Category Archives: family

The BP Transocean Gusher’s Risk: Some Links and Notes

Posted on June 3, 2010 | 1 comment

This post is  mostly about the oil spill from the point of view of risk. There is a great deal of risk in this crisis and it is a part of the story which is  something we need to really understand and work out in terms of making sense of these events. It is really important to  understand the parameter of risk for this crisis and for all the related crises that may or may not emerge over time.

Life is pretty damned difficult for lots of people and lots of eco-systems when things are working out within the context of the agreements and arrangements within which life and the economy ordinarily operate. When there is a large and sudden unplanned change it often causes a great deal of harm.  This gusher is a large and unexpected change. But in addition it is just a very bad thing. It is if nothing else a huge waste of valuable oil and gas. Forty days into this crisis it is still gushing out into the Gulf of Mexico. So I want to go through this set of issues related to risk.

Understanding a Salt Water Ecology is Difficult 

One of the things many of us did not like in this crisis is that we feel that the impact and risk were so downplayed and minimized in the early days when this was developing.  It seemed to many of us (how rightly time will tell) that those in charge were not considering the reality of a major gusher in that place.  I first began to deal with this crisis on-line with the following tweet: “BP Oil spill seen from space: old worry- https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/ideal-wetlands-policy-on-the-louisiana-coast/” That tweet was posted on April 27, 2010.  Since then the story and the situation have continued to develop.

I want to start with a link that will give people an idea of how much science, skill and knowledge is required to make an assessment of toxic impacts on the environment.  When I write the word toxic I am including the sticky, choking and smothering qualities of oil besides it direct bio-chemical toxicity. Use this link to get an idea of the field. 

1. http://www.cmast.ncsu.edu/index.php/cals-agriculture-a-life-sciences/physiologicalbehavioral-biotelmetry.html

II. Tourism and Export Dollars as Well as the Natural Treasures

In the case of many Louisiana coastal industries a small relative amount of damage can have a disproportionately huge impact.  appearance of the landscape, taste and health of fish and many other things of similar nature can be very subtle and difficult to measure. Beyond that the nature of the things being marketed is that they react in complex and varied ways to the damage done by oil. Some things will heal and some will deteriorate in an accelerated manner. Determining the likely results requires some accounting for currents, rainfall, winds, acidity in the water and many other factors. 

A. Lodging

People will not choose a less desirable site without some adjustment in real cost most of the time. A minor amount of damage can have a large impact on lodging for fishing and recreation. See this link to understand the lodging industry in Louisiana. 

2.http://www.louisiana-lodging.com/regions/cajun.html

B. Seafood

With seafood there is a great deal to the complexity of how an oil spill can affect things. I hope that we can all look back and see this as a minor incident but it  will take a long time to know for sure. The next few links can educate you a bit about how this real industry really operates. 

3.http://www.louisianaseafood.com/

4.http://www.fishlcba.com/

5.http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/pdfs/license/Certified%20Commercial%20Fishermans%20Form.pdf

6.http://204.196.151.247/oyster/

7.http://204.196.151.247/oyster/

8.http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/pdfs/license/Personalized%20Oyster%20Tag%20Order%20Form.pdf

III. The Lingering Risks of Oil Spills

One of the first things that we have to understand is that this is not likely to be completely cleared up any time soon. The Exxon Valdez experience makes us expect bad effects that will linger and persist. 

9.http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/02/1660593/expert-from-exxon-valdez-accident.html

IV. This Particular Spill and Dealing with It

Much of what I have covered so far is about oil damage as a general thing. Some is about Louisiana’s risk towards all oil spills. Now we want to look at this particular spill and how it is being dealt with and should be dealt with in the exact situation we are all in right now. The next site is the grandfather of all sites on this incident if you want to understand the crisis read through the sites content if you can. 

10.http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/site/2931

First Note:  So far the Damage has not Been all that Huge as Far as we Know

The truth is that by almost any measure this has been a relatively modest landfall so far. Even someone like me who is highly committed to the idea that this is a stressed and fragile environment will admit that this has so far not been as catastrophic as it could be. The following text is lifted from GOHSEP’s site. I have my doubts about some of it but I think it is a fairly excellent survey and much better than no source or the average source of measurement. 

“Oil Sightings Report June 2, 2010

Plaquemines:
Sighting: Oil found on mangrove trees in the canals of East Grand Terre near the Grand Bank Bayou area.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Sighting: Tar balls found scattered in a rip line made up of mostly trash in the south west inlet of Wilkinson Bay.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Sighting: Boom is washing up on an unnamed island at Grand Island Port in Barataria Bay. There is no oil in the grass but not in the water.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Sighting: Tar balls found scattered in a rip line at the southern end of Lake Grand Ecaille.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Sighting: Oil sheen approximately 40 yards wide by two miles long just outside Baptiste Collet.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Sighting: Blackish oil slick with some red/brown and foamy areas 4.5 miles east of the Southwest Pass Lighthouse.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Jefferson Parish:
Sighting: Ribbon of sheen with surface foam in Bay Dosgris off of Little Lake.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Sighting: Grey sheen running approximately mile south down the Barataria Waterway.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Sighting: Rip line with grey sheen extending approximately 300 yards south of the mouth of Bayou St. Denis in the Barataria Bay Waterway.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Sighting: Oil found on the mangrove trees in the canals of East Grand Terre at the north east side of Little Bayou Chevreau.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Sighting: Thick oil found in grass on an island one mile south of Manilla Village.
Date: 2 Jun 10.

