Posted on 08/17/2008 12:57:37 AM PDT by Schnucki
With its bust of Lenin stood next to crumbling block of flats, and its morose coal miners drinking vodka at lunchtime, Barentsburg looks like any forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union.
It is in fact stuck on the frozen Norwegian island of Spitsbergen just 600 miles from the North Pole, a territory granted to Moscow under an obscure 1925 treaty and since then a base for homesick coal miners. Four hundred families still shiver through the island's five-month Arctic winters in total darkness, eking out a meagre living by working for a state-owned mining company. But now their luck is about to change.
With the polar icecaps melting, and oil prices at record highs, a scramble for the Arctic's resources is underway that will transform this forgotten backwater. And Russia is leading the charge, as it signalled last year when a submarine sailed two and a half miles beneath the Polar icecap to the north of Spitsbergen and planted a titanium flag on the seabed.
"We were very proud when our flag was planted under the North Pole. We had a little celebration here," said Yelena Gnezdilova, a local hotelier, whose rooms command fabulous views of glaciers and icy mountains across a shimmering blue fjord. "Here we hope that Russia will develop the Arctic and that our town will play a part in that, but we Russians have always been here. Our pomors tried to master this land 400 years ago."
**snip**
The ambitions of today's Russians are equally bold – while the planting of the titanium flag was a largely symbolic gesture, it signalled Russia's intention to claim a vast of territory underneath the icecap that amouts to half the Arctic Ocean's seabed.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Putin v Pelosi. What a rotten situation.
We've seen the results before:
Hey Czar Putin, you third third stage syphilitic puke (if not in fact, then in behavior: http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec17/ch200/ch200b.html), go ahead and overplay your weak hand some more.
How old are you? 15?
Nice cogent reply there. Really made a good point. Dolt.
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