democratic regime.
As for this post, we wrote this piece some time ago and parked it in Drafts thinking that it was too salacious for our average consumer. We also made some knee-jerk assumptions that Bashar was a womanizing cheater and while we’ve never been above irresponsible blogging, we just felt we needed more convincing evidence so we could write a real zinger. So we waited. But now we don’t give a damn. Here’s our story.
In March 2012, hackers broke into Bashar al-Assad’s email. They got a variety of stuff, mostly inane banter that seemed to ignore the mayhem around him. Ah, la vida luja, right? Mixed in with the jibber-jabber were several email that were inappropriately flirtatious. The most prominent series was from a misguided pro-government Syrian siren named Hadeel al-Ali. Her flirtatious missives included references to Bashar as “The Dude” and little snips like “So cute!” Bleh. To make things even more scintillating, in that mess of emails was a photo of a mostly naked woman who some have speculated may be Hadeel. Regardless, the lass has a nice ass and we somewhat regret covering it up, but hey … the kids are watching.
As we’ve stated before, political power is to women what alcohol is to men. The opposite sex looks a hell of a lot better after consuming them. Anyway, we’re not going to bother with the full write-up. You can go visit the Guardian and CNN for more details (go to the bottom of the post). We just have to wonder if Bashar pulled a Kobe after all this went public and gave Asma at $1,000,000 gift card to Harrods. Bling, bling!
Wow. This is the best Bashar could muster? Check out the rock on Vanessa Bryant’s apology ring below. $4 million dollars. 8 carats. Damn.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/21/world/meast/syria-assad-emails
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/16/assad-emails-adviser-hadeel-ali
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/14/bashar-al-assad-syria18
[This post was created back in September but never got published for some reason. We blame our Syrian intern, Sargon. The little weirdo used to go up and down the office hallway shouting "Death to to Bashar!" but after finding a bizarre series of files on crop circles in his cabinet, we wonder if he is actually pissed off at the alien by the same name. If we had to guess, we'd say that Sargon doesn't much care for Bashar's interpretation of the meaning behind crop circles. We can't ask him because he has since returned to Syria. Soooo, distracted little bastard or double agent? Not sure. But here it is.]
Summer ends September 21, 2012. That means in less than two weeks, if the Smut King and Slut Queen (ok, we don’t know that for sure, but we’re going with it) aren’t gone, they’ve made us out to be liars. We predicted all of the way back in January that Bashar al-Assad and his consort Asma would be vacating their palaces in Syria. We figured they were headed for welcoming arms in Russia or Iran. Probably not Iran though. Asma doesn’t look good in black, and with a killer body and face like hers, who wants to cover them up?
Breaking news! Asma and Bashar al-Assad are expecting their fourth child.
Well, technically we said “most likely sometime this summer.” Still, we were far too optimistic we suppose. What’s it going to take? 50,000 dead? 100,000 dead? As the body count rises, the al-Assads are less likely to get asylum. They’re turning into political poison.* Eventually, even North Korea might not allow the Syrian mongrels across their borders.
* Since we’re just publishing today (December 30, 2012), the latest news out of Russia is that there is a growing pessimism that the Syrian crisis can be solved easily and to the benefit of either country. The Arab League sent their envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, to Moscow to muster support for more outside intervention. Brahimi waxed theatrical in stating: “If the only alternative is really hell or a political process, then all of us must work ceaselessly for a political process. It is difficult, it is very complicated but there is no other choice.” Well, he’s right, we suppose. Although, most Syrians probably think they’re already in hell.
But mummy, I want to go home.
Ooooh! Wouldn’t that be nice, luv. But no, we can’t. Your idiot father doesn’t know how to run a successful oppressive dictatorship. Oh, mother was right! I should have been happy as Sarkozy’s mistress and stayed in Europe!
So, be gone, already! Get the whole oppressive regime thing over with so Syria can move on to regressive tribal conflict, terrorist breeding, and chaos. Cynics are we? Yes indeedy. Still, go away, al-Assads.
