I Plan to Cease Commenting on the British Blogs

Posted on September 23, 2010 | Leave a comment

I am disentangling myself from the British blogs that I have been commenting on regularly.  I will simply identify them with their initials LOTB and TNV. The  reason I originally came to WordPress is now being phased out. Perhaps I will drift back some day. However, I am planning to leave the bridges cleanly cut and fully burnt so that this will not tempt me.

I am amazed how long it has lasted. However, for those who follow me for that reason.  I just want to say that I plan to stop commenting on the British blogs I have been commenting on since before starting this blog.  I am glad I had the occasion to attempt to participate in this dialog as long as I did.

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Monetary Policy for a Transformed America.

Posted on September 22, 2010 | 1 comment

I am advocating many forms of radical change in America. One of those radical changes will be to remake the money of the Union. I do not pretend this will be easy now but it will just get harder to do while it becomes more necessary. We have a far better chance of success if we undertake these radical changes now. This is one of those blog posts where a personal factor will be extremely important.  I have some problems including arthritis that sometimes act up before a storm. There are storms on the way and I am an agonizing cripple as I go through this project. 

I am not a money man! It must be among these very distinct circles of money men that  my ideas would be considered. In many ways as they examined my background they would find that I have a certain distrust for money compared to almost all  those who propound major monetary policies. Distrusting money more than most does not mean that one has necessarily got the worst monetary policy. One of the societies most famous for distrusting money was the society of ancient Sparta. In my glossary in this blog I say only a tiny bit about Sparta:  

“Sparta: Spartans were the most fierce, warlike and disciplined Greek culture. Their constitution was developed by Lycurgus from their status as a subgroup of the Arcadian hegemony. They became a diarchical mixed government military empire in which citizens were all soldiers supported by their women and the Helots whom they enslaved. Leonidas was a king who embodied their ideal when he opposed a vast Persian invasion at Thermopylae with his bodyguard of 300 picked troops effectively for a while and fighting to the last man. Arius  was a King of Sparta who signed a Treaty of Kinship with the Hebrews under the Maccabees.” 

However, there is certainly more to be said about that society. While I do not endorse everything this site says and it equates the polices with all of Greece and does not allow for the state of tribes and kingly tribal federations I am still willing to acknowledge the site as worth seeing:  

“What was more: Spartan women could inherit and so transfer wealth.  Athenian women, by contrast, were never heiresses; all property passed to the next male kinsman, who might at most be required to marry the heiress in order to claim the inheritance – an arrangement that often led men to discard their previous wife, although she was blameless, just to get their hands on the inheritance of a kinsman.  Economic power has always had the concomitant effect of increasing status.  This is clearly evidenced by contemporary descriptions of Spartan women.  They were “notorious” for having opinions (“even on political matters”!) and – what was clearly worse from the perspective of other Greek men – “their husbands listened to them”!  Aristotle claimed that Spartan men were “ruled by their wives” – and cited the freedom of Spartan women as one of two reasons why the Spartan constitution was reprehensible.  (For a comparison of women’s legal status in Sparta to that in other city-states, see Raphael Sealey, Woman and Law in Classical Greece (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1990), or Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (British Museum Press, London, 1995).)” The link itself is:  http://elysiumgates.com/~helena/Women.html 

That same Spartan society that distrusted money was an economic success as pointed out in this same site: 

” Sparta was the capital of the city-state of Lacedaemon.  The land area of Lacedaemon was larger than that of most Greek city-states, covering the bulk of the southern Peloponnese.  It was an extremely rich territory with considerable natural resources, including copper and tin mines, quarries, forests, and good ports giving access to the Aegean and Ionian Seas.  The fertile valleys of the Eurotas (Laconia itself) and Pamisos (Messenia) were suitable for the production of all essential foodstuffs of the ancient world, from olives to wine, as well as providing good pasture land for cattle, sheep, and goats.  It was known for the variety of its garden vegetables, including cucumbers and lettuce, which were considered distinctly Laconian.  It was famed for its horses and its Castorian hounds, both of which were valuable exports, while the horses frequently brought Sparta victories at the Olympic Games.  More important, however, unlike Athens and Corinth, Lacedaemon was self-sufficient in grain rather than being dependent on imports of this vital commodity – a critical political advantage.  In short, Sparta’s power did not rest on its military might alone, but was a function of its economic independence as well.” 

Because of the distrust of money the subjugate peoples were able to get rich and the Spartan money used by Spartans themselves was often iron, large and cumbersome. But their monetary policy worked. America will need some Spartan austerity to reach an Arcadian state of well-being from where we are now.  

Familiar Greenbacks

America is used to paper money

 I quote from an earlier post  in this same blog that discussed how America was on the brink of a truly huge crisis. 

” Much of what is reported as wealth and success in this country is actually simply waste. Almost all our systems of accounting reward and honor some kind of waste and hide its nature as waste. Yet in spite of greatly diminishing the amount of waste that we report from the real ocean of waste produced, we still know that we produce more waste per capita than anyone in history. That is seen as horribly offensive to every responsible person in the world. It is storing up horrors for the future, straining our environment  and literally killing innocent productive people in all kinds of ways that are not reported. It is a massive national crisis in and of itself.” 

In order to address its vast national problems effectively the country must secure the value of the money it will use to manage its business. It must secure this money from the very piratical and chaotic milieu which this country itself has helped to create. To do so we will need an entirely new monetary policy. 

Advantages of paper money

Paper legal tender will still be around.

 I will quote myself again from a post on this blog titled “America and the Next Big Thing”. Here I outline our basic monetary policy in the desired coming regime: 

” However, as this process goes forward we will be moving towards a society where most ego needs and heart’s desire needs are not met by a limitless desire for more expensive individual standards of living. Sharing in family and community will be incentivized. During this period of growth and liquidation we will also transition to a floating quatrimetalism as our monetary policy. The new money will tighten credit and secure our credit to some real degree always. Basically coins will make up a fixed percentage of all issued money value and count. All coins will be required to have a steel inner and outer ring. The coins will  be stringable like old Chinese coins. The four metals used will be Gold, Silver, Copper and Platinum. There will be mixed metal and pure metal coins and issues will vary with the markets by formulas designed to maximize stability. All banks will be forced to hold one percent of their assets in these value metal coins after a transition period, The Imperial House and Household Bank and the Federal Reserve as well as the  Senior Invited Guilds and the Imperial Association of Nobility and Aristocracy will form a very limited Bank of the Federal American Empire of the United States largely focusing on Specie issues.” 

