UKRAINE: From April 2015 till April 2016 - NOTHING CHANGED, PERHAPS IT IS WORST.

A first hand testimony of the couregeous Ukrainian

Valentina Lisitsa:

Valentina Lisitsa

6 de Abril de 2015 · 

Dear fans, DEAR FRIENDS!

I have a confession to make and a huge favor to ask all of you. I really REALLY need your help now.

But first, my confession.

Over the last year I have been leading a double life. There was me - a "celebrity" pianist hopping from a concert to a concert, all over the world; learning new pieces, meeting fans, recording, chirping about my happiness in upbeat interviews 

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But there was another me: not a musician but a regular human being - a daughter, a mother, a wife. And this human being was watching helplessly how the country of my birth, of my childhood, of my first falling in love - this country was sliding ever faster into the abyss. Children die under bombs, old ladies die of starvation, people burned alive... 

The worst thing that can happen to any country is fratricide war, people seeing each other, their neighbors as enemies to be eliminated. This is what has befallen my beautiful Ukraine. My heart was bleeding. You all saw on TV screens all over the world a magnificent revolution, the people of Ukraine raising in fury against their corrupt rulers, for a better life. I was so proud of my people! But the ruling class doesn't let go easily. They managed to cunningly channel away the anger, to direct it to other, often imaginable, enemies - and worse, to turn people upon themselves. Year later, we have the same rich people remaining in power, misery and poverty everywhere, dozens of thousands killed, over a million of refugees.

So, I took to Twitter ( how many of you know I have a Twitter account? LOL) under a name "NedoUkraïnka" - a word roughly meaning "Sub-Ukrainian", a stab at Ukrainian Prime Minister who called Russian-speaking Southern and Eastern Ukrainians "SUBHUMANS"! Yes, I kid you not. In an official written document. I am a subhuman, my husband, my mom....I mastered Ukrainian language perfectly, far better than a so-called "president" of Ukraine. But I don't speak it to my family, I didn't sing lullabies to my son in Ukrainian, when I sleep I never see the dreams in Ukrainian, when I will be dying my last words will NOT be in Ukrainian....

Sorry, I got carried away telling you those things... To get back to my story - I took to Twitter in order to get the other side of the story heard, the one you never see in the mainstream media - the plight of my people, the good and bad things that were happening in Ukraine. I translated news stories from Ukrainian language websites, I translated eyewitness accounts of atrocities.... I became really good in unmasking fakes published by Western media in order to make one side of the civil war look whiter and softer than Easter bunny, and another - as sub-humans, not worthy of mercy, the "collateral damage.

To give you just one example: one of my feats was to confront French fashion magazine "Elle" who published a glowing cover story about women in Ukrainian army. After the research I have shown to the magazine in my Twitter posts that the "cover girl" they have chosen to show was in fact a horrible person, open Neo-Nazi, racist, anti-Semite who boasted of murdering civilians for fun! The magazine issued a written public apology.

I was very proud! But with time my activities attracted a lot of vicious haters. I was a particularly important "target" because of being Ukrainian, thus - a traitor. I thought I knew hate - my playing on YouTube certainly "attracted" a fair share of hate mail. But I was mistaken. Death threats, wishes for my family to die, calling me "paid Kremlin wh*re"...the list goes on and on 

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My haters didn't stop there. Trying, in their own words, to teach me a lesson, they have now attempted to silence me as a musician. 

I am scheduled to play Rachmaninoff Concerto #2 with Toronto Symphony Orchestra this week. Back in December someone in the orchestra top management, likely after the pressure from a small but aggressive lobby claiming to represent Ukrainian community, has made a decision that I should not be allowed to play. I don't even know who my accusers are, I am kept in the dark about it. I was accused of "inciting hatred" on Twitter. As the "proof" , ironically enough, they presented to the orchestra my tweets containing, of all things, Charlie Hebdo caricatures depicting lying media!!! We all know what those who can't tolerate free speech did to Charlie Hebdo journalists. 

Now, the orchestra based in one of the freest democratic countries is bending over to the same kind of people, helping them to assassinate me - not as a living person yet , but as a MUSICIAN for sure.

Yes, Toronto Symphony is going TO PAY ME NOT TO PLAY because I exercised the right to free speech. 

