concert review: San Francisco Symphony
Oct. 25th, 2025 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacDavid Afkham, a German conductor new to SFS, led two wildly unalike Russian works, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto (with Sergey Khachatryan) and Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony. Amazing that only 65 years separate them.
Actually they do have one thing in common: when they were new, people who disliked them derided them as vulgar. But there was nothing vulgar about Friday's performances. Though there's plenty of vigor in the Tchaikovsky concerto, the overall mien of the piece was soft and gentle, perhaps taking a cue from the soloist, who leaned so far in that direction that the high notes in his cadenza disappeared off the edge of audibility. (And his encore was a soft and gentle Armenian lament that went on for quite a while.)
Afkham did something similar with the Shostakovich, at least in the slower, first and fourth movements. The stark tragedy of these parts in other performances vanished entirely, and it was ... soft and gentle. This didn't stop the more vicious parts of the first movement from being firm enough, or the two scherzi from being fairly caustic. The finale leaned towards the cheerful, but gave full value to the enigmatic ending, where - as with the Fourth but none of the intervening works - Shostakovich refuses to supply an upbeat conclusion.
The result of this combination of fast parts played in a usual manner and slow parts purged of the strongly emotional was an Eighth that felt entirely different from any performance of the work I'd heard before. Weirdly revelatory.
Actually they do have one thing in common: when they were new, people who disliked them derided them as vulgar. But there was nothing vulgar about Friday's performances. Though there's plenty of vigor in the Tchaikovsky concerto, the overall mien of the piece was soft and gentle, perhaps taking a cue from the soloist, who leaned so far in that direction that the high notes in his cadenza disappeared off the edge of audibility. (And his encore was a soft and gentle Armenian lament that went on for quite a while.)
Afkham did something similar with the Shostakovich, at least in the slower, first and fourth movements. The stark tragedy of these parts in other performances vanished entirely, and it was ... soft and gentle. This didn't stop the more vicious parts of the first movement from being firm enough, or the two scherzi from being fairly caustic. The finale leaned towards the cheerful, but gave full value to the enigmatic ending, where - as with the Fourth but none of the intervening works - Shostakovich refuses to supply an upbeat conclusion.
The result of this combination of fast parts played in a usual manner and slow parts purged of the strongly emotional was an Eighth that felt entirely different from any performance of the work I'd heard before. Weirdly revelatory.
Database maintenance
Oct. 25th, 2025 08:42 am![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
mark posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceGood morning, afternoon, and evening!
We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)
I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.
Ta for now!
I really gotta point something out here
Oct. 24th, 2025 11:54 amsolarbirdI really, really, really gotta point something out here.
This “ballroom” Trump Shitstain the First says he’s building is 90,000 square feet, and is going to cost THREE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS.
Apparently. That’s what he says.
This is bullshit. He’s pocketing AT LEAST half of that money. Probably two-thirds, maybe 70%. I daresay probably 70%. Or who knows, all of it – but let’s say he’s actually going to build something and some part of the extorted “donations” will actually be spent doing so. It’s still bullshit, and he’s still pocketing most of the money.
How do I know this?
Because $300 million for 90,000 square feet is over $3330/square foot in construction cost. That’s absolutely batshit insane by any standard. The highest-end commercial construction in the US is under $1000/square foot. You’re telling me he’s going to spend over three times that?
I don’t fucking think so. It’s bullshit, and he’s keeping most of the money.
But if that’s not enough for you, consider this:
The most expensive commercial building EVER BUILT IN THE WORLD (according to Wikipedia’s list of most expensive buildings) is One Financial Centre in Hong Kong, which is, slightly ironically, two massive skyscrapers. It’s a combined two million square feet of floor space, mostly vertical, which adds assloads of cost. It is opulent as fuck and serves extremely high-end customers in an extremely wealthy city.
Excluding land costs (because shitstain has the land already), 1FC cost right around $3315/square foot to build.
Which is to say, slightly LESS than his fucking “ballroom.”
His ballroom will cost MORE per square foot than the most expensive luxury commercial construction project ever built.
Which is, again, bullshit.
