Her first article, published as Syria’s government started to attack citizens, was met with a wave of criticism. Both Buck and Vogue’s editor, Anna Wintour, were accused of taking part in a public relations campaign on behalf of the Syrian regime.

Within a month or so, the article was removed from the magazine’s website. Almost a year later Wintour broke her silence on the matter to explain that “we were hopeful that the Assad regime would be open to a more progressive society” but “as the terrible events of the past year and a half unfolded in Syria, it became clear that its priorities and values were completely at odds with those of Vogue.”

Buck’s contract with Vogue was not renewed and that’s when she decided to offer an a 5,000-word explanation for her original sin.

It suggests that she was the victim of of manipulation from beginning to end…

Reference: http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2012/aug/01/asma-al-assad-anna-wintour

I don’t know when it became impossible to say anything good about Putin, but, as I’m trying to show by my quotations about Putin series, it was pretty early in the game.

But the Assad thing is interesting, isn’t it? The moment when the Word comes down from on high and otherwise trendy and with-it people are instructed that they must eat crow. We don’t often see it in action do we?

The author fired, the article withdrawn and a Big Wheel forced to apologise.