.
Elections are tampered with folks -- I think we've all established that well enough by now. Internationally and domestically, both by external and internal factions. Happens here, happens elsewhere.
Did Assad win the popular vote by 88%? It's certainly plausible the margin may have been closer than those results indicate.
But civilian sentiment in Syria offers perspectives markedly different than what we're told here in the States.
Here's an example:
Carla Ortiz:
29:18
I mean right now it looks like Assad is winning and people are getting to be able to take back their country a little bit, and right away, they do this gas attack, so then the United States starts bombing the crap out of them. This is just unbelievable and when we tell the truth about it they're gonna call you a conspiracy theorist. Well the thing is that I dare anybody to call me a conspiracy theorist and come along with proof.
You know the footage I have, and I can back any single thing that I'm saying because I have real footage, number one; number two, I arrived in Syria for the first time in February 2016 -- the government of Syria had control only over 35% of the country the rest of the country was taken by jihadists or armed groups.
There's no space, there is no space for extremism in Syria. This is one of the reasons why Syria was always hated by some of the neighboring countries, because what people don't know is Syria is a secular state , women are protected by the Constitution there; they cannot be forced to be covered by religion nor by society; minorities are protected also much more than any other [Country in the region].
Not only that but the vice-president, and I bet nobody knows this, the vice-president of Syria is a woman, the president of the Parliament in Syria is a woman, the first judge in all of the Middle East as a woman was Syrian, and 30% of the ministries in Syria are led by women. By law, most of the principals of high school are led also by women.
That's why you can see me when I'm reporting what I'm saying I am with a t-shirt, if whether it is tight clothes or not, I am free to be however I can be. You see the reports of these two famous reporters, I don't want to smear them, from CNN, she was on the ground completely covered in Black, you could only see her eyes. This reporter was covered up in Syria and saying she was there, but I was in the area where it was already liberated from the terrorists, okay? She was in the area protected by the terrorists, you know, and asking the world for the freedom of these people, which, the freedom of these people means the imposition of fundamentalism and Sharia law.
The most important thing is that people don't know that Assad made up this law in 2006, when he discovered that some girls that were in the borders of the extremist countries were being forced by the parents to stay at home. He made this law that every single Syrian woman shall finish high school by law, otherwise she and the father will go to prison. So this was the best option to protect the women and this caused a revolution in Saudi Arabia, where women were asking for the same rights as in Syria, they were asking, why can't we all get an education or no Haram.
33:22
In the Middle East, it is a hard and complicated position for a woman. Where are all the women in the world, where all the Liberals in the world, where are all the gay and lesbians around the world standing for the right of Syrians? Syrians won't judge you or take you to prison if you're gay of course because of the society is decided by the Constitution.
Now are they gonna call me an Assad apologist? No, guess what, I don't care about Assad. Istand by the people and what the people of Syria right now want whether we like it or not it is Assad to stay in power, because they would choose him over anyother terrorists because they don't want this fundamentalism and they want to live in a country that coexist togetherin peace the way they've done for all these years.
34:34
Who are we to impose the democracy that we think is perfect that it's not even working for us and who are we to demand a change of regime because it's gonna be okay for our personal interests of the Western policy and finally we don't have to agree we don't have to like Assad we need to respect the people of Syria and we need to let them take the decision they want to take. In the last election in 2013 which was an open election and overseen by the U.S., Assad won with 78% or 82%.
It probably hurts our interests the pipelines the whole a cold war that we still have with Russia it maybe does but we've seen it -- is it right or wrong? Only the Syrians have the right to decide and so what people don't understand isif we get rid of Assad something's gonna replace him. We don't have a replacement for Assad, just like we don't have a replacement in Libya. And now Libya is a failed state, it's a haven for terrorists and there's open slave markets now, so that's what the CIA in the United States is gonna do to Syria, and the people of Syria are saying: no we don't want that, Assad is actually our leader and we'll decide who our leader is and the CIA in the United States Israel and Saudi Arabia have a different idea of who's supposed to run Syria and that's exactly what's going on and that's what they don't want us to say.