Monday, September 27, 2004
Are Illegal Immigrants Criminals? Not!
By Ken SchoollandSeptember 27, 2004
I hear it from some of the nicest people one would ever meet. Some dear friends of mine, whom I respect very much, say that all illegal immigrants are criminals because they broke the laws that control who may come into this country. And since these immigrants are criminals, we don¡'t want that kind of person here.
Sadly, such accusations confuse what is legal with what is moral. American history is filled with people who broke unjust laws and were morally justified in doing so.
Legality ≠ Morality
The American Revolution was fought by men and women who broke the laws of England and of King George III. Had they been arrested, as was Nathan Hale, they would have been hanged for treason to the Crown. If breaking the law makes one a criminal, then the Founding Fathers were all criminals. But no one still believes that today.
Dred Scott and thousands of other slaves defied the Fugitive Slave Acts and ran away, "stealing themselves¡" from Southern plantation masters in the early 1800's. Those who were arrested were returned to their slave "owners," and anyone found trying to help them escape to Canada was prosecuted as well.
Thankfully, many juries exercised jury nullification. Declaring that the law was unjust, juries often refused to convict operators of the Underground Railroad. No one today would claim that a runaway slave was a criminal. Indeed, anyone who forcibly returned Blacks would now be considered guilty of having collaborated with the slave masters -- albeit legal slave masters.
In the 1930's there were hundreds of Jews who came to American shores aboard the SS St. Louis, forcibly sent back by immigration quotas to perish in Hitler's concentration camps. Thousands or millions of potential refugees watched in desperate disappointment.
But suppose those passengers had defied immigration law and jumped ship in Miami harbor. Would anyone today call them criminals? I think not. Indeed, those who returned Jews to their persecutors might be considered guilty of collaborating with villainy¡ -- albeit "legal" villainy.
Treasures of the Earth
It may be illegal for people to seek freedom and opportunity in this country, but it isn't immoral. I admire the courage of immigrants who leave all that is familiar to them, risking life and limb on stormy seas and deadly deserts, in order to move to a strange land where everything is unfamiliar and potentially hostile.
Most of our ancestors moved for freedom and opportunity and we are the beneficiaries. Thank God they weren't arrested and sent packing, as were violators of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Indeed, we might wonder if we could have mustered the same measure of courage if we had been in their shoes.
It is convenient and simple to exclude new newcomers by calling them criminals. But the real reason is much more complex. For some people it is a fear of other races. For others it is a fear that newcomers might work hard and will "take" jobs. Others fear the opposite -- that newcomers will not work hard and will take welfare.
In the first case, many immigrants are great entrepreneurs who offer jobs to Americans. Other immigrants take jobs, but they never "take" jobs that are not willingly offered to them by eager employers.
I often ask audiences: "Suppose you are an employer and you know only one thing about two job applicants in front of you: one is native-born and the other is an immigrant? Who would you expect to be the harder worker?" Audiences overwhelmingly favor the immigrant. Why? Americans are surely good workers. But the very act of migration is seen as proof of vigor, ambition, determination, and courageous self-reliance.
Choice: Employees Right, Employers Right
Americans have a moral right to make these choices for themselves -- as employees and as employers. Says Robert W. Tracinski, a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute:
- "The irrational premise behind our nation's immigration laws is that a native-born American has a 'right' to a particular job, not because he has earned it, but because he was born here. To this 'right,' the law sacrifices the employer's right to hire the best employees -- and the immigrant's right to take a job that he deserves. To put it succinctly, initiative and productiveness are sacrificed to sloth and inertia.
"The 'American dream' is essentially the freedom of each individual to rise as far as his abilities take him. The opponents of immigration, however, want to repudiate that vision by turning America into a privileged preserve for those who want the law to set aside jobs for them -- jobs they cannot freely earn through their own efforts....Any immigrant who wants to come to America in search of a better life should be let in -- and any employer who wants to hire him should be free to do so."
To the legalist, however, who places law above moral right, the employer who hires as he pleases is a criminal. The legalist wants stricter penalties against employers who defy state mandates on hiring. Once again this is reminiscent of historic laws that were used to criminalize employers who dared to hire Blacks, women, and Jews. Violations were illegal, maybe, but not immoral.
Welfare Magnet?
But what of the immigrant who takes welfare? Isn't this a burden on society that must be stopped?
