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Citgo, Sheehan and Chavez... oh my
©2006 The Media Desk
http://themediadesk.com
Believe it or not it is true.... for as far as it goes.
It is true that Citgo is the American subsidiary of the Venezuelan state owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela.
Also true is the fact that Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela is one of the most vocal Anti-American voices in this hemisphere.
And it is also true that Cindy Sheehan, the spokesmodel for the anti Iraqi war movement and darling of the Democratic powers in congress was a featured guest on Chavez's program on the Venezuelan state run TV network.
The only real question is what exactly does that say about the anti-war people in this country?
The call for a boycott of Citgo has some basis in reality, however, a total boycott by everybody in this country of the company would mainly hurt the four thousand or so Americans that work at the stations, the ones that drive the supply trucks, the employees at the company's US refineries and ports, at its headquarters offices in Houston and so on.
If we as Americans were to boycott every company that was owned or subsidized by a country that was Anti-American, we wouldn't buy anything at Wal Mart because the majority of their products are from Communist China. We wouldn't buy any fuel other than natural gas or coal because of the chance that some of it would be from Mexico or Saudi Arabia or any other Middle Eastern country. Nobody would drink French wine, use Canadian lumber, Turkish tobacco and so on and so forth.
For more on the email see the famous Snopes.com or BreakTheChain.org
Bottom line: Use some common sense both on your business dealings and Email forwardings...
The example email below was forwarded with over 150 WORKING email addresses still in the header from all of its previous forwardings.
Part of the email panic spam below.
Cindy Sheehan & Hugo Chavez
Venezuela Dictator Vows To Bring Down U.S. Government
Venezuela government is sole owner of Citgo gasoline company
Venezuela Dictator Hugo Chavez has vowed to bring down the U.S. government. Chavez, president of Venezuela, told a TV audience: "Enough of imperialist aggression; we must tell the world: down with the U.S. empire. We have to bury imperialism this century."
The guest on his television program, beamed across Venezuela, was Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar activist. Chavez recently had as his guest Harry Belafonte, who called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world."
Chavez is pushing a socialist revolution and has a close alliance with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Regardless of your feelings about the war in Iraq, the issue here is that we have a socialist dictator vowing to bring down the government of the U.S. And he is using our money to achieve his goal!
The Venezuela government, run by dictator Chavez, sole owner of Citgo gas co. Sales of products at Citgo stations send money back to Chavez to help him in his vow to bring down our government.