He’s pocketing that money, and nobody should think for a moment otherwise.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
library books to read during long medical procedures
Oct. 24th, 2025 08:39 amcalimac(liable to be the first in a series)
Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (Norton, 2011)
A deconstruction of everything I learned at school about the mighty 19C transcontinental railroad system. First, as I knew well, they weren't transcontinental: they only ran west from places like Omaha and St. Louis. But though the existing system covered everywhere east of there, it wasn't continuous: different gauges, breaks between lines, made everything slow. The transcontinentals were supposed to pay for themselves with freight, but freight trains were irregular and ad hoc, and it was still cheaper to send goods by ship via Panama, even though there wasn't a canal there yet, so financing was precarious. The mighty financiers like C.P. Huntington spent their time bailing themselves out of disaster, and they knew nothing about running a railroad. Meanwhile the people who did run the railroad didn't know what they were doing either, and setting freight rates, which had such a big effect on development of the country, was a guesswork procedure. The main lesson of this long and overdetailed book is that everybody was incompetent, including senators: "In making a case for political compromise, one should avoid John Sherman. If Henry Clay was the Great Compromiser, John Sherman was the Not So Great Compromiser."
Martin Amis, The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017 (Knopf, 2018)
Trump? Yes, I picked up this book because I'd seen that in 2016 Amis reviewed Trump's latest book and compared it with the 30-year-old Art of the Deal, concluding even then "that in the last thirty years Trump, both cognitively and humanly, has undergone an atrocious decline." (But wait: did he write his own books? "We can be confident that Trump had something to do with their compilation: it very quickly emerges that he is one of nature's reluctant micromanagers.")
Other than that, to appreciate this book you have to be really interested in Bellow and Nabokov, and I'm not. (There's not much about Hitchens or Travolta, or Trump.)
Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (Norton, 2011)
A deconstruction of everything I learned at school about the mighty 19C transcontinental railroad system. First, as I knew well, they weren't transcontinental: they only ran west from places like Omaha and St. Louis. But though the existing system covered everywhere east of there, it wasn't continuous: different gauges, breaks between lines, made everything slow. The transcontinentals were supposed to pay for themselves with freight, but freight trains were irregular and ad hoc, and it was still cheaper to send goods by ship via Panama, even though there wasn't a canal there yet, so financing was precarious. The mighty financiers like C.P. Huntington spent their time bailing themselves out of disaster, and they knew nothing about running a railroad. Meanwhile the people who did run the railroad didn't know what they were doing either, and setting freight rates, which had such a big effect on development of the country, was a guesswork procedure. The main lesson of this long and overdetailed book is that everybody was incompetent, including senators: "In making a case for political compromise, one should avoid John Sherman. If Henry Clay was the Great Compromiser, John Sherman was the Not So Great Compromiser."
Martin Amis, The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017 (Knopf, 2018)
Trump? Yes, I picked up this book because I'd seen that in 2016 Amis reviewed Trump's latest book and compared it with the 30-year-old Art of the Deal, concluding even then "that in the last thirty years Trump, both cognitively and humanly, has undergone an atrocious decline." (But wait: did he write his own books? "We can be confident that Trump had something to do with their compilation: it very quickly emerges that he is one of nature's reluctant micromanagers.")
Other than that, to appreciate this book you have to be really interested in Bellow and Nabokov, and I'm not. (There's not much about Hitchens or Travolta, or Trump.)
Caves
Oct. 23rd, 2025 06:14 pmtravelswithkumaAfters muchs times goings places, ridings trains lots ofs places. Nows bears stays ins ands sleeps lots. Perhpas comes springs times bears wills haves mores to dos. zzzzzzzzsss
at least one war
Oct. 22nd, 2025 07:20 pmcalimacOf all the croggling statements to come out of the presidential mouth lately, the most astonishing is "We’ve never had a president that solved one war, not one war." That's so untrue.
In particular, in 1905 Theodore Roosevelt was the major figure "in bringing to an end the bloody war recently waged between two of the world's great powers, Japan and Russia." And for doing so, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. (The quote is from his prize citation.)
I'm actually inclined to give the occupant some credit for adjudicating a cease-fire in Gaza and the return of the surviving hostages - all along I've said, if Hamas wants to negotiate, they should return the hostages, then we'll talk; well, they've done it, so let's talk - even if his only motivation is the desire for his own prize. What are prizes for, if not to encourage people to perform acts that deserve them? If only he weren't starting more wars, some of them against Portland and Chicago, then he claims to be stopping, it might even be a net plus. Even though we've been in positions like this before in the Mid East, and it always came to nothing.
