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Hunt For Clues To Sea Life Deaths At Farallones

October 3, 2009 By

hunts for clues to sea life_A humpback whale that suddenly rose out of the water and splashed down near the Farallon Islands provided a research vessel full of scientists with a surprising bonanza of research data.

“Whale poop!” shouted several researchers in unison, as biologists scrambled to collect the floating reddish specimens Saturday as part of a comprehensive study of the ocean’s ecology off the Northern California coast.

The color of the whale excrement meant that the huge creature had been feeding mostly on a tiny shrimp-like crustacean called krill instead of fish and anchovies, its preferred food in recent decades. It is a change in diet that several bird species at the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge are unable to make, according to researchers in a joint ocean survey by the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and PRBO Conservation Science.

As a result, colonies of fish-eating cormorants, seagulls and murres failed to breed this year on the Farallon Islands. Over the past few months, dozens of dead birds and even sea lions have been found on local beaches.

Anchovies have disappeared, and scientists don’t know why. The researchers on the vessel believe that, in their absence, birds and mammals like humpback whales that eat krill are thriving while the ones that are eating only fish are in trouble, and the whale excrement served as evidence.

“We’ve had an extraordinary number of dead animals,” said Jan Roletto, the research coordinator for the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. “It seems to be that the animals that suffered the most were the animals that forage on anchovies.”

Brandt’s cormorants, a black bird with white plumes that can dive as deep as 300 feet for its prey, did not produce any chicks this year on the Farallones or on Alcatraz. That’s compared with 15,000 chicks in 2007.

Breeding fails

For the anchovy-loving bird, it was the first complete breeding failure in 40 years during a year without El Niño conditions so far, according to scientists at PRBO, formerly known as the Point Reyes Bird Observatory.

Western gulls and common murres produced about one-seventh of the number of chicks they normally hatch. Researchers on the Farallones reported an increase in predation on the chicks that were produced, mainly because the parents were too far away looking for food.

Beachgoers probably noticed the death toll. Six to eight times the normal number of dead cormorants and sea lions were found on Bay Area beaches in May, June and July, according to researchers. The death toll in each case involves birds and marine mammals that prey on anchovies and other fish.

The deaths and breeding failures are all the more troubling because there appears to be plenty of krill, rockfish and other prey species to feed the seagoing birds and mammals.

Jaime Jahncke, the director of marine ecology for PRBO, said common murres had previous breeding failures in 1982-83 and in 1991-92, but both times the problems were linked to El Niño, a weather condition associated with warmer ocean temperatures and atmospheric conditions that cause heavy storms. Although forecasters say an El Niño is forming in the tropics, it has not yet hit California, Jahncke said.

No explanation

“I don’t know what it means, but it’s not good,” Jahncke said. “There are a lot of changes happening, and none of them have a clear explanation.”

Seagoing birds and mammals near the Farallon Islands depend on krill, anchovies and other prey that are attracted to conditions produced when cold, deep ocean currents bounce off the underwater outcropping called the Cordell Bank, forcing nutrients upward. The nutrients are most abundant during the transition from winter to spring.

Spring arrives an average of 20 days earlier than it did in 1970, Jahncke said. There has also been an increase in the strength of the upwellings over the past two decades, he said.

Apart from the lack of anchovies, that is probably a good thing.

The team of scientists on the boat spotted several blue whales before the humpback put on its show.

The abundance of blue whales, which feed almost exclusively on krill, and the evidence provided by the humpback made it clear that there is plenty of krill in the ocean.

“Whales primarily over the last decade have been feeding on fish,” said Lisa Etherington, the research coordinator for the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. “The last couple of years they’ve been feeding on krill. We don’t know why.”

Wild fluctuations

Jahncke said salmon smolt also feed on krill, a fact that may or may not help the beleaguered Central Coast chinook. The Cassin’s auklet, a small, chunky seabird that feeds on krill, had above-average nesting success this year.

But wild fluctuations are now almost normal, according to the researchers, who are concerned that the El Niño predicted for next year will cause a further decline in the numbers of birds. By Peter Fimrite, San Francisco Chronicle.

Filed Under: Environment Tagged With: ,

Illegal Attack By Georgia Launched War With Russia

October 2, 2009 By

illegal attack by georgia_An illegal military attack by Georgia on its breakaway region of South Ossetia triggered last year’s war with Russia, an international report said yesterday.

Russia was also guilty of breaking international law by invading deep into Georgian territory in response to the attack, the European Union-backed investigation into the causes of the five-day conflict concluded.

The report deals a severe blow to Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has repeatedly argued that he ordered troops into South Ossetia as a defensive action in response to a Russian invasion. Moscow insisted that it sent forces to South Ossetia to repel a Georgian attack.

The nine-month inquiry led by a Swiss diplomat, Heidi Tagliavini, said that the war was triggered by “a large-scale Georgian military operation” against the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali late on August 7, adding: “Operations started with a massive Georgian artillery attack.”

