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Why?
Because BP must pay.
Eleven oil workers are dead. One of the largest oil spills in U.S.
history continues to worsen. BP's oil gusher at the floor of the Gulf of
Mexico may be 100 times worse than BP first estimated (and 20 times
worse than the company presently claims). 100 times!
BP's oil gusher is now threatening coastal lands in Louisiana and is almost certain to destroy fisheries and the livelihoods of people who fish and shrimp in the Gulf, or rely on the Gulf for tourism business. The giant plumes of oil deep underwater will exact an unknown toll on sea life. And the spreading oil may even wind up in currents that eventually take it to the U.S. Eastern shores.
BP CEO Tony Hayward is sanguine about the whole problem. The Financial Times quotes him saying, "I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest."
A boycott will send a message to BP that its shoddy oversight of this project and its history of environmental and worker safety violations is unforgivable. Take the BP Boycott Pledge, and commit not to buy gas from BP for at least three months. Go here: www.beyondBP.org
BP cares desperately about its public image. This is the company that has sought to rebrand itself as "Beyond Petroleum." BusinessWeek estimates the BP brand as worth $3.9 billion -- the highest among oil companies. "Not even an Alaskan oil spill or an explosion at a Texas refinery has put a dent in BP's strong [brand] performance," said BusinessWeek in 2006. This time must be different. A boycott will express the organized consumer anger that BP so fears.
This is a company that should fear the public's wrath, for the Deepwater Horizon blowout was a preventable disaster. While much remains unknown, there is mounting evidence that BP could have averted the catastrophe. BP made a conscious decision not to install a $500,000 safety device that could have prevented the blowout. There is good reason to believe BP's contractors on the Deepwater Horizon made multiple mistakes leading up to the disaster, but it is ultimately BP's job to make sure its contractors are exercising sufficient care. And Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon, told 60 Minutes that BP pressured its contractors to skirt other safety measures that might have prevented the disaster.
All this from a company that made $14 billion in profits in 2009 -- a bad year. First quarter profits in 2010 were over $6 billion.
After the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, Tony Hayward reportedly asked why bad things keep happening to BP.
But this is not a case of bad things happening to good people. BP has one of the worst environmental and safety records of any oil company operating in the United States. BP has pled guilty in just the last few years to two crimes and paid more than $730 million in fines, penalties and settlements for environmental crimes, willful disregard for workplace safety and energy market manipulation.
BP sometimes says it will pay for the harms caused by the spill, but at other times hedges what it may be willing to do. There will be litigation and fines, and BP won't have the final say on what it wants to pay. In any case, cash compensation for economic harms caused -- while necessary -- doesn't bring back destroyed ecosystems and does little to mitigate the company's culpability for not preventing the blowout in the first place.
The only good that can come out of the BP disaster is if it forces the United States to fundamentally reorient energy policy. As a matter of simple common sense, the Obama administration should reverse its new policy and stop offshore drilling expansion. More fundamentally, BP's oil gusher is yet another reminder of the need for a massive shift away from fossil fuels and to investments in efficiency and renewable energy. The disaster also emphasizes how crucial it is to hold Big Oil accountable. The BP boycott is a way to start.
There are no "good" oil companies, but BP is a particularly bad and
irresponsible actor. Consumers should make it pay. Take the BP Boycott
Pledge:
124 Comments so far
Show AllPledge to not buy gas from BP for 3 months ... what!?!?!?
BOYCOTT PLUS!
SUPERSIZE BOYCOTT!
BOYCOTT period! No time limit. Put them out of business. They deserve nothing less.
They do deserve more however. How about JAIL for those responsible for making any decision relating to the Gulf disaster. That just may include some people in government and government agencies along with BP, Halliburton and Transocean.
That's unlikely to happen. It'll probably turn out like the bankster and Wall Street gangster creative destruction of our country, only to be bailed out on the threat of furthering the destructive forces and then profitting immensely from both sides of the fence.
Ok I tried. I clicked the blue words and the site did not come up. The response was "no documents match..."
Which gas stations have BP gas? Is their name on the building? If it is we don't have them in the northeast unless they go by another name.
We have them in Pennsylvania. I will never knowingly ever make another purchase of a BP provided product. They make more than gasoline, folks. Boycott ALL of their products.
From www.bp.com
BP comprises a number of internationally recognized and respected brands: BP, ARCO, ampm, Aral and Castrol.
We use the BP and Amoco brand names in the USA east of the Rocky Mountains and ARCO to the west. We have kept the Aral name for use in Germany.
In North America, we are the second largest fuels' marketer, with its Amoco Ultimate gasoline providing the highest premium grade ratio.
BP also operates the "bp connect" and "Wild Bean Cafe" convenience stores.
The high-performance engineering polymers portfolio to be sold includes the full span of BP Amoco's world-class line of thermoplastics and speciality polymers, known by the brand names of Udel, Radel, Amodel, Xydar, Torlon, and Kadel. BP Amoco's engineering polymers have applications in the automotive, aerospace, industrial, medical and electronics industries, among others.
___________________-
Okay. Lots of brand names to boycott, found not just at BP gas stations. Look for the BP logo or other information on the package that shows BP is the manufacturer.
I wouldn't buy a quart of Castrol. But the idea of castor oil as a local small-scale enterprise is excellent. Castor oil is the best engine lubricant on the planet. It's far better than petro-gunk. You can get a group of people together and contract with a local small farmer to produce a gallon of castor oil for each per year. If you use more than that you're probably driving too much. Oh and don't eat the castor beans.
When I was a kid some asshole doctor told my mother to give me a teaspoon of castor oil daily. I never knew why. I was very young, maybe two years old, but that is one of the traumatic things a kid will remember all his life. I finally won out. My mother got tired of the kicking and screaming. I finally had to go at her like a rabid cat and I think she just had enough. Don't eat the castor beans indeed.
How funny. Castor oil daily: you're right, your doctor was an asshole. But castor our in coordination with Gerson Diatetics is a wonderful health aid...many times life extending as well as life enhancing.
>>
There will be litigation and fines, and BP won't have the final say on what it wants to pay.
<<
Thanks for the laugh.
Consider me on the lifetime boycott list.
Along with Chevron and Exxon.
We can take them down one at a time.
