Watch the corporate media cover up for the murder and terrorism, the free press freed from the requirement to tell the truth. Only the media that voluntarily tells the truth has any value for democracy and none owned by a millionaire or billionaire is going to do much of that.
Mayor Jacob Frey really is America's Mayor not like that NYC media creation who they used to call that because the terror murder that threatens America is happening in his city and he told the truth about that.
THE ICESTAPO IS KILLING PEOPLE AND WILL GET AWAY WITH IT. The Trump regime is killing Americans in the street and just watch the free press back up them murdering Americans in the street and the courts and the Republican-fascist Congress. Every alleged protection of American democracy has failed us.
For further details, see my piece about the corruption baked into our constitutional system, both those by the slave-holders and corrupt northern financiers and those added to it by the Supreme Court and Congresses that ceded Constitutional powers to the executive. The Roberts Court six who made Trump king should be removed and given life sentences for their treason against egalitarian democracy and the American People along with the entire Trump regime, from him down to the scummiest ProudBoy incel-boy Icestapo terrorist and the Noem-Bondi-Leavitt floozie corps, too.
I listened to, I think it was Alison Gill and Dana Goldberg give a list of times that the worst criminals in American history have been given a pass, from the Confederate traitors to the insurrectionists, with things like Iran Contra and, maybe, Daddy Bush's invasion of Panama in which hundreds were murdered so he could have the kind of political theater that Trump mounted in Venezuela last weekend.
No more. When Democrats get back the Congress and Presidency they have to go after all of them, they have to nullify the G.H.W. Bush pardons to cover asses, whether Trump's or Vances or the billionires who they are the bitches of and right on down because Trump-Vance will pardon all of their criminal gang. If the Roberts Court won't go along with that, well this whole thing started with the six fascists on the Court, impeach them and charge them with crimes against the oaths they took. Needless to say, Democrats should nullify the Marbury power grab, finally. There is no reason that they can't do it, any Democrat who has the chance to fill a vacancy should only appoint known critics of that and if those don't exist among rich lawyers, they should find citizens with the intelligence to read the Constitution and tell the truth, that such a power does not appear in it.
Seriously reigning in the pardon power is probably as necessary to reinstating American democracy as anything else is, and there are many other such necessities. One is making it possible for politicians and other public figures able to sue people who libel and slander them again. Trump would never have had a political presence if he had been able to be sued for the lies he started telling as he started to become famous. The Republican fascist party has thrived on such lies since Nixon first started in the 1940s. It's time to face the fact that we can either have lies or we can have a republic. We certainly can't have lies and a democracy. Any lawyer, judge, "justice" who claims there is a right to lie should have their law license taken away and removed from any public office they might hold. Especially the "justices" who claim such lies.
THE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC FEATURES OF THE CONSTITUTION are baked into it and have been from the beginning. And I'm not talking about the Venezuelan Constitution which, UNLIKE THE U.S. CONSTITUTION was the product of a referendum, not based on the certainly less democratic process required for its adoption by the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution of Venezuela was written by an assembly which was voted into that body by the popular vote and the Constitution they came up with was approved by 72% of the voters in that election in 1999. I don't know of any other Constitution in the Americas that is the product of such a democratic process, certainly not the rigged writing and adoption of the U.S. Constitution which started with the unauthorized creation of a new government and its "adoption" in which a very small percentage of even the Protestant, white men of property allowed to vote in the majority of relevant elections actually voted in them. Even the Supreme Court god John Marshall admitted that it was an iffy if not a dicey thing - that would be in his biography of Washington, not his from the bench blather about that which was blatantly false. More honest evaluations of the process in a decisive number of the several states notes that it was rigged to ensure that the heavily federalist urban vote would make it to the polls while the more skeptical rural vote would not be cast. History does have that ironic result a the history of America continued and the anti-democratic features baked into it in the 1780s increased to favor states without much of anything but rural votes often of the most benighted states and regions. Swamping many, many times over their population in the most populous states.
But getting on with things, in the 21st Century we have had two presidential election in which the actual loser of the election became president under the anti-democratic Electoral College which is baked into the Constitution. Trump in 2016 and far more tellingly George W. Bush in 2000.
Let's concentrate on 2000. You may remember that the question of who would win the electoral college hinged on the vote in Florida, a state run by the brother of the "winner" Jeb Bush who was governor whose Secretary of State, the infamously sleazy and arguably corrupt Katherine Harris, and lower down officials rigged the election in numerous ways, including a campaign to exclude Black Voters from voting lists and roadblocks to hamper voting in communities with large Black populations. And that's not getting to the infamous "butterfly ballot" which was clearly intended to confuse voters who wanted to vote for Al Gore.
That election was ultimately decided by a five to four vote in favor of the Republican, George W. Bush, (Oh, I've fogotten to mention that in addition to being Jeb's brother he was, of course, the son of George H. W. Bush who, as mentioned here on Sunday had to pardon his way out of being prosecuted for his crimes while vice president and president) . . . George W. Bush was installed as president by five Republican "justices" on the U.S. Supreme Court including Sandra Day O'Connor who had wanted to retire but only if a Republican would name her replacement. That was so corrupt that two of those "justices" who voted against that decision were, themselves, Republicans Stevens and Souter who, to his credit, had been named to the court by daddy Bush.