Mama Asma gonna kick your assa!
Rolling back full circle, we were curious to see if Bashar the extraterrestrial had anything to say on the whole thing with Bashar al-Assad. Apparently, he didn’t say much, but we think we catch his drift.
Bashar. Suck it.
August has sucked. OK, it’s just us that suck, actually. Only three posts thus far. Three! That matches the number of readers we have. OK, not really, but that’s all we’ll have if we keep this pace up (or down). So, what’s new with us? Why, a lot, in fact. Here’s what’s happened since the infamous Blueberry post of August 10, 2012:
Asma al-Assad hasn’t let the whole genocide thing slow down her modeling career. Here she is in a recent bikini shoot. Note the photo wasn’t shot on a beach. It’s hard to be a sexy swimsuit model when you’re hiding in a reinforced concrete bunker.
Summer hasn’t ended yet, so our prediction that Batshit al-Assad would relinquish the throne by the end of the summer is still a hopeful prophecy. Bashar and Asma, don’t let us down! We have a lot of money riding on this (not really, but let’s pretend) and, oh yeah, the Syrian people kind of need to stop getting oppressed and slaughtered. You’re just forestalling the inevitable anyway.
The momentary good news for the revolution, was that the regime’s vice president, Farouk al-Cheney had defected to Jordan. But in a news interview today on Al-Jazeera, Mr. al-Cheney scoffed at such rumors. “Bah! Grr! Mumble, mumble, fttt-fttt,” said the still-instated VP. Meanwhile, the revolutionaries did confirm that Farouk Al-Sharaa, Mr. al-Cheney’s body double had defected to Oman. “Hey, at this point, we’ll take what we can get,” said spokeperson Ben al-Jeri pointing out that Mr. Farouk Al-Sharaa had been Syria’s only real threat in the International Beatbox Yo-Yo Revolution competition. “This takes Syria’s pop culture down quite a peg,” continued Mr. al-Jeri. “Expect the al-Assad regime to get laughed out of the competition this year if they send Prime Minister Wael Nader al-Halqi instead. He’s an idiot.”
No one ever doubted Bashar was a devotee … a devotee to Just Dance, that is.
Next in the news: the Prince of Portliness, Kim Jong-un, apparently got married or something. OK, the news broke in July, but we didn’t get around to absorbing the issue ‘cuz the Comic-Con was still swimming around our rattled noggins. Anyway, good for him. It reinforces the point that money and/or power and/or threats of disembowelment can get a woman to marry an handsomeness-impaired weirdo.
Speaking of weird, what is it with the Kims and their hair? We couldn’t imagine a sillier “do” than the bouffant that Dandy Andy Kim Jong-il sported, but Kim Jong-un’s floppy, down-the-middle, Li’l Tyke hair style deserves a resounding round of guffaws from his fellow countrymen, but we suspect that won’t happen, what with the whole Cult of Personality (and the threat of torture) thing going on. Grandaddy had some goofy hair too, by the way. It’s all part of the madness that runs in that family’s genetic disposition. And speaking of the personality cult phenomenon, check out the crazies bawling in the picture below with Kim il-Sung. Seriously, you know you have major brainwashing going on when being in the presence of the nutty leader/oppressor of your country overwhelms your emotions. “Big Daddy makes the ladies all wet,” Mr. Kim used to say. “And sometimes the fairies too!” he would add. Hey, his words, not ours.
Here’s Great Leader, Kim Il-sung showing what happens when you go from Marxist revolutionary to self-indulgent hypocrite. Go back to your roots, man. Keep the faith. Let your people eat something for a change.
