Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola may have won a seat on the influential House Natural Resources Committee when she came into office in September.
But she hasn’t been able to use that role to influence her fellow Democrats to be in favor of the one thing Alaskans want: The Willow Project — an important energy infrastructure development plan that would create jobs and more energy for America.
Democrats on the House committee and several influential Democrat senators, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, wrote to President Joe Biden on Friday, asking him to kill the permits for the Master Development Plan in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska .
Nearly two dozen Democratic lawmakers signed the letter calling Willow “ill-conceived and misguided.”
“No version of the Willow [Master Development Plan (MDP)] is consistent with your commitments to combat the climate crisis and promote environmental justice, especially as reflected in the Inflation Reduction Act, historic legislation on which we all collaborated to achieve these crucial goals,” the letter states.
If allowed to proceed, the project “would pose a significant threat to U.S. progress on climate issues,” the Democrat lawmakers said, adding that the project could result in $19.8 billion in climate-related damages.
The letter was initiated by Arizona Democrat Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, who chaired the House Natural Resources Committee until Republicans took over in January. On the Senate side, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety, led the charge.
Rep. Ro Khanna and Rep. Mary Peltola, with Rep. Steven Horsford, on social media. Rep. Khanna signed the letter opposing the Willow Project.
When Peltola was named to the committee by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in September,ber Grijalva said, “I think she brings a perspective – and it’s not just an Alaska Native perspective, it’s an Alaska perspective – to us.” He then said she had enormous influence in the committee.
But that’s not what it looks like for Alaskans, who are hoping their voice in Washington, D.C. will be heard by the president.
Biden is expected to make a decision on Willow as early as Monday.
President Joe Biden has not yet filed for reelection, although many expect him to do so within a few weeks. But a 2020 Democrat candidate of some notoriety has filed: Marianne Williamson, author, public speaker, progressive Democrat and spiritual adviser.
In her 2024 launch speech on Saturday, given at Union Station in Washington, D.C., Williamson said the country needs a disrupter.
“The status quo will not disrupt itself. That’s our job. We know that this country is plagued by many challenges now, not the least of which is hatred and division, which is greater than any of us have experienced in national life. It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear,” Williamson said in her speech in the stately presidential suite at Washington’s railway station.
Williamson, age 70, is the former spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey. PBS has already dismissed her challenge to Biden, saying it will be “only token primary opposition — a testament to how strongly national Democrats are united behind Biden.”
During her first presidential bid, launched in 2018, she dropped out of the race on Jan. 10, 2020, saying she would support the eventual Democrat Party nominee, but by Feb. 23, she announced her endorsement for Bernie Sanders during a rally in Austin, Texas.
Williamson has supported policies that include setting aside $100 billion for reparations for slavery, universal health care in a Medicare model for everyone, creating a “Department of Peace,” and supporting the so-called Green New Deal, which includes dramatically reducing carbon emissions and investing hundreds of billions of dollars into a clean-energy economy. She also supports progressive ideas about illegal immigration, and would create more opportunities for people to become citizens, even if they entered the country illegally.
Also this weekend, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said he will not enter the race for the republican nomination for president.
Hogan has been a harsh critic of former President Donald Trump, but said that too many big-name Republicans are already in the race or will soon be in the race, and he doesn’t believe he could get enough funding or traction.
“I would never run for president to sell books or position myself for a Cabinet role,”Hogan wrote in The New York Times. “I have long said that I care more about ensuring a future for the Republican Party than securing my own future in the Republican Party. And that is why I will not be seeking the Republican nomination for president.”
The presidential primaries and caucuses start in less than one year. While Trump has announced, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is on a book tour for his new book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,”which many view as a soft opening for an eventual announcement. And Nikki Haley announced that she will be a contender for the Republican nomination.
An Anchorage school librarian’s emails defending sexualized books in the stacks of elementary schools in Anchorage has gotten the attention of national news.
“An Anchorage, Alaska, district librarianprivately defended a pornographic book that was in the district by invoking the Holy Bible as a defense of providing those materials to children, internal emails show,” Fox Digital News reported.
“The Polaris K-12 public school librarian Rachel Gregory discussed the book ‘This Is Gay’ that was previously in circulation in the district and said it was a ‘slippery slope’ to ban it, while comparing it to the Holy Bible in an October 2022 email to the school’s principal, Carol Bartholomew. The internal documents were obtained via public record request by a local parent, Jay McDonald, and were reviewed by Fox News Digital.”
