The Documentary Podcast The future of the Alawites
In the wake of the Assad regime's fall in Syria, thousands of Alawites, a minority Shia sect historically linked to the former regime, have fled to Lebanon. They are seeking refuge from discrimination and sectarian violence that has left over 1,000 civilians dead, including women and children. The late Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, became the most powerful Alawite when he seized control of Syria in a coup in 1970. Under the rule of Hafez al-Assad and then his son Bashar - the ruling Assad's recruited heavily from the Alawite community placing them in top posts in state, security and intelligence branches. Syria's new President Ahmed al-Sharaa, promised to protect Syria's minorities, but has struggled to contain a wave of violence directed towards the Alawite community. Emily Wither travels to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli to meet with Syrian Alawite refugees and a new youth movement. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from Heart and Soul, exploring personal approaches to spirituality from around the world.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
30 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Startling new satellite pictures show secret activity at Iranian nuclear site that the US bombed to pieces
New satellite photos reveal Iran is trying to piece together its nuclear site after the US bombed it. Heavy machinery was seen at the Fordow site as it appeared Iran has intensified its construction and excavation of the nuclear site after US B-2 bombers struck it last Saturday in Operation Midnight Hammer. Activity was seen near the tunnel entrances and near the points where the buster bombs struck. Construction equipment was also seen digging new access roads to the facility and repairing damage to the main one in order to restore access to the country's main nuclear facility. US President Donald Trump said the strikes 'completely obliterated' Iran's nuclear program and set it back years, but the new satellite images suggest the Middle Eastern country had taken preliminary effort to protect its facility. Iranian media said the sites had been evacuated prior to the strikes and the enriched uranium was transported to a 'safe location.' It is unclear how much uranium was left at the site during the bomb, but officials said there is no contamination after the strikes. Earthwork also showed signs tunnel entrances might have been sealed off before the attacks, Newsweek reported. Similar construction activity was seen at the Fordow site prior to the strikes, where Iranians were seen shipping contents from the nuclear site to another location a half a mile away. Despite the extent of the damage being up to question, International Atomic Energy Agency - the UN's nuclear watchdog - said Fordow's centrifuges were 'no longer operational' and suffered 'enormous damage.' A leaked preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, a US government intelligence group, suggested there was 'low confidence' that that Middle Eastern country's program had been set back. Even Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said the United States hit Tehran's nuclear sites but achieved 'nothing significant.' 'Anyone who heard [Trump's] remarks could tell there was a different reality behind his words - they could do nothing,' the 86-year-old Iranian leader said. The Trump Administration - including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard - pushed back on the report. Hegseth slammed the media for diminishing the strikes. 'Your people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful, it's irresponsible,' he said. 'There's nothing that I've seen that suggests that what we didn't hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations,' he explained without offering further evidence that the uranium was destroyed. Trump has threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN for reporting on the preliminary report. The Times reported Thursday that Trump's personal lawyer Alejandro Brito had reached out to the newspaper and said the article had damaged the president's reputation. The letter demanded The Times 'retract and apologize for' the story, calling it 'false,' 'defamatory' and 'unpatriotic.' The newspaper's lawyer responded by noting that Trump administration officials had confirmed the existence of the report after The Times published its findings. 'No retraction is needed,' The Times' lawyer David McCraw said in a letter. 'No apology will be forthcoming. We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so.' A spokesperson for CNN told The Times that the cable news network had responded to Trump's lawyer in a similar fashion. Operation Midnight Hammer marked the end of a 45-year stand-off between the United States and Iran.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Trump dropped an F-bomb this week – and just for a moment, I warmed to him
I did not get out of bed this morning expecting to praise the public use of an expletive, but such is 2025. If any president was going to break this presidential norm, as NPR put it, it was always going to be Donald Trump. 'We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing,' the president told a group of reporters this week. 'Do you understand that?' he asked, before storming off. It appears to be the first time a president has deliberately used the F-word live on camera to a press scrum or in a public forum, instead of being 'caught' using the term accidentally on a hot mic (even that has only happened a handful of times). Cue plenty of puns from journalists about the 'dropping of the F-bomb'. For the record, Trump actually used the F-word about Iran in 2020, but the slightly delayed radio broadcast bleeped it out. Plus, as this 2016 video compilation shows, it's not unusual for him to swear. But what was different about this time – coming as it did at a moment of heightened global anxiety about military escalation – is that it came across as … authentic. Many people watching will have felt, heard and even shared that frustration about Israel and Iran's alleged breaking of the ceasefire. Trump's swearing made the point more forcefully than any diplomatic 'disappointment' could have done. It wasn't eloquent, but I believed it. We know other presidents – such as Lyndon Johnson, and especially Richard Nixon – swore in private. They wouldn't have dreamed of risking the reputational damage to do so in public, and would have had to apologise if they did. No British prime minister has ever said 'fuck' publicly to my knowledge. Few world leaders ever have. Which is potentially part of the problem. The most common complaint about the political elite is that they're out of touch; that we can't trust a word that comes out of their mouths because it's all untrustworthy scripted spin. Yet at the same time we believe they're swearing like sailors – and saying what they really think – behind closed doors (a perception bolstered by iconic roles such as Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker, the foul-mouthed spin doctor in The Thick of It, or the blue-mouthed Roger Furlong from Veep.) Of course, swearing doesn't equate to honesty. And, in Trump's case, the obscenity only masked his own complicity in creating the situation that frustrated him – from pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 to his 'monumental' airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend. But my point is that the public clearly doesn't trust the polished and sanitised scripts that characterise so much political speech. I'm not suggesting world leaders all suddenly disrespect the gravitas of their office. Can you imagine Keir Starmer being encouraged to swear? He'd sound like a headteacher attempting to rap. What I am saying is there's power in judicious swearing. You want to appear more human to voters? Act more like one. YouGov polling reported in April revealed that just 8% of Britons never swear. Perhaps an occasional curse or two would allow politicians to ally themselves with the 92% of us who do. Linguistic norms are always changing. For six years, I wrote a regular column for the Guardian's Mind your language section. During that time, I saw changes that would incense any purist. For instance, the BBC made even less use of those with received pronunciation accents and started broadcasting more voices that really sound like people across the country. Such 'real' accents are supposed to make the institution seem less remote and more trustworthy. The same is true of the institution of politics. Sounding more like real people does nobody any real harm. If the stakes are literally life and death, and people aren't listening, a well-placed, truly meant expletive will wake everyone up. At time of writing, the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran is holding. Maybe the F-bomb did the job after all. Gary Nunn is a freelance journalist and author
Sky News
2 hours ago
- Sky News
Trump-Iran live: 'Death to America' chants in Tehran - as Iran hits out at Trump's 'unacceptable' remarks about supreme leader
Donald Trump lashed out at Iran's supreme leader over claims Tehran won the war against Israel. But Iran's foreign minister warned the US president about his "disrespectful and unacceptable tone". Follow live and listen to Trump 100 below.