And there are the numerous other corruptions of elections baked into the Constitution or placed there by a combination of anti-democratic (these days literally anti-Democratic) politicians and judges and, especially "justices." The Roberts Court has been doing everything it dares to to bring us back to the days of 5/5ths of Black representation being in the hands of white supremacists in especially the Southern but hardly only the Southern states. Back to the status quo of Jim Crow that started with the Electoral College and corrupt deal that put Rutherford Hayes in the presidency after he made a deal with the Confederate losers of the Civil War to end Reconstruction.
As for the 2016 election a large role in Trump's eking out an "Electoral College victory" was played by the Republican head of the FBI (as well as the NYT) when he broke Department of "Justice" policy by making announcements of a new round of "investigations" of Hillary Clinton days before the election. I will note in passing that Hillary Clinton has to stand as both the most investigated human being in American history as well as the most exonerated person, perhaps in human history. Instead of her, the actual winner of the election, the genius of our framers gave us the most criminal and least punished politician in American history, as well as the stupidest and most vile one, Trump. For Trump to call Madurro illegitimate or corrupt is the final death of irony, only the American "free press" the supposed protector of democracy and even the republic letting him get away with that is actually the more massive of ironies.
It is forbidden here, in the so-called land of the free and home of the brave to mention that our Constitution has anti-democratic features galore baked into it and never removed by the process of amendment and some amendments to the thing to correct just some of those injustices which were overturned by UNELECTED SUPREME COURT FIAT. Again, that's not something that happened in the 1880s or the 1920s, that's something that is an ongoing program of the Roberts Court. It is forbidden to tell the truth about the corruption of our Constitution with the goddamned First Amendment in place - you're never going to hear it said this way on any corporate news venue or the goddamned New York Times and certainly not in the Bezos owned WaPo or the Soon-Shiong owned LA Times. Ken Burns won't tell you but I just did.
If we consider the Roman repertory from the point of view of progressions from one note to the next, the basic role of stepwise motion [notes next to each other on the white notes of a keyboard or in a c major scale] is self-evident. There is no chant in which the number of steps would not be, by far, greater than that of all other progressions combined. The only exception, if it can be so considered, is the simple recitative with prevailing unison repeat.
Gregorian Chant, Willi Apel p 252*
For those who are beginning to experiment with composing new chants dealing with the two sizes of steps, a major and minor second is a good place to start (recto tono, is it really composing?).
I will start with the notes d, e and f though in stressing ear-training as much as more theoretical descriptions I'm going to use the "do-re-mi" names for notes in their "fixed-do" form in which "do" is always a c, "re" is always a d, "mi"is always an e and "fa" is always an f. Unlike some of the conventions of fixed-do, I will not use those common names for sharps and flats as well as the plain letter name note, given by Paul Hindemith as his reason for rejecting using solfege syllables in his Elementary Training For Musicians. Hindemith seems to have had perfect pitch, which I and most of humanity does not have. I think using the do-re-mi syllables are extremely helpful but only in fix-ed do for and only with each possible note of the scale having its own syllable. More on that later, for now the syllable do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti corresponding to c, d, e, f, g, a, and b are what I'll be using.
In the notes of re mi and fa, (d, e, and f) the interval between re and mi is a major second and the interval between mi and fa is a minor second. You should check them on an instrument to make sure you are singing the right notes as you intend to.
Chanting On Only The Notes re and mi.
Try chanting on both re-mi using re as the first and last note and mi as the first and last note. You might use one or the other as the "tenor" for reciting most of the text and the other note for the initiation, the half-pause within a sentence or phrase and as the ending note. You should try both and whatever else occurs to you to try. If you find something you like, write out the words of the text you are singing and the notes you want to sing any given syllable to above it. Use a single line to mark pauses and a double line to mark the end.
Chanting On Only The Notes mi and fa.
Do the same with mi-fa checking the pitches on an instrument to make sure you are accurately singing the size of a "whole-step" (the major second d-e) or a "half-step" (the minor second e-f).
If you tried the chanting on one tone, using pauses and longer and shorter notes to go along with the text you will have some idea of how you might do it with two notes.
If you can't think of a text you want to set in this way, try "Alleluia" Or the English Hallelujah and "Amen" (whether A-men or Ah-men singly or repeated.
Speaking of things you might like to know but you don't have to worry about.
One of the things to keep in mind is that our ears accustomed to music in major and minor keys is that a half-step will often make us feel that the lower note draws us to expect to hear the a resolution on the higher note of the two. But it doesn't have to do that in music. Music in the Phrygian mode has e is the expected last note, the note of repose, the goal of a line often resolves to e from the f a half step above it. Such things are what give the modes their individual character just as the resolution of the B up to the c above it gives the major scale it's character.
