Call me Ishmael, the seated gorilla who knows

Call me Ishmael, the seated gorilla who knows

I HATE RIGAUD FISH STEW

Thanks to “Mere Cure”, the star above Venus, Ogdensburg’s Mother Superior is using all

of her corporate “Human Resources” Valkyries employed within the entire St. Lawrence

River basin, as well as Vic Toews’ reanimated coprolite, the Grey Mennonite Anabaptist

“pap-line”, to prepare New York state for its planned North American (Lake Superior in-

duced) “mess of pottage” NOVA.

Flushing New York down the loo from the Soo will return Ogdensburg, New York, (aka:

NEW TROY) to Canada, from which it was taken in 1867.

Vic Toews, the Manitoba Manitou of “Weemin” nurses under 30, who secretly runs the

Canadian cabinet shielded from the safety of his post as minister responsible for Canada’s extortion/enforcement ministry styled “Public Safety”, must be allowed to have his Border Action Plan “toute-suite”.

Mother Superior will see that millions of North Americans die on his thumbs down.

Once it happens, remember that you heard it here first (that is, if you are among the few survivors).

The Nordan Sculptor

THE MANITOU HAS NO CLOTHES! (the League of Hypocrites)

Visa officers lack information, training, auditor general says

By Robert Hiltz, Postmedia News November 22, 2011 3:58 PM

The auditor general says Canada's border and citizenship departments focus too much energy on defending cases of those who have been denied entry into Canada, and not enough on reviewing who should be allowed into the country.

Photograph by: Sam Leung, Vancouver Province

OTTAWA — The Canada Border Services Agency and Citizenship and Immigration Canada lack the guidance, training and information to properly determine who should and shouldn't be let into the country, according to the auditor general.

In his report released Tuesday, Interim Auditor General John Wiersema says the two departments focus most of their energies on defending cases where they have denied an individual entry into Canada — a small percentage of applicants — rather than on reviewing the cases of people allowed entry into the country.

"We've been reporting some of these problems with visas for 20 years, and I find it disturbing that fundamental weaknesses still exist," Wiersema said.

The watchdog's report says more than one million applications were processed for individuals seeing temporary residence within Canada and more than 300,000 for individuals applied for permanent residence in 2010 alone.

Yet, of the three manuals officers rely on to determine admissibility and hence, grant a visa, two had not been updated for several years.

There are also worrisome gaps in the information available to officers about security, health and safety risks to Canadians.

"(Immigration) and the CBSA lack the necessary tools and information to provide assurance that risks related to the admissibility determination process are properly managed," the auditor general's report says.

According to the report, the immigration department has yet to implement the improvements it developed after the last audit, issued more than a decade ago.

The report states that visa officers, the primary officials tasked with assessing whether someone can enter Canada, rely heavily on information provided by the person applying for a visa. This is problematic, the report says, since face-to-face interviews are rarely conducted because of the time and resources they require.

Another area of concern involves the medical screening performed on visa applicants. The auditor says officials have focused on preventing entry to Canada by those infected with two diseases, syphilis and tuberculosis, for the last half-century.

But "today 56 diseases require national surveillance in Canada," the report says. "CIC has not reviewed whether foreign nationals should also be subject to mandatory testing for some of these diseases."

The report says officials are often unable to determine the credibility of documents provided by some security agencies in foreign countries. Applicants must provide security checks from every country they have lived in for six months or more during the 10 years previous to applying for entry into Canada.

Almost two-thirds of visa officers surveyed by the watchdog said the inability to confirm details provided by applicants was a hurdle to determine the legitimacy of a visa application.

Furthermore, about half of the officials said they lacked sufficient information to determine whether an applicant was a security risk if allowed into Canada.

Neither immigration nor CBSA have conducted formal reviews of the available information from the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service to ensure they had access to enough data for assessing the security risk of an individual.

Since the CBSA's creation in 2003, the department hasn't signed an agreement with either the RCMP or CSIS to ensure full access to all of the necessary information. Without such an agreement, there is no guarantee officials will receive all of the information they require.

