"In one of his early Australian tours, [actor and humorist] Peter Ustinov was asked by a reporter, 'Are you worried about being in the land of the convicts?' He replied, 'I'm more worried about being in the land of the warders.' This neatly describes the political divide in Australia, ever since European settlement [...]," wrote Australian politician, Barry Jo
Looking at recent world events, one might be forgiven for wondering if the Nazis secretly won WW2 and captured the United States. If we look back and forth at war-alliance dynamics then and war-alliance dynamics now, we are struck by how the elites dominating western allies were all against communism leading up to WW2. Yet, these dynastic, corporate, and state leaders, who were so against communism, finished up as allies of Russia during WW2. The conventional explanation is that everyone good united against the Nazis because they were so undeniably evil, in order to save the world.
The University of Melbourne is censoring graduating Palestinian and pro-Palestine students and is withholding graduation images from ceremonies taking place this week at the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton, Melbourne.
Across multiple faculties and departments, graduating students are expressing solidarity for Palestine by wearing keffiyeh’s and carrying signs demanding that Uni Melb divest from arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
The included photograph shows a Palestinian boy moments before he died after he and his people were deliberately targeted by the Netanyahu regime. I captured it from Facebook after assuring Facebook that I could handle the image having read through their warning about how distressing it might be for me. (Unfortunately, I did not bookmark the post, so I cannot link to the original.)
Waverley Council in Sydney recently voted to remove Greens councillors from their positions as Deputy Mayor and Committee members due to their position on the Israel/Palestine conflict. I was terrified of the deep irrationality and over-powering hatred and anger on display at the meeting.
On Thursday 2 November, staff, students and alumni of The University of Melbourne published an open letter in Overland Literary Journal addressed to Vice-Chancellor of The University of Melbourne, Duncan Maskell.
With the atrocious China-bashing going on in Australia at the moment, mirroring US policy, we decided to republish the concisely expressed views of an American living in China. The comments under the video indicate a general approval of his appraisal by people who are familiar with Chinese life. His main criticism of China is the media censorship, which commenters suggest has worsened along with US China-bashing.
In person and online event this Saturday 4th of March the Belmarsh Tribunal reconvenes for its fifth session in Sydney University Great Hall.
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Update, 5pm Thu 24/11/22: Except for an automatically-generated response from Helen Haines MP, I have received no response from any one of the 11 representatives I emailed very early this morning. Later today, I will, likewise, email another 22. I am writing to each one of you in the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Support Group to ask you to try, as hard as you are able, to use your voice and your vote to support Julian Assange in Parliament during this current sitting which ends, in the Senate, next Friday 2 December and, in the House, next Thursday 1 December. |  |
Australian Parliament, which sits next week from Monday 6 September, must be made, finally, to debate Julian Assange's fate. At the weekly vigil for Julian Assange outside Melbourne's Flinders Street Station in the evening of last Friday 26 August, James Sinnamon explained how, if Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to end its imprisonment of Julian Assange, he would almost certainly comply without delay, and Julian Assange would
Friday, 17 June. In a horrible clown-world, the UK government has approved the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US to face criminal charges, despite an original British judge ruling that he should not be deported due to risk of suicide and a warning by his lawyer that he still remains a risk - and the fact that he has committed no crime.
" ... We end [up] waging war against Russians with the proxy. We are investing our emotions just like playing a computer game. Unable to distinguish dying in a computer game from dying for real. When we die, we might start another game. Ukrainians, after being dead once, can not do that. No more games after dying for real.
Following Sasha Gillies-Lekakis's unfair, suppressive, humiliating and vicious, ejection from Q&A audience on 3 March 2022, this statement appeared on
A friend of mine related today, that at her golf club, after a game, a woman exclaimed, "I wish that someone would shoot the Russian president." Most people there agreed loudly, although a couple of weeks prior, some of them had not even known what Perestroika was. Many people in Australia are confident to the point of arrogance in their belief that they are well-informed about the problems in Ukraine. "I was afraid to speak up, in case they shaved my head," my friend joked blackly.