* The passage from Apel continues on to the next page:
Unison repeats of a special character occur in some of the elaborate chants, where we find the same pitch repeated, up to eight times, on one syllable; eg. three unisons in the gradual Haec dies [778] on "(Do)mi(nus) five in the Offertory Perfice gressus [508] on "gres(sus)," eight in the Offertory Anima nostra [430] on "(libera)ti." Actually, it would be misleading to consider these formations under the aspect of vocal progression. As explained previously [p. 107] they represent an ornament, the vocal counterpart of the violin tremolo.
And as it happens, there is this example or exactly that in the liturgy of January 6th Reges Tharsis
WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT that the first Jewish president of the United States would be a Nazi?
IT'S PROBABLE, I THINK that the reason you hear so much about the federalist papers, the propaganda of those who favored the adoption of the Constitution of 1787 and so little about the antifederalists who, in so many cases proved to be far better predictors of the immediate and even extended history of the United States under the form of government that the federalists invented is because of the financial and political and ideological interests in the worst aspects of that history, often predicted by the antifederalists. While I may be skeptical as to the indisputable (irrefragable) character of what was deduced from the peculiarities of the various histories of countries under the various governments of 18th century Europe, these paragraphs from Cato 3 (often believed to be George Clinton) have more resonance to our life under the Constitution today than seems likely to be the product of chance (adventitious) circumstances.
The governments of Europe have taken their limits and form from adventitious circumstances, and nothing can be argued on the motive of agreement from them; but these adventitious political principles, have nevertheless produced effects that have attracted the attention of philosophy, which has established axioms in the science of politics therefrom, as irrefutable as any in Euclid. It is natural, says Montesquieu, to a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist: in a large one, there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are too great deposits to intrust in the hands of a single subject, an ambitious person soon becomes sensible that he may be happy, great, and glorious by oppressing his fellow citizens, and that he might raise himself to grandeur, on the ruins of his country. In large republics, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; in a small one the interest of the public is easily perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have a less extent, and of course are less protected--he also shews you, that the duration of the republic of Sparta, was owing to its having continued with the same extent of territory after all its wars; and that the ambition of Athens and Lacedemon to command and direct the union, lost them their liberties, and gave them a monarchy.
From this picture, what can you promise yourselves, on the score of consolidation of the United States, into one government--impracticability in the just exercise of it-- your freedom insecure--even this form of government limited in its continuance--the employments of your country disposed of to the opulent, to whose contumely you will continually be an object--you must risque much, by indispensably placing trusts of the greatest magnitude, into the hands of individuals, whose ambition for power, and aggrandizement, will oppress and grind you--where, from the vast extent of your territory, and the complication of interests, the science of government will become intricate and perplexed, and too misterious for you to understand, and observe; and by which you are to be conducted into a monarchy, either limited or despotic; the latter, Mr. Locke remarks, is a government derived from neither nature, nor compact.
It is one of the stupidest products of our ideology ridden and driven age that so many figure someone has to agree with you entirely to have anything worth listening to or agreeing with. I think even with the antifederalists the most glaring problem with their analyses was one they shared with the federalists, they undervalued the role that equality of People and its lack was responsible for bad government. They were all educated, mostly well off or aspiring to be white men who were part of the dominantly Protestant establishment, people who are part of such a minority are unlikely to notice the evils that come from the thing that gives them their advantage. Instead the antifederalists focused on the thing of paramount interest to those who are advantaged, "liberty." Liberty isn't a virtue in and of itself, "men of large fortune," "an ambitious person," allowed the liberty that generally accumulates in the privileged, the accidentally wealthy or those who opportunity, ability and chance situation allowed to accumulate wealth will exercise it against the needs and good of other People, one of the worst defects in the U.S. Constitution is that it was written by such men to their advantage and especially its interpretation by courts and, worst of all, the Supreme Court has enhanced that kind of anti-egalitarian liberty using the Constitution and the slogans of the 18th century to enforce inequality and to gull even those well disposed to be egalitarian against that. That has been a tendency from the start, it is why such as the supposedly anti-slavery "justice" Joseph Storey wrote what was the most appalling pro-slavery decision before Dred Scott, the Prig decision and why the ACLU has been entirely more a force for the enhancement of the power of oligarchs, fascists and some of our most malignant industries and corporations than they have for the common good.
In reading the antifederalists, you have to take into account the same things you have to when reading the Epistles of Paul, they were writing to an audience of their time, speaking in terms of the conditions and realities of their times. Keep that in mind while reading this section:
The people, who may compose this national legislature from the southern states, in which, from the mildness of the climate, the fertility of the soil, and the value of its productions, wealth is rapidly acquired, and where the same causes naturally lead to luxury, dissipation, and a passion for aristocratic distinctions; where slavery is encouraged, and liberty of course, less respected, and protected; who know not what it is to acquire property by their own toil, nor to oeconomise with the savings of industry--will these men therefore be as tenacious of the liberties and interests of the more northern states, where freedom, independence, industry, equality, and frugality, are natural to the climate and soil, as men who are your own citizens, legislating in your own state, under your inspection, and whose manners, and fortunes, bear a more equal resemblance to your own?