Neither of the departments responsible for allowing people past Canada's borders have in place a system to review applicants who have already been admitted into the country. This means the vast majority are never followed up on, the auditor general concludes.

The audit was performed between January, 2010 and April, 2011.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Visa+officers+lack+information+training+auditor+general+says/5749281/story.html#ixzz1eTmbBG2w

The post comment below made by me was removed by the Ottawa Citizen staff. This shows WHO the Ottawa Citizen (media) have aligned themselves with. They are not investigative journalists, they are accomplices invested in criminal activity intent upon covering up the truth. This will be confirmed by the occurrence of the "LOO AT THE SOO" when Lake Superior overflows it's boundaries, thereby killing millions as a result of an INDUCED blind thrust.

Glen and Jennifer

6:12 PM on 11/22/2011

Was this investigation to find problems or was it done to provide the Auditor General's office with deniability? My experience with CIC Immigration, CBSA, and Public Safety is that they are criminal organizations controlled by Vic Toews, who manages this criminal organization assisted by his "puppy dog", Jason Kenney. I have been denied entry to Canada to see my Canadian husband because Vic Toews sexually abused and raped me in the past on more than one occasion during Satanic Rituals he presided at as a secret practitioner of Voodoo, while publicly espousing the Mennonite faith (Anabaptist). Canada, how can these problems ever be solved as long as you allow criminals such as he to control and run your government (as de facto Prime Minister)?

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Visa+officers+lack+information+training+auditor+general+says/5749281/story.html#ixzz1eTmkKJlA

AMEN'S "A" slave enters Braxton-Hicks stage of childbirth on 11/11 - water (SAC) about to break

'I've been a meteorologist for 30 years, and I've never seen a year like 2011'

Top international climate scientists and disaster experts meeting in Africa have a sharp message for the world's political leaders: Get ready for more dangerous and unpredictable weather caused by global warming.

They're calling for preparations that they say will save lives and money.

The experts fear that without preparedness, crazy weather extremes may overwhelm some locations, making them uninhabitable.

The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a new special report on global warming and extreme weather Friday after meeting in Uganda.

This is the first time the group of scientists has focused on the dangers of extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods, droughts and storms.

Those are more dangerous than gradual increases in the world's average temperature.

The Washington Post reported that the report said there was at least a 66 percent chance that climate extremes had been changed because of carbon emissions produced by fossil fuels and other human activity.

Story: Flooded in 60 minutes: NYC tunnel warning

"Economic losses from weather- and climate-related disasters are increasing," the report said, according to the Post.

"The fact is, a small change in average temperature can have a big impact on extremes," Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and one of the report's reviewers, told the paper in an interview. "It's pretty straightforward: As average temperatures go up, it's fairly obvious that heat extremes go up and [the number of] low extremes go down."

In August, the U.S. government said the United States had already tied its yearly record for the number of weather disasters with an economic loss of $1 billion or more .

Story: Fall arrives late in some Southwestern pockets

National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes said at the time that, "I don't think it takes a wizard to predict 2011 is likely to go down as one of the more extreme years for weather in history."

A report by the National Climatic Data Center listed the storms and other weather-related events that had caused more than $1 billion in damage.

Story: Expect major river changes from climate, experts warn

"I've been a meteorologist for 30 years, and I've never seen a year like 2011 in terms of extreme weather events,” Jeff Masters, of the Weather Underground website, said in a press call organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, according to the Post.

David Friedberg, CEO of Climate Corp., which offers weather insurance for farmers, told the paper that more corn and soybean farmers were paying between $30 and $40 an acre to supplement federal insurance because of the weather's unpredictability.

"What we see is really the acute pain experienced by farmers because they're suffering from more floods and more droughts than they've ever experienced," Friedberg added.

It's not just the big headline grabbing disasters like a Hurricane Katrina or the massive 2010 Russian heat wave that studies show were unlikely to happen without global warming. "A particular pattern of rising risks" from smaller events is being seen, said one of the study's lead authors, Maarten van Aalst, director of the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre in the Netherlands.

Story: Up to 3 million Afghans face hunger as winter looms

Of all the weather extremes that kill and cause massive damage, he said, the worst is flooding.