I would have two steel rings on all these coins which would change their nominal value from their metal value and make them easier to use. Within that context I would call forth a formula which would allow the treasury to respond to fluctuations in the market by producing more or less of one kind of coin or another.  I would adopt the following coin types (not forgetting the unmentioned rings): 

1. platinum     5. platinum/gold  

2. gold              6. gold/ silver 

3. silver         7. silver/ copper 

4. Copper  

 We are used to metal as well 

There will be some inconvenience if this is done.  But money flows too conveniently now. Let us look at the opposite Spartan extreme for a reference:   

“One reason why wealth was less desirable lay in the fact that Sparta’s authorities refused to adopt the system of making silver into coins in the manner of other Greek cities. Instead she continued to use unwieldy iron bars for money. The historian Xenophon commented that ‘ a thousand drachmas’ worth would fill a wagon’.Spartans were also forbidden to travel abroad , except on state instructions, and foreigners were not admitted to Sparta without supplying a very good reason for doing so . This was to prevent the citizens from being corrupted by foreign ideas and morality. ”
I am not advocating any of that behavior but it was a society with a monetary policy that worked while many have failed with a failed policy. The link to this site is: http://www.laconia.org/sparti_h_1.htm 

I do not advocate the Spartan approach or the very different return to the gold standard. However, some do advocate it today. “There is no reason, technically or economically, why the world today, even with its countless wide-ranging and complex commercial transactions, could not return to the gold standard and operate with gold money. The major obstacle is ideological.” See the link: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/how-to-return-to-the-gold-standard/# 

metal works as well. 

So — yes — I dare to call for floating quatrimetalism as the new monetary policy for America. I hope America will push the world in a different direction by adopting this.

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Posted in Acadians, Arcadians, Frank W. Summers, Geopolitics, Greece & Greeks, Israel, Judaism, monetary policy, Royalty and Empire, Sparta, United States of America, Western civilization

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman and the Papal Visit

Posted on September 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

Well, it is done. John Henry Cardinal Newman is Beatified. Across America at universities there are many Newman Clubs where some of the  Catholic student members likely feel more connected to a canonization than they ever expected to and yet they are likely to have known only a very little about his life and record. He is a man who lived for 89 year in a single century. That is much more unusual than living for 89 years and so historians who are drawn to the study of centuries (despite their best efforts not to be) will always be likely to note him as a source in studying the nineteenth century of the Christian era.   He was a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and there are not very many of those. He was the author of a very long memoir called Apologia Pro Vita Sua: The History of My Religious Opinions.  That gives the rest of his writing, speaking and organizing a different shape and flavor for history than the lives of great men who do not write memoirs. He belonged to the Birmingham Oratory and therefore he is likely to be remembered by his community that has preserved his documents and artifacts and remembered the anecdotes of his life. Then, as of a few days ago, a Pope had made a historic journey to his homeland to celebrate his legacy. We now have added to all of this his official elevation to the “honor of the altars” not the “glory of the altars” which is the step of canonization which has not yet been taken.  His chapel will now become an official Catholic Shrine.  I expect the process to canonization will proceed in good order. Attention will show a man who like other saints was faithful to his sense of the life and inspiration of Jesus Christ.

I may or may not do another post on this visit by Pope Benedict XVI and this man who was so compelling a human being in so many ways.  Let us just consider the enormous effect which this visit has had on the Catholic community in Britain. I lived there as a child and found the air of anti-Catholicism thick enough. But for these days there has been a chance for the Roman Catholics there to see a fellow Teuton leading their worship on good terms with the Anglicans and beatifying a great Catholic son of their island.

In my own life it has also been a significant occasion. As an Anglo-Acadian, a former English major and a correspondent with Peers and others at the Westminster Parliament where Benedict XVI just spoke. For me there has not been much of an emotional response to these events but there has been an intellectual recognition that these things do matter.

The only possible victims in this happy event or the devotees of the American saint John Newman who was a multilingual pastor and builder and bishop.  Perhaps his ethnic name of Johannes Naumann or something close to it can be used. However, he was not very well-known anyway. However, he is worth knowing.

The saints meant more to me perhaps when I tried a bit harder to imitate them. However, I still admire what I am less able to imitate.  I do sort of hope this Beatification will move several efforts for peace and reconciliation forward.

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Posted in Christianity, Frank W. Summers, Jesus Christ, Lords of the Blog, Roman Catholicism, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, Western civilization

The Papal Visit to the United Kingdom & Beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman

Posted on September 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has made a success of his historic state visit to the United Kingdom this week so far. There has been a meeting with Queen Elizabeth and her Royal Consort in Scotland.  There has been a speech to all sorts of leaders in Westminster Hall, an ecumenical prayer service in Westminster Abbey with the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, a mass mostly in Latin at Westminster Cathedral with the Roman Catholic Clergy and faithful, a vigil at Hyde Park  and tomorrow there will be a Beatification of the Cardinal in Birmingham.

John Henry Cardinal Newman was an Anglican Cleric who did a great deal to restore the health of Anglican thought, scholarship and liturgy before spending a long time as a Roman Catholic doing a lot to restore the Roman Catholic Church in England, writing scholarship and poetry and creating a movement of renewal. His writing on the university as an institution has been a very important influence on my own life and thought. Although it has gotten muddled in my mind.

Tomorrow I hope to do a post on the Beatification itself. If not tomorrow then the next day.

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Posted in Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Western civilization

The Last Year of the 9-11 Decade Has Begun

Posted on September 15, 2010 | 10 comments

This is the first installment of list of People to Watch in the Second Post 9/11 Decade.  I want to say that in general I do not greatly edit a post and leave it in its original place in the blog. However, this was a jumping off point for a very ambitious project and so it has fallen into a different category of post. The latter parts of the series were first posted much later and had very minor revsions as I am typing this updated introduction in January of 2011. This post has already had some minor edits before tonight and will likely have quite a few more after this. So if you have read this since it was first posted on September 11, 2010. The historian in me is of two minds about this. First, like any historian I revise my writing and there are article versions that precede book versions of histories. However, this is not in any meaningful sense a history whereas by editing this post I am making it less usable and manageable as a typical historical source. I hope you read it anyway and find it useful in mapping out the projections you produce for the future.  The imperfectly kept rule will be that in the biographical sketches under each name the information in the original post will be in ordinary type while later text additions will be in this italic typeface. 

After the initial trauma of the 9-11 experience had grown a bit less raw it became rather a commonplace to assert that America had been forever changed on that day. I became rather a refrain to discuss how life and our history would be marked by that day which split the era into before 9-11 and after 9-11.  Even as I type this American populist conservative  commentator and television host Glen Beck has some sort of 9-12  movement which emphasizes this shift.  The truth is always hard to exactly determine and difficult for people to agree upon entirely. Nonetheless, it is true that we did experience an event of enormous cultural and historical significance on the eleventh day of September 11, 2001.

What will the long-term outcomes likely be?  I am not going to devote most of this post or of my time in these days to really trying to predict a very specific vision of the future.  In this blog I have advocated a certain set of future courses of action and states of being for the United States of America and the world.  However, advocacy and prediction are quite different things. There is little that involves detachment in the former and little that involves committed passion in the latter.

I am entirely engaged in the work of being myself and attempting to live up to my own responsibilities most of the time. That is similar to the lives of most people most of the time. Our responsibilities, aptitudes and abilities vary but  a very large number of us could describe our lives in those terms. What happens to be true is that the world does not wait for us to have our own lives in perfect order before it confronts us with challenges. America and much of its legacy in the world faces such a challenge just now.   