I can honestly be pointed out that the things attributed to People from southern states in the late 1780s are hardly confined to those from the southern states now, when you are as likely to find dangerous concentrations of anti-egalitarians in any of the northern states, those in the mid-west, the Rockies, the west coastal states (especially in the more Eastern sections of those), in the cities as well as in the most regressive rural districts, etc. Though it is undeniably a feature of our history and especially our politics that the dominant economic interests of the wealthiest Americans - the slave owning plantation economic class - harnessing racism among all classes, including those who had the most of a common cause with the enslaved, is as relevant to understanding American politics now as it was when the South Carolina and Georgia delegates to the Constitutional Convention were insisting on some of the worst anti-democratic features that are in it. Though I will point out that some of the framers from he northern states, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut for example, were as vehemently anti-democratic as any of the current Republican-fascists are.
It may be suggested, in answer to this, that whoever is a citizen of one state, is a citizen of each, and that therefore he will be as interested in the happiness and interest of all, as the one he is delegated from; but the argument is fallacious, and, whoever has attended to the history of mankind, and the principles which bind them together as parents, citizens, or men, will readily perceive it. These principles are, in their exercise, like a pebble cast on the calm surface of a river, the circles begin in the center, and are small, active, and forcible, but as they depart from that point, they lose their force, and vanish into calmness.
Instead of the concentration on citizenship in a state (remember Cato was arguing to New Yorkers against the legislature adopting the Constitution) far more relevant to the general American population are economic class differences, differences in race, gender, ethnicity, and religion. The "principles which bind them together" are a lot more fractured than what Cato presented in his arguments, there were slave-owning New Yorkers who had an economic and so personal interest in the prosperity of the slave economy of the Southern States - as I've pointed out here, Alexander Hamilton made appeals for the adoption of the Constitution based on the financial benefits to those of his class in some of the worst, most violent and literally deadly aspects of the Southern slave economy. Here's something I wrote pointing that out.
The Senate gives a minority the power to thwart the will of the majority, that makes it inherently a place of immorality. It was set up to give the slave states enhanced power over states in which the majority were developing a consensus against slavery, it was intentionally and explicitly set up that way, Alexander Hamilton peddling the Constitution with such anti-democratic features to the Northern legislatures by appealing to the financial benefit they derived from the slave economy of the South. He said to the New York ratification convention:
It is the unfortunate situation of the Southern States to have a great part of their population, as well as property in blacks. The regulation complained of was one result of the spirit of accommodation which governed the Convention ; and without this indulgence, NO UNION COULD POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN FORMED. But. sir, considering some peculiar advantages which we derive from them, it is entirely JUST that they should be gratified. The Southern States posses certain staples --tobacco, rice, indigo, &c., – which must be capital objects in treaties of commerce with foreign nations ; and the advantage which they necessarily procure in these treaties will be felt throughout all the States.
Though as the country developed, especially through the mechanisms that ensured that regional rivalries and resentments - and their potential use in the worst kinds of politics - would develop to ensure that the Senate was a power for a right-wing minority, preventing change that favors equality and morality.
Ellsworth of Connecticut made it clear that Hamilton and every other member of the Constitutional Convention understood the nature of what they were doing and that especially under slavery, it was what I have noted are the Krupps and IG Farbens of 18th century America whose interests were so tenderly represented in the Constitutional Convention, with Northern financial interests taking up their cause.
Ellsworth said: "As slaves multiply so fast in Virginia and Maryland that it is cheaper to raise than import them, whist in the sickly rice swamps foreign supplies are necessary, if we go no farther than is urged, we shall be unjust towards South Carolina and Georgia. Let us not inter-meddle. As population increases; poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless."
I also said: That Oliver Ellsworth anticipated the day when poor whites would take the place of enslaved blacks, no doubt anticipating the economics of using up and killing off workers you weren't allowed to access as your personal property, is not a surprise. Have I mentioned he was one off the vilest of the idolized founders?
You can read more of what I said back then.
But this is about the empowerment of the stupidest, most ignorant, most lying, most morally degenerate and literally criminal person to have ever attained the presidency and do everything up to and abolishing the most obvious of Constitutional limits on him is able to, in fact do that under the Constitution. And who in the late 18th century was correct in predicting what would happen. I wish I had a dollar for everyone who has said to me that what Trump is doing is "unconstitutional" because our Constitution started out bad, as the antifederalists saw, and it was made far worse by the action of the Supreme Court and the Congress, especially the Senate. The pretense that you have to go through the prescribed ratification process to change the Constitution is total and absolute bullshit because it's been done constantly, first in the original Marbury decision which changed one law WHICH WAS NOT ONLY DRAFTED BY ONE OF THE FRAMERS, ELLSWORTH BUT VOTED INTO LAW BY A CONGRESS MANNED BY SOME OF THE MOST EMINENT OF THE FRAMERS but which, starting with the Dred Scott decision which was the first, very deadly application of the Marbury power grab has been gaining in power and frequency ever since. There is nothing in the Constitution that gives the Congress the power to give the executive their power to make war, probably among the most seriously important things in the Constitution - what Trump has done in Venezuela this week on behalf of Chevron, apparently, but the "originalists" and "textualists" of the Supreme Court will not do a thing to enforce it.