In particular, in 1905 Theodore Roosevelt was the major figure "in bringing to an end the bloody war recently waged between two of the world's great powers, Japan and Russia." And for doing so, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. (The quote is from his prize citation.)
I'm actually inclined to give the occupant some credit for adjudicating a cease-fire in Gaza and the return of the surviving hostages - all along I've said, if Hamas wants to negotiate, they should return the hostages, then we'll talk; well, they've done it, so let's talk - even if his only motivation is the desire for his own prize. What are prizes for, if not to encourage people to perform acts that deserve them? If only he weren't starting more wars, some of them against Portland and Chicago, then he claims to be stopping, it might even be a net plus. Even though we've been in positions like this before in the Mid East, and it always came to nothing.
SMOF News, volume 5, issue 8
Oct. 22nd, 2025 07:26 pmpetrea_mitchellBig con appearances maybe not worth it to studios in the very online age.
Bonus link this week is about saving a piece of sfnal history.
Bonus link this week is about saving a piece of sfnal history.
reimagining Górecki
Oct. 21st, 2025 12:57 pmcalimacWhen the composer Henryk Górecki died 15 years ago, I wrote a post largely about how I'd discovered his music. Excerpts:
Now DGK has sent me a scholarly (but readable) article on the history of the Third's reputation before the Zinman recording. It didn't have the wide renown of subsequent years, but no, it wasn't that obscure. It was played and commented on. True, some people hated it (and still do!) but it was generally praised and considered remarkable. I guess we just never came across those. Though in fact DGK tells me that he'd gone looking for the record after reading a review in Fanfare, the review magazine for fans of the truly esoteric in classical record collecting. I hadn't known of that alert, but it proves the point: there was awareness and praise of the work.
But the article makes the situation remind me even more forcibly of Tolkien. For, of course, there were lots of reviews of The Lord of the Rings when it first came out in 1954-55, and articles about it later; it just wasn't the widespread popular phenomenon it became after 1965. And, as with Górecki's Third, though there's an assumption that it was generally panned when new, that turns out not to be true. There's an article in the upcoming Tolkien Studies 21 - which is in press right now - called "Reconsidering the Early Critical Response to The Lord of the Rings" by Matthew Thompson-Handell, which reveals that the general early critical response to the book was quite favorable, even among some of the reviews which have gained a reputation as pans. The guy who wrote, "This is not a work which many adults will read through more than once"? That's taken totally out of context and does not express what he meant. Read Thompson-Handell's article and you'll see.
Sometime in the mid 1980s, DGK, explorer of new and unusual music, showed me an obscure LP he'd picked up out of random curiosity. Packaged as the soundtrack album to a French film called Police, it consisted in fact of a full recording of a modern Polish symphony for soprano and orchestra. Neither on the record album nor anywhere else that he looked was there much information to be had on the work or its composer, one Henryk Górecki. DGK was astonished and spellbound by the audacity and craft of this music, and, unlike with many of his passions, when he played it for me I was too. ... For years, this marvelous piece of music remained our secret shared passion that hardly anybody else had heard of, like The Lord of the Rings in its early days. When I began to collect CDs a few years later, I found a German import with this work on it, and bought it quickly. Imagine our astonishment, then, when in 1992 a new recording of it on Nonesuch, a well-known American classical label - conducted by David Zinman - became a monster hit and the toast of the classical world, the first contemporary work to reach the top of the classical charts. The musical equivalent of the Lord of the Rings paperbacks had hit the stands. Suddenly our obscure passion was the talk of the town.The resemblance with being an early Tolkien fan hit me forcibly, though I wasn't old enough to remember that personally. Of course, we didn't think we were literally the only people who knew this piece, but nobody we knew did and no critics we read mentioned it, so it remained our secret gem. And then, all of a sudden in 1992, as with Tolkien in 1965 its fame exploded and everybody, at least in the field, knew it and was talking about it all the time.
Now DGK has sent me a scholarly (but readable) article on the history of the Third's reputation before the Zinman recording. It didn't have the wide renown of subsequent years, but no, it wasn't that obscure. It was played and commented on. True, some people hated it (and still do!) but it was generally praised and considered remarkable. I guess we just never came across those. Though in fact DGK tells me that he'd gone looking for the record after reading a review in Fanfare, the review magazine for fans of the truly esoteric in classical record collecting. I hadn't known of that alert, but it proves the point: there was awareness and praise of the work.