Sighting: Small area of grey sheen in north east corner of Hackberry Bay.
Date: 2 Jun 10.”

So while we do not yet know what this spill will amount to in the end we do know what  may be at risk and that risk is hard  to assess. So we have to do something.

Note: Responses and Plans

In this segment I provide some links and a little analysis as to how the response is going and how it may go. There is too much to cover well in a short blog post. The barrier islands are an idea being given attention.

11. http://usace.armylive.dodlive.mil/index.php/2010/06/corps-works-with-interagency-response-team-on-oil-spill/

12.http://www.lacpra.org/

I have seen the development of restored barrier islands in the context of an entire system of renewal as a good idea. My idea for policy is outlined in the post behind the following link.

13. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/ideal-wetlands-policy-on-the-louisiana-coast/

So if you read through all of this I hope that you have a better sense of what is at risk. There will probably be more posts on this subject later.

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Posted in Acadians, Audobon Society, BP - British Petroleum, Environment, family, Frank W. Summers, Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana, Oil & Gas Industry, Personal Philosophy and Moral Economics, Secrets, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, Wetlands, White House

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Spill Response: So Little, So Late and So Horrible

Posted on June 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

In today’s post I am going to discuss the horrific losses that we find in a world going to hell in a handbasket and how the spill exemplifies this process. Today the BP robots are finishing cutting off the final rubbish around the riser from the Blow Out Preventer, they are then starting to cut off the riser and will try to mount a cap to channel the flow. We will all be pleased if they mount a rising conduit.

Here are some points I want to consider today:

1.  A unique and separate point from all others is that when something of this magnitude happens I am not willing to eliminate the possibility of an act of war, piracy or terrorism by any party until the total investigation has occurred.

Then there are the more systemic points:

2. Had the deductible on the Oil Pollution Act been $100 million instead of $75 million and had the premium been 15 cents a barrel all this time instead of 8 cents  and then a graduated series of co-payments of say 25% to $2 billion, 50% $2-4 billion, 70% from $4 billion to the exhaustion of the fund — had such a sane policy been in force there would be less chance of a disaster and it would have been better managed. BP might find little reason to count most of us their enemies (assuming this is not piracy). This policy might have encouraged the development of clean energy alternatives, safer drilling practices and even a sound coastal policy. I again cite my own proposal. I encourage you to read it if you have not — it predates the crisis: https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/ideal-wetlands-policy-on-the-louisiana-coast/

3. Senator Mary Landrieu (not alone) has long demanded the manifestly fair and necessary revenue sharing by the state had that money been granted we would have had money to invest in coastal restoration.

4.This country is in many ways a tyranny which has betrayed all of its basic constitutional principles and few people have suffered more from that shift than the people of South Louisiana. The structure that have been imposed on the region in so many meanings of the word structure have been really destructive. I know what tyrranical means and so many instances of  tyrannical waste exist that I cannot list them all.

5. I may come out of this as a known enemy of the oil and gas industry. If so then it seems grossly unfair to me and to others like me to be put in that position. Although I have earned money from the wetlands and seafood industries directly I have written about and discussed for pay and for free the oil and gas industry. I also got a few hundred dollars of more or less direct oil exploration money once. It rankles, if  because of many very bad factors I did not choose, I am cast as a foe of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil and gas have always been part of my life and community.

6. This situation is so bad in so many ways that it would take ages to write about how bad it is. The truth is in a vast catalogue of small and large horrors.

7.There is need for radical change. But radical change is usually bad.

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Posted in Acadians, BP - British Petroleum, Environment, family, Frank W. Summers, Geopolitics, Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana, Memorial Day, Oil & Gas Industry, Personal Philosophy and Moral Economics, Secrets, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, War, Western civilization, Wetlands, White House

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The British Petroleum Oil Spill and Memorial Day

Posted on May 31, 2010 | 5 comments
Memorial Day actually springs from the traditions which came out of the Civil War, War Between the States, War of Northern Aggression, War to Save the Union, War for Southern Independence, Last Stand of Western Civilization or War to Put Down Rebellion– that great cataclysm of bloodshed and destruction which to many Southerners is what one is always presumed to be speaking about when one simply says “The War”. However on this Memorial Day my memory turns to the War Americans call the War of 1812 which gave us our National Anthem and the first complete military victory of the US over the Brits in a major engagement where no foreigners helped. That came in the battle of New Orleans.  Despite Lamar Mackay, Bob Dudley and thousands of US employees and stockholders the odd truth of all this is that the British and their Swiss allies are invading our most precious resources under the leadership of Tony Hayward and under the concealed banner of British Petroleum.  