Yes, it is. But politically powerless newcomers are no more responsible for the welfare system in this country than they are responsible for the tyranny and corruption in a country that they are fleeing. Okay, stop the flow of welfare, but at the same time remove the plethora of [anti-] labor laws that make it difficult for newcomers to be hired.
It is wrong to assume that most immigrants come to America to get on the welfare gravy train. If this is true, then immigrants would be moving away from states with the lowest welfare and into states with the highest welfare.
My research (The Journal of Private Enterprise, Spring 2004) demonstrates that the opposite is true. In overwhelming numbers, both the native-born population and the foreign-born population through the decade of the 1990's moved away from states with the highest welfare and into states with the lowest welfare. While there are some high profile exceptions, most immigrants seek opportunity, not welfare.
The brilliant economist, Julian Simon, demonstrated that immigrants are a great source of productivity and economic growth. They always have been. Simon declares that most wealthy industrial nations will depend on the productivity of immigrants to provide revenues for the increasingly costly welfare demands of a native-born population.
Moral Principles
Governments do not decide morality. Governments behave morally when upholding moral action and behave immorally when suppressing moral action. Morality is based on principles far more constant and profound than the variant whims of majority votes.
The people who understood this best, were those rebels who defied the law of the day to pen these words: "WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men Are Created Equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
To George Washington this meant, "...the bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions, whom we should welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges."
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:44 PM GMT+1 [Link]
PS: I am sorry, but I am being thrown out of the internet café at a quarter to midnight before I could finish my work on the above editorial. So, some italics and indents are missing and there may still be a few more errors in the layout or coding, but these will be corrected tomorrow morning.
In a hurry, from the internet café: In a couple of hours, the next post in "CB's notewok" will be a great extraordinary and very topical editorial by Ken Schoolland, exclusive to this site for the time being. Due to the unfortunate circumstances related below, it appears in the weblog instead of a separate page, where it will appear later only (I cannot work at the internet café as at home and do not want to jeopardize my most important passwords, the main one being unchangeable). Come back for Are Illegal Immigrants Criminals? Not!
!
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:54 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Sunday, September 26, 2004
another emergency
or Panoramic Recusal
Tomorrow, September 27, the U.S. Supreme Court will confer about the case Wonschik v. U.S. in order to determine whether the Pledge of Allegiance is constitutional or not. This could result in the "Pledge Protection Act" being over before it starts. This site can proud itself that through my suggestion "Recuse them all!" in a previous post, though it was meant to go well beyond the judicial power, the motion to recuse Justice Scalia (an "old friend" of mine, see my gay section [use my search engines]) has now been officially extended to include all the judges*). What a nice panorama indeed! And the rainbow flag**) will be able to flutter and shine putting to shame Old Glory, hanging so drably and hypocritically on that vertical pole behind every politician's desk. I have to make this very succinct, due to the emergency situation described below, cannot add all the info and links, so will have to get back to it later, but don't miss Rex Curry's new column REP. RON PAUL: PLEASE EXPOSE THE TRUE PHOTOGRAPHS ! I uploaded today. It will surprise many. And make them muse, especially us libertarians, including Wendy, about how principled we are, some less than Badnarik no doubt. Also, I have been a bit hasty with my enthusiastic judgment about LewRockwell.com (see "Halliburton Hamburgers or Mayonnaise of Mass Destruction" further down): Mr. Rockwell seems to be shying away from some sort of courage! Well, you did know, n'est-ce pas, that my site is much more scared of censuring ideas that are not fully mine or way off some libertarian dogmas than some of our most daring ones in the freedom movement?!
You are in good hands at The Exterritorial Imperative!
*) "Thanks for your remarks re recusing Scalia. Guess what? I took your advice
and rewrote the motion suggesting the recusal of the entire Supreme Court.
Great minds think alike. It may be the first time a motion has been made to
exclude the entire Supreme Court."
