SOTT Exclusive: Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa condemns Kiev's atrocities, silenced by Dutch airline KLM

Signs of the Times
Link
In April this year the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) cancelled a concert by Ukrainian-American classical pianist Valentina Lisitsa at the Roy Thomson Hall because she spoke out against Kiev's 'anti-terror operations' in eastern Ukraine. The TSO told Valentina's agent: "the Toronto Symphony Orchestra received some messages from ticket buyers and others expressing concern over pianist Valentina Lisitsa's public political statements." The TSO quickly found a substitute and paid Lisitsa's fees. Needless to say, her 'political views', which according to the TSO are "public incitement of hatred", are in fact valid concerns about military actions against civilian targets, actions that have been strongly supported by the US and Canadian governments since the West's installment of the current regime, which includes radicals with links to nazism, and the thousands of innocent lives lost as a result. In a plea on Facebook, posted on April 6th, Lisitsa wrote: ...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. 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. ... In this world, 'freedom of speech' is granted only to those who say the 'right' things. Oftentimes, those who speak the truth are attacked, in one way or another, or have their words twisted in order to show them in a bad light. Now Lisitsa is under fire again because Dutch airline KLM is removing her music from its in-flight entertainment program.

via IFTTT