Polar bear kills last villager

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | 10.16.03

[mhking]

A polar bear has killed the last villager on Russia's Vrangel island off the northern Chukotka peninsula, scientists at a local reserve said today.

The reserve's workers attempted to save Vasilina Alpaun, who was attacked on her own doorstep, but were too late.

The Ushakovskoye village had been abandoned since 1997, when its inhabitants were moved to the peninsula to make way for the bear reserve, but Alpaun, 25, returned to her old home shortly afterwards.

Bears roam free on the island and are rarely aggressive, the reserve's director Leonid Bove said, adding that the woman most likely provoked the animal.

[Charles Henrickson]

. . . the woman most likely provoked the animal.

She hit it on the nose with a microphone?

[Vigilanteman]

Actually, in times past, Wrangel Island has been claimed by both Americans and Canadians.

[Charles Henrickson]

Where is AETP on this?

[Dosa26]

bear medicine.

Would an ak w/ a 80 rnd drum of soft points do it? (I was tempted to type a 30 rnd banana mag but Dosa's a cautious cat) Would the soft points expand too quick in the fat?

[Charles Henrickson]

. . . the woman most likely provoked the animal.

Painted the darn thing purple. Now the poor animal is behind bars:

[hedgetrimmer]

I recall some alaskan islands that were given over to russia during the clinton adminstration, really hurting fishermen up in Alaska and shocking everyone in the mainland. Could this be the island? I wouldn't put it past clinton to give over US territory to Russia claiming its for "the enviroment".

Interesting history and thanks for the link.

[Charles Henrickson]

Bear feasts on human

Couldn't have been a cub. Otherwise it would have choked.

[hedgetrimmer]

Ah HA! Quietly, State Dept. Turns Over American Islands to Russia, Others

Stephan Archer
Monday, May 8, 2000
In recent years several U.S. islands have been ceded to Russia and other countries, without congressional approval or public debate.

These islands, many uninhabited, are significant because they hold potential mineral, gas, oil and fishing rights – not to mention potential strategic military value.

So where exactly are these disputed islands?

The Arctic islands, which lie west of Alaska and north of Siberia, include the islands of Wrangell, Herald, Bennett, Jeannette and Henrietta.

The islands in the Bering Sea make up the westernmost point in Alaska’s Aleutian chain and include Copper Island, Sea Otter Rock and Sea Lion Rock. These islands together have more square mileage than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

Though the United States had staked claim to these islands for more than a century, the State Department has been anxious to turn them back to Russia.

The tranfer would have gone unnoticed were it not for State Department Watch, a Washington-based group that monitors State Department acitivities.

Retired U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Carl Olson, who heads State Department Watch, recently checked with the Census Bureau, asking if it had plans to count the inhabitants of these disputed islands in the current census.

Olson was stunned by the response he received from the Census Bureau.

"Census Bureau officials were informed by the U.S. Department of State that these islands remain under the jurisdiction of Russia," wrote Kenneth Prewitt, director of the Census Bureau in a letter to Olson.

"Without confirmation and appropriate documentation from the Department of State to the contrary, the Census Bureau cannot include these islands as part of the State of Alaska," Prewitt concluded.

Americans Become Russians

Olson notes that the Census Bureau, with the approval of the State Dept., has just stripped Americans of their citizenship.

Consider the inhabitants of Wrangell Island, the largest of eight disputed islands – five lying in the Arctic Ocean and three in the Bering Sea.

Geographically speaking, the island’s inhabitants would also be citizens of the state of Alaska since no other American state comes even close to the proximity of the islands.

But if anyone desired to visit Wrangell Island, they would be greeted not by the Stars and Stripes waving proudly in the brisk air but by a Russian military tower.

According to Olson, the islands including Wrangell have 18 Russian soldiers and one officer and 50 to 100 inhabitants.

Olson insists these people have been made to endure foreign occupation by the Russian military and believes the U.S. government should do something about taking the islands back.

NewsMax.com contacted Mark Seidenberg, a former senior traffic management specialist within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and asked him if he believed the United States should pursue its sovereignty on the islands. Seidenberg, without hesitation, said "yes."

U.S. Territory for Long Time
U.S. claims for these islands are strong.

When the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the impending treaty included all of the Aleutian Islands, including Copper Island, Sea Otter Rock and Sea Lion Rock.

A number of years later, in 1881, U.S. Captain Calvin L. Hooper landed on Wrangell Island and claimed it for the United States. One of the landing party was famed explorer John Muir.

Also in 1881, the U.S. Navy claimed Bennett, Jeannette and Henrietta islands for the United States. Later that century, the British gave up their claim to Herald Island, allowing the Americans to take it over.