**) Just one good example of several nice alternative flags...
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:57 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Friday, September 24, 2004
For communicating during this time please preferably use my address cb at mail dot com and put the word donation in the subject line (like this: [donation]), so that I can find your message easily among the thousands of spam messages. Thanks!emergency
I am writing this from an internet café. This morning, shortly before 1 A.M., my monitor became totally broken. Therefore there will be a temporary, if not a permanent (I hope), interruption of the updating of my websites (all six of them) as well as a stop in my e-mail interaction. Plus a good number of other problems associated with this situation. You can (and maybe should) do something about this. September and October being the worst two months of the year for me costwise (most of the larger provider bills become due, for instance) and there being this year in both months additional exceptional expenses, I simply cannot free a single cowry shell for that new monitor. But I have on top of this page that neat nifty link to my donation page. There are even enough PayPal and e-gold donation buttons already on _this_ page to last you till the end of your life. Wouldn't this be _the_ occasion for all of you worldwide to use it for the very first time???!!! I will thank you with a smashing amount of new quality content!
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 04:22 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Read her column To express my gratitude and my happiness to have her on this site, I think it is about time that I draw your attention to her personal site, among several she is involved with, namely WendyMcElroy.com and her fascinating McBLOG weblog on it. For instance, let yourself be very moved, as I was today, by what she says about her father Gordon Albert McElroy. And that's not all. She has a wonderful husband, Brad, who is also posting into that blog. And he is offering you a very valuable step-by-step guide I can only warmly recommend to all of you who are internet users. I was already a great fan of Fred On Everything, now I am one of Brad on Everything.Egalitarians, listen!
To our Wendy of course, who, today, in an essay as clear and perfect as a crystal, talking about the wage gap between men and women, gives us a few lessons in correct thinking, as she regularly does, and in a wonderful succinct way explains one of the most important basic political-philosophical choices!Wage Gap Reflects Women's Priorities
if you don't mind listening to Winston Churchill whom she quotes as follows: "'All men are created equal' says the American Declaration of Independence. 'All men shall be kept equal' say the Socialists."
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 09:36 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Quote: "Who do you know outside Congress that can vote to give themselves raises? That can pull pensions out of thin air like apples off a tree? That can gerrymander their way into permanent job security? Who do you know outside Congress that can silence their critics by passing laws? Anyone? No one? Me neither. That’s because no such humans outside Congress exist." Where there's plenty to eat, there's plenty to poop. Another quote:Bottoms up or down the hatch!
Congratulations to JDM for becoming our capital taxation expert! And terminally and concludingly expose those taxes using ones in the capital on Capitol Hill!
You don't get it? Just read and follow the links inTaxation With Representation
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 07:23 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Thursday, September 16, 2004
This site had already drawn the attention to the danger as early as June 29, in "The Mental State of Our Union", that major column by JDM I had introduced to you with this comment. Wendy: From Tucker to tame? From tigress to pet??? :-) As if privacy and parental rights only were at stake here! It's our natural rights, self-ownership, our freedom that are being ignored. Basically, not just on one issue. It's a permanent head-on collision between illegitimate power and our sacred rights. "Spooner for President; he won’t show up for work." (John Flanagan from Peoria ~~ see Uh Oh by Jeremy Sapienza) Recuse them all! A good start might be Justice Scalia, as Rex Curry, also this week, suggests with his column "Justice Scalia recusal on libertarian arguments?", which, after a longer pause, found its way onto my Op-Ed page (see my remark there). JDM, this week, for once gets off his car seat, abandoning the political symbolism of turnpikes and toll roads, enters a stadium through some turnstiles I guess, paying voluntarily without the threat of the law and a ticket, to enjoy watching that national sport which Charlie Brown is so efficient at trying suicide with (with a little help of bullying feminist Lucy). Yes, nosebleed seats are a wonderful bird's eye view place to watch the political game also... How come you don't get bleeding noses from the altitude and thin air of Capitol Hill and surrounding political "heights"? That is indeed a good question! Now, start! :-)? JDM, what did you mean? "Verizon FreedomSM" or "Free HUNTER!" ??? Distraction from the daily grind? You may have to wash your libertarian mouth out with soap! :-) "Undesirable side[s] of capitalism"? There are none! Or do you want to be excommunicated by our major think tanks? ;-) I'm kidding, there is such good sound political musing in JDM's column, that I now prefer to discharge you from my bickering for "What's in a Name? A Whole Lot of Money". Not in mine! Yet!Number One or Mr. Only One
Mandatory Mental Health Screening Threatens Privacy, Parental Rights
Says Wendy McElroy in her column this week. As if anyone in Washington did care for those (except Ron Paul of course). Only one American (instead of all) urgently needs to be screened for mental health, George Dubya Bush, heir to Hitler's fascist mental health programs, it seems.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 12:48 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Halliburton Hamburgers
or
Mayonnaise of Mass Destruction"The children of Iraq may be missing their arms and legs – not to mention their parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters – but they’ll be able to eat delicious McDonalds hamburgers."
