Autumnal Equinox, 2002
Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 21 Sep 2002 12:00:00 GMT
The moon starts singing
When everyone is asleep
And the planets throw a bright robe
Around their shoulders and whirl up
Close to her side.
Once I asked the moon,
"Why do you and your sweet friends
Not perform so romantically like that
To a larger crowd?"
And the whole sky chorus resounded,
"The admission price to hear
The lofty minstrels
Speak of love
Is affordable only to those
Who have not exhausted themselves
Dividing God all day
And thus need rest.
The thrilled Tavern fiddlers
Who are perched on the roof
Do not want their notes to intrude
Upon the ears
Where an accountant lives
With a sharp pencil
Keeping score of words
Another
In their great sorrow or sad anger
May have once said
To you."
Hafiz knows:
The sun will stand as your best man
And whistle
When you have found the courage
To marry forgiveness,
When you have found the courage
To marry
Love.
From samizdata:
"Everyone wants peace - and they will fight the most terrible war to get it." -- Miles Kingstonand:
"Peace - in international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting." -- The Devil's Dictionary, 1911 edition.
Sexy calendario 2002 - a promotional calendar featuring beautiful scantily clad women posing with coffins. [samizdata]
Paul Thompson at The Center for Cooperative Research - 9/11 Timeline - Mr. Thompson has done quite a few updates since I last linked to his site. I've been keeping my mirror in sync: billstclair.com/911timeline.
Al Barger at Culpepper Log -
How to Stop Suicide Bombers -
kill their families. Likely effective. Morally repugnant.
Al Barger at Culpepper Log - A message from God - time to let 9/11 be over, said the (female) voice of God to Mr. Barger. Damn straight!
Thomas M. Saunders - The Bill Of Attainder Project - Mr. Saunders has a mission to restore this little understood part of the constitution. Bravo! Those "asset forfeiture" laws? All bills of attainder. All blatantly unconstitutional.
In 1986 I happened upon a phrase in the Constitution, in Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 3, which stated, "No Bill Of Attainder or Ex-post Facto Law, shall be passed." I was reasonably secure I knew what an ex-post facto law was, but I had no idea what a bill of attainder was. I am a Certified Linguist, and the prospects that came about from finding out what a bill of attainder really is, have led me into 1997, as the director of a program which is associated with Libertarians and others called the Bill Of Attainder Project.
...
To establish what a bill of attainder really is requires a trip to the local public library. You saunter in and you start looking up bill of attainder, and attainder in every dictionary, and encyclopedia you can lay your hands on. I picked a very small library, and with good reason.* I'd still be at some of them heaping up definitions and descriptions to this day. All you need to establish a definition is enough sources of your target "thing" to give it a complete picture. It is simple comparative analysis of establishing the basic elements of which your target "thing" is composed. Line up your collection of definitions and sources to see what they have in common. What my collection of definitions told me a bill of attainder was: "A Bill Of Attainder" is a law, or legal device used to outlaw people, suspend their civil rights, confiscate their property, or put them to death, or punish them without a trial. Nothing anyone has sent me has changed any of the definition I have put forth.
Liz Michael - Fighting the War On Terror: The Right Way - before we go routing other countries of terrorists, we need to get rid of the terrorists in our own government.
Moreover, firefighters and police officers specifically present to conduct a rescue, died when the towers fell on them. These people died serving their community. Whatever wrong you might think police officers do in the course of their business, on this day, they were not serving illegal warrants, or writing traffic tickets, or beating up a suspect, or confiscating someone's guns. This day, they were doing their sworn constitutional duty. And they died because of it.
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Additionally, those who died on Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville Pennsylvania, were engaged in another form of patriotism. According to reports, when these brave souls had heard through communications from the outside that it was likely their hijacked plane was to be used as a guided missile against some undefined American target, they banded together and formed an unorganized militia unit.
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So if you are to rightly honor the casualties of 9-11, you must rightly honor free enterprise, service to community, and armed service to your community and your country, be it the military, or be it the unorganized militia. Moreover, these were free people, operating in a free country, choosing life paths of their own free will. So if you are to honor them, you must also honor freedom, and also civil liberties. This is something that cannot and must not be forgotten.
Let me tell you how you do NOT honor them. You do NOT honor them by assenting to whatever tyranny of the day some noodnik with a government title decides is okay in the name of "Homeland Security". You do not honor them with National ID cards, checkpoints on interstates, harassment and molestation of air travelers, suspension of constitutional rights in the name of security, or suppression of dissent. You do not honor them with expansion of a socialist government, and especially not expansion of a national socialist government. You do not honor them by raising taxes and by supporting the terrorist tendencies of government agencies like the IRS. You do not honor them by looking the other way when a law enforcement official violates the constitution, or by looking away when a judge sets himself up as God and abuses his authority, just because they say they are keeping crime down. You do not honor them by supporting your elected officials, even when they are wrong, even if they are evil.