While thinking about the secular priestcraft of the Roberts Court in regard to this, remember this passage above.
. . . you must risque much, by indispensably placing trusts of the greatest magnitude, into the hands of individuals, whose ambition for power, and aggrandizement, will oppress and grind you--where, from the vast extent of your territory, and the complication of interests, the science of government will become intricate and perplexed, and too misterious for you to understand, and observe; and by which you are to be conducted into a monarchy. . .
I'M ALMOST RELUCTANT to give you this right now because I really want to encourage you to work on recto tono chanting on one note for a while, you really can learn a lot from it and it is extremely useful for deeper study of texts. Before going on to some ideas for chanting on more than one note I'll get some old stuff out of the way.
This is the project I said I was working on last month. Well, me and a colleague who is also interested in encouraging a New Chant practice in which People compose new chants in their own language - I say in Esperanto as well,* potentially the "The New Latin for the Church and for Ecumenism" as well, he's not an Esperantist. That wouldn't be as a replacement for singing Gregorian or other ancient chant but to continue with chanting as a developing and living practice instead of antiquarianism.
And about the antiquarian stuff.
In his highly eccentric but interesting and at times useful "Music Primer" the American composer Lou Harrison said:
Old Jewish chants** & also in both kinds of Catholic Christianity (in only slightly modified form). [Note there are more than two kinds of even Western Catholic chant.] They are sung in Temples & Synagogues too, of course. The Psalmtone form is lovely, & one may compose new ones at pleasure. Its full form includes an "Intonation" (beginning tones), a "Tenor" (the "chanting-many-syllables: tone) a "Flex" (a small cadence formula used only to accommodate sentences with several subordinate clauses) "Tenor" again; the "Mediant" (a half cadence formula for the middle of a sentence) "Tenor" again, & lastly a "Termination" (a melodic, slightly ornamental ending motive). An "Interrogation" ending should be provided for questioning sentences. Willi Apel's book "Gregorian Chant" is good on this subject - as are authors Idelsohn & Fox-Strangways on similar subjects. [Look for Idelsohn and Fox-Strangways at Archive.org.]
You are probably confused by that, I've studied chant and it is both confusing and, in at least one aspect wrong, I think, AND, IN ANY CASE, YOU ARE THE ONE WHO GETS TO DECIDE WHAT YOU DO IN YOUR OWN CHANT PRACTICE. You can follow the several outlines of medieval practice - the ones in the Solemnes editions of the Catholic liturgy are more informative and clearer - or any other practice someone else has come up with or you can do what you want to do.
More useful than the above, Lou Harrison finished his Primer with this
Whether rhythmic or not - & there are two basic forms - the Chant is perdurable, a basis to underlie the serious coming together of music & words, & though it is among the oldest kinds of music, still stimulates to hear &to make.
Speaking of "rhythmic" I should note that an alternative to chanting can be found in various traditions of folk spirituals though their purpose is somewhat different. Walter Brueggeman suggested that Psalm settings in the style of blues or country song might helpfully express, especially, the Psalms of protest and complaint and lamentation. I think for more on that James Cone's "Spirituals And The Blues" is especially rich. I'll only deal with chanting here but as this continues I think you'll find information that would be useful for those who want to go on with more of a folk spiritual practice. I intend for there to be lots of ear training involved and am already well into working on that.
I am a bit unhappy to hear someone has made a movie purportedly about the Shaker prophet Ann Lee in which a number of Shaker Spirituals are used in the music. Other than the unaccompanied singing of them, preferably by Shakers themselves, I have never heard any use of them I didn't dislike, not even as set by Aaron Copland. I haven't seen the movie and don't intend to but I doubt they're likely to do any better by that subject than the movies do about any others. I recall hearing the late Sr. Mildred Barker, who was one of the living repositories of Shaker spirituals and, I believe, the last survivor of the Alfred community which had its own singing tradition, talking about how she would repeat a song over and over again to meditate on it, to "labor" on it. I think that's probably a good approach to folk spirituals as prayer.
* The translation of the "Old Testament" by Dr. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto is very good and very singable, it is not a Scripture Scholar's translation from the Hebrew but of someone who could read Hebrew and someone than whom there is no such thing as a more authoritative expert on the language that he invented. Zamenhof's translation is, I think, something of a literary classic in the same way that Jerome's Vulgate, the King James Version, even more so the Tyndale and even earlier Wycliffe translations that the KJV kind of cribbed and the Luther translation is for German culture. Zamenhof's many translations of secular literature are very good, especially Hans Christian Anderson's tales.