The above quote and the one below are from "Liberventionism for Fun and Profit" by Daniel McCarthy on LewRockwell.com, this other premier libertarian site which is very determined, has plenty of pluck, sticks at nothing, has plenty of cheek, is not at all shy, is up to anything, simply is a terror, when defending liberty! Be it a column by Lew Rockwell himself or by any one of its many other top columnists. It is one of the rare sites (Strike the Root would be another good example) where the many brilliant authors the libertarian movement can boast with can bring to their hottest articles, others might hesitate to touch, fearing third degree burns, to make them really sizzle on that cool platform."If you don’t remember signing the social contract, don’t worry, someone else has signed for you – without your permission and without consulting you as to the terms of this agreement."
I hope I have already convinced you to read that article, and while you're at it, why not rummage a bit in the site's other offerings?
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:24 PM GMT+1 [Link]
A different meow
Jonathan David Morris reacts to the previous post "Anniversary of a marriage":I don't care what anybody says, not even a well known libertarian. Cats are entirely worth every moment of the time you devote to them. My wife and I began looking for a cat late last week. Her preference is for a black, long-haired male, and I won't contest that preference because it's going to be her birthday present, and because I really don't care what kind of cat it is. I just want to have a cat. In my opinion -- and this is based on many years of experience -- a house is not a home unless a cat lives there. Cats are wise beyond their means; they have more forethought than many humans I know. They're never afraid to ask for something, or even just to take it. But all they really require are food, shelter, and restroom facilities, and they will be perfectly content with these things. In return they will give you unconditional love. Cats are models of the freethinking spirit so many libertarians can only claim to have.
Thank you, JDM!
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 02:53 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Just this quote from a correspondence with a well known libertarian:Anniversary of a marriage
19 years ago, exactly to the day, my tomcat Raffi (short for Raffaele) married me. It was love at first sight, on both sides. Here he is in my arms tonight in front of the computer:
A picture from when he was young can be seen at the bottom of this page. A little over three months ago, he had almost died, having become partially paralyzed. With he help of a great practitioner of alternative medicine I was able to save him and he is again in reasonably good shape for his very old age. Though some treatment continues. His life story is an interesting one, but in order to get this online before midnight local time on our anniversary, I postpone relating it to some other time.CB: "[...] as all the changes now are associated with big additional expenses), I have to care for my cat who is ill, had to buy medicine and administer it several times a day for weeks, [...]"
***: "Maybe you should care more about your own life than for that of the cat. How many intelligent conversations have you had with it? If you like stroking its pelt - wouldn't any cat pelt of any dead cat do almost as well? What is a cat really good for - except for itself? To play a servant to it? Become more of a Stirnerian and learn to look out for number one. Or just become friendly with the cat of a neighbour - and let him feed it, shelter it and provide it with medical care."
Isn't libertarianism just darling?
Men, become friendly with the wife of your neighbour and let him feed her...
