December 18, 2005
Will Iredale
SCIENTISTS have for the first time found evidence that polar bears are drowning because climate change is melting the Arctic ice shelf.
The researchers were startled to find bears having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food. They are being forced into the long voyages because the ice floes from which they feed are melting, becoming smaller and drifting farther apart.
Although polar bears are strong swimmers, they are adapted for swimming close to the shore. Their sea journeys leave them them vulnerable to exhaustion, hypothermia or being swamped by waves.
According to the new research, four bear carcases were found floating in one month in a single patch of sea off the north coast of Alaska, where average summer temperatures have increased by 2-3C degrees since 1950s.
The scientists believe such drownings are becoming widespread across the Arctic, an inevitable consequence of the doubling in the past 20 years of the proportion of polar bears having to swim in open seas.
“Mortalities due to offshore swimming may be a relatively important and unaccounted source of natural mortality given the energetic demands placed on individual bears engaged in long-distance swimming,” says the research led by Dr Charles Monnett, marine ecologist at the American government’s Minerals Management Service. “Drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice continues.”
The research, presented to a conference on marine mammals in San Diego, California, last week, comes amid evidence of a decline in numbers of the 22,000 polar bears that live in about 20 sites across the Arctic circle.
In Hudson Bay, Canada, the site of the most southerly polar bears, a study by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the Canadian Wildlife Service to be published next year will show the population fell 22% from 1,194 in 1987 to 935 last year.
New evidence from field researchers working for the World Wildlife Fund in Yakutia, on the northeast coast of Russia, has also shown the region’s first evidence of cannibalism among bears competing for food supplies.
Polar bears live on ice all year round and use it as a platform from which to hunt food and rear their young. They hunt near the edge, where the ice is thinnest, catching seals when they make holes in the ice to breath. They typically eat one seal every four or five days and a single bear can consume 100lb of blubber at one sitting.
As the ice pack retreats north in the summer between June and October, the bears must travel between ice floes to continue hunting in areas such as the shallow water of the continental shelf off the Alaskan coast — one of the most food-rich areas in the Arctic.
However, last summer the ice cap receded about 200 miles further north than the average of two decades ago, forcing the bears to undertake far longer voyages between floes.
“We know short swims up to 15 miles are no problem, and we know that one or two may have swum up to 100 miles. But that is the extent of their ability, and if they are trying to make such a long swim and they encounter rough seas they could get into trouble,” said Steven Amstrup, a research wildlife biologist with the USGS.
The new study, carried out in part of the Beaufort Sea, shows that between 1986 and 2005 just 4% of the bears spotted off the north coast of Alaska were swimming in open waters. Not a single drowning had been documented in the area.
However, last September, when the ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of Alaska, 51 bears were spotted, of which 20% were seen in the open sea, swimming as far as 60 miles off shore.
The researchers returned to the vicinity a few days later after a fierce storm and found four dead bears floating in the water. “We estimate that of the order of 40 bears may have been swimming and that many of those probably drowned as a result of rough seas caused by high winds,” said the report.
In their search for food, polar bears are also having to roam further south, rummaging in the dustbins of Canadian homes. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the explorer who has been to the North Pole seven times, said he had noticed a deterioration in the bears’ ice habitat since his first expedition in 1975.
“Each year there was more water than the time before,” he said. “We used amphibious sledges for the first time in 1986.”
His last expedition was in 2002, when he fell through the ice and lost some of his fingers to frostbite.
By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writer
NEW BEDFORD — A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book.”
Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library’s interlibrary loan program.
The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand’s class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents’ home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.
The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a “watch list,” and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.
“I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book,” Professor Pontbriand said. “Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that’s what triggered the visit, as I understand it.”
Although The Standard-Times knows the name of the student, he is not coming forward because he fears repercussions should his name become public. He has not spoken to The Standard-Times.
The professors had been asked to comment on a report that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to spy on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002 in this country.
The eavesdropping was apparently done without warrants.
The Little Red Book, is a collection of quotations and speech excerpts from Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung.
In the 1950s and ’60s, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it was required reading. Although there are abridged versions available, the student asked for a version translated directly from the original book.
The student told Professor Pontbriand and Dr. Williams that the Homeland Security agents told him the book was on a “watch list.” They brought the book with them, but did not leave it with the student, the professors said.
Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots, and suspects that some of his calls are monitored.
“My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think,” he said.
Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk.
“I shudder to think of all the students I’ve had monitoring al-Qaeda Web sites, what the government must think of that,” he said. “Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless.”
President George W Bush has admitted he authorised secret monitoring of communications within the United States in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks.
The monitoring was of “people with known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organisations”, he said.
He said the programme was reviewed every 45 days, and he made clear he did not plan to halt the eavesdropping.
He also rebuked senators who blocked the renewal of his major anti-terror law, the Patriot Act, on Friday.
By preventing the extension of the act, due to expire on 31 December, they had, he said, acted irresponsibly and were endangering the lives of US citizens.
The president, who was visibly angry, also suggested that a New York Times report which had revealed the monitoring on Friday had been irresponsible.
America’s enemies had “learned information they should not have”, he said in his weekly radio address, which was delivered live from the White House after a pre-recorded version was scrapped.
‘Big Brother’
Senators from both Mr Bush’s Republican party and the opposition Democrats expressed concerns about the monitoring programme on Friday.
Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee , said there was no doubt it was “inappropriate”, adding that Senate hearings would be held early next year as “a very, very high priority”.
“This is Big Brother run amok,” was the reaction of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy.
Senator Russell Feingold, another Democrat, called it a “shocking revelation” that “ought to send a chill down the spine of every senator and every American”.
But in his address on Saturday, Mr Bush said the programme was “critical to saving American lives”.
The president said some of the 11 September hijackers inside the US had communicated with associates outside before the attacks – but the US had not known that until it was too late.
“The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and our civil liberties,” he said.
Monitoring was, he said, a “vital tool in our war against the terrorists”.
He said Congressional leaders had been briefed on the programme, which he has already renewed more than 30 times.
‘Illegal leak’
Mr Bush harshly criticised the leak that had made the programme public.
“Revealing classified information is illegal. It alerts our enemies,” he said.
The New York Times reported on Friday that Mr Bush had signed a secret presidential order following the attacks on 11 September 2001, allowing the National Security Agency to track the international telephone calls and e-mails of hundreds of people without referral to the courts.
Previously, surveillance on American soil was generally limited to foreign embassies.
American law usually requires a secret court, known as a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to give permission before intelligence officers can conduct surveillance on US soil.
so, spying on americans without warrants is okay, but telling americans that they’re being spied on without warrants is not okay…
i don’t often say this, but WHAT THE FUCK???
has anybody else noticed that this is one of the reasons why we are a separate country, and not an extension of great britain? maybe we should start calling him "king" george, instead of president shrub… 8/
Monday, December 19, 2005
By Liza Porteus
WASHINGTON — President Bush held a year-end news conference on Monday, where he defended the use of a domestic eavesdropping program and called for Democrats to stop their “delaying tactics” and reauthorize the controversial Patriot Act.
Bush called the leak of the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program, first reported in The New York Times last Thursday, as a “shameful act” disclosed in a time of war. That report said Bush had authorized the NSA to conduct surveillance of e-mails and phone calls of some individuals in the United States without court warrants.
“The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy,” he said. “This program has targeted those with known links to Al Qaeda.”
But the program will continue, Bush said, adding that he has reauthorized it over 30 times. “And I will continue to do so for so long as our nation faces the continued threat of an enemy that wants to kill our American citizens.”
The Justice Department likely will investigate who leaked information about the NSA program, the president added. A request for that investigation must come from the NSA itself.
The Monday event was Bush’s first full-fledged news conference since October and his ninth of the year. It came just one day after the president spoke to the nation in a prime-time television address from the Oval Office about the war in Iraq, urging patience and declaring that the United States was winning the battle.
On the eavesdropping issue, Bush said “absolutely” he has the legal authority to order such surveillance, and cited Article 2 of the Constitution, which he said gives him the responsibility and authority to deal with an enemy that declares war against the United States. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Congress also gave him the authority to use force against Al Qaeda, he noted, to tackle an “unconventional enemy,” some of whom lived in U.S. cities and communities while planning attacks.
“We need to recognize that dealing with Al Qaeda is not simply a matter of law enforcement. It requires dealing with an enemy that declared war against the United States of America,” Bush said.