Claims of these islands, however, didn’t become an important issue between the former Soviet Union and the United States until the 1970s, when the concept of international fishing zones 200 miles from national coastlines went into affect.

With both the Soviet Union and Alaska having coastlines within a much closer proximity than the needed 400-mile buffer zone, a maritime boundary had to be established.

Secret Transfer

The resulting U.S.-U.S.S.R. Maritime Boundary Treaty was passed by the Senate and ratified by former President George Bush in 1991. Russia, however, never ratified the treaty because its leaders complained that the U.S.S.R. didn’t benefit enough from it.

Nevertheless, former U.S. Secretary of State Jim Baker and the Soviet Union’s Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze signed a secretive executive agreement the year before that bound both governments to the treaty.

Currently, Russia is demanding hundreds of millions of pounds more fishing rights from the United States that would undermine the Alaskan fish industry and, subsequently, the state’s economy.

A wealth of petroleum and natural gas hang in the balance as well.

When NewsMax.com contacted the State Department for an explanation, a spokesman said he wasn’t aware of any issue involving the Wrangell Islands and the U.S. government and that it was his belief that the islands have been recognized as a part of Russia since the 1800s. During the course of the interview, the State Department official asked if he was being "put on."

Even though now recognizing Russian jurisdiction over the islands, the State Department had testified at the June 13, 1991, treaty hearing that the maritime boundary agreement "does not recognize Soviet sovereignty over these [five Arctic] islands."

Enraged by the turnover of Alaska’s sovereign land, Rep. John Coghill Jr. of that state’s legislature sponsored House Joint Resolution 27, which beseeches the Department of State to inform the Alaska Legislature of any decisions regarding the maritime agreement.

The resolution further points out that setting a maritime boundary between Alaska and Russia is a "constitutional issue of states’ rights."

One of the issues over these islands and the surrounding waters are the fishing rights of Alaskan fishermen. Oil, of which Alaska has the largest national reserves, may also be abundant in the disputed territory.

Military Value

Olson notes the area's strategic value as well.

Beneath the icy waters around the islands, submarine warfare has taken place in the past between the former Soviet Union and the United States. The ice is now one of the last places for submarines to hide. The islands could also be hosts to vital facilities tracking hostile government movements.

"Everybody knows that the shortest distance between the U.S. mainland and Asia is the polar route, giving easy access to aircraft and whatever else," Olson explained. "And the Asian mainland doesn’t just consist of Russia. It includes China."

More American Islands Lost

Olson adds that the Arctic islands are not the only American islands the State Dept. has been giving away without congressional approval or treaty.

In recent years four American Pacific Islands – Washington, Fanning, Makin and Little Makin – have been ceded to the island nation of Kiribati without a treaty.

"Lost” islands include Nassau Island in the Pacific Ocean and Bajo Nuevo and Serranilla Bank in the Caribbean Sea. The islands became American territory under the Guano Act in the late 1800s.

Regarding these three lost islands, the Census Bureau's Prewitt, in a letter dated March 15, stated, "With respect to Nassau Island, Bajo Nuevo, or Serranilla Bank, the Department of State has not informed the Census Bureau that claims to these islands have been certified."

In addition to the abandonment of the islands is the loss of all resources within a 200-mile economic zone of each island. As is the case with most of the Arctic islands, the economic zones around each of the islands may be more important than the islands themselves. http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/5/7/153932

[hedgetrimmer]

Nope you have to blame it on clinton

Giveaway of Islands to Russia Risks U.S. Security
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com

Monday, June 16, 2003

WASHINGTON – The State Department's secretive gift to Russia of eight Alaskan islands is a threat to U.S. security. The islands could provide strategic military value to the U.S. in the event of hostilities involving North Korea or China and could provide cheap energy for the United States.

What’s more, unknown to Congress or the American public, negotiations for the giveaway began and ended while Russia was part of the old Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The U.S. spent billions to fight the Soviet empire around the globe, to say nothing of the lives that were sacrificed. The Soviets had gobbled up a third of the world, in keeping with the avowed communist aim of world domination. Yet the State Department, as secretly as possible, agreed to give the communist enemy territory that holds potential oil, gas and fishing rights, as well as a value to national security.

Efforts are under way to persuade the Congress of the United States to bestir itself over this matter, but when Jesse Helms, R-N.C., retired from the Senate early this year, efforts to reverse the giveaway lost a powerful lawmaker who was focused on the issue.

The matter remains in limbo. Ironically, this is because although the U.S. Senate years ago ratified the executive agreement in the form of a treaty, despite objections by Helms and others, it is the Russians who are refusing to ratify the pact. They insist that the land grab, which redounded to their benefit, was not lavish enough.