Yes, they will pay my fee but they are going to announce that I will be unable to play and they already found a substitute. 

And they even threatened me against saying anything about the cause of the cancellation. Seriously. 

And I thought things like this only happen in Turkey to Fazil Say?

Now, the plea. 

Before you decide to help me - If you wish, please take time and read my tweets. You might find some of them offensive - perhaps. The satire and hyperbole are the best literature tools to combat the lies. Bear that in mind when reading. 

Here is what I ask you to do for me, and in defense of freedom even if you disagree with me on politics (LOLl!) 

I ask you to raise your voice and tell Toronto Symphony that music can't be silenced. 

Ask them to let me play. 

If you want to write something - great!

Or just share a photo I made ( sorry, I made it on my phone, nothing fancy)

Ask your friends to join in.

If they do it once, they will do it again and again, until the musicians, artists are intimidated into voluntary censorship. Our future will be bleak if we allow this to happen. 

Please stand with me. 

Here are the links :

https://www.facebook.com/torontosymphonyorchestra

Twitter @TorontoSymphony

Hero of Labour of the Russian Federation medal presentation ceremony

Hero of Labour of the Russian Federation medal presentation ceremony

On the eve of International Workers’ Solidarity Day, the President presented Hero of Labour of the Russian Federation gold medals to Russians who have made a substantial contribution to the country’s socioeconomic development, including the development of culture, education, industry and agriculture.

April 30, 2016

13:30

The Kremlin, Moscow

3 of 11

Hero of Labour of the Russian Federation medal presentation. The title of Hero of Labour of the Russian Federation is awarded to Pavel Kamnev, General Director and Chief Designer of Experimental Design Bureau Novator (Sverdlovsk Region).

The Hero of Labour of the Russian Federation title was established by Presidential Executive Order No. 294 of March 29, 2013.

* * *

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, friends.

It is the fourth such occasion that today, on the eve of International Workers’ Solidarity Day, Hero of Labour of the Russian Federation gold medals are presented to outstanding Russian citizens.

This honorary title is, without doubt, true to our people’s very nature. For centuries, our people have performed feats of labour as well as of combat glory, built a great country, made scientific breakthroughs, created immortal artistic and literary masterpieces.

Our distinguished compatriots have been of different ethnicities and faiths, but a feeling of responsibility for Russia’s future and involvement in its history have brought them together. They have shown that true patriotism means primarily working selflessly for the good of the nation.

Peter Koenig -- Brazil: Dilma – Don’t Let Go! Open Letter to President Dilma Rousseff

Brazil: Dilma – Don’t Let Go! Open Letter to President Dilma Rousseff By Peter Koenig Dear President Rousseff, April 28, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - Please do not let go! Don’t let the corrupt neoliberal right wing with the help – no, at the instigation of Washington steal your country – take away Brazil from the Brazilians, rip-off and destroy all you and Lula have achieved in the last 14 years, free education, health services, efficient and modern public transportation, a basic social safety net – a more equal society. During the past decade and a half, you were able to distribute the benefits of Brazil’s riches to the majority of Brazilians, slowly turning the tide from the oligarchs, the latifundios – to the people, to those who work the lands, who have built and are still building and are eager to continue building a Brazil for all Brazilians. The dying beast in the North is roaring; it cannot tolerate a free and autonomous ‘backyard’. A new sort of ‘coups’ is being invented – less blood, more fraud, election fraud, like in Argentina ), and in Venezuela In the case of Brazil, it is legislative fraud, buying and putting into key positions crook-politicians, like Vice-President Michel Temer and Eduardo Cunha, President of the Lower House, who miraculously ascended (was ‘elected’) to his current position in February 2015 – and this in the midst of the huge, so-called ‘Car Wash’ corruption scandal, in which he is involved with bribes amounting to tens of millions of dollars allegedly from Petrobras. A similar parliamentary impeachment coup was carried out in Uruguay in 2012, removing President Fernando Lugo, by the same US instigators. The pattern is notorious. The accusations – and proofs – against Eduardo Cunha, are disproportionally graver than the mild accusations of ‘administrative accounting’ manipulation that Dilma Rousseff is alleged having committed. Though there is no proof of this in the case of President Rousseff, every country and its neighbor does it. Among the worst offenders of this practice is the North American creation of NATO in Europe. Please, Dilma, do not allow the oligarchs and latifundios to return and to run Brazil under the direction of Washington. Mr. Temer has already mentioned how, as new President, he would undo the social benefits and equality you and your predecessor have let Brazilians enjoy; he would return Brazil to the bankers, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs, and of course to the IMF – back to the debt trap, call it the death knell.