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This country was not crafted to be safe. Our constitution was not crafted as a document to guarantee security. The United States of America was founded to establish not safety, but liberty. And the "security of that free state" was to be entrusted, not to a bunch of soldiers, or a bunch of jackbooted federal agents, or a bunch of cops, and definitely NOT to a bunch of airport security flunkies. It was to be entrusted to "a well-regulated militia", that selfsame "whole of the people" I spoke of earlier. You do NOT honor the 9-11 casualties by being secure. You honor them by being free. And by fighting for that freedom. And by vanquishing whatever tyranny threatens that freedom, no matter the source of that tyranny.
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And we have a duty to support law enforcement when it is doing its constitutional duty. When they do that, we should honor those brave men and women.
However, as much as we have that duty, we also have a duty to oppose law enforcement when it steps out of that role, and instead, engages in criminality or terrorism of its own. And like any other tyranny, we have a responsibility to do more than just bitch and moan. Whether it is through lawsuits, through media coverage, through criminal prosecutions, through elections, or even through what we patriots refer to as the "Time Honored Tradition". Criminality, tyranny and terrorism must be opposed, WHEREVER it is found, WHOEVER is perpetrating it, in order to preserve liberty.
We should also honor politicians who do their constitutional duty. And when I find some who are actually doing their duty and following the constitution, I will let you know so you can honor them. It frankly would be easier to find ten righteous men in Sodom.
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When we have rooted out, tried, and hanged our own traitors within our own governments, then, and only then, have we the right to pronounce judgment on Osama Bin Laden, and on the likes of Saddam Hussein. If that takes a bloody civil war on American soil, all I have to say is, "Let's Roll".
Warren Tilson at anti-state.com - What Would Happen If the Police Just Went Away? - a large increase in crime and disorder, for a very short time. More and more I believe that the world would be better off without the men in blue. I can do a much better job of protecting myself and my family than they will ever do. [anti-state]
Total anarchy right? No. The above is total chaos.
Get a dictionary, look up some definitions. How long would this state of affairs last? How long would the criminals and the recklessly inconsiderate rule through terror and disregard for others? How long would the streets be a hellzone for any person who was not a thug?
Oh, about an hour.
That's right, one hour.
An hour is how long it will take the culture shock to wear off. We will have gone from a culture where you are forced to rely on others, to be "protected" by an inefficient tax-funded monopoly that you are forced to pay for, to protect you from having to rely on yourself and family and friends.
Now it is true that, really, you have to rely on yourself and your kin today, but the difference would be that there would be no police to second guess you, arrest you for carrying the means of your defense, or to protect the criminal from righteous retribution by his victim or kin.
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...Eventually the criminally minded would realize that without the cops, via the taxpayers, around to absorb most of the cost of the criminal's protection (yes, I am saying that the money taxpayers spend on the police acts as a subsidy for criminals) there would be no way of making criminal acts pay. The odds of being killed or maimed would be way too high and since the police would not be there to enforce the laws that make it harder for good people to defend themselves every potential victim would have access to effective weapons...
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The police are the problem. The cause all of our woes, on the local level, can be traced to the existence of professional policing. It is time to end this failed experiment and increase our freedom a hundred fold.
Ron Paul at LewRockwell.com - War Is a Political Disaster - a speech given on September 18 to the House of Representatives.
Mr. Speaker, I have for years advocated a moral and constitutional approach to our foreign policy. This has been done in the sincerest belief that a policy of peace, trade, and friendship with all nations is far superior in all respects to a policy of war, protectionism, and confrontation. But in the Congress I find, with regards to foreign affairs, no interest in following the precepts of the Constitution and the advice of our early Presidents.
Interventionism, internationalism, inflationism, protectionism, jingoism, and bellicosity are much more popular in our nation's capital than a policy of restraint.
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War is not politically beneficial for two reasons: innocent people die, and the economy is always damaged. These two things, after the dust settles from the hype and the propaganda, always make the people unhappy. The euphoria associated with the dreams of grandiose and painless victories is replaced by the stark reality of death, destruction, and economic pain. Instead of euphoria, we end up with heartache as we did after the Bay of Pigs, Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, and Lebanon.
talibanletter.txt is an email I received, with a "From" header of besmart@emirates.net.ae, extolling the virtues of the Taliban. It appears to be responding to something I and others said or quoted comparing the Taliban's behavior to the kidnapping by the state of Oregon of the Christine family children.
Russell Madden at Laissez Faire Electronic Times - Sacred Ground - commentary on what to do with the WTC site.
Besides, it is far easier to indulge in visceral "feeling" than it is to focus one's mind and to weigh and evaluate evidence according to objective principles of logic. The former is an automatic process, a talent even animals possess. The latter is work -- sometimes very difficult work -- and is a trait unique to human beings. The bias of those who champion the former approach over the latter betrays the shallowness of their humanity and the baseness of their character.
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In a free society, the only ground that should be worshipped and cherished and worthy of the title "Sacred" is land that someone owns. Such truly Sacred Ground should be inviolable. Such Sacred Ground should be off-limits to any who would enter without permission or presume to tell the owner how he may peacefully use that property. Such Sacred Ground should be a haven from the human jackals and hyenas that skulk in the shadows, ready to leap in and seize the property of others. Such Sacred Ground should provide the boundary, the fortress walls between an owner and the envious multitude who would dictate and force and steal what they cannot -- or will not -- achieve on their own.
