Wednesday, January 28, 2004
a not Very funny Valentine about Vicious Vagina monologues and Vagina warriors' Vignettes on V-day and other Venues and Viewpoints... ;-)
by Wendy
hurry along to read all about it here...
PS: ...I forgot three V's: inVented Victims of Violence... ;-)
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 03:07 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Monday, January 26, 2004
NYPD under scrutiny again after teen shot
From Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,109451,00.html, courtesy of Rational Review News Digest:"A grand jury this week will consider charges including murder against a police officer who fatally shot an unarmed teenager Saturday in the stairwell of a housing complex, law enforcement officials said. ... [Timothy] Stansbury was shot once in the chest as he pushed open a red metal door to the roof of the Louis Armstrong Houses around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. Housing Officer Richard Neri, who had his gun drawn, was pulling the door from the other side as part of a routine stairwell and rooftop patrol called a vertical that he was conducting with his partner." (01/25/04)
So he was "conducting" with his pardner. Stop conducting. Toscanini, do you hear me?!
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 12:55 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Saturday, January 24, 2004
Follow-up to Albanian tragedy
Please visit the editorial below again later today or tomorrow, but this time at
http://www.exterritorial.net/albania.htm,
as it will offer there a lot of additional and more recent information and will continue to be updated. I am sorry to be a bit late with this, but there were just too many things raining down on me the last few days. The latest is of such importance that you may expect a longer report on it in this "notewok" (I was deeply insulted on a very special US site...). Stay tuned!
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 03:05 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Albanian tragedy!
The pursuit of happiness destroyed!
I personally hold Albanians in high esteem. I can testify to the great traditions of this people through a few personal encounters I was lucky to have with a couple of them and which were brutally terminated (like in many other cases!) when "our" government proceeded to deport them again after having temporarily let them in. I also could observe a bit the Albanian community here in Hamburg and was impressed. Sort of too decent people for this world!My deceased friend C. Neal Brady was engaged in helping several Albanian families too (in Luxemburg) and testified to the same.
Of course, mutual contact with that country has been quasi-inexistant for most of my life time, Albania having been that tragic prison. But is the real scandal not the fact that this country is still now mistreated by the European political community, notwithstanding the fact that we are all more or less mistreated by politics?!
Therefore I gladly post here the following message which was forwarded to me by Ken Schoolland who made the acquaintance of Kozeta during the Kosovo War. She is the ISIL representative for Albania. Ken found her "to be one of the greatest champions of desperate refugees" that he has ever met.
I take this opportunity to officially announce the new upcoming Immigration section on this website. It will soon be located at http://www.butterbach.net/immigration/. Already since a long time this website offers the following pertaining to the subject:
- http://www.butterbach.net/cosmos.htm (in German/auf Deutsch)
- http://www.butterbach.net/cosmos_f.htm (in French/en français)
- http://www.butterbach.net/cosmos_e.htm (in English)
From: Kozeta Cuadari <kcika@yahoo.com>
Subject: Albanian tragedy!
It was 9.00 p.m. on Friday, 9 January 2004. The programmes of Top Channel, one of the most successful TV Stations in Albania, were interrupted with the shocking news that a boat of more than 30 refugees was sinking in the Adriatic Sea, only 5 miles far from Vlora Coast. The strange voice of a man calling from his mobile was asking for help publicly. We could hear his voice directly on the extraordinary edition of Top Channel news: "Please help us! We are drowning...". The news broadcaster, pale and in a trembling voice, implored the police, government and local people in Vlora to go for help. The number of his mobile remained on the screen for a couple of hours, but no response came on the other end of the line.
Here started the marathon of that tragic night. And step by step the whole truth was revealed, mostly by the media. At 5.00 p.m., on Friday 9 January, more than 30 people from Shkodra district, Northern Albania, one of the poorest in the country, set off to follow their dream that would be the last: their impossible dream for a better life that brought those people to death. Among them were 6 women. They were all refused to be given a visa from the Italian Embassy to join their families and relatives in Italy. They had paid 1500 EUROS each to cross the sea illegally, being discriminated up to the point that they could use every other means to go abroad, risking their lives in the middle of the winter. The news caused panic and everyone got stuck in front of the box, waiting hopefully for a solution. Gradually, after the news was broken, the government started to take measures. Help was asked from NATO Forces that were settled in Albania and from Italian Naval Forces. The Ministry of Defence sent the order for special troops to be put to sea, but the sea was so rough that it was impossible for the rescuers to find the boat. It was too late.