US Air Force Bombed Aleppo and then Blamed Russia

US Air Force Bombed Aleppo and then Blamed Russia

By RT

Global Research, April 29, 2016

RT 11 February 2016

Region: Middle East & North Africa

Theme: US NATO War Agenda

In-depth Report: SYRIA: NATO'S NEXT WAR?

Two US Air Force A-10 warplanes carried out airstrikes on Aleppo Wednesday, destroying nine facilities, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported. The same day, the Pentagon accused Moscow of bombing two hospitals, despite no Russian flights over the city.

“Yesterday, at 13:55 Moscow time (10:55 GMT), two American A-10 assault aircraft entered Syrian airspace from Turkey, flew right to the city of Aleppo and bombed targets there,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Thursday.

Also on Wednesday, Konashenkov referenced, the Pentagon’s spokesman, Colonel Steven Warren claimed that Russian warplanes allegedly bombed two hospitals in Aleppo.

“In his words, some 50,000 Syrian have been allegedly deprived of vital services,” Konashenkov said, pointing out that Warren forgot to mention either hospitals’ coordinates, or the time of the airstrikes, or sources of information. “Absolutely nothing.”

“No Russian warplanes carried out airstrikes in Aleppo city area yesterday. The nearest target engaged was over 20km away from the city,” Konashenkov stressed, adding that on the contrary, airplanes from the US-led anti-ISIS coalition were active over Aleppo, “both aircrafts and UAVs.”

JAMES PETRAS -- President Obama: The Race for the Imperial Legacy

President Obama: The Race for the Imperial Legacy

04.29.2016 :: United States

Only the rankest gang of corrupt media pundits in the US media can pretend this gangster President should evade a war crimes tribunal.

Introduction: 

President Obama is racing forward to establish his imperial legacy throughout Russia, Asia and Latin America. In the last two years he has accelerated the buildup of his military nuclear arsenal on the frontiers of Russia. The Pentagon has designed a high tech anti-missile system to undermine Russian defenses.

In Latin America, Obama has shed his shallow pretense of tolerating the center–left electoral regimes. Instead he is has joined with rabid authoritarian neo-liberals in Argentina; met with the judges and politicians engineering the overthrow of the current Brazilian government; and encouraged the emerging far-rightwing regimes in Peru under Keiko Fujimori and Colombia under President Santos.

In Asia, Obama has clearly escalated a military build-up threatening China’s principle waterways in the South China Sea. Obama encouraged aggressive and violent separatist groupings in Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjian and Taiwan. Obama invites Beijing billionaires to relocate a trillion dollars in assets to the ‘laundry machines’ of North America, Europe and Asia. Meanwhile he has actively blocked China’s long-planned commercial ’silk route’ across Myanmar and west Asia.

In the Middle East, President Obama joined with Saudi Arabia as Riyadh escalated its brutal war and blockade in Yemen. He directed Kenya and other African predator states to attack Somalia. He has continued to back mercenary armies invading Syria while collaborating with the Turkish dictator, Erdogan, as Turkish troops bomb Kurdish, Syrian and Iraqi fighters who are engaged on the front lines against Islamist terrorism.

Felicity Arbuthnot -- Death and Destruction in Iraq, Extensive US War Crimes: Apocalypse in Mosul in the Guise of Bombing ISIS

Death and Destruction in Iraq, Extensive US WarCrimes: Apocalypse in Mosul in the Guise of Bombing ISIS

By Felicity Arbuthnot

Global Research, April 27, 2016

Region: Middle East & North Africa

Theme: Crimes against Humanity, US NATO War Agenda

 “The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.” (Albert Camus 1913-1960.)

