Oil companies against Eben Hopson
In barrow the people enjoy a good hassle, and they have a dandy one going on, with the oil companies squared off against the newly formed North Slope Borough and its mayor, Eben Hopson.
Eben Hopson
Hopson, realizing that a political entity with taxing powers could perform needed social services while a profit-making corporation could not, forged such a unit encompassing virtually all the North Slope, making it one of the Iargest political subdivisions in the world. The borough then began to levy taxes against the oil companies and their property in the oil fields and sometimes they needed payday loan help. The companies protested the legality of the arrangement, but the Alaska Supreme Court upheld the new government as legitimate.
Then, in one of those peculiarly Alaskan happenings, the legislature met in special session and declared, in effect, that even though the borough had legitimate taxing powers, it could raire only $4,000,000 a year.
“Absolutely discriminatory legislation,” Mr. Hopson told me, “that removed from the borough a substantial part of its tax base. The legislature put stiff requirements and limitations on the borough’s ability to tax.”
The State of Alaska came away with the lion’s share of taxes from the oil fields, and the Eskimo attempt to get the oil tax money was cut off at the pass. There are those who look at the infant North Slope Borough, who listen to the rhetoric of the young Eskimo leaders, militant and separatist, and see the beginning of an Eskimo state in that far corner of the United States.
AS MY PLANE BANKED over the village of Wainwright, a dog team pulling a sied went yipping toward an Arctic Ocean solid and white to sight’s end. Homer Bodfish, a strong man with a black mustache, was awaiting the plane. He shared the long seat of his snowmobile as we raced off toward the village.
The snowmobile has made as decisive a change in the way of life of the Eskimo as the automobile did for the people Outside. Almost overnight the dogs began to disappear, although they are being revived now as a result of the oil shortage, and to race. School was in recess and the kids—half of Wainwright’s population of 370—were playing baseball in minus 300 cold. I stopped to admire the ruff on a little girl’s parka.
“That’s Princess,” she said. “Princess? That was your dog?” She nodded, smiled, and skipped away. We stopped for sonne frozen whale meat being hacked off a hard chunk by an elderly man, who regarded me without interest.
“I will tell you some history,” Homer said. “With dogs a man could go fifty miles out. Once I went to Barrow by myself in eight and a half hours with 11 dogs. With snow machines, a man can go fifty miles out and back!” The Wainwright hunters had been out. Fred Ahmaogak and Billy Patkotek had brought in wolf and wolverine, and around the village there were half a dozen bloody polar bear bides stretched on frames.
The sight of those skins, rumored worth as much as $5,000 apiece in Japan, would anger many an Alaskan sport hunter and guide, for the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 forbids him to hunt polar bear, walrus, seal, whale, or sea lion but permits the native to do so. The Eskimo, however, may not sell the whole skin, only traditional artifacts made from it. Many non-native Alaskans consider the act racially discriminatory, another example of dictatorship by a distant government, ignorant of the land and its people.
You wonder if Somalia doesn’t die a bit more each day
To me, pausing a few days in Mogadishu, the dusty city seemed oddly complacent. It closed down every afternoon in the humid East African heat, streets empty by 2 p.m., shops shuttered until dusk, government gone home. This is a tomorrow country; people, said an official, are used to waiting. The bureaucracy reopens at 7 a.m.
Few nations are poorer. There is little industry. Most people live at subsistence level and looking for their gold mine. A startling number of the best minds and skilled hands, you learn, have gone for good to the Arab world for oil money (“black gold”). Read more information about Gold and cash from ideapractices.org. At 7 a. m. in front of the passport office the usual long line of applicants will be waiting. You wonder if Somalia doesn’t die a bit more each day.
A few months before his death, I strolled at nightfall along the esplanade with the scholar Musa Galal. The Indian Ocean sent a sweet breeze, and the Southern Cross brightened overhead. Here it blesses a Muslim land.