By the next morning one of the ships of the Italian Naval Forces found the boat. Only 11 people had survived, 21 were found dead and it is thought that there were more than 5 other people missing. The survivors were so shocked that they could not give further evidence to what really happened that night. They were sent to the hospital and given first aid. All they say is that they survived due to their young age and strength (they were all between 29-30 years old). They say they could hear the helicopters so near that night, and the ships passing by, but no one saw them because of the wind and big waves. Anyway, the news seems to have lots of contradictions, regarding the exact number of people in the boat, the delayed help, and people implicated in the tragic event. It is said that some chief police officers are involved in the illegal traffic. This is one reason why they delayed help, though they knew about the boat of clandestines two hours before the phone call. Another hypothesis is that the police was informed that there were drugs in the boat, not people, so they thought it was better to sink.
Actually, measures have been taken by the government to prevent the illegal traffic and to stop the smugglers. Two years ago it was said that the government had put an end to the illegal traffic and some boats had been burned to show this was achieved, but it was all a comedy show. High officials are involved in the traffic.
More than 20 people lost their lives in this tragic event. No one can bring them to life again. Albanians know that unless they are treated as human beings by the foreign authorities, they will try every means to follow their dreams for a better life, for water and electricity, for feeding their children and joining their families that they haven't seen for years. It is the government's duty to respect their own citizens and support their free movement. Albania is one of the most ancient countries of Europe, with an old culture and excellent traditions. We deserve to be called Europeans and share their rights. This event was an appeal to old Europe and its old-fashioned laws. If the doors of the world remain closed for the Albanians, they will still try to go illegally, they will dig a tunnel under the sea and try to go away from poverty. And no one can stop them! Even death!
Kozeta Cuadari Cika
Tirana, Albania
PS by CB: A few days earlier Kozeta had written the following letter to her friends at ISIL. I quote it in full and have set in bold characters the passages that seemed most remarkable to me:
Dear Isil Friends,
This year has had a terrible start for Albania. On Saturday, 10 January, a boat of 30 or more illegal emmigrants tried to cross the sea to Italy but sank in the water. More than 20 people were drowned. All clandestines were young people. They had their families in Italy and wanted to join them, and the only way was to travel illegally, because the Italian Embassy denied the visas. They asked for help since they saw that the sea was rough and impossible to sail, but help arrived too late. It is reported that the traffic of illegal emmigrants is supported by people in power, high police officers are also implicated in this traffic. Albanians are the only people in Europe who cannot move to other countries, even if they have legal docummentation. This is crazy to think that we live in the 21st century, and Europe denies us the free movement to join our families who live abroad or to look for work in other countries. Albania is still a very poor country and the so! cialist government is doing nothing to improve the situation. All clandestines were from Northern Albania, which lacks not only places of jobs but also running water and electricity. These people were looking for a better life accross the borders, but they found death instead. Yesterday we mourned their deaths. A lot of protests are being organized by people and organizations agains the illegal traffic of people, poverty and government. More information in the coming days, if you are interested.
Yours in Liberty,
Kozeta
Please forward the above to others wherever you can!
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 12:57 PM GMT+1 [Link]
A Man's (and Woman's) Home Is a Castle
~
I warmly recommend to you the above latest guest column by Wendy McElroy. It is online since yesterday. Didn't you notice? :-)All guest columns are listed together on a special Op-Ed page.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 09:55 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Happy birthday to you, Brad!
Brad Spangler is getting 35 today. And he can eat his birthday cake and still have it by clicking on the empty space above...