I don't hold the New Testament translation into Esperanto done by a number of Christian scholars in as high regard, it's certainly grammatically correct and probably as accurate as any of the other such scholar committee translations are but I find it cumbersome. I don't have the translations of the Gospels by Gerrit Berveling to compare, I've only read his translation of the so-called Thomas Gospel. A good, modern not to mention singable translation of the New Testament into Esperanto probably lies in the future.
** I would suggest, if you want to look into old Jewish chanting of Scripture you in addition to the approved academic points of view, check in to the very controversial work of Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura who claimed to have decoded the musical indications in ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the Scriptures. While most if not all academic experts in the topic rejected her claims, the recordings I've heard of performances informed by her theories are rather stunningly musically coherent, often unexpected and moving and anything but expected. You can hear a number of those on Youtube, though I have to say the ones in which she composed accompaniments for them kind of obscure the musical chanting. Whatever you make of her claims of authenticity, it's worth hearing them put into actual music. Its worth as music is clear to me, at least.
IF THE VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION FIGURE Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year doesn't come out soon in opposition to Trump ruling her country as he intends to, and very soon, the reasonable conclusion is that she's OK with that. If she agrees to being installed by Trump - and if that happens the reasonable conclusion, no, the absolute certainty is that she's an American puppet, if by "America" you mean Donald Trump and his criminal regime. She didn't oppose him blowing up fishing boats, a clear international crime, absolute murder, she supported him doing that, so I'm not expecting she's going to do anything to support the independence of Venezuela now.
Though I'm far from enthusiastic for the Madurro administration he did something that she has not done, he won an election. I'll get into whether or not the election he ran was a clean one when my country gets rid of the Electoral College, the media lying for Republican-fascists with impunity and the partisan gerrymandering that the Roberts Court is rubber-stamping.
I am always seriously skeptical of any "opposition" figure who is a right-wing capitalist from the oligarchic class as Machado is, if she became the president of Venezuela I'd expect she would be far less about an attempted reform than Violetta Chamorro was in Nicaragua - her win in 1990 was heavily influenced by George H.W. Bush's quite similar illegal act in Panama the year before, it was widely feared in Nicaragua that he would invade their country, too. You remember, that's the illegal war and abduction of a national leader that led to George H.W. Bush pardoning all kinds of criminals like Caspar Weinberger , Robert McFarlane, Elliott Abrams, though some interpreted that as him pardoning them so they wouldn't testify about him re Iran-Contra. You might find this old show about how the crimes of daddy Bush set things up for Trump's grant of impunity for his many crimes prescient and very timely.
If I were a Venezuelan, I'd count on Machado selling the country out, especially the lower classes. She's an elite-trained capitalist oligarach. I stopped being impressed with the Nobel Peace Prize when they gave one to that massive criminal responsible in the deaths of literally millions, both during his time in government and after, Henry Kissinger. I like to think of him in hell right now and I don't like to think anyone's in hell. I expect Poppy Bush is there with him, twisting in the flames or some such torture. They would be if anyone was.
The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; . . .
BOMBING ANOTHER COUNTRY, abducting its elected leader and kidnapping them as Trump reportedly did during the night is an act of war by any unabridged meaning of the phrase "act of war." The U.S. Constitution supposedly gives the power to make war to the U.S. Congress but that's clearly a lie, Trump has committed war on Venezuela, certainly with the motive of getting its oil for his billionaire and millionaire friends and you can be certain that his crime family, including his in-laws are in it for their cut of the action.
The Library of Congress website both claims that Article I of the Constitution establishes that sole power to declare war, claims that "The Declare War Clause is a central element of Congress’s war powers," and oh, so conveniently, show how under the Constitution as it really is, that most important feature of the thing has been made meaningless by a combination of Congressional cowardice and Supreme Court corruption.
ArtI.S8.C11.2.1 Overview of Declare War Clause:
[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; . . .
The Declare War Clause is a central element of Congress’s war powers and its meaning is among those most heavily debated.1 The Supreme Court has observed that only Congress has the power to declare war,2 but the implications of this exclusive assignment are not well-settled. In particular, the relationship between Congress’s power to declare war and the President’s war powers granted under Article II of the Constitution is a subject of significant disagreement.3
The first draft of the Constitution considered in Philadelphia in 1787 would have given Congress the power to make war, but the Framers substituted the word declare in what James Madison described as an effort to ensure that the President was empowered to repel sudden attacks.4 Under Congress’s interpretation of the Constitution, the President may introduce troops into hostile circumstances if Congress has (1) declared war, (2) specifically authorized the President to use force, or (3) there is a national emergency created by an attack on the United States or its territories.5 The executive branch claims much broader authority and asserts that the Constitution empowers the President to initiate and engage in many types of military action without congressional authorization.6
While this interbranch debate remains active, other questions concerning the Declare War Clause have been settled by longstanding practice and judicial opinions. For example, the Supreme Court has recognized that Congress need not issue a formal declaration of war to authorize the United States to engage in military action.
It must be pointed out that none of those loopholes apply in the case of Trump bombing Venezuela and kidnapping its president, though that won't matter in the slightest. I doubt the Library of Congress will even bother to revise this clearly lie filled posting in the future to match reality as it really is.