We got into the 2013 Comic-Con! Huzzah! Miracle of Miracles. Since we made it into two days of the Con this year, that qualified us for early round purchases for next year. We were hoping for a 4-day+preview-night deal, so when the message came across the waiting room page that those were sold out, we assumed that there might be a few single day badges still available. Probably Thursday and Sunday again (grrr), but when we got to the head of line, we found out that single day passes for all 4 days were available. Good enough. So, apparently the infamous Comics A-Go-Go! streak of bad luck has ended. Either that or the gods are conspiring to give us greater disappointment at a later date like, oh let’s see, how about we develop gangrene or the world gets consumed by a wormhole. Actually, that last one would be cool if we ended up in another galaxy far, far away where spacecraft actually made real noises in the vacuum of space. No? Too obscure?
Yet another landmark from the land of Comics A-Go-Go! We’ve always been fools for nice round numbers. They make adding and subtracting so much easier. Having said that, too many zeroes in a number scare us. Anyway, sometime at the beginning of the month we hit 50,000 page views. 48,525 were for the post linked to the Tony Hayward picture below.
OK, not really. Actually no single post really stands out but the one linked to the Joker picture below has been the leader in the last month. As The Dark Knight Rises movie eventually winds down, this post will lose steam too. By then, we’ll do some sort of post on actual comics rather than this drivel so stick with us, sunshine.
It’s been a while, so we should check in and see what our favorite dictator and his humble bride are up to. When last we left Bashar and Asma al-Assad, they were hunkered down eating spiced humus on their palatial veranda and railing against the foreign conspiracy that was intent on taking down their benevolent rule. Their tack appeared to be one of waiting for the whole revolution thing to blow over.
So, where are we at today? Pretty much nowhere different, really. According to a report in the Telegraph, Bashar got in front of his sham parliament and condemned yet another massacre he says was perpetuated by foreign terrorists. Of course. What else would he say? Go back through all of the grass roots uprisings against despotic regimes over the last several decades and all of the ones that actually posed serious problems for demagogues were accused of being chock full of evil-doers from outside the vulnerable borders of the blessed motherlands.
According to Bubba Bashar, the terrorists that attacked and slaughtered about 80 people in Houla last week were not sanctioned by him or his cronies and not even “monsters” would launch such a strike. He went on to say that “The issue is terrorism. We are facing a real war waged from the outside.” Soooo, how come you’re not asking for help from the international community to shore up your defenses against these external terrorists? Coalitions have been formed to deal with such threats to other legitimate governments. No? We seem to remember Saddam moaning about the same bullshuck. Good luck with that sorry story, honey. Nobody’s listening.
Round 1: Four down and two to go! Then, let’s move on to round 2!
We predicted that the al-Assads would be gone by summer. Well, summer isn’t over until mid-September, so there’s still plenty of time for something or other to happen. In the meantime, we outsiders will continue to wag our fingers and say things like “Say, could you scale back that whole killing stuff a bit?” or “See? Now THAT’s why you didn’t get invited to HRH Elizabeth I’s 60th!”
Yeah, we know. It’s easy to say “send in the drones!,” but obviously regime changes can be volatile. We have no real answers, so we’re just armchair-coaching, but for crying out loud, enough is enough. People like Bashar al-Assad aren’t misguided idealists making bad decisions for good reasons. They are selfish and cruel barbarians that don’t give a crap about the people they have the obligation to protect! Damn!
Well, the good news, we suppose, is that … wait, there really isn’t any good news. All we know is that when the dust finally settles, there are going to be a lot of very bad things happening to the people that are currently shooting their guns. And the Arab Spring stumbles on …
Sacha Baron Cohen, the understated writer/actor, has returned with a new comedy. This time it’s a feature film … no mockumentaries like Baron Cohen’s other films Borat and Brüno. The Dictator is slated to come out May 11th. Here’s the deal-e-o in a nutshell:
According to the distributor, Paramount Pictures, The Dictator will “tell the story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.” Larry Charles, who previously directed Borat and Brüno, will direct this film. Also starring, Ben Kingsley (we like Ben) and Anna Faris (we like Anna).