Bartholomew appeared to solicit talking points and information from the librarian after receiving community pushback about the book, Fox News reported.
“This Book is Gay” discusses romps in saunas and sex parties, which can pose a higher risk for contracting sexually transmitted infections. However, the librarian maintained in the email that the book does not anywhere “encourage unsafe behavior.” Fox reported.
Jay MacDonald, who has read portions of the book aloud to the Anchorage School Board, has been ordered by the board to stop reading passages of books that he reports are in the school libraries. His records requests uncovered emails between school employees that related to their efforts to make unsavory sexualized material available to very young children in the Anchorage School District. Some of the records show that books were being hurried into the classrooms, while to the public, school employees were saying the books were not available for children.
Durham School Services and Teamsters Local 959 have a tentative agreement that is expected to be ratified by members of the Teamsters this weekend. Bus drivers walked out on Jan. 31, after they dropped students off at school. They were dissatisfied with working conditions.
If ratified, students and parents could see bus service return on Monday, March 6, and the superintendent will be sending notices to parents on Sunday, March 5, as to how many drivers may return to work on Monday and which routes will be functioning.
“We want to thank everyone for their patience during this process. We know this interruption in service was difficult and we appreciate all the efforts to get your students to and from school,” said Superintendent Randy Traini.
Neither Durham nor the Teamsters are commenting on the terms of the agreement until it’s ratified, but the Teamsters put out a statement:
In October 2021, the Alaska Covid Alliance held an Early Covid Treatment Medical Summit in Anchorage, during which early treatment options were discussed by experts. Even with little publicity, more than 1,200 Alaskans came to the conference to learn about how they could better protect themselves and their loved ones from Covid-19.
At that time, the federal government’s recommendation for early treatment was to “do nothing.” We were told to stay home until you couldn’t breathe, then go to the emergency room.
Unfortunately, death rates were high among those who had to show up at the emergency room.
Our Alaska Covid Alliance experts spoke of simple things you could do. This included the use of Vitamin D3, so crucial to Alaskans who live in a very dark world for much of the year.
These experts also spoke of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, medications that put the mainstream medical community into a tizzy. The presenters did not address inpatient care; they only spoke of what could be done prior to hospitalization and, hopefully, to keep you out of the hospital.
The keynote speaker for the Alaska Covid Alliance Conference was Dr. Li-Meng Yan. Dr. Yan is a Chinese virologist who worked at a WHO reference lab in Hong Kong.
She stated in Anchorage that year that Covid-19 was created by military scientists of the Chinese Communist Party as a “biological weapon.”
She went on to say the Communist Party of China seeks to divide America — to divide and conquer. She discussed a Chinese biowarfare document that stated the CCP is “looking forward to economic destruction and social unrest in the U.S.”
At that time, many in the scientific and medical communities dismissed her findings as flawed and a mere conspiracy. She was vilified for daring to express the truth that the Covid-19 virus was created in the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab. The “fact checkers” said it was false information.
Dr. Yan also stated in 2021 that the virus release was intentional.
The Anchorage Daily News quoted registered nurse Jennifer Meyer, a public health researcher who studies misinformation as an assistant professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage, as she disparaged the conference participants for using “anti-vaxx tactics.” Meyer live-tweeted a series of “fact-check critiques” during the conference, and criticized Mayor Dave Bronson for speaking at it.
“I get concerned when vulnerable patients are listening to false claims and that might influence their health care decisions,” Meyer was quoted by the newspaper as saying. “I feel sort of ethically bound to voice my concerns otherwise I’m not practicing nursing and nursing is a science-based profession, and so is public health.”
The Anchorage newspaper also called the Alaska Covid Alliance “a shadowy group.” It implied the doctors who presented at the conference were not qualified and were peddling misinformation.
Other American physicians and virology researchers who dared to disagree with the groupthink were attacked as conspiracy mongers, not just by the Anchorage Daily News but by nearly all mainstream media.
Last month, Dr. Yan re-iterated to Tucker Carlson on Fox News that the virus was not only released from a lab, but that the Chinese government had underestimated its transmissibility.