There is no simple solution to all of the problems that we have to solve. But it will simply do little good to pretend that we do not have serious challenges that we must meet.  It helps to know what principles govern human behavior at the individual, family, community , national and global levels. But knowing all the basic principles that will shape the decisions we make and others make will not be enough.  We will need to know many things including players who will be making the decisions and  the reasons that are likely to appeal to them as they make those decisions.  I have left out several people for reasons too complex to summarize here but want to mention some of them by way of showing how incomplete the list is:

Larry Summers, Meg Whitman, Philip Lord Norton, King Juan Carlos, Felipe Calderon, Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, Mary Landrieu, Nancy Pelosi, Taylor Swift, Michael Phelps, Drew Brees, Colin Powell , Henry Louis Gates, Arnold Schwartznegger, Nick Clegg, James Carville, Anderson Cooper, Billy Nunguesser  and even me…   

Gearing up for the future of America these are in no particular order a group of people to whom more may be added later:

Dramatis Personae:

1.President Barack  Hussein Obama This President of the United States of America  will continue  to set the tone for much of the American future and its policies for the foreseeable future. We face the future as best we can in a world where the election of Barack Obama has already shown us as profoundly weak in the eyes of so much of the world. Barack Hussein Obama it is to be noted is the descendant of an American mother and has married and had children with an American wife. The mother was white, the wife is black. Obama’s father was an African student and he also had an Indonesian stepfather. In a scoiety where forty-one percent of children are currently born out of wedlock, Schwarzenegger has been Governor of California, Jindal  is currently Governor of Louisiana, Granholme was Governor of Michigan until two weeks ago and tens of millions live here without documents Obama has a strong basic appeal to our society which is committed to its own utter destruction at this time.

2. Josef Ratzinger, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI The second consecutive Patriarch of Rome, Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff and Successor to the Throne of St. Peter who has  not been an Italian and that (without saying the Italians are not agreat people and without saying that Bishops ought mostly to come from their own lands or related lands) is a good thing. It would probably be good if about half of all Popes were Italian  over time but I would not want to see dozens of Popes in a row who were not Italian so everyone must do the best they can. He is a German who fought in the regular nonpolitical  part of the German forces doing his duty in World War II and is a very accomplished scholar. However, the service to any state headed by Adolf Hitler and his lunatics is a blemish on the Papacy. But the Papacy has had many blemishes — nonetheless I do not lay all the blame on him personally but I do hold it against him.   He remembers the insanity of Nazi political religion and although his experience was more ambiguous than he admits he will work to see that the liturgy and practice of the Church draws forth a milieu such as produced Mozart, the Bach family and the Gothic Cathedrals. If he could say anything kind and honest to the Jews in the way of professional advice and have it received he would advise them to invest in their worship and liturgy to reach and surpass the heights of the Temple’s musical past.  

3. Her Britannic Majesty, Elizabeth She has managed to become the Head of State for sixteen countries as they left the Empire as well as head of the Commonwealth. The Crown is more independent of the UK government than it has been in centuries and this gives her bargaining power in that government she would not have otherwise.  Queen Elizabeth of Scotland and of England Second of the Name’s traditional  Christmas Speech this year was perhaps as good as any if not the best she has ever given. She seems to be growing both deeper and more spiritual and nuanced. There is no doubt in my mind that she will continue to be a factor in the world for at least as long as she reigns.

4. HRH Charles Prince of Wales is the Prince of WAles with the most formal education in history. He will not be a pet or showdog for anyone. Much of what he does is decent, admirable and very fine. He deals with issues others fail to see as vital. He can nonetheless be very dangerous to US interests. On the other hand he may help resist greater mutual dangers. As is often found in Kings (which he is not yet) the best and worst of his complex heritage are present together in him.  One of his many new initiatives is accounting for sustainability which is I think in part a response to the BP disaster. I think he is also very involved in the marriage of his son Prince William and trying to make a better and more secure future for both British royalty and the British people.

5. David Cameron A careful and clever young Prime Minister who will not overreach any time soon. He wants to build a Cameronism for the Conservatives  and see them rule the UK but he is in no hurry. Nobody knows what he may be capable of or what his limits are — not even David Cameron.  David Cameron has now formed a coallition government with the Liberal Democrats. He and Nick Clegg have done a very good job of organizing the debate and the reform of parliament in a way which can possibly lay a foundation for a political future that reverses many of the seemingly intractable roots sent into the political ground by the Labour Party in its thirteen years or so in power. He is still feeling his way in these years of Lib-Con coallition and is likely to emerge from the process stronger than ever. With a wife and young children he is clearly a symbol of what long-term political potential could look like.

6. Sarah Palin This former and resigned Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential Candidate has made an impact on American politics and raised cultural hopes which are not easy to quantify. She is not perfect but is a powerful living symbol of deep hopes of many people. Sarah Palin has recently had a television reality show called Sarah Palin’s Alaska in which she promotes her state and makes up in some way for walking out of the Governor’s Office. She also has come out with her second book after  the memoir Going Rogue. This second book is America by Heart and has been very successful.  She continues to develop ties with the Tea Party and other aspects of the US electorate and political milieu. 

7. George H. W. Bush This former US President is getting old enough that he may not be with us for long into the coming decade (or he may live well past this final year of the first decade, through the coming decade and into following one) but regardless his influence on the CIA, his heritage in establishing a unique American family expressed of Presidents, Governors and rooted in his father’s senatorial career makes him unique. His work with  Bill Clinton in the field of disaster relief will make the world and the nature aware of his work well into the Obama regime. He is also taking a measurable role as patriarch (in a limited American sense) of the Bush clan. He is mentioned in his son’s new memoir and has appeared on television discussing his exceptional sons, wife, daughters-in-law and grandchildren. He seems to be applying his formidable intellect to the fact that there are systemic problems in the USA which may demand remedies he would not have hoped to see employed during most of his life. 

8. George W. Bush This former President of the United State will continue to have influence both in the Bush family network and in the business community. In time his political legacy will be seen by the  GOP as having been elected twice with significant coattails.  If he lives a long time he will have more of a politico-social life than most imagine now before he leaves the stage. However, he will not be the individual super-producer of work that Jimmy Carter has been. Sincw the first part of this entry was posted this former President Bush has come out with his memoirs Decision Points which has sold very successfully. Dana Perino his former Whte House press secretary has used her television news job to defend his record in subtle by continuous ways. His daughter Barbara Bush has been working on establishing a very successful health and medical charity which givers her occasion to discuss his good deed in AIDS outreach in Africa. His reputation has been rebuilt considerably since he left office amid clouds of critical animosity. 

9. Glen Beck One to watch! It is too early to say what this Mormon populist conservative tv host, commenter and  organizer will really do over the long-term. Beck continues to play a fairly serious game. He is a man of patience and significant internal resources on whom a great deal of the jury of history is not only out but in some cases has not yet even been convened.

10. Hillary Clinton This Secretary of State and former First Lady is a big question mark. She will respond effectively to opportunity. That does not mean the liberal feminist has no ideals but her style is opportunistic. She will do a lot if there are big opportunities in her path and she will do very little (for one of her stature) if there are not good opportunities. Hillary Clinton has begun to pay the full and significant price of being Obama’s secretary of State. On the other hand, she works with her husband and her Senate ties in New York and with leaders around the world. She works and stays with the game and sometimes fails her way to success. She is becoming more impressive and indispensable in American political terms even as she becomes more flawed and marked by faults of various kinds. 

