"ACTING STRANGELY" WHILE FILMING

From the Daily Comet in Thibodaux:

One of the state’s leading civil-liberties advocates sent letters Monday to nine law-enforcement agencies in areas affected by the oil spill, including Lafourche and Terrebonne, urging them not to block individuals or the media from shooting video or taking photos on beaches being cleaned by BP or other public areas.

Marjorie Esman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, said she has received “numerous reports of interference with the right to photograph and record on public beaches” by police acting on the orders of BP or working off-duty security details for the oil-and-gas company, which has taken responsibility for the worst oil spill in the nation’s history.

“Public beaches remain open to the public, whether or not BP officials want them to be,” Esman wrote. “BP may not want the public to know the full effects of the oil spill, but that is precisely why public access is so important. BP doesn’t have the right to censor what people learn about the problem that it caused and that it must solve.”
....

Courier and Daily Comet reporters and photographers have at times been denied access to oil-soaked areas and had attempts to interview spill cleanup workers blocked by BP contractors and others. Other media outlets, including the New York Daily News and CBS news, have reported obstruction by local police and the Coast Guard, who reportedly said they were acting under BP’s orders.

Michael Oreskes, an Associated Press senior managing editor, wrote to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs earlier this month, citing instances of photographers and reporters threatened with arrest for attempting to gain access to public areas and other harassment by law enforcement and BP contractors.
....

She [Esman] also referred to an alleged incident in which an unnamed Terrebonne sheriff’s deputy working an off-duty detail for BP told a person to stop filming the outside the BP building in Houma, even though he was filming from a private field across the street. The deputy admitted the man broke no laws but tried to intimidate him into leaving anyway, Esman wrote.

Terrebonne Sheriff Vernon Bourgeois said the person filming was acting strangely and likely “testing the deputy.” But regardless, the deputy had no right to stop the person from filming, the sheriff conceded.

Ah, my friends, if "acting strangely" while filming is cause for action by law enforcement officers, a good many of us are in trouble. I'll add that Grandpère was a bit uneasy while I was taking photos on Grand Isle and Port Fourchon, but I was not.

I knew that we had the right to cross the barricade on the beach at Grand Isle, but I did not want to tussle with the authorities, and GP would have been quite upset with me if I had put my rights to the test.

CHURCH NEWS TO DEPRESS YOU IF YOU'RE NOT ALREADY DEPRESSED

Mexico adopts the Anglican Covenant.

Mexico has become the first Communion Province to adopt the Anglican Communion Covenant following its VI General Synod in Mexico City on 11 and 12 June.

The Episcopal Diocese of Albany endorses the Anglican Communion Covenant.

The resolution most heavily debated was Resolution #2 which stated: “RESOLVED, that the Episcopal Diocese of Albany endorses the Anglican Communion Covenant (final text, approved for distribution December 18, 2009) and recommends its adoption by all the Provinces of the Anglican Communion."

The House of Bishops commends the adoption of the Anglican Covenant by the Church of England.

1.On the Anglican Communion Covenant, the House agreed
(a) to commend it for adoption by the Church of England;
(b) to invite the Business Committee to schedule the beginning of the adoption process for the inaugural Synod in November 2010, with a view to final approval in February 2012;
(c) not to propose special majorities for its adoption; and
(d) to authorise the House’s Standing Committee to oversee the production of necessary material for the Synod.

As a palate cleanser to all of the above, read Savitri Hensman's brilliant opinion piece in the Guardian.

The Church of England's House of Bishops is urging it to accept an Anglican Communion Covenant. This would give top leaders of overseas churches more power over the C of E and (strictly in theory) vice versa. The Archbishop of Canterbury has been a champion of greater centralism among Anglicans worldwide, supposedly to strengthen unity. But recent events have exposed the tawdry reality behind talk of "interdependence" and "bonds of affection".

Is the Roman Catholic Church to be our model for Anglican unity? The Roman Catholic Church which presently appears to be imploding from the top?

From Mark Silk at Beliefnet:

I grant you that it isn't every day that the authorities hold a country's bishops for questioning for nine hours, confiscate their computers and cell phones, and drill into the sarcophagi of a couple of their deceased number. But when Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone protests that the Belgian bishops had been held without food and water when they haven't, and the Belgian bishops have to issue a correction, that's tells you the wheels are coming off the popemobile.

Is this the direction that we want to go? Away from "the bonds of affection" to an ever more constricting control by a central authority? With a quasi-Anglican pope?

As Hensman says:

In power-play of the type the Covenant encourages, global church politics will trump love, justice and even logic. This is a poor substitute for freedom in Christ.

To which I can only say, "Amen".

OUR PET EGRET

 

Majestic bird

 

Feeding on insects

 

Posed showing off its beauty

 

Near the patio.

It's a wonder that the legs, which are so very thin, are able to hold the egret upright. The long neck, too, seems fragile, but the muscles in both must be quite strong.

I'm showing off our visitor as if I had a new grandchild. To think of a beauty like this bird covered with oil is beyond depressing.