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 07:54 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
LUX LUCRE (1963 - 2004)
The terribly tragic news that Lux Lucre (Kerry Pearson) passed away in his sleep during the night from Thursday to Friday, January 8 to January 9 (if I got it right) reached me three days ago from Ken Schoolland. I am totally confused, that's why I post this message only today. The libertarian community world-wide is in mourning because of this sad loss of one of its wonderful and important activists and of such a nice man. My obituary will appear as soon as possible, not on this site, but on "The Exterritorial Imperative", for a special and very good reason. I will talk of my relation and too short cooperation with Kerry. In the meantime you can learn more on Kerry, on the circumstances of his decease, on the help the family needs now, on his wonderful main website with the new great design etc., and see some pictures, if you visit all the links I collected for you in a hurry below (in no logical order).
http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/1/10/101226/903
http://forums.prospero.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=foxfirefly&msg=12391.1
http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/tle254-20040111.html
http://fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=2&t=3277
http://forums.prospero.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=foxfirefly&msg=4787.261
http://www.luxlucre.com
http://www.lairofluxlucre.com/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rrnd/message/284
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 12:06 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Children Victimized By System Secrecy
The latest essay by Wendy McElroy has been placed online today:
Children Victimized By System Secrecy
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:37 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Saturday, January 10, 2004
The above is page one and two of a letter of an Iraqi mother requesting world-wide support to force the American invader to start an investigation on how her 19 year old son Zaydun below was killed by an American army patrol.
I cannot fully judge the case, though other people I respect, who are more qualified than I, tell me that it is true. It is also fully believable if you put it in context with many other happenings of the sort. And the site does not push under the rug killings by Iraqis, for instance of Christians by Muslims. Anyway, I urge you to visit, for more details and your own appreciation and for updates on the case, the very interesting and informative portal site
Healing Iraq
Daily news and comments on the situation in post Saddam Iraq
They have a nice motto on their site:
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into." Jonathan Swift
The site is here:
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/archives/2004_01_01_healingiraq_archive.html
Another incident related on that site (at a Baghdad wedding, where the guests, following an Arab tradition known to me already as a kid, shot in the air, which prompted another American unit to shoot also, but this time not in the air, but into at least one of the guests, making him a cripple for life maybe) shows the result of sending American hillbillies as GIs to a different and ancient culture unknown to them. Well, the hillbillies can and should be located much higher up in the social hierarchy than with the GIs. Shouldn't one at least know the language of the people one wants to shoot, oops, liberate? Not knowing anything or only a little makes wars possible in the first place.
Further on the matter of "liberation" as the Empire sees it, you may want to read
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1313.shtml
and if you cannot believe it, you can and will believe what the aggressor admits himself:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/01/05/international0844EST0497.DTL
To leftist feminists: the above contains a wonderful proof and example of your theories. Or maybe not?
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 04:41 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Thursday, January 8, 2004
2004!
After the question mark (see below) a not totally convinced exclamation mark! To introduce a somewhat brighter note, may I mention that in the meantime I have got a number of more pleasant New Year's greetings, wishes, news. I cannot quote them all, but I will choose just one typical one I liked in each of three categories important to me.
- The pleasantly warming, healing, elating category, carrying you away for a moment from your sorrows to outer space, reminding you of a fundamental truth or reality most often not seen. Steven wrote: Belated best wishes for a happy and prosperous trip around the sun! Yours,...
- The "even more realistic as the one before" category, but remaining on earth in the middle of the sorrows, therefore helping in a very sound way. Stefan Metzeler wrote in German: Auch Dir Alles Gute zum neuen Jahr. Gruss,... adding in English Modest contribution for a better new year to his concurrent e-gold gift, thus increasing my bullion holdings in London, Dubai and Zurich... :-) To my astonished thanks he replied, again in German, Freut mich, hoffentlich habe ich einen Trend gestarted :-) Dann wird 2004 zu einem tollen Jahr, auch für Dich! Gruss,...which means that he hopes to have started a trend, because then 2004 will become a terrific year, also for me.