If we were in a distant Latin American country, like Ecuador, BP would expect to get away with this and continue making profits, like Chevron/Toxico. Maybe this marine holocaust will cause America to wake up to a story that's been around for quite some time. It was brought up by John Perkins in his e-newsletter this morning:
http://www.oilwatchmesoamerica.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2000&Itemid=78
On CD too:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/15
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/04/07-5
Boycott all gasoline.
We need to move away from fossil fuels in general. They are destroying the planet and causing global warming.
Electric vehicles may really be running on coal.
We need to invest in renewable energy, not war.
End all US wars. End our military outposts around the world. Eliminate the CIA. That's where the money is--the military machine sucks about 60 percent of the US budget. It must end and we must move away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy, more efficiency, less consumption, and greater energy efficiency.
End the military and retool for a future to be possible!
Bicycle paths, green belts, parks and pedestrian-only zones for walking, federal subsidies only to solar, wind, hemp, algae. When I think of my wish list, I always wonder about horse & buggy. Is that just too unrealistic? You see them in tourist areas of cities, like downtown around the riverwalk here in San Antonio. Since downtown streets are sometimes one way, alternating directions every other street, couldn't we have horse and buggy only streets in between car streets? I imagine that it would lead to so many new small horse transportation businesses displacing giant multinational energy corporations, and more veterinary jobs, and green spaces for the horses to graze on. There would be jobs for people to collect the horse manure and sell it to gardeners.
One place I visited, I saw a guy with a 2-passenger rickshaw. His price was 10.00 per hour, which seemed really low to me, compared to what limo companies charge. When I saw him, people were all around him, wanting to hire him, but he already had two little old ladies as his clients for that whole day. They were inside a museum and he was resting.
We got a lot of sidewalks and biking paths in VA Beach even when some of the anti-tax zealots complained about sidewalks and bicycle paths costing taxpayers. In warm and congenial weather, bikes and hose buggies can be great.
Boycott all fossil fuels. And nuclear. Only one way to do that- get off the energy tit.
I just logged onto the official BP website--www.bp.com--and clicked on the "Environment and Society" tab. I learned many important things by reading about the following topics:
"HOW WE OPERATE
Governance and management systems that help us conduct our business responsibly
"SAFETY
Our framework for achieving the safe, reliable operations integral to our success
"ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
The systems, standards and technologies we apply to minimize our environmental footprint
"ENERGY CHALLENGES AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Delivering secure, affordable energy while addressing the global issue of climate change
"ALTERNATIVE ENERGY
Developing large-scale businesses towards a low-carbon future
"DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNITY
Making a positive difference to the societies we work in brings mutual advantage"
I am now aware that BP is doing everything it possibly can to operate its business safely and responsibly--and, above all, to minimize its negative environmental impacts. It is even putting a massive amount of resources into developing non-carbon alternative energy supplies to prepare for the future. That is very socially conscious of them! Most of all, BP is instilling joy in the hearts of Americans coast to coast by offering nothing but cheerful, honest service in every way to each citizen of this great country, the home of free enterprise.
It looks like the boycott already succeeded beyond our wildest dreams! What more could we ask?
Oh joyous rapture, I'm feelin' better already. Such welcome news on the heals of Don Blankenship's affirmation of his company's ongoing dedication to worker safety and environmental responsibility. I felt so good with all of this that I went outside and threw up on the cat.
The BP just up the road here seems in the habit of starving the operators/lessees of their operation. BP put up a shiny new sign but most of the card readers at the pumps quit working years ago and haven't been fixed, there are no paper towels or windshield washing fluid at the islands, and I swear that several of their pumps should be investigated by the County Auditor for incorrect readings.
There are BP's all over here. It will be inconvenient, but I'll boycott. Other options I've considered over the years would not be smiled upon by Nepolitano's minions.
On US 5 in California from the Oregon border south, at just about every town, are these choices, Arco (BP),) Shell, Exxon, or Chevron, sometimes a Valero or a 76 (Conoco-Phillips);
Are there any sustainable, green, socially conscious, oil companies? (that's not a serious question because I know the answer).
exxon owns valero, use citgo if you can- its socialist gas/ Venezuela ... its tough tho;
Right, I've used Citgo for the past several years, convincing myself the money is going to the people of Venezuela rather than to a handful of billionaires. I don't know if I'm right or not, but every two weeks or so when I'm forced to buy gas my ever-socialist heart feels better.
The original question is legit --- are there any oil companies less reprehensible than others? Even a safety history that looks better?
I've said this before, but again, we need to look to Cuba to see what a post-oil future looks like and how to make the best of it. But what a waste of time --- there's no way Americans will be foresighted enough or altruistic enough to do anything other than drown in their own arrogance. (If I could give Cubans some advice, I'd say close their borders, so to speak ---- we may all want to be in Cuba if the worst happens.)
In the meantime, calls for individual sacrifice are naive at best and annoyingly condescending at worst; if we don't approach these problems as a country, we are in serious trouble.
"there's no way Americans will be foresighted enough or altruistic enough to do anything other than drown in their own arrogance." True enough. That the species will ultimately "drown in it's own arrogance", seems to be hardwired into our DNA. We're not even making token gestures toward the sorts of changes that might save us from a truly gruesome end.
"(If I could give Cubans some advice, I'd say close their borders, so to speak ---- we may all want to be in Cuba if the worst happens.)" True again. Even now the southern tide is beginning to reverse. A veritable wave of retired/retiring Americans are moving to Mexico--not least because health care is actually affordable there. I'm not sure it would be advised for the younger generations though; things are going to start going down hill fast fairly soon, and they will get bad in the poorer countries first.
I think you may be mistaken that Exxon owns Valero. Valero bought out Diamod Shamrock and is an independant refiner located in San Antonio, Texas. They have a unique refining process that utilizes the lower grades of crude oil.
I do agree with patronizing Citgo. The profits made by this company go mainly back into Venezuela's society and are used to fund schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. Of course that's the very reason Hugo Chavez is so demonized here in America. He has established a socialistic government that works for the people rather than a small group of elite ultra rich pigs, and as such, the U.S. must label him a communist dictator in order for him to be demonized by the American public. After all, if the American people saw that the people of Venezuela are happier than most here in the U.S., the American people would demand a similar system that treats them like human beings rather that consumer slaves. My daughers actually were telling me one night last week how evil Chavez is, and I asked them why they felt that way. The said that had read mothing but bad about him in the newspapers and hear nothing but bad on the MSM. When I told them what Chavez actually did for the Venezuelan people, they changed their mind very quickly and learned once again that they cannot trust what their government ot press tell them. Upon returning to class, one of them spoke with their political science professor and he told them basically the same thing I did.