Only a power that takes for granted that good old Uncle Sam is just dying to roll over and give in would have the gall to position itself as the metaphorical burglar who takes all your money and jewels and demands to know, “Is this all you’ve got?”

The eight islands in question, west of Alaska and north of Siberia, include Wrangell, Bennett, Herald, Jeanette, and Henrietta.

The other three islands in question lie on Alaska’s Aleutian chain: Sea Lion Rock, Sea Otter Rock, and Copper Island. As NewsMax.com has reported, these islands alone have more square mileage that Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

It all started in an effort to draw clear lines to replace boundaries that had been blurred by legalities. Carl Olson of State Department Watch explained to NewsMax that countries were entitled to an exclusive 200-mile “economic-fishery-conservation zone from the coast.”

The problem? Since the U.S. Alaska coast and the Soviet Union were within 400 miles of each other, where to draw the line as to who gets exclusive rights to which economic and fishery benefits?

Henry Kissinger started the ball rolling during the final hours of his tenure as secretary of state in the outgoing Ford administration in January 1977.

Thus began years of secret negotiations that took on a life of their own and continued under succeeding administrations. It was not until 1984 that this back-channel giveaway was discovered when it was quietly inserted into the Federal Register.

Kissinger, Olson reminded us, made his mark in diplomacy as the grand master of “detente,” which “means he could accommodate almost anything the Russians were doing.”

The World War II lend-lease debt that the Russians owed the U.S. is an example. “I mean he compromised that down to almost nothing.”

Olson, a retired U.S. Navy commander, has made it his business to keep a close watch on the kind of “quiet diplomacy” that has characterized some of the greatest disasters of the 20th century. Yalta, Potsdam and Tehran, which positioned the Soviet Union to make its worldwide power grab after World War II, serve as classic examples of why someone needs to keep track of this.

During the early Cold War years, State Department foreign service professionals, considering themselves above the foreign policy debates of mere elected officials, acquired the derisive term “the striped-pants boys.” They appeared to concern themselves with the interests of every nation on Earth except those of the United States. Their ilk still abounds at State.

But in fact, the history leading us to the fear that the giveaway of these eight islands between Alaska and Siberia will soon be finalized actually predates the Cold War. In our next installment, NewsMax.com deals with a little-known Soviet invasion of the U.S.

[U S Army EOD]

You may be on to a great idea and not realize it. They have the dye in the bags at the bank for bank robbers. Sooo have all campers and hikers carry spray paint. Then the next party down the trail will know to advoid the pink, purple or whatever color the bear was spray painted.

[ValerieUSA]

Years ago I read that mentruating women should never go camping in the north because bears will detect the odor from miles away and stalk and attack them.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

Bears roam free on the island and are rarely aggressive, the reserve's director Leonid Bove said, adding that the woman most likely provoked the animal.

Hmm, sounds to me like the reserve's director propogated the myth that the bears are harmless, thus allowing the bears to pluck off the residents one by one. Now the reserve has the island all to itself. :)

[U S Army EOD]

Welllll that is certainly one way to create a wildlife habbitat when the wildlife eats all the humans. This is why early man spent a lot of time up in trees.

[paulklenk]

Reminds me of a story:

An explorer came out of the jungle, to find a humungous elephant dead in the middle of the clearing. Standing next to the elephant was a pygmy, pleased as pie.

"Did you kill that elephant?" he asked the pygmy.

"Yes, I did," said the pygmy.

"That's amazing! How did I little guy like you kill such a huge elephant?"

"With my club," said the pygmy.

"Wow, that must be a big club!" said the explorer.

"Yeah, there are about sixty of us," replied the pygmy.

[paulklenk]

True story: When I worked in Glacier National Park, we had to be careful of bears when hiking. To condition the bears and warn them in advance of human presence, we were advised to wear large jingle bells that you could hear coming from a distance. We called these 'bear bells,' and they were available in our gift shop.

Legend had it that a tourist once asked the shop clerk, "How do you get them bells on them bears?"

[ChemistCat]

Did you see posts 88 and 89?

This village was cleared of AMERICANS by Russian OCCUPIERS.

This woman who was eaten was American.

And this nauseous matter, though started during the Cold War by Kissenger, was concluded under Clinton--who had absolutely no good reason to hand Alaskan islands over to Russia.

Oh, they've helped us SO MUCH since then.

[Fledermaus]

Will we soon see the novel "The Last of the Ushakovskoye"?

[Lion in Winter]

You owe me a keyboard.... bawwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahahaha! snort!

[FreedomPoster]

Just damn. I'm surprised I didn't read about that here, I was here then, mostly lurking. Another "Clinton was just evil" item.

Ping to A-G: Did you know about the item in the replied-to post?