www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Alaska Village Reject Free Venezuelan Oil

The villiagers in the story linked below rejected CITGO's offer of free oil after President Chavez insulted President Bush before the UN General Assembly. As at least one of the villaage leaders has a Russian Christian name these may be Orthodox Aleuts. In any case, I applaud there stand.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061009/ap_on_re_us/oil_from_chavez

Why is Alaskan Oil the highest in the nation when the oil is piped and mined from Alaska?

I understand the distaste for Chavez and his over-the-top rhetoric, but shouldn't the state selling oil to oil companies give its own people a small discount or a cheap rate?


Edit:
By the way, doesn't President Bush use the same rhetoric when referring to the leaders of N. Korea, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Cuba or whatever other nation he opposes?

"Axis of Evil", "Evil dictator", etc... just today I heard a right-wing spinner refer to the leader of N. Korea as "Kim Jong mentally-ill" - as if that snappy soundbyte means anything...

That's what the Scots say about their oil. They say that they are poorer since the discovering of oil off of their coast than they were before. No wonder some Scots want independence. Maybe Alaska should sue for independence as well.

CDL

Oil and gasoline prices in Alaska are expensive because it needs to be shipped in from the lower 48 States. Oil from the ground needs to be refined into fuel oil (to heat homes) and gasoline. There are no refineries in Alaska. The environmentalists do not want them there.

The State of Alaska distributes $800 to each resident each year from the profits on the sale of oil. Indigenous groups get more.

Sound like a good idea to me. Let's give Alaskans, Texans, and other oil producing states a 'price break' while charging peoples from non oil producing states such as New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania 'premium pricing' (ie: higher than 'average') to make up the difference it costs to produce the product. Yeah ! that's sounds like a great idea .

I.F.

P.S: I'm no big fan of president Bush, but I applaud all those people who have in recent days stood in solidarity with him. The Venezualian president's comments were directed at ALL Americans and there should be no mistake about that.

I'm from an oil refining state and I pay some of the highest prices in the country already. Why do you assume that non-oil producing/refining states don't already pay more than others? Texas has the cheapest fuel and oil rates in the country.

As for Chavez's comments, no they were not directed at all Americans - he has stated that repeatedly at all his propagandized speeches - that he has nothing but respect for the American people, he just personally hates George W. Bush.

MSNBC [msnbc.msn.com] : USAToday [usatoday.com] Of course, I realize this whole thing is nothing more than hype and propaganda, but it's the same thing President Bush does in regard to other nations. Do you applaud the Cubans, Iranians, Syrians, N. Koreans, and others for standing with their leaders when the US criticizes them as "evil"?

There is no moral equivalency between the United States and Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea and many other countries.

President Bush is absolutely correct when he calls the leaders of these countries evil.

Is the United States advocating forced communism like Castro has done for the past 50 years?

Is the United States advocating the murder of all the Jews like Iran continually does?

Is the United States funding groups like Iran funds Hizbollah to launch rockets to kill innocent Jews, Christians and Muslims who live in the state of Israel?

Does the United States keep nuclear weapons for offensive purposes? Iran�s president has openly stated he wants a nuclear weapon to take out all of the Jews at once. North Korea wants one to use to threaten South Korea to become communist.

I could go on and on. You can disagree with tactics that President Bush has used. You cannot claim that his intentions to keep America safe and spread freedom are evil. They are not in any way the moral equivalent to Chavez, Iran or any of the other countries with evil leaders.

9/11 did not happen because America is an evil nation. It happened because some Moslems want us dead because we are seen as a Christian nation.

What impresses me is that those who seem offended thus rejecting the Venezuelan oil, seem to be the Eskimo and Native-American communities. They feel offended because a foreign leader has insulted the head of their own opressors.

Fiery village politics, no matter how hot they become, don't provide adequate heat to one's home and family!

Practicality and common sense should prevail and the Aleuts and other economically depressed minorities in Alaska and in other "freezer" States of the Union should swallow their patriotic pride and grab this rare opportunity while it lasts. At least, just for this winter! :p

Pick up the political issues again in Spring or in Summer, when the heat emanated by evil diatribes and international upmanship tend to rise correspondingly with the Fahrenheit degrees!