But the article makes the situation remind me even more forcibly of Tolkien. For, of course, there were lots of reviews of The Lord of the Rings when it first came out in 1954-55, and articles about it later; it just wasn't the widespread popular phenomenon it became after 1965. And, as with Górecki's Third, though there's an assumption that it was generally panned when new, that turns out not to be true. There's an article in the upcoming Tolkien Studies 21 - which is in press right now - called "Reconsidering the Early Critical Response to The Lord of the Rings" by Matthew Thompson-Handell, which reveals that the general early critical response to the book was quite favorable, even among some of the reviews which have gained a reputation as pans. The guy who wrote, "This is not a work which many adults will read through more than once"? That's taken totally out of context and does not express what he meant. Read Thompson-Handell's article and you'll see.
They live and work among us
Oct. 20th, 2025 02:24 pmgaryomahaM received a text alert from work this weekend. It was addressed specifically to him, regarding some data system that was misbehaving. As per regulations, M, who represents the management side, contacted a partner on the technical side and they discussed what might be going on. Neither could quite figure it out but they agreed to track down the person who had issued the alert.
M got there first. "Hello (Alert Issuing Person) this is M. Can you tell me more about the problem?"
AIP: "Oh hi, M. I couldn't reach the person who is in charge of this so I called you, since you're in the staff directory and you have the same name as that person."
Wait, what? So John Doe is unavailable, but that's okay, I'll simply contact another person also named John Doe in this organization of thousands around the world, and maybe he can help.
This is so beyond M's and my life experiences that we are still shaking our heads.
AWS outage
Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 amalierak posting in dw_maintenanceDW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.
Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.
Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.
Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
concert review: SF Music Day
Oct. 19th, 2025 07:46 pmcalimacToday I did get up to the City early on. But as I didn't need to be there until 12.30 instead of 10.00, it was easier.
The topic was SF Music Day, an annual event I'd never heard of before. The promoters take over the Veterans Building for an afternoon, presenting 6 events (each slightly less than an hour) in each of three concert spaces in the building. Times are coordinated, so attendees can hop from one room to another, but I didn't. Most of the items in Herbst Theatre, the main space, were jazz-oriented, so I planted myself for the entire afternoon in the cavernous and echoing room on the second floor where the classical performers were. The acoustics were fine for the music, but it was difficult to make out any spoken words from anybody.
The highlights came at the end. Pianist Elizabeth Schumann thundered her way through Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and loaded it with enough tone color that an orchestration seemed superfluous. Then she surprised everybody by choosing for an encore Gershwin's "Embraceable You," but encores have a long tradition of clashing strongly with the main work. Then Schumann came back with four of her colleagues from Ensemble San Francisco for an energetic and catchy run through Dvořák's Op. 81 Piano Quintet.
The day had begun with the Benicia Chamber Players, who regularly perform on both sides of the Carquinez Strait, in two movements from Schubert's "Rosamunde" Quartet, the work I missed yesterday, and a squeaky squawky work by Gabriella Smith. Then some of the young chamber musicians who are the subjects for master classes at Kohl Mansion played movements from string quartets and piano quartets by the Viennese classicists.
In between these and the closing numbers, we got a couple more varied groups. The Turas Ensemble is two barefoot sopranos who sing ethereal versions of I know not what, because I couldn't make out any of their spoken explanations of what they were doing, or their lyrics either. Some songs unaccompanied, some with dulcimer or hurdy-gurdy or whatnot. And the Berkeley Choros Ensemble play instrumental popular music from Brazil, rather pleasant to listen to and moving enough to encourage one older couple to get up and dance, or at least sway together, to the music.
Getting out of a concert in the City at 5.45 on a Sunday - not Friday or Saturday when places would be crowded - would ordinarily be a perfect time to seek out a restaurant for dinner. But today I felt no urge to do that, and went straight home instead, where I'm partaking what I ought.
The topic was SF Music Day, an annual event I'd never heard of before. The promoters take over the Veterans Building for an afternoon, presenting 6 events (each slightly less than an hour) in each of three concert spaces in the building. Times are coordinated, so attendees can hop from one room to another, but I didn't. Most of the items in Herbst Theatre, the main space, were jazz-oriented, so I planted myself for the entire afternoon in the cavernous and echoing room on the second floor where the classical performers were. The acoustics were fine for the music, but it was difficult to make out any spoken words from anybody.
