German festival excludes pro-Russian founder
NewsThe Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival has informed its founder, the pianist and conductor Justus Frantz, that he is no longer welcome at its events.
Frantz, 79, has continued to perform in Russia since the Ukraine invasion of February 2022. He also served on the jury of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
His much-repeated argument is that music should be a bridge, not a barrier, between nations.
And yet these competitions will doubtless still allow pro-Israeli conductors. Rank hypocrisy, as ever
Russia is the sole aggressor in an unprovoked war on a peaceful, sovereign nation.
Israel is… what, in your opinion?
But I hope they will boycott antisemites like you from coming.
Er, as Zelensky for one would agree (and has said), Israel is more like Ukraine in this analogy and Hamas Russia (indeed Russia has been helping Hamas and its sponsor Iran). But sure, don’t worry yourself about the women who were raped and massacred or the babies beheaded, cooked in ovens or even raped – they’re only Israeli.
Completely unrelated and irrelevant issue
So, when the US and UK presumably prevented the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, according to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, they were doves of peace?
Artists performing in the US and UK, have you done a body count?
In spite of the current war, there will eventually be a close German/Russian alliance. As Angela Merkel repeatedly stressed, they have too many common economic interests to follow the USA’s line of isolating Russia. The only question is how long it will be before this alliance is reformed. The war probably has about two years to go before a stalemate cease fire is declared leaving Russia with the occupied territories. The new alliances will probably be well underway about 5 years after that, I would guess.
As BRICS strengthens, the EU will increasingly play a middle role and take advantage of both sides. This will frustrate the USA, but it will not be able to indefinitely sabotage EU/Russian cooperation with things like NATO expansion and war, or even blowing up pipelines.
In the meantime, we will concern ourselves with the trivialities of what musicians work where. Human nature with its invidious attachment to groups, takes great satisfaction in ostracism, blacklisting, and shunning. Directed toward Putin’s terror state, it becomes easy to rationalize.
Lol, no. BRICS is dead in the water. India and China don’t see eye to eye on anything and the Chinese economy is mired in a debt and consumer confidence crisis, just as a demographic time bomb is blowing up its entire job market and social fabric.
Russia is a mafioso petrostate. It has nothing to offer besides oil and gas. And we in the West need less and less of that with every passing year.
Focus on your day job, William.
If you have oil and gas, then you are incredibly attractive for an indefinite number of countries. Just saying.
Da. As smart comrade Serge says: flatulence is sexy. Serge and Ivan largest gas producer of village.
I think that pretty much sums it up. Realpolitik will win out.
Realpolitik died finally with Kissinger last week. As always, realpolitik fails to understand that people other than great powers also have agency. Eastern Europeans have agency. Vietnamese have agency. Black South Africans have agency. Ukrainians have agency. Etc. etc. This is why over and over and over again adherents of realpolitik failed to predict and prepare for some of the most seminal events of the last 100 years, from losing the Vietnam war to the end of Apartheid to the collapse of the Soviet Union to the sheer willpower of Ukrainians who refuse to again be Muscovite colonial appendages. All this self important realist nonsense by Osborne and Sayer will likewise prove wrong in the medium term.
PS: realists don’t exist. Amoral cynics just don’t want to admit they are amoral cynics.
One is used to incoherent drivel from Osborne , but “will not be able to indefintely sabotage EU/Russian cooperation with things like NATO expansion and war, or even blowing up pipelines ” goes beyond anything one can expect from Osborne’s very limited intellect and/or grasp of reality
What happened to “Russia will defeat even NATO”?
https://slippedisc.com/2015/05/ukraine-opera-house-is-threatened-by-mass-mobilisation/
For ease of reading, Mr Osborne wrote what follows in 2015 about the already ongoing invasion of Ukraine by russian proxies : “Yes, it will go on and on. There can be no military solution. If it comes to all out war, Russia will defeat even NATO, but that will still not be a solution. The solution is probably something along the lines of a long-term plan to bring Russia into the EU”.
A silly assertion then, which looks now utterly ridiculous.
Russia can’t defeat Ukraine and, in a direct confrontation with NATO, the barbarian horde which calls itself the russian army would be crushed.
Russia was already a corrupt, bloody dictatorship back in 2015 and the idea of bringing it into the EU was, well, almost as absurd as it is today.
But Mr Osborne is still lecturing us with aplomb. Please keep to musicology, that’s what you’re good at, and stay away from politics…
Interesting responses and more than I expected, though as usual deluded by blind partisanship that ends in wishful thinking about the war. The confusion is understandable because there is a huge amount of propaganda on both sides about the war and its progress.
The comments about Putin’s oil and gas fueling a bipolar world are correct along with the enormous populations of China and India, to say nothing of China’s massive industrial capacity.)
Just one additional note, NATO (a sort of euphemism for the USA) is fighting a proxy war against Russia and has been since 2014 (or earlier if one counts Georgia.) Russia will likely win because Ukraine (the NATO proxy) will not be able to break through the defenses Russia has constructed to guard the occupied regions. (It’s similar to the WWII Battle of Kursk for those who know the history.) To do so would require at minimum airpower that the West will not provide.