When people were trying to find the truth in 2020 through 2022, the government was working overtime to hide it. The Leftist media went wild. Those who dared to state the Covid virus came from the military lab in Wuhan China were immediately labeled as xenophobes and racists.
There were attempts to state the virus was originated in a wet market in Wuhan. That of course is interesting, as wet markets are seafood markets where bats would not be sold. When the World Health Organization went to investigate the wet market and look for the alleged bats and pangolins, they found none.
It was crucial to keep up the façade.
In January of 2020, Kristian Anderson, a Danish-born and British-educated scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., sent an email to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the now-former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stating the Covid-19 looked to be man-made.
Five days after that email, Anderson had a phone call with Fauci. After that phone call, Dr. Anderson recanted his belief, “The main crackpot theories going around at the moment related to this virus being somehow engineered… and that is demonstrably false.”
Interestingly, a short while later, Dr. Anderson was given a $1.8 million grant and $16.5 million funding from National Institutes of Health.
Coincidentally, more than 9,300 military members from around the world attended the 7th Military World Games in Wuhan in October of 2019. The event was a first for China and the military athletes came from 109 countries.
There were 300 military attendees from the U.S. at these games. At the end of the games, these Americans returned to over 219 home bases in 25 states, without being screened for possible Covid-19 infection. Less than a month later, the first “case” in China was reported.
Here’s the newsflash: The U.S. Department of Energy now states Covid likely resulted from a lab leak. This recent bombshell from the Energy Department was also affirmed by FBI: The virus came from a lab.
Once this information was released by the Department of Energy, other agencies tried to minimize the lab leak theory as the cause of this massive pandemic. They were quick to tell us this Energy Department statement was made with “low confidence.”
The FBI, however, gave the same Covid origin story “moderate” confidence.
How quickly the mainstream media attempted to backpedal.
The truths now spoken by the federal government about the origin of Covid and what to do to prevent contracting it is coming unraveled.
We now know masks don’t work for Covid. Natural immunity is better than getting the jab. Getting the jab didn’t protect you from the virus. In fact, people who had all the jabs are more likely to get the virus. Myocarditis is more common with jab than getting Covid. School lockdowns didn’t work. There is no need to vaccinate children and mandates didn’t work.
The list goes on and on. Looking back, it’s reasonable to ask if it was more important to the government to protect government officials and Big Pharma than to protect the American people.
In 2021, Dr. Yan stated in Anchorage, “The hope is in America. The truth is there. You just need the courage.” Dr. Yan is the face of that courage.
Linda Boyle is a member of the Alaska Covid Alliance.
Tennessee’s legislature passed a law making it illegal to host “an adult cabaret performance” where children are present. By a vote of 74-19, the lawmakers said that performances, such as those featuring “topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, [and] male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest” are illegal.
The bill is under the category of obscenity and pornography, describing activities as “an offense for a person who engages in an adult cabaret performance on public property or in a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult.”
In addition to banning drag queen performances for children, the law bans gender conversion chemicals and procedures for minors.
Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law Thursday. The history of the bill and full description, including votes, can be found at this link.
First-time violators of the obscenity ban may be charged with a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by a $2,500 fine and up to a year in prison. Repeat offenses will be considered Class E felonies in Tennessee. Most likely, the law will be violated by someone who intends to take it to court.
In some jurisdictions, such as San Francisco, it’s common for the community to hold highly sexualized parades and performances with naked men, and people dressed in sadomasochist attire, and some of these events are intended for children. But no more in Tennessee, where they want kids to have their innocence of childhood free from attack.
Alaska has no such law against sexualized performances for children. Drag queens now are commonly employed to entertain and groom children in Anchorage and Juneau, or in Soldotna, as shown in the photo at the top of the page, where drag queens from Anchorage performed for children in the park.
Sen. Scott Kawasaki, a Fairbanks Democrat, hopes no law will pass in Alaska like the the one just signed into law in the Volunteer State.
“Not in Alaska,” he said on Twitter in response to an AP news report.
The Biden White House has also weighed in to criticize Tennessee lawmakers.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Americans have more important things to worry about than drag queens performing in front of children.
“The American people are focused on so many issues. We just talked about economy, we just talked about inflation, we’re talking about safer communities and schools, and good healthcare — all of the things that you all ask me every day. And you all know that’s what the American people care about,” she said.