On a side note, both of my daughters begin college this past year at Texas State University (used to be Southwest Texas State University), a fairly progressive school when it comes to politics. On the first day of classes, they were given a poll asking whether they considered themselves politically conservative or liberal. Both said they view their policial ideals as progressive, and noted along side the poll question that they wouldn't be caught dead as conservatives. It not only made me proud and feel as if all of the things I have harped about during the Bu$h administration and how the republicans and blue dog democrats in congress have been basically nothing but obstuctionists toward anything Obama tried to pass, progressive or not as well as pathetic liars and frauds. The now view the republikkkan party as the party of self but also have a dismal view of the democratis party as it has become sice Clinton.
Polls of the millenial generation also show that a majority (51%) of this generation also would prefer socialism over capitalism economically and believe that it is our duty as people to help our less fortunate members of society live a confortable life instead of being at the mercy of heartless and selfish greedpigs and that thhe financial industry and corporations should be heavily regulated by government to protect the environment as well as the consumers. It may just be that this generation just now coming of age may be the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
While most young folks seem to be progressive, few seem to remain that way once they reach middle age--at least in the 'red states.' Interesting to be sure.
"After all, if the American people saw that the people of Venezuela are happier than most here in the U.S., the American people would demand a similar system that treats them like human beings rather that consumer slaves"
I'm concerned about USans, but really I'm more concerned about the targeted victims outside the USA, the other 6.5 billion they are trying to herd into the same corral with the USans. Trying to terminate their seeds, destroy their ability to think, replace their reverence for their natural heritage.
On the first day of classes, they were given a poll asking whether they considered themselves politically conservative or liberal.
I would not have answered the question. I'm onboard with most everything else in your comment.
Boycott BP, use a different criminal.
Weissman, what is a boycott of BP going to do??
Journalism sucks in America.
They should be the ones leading Americans to boycott
our addiction to oil.
Only use vehilcles for absolute neccessity,
like back and forth to work and the food store, period.
Stay out of you vehicles !!!!!
Throw the cell phones away !!!
Boycott BP reminds me of the progressive rational for
supporting Opama, they wanted change, but not really,
just a "feel good" about myself feeling and that is ALL
a boycott of BP will get you.
If you really want to send a message, boycott consumerism.
Throw you cell phones away, nobody is going to do that
because very few really want a change, just "feel good"
about themselves little somethings.
My cell phone is gone as soon as the contract expires in a couple months. I don't need to be all that accessible anyway.
I have boycotted consumerism for over 50 years! Don't own a cellphone. We are a one vehicle household. We walk or ride our bicycles whenever possible. We only buy what we absolutely need. We try very hard to not buy new if what we have is repairable or used is available for replacement. We don't use much in the way of electricity ... etc ...
If all ordinary people used their money for impact perhaps things would change. It is the best I can do on a daily basis to make my beliefs impact those who are all too willing to abuse ordinary people.
BOYCOTT!
ORGANIZE!
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE NOW!
SOCIAL JUSTICE NOW!
ECONOMIC JUSTICE NOW!
Nice going Sput, me too. I wish more voices here would join in and confirm their changed lifeways. Any other changed people out there in progressive land? If not, why not!
By simply moving out of sunbelt-suburbia to a Pennsylvania city, my car use declined from 20,000 miles to less than 4000 miles - and I would have gotten rid of the car altogether if it weren't for a hang gliding hobby.
Other alternatives are low-cc motor scooters, or electric versions of same.
Not following the standard 'consumerism' path in the U.S. is downright difficult though. Well, especially where we live. Not just that ... it's family and friends/acquaintances that's the hardest. When we are so different in how we approach life and living, when what is important to us doesn't coincide with that of those around us, when it even provokes anger from others, when we are marginalized for not being what is expected ... etc ... it's just damn difficult being a progressive. And, it's a lot of work! That's probably why most people won't come out and play!
But ... I'm not giving an inch.
Funny thing is ... we traveled all over the place, did all kinds of things and lived quite well and still do ... without cellphones and talking constantly about nonsense ... how is it so impossible today for most of the population? It is something I don't understand ... probably never will.
Just how does throwing a cell phone away but still driving your car send a message to BP?
I see nothing wrong with a boycott. Avoid TA when traveling because they are often a BP station.
Boycotts worked in the civil rights movement and against Apartheid. There is one now against Israeli products.
Boycotts need more support, more advertising, and more people promoting them to succeed.
The longer this disaster goes on the angrier I get!
The incompetence and malfeasance is astonishing. I don't know why I continue to be astonished by anything anymore. How do people make it this far in life to reach the epitome of incompetence? They had to have had a lot of experience in high cost destructive decision making heading up to this point ... just like those responsible for the financial weapons of mass destruction. And nobody smacked 'em down along the way!?!??!?
I remember an incident when I was a kid ~5 years old. I loved going out to the neighborhood pond. Just sitting and watching everything that was going on. The fish and frogs, the polliwogs, the snapping turtles, water snakes, salamanders, all the birds and insects ... they simply amazed me. So one day ... I don't know what got into me ... but I caught a bunch ... frogs, turtles and salamanders ... and brought them home. I set up a bunch of bowls and pans and dishes with water and food ... all around our house. My parents came home and immediately encountered my menagerie. Well ... they explained to me that it wasn't good for the frogs, turtles and salamanders to disrupt their lives. They were very happy living where and how they were living. How were they going to survive in a habitat so foreign? How were they going to survive with food that wasn't good for them? What was going to happen to them and their young?
Well ... I felt so bad ... I mean really bad ... tears and all.
So ... my parents made me carry every single dish and bowl and pan, with all the water, with the turtles, frogs and salamanders, back to the pond and let them go.
It was a lot of work for a small kid. I did it. To say the least, I learned an awful lot from the entire experience. It was a life lesson very early on.
Didn't any of these BP bigshots ever have a life lesson?
All my life I've shared your feelings about nature, Sputnik. Just watching, seeing, encountering, hearing, smelling, draws me into a kind of ecstasy really, whether while crouching at the edge of a pond, swimming in the ocean, or hiking a mountain path. I mourn the loss of habitat which made such beautiful, engaging landscape for us humans.
It's the gulf and shore photos coming out that are making me sick, causing me to grieve the death of a beautiful world, and making me wonder how much more ham fisted humanity this former paradise of a planet can take.
