My Current Situation

Jadaharabi said
The horses. One of my mares was a full sister to one of Princess Alia's stallions.
I owned 12 descendants of straight Syrian bred horses from the importation of 1903 by Homer Davenport to America.
The Syrian government had just built a brand new government stud Farm. My wife and I are on the first page of the Farms guest book.
Mustafa Al Jabri is a friend. His uncle was once ruler of Syria. Mustafa ran against President Assad but then pulled out of the election.
He probably didn't want one of the eleven secret service agencies bumping him off. the job of the agencies were to watch the next agency. President Assad did not trust very many people.
Don't know if you've ever heard of him dr. Jerald Dirks. he wrote several books he had been a Methodist preacher converted to Islam. He wrote the cross and the crescent and several other books.
He and a few others were with me.

That's awesome! I had to look up Dr. Jerald Dirks because I forgot the name but I have watched him speak before. Sadly I just searched now and apparently he passed away this past February. I've heard of his books I might have to check them out now, thanks!

Yeah the Assads have always been paranoid and authoritarian, Syria was (is?) one of those places you can't say anything bad about the government or you'll be looking over your shoulder the rest of your life. If I remember the stories right... My grandpa's beef started when he was in the Syrian army and fought in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war where apparently the Syrian government was paid off by the Israelis to retreat from the Golan Heights where he was stationed as a tank commander; he realized the corruption was rampant and tried to do something about it, became a high-ranking member of the Muslim Brotherhood (which back then was actually kind-of legit, not a bunch of crazy fundamentalists like now) and fought the gov. Obviously it didn't work out and I bet looking back he would have not done those things if he had known the kind of danger it put his family in. And just to be clear my grandpa is totally beyond the political stuff now he isn't involved with any of that anymore; he just wants to live his life and enjoy the little time he has left with his family as he grows older. I'm hoping to visit him soon as he's getting up there in age and lives in a fairly poverty-stricken part of Alexandria, Egypt. He finds satisfaction in helping the local poor people, only reason he hasn't moved to somewhere nicer which the rest of my family has tried to convince him to do for years.