Ms Tagliavini said in a written statement: “None of the explanations given by the Georgian authorities in order to provide some form of legal justification for the attack lend it a valid explanation.”

Her inquiry rejected as not “sufficiently substantiated” Georgian claims of a Russian incursion into South Ossetia prior to the outbreak of the war. But it noted “an influx of volunteers or mercenaries” into South Ossetia from Russia and said that some Russian troops were in the war zone earlier than the Kremlin had claimed.

The Russian air force also bombed targets in Georgia hours before Moscow said that it had begun military operations at 2.30pm on August 8.

The inquiry concluded: “There is the question of whether the use of force by Georgia in South Ossetia, beginning with the shelling of Tskhinvali during the night of 7/8 August 2008, was justifiable under international law. It was not.

“It follows from the illegal character of the Georgian military assault that South Ossetian defensive action in response did conform to international law in terms of legitimate self-defence.”

The report said that there was also no justification for Georgian attacks on Russian peacekeeping forces based in South Ossetia. It went on: “There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation. Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive on 7/8 August could not be substantiated. It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack.

“Consequently, the use of force by Georgia against Russian peacekeeping forces in Tskhinvali in the night of 7/8 August 2008 was contrary to international law.”

The inquiry condemned Russia’s response to the fighting, however, as going “far beyond the reasonable limits of defence”. It said that the Kremlin broke international law in justifying its actions and in recognising South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Georgia’s other breakaway region, as independent states after the war.

Initial Russian defensive actions in South Ossetia were legal, but subsequent military occupation of large parts of Georgia – tanks came within 25 miles of the capital Tbilisi – was not “even remotely commensurate” with the threat posed to its peacekeepers.

Russia’s invasion broke international law and continued destruction of Georgian territory after a ceasefire negotiated by President Sarkozy of France “was not justifiable by any means”. The report added: “In a matter of a very few days, the pattern of legitimate and illegitimate military action had thus turned around between the two main actors Georgia and Russia… It must be concluded that the Russian military action outside South Ossetia was essentially conducted in violation of international law.”

The report rejected the Kremlin’s assertion that it had acted in defence of Russian citizens in South Ossetia, most of whom hold Russian passports. It said that people in South Ossetia and Abkhazia remained Georgian citizens under international law and it condemned Russia’s “passportisation” policy as “an open challenge to Georgian sovereignty and an interference in the internal affairs of Georgia”.

The inquiry described Russian claims that Georgia was committing “genocide” against South Ossetians as “neither founded in law nor substantiated by factual evidence”. It noted that Russia reduced to 162 its initial claim that 2,000 South Ossetians had been killed by Georgian troops.

It accused Georgian and Russian soldiers as well as South Ossetian militias of committing atrocities that amounted to “war crimes”. But the similarity of weapons used by all sides made it difficult to attribute responsibility for particular acts.

The report condemned Russia for failing to control South Ossetian irregulars who it said were guilty of ethnic cleansing of Georgian villagers from their homes in the conflict zone. Georgia’s use of Grad missiles and cluster munitions in its night attack on Tskhinvali amounted to “indiscriminate attacks” on the civilian population.

While Georgia’s attack on Tskhinvali marked the start of the war, the inquiry said that it “was only the culminating point of a long period of increasing tensions, provocations and incidents” involving Russia and separatist leaders in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Assessments of the war had to consider “a great power’s coercive politics and diplomacy against a small and insubordinate neighbour, together with the small neighbour’s penchant for overplaying its hand and acting in the heat of the moment without careful consideration of the final outcome”.

The Kremlin welcomed the report. Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the EU, said: “It confirms what we’ve know all along – who started the war and who bears responsibility.”

Georgia insisted that the inquiry proved that Moscow had been plotting a war for a long time. Temuri Yakobashvili, Georgia’s Minister for Reintegration, said: “The report proves that Russia was all the time preparing this war and August 7 and 8 were the culmination. The report is not about who started the war; the war did not start on August 7 or 8.”

The inquiry said that Georgia reported 228 civilians killed and 184 soldiers dead or missing in the war. Russia said that 64 of its troops died and 162 South Ossetian civilians.

More than 100,000 people became refugees during the conflict. Several thousand South Ossetians remain homeless and some 25,000 Georgians have been unable to return to South Ossetia. By Tony Halpin, The Times.

Filed Under: Government, News & Media Tagged With: , ,

Palestinian Leaders Deny Jerusalem’s Past

October 1, 2009 By

palestinian leaders deny jerusalem's past_Jews have no history in the city of Jerusalem: They have never lived there, the Temple never existed, and Israeli archaeologists have admitted as much. Those who deny this are simply liars. Or so says Sheik Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority.

