Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

It’s the middle of a recession, so let’s talk career development. Have you thought about joining the Army? Just think of what the Army can do for you…

…it can turn you into a raving maniac, like soldier Joshua Tabor, who was found wandering around his neighborhood wearing a helmet and threatening to break people’s windows. Back inside his home, he beat his four year old daughter, and then waterboarded her because she couldn’t say her alphabet.

He’s an army of one, he is.

A year and a half ago, the Irregular Diaries here were consumed with debate between Clinton Democrats and Obama Democrats. PUMA – Party Unity My Ass – was the rallying cry for supporters of Hillary Clinton.

I haven’t heard any of that here since Sarah Palin came on the scene as the Vice Presidential Tragic Clown candidate. So, tonight, I’m wondering – are there any Clinton PUMAs left, ready to pick up the banner again and march into the 2012 Democratic primaries in rebellion?

We sold one of these Clinton 2012 shirts here the other day, but I have yet to see the angry Clinton supporters actually speaking out. If you’re out there, drop us a line and tell us about the state of the PUMA.

A couple of weeks ago, Irregular Times noted that there was a large oil spill along the Gulf Coast in Texas. What this site did not reveal, however, was the celebrity connection. Apparently, Irregular Times believes that it’s above that sort of journalism.

In this case, that snobbery caused Irregular Times to miss an amazing story – one that is only being hinted at by Houston Chronicle today in an article with the headline Sheen lingers 2 weeks after Port Arthur oil spill.

A Sheen is lingering this oil spill – but which Sheen, and why? Clearly, it’s not Martin Sheen. He’s always been responsible. Apparently, the Houston Chronicle doesn’t believe that it has enough corroborating sources to go fully public with the story yet, but we all know who it is. It’s the Sheen who’s always getting in trouble: Charlie Sheen. If there’s any Sheen who would linger around the scene of a disaster, it’s Charlie Sheen.

The question we now need to ask ourselves is: Why? All we need to do is follow the smell of oil to the next Charlie Sheen story to find the answer. On Friday, it was reported that Charlie Sheen’s SUV was found crashed at the bottom of a cliff – and it was empty. There was no sign of any blood, or struggle, on the inside. How could that have happened?

The truth seems clear: Charlie Sheen knows something about the oil spill in Texas, something that none of the rest of us have been told about. Charlie is on the trail of a truth that’s thick, dark, and oozing slime. Someone sent Charlie’s SUV flying down into a ravine as a warning that he had better back off – or else.

We don’t know for sure where Charlie Sheen is now – off in some mysterious place along the Texas Gulf Coast, hiding out, waiting for them to arrive for the final showdown, lingering until the moment of truth. We can only trust that Sheen will get to the bottom of this slick enigma, as surely as his SUV got to the bottom of that cliff.

Go, Charlie, go!

In his essay, “Neither Victim nor Executioners,” Albert Camus spoke of a “conspiracy of silence” bred of fear. I would put an end to that. Camus states: “The years we have just gone through have killed something in us. And that something is simply the old confidence man had in himself, which led him to believe that he could always elicit human reactions from another man if he spoke to him in the language of a common humanity. We have seen men lie, degrade, kill, deport, torture – and each time it was not possible to persuade them not to do these things because they were sure of themselves and because one cannot appeal to an abstraction, i.e. the representative of an ideology.” I want to appeal to that abstraction, I want to appeal to the representatives of ideologies, I want to reason with those, who in their certainty, cannot be reasoned with, and I want to assure them that if they will not reason, if they will not heed the appeals of common humanity, they will be brought down.

I am not as arrogant as to believe that I can do this single-handedly or with my own tongue, pen, or cursor. I will need help. So I appeal to you, my reader, in the language of common humanity, help me to put an end to the tyranny under which we all live. Let us take the next step in human evolution and kill in ourselves that which drives us to kill the body and/or spirit of others. Let us learn, as a species, to be compassionate toward all life; for only by realizing the value of life in all its manifestations are we able to truly appreciate the beauty in one another.