“That’s what – even when they went to vote in November, those were the issues that mattered the most to them. But instead of doing anything to address those real issues that are impacting American people, right now you have a governor from Tennessee that has decided to go after drag shows. What sense does that make to go after drag shows? How is that going to help people’s lives?” Jean-Pierre said during the daily White House press briefing.
Walgreens confirmed on Friday it will not dispense a certain abortion drug by mail or at their stores in the states that prohibit the life-ending chemical compound.
The company made the announcement in response to a letter from 20 attorneys general of states, who threatened legal action if the company distributed the drug mifepristone, which part of a cocktail of medication that has become the most popular method for ending the lives of unborn children.
Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and the 19 others had signed the letter warning Walgreens and CVS pharmacies that mailing abortion-inducing pills is illegal and unsafe and that they would take legal action against the company if it followed through on its plans to mail the drugs across state lines. Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor was a signatory of the letter, although in Alaska there are no restrictions on abortions, which can be performed up until the moment of birth. The attorney general of Kansas sent a separate letter.
In January, the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone to be used in combination with misoprostol to end a life up to 10 weeks of gestation. The drugs must be dispensed by a certified prescriber, pharmacy, or under their supervision and, according to the FDA, can be dispensed by mail.
“Walgreens does not intend to dispense Mifepristone within your state and does not intend to ship Mifepristone into your state from any of our pharmacies. If this approach changes, we will be sure to notify you,” the letter to Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach from Walgreens Executive Vice President Danielle C. Gray said.
Kobach applauded the decision, and said that the use of unsupervised abortion pills could lead to complications and the possibility of coercion. Although he didn’t specify it, unfettered availability of abortion drugs could also lead to a woman being forced or tricked into taking the medication. These medications are different than the Plan B pills that women can take after unprotected sex.
“This is a significant victory for the pro-life cause and for women’s health. The dispensing of these pills without a supervising physician present would expose women to complications and potentially to coercion as well. I’m grateful Walgreens has responded quickly and reasonably and intends to fully comply with the law.”
Planned Parenthood says the drugs are safe.
“The abortion pill is really safe and effective. It’s a super common way to have an abortion, and millions of people have used it safely,” the organization says on its website.
The White House also believes the drugs are safe for women.
“Elected officials targeting pharmacies and their ability to provide women with safe, effective and FDA-approved medication is dangerous and just unacceptable,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “This is all part of a continued effort by anti-abortion extremists who want to use this arcane law to impose a backdoor ban on abortion. The administration will continue to stand by the FDA’s expert judgment in approving and regulating medications. And in the face of barriers to access and concerns about safety of patients, healthcare providers and pharmacists, we will continue to support access to this critical medication within the limits of the law.”
However, women who take the medication might face complications.
“Your doctor may want to do an ultrasound to make sure your pregnancy is less than 10 weeks and is not outside the womb (ectopic),” according to WebMD.
“Take mifepristone by mouth as directed by your doctor, usually as a single dose. After taking mifepristone, your doctor should direct you to wait 24 to 48 hours before taking another medication (misoprostol) by mouth as a single dose. The medications may not work as well if you take misoprostol sooner than 24 hours after taking mifepristone or later than 48 hours after taking mifepristone. Follow your doctor’s instructions carefully. Heavy vaginal bleeding does not mean that an abortion is complete.”
The website also warns women to not drink grapefruit juice while taking the medication and says that if the treatment fails and the pregnancy continues, the baby may be born with birth defects.
“It is important that you return for a follow-up visit within 7 to 14 days after taking mifepristone, even if you are not having any problems,” the website advises. “If abortion does not occur or is not complete, or there are serious medical problems, surgery may be needed. If the treatment fails and the pregnancy continues until birth, there is a risk of birth defects.”
Part VI: The Lend-Lease Agreement of World War II was a time before the Cold War when the U.S. and U.S.S.R. cooperated to defeat Nazi aggression. Then mistrust set in.
Too often, wars are described in terms of presidents and generals, emperors and kings, grand strategies and elaborate campaigns. But wars affect the lives of all people―the soldiers who fight, and the men, women, and children who support the effort from home. In the United States, the Lend-Lease Program, which would mark a turning point in World War II, was, essentially, a home-front undertaking.
