Friday, May 20, 2005
Decrepit America
When freedom and individual natural rights have become decrepit, the whole nation has become decrepit. To what degree this has been the case after 9/11, is marvellously shown by a couple of sentences that represent a total indictment of the United States in Wendy McElroy's latest major column on this site:Father's Rights Movement to Get English Invasion
http://www.butterbach.net/wendy/w101.htmShooting without warning (and due process trial) has become the motto and habit, and not only on the part of government...
As I write in the description meta tag of the source code header of Wendy's article: Wendy McElroy on the litmus test by the British father's rights movement of US decrepit freedom after 9/11.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 02:24 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Open Letter To President Bush on the Signing of the REAL ID Act
"Comrade Bushnev,Congratulations on signing the National ID into law. Now that all Americans are going to be tracked from birth to death in one huge database, I'm sure you'll be able to prevent anyone from doing anything you or your handlers don't like. Liberty was so messy!
When the Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001, you said it was because they hate our freedoms. Problem solved. We no longer have any freedoms. Bravo!"
Read the complete letter in Bill St. Clair's blog "End the War on Freedom" (subtitle: Links and Commentary from my Crypto-Anarcho-Libertarian Perspective).
A few more comments on the subject:
The End of America: May 10, 2005
"On Tuesday, May 10, 2005, America became a true police state."
http://jpfo.org/alert20050511.htm
Nope! Even if it is increasing these days, the growth is in the seed already. It may have been a lighter version, but it was a true one before. Right from the beginning. Like with all nations of the world, the seed is planted when the borders are drawn and a territorial state is born with a legal monopoly imposed on every resident and on every visitor. This is already a police state and couldn't survive without being one. More on this on the 4th of July! Remind me, if I forget...
Stay angry about Real ID
"I'm amazed at the calm in the aftermath of Senate passage of this Stalinist monstrosity."
http://www.clairewolfe.com/wolfesblog/00001399.html
Senate approves electronic ID card bill
"Anyone without such an ID card will be effectively prohibited from traveling by air or Amtrak, opening a bank account, or entering federal buildings."
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5702505.html
UPDATE 1-US Senate unanimously approves new Iraq war funds
"The Bush administration will also get $592 million to build a new embassy in Iraq. It would be the largest U.S. compound in the world."
http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=bondsNews&storyID=8447726
Bruce Schneier writes in his latest Crypto-Gram: "Those seriously interested in this issue are invited to attend an EPIC-sponsored event in Washington, DC, on the topic on June 6th. I'll be there."
PS:
Real ID: A License to Kill
by Jonathan David Morrishttp://www.butterbach.net/jdm/jdm70.htm
The Great Reaper of Liberty finally had its way. We have been marked and Nero can burn God's own country. The Sensenbrenner scythes can reap...
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 04:19 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Sunday, May 8, 2005
Out of brutality
The Ponzi scheme must stop!
"The abuse cycle must end.""It demands an unwillingness to “go along with” the perpetuation of this social program that first creates brutes through the use of coercion, and then proclaims that we need coercion to deal with the brutes, with the rebels, and with the rage carried in all of us. You do not need to be a genius to declare, “Enough!”"
I recommend the essay
You Are Already Free
by Richard Rieben
which was published on May 3, 2005, on the Strike The Root site, a fundamental essay I would have been proud and elated to publish in my new
Read this article on STR and also the astute discussion that followed it in their forum:
The link to the website mentioned in the essay
As for the partially gruesome translations sported on that site, we will have to do something about that as soon as possible. Those defenseless victims, the brutalized languages of several great cultures, almost make me weep. How about sending the contract to the premier and tax-paid translation services of the European Union in Luxemburg? ;-) That would at least prevent them a couple days from translating the usual despotic and dangerous nonsense sprouting in Brussels...
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:40 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Bush on trail again in Europe
Christian Butterbach: Can't you keep him there and leave us in peace?
Or did he flee, his situation having become too dangerous at home?
Richard Rieben: Lordy no, we's too cowardice to threaten big Georgie. We were rather hoping, though, that while you've got him over there if you could, ah, maybe, er, do us a little favor ... hmmm?
Christian Butterbach: Or has he become a director of ISIL maybe (those places he goes to mostly seem to be the kind ISIL would go to!)?
Richard Rieben: Americans just love competition and fair play. ISIL presents the case for liberty, then George has his turn, and presents the case for servitude. Balanced, like.
Christian Butterbach: It's of course always nice to travel on taxpayers' money... We can't. 
