This week, a video has been circulating claiming to show a herd of bison “running for their lives” out of Yellowstone National Park. The suggestion has been that the animals are sensing imminent danger associated with a volcano in the area.
But there’s just one problem: park officials told Reuters that the video actually shows the bison galloping into the park, not out of it.
Below is what appears to be the most popular version, which includes some alarming claims:
“It was a spring-like day and they were frisky. Contrary to online reports, it’s a natural occurrence and not the end of the world,” park spokeswoman Amy Bartlett told the outlet.
In fact, one person who claims to be the person behind the original video (many versions have been posted) of the bison running included a detailed description of where the event occurred, and said it’s actually an annual occurrence:
March 14, 2014 — This herd of Yellowstone National Park Bison dashes from Mammoth Hot Springs eastward along the roadway and deeper into the park. If the herd matriarch gets the urge to run, she will … and the entire herd will run to keep up.
I’ve been lucky enough to live and work here year-round in Yellowstone National Park since 2010, and every Spring I am blessed to witness them running … in a celebration of life, in a celebration of the coming richness of the Spring Season … and running for the sheer joy of being able to!
The spreading anxiety was caused by baseless rumors and deliberate misrepresentations of what those bison were actually doing in the video, according to Leo Leckie, a sales associate of the nonprofit Yellowstone Assn., an educational partner of Yellowstone National Park.
Leckie ought to know. He shot the video, which lasts 1 minute and 9 seconds and was originally posted March 14 on his Facebook page under the title, “Yellowstone bison on the run for the joy of Spring.”
“Those bison were running for the sake of running,” Leckie said in an interview Thursday. “There was nothing chasing them. There was no mudslide. They were just running.”
Added Leckie: “And they were running into the park, not away from it.”
The park also published a video with a fuller explanation saying that, during the dead of winter, the animals will drop to lower elevations and even wander outside the park in order to find food. When spring returns, they flood back into the park:s for volcanic and seismic activity, the official video explains that the area experiences thousands of earthquakes a year, but many of them are very small. But Al Nash, the chief of public affairs at the park, did say that the park experienced its biggest earthquake (4.8) in 30 years on Sunday.
Still, he says, that’s no cause for worry.
“We have seen no signs to suggest the Yellowstone volcano is about to erupt,” he said.
Peter Cervelli, associate director for science and technology at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Volcano Science Center in California and a scientist with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, agrees.
“The chance of that happening in our lifetimes is exceedingly insignificant,” he told Reuters.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
No comments:
Post a Comment