Me too sputnik and Bliss Doubt. Ruined tourist beaches and seafood enterprises cause me only passing sadness. Dead wildlife, whether from oil or habitat destruction or littering our highways overpowers most other things I could be upset about. It defines me and my species as antithetical to life. I live in the middle of a wildlife preserve - a "life lesson" every day. I wish everyone could see things from here.
Compare the lesson you leared from that experience with the lessons that apparently helped George W. Bu$h learn during his youth. Rtaher than catching these critters and being told to release them for their own benefit back to where they came from, Bu$h blew them up with firecrackers. Supposedly, that is an early symptom demonstrated in people who later on in life become serial killers. Apparently, the theory was right on target with Bu$h.
I never knew that about Bush, but I have always known the type. I knew the minute that smirky bastard was elected that a lot of people were gonna die.
"How do people make it this far in life to reach the epitome of incompetence?"
The answer to your question is simple: They are so self-centered that they simply don't care about the wellbeing anyone else!
The quality of their product sucks for years anyhow. I stopped using them literally about ten years ago.
My motorcycle buddies and I renamed them as By Pass (BP), get it?
YAWN ! Let the free markets decide. Thank god for capitalism because without it you can't choose your pumps.
Yawn, NO ACCOUNTABILITY and plenty of stupid people.... YAWN.
Still chewing on that "free markets" myth, huh? Federal subsidies to oil companies, R&D 3 billion per year, military protection of their refineries and shipping lanes worldwide 19 billion per year, tax breaks 7 billion per year. That doesn't scratch the surface. How do you calculate the cost of unjust wars in petroleum rich regions of the world?
Corporate welfare is NOT free market.
Remember that scene in "Independence Day" when they figure out how to translate what the aliens are saying? The President asks them what they want and the alien replies, "we want you to die".
When BP and their mouthpieces in Congress, the White House and the MSM are speaking, catchphrases and buzzwords come out, over and over. It's all code and it is not unreasonable to translate as, "we want you to die".
Unless there is a complete re-organization of the whole national energy and political picture, we, the citizens of this country will end up paying for this blow-out. BP will dodge all but a few of the smaller bills. Boycott? Well, it's a start.
I said it before and i will say it again...Stephen Hawkings was onto something a couple of weeks ago.
So, i will suggest that BP and the u.s. government are trying to ensure that extraterrestrials who want our resources will not have reason to invade our planet.
It's my new story and i'm sticking to it.
Boycott BP? Well, duh!
Boycott BP? How does one do that - not buy their gas?
That's not where their money comes from. The entire world would have to join said boycott - and, even then, the effects would be minimal. Plus, all BP would do is change their gas station names to Happy Patriot Fuel and we lazy, passive Americans would go right back to filling the tank on the way to Walmart - after a quick stop at McDonald's, natch.
If ya haven't noticed, AIG is 'profitable' again. How'd that boycott go? And all of the Big Bankster Economic Terrorists - that's right, ALL - had a 'perfect' 1st Q - over 30 BILLION in PROFITS as unemployment climbs and foreclosures set new records. How's that Bankster boycott going?
Meanwhile, seeing as how Halliburton is directly responsible, how does one boycott them? Or Transocean, a company that has already made raked in a $400 million payout from their insurance company?
Boycotts make ya feel good, but are meaningless in a global economy.
Boycotts are very effective Frank. Your money is not being used to destroy the environment. Most battles are won by fractions. BP will definitely feel the reduced profits and so will their shareholders. In time their business will decline as well as their shareholders and share price.
Also, it is just a simple extension of the alternative economy's boycott of national and international corporations. Don't feed the beast Frank, starve it.
every action is part of the problem or part of the solution....BOYCOTT !
Why limit it to BP alone? Why not boycott all of Big Oil and let's finally wake up to hemp and algae along with other renewable technologies?
Don't be ridiculous. I need to go the the post office later this morning, and the minute I start my car I'm supporting big oil.
Is it true what I heard recently, that the amount that can be litigated against BP has a cap? If so, especially regarding the destruction of eco-systems, BP should admit its negligence and offer to pay for the total destruction it has caused. Katrina was an "Act of God". This disaster isn't!
Where is Hegel when we need him? When the posts in his forum of smarter-than-average people hazard to suggest solutions to the larger and looming problem of human oil dependency itself we seem to toggle between one end or the other of the box which encases our thinking.
At one end is supply side control: Nationalizing or severely regulating big oil, if not putting it out of business altogether, prioritizing alternative energy R&D, etc., the problem being that big oil and government (everywhere, I would imagine) are one and the same voracious entity, and that the law of supply and demand is a real law, like gravity. An oil dependent civilization is a fait accompli, and to withdraw the syringe at this point would be disruptive and likely fatal to most of industrialized humanity. The action item for the supply side solution is that The People (i.e. wide awake progressive people) must seize power and de-corporatize the planet, a science fiction plot from which the adult mind must recoil in disbelief.
At the demand side the solutions involve a pervasive change of consciousness, a sort of mass awakening from our dream of uncontrolled growth. We toss our car keys in the trash, we plant community vegetable gardens, we go back - all umpty billion of us - to living the bucolic lives we had before the industrial revolution (only without the inquisitions and plagues.) To induce humanity to voluntarily scale back its numbers or its conveniences or its playthings or its bigshot entitlement to rape and consume Mother Nature while BP's product remains an available alternative is another beautiful dream. For a reality fix, go down to the mall (or better yet go to Beijing) and ask yourself how soon that universal enlightenment is apt to happen.
So we have what the philosophers call a dilemma. We slide back and forth between them moderately or radically, we combine the two or not, but we haven't yet, as far as I can tell, come up with that critical third, out-of-the-box alternative. Beyond tending to our own little households we have energy, I think, to put behind a plan or social movement if it looks like it has the slightest chance of traction or success. But we are weary of utopian nonsense, and that is why so many intelligent people have become cynical and sad. We vote and march and sign petitions and slap bumper stickers on our cars, though the futility of it is tiring. Or we do nothing but bitch and curse the darkness and watch the human experiment unravel.
We need one good idea, a grain of sand around which to build a pearl. I haven't thought of it yet, and neither have you.
Respect for all life is that grain of sand Vox but progressives cannot see it.