Scraping oil off beaches

 

Below we have a map of how the British invaded Baltimore and how Americans sunk their own ships in a line to block access to the harbor. The British were large held at bay by that single maneuver and the heavy artillery from a fortress which was operating under an enormous star-spangled banner which a lawyer saw from a truce ship and about which he wrote the song which became our anthem.  
This Map Shows  how British Besiege and Attack Baltimore in war of 1812
The American gunboats were supported by a line of sunken American ships in lines not shown on that map that were sacrificed by the waterfolk and traders to limit movement of the mighty British fleet as well as by the fort McHenry which fired off huge guns and small ones beneath an enormous starry flag. The battle was watched by a lawyer in a truce fleet and  he wrote our National Anthem from its inspiration.

British invasion and repulsion in the Battle of New Orleans

 

The round of hostilities between Britain and America which reached such poetic height in Baltimore reached it end in the Battle of New Orleans which was fought very near where the current battle for the survival of the marshes is ongoing. We are facing the invasion of British Petroleum Crude near where Jackson and his army and Lafitte and his navy (injured by a new American attack) drove off some fine units of UK invaders. There in New Orleans they handed the British the first decisive defeat at the hands of an all American force in a major encounter. The Revolution owed much (if not most) of its winning to the Kingdom and Empire of the French but here French and English-speaking Americans drove out the British Empire in blood-soaked victory alone.    

This 2010 battle of Memorial Day  is an epic struggle and the stakes are very great. It is hard for us to win on this side because if there is little damage it will be used as an excuse for future sabotage or carelessness to be more easily permitted. If there is great damage then we live in age when the natural world is already under great strain and we have rich “well-educated” idiots (who had the capacity not to be idiots when they were young) in government and in big business who never think things through as regards the natural world. I hear so many stupid and irrelevant remarks. The damage done in a short period of time can wipe out millions of years of vital continuity and removing the toxins through there being biodegraded later won’t help. The oyster beds of South Louisiana ought to be compared and classed with vineyards of Napa and Sonoma and instead are classed with the sands of the Arabian deserts. It is hard for me to write this through all the pain and depression I am feeling.
I am very careful to use legal materials in this blog but if I have infringed any rights in this post I will worry about it after I see how much of my homeland has survived. This is a struggle  of enormous proportions. The eleven killed in the explosion and the  dozen or so cleaners who have been hospitalized have suffered in a war in which admirals, generals and Guardsmen are also battling. This is really a struggle for what cannot be replaced.   

http://www.usa-flag-site.org/song-lyrics/star-spangled-banner.html 

Local efforts to block oil incursions

I am going to include a few phrase of my own between pictures of the struggle and verses of the National Anthem. Just above you see people drawing a line against the new invasion. Do we doubt they risk their health in this noble struggle? 

 The Star Spangled Banner Lyrics
By Francis Scott Key 1814

 

 
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

  

 

 

Fishing fleet cleaning or stranded in many places

Like Baltimore and Lafitte’s flotilla it has fallen to small ship and boat owners to bear the brunt of much of this great battle and they do so alongside the Coast Guard and others in their government’s formal service. But is their civilian service much less patriotic? 

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! 

A flotilla of shrimp boats adapted for skimming

This flotilla of shrimp boats sails like the Americans of 1812 and 1814 to save their homes families and country. Already some languish in hospitals. Are they not our heroes too?  

 And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! 

Louisiana National Guard fights a new enemy.

The National Guardsmen know that their world will not recognize this as combat. They will earn no new respect on world battlefields. Yet they risk their health in a beautiful but dangerous coastal wilderness under hot suns in proximity to possible and unmeasured risks of poisoning. The battle for their homeland and can not hurt the liquid at which they throw their human and mortal flesh. Are they not good warriors in this case as well?  

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! 

 I wish everyone a good Memorial Day weekend. I have several friends nobly risking their lives in the two foreign wars we are fighting  and I wish them well.  SD, AD, JS,and JS if you read this know you are not forgotten. But this day my heart is full of pain and also the debt of respect for those who fight with little hope for honor or glory against an invasion so near to so much that I love. 

Note: Throughout the BP Macondo oil leak crisis I was responding day by day to an enormous set of devastating problems for many that I care about deeply or am connected to. While I have made no money on all that work and tried to use my own, open source or public domain materials in every case the stresses were enormous. This particular post has received many views and I have few if any net assets. If it happens that this or any materials used during the crisis are proprietary and used without permission I first apologize and secondly will do in a slow and careful manner whatever I can to make things right. Nonetheless, I am gratified that so many have visited this post over such a long time…

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Posted in Acadians, BP - British Petroleum, Christianity, Easter Holiday, Environment, family, France, Geopolitics, Gulf of Mexico, Healthcare, Labor, Louisiana, Memorial Day, Oil & Gas Industry, Royalty and Empire, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, Western civilization, White House

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Biggest US Spill: Living in the Age of Liquidation

Posted on May 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

This BP — Transocean spill  is not just another mess. This spill is historic and calls for a response in historic terms. It also must be seen in context. That context and response is what this post is about.  The liquid nature of the spill goes with the crisis of unstructured flow of migrants who are joined by the desire to make money flow around for no real reason. This joins with the government forcing racial groups to flow together in no structured way. This goes with an economy designed to liquidate all wealth and punish the kinds of wealth that does not flow quickly. In may ways this spill symbolizes our whole set of social disorders. 