It is to be assumed that the Congress, so notably full of lawyers, some of them actually deemed "Constitutional scholars" and that those who are appointed to the Supreme Court are similarly expert in the document - though as the Republican members of the Rehnquist and Roberts Court, with exactly two exceptions, show, that assumption is, itself, bullshit - have made the most serious and momentous of powers delegated to the most democratically vulnerable branch utterly meaningless. Such is the true nature of the U.S. Constitution, its lore and history and its reality as opposed to the lies that comprise such "Constitutional scholarship." The next stupidly written part of that comprises not only an open barn door but an entirely open side of the horse shed that doesn't need to be escaped.
7 Congress also can, by statute, authorize the President to use force within defined parameters that do not rise to the level of a general declaration of war.8 The United States has issued declarations of war against eleven countries during five conflicts, but it has not formally declared war since World War II.9 As a result, statutory authorizations have become the predominant method for Congress to permit military action since the Second World War.10
The Supreme Court has also observed that the Declare War Clause confers broad authority upon Congress to pursue the war effort.11 The power to Declare War, the Supreme Court stated in 1870, involves the power to prosecute it by all means and in any manner in which war may be legitimately prosecuted.12 In line with this interpretation, Congress has enacted an extensive set of statutes that trigger a host of special wartime authorities concerning the military, foreign trade, energy, communications, alien enemies, and other issues if Congress declares war.13
The United States doesn't have a Constitution that means a goddamned thing, the Roberts Court , the most corrupt Supreme Court in our history, up to and most of all legalizing open bribery and corruption, as long as payment is made after what is bought is delivered and, worst of all, making Donald Trump an absolute dictator for four years - or more if he seizes power for longer, and don't think Vance won't try that as well. The United States is a lawless country due to the lies and dodges and corruption of the lawyers on the Supreme Courts since WWII who have allowed that power grab by the executive with the acquiescence of partisans on both sides of the Congress - again many of those giving that non-Constitutional power to presidents being not only lawyers but "Constitutional scholars."
Once a road through the actual meaning of the Constitution has been cut by the goddamned Supreme Court, it is there until it is sealed up by an amendment. Actually, under the real as opposed to the pretend Constitution, that's not true because the Marbury power, as has been seen over and over again, especially in the most corrupt of Courts, which is a majority of them, gives them the real power to nullify and amend the Constitution at their whim or ideological desire or, now under the corruption of the Roberts Court, as their patrons so order it up. Destroying the Marbury power grab is essential as the history of the United States proves, any court which is granted or grabs for itself such a power means that no written or unwritten Constitution means a goddamned thing in and of itself.
I doubt that anything but a total revision of the Constitution INCLUDING A CHANGE FROM THE INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT OURS INVENTED will reign in the most corrupt, the most overtly and literally criminal president from committing he most serious of crimes, especially if the Court has been as corrupted as ours is. Trump is that and the Roberts Court and the Republican-fascist congress is as guilty as he and his drunken, steroid stimulated Secretary of mayhem, Hegseth and the military officers and others who have carried out these grotesquely illegal acts. I don't expect any of them will suffer any consequences because the United States is a lawless country.
THE PASSAGE from Willi Apel's book on Gregorian Chant given yesterday was right, the primary value of the musical recitation of Psalms, Canticles such as the Magnificat or Nunc Dimittis, passages from the Prophets, Writings, Gospels and Epistles isn't the music, it's the words. You could write your own psalm or canticle or paraphrase of scripture, you get to decide what you're going to do at home on your own.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't any musical value to it. When the rhythm of the text is the focus you can learn a lot about the rhythm of it, which in musical terms means lengths of notes, different lengths of notes and pauses of different length. To an extent also the varying loudness of softness of what is sung . Just learning how to sustain a tone on pitch has musical value. Added to that is the clarity and naturalness of pronunciation of the consonants as well as the vowels. But those can't be separated from the meaning of the words in the context of the text.
You can learn a lot from recto tono chanting, it will be a lot more subtle than chanting with elaborate melodies, which have their own lessons to teach. But those subtle lessons are some of the most important if meaning in music is what you're after.
If you have an instrument you can play, checking the pitch with it can help a lot. If you have a keyboard or guitar (make sure it's in tune) accompanying yourself with it with a single chord or note can help a lot. This is your practice, you get to decide how you're going to do it.
IN THE COURSE of my new years day, I was involuntarily exposed to the movie Wicked. L. Frank Baum must have gone to hell because if he's aware of what they did to his story it must be torture for him.
My advice, read the book and forget the movies.
Update:
Well, I felt eternally damned after about an hour of the thing.
George Clooney, good bye and fuck off. I sure as hell won't be watching anything that he's in from now on.
I agree with Tabitha, Hunter Biden is fast becoming one of my favorite commentators on the scene. He said it just right, except I think Clooney likes his celebrity and money and public image a hell of a lot more than he does the United States. Tapper and the others mentioned, too.