You might be right, Stone. That certainly is something we all have a stake in. Everybody loves life, even people who steal it from others. Even people who are compelled to smash life love their own lives. Even the flow of money between a banker's fingers is ultimately the flow of life. It's an interesting paradigm in the abstract. Instead of a dualistic Left vs Right or top vs bottom you have a radial shape in which the dichotomy is between those who are near to or far from the respect for life. Mystical life or just a plain old lifeline, whatever.
My hope is that Mother Nature, a.k.a. the Natural Course of Things, will soon provide us with the incentive to see things in that way. Such an event would be no fun, but unlike many 70 year olds I'd like to live to see it.
Americans...NOT ON MY BEACH....I am boycotting !!!!!!
These screwy journalists should have been calling for
boycotts when the first droop of blood spilled for oil.
It is OK to destroy and commit genocide for oil, but,
if any gets on our beaches...lets boycott
Americans,...most self-centered, greedy, populace on this
planet .......good ole progressives...Not On My Beach !!!
pathetic bunch
What else should we boycott Mr. Journalist????
We can't think for ourselves... candy? Oh, I know...
lets boycott pickles because our agriculture industry
pollutes.
Public transport and the idea of rethinking urban lives has a world faamous model of Curitiba in Brazil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRD3l3rlMpo&feature=channel
Public transportation and community design that puts housing near jobs, schools and shopping to allow for walking, biking and local jitneys should be a topic of study in every architecture, civil engineering and urban planning curriculum. Individual lawns could be replaced with commons and community gardens. There are some vertical garden ideas, passive heating and cooling, etc. I am sure that many good minds have been thinking about this.
Joe
We haven't had a conventional lawn for decades. Our neighbors hate it. They all have lawncare companies mowing, spraying all sorts of pesticides and fungicides and fertilizers(that go all over the sidewalks, on the streets, down the storm drains, etc...) ... and we live in an urban area! We even get nasty notes about the bird poop on their big SUV's. The birds eat the berries and poop on their cars. The bird poop can have really brilliant colors! We just laugh. Like we tell the birds to specifically poop on other people's cars!?!?!
There isn't much in the way of shopping in our downtown anymore. Since the strip malls were built and Wal-Mart moved in, our downtown has pretty much died.
Our city planners could give two hoots about the environment nevermind pollution and fossil fuel consumption. Go and ask questions at one of their public meetings ... good luck ... they're arrogant and abusive. There are some progressive communities but our's isn't one of them.
It is ill conceived and poorly communicated calls to boycott like this (really... gas stations?) that contribute to the perception that we progressives are nothing more than puerile reactionaries. What does targeting small time gas station owners do to address the crimes of massive corporations like BP. It is like suggesting that one can kill a tree by picking the fruit off rather than going after the roots. We recognize this when we fight against the war on drugs (busting addicts doesn't do anything to stop the trade) why can't we apply the same reasoning to dealing with corporate criminals like BP.
After reading the article I got to thinking about what this boycott would look like in my community and I quickly realized that all it would do is blindside and hurt small gas station owners and their families who really have nothing to do with the problem. Yeah they sell a dirty product that should be banned, but for now (thanks to poor city planning and a petroleum based economy) many of us are stuck having to rely on gas to get to work to feed our kids.
The gas station near my house is run by a really friendly immigrant family that works hard to provide for themselves, contributes to the community, and provides amazing service to their customers. Targeting them for the crimes of their supplier is both unfair and ineffective.
I do understand your position. I just happen not to agree.
The gas stations carrying BP gasoline, or any business carrying BP products, can change suppliers. It's pretty simple.
Boycotts allow the individual to vote with their dollar.
Let me give an example. If I go along spending my dollar without taking into account the businesses, companies, corporations and how they function(foreign made products using slave wages/slave labor/child labor, anti-union, abuse of employees, dangerous working conditions, etc...) then I am contributing to whatever it is I do not find acceptable. If a multi-billion dollar international corporation treats its associates with little respect, low wages and most of their merchandise is made in china(where factory workers are treated very, very poorly) and I shop there ... then ... I am effectively supporting that multi-billion dollar international corporations's behaviour. The best I can do as an individual is boycott that corporation.
I can sleep very well at night knowing my dollar is not contributing to unacceptable behaviour of any sort.
So ... yes ... someone somewhere might lose business. But, if I don't stand up for my priciples who's going to? What is the point of having principles if I don't live by them? If I don't have principles then who am I?
It is a personal choice and a personal journey through life.
I hear you Sputnik.
I agree that boycotts can be extremely effective, I just don't think that this is one of those situations where the tactic can successfully applied without doing unnecessary injury to innocent shopkeepers. Yes family run gas stations can switch suppliers, but let's be realistic... there are lawyer fees, franchising fees, signage costs, months of contract negotiations, etc. The gas station owners will eat the losses they incur for the first several months of this boycott and will only begin considering switching suppliers when they are about to go tits up. It just isn't an effective or ethical way to put pressure on BP.
You say that "The best [you] can do as an individual is boycott that corporation", but I suggest that there are several other options at your disposal. (Remember, I agree that boycotts work, but they are never the only option for an individual)
1) Move your money. Divest from any mutual funds, retirement plans, or other financial products that hold shares in the company you are taking action against. This may hurt the banks, insurance, and investment firms, but they are often complicit in the crimes of these companies.
2) Educate other investors and encourage them to either divest or pressure the board. If you decide to keep your shares in one of these companies visit ProxyDemocracy.org and work with other shareholders to shape the company you own shares in.
3) Educate the public about the issues. It doesn't give you the same "I'm kicking corporate ass" feeling, but it does help change public perception of these companies and gets people talking. Many folks are still not aware of the corrupt and downright evil things these corporations are up to - trust me I hear people defend BP and other criminals like them every day.
4) Get involved in politics and help shape legislation. I know... it's a long shot, but it is legislation and government corruption that allow corporations like BP to get away with this garbage.
Anyway.... I know that you are probably already aware of these alternatives and probably dozens of others(you seem like you've thought through this stuff), but I figured it wouldn't hurt to share some suggestions for others who might want to take action other than boycotting.
In the end, I think we would do better to focus our actions on the politicians and financiers that enable companies like BP to get away with these crimes. No point taking out a bunch of working stiff gas station owners just to make our point that BP is criminal.
It is clear you are a monied elitist, with your investment advice and delusions of participatory democracy. "Get involved in politics and help shape legislation" indeed! Perhaps you have the money to buy a congressman, but most of us don't.
The injury to small gas station owners is collateral damage, and no more worthy of concern than protecting crack dealers.
Dude... "monied elitist".... lol!