“After Sept. 11, one question my administration had to answer was, how, using the authority I have, how do we effectively detect enemies hiding in our midst and prevent them from striking them again? We know that a two-minute phone conversation from someone linked to Al Qaeda here and to Al Qaeda overseas can cost millions of American lives,” he added, saying some of the Sept. 11 hijackers made several phone calls overseas before the attacks.
He said the Sept. 11 commission – charged with probing the intelligence failures surrounding the attacks four years ago that left 3,000 people dead – said the United States intelligence community needs to better “connect the dots” before the enemy can attack again.
“So, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, I authorized the interception of communication with people with known links to Al Qaeda and people linked to known terror organizations,” Bush said.
Bush: We’re Protecting Civil Liberties
(yeah right… by eliminating them)
The program is reviewed “constantly” to ensure it is effective and not infringing on Americans’ civil liberties, the president added. He also said congressional leaders have been briefed on the program more than a dozen times and denied the accusation that the program is a classic result of “unchecked power” in the executive branch.
He stressed that the program is limited to known Al Qaeda terrorists and for calls made from the United States to somewhere overseas, and vice versa. Calls between two U.S. cities are not monitored, he said, unless an order is granted by a secret court under the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as they always have been, he said.
One of the principal provisions of the Patriot Act permitted the government to gain warrants in cases involving investigations into suspected terrorists in the United States – an expansion of powers previously limited to intelligence cases.
“I can fully understand why members of Congress are expressing concerns about civil liberties, I know that, and I share the same concerns,” Bush said. “I want to make sure the American people understand … we have an obligation to protect you and while we’re doing that, we’re protecting your civil liberties.”
When asked by one reporter if he could give an example of an attack that was thwarted by the eavesdropping program, Bush said: “No, I’m not going to talk about that because it would help give the enemy notification or perhaps signal them methods and uses and sources. We’re not going to do that.”
To highlight the importance of keeping the program details secret, Bush said that before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. intelligence community was listening to phone conversations with Usama bin Laden. But then details of the intercepts were leaked.
“We were listening to him, he was using a type of cell-phone, or a phone … and somebody put it in a newspaper that this was the type of device he was using to communicate with his team and he changed [phones],” Bush said. “I don’t know how to make the point more clear that anytime we give up … revealing sources, methods and what we use the information for, simply says to the enemy: Change.”
News of the program caused an uproar in Congress last week, and Democrats and Republicans have called for an investigation into it.
“This is just an outrageous power grab,” said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. on NBC’s “Today” show. “Nobody, nobody thought when we passed a resolution to invade Afghanistan and to fight the War on Terror … that this was an authorization to allow a wiretapping against the law of the United States.”
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he intends to hold hearings. “They talk about constitutional authority,” Specter said. “There are limits as to what the president can do.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., told FOX News on Monday that there’s “no doubt these intercepts can be crucially important to defending America.”
He noted that after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush said he would use every legal power he could to prevent another attack, and there hasn’t been one attack on U.S. soil in four years. “He certainly acted with legal advice” and the Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed on the issue, he added.
Added Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. “I happen to believe that some of the intercepts since Sept. 11 probably have thwarted, saved some lives … we’re at war. We want to protect our constitutional rights … but we’re at war.”
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday that the NSA program had yielded intelligence results that would not have been available otherwise in the War on Terror.
He stressed that it is not a blanket spying program of ordinary Americans but of overseas communications of potential Al Qaeda suspects in the United States.
“This is not a situation of domestic spying,” the attorney general said.
“Our position is that the authorization to use military force which was passed by the Congress shortly after Sept. 11 constitutes that authority,” Gonzales continued. It “does give permission for the president of the United States to engage in this kind of very limited, targeted electronic surveillance against our enemy.”
Gen. Michael Hayden, the deputy national intelligence director who was head of the NSA when the program began, said, “I can say unequivocally we have got information through this program that would not otherwise have been available.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Sunday wrote to her Democratic colleagues, saying she expressed her concerns both verbally and in a classified letter to the administration when she was advised of the NSA activities. She said the administration “made clear” it didn’t think congressional notification or approval was required.