LISTENING YESTERDAY TO A LECTURE by Rowan Williams, One being with the Father, given last September, I thought I would transcribe it and go over it during the first week or so of the new year. But this morning, looking at RMJ's blog I read this comment originally from bluesky:
The thing to remember is that destroying the Kennedy Center is the point of all of this. Shut down arts, shut down science, shut down academia so that radical Christianity can take over.
Reading that I realized that instead of me writing something of less value, Rowan Williams had said something far more apt and a far better refutation than anything I could come up with. Here from about 35:20 in the lecture .
Engagement with the ongoing risky time-taking business of finding where life is under threat and asking how we may receive and give life there. Yes, that is a crucial element in what the Christian community is summoned to do.
LISTENING TO THE LATEST information from Maria Farmer, one of the sisters who first informed the FBI about the Epstein pedophile rape ring only to have the FBI ignore their report for years, I have to wonder why no one is asking what role the then FBI director, Louis Freeh had in facilitating the continued abduction, rape and trafficking of children after HIS FBI did exactly that.
Along with Janet Reno as Attorney General, Bill Clinton's appointment of the DC establishment-media darling Louis Freeh as the director of the FBI have to stand as his worst appointments. But what can a Democratic president who appoints a frickin' Republican to head the FBI expect? By that time the Republican Party was well on its way to becoming the anti-democratic as well as anti-Democratic, fascist party it has become. I can't believe that it was solely due to the deliberate idiocy of the legal profession that pretends that "the law" is above politics because Clinton certainly should have known better by then. Though I've come to never underestimate the power of training in the law to allow you to pretend to not know what you know very well. *
Maybe I'll rehash the vileness of Freeh another time but let me get to the other obvious figure who should be questioned and investigated as to what he knew about the enabling by his bureau of the massive child-rape-trafficking-blackmail ring with clear international features to it, Freeh's successor, the absurdly lauded and idolized Robert Mueller. His FBI sat on the same information from the Farmer sisters that Freeh's did.
I will stand second to no one in my criticism of the epic malfeasance trough nonfeasance of Merrick Garland who should go down in history as the man who cared more for his own reputation than for American democracy or even the rule of law but he doesn't stand alone among those who could have saved countless children from being abducted, raped and trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell and the others who ran that child-rape-blackmail scheme. I have enough disdain for all of those who facilitated that crime spree to continue and one of its major figures, Trump to gain and regain power. I find that the powers of disdain expand to the size of those who deserve it. There are certainly others, such as the politicians and scientists and figures of finance, etc. who knew about it all along. I think there is every reason to believe that Bill Clinton was someone who was aware of it even as he did nothing to stop it. He may have never gone to the island but he was no babe in the woods. I will remind you Republicans who troll me that I have said from the start if Bill Clinton raped children they should lock him up and throw away the key. I say the same for everyone who did that, I don't believe that pedophiles can ever be safely assumed to reform. Though I'm sure there are some who give it up, I doubt most do.
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* Which brings me to that other major figure of both those accused of pedophile abuse and getting Epstein off so he could continue raping and trafficking and blackmailing for years, Dershowitz. Someone didn't care for me talking about what a damned liar he is and how that kind of lying is not only typical of those who take up the profession of lawyering, learning not only how to lie your lying face off to the media and only slightly reigned in in court so as to gull jurors from master liars such as Dershowitz at law schools such as Harvard where he taught the art of lying and Yale, where he learned it.
I don't think I had listened to this exchange between that expert in the lies of Dershowitz Norman Finkelstein and Katie Halper before the other day - I listen to way too many such things - but he had about the best explanation of how that works in regard to the epic lying of Dershowitz and how academia, which considers the minor sin of alleged plagiarism as a mortal sin that damns the accused for eternity even as it gives a pass to the most flagrant of lying by their faculty members, even those who get their lying puss on TV so much that they come to represent some place like Harvard Law.
Those stupid shows that have led Americans to have an absurdly high respect for what is a pretty grimy profession, everything from Perry Mason to the newer ones and movies like To Kill A Mockingbird have sold us a ridiculous image of lawyers. I tell that truth because there is no hope of there ever being a reform of it unless those of us outside of that racket see through it and demand change. Lawyers will never ever reform themselves, not even those who may disdain lying themselves because they know that they'd suffer professionally if they admitted what a bunch of fucking liars their colleagues are.
And while we're at it, I want to know which governments were in on it. And what other child raping and trafficking and blackmailing rackets are there. Between just those known here and in the UK, I have every confidence that those are the tip of a shitberg. The elites seem to like to rape children. Which is just one of the reasons why we should level elites out of existence.
WE'RE HAVING AN ICE STORM so the electricity has been going in and out, the reason I haven't written anything today. Here's the beginning of an excellent article with the excellent photo that was published with it.
Christmas is a child born in transit
Guests at the Buen Samaritano shelter for migrants participate in a candle lighting ceremony in anticipation of Christmas in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, across from El Paso, Texas, Dec. 22, 2022. (AP/Morgan Lee)