Richard Rieben: Well, think about it, Chris. You're a taxpayer, right? And, when you travel, you travel on your own money, right? Therefore, you do travel on taxpayer's money, now, don't you?
Richard
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:54 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, May 4, 2005
Calling all Longhorns________________
Stop the Car Spychip Bill!
All right, you intrepid, privacy-loving Texans -- it's time once again to show the rest of the country what you're made of. You're in the spotlight as the test case for the government to see if it can get away with spychipping cars!A bill in the Texas House of Representatives would require an embedded RFID tag to be placed on your windshield, within your mandatory inspection sticker. The sticker could be read from over 30 feet away by government reader devices that can function like gestapo-style invisible checkpoints -- ID'ing all Texas vehicles as they pass. Along with requiring this device in your cars, the government could hide reader devices in the roads to monitor all cars entering a given neighborhood, driving into a given parking lot, or even just heading down the open road. [Just imagine, Laura Bush would just need to call the police to know where her husband is!... ;-)]
Your ability to travel anonymously is at stake, but you can win this one if you fight it!
Source: My San Antonio, 4/8/05 http://www.mysanantonio.com/...
Contact your state Rep and tell them you'll be remembering how they vote on this one when election time rolls around again. Better yet, stop by their office and tell them in person. But whatever you do, don't sit idly by and let this happen!
Find your Texas state representative here: http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/
My source: CASPIAN Newsletter, 4/27/05
PS: I just got the following news: "Thanks, Christian. It worked! Texas pulled the provision! More in the next newsletter." Of course, I have no merit with this, I had posted the appeal too late anyway. But still, nice to hear. And thanks to those others who apparently had become very active!
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 09:51 AM GMT+1 [Link]
A Destiny to Be Invaded...
...including a subtle hint at the European Union !
050505Exhibition from 5th to 22nd mai 2005
Open on tuesdays to sundays from 3 to 8 pm
«Ancienne Chapelle du Rham»
Plateau du Rham - Luxembourg city
An exhibition bringing together Luxembourg-based artists Sneja_D, MeltingPol and Ren Schroeder with UK-based artists Justine Blau and Pippa Koszerek exploring the theme of «ASSIEGéR» .
«ASSIEGéR» draws up Luxembourg’s complex history as a site of constant invasion, a city of underground tunnels, its one time strategic position as the ‘Gibraltar of the North’ and today as important siege of diverse European Institutions. On another level the theme considers how mass culture, advertising and television constantly create a worldwide siege of ideas and influences.
The artists are exploring the theme of «ASSIEGéR» by highlighting historical, political or socio-cultural issues. By playfully intermixing or “invading” each other’s work, the artists also explore each other’s boundaries, creating a visual (an aural) disruption and a dialogue around their diverse approaches.
Through sand constructions, video installations, paintings and punctual interventions the artists will invade the inner and outer space of the gallery and transform it into a creative playground where also other artists are punctually invited to respond to the theme of «ASSIEGéR» through dance, poetry and music. In this context, three events are currently scheduled :
Programme:
Thursday, May 5 from 5 to 10 pm :
Opening-act with CyberPiper andIsadora Sanchez (music & dance)
Saturday, May 14 from 7 to 10 pm :
Over the Hill– Studio Session with Sonic Attack (music)
Sunday, May 22 from 12 am to end :
Closing Brunch avec Francis Kirps et Angélique A. (poetry & dance)
~
I would like to draw your attention to the video installation "Power corn" of Sneja_D, in which the theme of ASSIEGéR is associated with the invasion of our super-market shelves and our daily dishes by genetically manipulated food. In her installation, Sneja_D wishes to cast a critical glance at this topical phenomenon while at the same time treating it with humour.
For more information on all this, please go to the website of this event and click on EXHIBITION.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 08:20 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Sunday, May 1, 2005
Something has to be done!
No sweat! It's being done already! All over the world, night and day! The bad guys are at it in particular, with their illimited extorted stolen means, the good guys are sacrificing themselves in trying to stand up to them. But that's not what I mean. I'm talking about something more modest, my portal site and its home page.Last month, April 2005, the number of unique visitors per month to my site fell from 25,860 to 18,214. This is still good, but my hope and reasonable expectancy both are rather for further increases... So something has to be done indeed!
There are a number of reasons for the brakes having been applied to the further expansion. First of all, for 9 days out of a month of only 30 (extrapolated to 31 days, the figure would have been somewhat better, namely 18,821), my home page had been replaced by a black page mourning Terri Schiavo. This was my decision. And I am still fully standing by my decision ["Stand By Your Man", as the recommendation in Tammy Wynette's famous song, interpreted.among others by Elton John, goes... ;-)], even if, I am sure, a good deal of my audience has a different view on the matter.
