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Obama State Department set to cede oil-rich Alaska islands to Russia
Washington Times ^ | Monday 20th February | admin

Posted on 03/16/2012 12:28:02 PM PDT by Candor7

Obama’s State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians. Yes, to the Putin regime in the Kremlin. … The seven endangered islands in the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea include one the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The Russians are also to get the tens of thousands of square miles of oil-rich seabeds surrounding the islands. The Department of Interior estimates billions of barrels of oil are at stake.

The State Department has undertaken the giveaway in the guise of a maritime boundary agreement between Alaska and Siberia. Astoundingly, our federal government itself drew the line to put these seven Alaskan islands on the Russian side. But as an executive agreement, it could be reversed with the stroke of a pen by President Obama or Secretary Clinton.

The agreement was negotiated in total secrecy. The state of Alaska was not allowed to participate in the negotiations, nor was the public given any opportunity for comment. This is despite the fact the Alaska Legislature has passed resolutions of opposition – but the State Department doesn’t seem to care.


TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Russia
KEYWORDS: alaska; ntsa; obama; russia; trerason
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To: Candor7

The islands, as I remember, are inhabited by Russians, because that is where they are, North side of Russia.

The state department didn’t estimate oil quantities, because they are not ours.


21 posted on 03/16/2012 12:55:36 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: Candor7
The marine boundries with Russia, Cuba, Canada, Mexico, etc were established in the mid 70s in conjunction with the Magnussen Act.

Those same boundries were retained for LOST.

Anyway, in the oughties, LOST passed out of Senate committee, and even though LOST never made it to the Senate floor, everybody blamed Bush and his State Dept.

The moral of the story is that kooks and malcontents are going to bitch whether the prez is Bush or Obama

22 posted on 03/16/2012 12:59:02 PM PDT by Ben Ficklin
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23 posted on 03/16/2012 12:59:53 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.)
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To: thackney; Cheburashka

ALSO SEE: ( There is more to the issue, its an in process territorial claim which Obama is abandoning?)

The Obama administration’s conduct in the international community is once again under the critical scrutiny of the political right. This time, attacks on the president’s foreign policy have come from Alaskan attorney and former Republican senatorial candidate Joseph Miller.

On Friday, February 17, Miller reported on his blog at WND.com that the Obama administration, acting in compliance with the State Department, officially signed over several “strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands” to the Russian government. Miller expressed concern over the loss of territory, in addition to - potentially - “billions of barrels of oil” in the seabeds surrounding these islands.

Several conservative blogs and online news outlets have reiterated Miller’s story, virtually all of them citing the entirety or substantial portions of the original blog post. In light of the backlash against the Obama administration this latest information has provoked and may continue to foment, it is necessary to investigate some of the claims made by Miller in order to determine the validity of his reporting.

Most of the islands in question belong to a large coastal chain called the De Long Archipelago. Geographically, the De Long islands all lie within closer proximity to Russia’s northeastern border than to the Alaskan mainland. Additionally, all of the islands cited by Miller are located on the western - or “Russian” - side of the US-Russia maritime boundary, a division established via a 1990 treaty between the US and former Soviet Union. While the Soviet Union was dissolved before its leaders could make the agreement official, the United States was quick to ratify the treaty.

Though both Russian and American explorers have visited the islands and claimed them for their respective governments, the primary occupants of the islands have historically been Russian/Soviet explorers, researchers, and fishermen. The US State Department does not officially recognize any US claim to these territories, and a 1994 ruling by the Alaskan Supreme Court determined that the De Long islands Wrangel, Bennett, Jeannette, and Henrietta (all of which Miller mentions), as well as several others, were not Alaskan territories.

Barring the possibility of a war with Russia or Canada (or between Alaska and the rest of the United States), Miller’s claim that the islands are strategically significant is dubious at best. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union found no militaristic purpose for the islands; instead, they devoted their energies to building meteorological and astronomical observatories on them. Regardless of the future potential for hostilities, occupying and constructing military outposts so close to non-US sovereign territories would do little to ease extant international tensions; indeed, such a foreign policy move would likely serve to exacerbate them.

As for the resource-richness of the islands and surrounding coast, Miller’s anxiousness over the possibility of losing out on oil reserves reflects a fundamentally narrow view of energy independence given that he also expresses his displeasure with Obama’s decision to strike down the Keystone oil pipline project. The abilities of Alaska’s politicians and economists might be better spent further developing the state’s hydroelectric power facilities, or exploring other alternative energy sources for which Alaska’s environment is uniquely suited.

Considering the dual effort between Russia and China which successfully struck down a US-backed Security Council resolution to intervene in Syria earlier this month, ending the dispute over these islands may gain the US another ally in its policy toward events in the Middle East. Ultimately, however, the Obama administration’s decision to formally cede geopolitical control of the De Long Archipelago and a few smaller islands to Russia represents but another shift away from international Cold War dynamics, a symbolic gesture intended to do away with a vestige from a period of history branded by threats, tension, violence, and fear. While the world still contends with the consequences of that ideological battle to this day, Miller’s assertion that America “won the Cold War and should start acting like it” is not new and ignores years of violent post-Cold War history marked by that very same attitude
..

http://www.examiner.com/foreign-policy-in-national/the-world-according-to-joe-miller-obama-island-giveaway-too-generous


24 posted on 03/16/2012 1:02:16 PM PDT by Candor7 (Obama fascist info.. http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html)
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To: thackney
I see you and I did this back in 2009 as well.


25 posted on 03/16/2012 1:02:40 PM PDT by icwhatudo
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To: Candor7

I am not the biggest fan of Russia as most of you know, but claiming those islands is a stretch. They are behind the International Date Line and are much closer to Russia than the United States. Now if Obama was ceding Little Diomede Island or the Western Aleutians, then I would be griping.