On 1^st May 2003, George W. Bush stood in a dinky little flying suit on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and in a super stage managed appearance told the lie of the century: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.” (1)

The illegal occupation and decimation of Iraq continued until December 2011. In June 2014 they returned to bomb again in the guise of combating ISIS. As the thirteenth anniversary of Bush’s ridiculous appearance with a vast “Mission Accomplished” banner behind him, Iraq is largely in ruins, Iraqis have fled the murderous “liberation” and it’s aftermath in millions and there are over three million internally displaced.

Trump “The Fascist”: Backdoor Backing of a Political Psychopath Named Hilary Clinton

04.12.2016 :: United States

Trump “The Fascist”: Backdoor Backing of aPolitical Psychopath Named Hilary Clinton

JAMES PETRAS

Introduction: From left to right a raucous chorus has emerged to denounce Republican Presidential primary frontrunner Donald Trump as a ‘fascist’. They cite his campaign promises to build an Israeli-style wall along the US border; his threats to expel eleven million undocumented immigrants; and to restrict foreign Muslims from entering the US, as well as the way his pugnacious face and arm resemble those of Benito Mussolini (’he juts out his chin, he raises his arm’).…

They decry his extreme nationalism as ‘resembling Hitler’s policy’, by which they mean his opposition to detrimental free trade agreements and his slogan to “Make America Great.. Again.”

In this article I will critically address the current cartoonish image of fascism with fascism’s historical reality, and then proceed to analyze the so-called “lesser evil” politics behind the re-invention of an American fascist in the guise of billionaire Donald Trump.

Fascism: Fact and Fiction

Historically, fascist politics involved organized mass movements, armed militia and paramilitary groups who assaulted political opponents and violently censored critical speech and suppressed the right to assemble. Fascists scapegoated minorities, especially gypsies and Jews, and burned trade unions and leftist headquarters, assassinating their leaders and beating their members. Programmatically, they attacked pacifists and defended overseas wars and empires in the name of ‘living space’. Evoking a past imperial glory, they were not ‘isolationists’.

Candidate Trump has not organized anything resembling a mass movement, let alone an armed militia. There are no ‘Trumpeting Brown Shirts’. At most, the police and a handful of his (often elderly) white supporters have punched a few KKK-dressed provocateurs who have physically disrupted and threatened Trump’s public meetings and his exercise of free speech. In fact, the ‘fascist’ disruption of democratic freedoms seems to be mostly organized and practiced by his political rivals.

Trump, far from scapegoating the powerful Jewish minority in this country, gave a shamelessly Israel-centric speech and received a standing ovation from nearly 18,000 mostly prominent Jews at the March 2016 meeting of the major pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC).

His rhetoric, concerning the expulsion of 11 million undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America and the building of a border wall, is a far cry from the practice of imprisoning and violently expelling over two million undocumented Latinos under the Clinton-Bush-Obama/Clinton regimes. At its worst, Trump promises to continue the existing federal policy on immigration and not create a ‘fascist’ rupture with past administrations. Is a ‘rhetorical cement wall’ worse than the real wall of armed border police, helicopters and armed carriers that have operated under the Presidencies of Clinton - Bush - Obama/Clinton with its hundreds of migrant deaths in the desert? Are declarations of a repressive immigration policy more ‘fascist’ coming from Trump’s loud mouth than the actual official practice of violently seizing undocumented workers from their homes and workplaces with long-term imprisonment and expulsion? Expelling youth, raised and educated in this country, or violently splitting up productive, well-integrated families and imprisoning their main breadwinners for lack of documents…that’s the official policy of the current and past three administrations.

There is far less of the truly fascist embrace of pre-emptive war and invasion in Trump’s speeches than in the actual policies pursued by the Clinton-Bush-Obama/Clinton regimes. In fact, among Trump’s numerous critics, especially his Republican rivals and the Hillary Clinton camp, we hear the loudest denunciations of his non-interventionist foreign policy (isolationism), which is “out of line” with the interventionist, overseas wars of current and past Republican and Democratic administrations. Trump’s critics and media pundits are ‘horror-struck’ at his apparent willingness to co-operate with Russian President Putin against common enemies, such as ISIS. Is his pragmatic regard of Russia more or less fascist than his rivals’ support for the Ukrainian putsch, orchestrated by the Obama regime in alliance with bona fide armed anti-Semitic Ukrainian fascists? His calls to dump NATO as an expensive drain on US treasure and manpower have the elite howling in outrage!

