Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

The re-election campaign web site for Congressman John Conyers claims that Conyers stands against the Patriot Act. It tells how Conyers has reacted to the Patriot Act in the past, reading, “The Bush Administration was not satisfied with a bill that gave it everything it needed; it sacrificed his good faith negotiations and bipartisanship for a bill that had everything it wanted. What the Administration wanted was the ability to conduct secret searches of suspects (also known as “sneak-and-peek” searches), to monitor our reading habits by getting records from libraries and bookstores, and to detain non-citizens indefinitely. To accomplish this, the Administration and the House Republican leadership threw away the bipartisan bill from the Committee and wrote a new one in secret; the new bill, known as the USA PATRIOT Act, was given to the Congress the very morning it was voted on and was not disclosed to the public until much later. The secrecy in which it was written and the extreme provisions it contained were what called for Mr. Conyers to vote against the frightfully-named USA PATRIOT Act.

Unfortunately, the Administration’s war on terrorism proved that his vote was the right one. When Mr. Conyers asked the Justice Department how it has used its sneak-and-peek authority, it cannot tell of one act of terrorism that has been prevented. When Mr. Conyers asked the Department how often it has sought patron records from libraries and bookstores, it responds by saying the very number of times is classified so that the information cannot be disclosed to the public.”

That sounds like a strong stand in opposition to the Patriot Act, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, making sounds is one thing. Action is another.

Yesterday, John Conyers voted to extend the Patriot Act without reforming it at all.

Big oil companies, and their political lackeys in Congress, are always going on about how oil spills aren’t very common. But then, oops, reality comes along, as it did yesterday for the Contango Oil company, which had to shut down 6 oil wells when one of its pipelines started leaking petroleum into the Atchafalaya River down in Texas.

Never worry. It’s a rare thing. Really.

Hey, can anyone tell me what city this is?

Still think everything is local?

The big coal industry is busy putting a lot of advertisements on TV telling us how great clean coal is. Why, you’d think you could use it to wipe your kitchen countertops with, it’s so clean.

And then, reality intervenes, like an explosion… or as an actual explosion. In Turkey, 13 coal miners were killed this week when methane leaking into their coal mine exploded. Many other coal miners were sent to the hospital with severe injuries.

Is that coal that they brought out of the ground along with their blood clean?

Back in the 1980s, the United Kingdom went to war against Argentina in the Falkland Islands. Both nations claimed ownership of the islands, which are used to farm sheep and to drill oil. Hint: It wasn’t for the sheep that the British pushed their claim of ownership of the Falklands. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was even drawing up plans to drop nuclear bombs on Argentina in order to win the conflict.

A generation later, the United Kingdom is starting the escalation toward war again by moving an offshore drilling rig into the waters around the Falklands, with the intention to drill there starting today.

For more news from the Falkland Islands, visit:

- Falkland News Network
- Penguin News

A bumper sticker seen at a Tea Party convention:

Don’t mess with marriage

.

What does that mean?

If you’re not supposed to mess with marriage, why would you go ahead and tell huge numbers of couples that they can’t get married? Isn’t that messing with marriage?

The trouble with the right wing marriage pose is that it seeks to protect the institution of marriage by messing with actual marriages.

Bombshell news from Chinese researchers has registered barely a whimper in the American press this weekend. Over 3,000 dinosaur footprints have been found in China. Here in the USA, bigfoot researchers feel lucky if they find one big sasquatch footprint, but here are thousands of dinosaur footprints. What more evidence do we need that dinosaurs are still alive and breeding in Asia?

I note that Agence France Presse attempts to distract from the discovery by claiming that the footprints are “believed to be more than 100 million years old”. But who exactly believes such a thing, AFP won’t say. That’s mighty curious, I think. When I find a footprint, do I assume that it’s millions of years old? No! I assume it’s recent.

So, we can presume that these thousands of dinosaur footprints are recent, unless evidence to the contrary is found. AFP is unable to cite any such evidence.

Why are French journalists so loathe to admit that dinosaurs are running helter skelter across modern day China? Is national jealousy at the root of the coverup, or something more sinister? What do the French have to profit from the news of living dinosaurs remaining a secret?

Furthmore, what are all those dinosaurs doing in China? Does the dinosaur revelation help to explain how Chinese sweatshops are able to produce shoes, shirts, and other products so inexpensively?

If you don’t hear anything more about the living dinosaur story, count that as a confirmation that the dinosaurs really do exist, and are too valuable to be made common knowledge.

A week after Laurent Gbagbo, the President of the Ivory Coast, dissolved the government of that nation, police there have shot and killed 5 protesters. Those killings in turn have provoked intense, and sometimes destructive, anti-government protests.

For more information, visit:

- Afrol News
- allAfrica Cote d’Ivoire

Ride a bicycle, and you’re reducing the demand for oil. Demand for oil is one of the biggest motivators for war these days. So, ride a bicycle, and you’re riding for peace.

Economic efficiency, clean environment, and physical health are benefits too, but when I’m on a bicycle, I’m mostly thinking about the peace.

Wear this tshirt to spread the word of bicyclists for peace.

Why don’t more people vote for the Green Party? That’s what radicals everywhere keep on asking.

Uh, could it be messages like this one, sent out today by New York State Green Party State Committee Member David Cyr, and now making the rounds as a forwarded email? In it, Cyr justifies the terrorist attack in Austin yesterday as a sane reaction to capitalism. Cyr writes:

“The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.”
— Possible last words of Joe Stack (1956-2010)

Full text of apparent suicide message posted by Joe Stack before burning his house and crashing his small plane into an IRS office:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35461747/ns/us_news-life/

Stack is being dismissed as a lunatic by the government media, and portrayed as a “right-wing” extremist by liberals. Read the full text of his post. His deep frustration is likely far more common than uncommon, and not particularly “right-wing” either. He just wasn’t able to compliantly cope any longer with an insane world. Stack’s final action said, “No Justice, No Peace!”

David J. Cyr
Delhi, NY
GPNYS SC member – Delaware County

Who is this Dave Cyr knucklehead? Is he on the Green Party’s electoral strategy committee? That would explain a thing or two about the Green Party’s inability to even get the support of most American liberals.

Joseph Andrew Stack flew an airplane into a building containing government offices. He committed an act of terrorism, plain and simple. He killed himself, and tried to kill others.

Yes, Davy Boy, Stack was insane – and so are you.