Amado

Oppressors? Just who are the oppressors here? This isn�t Mexico where government policies are so oppressive that people need to leave the country in order to feed themselves. If you want to see oppression go to Mexico, or even worse, go to Cuba or Venezuela.

The Alaskans are right to reject the assistance of Chavez. He is only offering it to score a political hit on the United States. It�s embarrassing that some people would sell their country out just for temporary economic advantage. Of course there are those who accepted money from Hitler and praised him while knowing he was busy killing Jews. But, hey! They got some cash so to hell with principles.

Chavez is a nasty dictator who has attacked the Catholic Church in Venezuela. Chavez has the right, under a concordat with the Vatican, to approve any episcopal appointment to andy see in Venezuela and has refused to approve Vatican appointments, leaving several sees vacant.

Chavez shut down the Catholic TV station in Caracas.

Chavez has provided support to the Marxist Colombian FARC (John FARC Kerry was quoted as making excuses for them). The FARC engages in kidnapping for profit, assasination, and drug trafficking throughout Colombia. They tried on several occasions to kill Colombian President Alavaro Uribe.

Chavez is a reprehensible, nasty, totalitarian wannabe who worships at the feet of Fidel Castro. There is no room for any compliments for such a man in a Catholic message board.

Dear "CJ", 'Mexican' may know more than he is alluding to. In the early 1900's the US Federal Gov't in fact DID persecute native Alaskan tribes, and other settlers there. They actually sent Protestant 'missionaries' to 'Christianize'...IE...'convert' the Orthodox peoples who were brought into the One Holy Apostolic Church by Russian monks, namely St Herman of Alaska and others. They forced children to deny the Traditional faith and accept various heterodox schismatic sects, namely Presbyterian reform theology and practice. If you should pick up a book "Orthodox Alaska" by Fr. Michael Oleksa, you will find such cited in the latter chapters. This treachery is akin to the dispicable treatment by the US towards Native Americans, ...have you not taken your children to Cherokee, NC..? You, and they would get an education into how Pres Andrew Jackson, in opposition to the Supreme Court, treated the Cherokee nation. The scrappy ones refused to surrender and headed for the hills of the western Smokies, and their decendants are there to this day. They even developed their own written language, based on Latin lettering, with unique variations. That is not unlike Sts Kyril and Methodi who brought the Apostolic faith to my Slavic ancestors in the 10th century. That resulted in the 'Cyrillic' alphabet in use today in all Eastern Slav countries. God be praised. End of today's lesson. s Bohom, mik the 2 cent'er

I'm sure the majority of the people of other nations feel the same way about their leaders calling Pres. Bush "evil". Chavez, for example, was elected in just as Pres. Bush was.

The US has done its share in keeping Cuba poor, no denying that.

That is a strawman argument. Iran has never advocated killing of "all Jews", especially not Ahmedinajad. There have been individual Iranians who have stated that as their position, just as we have US citizens who are klansmen...

The US is funding Israeli rockets, tanks, and bullets to kill innocent Christians and Muslims in Palestine, Lebanon, and Israel.

Preemptive strike is offense.

Where? When?

South Korea is more concerned with the US than N. Korea, the Koreans themselves have stated that.

I disagree. If we can judge Chavez "evil", he can do the same to the US President. I don't think either are "evil", and I think that word is used to intertwine God into politics and is nothing but propaganda no matter who uses it.

No, that again is the US view of the matter. The people who are against the US policies abroad have stated that it is because of evils like "abortions, sex, western immoralities" and because of US military intervention in Saudi Arabia (what these extremists call the "holy land of Muslims"). If the US was a Christian nation, it wouldn't support immoral acts. The United States is not a Christian nation, it is a secular nation and it always has been (although the nation's citizens are majority Christian).

OPPRESSORS? Yeah right. These folks are more free than those south of our border. I dont see multitudes of Eskimos coming across our northern borders in the hundreds of thousands. Who is the oppressor? Mr. Fox or Mr. Bush?

The majority of Inuit are Alaskan Americans or Canadian citizens, why would they come across any border?