In this video, BBC journalist Orla Guerin interviews Azerbaijan President Aliyev, assuming that Azerbaijan press and politics are heavily censored, and presses him on that. He denies the accusation, then asks her why Julian Assange has been held inhumanely for years, if the British and western press are so free. The BBC journalist simply won't acknowledge the situation for journalists and the media in her own country, kind of proving the president's point.
UPDATE: Youtube has removed the film again, but you can watch it at https://planetofthehumans.com. We reproduce a letter from Jeff Gibbs, Director of Planet of the Humans.
Did you know that YouTube has removed Michael Moore's massive environmental film, "Planet of the Humans"? The reason appears to be a purported infringement of copyright, which its producer vehemently denies. They didn't like the message, he argues in this rivetting and educational interview. Michael Moore joins Rolling Stone's "Useful Idiots" show to discuss the removal of Planet of the Humans from YouTube, and addresses criticism he and the film have received. This fascinating interview has nearly as much to offer on the environmental movement and its problems - notably with corporate interference - as the film itself.
This 21:09 minute video debate has beenc republished from Attack on Freedom of Speech (19/4/19) | PressTV (but see note below - Ed).
During the 80 years following 1789 that it took for the French Revolution to acheive its aims as the Third Republic, the people of the third estate (that is neither church nor noble) launched many newspapers and founded many societies where they could meet and discuss matters.
We live in increasingly 'interesting' times. US Journalists and government employees are afraid to criticise their government's outrageously authoritarian move against one media outlet, because they are afraid of being harassed themselves. According to the US Department of Justice, RT is an agent of a foreign, even hostile, power. All the while, the United States Department Of Justice refuses to explain why this is the case or even cite what laws RT may have broken. But something else is in play: critics warn RT is a test case for a wider campaign of media suppression. The UK is following suit, with parliamentarians attacking journalists who write against its illegal foreign wars, because they are afraid of being pursued one day for war crimes. Julian Assange has rightly described Australia as being governed by Washington, so we Australians had better look out and stand up and defend RT and anyone who writes a different point of view.
CrossTalking with Lee Stranahan, Rocky Anderson and Marcus Papadopoulos.
In Syrian Girl's Facebook Ban Linked to Russia-gate Twitter Purge? - an Exclusive Interview (30/9/17) | Russia Insider, Charles Bausman reported that Facebook had blocked SyrianGirl's account after she had criticised Kurds.
Syrian Girl, the Australian activist, Youtuber, and social media powerhouse, tweeted on Thursday evening (EST) that her Facebook account has been blocked for her exposure of fraud during the Kurdistan referendum. She had 75,000 followers.
She also has 70,000 followers on Twitter, and 75,000 subscribers to her excellent Youtube channel.
She gave Russia Insider (RI) an exclusive interview on Friday, explaining that Facebook acted without warning, (which is unusual - usually they give people a chance to correct whatever is upsetting the censors), and so far have not responded to emails.
She speculated that perhaps her page had been caught up in the anti-Russian Twitter / Facebook purge currently unfolding. (Twitter removed 200 Russian accounts that targeted Facebook during election - USA Today)
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This of course follows the evidence-free beat-up that alleged Russian interference somehow caused American voters to elect Russia's allegedly favourite candidate Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton the chosen favourite of the American corporate elite, including Zuckerberg himself.
As revealed by Julian Assange of Wikileaks, "Zuckerberg Colluded with Hillary Clinton Campaign":
Mark Zuckerberg's claims this week that Facebook was fair to Donald Trump during the 2016 election just took another serious blow.
The Facebook founder and CEO personally met with Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta a year before the 2016 election, according to an email released by Wikileaks.
The news comes a day after Wikileaks' Julian Assange dropped a bomb onto the heads of Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, alleging they colluded with Hillary Clinton's 2016 election campaign.
Assange Tweeted Thursday, linking the emails sent back and forth between John Podesta and Sandberg which reveal Sandberg wanted Clinton to win "badly." Assange said the women met privately numerous times during Clinton's campaign.
Assange included one email from Sandberg to Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager, which is particularly damaging in which the Facebook executive pledged to help elect Clinton.