No one summed the case up better than Christopher G. Adamo in his article America's system of justice is broken on Rational Review:
In Florida, based on the testimony of one man, a defenseless woman is starved to death. His "evidence" was so flimsy that it normally would be insufficient to uphold even a parking ticket. The judge who nonetheless concurred and ordered her starvation is so mired in conflicts of interest that he should have been automatically recused from the case.
Yet the Governor of the state, whose job it ostensibly is to protect citizens from being deprived of life, liberty, or property absent due process of law, stands impotently by and allows the travesty to proceed to its malevolent end, claiming that intervention on her behalf would be contrary to "the rule of law."
The second reason for a drop of visitors was that on February 8, 2005, I had lost all my data (and very little is recovered so far), including the opt-in lists of my newsletters, so that I cannot announce new content but to a small number among my audience.
Finally, less content had indeed been added, though it was at hand, because I had not enough time for that, didn't feel like it at all, having had to deal with an exceptional lot of red tape imposed by those bad extortionist guys (if you don't know whom I mean, write me a letter), having had some Spring feelings leading to some entanglements (don't ask), having had to deal with my health, my household and my holdings. As nobody is laughing here, they all have to be punished and need to go to this page to get redemption.
I forgot a main reason: I absolutely spend the largest part of my days and my nights with correspondence, with e-mail. Not that I dislike it. A lot of the very best texts I write myself and of the very best texts the prestigious authors I stay in contact with write, are in that correspondence, and not on my websites. A pity, but they can always be used later, so that's not the problem, the problem is: it's simply too much for the time of one man alone who has no help whatsoever with anything, except the generosity [and, ahem, the self-interest ;-)] of the authors who send me their great essays.
So, something radical will be done:
- My very successful blog "CB's notewok" will be moved to its own page, with just links to it on the home page. It will also become more lively again with more frequent posts.
- Two new cooperative blogs will be added to replace the defunct "CB's fireplace".
- The home page will be improved in several steps to make it more useful and maybe a bit better looking, the main concern being though to take away anything that slows down the loading of that most important page (with the occasional exception maybe of some beautiful pictures, should they be required). Some has already disappeared, like the newsticker (now on its own page) or the establishing of a secure encrypted SSL connection for the PayPal button [this is now on the donation page ~~~ ever heard of that one? ;-)], but just this morning I had noticed again that the Cost of War iframe causes problems, preventing the page from opening quickly enough. All this messing about will be taboo on the home page.
- Although my sites are more than a hobby of a pensioner exercizing, as a private person, his freedom of opinion, of speech and of the press, and offering, beyond the more personal part, a service to the public by spreading knowledge on many subjects, this is certainly not done for profit. But His Supreme Arrogance the First Criminal and Ruffles Creator par excellence, the despotic State, has deigned to force me to become again a dealer (I am dealing with the most dangerous, addictive and lethal drug, rare knowledge!), a businessman, with all the disadvantages and impossibilities this entails for a single individual in our fake market system. Never taking in any money to be kept for myself as a reward for my work, but all going to the robbers, with advance taxes and fees even before I would have started to "earn" anything. No thank you, dear Socialists! To save myself as far as possible from this slave work and red tape ordeal (more forms to fill per month than I use sheets of toilet paper rolls), I decided to do away with all paid advertisements on my sites (Google ads, Affilinet ones, etc.), even before I really started to avail myself of them fully. This is a very bitter decision, as suddenly there is a real potential. No ads, wow, you might say. Don't rejoice too early. You will not only lose some valuable information and services (the Whois search service, for instance, if I cannot find another arrangement), but you will maybe have to make contributions to prevent the sites from simply disappearing, when I cannot bear the high cost anymore.
- "CB's notewok" for news ~ comments ~ editorials, a weblog, as the main feature of the home page so far, will be replaced by a longer essay or other text, thus starting a new tradition of having a particularly striking, unique and important text as main fare on that home page, where it would stay a rather long time, to be later moved to another spot and replaced by the next text of the sort. Such a fundamental text you will not find every day.
You will be in for several surprises regarding the first one. A friend had recommended it to me with the following words: "Here is a well thought out and, it seems to me, rational position. [The author] is one of the few politically active people who makes sense. Please pay careful attention."
What else is new? [will be added a bit later, as I want the above to be posted on May 1 local time by all means]
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:02 PM GMT+1 [Link]