His claims, made last month, would be laughable if they weren’t so common among Palestinians. Sheik Tamimi is only the latest to insist that, in his words, Jerusalem is solely “an Arab and Islamic city and it has always been so.” His comments come on the heels of those by Shamekh Alawneh, a lecturer in modern history at Al Quds University. On an Aug. 11 PA television program, “Jerusalem—History and Culture,” Mr. Alawneh argued that the Jews invented their connection to Jerusalem. “It has no historical roots,” he said, adding that the Jews are engaging in “an attack on history, theft of culture, falsification of facts, erasure of the truth, and Judaization of the place.”

As President Barack Obama and his foreign-policy team gear up to propose yet another plan for Israeli-Arab peace, they would do well to focus less on important but secondary issues like settlement growth, and instead notice that top Palestinian intellectual and political leaders deny basic truths about the region’s most important city.

For the record: Jerusalem is the holiest city in Judaism, mentioned more than 600 times in the Hebrew Bible. Three times a day, religious Jews face eastward toward the city when they pray. At Jewish weddings, the couple’s joy is diminished as they shatter a glass to acknowledge Jerusalem’s still unfulfilled redemption. It is a widespread custom then to recite the 137th psalm (“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate. . .” ).

According to Jewish tradition, Jerusalem’s designation as Judaism’s most sacred city made it the obvious place for King Solomon to build the Holy Temple following the death of his father, King David. After the temple’s destruction by the Babylonians, it was rebuilt by King Herod before being destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70.

Earlier this month, archaeologists with the Israeli Antiquities Authority discovered a 3,700-year-old Jerusalem wall—the oldest and biggest ever uncovered in the region—that they believe was built by the Canaanites before the First Temple period. It’s true: there is scant archaeological evidence of the First Temple. But not so for the Second Temple, which is accepted as historical fact by most archaeologists. From the Herodian period, aside from dozens of Jewish ritual baths surrounding the temple that have been uncovered, one retaining wall of the temple, the Western Wall, still stands.

But Sheik Tamimi doesn’t need to take the Jews’ word for any of this, or that of legions of world-class scholars. For proof of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, he need only look at writings from his own religious tradition.

The Koran, which references many biblical stories and claims figures like Abraham as Islamic prophets, also acknowledges the existence of the Jewish temples. The historian Karen Armstrong has written that the Koran refers to Solomon’s Temple as a “great place of prayer” and that the first Muslims referred to Jerusalem as the “City of the Temple.” Martin Kramer, a historian who has combed through Koranic references to the temples in Arabic, notes surra 34, verse 13, which discusses Solomon’s building process: “They [jinn/spirits] worked for him as he desired, (making) arches, images, basins large as wells, and (cooking) cauldrons fixed (in their places).”

There is still more recent official Muslim acknowledgment of Jerusalem’s Jewish history—a booklet put out in 1924 by the Supreme Muslim Council called “A brief guide to al-haram al-sharif.” Al-haram al-sharif, the Arabic name for the Temple Mount, is currently the site of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque. It is, according to Islamic tradition, where Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Yet it is also, according to the council’s booklet, a site of uncontested importance for the Jews. “The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest (perhaps from pre-historic) times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.” And the booklet quotes the book of Samuel: “This, too, is the spot, according to the universal belief, on which ‘David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offering and peace offerings.’” Later, the booklet says the underground structure known as King Solomon’s Stables probably dates “as far back as the construction of Solomon’s Temple.” Citing the historian Flavius Josephus, it claims the stables were likely used as a “place of refuge by the Jews at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 A.D.”

So why do those like Mr. Tamimi deny what their predecessors acknowledged? To undermine Israel, which earned statehood in 1948 and captured the Old City of Jerusalem during the Six Day War of 1967. Since then, Palestinian leaders have fought to erase any Jewish connection to sacred places, particularly the Temple Mount.

While Israel has never hesitated to acknowledge Jerusalem’s holiness in Islam—albeit saying that it has less importance than Mecca—Palestinian leaders insist that Jews are transplants in the region, nothing more than white European colonialists. This denial has formed the foundation for their argument that Jerusalem should become Palestine’s capital. This is why the previous mufti of the Palestinian Authority, Sheik Ikrama Sabri, dismisses the Western Wall as “just a fence.” Yasser Arafat classified it, bizarrely, as “a Muslim shrine.” As Saeb Erekat, Arafat’s chief negotiator, said to President Clinton at Camp David in 2000: “I don’t believe there was a temple on top of the Haram [holy site], I really don’t.”

These sentiments are echoed in Palestinian primary-school textbooks, preached at mosques, and printed in official newspapers. The Palestinian leadership isn’t bellyaching over borders—it is stating, in full voice, that Israel has no right to its most basic historical and religious legacy.

This is no foundation for “peace talks.” By Bari Weiss, Wall Street Journal.

Filed Under: News & Media, Society & Culture Tagged With: ,