26 posted on 03/16/2012 1:11:39 PM PDT by Thunder90 (Romney barely won in OH with a 12-1 money advantage, he can't beat Obama that way.)
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To: jersey117
I’m almost afraid to click on these links. It’s one nightmare after the next.

As I pointed out here after the prez election that this will truly be the end of what we have known as America. Every day he & his comrades/Czars don't disappoint on that issue. It's not that it will be over - it IS. There is absolutely no formidable opposition to this destruction as the PTB are no less than satanic.

27 posted on 03/16/2012 1:13:58 PM PDT by Digger (If RINO is your selection then failure is your election)
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To: Candor7

All this post shows, is how unreliable the information posted is in the blog, examiner.com.

It is made up BS, for islands we never had.


28 posted on 03/16/2012 1:14:51 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: Candor7

Wanna bet the development proceeds wind up in his/his buddy’s pockets?


29 posted on 03/16/2012 1:14:52 PM PDT by mo (If you understand, no explanation is needed. If you don't understand, no explanation is possible.)
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To: Evil Slayer

You will have to ask senator murCOWski for help.

LLS


30 posted on 03/16/2012 1:20:33 PM PDT by LibLieSlayer (WOLVERINES!)
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To: Candor7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUs-DoeqI5U&feature=youtu.be


31 posted on 03/16/2012 1:22:44 PM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole...)
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To: Candor7
Obama’s State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians.

And. STILL, we lack the outrage, the passion for our country to take to the streets and protest this latest insult to our nation by the Kenyan.

My God, WHERE are our patriots!!???

32 posted on 03/16/2012 1:28:12 PM PDT by DustyMoment (Congress - Another name for white collar criminals!!)
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To: Candor7

Is obama being extorted?


33 posted on 03/16/2012 1:37:56 PM PDT by mgist
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To: Candor7
Will this explanation from the State Department, written in 2003 help you believe it is a myth?

Status of Wrangel and Other Arctic Islands
http://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rls/fs/20922.htm

No negotiations regarding the U.S.-Russia maritime boundary have occurred since 1990, when the U.S.-USSR Maritime Boundary Agreement was signed. The negotiations that led to that agreement did not address the status of Wrangel Island, Herald Island, Bennett Island, Jeannette Island, or Henrietta Island, all of which lie off Russia's Arctic coast, or Mednyy (Copper) Island or rocks off the coast of Mednyy Island in the Bering Sea. None of the islands or rocks above were included in the U.S. purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, and they have never been claimed by the United States, although Americans were involved in the discovery and exploration of some of them.

The U.S.-USSR Maritime Boundary Agreement, signed by the United States and the Soviet Union on June 1, 1990, defines our maritime boundary in the Arctic Ocean, Bering Sea, and northern Pacific Ocean. The U.S.-USSR Maritime Boundary Agreement is a treaty that requires ratification by both parties before it formally enters into force. The treaty was made public at the time of its signing. In a separate exchange of diplomatic notes, the two countries agreed to apply the agreement provisionally. The United States Senate gave its advice and consent to ratification of the U.S.-USSR Maritime Boundary Agreement on September 16, 1991.

The Russian Federation informed the United States Government by diplomatic note dated January 13, 1992, that it “continues to perform the rights and fulfill the obligations flowing from the international agreements” signed by the Soviet Union. The United States and the Russian Federation, which is considered to be the sole successor state to the treaty rights and obligations of the former Soviet Union for the purposes of the U.S.-USSR Maritime Boundary Agreement, are applying the treaty on a provisional basis, pending its ratification by the Russian Federation.

The United States regularly holds discussions with Russia on Bering Sea issues, but these discussions do not affect the placement of the U.S.-Russia boundary or the jurisdiction over any territory or the sovereignty of any territory. The U.S. has no intention of reopening discussion of the 1990 Maritime Boundary Treaty.

Note: I believe this is the source of the map used in the other websites.

34 posted on 03/16/2012 1:42:10 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: mgist

Read further.


35 posted on 03/16/2012 1:44:48 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (The Global Warming HOAX is about Global Governance)
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To: Candor7

World Nut Daily spraying its computer screen.

Ye Gods, these islands have been de facto Russian territory forever. Is there some plot to make conservatives look silly for trying to hang Obama for one of the few things he’s got right?


36 posted on 03/16/2012 1:57:48 PM PDT by Grut
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To: Candor7

Well. By giving the oil to Russia there is a pretty goodchance it will get on the world market and help keep the price of oil down. Keeping it in the USA will simply lock it up forever or for so long as the USA remains.


37 posted on 03/16/2012 2:40:01 PM PDT by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson.")
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To: stephenjohnbanker

And what about Texas to Mexico.... ??


38 posted on 03/16/2012 4:25:06 PM PDT by traumer
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To: Candor7; LucyT; Berlin_Freeper; Hotlanta Mike; Silentgypsy; repubmom; HANG THE EXPENSE; Nepeta; ...
LucyT ping................

Summary of Giveaway of 8 American Alaskan Islands to the Russian Government

Here is the summary:

http://statedepartmentwatch.org/GiveawaySummary.htm

39 posted on 03/16/2012 5:32:09 PM PDT by melancholy (Professor Alinsky, Enslavement Specialist, Ph.D in L0w and H0lder)
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To: gaijin

This is basic.

We don’t have a president. We have a queen.


40 posted on 03/16/2012 5:37:10 PM PDT by melancholy (Professor Alinsky, Enslavement Specialist, Ph.D in L0w and H0lder)
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