The highlights came at the end. Pianist Elizabeth Schumann thundered her way through Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and loaded it with enough tone color that an orchestration seemed superfluous. Then she surprised everybody by choosing for an encore Gershwin's "Embraceable You," but encores have a long tradition of clashing strongly with the main work. Then Schumann came back with four of her colleagues from Ensemble San Francisco for an energetic and catchy run through Dvořák's Op. 81 Piano Quintet.
The day had begun with the Benicia Chamber Players, who regularly perform on both sides of the Carquinez Strait, in two movements from Schubert's "Rosamunde" Quartet, the work I missed yesterday, and a squeaky squawky work by Gabriella Smith. Then some of the young chamber musicians who are the subjects for master classes at Kohl Mansion played movements from string quartets and piano quartets by the Viennese classicists.
In between these and the closing numbers, we got a couple more varied groups. The Turas Ensemble is two barefoot sopranos who sing ethereal versions of I know not what, because I couldn't make out any of their spoken explanations of what they were doing, or their lyrics either. Some songs unaccompanied, some with dulcimer or hurdy-gurdy or whatnot. And the Berkeley Choros Ensemble play instrumental popular music from Brazil, rather pleasant to listen to and moving enough to encourage one older couple to get up and dance, or at least sway together, to the music.
Getting out of a concert in the City at 5.45 on a Sunday - not Friday or Saturday when places would be crowded - would ordinarily be a perfect time to seek out a restaurant for dinner. But today I felt no urge to do that, and went straight home instead, where I'm partaking what I ought.
GWOT V - Constitution Club II - NI
Oct. 19th, 2025 04:08 pmdrewkittyGWOT V - Constitution Club II
"The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."
- Fitzgerald translation of Quatrains 31 and 54
A California high school.
A 'Constitution Club' evening meeting.
A bored teacher acting as host for a known American operative teaching American civics to a hostile California audience.
A few embedded junior agents - all high school students themselves - diligently filing their reports, occasionally glanced over by a bored Collections junior analyst.
Just a little bit too late.
###
"Today we are going to further explore the concepts of human rights versus civil rights."
An eager hand, from the first row.
"Isn't it true that the Constitution doesn't actually protect any right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness?"
"That's from the Declaration of Independence. So it is part of the tradition but not actually part of the Constitution."
"So where do we find a right to merely exist, to be alive?"
"The Fourth Amendment."
"How so? It talks about warrants and seizures."
"'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,' reads the start of the 4th. The part sometimes overlooked is that 'secure in persons'. In other words, the government can't just arrest you and take you away."
"Bullshit! That's exactly what Homeland did!"
"That is, in fact, exactly what Homeland did. Their argument would be that the seizure - of people an immediate threat to the United States - was 'reasonable.' That leads down the 'reasonable person' path in common law."
"So that right doesn't actually exist. The person who decides what is reasonable is the Homeland trooper making the arrest!"
"That leads directly to why we have and why we need courts. A third party to determine reasonableness. And that third party is not really the courts, but a jury of your peers. That's the Fifth Amendment, 'unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.'"
"Um, I see here a comment about getting grand juries to indict ham sandwiches."
"As for the Fifth Amendment, 'nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.'"
"Again, a comment about 'Do Process' as in turning a meat grinder. That's a process. You fall in, you get ground up. Process requirement met."
"What is that you are looking at?"
"An essay I found on TacNet. A savage critique of the Bill of Rights, by some military lawyer at Alviso."
"The only military lawyers at Alviso were the defense team..." he started.
"This was written by one of the judges."
"Oh."
A long pause, as those with devices did searches and those without were passed some printed pages, or other people's devices.
Only one woman did not participate in the search. She glared, and clung to her small purse as if it were her only hope.
###
"I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
We should have started with putting a period after 'Congress shall make no law' and called it a day.
As long as there are tests in school, there will be prayer in school as well.
Freedom of should be freedom from. Religion is best treated like a penis - keep tucked away, keep well away from children, do not wave it around in public and especially never shove it down an unwilling throat or into any other orifice. Especially a womb!
Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences from that speech.
The press is a necessary evil, and should enjoy no rights of its own, deriving its rights only from the right of the public to be fully informed.
Peaceful assembly is in the eye of the beholder. A Dungeons and Dragons (TM) beholder, with paralysis ray and vivisection fangs. If protest is a crime, there is no such thing as a peaceful assembly. But no truly peaceful assembly is with pitchforks and torches either.
