I always enjoy your posts, and also (usually) the comments.

[[the Apartheid wall ]]

Let’s see, the Israelis want to put up a wall to prevent people from coming over the border and blowing up their citizens. And this counts as “Apartheid.”

The Israelis don’t have a right to defend themselves? They have to submit to being blown up? That seems to be what you’re implying.

[[What’s more assuming someone wished to exterminate the Jews (which I don’t btw!) ]]

So in addition to being an Israel hater, you’re a Holocaust denier. [Gilbert Gottfried as Iago voice:] What a surprise that is! I think I’m about to have a heart attack and drop down dead because of that surprise!

“FAO Salaam =Shalom = Peace

Funny how people like you defend countries that hang gays, brutalise women, disallow freedom ov movent and free speech and even allow their children’s TV to talk about killing and “eating Jews”

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=98899&in_page_id=34

yet all your bile and anger goes against a true democracy like America.”

————-

Bile and anger? Hardly. More sadness, disappointment and frustration …

I wasn’t actually defending Iran or its government – & you can’t have read my post properly because I specifically said :

[Quote ]
“Whatever else you say about Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
(& yes we can say a lot! ) at least he’s had the courage and willingness to travel over to America and to write open letters to Bush and Americans generally. [IUnquote]

&

[Quote]

“Maybe instead of insulting him as they did at Columbia university they’d have done better by starting a respectful but firm dialogue that could’ve gone somewhere positive?

(BTW. its a fact too that Ahmadinejad was popularly elected – NOT a dictator who staged a coup like, say, our ally Musharraf or the Saudi Monarchy! Okay I’m no fan of his, he’s spoken a lot of rubbish but still – give the devil his due! ) [Unquote]

Did you miss it again that time, buddy? OK once more :

1. “Whatever else you say about Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – & yes we can say a lot!”

2. “I’m no fan of his, … ”

3. “… he’s spoken a lot of rubbish …”

&

“.. give the devil his due!”

How can it be that you call somebody a devil, say he’s talked a lot of rubbish and that you’re no fan of them – & still peopel think you’re defending him! Sheesh!

Mahmoud Ahmadhinejad is a nutjob – but he has shown a willingness to try and communicate and he has had the cajones to come over here … Maybe we shouldn’t have wasted that opportuinity to start talking.

That was what I was saying! Capiche now?

As for America being a ‘true democracy’ .. well I appreciate your patriotism but, actually, the closest human society has ever come to true democracy is actually ancient Athens!

BTW. : What is meant by FAO?

“Ah– the moral equivalency crowd! Somehow, the US and North Korea apparently have an equally “large streak of insanity running through them.” Really? I mean, I’m not a Bush fan either, folks, but I’m not sure that there is a large parallel between these two countries. Does that mean that I am blind to America’s warts? Absolutely not. It means that we can look at the big picture and see quite easily that there is no equivalence here.”

StevoR : Actually, there is. Being wilfully blind to and wishing to deny unpalatable parallels, David D does NOT make them go away.

David D : “Same thing goes for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel does not operate in the same way that the other side rejoices (yes, rejoices) in.”

StevoR : Wrong. Sorry. Israel _does_ rejoice in the massacre of Palestineans in exactly the same way. Look up Baruch Goldstein, an extremist Jewish settler who gunned down fifty-or-so innocent Palestineans as they prayed in Hebron and the reaction of the Jewish settlers who celeberated this slaughter and made Goldstein their virtual saint!

Look at Yigal Amir, Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin and the joy that provoked among settlers – who’ve also threatened Sharon when he went from supporter of illegal Jewish settlements to grudging acceptor of the need for a separate Palestinean state.

While your on with it, look up the Sabra & Shatilla Massacres, the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, the actions and comments of the Israeli settlers who’ve called for the “transfer” of the indigenous Palestinean population, et cetera.

David D : “I have yet to find an article where the Israelis have gone out of their way and blown up a pizza parlor, or a schoolbus, or a religious school.”

Me : Turning Gaza into an open air ghetto and the Apartheid wall and the invasion & re-invasion of Palestinean lands not enough for you? Try shelling a innocent Palestinean family at the beach and killing all but one member – or deliberately running over peace activists like Rachel Corrie with tank-bulldozer hybrids or shooting journalists like Tom Hurndell in the head even though clearly identified as such & .. well the list is too long already.

Suffice to say, Israel has done far worse than the Palestineans when it comes to committing atrocities against civilians. The stark numbers and situation are unequivocal on that.

DD : “I don’t think that the example of the Nazis and the French resistance is rather naive – ”

SR : Thanks, I don’t think its naive either – because its apt instead!

DD : “… from what I know, France was not created by the U.N. as a homeland for the Germans; the Germans invaded a sovereign country and proceeded to exterminate large portions of the population. Ehtnic cleansings in 1948 and 1967? Didn’t the countries surrounding Israel vow to drive the Jews into the sea? Who was cleansing who?”

Israel was ethnically cleansing the Palestineans as any honest historian -or surviving Palestinean living at the time – will tell you. Yes there was some nasty Arab rhetoic – but that’s part of Muslim-Arab world culture. Saying something doesn’t mean its going to happen. The Jews at worst would’ve lost their state and been evacuated to the West -where frankly they belonged.

Moreover, of course, the Arabs fought to regain land they knew was theirs – incl,.the third holiest site to Islam! That was always going to happen and was provoked by the wrongful creation of a new colonial outpost in a region just freeing itself from the vestiges of Empire. See ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ sometime, David, for a slight indication of just how badly the Arabs (who fought on the allied side btw.) were betrayed and what sort of promises were _not_ kept!