We are at a cross-road. Never in human history have we faced the challenges we confront today. Our water and air are being poisoned. Our fellow species are becoming extinct. Because of our intellect and adaptability, we may last a little longer, but of this you may be certain, man cannot exist without air and water.

What of the American Dream? Three cars, two mansions, and a partridge in a pear tree. What about me? My TV sets? My endless and excessive consumption that proclaims to all, echoing from the mountain tops, through the concrete valleys of the cities “I HAVE EXCELLENT CREDIT! I AM OF VALUE!”

no.

No.

NO!

I AM NOT A CONSUMER – I AM A HUMAN BEING!!!

Recently, I was invited to a website to sign petitions. I signed over one hundred petitions, took numerous pledges, sent emails to congressmen and women who dutifully had their interns send me form letters thanking me for my concern and assuring me they were working diligently to resolve, rectify, or whatever else they do up on the hill, and that I should feel good about myself for my feeble attempt and fade back into oblivion with my absolved conscience. After which, they most likely enjoyed dinner with the CEO of GM, Wal-Mart or Exxon and planned the next “Great Society.”

There are those who say Humankind is beyond redemption, and therefore justify taking no action. Less than that, they choose not even to think about it. I’ll say that again: “they choose not even to think about it.”

Part of the problem is we are looking for a savior. We leave it to Congress, the President, or some absent deity to solve our problems. “I voted for one of the two candidates I was allowed to vote for. I did my part,” and/or “I pray about it, drop some money in the basket, and. . .”

I know this to be true and, if you look deep within, you must come to the same conclusion: “unless we change what we are doing and how we are doing it, nothing will ever change.” It is a simple business concept we can all learn from: “find what works and repeat it.” Contra wise, “if it doesn’t work, stop doing it.”

Religion is no longer the primary means of controlling the hearts and minds of everyday people in the United States. Every time someone wants a new liberty or doesn’t like the rules of a religion, they start their own. Fear is the new opiate of the masses. Fear of terrorists, fear of death, fear of pain, fear of poverty, fear of looking foolish. Guess what – the lesson of Gitmo’s illegal detentions is not lost upon the American people. Gitmo’s example is not a threat to the terrorists; it is a threat to us, everyday thinking people. If we can be arrested and detained without due process, if the government can torture with impunity under the protection of a declaration of eternal war (War on Terror), and the so-called PATRIOT Act, which citizen, in his or her right mind, will stand up and say something that might get him/her “extraordinarily rendered” (whatever that means – I speculate it is Governmentese for “Kidnapping Innocent Civilians”) to Egypt or Afghanistan to have done to them whatever went on in all those gruesome pictures of Abu Garib, and to never see their loved ones again? Meanwhile, Halliburton and Exxon reap profits the likes of which have never been seen in Human history and complain about paying—or find ways not to pay—taxes.

Corporations must no longer possess the rights and privileges of citizens. A corporation is not a human. Further, when corporations act in a manner that is destructive to the environment, when in their fevered obsession with profits they kill or harm a single human being or destroy a lake or rain forest, the people responsible for the policies that caused such misfortune must be brought to justice in a manner that reflects the gravity of their transgression and must be sentenced accordingly. My guess is we will see a quick end to the death penalty.

THIS MUST END! WE MUST END IT! I do not believe in violence and will never advocate its use. However, that being said, RESOLUTION is a pen stroke away from REVOLUTION and I am putting the government and corporations on notice: We are sick and tired of the world you are creating and we will have a say.

We will have the final say.

We will not ask for it. We will demand it.

hoc opus, hic labor est
Erik F. Kreis
©2009

Is it the saddest story that Leif Garrett, a nearly-50-year-old former teen idol who is now barely remembered even by people who are old enough to have once been his fans, has been arrested for carrying black tar heroin? No. The saddest story is that 30 years after Leif Garrett was a star, on a day when there are truly serious issues to be discussed, the term “Leif Garrett” has reached the top 20 most popular Google searches.

We get the media that we deserve.

It’s not just in America, and in Ireland, and in Canada, and in… well, you know, pretty much any other country you can think of. Catholic priests have been caught sexually molesting kids in Germany now too. Wouldn’t you know it? The Catholic Church lied about it. Covered it up. Who could have imagined such a thing?