There's a debate in the climate science community about whether it is possible and fair to attribute individual climate disasters to manmade global warming. Usually meteorologists say it's impossible to link climate change to a specific storm or drought, but that such extremes are more likely in a future dominated by global warming.

The panel was formed by the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization. In the past, it has discussed extreme events in snippets in its report. But this time, the scientists are putting them all together.

REANIMATED FOUNDLINGS

REANIMATED FOUNDLINGS

Genetic Engineers choose the life-path “genome recipe”

for COPROLITE walking dead

Morally and ethically challenged HYPO-crites are engineered and bred in secret cloisters by “underground” societies linked to the above-ground “Ecclesiastics” and/or, to their “third-kind” gender affiliates currently self-styled “VALKYRIES”.

Most re-animated coprolite “foundlings” are employed as Cops, Nuns, Priests, Media, Prostitutes, Politicians, Clerks, Therapists, or in Human Resources (HR).

Their origins are “Cro-Magnon”….coprolite dating as far back as 40,000 BC.

My wife Jennifer and I are proto Cro-Magnon “Dennison”, dating back to 41,000 BC. We both broke away from Cro-Magnon control in 2008, once the observed evidence reached the level of PREPONDERANCE.

INDIRECT REASONING
BASED ON
OBSERVATIONS
(SCIENCE)

and a

PREPONDERANCE

OF THE

CIRCUMSTANTIAL

EVIDENCE

(LAW)

The SculPTors

Glen EP Kealey and Jennifer Ann Kealey

Vic Toews’ recipes for USA

Vic Toews’ recipes for USA October 27, 2011

Manitoba’s Men-no-Night-Light seek “NOVA FISH STEW”

URUGUAY vs PARAGUAY????

You RAGU….Ay!

or

Pa RAGU….Ay!

ROLL OUT THE RIM AND WIN?

All Americans, soon to be martyred PILGRIMS, are invited to visit Glen Kealey at the CIPI Oxford-on-Rideau (RADO) farm in Oxford Mills, Ontario, Canada. There, from the vantage point of our recently erected BLIND THRUST RAFT (made from home-grown alders), you may gaze upon your not-too-distant future; that is, upon the induced FATE (a nova, being generated from the Loo at the Soo) one reserved for middle-America and New York, from yonder Lake Superior et al; as laid out for you by Vic Toews, the current Canada/Brazil personal minister of Mennonite/Amish/Hutterite/Quaker “ANABAPTIST” northern GAP border security.

It may also interest American pilgRIMs (see the gRIMaldi brothers of Monaco) to roll out the RIM of a Canadian 1967 two-face and two-ney minted in Vic Toews’ Winnipeg (mini-gap), Manitoba. Who knows, this MANITWO of MANITOBA “Golden Boy” of Canadian politics may suddenly change his WILL ….Maybe to spare our neighbors lives, our maple LEAFS ….not to forget my wife Jennifer, whom he now holds captive, exiled in Ogdensburg, New York.

Glen EP Kealey, Chairman

Canadian Institute for Political Integrity

908 County Rd. 18, RR#1

Oxford mills, Ontario, K0G 1S0

PLEASE NOTE: I am informing you of the above because, being a Canadian citizen, I am obligated to do so by law. Silence during a time of HIGH TREASON is considered implied acquiescence, and as we recall Nuremberg (1946-50) and the 1789 French Revolution, failure to do so is punishable as such. Now YOU know.

......and they died on T.V.

NEW YORK (AP) — Give me your tired, your poor — your Internet-connected masses yearning to see.

Lady Liberty is getting high-tech gifts for her 125th birthday: webcams on her torch that will let viewers gaze out at New York Harbor and read the tablet in her hands or see visitors on the grounds of the island below in real time.

The five torch cams are to be switched on Friday during a ceremony to commemorate the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on Oct. 28, 1886. The ceremony caps a week of events centered around the historic date, including the debut of a major museum exhibition about poet Emma Lazarus, who helped bring the monument renown as the "Mother of Exiles."

The statue's webcams will offer views from the torch that have been unavailable to the public since 1916, said Stephen A. Briganti, the president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation Inc.

"The statue is the most famous symbol in the world," he said. "Most of the people in the world have seen it, but they have not seen it like this. It will be a visit that so many people, including New Yorkers, have never taken before."

Through the webcams, Internet users around the world will have four views, including a high-quality, 180-degree stitched panorama of the harbor with stunning views of Ellis and Governors islands. They will be able to watch as ships go by Liberty Island and observe as the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center goes up floor-by-floor in lower Manhattan. They can get a fish-eye look at the torch itself as it glows in the night.

The five cameras, which will be on 24 hours, seven days a week, were donated to the National Park Service by Earthcam Inc., a New Jersey-based company that manages webcams around the world.

The cameras put viewers on the balcony of the torch and high above the crown, said Brian Cury, the founder of Earthcam.

"This is not your dad's picture of the Statue of Liberty," he said. "This is not a view from a tourist helicopter. This is unique."

Friday's ceremony also will be marked by a water flotilla, actress Sigourney Weaver reading Lazarus' poem and a naturalization ceremony for 125 candidates for citizenship representing over 40 countries.

The public is invited to attend the ceremony, with ferry service available between Manhattan and Liberty Island. The interior of the statue — from the pedestal down to the museum base — will close after the 125th anniversary celebration for up to a year so that stairwells, elevators and mechanical systems can be upgraded. The park itself will remain open to visitors.

The statue, designed by sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, was given by the French government to the U.S. as a token of friendship between the two countries and dedicated by President Grover Cleveland.

And while today it is known as a symbol of liberty for millions of refugees and exiles, initially the famous sonnet by Lazarus in the voice of the statue asking for "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" did not appear on the statue. It was not until 1903 that "The New Colossus" was placed on the pedestal.

Lazarus is the subject of a new exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan, which has views of Lady Liberty. It's to open Wednesday to coincide with the anniversary of the statue's dedication.

Curator Melissa Martens said Lazarus was born into the fourth generation of a Jewish family in New York prominent since colonial times. "They were some of the early people to articulate the Jewish experience in dialogue with the challenges of freedom and religious liberty," she said.

Featuring over 83 original objects from 27 institutions and individuals, "Poet of Exiles" is the first full-fledged artifact exhibit at a major museum to robustly explore the life of Lazarus, from her work as an advocate for immigrants fleeing the Russian pogroms of the early 1880s to her pioneering support for a Jewish homeland.

Lazarus died in 1887 at age 38 from Hodgkin's disease, never having known her poem would be united with the Statue of Liberty.

BE PREPARED

Ottawa Citizen

Hugh Adami: Canada customs officer should explain shabby treatment of American

By Hugh Adami, The Ottawa Citizen October 17, 2011

Derrick Hayden, is an American who was treated poorly by Canada Customs at the Ottawa Airport and sent home because they thought he was lying about something. For column by Hugh Adami


Could Canada customs officer, badge number 16321, call this newspaper, please, to explain why your colleague was so vile with an American who flew to Ottawa on Oct. 3?

And while he’s at it, 16321 might want to explain why he was a bit of a jerk, too.

Because really, if Derrick Hayden’s version of events is even close to accurate, then 16321’s cohort — who kicked the Boston-area man out of the country after apparently belittling him — deserves a transfer to Correctional Service of Canada to see how he would fare treating prison inmates the same way.

Hayden says the customs officer accused him of lying, called him a coward and suggested he act like a man. He rifled through Hayden’s bags, read his cellphone texts and looked to see what was on his tablet computer.

“I think he just didn’t like Americans,” says Hayden, whose grandparents, as well as his wife’s, were Quebecers who settled in the U.S.

Hayden planned to spend a few days in Ottawa with a friend he knows through the classroom-office furniture company he works with — Chicago-based Sedia Sytems — and then visit a job site here and in Montreal.

In Ottawa, he planned to do a quality-control check on furniture sold to Export Development Canada, a Crown corporation, then visit another customer in Montreal before returning home Oct. 7.

