Thursday, September 25, 2014

On A Lighter Note

After my rant in the last post I thought I'd post some lighthearted street shots. I try to be as inconspicuous as possible when I'm out shooting. Sometimes I try to make eye contact, but not for any of these below. I was just caught red handed.




Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The MURDER of Klinghoffer

This is a rant.

To understand the background read this.

The Metropolitan Opera in New York City has scheduled performances of this opera which was enabled with a gift of millions of dollars from an unnamed donor (the Met refuses to divulge the name). I strongly suspect it is Qatar. The Met's director, Peter Gelb - who is a scion of the Gelb family, a liberal minded Jewish family of NYC 'culture', ancestors of which also boast of being managers of the New York Times (need I say more?) - has remarked that this opera is a work of art with an important message.

From where I stand the message glorifies Palestinian terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro, an Italian ocean liner, and furthermore glorifies antisemitism, terror tactics, and the murder and desecration of a wheelchair bound Jewish man. How can this be considered a work of art with an important message?

I attended a rally at Lincoln Center yesterday to protest the staging of this travesty. The rally coincided with the first performance of the Metropolitan Opera's season. The first performance of the Klinghoffer travesty will be on October 20th, and I suspect there will be a rally held at that time also. Speakers at the rally included quite a few influential New York politicians who vowed to pursue withdrawal of public funding for the Met Opera and Lincoln Center. I hope they are successful. I hope the Met Opera suffers a drastic financial loss as a result of their decision to stage this opera.

The Met had some serious negotiations this summer with its service unions, one of which was Local 802 of the Musician's Union. It was comforting to hear from an acquaintance whom I met at the rally that some of the musicians have enough of an ethical conscience to refuse to play the performances. It's a big risk for musicians to take action like that. I salute them.

I stayed at the rally for about three hours. A world record for me! Shot lots of images, so many that I filled one and a half 16gb cards, another world record for me. Here's a few of the images.