Shostakovich-----
Let's look at THE NOISE OF TIME first of three parts of novel where all the angst, fear, total subjugation of Russia's 99% WE THE PEOPLE under STALINIST communism was met by the novel's hero with resistance subtle-----by avoidance of controversy, but for the hero the fear of retaliation against loved ones, family, friends is what allows far-right wing authoritarian militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty ---LIBERTARIAN MARXISM to take hold. Shostakovich was young----looking to start family and freedom of expression with his music so he rebelled against the STALIN COMMUNIST regime. The hero was BIG on TRUTH AS IRONY. The big statements/musical scores written for POWER ----the smaller more subtle scores of music hiding TRUTH.
We have shouted these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA that our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE should not simply listen to HEADLINE PUBLIC POLICY discussions. The title of Federal, state, and local public policy BILLS soon to be LAWS are always made BIG to pretend those policies are 99% POPULIST........the TRUTH of goals of these policies are hidden away in subtle language. So, our US bill-making began to be HUNDREDS OF PAGES long with goals enfolded deep into text where TRUTH had to be found.
US MEDIA, journalists, academics during CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA touted all the BIG headlines of bills MOVING FORWARD in Congress never mentioning the GOALS hidden deep in these bill's language.
THE NOISE OF TIME makes a hero of a character seeming to resist POWER while assigning to this hero lots of admiration for the very same global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS'----THE POWER.
Of course BOLSONARO was not ELECTED---he was installed just as TRUMP----
Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro wins presidential vote – as it happened
Electoral authorities have confirmed Bolsonaro will become president after winning 55.7% of the vote in Sunday’s second-round poll
Brazil's newly elected far-right wing STALINIST/HITLER/MAO tells our international media and his 99% of WE THE BRAZILIANS he will use martial law to calm all that ROBBER BARON fleecing of Brazil while keeping a FREE MARKET ECONOMY going. We have listened these few decades to CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA claim to be building a FREE MARKET economy as everyone in the nation loses the ability to have opportunity and access to a FUNCTIONING SOVEREIGN ECONOMY-----so, no FREE MARKET ECONOMY has existed in Brazil as here in US ----no intentions of creating a FREE MARKET economy. Bolsonaro is simply installing the same CHINESE-STYLE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----where the 99% of Chinese citizens lived under FAR-RIGHT WING MILITARY MARTIALISM------while the Chinese global 1% and their 2% participated in 1000BC laissez faire global trade policies.
This is where all those REAL left social progressive 99% of citizens----labor, civil rights, women's rights, GBLT rights are all thrown under the bus----because those global banking 5% freemason/Greek players PRETENDING CLINTON/OBAMA were 'left' were of course LYING.
'The Associated Press contributed to this report'.
AP used to mean something when our US media and journalism was broad and really free market. BOLSONARO we are told is populist because he is going to get rid of all that ROBBER BARON crime and corruption ----as he works to make BRAZIL A TRIBUTE STATE.
Brazil elects anti-establishment candidate Jair Bolsonaro as president
Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal declared Sunday that anti-establishment congressman Jair Bolsonaro, a champion of traditional Brazilian values, has won the country's election for the presidency of Latin America’s biggest country and the world’s fourth-largest democracy.
Bolsonaro, who cast himself as a political outsider despite a 27-year career in Congress, is the latest of several leaders around the globe to gain prominence by mixing tough, often violent talk with right-wing positions. But he also is very much a product of a political tempest in Brazil that made his messages less marginalized: widespread anger at the political class amid years of corruption, an economy that has struggled to recover after a punishing recession and a surge in violence. The name of his party, PSL, translates to "Social Liberal Party," although it largely abandoned its socially liberal platforms after he joined.
Bolstering his rebel image is his reputation for offensive statements and sometimes extreme views, including insulting women, black people and the LGBT community.
“I’m afraid to go out at night when it gets dark,” said Raquel Nunes, 27, a secretary from Sao Paulo and an avid Bolsonaro supporter, as The Wall Street Journal reported. “But he’s going to solve this, he’s going to be firm, talking didn’t get us anywhere so we need to respond with force.”
In a highly unusual moment, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Jose Dias Toffoli, read out part of the Constitution to reporters after he voted.
“The future president must respect institutions, must respect democracy, the rule of law, the judiciary branch, the national Congress and the legislative branch,” Toffoli said in remarks many took to be a rebuke of Bolsonaro and his more extreme positions.
OH, REALLY? YOU MEAN UNLIKE BRAZIL'S CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA?
With 96 percent of ballots counted, Bolsonaro had 55.5 percent of the votes. Leftist Fernando Haddad of the Workers’ Party had 44.5 percent.
“We have everything we need to become a great nation,” Bolsonaro said Sunday night in a video broadcast on his Facebook account shortly after he won, as The New York Times noted. “Together we will change the destiny of Brazil.”
Voters in Sunday’s runoff election apparently looked past warnings that the brash former army captain could erode democracy, and embraced a chance for radical change after years of turmoil.
“I feel in my heart that things will change,” said Sandra Coccato, a 68-year-old small business owner, after she voted for Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo. “Lots of bad people are leaving, and lots of new, good people are entering. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Bolsonaro’s campaign first gained traction with his promises to go after violent crime in a country that leads the world in homicides and where many Brazilians live in daily fear of muggings or burglaries. However, his vows to loosen gun laws and give police a freer hand to use force against suspects also have raised concerns that a Bolsonaro presidency could lead to a bloody crackdown and an erosion of civil rights.
A woman donning the official Workers' Party color celebrates after voting in the presidential runoff election in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Sunday. (AP Photo/Nelson Antoine)
The campaign gained momentum by winning over much of the business community with promises of enacting market-friendly reforms that would reduce the size of the Brazilian state, including cutting ministries and privatizing state companies.
His divisive politics have heightened disharmony between Brazilians.
In Rio de Janeiro, his supporters set off fireworks on iconic Copacabana Beach. In Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, cars horns could be heard honking and crowds celebrated as the results came in. In that same city, crowds gathered on a central avenue with banners and flags and people cheered and set off firecrackers in other neighborhoods as results came in.
Riot police separated supporters of Bolsonaro and those of his leftist rival Haddad when they briefly scuffled in Sao Paulo.
Bolsonaro went into the election the clear front-runner after getting 46 percent of the votes to Haddad’s 29 percent in the first round of the election Oct. 7.
After opinion polls in recent weeks had Bolsonaro leading by as much as 18 percentage points, the race had tightened in recent days. But Haddad was unable to make up the difference.
“I’m not crazy about Bolsonaro. But he is our way to keep the Workers’ Party out of office,” said Rafaela Rosa, a 32-year-old teacher, after voting Sunday in Sao Paulo. “We have had enough corruption and now we need to clean up.”
OH, YEAH! IT WAS THAT WORKER'S PARTY DOING ALL THAT MASSIVE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION OF ROBBER BARON FEW DECADES.
________________________________________________
The hero's early years has his first love TANYA loving him for his PURITY. PURITY AND TRUTH are bound tightly and this hero was painted as a RUSSIAN genius of musicology----composition. When we hear global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS take the far-right corporate FASCIST route tied to SUPREMACY/PURITY ----they are trying their best to build that MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN-----LEO STRAUSS of neo-liberal economics was not one of the FEW WISE MEN these CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA promoted with US neo-liberal economics -----STRAUSS was the VULGAR gathering a global banking 5% freemason/Greek player also vulgar. Who is the REAL FEW WISE MEN?
Our REAL GENIUSES AND GEEKS. We shout over and again, people of REAL GENIUS are not able to kill TRUTH. They can only work within the parameters of TRUTH. So, Shostakovich was no doubt the same 5% freemason/Greek player as today's BILL GATES/ELON MUSK sold as PURITY AND GENIUS ----while simply being VULGAR FIGURE-HEADS.
'Pure Genius' Season 2 Isn't Happening, But There Are Always Plenty Of Unconventional Doctors On TV
ByKayla Hawkins
Jan 26 2017
The debut season of techno-medical mashup series Pure Genius is coming to an end, and Deadline reported that Pure Genius won't return for Season 2. According to the outlet, CBS declined to pick the series up for more than the original 13 episodes. Unfortunately, the show wasn't given the chance to wrap up Dr. Wallace's story in any meaningful way, since it was never given an extended Season 1 order. But, even though Pure Genius is canceled, it doesn't change that it was a delightfully weird twist on your typical CBS drama, all while still being a totally passable CBS drama.
Pure Genius managed to combined a totally normal medical show with some 21st-century innovations. And, while it's too bad that switching things up didn't quite work this time, there are still plenty of other shows that are doing twists on the medical genre right now. In fact, if you're a Pure Genius fan because of the show's love for futuristic tech, then you should be doing well with other TV options. Maybe Pure Genius was just a little too ahead of its time when it came to incorporating both into a single series. But, there are always these shows to check out after Pure Genius wraps its series.
It's kind of hard to recommend a show that hasn't premiered as an alternative to one that was just canceled, but it just seems perfect. I mean, the idea of a billionaire donating tons of surveillance equipment to a police department ranges from slightly to extremely terrifying in real life, but in the world of a TV drama, it's at least somewhat intriguing.
Dr. Thackery is kind of like the Dr. Wallace of the turn of the 20th century, with his experimental, unpracticed surgeries. One warning, though — The Knick's surgery scenes are a significant amount more graphic, gory, and scary than those on Pure Genius. But the storytelling and filmmaking are some of the best on television.
Also on CBS, and recently renewed, this falls into the more straightforward medical drama category. But there's something reliably entertaining about the typical case-of-the-week show, where you know no matter how bad the situation in that emergency room, the cast will figure out a way to send everyone on their way after 45 minutes.
In a random throwaway line, the show mentioned that in this universe, every single disease has been cured. There's also a lot more than that to the show, which is set in a version of the future where tech companies have managed to not just heal life, but also create it in robots.
Chicago Med also won't shock any fans of the medical drama genre. However, it is a part of a fascinating new TV experiment: How many dramas can NBC build around the municipal workers in Chicago? So far, the well seems to be bottomless.
And if you were watching Pure Genius because the idea of a high-tech hospital just makes you think of how badly an evil corporation could screw it up, then you should watch this paranoid hacker fever dream/highly awarded drama. I know it's a long shot, but if I'm going to throw out recommendations for the medical drama lovers, then I also have to serve the conspiracy theorists. (Duh.)
From tech news obsessives to those who love watching good-looking actors recreate a spinal surgery, there's something to find on television to replace the hole left by Pure Genius.
________________________________________
BARNES' hero makes as his first great work of music an OPERA modeled on SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH------MACBETH simply being that global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS freemason STAR creating societal FADS-----as the European REVOLUTIONS of late 1600-1700s were getting ready to be released. Macbeth has many interpretations---but mainly it represented the OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS in angst over what was to become manufactured war in Europe. Macbeth seeing his MOTHERLAND AND FATHERLAND in grips of intrigue-----suffers as that 99% WE THE PEOPLE as Europe falls into far-right wing authoritarian global corporate FASCISM.
How were Shakespeare's era able to have OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS with conscience, angst, honor when RUSSIA'S STALINIST revolution had none?
MACBETH as too Shostakovich's so-called master piece modeled on this Western ROMAN SALUTE----was no mistake----it was a tribute to a STALIN/HITLER installed to represent those pre-Christian NERO/CATO/SENECA OLD WORLD KINGS.
Macbeth: Plot Overview
www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbet/summary
Plot Overview.
The play begins with the brief appearance of a trio of witches and then moves to a military camp, where the Scottish King Duncan hears the news that his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, have defeated two separate invading armies—one from Ireland, led by the rebel Macdonwald, and one from Norway.
So, Shostakovich is painted the same as today's global banking 5% freemason/Greek players ----a populist revolutionary against POWER----while working for power. This is why as the hero aged----he no longer felt the need to pretend to fight POWER----he handed over his SOUL-----along with his signature on all that POWER was doing to oppress the people.
'1966 Lohengrin
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Seattle Opera’s first-ever Wagner production was staged early in 1966, when the company was barely three years old. A team of strong American singers and Seattle Opera’s orchestra and chorus wrestled with Wagner’s mighty score for Lohengrin. The Seattle audience was flabbergasted by the beauty and intensity of the music, and enjoyed the beautiful romantic production'.
WAGNER was that opera composer who created music used by POWER-----just as Shostakovich---again, we love our Western classical STARS-----ROMAN SALUTES and all----so, WAGNER as tool for OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS' POWER.
BILL GATES IS MUCH LIKE SHOSTAKOVICH----BOTH MADE TO APPEAR TO BE GENIUS TIED TO TRUTH---BOTH SIMPLY FIGUREHEADS ALLOWED TO SELL AS THEIR OWN PRODUCTS DEVELOPED BY OUR 99% OF WE THE REAL GENIUS.
Biography of Bill Gates
Microsoft Founder, Global Philanthropist
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates listens during a press conference to launch a plan aimed at saving 10 million mothers and newborns in the poorest countries.
Cetty Images/Rick Gershon
by Mary Bellis
Updated April 03, 2018
Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates in Seattle, Washington, on October 28, 1955, to a high-spirited family with a history of entrepreneurship. His father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. His late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International.
Bill Gates would go on to not only develop a fundamental programming language but also found one of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world, while also contributing billions of dollars to charitable initiatives around the globe.
Early Years Gates had an early interest in software and began programming computers at the age of 13. While still in high school, he would partner with childhood friend Paul Allen to develop a company called Traf-O-Data, which sold the city of Seattle a computerized method to count city traffic.
In 1973, Gates was accepted as a student at Harvard University, where he met Steve Ballmer (who was Microsoft's chief executive officer from January 2000 to February 2014). While still a Harvard undergraduate, Bill Gates developed the programming language BASIC for the MITS Altair microcomputer.
Founder of Microsoft In 1975, Gates left Harvard before graduating to form Microsoft with Allen. The pair set up shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with a plan to develop software for the newly emerging personal computer market.
Microsoft became famous for their computer operating systems and killer business deals. For example, when Gates and Allen developed their brand-new 16-bit computer operating system, MS-DOS, for IBM's new personal computer, the duo convinced IBM to allow Microsoft to retain the licensing rights. The computer giant agreed, and Gates made a fortune from the deal.
This was all of course DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE technology handed to GATES to be privately patented.
Robert Gates - Government Official - Biographywww.biography.com/people/robert-gates-40993 Robert Gates is the only secretary of defense to serve under two consecutive presidents who represented opposing parties. Education Georgetown University , Indiana University , College of William ...
On November 10, 1983, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, Microsoft Corporation formally announced Microsoft Windows, a next-generation operating system that revolutionized—and continues to revolutionize—personal computing.
Marriage, Family, and Personal Life On January 1, 1994, Bill Gates married Melinda French. Born August 15, 1964, in Dallas, TX, Melinda Gates earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and economics from Duke University, and a year later, in 1986, received her MBA, also from Duke. She met Gates when she was working at Microsoft. They have three children. The couple lives in Xanadu 2.0, a 66,000-square-foot mansion overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.
Philanthropist Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with the broad mission to help improve the quality of life for people around the world, primarily in the areas of global health and learning. Initiatives have ranged from funding tuition for 20,000 college students to installing 47,000 computers in 11,000 libraries in all 50 states. According to the foundation's website, as of the last quarter of 2016, the couple has endowed their charitable endeavor with $40.3 billion.
In 2014, Bill Gates stepped down as chairman of Microsoft (although he continues to serve as a technology adviser) to focus full time on the foundation.
Legacy and Impact Back when Gates and Allen announced their intention to put a computer in every home and on every desktop, most people scoffed. Up until then, only the government and large corporations could afford computers. But within only a few decades Microsoft had indeed brought computer power to the people.
___________________________________________
Having lived in Seattle as REAGAN became CLINTON led by GREENSPAN ----knowing the goals of MOVING FORWARD bringing the US down to colonial sacked and looted status-----the ties of WAGNER to GATES' Seattle was not a coincidence.
In Seattle the GATES' family is global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS thinking themselves THE WISE MEN-------embracing LEO STRAUSS in order to pretend they are not THE VULGAR------but the GOOD CLUB. All of this is far-right wing global banking 1% corporate FASCISM all making its appearance in 1980s-90s.
The problem is not to presentation of WAGNER-----the reintroduction of a new modeled MACBETH these few decades----the problem is what is MOVING FORWARD in US cities deemed FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES at the same time all these global banking 1% cultural FADS are growing.
We have known BILL GATES was that VULGAR PLAYER ----working for global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS in creating a TRUE GENIUS for themselves in all that SUPER-DUPER BIG DEAD HEAD ONE WORLD ONE TECHNOLOGY GRID.
Nothing more STALIN/HITLER/MAO FASCIST then DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE.
BILL GATES is the GOOD billionaire just as SHOSTAKOVICH is painted as that ANTI-POWER hero by BARNES.