From what we can tell, the premise is that Admiral General Aladeen, a dictator from the fictional Middle Eastern country called The Republic of Wadiya, arrives Stateside to much fanfare and controversy but ends up “lost in America” where he most likely will find spiritual awakening and redemption from his previous tyrannical lifestyle. We hope not. We hope that when he gets back to power, Aladeen turns out worse than he was before. Dark comedy. That’s the ticket.
Anyway, here’s a weirdo tidbit. Apparently, the film is loosely inspired by a novel that was purportedly written by the late, great Saddam Hussein. Except, we can’t imagine that humorless Saddam could write a comedy so we’re guessing the film is a mocking tip-of-the-hat to the formerly-real-life dictactor’s opus, Zabibah and the King. The bizarre self-worship portrayed in the film reminds us of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and we have to suppose “El Coronel Mariposa” was a significant inspiration for the film.
Incidentally, anyone watch the Oscars? No? Well, Sacha showed up in his Admiral General Aladeen outfit (after being expressely warned not to do so by the Academy muckety-mucks) carrying an urn that he claimed contained the ashes of his late golf buddy Kim Jong Il. After some silliness, he “accidentally” spilled the contents of the urn on the red carpet and Ryan Seacrest. How this guy manages not to draw hit squads from the nefarious parts of our globe is anyone’s guess. Sacha, we respect your cajones. We really don’t want to see them as we almost did in Borat, but we do respect them.
And here’s the source of Sacha’s inspiration… Daffy Gaddafi! You go, girl!
A dictator in drag. There ain't no ho like a hairy ho.
The virginal paratroopers complete the insanity. What's up with the dude in the suit? Could he look any more uncomfortable?
Moamar, you old queen! As for Hugo … give yourself a double fist-pump. Saddam is history. Hosni is gone. Muammar is gone. Bashar will soon be gone as will Mahmoud. Li’l Kim Jong-un is an up-and-comer, but you may be the undisputed, still-somewhat-relevant throwback dictator de jour.
Hugo "Mushroom Man" Chavez
Nobody sports a healing hat like our Man in Caracas.
And speaking of the formerly-alive, poofy-headed man-child Kim Jong-il, we’re not sure if we’re flattered or indignant that we have received zero page views from North Korea. Why would anyone ever want to censor Comics A-Go-Go!? We can only hope that Kim “Chubby Cheeks” Jong-un will allow the glorious golden sunrise that is CAGG to enlighten his people.
Now that he's gone, the vegetables can become food again.
It’s almost trite to say it, but with Saddam out of the picture, Iraq just hasn’t been the same. Now corruption has to be divided up among so many parties. To coin a phrase from Spain … “Esto nunca pasaba con Franco.”
Saddam "Capone" Hussein taking pot shots at Predator drones.
It’s a two-fer! The girls must have been going mad! This is like seeing Elvis and Tom Jones on stage together for the first time.
Asma recently attempted to purchase Dorothy's Ruby Slippers but Glinda cast a spell on her so now Asma has painful plantar warts.
Comics A-Go-Go! has written a few times about the contempt we have for Asma al-Assad, the First Lady and Royal Highn-ass of the Syrian dictatorship. As much as we were led to believe she was the Middle Eastern equivalent to Princess Di, sadly, she has demonstrated a lack of concern for the plight of her fellow people whereas Diana had a caring spirit in spades. Now that the walls are crumbling in Damascus (albeit only one brick at a time), one would think Asma would express concern about the affairs of the state. Apparently not. She seems to be much more concerned about the price of vases and shoes at Harrod’s than the destruction of Homs. That will shortly be coming to an end (see link to article below).