Forget the swine flu, the little runt of an epidemic that ended up being less disturbing than a Porky Pig cartoon. Ecolocalizer is reporting on a growing fungus that threatens to consume humankind – from the inside out.

The site writes, “Aspergillus fumigatus is a fungus found commonly in ordinary garden soil. When the spores of the fungus are inhaled, It can also cause disease–sometimes fatally in those with already compromised immune systems and respiratory disease such as COPD.” (COPD is a term used to refer to conditions such as chronic bronchitis or emphysema.) The article goes on to point out that the fungus is becoming more virulent, because farmers are spreading fungicides around.

Okay – there’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s get started with the fact that the fungus is commonly found in ordinary garden soil – but not, by implication, in common forest soil, or common grassland soil, or common national wildlife reserve soil. Why? It appears that the fungus is actually seeking out human habitation where it can more easily launch attacks against us. That implies sentience, the ability of the fungus to follow its victims close to their homes, and then lurk, planning for the right opportunity to launch a violent assault against us.

Next, we have to ask: Why has this deadly fungus just so happened to have developed at this particular point in time? We’re supposed to believe that it’s a “coincidence” that news of the super fungus comes on the same day that 5 people were killed in a fire in Brooklyn that authorities admit was “suspicious”. Those same authorities have rather conspicuously not linked the fire to the advance of the fungus into gardens across America – almost as if there was someone telling them not to discuss the link. Notice that in ALL media reports about that Brooklyn fire, no one talks about the impending fungal invasion. Looks like someone was handing out talking points.

It’s not going to be popular among the agricultural elites in this nation, but we also have to ask: Why are farmers contributing to the problem, helping to make the fungus stronger? What are they up to? News reports from around the world report unusually high rates of farmer suicides – in India and Australia, for example.

If farmers around the world were conspiring to spread our sentient fungal enemies, planning a land-sharing agreement after the slaughter of 95 percent of the human race, that would explain farmers’ guilty consciences.

We may not have much time to stop the global agrofungal conspiracy. A recent report from DeKalb County, Illinois indicates that farmers there are spending more time on the road than usual. The original report, however, has been scrubbed from the web. You can only find its archived version now, suggesting an attempted coverup.

Where were those farmers going, and why didn’t they want us to find out about it? The fungus knows.

In an internal e-mail I received this morning, the Tea Party Nation corporation has announced the practice of censoring, banning and ejecting its own members for the sins of “antagonism” against Tea Party Nation leadership, consorting “with liberal media outlets”, and sharing information with other Americans about the Tea Party Nation’s workings…

… because it’s all about freedom! The kind of freedom a corporation like TPN can exercise to stamp out heresy.

Well, that and charging $360 a plate for dinner. So very much of the people.

Barry C. Black the government-appointed, tax-paid high priest of the United States Senate, spoke yesterday of the evils of self-sufficiency. Praying to his Christian deity, which he wrongly presumes is the deity of every American, he preached, “Deliver us from the self-sufficiency that will not recognize our need of You.”

In these times of record-braking budget defecits and general economic disarray, is a message against self-sufficiency really what our nation needs to hear? Has the problem with Wall Street been that it was too self-sufficient? Do we need more corporate dependence on taxpayer bailouts?

Is corporate welfare the message Barry C. Black intended to communicate, or does he merely want the United States to become dependent upon his religion?

Barack Obama angered many environmentalists this week when he promised to promote the coal industry fraud of clean coal. Why would he do such a thing, when there’s never been a single viable commercial use of supposedly clean coal technology, when the technology doesn’t even really eliminate most of the pollution and waste from the process of gaining energy from coal anyway?

Well, there’s a lot of money in that coal. One of the coal giants, Alliance Resource Partners, just announced record profits for 2009. What did they do with all that money? $12,500 of it went to the Central Executive Committee of the Kentucky Democratic Party.

And what did Kentucky’s representatives in Congress do this week? They joined together to reconstitute the Congressional Coal Caucus, which includes Nick Rahall, the Democratic Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee.

Coal dust is settling all over the Democratic Party these days.