Thursday, July 29, 2004
I saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" today.
I urge simply everyone to go and see it.Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 09:43 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Friday, July 23, 2004
When the word "peace" sounds like "piss"...
I read in today's issue of Rational Review News Digest (a shame if you are not yet a subscriber! how can you feel informed without it?) the following item:- 27) Bush: "I want to be the peace president"
Swiss Info
After launching two wars, President George W. Bush says he wants to be a 'peace president' and has taken swipes at his Democratic rivals for being lawyers and weak on defence. With polls showing public support for the war in Iraq in decline, Bush cast himself as a reluctant warrior and assured Americans they were 'safer' as he campaigned in the battleground states of Iowa and Missouri against Democrat John Kerry and his running mate, former trial lawyer John Edwards. 'The enemy declared war on us,' Bush told a re-election rally in Cedar Rapids. 'Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president .... The next four years will be peaceful years.' Bush used the words 'peace' or 'peaceful' a total of 20 times. (07/22/04)
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5096629
~
- When I read the first line, I looked out of the window to see whether the earth is still turning around its axis...
- "You started!" is the familiar sound of a repetitious sentence you can hear in children's playgrounds...
- Who was first, the hen or the egg? It's been a while that territorial governments play that war game!...
- Repeat your ad 20 times and people may buy your washing-powder instead of your competitor's. After all, both wash reasonably white, which you can see. Will a lie 20 times repeated make dark war look like bright peace? You should be able to see that too!
- Piss on that next four year peace promise!
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 01:34 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Debunking the statistics...
"There are three kinds of lies – lies, damned lies and statistics." MARK TWAIN, Autobiography (1924), v. 1, ed. A. B. Paine.This quotation is sometimes wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill or Disraeli, for instance on http://www.gurteen.com/.... See also the comments at the bottom of that page. Shakiness seems to be a common trait of the attribution of quotes and of statistics. It's best to attribute a quote to the author who first pronounced it in print, in her/his book, without adding that he/she is just quoting the speech of someone else. Or we would have to consider each one repeating it an author worth mentioning... Winston Churchill is more often quoted though for apparently having said that one should not believe a statistic that one has not falsified oneself. That's more like him. :-)
- Anyway, be it as it may, truth in modern times is often buried under an avalanche of statistics, as wrongful as the Inquisition's numbering of witches... (though correct honest ones can be of great help!). So we need honest experts capable of looking through that mess and explain us, the more lucky than smart ones: we have Wendy McElroy who this week again on the Op-Ed page brilliantly opposes the panic mongering of those statistics manipulators:
No Panic Over School Child Abuse
She has done it often before (check the list of her essays) and will hopefully continue to corner the modern witch-hunters hailing mostly from left feminist circles! They make a good living out of it around here too.Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 02:02 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Sovereign Life
The True Significance and Power of the Word Secede
May I introduce to you one of the very best texts ever published on this site in seven years? It should be this site's celebration of Fourth of July (or False of July as I like to call it), thus in a sense topical, though a yearly recurring event, having more and more, sad to say, become indeed independent of true meaning and significance as the years went by. But I did not bother to publish it closer to that referring date, as I consider this more than excellent essay a fundamental text of permanent, not just topical, and universal relevance. I am pleased to add it to the still too small collection of rare, clear-cut and clean-cut jewels which I, upon entering the arena of the Web in 1998, had mainly hoped to be able to publish. I rank it with texts like The Freedom to Read, Definitionen und Unterscheidungsmerkmale, Die Cosmopolitische Union (English translation: Appeal to establish a COSMOPOLITAN UNION; French translation: Déclaration de principes de l'UNION COSMOPOLITE), AKTUALITÄT EINER VERGESSENEN BEWEGUNG: DIE BODENREFORMER.Discover the hidden implications of the word secede in
A Troublesome Document: Musings on July 4
by David MacGregor. I include it on purpose on "The Exterritorial Imperative" among my sites, where it best belongs, instead of on the portal site.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:04 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
20. Juli 1944 ~ July 20, 2004
"You should never give powers to a leader you like that you'd hate to have given to a leader you fear."
"These days, just about anyone can be a terrorist. Hell, you could be a terrorist and not even know it. You're a threat to yourself now."Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 07:25 PM GMT+1 [Link]
ROTFL
One of this website's regular columnists can claim a rare feat. And one which we all since long have secretly wished to perform. He cracked the data base of our most illegitimate but legislated leptokurtic telephone eavesdroppers. He virtually entered the dark vaults where normally only leptodactylous State ghosts tread and their lackeys. What he found was very revealing. And he reveals it to us. As a matter of precaution I waited before letting you know till the traces of his trespass have somewhat faded... But now you can read the revealing transcript on this site. And while rolling on the floor laughing, don't forget to shed some tears also in regard of the seriousness of the matter, but then wipe them and right away start preparing for some big change in November. After November your laughs and tears should be entirely about private matters and unprovoked by the ghosts of yesteryear.The sheets of the ghosts have become so transparent. You can easily make out the skulls and bones they are hiding in vain.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 01:41 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Tuesday, July 6, 2004
No one man (Badnarik) will ever be able to solve the world's problems. But two men (Bush and Kerry) will be able to create them!
Let us start to solve some or at least stop creating so many...Read, as announced, this week's special early column by Jonathan David Morris on this site:
The Libertarian Lessons of "Fahrenheit 9/11"
Then click here.Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:55 AM GMT+1 [Link]
