Thursday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, and that is all.”

                                                         Oscar Wilde

Some of you have read this before but it wears on me so here it is again.

When I was in the USAF I was sent to Spokane, Washington (Fairchild AFB) to a seminar on what to expect in case of a nuclear war and how to survive. They began teaching about intercontinental ballistic missiles coming and going, long range bombers, etc. But one of the possibilities was this. Since the advanced refinement of nuclear materials it would be possible to create a nuclear weapon that would equal the yield of the Hiroshima bomb and only weigh about 40 pounds. They also stressed that it would be possible to create a “dirty bomb” that would not explode in a nuclear holocaust but simply be blown into dust by a conventional explosive like TNT or C-4 and the radioactive dust would go downwind and kill every air breather within ten days or so and nothing would be destroyed like buildings, bridges, etc. All one of our enemies would have to do is put one of these devices in a backpack, go upwind of an area of heavy population and light it off. We would not have a clue who did it...after all our border protection is laughable and therefore retaliation would be impossible. Look at the United States at night via a satellite view and you can tell where the heavy populated areas are. I figure about 40 of these devices would reduce our population by at least half. Every time I hear about a bomb going off like has been happening lately...I hold my breath hoping it is nor “dirty”. We are making a deal with Iran to stand aside while they improve their nuclear capabilities. I am talking about the Iran that has financed and armed the Taliban and al-queda among other terrorist groups and hold frequent street marches screaming “Death to America”. To this day selected post offices across the nation have Potassium Iodine stored. This is supposed help radiation poisoning. Somebody knows that this scenario is a possibility. Our most dangerous threat is not a missile or a bomb, it is a lunatic with a back pack. But maybe I am scaring you...you need to be.

I am once again reading ancient history when I go to bed at night. Previously it was thought that Jericho was the oldest city on Earth at about 7,500 years old. However, recent excavations have revealed two cities one in central Turkey and one in south central Turkey that have been radiocarbon dated at about 8,500 years years old. The ruins of the site in south-central Turkey had columns made of granite about ten feet tall and have bas-relief carvings top to bottom. The columns were basically made by stacking slabs of granite on top of each other before the artwork was begun. It is estimated that each slab weighed about 1.5 tons and had to be transported from a quarry that was nearby but it would take some muscle to get it moved, elevated and carved. Scientists estimate that it would have taken over 500 men about a year to get this thing accomplished. There are several problems with this. There is no evidence of enough residences within 100 miles of this site to house 500 people. If there were 500 workmen, how were they fed? There is no evidence of any type of garden and no kitchen midden. A kitchen midden is where people would throw their garbage...skins, bones etc. Who were these people? Where did they come from? Where did they go?. The structure required coordination meaning there had to be a written and/or spoken language along with knowledge of some math and engineering design. Where did this come from? They also did not have metals hard enough, if any metals at all, to carve granite. They could have done it with other stones but it would have taken centuries to get it done. It makes you wonder if we know anything at all about who and what we are.