This outrageous attempt at thought control and censoring of political information by Zuckerberg, as well as Google, YouTube and Twitter, shows that in a true democracy, the news media upon which we all depend, must be taken out of the hands of the corporate owners and placed in the hands of the people.
Alternatively, rival newsmedia and social media that are run transparently, and with a charter to promote a free contest of ideas, should be established.
This could easily be done with public funds and with popular support within purportedly democratic countries like Australia, France, Germany and the UK. Should this not occur, then alternatives could be set up. One such alternative is the community-owned minds.com.
Another alternative is for sovereign countries like Russia and Iran, which are independent of United States' hegemony, set up their own alternatives to Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. If they were also run transparently and with a charter to promote a free contest of ideas, they would very quickly draw away much of the current audiences of Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Such an initiative would surely cost those countries only a fraction of what they are currently obliged to spend on defence.
In fact, Russia has already set up Yandex an alternative to Google. Hopfeully, Yandex will soon be expanded to include more in English. Hopefully, also, other alternatives to Google, Facebook, and Twitter will soon be established.
Over time their need for defence expenditure would be greatly reduced as more and more people in Western countries are able to see through the lies of the corporate newsmedia. We could well see the end of war altogether.
See also: "Russia Threatens to Ban Facebook" (2/10/17) | Russia Insider by Tyler Durden – Russia demands data of Russian citizens be kept on servers physically located in Russia, @caityjohnstone/the-push-to-fight-foreign-propaganda-is-the-same-as-government-book-burning-bba16a128835">"The push to 'Fight Foreign Propaganda' is the same as government book burning" (28/9/17) | Medium by Caitlin Johnstone.
The Minister for Planning has publicly insisted [1] that Victoria has to fit 10 million people in Victoria with four more million in Melbourne and that that is the reason for the planning dictatorship he is trying to force on Victorians. If we did not 'have' to fit in millions more, no new plan would be 'needed'. Population numbers as a topic dominate the mainstream press,[2] but three residents' action groups in Planning Backlash - possibly trading on their marginal electorate status - reportedly held the rest to ransom for their presence at the Planning Backlash rally on the steps of parliament 8 June 2017. Their ransom was censorship of their fellow groups in a promise that no rally speakers would mention the role that population growth has in driving Plan Melbourne 2017-2050 and all the destruction it promises. Even though the Victorian Government has openly published several written policies for massive population growth, [3] the Yarra Residents' Coalition, Brunswick and Moreland groups of Planning Backlash have been identified as censoring debate about this on the very steps of Victoria's parliament.
In light of this censorship and division, Brad Marsh's statement at the end of his speech, as President of Yarra Residents' Coalition, was ironic, "We have 18 months. Lets work together and see if we can restore democracy to the political decision-making and restore residents' rights."
I protested to Mr Marsh about the censorship and his reply to me was that population was 'complicated' and that the real drivers were money and foreign buyers. My informed response was that the money is to be made through population growth-caused demand and that property is marketed to foreign buyers with the guarantee of population growth pushing prices up. It is extremely difficult for me to believe that Mr Marsh is unaware of this.
Apparently Professor Buxton, together with Mr Marsh, saw it advisable to remove the subject of population growth from those covered by this public meeting.
Well, now that the rally is over and the aim of getting population-discussion-shy groups to come has been achieved, it is important for people to know why population was not mentioned at the rally. It is important because the public are truly mystified by the suppression of real population numbers debate and they don't need more confusion. They suspect that something is going on in the background but rarely does an actual incident of discussion-suppression get reported. People go home with the false idea that they are alone in strongly questioning the state population juggernaut and this makes them less sure of their ground - which is what the growth lobby want.