Bashar al-Assad continues to cast a long, gawky shadow across the people of Syria after succeeding his father, the tyrant Hafez, to the throne. Whereas Hafez was mostly a regional player, Bashar (probably in large part to his beautiful and trendy wife) has had a greater presence on the world stage. Given Europe’s fawning attention up until the crackdown, Bashar would have received enthusiastic support and adulation in bringing his country out of the despotic hegemony of his tribe’s rule. To a large degree, Syria is secular which in the Middle East should have meant greater freedoms of religion and other basic democratic rights (prove us wrong), but like the dictatorship of the Shah of Iran, it just served to oppress his people by fracturing any possibility of a strong religious counter-force. Side note: Take care, people of Syria. The lessons of Iran should be present when the regime finally falls.
Inseparable as children, Beker and Bashar al-Assad both pursued prestigious careers: Beker became a chemist with Syrian Petroleum Company and Bashar an ophthalmologist. Relationships have been strained recently, however, as Beker demonstrates his support for small democratic reforms while Bashar continues to consolidate his dictatorship.
Anyway, Asma, time for you and your Muppet of a Man to go away and we sure as hell hope you don’t end up with sanctuary somewhere in a friendly country. But of course you will. Because that’s what happens in these situations. The world is unfair.
Photo-op!! Look at our people running to yet another bargain at the bazaar. Our economy's roaring along thanks to a huge investment of our personal fortune.
Back in February, we wondered what Asma al-Assad was thinking about the whole killing-our-people thing. Given her history of philanthropy and apparent progressive sensibilities, we figured that the abominable way in which her husband and his henchmen went about the business of violently suppressing the freedom movement of their people would be tempered by her loving hand. OK, OK. We get it. Why would a tyrant, a dictator, a despot want to fade back while a democracy movement surged forward (not a question). So, of course Bashar “Napalm” al-Assad would want to defend his stranglehold. Morally wrong, yes. Predictable, also. But what we hoped for was that Asma would put her foot down and say enough is enough … let my people go. Or at least flee the country. Nope.
In an article in The Guardian released today, hacked email messages exchanged between the members of the Royal First Couple of Syria demonstrated that the al-Assads are continuing to live within their gilded cocoon as if the horror surrounding them is a distant menace perpetrated by enemies of the anti-Republic. Bashar rants about enemies training al-Qaeda to subvert the Head Bastard and his cronies. Get that? These are private emails to intimate contacts within the power echelon. He actually believes (or wishes to convince his close friends) that he is being targeted by al-Qaeda affiliated death squads. These death squads are being recruited by … wait for it … U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford. You know, the minion of The Great Satan. You know, The Great Satan that consists of Americans, Israelis (well, Jews in general), and complicit kiss-ass Arabs. You know, the sworn and singularly Dread Enemy of al-Qaeda. What the hell? Hmm. You can’t make up this kind of crazy. (Of course, … full disclosure time …, there’s a possibility of the hacking being a hoax but it’s unlikely).
And where is Asma in all of this? Yakking it up with pals about online shopping sprees. Ah well, did we really think this dictator and his wife were genuine humanitarians in spite of their apparent gestures of good-will to the indigent or their royal escapades in Europe (again, not a question).
Bashar and Asma al-Assad, go 
yourselves.
Syria’s imploding and there isn’t much help yet from outside. Maybe it’s best in the long run. A groundswell internal revolution is more to matter to the citizens than external pressure (we’ll see if that’s true as we watch Egypt and Libya evolve over the next few years by comparison to Iraq).
After writing the previous blog about Beker Al-Assad (how do we get the deep dish on so many things?!), it struck us that the connection between the Middle East and Europe is oddly close in some ways and light years apart in others. The wife of Syria’s dictator, Bashar Al-Assad, was born in the UK, dresses and acts in many ways like high society Europeans, is involved in various progressive campaigns to address the needs of the indigent in her nation, and she very recently posed in an issue of Vogue. And yet, she is the wife of a brutal man and lives comfortably in a society rife with corruption, rampant class disparity, and primitive tribal rivalries. The clash is surely apparent to her and we wonder what’s going through her mind as her husband and his cronies reign over the repression of their own people. It doesn’t matter that, if the claims are even true, Bashar is not fully in control of his government, secret police, whatever. The reality is that he’s responsible for his portion of the massacres and brutality. In a time that the Middle East is getting a breath of democratic fresh air, Bashar could lead, but he’s chosen to orchestrate or at least tolerate the wrong-doings of his government. Next to him is a lovely and extroverted person, but is Bashar’s wife clinging to her best-of-both-worlds situation? Is she trying to work delicately behind the scenes to soften the iron fist? Is she too frightened to do anything? Is she planning a clandestine departure to more friendly environs?