11. President Nicolas Sarkozy has already sought to strengthen ties with the United States, has entertained the Pope, has married a supermodel the whole world has seen nude and is worth seeing nude, has deported Gypsies and taken action against Moslem corruption of French culture. There is something of La Royaume de La Belle France about him. He needs to hunt and got to Church once in a while in very expensive clothes (seriously)  In doing all these other things so far he has avoided brutality, great scandal and the greater than necessary abuse of human rights. He  will chafe against the European bit distance himsel from the UK when he can in conscience and is the first real chance that French royalist gradualists have had for a negotiation towards their better goals. Sarkozy is farther from being able to adress his principal goals than most world leaders and he is a cautious man as regards policy. Sarkozy has not been able to bridge both the Obama gap and the language gap and forge more ties with the United Statres of America. It seems to be a case where events are pushing him into the European mainstream so far.

 12. Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu ( בִּנְיָמִין “בִּיבִּי” נְתַנְיָהוּ ), also Binyamin Netanyahu) was born on October 21, 1949 and  is the ninth and current Prime Minister of Israel  and importantly Netanyahu is the first and only Israeli prime minister born in Israel after the establishment of the State of Israel. He achieved this distinction with his earlier Prime Ministry but it is still his distinction currently. With strong social and educational ties to America he holds varied roles in the small and complex country at the unique crossroads of the old world simultaneoulsy serving as the Chairman of the Likud Party, as a member of the Knesset, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel. He will surely struggle in the current environment  but if the right changes occur he will lead Israel and the region in capitalizing on this set of changes.  Netanyahu must currently deal with an American regime which is completely antithetical to  a peaceful and secure Israel and where he also lacks a wide variety of good options.  However, as I type this Hezbolla ministers have resigned in Lebanon and there are forces struggling to assert a new order in the Middle East.

13. Bill Gates, William Henry “Bill” Gates III was  born October 28, 1955 and is a great creator and leader who is now largely redefining philanthropy.  He is best known for being long time chairman of  Microsoft, the uniquley important software company he founded in a powerful partnership with Paul Allen. He and his wife Melinda are partners in love and parenthood but their partnership has also been very significant for  the world as they steer and an enormous empire of giving and activism. They are financialy able to do this as Bill Gates  is  ranked among the  richest people in the world  and was ranked as the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he fell to third. During his career at Microsoft, Gates Gates built the giant into an essential part of computing around the world as both CEO and  later chief software archirect, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock. Perhaps he may be drawn back into the corporate leadership he knows well and into new forms of social leadership. In the meanwhile he is likely to have a profound impact on America and the world as they find their way forward with Microsoft, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, their cooperation with Warren Buffet and other challenges that come along.  Bill Gates is becoming that kind of litmus test of America’s potential to adapt and survive. He has social moementum which could be harnessed for the good of society by skillfull social change  in America but has long struggled under great suspicions. America does not believe it has to choose between people like Billl Gates and more evil leaders. America believes it does not need leaders. 

14. Steve Jobs will use the Gates retirement to pull ahead. However at the personal level he is a darker figure than he was as a youth. Even as a youth he was no saint. But he is brilliant and a vital national asset like Gate in that way. Apple, the Next flop,  Pixar and more Apple. He is a compelling genius in technology and industry who chose the pirates flag as the icon for Mac development and who instead of a big charity has a liver transplant where someone had to die for him to live. He has ads for Apple that mostly attack PCs and Microsoft’s Windows. He is easily compared to Gates and has always been loved by the cool kids in American society as it is. Steve Jobs cannot be dismissed as someone to watch.  In the layering of this post it happened in 2011 but before Sept. 11 that Jobs took a leave of absnce from Apple indefinitely for health reasons.  

15. Carl Svanberg This Swede Chairman of BP and other corporations is one to watch. Low profile and clever he is not the man to forget.   Svanberg did graduate work  and earned a Master’s degree  in Applied Physics  after a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Scandinavian institutions of quality and honorary doctorates from other institutions.  Svanberg remains a major player in high tech industry in the Norse Lands remaining a well invested director on the board of telecom firm Ericcson where he served as CEO  from April 8 to December 31 of 2009. He is also on the board of several other companies and maintains some of the agressiveness of the ice hockey player he once was. He rubbed several people in Louisiana the wrong way during the BP crisis. 

16. UN Secretary  General Ban Ki-moon,   반기문 (潘基文) This cool professional can think more clearly about the Middle East but his bones and instincts know less than any previous Secretary General. On the other hand this man from East Asia is bringing to 37 years of relevant  service both in Government and on the global stage and having served in Korea as  Director-General of American Affairs he is trying to educate the West about the Far East in his quiet way — Good luck with that!  On 1 January 2007, Ban Ki-moon of the Republic of Korea became the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations .  He was as well as being Director-General of American Affairs, his country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In that Korean ministry he had held  responsibility for a variety of portfolios, including Foreign Policy Adviser to the President, Chief National Security Adviser to the President and Deputy Minister for Policy Planning . As a diplomat he has lived in New Delhi, Washington D.C. and Vienna as well visiting many other places. He is married to his high school sweetheart and they have two children and is believed to be trilingual – French being the third language. He was educated in Korea and a t Harvard in the USA. 

17. Hu JinTao  胡锦涛 is The Premiere in the People’s Republic of China will continue to try to develop the Presidency and Premiere powersharing and to increase the importance of the Congress of People’s deputies if he can. He will try to restore full regularity to the Chinese governments by incorporating Imperial and Confucian elements. He will  reform the Party and execute those who commit crimes which bring the party into ill regard. Minority and foreign relations will be a continuous challenge and he will foster the development of Chinese urban consumer life to make China less dependent on Exports.

18. Timothy Geithner One to watch! He is an opportunist with ideals and may do much or little depending on where money moves relative to him.

19. Al Franken A man to watch. He is clever, rooted, articulate and conscientious. He is also a bitter angry and reckless man. Which guy will show up for the next eleven years? Franken is a comedian who won a bitterly contested recount in his Senatorial election when elected with President Barack Hussein Obama. He has authored books of rather nasty tempered political humor. He is not so far either a substantial statesman nor a total joke in the US Senate.  

20. Barney Frank Money, New England and Homosexuality will increasingly become a portfolio of political expertise and experience for this man. He will grow in stature on these things and lose relevance on others as often happens to older politicians in legislatures. However, he could seize on on some successful other cause and make himself known in other circles. 

21. Vladimir Putin ,Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin  Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин,  will remain Putin while he remains alive. He has many hopes he still cannot really do anything to achieve but he keeps chipping away  at the obstacles. He likes healing and building better but could become a figure of destruction fomenting hate — it just depends on too many factors to sort out here.

22. Bobby Jindal has earned some credibility with Louisiana in the BP crisis but not enough to waste. Look to see him as the Indian-American, Louisiana and Oxford alumni Jindal unless a big chance at being a national Republican Icon is very clear and near.  Bobby Jindal has just come out with a book titled Leadership in Crisis which is part political memoir  and part summary of the BP crisis and part autobiography. I have also met with him briefly since I first published this blog post and we discussed some issues relating to the spill. This was in a public venue in Abbeville’s A.A. Comeaux Recreation Center after a speech and did not get into his secretary’s permanent log. But I thought it was a useful exchange.