Several politicians spoke at this meeting, including the Shadow Minister for Planning. One of the strategies in the meeting was the idea of ousting the Labor government for a Liberal Government, in hopes of more friendly planning. There seems to be some substance in the idea that the last Liberal Government, whilst pursuing a similar program of population growth, overdevelopment and deregulation to that of the previous Labor Government, did allow some protections in the form of residential zones, now predictably overturned by Planning Minister Wynne, using the excuse of population growth. Alternating Liberal/Labor governments are like a good cop/bad cop scenario. Mr David Davis, Shadow Minister for Planning (Liberal) made many promises of more friendly planning in his speech at the rally, but the subject of the population driver was not mentioned, of course. A man who identified himself as a member of one of the three groups mentioned above was later heard saying to David Davis (Shadow Minister for Planning) that he was in favour of immigration-fed population growth and David Davis reportedly replied that he was in favour of it too.
The groups that apparently (were they really representative?) wanted population growth left out of the speeches and banners are mostly in Labor and Green electorates, heavily networked by the Socialist Alliance. These north of the Yarra suburbs are already densely packed. Why would people in such overpopulated suburbs apparently be in favour of mass immigration? One explanation is that the Greens and Socialist Alliance activists tend to push open-borders views and to confound multiculturalism with open-ended immigration. Because they lack valid arguments for their positions, they tend to unfairly attack people as 'racist' who don't want mass immigration-fed population growth. This is intimidating and probably stops many people in these suburbs from speaking openly.
Whilst the open-borders ideology is an obvious influence in the inner suburbs north of the Yarra, we should be aware that these views have been covertly nurtured by the property development lobby, which has a record of infiltrating, manipulating and financing people in groups using political activism as a front. See a discussion of this kind of tactic in a Property Council of Australia forum here: Transcript of Growth Lobby video-shocker, "Straightening out B.A.N.A.N.A.S". Unsurprisingly, the Labor Party, which is truly little more than a property speculating corporation, doesn't seem bothered by this activity. (See "Australian Labor Governments or Commercial Corporations?" Many government departments (whether under Liberal and Labor governments) are members of the Property Council of Australia and fail to criticise its overt aims of influencing government to its financial advantage in matters of property and development tax, media influence, and mass immigration.
There are two parts to the attack on our democracy that a rogue Melbourne Planning System carries. One is the way the government 'streamlines' or steamrolls developers' interests over the civil rights and democratic interests of the people living here, citizens and residents. Another is the mass economic immigration that fuels the developers' interests and which the state government invites via its website https://www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au/. Since both phenomena are interwined and mutually dependent, one unable to exist without the other, neither should be left out in a public protest. This is particularly so when you have the opportunity of instructing the passing public about the role of government-pushed mass immigration in overturning our democracy and property rights in the planning system.
Note that the Victorian Government, in its population literature, has totally misled Victorians about its major role in causing population growth and driving overdevelopment, assigning sole responsibility for immigration to the federal government. The chief way that the Victorian government misleads the public is by denying its own role in economic immigration, although its role has been major and structural since the time of Kennett. See "Sheila Newman: Kennett population policy, numbers and flow-ons: Regional migration and industrial law under Kennett". [4]
[1] Wynne expressed this imperative to 774 Drive Program host, Raphael Epstein on Friday 26 May 2017. See the following comments: http://candobetter.net/comment/214871#comment-214871, http://candobetter.net/comment/214873#comment-214873, and http://candobetter.net/comment/214882#comment-214882
The Victorian Government has published its population engineering policies for rapid population growth in multiple planning and other documents. See "Towards "Melbourne at 8 million" and beyond", which gives a history of the Victorian Governments' constantly increasing population targets. The Government's population growth policy is a moving target, ever climing upwards and the public have never been consulted, although they have many times expressed their rejection of what is happening.
[2] Although population growth is a constant topic on the mainstream media, expression of opposition to it is suppressed. True discussion of the pros and cons constantly suppressed in the mainstream media. See, for instance, "Yet again, ABC refuses to discuss population ponzi - by Leith van Onselen".
The gambit of mainstream media and politicians, is to pretend that the only issue in mass immigration is race. They thus racialise the 'debate' and excise the true costs of their ponzi scheme to the general public. When parliamentarians attempt to raise the population numbers issue among their fellows, they are frequently attacked.
[3] Victorian population growth policy document:
, "Beyond Five Million, The Victorian Government's Population Policy," December 2004.