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:25 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Have a thought also for the misguided perpetrators, who were victims too, be it of those who pulled the strings, wherever they are, but certainly on both sides of the official ideological fence, or of their own errors of judgement. We are all now, around the world, as individuals, affected by the consequences. And those who can only breathe when in power over others finally have their never ending orgasm, having, whether fabricated and planned well in advance or fallen from the sky, the universal one size fits all pretext to lead us by force far beyond what George Orwell imagined in his wildest nightmares. Let me express a strong condemnation of the wrong notion of collective guilt. Guilt or non-guilt is strictly always an individual matter, if one applies sound factual criteria. On the other hand, non-guilty individuals deserve their share of the blame, might be accused of complicity and attributed a partial guilt, if, like the majority of them, they always follow the crowd, trim their sails to the wind, make no effort at discernment. They have a moral obligation to inform themselves better! Thus I want to accuse and denounce mass society and the mass ideologies it is based upon, nationalism, territorialism, imperialism, all collectivisms, not excluding organized religions based on "revelation". This includes all shades of Marxism, and, of course, fascism and National Socialism (better known as Nazism), even partially many shades of anarchism up to some dangerously flawed concepts of some libertarians, be their first letter lower or upper case. Belief in theocracy or democracy is equally wrong and leads to the cesspool the world is in. We should never abdicate our autonomy to the self-declared (and usually totally incompetent) rulers, be they experts, clerics, politicians, etc., whatever funny clothes or head dress they wear. The solution to prevent further bloodshed lies in accepting difference, in furthering tolerance, exterritorialism, panarchism, the right to individually secede from the system one is born into and to enter no new one or to form political groups (non-territorial "states", legal communities) of whatever type (theocracies, monarchies, dictatorships, democracies, fascist states, Nazi states, communist states, anarchist communities, whatever) solely based on voluntary membership, always only at the own risk and expense of the volunteers. Please protest the unenlightenedness of the majority by clicking the following picture of an ongoing mass gathering which had given the perpetrators inspiration.9/11
In remembrance of September 11, 2001
On this third anniversary, I want you to devote your thoughts to the victims of the most extraordinary and perverted crime ever, marking a turn in human history. Please think of the individual victims who died or were maimed, to their kin, to all those who loved them and were so cruelly affected.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 12:51 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Friday, September 10, 2004
Here he is! If you click on the image, this will just change it from jpg to bmp, a hardly visible enhancement of picture quality. If you want to see the whole gallery, click here. For dirty proposals :-) click here. The pictures were taken with a very simple webcam in bad lighting conditions. We did not let the camera record a short video sequence and then selected the best picures from that (though this would have been theoretically possible), we just repeatedly saved a picture from what we saw on the monitor screen, but were always too late to catch the very best moments, as the procedures of the software for that saving have too many steps taking too much time. So the result is haphazard, as life itself is, in general or under present circumstances, but the freedom of this haphazardness is always better then the carcans and yokes of the State. The only structure of the whole is that the pictures are strictly in a chronological order, starting with the "oldest", no attempt was made to build a dramatic development. It should just illustrate a few happy moments of a pleasant, intellectually stimulating [what did you think?! ;-) ] encounter...The eleven fingers man II
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 03:45 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Thursday, September 9, 2004
The eleven fingers man
As told in 21 pictures...
Marcus, living in Berlin, but being around, nearby Hamburg, for a couple of weeks, not too far from his home county by the way, was so kind as to visit me and my cat yesterday afternoon and bring along a big basket ~~ of the most delicious organic food stuff, thus caring greatly for my health and, again (see my remark in the previous post), sparing you my donation page. He also, as he had announced, bought my unusable TV card sitting on my shelf and we had a nice long talk. My webcam recorded some of his facial expressions (see the animated gif below). The full picture gallery (with a line or two of comment) will be online tomorrow at the earliest.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:04 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Wendy McElroy's column "Grandparents Can't Trump Parental Rights" touched me personally. I am the only child of parents that divorced, though, after an earlier separation of property, they waited on purpose till I was eighteen to minimize the effects upon me. Though the worst effects were well before the divorce, they never totally stopped afterwards, at least till both died a few years ago, and even then it was not completely over and it will never be. But my custodial mother was sensible enough not to prevent contact with the non-custodial grand-parents, though occasionally there was some reticence, some little tension. On the other hand the tensions before the divorce and the divorce itself later spread all kinds of rips through the intricate fabric of a large family (most sprawling was my mother's line, the mostly very conservative orthodox Catholic part of my inherited burden, clearly less my father's line, mostly classical liberal or even outright anarchist [my better burden! ;-)], though there was some such rebellious strain also on my mother's side) which finally lead to my losing a very substantial inheritance which would have spared you my donation page. :-) But there was another divorce and another great hurting split. A first cousin of mine and I had fancied each other very much, had spent a lot of wonderful time together including all the mischief kids that age can muster, till suddenly, without any warning, we were separated, with a good-bye lasting minutes only, when the parents started divorce and the mother moved away taking the kid with her to another man. She became so tabu in that conservative family that her name was hardly mentioned anymore, and if it still was, in the most derogative way, and we kids, indeed the whole family, were strictly forbidden to meet "the enemy" on the other side of the front, and there was no way for us kids to do anything about it. For decades I have been thinking of him and from time to time searching him to no avail, as there had been changes of surname. Not knowing of course what career he had chosen, I had no clue to his whereabouts, even in my small country Luxemburg. Till on 17 May 2002 I got a message via my contact page on this website. One of his own kids had discovered it, he himself not yet really being computer literate at that time. A correspondence ensued, both e-mail and snail, and telephone calls, and he and his wife sent me huge parcels full of gifts (Luxemburg food specialties), greatly helping me to make ends meet at a very difficult moment resulting among others from that former very ugly lawsuit against this site. Late on the evening of March 4 this year, after having spent the day, and only one day, on urgent business in Luxemburg City, I stood, unannounced, on the step of his door, rang the bell, and, after well more than half a century, two bearded men looked each other in the face, not recognizing each other right away, who had not seen each other since the age when they were not yet able to grow one. To prevent such unnecessary bereavements, grand-parents should battle. Read what Wendy has to say about it.National Grandparents Day
"My heart goes out to every loving grandparent who is cut off from knowing a grandchild. For them, National Grandparents Day must bring a stab of pain rather than joy."