23. Bill Richardson will do a variety of things in New Mexico, America and the world. But if constitutional change comes to the USA then expect him to rise to new prominence as a major framer and negotiator for the constitutional rights and role of Aboriginal Americans and their Nations. 

24. Bill Clinton will become a very prominent broker if constitutional change comes and his health holds out. Otherwise expect him to continue to fade away more and more with occasional flashes of influence. Bill Clinton is busy lately. He participated in the 2010 elections which were one of the biggest defeats in the history of the Congressional Democrats. He has worked for Haiti but has seen lots of mediocre and poor results. However, like his wife he is always growing in experience and sophisitication.

25. Osama Bin Laden will become more of an icon as the Obama presidency progresses if his health holds out. His second act will get under way.  Is he a living legend or a dead one? That basic query is the question many can’t help asking and if he is alive what  is he really doing. He may well be behind the rebuilding of his movements in the Arabian Peninsula and Afghanistan.  He is a powerful symbol of what it means to be committed to a cause over a life time. 

What does it mean to pick on a few players in the world and recognize their importance to our future? It does not mean that they are the only participants in the future of our world who will matter.

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Posted in 9-11 attacks, Bobby Jindal, BP Chairman Svanberg, Christianity, France, Geopolitics, Gulf of Mexico, List of People to Watch, Louisiana, Peace Plan in Israel, Roman Catholicism, United States of America, Western civilization, White House

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Nine Years from September 11, 2001 Approaches

Posted on September 8, 2010 | Leave a comment

I want to discuss the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. I am sure lots of other people will have things to write and say and I myself have written and talked about the subject quite a bit. However, it is for all those reasons that I am doing something a little different in this post. I am going to write about the day as I remember it. Not after refreshing my memory by looking at lots of different notes or source materials. I am writing about it as I readily remember it  after just a few days short of the ninth anniversary of that event.  I know enough about memory to know that some of my memories are likely to be inaccurate. But here the story goes…

In those days I woke early on any Tuesday. There were times when I worked as a substitute teacher at one school for weeks at a time but there had been few of those streaks at that time. I would have more of them in the next year and the one thereafter, but I did not know that then. In those days I usually worked one or two-day contracts at a time.  Those contracts came in by phone early in the morning. I worked just a bit less than four days a week on average with plenty of five and three-day weeks and as few as two plenty of days as well. I had a small farm leased out that required some attention and a small distribution company that distributed about ten different intellectual properties to hundreds of gift shops, bookstores and institutions as well as to conferences of individuals that also took some time. So the lack of work was not so bad when I had a day off.  I also had just gone on the previous Monday for a job interview with a friend who had worked with me on a university newspaper called the Vermilion. He was the Assistant Sports Editor at the newspaper in the same city as that student publication. This was now a paper owned by the Gannett chain and had lots of resources that were a delight to see. I asked for a job to string some games during football season and he offered me a job as a part-time sportswriter at night and on weekends when I was not subbing.  I filled out the basic forms and toured the office that evening. By Wednesday I had taken my drug tests and gotten the results back and by Friday been approved for an ID badge and to fill out the longer forms. With all that done I had also been assigned my first game the next Friday .

That day I had woken up early and while waiting for a call that did not come during the usual period of time between 6:15 and 6: 40 had continued some preliminary preparations for the new job and the specific first game.  Then I was feeling a little discouraged about the day off and also aware that I had agreed to take some afternoons at one of the schools in town on days when I did not have a whole  and was thinking that might happen. I checked  my gift for my brother’s Catholic Confirmation that Tuesday night. I finished filling out the card. I decided to dress and put my subbing supplies in the truck and go visit my grandmother so that if I got a call from the school in town I would be ready. I was feeling a bit grumpy and blue I think and  so decided to deal with my love life.

In this Moslem related disaster in a modern country it is not entirely without relevance that although I have never been in a full-fledged polygamous relationship ( I have had more than one girlfriend at a time who knew each other) I have always known that was my sexual orientation. Truly polygamous men do not fall out of love nearly as easily as they fall in to it and that is why they accumulate attachments. So while I had never been with the woman I was thinking of that day while I was married I had never forgotten her either. She has married since (and divorced) but she had never been married in those days.   Even as I type this I still have feelings for her and some other women but we are very clearly not involved. In those days we had been dating for a few months but not heavily and then she had gone off to Houston allegedly to be a flight attendant we had talked about corresponding and visiting  but that had degenerated into yet another in a series of messy and gradual break-ups which was not entirely clear in its termination. I felt I had to make it clear. I wrote her a somewhat anguished and demeaning e-mail saying that it was now clear to me we were not together and so I wanted to say it in writing. Part of my anguish came from the fact that in the dark side of my worldwide net of friends there had been rumours that something bad would be launched against the United States in the early years of the two thousands and I worried about her.  I did not know any of this specifics but I figured Islamic terrorists would probably fly and not bicycle into the country.

I sent the e-mail basically severing communication with my flight attendant sort of ex-girlfriend and hopped into my truck.  I bit down on the bitterness of this and called my grandmother to make sure that today would be a good day for me to go over as we had discussed. She said it was fine and I drove from Big Woods a few miles and past the turn to the rural post office where I had and still have a box. While I was waiting for the Perry drawbridge to be lowered back into place over the Vermilion Bayou I turned on the radio. The news was that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center in New York and  had probably been a terrorist attack. I called my parents on my cell phone and drove across the bridge while talking to my mother. She said they would turn on the TV. I called my grandmother and told her I was still on my way and to turn on the TV. She said she was already watching it. I pulled in and was watching the television and discussing the whole situation with my grandmother and her housekeeper when we saw the second jet hit the second tower. 

In agony I called my flight attendant girl’s mother and asked her if she knew if her daughter was OK. She said that she did know that she was alright and staying on the ground that day. My voice did not crack on the phone but tears flowed down my cheeks.  I then called the newspaper. The Advertiser is a newspaper which to everyone’s annoyance I still called The Daily Advertiser when I worked there because when I started reading it the periodical was named that except on Sunday when it was The Sunday Advertiser.  The sportswriter who answered was on of the few I knew. I asked him to record my name in a few distinct places and to feel free to call me for emergencies of any kind that might come out of this. He said the paper did not need me just then. I called not all the schools who hired me nor the system but a special number at the one where I might have gotten an afternoon call.  They did not need me either. At Gammie’s I watched the crisis unfold.   

I read over the papers which had come to my grandmother’s that morning just briefly and the one at which I was hired just before the 9-11 attacks had nothing I saw as anticipating this attack today. I knew it would be the front page for a long time. I got through the day and my brother’s confirmation somehow, and one of my cousins was born that day I don’t remember if I called the family or not.  I called one of my ex-wife’s relatives to see if they knew if she was alright they did not but agreed to e-mail me if she was dead or injured. The next day I talked to my parents about their plans to bring home missionaries from a Moslem country and I subbed we all talked about the horrible events while I was at school. The week passed watching, listening and reading horrible events.