Perfect example of why one should hold back on judging a brother until you have the facts.
I am a social services worker who supports a wife and child at wages that are just above the poverty line. We rent a 900 sq/ft box, have no assets apart from our beater '91 subaru, and can't afford to pay student loans for a degree I had to drop out of in my last semester when we had our son.
I care about my local gas station owner because he's got a little baby too and every cent he has made since coming to Canada is wrapped up in his crappy little gas station. I'm guessing he's also floating a $400k mortgage on a 60 yo crack shack they call a starter home around here. He's a lot like me and the hundreds of clients I work with who are doing everything right, but still can't find jobs that pay enough to make ends meet. I'm not going to support an action that will bankrupt my struggling brothers and sisters.
Monied freaking elitist...
And despite working my ass off 40hrs/week for a pittance, I give up my evenings to organize and head up the Green Party in my riding. A useless stiff like me got the job because most of the other politically minded folks in our area are too busy trying to keep their head above water or more interested in flaming people in online political forums. There are opportunities for normal folks to get involved in politics... Greens let ALL members suggest and vote on policy... sounds participatory to me.
My "investment advice" wasn't meant for the rich. It is for the poor buggers who got stuck with private pre-packaged retirement plans that invest in crooked corps like BP instead of a proper public pension plan like the gov should provide.
It's finance and government that enable BP so that is where the battle needs to be fought... no need to canibalize struggling working people like us.
Sorry for being defensive, but I have no patience for hater douches.
AnthEmic ... don't let 'em get under your skin. You make excellent points and valid argument! We have to be true to ourselves. Having principles, standing up for them and living by them is really all we have. They make us who we are. I applaud you and anyone for that matter who sees the 'greater good' as the goal.
>>
I'm guessing he's also floating a $400k mortgage on a 60 yo crack shack they call a starter home around here.
<<
Sounds like Vancouver. I was there a couple years back visiting some friends. Their house is "worth" around $700K judging by selling prices in their neighborhood. It's a nice place but definitely not exceptional. Wow.
That's what I get for blogging while drunk and embittered. My bad. I apologize.
All good mate!
Thanks.
Maybe you're not a douche after all... lol! :)
Tie the boycott to ending the Middle East oil war and small gas station owners, crack dealers, and all of humanity will be protected and better off.
The last paragraph in your posting says it all, AnthEmic.
AnthEmic ... thank you ...
I'm probably old enough to be your parent. I've been involved in anti-war protests(going back the earlier days of Vietnam), marches, teach-ins, sit-ins, boycotts, strikes, write-ins, petitioning, voter registration, political campaigns, door-to-door petition and referendum movements, phone-ins, letters to editors, letters to Senators, letters to Congress(people), letters to Presidents, letters to corporations, environmental and anti-nuclear arms and anti-nuclear power campaigns, and on and on ...
I've carried signs. I've been spit at, handcuffed, thrown onto the ground with National Guard guns to my head, insulted, threatened, physically attacked, doors slammed in my face ... and on and on ...
I only do business with local banks and credit unions. I have no investments as I do not believe in the stock markets or bond markets no matter how far removed. I don't believe in people making money by shuffling other people's money around.
Socially responsible and ethical investment is great ... but ... as I have found ... eventually every publicly traded company travels the standard corpo-fascist path.
I'm old and tired. Reading, staying informed, trying to contribute a little to on-line discussion, gardening, caregiving, cooking and taking care of my wonderful ... somewhat elderly ... canine companions and my boycotting are all I have the patience and stamina for these days.
What I would like to know is ... where are all the young people? We used to get together, have gatherings, even if just for protest poster making. We used to have great discussions and even heated arguments ... over politics, current events, moral and ethical issues, war & peace, etc... I don't hear or see this happening the way it used to. Being an activist, at any level, does not go over too well these days ... especially in public. I know it all too well. There's a lot of scarier intimidation today even when I compare it to what I experienced personally over many, many years. Maybe that is a factor.
Thanks though for trying to give an old dog some ideas. Maybe I'll see a protest soon and I'll join in ... but till then my boycotts will have to do.
Thanks Sputnik... respect! :)
We young-uns are out there and trying, but we (I) need teachers like you and all the other "tired" older folks to share your stories, victories, failures, and dreams with us.
I do my best to stay informed and study the history and methods of the movements you folks pioneered, but wisdom and real understanding are hard to find in the absence of relationship. I have a few good mentors and cherish the times we get to chat... even if they always seem to have to get to bed by 8:30 when I'm just starting to get fired up. :)
Maybe your season for carrying signs and staring down the barrel of a gun is over, but for those or us just getting started you folks who did your time are an inspiration and the key to any success we might have.
Maybe my alternatives to boycotting should have included "find some young people who are full of piss and vinegar and school them so they can continue the work that you devoted your life to". I know that I am always game for a good talk with someone who knows his/her stuff and most are my friends are too. I guess the challenge lies in finding each other and making meaningful connections.
BTW... thanks for your other comment too... I appreciated it.
From "Crude World," by Peter Maass (2009), writing on the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria in 1994: "Shell faced a public relations disaster after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa because the company was regarded [rightly, in my opinion] as having encouraged the military government to eliminate the human thorn in its balance sheet. Saro-Wiwa's murder led to anti-Shell boycotts in America and the United Kingdom, and in response, Shell devoted a larger (but still modest) share of revenues to development projects.
You state that retailers "have nothing to do with the problem." Nothing? Really, how's that? They don't have to sell gasoline.
They don't "have to" sell gas, but the sky isn't exactly the limit for a brown guy with limited English in a conservative wonderbread community like mine - even if he has a PhD from his home country that got him the points to immigrate. I guess he could take option "B" and become a taxi driver... no wait... still using fossil fuels. Maybe he can sell cheap plastic crap from China... nope, still part of the problem since BP provides the oil to make those products.
I don't deny the need to hold these big oil companies accountable for their crimes (they should pay dearly), I just don't think we can pin the problem on small retailers and take it out on them. It's not like boycotting wicked sweatshop owners making a mint off the backs of endentured servants - these are small family run operations that survive on nickel and dime profis.
We live in a petroleum based economy that fetishizes consumption. Until the paradigm changes or the money moves on we are stuck fighting through education (like sharing the Saro-Wiwa story and other under/un reported oil industry crimes), pressuring governments through political action, and trying to get the investors who fund these crooks to take their money elsewhere.
You can always support the small time gas station owners in other ways: helping them find other work or subsidize them during the boycott. But a boycott would be a good idea, but only if it includes pressuring BP to help end the Middle East oil war. Plus a strike against an oil company with gas station outlets would be very visual in most communities, thus an effective target.
Get aware, Americans. In the 1980's, we had the technology in the U.S. to have all-electric government vehicles in Indiana at a military base. These vehicles were not tiny and they could go more than 65 mph. We rejected this technology to regress to oil-operated vehicles and the height of oil production of known fields in the world peaked years ago. Jimmy Carter tried to save us from this dead-end. Why in the world would we continue to support an exhaustible source of energy when we can have otherwise?
BP, you are history. Shell, you are history...etc., etc.
The whole criminal case against BP is being rigged via the feds as we speak. Obama is doing everythuing he can to lessen the punitive damages that are coming down the pike.
Like NOAA forcing all sample testing to a lab that already considers BP one of their biggest clients. Or Fish and Wildlife sending animal rescue volunteers away because the feds only want people that contracts with BP to do animal rescue and tissue sampling.
I think we can expect all results to be whitewashed, minimized, deflected, distorted, and never 100% certain of BP's direct culpability.
Obama's taking care of who matters most to him. That's all he's thinking about. Giving BP the best possible case for getting off cheap.
Yes, Obama is a tool of the "establishment". If he were not, he would support Palestinian rights. I did not see him sending out a "helping hand" to Noam Chomsky, who was recently rejected, as Norman Finkelstein was last year, in the U.S. from the abuses of Israel! He is impotent and he will not be elected for a second term! He really should have had the "guts" to do something, especially for the Palestinians, but he didn't have these guts.
BP probably spends more on marketing than on protecting its employees. Their industry couldn't survive without environmental degradation so I don't know what it would mean to give a dollar amount to whatever BP considers "environmental protection".
It seems that most people have probably already thought of this and the article is a bit on the late side. I know that I won't be stopping at a BP gas station for fuel - ever. I really don't even know where one is, so I'd hoped to open this article and find more suggestions than just a superficial boycott to last "for at least three months."
I just haven't taken the time to research and would love to know: How do I take a boycott beyond the gas station? Who else contracts with BP? Let's send a message to all companies that contract with BP that they will also be boycotted until they change their supplier. Where else does BP make money that I can hurt with my votes-by-purchase? I'd have to boycott paying taxes in order to boycott the government money they rake in.
I have been avoiding BP / ARCO for years for their criminal activities. Now it is time to go after those politicians that enable this plunder and pollution of Mother Earth like our lives depend on it.
BP used to handle Iran's oil, back when Iran was a successful democracy. When the Iranians asked BP for a better deal, they got the Shah.
AGAIN - brilliantly summed up !
BP at that time was so mad that the recently , popularly elected Mossadegh, given the third finger shown to the iranians by BP and its american counterparts in oil, was going to nationalize the industry .
hence the british asked for the assistance of the USA ....
and that's when the still newly created CIA , led by the nephew of Theodore Roosevelt (Kermit R) , concocted the overthrow of Mossadegh and successfuly put in place The Shah Pahlevi...and Iran became a "friend" of the Brits and USA and "the west"...for making sure that the oil conglomerates and other US and British Corporations would, as General Smedley Butler would say , like IN china:
"run unmolested" and do as they pleased. until of course the iranians got so frustrated from all the tortured years of the SHAH - now a real darling of the USA and "the west" - that they had no recourse but to accept the return of the once-sidelined Ayatollah Khomeini - turning it into a theocracy ....but MORE IMPORTANTLY , capitalising on the resentments from decades of US/Western support for the SHAH and the original dismantling of Iranian "socialist" democracy under mossadegh , because he intensified the "anti-western" turn of events...and of course the curtailment of "business as usual" for the Oil and other US /british corporations.
THAT LAST one was obviously the REAL "deal -breaker" - breaking the PROFITS of the oil corporations. ..and of course the most overriding factor:
that IRAN - in whatever form - STOPPED being the USA's poodle.
that's not allowed.
IRAN USED TO BE A DEMOCRACY. BP HAD THE OIL CONTRACT. WHEN THE PEOPLE ASKED FOR A BETTER DEAL FROM BP, IRAN GOT THE SHAH.
BPs Shah is already in the Oval Office.
Whoodle4Gfzy ....
you put in a few words - a TRULY powerful, clear way what it takes me so many words to TRY to summarize. I wish I could tell it as clearly as you have.
and that is exactly the complete story of why the USA and ENGLAND - the SAME 2 powers and "oil" corporation giants in the 1950's inside iran that connived against iranian democracy - are TODAY ALSO the SAME two , a "former empire" and its current SPAWN :USA Empire , most obsessed with destroying Iran....
as if they are "picking up where they left off" .
as in the 1950's -- these two powers designating themselves as "leaders of the free world", and where they destroyed Iran's democracy and sovereignty , are today also trying to destroy Iran's sovereignty all over again.
IN BOTH TIMES - the 1950's and today - their meddling have absolutely NOTHING to do with "freedom or democracy" ....regardless of what iran's regimes had either as democracy in 1950's or theocracy today.
all has to do with REGIME CHANGE that OBEYS the American Empire, as it was to obey the british and american empires in the 1950's.
it also is part of the clear , over-all pattern with countries everywhere:
PURE IMPERIAL THEFT and OBSESSION to control another country.
After the Exxon Valdez disaster, I NEVER BOUGHT EXXON GAS AGAIN........LET'S DO IT TO BP !!!!!!!
Why boycott only 3 months. Why not boycott until you hear that the clean-up is complete?
Really! A petition asking for at least 3 months participation: how weak. Where's the list of demands, with my favorite being ending the Middle East oil war? Without a focus on changing a specific human behavior what good is it? Is amplifying human suffering the best we can do...having certain people carry around leaky buckets of oil as one commentator suggests...that's the best resolution for humanity?
THE FACEBOOK "BOYCOTT BP" PAGE REACHED 50,000 FANS THIS EVENING-- JOIN UP AND INVITE ALL YOUR FRIENDS
Why?
Because BP must pay.