GIVE VETS A PIECE OF THE HIGH LIFE

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STORY OF THE DAY - QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE

I used to hate birthdays, she told me,
until I figured out I was the Queen of
the Universe & now I do them for the
little people.

From StoryPeople.

FRONT FELL OFF

Thanks to David Fly via Lisa.

TWEETY TURNS "63" NEXT WEEK!!!

 

"I TAWT I TAW A PU .... A PUT....
OH I DON'T KNOW WAT DA FUT I TAW !!!


On a lighter note, and, boy oh boy!!! do I need a lighter note.

Thanks to Suzanne. When I saw the subject line of the email, I thought the reference was to Chris Matthews' birthday. But no. Chris is 65, and his birthday is in December.

RED WATERS - RED TAPE

Oil skimmers try to clean up oil, released from the Deepwater Horizon leak in the Gulf of Mexico, before it reaches wetlands Ted Jackson - The Times Picayune

From NOLA:

Just weeks after the oil spill crisis began to unfold in the Gulf of Mexico, the French foreign minister volunteered a fleet of oil skimming boats from a French company, Ecoceane. A month later, in early June, Ecoceane Chief Executive Eric Vial met with BP and Coast Guard officials to present the idea.

But after that meeting, weeks went by with little contact as oil continued gushing into the Gulf. A frustrated Vial was only able to get around the bureaucracy last week when his company sold nine of the oil collection boats to a private contractor in Florida, who could then put the boats to work.

Oil giant Shell was in negotiations to let BP use the Nanuq, a 300-foot oil recovery boat sitting idle in Seward, Alaska. But in recent weeks, BP declined to bring it to the Gulf.

So. What's going on? Bureaucratic tangles? Delaying tactics? Ill will?

As oil oozes inland, tainting marshes and fouling beaches, local response officials from Florida to Grand Isle for weeks have been begging for the oil-fighting tool that everyone wants but no one can get enough of: skimmers. They're the primary means for attacking oil head-on and collecting it before it hits land, yet local government agencies complain that the number of specialized skimming vessels out on the water is woefully lacking.

"We want all the skimming vessels in the world deployed," said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser. "This is an oil spill bigger than anything we've ever seen. It's a national disaster. We're at war. If you were at war and in charge, would you deploy everything you had to win the war?"

Well, we all know that the acronym SNAFU originated during World War II, so even in that war....

On the Senate floor last week, Sen. George LeMieux, R-Fla., pointed to a Coast Guard map detailing more than 850 skimmers available in the southeastern United States -- and more than 1,600 available in the continental United States.

"We are literally talking about more than a thousand skimmers that are available, but we only have 400 - if this number is correct -- at work," LeMieux said. "It is hard to believe that the response is this anemic; it is hard to believe that there is this lack of urgency or sense of purpose in getting this done."

US law requires that a minimum number of skimming vessels must remain in place wherever there is drilling in the water.

As for the use of foreign vessels, the Jones Act, a maritime law passed in 1920, regulates the use of vessels from other countries in US waters.

The law prevents foreign crews and foreign ships from transporting goods between U.S. ports; in the Deepwater Horizon case, the "port" would be where the oil is collected offshore. Allen has said that many of the foreign-flagged boats are working the spill more than three miles offshore, meaning they would not be carrying oil to a separate port on shore.

"While we have not seen any need to waive the Jones Act as part of this historic response, we continue to prepare for all possible scenarios," Allen said. "Should any waivers be needed, we are prepared to process them as quickly as possible to allow vital spill response activities being undertaken by foreign-flagged vessels to continue without delay."

The statement by Thad Allen that "we continue to prepare for all possible scenarios" took my breath away. While we probably have not yet reached the worst-case scenario, the present scenario is pretty damned awful.

The enterprising Ecoceane Chief Executive, Eric Vial, who took matters into his own hands and sold nine of his boats to a Florida company, making them American boats which could be deployed quickly without the bureaucratic red tape, looks like a genius.

As of last week, no Jones Act waivers had been granted. According to the joint information center for the response, six vessels involved in oil containment have applied for Jones Act waivers that are still pending.

I've heard comments to the effect that Billy Nunguesser, the president of Plaquemines Parish, is a nut, but when you watch the oil flowing into the wetlands of your parish, and you know that all possible resources are not being deployed to stop further intrusion, your desperate pleas for help begin to sound crazy to those who are not on the scene. What I read and see on TV is enough to send me close to the edge, and I'm not directly affected.

I've concluded that our trip to Grand Isle last week was pretty much a waste of time, since we were permitted to see only the cosmeticized areas of the island.

STORY OF THE DAY - WHEN I GROW UP

When I grow up, I want to remember
that I always wanted to be about a
thousand different things & one lifetime
didn't seem nearly enough. When I
grow up, I hope it's at the very end
when it doesn't matter anymore anyway


From StoryPeople.

JESUS AND MO - UNITE

From Jesus and Mo.