We are facing the largest oil spill in US history. We had the failed Times Square bombing, the underwear bomber, the Fort Hood shooting and we have hundreds of thousands of people protesting  forcefully to proclaim that one should be able to stay here as long as one wants without documentation. Not all the Arizona law protesters want to say that but hundreds of thousands do. We have people in our congress advocating an unconstitutional ex post facto law against BP. Here again the nuance is that if Congress were saying they would issue letters of Marque and Reprisal against BP if they do not adequately deal with the spill I would not object (Britain would but not I). Our debt to revenue ratio is outrageously high and people largely believe we should all spend more to stimulate the economy.  We are still involved in two foreign wars. In my opinions all the things I mentioned above are only minor symptoms of the disease afflicting our society. We are a country in crisis, deep and serious crisis.

I am different from  most of those who are likely to read this blog as American citizens in that I support and advocate radical constitutional change. I advocate change which is revolutionary  — although I am willing to see that change come in the following Constitutional form: “or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” This quote makes up most of Article V (Article Five) of the Constitution.

The part I did not include is the first few words reproduced here and now ” The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, (or, on the Application of the Legislatures)” the words in parentheses are the words at the start of my quote above. All amendments in US history have been passed through the houses of congress and then ratified by the States. However, a constitutional convention summoned by  two-thirds of the States  and ratified by three-fourths of the States could effect total transformation of the country as long as every State retains equal votes in the Senate and the entirely new Constitution would be a formal and legal continuity of our current regime. The only role of Congress in this second path would be to choose whether State legislatures or State conventions should ratify the larger convention.  In the real world if a convention had been called then force of arms would be justified if (by no means certain) a Congress refused to act to make this one choice. Thus if three-fourths of the states can be convinced of the need for radical change then we can have it. And we do need radical change. It is time for our society to evolve. I have outlined the ideas for a new regime elsewhere in this blog.

We need to create a system which will value conservation, preservation, familial wealth, nature, honor and recognize that neither big business nor bureaucracy has all the answers and yet both have a role to play. The risks these spills and other things like the war on terror relate to or not adequately addressed in an eight year presidential administration. We need the kinds of changes we are very far from adopting so far.  The total destruction of our society is what is likely if we continue to follow the path we have been following .  As our society becomes more dysfunctional the rate of decay will increase. Making the right changes now will be very hard but making them later will be much harder.

We are partly destroying and may be largely destroying an estuary which is the product of processes ranging in millions, thousands and hundreds of years. We are doing this in days and months. We need a government with a loner term view of things. However, not just any old thing will do. We need to make  the right changes. I have tried to outline those changes elsewhere in this blog. But we will not have many more chances for good change. It will not be long before any effort we make will be the kind of desperate and frenzied reaction that seldom works out well — to say the least.  This may be our last chance to create change that is rational, wise and measured. 

So let us consider really  changing the government. We have a choice now. That will not be true forever.

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Posted in Acadians, BP - British Petroleum, Environment, family, Geopolitics, Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana, Mexico, Oil & Gas Industry, Royalty and Empire, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, War, Western civilization, Wetlands, White House

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BP Has Failed to Stop the Gusher: A Catalogue of My Blog’s Coverage

Posted on May 29, 2010 | 2 comments

 

British Petroleum has announced that the “Top Kill” or dynamic kill option has not  worked and is being abandoned. They claim only 38 acres of Marsh have been damaged severely and that only 107 miles of coastline has been hit. However I live in distant Vermilion Parish and we have verified small amounts of oil contamination on our own coasts. There is so much we do not know. Everything is in flux and under a strain and pressure.

I want to give you the list of my blog posts on the subject of this spill in reverse chronological order. Perhaps there are some you have missed that would be of use to you in understanding this crisis. We are ready see this struggle continue indefinitely but I am using we in the broadest sense. I myself am not very involved in the struggle itself in the way that some other parties are involved. 

1. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/links-loss-and-the-laws-biggest-us-oil-spill/

2. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/the-largest-spill-in-us-history-more-links/

3. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/british-petroelum-spill-and-clean-up-crisis-goes-on/

4. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/two-bps-on-my-mind/

5. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/22/oil-and-gas-an-odd-argument-for-continuing/

6. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/22/twelve-questions-about-the-deep-water-horizon-gusher/

7. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/the-oil-spill-in-the-gulf-and-making-desperadoes/

8. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/yet-more-of-my-thoughts-on-the-oil-spill-and-a-few-links/

9. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/more-thoughts-about-the-oil-spill/

10. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/the-deep-water-horizon-oil-spill-thoughts-about-the-crisis/

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Posted in Acadians, BP - British Petroleum, Environment, family, Frank W. Summers, Geopolitics, Gulf of Mexico, Labor, Louisiana, Mexico, Oil & Gas Industry, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, Vermilion Parish, Western civilization, Wetlands, White House

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British Petroelum Spill & Clean-Up Crisis Goes On -v1.1

Posted on May 25, 2010 | 1 comment
I have had so much trouble with this post that it could make me paranoid. Goodness knows how many versions I have struggled with. The question is whether anything other than misery and struggle will ever be associated with this story. This whole region is reeling from this blow. But we are also trying to find the right ways to respond.  Fishing fleets are stranded or helping in cleaning up in most places. The current loss and the sense of anxiety is endless. These coasts support a significant part of even a worldwide ecosystem and fisheries and for the gulf region they are truly vital. But for local people they are almost the essence of life here.

Fishing fleets are largely stranded although some skim oil full-time

There are some families who have cared for oyster beds for five generations and have lost all of their oysters. One family establishment can be a tens of millions of dollar loss in assets and that is only if they can seed again from their wild reserves in estuaries and clean the beds they must strip and keep alive and together over years of heartbreaking work to help their children takeover. Many Brown Pelicans and their nests in rookeries are oiled. Fish and turtles are stressed. The struggle is bleak and just beginning. The pelican is on Louisiana’s flag is a sacred symbol in several religious traditions. Its health as a species has been fought for and it is the subject of the successful John Grisham novel The Pelican Brief. I went to Tulane Law School and dropped out like Darby Shaw the fictional female author of the fictional brief about pelicans and justices from which the novel takes its name. But this story is more sinister in my view whether or not it is as intentional as the plot in that novel. But I am no Darby Shaw. 

cleaning oil

I have had software trouble with every image including those of people scooping emulsified oil off of sandy beaches. I hope that image appears here after all. But whatever the reason for my struggle is tonight it is a small token of the real struggle. This is a struggle in which rigid and absorbent booms, chemical capture cages, berms, levees, flushing, and many other tactics will scarcely be enough. This is a struggle that cannot help but be against great odds. That is true even if every one behaves well. The parties have many reasons why they might not behave well.

BP CEO Tony H. is on site

It will not be nearly enough to find a way through ninety percent of this disaster real recovery will start when 99.9 % of the direct damage has been repaired. The eco-system is strained by our era’s world. But a real quality environment is the beginning of recovery. Nobody here is sure we can ever get there. Quality tourism, quality estuaries that contribute to the whole world in vital economic and ecological ways. Quality historic and cultural scenes that make this all workable as a demanding place to live. All this is threatened.  

 The BP executives claim there is a 70% chance they will shut down and in the well tomorrow.  We will see as this nightmare keeps rolling on for us now on May 25, 2010. What will the total picture of this crisis end up being? Will there be at least hope for the pelicans of the barrier islands, fro the spawning grounds, the estuaries and the people of these lands? 

Pelicans nest this time of year and in areas very vulnerable to an oil spill.

There is an almost unlimited catalogue of the risks involved in this mess. It is  the kind of situation that can become much worse very easily and is hard to make right. I ask those of you who can do something good to consider what good you can do. There are other needs in the world but the need to address this crisis is also very great.

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Posted in Acadians, BP - British Petroleum, Environment, family, Geopolitics, Gulf of Mexico, Oil & Gas Industry, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, Wetlands

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The Oil Spill in the Gulf and Making Desperadoes

Posted on May 20, 2010 | 2 comments

The tragedy of the oil and gas spewing into the Gulf for more than a month now is something that sits heavily on my mind and is another sign of all that is wrong with the world. BP, the company that has been British Petroleum, has said this will be the largest oil spill response in history and it does seem that they are doing quite a bit. I do applaud their efforts to address this crisis compared to not addressing it at all. However,  it is a reminder to me of all the reasons why life is so often hellish and why it is almost impossible for me to have any hope in the world in which I live. All the difficulties that are involved in Louisiana’s managing wildlife refuges, large scale fishing and a major oil industry in a difficult  situation are part of the worldwide centuries long mega trend of stupidity and evil in a committed making of deserts and despair which traps people into vile cities and horrible jobs in near deserts that is what some people call civilization.  China is not perfect in any of its policies but the fact that it employs half its people as farmers is seen as an aberration or a weakness by most Westerners. While I would like to see things get better for these people among whom I lived I actually admire and respect their deep tie to agriculture. I look at the manors of medieval Europe with complex covenants, hedgerows,small plots, commons and Lord’s fields as well as a set of rules about shared infrastructure as a magnificent achievement. The enclosure and industrialization did some good but also very much evil in the world. There is a meaning of the word Arcadian that means ” a paradise of natural resource management”.  In other words for me there is no good side or upside to disabling fisheries and tourism and nature reserves and pressuring more people into the petrochemical economy here. Indeed I do not want to see the oil industry decline, not at all. But if I have to or had to choose then the oil & gas would give way to the wetlands management interests.  Only really confronting the world forces that are destroying us in a sane way will work.  I am afraid that I am not optimistic about any of the right things happening.   