Pray, King, may I have permission to complain? No, you may not. Well, shit.
"II. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
A lingerie clad hooker, being necessary to some quiet in the pants, the right of women to own and wear panties, shall not include fringed panties.
Makes more sense than the militia interpretation. If only soldiers can have guns, the people can't. I mean, duh.
"III. No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
Let them eat cake! Or put them in hotels. The most useless right ever.
###
"That's pretty ... savage."
"A savage pamphlet for a savage time. Over four thousand executions. It does not get better."
###
"IV. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Homeland closed the courts. Don't need a warrant. No one to issue, no one to adjudicate it.
Reasonable gets back to that beholder eye again.
"V. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Inter arma enim silent leges.
When tanks roar, mere human voices are drowned out.
Except during war means a permanent state of endless war. A boot stamping on a human face forever, thanks George Orwell.
'Do Process' as in turning a meat grinder. That's a process. You fall in, you get ground up. Process requirement met.
"VI. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
And a lollipop. You can suck on a lollipop after your jaw is broken and your teeth punched out. All those others depend on a sense of fair play.
A Homeland hearing was an officer, often in the field, who certainly gave his verdict with speed and in public.
BLAM!
"VII. In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."
Again, no Courts, no juries. Force walks naked, dressed only in a flag and the reddish-black blood of its victims.
OK, fine, have a jury. Shall we use a jury of grinning murderers? Because we can't use a jury of murdered victims. Because they're dead and we have no mediums nor seances nor Ouija boards to get their opinions.
Maybe a jury of pigeons. They can indict ham sandwiches and coo their approvals, and be a tasty snack for the dogs afterwards.
"VIII. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
So we should levy kind and usual punishments instead? Taxes?
More beholder level irony. What is excessive? A bail you cannot afford? A house you cannot buy, a sentence you cannot live long enough to complete?
Punishments for crime are justifications for enslavement.
"IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
The most sweeping slight of hand ever committed in political science.
What rights retained by the people? The right to flee? The right to suffer? To choose between murder by troopers after capture and lawful execution for fleeing troops under the laws of land warfare? The right to reproduce? Or to fuck and not reproduce?
That 'pursuit of happiness' ... that you can't take away even if you cut off someone's arms and legs and rename them Mat? Or then dunk them in a hot tub and call them Stew?
"X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The people have no mechanism to protect their rights. Take away their right to protest under the 1st, take their weapons under the 2nd, take their bodies under the 4th and 5th, torture them under the 8th... and whether they die screaming in state prison or a Federal institution matters not at all.
The Bill of Rights is a package deal. Start unthreading it and like a sweater, it falls apart into useless strands.
###
"Let's take a short break."
Unusually, there was some food left on the buffet table. That was not a good sign.
"How should we tackle this?"
"What do you mean 'we', kemosabe?" retorted the teacher. "You opened this can of worms, you get to mix in the sauce."
###
"Welcome back. Let's discuss the idea of a jury. Are we, assembled, a jury?"
###
Sidebar conversations. Impassioned hand waving. Some shouting.
And no agreement. Exhaustion and a determination to try again next week.
Until he reached the door, with his back to most of the crowd and particularly to the one woman who had held her silence all that evening.
An unsteady hand with painted nails, holding a pistol.
Strictly forbidden in schools.
Students rushed forward, except those caught flat footed or in shock.
Too late.
She dropped the pistol as they grappled with her and held her against the wall.
That did nothing to affect the consequences of the one shot she had fired.
Her single contribution to the debate, which her victim could not answer or even dispute. Ever.
Someone set off the wall alarm, a lifetime too late.
###
"A spontaneous exclamation, also sometimes called an excited utterance, is a statement made in the midst of a startling event, with no opportunity for premeditation or deliberation. It is generally admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule in a court of law."
###
"There's my speech! There's my arms! There's my security of person! And there's YOUR fucking due process!" she screamed.
Her victim did not hear her, having been deprived of the ability to do so, by having his brains spilled on a broad stretch of the walkway just outside the classroom door.
The medics did their duty by putting a yellow highway blanket over the corpse.
The police came and took her away, to answer for her crime to a jury of her peers.
Under post-Rebellion California law, she would either hang by the neck until dead, or be executed by gunfire. Clearly she had known and accepted this the minute she carried the purse, with its unlawful concealable handgun, into the school.