They're called the Good Club - and they want to save the world
Paul Harris in New York reports on the small, elite group of billionaire philanthropists who met recently to discuss solving the planet's problems
Paul Harris in New York
@paulxharris Sat 30 May 2009 19.01 EDT First published on Sat 30 May 2009 19.01 EDT
It is the most elite club in the world. Ordinary people need not apply. Indeed there is no way to ask to join. You simply have to be very, very rich and very, very generous. On a global scale.
This is the Good Club, the name given to the tiny global elite of billionaire philanthropists who recently held their first and highly secretive meeting in the heart of New York City.
The names of some of the members are familiar figures: Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, David Rockefeller and Ted Turner. But there are others, too, like business giants Eli and Edythe Broad, who are equally wealthy but less well known. All told, its members are worth $125bn.
The meeting - called by Gates, Buffett and Rockefeller - was held in response to the global economic downturn and the numerous health and environmental crises that are plaguing the globe. It was, in some ways, a summit to save the world.
No wonder that when news of the secret meeting leaked, via the seemingly unusual source of an Irish-American website, it sent shock waves through the worlds of philanthropy, development aid and even diplomacy. "It is really unprecedented. It is the first time a group of donors of this level of wealth has met like that behind closed doors in what is in essence a billionaires' club," said Ian Wilhelm, senior writer at the Chronicle of Philanthropy magazine.
The existence of the Good Club has struck many as a two-edged sword. On one hand, they represent a new golden age of philanthropy, harking back to the early 20th century when the likes of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Carnegie became famous for their good works. Yet the reach and power of the Good Club are truly new. Its members control vast wealth - and with that wealth comes huge power that could reshape nations according to their will. Few doubt the good intentions of Gates and Winfrey and their kind. They have already improved the lives of millions of poor people across the developing world. But can the richest people on earth actually save the planet?
The President's House of Rockefeller University is on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The university's private campus, full of lush green trees, lies behind guarded entrances and a metal fence. It overlooks the East River, only a few blocks away from the United Nations.
It was here, at 3pm on 5 May, that the Good Club gathered. The university's chancellor, Sir Paul Nurse, was out of town but, at the request of David Rockefeller, had allowed the club to meet at his plush official residence. The president's house is frequently used for university events, but rarely can it have played host to such a powerful conclave. "The fact that they pulled this off, meeting in the middle of New York City, is just absolutely amazing," said Niall O'Dowd, an Irish journalist who broke the story on the website irishcentral.com.
For six hours, the assembled billionaires discussed the crises facing the world. Each was allowed to speak for 15 minutes. The topics focused on education, emergency relief, government reform, the expected depth of the economic crisis and global health issues such as overpopulation and disease. One of the themes was new ways to get ordinary people to donate small amounts to global issues. Sources say Gates was the most impressive speaker, while Turner was the most outspoken. "He tried to dominate, which I think annoyed some of the others," said one source. Winfrey, meanwhile, was said to have been in a contemplative, listening mood.
That the group should have met at all is indicative of the radical ways in which philanthropy has changed over the past two decades. The main force behind that change is Gates and his decision to donate almost all his fortune to bettering the world. Unlike the great philanthropists of former ages, Gates is young enough and active enough to take a full hands-on role in his philanthropy and craft it after his own ideas. That example has been followed by others, most notably Soros, Turner and Buffett. Indeed, this new form of philanthropy, where retired elite businessmen try to change the world, has even been dubbed "Billanthropy" after Gates. Another description is "philanthro-capitalism".
Yet the implications of the development of philanthro-capitalism are profound. It was fitting that the Good Club was meeting near the UN. The club members' extreme wealth makes it as powerful as some of the nations with seats inside that august chamber.
Proponents of philanthro-capitalism would argue that they are also more effective in doing good for ordinary people. Indeed the club's members have given away about $70bn in the past 12 years. That is far beyond what many individual countries can afford to do with their own social policies and aid budgets.
"They have assets that rival the social spending budgets of many countries," said Professor Paul Schervish, director of Boston College's Centre on Wealth and Philanthropy.
There is little doubt that members of the Good Club have done amazing work. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with a current endowment of more than $30bn, is the biggest philanthropic organisation ever. Just one of its projects, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, is estimated by the WHO to have prevented 3.4 million deaths in just eight years.
The Soros Foundation has done valuable work setting up democratic institutions and independent media across the former Soviet bloc. These titans of philanthropy have also started a trend among the slightly less wealthy. While Gates's and Soros's efforts bestride the world, major philanthropists have emerged in specific regions like India or Latin America funding their own pet ideas and projects. Gayle Peterson, co-founder of Headwaters Group Philanthropic Services, recently gave advice to a businessman who wanted to set up a foundation to give away $280m annually in south-east Asia. "He told us: I want to be just like Bill Gates," she said.
But there is a potential downside to the growth of these "über donors", especially if the whims of individuals start to take precedence over the expertise of professionals.
The strange truth is that giving away billions of dollars is difficult and fraught with risk. There can be waste, mismanagement and poor investment. At the same time it can actually do harm. "If you are putting enormous amounts of money into a community that can't cope with it, then you can implode that community," Peterson said.
Others are even more outspoken at the growing dominance of a tiny handful of billionaires in the development sector. "The problem with any Good Club is that all the people might not be 'good'. Or at least not 'good' in universal definitions," said Louise Uwacu, the Rwandan-born founder of the Canadian education charity Positivision.
There is also the issue of accountability. Even the most repressive of national governments is on some level beholden to its own people, or has the capacity to change and reform under popular pressure. But who votes for the Good Club?
Such sceptical sentiments might spring from the Good Club's decision to meet in such secrecy in New York. In many ways that was understandable. All its members are sensitive about privacy because of their unique mixes of fame and wealth. The covert nature of the discussion also allowed them to speak freely about sensitive issues. "I think they just wanted to be able to be candid. The secrecy allowed that," said Wilhelm.
But some people are crying conspiracy. The cloak-and-dagger aspect of the meeting has prompted some to accuse the Good Club of being a sort of Bilderberg Group for philanthropy, with an equally nefarious agenda of global power politics. That idea has particular power on the Christian right of America, which has reacted angrily to the idea that the club discussed birth control and overpopulation. Experts in the philanthropy field think that this negative image can be countered by more openness for future Good Club meetings.
"If they do hold more meetings, and every indication is that they will, I think people would want them to be more public. After all, they can make decisions that affect millions of peoples' lives," said Wilhelm.
That is true. If the members of the Good Club wish to wield their undoubted power, they may have to get used to the idea of doing it more openly.
The American tradition of great donors
Bill Gates
The co-founder of Microsoft is the biggest philanthropist the world has ever seen. Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,he controls more than $30bn in assets - not bad for a computer geek from Seattle. Often ranked as the world's richest man, he has donated virtually his entire fortune to philanthropy, focusing on combating diseases in the developing world.
Henry Ford
As well as being the father of the US car industry and the inventor of the modern production line, Ford has been a major force in philanthropy. He made a vast fortune and left virtually all of it to the Ford Foundation, which by 2007 had more than $13bn in assets.
George Soros
Hungarian-born Soros is a hugely successful US currency speculator and financier. But he is also well known for his philanthropic works. Focusing on political democratisation and creating an independent media, he has funded projects mainly in the former Soviet republics. A political liberal, he is also a funder of the Centre for American Progress.
Andrew Carnegie
This Scottish-born American industrialist made a huge fortune in steel and industry at the end of the 19th century. He devoted the rest of his life to philanthropy, especially education, founding libraries, museums and universities in Britain and America. He wrote of the responsibilities of the wealthy in two books, Triumphant Democracy and the Gospel of Wealth.
John D Rockefeller
The man whose name became a byword for unimaginable wealth made his
fortune in oil. Often regarded as the richest person in history, Rockefeller spent the last 40 years of his life in effective retirement, setting up various foundations and funding philanthropic causes. His special interests were in the fields of science and medicine.
________________________________________
Hmmmmm, Wagner's son-in-law ----LORD CHAMBERLAIN? How global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS of Wagner meets Hitler.
'Lord Chamberlain - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chamberlain
The Lord Chamberlain is the most senior official of the Royal Household and oversees its business, including liaising with the other senior officers of the Household, chairing Heads of Department meetings, and advising in the appointment of senior Household officials'.
While pre-Weimar Germany made much of keeping a WAGNER and a far-right wing authoritarian HITLER separate----just as THE NOISE OF TIME tries to paint a Shostakovich as anti-POWER-----WAGNER was as willing as Shostakovich to give POWER what it wanted just as today's global banking 1% freemason STARS.
All this is global banking 1% using our media, journalism to make LIES the only TRUTH in town.
Again, Wagner opera just as free to circulate our US city opera houses----what we are concerned with is THE TIMING of these CULTURAL EVENTS.
'Wagner controversies - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_controversies
Wagner's son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain expanded on Wagner and Gobineau's ideas in his 1899 book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, a racist work extolling the Aryan ideal that later strongly influenced Adolf Hitler's ideas on race'.
All of these cultural events inside US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES no doubt ring a bit louder for the victims of last century's HITLER/STALIN as global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS KNIGHTS OF MALTA partnered with TRIBE OF JUDAH. The reality painted in THE NOISE OF TIME of societal FEARS, LOSS OF POWER AND FREEDOM OF CHOICE----of being required by penalty of severe harm to RE-EDUCATE------that is what US public policy is MOVING FORWARD today and our Congressional, state assembly, and city councils are HIDING AND LYING the goals buried in the DETAILS of public policy.
CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA KNOW WHAT MOVING FORWARD HAS AS A GOAL NEXT---THESE GLOBAL BANKING 5% FREEMASON/GREEK PLAYERS SIMPLY DON'T CARE.
RICHARD WAGNER
In 1933, the year of Hitler's accession to power, the fiftieth anniversary of the composer Richard Wagner’s death was celebrated at the Bayreuth festival under the theme ‘Wagner and the new Germany’. The links between the 19th century opera composer and the 20th century dictator existed from the Nazi Party’s beginnings, and were to be strengthened and developed throughout the years of Hitler’s reign. Perhaps no other musician is as closely linked with Nazism as is Wagner, and no composer’s music is as tainted with the ideological associations of the Third Reich.
Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig on 22 May 1813, one of nine children in a working-class family. Soon after his birth the family moved to Dresden, and later to Prague. As a youth, Wagner was drawn to the theatre, and saw music as an expansion of his interest in the stage. By the time he was ready to begin his studies, he had decided to commit himself to composition, and he entered the University of Leipzig to study music. An early marriage to the actress Minna Planer was undermined by infidelity on both sides, and the struggling musician moved to Riga, Paris, and then back to Dresden, seeking both artistic success and to avoid his creditors. He had his first real success with the staging of his opera Rienzi. He also, however, became involved with the underground nationalist movement, an involvement that was to force him into exile after the revolution of 1848. In 1850, he wrote his infamous treatise Das Judentum in der Musik (Judaism in Music), in which he denied that Jews were capable of true creativity. According to Wagner, the Jewish artist can only 'speak in imitation of others, make art in imitation of others, he cannot really speak, write, or create art on his own'.
Wagner suffered years of financial hardship in Zürich, but his slow rise to fame and wealth began with the ascendancy of Ludwig II to the Bavarian throne in 1864. With the king’s financial support, he returned to Germany (this time to Munich) with his wife; he also began an affair with Cosima von Bülow. The affair, along with his controversial operas, injured Wagner’s reputation, and he was pressured to leave Munich. He did, however, marry Cosima, with whom he had three children. The family settled in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth, where Wagner constructed a special opera house for the premiere of his epic four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. During these later years, as his popularity grew, so too did his public commitment to antisemitism. Despite his hatred for ‘Jewry’, however, Wagner maintained close personal friendships with many Jews, and did not seem to espouse a clearly developed racial theory.
He died of a heart attack while on an Italian vacation, on 13 February 1883. Almost exactly 50 years later, on 30 January 1933, Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. Some days later, the German-Nordic Richard Wagner Society for Germanic Art and Culture released a statement inaugurating the Bayreuth celebrations. Claiming that Wagner had 'wrought for the Germans a self-reliant national art, by having created Bayreuth', it declared that
just as Richard Wagner created Der Ring des Nibelungen out of faith in the German spirit, it is the mission of the German people ... to reflect upon themselves and to complete the organisation of the German people, through which, in addition, all the ideal aspirations of the German-Nordic Richard Wagner Society will maintain a real political impact on the state, the nation, and the world around us in the national Germanic spirit of Richard Wagner.
With the support of industrial lobbies and the German military, the Wagner Society promoted its idol’s music as symbolizing a solution to the threat of bolshevism and Jewry, as well as being the purest representation of the glory of the Germanic race. Many members of the Society were also involved with the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Combat League for German Culture).
The Society’s success in promoting Wagner’s music was due as much to its propaganda efforts as to Hitler’s personal predilections. Hitler felt a deep connection to Wagner, and as early as 1924 claimed that his vision of a future Germany was manifest in the composer’s music. Hitler was also influenced by the writings of Wagner’s son-in-law, the ‘race theorist’ Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and became a friend of his children, particularly his daughter-in-law Winifred. After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the fascination with Wagner was turned into a kind of national cult. The Bayreuth festival was used as an opportunity to publicise Nazi propaganda. Nazi Party events prominently featured Wagner’s music, including excerpts from Rienzi and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
The precise nature of the relationship between Wagner and Nazism, however, is difficult to pin down. Hitler seldom mentioned Wagner in his writings, and rarely in public; when he did make reference to Wagner, it was not in relation to antisemitism, but rather as a German leader and visionary. Furthermore, Wagner’s music and ideology was not appropriated wholesale, but only where it accorded with Nazi concerns: works like Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, for example, were ignored. Although Wagner’s operas reflect a nationalistic world view that echoes that of Nazism, they cannot legitimately be described as ‘Nazi music’. At the same time, the impact of the composer and his works on the dictator cannot be denied.
According to Hitler's memoirs, it was his teenage viewing of Rienzi that made him understand for the first time his destiny: to strengthen and unite the German Reich. For his 50th birthday, he requested the originals of several Wagner operas, and, against the wishes of Wagner's family, took them with him into his bunker. This legacy hangs over the music, which for many can never be freed from the taint of Hitler’s adoration. Wagner’s work is still regarded as controversial today, and is rarely played in Israel.
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We discuss often how Brazil's LULA was never 'LEFT' ----he was the FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL of Brazil ------replaced by what is the same TRUMPIAN dictator as BOLSONARO------who is supported by Brazil's FAKE religious right being global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS FREEMASONRY
HADDAD being WORLD BANK/UNITED NATIONS/INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION -----FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL CORPORATE FASCIST COMMUNIST PARTY------Stalin's FRIENDSHIP Party-----
So, our international media tell us BOLSONARO has put down the LEFT in Brazil----all those VULGAR GREEDY MASSES-----cheered by FAKE EVANGELICALS.
Our US media has tried very hard to sell our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE as the hyper-consumers even as those VULGAR global banking 1% unleashed the hyper-neoliberalism making marketing and advertising for consumption KING.
WHO ARE LEO STRAUSS'S GENTLEMEN ---THOSE HAVING HONOR AND TRUTH TODAY?
Our OLD -SCHOOL freemasonry tied to REAL GENIUS embraces PURITY AND TRUTH. So, too do our US 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens. It is only a very small percent of SOCIOPATHS in societies---that 5% freemason/Greek player as VULGAR working for a few OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS trying as hard as they can to PRETEND they are THE WISE MEN.
We thinks our global banking 1% FRENCH media doth PROTEST TO MUCH! These are all those FAKE COMMUNISTS rightfully outed by the novel's hero Shostakovich.
Who works hard at WORLD BANK MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS? France's LAGARDE....Hmmmm, looks like LEO STRAUSS has family in France-----------not much LEFT happening today in FRANCE
'Dominique Strauss-Kahn
- Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn is a French politician, former managing director of the ... He was a professor of economics at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense and Sciences Po, and was Minister of Economy and Finance from ..... Strauss-Kahn has helped the government of South Sudan to set up a bank'.
DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN is of course that FAKE 'LEFT' COMMUNIST
© Nelson Almeida, AFP |
Demonstrators take part in a protest against Jair Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Oct. 20, 2018.
Video by Yuka ROYER
Text by FRANCE 24
Latest update : 2018-10-21
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in Brazil to protest against far-right front-runner Jair Bolsonaro a week before the second round of the presidential vote.
In Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Goiania and Aracaju, people occupied avenues and squares on Saturday, singing, dancing and shouting, "Ele Nao!" -- "Not him!" -- the anti-Bolsonaro rallying cry.
The rallies took place one week before Brazilians return to the polls on October 28 for the second round of voting.
In front of the famous Sao Paulo Art Museum, people beat drums and waved gay pride flags and banners thereby denouncing Bolsonaro, who is known for his offensive comments about gays, women and black people.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain, won the first round on October 7, getting 46 percent against 29 for Fernando Haddad of the Workers' Party (PT) that governed Brazil between 2003 and 2016.