  Then Friday I went to the game and I knew that there had been people asking to shut down the season. I  had planned to work the football season but became a regular sportswriter in the initial contract and now I did not want to lose my job nor did I think it was a good idea. At the game the principal for one of the two high schools was a man who had been a dean of students at a high school where I was a regular teacher a decade earlier. We chatted and I told him I wanted to do a patriotic angle on the game so he got me the names of the Marine Honor Guard and  I interviewed the kids who said the prayers and led a patriotic song. My editors approved my unique blend of high school game story and social commentary.  I  later read one very nice letter to the editor that praised my approach. I also talked to the  ones who wanted to cancel the season on our paper we made a kind of peace and so the new guy I was  stayed on through football, soccer and basketball season. Days of apprehension dragged on and in the end I lost no very close friends or relatives in all that mess.

My selfish needs and personal duties slowly grew to block out thoughts as  well as the feelings of the day of horrors. I felt that life was tough in some ways but really for me there was only borrowed sorrow. In those days I had a farm, a small distribution company and was also working as a substitute teacher. I actually would have defined my life as pretty bad then but it has more or less constantly gotten worse and so now I have many of the same problems to face without the farm, company or two paychecks. In some ways my life is like Dante’s Inferno — just a constant downward spiral with interesting sightseeing and conversation along the way. The struggle of 9-11 has passed for me. But not for those in wars, left without loved ones killed or seeing Ground Zero everyday. I hope that they are really seeing progress on the Freedom Tower. I do not forget any of them nor the world that made that day. However, the life I live today is not that life and my mind does not bend to such things so easily.

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Labor Day from the Point of View of Your Favorite Radical Rightist Perhaps

Posted on September 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

It is sort of odd that last night I watched the Labour Party Leader debate  elections in Britain and on Saturday had a rather nice birthday barbecue for much of our family and many of his friends.  All of this has happened in such a way that one might expect me really to be in the Labor Day spirit. However actually I am not. I have never really belonged to a union. There was a Communist Party official available to help me with labor issues when I was a teacher in China but although I spoke to many including some Communist Party members when I needed help I did not ever look up this individual. His brochure was all in Chinese and my Chinese is very poor. I used to have coffee with union reps on some jobs but they never really asked me to join. I worked in one all unionized shop in college and it was kind of a bad experience.

Much of this blog is about really making constitutional changes. That bridge having been crossed is transformative. I am deeply discouraged with the system we have and would like it very much changed. In my writings on the subject of such changes I have discussed a number of things that slightly touch on the issues of labor and unionization but not so directly. Today I will lay out my vision of that aspect of life and society as perhaps it ought to be.

I. Change in the Anti-Trust Laws and Guilds

A. Classes of Guilds

1. First Class Guilds

First, I think that the laws should be changed so that competition  is structured and policed within a guild system. Every corporation and most capitalized unincorporated businesses over a certain size would be penalized  for failure to join at least one guild as  required by new laws. Each corporation would be required to transfer two percent of it s profits and one mil of its operating budget each year to be shared among the Guilds to which it belongs. Guilds would be required to set aside a portion of their revenues for labor guilds that are associate with them perhaps dividing five percent of their own guild income directly with these guilds.  These guilds would have a main guild hall and branches, would work to set and police standards of production, waste management, safety and other things.

These guilds would be such as Old Steel Mills Guild, Detroit Auto Guild or Texas-Oklahoma Cattle Guild. Each Guild would have a geographical limit in its charter which could be as large as the country but multi-state regions and state guilds would be easier to charter. There would be classes of Members. Top class Members of the guilds would have to live and work in the geographical area, own the principal means of production an employ people in making things or providing services certified by the guild.  Second Class members would be fictional persons such as corporations and their majority shareholder officers who otherwise meet these standards. Then differing classes would follow.

2. Second Class Guilds   

These guilds would be made up of tradesmen and craftsmen, truckers and merchants who own their own principal tools and  employ few people in producing their goods and services. These people would receive half as much from the first class guilds with which they are associated as would the lower classes of guilds. but they would have more rights with regards to the government and legal collective bargaining. The would also have guildhalls and payments by law from income and capital budgets.

3. Third Class Guilds

The third class guilds would have  members who hold special licenses and own such tools as they can personally transport back and forth from their employer’s premises at the end of each shift or a week or so of shifts worked.    They would also have guildhalls and payments by law from income and capital budgets.

4. Fourth Class Guilds

These guilds would consist of laborers selling their more or less skilled work and using the capital of others. Each would be required to pay a patronage fee of one tenth its total income to at least one and no more than three Third Class Guilds which would help guide it and hire or promote some of its members.  The would also have guildhalls and payments by law from income and capital budgets.

B. Obligations and Functions of Guilds

1. Guilds would have an obligation to operate a work bank for family member of their own members as well as unemployed members. There would be a menu of things they would capitalize as their means increased. Wedding and Funeral reception spaces contracting the actual services with existing businesses or allowing members to do the minimum on their own. Health and dental clinics for members. A well priced set of youth camps and vacation spots as well as college scholarships. All of this would be  a menu of capital assets as they acquired wealth.

2. They would have substantial powers in collective bargaining and regulatory law representation.

3. Any time a member received punitive, exemplary  or other special damages from a court for guild related activity the guild would receive part of the award into its capital funds.

4.Unions could join guilds as they are created and remain on as certified Guild Council factions and guild agencies.

5.  Each guild would have a charter spelling out familial rights and privileges and would be required to spend two percent of its budget each year on programs and projects geared to the benefit of members family associations.

6. Each Guild would operate either an intern program or a day labor program depending on its class so that those wishing to get into the guild can be aware of how the guild works and how best to get into it. However, guilds will be entitled to exclude members for many reasons. 

C. Special Privileges of the Guilds 

1. The federal government will distribute one percent of all revenue it collects among the capital trusts of the guilds each year. A third will be divided  among the guilds according to a formula that does not take into account annual performance. E third will be divided by the fulfillment of the general standards for best guilds and each guild will receive a share according to a performance score. The last third will be in a relatively few awards presented at a banquet for winners of prizes based on great excellence. 

2. No less than seventy percent of all government vendors in each and every sense and category shall be Guild approved interests.

II. Networking Life Enhancement

The new Labor and all the guilds will be directed to work with family associations,  constitutional jurisdictions and other entities to create many resources for a better life for each and every kind of worker without lying. There is not going to be infinite opportunity nor horribly expensive equality if the revolution I am seeking does come. 

  

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Posted in Frank W. Summers, Geopolitics, Guild culture and tradition, Labor Day, Personal Philosophy and Moral Economics, Royalty and Empire, United States of America

The Danger of Being a Complete Idiot

Posted on September 4, 2010 | Leave a comment

I have decided that I am personally opposed to be the world being run by complete idiots.  I think that in time there will be a need to decide that merely being a complete idiot is not a sign of a divine right to govern. Being a complete idiot may be  a fine ideal for people at many levels and may feel really wonderful but it is not sufficient to outweigh all other possible human qualities.

We have a society that moves fast and moving fast has become essential to a lot of what we do and who we are. However,  we often move in a lot of ignorance and foolishness. The adjustment to a somewhat more deliberate pace will not be an easy one.

