Friday, April 21, 2017

The BPO's Friday morning concert starring Natasha Paremski

The Buffalo Philharmonic concert this morning featured the young pianist Natasha Paremski. She was terrific in Beethoven's Piano concerto 3. From the first chords, I was struck by the bold clarity of her playing. Bought one of her CDs at intermission. I would have liked to hear the entire piece again, as I found my attention wandering at several points. Was there something slightly mechanical about  the  way she played, or is it the concerto itself?

A short piece on the program, titled Starsplitter, was by local born young composer Phillip Rothman, who was in the audience. It was a wall of sound, and we liked it, though I couldn't exactly discern much form. But I would hear it again.

Liked Kodaly's Dances of Galanta -- nice warm sound. However, I didn't think it has the earthy gypsy-inspired sound I want in folk dances. These were orchestral folk dances, folk dances for PhDs.
 
And conductor Joann Faletta -- she must give herself and the whole orchestra a good dose of caffeine (or something) when they play. She always achieves a bright, clear tone. With quick tempos.

Because of a scheduling problem, we had to move our Saturday night tickets to this morning for this concert. At 10:30 on a Friday morning, the audience was mostly in their 60s, 70s, and up. Kleinhans  was perhaps two-thirds full. Obviously, these were people who don't like driving at night, or driving into the city at night. It's good that the BPO accommodates this audience with 10:30 morning concerts on Fridays. But it's an awkward time in some ways, with the concert finishing at 12:40, leading to a late lunch. And I missed the little bit of diversity in the audiences that we see on Saturday nights.

Monday, April 3, 2017

How I understand the Russia-Trump thing -- a work in progress

I thought it might be useful to write down what I know about the current state of the Russian hacking of our election, and the possible links between the Russians and the Trump campaign. It's all very complicated. I usually try not to spend too much time on this political stuff (life is short), but I have had a feeling of foreboding about this, as if something terrible will come of this, one way or another. So I'd like to write it down, and be able to revise it, and look back on it, to see how my understanding changes. If friends are interested, they are welcome to make suggestions to correct factual mistakes or argue with my suppositions and announce what a naive fool I probably am.

1. Elements of Russian intelligence agencies, or their surrogates, "hacked" the presidential election campaign of the United States by (a) generating thousands of false and defamatory stories about Hillary Clinton and her campaign and spreading the stories on a number of blogs and media web sites (usually conservative and far-right sites); (b) using individual "trolls" with fake profiles who logged onto media sites to incite Trump supporters and spread falsehoods; (c) penetrating networks and Web accounts of Democratic and Republican Party staffers. In the case of the hacked Democratic party accounts (such as those of John Podesta) they relayed possibly embarrassing information to WikiLeaks and other outlets. The hacking attacks began perhaps a year before the election (I'm uncertain of the timing). This is my understanding of what our own intelligence agencies (the FBI, NSA) have found and reported. I believe them, or at least, I see no reason not to believe them.

2. It's significant to me that the FBI has reported that Republican Party networks were also breached by the Russians, but that the Russians did not visibly act on whatever information they obtained there. The Russians had a pretty good idea of what Republicans were thinking and doing in private. That was apparently enough for them. Near the end of World War II, when Stalin met Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta to discuss the final stages and aftermath of the war, Stalin was well informed about the Roosevelt-Churchill strategy thanks to informants within the American and British governments. The Russians apparently continue to be very good at this sort of thing.

3. From the time of the initial revelations about Russian cyber attacks and attempts to harm the Clinton campaign, I've had two concerns about the FBI narrative that Russia actively worked against the Clinton campaign.

a. Why would the Russians attempt to specifically harm the campaign of the likely winner? At the time they were hacking and supposedly posting thousands of fake stories against Clinton, Clinton was the strong favorite to win the election. If their espionage was discovered by the US, and if Clinton won the presidency, they would have then faced a president much more antagonistic than Obama.

b. How could the Russians be sure of what they would be getting if Trump was elected? They surely understood that Trump is an uninformed, erratic man who seems to believe and express falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Why would they want such a man in charge of thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at Russian cities?

4. The overall Russian intentions and strategy are not entirely clear. Under Vladimir Putin's direction, Russia has been conducting a political, cyber, and military campaign to weaken NATO and the West, and to expand Russian influence in Europe and the Middle East, for about ten years. Their hacking of our election may simply be a brazen continuation of that campaign. Perhaps they saw supporting Trump (a divisive, anti-democratic man with authoritarian tendencies) as the best way to accomplish their strategy. There's too much we don't know.

5. Yet, the Russian actions, as presented by James Comey, the director of the FBI, amount to espionage intended to harm the Clinton campaign, and to aid the Trump campaign. It is hard to imagine that Comey and the other American intelligence heads would publicly make these pronouncements unless they were dead certain.


6. The detail, scope, and penetration of the Russian campaign should be thoroughly investigated and published. I believe the FBI and NSA and Senate Intelligence committees are conducting that investigation. (The House intelligence committee is headed by an apparently partisan Republican, Devin Nunes, who has sadly discredited himself; it's unlikely that committee will get far.)

7. Aside from seeking to understand the scope of the Russian penetration of our electoral process, there is this question: did members of the Trump campaign, or Trump  himself, collude with the Russians in the effort to harm Hillary Clinton's campaign? I assume the FBI and Senate investigations will explore that question. There were financial and political contacts between members of the Trump campaign (Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn) and Russian oligarchs and Kremlin media. There have been reports of meetings between Trump representatives and Russian officials prior to the inauguration.This rises to the level of circumstantial evidence of collusion. That Trump himself expresses a high regard for Vladimir Putin is a possibly related matter.

8. However, there is currently no direct evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian intelligence agencies, at least none that has been made public.

9. My own speculation: it does not seem likely that Trump or his campaign directly colluded with the Russians in a deal to get himself elected. Whatever else he is, it is hard to fathom that anyone would think that such a deal could stay secret, and that he would not realize he was placing himself in impossible danger. More likely to me is that Trump himself or members of his campaign had willfully entered into financial or political ties with Russian oligarchs. Putin has established a system of exerting influence through wealthy associates who form useful relationships with influential non-Russian partners. They basically offer big profits and money to the non-Russians, achieving their acquiescence, compliance, and support. It's plausible that these connections and relationships helped Russian intelligence get easier access to American electoral resources and networks -- the job of the hackers was thus made easier thanks to unwitting American partners.

10. My own further speculation: the Russians under Putin probably see their cyber hacking as no big deal. They are simply using the tools at their disposal to push the Americanskys and get a desired result, and they assume that we do the same things. That they successfully hacked our system, and Donald Trump actually won the election, probably astounded them as much as it did many of us.