Haddad replaced jailed party founder Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
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This is why all today's US FAKE NEWS filled with FAKE DATA and policies that LIE AND HIDE selling them as TRUTHS-------has Trump as our US representative to the MOVING FORWARD BRUTAL FAR-RIGHT WING DICTATOR-----backed as well by FAKE EVANGELICALS pretending the same people having brought ROBBER BARON sacking and looting NEO-LIBERALISM are now the same ready to clean up society----SAVONOROLA would back TRUMP/PENCE just as he would BOLSONARO
So, Trump is the FASCIST while PRE-WEIMAR CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA were champions of our 99% populist citizens.
Once we understand the games global banking 1% play ----STOPPING MOVING FORWARD becomes EASY PEASY.
WASHINGTON POST OWNED BY BEZOS----MAY AS WELL BE STALINIST PROPAGANDA-----STALIN'S STOOGES.
Opinions
Donald Trump is actually a fascist
By Michael Kinsley
December 9, 2016
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for Vanity Fair magazine and a contributing columnist for The Post.
Donald Trump is a fascist.
When you call somebody a fascist, you can mean any number of things. Often, it means no more than “somebody I don’t like.” It is an all-purpose epithet, usable by anyone against everyone from university deans to Fox News anchors. For that reason, the label should be used sparingly — saved for special occasions. As with “Nazi” or “Hitler,” it is often said that in any discussion, the first person reduced to using such a word has lost the argument. It’s ridiculous to compare any living person to Hitler or Mussolini.
But I mean “fascist” in the more clinical sense. For close to a year, and especially since his election as president, people have been trying to figure out Trump’s political principles: What does he stand for, how will he act as president? Various theories have been advanced. Some think he won the election by pandering simultaneously to different groups with conflicting agendas, and convincing all of them he was on their side. Was this a calculated exploitation of America’s “gimme gimme gimme” politics? Or was it the politics of a man who had no politics, who wanted to be president because, in our celebrity culture, it was the only job more glamorous than starring in his own reality television show? It has even been suggested, in the sole subject of conversation in Washington for the past month, that Trump might allow himself to be sworn in as president and then resign, having accomplished all he aspired to.
But now that we’ve seen a bit of him in action, it seems that Trump actually does have a recognizable agenda that explains how he simultaneously can pander to big business generally while “strong-arming” (the words of a Post editorial Friday) an air conditioning manufacturer to save a few hundred jobs for a while. Or how he can make nice with the authoritarian Vladimir Putin while making bellicose foreign policy noises in general. Or how he can blithely upset with a phone call the absurdly delicate balance of our relations with China and Taiwan. All this seemingly erratic behavior can be explained — if not justified — by thinking of Trump as a fascist. Not in the sense of an all-purpose bad guy, but in the sense of somebody who sincerely believes that the toxic combination of strong government and strong corporations should run the nation and the world. He spent his previous career negotiating with the government on behalf of corporations; now he has switched teams. But it’s the same game.
The game has several names: “Corporate statism” is one. In Europe, they call it “dirigisme.” Those two other words for it — “Nazism” and “fascism” — are now beyond all respectability. It means, roughly, combining the power of the state with the power of corporations. At its mildest, it is intrusive regulations on business about parental leave and such. At its most toxic, it is concentration camps. In the 1930s, a few Americans (including a few liberals) bought into it. Pearl Harbor ended that argument. Even for Trump, “fascism” itself now is a dirty word, not just a policy choice. Even Trump would not use it — least of all about himself.
But the deal Trump negotiated with Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to “save” hundreds of jobs is a prime example of the philosophy. Trump brags about “saving” Midwestern blue-collar jobs through a combination of bribery and arm-twisting. Turns out hundreds more jobs will be lost, and Trump as president can’t possibly negotiate on behalf of millions of workers.
But Trump believes — truly believes, I think — in the title of one of his books: the art of the deal. He thinks he is the world’s greatest negotiator. When he says he won’t reveal his income taxes because he is in the midst of negotiations with the IRS, he may be sincere. He says, believably, that he gets audited every year. That means every year’s tax bill is just the government’s opening move in an annual chess game, and Trump doesn’t want to give away his own opening move. Now he plans to negotiate more “deals” and he thinks — because he can outfox some midlevel IRS auditors — that he can outfox the political and business leaders of the world. “The Art of the Deal” is not “Mein Kampf,” although “not ‘Mein Kampf’ ” isn’t much of an endorsement.
Just to be clear: If I’m correct that Trump actually has a governing philosophy, that’s a bad thing, not a good thing. If he actually has principles to guide him through those famous swamps he plans to drain, that’s alarming, not reassuring. Bad principles are not a good substitute for no principles. Four or eight years of bad principles may make no principles look pretty good.
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'We use words like "honor," "code," "loyalty." We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line'
Indeed, for our America built on HONOR/TRUTH/JUSTICE-----global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS KNIGHTS OF MALTA TRIBE OF JUDAH make a mockery of words like HONOR/LOYALTY/TRUTH.
THE NOISE OF TIME takes the early pages to create what is a real depiction of struggles by humans under the confines of a society where all morality, ethics, any structures identifying REAL GOOD, REAL TRUTH, REAL PEOPLE'S POWER have been eliminated. The middle section of novel moves from the hero standing up against POWER----to justifying his need to BEND to POWER ----leaving IRONY AS TRUTH behind to simply become THE WORM.
youtube.com
You Can't Handle the Truth! - A Few Good Men (7/8) Movie CLIP (1992) HD
A Few Good Men movie clips: http://j.mp/1BcRpvP BUY THE MOVIE: http://bit.ly/2ddS0MJ WATCH ON CRACKLE: http://bit.ly/2dorpdG…
The article below from WORLD BANK/UNITED NATIONS far-right wing global banking 1% LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS------is bringing SHOSTAKOVICH back as a hero of SOCIALISM-----------at the same time BARNES' novel tries to paint the same picture of this global banking 1% FREEMASON STAR player.
Clarifying a confused debate
The legacy of Dmitri Shostakovich
By Fred Mazelis
7 April 2000 World Socialist Web
A quarter century after his death, interest in the works of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich has never been greater, while the debate over the relationship of this music to the history of the twentieth century continues to rage.
Shostakovich's extraordinary 15 symphonies and 15 string quartets, many believe, rank him with Beethoven in terms of both the magnitude of the output and its depth and originality. In addition to the symphonies and chamber music, Shostakovich also produced concertos, song cycles, ballets, film scores, music for solo piano and two operas.
In the years immediately after the 1917 Revolution Shostakovich had studied with Alexander Glazunov at the Petrograd (later Leningrad) Conservatory, and through Glazunov he absorbed the idiom and tradition of such Russian masters as Rimsky-Korsakov, who had been Glazunov's teacher, as well as Tchaikovsky and especially Modest Mussorgsky. Shostakovich's interest in Mussorgsky can be seen in the fact that he produced orchestrations of two of Mussorgsky's operatic masterpieces, Boris Godunov (in 1940) and Khovanshchina (in 1959).
But Shostakovich was far from a simple follower of the nineteenth century Russian masters. While he usually stayed within the framework of traditional tonality and rejected the twelve-tone school pioneered by Arnold Schönberg, his work is completely infused with a twentieth century sensibility. Among the greatest influences on the young Soviet composer were Gustav Mahler, the late Romantic composer who was the greatest symphonist of the first decade of the twentieth century, and Igor Stravinsky, the Russian composer who emigrated after the Russian Revolution, who first came to the attention of the musical world with his three great ballets, The Firebird, Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring, composed in quick succession between 1910 and 1913. Both the melancholy, introspection and emotional depth of Mahler and the satiric and even grotesque elements in Stravinsky can be heard in Shostakovich's work, but transformed into his own unique style and musical language.
The appeal of this music is evident from a look at recent programs at major concert halls in New York City. Over the last few months—despite the attention lavished on Aaron Copland and Kurt Weill in this centenary year of their births—various musical organizations have scheduled an astonishing number of Shostakovich's works.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the opera first performed in 1934 and not heard for decades after it was officially denounced by Pravda in 1936, was given an effective production at the Metropolitan Opera.
At the same time, the San Francisco Symphony came to New York's Carnegie Hall to perform Shostakovich's 11th Symphony, subtitled “The Year 1905,” a programmatic work on the struggle against czarism and its suppression that year. The New York Philharmonic performed Shostakovich's 14th Symphony the week of March 30. Later this spring it will present the famous Leningrad Symphony, the Seventh.
The most ambitious series of programs, entitled The Shostakovich Project, was presented by the acclaimed Emerson String Quartet. All 15 quartets were presented in a series of five recitals at New York's Lincoln Center. This was followed by “The Noise of Time,” a theater-concert piece that was presented for a total of six performances by the London-based Theatre de Complicite. This unusual production was divided into two halves: a multimedia evocation of Shostakovich's life and times, using poetry, projected images, the reading of letters, snatches of music and radio broadcasts, followed by the performance by the Emerson Quartet of Shostakovich's final 15th Quartet.
This musical and extra-musical activity reflects a growing consensus on the depth and originality of Shostakovich's music. There is anything but consensus, however, when it comes to an analysis of its meaning and significance.
The debate on his legacy began more than 20 years ago, with the publication of “Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as Related to and Edited by Solomon Volkov.” A young Soviet musicologist who befriended the composer in his last years, Volkov left the USSR soon after Shostakovich's death. “Testimony,” purporting to reveal Shostakovich's real views in his own words, appeared in 1979.
Up to this point Dmitri Shostakovich had generally been portrayed as an honored and respected figure, the leading creative musical voice of the Soviet Union. He had been officially criticized both in 1936 and 1948, but the post-Stalin leadership and its cultural establishment did not dwell on those events. For the last 26 years of his life, it appeared that Shostakovich had made his peace with the Moscow bureaucracy, which spuriously claimed to represent the working class and socialism. Shostakovich's name was regularly attached to official statements lending support to Soviet foreign policy and expounding on the Stalinist doctrine of “socialist realism.”
Those more thoroughly acquainted with the nature of the regime and its cultural policy had good reason to suspect that the official portrait was not the whole story, but the most widespread view remained that of Shostakovich as a loyal and contented spokesman for Soviet society.
“Testimony” challenged this prevailing conception. The composer, as reported by Volkov, maintained that he was not a pliant tool or loyal spokesman for the authorities. On the contrary, he expressed bitterness about Stalin and his successors. “Stalin was a spider and everyone who approached his nets had to die.... Stalin and Hitler were spiritual relatives,” Shostakovich declared, according to Volkov. He suggested that his apparent support for official policy was obtained under duress. Moreover the composer said he had smuggled oppositional themes into many of his major works.
The exultant finale of the Fifth Symphony, one of the most famous classical compositions of the twentieth century, was, according to “Testimony,” “forced rejoicing, created under threat.” The Seventh Symphony, composed in 1941 and indelibly associated with the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis and the darkest days of the Second World War for the Soviet people, was planned before the war, by Volkov's account. The famous “invasion theme” had nothing to do with fascists: “I was thinking of other enemies of humanity when I composed the theme,” Shostakovich is reported to have told his young friend.
Volkov's book came under immediate attack. The Stalinists, not surprisingly, responded with thunderous denunciations and charges that it was a forgery. It was not only in Moscow that the book was criticized, however. In 1981 Laurel Fay, an American musicologist, wrote an article for the Russian Review, published by the strongly anti-communist Hoover Institution, in which she charged that parts of the book had been plagiarized from previously published Russian-language articles by Shostakovich.
Volkov was also reported to have maneuvered himself into a photo at Shostakovich's funeral so that he could be pictured between the composer's widow and daughter. There seemed strong grounds for skepticism about his memoir of the Soviet composer. And Volkov has never answered the charges leveled by Fay.
Nevertheless, with the passing years it has become clear that, whatever the embellishments or distortions contained in “Testimony,” it is not a fabrication. It does not present a fundamentally false picture of Shostakovich.
The accumulated evidence, including accounts from the composer's former colleagues after the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR, suggest that, like many of his fellow artists and intellectuals, he regarded the ruling bureaucracy with a mixture of hatred, fear and contempt.
Some of Volkov's critics, including Fay in a new biography of the composer published late last year, no longer claim that “Testimony” is a total fraud. Whatever one's evaluation of the book, there are not many today who make the assertion that Shostakovich was a happy Soviet citizen.
The debate on Shostakovich, however, shows few signs of quieting down. It has shifted to a great extent from a dispute on the authenticity of “Testimony” to a broader debate on the meaning of Shostakovich's music and his historical role. The dissolution of the USSR nearly 10 years ago has only fueled the argument, which has become more than ever bound up with assessments of the Cold War and the history of the USSR and of culture in the Soviet Union.
Most critics and classical music listeners tend to agree on the lasting power of Shostakovich's music, and the question that is now posed is: how did he accomplish all of this during the decades of Stalinist dictatorship?
Did the composer “learn” from the official criticism, conform to the doctrine of socialist realism and thus find the right road? Or did he capitulate to the regime and see his music suffer thereby? Is he perhaps overrated? Was he a secret dissident as portrayed by Volkov, whose work developed in conscious struggle against the regime, and moreover against the ideals of socialism itself? Or did his music really have nothing to do with Soviet history and politics, rather existing on its own personal plane?
Several schools of thought have emerged, roughly corresponding to the assessments implied in the above questions. They are all wide of the mark, some more so than others.
The claim that the composer was a willing and loyal defender of the regime is credited only by a handful of Stalinist apologists. One Internet web site, for instance, claims that “Shostakovich was a patriotic Soviet citizen and lifelong socialist.... Despite two brief periods of friction much dramatized in the West, he was by far the most often, and most highly, officially honored member of the Soviet musical establishment in its history.”
This depiction is patently false. Countless colleagues and friends attest to the shattering impact on Shostakovich of the “two brief periods of friction.” These were not, of course, simply cases of sharp musical criticism. Stalin himself attended a performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk on January 26, 1936, and left before the conclusion. On January 28, Pravda denounced the opera as a “Muddle Instead of Music.” The official organ of the Communist Party said the composer was playing a game that “may end very badly.” This language, with its thinly-veiled threat, was universally understood in musical and intellectual circles to have been approved if not dictated by the man who was already deeply feared and was about to launch the infamous Moscow Trials of 1936-38.
At the age of 29, the young composer saw not only his career threatened with destruction, but his life and the fate of his family also imperiled. Shostakovich reportedly packed a suitcase in preparation for arrest, and slept in the hallway outside his apartment so that when the NKVD came his children would not see him taken away. The fear which descended in this period did not lift for many years—indeed, in some respects it never lifted at all.
In 1948, with Stalinist cultural czar Andrei Zhdanov leading the pack, the official denunciation of Shostakovich, along with Prokofiev, Khatchaturian and Miaskovksy, was more detailed, drawn-out and brutal. Shostakovich read a humiliating speech of self-abasement to the official meeting of Soviet composers convened to condemn his “formalism.”
Any attempt to portray Shostakovich as basically unaffected by these experiences, as satisfied with Soviet society and cultural life under Stalin and his successors, is preposterous and hardly needs rebuttal. At the other extreme, however, a group of insistent and prolix musicologists has discovered a Shostakovich that is apparently the polar opposite: a lifelong enemy of Bolshevism who, instead of writing music glorifying Stalinism, wrote what can only be described as anticommunist program music.
Using “Testimony” as a starting point, some critics and music historians, most notably the British writer Ian MacDonald, have taken Volkov's thesis to somewhat absurd conclusions. Whereas Volkov claimed that some of the composer's major works contained symbolic references to the tribulations of the Soviet people under Stalin, MacDonald has analyzed virtually every single composition of Shostakovich over a period of more than four decades, and everywhere found coded messages of resistance to “Communist” tyranny. Thousands of pages have been written on this subject, complete with detailed analysis of scores, mechanically equating musical themes and their treatment with specific political positions.
The motive of all this appears to be to exonerate Shostakovich posthumously of all charges that he collaborated with the Stalinist regime—to show that he was forced to act as a mouthpiece for the authorities, and also that he was expressing his hostility to them through his music.
A careful and objective examination of the music and its context reveals that there is some truth to these conclusions, but by turning them it into a mechanical caricature, MacDonald and his cothinkers have created a completely formal and lifeless portrait that robs the music of its meaning. It is almost as if Shostakovich decided to compose in order carry out a crusade against the Soviet Union.
MacDonald has begun with a preconceived ideological agenda, that of separating Shostakovich from the whole history of the Russian Revolution. The music is dissected in order to fit this conception. Anything that suggests that Shostakovich may have once had some hopes for the Revolution must be explained away. Thus MacDonald makes the highly dubious claim that positive comments about Lenin in a letter authored by Shostakovich in 1923, when he was 17 years old, were written only because the budding composer knew that his letters were being read by the secret police.
This tendentious approach is connected to the superficial capitalist triumphalism of the 1990s. MacDonald writes in the aftermath of the collapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and he has set himself the task of proving that the great composer could not possibly have had anything to do with the horrible 1917 Revolution, which is now considered to be the cause of all of Russia's problems.