Instead, about four hours after arriving in Ottawa at on Oct. 3, he was on a plane back to Providence, Rhode Island, via Philadelphia.

Hayden says he doesn’t know why he was treated so badly. He says he comes to Canada frequently on business, and until last week, never had any problems with Canadian customs agents at airports or border crossings. This was his first trip to Ottawa, so a good first impression is obviously out the window.

Hayden says he had all the necessary travel documents and doesn’t have a criminal record. He says he was polite and answered every question asked by four customs officers, including the real tough guy who eventually told him he would be on the next flight to the U.S.

At one point, says Hayden in an email he sent to the Citizen before our telephone conversation, the officer told him something like this: “You are not in the U.S. anymore. Once you got on that plane this morning, you were in Canada and have to obey our rules.

“I’m not sure how you do things in your country, but we do not like liars and do not let them in. Under Canadian law, I can arrest you for lying to me and my partner. You will be booked on a flight home, and don’t ever come back to my country.”

Hayden says he doesn’t know what led the customs officers to believe he was lying to them, but says he was told in so many words that they suspected he was planning to stay in Canada longer and work illegally. He says he had his hard hat and two shirts with the company logo in his luggage.

He says he was peppered with questions by officer 16321, who then conferred with the agent who went after Hayden at full throttle. His questions were the same, says Hayden. He figures the agent was trying to get different answers than he gave 16321 and trap him in a lie.

“I said: ‘You know, I don’t know what you want me to say. If you want a letter from my boss, if you want to call him, (I) can do whatever you need.’”

At that point, says Hayden, the officer told him with a raised voice: “‘It’s too late for that. You’re not coming into my country. I’m not letting you in.’”

Hayden says he spent about two-and-a-half hours at Canada customs. The first officer asked him a series of questions before sending him to the second agent. That agent questioned him, made a note on a document and then sent him down a hallway to the third officer — 16321. Then, he was handed to King Kong.

When 16321 escorted him to the airport’s U.S. customs side, he was finally able to go to the washroom, and grab something to eat and drink. His cellphone was returned and he was given a ticket for a 3:50 p.m. flight. He was again told he was being kicked out because he was clearly lying about something.

Officer 16321 presented him with a form to sign that acknowledged he was withdrawing his application to enter Canada. Though Hayden was told he would be free to return another time by signing the form, he wonders if he will be, now that his U.S. passport has been flagged.

A U.S. customs officer told Hayden to file a complaint with his congressman because he didn’t think there were any grounds not to grant him entry. He plans to do so, but he has already sent emails to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the Prime Minister’s Office.

“I’m sure Canada wouldn’t be happy (with Canada customs) treating Americans this way,” says Hayden. “We’re all supposed to get along.”

The CBSA says it can’t say much about the matter because of the Privacy Act, but “we can tell you our information is inconsistent with yours.

“A person may be deemed inadmissible for a number of reasons …. Individuals who provide inaccurate or incomplete information at the time of their admissibility may be subject to enforcement action and may be prohibited from returning to Canada.”

CBSA says it will investigate the complaint and respond to Hayden.

Is something bothering you? Please contact thepubliccitizen@ottawacitizen.com

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

COMMENTS

Glen and Jennifer

6:11 AM on 10/17/2011

I gave Senator Bob Runciman evidence of similar and worse treatment of myself when he visited Ogdensburg for a meeting October 7, 2011 at the Remington Museum. This type of abuse is being taught at the Rigaud training center in Vaudreuil near Montreal. An agent is considered "seated" only once he learns to be disrespectful of certain visitors who can expose their secret mandate.

JOSEPH MENGELE'S BOYS FROM BRASIL

Silent acquiescence to Vic Toews is North America's highest treason


Glen and Jennifer

Chooser of the Slain

Nobel Peace Prize recognises women rights activists

07 October 11 11:55 ET

This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded jointly to three women - Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen.

They were recognised for their "non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work".

Mrs Sirleaf is Africa's first female elected head of state, Ms Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist and Ms Karman is a leading figure in Yemen's pro-democracy movement.

"We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women achieve the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society," said Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland in Oslo.