This is a very bad time for me. I was one of a small minority of Americans who wanted a federal system to be our project in rebuilding Iraq and felt that the minute we accepted a nonfederal solution to their broken state we were closing off the best options and increasing the chances of the worst options and also that ending any real chance we would have an ally who would support our best national self. Among the small minority who were committed to the federal model of Iraqi redevelopment I was among the  few among this minority who favored a state or province for the Marsh Arabs. Basically, I favored a bicameral legislature with the lower house based on population and the upper house representing states or provinces. Those would have been Iraqi Kurdistan, a Sunni Arab Majority Province in the triangle,  an approximately equal Sunni and Shiite population Province, the special capital city province of Baghdad, a Perseo-Arab Shiite majority province and an Arab Shiite majority province as well as a Marsh Arab province.  More or less all media and political figures started off with a dismissing of the possibility of a Marsh Arab state. It was a sort of unanimous presumption. In the Philippines I was a very weak and insignificant force in trying to get the landed gentry, tribal peoples and Federation of Free Farmers as well as fishermen to see and discuss their common interests in an environment that was both preserved and exploited. In other words, managed with wisdom. In Mexico, I struggled to help garlic farmers and  goat herds interact more effectively with the world economy. None of these efforts were huge nor entirely unsuccessful but they were all failures as far as my own efforts were concerned.

I have long been involved in the struggles here related to  all of the things involved in this crisis. However, I am in many ways a remarkably unsuccessful person. I do not know what  the final lessons of this crisis will be but I do know that they are lessons we desperately need to learn well and are not likely to learn well. I alos believe that while people here are among the most conscientious and hard-working people in the world they are the kinds of people who can be driven to do desperate things if placed in desperate situations. The creation of a large class of desperadoes who are skilled and look like almost every population on Earth and who are skilled in the use of arms with honor is not something to be dismissed lightly. We must hope that things will get better and not become entirely desperate.

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Posted in Acadians, BP - British Petroleum, Environment, family, Geopolitics, Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana, Oil & Gas Industry, United States of America, Western civilization, Wetlands

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Yet More of My Thoughts on the Oil Spill and a few links

Posted on May 18, 2010 | 2 comments

This is going to be another short post related to the big British Petroleum (BP) Transocean Deep Water Horizon Rig Tragedy. I am just throwing up some links that might be relevant. First I recommend watching the film Louisiana Story directed by Robert Flaherty, with portrayals by Joseph Boudreaux and Lionel Leblanc and produced and funded by Standard Oil of New Jersey. This film is described or offered for sale in the next two links. 

http://www.amazon.com/Louisiana-Story-Joseph-Boudreaux/dp/B00008UALJ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Story

I also want to give some idea of the cultural and historical significance of Louisiana’s barrier islands. I think that reading Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening is a good portal into this whole world of discussion and discovery. 

http://www.katechopin.org/the-awakening.shtml

Then I also wanted to give you a chance to see the significance of disrupting Atlantic Bluefin Tuna spawning in this area at this time. There is so much more at stake than is proportionate to the size of the waters that are being disrupted relative to the world’s ocean’s. In this case I am reproducing a few lines from the site as well. 

http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=236

“Although Atlantic bluefin are widely distributed and migrate thousands of kilometers, there are two confirmed spawning locations—the Gulf of Mexico in the western Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea in the eastern Atlantic. Although many ecological and environmental variables undoubtedly affect both the location and productivity of spawning in these two areas, relatively little is known concerning why bluefin spawn where they do.

Spawning in the Gulf of Mexico occurs between mid-April and mid-June when females, which mature around age 8, release approximately 30 million eggs each. The highest density of bluefin larvae, the primary indicator of spawning, occurs in the northern Gulf of Mexico with lesser larval concentrations appearing off the Texas coast and in the Straits of Florida.”

In addition to all of this I am providing a link to the Board which promotes Louisiana seafood.  They are among those trying to cover th Gulf spill and response as well. 

http://www.louisianaseafood.com/

There are many links which I have not covered or shown here.  I do want to end by including a link to this great habitat of birds and plants as it has been protected by the government for over a century. There is a wide variety of habitats outside of these parks which also need help and support.

http://www.stateparks.com/breton.html

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Posted in Acadians, BP - British Petroleum, Environment, family, Gulf of Mexico, Oil & Gas Industry, United States of America, Western civilization, Wetlands

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The Direct Imperial Government in the New American Regime: Part Three

Posted on May 12, 2010 | 1 comment

This is my third post on the Direct Imperial Government in my proposed new regime. In this post I wish to cover two agencies of the proposed DIG. I have done a lot of posts in this blog on healthcare under our current political order.  Here are two of them:

1. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/healthcare-lessons-from-fdr/

2. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/healthcare-bill-passed-by-the-senate-finance-committee/