Of course these musicologists can point to some extent to the alleged musical interpretations of Shostakovich himself in “Testimony.” But MacDonald's diatribes against socialism go far beyond anything in Volkov's memoir. Assuming that at least some of Shostakovich's reported comments on his music are accurate, there is a big difference between these remarks on some of his major works, and the rigid and thoroughly speculative programmatic analysis put forward by MacDonald. Moreover, the composer's own feelings, while certainly deserving of consideration, are not necessarily a rounded understanding of his own music. If one were to be satisfied only with Beethoven's or Wagner's explanations of their music, by way of example, why bother with biographies and musical analysis of their work?
Music critic Alex Ross, writing in a recent issue of The New Yorker, has made an apt distinction between Shostakovich's probable motives in speaking to Volkov, and a fuller understanding of his career. As Ross puts it, “‘Testimony' does tell us what Shostakovich was thinking about at the end of his life, but Shostakovich at the end of his life was a desperately embittered man, whose pronouncements on his own work are not always to be trusted. ‘Testimony,' in other words, may be authentic, but it may not always tell the truth.”
To understand Shostakovich in the early 1970s, when he spoke to Volkov, it is necessary to understand his life over the tumultuous decades leading up to that. He had been psychologically scarred and politically disoriented, not only by his own personal difficulties, but by what he had seen around him. His demoralization, and not any political convictions, is what led him to join the Communist Party in 1960, and later to sign public condemnations of Andrei Sakharov and other liberal dissident figures. Apparently he had become both so disillusioned and despairing that he adapted himself and for the most part did what was asked of him as a prominent public figure.
At the same time, especially as the hopes associated with the Khrushchev period gave way to the “stagnation” and even moves toward the “rehabilitation” of Stalin under Leonid Brezhnev, Shostakovich undoubtedly became more and more repelled at the compromises he had made over a long period of time. He appears to have sought through his reminiscences with Volkov to put the best face on this record by interpreting his music in such a way as to show his hostility toward the regime.
Politically speaking, he was a shattered man. Many with far greater political understanding and experience than he had had also made their confessions. Shostakovich had done something similar in the musical sphere (although he had been obliged to confess, not to fabricated acts of terror, but only to musical sins). Whereas lifelong revolutionaries like Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin had paid with their lives despite their capitulations to Stalin, Shostakovich had lived to regret his role.
If this explains at least in part the genesis and the content of “Testimony,” it still leaves us pondering what bearing these bitter and demoralizing experiences had on the work of the composer. And here the various critics of Volkov and MacDonald's views also have difficulty in explaining the musical contributions of Shostakovich.
Richard Taruskin, for instance, has pointed out, quite accurately, that MacDonald “followed up on Mr. Volkov's suggestions by fashioning anti-Stalinist readings of astounding blatancy and jejune specificity for all of Shostakovich's works.” By casting Shostakovich as “an omnipotent anti-Stalin, able at the height of the Stalinist terror to perform heroic acts of public resistance,” MacDonald and similar writers have established a “clamorous cult” around Shostakovich, Taruskin complains. This, however, leads Taruskin to question, not simply Volkov and MacDonald, but the greatness of the composer himself. The “‘Testimony'-inspired enthusiasm” for Shostakovich, writes Taruskin, “may prove ephemeral as the cold war, and the passions it aroused, fade into the past.” Elsewhere Taruskin, as well as other critics, have penned some disparaging or dismissive remarks about some of Shostakovich's most famous compositions, including the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.
Though less crudely than his antagonists, Taruskin is also making an equation of sorts between Shostakovich's “political” record and the merit of his music. Where MacDonald equates the “good” Shostakovich with great music, Taruskin suggests a compromised Shostakovich translates into compromised music.
Laurel Fay has put forward a slightly different view. Less skeptical of the power of the music, she makes the strange assertion that Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony “helped to demonstrate that, in the hands of a supremely talented composer, Socialist Realism was not inherently inimical to the creation of enduring works of art.”
Fay is making the serious error of equating compositions which proved acceptable to the Stalinist bureaucracy with “socialist realist” music. But musicians were able to work in more abstract forms than writers or artists, making it more difficult for the authorities to prescribe the “correct” music than the “correct” literature and art. The regime demanded tonal and accessible music. That does not mean, however, that all those who wrote tonal music, like Shostakovich, or Aaron Copland and Kurt Weill, for that matter, were exponents of socialist realism.
There are also critics who reject the attempt to mechanically equate political opposition to the greatness of Shostakovich, but only by completely divorcing the music from its social and political context. Bernard Holland put forward this view in a recent column in the New York Times entitled, “Great Music Isn't Necessarily Made by Great People.”
Holland claims the problem “begins with a need to find that a maker of beautiful things is also a moral person. Artists are not necessary good people at all.... It is hard to call Shostakovich's life tragic, at least any more tragic than your own. Terrifying and stressful a lot of it was, but tragedy requires an imposing person brought down by fate and bad decisions. Shostakovich was more a victim; I don't think he rises to the needed stature.... Indeed, the wrenching anguish in so many of his pieces ... is perhaps a composer wondering how much he really likes himself.”
The proposition that great art is not necessarily the product of “good people” is a banality which tells us next to nothing. The issue isn't whether Beethoven, Mozart or Shostakovich were “good people,” a phrase that can mean almost anything. We need to know how their art reflected the world in which they lived, whether they were able to distill into their music powerful human emotions, historically specific as well as universal human experiences.
This brings us to the basic issue which is being ignored by virtually all of the warring musicologists in the Shostakovich debate. The greatness of Shostakovich is not a function of his political views or his personal courage. It is bound up with his ability—not necessarily consciously—to reflect the great struggles of his time, to find the musical language, in abstract, personal and emotional terms, through which to express not only his personal travail, but that of many millions of others.
No music or art exists in a vacuum, and the suggestion of Mr. Holland that Shostakovich was simply expressing his feelings about himself tells us very little. It could perhaps be argued that Richard Strauss was able, to some degree, to isolate himself during the years of the Third Reich and to continue to compose some enduringly beautiful music.
Shostakovich had no such option. He was inescapably caught up with the big political events of the day. Holland's claim that the composer's life, in which he saw close family members and many of his closest artistic friends and colleagues perish at the hands of Stalinism, is no “more tragic than your own,” is frankly somewhat callous and ignorant. Yes, there was tragedy involved, the tragedy of the dashed hopes associated with the Russian Revolution. This is not the only explanation of Shostakovich's greatness, but it cannot be ignored in any consideration of his work.
It is precisely because Shostakovich's career is so inextricably linked to the history of the Soviet Union that the great majority of critics have such difficulty with the subject. They are otherwise knowledgeable, but not on this score, and many of them tie themselves into knots attempting to explain the man and his music.
Most of the competing assessments of Shostakovich all tend to take one thing for granted. Whatever their other differences, they equate Stalinism with Bolshevism, and generally regard Stalin as the logical follower of Lenin and the leader of “communism.”
If Stalinism were the same as Bolshevism, then of course there would have been no reason for the Stalinist regime to wipe out all the Bolsheviks—even many who no longer articulated any opposition. This historical fact is crucial to an understanding of Shostakovich's creative life, because the composer was part of the generation that suffered so much and whose early hopes for the future were crushed by the parasitic bureaucracy represented by Stalin. It is this disillusionment, and how Shostakovich was able to express often contradictory moods and feelings out of the experience, that gives his music a special significance.
To read much of what has recently been written on Shostakovich, one would never guess that the Russian Revolution had a vast and positive impact on the arts, including music, in its first decade. Experimentation was encouraged, along with the aim of bringing music to the masses. Tickets for the opera, symphonic and chamber concerts were distributed free or at nominal charge to workers, students and soldiers, who replaced the former elite audiences of pre-revolutionary times. A conductorless orchestra (a precursor of sorts of today's world famous Orpheus Chamber Orchestra) was formed in Moscow in 1922, an artistic council of players replacing the conductor, with issues of interpretation and technique resolved through rehearsal.
At the same time, after the successful end of the Civil War and the threat of foreign intervention, contacts with advanced and progressive trends in the West were resumed. Composers who visited the Soviet Union in its early years included Paul Hindemith, Alban Berg and Darius Milhaud. Berg's Wozzeck and Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf were performed in the USSR in the late 1920s. Jazz also flourished.
This was the atmosphere in which Shostakovich came of age, musically speaking. He achieved immediate fame with his First Symphony, completed as his graduation piece from the Leningrad Conservatory when he was 19 years old. Shostakovich assimilated the latest trends in music. He worked with both modernist techniques as well as more accessible and traditional ones. He also collaborated with other figures, such as the well known dramatist Vsevolod Meyerhold, for whom he composed music for a production of Mayakovsky's play The Bedbug in 1930.
The composer did not join the Communist Party until he was well into his 50s. He was not involved in the bitter political struggle between the Stalinists and the opposition within the Bolshevik Party. He was certainly never a Trotskyist. Eleven years old at the time of the Russian Revolution, he had been reared in a liberal and progressive family, a family which had rejected religious superstition and embraced the values of the Enlightenment. The young composer was undoubtedly influenced by the great hopes aroused by the Revolution. It is not surprising that he may have preferred not to dwell on these hopes when he spoke to Volkov 50 years later, but there is sufficient evidence in “Testimony” of the impact of these years. He speaks favorably, for instance, of Aleksandr Voronsky, the revolutionary art critic and supporter of the Trotskyist Left Opposition. Marshal Tukhachevksy, the leader of the Red Army who perished in the purges in 1937, was extremely close to Shostakovich up to the time he was executed by Stalin. Many of Shostakovich's colleagues, such as Meyerhold, had been close to Trotsky during the 1920s.
The significance of the denunciation of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk can only be appreciated against this backdrop. The shallowness of so much that has been written in relation to the subject is apparent when one considers the circumstances—both Shostakovich's career up to that point, as well as the political context—under which the opera was attacked.
In January 1936 Bolshevik leaders Kamenev and Zinoviev, the men whom Stalin relied upon during Lenin's final illness to isolate Trotsky and prepare his consolidation of power, were already in prison. About six months later they were displayed at the first of the Moscow show trials, where they recited their bogus confessions and were then shot on Stalin's orders. In the next year the Stalinist terror reached its peak, with the arrest or execution of all the major figures who had led the Revolution.
Lady Macbeth had been a huge success in the USSR for nearly two years when it was suddenly denounced. While it is true that the bureaucracy was stepping up its criticism of experimental and avant-garde techniques such as those employed in this opera, more than Stalin's musical evaluation was involved. It is also likely that the opera's treatment of the police and of police repression, among other themes, struck Stalin as highly inappropriate in this period immediately before the Moscow trials.
Shostakovich escaped with his life. Undoubtedly his musical prominence helped him. At the same time, he was shattered by the experience, and spent most of the rest of his life trying to stay out of political trouble while continuing his composing.
He may have adapted himself to the status quo politically, but it would be very wrong to conclude that this meant at the same time a capitulation to the doctrine of socialist realism. This dogma was part of the reaction against the ideals and principles of the Russian Revolution. Dictating that only “optimistic” themes could be developed by the artist, it became a weapon used by the bureaucracy to strangle any independent thought and artistic creation. Above all socialist realism demanded dishonesty instead of creative integrity. It demanded that the artist churn out works devoid of sincerity and independent expression. From this standpoint, socialist realism was just as much a parody and antithesis of Marxism, just as much in opposition to the ideals and principles of the Russian Revolution, as the contradiction-in-terms of “socialism in one country.”
Shostakovich found a way to create music which by no means can be reduced or equated to socialist realism. He fought to maintain his independence as a creative artist. He above all insisted on authenticity of feeling, not duplicity. This did not mean, however, a turn away from composing for a broad audience. The Soviet composer found this audience not by devaluing his work, however, but by writing music of great passion, complexity and emotional depth. There were others who composed trite pieces to meet the immediate needs of the regime. Shostakovich was not one of them.
Musicologist Joseph Horowitz perhaps comes closest to bringing out the nature of Shostakovich's art among the many who have written on the subject when he declares that “The Soviet pressure cooker shattered Shostakovich's nerves and, doubtless, shortened his life. But Stalinism may be said to have more inflamed than suppressed his creative gift. With its mournful austerity, its vicious ferocity, its programmatic clues, his music conveyed his own denunciations: of state tyranny of the persecution of Jews, of the suppression of the human spirit. He suffered and testified.”
SHORTENED LIFE----HE LIVED INTO HIS NINETIES.
“Like Beethoven in his paeans to liberty, Shostakovich was a moral bulwark or scourge,” Horowitz writes. There is indeed some parallel, although Horowitz does not comment on it, between Beethoven's embrace of the French Revolution and Shostakovich's relationship to the Russian Revolution, and their subsequent disillusion with Napoleon and Stalin.
To call Shostakovich a “moral beacon,” as Horowitz does, may perhaps be an overstatement. His music, however, stood for more than the composer as an individual. It did have a moral aspect.
Horowitz writes of “the pact Shostakovich forged with a great audience.” The basis of this pact was a shared experience: that of the early hopes of the Russian Revolution, their rapid disappearance under a regime with many political similarities to that of Hitler, and yet the determination of the Soviet people to defend their country, and to defend what remained of the achievements of their Revolution, against the Nazi invaders. There were limits to Shostakovich's demoralization during these years. He was able, in such works as the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, to articulate the feelings of those who felt it was necessary to fight Hitler without loving Stalin.
There is something else that made the Soviet audience “great.” In addition to the longstanding Russian musical tradition, there was the influence of the October 1917 Revolution described above. It produced a profound cultural awakening within the masses, an awakening that could inspire and sustain great art. The existence of a mass audience for classical music, as well as poetry and other art forms, reflected this awakening, and was the cultural equivalent of the economic conquests of the Revolution that Stalinism at this point had not yet destroyed.
The Fifth and Seventh Symphonies are monumental works, partly programmatic in the case of the Seventh, which evoke images of struggle, suffering and triumph. The Sixth and Ninth Symphonies, on the other hand, while lighter works, which met with some disappointment in official Soviet circles because they did not conform to the “heroic” image then attached mechanically to the composer, are no less beautiful and rewarding.
It is nothing short of amazing that Shostakovich was able to produce the Fifth through the Ninth Symphonies, as well as the first five string quartets, in the tragic years between his first denunciation in 1936 and his second in 1948. This was only possible because he fought in the only way he knew how, and this does give his work an “oppositional” aspect.
Between 1948 and Stalin's death in 1953 Shostakovich, though under constant official pressure, continued to compose. Some of his greatest works date from this period, even though he held back their performance in many cases because he feared the official reaction. The Fourth and Fifth Quartets were written in the late 1940s but not performed publicly until after Stalin's death. The same is true of the famous First Violin Concerto. The Tenth Symphony, one of the composer's greatest works, was completed in the months following Stalin's death, but its origins probably date from 1951, during the same period in which he was composing his 24 Preludes and Fugues for Piano.
Certainly not everything that Shostakovich wrote was a masterpiece. There were also some, but not many, works composed on order for the bureaucracy, like Song of the Forests, one of the few pieces which could more justifiably be said to conform to socialist realism. The Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies, programmatic works entitled “The Year 1905” and “The Year 1917,” were written in 1957 and 1960 respectively. While still conveying the composer's enormous talent, they lack the depth of many of his other compositions, and sound as if they were less deeply felt by Shostakovich himself.
In the last decade of his life this contradictory figure, torn by doubts and depression, composed his last three symphonies and his last quartets, all masterpieces. The 13th Symphony, entitled “Babi Yar,” is based on the poems of Yevgeny Yevtushenko indicting anti-Semitism. The Fourteenth, another symphony for vocal soloists, is dedicated to British composer Benjamin Britten and utilizes the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire and Rainer Maria Rilke, on the subject of early or unjust death. The Fifteenth and final symphony is one of Shostakovich's most affecting and at the same time mysterious compositions. Including musical quotations from Rossini and Richard Wagner, Shostakovich also weaves in many autobiographical gestures, including the use of the DSCH motto (the notes D-E flat-C-B, corresponding to the abbreviation of the composer's name).
The 50 years of composition between Shostakovich's First Symphony and his final works, including the Fifteenth String Quartet (1974) and Viola Sonata (1975) are, in terms of the quantity and quality of this work, without any parallel in the twentieth century. Shostakovich the man cowered in the face of Stalinism. Given his lack of political perspective, that is not surprising. But he did not capitulate to socialist realism, nor did he succumb to despair and turn away from his audience. He expressed the enormous contradictions of his time, and he wrote music that will live forever.
Let's look at THE NOISE OF TIME first of three parts of novel where all the angst, fear, total subjugation of Russia's 99% WE THE PEOPLE under STALINIST communism was met by the novel's hero with resistance subtle-----by avoidance of controversy, but for the hero the fear of retaliation against loved ones, family, friends is what allows far-right wing authoritarian militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty ---LIBERTARIAN MARXISM to take hold. Shostakovich was young----looking to start family and freedom of expression with his music so he rebelled against the STALIN COMMUNIST regime. The hero was BIG on TRUTH AS IRONY. The big statements/musical scores written for POWER ----the smaller more subtle scores of music hiding TRUTH.
