My Archives: January 2006

My Archives: January 2006

Monday, January 30, 2006

Nam June Paik (July 20, 1932 ~ January 29, 2006)
I am saddened to learn of the death yesterday of a very nice man and important great artist. Please see this quick short note as an homage and big thank you to him, pending a larger one. On Saturday, August 6, 1966, he had been my guest at an apartment in downtown Luxembourg City, overlooking the city's salon, the Place d'Armes (in the building where my "The American Bookstore in Luxemburg" and Galerie Butterbach were located). At this reception in his honour we had hoped that he could give a concert (a performance) together with Ms. Charlotte Moorman. The two had travelled separately and Ms. Moorman somehow got lost in Stockholm and did not arrive in time before the departure of Mr. Paik by plane scheduled for Sunday. These are the rough details as far as I can remember them now without checking my documents of that time and also our correspondence in the years 1962 and 1965 in particular. But I would absolutely like to get these lines online today. So, what was planned to be a concert remained a party, but one which I will always gratefully remember with a special excitement. I hope to be able to reveal more at a later date. In the meantime, you can find some information on the following page of the Guggenheim Museum:
http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/paik/paik_top.html

Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:20 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Tuesday, January 24, 2006

JDM's site is down!
We unfortunately do not yet know for how long. A problem initially caused by massive spam having finally had the effect of a denial of service attack. His latest column is online though at BUTTERBACH.NET/EXTERRITORIAL.NET:
http://www.butterbach.net/jdm/jdm108.htm
"DON'T BLAME ME, I VOTED FOR GORE"
by Jonathan David Morris
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:02 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Saturday, January 7, 2006

Michael Badnarik writes:
I recently learned a new word. Pheochromocytoma. It's a disease of the central adrenal gland that causes an overproduction of adrenaline that is potentially fatal. We all know what it's like to be surprised or scared so badly that your heart suddenly races, and it takes a few seconds to catch your breath. Now - try to imagine having your adrenaline level so out of control that your heart pounds constantly, and you experience high anxiety all day long. Not a very pretty thought.
Someone I know has pheochromocytoma, but fortunately he has found a very simple way to control the disease. He smokes marijuana. Doctors in California have documented the fact that smoking marijuana - at least in this case - is able to control the disease.
There's more good news. The citizens of California have voted to approve marijuana for medical purposes. THREE TIMES! Unfortunately the federal government doesn't care about "states rights" or people suffering from rare diseases. The feds have decided that marijuana is bad and illegal, and they don't care why someone may need it. They will arrest you for possessing or using it.
When faced with a life or death situation, we all will go to great lengths to solve our problems. Steve Kubby and his wife decided to move to Canada to avoid prosecution in the "Land of the Free". They didn't realize just how relentless our federal government can be when they establish a "zero tolerance" policy on something like marijuana, which has been used for centuries without destroying previous civilizations.
The United States government is SO single minded in pursuit of Steve Kubby that they have lied and broken several of their own laws in an effort to make him comply with their "absolute" authority. They are planning to extradite him from Canada on January 9th. They plan to place him in a Placer County jail to await trial for drug violations. Naturally, they're not going to let Steve smoke marijuana while he's in jail. Which means that within hours or days he will experience severe headaches, nausea, high blood pressure - and an excruciatingly painful death.
This is not an abstract horror story. This is what is going to happen to this man, Steve Kubby.
http://www.badnarik.org/supporters/blog/images/060106_Kubby_Steve.jpg
Steve has been a Libertarian activist for many years. He has used his struggle for life to enlighten people about the inherent unfairness of our crazy war on drugs. He has raised money, petitioned the government, and waged a one man crusade against the insanity of our government telling us what we can or cannot ingest into our bodies. And now he needs our help BEFORE our government throws him in jail to writhe in agony before he dies.
"Irony" does not adequately describe a situation where you can combat a deadly disease - but not the government that was intended to protect your life, liberty, and property. This isn't irony. It is an obscene violation of everything that Americans claim to believe in.
Here's what I want you to do. I want you to review the three web links below to learn more about pheochromocytoma, Steve Kubby, and the lengths the US government has taken to make him look like a criminal.
http://www.kubby.com/
http://www.endocrineweb.com/pheo.html
http://www.marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=874
Now I want you to call Steve's wife, Michele at (250) 578-8422 to offer moral support, and to ask what she'd like you to do to help.
Steve doesn't have much time before the 9th. Please call Michele RIGHT NOW.

Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:15 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, January 4, 2006

Two Aspects, Two Levels
How sad, the destiny of the miners in West Virginia, so near the Power Center. These workers are heroes who by their hard work contribute to all what we consume and consider our due and sometimes do not respect enough. Respecting material things is a spiritual attitude that respects human life.
In the Power Center Itself only money is respected and the power it gives has no respect for human lives either. In Abramoffistan the lobby rides its pet hobby, golf on a green lawn, under an innocent private jet white sky, over the dark ground of death in the mines.
The market sells coffins if in cahoots with power.
A catharsis is required and imminent.
Do you see the diaphanous warning written in the sky by the military jets' exhausts?

Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:45 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Monday, January 2, 2006

John the Hermit?
There are Johns and johns all over the place. No, I do not mean those johns that are facilities or emblazon JDM's website. Here in Hamburg it would be a big lie to say that they are all over the place. They used to. But they are not anymore. And the populace is very upset about this, but bears the situation stoically, as afraid of the big pimps, the politicians, whom we pay like johns of whores for fake services, as of the pimps in their limousines and sports cars in the red light districts (we have several here!). I mean the upper case Johns, who are all over the place too, with their first names cloned from those of the Johns in the Holy Books (there are several too!), and one in particular, not John the Divine, but John the Humane: John Zube. In his hermit den in the middle of bush fires around Berrima near Sydney (when it would make sense to close the facilities to make all men form rows of firefighters) he has concocted for someone first and then for all of us who are readers of these websites, but are libertarians afraid of extinguishing the fires in the world by leaving the government facilities and taking their hoses into their hands, so to speak, an article called Decidophobia , which is a rare piece (though they are more likely to come from John than from elsewhere) of "encyclopaedic summing up", as I call it: the quintessence of his thoughts taken from many great minds (including his father) and developed over more than half a century with more painstaking assiduity than any of us could muster. He is always a step further, more radical and more encompassing than other freedom fighters, offering so far the completest synthesis. If only those who never listen, the pimps and johns, would listen a bit, and those many who have added first class pieces to the puzzle and cornucopia of freedom ideas and knowledge, would try a bit more to measure their theories up to those best ones, we would advance quicker and be further by now. But it starts.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 04:11 PM GMT+1 [Link]

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