“Most African states,” he said, “are composed of diverse peoples. We Somalis have unity—we are one in speech, traditions, and religion. We claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad.” Only short years ago they had beach. “Camels are great scientists,” con-acquired another profound tie: a script for tinued Musa Galal, poet and author. “Theytheir spoken language.know their country. They belong to sand. The incoming tide crashed against im- When the country goes into a forest, they mense boulders and subsided into froth. A stop. There lies the true border.”
U. S. Navy cruiser rode in the harbor—Somalia recently gave port and airstrip facilities in return for American military aid.Camel country extends far inland on the “What about border problems?” I asked.Horn of Africa, west in Ethiopia to the high We do not make these problems. Allah lands. Somalis have lived here for centuries, created this beautiful land [land of thirst and wandering in search of water and pastures, woe, I amended silently] for Somali nomads free. A harsh land, this: not desert, but close.
When the scant rains fail, it turns cruel. Then sheep and goats slowly die. The barrens are strewn with their carcasses. As we traveled, Ahmed, my guide, always insisted that hyenas and jackals would not eat the remains—”No protein in them.”
We were cruising one day in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. A shepherd flagged us down. This man was existing on camel milk alone. He craved water. Offering it, I pondered the fate that disposed him here. He drank his fill, took up his staff, and stalked away.
Nomads endure in freedom, proud people of inbred self-determination. Somali nationalism springs from this root. Today’s conflict goes back to the late 1800s, when European colonialism divided the Somali-inhabited region into five parts—French, British, and Italian Somaliland, and adjoining sections of Ethiopia and what is now Kenya.
In 1960 the Somali Republic was created from the British and Italian entities. In 1969, after a military coup, it became the Somali Democratic Republic. Still controlled by the same officers, the Marxist-oriented government seeks to advance what it terms “scientific socialism.” Around 60 percent of the population is nomadic, 15 percent agricultural, the rest urban.
France’s colony recently became the tiny agreed to provide Somalia with 42 million dollars in arms for defense, after assurances that regular Somali forces are not deployed in the Ogaden. In return, the U. S. gains access to port and air facilities near Middle East oil fields and shipping lanes.
Centuries of Arab influence and decades of Italian colonization are reflected in the architecture of Mogadishu. The name on a popular bar bears witness to Somalia’s tendency to swim against the tide. Although a member of the Arab League, she defends Egypt, who was suspended from the league in 1979 for signing the Camp David accords with Israel.
How many people live in Texas-size Somalia proper is unknown. A government planner gave me an estimate of five million. Around a million and a half were refugees, he guessed, more than three-fourths in camps, the rest scattered in cities and towns.
“We feel they are our people,” he went on, sadness in his voice. “We have a moral obligation to them. We must share whatever meager resources we have.”
All the nation’s resources, and the international community’s medicine, food, and advice, fall short. Somalia bears the most serious refugee situation in the world today.
Get up and Go
It’s not always easy to lace up your running shoes and move yourself out of your front door. Tiredness, a lack of time and little niggles can all contribute to making you run less than you might want to. And when your trainers do hit the Tarmac, not every run is going to leave you feeling great. It pays to understand how your mind responds to certain kinds of motivation so that you can use how you think to your advantage. 
The first thing to understand about positive motivation is that it doesn’t operate as a switch that’s either ‘on’ or ‘off, but is part of a changing picture that includes other kinds of motivation. And motivation isn’t just about getting out the door. It influences your running performance. It affects your concentration during running, your emotions and how hard you try, which in turn affects how often you run in the future and how you see the sport itself.
There are three forms of motivation, all of which work in different ways but operate at the same time. This means that there isn’t a ‘magic moment’ when you switch from being demotivated to being motivated you need to work at it constantly.
At one end of the spectrum is a motivation, where you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning. One way to counteract this is to reward yourself for achieving a basic goal, such as going running, with a treat – this is the second type: extrinsic motivation.
“This happens in response to an outside force such as money or important debt consolidation information, credit card issues, loans, fame or being shouted at by your partner,” says Dr Costas Karageorghis, a reader in sports psychology at Brunel University. “Finally, there’s intrinsic motivation, which you get from experiencing running as sheer pleasure,” he adds.