The inability to defeat Putin is saddening to me because I think he is a monster. The end result from a military stand point will be analogous to the Korean War, a vicious back and forth that will end in stalemate.
In reality, I think this is what the USA expected from the start. The goal is to isolate Russia from Europe with a long war. From that perspective, the USA is already victorious, though as I mention, the approach will fail to some degree in the long term because Germany will not lose sight of Russian gas.
(And of course, Brettermeier, the great defender of German honor, should hang on to this post in case he needs to bring it up 8 year later as with my 2015 post.)
This is funny, coming from an ultracrepidarian like yourself.
“(And of course, Brettermeier, the great defender of German honor, should hang on to this post in case he needs to bring it up 8 year later as with my 2015 post.)”
So you have learned a valuable lesson about the Internet today, it seems. You are most welcome.
“The comments about Putin’s oil and gas fueling a bipolar world are correct along with the enormous populations of China and India, to say nothing of China’s massive industrial capacity.)”
You get funnier with every new comment.
Russia doesn’t have the economic or military wherewithal to create another pole to rival the US. With its full invasion of Ukraine it has now made itself a vassal of China. Meanwhile, China has epic amounts of excess industrial capacity, but fewer and fewer workers to staff it with every passing year, while needing to feed more and more retirees, and what capacity it has is too expensive compared to its southeast Asian neighbors. Meanwhile also, Chinese municipalities are deeply overindebted and will need a bailout that will make the US bailouts in 2009 look like kindergarten games. Chinese economic growth has ended. It will not replace the US as the no. 1 economy anytime in the foreseeable future. Its demographics and politics mitigate against that.
India sees China as a rival, not a partner. And more and more countries in the global south are waking up to the reality that “belt and road” is a neocolonial debt trap.
A new bipolar world order remains an anti-Western academic pipedream.
Mr Osborn,
You are correct about the future German/Russian cooperation.
You are incorrect about war. Ukraine has lost.
See my second post above.
Many of your assessments have been spot on, however Mr. Osborne, your speculation and broad stroke pronouncements on this topic smacks of Neville Chamberlain-style acquiescence and pandering to a mantra of peace at any price. Thankfully the Ukrainian people are not yet ready to abandon ship, and whether or not America has the full wear withal to continue their material backing, the rest of non-reactionary Europe will step in even more to assist their grievously victimized target of Putin.
I wish it were true that European countries would step in, but they already recognize the futility of the situation. The end result will be a mistrustful rapprochement with an eye to Russian energy. The most frustrating thing is that this whole war was so easily avoidable if we would have had proper leadership in the 90s.
Europe doesn’t need Russian energy anymore. The German experience last winter, when energy shortages and resulting price spikes failed to materialize, cemented that realization. It will need even less Russian energy with every passing year, as more and more users switch to renewables and away from oil and gas, and as the remaining gas users expand their use of Qatari and American LNG, for which new terminals have been built in the meantime. The West doesn’t need Russia anymore. That ship has sailed. Indeed, some would argue that the timing of Putin’s invasion was a kind of “now or never” situation, as he was likely aware that he would never again have as much leverage over European energy markets as in early 2021. It’s all downhill from here for Russian influence.
Wake up, Michael. The battle between the two Vlads was over a long time ago. The neo-con pandering to a mantra of war at any price waged by proxies of America and its obedient vassal state UK was the downfall of Zelensky. He should have accepted the late Henry Kissinger’s famous dictum: “To be an enemy of US is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”
Some additional info for this discussion. (Forgive me if I do not bother with the low intellectual niveau of some of the comments.) See this article in the WSJ entitled Time To Stop the Magical Thinking About Russia’s Defeat.
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/its-time-to-end-magical-thinking-about-russias-defeat-f6d0b8de
Here is a vlog that summarizes a lot of pertinent information. Especially important is an article in Der Spiegel that shows the German Realpolitik that has already evolved, such as Germany bypassing embargos against Russia by shipping parts through other countries. It’s a sign of what’s to come with Germany when the war eventually winds down:
https://www.tiktok.com/@jeffrey1012/video/7311002872101997832
These sorts of reports will continue to become more common as the reality of the situation settles in, that barring some highly unforeseeable event(s) its highly unlikely the occupied regions will not be retaken. And again, this does not make me happy.
The one major missing issue in these reports is that the USA has already had a significant temporary victory in isolating Russia from Europe. Germany, however, will eventually undo that. It has too much to gain from a German/Russian alliance.
A typo in my last comment which should read: “…that barring some highly unforeseeable event(s) its highly unlikely the occupied regions will be retaken.”
Interestingly, given the release of Maestro, Justus’ real claim to fame is that he’s the only person to have slept with both Bernstein, and Bernstein’s daughter…
And now sleeps with Putin.
The Germans got it right with the Israel-Hamas affair. Now, then can go back to being idiots again for the next 10 years.
How very kind of Russia to take pity on such a 3rd rate pianist.
Mr Frantz is a very silly man. He sent me a miserable, self-justifying email (rich in name dropping – his ‘friends’..Karajan, Rostropovich, Menuhin, etc) when he joined the jury of the state run Tchaikovsky Piano Competition. Nought to do with money of course but ‘in the interests of peace’. Bollocks..