{"id":25697,"date":"2013-01-28T08:29:18","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T04:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=25697"},"modified":"2013-01-28T08:29:18","modified_gmt":"2013-01-28T04:29:18","slug":"charlie-had-his-angels-now-assad-has-lionesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-politics-analysis\/charlie-had-his-angels-now-assad-has-lionesses\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Charlie’ Had His ‘Angels’, Now Assad Has ‘Lionesses’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"assad<\/a><\/p>\n

Charlie had \u201cAngels,\u201d the late Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi \u201cAmazons\u201d and now Syrian President Bashar al-Assad \u201cLionesses\u201d (a play on his name, Assad means lion in Arabic).<\/p>\n

The new brigade of women is said<\/a> to be recruited to man checkpoints and carry out security operations and are part of a new paramilitary force.<\/p>\n

The \u201cLionesses for National Defense\u201d have already been deployed in Homs, where they have been spotted guarding areas where residents still largely support Assad\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0Amazonian Guard\u201d\u00a0was the unofficial name to Gaddafi\u2019s all-female elite cadre of bodyguards also known as \u201cThe Revolutionary Nuns,\u201d and \u201cThe Green Nuns.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group was formed in the early 1980s, after Gaddafi’s official resignation as Libyan head of state in favor of the title of “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.”<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, American crime drama television series \u201cCharlie\u2019s Angels,\u201d the never-seen Charlie recruits three women to work for his private investigation agency. It was one of the first shows to showcase women in roles traditionally reserved for men.<\/p>\n

\u201cCharlie\u2019s Angels\u201d was broadcast in the United States on the ABC Television Network from 1976 to 1981 and was one of the most successful series of the 1970s. In 2000, it was turned into an action comedy film and followed with the 2003 sequel, \u201cCharlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.\u201d<\/p>\n

But back to Assad\u2019s Lionesses, I wonder how they reacted when they heard or read that rape was a significant feature of their government\u2019s war on its own citizens.<\/p>\n

What will the Lionesses do when they see elderly Syrians and Syrian women and children being killed?<\/p>\n

What will the Lionesses do when they witness warplanes dropping barrel and cluster bombs on their compatriots\u2019 homes and bread lines?<\/p>\n

Will the Lionesses\u2019 security duties be to kill more Syrians?<\/p>\n

Back to you Lionesses — we are watching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MICH CAFE: It seems to be a common theme among Arab dictators – recruiting women to front up the military in your regime. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":25700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,83,483,60,482,317],"tags":[16592,16595,16593,1209,16590,513,191,16594,4789,16591,18330],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}