University of Sydney Provost Stephen Garton has chosen- as a pretext- one tiny, buried image in the background of info graphic ,shown during advisory analysis made by professor Tim Anderson  about the Israeli attacks on Gaza, to suspend him from his position as a senior lecturer and to ban him from entering the university at which he has worked for more than 20 years.

This move is the culmination of a series of failed attempts by the University’s management to restrict his public comments  on and criticism of war propaganda against Syria, Iraq and Palestine, according to a post published by the professor on his Facebook page on December 4, 2018.

Prof. Anderson told the Syria Times e-newspaper that he has not presented material on the Nazi Swastika [the buried image in info graphic ] during his advisory analysis of the Israeli attacks on Gaza and he has rejected the attempts of the university’s management at political censorship as unprincipled.

“The management’s complaints, over the last 18 months, have been petty and absurd and most of them  have to do with my criticisms of war propaganda against Syria, Iraq and Palestine.. In my view they represent an unusually aggressive regime of political censorship, in which no decent university should be involved,” he said, indicating that Stephen Garton has ignored the ‘intellectual freedom’ rule of the university, which states that academic staff are entitled to ‘express unpopular or controversial views, provided that in doing so staff must not engage in harassment, vilification or intimidation’. 

“ I will point this out to the Review Committee… I have told Provost Garton that I don’t abuse or engage in gratuitous criticism, but I do criticize dishonest propaganda harshly, when justified,” Prof. Anderson stressed.

Academics criticize the suspension of their colleague

Thirty six  academics from the university of Sydney  released a statement opposing the suspension of Dr. Anderson, insisting that the drawing of historical comparisons between the actions of states is essential to intellectual and educational work, and must not be subject to a priori constraints.

By  Eva Bartlet

DAMASCUS, SYRIA — On October 2, 2018, I met with the Grand Mufti of Syria, Dr. Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun, a scholar and the highest official of Islamic law in Syria, who assumed the position of grand mufti in 2005.

Dr. Hassoun’s (archived) website notes that in addition to his title of grand mufti, his other positions include, “Chairman of the Media Committee of the Higher Consultative Council for the Rapprochement between the Islamic Schools of Thought, Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.” Essentially meaning that the mufti focuses on interfaith, and inter-sect, dialogue.

His speeches routinely focus on the theme of rapprochement or, more generally, coexistence and love. He takes a firmly anti-sectarian stance, and supports the removal of barriers between sects, in order to achieve national unity.

Yet Dr. Hassoun’s detractors — most often aligned with NATO, Gulf, Turkish, or Israeli interests — accuse him of supporting terrorism. These claims emanate from a mistranslated version of a speech Hassoun gave in 2011 following the assassination of his son Saria just days before. The translation was provided by MEMRI, an organization founded by former Israeli intelligence officials that translates political speeches from Arabic into English.

Dr. Hassoun has long since addressed the accusation, including in a November 2011 interview with Der Spiegel, in which he clarified:

I didn’t threaten to send suicide bombers. I merely described a scenario in which it could easily emerge from the situation, and I warned against what could happen. Sentences were taken out of context and given a different coloring. Besides, the context to which my remark applied was a self-defense situation: a possible NATO attack on Syria.”

Nearly 31000 people have reportedly joined "Yellow Vest" anti-government protests started on November 17, 2018 in France amid the failure attempts of the French government to contain the crisis by extensive crackdown and mass arrests.

The Syria Times e-newspaper interviewed the French retired colonel Alain Corvez to talk about the goals and causes of the protests and how it will end up.

"The main goals of the protests are against taxes increases but you can guess that it is also against EU, even if it is not express as so,  because everybody knows that French laws are the expression of Brussels technocratic regulations," the retired colonel said.

He affirmed that French politics do not feel France and the deep roots of French people. They are as oligarchs living in an artificial world seeing EU as the best future for France.

If someone had told her seven years ago she would be traveling often to a country in the heart of the Middle East and thinking of it as her second home, she would have laughed it off as ridiculous. But as she researched the country and situation and saw with growing anger and resentment how malicious her country's government actions were (against Syria and other countries throughout our history), she felt she had to do anything she could - anything that was moral, ethical and legal anyway - to help share the truth or never consider herself a true human again.

 Mrs. Janice Kortkamp, who introduces herself on her face Book page as an independent activist regarding Syria and the Middle East, has travelled around Syria six times since May 2016 and she never could have imagined how her interest in Syria would end up as it has!

 She told the ‘Syria Times’ e-newspaper that the most important thing that first attracted her to Syria and wanting to get to know something about it, was watching an interview with President Bashar al-Assad actually in November of 2012.

 “Up until the moment I started watching the interview of President Bashar al-Assad, I knew nothing of Syria other than what the "news" media was telling me - which I believed at the time was the truth. However after only a few minutes of watching that interview I became intrigued by what your leader was saying. His rational and calm but not cold demeanor, his ability to describe things in ways I could understand, while at the same time being precise in his answers, made me want to know more. That's all it took for me to become kind of obsessed with Syria” said Mrs. Kortkamp, who has two sons and lives in Virginia.

 Her decision to defend Syria is probably the strangest thing that ever happened to her! She is not a person of causes though she respects people who are.

A British political analyst has argued that the US and the UK, which refuse to play a role in the Astana and Sochi peace talks on Syria, because the talks at these venues are the brainchild of Russia, would be content for the conflict in Syria to come to an end through a political solution providing this solution prohibits the Syrian Army from re-entering the north-east and north-west of Syria. 

Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos, the Publisher and Editor of Politics First magazine, told the Syria Times e-newspaper that the brutal reality for Washington and London is that Moscow is the dominant outside power in Syria and there is nothing that the West can do to change this. 

“The West understands clearly that its goal of overthrowing the Syrian Government and turning Syria into a client state of America, has failed.  So the Americans and the British are currently trying to prevent the Syrian people from liberating the north of their country because this is where Washington and London have a direct presence in,” the analyst said.

He affirmed that: “Washington, Ankara and Riyadh still hold hope of securing a permanent presence for themselves in the north of Syria, which they could use, at some time in the future, as a springboard for igniting another conflict in Syria, in the hope that, this time, their terrorist proxies would capture Damascus.” And Dr. Papadopoulos warned: “That is a potential menace which I hope the Syrian and Russian governments are alive to.”  

“Aside from the terrorists themselves, it is their backers who are responsible for the conflict in Syria being prolonged.  If America took the decision to completely end its support for the terrorists in Syria, including ISIS, and instructed its allies - Britain, Turkey and Saudi Arabia - to also cease supporting the terrorist organizations who are waging war on the Syrian people, then the conflict would come to a rather quick end,” Dr. Papadopoulos stated.

Asked about the illegal presence of one of the Astana talks’ guarantor county’s troops – Turkey - in the north of Syria, the analyst replied: “The Turks still harbour ambitions for the north of Syria - namely, partition – and they still illegally maintain forces in the north of Syria but the Turkish position in the region is gradually weakening on account of Russia's leverage over Turkey, which Ankara is unable to resist.”