WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US government Wednesday listed polar bears as a threatened species owing to a drastic reduction in Arctic sea ice, but stood by its permission for oil and gas drilling in their frozen habitat.
The polar bear now comes under federal protection, but officials were vague about what that would mean in practice,
and were at pains to stress that it did not mean a halt to energy exploration in northern Alaska and offshore.The Bush administration supports oil drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge in Alaska, adamant that industry regulations already exist to protect species such as polar bears, whales, seals and walruses.
There are no easy answers for this one. All I know is, we do need to drill somewhere AND the Polar Bears need to be protected, as does all wildlife. Can you even imagine Polar Bears just not existing anymore.? I can't. Explaining to future generations as they look back, (as we've done with the dinosaurs, etc.) that there used to be animals called Polar Bears and this is what they looked like, but they died off because of.....man. It's very sad. What a mess we've made.
Congratulations world, the Polar Bear is now on the THREATENED species list and you have now admitted to global warming. Whatcha gonna do about it? Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. Just keep making your lists and having those telethons.
What Your Taste in Music Says About You |
 Your musical tastes are intense and rebellious. You are intelligent... but in a very unconventional way. You are curious about the world. You love doing something new. In fact, you enjoy taking risks and doing things most people would shy away from. You are very physical. It's likely that you're athletic, but not into team sports. You have the soul of an artist. Beauty and harmony are important to you. |
Well...Hillary sure has it. Gotta say that. She's a tough broad. She can keep going until the general election...and why not? Bubba is Hillary's adviser, maybe Obama should be worried. I think he should keep giving all his attention to McCain and ignore Hillary as if she doesn't exist.
gross.
POST NOW
It's too early and my hand is itching.
Let's see, is there any good news to report? I don't have the time to research it. Today is primary day and Hillary is expected to have a big win. What it means? I don't know.
On a brighter note, my son got his cast off yesterday. He's a bit timid when it comes to moving it around. Dr. said he can get out to the driving range and hit some balls asap. He wants him to loosen it up. I think the sooner we do that the better for him as far as getting back his strength goes. He's still young so he'll do well...thank you.
That's all. Now it's hammer primary time.
Good day.
Obama is now wearing an American Flag pin on his lapel. Now that he's starting to talk trash on McCain it'll make appear more patriotic, like McCain. Obama has suddenly starting talking about his Veteran Grandfather. They buried him with an American Flag. Wow! He was a patriot! It must mean - Obama have some of that patriot blood flowing through them veins of his.
His timing is perfect.
I guess the email forward finally made it to him.
Next we'll see him saluting the flag.
As I said before, fake and phony.
Polish Holocaust hero dies at age 98
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA, Associated Press WriterMon May 12, 12:35 PM ET
Irena Sendler — credited with saving some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazi Holocaust by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, some of them in baskets — died Monday, her family said. She was 98.
Sendler, among the first to be honored by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial as a Righteous Among Nations for her wartime heroism, died at a Warsaw hospital, daughter Janina Zgrzembska told The Associated Press.
President Lech Kaczynski expressed "great regret" over Sendler's death, calling her "extremely brave" and "an exceptional person." In recent years, Kaczynski had spearheaded a campaign to put Sendler's name forward as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker with the city's welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, launching World War II. Warsaw's Jews were forced into a walled-off ghetto.
Seeking to save the ghetto's children, Sendler masterminded risky rescue operations. Under the pretext of inspecting sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, she and her assistants ventured inside the ghetto — and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages.
Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents.
Records show that Sendler's team of about 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and its final liquidation in April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.
"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory," Sendler said in 2007 in a letter to the Polish Senate after lawmakers honored her efforts in 2007.
In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families — most of whom perished in the Nazis' death camps — Sendler wrote the children's real names on slips of paper that she kept at home.
When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate's yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded.
"It took a true miracle to save a Jewish child," Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler's team as a baby in 1942, recalled in an AP interview in 2007. "Mrs. Sendler saved not only us, but also our children and grandchildren and the generations to come."
Anyone caught helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland risked being summarily shot, along with family members — a fate Sendler only barely escaped herself after the 1943 raid by the Gestapo.
The Nazis took her to the notorious Pawiak prison, which few people left alive. Gestapo agents tortured her repeatedly, leaving Sendler with scars on her body — but she refused to betray her team.
"I kept silent. I preferred to die than to reveal our activity," she was quoted as saying in Anna Mieszkowska's biography, "Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Story of Irena Sendler."
Zegota, an underground organization helping Jews, paid a bribe to German guards to free her from the prison. Under a different name, she continued her work.
After World War II, Sendler worked as a social welfare official and director of vocational schools, continuing to assist some of the children she rescued.
"A great person has died — a person with a great heart, with great organizational talents, a person who always stood on the side of the weak," Warsaw Ghetto survivor Marek Eldeman told TVN24 television.
In 1965, Sendler became one of the first so-called Righteous Gentiles honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for wartime heroics. Poland's communist leaders at that time would not allow her to travel to Israel; she collected the award in 1983.
Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said Sender's "courageous activities rescuing Jews during the Holocaust serve as a beacon of light to the world, inspiring hope and restoring faith in the innate goodness of mankind."
Despite the Yad Vashem honor, Sendler was largely forgotten in her homeland until recent years. She came to the world's attention in 2000 when a group of schoolgirls from Uniontown, Kan., wrote a short play about her called "Life in a Jar."
It went on to garner international attention, and has been performed more than 200 times in the United States, Canada and Poland.
Sendler, born Irena Krzyzanowska, said she lived according to herphysician father's teachings, arguing that "people can be only divided into good or bad; their race, religion, nationality don't matter."
She married Mieczyslaw Sendler but they divorced after the war's end. Sendler then married fellow underground activist Stefan Zgrzembski, and they had two sons and a daughter. One died a few days after birth. The second son, Adam, died of a heart failure in 1999.
Sendler is survived by her daughter and a granddaughter.
one word - wow!!
The problem with beauty is that it's like being born rich and getting poorer. ~ Joan Collins