Repeated here for regional Australia in a government funded 'independent' think-tank: http://inform.regionalaustralia.org.au/population-and-people/population-and-migration/item/beyond-five-million-the-victorian-government-s-population-policy
[4] Victoria in Future 2016, VIF Frequently asked questions: This Victorian Government 'population research' document pretends to educate the public about trends in Victoria's population, but obfuscates the fact that the government's population policy has greatly impacted these 'trends' in the past and plans to in the future - upwards. The chief way that the Victorian government misleads the public is by denying its role in planned immigration, although its role has been major and structural since the time of Kennett. See "Sheila Newman: Kennett population policy, numbers and flow-ons: Regional migration and industrial law under Kennett". Here is a statement by the Victorian Government which crucially misleads the public:
"Net overseas migration
Net overseas migration (NOM) is the difference between people coming to live in Australia and residents leaving to settle overseas.
In the past, natural increase has generally contributed more to Australia's annual population growth than has overseas migration. However, since 2004-05, overseas migration has overtaken natural increase as the major contributor to population growth. In 2014-15, NOM accounted for 54% of the annual population growth of Victoria (ABS cat. no. 3101.0).
[...] In discussing net overseas migration, it needs to be borne in mind that governments have much less control over migration than may be expected. State Governments have no control and can only influence Commonwealth Government through advocacy. In turn, Commonwealth Governments have chosen not to practice rigorous controls over the number of people moving in or out of the country. Numbers of permanent humanitarian and skilled migrants are capped by Commonwealth Government policy. On the other hand, Australian residents, and New Zealanders, come and go without restrictions. The numbers of long term but temporary migrants, such as students, working holiday makers and category 457 migrants, are not capped, nor are those coming under family reunion schemes."
US Congress Quietly Passes Bill Targeting “Russian Propaganda” Websites By Tyler Durden, Global Research, December 03, 2016, Zero Hedge 2 December 2016. On November 30, one week after the Washington Post launched its witch hunt against “Russian propaganda fake news”, with 390 votes for, the House quietly passed “H.R. 6393, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017“, sponsored by California Republican Devin Nunes (whose third largest donor in 2016 is Google parent Alphabet, Inc), a bill which deals with a number of intelligence-related issues, including Russian propaganda, or what the government calls propaganda, and hints at a potential crackdown on “offenders.”
A quick skim of the bill reveals “Title V—Matters relating to foreign countries”, whose Section 501 calls for the government to “counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly.”
The section lists the following definitions of media manipulation:
As ActivistPost correctly notes, it is easy to see how this law, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, could be used to target, threaten, or eliminate so-called “fake news” websites, a list which has been used to arbitrarily define any website, or blog, that does not share the mainstream media’s proclivity to serve as the Public Relations arm of a given administration.
The two videos inside this article are Parts 1 and 2 of a seminar on "The Right of Blasphemy - No to Medieval Trials" which took place in Rome, Italy, on Sunday, October 30, 2016. The seminar aimed at raising awareness of the fierce campaign against the enlightening intellectuals in the Arab world. From assassinating the writer and intellectual; Nahed Hattar in Jordan, imprisoning the Islamic researcher; Islam Behery In Egypt, and the liberal blogger; Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia, to sentencing the journalist; Mohamed Sheikh Walad Amkheter to death, to other, endless examples. “Blasphemy”is always a prefabricated accusation of anyone who tries to discuss or think differently. Of additional interest is the fact that the president of the secularist ADHOC organisation that held this very open-minded seminar was Syrian-born Randa Kassis, who recently met with Donald Trump Jr at the French 'think tank' the Center of Political and Foreign Affairs, headed by her husband, Fabien Baussart, to discuss US-Russian cooperation. (See "Hope for Syria! Trump's son at Randa Kassis pro-Syrian French think tank in October."
DR NADIA OWEIDAT: "I have felt personally in my entire ten years of being an analyst in Washington [...] that I am constantly accused of being not authentic enough because I'm not an Islamist.So there's somebody has decided that if you from the region and it doesn't matter like I come from the biggest tribe in Jordan - my tribe goes back to the time of the Pharaohs - [...] but that doesn't make me authentic because I'm not religious. I'm not Islamist. Not just not really, just I'm not Islamist.