The propagandists, who paint Trump as a modern American fascist, cite his crude sexist remarks as ‘examples of a misogynist totalitarian’ while pointing favorably to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as potentially the ‘first feminist President’. In regard to his alleged misogyny, ‘the Donald’ pointed to Madame First Lady, Senator and Secretary Clinton’s promotion and critical role in US wars against Libya, Iraq and Syria where well over one million women have been rendered refugees, raped, injured or killed. Which is worse, one may ask: Crude locker room jokes or millions of orphaned boys and girls denied parents, homes, education and any future in the Middle East and North Africa? That is the world Midwife Hillary Clinton had helped to deliver.

Misogyny is the in the eye of the deceiver.

Are Trump’s verbal attacks on the practice of US multi-nationals relocating abroad to avoid US taxes and Wall Street financial houses hiding billions of the US elites’ obscene wealth in offshore tax shelters, more detrimental to ‘American values’ (as charged) than Hillary Clinton’s pandering to Wall Street while pocketing over $300,000 for each 45 minute sycophantic performance (marketed as her ‘policy lectures’), or her decades of actively promoting globalization - including the US job-destroying NAFTA?

Clearly Trump currently lacks program, organization and practice that define a fascist politician. At the very worst, he parrots the general line of attack against immigrants and Muslims. So far he would just bar them from the US but not bomb them ‘to the stone-age’. This should be contrasted with the actual policies carried out by the war-criminals Clinton/Bush/Obama-Clinton. It would be hard for Donald to ‘trump’ Hillary when she threatened to ‘obliterate Iran’ and its scores of millions of citizens because of Iran’s fictitious ‘nuclear program’.

On the other hand, Trump’s own meetings and rallies have been the victim of repeated disruption by organized groups acting like fascist thugs. Role reversal in real life: Trump, the target of rabid sustained mass media attacks, is pronounced the fascist …

Bashing Trump: Backdoor Backing of Hillary the Militarist Psychopath

If the objective case for labeling Trump ‘a fascist’ is weak or non-existent, why do so many prestigious academics and journalists play this stupid game of name-calling?

The commonsense explanation of their ruffled bluster is because they are setting up ‘Trump-the- Straw-Dragon’ in order to promote the poisonous Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton as the ‘lesser evil candidate’ for President of the United States.

No serious observer minimally aware of Clinton’s carnal embrace of multiple simultaneous disastrous and destructive wars in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Libya, could possibly support her - unless if they are convinced that a greater danger looms on the horizon and “we have to defeat fascist Trump at all cost”? No serious democrat or wage and salaried employee can ignore Madame Clinton’s role as Wall Street’s most shameless pimp unless they ‘believe’ that a loud-mouth New York ‘fascist is worse than Wall Street’.

The phony scaremongering about Trump’s “fascism” just serves to cover up Clinton’s most servile promotion of traitorous wars for the benefit of Israel. One should envision the thousands of desperate Syrian refugees clinging to decrepit boats in the Mediterranean when reading excerpts of Clinton’s private e-mails: According to WikiLeaks, Hillary declared that “the best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability (sic) is to help (sic) the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad. … The fall of the House of Assad could well ignite a sectarian war between the Shiites and the majority Sunnis of the region drawing in Iran, which, in the view of Israeli commanders would not be a bad thing for Israel and its Western allies”. Not a bad thing for Israel - but a cruel and criminal policy against a sovereign nation and multi-ethnic society. Madame Clinton followed through with these demented pronouncements, which can only be viewed as genocidal! Clinton promoted the most violent proxy war, uprooting over half of the civilian population of Syria and killing hundreds of thousands, while shredding a sovereign nation. She thus pandered to her Israeli mentors and Pluto-Zionist funders.

To justify backing a serial war monger, a US Secretary of State who has served Israel’s interests, and a politician who has carnalized her ‘feminist principles’ with Wall Street billionaires, Hillary Clinton’s smarmy supporters have had to invent an opponent who is even worse: Creating and then denouncing “Trump the Fascist” serves as a backdoor justification for supporting a proven political psychopath!