As for the UN creating Israel the reality is that the Palestineans were Hitler’s ultimate victims – to salve their consciences post WWII – the Western powers the British & Americans whose land it wasn’t – gave away one of their colonial Mandates to another European political and ethnic group – the Ashkenazi Jewish Zionist movement.

This will go down as one of the worst mistakes in history – not just for the Palestineans but for the entire planet as it has been a very major factor in the breakdown in Islamic-Western relations and all that’s come from that – incl. Sept. 11th 2001.

Hitler won in the creation of Israel – that’s the sad truth. The victims of the Shoah (Jewish Holocaust) were out of Europe as the Nazi’s wished, and put in the most perilous of places and made to turn into the very type of brutes they’d fled.

What’s more assuming someone wished to exterminate the Jews (which I don’t btw!) what better start is there than gathering them all together in a hostile land where everyone around them hates them with a fierce passion … (& with good reason!) What better way to exterminate Jewish thought and culture too than turning it into a warped, thuggish, unquestioning, nationalism for a fundamentalist militaristic state?

Ironic, tragic, and sadly true.

[Me :] “I think you’re forgetting the situation with the US refusing to negotiate with Iran -”

Nnnnnnnnnnnnno. I’m not.

I think you’re forgetting the BLOODY THREAD WAS ABOUT BLOODY NORTH BLOODY KOREA!!!!!!!

But I’ll be sure to work the whole entirety of global geopolitics into every post from now on just for you, there, Chuckles.

——————————————————-

Actually this thread was (& largely is) about power of music to bring people and their nations together – but there was also a big political aspect to it all too.

So when you ignored the fact that the USA has refused to talk its ‘enemy’ Iran it was an error of fact that required correcting – especially as you were so rude and aggressive in falsly asserting your untuth. (Or at best half-truth.)

Had you accepted the simple reality that the US does indeed often refuse to talk to its enemies notably in the case of Iran (& Vietnam, Cuba & the Liszt goes on ..) I would’nt have needed to put you right. Besides, there’s the possibility you might’ve learnt something & if not maybe others have .. making such sadly all-too frequently needed corrections worthwhile.

As for working some global geopolitics into your future posts – well you might need to learn a bit more about that first – from both sides of the story rather than just your own!

MoeHammered, even if he was Georgian, it still wouldn’t ethnically be considered Slavic music, since like Armenia, Georgia’s a non-Slavic country. However, the Russian influence is definitely in Khachaturian’s music, along with the up-tempo style that’s characteristic of the Caucuses mountains.

For full disclosure, let me say I share the same ethnic heritage of Khachaturian’s (Armenian), so yes, that does partially bias me, but only as far as his music is amazing. If Khachaturian was some bible pushing moron publicly criticizing evolutionary theory, then I’d have major issues with him, regardless of shared cultural heritage.

Nnnnnnnnnnnnno. I’m not.

I think you’re forgetting the BLOODY THREAD WAS ABOUT BLOODY NORTH BLOODY KOREA!!!!!!!

But I’ll be sure to work the whole entirety of global geopolitics into every post from now on just for you, there, Chuckles.

Beethovens’ 9th Symphony. Without any doubt or question.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87991800

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arirang

The story of “playing an American Child’s composition” is fascinating.

JC

And david D, please. “Moral equivalency”? I did not make any statements on which is worse, or better. I make the point that both countries have some degree of insanity. This is a cold fact, and the only point I was trying to make.

I wish there will come a day that I can make a factual statement and not have someone slam hyperbole all over the comments.

BTW BA can I please be unspammed?

Same thing goes for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel does not operate in the same way that the other side rejoices (yes, rejoices) in. I have yet to find an article where the Israelis have gone out of their way and blown up a pizza parlor, or a schoolbus, or a religious school. I don’t think that the example of the Nazis and the French resistance is rather naive–from what I know, France was not created by the U.N. as a homeland for the Germans; the Germans invaded a sovereign country and proceeded to exterminate large portions of the population. Ehtnic cleansings in 1948 and 1967? Didn’t the countries surrounding Israel vow to drive the Jews into the sea? Who was cleansing who?

I love music, I am a musician myself, and it was wonderful to see the guys playing in one of the sadder and darker corners of the world.

I was only a mere music minor in college, but the 4th movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony has always been my favorite. I feel that could also be appropriate for this concert, however they would have had to get a chorus to North Korea as well.

But now I have a new list of music to look up! This is very exciting

On the other hand, I hope that at least few normal music fans got, somehow, tickets, black market is working in place like N.Korea. If yes the whole effort was worthy, but I would not overestimate the meaning of the tour. 50 years of tours can be not enough to free minds of N.Korean from communists’ demos.

Just dropping by. Please return to your arguing about GW Bush, the great communicator.

Funny how people like you defend countries that hang gays, brutalise women, disallow freedom ov movent and free speech and even allow their children’s TV to talk about killing and “eating Jews”

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=98899&in_page_id=34

yet all your bile and anger goes against a true democracy like America.

PS In Northern Ireland and France/Germany peace was only decided when both sides agreed to talk – with America’s help I might add – and not unilaterally

Just not death metal!
————————–
Sorry about the double post.

Nice article, Phil – and congratulations to the NY Phil. – this kind of thing should definitely happen more often.