We have shouted these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA that our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE should not simply listen to HEADLINE PUBLIC POLICY discussions. The title of Federal, state, and local public policy BILLS soon to be LAWS are always made BIG to pretend those policies are 99% POPULIST........the TRUTH of goals of these policies are hidden away in subtle language. So, our US bill-making began to be HUNDREDS OF PAGES long with goals enfolded deep into text where TRUTH had to be found.
US MEDIA, journalists, academics during CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA touted all the BIG headlines of bills MOVING FORWARD in Congress never mentioning the GOALS hidden deep in these bill's language.
THE NOISE OF TIME makes a hero of a character seeming to resist POWER while assigning to this hero lots of admiration for the very same global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS'----THE POWER.
Of course BOLSONARO was not ELECTED---he was installed just as TRUMP----
Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro wins presidential vote – as it happened
Electoral authorities have confirmed Bolsonaro will become president after winning 55.7% of the vote in Sunday’s second-round poll
- Brazil election 2018: ‘The extreme right has conquered Brazil’ – Bolsonaro wins presidency
- Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil’s far-right president in his own words
- Jair Bolsonaro has been elected as the next president of Brazil, winning 55.1% of the vote in the second-round vote between himself and PT candidate Fernando Haddad.
- The far-right candidate was leading in the polls after he fell just short of achieving a majority in the first round of voting three weeks ago.
- His win on Sunday night has alarmed progressives, given his previous comments supporting torture and calling for political opponents to be shot. As well as comments disparaging women, minorities and LGBT people.
- In a televised victory speech, Bolsonaro said “We are going to change the destiny of Brazil” but also extended an olive branch, saying he was going to govern for all Brazilians regardless of orientation, opinion or colour.
- Bolsonaro supporters celebrated in the streets across the country. Military police and other military personnel were hailed as heroes.
- World leaders including Donald Trump offered their congratulations to Bolsonaro, though the leader of Venezuela, a country Bolsonaro has been highly critical of, offered very guarded praise, urging Bolsonaro to work toward having peaceful and harmonious relations with other countries.
Brazil's newly elected far-right wing STALINIST/HITLER/MAO tells our international media and his 99% of WE THE BRAZILIANS he will use martial law to calm all that ROBBER BARON fleecing of Brazil while keeping a FREE MARKET ECONOMY going. We have listened these few decades to CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA claim to be building a FREE MARKET economy as everyone in the nation loses the ability to have opportunity and access to a FUNCTIONING SOVEREIGN ECONOMY-----so, no FREE MARKET ECONOMY has existed in Brazil as here in US ----no intentions of creating a FREE MARKET economy. Bolsonaro is simply installing the same CHINESE-STYLE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----where the 99% of Chinese citizens lived under FAR-RIGHT WING MILITARY MARTIALISM------while the Chinese global 1% and their 2% participated in 1000BC laissez faire global trade policies.
This is where all those REAL left social progressive 99% of citizens----labor, civil rights, women's rights, GBLT rights are all thrown under the bus----because those global banking 5% freemason/Greek players PRETENDING CLINTON/OBAMA were 'left' were of course LYING.
'The Associated Press contributed to this report'.
AP used to mean something when our US media and journalism was broad and really free market. BOLSONARO we are told is populist because he is going to get rid of all that ROBBER BARON crime and corruption ----as he works to make BRAZIL A TRIBUTE STATE.
Brazil elects anti-establishment candidate Jair Bolsonaro as president
Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal declared Sunday that anti-establishment congressman Jair Bolsonaro, a champion of traditional Brazilian values, has won the country's election for the presidency of Latin America’s biggest country and the world’s fourth-largest democracy.
Bolsonaro, who cast himself as a political outsider despite a 27-year career in Congress, is the latest of several leaders around the globe to gain prominence by mixing tough, often violent talk with right-wing positions. But he also is very much a product of a political tempest in Brazil that made his messages less marginalized: widespread anger at the political class amid years of corruption, an economy that has struggled to recover after a punishing recession and a surge in violence. The name of his party, PSL, translates to "Social Liberal Party," although it largely abandoned its socially liberal platforms after he joined.
Bolstering his rebel image is his reputation for offensive statements and sometimes extreme views, including insulting women, black people and the LGBT community.
“I’m afraid to go out at night when it gets dark,” said Raquel Nunes, 27, a secretary from Sao Paulo and an avid Bolsonaro supporter, as The Wall Street Journal reported. “But he’s going to solve this, he’s going to be firm, talking didn’t get us anywhere so we need to respond with force.”
In a highly unusual moment, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Jose Dias Toffoli, read out part of the Constitution to reporters after he voted.
“The future president must respect institutions, must respect democracy, the rule of law, the judiciary branch, the national Congress and the legislative branch,” Toffoli said in remarks many took to be a rebuke of Bolsonaro and his more extreme positions.
OH, REALLY? YOU MEAN UNLIKE BRAZIL'S CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA?
With 96 percent of ballots counted, Bolsonaro had 55.5 percent of the votes. Leftist Fernando Haddad of the Workers’ Party had 44.5 percent.
“We have everything we need to become a great nation,” Bolsonaro said Sunday night in a video broadcast on his Facebook account shortly after he won, as The New York Times noted. “Together we will change the destiny of Brazil.”
Voters in Sunday’s runoff election apparently looked past warnings that the brash former army captain could erode democracy, and embraced a chance for radical change after years of turmoil.
“I feel in my heart that things will change,” said Sandra Coccato, a 68-year-old small business owner, after she voted for Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo. “Lots of bad people are leaving, and lots of new, good people are entering. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Bolsonaro’s campaign first gained traction with his promises to go after violent crime in a country that leads the world in homicides and where many Brazilians live in daily fear of muggings or burglaries. However, his vows to loosen gun laws and give police a freer hand to use force against suspects also have raised concerns that a Bolsonaro presidency could lead to a bloody crackdown and an erosion of civil rights.
A woman donning the official Workers' Party color celebrates after voting in the presidential runoff election in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Sunday. (AP Photo/Nelson Antoine)
The campaign gained momentum by winning over much of the business community with promises of enacting market-friendly reforms that would reduce the size of the Brazilian state, including cutting ministries and privatizing state companies.
His divisive politics have heightened disharmony between Brazilians.
In Rio de Janeiro, his supporters set off fireworks on iconic Copacabana Beach. In Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, cars horns could be heard honking and crowds celebrated as the results came in. In that same city, crowds gathered on a central avenue with banners and flags and people cheered and set off firecrackers in other neighborhoods as results came in.
Riot police separated supporters of Bolsonaro and those of his leftist rival Haddad when they briefly scuffled in Sao Paulo.
Bolsonaro went into the election the clear front-runner after getting 46 percent of the votes to Haddad’s 29 percent in the first round of the election Oct. 7.
After opinion polls in recent weeks had Bolsonaro leading by as much as 18 percentage points, the race had tightened in recent days. But Haddad was unable to make up the difference.
“I’m not crazy about Bolsonaro. But he is our way to keep the Workers’ Party out of office,” said Rafaela Rosa, a 32-year-old teacher, after voting Sunday in Sao Paulo. “We have had enough corruption and now we need to clean up.”
OH, YEAH! IT WAS THAT WORKER'S PARTY DOING ALL THAT MASSIVE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION OF ROBBER BARON FEW DECADES.
________________________________________________
The hero's early years has his first love TANYA loving him for his PURITY. PURITY AND TRUTH are bound tightly and this hero was painted as a RUSSIAN genius of musicology----composition. When we hear global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS take the far-right corporate FASCIST route tied to SUPREMACY/PURITY ----they are trying their best to build that MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN-----LEO STRAUSS of neo-liberal economics was not one of the FEW WISE MEN these CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA promoted with US neo-liberal economics -----STRAUSS was the VULGAR gathering a global banking 5% freemason/Greek player also vulgar. Who is the REAL FEW WISE MEN?
Our REAL GENIUSES AND GEEKS. We shout over and again, people of REAL GENIUS are not able to kill TRUTH. They can only work within the parameters of TRUTH. So, Shostakovich was no doubt the same 5% freemason/Greek player as today's BILL GATES/ELON MUSK sold as PURITY AND GENIUS ----while simply being VULGAR FIGURE-HEADS.
'Pure Genius' Season 2 Isn't Happening, But There Are Always Plenty Of Unconventional Doctors On TV
ByKayla Hawkins
Jan 26 2017
The debut season of techno-medical mashup series Pure Genius is coming to an end, and Deadline reported that Pure Genius won't return for Season 2. According to the outlet, CBS declined to pick the series up for more than the original 13 episodes. Unfortunately, the show wasn't given the chance to wrap up Dr. Wallace's story in any meaningful way, since it was never given an extended Season 1 order. But, even though Pure Genius is canceled, it doesn't change that it was a delightfully weird twist on your typical CBS drama, all while still being a totally passable CBS drama.
Pure Genius managed to combined a totally normal medical show with some 21st-century innovations. And, while it's too bad that switching things up didn't quite work this time, there are still plenty of other shows that are doing twists on the medical genre right now. In fact, if you're a Pure Genius fan because of the show's love for futuristic tech, then you should be doing well with other TV options. Maybe Pure Genius was just a little too ahead of its time when it came to incorporating both into a single series. But, there are always these shows to check out after Pure Genius wraps its series.
It's kind of hard to recommend a show that hasn't premiered as an alternative to one that was just canceled, but it just seems perfect. I mean, the idea of a billionaire donating tons of surveillance equipment to a police department ranges from slightly to extremely terrifying in real life, but in the world of a TV drama, it's at least somewhat intriguing.
Dr. Thackery is kind of like the Dr. Wallace of the turn of the 20th century, with his experimental, unpracticed surgeries. One warning, though — The Knick's surgery scenes are a significant amount more graphic, gory, and scary than those on Pure Genius. But the storytelling and filmmaking are some of the best on television.
Also on CBS, and recently renewed, this falls into the more straightforward medical drama category. But there's something reliably entertaining about the typical case-of-the-week show, where you know no matter how bad the situation in that emergency room, the cast will figure out a way to send everyone on their way after 45 minutes.
In a random throwaway line, the show mentioned that in this universe, every single disease has been cured. There's also a lot more than that to the show, which is set in a version of the future where tech companies have managed to not just heal life, but also create it in robots.
Chicago Med also won't shock any fans of the medical drama genre. However, it is a part of a fascinating new TV experiment: How many dramas can NBC build around the municipal workers in Chicago? So far, the well seems to be bottomless.
And if you were watching Pure Genius because the idea of a high-tech hospital just makes you think of how badly an evil corporation could screw it up, then you should watch this paranoid hacker fever dream/highly awarded drama. I know it's a long shot, but if I'm going to throw out recommendations for the medical drama lovers, then I also have to serve the conspiracy theorists. (Duh.)
From tech news obsessives to those who love watching good-looking actors recreate a spinal surgery, there's something to find on television to replace the hole left by Pure Genius.
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BARNES' hero makes as his first great work of music an OPERA modeled on SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH------MACBETH simply being that global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS freemason STAR creating societal FADS-----as the European REVOLUTIONS of late 1600-1700s were getting ready to be released. Macbeth has many interpretations---but mainly it represented the OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS in angst over what was to become manufactured war in Europe. Macbeth seeing his MOTHERLAND AND FATHERLAND in grips of intrigue-----suffers as that 99% WE THE PEOPLE as Europe falls into far-right wing authoritarian global corporate FASCISM.
How were Shakespeare's era able to have OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS with conscience, angst, honor when RUSSIA'S STALINIST revolution had none?
MACBETH as too Shostakovich's so-called master piece modeled on this Western ROMAN SALUTE----was no mistake----it was a tribute to a STALIN/HITLER installed to represent those pre-Christian NERO/CATO/SENECA OLD WORLD KINGS.
Macbeth: Plot Overview
www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbet/summary
Plot Overview.
The play begins with the brief appearance of a trio of witches and then moves to a military camp, where the Scottish King Duncan hears the news that his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, have defeated two separate invading armies—one from Ireland, led by the rebel Macdonwald, and one from Norway.
So, Shostakovich is painted the same as today's global banking 5% freemason/Greek players ----a populist revolutionary against POWER----while working for power. This is why as the hero aged----he no longer felt the need to pretend to fight POWER----he handed over his SOUL-----along with his signature on all that POWER was doing to oppress the people.
'1966 Lohengrin
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Seattle Opera’s first-ever Wagner production was staged early in 1966, when the company was barely three years old. A team of strong American singers and Seattle Opera’s orchestra and chorus wrestled with Wagner’s mighty score for Lohengrin. The Seattle audience was flabbergasted by the beauty and intensity of the music, and enjoyed the beautiful romantic production'.
WAGNER was that opera composer who created music used by POWER-----just as Shostakovich---again, we love our Western classical STARS-----ROMAN SALUTES and all----so, WAGNER as tool for OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS' POWER.
BILL GATES IS MUCH LIKE SHOSTAKOVICH----BOTH MADE TO APPEAR TO BE GENIUS TIED TO TRUTH---BOTH SIMPLY FIGUREHEADS ALLOWED TO SELL AS THEIR OWN PRODUCTS DEVELOPED BY OUR 99% OF WE THE REAL GENIUS.
Biography of Bill Gates
Microsoft Founder, Global Philanthropist
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates listens during a press conference to launch a plan aimed at saving 10 million mothers and newborns in the poorest countries.
Cetty Images/Rick Gershon
by Mary Bellis
Updated April 03, 2018
Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates in Seattle, Washington, on October 28, 1955, to a high-spirited family with a history of entrepreneurship. His father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. His late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International.
Bill Gates would go on to not only develop a fundamental programming language but also found one of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world, while also contributing billions of dollars to charitable initiatives around the globe.
Early Years Gates had an early interest in software and began programming computers at the age of 13. While still in high school, he would partner with childhood friend Paul Allen to develop a company called Traf-O-Data, which sold the city of Seattle a computerized method to count city traffic.
In 1973, Gates was accepted as a student at Harvard University, where he met Steve Ballmer (who was Microsoft's chief executive officer from January 2000 to February 2014). While still a Harvard undergraduate, Bill Gates developed the programming language BASIC for the MITS Altair microcomputer.
Founder of Microsoft In 1975, Gates left Harvard before graduating to form Microsoft with Allen. The pair set up shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with a plan to develop software for the newly emerging personal computer market.
Microsoft became famous for their computer operating systems and killer business deals. For example, when Gates and Allen developed their brand-new 16-bit computer operating system, MS-DOS, for IBM's new personal computer, the duo convinced IBM to allow Microsoft to retain the licensing rights. The computer giant agreed, and Gates made a fortune from the deal.
This was all of course DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE technology handed to GATES to be privately patented.
Robert Gates - Government Official - Biographywww.biography.com/people/robert-gates-40993 Robert Gates is the only secretary of defense to serve under two consecutive presidents who represented opposing parties. Education Georgetown University , Indiana University , College of William ...
On November 10, 1983, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, Microsoft Corporation formally announced Microsoft Windows, a next-generation operating system that revolutionized—and continues to revolutionize—personal computing.
Marriage, Family, and Personal Life On January 1, 1994, Bill Gates married Melinda French. Born August 15, 1964, in Dallas, TX, Melinda Gates earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and economics from Duke University, and a year later, in 1986, received her MBA, also from Duke. She met Gates when she was working at Microsoft. They have three children. The couple lives in Xanadu 2.0, a 66,000-square-foot mansion overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.
Philanthropist Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with the broad mission to help improve the quality of life for people around the world, primarily in the areas of global health and learning. Initiatives have ranged from funding tuition for 20,000 college students to installing 47,000 computers in 11,000 libraries in all 50 states. According to the foundation's website, as of the last quarter of 2016, the couple has endowed their charitable endeavor with $40.3 billion.
In 2014, Bill Gates stepped down as chairman of Microsoft (although he continues to serve as a technology adviser) to focus full time on the foundation.
Legacy and Impact Back when Gates and Allen announced their intention to put a computer in every home and on every desktop, most people scoffed. Up until then, only the government and large corporations could afford computers. But within only a few decades Microsoft had indeed brought computer power to the people.
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Having lived in Seattle as REAGAN became CLINTON led by GREENSPAN ----knowing the goals of MOVING FORWARD bringing the US down to colonial sacked and looted status-----the ties of WAGNER to GATES' Seattle was not a coincidence.
In Seattle the GATES' family is global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS thinking themselves THE WISE MEN-------embracing LEO STRAUSS in order to pretend they are not THE VULGAR------but the GOOD CLUB. All of this is far-right wing global banking 1% corporate FASCISM all making its appearance in 1980s-90s.
The problem is not to presentation of WAGNER-----the reintroduction of a new modeled MACBETH these few decades----the problem is what is MOVING FORWARD in US cities deemed FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES at the same time all these global banking 1% cultural FADS are growing.