Jean Lafitte

Legendary Pirate

The exact place and date of birth of Jean Lafitte is not known for sure. The generally accepted year is 1776. Lafitte himself claimed Bordeaux, France as his birthplace while at the same time his brother Pierre claimed that their birthplace was Bayonne, France. At that time it would be advantageous to be a French citizen so as to not be subject to American laws. There are several documents out there that put Lafitte’s birthplace at many different places in the world including an island on the South Carolina coast. His biographer states that the best documentation puts his birthplace on the French possession island of Saint Domingue as it was known as then and is known as Haiti today. Jean’s father died and in approximately 1784 his mother moved him and his older brother Pierre to the Mississippi River Delta area which was a French possession also. Jean stayed with his mother and Pierre was raised by an extended family in other areas of Louisiana. Soon after their arrival Jean’s mother married a wealthy New Orleans merchant named Pedro Aubry. It is believed that as a young man Jean roamed the bayous and inlets from the Gulf of Mexico and became known as the most knowledgeable person alive about this area. Jean’s brother Pierre became a privateer for Saint Domingue and was carrying a Letter of the Marque. This meant that he was a pirate for Saint Domingue and would capture ships of the nation named in the “Letter” and split the booty with Saint Domingue in return for safe haven in Saint Domingue’s harbors. Jean began operating a warehouse and a store (probably on Royal Street) in New Orleans where he would distribute the booty brought to him by his brother to merchants in the New Orleans area. New Orleans and a hell of a lot more became American property with the Louisiana Purchase in 1804. This put a severe kink into the smuggling operation of the Lafitte brothers in New Orleans so they began looking elsewhere. They found a sparsely occupied island in Barataria Lake southwest of New Orleans. This lake was accessible only by a narrow channel between Grand Terre and Grand Isle that was easily defended and any ship approaching would be quickly detected and was a long way from American naval bases. Their business boomed once the privateers in the Gulf of Mexico found them. They would simply unload the ships and send the goods on barges up various bayous to New Orleans. Eventually the brothers got tired of being dry goods brokers and bought a boat, hired a captain and became privateers themselves. A few days later they made their first score. It was a Spanish ship with 77 slaves aboard. After selling the slaves (probably to Jim Bowie) and the other goods aboard they made about $18,000. They liked the boat and kept it also. A couple of days later they knocked over a Spanish brig and reaped about $9,000. They decided that this was a lot better than smuggling stolen goods. But they did not like this boat and chose to unload it and turn it back over to the original crew. The Lafitte brothers were renowned for good treatment of hijacked crews. A big turn of events occurred when England kept stopping American ships at sea and “Shanghaiing” American sailors. This means they would take American sailors off their ships and force them to serve on British ships. America finally got fed up and in 1812 declared war on England. During all of this the Lafitte brothers had gathered/swapped ships until they had three very fast sloops armed to the teeth. The British knew that the Americans did not have a viable navy and utilized pirates and privateers in their behalf so they approached Jean Lafitte and his small navy to join the British navy for pay. Jean believed that the Americans would win this war and wrote a letter to a member of the US Congress telling him of the British offer. Previously Jean’s brother Pierre had been captured in a United States Navy raid and was imprisoned in New Orleans. Jean offered to join with the Americans in their war against Great Britain along with most of his crews if any criminal charges that were pending against he and his men would be dropped and Pierre would be released. The military person in command in this area was General Andrew Jackson and he balked at first but when three British warships showed up southwest of New Orleans he agreed. Jean Lafitte and his men were indeed present at the immortal Battle of New Orleans where the British had their asses handed to them even though they had the rag-tag army commanded by General Jackson out-numbered and out gunned. The British had 345 killed, including the British commanded General Packenham, and many wounded to 45 killed for the Americans. Lafitte knew that his operation at Barataria Bay was over and began looking for another location and found one in Galveston in what is now Texas. But at that time southern Texas was a Mexican property. Mexico was in the midst of a war for Independence with Spain. Both Pierre and Jean agreed to spy for Spain with Pierre in New Orleans and Jean on Galveston Island. Jean again established a base for smuggling on Galveston Island along with some pirating on his own. The US had passed a law that slaves could not brought in to the US unless they were captured off of a slave ship, then the slaves could be brought in to customs agents and be sold by them and half the profit going to the captors so that told Jean and Pierre what their targets would be. They began a very profitable venture of capturing slaves, bringing them to New Orleans and letting the customs agents sell them to Jim Bowie at a reduced rate. Then they got an additional profit when Bowie sold them and gave the Lafitte brothers a commission. In 1821 the US Navy went to Galveston to run the Lafitte brothers out of the Gulf of Mexico. Jean agreed to leave without a fight and sailed down to Isla Mujeres off the northeast corner of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico (near present day Cancun) and set up operations but it did not flourish like the others and his camp was nothing but a group of squalid huts. Later he became ill and moved onto a small village on the Mexican mainland and died a few days later died of a tropical fever. He was 47.

Thanks or listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow