Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Congressman Charlie Dent likes to adopt an anti-Europe posture when he’s talking in front of right wing voters in the 15th district of Pennsylvania. He frequently warns that Democrats are trying to lead America into a “European-style Welfare state”, adding the comment about Europe in order to cast Democrats as somehow unAmerican in character.

It turns out that Charles Dent has some rather strong European political connections himself, though. Just last Thursday, Congressman Dent had a special fundraising event arranged for him at 201 C Street, the home of an influential lobbyist. That lobbyist, David D. O’Brien, is the head of his own firm, which represents several European interests, including the embassies of European nations and Wartsila Defense, a company owned by a Scandinavian technology company.

Representative Dent may insult Europe with his words, but he’s happy to have cash slapped in his hand at parties arranged for him by the agents of European power elites.

But where did he get the gasoline?

Woo hoo! The more I look at Sarah Palin’s political record, the more it looks like a political fun house… or a mad house, maybe.

Now it turns out that Irish blogger Maman Poulet managed to catch Sarah Palin in a big fat lie that the mainstream media never even bothered to check out.

Sarah Palin said that she had lots of foreign policy experience because she had been to Ireland, Germany and Kuwait. Better revise that, GOP. It seems that Palin wasn’t being honest about the Ireland part.

Maman Poulet discovered that Sarah Palin’s supposed trip to Ireland consisted of a layover of an hour or two in a sequestered part of Ireland’s Shannon Airport when her plane on the way to Kuwait stopped for refueling. Does that count as visiting Ireland, and having foreign policy experience there? Sure, if you’re running for Vice President of the Wasilla High School Student Council.

It’s a shameless padding of Palin’s resume that indicates more about her lack of experience than about her qualifications to succeed John McCain and become President of the United States.

Hidden in the murky estuaries of the River Thames, the central corridor of power in the British Empire, a secret has been kept for years – a secret that now has been revealed: Seahorses.

New Scientist tells us: “About five short-snouted seahorses (Hippocampus hippocampus) have been spotted during routine conservation surveys over the last year or so, leading scientists to think they have probably established a resident population. The news has been kept secret until now.”

Why were the seahorses kept a secret, and why are we hearing about this now?

People like to think of seahorses as a friendly sort of creature, what with its slow swimming habits, its big round tummy, and its gently grasping tail. Friendly? Have you ever talked to a seahorse? No. Seahorses don’t talk to people. You know why? They don’t know English.

There has never been a seahorse that has lived in an English-speaking country that has bothered to learn to speak English. Does that remind you of anyone? It should: Illegal immigrants.

So, now we learn that these seahorses (unnaturally mixing land animals and ocean animals) have “established a resident population”. Residents, but not citizens. It kind of reminds me of George W. Bush’s idea of “guest workers” – except the stinking little seahorses aren’t doing any work. They’re just swimming around slowly in the River Thames, not contributing to society, but having babies (that the fathers are expected to take care of while the mother goes out and has a good time) and then expecting the government to take care of it all.

“Conserve my habitat!” they would say, if they could speak English. Well, what have the seahorses done to conserve their own habitat?

They think that they can come in and just set up their little river camps, driving down property values, without going through Customs? Where is their respect for the law?

Of course, some people would say that the seahorses don’t know about the law. Well, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

I think it’s worse than that. Just consider what Al Quaida could do with a group like this. They don’t have anything to do but seethe with resentment against the success of the English people. They’ve managed to learn how to cross borders without being protected, and they’ve been kept secret by the government.

These malcontents on the River Thames look like a classic terrorist sleeper cell to me, and given the government’s involvement, it looks like an inside job to me.

But now the secrecy has been lifted. Do you know why? Parliament has just passed a law that gives special protections to the seahorses, so that they can go about with their little nefarious schemes without bothering to hide anymore. They’ve been made untouchable.

Why is that law coming into effect now, in 2008? Is this some kind of October surprise, in April, designed to tip the American presidential election toward a certain candidate? The coincidence in timing is difficult to ignore.

What’s really going on at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City?

The cover stories for the repeated failures of the opera Tristan und Isolde are appearing increasingly thin. Five different actors have had to be used in the title roles of Tristan and Isolde:

Gary Lehman
Ben Heppner
Mac Master
Deborah Voigt
Janice Baird

Now, there is to be a sixth: Roger Dean Smith… or so he says.

What’s going on? Performances of Tristan und Isolde have had to be cancelled more than once, due to “mishaps”.

The tenor has fallen off the stage. Scenery has nearly killed the singers. There have been mysterious plagues that the publicists are dismissing as “stomach ailments” and “viruses”.

Nobody believes it, of course, and Manhattan’s elite opera scene is abuzz with rumor of what is really happening behind the curtain of the newest production of Tristan und Isolde.

To understand today’s dramatic events, one needs to go back to the time of the composition of Tristan und Isolde. It was in 1849, and Richard Wagner had to flee the city of Dresden because of what the establishment describes, euphemistically, as The May Uprising. Conventional history says that the May Uprising was a political battle between a repressive government and a mob seeking democratic rule. Conventional history is wrong.

The truth is that Richard Wagner had been dabbling in ancient folklore a little bit too deeply, and he came across some folkways that should have been forgotten: The dark arts of necromancy. Richard Wagner thought that he was writing a new opera to celebrate the culture of teutonic peoples, but really, he was casting a black spell to raise the dead. The May Uprising was not about politics. The truth is that the battle was an attempt to defend the living residents of Dresden from a zombie seige.