A turning point in history is a point at which a very significant change occurs. Sometimes a turning point has immediate repercussions, making its significance obvious to people at the time it is occurring; at other times, the impact of an event becomes clear only in retrospect. A turning point can be a personal choice affecting millions; it can be an event or idea with global or local consequences; it can be the life of a single person who inspires or otherwise affects other people.
Many historians recognize the significant contribution the Soviet Union portion of the Alaska-Siberian air road (ALSIB) Lend-Lease transports made to the Allied victory 78 years ago, yet few people outside the World War II veteran community now remember this air bridge between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Nearly 8,000 combat aircraft were built in American factories and delivered to Soviet pilots in Alaska, where they were then flown to the Russian warfronts via the ALSIB and Krasnoyarsk air routes.There is no doubt that without the American airplanes and the supplies they carried, heroic Soviet pilots would not have achieved the same level of success. The use of American-built P-39 Airacobras by Rechkalov and Pokryshkin on their heroic missions provides but one example.
The wartime Lend-Lease Agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, signed in Washington, D.C., on June 11, 1942, allowed the two countries to provide mutual assistance in fighting a war against aggression.
Soviet and American pilots met each other in Alaska during the war, and the friendship and cooperation between the two nations during that period of history is now little remembered in the wake of 45 years of ill will during the Cold War (1946–91).
At a time when our two countries continue to struggle toward mutual cooperation, while today in the midst of a brutal conflict in Ukraine, it seems fitting to remind all peace-seeking nations of the U.S. Lend-Lease Program and Soviet–American cooperation of the early 1940s. The U.S. Lend-Lease Program, and the ALSIB Air Route in particular, played a vital part in the defeat of Nazi Germany and its Axis partners during World War II. The ALSIB Air Route has also established a tradition of cooperation across the Bering Strait that continues to this day.
Looking Back and Looking Forward: Will the Past Predict the Future?
Who was responsible for post-war tensions between the U.S. and the U.SS..R.? Were they primarily a result of the Soviets’ mistrust of a perceived intent on the part of the Allies to establish a “New World Order” and act as policeman of the world? The United States’ influence in Asia, Europe, and North Africa at the end of the war was superior to that of any other nation. The U.S. government’s interest in creating a military coalition (i.e., NATO in 1949) and in establishing military bases in strategic locations all over the world obviously attracted Stalin’s attention.
Did President Harry Truman misunderstand Stalin’s psychological behavior at the end of the war? At the Potsdam conference in July and August of 1945, Truman informed Stalin of the U.S.’s intention to use nuclear weapons against Japan. In Truman’s view, he was just sharing this essential information with his closest war ally, but Stalin apparently interpreted this message as a potential threat to the Soviet state.
Could termination of the Lend-Lease program to the USSR and other countries in September 1945, and Truman’s approval of the Marshall Plan to assist Western Europe in 1947, have exacerbated Stalin’s fears regarding U.S. post-war military expansion? In September of 1945, an American public poll showed that 49 percent of Americans supported Truman’s termination of the Lend-Lease program; 58 percent of the respondents believed that Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union should be repaid in full.
Or were postwar tensions a result of Soviet communist expansionist ideology, a stated component of the Marxist–Leninist agenda? Questions surrounding the causes of post-war tensions between the U.S. and USSR are complex and must be studied objectively if we hope to elucidate the confrontational patterns between military powers in the past in order to avoid the resurgence of similar patterns in the future.
The history of Soviet–American relations has been short and somewhat intense. Evidently, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved recognition of the Soviet Union in 1933, not out of any good will or political vision of peaceful cooperation with the Soviets, but for entirely pragmatic economic reasons. The Soviet Industrialization Plan required huge economic investments from the West, and in that Great Depression year of 1933, American manufacturers needed business wherever they could find it.
In fact, in the 1930s, more than 200,000 unemployed Americans approached the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., asking for work, and some of them were actually hired and emigrated from the U.S. to work in the Soviet Union.Certainly, the Soviet government, in turn, hoped diplomatic ties would open doors for greater access to American bank loans and Western technology—and for greater export of socialist ideology at a time when membership in the Communist Party USA was growing.