I think that it is somehow important to be able to step out of the ordinary and mundane flow and norm of human life and society.  It is important to be able to see the bigger picture and the connections between the separate pictures which are the worldviews of each society, nation and culture. I think it is good to be able to see the several goods that conflict with the several evils that may accompany a policy decision  and also to see  how those evils conflict with each other and how those goods conflict with each other. I trust the analysis that follows such a  moral parsing  more than one which starts always looking for just the good and the bad of a choice. I trust even less that analysis rooted in the opinion that there is no good or evil.

I like the idea that a school should be a place of learning first for all the students. I do not believe we can eliminate all the rest but I believe that rape, bullying, brutalization, farting, stupidity being propounded pompously and theft should be less important than well-organized lessons, sporting events, school dances, plays, bands, moderate punishments and friendly conversation at the lunch table. I am willing to see the world that I live in clearly but I am not willing to see it as all perfectly good and right.

I think that the main purpose of the world we live in from my point of view is to suck as much as possible. However, I sometimes choose to resist this trend. One thing I hate is that whole trend which has amended the election of any US Senators by the State Legislatures away, made absolute robots of the College of Electors to the point of completely ignoring them except as mathematical factors, diminished the role of the Vice President as President of the Senate, started the rule of saying the United States is a country instead of the United States are a country (to which like others of these rules I adhere), racial policy that says either no colored people can share a conference center with white people anywhere or else blacks have the obligation to overrun every white school and rearrange its curriculum and life. These are just some of the many ways in which the country which is my home has made being a complete idiot the national ideal. I wish it could be changed.

It takes great intelligence and knowledge and some discipline to really follow the beauty pageants system, baseball at each level, the NCAA basketball tournament or a good game of football. It takes great knowledge and intelligence to stay current on what is happening in Country, Cajun, Zydeco, Bluegrass, various regional forms of the Blues, Contemporary Christian, Southern Swing, Motown, Jazz, Broadway Showtunes and movie Soundtracks. It takes great knowledge and skill  to follow and understand the Mercantile Exchange, The New York Stock Exchange, the history of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange, the Urner-Barry Seafood Price Current, the NASDAQ and the Morningstar summary of  mutual funds. Nobody apologizes for any of this difficulty. But I am convinced that in the essence of our polity and commonwealth and in the social mechanics that hold us all together  we face the ideal of the complete idiot gaining ground year by year and generation by generation.  I do not mean democracy.  I really mean the ideal of the complete political idiot. I am not joking. We have not achieved our ideal yet, but that is the ideal to which we are being drawn and towards which we are drawing the world.

I wish we would adopt a different ideal. I fee l that there are real dangers in us all becoming complete idiots in this area of our lives. We will face challenges in the environment, politics, war and diplomacy which a complete idiot is not the best person to address. Sometimes we will need people who are not complete idiots.

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Posted in Amy Grant, Asia, College Football, Contemprary Christian Music, Country Music, Geopolitics, Music, Peace Plan in Israel, Population policy, United States Armed Forces, USA--UK Relationship, Vince Gill, White House

Peace, War and the Future in Israel & Elsewhere

Posted on September 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

I am writing this blog post about the peace process in Israel and the larger issues related to it in so many ways. That topic will be challenging and my little blog post is not likely to be so very influential either. We face many challenges  in the world and I am weary and sometimes weak in the face of the many challenges we face considering the  time that has passed since I have known. I am going to lay out a  plan for Peace in Israel that I do not believe can be implemented right now. All I can really do is say that I will not call something else acceptable right now my self.

I first want to quote from an earlier blog post which in turn reproduced a Facebook Note from my Facebook profile. To see the blog post itself see this link:  https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/novus-ordo-seclorum/  The most pertinent passage appears below.

” I. I suggest that reparations be paid for the Holocaust by many parties which benefitted or inherited from beneficiaries. I suggest that a large part of these funds be paid to purchase the Sinai from Egypt and then a separate portion be set up as a development fund. This fund would also include a fund for concessions to be paid for in which those paying in to the fund would be preferred. This Sinai would be a State of a greater Federal Great Israel. The other States would be the Principal State of the Republic of Israel, the Capital Sate of Jerusalem, and the State of Palestine. The Republic would receive slightly more land than it yielded to form the Capital State of Jerusalem in the from of five state military reservations in the Sinai. Palestine would receive a concession the size of Gaza which would be one of three districts in that federal state. The remainder of Sinai would be composed of several federalized districts and it would form the fourth and last state.”

In time I will return to pursuing this argument  a bit further and explaining and clarifying it a bit. Life is indeed a constant source of interruptions to our hobbies, hopes and avocations. I am going to write a bit about my life and how my life gets in the way of reshaping the world. This will be one of my more rambling and indirect posts I think.

I think Israel is too small even with the occupied territories. My plan does not call for enslaving, deporting or exterminating the Palestinians. However, it is clear to me that I must support the expansion of the State of Israel above all considerations that can be used to distract from it. Further, I must demand reparations for the Holocaust. I do not demand a truly adequate compensation but a very significant gesture. I was thinking in the neighborhood of forty-five billion dollars.

The Holocaust Reparation Fund

I. Amount Collected and Release of Claims

 I would propose collecting a total of forty-five billion dollars for this fund. So that it is a cohesive fund from all sources and that Israel would sign a release saying that all claims of the Hebrew Nation which can be discharges with money related to the Holocaust would be discharged with this payment.

  II. Structure Of Expenditures and Disbursement of Funds

1. Thirteen Billion Dollars would be paid to Egypt  for full and total cession of all lands on the Sinai Peninsula to which it has any claim which are more that fifteen kilometers from the banks of the Suez Canal and are not an effective part of the existing city of Al Qantarah. This would be a permanent and complete cession to the new Federal Great Israel brokered by  a treaty bound current State and Republic of Israel.

2. The Zone along the Canal in Sinai would become a permanent Canal Condominium Territory governed by the Suez Corporate Territorial Government. Egypt would retain twenty of a hundred seats in the upper house of the legislature which would also be  the corporate board and would receive one billion dollars from the Holocaust Reparation Fund for which the new Israeli State of Sinai would receive fifteen of these same hundred states. Egypt would also receive one billion and formal release of all claims resulting from seizure of its rights from GDF Suez which in return would receive twenty seats of these same hundred and the Royal Pretender to throne of Egypt would pay nothing except formal release of all other family claims to the canal but would receive five seats of these same one hundred seats.  Israel would pay one billion dollars to Egypt and would receive for  the New First State of the Republic of Israel  twenty seats and for the Federal Great Israel’s national government twenty seats. Thus 20+ 15+20+5+20+20 = 100. Egypt would retain a share of these assets and gain three billion dollars in cash and release of all competing claims. The lower house of the legislature of the Canal Condominium Territory would be democratic and represent inhabitants of the zone.  The Holocaust Reparation Fund will only be reduced by a billion dollars.

3. One billion would be paid to a fund for Egyptians living in the Sinai to either resettle in Egypt or else accommodate to the new situation taking an oath and signing papers of loyalty to Israel.