On Saturday, Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democrats sent a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, requesting hearings on the issue and the appointment of a panel of outside legal experts to assist during those hearings. She said Rep. Jane Harman, the Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the administration reversed its decision to brief the committee on the details of the NSA activities to which the President referred in his radio address.
“The refusal to provide the committee with the information necessary to discharge its oversight responsibilities is reminiscent of an administration directive in October 2001, which severely restricted the flow of information from the intelligence community to the House and Senate Intelligence committees,” Pelosi said in the letter.
“We all agree that the president must have the best possible intelligence to protect the American people. That intelligence, however, must be produced in a manner consistent with our Constitution and our laws, and in a manner that reflects our values as a nation to protect the American people and our freedoms.”
Bush on the Patriot Act, Iraq
Bush also blasted those senators who held up reauthorization of 16 expiring provisions of the Patriot Act on Friday. Although those senators who filibustered the reauthorization and prevented a vote on them were in the minority, some Republicans were part of that group.
Critics of the law say they were willing to extend them for three or six months but will not permanently extend them before they can be further studies and to make sure they are not infringing on individuals’ civil liberties.
The provisions under debate, which expire Dec. 31, include: authorization for roving wiretaps, which allow investigators to monitor multiple devices to keep a target from evading detection by switching phones or computers; secret warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and organizations such as libraries; expanded abilities to share secret grand jury information with foreign governments; and watching terror suspects longer than other federal laws provide.
The rest of the overall act was made permanent in 2001, when Congress first voted on it.
Saying the Patriot Act has helped tear down legal and bureaucratic barriers to sharing intelligence information between U.S. agencies, Bush noted that many of the senators now filibustering the act voted for it in 2001.
“These senators need to explain why they thought the Patriot Act was a vital tool after the Sept. 11 attacks but now feel it’s no longer necessary,” Bush said, adding that the filibustering lawmakers “must stop their delaying tactics.”
“It is inexcusable for the United States Senate to let the Patriot Act expire,” he added.
The terrorists want to inflict more damage now than they did before Sept. 11, Bush continued, and “Congress has the responsibility to give our intelligence and law enforcement agencies the tools they need to protect the American people.”
He added: “In the War on Terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment.”
On Iraq, Bush again reiterated themes he has voiced in the past two weeks, urging patience with the fledgling democratic progress there.
About 11 million Iraqis went to the polls to cast votes for a 275-member parliament last week. The high turnout and relatively low level of violence during the election marked what many say is a new beginning for Iraq.
“In a nation that once lived by the whims of a brutal dictator, the Iraqi people now enjoy constitutionally-protected freedom and their leaders now derive their powers from the consent of the governed,” Bush said Monday. “The Iraqi people still face many challenges … the formation of the government will take time as the Iraqis work to build consensus.”
He noted that the new government must prioritize the security, reconstruction, economic reform and national uniformity once it assembles.
“The work ahead requires the patience of the Iraqi people and the patience and support of America and our coalition partners,” Bush said.
When asked again whether he would consider some sort of timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, Bush again refused to give such a timeframe, saying it shouldn’t the political whims of the hour that dictate U.S. military strategy and he will take his cues from military commanders on the ground.
“I can’t think of anything more dispiriting to a kid risking his or her life to see a decision made based on politics,” Bush said.
2. Vice President – Dick Cheney
3. Speaker of the House of Representatives – Dennis Hastert
4. President Pro Tempore of the Senate – Ted Stevens
5. Secretary of State – Condoleeza Rice
6. Secretary of the Treasury – John W. Snow
7. Secretary of Defense – Donald Rumsfeld
8. Attorney General – Alberto “Torture Lawyer” Gonzalez
9. Secretary of the Interior
10. Secretary of Agriculture
11. Secretary of Commerce
12. Secretary of Labor
13. Secretary of Health and Human Services
14. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
15. Secretary of Transportation
16. Secretary of Energy
17. Secretary of Education
18. Secretary of Veterans Affairs
basically we’d have to impeach all those people as well… imagine "president" condoleeza rice, or "president" donald rumsfeld… what we need is another revolution.
i hope bush and his minions are spying on me… BOO! YAH! I AM A TERRORIST AND I AM PLANNING A REVOLUTION! feh on “president” shrubby junior!