The post-war history of Soviet–American relations, seen from an American perspective, can be summarized as a series of Cold War cycles. The first cycle (1945–55) might be called the Truman–Stalin duel. This period coincided with the division of Germany and Europe, the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, the Warsaw Treaty, and the Korean War. The second cycle (1956–73) featured Khrushchev’s nuclear threat, the expansion of socialist ideology into developing countries, the development of Soviet space technology as demonstrated by Sputnik, and the Soviet–Egyptian arms deal. The third cycle (1974–86) began with the self-destruction of an American president, Richard Nixon, via Watergate, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
The United States then imposed a trade embargo and otherwise tried to isolate the USSR. In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and his administration challenged the Soviet government by enlarging the U.S. nuclear and conventional military arsenal. Attempts by the Soviets to compete with the military production of the United States eventually devastated the Soviet economy and severely impacted its physical environment and natural resources.
In spite of all of the mutual animosity of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union never engaged in direct military action, fighting, at worst, by proxy. In fact, both American and Soviet leaders did a fairly good job of preventing a “hot war” between these two great nations, thereby preserving mankind for subsequent global challenges.
An analysis of the ALSIB Air Route demonstrates the need for a dynamic rather than static approach toward foreign neighbors whose political and economic systems differ from ours. The program demonstrated that two nations could compromise in their views and set aside conflicting cultural values and economic principles sufficient to achieve a common, mutually beneficial goal.
A dynamic approach to dealing with potentially antagonistic neighbors, therefore, may help the United States government and United States citizens achieve favorable results in their exploration of new avenues for cultural, political, commercial, and military cooperation and exchanges with Russia and other former Soviet republics.
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, andClipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
When Alaska’s delegation met with President Joe Biden on Friday, Sullivan had a leave-behind document for the commander-in-chief: A map showing all of the areas that Biden has locked down in Alaska.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Rep. Mary Peltola pressed the president to approve the Willow Project, a ConocoPhillips oil play in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. It’s a long shot, observers say, because the Biden Administration is owned by the environmental lobby. It was the first-ever meeting of the entire Alaska delegation and the president, who is now in his third year in office.
The map and the legend that goes with it shows that starting on Biden’s first day in office on Jan. 20, 2021, he took 10 adverse actions by his administration against Alaska in just the first three months. Another 10 adverse decisions were made before Thanksgiving that year, for a total of 20. And by the end of that year, the total number was 41 orders and rules that locked down Alaska’s resource economy.
Must Read Alaska has obtained an exclusive copy of that map, above, and legend, below:
Sullivan, Murkowski, and Peltola issued a joint statement after their meeting with the president and his advisers:
“We met with the President and his senior advisors in the Oval Office for more than an hour yesterday afternoon. The conversation was honest and respectful, and we appreciated the President’s recognition of how critical this moment is for Alaska’s future our nation’s energy transition.
“We were united in our advocacy for the Willow Project and made the strongest possible case for it. From state and national labor voices to Alaska Native leaders—Alaskans have repeatedly made clear their strong and united support for the project, and traveled thousands of miles to share their stories as to why the Willow Project will support their communities and families.
“Now, this decision is in the hands of the President. We hope the President will listen to the voices of indigenous Alaskans who live on the North Slope, the voices of labor leaders and union workers who are ready to help build Alaska’s economy, listen to the voices of national security officials underscoring the importance of Willow for American energy security, listen to the unanimous voice of members of the Alaska Legislature, and most importantly, listen to the Alaskans whose children and communities stand to benefit from the Willow Project for generations to come.
“The President has all the information he needs to make the right decision for Alaska and for the nation, and reapprove a three-pad, economically-viable Willow Project alternative without delay.”
The statement added that the Willow Project is a meticulously planned, socially just, and economically crucial project that will cover 0.002% of Alaska’s petroleum reserve, which itself is the size of Indiana. After the Obama-Biden administration encouraged development in the petroleum reserve, the project’s proponent, ConocoPhillips, entered federal permitting and received approval for it in 2020.
After further environmental analysis over the past two years, civil servants at the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management recently recommended its re-approval with three pads; anything less would be non-viable and equivalent to a denial.
The Willow Project has widespread support from the delegation; Alaska Natives, including those who live on the North Slope; state and national labor groups such as the AFL-CIO; many additional stakeholders, and is unanimously supported by the Alaska State Legislature, the statement added.
The Alaska delegation says it expects the Biden administration’s final decision on the Willow Project next week.
