[Forster]

Aren't they being persecuted?

I'd say not. Persecution is such a loaded term, I wouldn't use it.

 

[59540]

You're being coy. How cute.

Do you believe in human rights? Where do you get such a notion? And if not, where do you get the idea that you have any business saying anything at all about Putin, Russia and Ukraine?

"Society" does already. I see nothing wrong in that - though I'd probably draw the line at punishing people just because they don't like the football team I support.

Why, if you had the power?

 

[59540]

I'd say not. Persecution is such a loaded term, I wouldn't use it.

Evasion. Loaded term is a loaded term.

Persecute: To oppress or harass with ill-treatment, especially because of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or beliefs.

Persecution: The act or practice of persecuting on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or beliefs that differ from those of the persecutor.

I was told earlier that such persecution is fine if it achieved the desired anti-Putin ends.

 

[CnC Bartok]

There's a hell of a lot of intellectual explanation, posturing, and half-baked justification for what's behind this current situation, or "whataboutism", as it has been so succinctly named, going on here. I find it immensely disturbing to read these things, when not only is a sovereign state being wiped off the map, but also our very way of life and even existence, is being threatened.

 

[Forster]

Do you believe in human rights? Where do you get such a notion? And if not, where do you get the idea that you have any business saying anything at all about Putin, Russia and Ukraine?

I asked you first. This is important. Your habit is to interrogate everyone else and yield nothing about yourself. A page or two back, I took the trouble to respond comprehensively to one of your posts. I guess it was sub par as I've not had any kind of reply.

I got my idea of human rights from a mix of places, including my mother. She certainly said it's ok to bad mouth such as Putin. But as I already claimed, it doesn't matter what my thoughts about human rights are if I transgress the UK laws that govern where I live.

Evasion. Loaded term is a loaded term.

It's not an evasion. I try to avoid using loaded terms, though I dare say I fail miserably.

Frankly, I couldn't care less about how the classical music world does or doesn't respond to the crisis in Ukraine when I've got so much else to care about. It's difficult to tear oneself away from the daily horrors being visited upon Ukraine, and wishing that the pandemic, which has made so many people so unhappy, was not being followed quite so quickly by another global disaster.

And the climate crisis hasn't gone away either.

 

[59540]

There's a hell of a lot of intellectual explanation, posturing, and half-baked justification for what's behind this current situation, or "whataboutism", as it has been so succinctly named, going on here. I find it immensely disturbing to read these things, when not only is a sovereign state being wiped off the map, but also our very way of life and even existence, is being threatened.

I recall hearing the same rhetoric just before the war in Iraq, a decade after the war in Kuwait.

I root for Ukraine, would love to see Putin removed from the scene (although I'm not so sure he'd be replaced by much better)...but just as with Iraq and Kuwait and Afghanistan and Chechnya and the Crimea it's not my fight. If it's yours, go fight it.

And the climate crisis hasn't gone away either.

OK I think the thread has run its course now.

 

[Sid James]

Again we are treated to a glutinous fog of an invented moral equivalency between the 1930s West and Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. As only one example of the deadly ferocity of Stalin's Soviet Union (somewhat equal with Hitler's Night of the Long Knives), is this account of the deadly purge of the Soviet army in the later 1930s....

"[O]ut of eighty members of the 1934 Military Soviet only five were left in September 1938. All eleven Deputy Commissars for Defense were eliminated. Every commander of a military district...had been executed by the summer of 1938. Thirteen out of fifteen army commanders, fifty-seven out of eighty-five corps commanders, 110 put of 195 divisional commanders. 220 out of 406 brigade commanders, were executed. But the greatest numerical loss was borne in the Soviet officer corps from the rank of colonel downward and extending to company commander level." (Alan Clark: Barbarossa)

I am unaware of similar spasms of domestic murder committed by the West in those years (or ever). This zeal to establish a moral equivalence between Russia and the West reflects a profound ignorance of history. Odd that the perceived persecution of Netrebko and Gergiev has spawned such a torrent of (as Woodduck notes) spurious WhatAboutism seeking to conflate the relative insignificant discomforting of N and G or the misguided appeasement by the West with the real horrors of pre-war Russia and Germany and Putin's continuing criminality.

We don't have to go back to the 1930's. The USA has been involved in many invasions, and supported insurgencies and coups which have destablised legitimate governments and similarly crossed the line of national sovereignty. Often, their allies are just as bad - or arguably worse - than their enemies. How about a historical list of people they helped put into power? It could include Mobutu, Pinochet, Suharto. I can go on.

In these matters, the USA is amoral. I can give further examples and discuss them in depth, but won't, because then this thread could escalate to a full on political debate.

So, who's doing the so-called WhatAboutism? Who's casting the "glutinous fog," whatever that is? Seriously, you should think of a career in public relations.

 

[mmsbls]

The last several pages have been devoid of musical content. We have repeatedly requested that members not post purely political content. The thread is closed.