The death of a hated American was worth that price to her.
She might exercise her right in court to state the abuses she had endured, the crimes she had witnessed, the resulting PTSD and mental health challenges that had contributed to her atrocious act.
Against, under post-Rebellion California law, none of that would lend an iota of mercy to her fate.
The students stayed in the classroom, not just as material witnesses who needed to be processed, but out of simple shock.
The teacher conferred with the school security officer and the principal. There was really nothing to be done.
Finally the teacher went to the students.
"I need a vote. A simple show of hands. If you vote in favor, I will continue our discussion where it was so rudely interrupted next week. Otherwise I will disband this club."
Reluctantly, slowly, with glances and grimaces, every hand in the room went up.
"We will start next week, with ..." he paused, "the rights of the accused."
"The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."
- Fitzgerald translation of Quatrains 31 and 54
A California high school.
A 'Constitution Club' evening meeting.
A bored teacher acting as host for a known American operative teaching American civics to a hostile California audience.
A few embedded junior agents - all high school students themselves - diligently filing their reports, occasionally glanced over by a bored Collections junior analyst.
Just a little bit too late.
###
"Today we are going to further explore the concepts of human rights versus civil rights."
An eager hand, from the first row.
"Isn't it true that the Constitution doesn't actually protect any right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness?"
"That's from the Declaration of Independence. So it is part of the tradition but not actually part of the Constitution."
"So where do we find a right to merely exist, to be alive?"
"The Fourth Amendment."
"How so? It talks about warrants and seizures."
"'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,' reads the start of the 4th. The part sometimes overlooked is that 'secure in persons'. In other words, the government can't just arrest you and take you away."
"Bullshit! That's exactly what Homeland did!"
"That is, in fact, exactly what Homeland did. Their argument would be that the seizure - of people an immediate threat to the United States - was 'reasonable.' That leads down the 'reasonable person' path in common law."
"So that right doesn't actually exist. The person who decides what is reasonable is the Homeland trooper making the arrest!"
"That leads directly to why we have and why we need courts. A third party to determine reasonableness. And that third party is not really the courts, but a jury of your peers. That's the Fifth Amendment, 'unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.'"
"Um, I see here a comment about getting grand juries to indict ham sandwiches."
"As for the Fifth Amendment, 'nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.'"
"Again, a comment about 'Do Process' as in turning a meat grinder. That's a process. You fall in, you get ground up. Process requirement met."
"What is that you are looking at?"
"An essay I found on TacNet. A savage critique of the Bill of Rights, by some military lawyer at Alviso."
"The only military lawyers at Alviso were the defense team..." he started.
"This was written by one of the judges."
"Oh."
A long pause, as those with devices did searches and those without were passed some printed pages, or other people's devices.
Only one woman did not participate in the search. She glared, and clung to her small purse as if it were her only hope.
###
"I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
We should have started with putting a period after 'Congress shall make no law' and called it a day.
As long as there are tests in school, there will be prayer in school as well.
Freedom of should be freedom from. Religion is best treated like a penis - keep tucked away, keep well away from children, do not wave it around in public and especially never shove it down an unwilling throat or into any other orifice. Especially a womb!
Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences from that speech.
The press is a necessary evil, and should enjoy no rights of its own, deriving its rights only from the right of the public to be fully informed.
Peaceful assembly is in the eye of the beholder. A Dungeons and Dragons (TM) beholder, with paralysis ray and vivisection fangs. If protest is a crime, there is no such thing as a peaceful assembly. But no truly peaceful assembly is with pitchforks and torches either.
Pray, King, may I have permission to complain? No, you may not. Well, shit.
"II. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
A lingerie clad hooker, being necessary to some quiet in the pants, the right of women to own and wear panties, shall not include fringed panties.
Makes more sense than the militia interpretation. If only soldiers can have guns, the people can't. I mean, duh.
"III. No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
Let them eat cake! Or put them in hotels. The most useless right ever.
###
"That's pretty ... savage."
"A savage pamphlet for a savage time. Over four thousand executions. It does not get better."
###
"IV. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Homeland closed the courts. Don't need a warrant. No one to issue, no one to adjudicate it.
Reasonable gets back to that beholder eye again.
"V. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Inter arma enim silent leges.
When tanks roar, mere human voices are drowned out.