Just look at the history books. After the zombies started rising out of Dresden’s cemeteries, Richard Wagner ran away, because he didn’t know how to control his creations. The government soldiers in Dresden are then recorded as making a last stand in the Zeughaus.

Do you know what Zeughaus means, when translated into English? It means “House of the Undead”. The government soldiers went to the heart of the problem, to find the answer for the dreadful question: How do you kill somebody when they’re already dead?

The answer to that question was lost to history, but obviously they found some kind of way to control the zombies.

Richard Wagner, in the meantime, set up his operations again in Zurich, and this time he finished what he had started. He finished a final, revised draft of Tristan und Isolde, which still included some elements of necromancy, but not as much as in his first draft.

So, that’s what the people at the Met are facing right now: Black magic. It’s not as strong as when Richard Wagner first tried it in Dresden, but it is potentially deadly nonetheless.

I can’t tell you what’s going to happen for certain, but I can tell you this: There are just a few more performances of Tristan und Isolde at the Met, and I won’t be setting foot in Manhattan until after they are done.

Tonight I was researching various topics on paganism and ancient revivalism when I came across a Wikipedia article about a group of pagans in Greece who were trying to gain equal rights in the eyes of the Greek government. It seems that prior to 2006, all religions except Christianity, Judaism and Islam had been banned. An Athenian court seems to have overruled that.

The story regarding this can be found here (I may post a separate diary entry about this later).

When I read about their desire to be allowed to worship in the Parthenon, I looked it up on Wikipedia for clarification. The article listed pollution hazards and I found myself curious enough to read on. It seems that acid rain from the growth of Athens and the exhaust from cars has caused irreparable damage to the sculptures in the Parthenon.

Pollution is a bad thing, not only for the harm it does to ourselves and our environment but for the harm it does to our history. When historical landmarks and wonders of the ancient world are threatened by our pollution, isn’t it time to do something?

I see this and then I see conservatives calling for less restraints put on pollution control and I find it hard to believe that they could be so caviler and arrogant not to see the harm that is already happening. Is there nothing at all more important than grabbing for that extra dollar?

A couple of days ago, there was a little bit of a dispute, in response to my first mantis shrimp blog entry, about whether people eat mantis shrimp. It turns out that the Italians do indeed eat mantis shrimp. Here’s one recipe: Canocchie alla Pezza.

It will be noted, however, that this recipe does not call for the use of tawdry cocktail sauce. Instead, it suggests lemon, garlic, salt and olive oil. A much lighter taste.

For a better read, catch the same blogger’s visceral repulsion to the stomatopod, in her article entitled: The Horrible Mantis Shrimp. Fun fact from that article: A few mantis shrimp species have sufficient strength in their front claws to break through the glass of aquarium tanks, and scuttle around your home in fury for a while before dying.

Another blogger, Astron, refers to mantis shrimp meat as “tender and sweet”. Oh, the humanity!

Yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the World War I battle of Passchendaele: a horror in which 3/4 of a million soldiers were killed.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), one of the WWI poets, wrote this, not about Passchendaele particularly, but about that war — and all other wars.

AFTERMATH

HAVE you forgotten yet?…
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days
Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare
But the past is just the same,—and War’s a bloody game….
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,-
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,—
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, “Is it all going to happen again?”

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,—
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads, those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you’ll never forget.

RED DAVE

There’s news today that some people are accepting as a confirmation of global warming. Others of us, however, are willing to look beneath this superficial interpretation, and see what’s really going on up at high altitudes.

Experts say that the Aletsch glacier in Switzerland is retreating, and fast. For example, Laudo Albrecht of the environmentalist group Pronatura says, “It should retreat, but not so fast. The glacier is in rapid retreat.”

These environmentalists purport to have some explanations about why the glacier is retreating, but I never hear them really ask the question that would provide a reasonable description of what’s going on. Sure, the Aletsch glacier is retreating, but these so-called experts never ask what the Aletsch glacier is retreating from.

If these people would look at the map of the region around the glacier, they would see the answer right away. Look at the map yourself, and you’ll see, clearly marked, the word “Munster”. As everyone knows, munster is the Swiss word for monster. The Aletsch glacier is retreating from a monster. Well, wouldn’t you?

What is this monster like? We can’t say, because the environmentalists are keeping it secret from us. They’re afraid that if the world knows what is really causing the Aletsch glacier to retreat, they’ll realize that global warming is just a conspiracy theory dreamed up to conceal the presence of monsters lurking below glaciers around the world.

Thousands of people protested against the visit of George W. Bush in the streets of Rome yesterday, expressing widespread opposition to Bush’s foreign policy among citizens of Italy.

Some protesters lit smoke bombs and threw bottles. Police tried to control the protesters by firing tear gas at them.

“Bush Out!” the protesters in Rome demanded, expressing opposition to the continued American military occupation of Iraq. Bush responded by asking whether Italians had thought enough about national independence for Kosovo.

In touch with the pulse of the planet as usual, that Mr. Bush.

On the other hand, it’s a pity that a few protesters ruined the event for the rest. The Guardian is even reporting that one or two protesters broke flower pots.

What were they thinking? Damn flower pot! I’ll teach you to support the ocupation of Iraq!