"petitioned President Vladimir Putin, the heads of both chambers of the Russian Parliament, and the Russian Foreign Minister requesting the return of Spruce Island to the church.”He claims documents found in Juneau by a Russian who fled the Revolution in 1917 show the island was given to the Russian Orthodox Church when Russia sold Alaska to the US.
Bloomberg disputes this claim.
But NPR reported (on April 1, but claiming it was not an April Fool's Joke):
A recent petition written in clunky English on the official White House Website seeks Alaska seeks Alaska's secession and return to Russia.While the Alaska Independence Party has long called for Alaska's independence from the US, there's nothing on their website about being annexed by Russia, and even they aren't so detached from reality to exchange the US for Russia.
So far, it has generated more than 37,000 signatures — or more than a third of the 100,000 needed to get the Obama administration to formally respond.
A Moscow Times article, which gives a long history and quotes a Kenai College history professor, says they didn't get a response from our governor on this issue.
Alaska's official policy regarding Russian claims on the state remains unclear — the offices of the current Alaska Governor Sean Parnell and former Governor Palin did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.I'm pretty sure the governor's position is very clear. I think annexation to Russia is one thing both Republicans and Democrats would unite against. And I suspect that the US military presence in Alaska is a wee bit stronger than the Ukrainian force in the Crimea.
Steve, my response may not be constrained to your post but I do think it has its moments. Please bear with me.
ReplyDeleteThere are times reading your blog, absent now seven years from Alaska and the United States, that I find a new idiom, a story or American personality I don’t know well, or at all. I just don’t have the cultural, political, or economic context -- the what's hot or not feel of a place I once called home. Perhaps it's a bit like being at a live concert versus watching it on a borrowed cell phone.
Given that, yesterday I was asked by a neighbour to help him see the ‘American point of view' on a legal matter. Interestingly, I found myself wanting to beg off this small favour. After all, what I know about the US these days comes from books, papers, social media and YouTube clips.
Then it hit me: Leaving one's country is necessarily about arriving elsewhere. Emigration becomes immigration.
So cheers and all the best with Russia; I have to take lunch in Bloomsbury.
The Russian Orthodox Church had seven years after the lands of Spruce Island were awarded mostly to the Ouzinkie Native Corporation (which received therm as part of ANCSA, in 1971, 45 years ago) to make a claim. They did not.
ReplyDeleteI'm really getting tired of the Russophobian convenient enemy de jour meme.
"It's like déjà vu all over again" [Thanks to Yogi Berra]
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