Except during war means a permanent state of endless war. A boot stamping on a human face forever, thanks George Orwell.
'Do Process' as in turning a meat grinder. That's a process. You fall in, you get ground up. Process requirement met.
"VI. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
And a lollipop. You can suck on a lollipop after your jaw is broken and your teeth punched out. All those others depend on a sense of fair play.
A Homeland hearing was an officer, often in the field, who certainly gave his verdict with speed and in public.
BLAM!
"VII. In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."
Again, no Courts, no juries. Force walks naked, dressed only in a flag and the reddish-black blood of its victims.
OK, fine, have a jury. Shall we use a jury of grinning murderers? Because we can't use a jury of murdered victims. Because they're dead and we have no mediums nor seances nor Ouija boards to get their opinions.
Maybe a jury of pigeons. They can indict ham sandwiches and coo their approvals, and be a tasty snack for the dogs afterwards.
"VIII. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
So we should levy kind and usual punishments instead? Taxes?
More beholder level irony. What is excessive? A bail you cannot afford? A house you cannot buy, a sentence you cannot live long enough to complete?
Punishments for crime are justifications for enslavement.
"IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
The most sweeping slight of hand ever committed in political science.
What rights retained by the people? The right to flee? The right to suffer? To choose between murder by troopers after capture and lawful execution for fleeing troops under the laws of land warfare? The right to reproduce? Or to fuck and not reproduce?
That 'pursuit of happiness' ... that you can't take away even if you cut off someone's arms and legs and rename them Mat? Or then dunk them in a hot tub and call them Stew?
"X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The people have no mechanism to protect their rights. Take away their right to protest under the 1st, take their weapons under the 2nd, take their bodies under the 4th and 5th, torture them under the 8th... and whether they die screaming in state prison or a Federal institution matters not at all.
The Bill of Rights is a package deal. Start unthreading it and like a sweater, it falls apart into useless strands.
###
"Let's take a short break."
Unusually, there was some food left on the buffet table. That was not a good sign.
"How should we tackle this?"
"What do you mean 'we', kemosabe?" retorted the teacher. "You opened this can of worms, you get to mix in the sauce."
###
"Welcome back. Let's discuss the idea of a jury. Are we, assembled, a jury?"
###
Sidebar conversations. Impassioned hand waving. Some shouting.
And no agreement. Exhaustion and a determination to try again next week.
Until he reached the door, with his back to most of the crowd and particularly to the one woman who had held her silence all that evening.
An unsteady hand with painted nails, holding a pistol.
Strictly forbidden in schools.
Students rushed forward, except those caught flat footed or in shock.
Too late.
She dropped the pistol as they grappled with her and held her against the wall.
That did nothing to affect the consequences of the one shot she had fired.
Her single contribution to the debate, which her victim could not answer or even dispute. Ever.
Someone set off the wall alarm, a lifetime too late.
###
"A spontaneous exclamation, also sometimes called an excited utterance, is a statement made in the midst of a startling event, with no opportunity for premeditation or deliberation. It is generally admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule in a court of law."
###
"There's my speech! There's my arms! There's my security of person! And there's YOUR fucking due process!" she screamed.
Her victim did not hear her, having been deprived of the ability to do so, by having his brains spilled on a broad stretch of the walkway just outside the classroom door.
The medics did their duty by putting a yellow highway blanket over the corpse.
The police came and took her away, to answer for her crime to a jury of her peers.
Under post-Rebellion California law, she would either hang by the neck until dead, or be executed by gunfire. Clearly she had known and accepted this the minute she carried the purse, with its unlawful concealable handgun, into the school.
The death of a hated American was worth that price to her.
She might exercise her right in court to state the abuses she had endured, the crimes she had witnessed, the resulting PTSD and mental health challenges that had contributed to her atrocious act.
Against, under post-Rebellion California law, none of that would lend an iota of mercy to her fate.
The students stayed in the classroom, not just as material witnesses who needed to be processed, but out of simple shock.
The teacher conferred with the school security officer and the principal. There was really nothing to be done.
Finally the teacher went to the students.
"I need a vote. A simple show of hands. If you vote in favor, I will continue our discussion where it was so rudely interrupted next week. Otherwise I will disband this club."
Reluctantly, slowly, with glances and grimaces, every hand in the room went up.
"We will start next week, with ..." he paused, "the rights of the accused."