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:25 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Without you telling me, I found out when you find the time to write your columns. You do it while driving. 600 miles a week to work and back. You have a notebook, a mike and that IBM software allowing you to transform speech into print and command the computer. It is a question of efficiency. The words you are swearing need to be uttered only once and are at the same time directed at the traffic and at the politicians. Wait till we have a president we love. You will have to write your columns in bed. To keep the efficiency. PS: I already had found out about the hairspray, now that!I found out about you! :-)
Dear JDM:
PPS: American teenagers have those backseat traditions. Whatever the situation, elephant or donkey, they can be efficient. It bolsters the car industry, produces cannon fodder, and finally ends up with world power.
Wouldn't it be fun if a porcupine crossed the road and they would have to stop? The elephant and the donkey I mean.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 09:58 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
My birthday is over
Thanks to all who did not miss it. If, like some of those missiles, you did, the collateral damage is more bearable than Margaret Albright could ever justify. May I quote among the reactions received one of those that I liked particularly? I need to translate that message from the German:Dear Chris! And in doing so, being, like so often, glued to your pages, I read that you had your birthday yesterday. Therefore, sent afterwards, the most heartfelt congratulation. May you still for a long time be spared the gout in your fingers (all eleven!) and may your discharges be preserved to us! Your Marcus
And the beautiful picture below was the background of another, more lyrical, message that had done me good.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:00 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Those that won't step aside and let us. Live our lives in peace, unrobbed, unmolested, unmutilated. And alive!"God is not indifferent to America."
How could He be, with that bunch of Devils in D.C.?!
Morris. There are two American statesmen of that name plus an American philosopher, two artists, one American, one British (the one who created the Morris chair), two American towns, more than two of those chairs, but there is only one Jonathan David Morris. And he is on this site today, with a calm, mature column called "Zell Miller: Certifiably Insane", about those that are neither calm nor mature, but dancing all over the world a dishonest vigorous rural English dance called morris (lower case m), also wearing costumes and bells, but very little Robin Hood like, though they pretend. The only excuse they may have is its Moorish origin. Was the Second (actually Third) Gulf War not sort of a May Day festivity, having been officially ended on May 1? How come then that we now would be better off screaming "Mayday! Mayday!"?
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 06:17 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Still, there is a problem. Care for boys? China has too many of them! 30 to 40 millions of Chinese men risk to stay bachelors all their life: They are NOT coming! Will they become restless? Will the Chinese have to organize a surplus sale to the rest of the world of all those dangling carrots or wielding sticks? For more insight, go to Wendy's latest column, "China's Missing Women". Actually last week's, though I posted it only this week, yesterday. Sorry! But tomorrow there will already be a new one. Did you think that my double entendre diner was closing down? No, the (note)wok is still cooking. PS: Maybe one could send some of our women over there, surplus ones, meddling statist feminists for instance. Good riddance!The Chinese are NOT coming!
