#13 February 18, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Patty commented:
This is first part of article, again lengthy. Sorry
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 transfer would have gone unnoticed were it not for State Department
Watch, a Washington-based group that monitors State Department
activities.
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.
http://www.alaska.net/~logjam/give_away.html There is more and sorry this is very lengthy