Reading from the prize citation, he said the committee hoped the prize would "help to bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realise the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel - deemed by Forbes the world's most powerful woman - called the award a "wise decision".

But Mrs Sirleaf's main rival in polls this coming Tuesday, Winston Tubman, told the BBC she did not deserve the prize and was a "warmonger".

Arab Spring

Mrs Karman heard of her win from protest camp Change Square in the capital Sanaa, where she has been living for several months calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to stand down.

She was recognised for playing a leading part in the struggle for women's rights in Yemen's pro-democracy protests "in the most trying circumstances" and is the first Arab woman to win the prize.

As the head of Yemeni organisation Women Journalists without Chains, Mrs Karman has been jailed several times.

Mrs Karman told BBC Arabic she was dedicating it to "all the martyrs and wounded of the Arab Spring" - the wave of unrest which has swept the Middle East and North Africa in the past year - and to "all the free people who are fighting for their rights".

Mr Jagland said the oppression of women was "the most important issue" in the Arab world and that awarding the prize to Ms Karman was "giving the signal that if it [the Arab Spring] is to succeed with efforts to make democracy, it has to include women".

'Iron Lady'

Ms Sirleaf, 72, who had been widely tipped as a winner, said the award was "for all Liberian people" and a recognition of "many years of struggle for justice".

She was elected in 2005, following the end of Liberia's bloody and ruinous 14-year civil war.

Upon coming to office, the US-educated economist and former finance minister - known as Liberia's "Iron Lady" - pledged to fight corruption and bring "motherly sensitivity and emotion to the presidency".

Mrs Sirleaf is standing in Tuesday's election, having previously said she would only hold the presidency for one term.

Her rival Mr Tubman denounced the award, saying she had "brought war here".

She had initially backed the rebels of Charles Taylor - currently on trial for war crimes in The Hague.

Although she has apologised, Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended that she be barred from holding public office for 30 years.

"I did more to stop the war than she did because she was for continuing the war," Mr Tubman said.

"Now that the war has stopped she wants to continue on top of the country as though she is some liberator. She is not."

He told AFP news agency the timing of the award was "provocative".

But Archbishop Desmond Tutu and U2 singer Bono welcomed Mrs Sirleaf's honouring, with Mr Tutu telling AFP: "Woo hoo. She deserves it many times over. She's brought stability to a place that was going to hell."

Her compatriot Mrs Gbowee was a leading critic of the violence during the Liberian civil war, mobilising women across ethnic and religious lines in peace activism and encouraging them to participate in elections.

In 2003 she led a march through the capital, Monrovia, demanding an end to the rape of women by soldiers.

The Nobel Committee said she had "worked to enhance the influence of women in West Africa during and after war".

Mrs Gbowee told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme: "I am confused. I am humbled. This is the first time in the 39 years of my life that I am out of words.

"This is a victory for women rights everywhere in the world. What could be better then three women winning the prize?

"This is the recognition that we hear you, we see you, we acknowledge you."

The women will share the $1.5m (£1m) prize money.

The BBC's world affairs correspondent Mike Wooldridge says that the Nobel Peace Prize originally recognised those who had already achieved peace, but that its scope has broadened in recent years to encourage those working towards peace and acknowledge work in progress.

The Nobel committee received a record 241 nominations for this year's prize - among the individuals and groups believed to have been put forward were the European Union, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and key cyber dissidents in the Arab Spring movement.

Where are the "women" of the world? Why are they not protesting the take over of the use of their gender by "weemin"[third kind]?

Seek the bezoar Panada Lite

ARMENIA

The broken relief of Armenia, together with the fact that its highland lies at the junction of various bio graphic regions, has produced a great variety of landscapes. Though a small country, Armenia boasts more plant species (in excess of 3,000) than the vast Russian Plain. There are five altitudinal vegetation zones: semi desert, steppe, forest, alpine meadow, and high-altitude tundra.

The semi desert landscape, ascending to an elevation of 4,300 to 4,600 feet, consists of a slightly rolling plain covered with scanty vegetation, mostly sagebrush. The vegetation includes drought-resisting plants such as juniper, adder, gurza (a venomous snake), scorpion, and, more rarely, the leopard inhabit region.