- The tongue in cheek category, reminding you that you are still young, in spite of being old, and are loved by your friends, and that life is fun and should be enjoyed, far from state and religious right, these two having to be protested. But how do you do all that? Nico wrote in English and Luxemburgish, calling me Bubi, my nickname or pet name as a small kid which my closest friends from that time still use, provided they are still alive, and also my relatives (family all dead), provided they are also alive and still talk to me. I think my father gave me that name. WARNING: adult content! :-) [User ID: pas-chilly-au-Chili/Password: redeemingSOCIALvalue/enter only the bold part] Have fun!
And thank you, golden sun!
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:53 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Thursday, January 1, 2004
"I'm afraid that 90 percent of Americans don't know where Iraq is and never will know, and they don't care."
Who said this??
The one who answered the question
"Speaking of elections, is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year?"
with
"No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don't want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn't their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption?"
or the question
"So if George W. Bush or John Ashcroft had been around in the early days of the republic, they would have been indicted and then hanged by the Founders?"
with
"No. It would have been better and worse. [Laughs] Bush and Ashcroft would have been considered so disreputable as to not belong in this country at all. They might be invited to go down to Bolivia or Paraguay and take part in the military administration of some Spanish colony, where they would feel so much more at home. They would not be called Americans – most Americans would not think of them as citizens."
Well, it is our great inimitable Gore Vidal, in an interview given to Marc Cooper of LA Weekly and published as Uncensored Gore Vidal on AlterNet yesterday. Don't miss it! It is full of important historical insights and warnings accordingly. His basic assumptions may not be yours, politically he is neither anarchist, left or right, or anarcho-capitalist nor anything of the sort, more a liberal than a libertarian, more a conservative (in the best sense of the word) than the latter, but certainly no neo-con. That's already something and maybe enough these days. ;-) Anyway, he is, as I said, inimitable and his very own category. An elitist, consistent with the immense stature of his intelligence and education, no populist (right or left) for sure, but with his heart on the left, thus at the right natural biological place. True intelligence has always been on the side of the moral good, not the bad. And on the side of the poor, of the oppressed. At least, that's how I see it. And being gay gave him from the start some special grip on seeing realities as they are, not as they are being told, a talent that straights sometimes may take longer to develop, unless they suffer from some other very personal conflict with the status quo.
Please watch in particular what Gore has to say on the USA PATRIOT Act. The importance of this cannot be stressed enough. This is not just a dreadful danger for the wonderful American people [not all, mind you :-)], but for the whole world, since especially in Europe governments in their incompetence and their intrinsic malice (though that's not what their PR efforts are trying to tell us) are APING these days the worst part of America. Agreed, this is no news: it has only extended to matters of greater negative impact. Is it not a disgrace that even countries like the Netherlands or Denmark are not capable anymore to fully resist the bad influence?!
I would not mind getting comments on this.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 02:00 PM GMT+1 [Link]
2004?
I doubt that it will be ~ I can't say better ~ less bad than 2003. But it is always better to get a good surprise than a bad one. So I wish all my readers the former. Stay healthy and happy and economically in reasonable shape as much as possible in the state-made and sheeple-made collectivist circumstances.
Happy Unhappy New Year! (Can one say that actually?) My turn of the year has been modest, to say the least. From around noon yesterday till this morning my provider HanseNet had seen to it that I was cut from the Internet, which for me means practically from everything... Phoning the hotline, I was more or less clearly told that I should not complain, that I should just wait, as, after all, I was not the only one concerned. Isn't that the bottom line of statist reasoning?!
Then, I also received (one by fax, one by snail mail) two good wishes for the New Year from local friends, both accompanied by a more or less threatening reminder to repay some money I had basically agreed to owe but not to repay that quickly. How friendly and tactful!
My gift to you, dear readers, is the upload this morning, postponed from yesterday, of very valuable content. Go to the Guest column New! item in the English [~E~] menu above and see for yourself: 30 essays by Wendy McElroy. Such sound, competent, libertarian, individualist reasoning, of a kind that, I think, could appeal to both conservative and liberal audiences, is the best food for the intellect you could find to start the new year.
More to come!
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:55 AM GMT+1 [Link]