We have known BILL GATES was that VULGAR PLAYER ----working for global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS in creating a TRUE GENIUS for themselves in all that SUPER-DUPER BIG DEAD HEAD ONE WORLD ONE TECHNOLOGY GRID.
Nothing more STALIN/HITLER/MAO FASCIST then DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE.
BILL GATES is the GOOD billionaire just as SHOSTAKOVICH is painted as that ANTI-POWER hero by BARNES.
They're called the Good Club - and they want to save the world
Paul Harris in New York reports on the small, elite group of billionaire philanthropists who met recently to discuss solving the planet's problems
Paul Harris in New York
@paulxharris Sat 30 May 2009 19.01 EDT First published on Sat 30 May 2009 19.01 EDT
It is the most elite club in the world. Ordinary people need not apply. Indeed there is no way to ask to join. You simply have to be very, very rich and very, very generous. On a global scale.
This is the Good Club, the name given to the tiny global elite of billionaire philanthropists who recently held their first and highly secretive meeting in the heart of New York City.
The names of some of the members are familiar figures: Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, David Rockefeller and Ted Turner. But there are others, too, like business giants Eli and Edythe Broad, who are equally wealthy but less well known. All told, its members are worth $125bn.
The meeting - called by Gates, Buffett and Rockefeller - was held in response to the global economic downturn and the numerous health and environmental crises that are plaguing the globe. It was, in some ways, a summit to save the world.
No wonder that when news of the secret meeting leaked, via the seemingly unusual source of an Irish-American website, it sent shock waves through the worlds of philanthropy, development aid and even diplomacy. "It is really unprecedented. It is the first time a group of donors of this level of wealth has met like that behind closed doors in what is in essence a billionaires' club," said Ian Wilhelm, senior writer at the Chronicle of Philanthropy magazine.
The existence of the Good Club has struck many as a two-edged sword. On one hand, they represent a new golden age of philanthropy, harking back to the early 20th century when the likes of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Carnegie became famous for their good works. Yet the reach and power of the Good Club are truly new. Its members control vast wealth - and with that wealth comes huge power that could reshape nations according to their will. Few doubt the good intentions of Gates and Winfrey and their kind. They have already improved the lives of millions of poor people across the developing world. But can the richest people on earth actually save the planet?
The President's House of Rockefeller University is on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The university's private campus, full of lush green trees, lies behind guarded entrances and a metal fence. It overlooks the East River, only a few blocks away from the United Nations.
It was here, at 3pm on 5 May, that the Good Club gathered. The university's chancellor, Sir Paul Nurse, was out of town but, at the request of David Rockefeller, had allowed the club to meet at his plush official residence. The president's house is frequently used for university events, but rarely can it have played host to such a powerful conclave. "The fact that they pulled this off, meeting in the middle of New York City, is just absolutely amazing," said Niall O'Dowd, an Irish journalist who broke the story on the website irishcentral.com.
For six hours, the assembled billionaires discussed the crises facing the world. Each was allowed to speak for 15 minutes. The topics focused on education, emergency relief, government reform, the expected depth of the economic crisis and global health issues such as overpopulation and disease. One of the themes was new ways to get ordinary people to donate small amounts to global issues. Sources say Gates was the most impressive speaker, while Turner was the most outspoken. "He tried to dominate, which I think annoyed some of the others," said one source. Winfrey, meanwhile, was said to have been in a contemplative, listening mood.
That the group should have met at all is indicative of the radical ways in which philanthropy has changed over the past two decades. The main force behind that change is Gates and his decision to donate almost all his fortune to bettering the world. Unlike the great philanthropists of former ages, Gates is young enough and active enough to take a full hands-on role in his philanthropy and craft it after his own ideas. That example has been followed by others, most notably Soros, Turner and Buffett. Indeed, this new form of philanthropy, where retired elite businessmen try to change the world, has even been dubbed "Billanthropy" after Gates. Another description is "philanthro-capitalism".
Yet the implications of the development of philanthro-capitalism are profound. It was fitting that the Good Club was meeting near the UN. The club members' extreme wealth makes it as powerful as some of the nations with seats inside that august chamber.
Proponents of philanthro-capitalism would argue that they are also more effective in doing good for ordinary people. Indeed the club's members have given away about $70bn in the past 12 years. That is far beyond what many individual countries can afford to do with their own social policies and aid budgets.
"They have assets that rival the social spending budgets of many countries," said Professor Paul Schervish, director of Boston College's Centre on Wealth and Philanthropy.
There is little doubt that members of the Good Club have done amazing work. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with a current endowment of more than $30bn, is the biggest philanthropic organisation ever. Just one of its projects, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, is estimated by the WHO to have prevented 3.4 million deaths in just eight years.
The Soros Foundation has done valuable work setting up democratic institutions and independent media across the former Soviet bloc. These titans of philanthropy have also started a trend among the slightly less wealthy. While Gates's and Soros's efforts bestride the world, major philanthropists have emerged in specific regions like India or Latin America funding their own pet ideas and projects. Gayle Peterson, co-founder of Headwaters Group Philanthropic Services, recently gave advice to a businessman who wanted to set up a foundation to give away $280m annually in south-east Asia. "He told us: I want to be just like Bill Gates," she said.
But there is a potential downside to the growth of these "über donors", especially if the whims of individuals start to take precedence over the expertise of professionals.
The strange truth is that giving away billions of dollars is difficult and fraught with risk. There can be waste, mismanagement and poor investment. At the same time it can actually do harm. "If you are putting enormous amounts of money into a community that can't cope with it, then you can implode that community," Peterson said.
Others are even more outspoken at the growing dominance of a tiny handful of billionaires in the development sector. "The problem with any Good Club is that all the people might not be 'good'. Or at least not 'good' in universal definitions," said Louise Uwacu, the Rwandan-born founder of the Canadian education charity Positivision.
There is also the issue of accountability. Even the most repressive of national governments is on some level beholden to its own people, or has the capacity to change and reform under popular pressure. But who votes for the Good Club?
Such sceptical sentiments might spring from the Good Club's decision to meet in such secrecy in New York. In many ways that was understandable. All its members are sensitive about privacy because of their unique mixes of fame and wealth. The covert nature of the discussion also allowed them to speak freely about sensitive issues. "I think they just wanted to be able to be candid. The secrecy allowed that," said Wilhelm.
But some people are crying conspiracy. The cloak-and-dagger aspect of the meeting has prompted some to accuse the Good Club of being a sort of Bilderberg Group for philanthropy, with an equally nefarious agenda of global power politics. That idea has particular power on the Christian right of America, which has reacted angrily to the idea that the club discussed birth control and overpopulation. Experts in the philanthropy field think that this negative image can be countered by more openness for future Good Club meetings.
"If they do hold more meetings, and every indication is that they will, I think people would want them to be more public. After all, they can make decisions that affect millions of peoples' lives," said Wilhelm.
That is true. If the members of the Good Club wish to wield their undoubted power, they may have to get used to the idea of doing it more openly.
The American tradition of great donors
Bill Gates
The co-founder of Microsoft is the biggest philanthropist the world has ever seen. Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,he controls more than $30bn in assets - not bad for a computer geek from Seattle. Often ranked as the world's richest man, he has donated virtually his entire fortune to philanthropy, focusing on combating diseases in the developing world.
Henry Ford
As well as being the father of the US car industry and the inventor of the modern production line, Ford has been a major force in philanthropy. He made a vast fortune and left virtually all of it to the Ford Foundation, which by 2007 had more than $13bn in assets.
George Soros
Hungarian-born Soros is a hugely successful US currency speculator and financier. But he is also well known for his philanthropic works. Focusing on political democratisation and creating an independent media, he has funded projects mainly in the former Soviet republics. A political liberal, he is also a funder of the Centre for American Progress.
Andrew Carnegie
This Scottish-born American industrialist made a huge fortune in steel and industry at the end of the 19th century. He devoted the rest of his life to philanthropy, especially education, founding libraries, museums and universities in Britain and America. He wrote of the responsibilities of the wealthy in two books, Triumphant Democracy and the Gospel of Wealth.
John D Rockefeller
The man whose name became a byword for unimaginable wealth made his
fortune in oil. Often regarded as the richest person in history, Rockefeller spent the last 40 years of his life in effective retirement, setting up various foundations and funding philanthropic causes. His special interests were in the fields of science and medicine.
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Hmmmmm, Wagner's son-in-law ----LORD CHAMBERLAIN? How global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS of Wagner meets Hitler.
'Lord Chamberlain - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chamberlain
The Lord Chamberlain is the most senior official of the Royal Household and oversees its business, including liaising with the other senior officers of the Household, chairing Heads of Department meetings, and advising in the appointment of senior Household officials'.
While pre-Weimar Germany made much of keeping a WAGNER and a far-right wing authoritarian HITLER separate----just as THE NOISE OF TIME tries to paint a Shostakovich as anti-POWER-----WAGNER was as willing as Shostakovich to give POWER what it wanted just as today's global banking 1% freemason STARS.
All this is global banking 1% using our media, journalism to make LIES the only TRUTH in town.
Again, Wagner opera just as free to circulate our US city opera houses----what we are concerned with is THE TIMING of these CULTURAL EVENTS.
'Wagner controversies - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_controversies
Wagner's son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain expanded on Wagner and Gobineau's ideas in his 1899 book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, a racist work extolling the Aryan ideal that later strongly influenced Adolf Hitler's ideas on race'.
All of these cultural events inside US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES no doubt ring a bit louder for the victims of last century's HITLER/STALIN as global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS KNIGHTS OF MALTA partnered with TRIBE OF JUDAH. The reality painted in THE NOISE OF TIME of societal FEARS, LOSS OF POWER AND FREEDOM OF CHOICE----of being required by penalty of severe harm to RE-EDUCATE------that is what US public policy is MOVING FORWARD today and our Congressional, state assembly, and city councils are HIDING AND LYING the goals buried in the DETAILS of public policy.
CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA KNOW WHAT MOVING FORWARD HAS AS A GOAL NEXT---THESE GLOBAL BANKING 5% FREEMASON/GREEK PLAYERS SIMPLY DON'T CARE.
RICHARD WAGNER
In 1933, the year of Hitler's accession to power, the fiftieth anniversary of the composer Richard Wagner’s death was celebrated at the Bayreuth festival under the theme ‘Wagner and the new Germany’. The links between the 19th century opera composer and the 20th century dictator existed from the Nazi Party’s beginnings, and were to be strengthened and developed throughout the years of Hitler’s reign. Perhaps no other musician is as closely linked with Nazism as is Wagner, and no composer’s music is as tainted with the ideological associations of the Third Reich.
Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig on 22 May 1813, one of nine children in a working-class family. Soon after his birth the family moved to Dresden, and later to Prague. As a youth, Wagner was drawn to the theatre, and saw music as an expansion of his interest in the stage. By the time he was ready to begin his studies, he had decided to commit himself to composition, and he entered the University of Leipzig to study music. An early marriage to the actress Minna Planer was undermined by infidelity on both sides, and the struggling musician moved to Riga, Paris, and then back to Dresden, seeking both artistic success and to avoid his creditors. He had his first real success with the staging of his opera Rienzi. He also, however, became involved with the underground nationalist movement, an involvement that was to force him into exile after the revolution of 1848. In 1850, he wrote his infamous treatise Das Judentum in der Musik (Judaism in Music), in which he denied that Jews were capable of true creativity. According to Wagner, the Jewish artist can only 'speak in imitation of others, make art in imitation of others, he cannot really speak, write, or create art on his own'.
Wagner suffered years of financial hardship in Zürich, but his slow rise to fame and wealth began with the ascendancy of Ludwig II to the Bavarian throne in 1864. With the king’s financial support, he returned to Germany (this time to Munich) with his wife; he also began an affair with Cosima von Bülow. The affair, along with his controversial operas, injured Wagner’s reputation, and he was pressured to leave Munich. He did, however, marry Cosima, with whom he had three children. The family settled in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth, where Wagner constructed a special opera house for the premiere of his epic four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. During these later years, as his popularity grew, so too did his public commitment to antisemitism. Despite his hatred for ‘Jewry’, however, Wagner maintained close personal friendships with many Jews, and did not seem to espouse a clearly developed racial theory.
He died of a heart attack while on an Italian vacation, on 13 February 1883. Almost exactly 50 years later, on 30 January 1933, Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. Some days later, the German-Nordic Richard Wagner Society for Germanic Art and Culture released a statement inaugurating the Bayreuth celebrations. Claiming that Wagner had 'wrought for the Germans a self-reliant national art, by having created Bayreuth', it declared that
just as Richard Wagner created Der Ring des Nibelungen out of faith in the German spirit, it is the mission of the German people ... to reflect upon themselves and to complete the organisation of the German people, through which, in addition, all the ideal aspirations of the German-Nordic Richard Wagner Society will maintain a real political impact on the state, the nation, and the world around us in the national Germanic spirit of Richard Wagner.
With the support of industrial lobbies and the German military, the Wagner Society promoted its idol’s music as symbolizing a solution to the threat of bolshevism and Jewry, as well as being the purest representation of the glory of the Germanic race. Many members of the Society were also involved with the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Combat League for German Culture).
The Society’s success in promoting Wagner’s music was due as much to its propaganda efforts as to Hitler’s personal predilections. Hitler felt a deep connection to Wagner, and as early as 1924 claimed that his vision of a future Germany was manifest in the composer’s music. Hitler was also influenced by the writings of Wagner’s son-in-law, the ‘race theorist’ Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and became a friend of his children, particularly his daughter-in-law Winifred. After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the fascination with Wagner was turned into a kind of national cult. The Bayreuth festival was used as an opportunity to publicise Nazi propaganda. Nazi Party events prominently featured Wagner’s music, including excerpts from Rienzi and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
The precise nature of the relationship between Wagner and Nazism, however, is difficult to pin down. Hitler seldom mentioned Wagner in his writings, and rarely in public; when he did make reference to Wagner, it was not in relation to antisemitism, but rather as a German leader and visionary. Furthermore, Wagner’s music and ideology was not appropriated wholesale, but only where it accorded with Nazi concerns: works like Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, for example, were ignored. Although Wagner’s operas reflect a nationalistic world view that echoes that of Nazism, they cannot legitimately be described as ‘Nazi music’. At the same time, the impact of the composer and his works on the dictator cannot be denied.
According to Hitler's memoirs, it was his teenage viewing of Rienzi that made him understand for the first time his destiny: to strengthen and unite the German Reich. For his 50th birthday, he requested the originals of several Wagner operas, and, against the wishes of Wagner's family, took them with him into his bunker. This legacy hangs over the music, which for many can never be freed from the taint of Hitler’s adoration. Wagner’s work is still regarded as controversial today, and is rarely played in Israel.
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We discuss often how Brazil's LULA was never 'LEFT' ----he was the FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL of Brazil ------replaced by what is the same TRUMPIAN dictator as BOLSONARO------who is supported by Brazil's FAKE religious right being global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS FREEMASONRY
HADDAD being WORLD BANK/UNITED NATIONS/INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION -----FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL CORPORATE FASCIST COMMUNIST PARTY------Stalin's FRIENDSHIP Party-----
So, our international media tell us BOLSONARO has put down the LEFT in Brazil----all those VULGAR GREEDY MASSES-----cheered by FAKE EVANGELICALS.
Our US media has tried very hard to sell our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE as the hyper-consumers even as those VULGAR global banking 1% unleashed the hyper-neoliberalism making marketing and advertising for consumption KING.
WHO ARE LEO STRAUSS'S GENTLEMEN ---THOSE HAVING HONOR AND TRUTH TODAY?
Our OLD -SCHOOL freemasonry tied to REAL GENIUS embraces PURITY AND TRUTH. So, too do our US 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens. It is only a very small percent of SOCIOPATHS in societies---that 5% freemason/Greek player as VULGAR working for a few OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS trying as hard as they can to PRETEND they are THE WISE MEN.
We thinks our global banking 1% FRENCH media doth PROTEST TO MUCH! These are all those FAKE COMMUNISTS rightfully outed by the novel's hero Shostakovich.
Who works hard at WORLD BANK MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS? France's LAGARDE....Hmmmm, looks like LEO STRAUSS has family in France-----------not much LEFT happening today in FRANCE
'Dominique Strauss-Kahn
- Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn is a French politician, former managing director of the ... He was a professor of economics at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense and Sciences Po, and was Minister of Economy and Finance from ..... Strauss-Kahn has helped the government of South Sudan to set up a bank'.
DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN is of course that FAKE 'LEFT' COMMUNIST
© Nelson Almeida, AFP |
Demonstrators take part in a protest against Jair Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Oct. 20, 2018.
Video by Yuka ROYER
Text by FRANCE 24
Latest update : 2018-10-21
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in Brazil to protest against far-right front-runner Jair Bolsonaro a week before the second round of the presidential vote.
In Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Goiania and Aracaju, people occupied avenues and squares on Saturday, singing, dancing and shouting, "Ele Nao!" -- "Not him!" -- the anti-Bolsonaro rallying cry.