5. Five Billion Dollars would be paid to an endowed trust to use only in resettling descendants of the Holocaust within the boundaries of the new Israeli State of Sinai.     

6. Three Billion Dollars would be paid to the Israel general Treasury to develop the basic infrastructure of its new  five military bases in Sinai.

7. Three Billion dollars would be set up as the initial treasury of the new Israeli Capital State of Jerusalem.

8. Three billion would be given to a jointly administered fund for the Palestinian Authority and Israel to develop the third of the three federal districts in the Israeli State of Palestine which will be located in the new lands in the Sinai.

9. One Billion Dollars would be paid to the Palestinian Authority to  develope the initial treasury of the Israeli Federated State of Palestine. Its state legislature will have an upper house with seats by the three great district and a lower house with seats elected in electoral district by population.

10. These initial  thirty  billions will be the unrecoverable portion of the payment. 13+1+1+5+3+3+3+1= 30 billion.

11. The remaining fifteen billion dollars will be kept in an internationally administered trust until exhausted. Its sole use will be to buy goods and services for the development of the Israeli State of Sinai from the donors to the Holocaust Reparation Fund. Only Austrian and German companies and any other not of those countries that contributed to the fund will be eligible vendors.  However, the international board will assure that market prices are charged and that orders are relatively widely distributed among the pool of donors.

III. Skewing the Collection of Reparations

West German Lander should pay a somewhat discounted portion of the totality of the reparations because they have paid early and in a structure as part of the West German government. However they would still pay but Swiss banks, Austrian and Czech governments, the Eastern Lander governments, major corporations and estates of rich individuals would pay. In return for their contributions and disclosure to a Truth and Reconciliation Committee they would also be entitled to a  UN authorized agreement releasing them from criminal and civil claims for genocide and crimes against humanity. Individuals could still complain for murder and other ordinary crimes but all ethnic, racial and war crimes would be settled. Confessions made along with payments would be sealed for a period of twenty years except for a vague sort of eummary which would be published as a book. Payments made by others would vary by degree of guilt off-set by other factors.   It would also be true that individuals claiming benefits under the fund would agree that in the future thay would allow those who paid in to be held free of punitve damages for  holding stolen property and would allow some portion less than a third of recovered property value to go to a structure to compensate partially even parties with guilty title but not direct thieves who have collected stolen assets. In a ddition it would be clear that those clearly not part of the paying pool who paid nothing and were later found implicated directly in harm whether coroporations or governments would never receive any of these benefits. On the other hand even criminal cartels should they come into the structure should still qualify for these specific protections even if they do not receive recognition by the law in any other good way. Despite saying Germany and Austria if by some miracle some Norse governments were to admit principal and activist guilt they could pay into the structure and make the deal as well. If organized crime in Western China were to come forward and admit its active role in the policy then it too would qualify. Forty-Five billion is a minimal amount. In my view Germany ought to be made to feel that they are the guarantor help collect or pay it all despite previous agreements. However, somehow pressure must be exerted to make them work to deliver other guilty parties to pay instead of shielding them. Clearly however Italy, Poland, Vichy France, Spain, Turkey and many other countries cannot be held responsible the moral lines are too unclear in dealing with the Nazi monstrosity. I would be a better broker and proponent of this deal if I was a big bad guy all these scary people feared. However, I am a fairly weak player not likely to live to be an old man whether they do anything or not. But if rage and contempt count for anything then I am a factor to be reckoned with anyway. I can fight a little but I am no anti-Hitler to throw my weight around.

II. Constitution of  the Israeli Federated State of Sinai

1. The Federated State of Sinai should have one of the most complex constitutions of any new polity in the world’s history. People have grown unused to civilization but civilized solutions are often complicated. The Upper House of the State Legislature should itself be federal by Seven Districts and the lower house elected by population.  The Districts themselves will have relatively strong  local near state governments and some of them will also be federal. 

 2. There will be a reservation of five percent of the lands as an Egyptian Ethnarchy of which the Royal Pretender to the Throne of Egypt will be the Head of State and appoint several members of the District Upper House and will have his own Ward of which he is Head of State and populated by Egyptian royalists who wish to live there including up to one-third of the population coming in new from Egypt and the others from  the current population of Sinai and Palestine. The second ward will be the Constitutional Patriarchate of Alexandria and will recognize the Christian Coptic Patriarch of Alexander as Ward Head of State under a Sinai and Israel Constitution . Up to two-thirds of the population can be Christian refugees from Muslim countries so long as one half of them  are from Egypt and the other third must be currently residents from within Israel, Palestine and Sinai. The last ward will be the Sinai Republican Ward made up of old residents of the peninsula and Palestinian and Israeli Arabs wishing to start such a polity.

3.The Second District will consist of ten percent of all lands and be an North  American Jewish Ethnarchy for Hebrews practicing  some form of Judaism and seeking to maintain dual citizenship culture for families who participate in the USA, Mexico and Canada as well as Israel.

4. The Third District will the District of Federated Israeli Military Hinterland Communities and consist of five civilian settlement belts for residents of the Republic of Israel which measure four kilometer wide bands around the five military bases that will be part of the Israeli First State of the Republic of Israel.

5. The Fourth District will be a one hundred Kilometer State Capital District.

6. The Fifth District will be made up of fifty percent of all the lands in the Israeli Federal State of Sinai and will be made be  dedicated to the Right of Return and permanent priority will be given to the resettlement of direct descendants of Holocaust victims currently in Israel and returning from other places.

7. The Sixth and Seventh districts will be equal in size. Together they will occupy all remaining lands which will be substantially less than thirty-five percent but I will not work out the exact numbers.  The Sixth District will be the Federated Christian District  of which the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem will be head of State, appoint members to the District Upper House and be head of State of a Ward under an Israeli and Sinai Constitution.  This District will have another ward of equal size under the Ward Head of State who will be the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.  Each of these district should receive as part of Sinai state territory and as part of their respective ward’s rule a land concession of one square mile each divided between Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth.  The Third Ward will be a Ward for Sinai and Israeli Christians.  The Fourth  Ward will be a Ward for ethnic Palestinian Christians who want to resettle there. The Seventh District should be the Hebrew Royalist District  of the State of Sinai. Here there will be a Ward which is the Barony of Rothschild and two other Baronies. Since I am fantasizing anyway I may as well say that I think the largest ward should be a Duchy and I would name my nominee for founding Duke or Duchess if this ever came close to reality and it was necessary to do so.              

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Posted in Egypt, Frank W. Summers, Geopolitics, Israel, Jesus Christ, Judaism, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Mexico, Palestine, Peace Plan in Israel, Roman Catholicism, Royalty and Empire, Sinai, Suez Canal, United Nations, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, Western civilization

Another Oil Rig Explodes in Gulf

Posted on September 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

Another oil rig has exploded in the Gulf and is burning. All 13 workers have gotten off alive. We do not know if oil is still leaking. This is quite a year.

UPDATE

The fire has been put out. All thirteen workers are expected to make full recoveries.  The rig in 340 feet of water off Vermilion Bay should not sink. There may have been some leaking but there is no reason to believe it is leaking now.

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Posted in Grand Isle, Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana, United States of America, Wetlands