The others that I have done should be searchable. However, the second of the two links I have provided above would more or less indicate the operations of the Imperial Wellness Agency which would do approximately what the proposed National Wellness Agency would have done. It would of course be stronger and more effective than the NWA because it would have a fixed base of two percent of all DIG funds to add to its revenue streams. It would be a large constitutional anomaly as will all of the major DIG agencies and ministries but it will operate in a well-defined and circumscribed sphere of action. It will consist of a web of specific exceptions to the normal way of doing business. The taxes it receives that I really drew up for the NWA should stand even though they are less appropriate for the DIG than for the federal program I proposed.  This intrusion will be modest if this regime actually emerges. One must remember that this would be a revolution that leaves the vast preponderance of resources in a slightly altered set of institutions that have evolved within a republican structure.  This is a very American approach since America’s 200 and more republican years have merged from a relatively slightly modified version of British and Arcadian-Acadian royalist regimes mixed with Iroquois Chieftainly confederated mixed government  seen through the lense of Greek Classical political science and the Roman republics emergence from the Kingdom of the City of Rome. In the tradition we now would move like Rome from Republic to Empire. However, the American enterprise has never been a purist enterprise and this is not a purist’s proposal.

I will not discuss the details of the Imperial Wellness Agency here except to say that it would support a web of Community Clinics, employ most law and medical school students for a few days in their career, offer token pay to volunteers and track them, recycle surplus pharmaceuticals, rely in part on taxes on migration and dangerous activities from abroad. It would offer sponsorship networks and support emergency response to common disasters. There would be a kind of token insurance program and it would provide some level of available care (much inferior to the very best available) to everyone for little or  even no cost  in a way which demands from but does not destroy private market care. It will also create incentives to control cost which no current system employs well.

The last agency I will discuss in this little series is the Government Liaison to the Imperial House and Household. This agency will seek to ensure that all DIG programs and actions tend to support and enhance and not oppose or curtail the Imperial House and Household’s civilian and military agencies. There will be a Women’s and Family Division which will make sure that the Imperial Wellness Agency and Rolls of Kindreds as well as ordinary organs of governance support the Empress’s Bureau of Women’s Affairs and the Mistress of Ceremonies’ Office of Liaison’s and Placements. It will have an Enforcement Division which will support the integration of the MC’s Office of Ritual Confrontation, the House’s military, the Ministry of Protocol and GRIHHA regulations and proclamations into the law and law enforcement. It will have a Habitat Division to support integration into IWA (Imperial Waste Authority), the HHEA (Human Habitat Expansion Agency)and the local governments all related Imperial House work. Lastly the GLIHH will have the Personal Ministry Division which will assign people to see to the needs of House members discharging DIG functions or interaction in any official way with the DIG

These four agencies are not everything that there is within the DIG. However, they do set out a picture of all that the Direct Imperial Government would and would not be within the new regime. That should make it easier to see what the costs of establishing the new regime would and would not be.

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Posted in Acadians, Chivalry, Environment, family, Geopolitics, National Wellness Agency, Personal Philosophy and Moral Economics, Royalty and Empire, Sex, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, War, Western civilization

Really Becoming an Empire: Some Aspects of Transforming America. Part Four

Posted on April 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

This is about the Arcadian-Acadian heritage, people and Tribe. I have mentioned this subject often in this blog.  I recommend that you read the rest of this post first and then come back to the links to other posts in this blog. Here are some of the posts and a page where Acadians or their institutions are  mentioned are represented:

1. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/louisiana-in-the-proposed-reconstitutionalized-american-union/

2. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/monarchy-and-royalist-culture-in-america-past-present-and-future-part-3-3/

3. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/thinking-a-new-thing-a-competing-american-narrative/

4. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/see-you-later-alligator-after-a-while-bobby-charles/

5. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/images/photographs-in-vermilion-parish/photographs-reproducing-mommees-paintings-1/

To show how Acadian experience is relevant to the question of how Americans govern themselves and have decided to do so in the past I will quote one of my own post in this blog at length this post in turn has links to longer and very worthy sources that can help one to understand how all of these historical issues are interrelated.

“The first really key point is that the real roots of the American Revolution occurred in a larger colonial context.  I am going to recommend a book that does not declare ( as I do here and now) that the Acadian expulsion (loosely described in Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline)  were a principal cause of and stimulus to the American revolution.  But it does show the connections of this event to the revolutionary ferment in a broad contest. In this regard I recommend Leach’s book.  http://www.amazon.com/Roots-Conflict-Colonial-Americans-1677-1763/dp/0807842583#noop 

Secondly, I want to show that the destruction of Acadie was a large and significant act. That it had everything to do with creating a British profile and character the Americans could distrust and that in their early history the Acadians had both elements the Americans were eager to restore to their experience of the British Constitution and also the chivalric and aristocratic values which I argue that we need to restore today. In which regard there is a recent book by John Mack Faragher:  http://www.amazon.com/Great-Noble-Scheme-Expulsion-Acadians/dp/0393051358  to understand the British view of how great and wealthy a land the Acadians had created and how eager they were to have its wealth for themselves.  The Acadian experience is deeply tied to the American experience as a whole.”