So I've had this accusation and its really irritating who has decided that unless an Islamist I'm not an authentic voice from the Middle East. [...]
We have to fight this because this sympathy is really costing the entire world, because it's a huge imbalance in siding with Islamist as authentic. [...]
Political Islamist parties have proven over and over that they are very authoritarian and there's enough of us in the Middle East that are really sick and tired of authoritarianism. We would like to see real human rights, would like to see real engagement. We want to play a role in building our countries and were excluded from from that engagement. [...] Islam is like returning regimes exclude everybody [...] who doesn't carry their vision. It's not even vision their narrow-minded ideology. So this really needs to be tackled [...]" (Dr. Nadia Oweidat: Modern Islamic thought professor.)
It has been very difficult to discover the list of participants and all their names. Below is a list advertised on the International Humanist and Ethical Union, IHEU site in England.
Speaker list:
1. Dr. Hamed Abdel-Samad: German-Egyptian writer and critic of Islamism.
2. Dr. Nadia Oweidat: Modern Islamic thought professor.
3. Dr. Saaed Nashed: Moroccan writer and intellectual, concerned with the issues of modernism and enlightenment.
4. Dr. Olfa Youssef: Tunisian writer, author, professor.
5. Dr. Elizabeth O’Casey: Advocacy Director of IHEU and representative at the United Nations Human Rights Council.
6. Mr. Majed Hatar brother of the assassinated Jordanian writer Nahed Hatar
Whilst one can obtain an automated transcript of the speeches via you tube's transcript function, the accuracy is poor. I have tried to transcribe parts of the first and the second speeches and may put these up later.
Previously published (3/5/15) on PressTV
The US State Department has been criticized for its move to deny a visa to an Iraqi Christian nun planning to reveal ISIL atrocities to Congress.
Sister Diana Momeka was part of an Iraqi delegation that was scheduled to testify before the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committee later this month.
Momeka has been a frank supporter for the Christians who have been killed and deported by the ISIL 1 terrorist group.
Other members of the delegation received visas to the US to speak in Washington about the persecution of minorities of the region.
The US consulate in the Iraqi semi-autonomous region of Erbil, Kurdistan rejected her visitor visa application earlier this week.
According to the US State Department, the Christian nun was "not able to demonstrate that [her] intended activities in the United States would be consistent with the classification of the visa."
The nun was the only Christian in the group that was set to head to the US on an invitation from American NGOs.
The criticism came from Nina Shea of the conservative Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom in an op-ed in National Review Online.
"She told me in a phone conversation that, to her face, consular officer Christopher Patch told her she was denied because she is an 'IDP' or Internally Displaced Person. 'That really hurt.' Essentially, the State Department was calling her a deceiver," Nina Shea said in the op-ed.
ISIL destroyed Sister Diana's home forcing her and 50,000 others to flee back in August.
Shea explained that State Department officials concluded from the nun's application process and interview to obtain a visa that Sister Diana "could be falsely asserting that she intends to visit Washington when secretly she could be intending to stay. That would constitute illegal immigration, and that, of course, is strictly forbidden. Once here, she could also be at risk for claiming political asylum, and the US seems determined to deny ISIS's (ISIL) Christian victims that status."
Sister Diana, who is from an Iraqi town of 50,000 mostly Christian residents, was forced to leave her home by ISIL in August.
Since then, she has received refugee status and has been an outspoken critic of ISIL and other terrorist groups creating mayhem in Iraq and elsewhere.
HDS/AGB
#fnSdm1" id="fnSdm1">1.#txtSdm1"> ↑ 'ISIL' is generally considered to be synonymous with 'ISIL'. Elsewhere on this site, the term 'ISIS' is used.
‘I was to play Rachmaninoff, not preach politics’ – fired pianist Valentina Lisitsa to RT. This article first published April 07, 2015 22:19 http://rt.com/news/247297-canada-orchestra-pianist-ukraine/ The Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa has become even more famous than she's already been among the online community, after her political views cost her a job with a Canadian orchestra. And she doesn't plan on being silenced, she told RT.