Steppes predominate in Armenia. They start at altitudes of 4,300 to 4,600 feet, and in the northeast they ascend to 6,200 to 6,600 feet. In the the central region they reach 6,600 to 7,200 feet and in the south are found as high as 7,900 to 8,200 feet. In the lower altitudes the steppes are covered with drought-resistant grasses, while the mountain slopes are overgrown with thorny bushes and juniper.

The forest zone lies in the southeast of Armenia, at altitudes of 6,200 to 6,600 feet, where the humidity is considerable, and also in the northeast, at altitudes of 7,200 to 7,900 feet. Occupying nearly one-tenth of Armenia, the northeastern forest are largely beech. Oak forests predominate in the southeastern regions, where the climate is drier, and in the lower part of the forest zone hackberry, pistachio, honeysuckle, and dogwood grow. The animal kingdom is represented by the Syrian bear, wildcat, lynx, and squirrel. Birds - woodcock, robin, warbler, titmouse, and woodpecker - are numerous.

The alpine zones lies above 6,600 feet, with stunted grass providing good summer pastures. The fauna is rich; the abundant bird life includes the mountain turkey, horned lark, and bearded vulture, while the mountains also harbour the bezoar goat and the mountain sheep, or mouflon.

Finally, the alpine tundra, with its scant cushion plants, covers only limited mountain areas and solitary peaks.


Settlement patterns

One the more important of the distinctive regions of Armenia is the Ararat Plain and its surrounding foothills and mountains. This prosperous and densely populated area is the centre of Armenia's economy and culture and traditionally the seat of its government institutions.

The other regions are the Shirak Steppe, the elevated northwestern plateau zone that is Armenia's granary; Gugark, high plateaus, ranges, and deep valleys of the northeast, covered with forests, farmlands, and alpine pastures; the Seven Basin, the hollow containing Lake Sevan, on the shores of which are farmlands, villages, and towns; Vayk, essentially the basin of the Arpa River; and Zangezur (Siuniq) in the extreme southeast. This last region is a maze of gorges and river valleys cutting through high ranges. It is an area rich in ores, with fields and orchards scattered here and there in the valleys and on the mountainsides.

The population density is highest in the Ararat Plain. The river valleys in the southeast and northeast are the next most densely populated areas. Half the population is concentrated in the zone marked by an upper altitudinal limit of 3,300 feet, which makes up only about one-tenth of the entire territory. Many people also live in the foothills, at altitudes of 3,300-4,900 feet, and in the mountains (4,900-6,600 feet). These regions account for a further third of the entire population. The high ranges and mountains are lightly populated; no ones resides above 7,800 feet.

Fundamental changes in the distribution of Armenia's population have been caused by the urbanization resulting from economic growth, particulary from the country's industrialization. Before the Russian Revolution, Armenia's four cities- Erevan (now Yerevan), Alexandropol (Gyumri), Kamo, and Goris - accounted for about one-tenth of the total population. Two-thirds of the population are now urbanized.

The high country to the north of Shirak and in the ZAngezur region has small hamlets that lie in secluded glens, on river banks, and near springs; in the plains, such settlements cluster around mountain streams and irrigation canals, amid orchards and vineyards.


Coprolite

the fossilized excrement of animals. The discovery of the true nature of this material was made by the English geologist William Buckland, who observed that certain convoluted bodies occurring in the Lias (rock strata of Early Jurassic age, 187 to 208 million years old) Gloucestershire had a form that would have been produced by their passage in the soft state through the intestines of reptiles or fishes. These bodies had long been known as fossil fir cones and bezoar stones. Buckland's conjecture that they were of fecal origin and similar to the excrement of hyenas was confirmed on analysis; they were found to consist essentially of calcium phosphate and carbonate and not infrequently contained fragments of unaltered bone. The name coprolites (from Greek kopros, "dung"; and lithos, "stone") was accordingly given them Buckland.




Glen E.P.Kealey
Canadian Institute for Political Integrity (CIPI)