So, Asma, what’s up?
As for Saudia Arabia, feh. Don’t get us started.
Yeah, you know it. Ah-yeah! You know da First Couple of Syria is bringin’ it tonight! Aight!
CNN has an interesting take on the situation.
His Royal Highness, Mr. Bashar Helbibi Al-Assad
Let it never be said that Comics A-Go-Go! isn’t aware of the world’s current events. As the Arab Spring surges forward, we wonder just how long the son of Hafez Al-Assad can hang on. It’s odd, this thing with the dictators. Leadership spoils even the best of us. Bashar had some promise. The hope outside Syria was that he, of all the offspring of the ruthless tyrant Hafez, would relax the Al-Assad hold on the people of Syria. Oh, the naïveté.
There is a slim, albeit considered, possibility that we may see a middle-of-the road solution to the Syrian crisis. Preparations are already underway for a transfer of power (we predict that Bashar will be gone less than a year from now and most likely sometime this summer). However, rather than going all out to push for the chaos of a democratic venture or a trade-off for conservative sectarian tyranny, the option of keeping things within the Al-Assad fold could happen. Syrians don’t necessarily hate the Al-Assad family. They just dislike the terror of not knowing if they will be hauled off in the middle of the night to be tortured after drawing mustaches on the ubiquitous posters of Syria’s first son. Sooo, what about the second? Beker Al-Assad is currently residing in self-imposed exile in Amsterdam due to an embarrassingly public display of differing opinion between the two brothers on the issue of whether or not the existence of Israel was like the moon landing. Beker contended both were real. Bashar said he sided with Rush Limbaugh and said that both were made-up.
Once it was clear that Bashar would succeed his ailing father, he voiced his intentions to keep the regime rolling along with little change other than upgrading the national telephone system. Secret police? Same. Suspect incarcerations? Same. A dubious harem of Nordic women that may or may not have understood the solicitations to travel to Syria for six-month, all-expenses-paid employment as nannies for the spoiled and cruel children of the political elite? Same. Syrians now experience static-free, sterile “we know we’re being recorded” conversations with relatives but clearly that’s not enough, as demonstrated by the demonstrations.
Power = unnatural sex appeal. That is the only reason (well, besides money) that a hottie like Asma would hook up with the likes of chinless & shoulderless Bashar Al-Assad.
Beker threw his taqiyah into the ring early on with a promise that he intended to reduce sanctioned police kidnappings to no more than two nights per week and that foreigners would no longer be held against their will regardless of gender. This “soft” approach did not sit well with both father and eldest son. With the threat of his own imprisonment, Beker secretly crossed the border into Lebanon one night and flew to Amsterdam where he held a not-so-veiled disdain for his older brother’s eventual acquisition of supreme power.
Beker isn’t well-known to younger Syrians and enjoys only tepid regard from his countrymen that remember his controversial attempt to bring the Winter Olympics to Syria. The venture would have saddled a country already in a brutal recession at the time with debt it could not hope to pay down. But, there is a rising consensus, particularly among the moderates, that Beker may be a good solution to turn down the heat in the Land of Hummus — at least temporarily until the population can figure out what to do next. In the end, Beker may be the least of the evils that awaits in the Syrian future. God speed, Beker.
The Al-Assads in happier times (back row, l. to r. Shabez, Bashar, Beker, Beni-Beni and Janet; seated: Momma Anisa and Hafez
Pop Culture is Go!
Comic-Con
comicsagogo.com