The rallies took place one week before Brazilians return to the polls on October 28 for the second round of voting.
In front of the famous Sao Paulo Art Museum, people beat drums and waved gay pride flags and banners thereby denouncing Bolsonaro, who is known for his offensive comments about gays, women and black people.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain, won the first round on October 7, getting 46 percent against 29 for Fernando Haddad of the Workers' Party (PT) that governed Brazil between 2003 and 2016.
Haddad replaced jailed party founder Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
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This is why all today's US FAKE NEWS filled with FAKE DATA and policies that LIE AND HIDE selling them as TRUTHS-------has Trump as our US representative to the MOVING FORWARD BRUTAL FAR-RIGHT WING DICTATOR-----backed as well by FAKE EVANGELICALS pretending the same people having brought ROBBER BARON sacking and looting NEO-LIBERALISM are now the same ready to clean up society----SAVONOROLA would back TRUMP/PENCE just as he would BOLSONARO
So, Trump is the FASCIST while PRE-WEIMAR CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA were champions of our 99% populist citizens.
Once we understand the games global banking 1% play ----STOPPING MOVING FORWARD becomes EASY PEASY.
WASHINGTON POST OWNED BY BEZOS----MAY AS WELL BE STALINIST PROPAGANDA-----STALIN'S STOOGES.
Opinions
Donald Trump is actually a fascist
By Michael Kinsley
December 9, 2016
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for Vanity Fair magazine and a contributing columnist for The Post.
Donald Trump is a fascist.
When you call somebody a fascist, you can mean any number of things. Often, it means no more than “somebody I don’t like.” It is an all-purpose epithet, usable by anyone against everyone from university deans to Fox News anchors. For that reason, the label should be used sparingly — saved for special occasions. As with “Nazi” or “Hitler,” it is often said that in any discussion, the first person reduced to using such a word has lost the argument. It’s ridiculous to compare any living person to Hitler or Mussolini.
But I mean “fascist” in the more clinical sense. For close to a year, and especially since his election as president, people have been trying to figure out Trump’s political principles: What does he stand for, how will he act as president? Various theories have been advanced. Some think he won the election by pandering simultaneously to different groups with conflicting agendas, and convincing all of them he was on their side. Was this a calculated exploitation of America’s “gimme gimme gimme” politics? Or was it the politics of a man who had no politics, who wanted to be president because, in our celebrity culture, it was the only job more glamorous than starring in his own reality television show? It has even been suggested, in the sole subject of conversation in Washington for the past month, that Trump might allow himself to be sworn in as president and then resign, having accomplished all he aspired to.
But now that we’ve seen a bit of him in action, it seems that Trump actually does have a recognizable agenda that explains how he simultaneously can pander to big business generally while “strong-arming” (the words of a Post editorial Friday) an air conditioning manufacturer to save a few hundred jobs for a while. Or how he can make nice with the authoritarian Vladimir Putin while making bellicose foreign policy noises in general. Or how he can blithely upset with a phone call the absurdly delicate balance of our relations with China and Taiwan. All this seemingly erratic behavior can be explained — if not justified — by thinking of Trump as a fascist. Not in the sense of an all-purpose bad guy, but in the sense of somebody who sincerely believes that the toxic combination of strong government and strong corporations should run the nation and the world. He spent his previous career negotiating with the government on behalf of corporations; now he has switched teams. But it’s the same game.
The game has several names: “Corporate statism” is one. In Europe, they call it “dirigisme.” Those two other words for it — “Nazism” and “fascism” — are now beyond all respectability. It means, roughly, combining the power of the state with the power of corporations. At its mildest, it is intrusive regulations on business about parental leave and such. At its most toxic, it is concentration camps. In the 1930s, a few Americans (including a few liberals) bought into it. Pearl Harbor ended that argument. Even for Trump, “fascism” itself now is a dirty word, not just a policy choice. Even Trump would not use it — least of all about himself.
But the deal Trump negotiated with Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to “save” hundreds of jobs is a prime example of the philosophy. Trump brags about “saving” Midwestern blue-collar jobs through a combination of bribery and arm-twisting. Turns out hundreds more jobs will be lost, and Trump as president can’t possibly negotiate on behalf of millions of workers.
But Trump believes — truly believes, I think — in the title of one of his books: the art of the deal. He thinks he is the world’s greatest negotiator. When he says he won’t reveal his income taxes because he is in the midst of negotiations with the IRS, he may be sincere. He says, believably, that he gets audited every year. That means every year’s tax bill is just the government’s opening move in an annual chess game, and Trump doesn’t want to give away his own opening move. Now he plans to negotiate more “deals” and he thinks — because he can outfox some midlevel IRS auditors — that he can outfox the political and business leaders of the world. “The Art of the Deal” is not “Mein Kampf,” although “not ‘Mein Kampf’ ” isn’t much of an endorsement.
Just to be clear: If I’m correct that Trump actually has a governing philosophy, that’s a bad thing, not a good thing. If he actually has principles to guide him through those famous swamps he plans to drain, that’s alarming, not reassuring. Bad principles are not a good substitute for no principles. Four or eight years of bad principles may make no principles look pretty good.
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'We use words like "honor," "code," "loyalty." We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line'
Indeed, for our America built on HONOR/TRUTH/JUSTICE-----global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS KNIGHTS OF MALTA TRIBE OF JUDAH make a mockery of words like HONOR/LOYALTY/TRUTH.
THE NOISE OF TIME takes the early pages to create what is a real depiction of struggles by humans under the confines of a society where all morality, ethics, any structures identifying REAL GOOD, REAL TRUTH, REAL PEOPLE'S POWER have been eliminated. The middle section of novel moves from the hero standing up against POWER----to justifying his need to BEND to POWER ----leaving IRONY AS TRUTH behind to simply become THE WORM.
youtube.com
You Can't Handle the Truth! - A Few Good Men (7/8) Movie CLIP (1992) HD
A Few Good Men movie clips: http://j.mp/1BcRpvP BUY THE MOVIE: http://bit.ly/2ddS0MJ WATCH ON CRACKLE: http://bit.ly/2dorpdG…
The article below from WORLD BANK/UNITED NATIONS far-right wing global banking 1% LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS------is bringing SHOSTAKOVICH back as a hero of SOCIALISM-----------at the same time BARNES' novel tries to paint the same picture of this global banking 1% FREEMASON STAR player.
Clarifying a confused debate
The legacy of Dmitri Shostakovich
By Fred Mazelis
7 April 2000 World Socialist Web
A quarter century after his death, interest in the works of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich has never been greater, while the debate over the relationship of this music to the history of the twentieth century continues to rage.
Shostakovich's extraordinary 15 symphonies and 15 string quartets, many believe, rank him with Beethoven in terms of both the magnitude of the output and its depth and originality. In addition to the symphonies and chamber music, Shostakovich also produced concertos, song cycles, ballets, film scores, music for solo piano and two operas.
In the years immediately after the 1917 Revolution Shostakovich had studied with Alexander Glazunov at the Petrograd (later Leningrad) Conservatory, and through Glazunov he absorbed the idiom and tradition of such Russian masters as Rimsky-Korsakov, who had been Glazunov's teacher, as well as Tchaikovsky and especially Modest Mussorgsky. Shostakovich's interest in Mussorgsky can be seen in the fact that he produced orchestrations of two of Mussorgsky's operatic masterpieces, Boris Godunov (in 1940) and Khovanshchina (in 1959).
But Shostakovich was far from a simple follower of the nineteenth century Russian masters. While he usually stayed within the framework of traditional tonality and rejected the twelve-tone school pioneered by Arnold Schönberg, his work is completely infused with a twentieth century sensibility. Among the greatest influences on the young Soviet composer were Gustav Mahler, the late Romantic composer who was the greatest symphonist of the first decade of the twentieth century, and Igor Stravinsky, the Russian composer who emigrated after the Russian Revolution, who first came to the attention of the musical world with his three great ballets, The Firebird, Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring, composed in quick succession between 1910 and 1913. Both the melancholy, introspection and emotional depth of Mahler and the satiric and even grotesque elements in Stravinsky can be heard in Shostakovich's work, but transformed into his own unique style and musical language.
The appeal of this music is evident from a look at recent programs at major concert halls in New York City. Over the last few months—despite the attention lavished on Aaron Copland and Kurt Weill in this centenary year of their births—various musical organizations have scheduled an astonishing number of Shostakovich's works.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the opera first performed in 1934 and not heard for decades after it was officially denounced by Pravda in 1936, was given an effective production at the Metropolitan Opera.
At the same time, the San Francisco Symphony came to New York's Carnegie Hall to perform Shostakovich's 11th Symphony, subtitled “The Year 1905,” a programmatic work on the struggle against czarism and its suppression that year. The New York Philharmonic performed Shostakovich's 14th Symphony the week of March 30. Later this spring it will present the famous Leningrad Symphony, the Seventh.
The most ambitious series of programs, entitled The Shostakovich Project, was presented by the acclaimed Emerson String Quartet. All 15 quartets were presented in a series of five recitals at New York's Lincoln Center. This was followed by “The Noise of Time,” a theater-concert piece that was presented for a total of six performances by the London-based Theatre de Complicite. This unusual production was divided into two halves: a multimedia evocation of Shostakovich's life and times, using poetry, projected images, the reading of letters, snatches of music and radio broadcasts, followed by the performance by the Emerson Quartet of Shostakovich's final 15th Quartet.
This musical and extra-musical activity reflects a growing consensus on the depth and originality of Shostakovich's music. There is anything but consensus, however, when it comes to an analysis of its meaning and significance.
The debate on his legacy began more than 20 years ago, with the publication of “Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as Related to and Edited by Solomon Volkov.” A young Soviet musicologist who befriended the composer in his last years, Volkov left the USSR soon after Shostakovich's death. “Testimony,” purporting to reveal Shostakovich's real views in his own words, appeared in 1979.
Up to this point Dmitri Shostakovich had generally been portrayed as an honored and respected figure, the leading creative musical voice of the Soviet Union. He had been officially criticized both in 1936 and 1948, but the post-Stalin leadership and its cultural establishment did not dwell on those events. For the last 26 years of his life, it appeared that Shostakovich had made his peace with the Moscow bureaucracy, which spuriously claimed to represent the working class and socialism. Shostakovich's name was regularly attached to official statements lending support to Soviet foreign policy and expounding on the Stalinist doctrine of “socialist realism.”
Those more thoroughly acquainted with the nature of the regime and its cultural policy had good reason to suspect that the official portrait was not the whole story, but the most widespread view remained that of Shostakovich as a loyal and contented spokesman for Soviet society.
“Testimony” challenged this prevailing conception. The composer, as reported by Volkov, maintained that he was not a pliant tool or loyal spokesman for the authorities. On the contrary, he expressed bitterness about Stalin and his successors. “Stalin was a spider and everyone who approached his nets had to die.... Stalin and Hitler were spiritual relatives,” Shostakovich declared, according to Volkov. He suggested that his apparent support for official policy was obtained under duress. Moreover the composer said he had smuggled oppositional themes into many of his major works.
The exultant finale of the Fifth Symphony, one of the most famous classical compositions of the twentieth century, was, according to “Testimony,” “forced rejoicing, created under threat.” The Seventh Symphony, composed in 1941 and indelibly associated with the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis and the darkest days of the Second World War for the Soviet people, was planned before the war, by Volkov's account. The famous “invasion theme” had nothing to do with fascists: “I was thinking of other enemies of humanity when I composed the theme,” Shostakovich is reported to have told his young friend.
Volkov's book came under immediate attack. The Stalinists, not surprisingly, responded with thunderous denunciations and charges that it was a forgery. It was not only in Moscow that the book was criticized, however. In 1981 Laurel Fay, an American musicologist, wrote an article for the Russian Review, published by the strongly anti-communist Hoover Institution, in which she charged that parts of the book had been plagiarized from previously published Russian-language articles by Shostakovich.
Volkov was also reported to have maneuvered himself into a photo at Shostakovich's funeral so that he could be pictured between the composer's widow and daughter. There seemed strong grounds for skepticism about his memoir of the Soviet composer. And Volkov has never answered the charges leveled by Fay.
Nevertheless, with the passing years it has become clear that, whatever the embellishments or distortions contained in “Testimony,” it is not a fabrication. It does not present a fundamentally false picture of Shostakovich.
The accumulated evidence, including accounts from the composer's former colleagues after the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR, suggest that, like many of his fellow artists and intellectuals, he regarded the ruling bureaucracy with a mixture of hatred, fear and contempt.
Some of Volkov's critics, including Fay in a new biography of the composer published late last year, no longer claim that “Testimony” is a total fraud. Whatever one's evaluation of the book, there are not many today who make the assertion that Shostakovich was a happy Soviet citizen.
The debate on Shostakovich, however, shows few signs of quieting down. It has shifted to a great extent from a dispute on the authenticity of “Testimony” to a broader debate on the meaning of Shostakovich's music and his historical role. The dissolution of the USSR nearly 10 years ago has only fueled the argument, which has become more than ever bound up with assessments of the Cold War and the history of the USSR and of culture in the Soviet Union.
Most critics and classical music listeners tend to agree on the lasting power of Shostakovich's music, and the question that is now posed is: how did he accomplish all of this during the decades of Stalinist dictatorship?
Did the composer “learn” from the official criticism, conform to the doctrine of socialist realism and thus find the right road? Or did he capitulate to the regime and see his music suffer thereby? Is he perhaps overrated? Was he a secret dissident as portrayed by Volkov, whose work developed in conscious struggle against the regime, and moreover against the ideals of socialism itself? Or did his music really have nothing to do with Soviet history and politics, rather existing on its own personal plane?
Several schools of thought have emerged, roughly corresponding to the assessments implied in the above questions. They are all wide of the mark, some more so than others.
The claim that the composer was a willing and loyal defender of the regime is credited only by a handful of Stalinist apologists. One Internet web site, for instance, claims that “Shostakovich was a patriotic Soviet citizen and lifelong socialist.... Despite two brief periods of friction much dramatized in the West, he was by far the most often, and most highly, officially honored member of the Soviet musical establishment in its history.”
This depiction is patently false. Countless colleagues and friends attest to the shattering impact on Shostakovich of the “two brief periods of friction.” These were not, of course, simply cases of sharp musical criticism. Stalin himself attended a performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk on January 26, 1936, and left before the conclusion. On January 28, Pravda denounced the opera as a “Muddle Instead of Music.” The official organ of the Communist Party said the composer was playing a game that “may end very badly.” This language, with its thinly-veiled threat, was universally understood in musical and intellectual circles to have been approved if not dictated by the man who was already deeply feared and was about to launch the infamous Moscow Trials of 1936-38.
At the age of 29, the young composer saw not only his career threatened with destruction, but his life and the fate of his family also imperiled. Shostakovich reportedly packed a suitcase in preparation for arrest, and slept in the hallway outside his apartment so that when the NKVD came his children would not see him taken away. The fear which descended in this period did not lift for many years—indeed, in some respects it never lifted at all.
In 1948, with Stalinist cultural czar Andrei Zhdanov leading the pack, the official denunciation of Shostakovich, along with Prokofiev, Khatchaturian and Miaskovksy, was more detailed, drawn-out and brutal. Shostakovich read a humiliating speech of self-abasement to the official meeting of Soviet composers convened to condemn his “formalism.”
Any attempt to portray Shostakovich as basically unaffected by these experiences, as satisfied with Soviet society and cultural life under Stalin and his successors, is preposterous and hardly needs rebuttal. At the other extreme, however, a group of insistent and prolix musicologists has discovered a Shostakovich that is apparently the polar opposite: a lifelong enemy of Bolshevism who, instead of writing music glorifying Stalinism, wrote what can only be described as anticommunist program music.
Using “Testimony” as a starting point, some critics and music historians, most notably the British writer Ian MacDonald, have taken Volkov's thesis to somewhat absurd conclusions. Whereas Volkov claimed that some of the composer's major works contained symbolic references to the tribulations of the Soviet people under Stalin, MacDonald has analyzed virtually every single composition of Shostakovich over a period of more than four decades, and everywhere found coded messages of resistance to “Communist” tyranny. Thousands of pages have been written on this subject, complete with detailed analysis of scores, mechanically equating musical themes and their treatment with specific political positions.
The motive of all this appears to be to exonerate Shostakovich posthumously of all charges that he collaborated with the Stalinist regime—to show that he was forced to act as a mouthpiece for the authorities, and also that he was expressing his hostility to them through his music.
A careful and objective examination of the music and its context reveals that there is some truth to these conclusions, but by turning them it into a mechanical caricature, MacDonald and his cothinkers have created a completely formal and lifeless portrait that robs the music of its meaning. It is almost as if Shostakovich decided to compose in order carry out a crusade against the Soviet Union.
MacDonald has begun with a preconceived ideological agenda, that of separating Shostakovich from the whole history of the Russian Revolution. The music is dissected in order to fit this conception. Anything that suggests that Shostakovich may have once had some hopes for the Revolution must be explained away. Thus MacDonald makes the highly dubious claim that positive comments about Lenin in a letter authored by Shostakovich in 1923, when he was 17 years old, were written only because the budding composer knew that his letters were being read by the secret police.