However, in this post I cannot really describe the Acadian people or experience. The best I can go is outline their role in the proposed new regime. I will focus on doing as I have done with other parts of the proposed regime.  I will fill out a portion of the Constitution’s demands so that perhaps there can be some light shed on the things they represent. There must be eight hundred forty members of the Acadian Electoral Delegation in the Conclave. I will set out to identify these eight hundred forty and let the rest of the Ethnos Arkadios be seen by that little revelation.

THE 840 MEMBERS OF THE ACADIAN ELECTORAL DELEGATION

I.  The Acadian Peer- Electors

A. Les Princes de Grand Familles representant pour vie et tout

1. The Second Heir of the Boulet Principality

2.The Second Heir of the Theriot Principality

 3.The Second Heir of the Broussard Principality

4.The Second Heir of the Mouton Principality

5, The Second Heir of the Leblanc Principality

B. Les Presidents Herediteurs  Haute Chefs et Condes de los Acadianos representant

6. The First Heir of The High Boudreaux High Chieftancy

7.The First Heir to the Melancon High Chieftancy

8.The First Heir to the Hebert High Chieftancy

C. Les Chefs Medi Herediteurs des Acadiens

9. Le Chef Medi Boudreaux Bas

10. Le Chef Medi Thibodeaux

11. Le Chef Medi Breaux 

D. Les Chefs Bas Herediteurs des Acadiens

12. Le Chef Prince, Le Roi et Basile

13. Le Chef Fontenot

E. Autre Chefs Herediteurs

14. Le Sous Chef Herediteur Theriot de Bayou Lafourche

15. Le Sous Chef Herediteur Broussard de la Paix Attakapas

F. Institutional Peers

16. Sheriff of Vermilion Parish

17. Head of the Francophone Studies at the Universite des Acadie

18.Head of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the Unversite des Acadiens

19. Head of the English Department at the Universite de Acadiens

20. Highest representative securable by treaty at St. Anne’s University

21.Head of the French Immersion Program  at St. Anne’s University

22. Bishop of  Houma-Thibodeaux

23. Sheriff of Acadia Parish

24, President Elective de la Federation des Comites de Vigilance

25. Superior of the  Sacred Heart Sisters Community of Grand Coteau

II. Bouletherion Delegates

1. First President of the Bouletherion Elected by the Council of Chiefs 

2. Second President of the Bouletherion Elected by the Council of Chiefs

3. President of the Bouletherion appointed by the Basileus  Deceased

4. President of the Ladies Councils in the Bouletherion Elected Thereby.

5. President of the Ladies Councils in the Bouletherion  Appointed by the Basilissa. 

6. Le Chef Guidry Herediteur des Garde de Soir et Noir des Roi et Reine.

III. Les Sous Presidents de Conseil des Armes

1. Le Premiere SousPresident de Conseil des Armes

2. Le Sous President Ouest de Conseil des Armes

3. Le Sous President Est de Conseil des Armes

IV. Le Conseil des Droit

1-3 Les Plus de Toute des Lois

4. The Chaplain

5-9 The Assistant Chaplains

11. The  Chief Genealogist.

V. La  Premiere Maison

1. -10. Highest Ranking Acadian members of the House not Disqualified.

11.-21. Ready list of the Basileus Deceased

22.-32. Ready List of the Basilissa

VI. Chiefs of the Auxiliary Councils

1. Chief of the Metis Auxiliary Council

2. Chief of the Creoles of Coleurs Council

3. Chief of the  Advocate Council High Ranking Acadians without High Last Names.

4. Chief of the Black Race Auxiliary.

5. Chief of the Ethnic Auxiliaries Federation.

6. Chief of the Auxiliary of Royal Descendants.

VII. Delegates of the Revolution and Restoration

1-72 Seventy-Two Delegates of the Congres Mondial

73-144 Seventy-Two Delegates of the Action ‘Cadien

145-217 Seventy-Two Delegates of CODOFIL

VIII. Random Seventy-Twos

First, the Seventy-Two Acadiana Acadians

Second, the Seventy-Two Acadie Acadians

Third, the Seventy-Two Sympathizers of La Rochelle

Fourth, the Seventy-Two Willing Greeks of Arcadia

Fifth, the Seventy-Two UL Alumni

Sixth, the Seventy-Two Alumni of Our Lady Of the Oaks and St. Charles College.

25 +6+3+11+32+6=83

217 + (6 x 72)=649

The remainder of the 840 seats after subtracting 732 is 108. There would be 54 seats on a yearly rotation in a  twelve year cycle of the Couples serving as family and kinship coordinators. There would 27 seats at random from the guards assigned to the late Basileus. There would be 27 seats assigned first to the late Basileus Harem and if he had fewer than 27 consorts to his Roll of Friends not otherwise seated.

Using these terms and names one could search though my blog posts and piece together quite a bit. This is not the last time the tribe will be mentioned but it is where I will stop for now.

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Posted in Acadians, Christianity, family, France, Geopolitics, Louisiana, polygamy, race, Royalty and Empire, Sex, United States of America, Vermilion Parish, Western civilization

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