31-12-2008 Did you get the joke?
If you didn't get it, I suggest you go find a library, ask for a book called 1984 and, you know, read it.2008 has been a year of decreasing liberties. Rules and laws limiting the personal freedom of hundreds of millions of people are being forged all over the world, and so far, there have been too few people that have said anything about it. Here is another idea: either read the graphic novel V for Vendetta, or watch the movie of the same name. It shows, with more of an emphasis than 1984, how easy it is to get lulled by your government into a sense of safety, only by sacrificing a few of your liberties.
In the Netherlands, we're losing our rights. In England, people are losing their rights. In America, people are losing their rights. All over the world our liberties are being taken away. And this is not the governments' fault: we, the people, the consumers, the masses, have forgotten that a government does not exist to keep us all safe from each other and ourselves, that governments do not own the power they have; they are but granted it by the people they govern over. We need to remember that every government in the world exists only by the mercy of their peoples.
Why are we allowing such a decrease in freedom? Why are we silently consenting in slowly but certainly losing the right to be who we want to be? If a government takes yet another decision not out of concern for the people, not out of regard for the will of the people, and not for the good of the freedom of the people, then it is the duty of the affected people to take their government to task. We need to remind them that a government will never, ever act out of its own quirks and wims.
Some people argue that since we elect our government, after the elections the winner can do whatever they want. We've chosen them, have we not? We gave them the scepter, we allow them to make the decisions. Right?
When I vote for my government, I vote not for a person, or for a group of persons. I vote for my ideas, beliefs and convictions. When that government, which I helped elect, betrays my trust and makes decisions it said it wouldn't make, decisions that are against anything that a free country should stand for, I will grab that government by its shoulder, give it a long hard look, and tell it that it'd better get its goddamned act together. A government does not tell its people how to behave, what to eat, or how to live. A people tells its government what it wants, and the government turns those wishes into law and policy.
I will not be ruled over, reigned over, I will not be under anyone's power. None of us should ever wish it. Isn't it about time that we see through that pathetically thin veil of "hand in your liberties, get your safeties"? I think it is, and I invite you to agree with me. When your governments zigs where you zag, tell them to either get real or get lost. Tell them that you will not stand for tiranny, for dictatorship, for censorship. Make sure that they know that there is at least one person in their country that will not give up their freedom without a fight.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.-- Benjamin Franklin
19-12-2008 Majel Barrett-Roddenberry
Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, the First Lady of Star Trek, passed away yesterday. You might remember her as Number One in the pilot and nurse Chapel in the later episodes of the original Star Trek series, or Lwaxana Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation, or the voice of the ship computer in all the series.Her husband, Gene Roddenberry, who died in 1991, was the creator of Star Trek. After his death, Majel continued his work by producing the series Andromeda, based on some of Gene's unused work. It ran for five seasons.
Ten days before her death, it was announced that she would once again be giving the Enterprise computer its voice on the new Star Trek movie; she has already done all the voice acting, so this means I have to really go see Star Trek XI now, no matter how pessimistic I am, just to witness Majel Barrett-Roddenberry's very last performance.
That, and rewatch all of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Farewell, Lwaxana, daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, and Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed.
15-12-2008 Those wacky Americans
Where would I be if I didn't have someone like Bill O'Reilly to tell me about my country?It turns out that my country's capital, Amsterdam, is not actually what anyone who's ever been there would say it is; it is no old beautiful city with a proud atmosphere of liberalism; apparently, Bill O'Reilly says, Amsterdam is this smelly pothole with bullets flying around in it and toddlers smoking weed and little old women getting it on with prostitutes, with men sodomizing in the streets and just overall lawlessness. O'Reilly even goes so far as to call it anarchy!
It is amazing how many misrepresentations, mistakes and lies Bill-O can fit into every little thing he says. There is no anarchy, we do not teach our children to smoke pot, Amsterdam is not controlled by gangsters, and there is no yeti in your closet.
Sometimes I find it hard to believe that there's and actual, no-kidding, real life television network, that presents itself as "Fair and Balanced", and is just so very obviously the exact opposite of that, out there that somehow manages to not implode on itself due to the gravity of the universe of lies that is dreamt up by it every single day. But it's there, and it's called Fox. You know, I'd be fine with the idea of Fox, if they'd just come out and say "yeah, sure, we're fundies, we say shocking things to push our fundie agenda, we'll slander anyone who disagrees with anything we say, we'll make up outrageous lies and present it as news. What else is new?" But to indeed be and do all that and say you're "Fair and Balanced"? I won't even dignify it by calling it a lie. It's like a pig saying it's a kangaroo: it just isn't so. There's no point in lying about it.
Bill-O, Bill-O, wherefore art thou Bill-O?
17-11-2008 Way To Go, USA
While all them liberuls were out celebrating and dancing in puddles of their own piss over Obama's victory, shit did happen. In the state of California, USA, a proposition 8 was voted into legality. The proposition bans gay marriage once again. I feel very passionate about this. Not because I am gay myself1, or because I have that many gay friends; I simply find the idea that there are people out there that do not have the freedoms I have, to get married in this case, sickens me to my stomach. Women's rights in Saudi Arabia anger me, human rights policies in China piss me off, and the nearly homologous ban on gay marriage across the USA and even the world makes me sick. I cannot understand, and perhaps I do not want to understand, that there are people, civilized people, who eat with knives and forks, who have babies that they rock to sleep, who stop their car for crossing geese, that have somehow decided that there is a small group of people in that society that don't deserve the same rights as they do.Politicians against gay marriage may say what they want. They may say that there's nothing wrong with homosexuality and that they're simply trying to protect the sanctity of marriage. They may say all this is somehow written in the law. They may say that "that's how it's always been". They're liars, filthy rotten liars, who quite simply see homosexual people as less than worthy, as less important, as subhuman. To put it as one infamous German civil rights activist once did: Untermenschen.
Goddammit, here's what Keith Olbermann has to say.
1: Many christians say homosexuality is a choice. If it were, I'd happily turn homosexual. Just because christians wouldn't like it.