See also: Toronto Symphony Bans Pianist Critical of Kiev Regime (9/4/15), twitter.com/ValLisitsa, Canada's Immigration Minister Delivers Pro-War Speech against Russia (18/3/15) and Kiev Becomes First European Capital to Openly Glorify Criminal Ideology (10/4/15).
"I always separated music from politics and tried to keep enormous distance between the two," the pianist told RT's 'In the Now' host Anissa Naouai on Tuesday, after news of how she's been treated by Canada's Toronto Symphony Orchestra has spread globally.
The hashtag #LetValentinaPlay surged in popularity on social media, and thousands of supporters spoke out for the artist, who was offered to be paid not to play.
READ MORE: Canadian orchestra drops Ukraine-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa over anti-Kiev posts
"I was about to play Rachmaninoff concertos with the orchestra, not to preach politics," Lisitsa, who was fired allegedly for her political views rather than lack of skill, told RT. The orchestra hasn't returned RT's requests to comment on the situation so far.
"I never expected my music to be silenced," the pianist said, adding that she's "totally for freedom of speech, freedom of discussion and freedom of heated argument."
"That's what I've been doing on Twitter," she said, explaining her extensive tweeting on Ukraine on the social platform, with her point of view not falling in line with the popular Western narrative, allegedly costing her a job.
 Syrian UN ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari addressing the press conference
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Panel of experts, who observed the Syrian Presidential elections of 3 June 2014, appearing alongside Bashar Al-Jaafari
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Yesterday (Thursday., 19 June 2014) at 11am, the Syrian Mission to the United Nations convened a press conference featuring people from the US who observed the recent elections of 3 June. 2 Five minutes into the opening comments of Syrian Ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari, the UN webcast cut off. The thousands of journalists, political analysts, and others who view UN webcasts each day from all over the world were denied the ability to watch the press conference, and hear what was said. |
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This is not the first time this has happened when Bashar al-Jaafari is speaking. This occurred on June 7th earlier this year, and on numerous occasions throughout 2013. Reporters at Inner City Press reported that this is not accidental, but was ordered by Michele DuBach, Acting Deputy Director-News & Media Operations.
This comes in the context of other UN harassment of Syria. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has met with Ahmad Jarba, a leader of violent insurgent groups in Syria, but has refused to meet with Bashar Jaafari. Though Syria pays over $1 million to the UN each year, it is not being treated as an equal member state.
Watch the important, UN Press Conference about Syria, that someone obviously doesn't want you, or anyone else, to see:
#fnAbSy1" id="fnAbSy1">1. #txtAbSy1">↑ Examples of msm 'reporting' of the 2014 Syrian elections include: The Clever, 'Democratically Supported,' Bloodthirsty Tyrant (4/6/14) by Daniel dePetris of the Huffington Post, Syria Election: Experts Weigh In (2/6/14) – Voice of America, Landslide win for Assad in Syria's presidential elections (4/6/14) – Haaretz, Syrian election sends powerful signal of Assad’s control (3/6/14) by Liz Sly and Ahmed Ramadan of the Washington Post. (In comparison to the rest of the msm the report in Israel's Haaretz is surprisingly factual and balanced – Ed).
#fnAbSy2" id="fnAbSy2">2. #txtAbSy2">↑ According to the report cited above from Haaretz which can hardly be accused of bias towards the Syrian government, 88.7% of the 73.42% of eligible Syrian voters who voted, voted for President Bashar al-Assad. So, of 15,845,575 Syrians eligible to vote, eligible voters 10,319,723 or 65.13% voted for Bashar al-Assad.
No-one who, elsewhere, chose to loudly dispute the legitimacy of that election could bring himself/herself to show the courage of his/her convictions by challenging the testimony of those observers at that press conference.
What other political leader in the world, particularly from nations hostile to Syria – the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Israel and Australia – can claim to have anywhere near as much popular support as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad?
The legitimacy rightly enjoyed by President Bashar al-Assad dwarfs that that can be claimed by of any one of his opponents: United States' President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicholas Hollande, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
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