Chavez’s oil has nothing to do with his barbs at Bush

I’ll be burning Hugo Chavez’s oil this winter to stay warm.

While I personally am not eligible to receive the Venezuelan oil Chavez has donated to low-income Native Americans in Alaska, my roommate is. Because she’s Tlingit, a native tribe located in Southeast Alaska and western Canada, we’ll be warming ourselves during the cold Alaskan winter with oil donated by a man who has called US President George W. Bush more nasty names than Hillary Clinton.


Frankly, I don’t care if some people bluster on about it being un-American to accept oil from a country whose leader routinely vilifies the US, calls its leader the “devil” and generally runs around wielding its energy resources like a weapon.

I would be beyond angry, however, if I was Venezuelan. Chavez suffered a surprising defeat during a referendum earlier this month, which would have taken the country down the road towards a more socialist-leaning government than it has now. Why? Well, not everyone is happy with the government’s management of the economy. I can’t imagine why.

But with a hair below 38 per cent of the Venezuelan population below the property line – compared to only 11.2 per cent in Alaska – I’d be pretty grumpy if my supposedly Socialist-leaning government was handing out freebies in the other, generally richer, hemisphere just to take a pretty ineffective potshot at a fellow president.

Gulf News