We knew that from before. The Chinese are clever on their own turf, hardworking and not greedy, they don't need to colonialize the world. So the yellow danger was never really existent in that sense, but the communist one indeed was.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 09:48 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Thursday, September 2, 2004
8 days ahead of 9/11
That's 9/3
And this is my fax machine. Did you think that I have such a big one? It can do all kind of things. :-)
And this is the number where you can send me your faxes to: ♣49-40-37501769
And 9/3 is my birthday! ♥♥♥
And this is the page whence you can send me money for the paper and toner used by your congratulations: $ € $ € $ €
And don't forget the electric power and all those maintenance and occasional replacement kits for the fuser, the drum etc. :-)
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:12 PM GMT+1 [Link]
No, it has to do with the fact that only freedom (or libertarianism) is a win-win situation! This is what JDM has to say about my previous comment "The advantage of relative poverty or how, like the simple-mindedness in the Bible, it can lead to heaven cheaply." (permanent link): Your commentary is an important extension of the point I was trying to make in my article. The intellectual class -- in America, at least -- often condemns the masses for enjoying the mindless corporate schlock that passes for entertainment nowadays. And that's fine, I think. The criticism is warranted. But the holier-than-thou attitude from which it's derived is not. I would argue that politics is also mindless corporate schlock. It's interactive entertainment. It compels you to "get up," "get out," and "do good." But it's bullshit. What they really want is for you to come to the polls and give your consent for them to control your life for another four years. Let me put it this way: Here in the States, we have an idiot rapper named Sean Combs, who goes by the name Puff Daddy (or P. Diddy). Anyway, he's got a new get-out-the-vote campaign called "Vote or Die." To me, that sounds about right. It's a no-win situation either way.NO-WIN V. WIN-WIN
This has nothing to do with Microsoft® Windows®, and I will not say if using it is a no-win or a win-win situation. :-) It certainly is a situation with too many windows. . . . °/°
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 12:41 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, September 1, 2004
Revelations 4
Last month, it was August after all, vacation time in the Northern hemisphere I think, the traffic figure sank by 189 MB, compared to the preceding month (2,799 versus 2,988)(see here), a very small amount, which can have many reasons I will not go into here, BUT, and that is the essential, the number of visitors was the highest ever, namely 13,178 (2,848 visitors more than the monthly average this year so far), as you can see from the pic below:
I expect you to treble this within the next three months!!! ;-)
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:54 AM GMT+1 [Link]
It was not an easy decision, hooked as I was. But it is almost two years now: the new TV card is still sitting in its box on my bookshelf. Unlike JDM, I could not afford a Toshiba flat screen TV (27 inches! braggart!), especially as here in Europe one would have to add a zero at the end of the price. I survived it. I was suddenly in heaven without having died.The advantage of relative poverty
or how, like the simple-mindedness in the Bible, it can lead to heaven cheaply.
On December 6, 2002, it had happened. I had been watching TV a lot, almost around the clock: during work, in the breaks, before and after. And this with the utmost ease and comfort. Thanks to dozens of channels via cable, to my Belinea brand 19 inches "TCO 99" CRT monitor (much better resolution and less radiation than a TV set, so that you can sit very close to it), to my Hauppauge TV card and my TVgenial software. I didn't need to buy a printed TV schedule, I had it up to date on my screen and dozens of very convenient sophisticated features in addition. It would fill several pages to talk about them all. Everything went just fine till that moment when the daily shenanigans of my feline companion behind the computer had finally gotten the better of it. The card I mean. Exactly like that famous bug that gave the software bugs their name. Having something to watch that day that I would have killed my grandmother for in order not to miss it, I immediately ran to the small V.A.R. (= [little] value added reseller) (in German "Kistenschieber") PC shop next door where I had bought the part to have it replaced by a new one. But the same was not produced anymore. So I bought a newer one, explaining that it absolutely had to run on Windows 98. The package said so on the outside. And the shop clerk confirmed it. At home again, I opened the package and read the installation guide which said Windows 98 SE (second edition) was needed. So I could not install it. I went back to the shop, but they refused to take it back, suggesting to sell me Windows SE instead, which I had good reasons not to want. So I thought this must be a hint from heaven and decided to skip TV altogether from now on.
What a relief. What nice freedom! No News Is Good News. I get sounder information from the Web or the Internet in general (newsletters, e-mail, etc.) and also occasionally watch some live TV (like the wonderful transmission of the Libertarian Party Convention in Atlanta on C-SPAN) or listen to some radio broadcasts via the Internet. Things I could not get on cable TV, not even on satellite TV, here.
And reading this week's column of Jonathan David Morris, sort of a soothing soft-porn kind of political musing, I, like JDM, realized again something strange, but probably important, that the real dangerous ones are not those masses of couch potatoes we may be looking down upon, as they are seemingly ignorant and do not actively participate in shaping politics, but those fewer politically correct and activist ones who shape it too much.
Nothing is on but the full moon tonight.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 12:33 AM GMT+1 [Link]