This tendentious approach is connected to the superficial capitalist triumphalism of the 1990s. MacDonald writes in the aftermath of the collapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and he has set himself the task of proving that the great composer could not possibly have had anything to do with the horrible 1917 Revolution, which is now considered to be the cause of all of Russia's problems.
Of course these musicologists can point to some extent to the alleged musical interpretations of Shostakovich himself in “Testimony.” But MacDonald's diatribes against socialism go far beyond anything in Volkov's memoir. Assuming that at least some of Shostakovich's reported comments on his music are accurate, there is a big difference between these remarks on some of his major works, and the rigid and thoroughly speculative programmatic analysis put forward by MacDonald. Moreover, the composer's own feelings, while certainly deserving of consideration, are not necessarily a rounded understanding of his own music. If one were to be satisfied only with Beethoven's or Wagner's explanations of their music, by way of example, why bother with biographies and musical analysis of their work?
Music critic Alex Ross, writing in a recent issue of The New Yorker, has made an apt distinction between Shostakovich's probable motives in speaking to Volkov, and a fuller understanding of his career. As Ross puts it, “‘Testimony' does tell us what Shostakovich was thinking about at the end of his life, but Shostakovich at the end of his life was a desperately embittered man, whose pronouncements on his own work are not always to be trusted. ‘Testimony,' in other words, may be authentic, but it may not always tell the truth.”
To understand Shostakovich in the early 1970s, when he spoke to Volkov, it is necessary to understand his life over the tumultuous decades leading up to that. He had been psychologically scarred and politically disoriented, not only by his own personal difficulties, but by what he had seen around him. His demoralization, and not any political convictions, is what led him to join the Communist Party in 1960, and later to sign public condemnations of Andrei Sakharov and other liberal dissident figures. Apparently he had become both so disillusioned and despairing that he adapted himself and for the most part did what was asked of him as a prominent public figure.
At the same time, especially as the hopes associated with the Khrushchev period gave way to the “stagnation” and even moves toward the “rehabilitation” of Stalin under Leonid Brezhnev, Shostakovich undoubtedly became more and more repelled at the compromises he had made over a long period of time. He appears to have sought through his reminiscences with Volkov to put the best face on this record by interpreting his music in such a way as to show his hostility toward the regime.
Politically speaking, he was a shattered man. Many with far greater political understanding and experience than he had had also made their confessions. Shostakovich had done something similar in the musical sphere (although he had been obliged to confess, not to fabricated acts of terror, but only to musical sins). Whereas lifelong revolutionaries like Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin had paid with their lives despite their capitulations to Stalin, Shostakovich had lived to regret his role.
If this explains at least in part the genesis and the content of “Testimony,” it still leaves us pondering what bearing these bitter and demoralizing experiences had on the work of the composer. And here the various critics of Volkov and MacDonald's views also have difficulty in explaining the musical contributions of Shostakovich.
Richard Taruskin, for instance, has pointed out, quite accurately, that MacDonald “followed up on Mr. Volkov's suggestions by fashioning anti-Stalinist readings of astounding blatancy and jejune specificity for all of Shostakovich's works.” By casting Shostakovich as “an omnipotent anti-Stalin, able at the height of the Stalinist terror to perform heroic acts of public resistance,” MacDonald and similar writers have established a “clamorous cult” around Shostakovich, Taruskin complains. This, however, leads Taruskin to question, not simply Volkov and MacDonald, but the greatness of the composer himself. The “‘Testimony'-inspired enthusiasm” for Shostakovich, writes Taruskin, “may prove ephemeral as the cold war, and the passions it aroused, fade into the past.” Elsewhere Taruskin, as well as other critics, have penned some disparaging or dismissive remarks about some of Shostakovich's most famous compositions, including the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.
Though less crudely than his antagonists, Taruskin is also making an equation of sorts between Shostakovich's “political” record and the merit of his music. Where MacDonald equates the “good” Shostakovich with great music, Taruskin suggests a compromised Shostakovich translates into compromised music.
Laurel Fay has put forward a slightly different view. Less skeptical of the power of the music, she makes the strange assertion that Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony “helped to demonstrate that, in the hands of a supremely talented composer, Socialist Realism was not inherently inimical to the creation of enduring works of art.”
Fay is making the serious error of equating compositions which proved acceptable to the Stalinist bureaucracy with “socialist realist” music. But musicians were able to work in more abstract forms than writers or artists, making it more difficult for the authorities to prescribe the “correct” music than the “correct” literature and art. The regime demanded tonal and accessible music. That does not mean, however, that all those who wrote tonal music, like Shostakovich, or Aaron Copland and Kurt Weill, for that matter, were exponents of socialist realism.
There are also critics who reject the attempt to mechanically equate political opposition to the greatness of Shostakovich, but only by completely divorcing the music from its social and political context. Bernard Holland put forward this view in a recent column in the New York Times entitled, “Great Music Isn't Necessarily Made by Great People.”
Holland claims the problem “begins with a need to find that a maker of beautiful things is also a moral person. Artists are not necessary good people at all.... It is hard to call Shostakovich's life tragic, at least any more tragic than your own. Terrifying and stressful a lot of it was, but tragedy requires an imposing person brought down by fate and bad decisions. Shostakovich was more a victim; I don't think he rises to the needed stature.... Indeed, the wrenching anguish in so many of his pieces ... is perhaps a composer wondering how much he really likes himself.”
The proposition that great art is not necessarily the product of “good people” is a banality which tells us next to nothing. The issue isn't whether Beethoven, Mozart or Shostakovich were “good people,” a phrase that can mean almost anything. We need to know how their art reflected the world in which they lived, whether they were able to distill into their music powerful human emotions, historically specific as well as universal human experiences.
This brings us to the basic issue which is being ignored by virtually all of the warring musicologists in the Shostakovich debate. The greatness of Shostakovich is not a function of his political views or his personal courage. It is bound up with his ability—not necessarily consciously—to reflect the great struggles of his time, to find the musical language, in abstract, personal and emotional terms, through which to express not only his personal travail, but that of many millions of others.
No music or art exists in a vacuum, and the suggestion of Mr. Holland that Shostakovich was simply expressing his feelings about himself tells us very little. It could perhaps be argued that Richard Strauss was able, to some degree, to isolate himself during the years of the Third Reich and to continue to compose some enduringly beautiful music.
Shostakovich had no such option. He was inescapably caught up with the big political events of the day. Holland's claim that the composer's life, in which he saw close family members and many of his closest artistic friends and colleagues perish at the hands of Stalinism, is no “more tragic than your own,” is frankly somewhat callous and ignorant. Yes, there was tragedy involved, the tragedy of the dashed hopes associated with the Russian Revolution. This is not the only explanation of Shostakovich's greatness, but it cannot be ignored in any consideration of his work.
It is precisely because Shostakovich's career is so inextricably linked to the history of the Soviet Union that the great majority of critics have such difficulty with the subject. They are otherwise knowledgeable, but not on this score, and many of them tie themselves into knots attempting to explain the man and his music.
Most of the competing assessments of Shostakovich all tend to take one thing for granted. Whatever their other differences, they equate Stalinism with Bolshevism, and generally regard Stalin as the logical follower of Lenin and the leader of “communism.”
If Stalinism were the same as Bolshevism, then of course there would have been no reason for the Stalinist regime to wipe out all the Bolsheviks—even many who no longer articulated any opposition. This historical fact is crucial to an understanding of Shostakovich's creative life, because the composer was part of the generation that suffered so much and whose early hopes for the future were crushed by the parasitic bureaucracy represented by Stalin. It is this disillusionment, and how Shostakovich was able to express often contradictory moods and feelings out of the experience, that gives his music a special significance.
To read much of what has recently been written on Shostakovich, one would never guess that the Russian Revolution had a vast and positive impact on the arts, including music, in its first decade. Experimentation was encouraged, along with the aim of bringing music to the masses. Tickets for the opera, symphonic and chamber concerts were distributed free or at nominal charge to workers, students and soldiers, who replaced the former elite audiences of pre-revolutionary times. A conductorless orchestra (a precursor of sorts of today's world famous Orpheus Chamber Orchestra) was formed in Moscow in 1922, an artistic council of players replacing the conductor, with issues of interpretation and technique resolved through rehearsal.
At the same time, after the successful end of the Civil War and the threat of foreign intervention, contacts with advanced and progressive trends in the West were resumed. Composers who visited the Soviet Union in its early years included Paul Hindemith, Alban Berg and Darius Milhaud. Berg's Wozzeck and Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf were performed in the USSR in the late 1920s. Jazz also flourished.
This was the atmosphere in which Shostakovich came of age, musically speaking. He achieved immediate fame with his First Symphony, completed as his graduation piece from the Leningrad Conservatory when he was 19 years old. Shostakovich assimilated the latest trends in music. He worked with both modernist techniques as well as more accessible and traditional ones. He also collaborated with other figures, such as the well known dramatist Vsevolod Meyerhold, for whom he composed music for a production of Mayakovsky's play The Bedbug in 1930.
The composer did not join the Communist Party until he was well into his 50s. He was not involved in the bitter political struggle between the Stalinists and the opposition within the Bolshevik Party. He was certainly never a Trotskyist. Eleven years old at the time of the Russian Revolution, he had been reared in a liberal and progressive family, a family which had rejected religious superstition and embraced the values of the Enlightenment. The young composer was undoubtedly influenced by the great hopes aroused by the Revolution. It is not surprising that he may have preferred not to dwell on these hopes when he spoke to Volkov 50 years later, but there is sufficient evidence in “Testimony” of the impact of these years. He speaks favorably, for instance, of Aleksandr Voronsky, the revolutionary art critic and supporter of the Trotskyist Left Opposition. Marshal Tukhachevksy, the leader of the Red Army who perished in the purges in 1937, was extremely close to Shostakovich up to the time he was executed by Stalin. Many of Shostakovich's colleagues, such as Meyerhold, had been close to Trotsky during the 1920s.
The significance of the denunciation of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk can only be appreciated against this backdrop. The shallowness of so much that has been written in relation to the subject is apparent when one considers the circumstances—both Shostakovich's career up to that point, as well as the political context—under which the opera was attacked.
In January 1936 Bolshevik leaders Kamenev and Zinoviev, the men whom Stalin relied upon during Lenin's final illness to isolate Trotsky and prepare his consolidation of power, were already in prison. About six months later they were displayed at the first of the Moscow show trials, where they recited their bogus confessions and were then shot on Stalin's orders. In the next year the Stalinist terror reached its peak, with the arrest or execution of all the major figures who had led the Revolution.
Lady Macbeth had been a huge success in the USSR for nearly two years when it was suddenly denounced. While it is true that the bureaucracy was stepping up its criticism of experimental and avant-garde techniques such as those employed in this opera, more than Stalin's musical evaluation was involved. It is also likely that the opera's treatment of the police and of police repression, among other themes, struck Stalin as highly inappropriate in this period immediately before the Moscow trials.
Shostakovich escaped with his life. Undoubtedly his musical prominence helped him. At the same time, he was shattered by the experience, and spent most of the rest of his life trying to stay out of political trouble while continuing his composing.
He may have adapted himself to the status quo politically, but it would be very wrong to conclude that this meant at the same time a capitulation to the doctrine of socialist realism. This dogma was part of the reaction against the ideals and principles of the Russian Revolution. Dictating that only “optimistic” themes could be developed by the artist, it became a weapon used by the bureaucracy to strangle any independent thought and artistic creation. Above all socialist realism demanded dishonesty instead of creative integrity. It demanded that the artist churn out works devoid of sincerity and independent expression. From this standpoint, socialist realism was just as much a parody and antithesis of Marxism, just as much in opposition to the ideals and principles of the Russian Revolution, as the contradiction-in-terms of “socialism in one country.”
Shostakovich found a way to create music which by no means can be reduced or equated to socialist realism. He fought to maintain his independence as a creative artist. He above all insisted on authenticity of feeling, not duplicity. This did not mean, however, a turn away from composing for a broad audience. The Soviet composer found this audience not by devaluing his work, however, but by writing music of great passion, complexity and emotional depth. There were others who composed trite pieces to meet the immediate needs of the regime. Shostakovich was not one of them.
Musicologist Joseph Horowitz perhaps comes closest to bringing out the nature of Shostakovich's art among the many who have written on the subject when he declares that “The Soviet pressure cooker shattered Shostakovich's nerves and, doubtless, shortened his life. But Stalinism may be said to have more inflamed than suppressed his creative gift. With its mournful austerity, its vicious ferocity, its programmatic clues, his music conveyed his own denunciations: of state tyranny of the persecution of Jews, of the suppression of the human spirit. He suffered and testified.”
SHORTENED LIFE----HE LIVED INTO HIS NINETIES.
“Like Beethoven in his paeans to liberty, Shostakovich was a moral bulwark or scourge,” Horowitz writes. There is indeed some parallel, although Horowitz does not comment on it, between Beethoven's embrace of the French Revolution and Shostakovich's relationship to the Russian Revolution, and their subsequent disillusion with Napoleon and Stalin.
To call Shostakovich a “moral beacon,” as Horowitz does, may perhaps be an overstatement. His music, however, stood for more than the composer as an individual. It did have a moral aspect.
Horowitz writes of “the pact Shostakovich forged with a great audience.” The basis of this pact was a shared experience: that of the early hopes of the Russian Revolution, their rapid disappearance under a regime with many political similarities to that of Hitler, and yet the determination of the Soviet people to defend their country, and to defend what remained of the achievements of their Revolution, against the Nazi invaders. There were limits to Shostakovich's demoralization during these years. He was able, in such works as the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, to articulate the feelings of those who felt it was necessary to fight Hitler without loving Stalin.
There is something else that made the Soviet audience “great.” In addition to the longstanding Russian musical tradition, there was the influence of the October 1917 Revolution described above. It produced a profound cultural awakening within the masses, an awakening that could inspire and sustain great art. The existence of a mass audience for classical music, as well as poetry and other art forms, reflected this awakening, and was the cultural equivalent of the economic conquests of the Revolution that Stalinism at this point had not yet destroyed.
The Fifth and Seventh Symphonies are monumental works, partly programmatic in the case of the Seventh, which evoke images of struggle, suffering and triumph. The Sixth and Ninth Symphonies, on the other hand, while lighter works, which met with some disappointment in official Soviet circles because they did not conform to the “heroic” image then attached mechanically to the composer, are no less beautiful and rewarding.
It is nothing short of amazing that Shostakovich was able to produce the Fifth through the Ninth Symphonies, as well as the first five string quartets, in the tragic years between his first denunciation in 1936 and his second in 1948. This was only possible because he fought in the only way he knew how, and this does give his work an “oppositional” aspect.
Between 1948 and Stalin's death in 1953 Shostakovich, though under constant official pressure, continued to compose. Some of his greatest works date from this period, even though he held back their performance in many cases because he feared the official reaction. The Fourth and Fifth Quartets were written in the late 1940s but not performed publicly until after Stalin's death. The same is true of the famous First Violin Concerto. The Tenth Symphony, one of the composer's greatest works, was completed in the months following Stalin's death, but its origins probably date from 1951, during the same period in which he was composing his 24 Preludes and Fugues for Piano.
Certainly not everything that Shostakovich wrote was a masterpiece. There were also some, but not many, works composed on order for the bureaucracy, like Song of the Forests, one of the few pieces which could more justifiably be said to conform to socialist realism. The Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies, programmatic works entitled “The Year 1905” and “The Year 1917,” were written in 1957 and 1960 respectively. While still conveying the composer's enormous talent, they lack the depth of many of his other compositions, and sound as if they were less deeply felt by Shostakovich himself.
In the last decade of his life this contradictory figure, torn by doubts and depression, composed his last three symphonies and his last quartets, all masterpieces. The 13th Symphony, entitled “Babi Yar,” is based on the poems of Yevgeny Yevtushenko indicting anti-Semitism. The Fourteenth, another symphony for vocal soloists, is dedicated to British composer Benjamin Britten and utilizes the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire and Rainer Maria Rilke, on the subject of early or unjust death. The Fifteenth and final symphony is one of Shostakovich's most affecting and at the same time mysterious compositions. Including musical quotations from Rossini and Richard Wagner, Shostakovich also weaves in many autobiographical gestures, including the use of the DSCH motto (the notes D-E flat-C-B, corresponding to the abbreviation of the composer's name).
The 50 years of composition between Shostakovich's First Symphony and his final works, including the Fifteenth String Quartet (1974) and Viola Sonata (1975) are, in terms of the quantity and quality of this work, without any parallel in the twentieth century. Shostakovich the man cowered in the face of Stalinism. Given his lack of political perspective, that is not surprising. But he did not capitulate to socialist realism, nor did he succumb to despair and turn away from his audience. He expressed the enormous contradictions of his time, and he wrote music that will live forever.
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