================
what an amazing TRUTH of a pair of question and answer....amazing because of its TIMELESSNESS in its direct way that anyone in the world knows. we all say such things about the most common affairs of existence, don't we?
such simple, ordinary words that are however SUPPRESSED when they are TRUE by corporations and the Empire.
considering that timelessness...
consider:
THE USA and its corporatocratic , money capitalism....
really should be PAYING much of the rest of the world - for uncountable DEBTS to humanity, to nations, to futures and generations, to lost livelihoods, lost wages, lost values, destroyed environments, destroyed cultures, etc.....
can one imagine :
if the world was suddenly to have to "account for" deeds -- as forced to account for everything that has ever happened - with every single life and occurence ....say, in just the last 300 hundred years....
the USA and Corporations under the banner of "capitalism", counting all the untold stories and destruction and suffering and consequences and added "interest" on such cruelties would probably have to pay or account to that "alien power" overlooking the Earth --
in such degree that the USA would cease to exist before it could even begin to pay a fraction of what it owes to the rest of the world.
Every BP employee should be required to work with a leaking bucket of crude oil slime from the bayous on their desk. Managers should get two. Every board member should be required to balance one their head during meetings and carry around no fewer than six in their limos.
If you really wanted to make the punishment fit the crime you'd make them drink those buckets.
I would just love it if someone would run up to the BP CEO and dump a five gallon bucket of the heaviest motor oil available over his head. Maybe he'd get the point.
Forget that. Confiscate the company and put them lot of them in a dungeon. Throw them a bucket of fish heads twice a month and encourage the guards to use them for taser practice.
The New York Times
May 21, 2010
MORE THAN JUST AN OIL SPILL
BOB HERBERT
Hopedale, La.
The warm, soft winds coming in off the gulf have lost their power to soothe. Anxiety is king now — all along the coast.
“You can’t sleep no more; that’s how bad it is,” said John Blanchard, an oyster fisherman whose life has been upended by the monstrous oil spill fouling an enormous swath of the Gulf of Mexico. He shook his head. “My wife and I have got two kids, 2 and 7. We could lose everything we’ve been working all of our lives for.”
I was standing on a gently rocking oyster boat with Mr. Blanchard and several other veteran fishermen who still seemed stunned by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Instead of harvesting oysters, they were out on the water distributing oil retention booms and doing whatever else they could to bolster the coastline’s meager defenses against the oil making its way ominously and relentlessly, like an invading army, toward the area’s delicate and heartbreakingly vulnerable wetlands.
A fisherman named Donny Campo tried to hide his anger with wisecracks, but it didn’t work. “They put us out of work, and now we’re cleaning up their mess,” he said. “Yeah, I’m mad. Some of us have been at this for generations. I’m 46 years old and my son — he’s graduating from high school this week — he was already fishing oysters. There’s a whole way of life at risk here.”
The risks unleashed by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are profound — the latest to be set in motion by the scandalous, rapacious greed of the oil industry and its powerful allies and enablers in government. America is selling its soul for oil.
The vast, sprawling coastal marshes of Louisiana, where the Mississippi River drains into the gulf, are among the finest natural resources to be found anywhere in the world. And they are a positively crucial resource for America. Think shrimp estuaries and bird rookeries and oyster fishing grounds.
These wetlands are one of the nation’s most abundant sources of seafood. And they are indispensable when it comes to the nation’s bird population. Most of the migratory ducks and geese in the United States spend time in the Louisiana wetlands as they travel to and from Latin America.
Think songbirds. Paul Harrison, a specialist on the Mississippi River and its environs at the Environmental Defense Fund, told me that the wetlands are relied on by all 110 neo-tropical migratory songbird species. The migrating season for these beautiful, delicate creatures is right now — as many as 25 million can pass through the area each day.
Already the oil from the nightmare brought to us by BP is making its way into these wetlands, into this natural paradise that belongs not just to the people of Louisiana but to all Americans. Oil is showing up along dozens of miles of the Louisiana coast, including the beaches of Grand Isle, which were ordered closed to the public.
The response of the Obama administration and the general public to this latest outrage at the hands of a giant, politically connected corporation has been embarrassingly tepid. We take our whippings in stride in this country. We behave as though there is nothing we can do about it.
The fact that 11 human beings were killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion (their bodies never found) has become, at best, an afterthought. BP counts its profits in the billions, and, therefore, it’s important. The 11 men working on the rig were no more important in the current American scheme of things than the oystermen losing their livelihoods along the gulf, or the wildlife doomed to die in an environment fouled by BP’s oil, or the waters that will be left unfit for ordinary families to swim and boat in.
This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter.
No one knows how much of BP’s runaway oil will contaminate the gulf coast’s marshes and lakes and bayous and canals, destroying wildlife and fauna — and ruining the hopes and dreams of countless human families. What is known is that whatever oil gets in will be next to impossible to get out. It gets into the soil and the water and the plant life and can’t be scraped off the way you might be able to scrape the oil off of a beach.
It permeates and undermines the ecosystem in much the same way that big corporations have permeated and undermined our political system, with similarly devastating results.
THE TRAGIC irony as described in that article by herbert - particularly showing how PERSONAL it can get , as with that father and his little kids, losing his lifelong livelihood, and watching as his beloved "AMERICAN SHORE ...to SHORE"....is "invaded" -- by oil...the very "lifeblood" of the modern world and which condition AMERICA has been the most OPPORTUNISTIC in building its empire through the imposition of that "life" based on that "lifeblood": OIL,
is now seeing the consequences on its own shores....
ironic that it is America's OWN Capitalist Empire building with OIL for its grand army, its technological superiority to intimidate that world and "satisfy" the "american way of life which should be the way of the world".....
that is WASHING that lifeblood of oil on america's own shores, against ITS own people and children,
as a POISON to their own existence.
it REALLY is the classic lesson:
"what goes around, comes around".
america spread CAPITALISM and its greed , with its thirst for "OIL" as the 'easiest' way to profit and build an empire , and CAPITALISM washes on its own shores - OIL.......
the FRUITS of its own Capitalist Dogma GREED.
it's almost as if NATURE and the Mother Earth herself were telling america:
"you wanted so much oil -
to profit by and be so powerful...
at the expense of all that is decent..
well............HERE it is
FREE... from me....only ....
you now have to watch how I --
the earth and nature
will ALSO destroy what belongs to ME...
the shores and environment
on which and from which you have built
your Oil-based War Empire...
you have bled me and bled me
for your Oil Profits and Power............
now........have some MORE OIL".
if the Mother Earth and Nature would sing a Song to the USA-led "way of life".....of the kind we see in its consequences everywhere that are destructive....
that might be one way she would sing it...like a Mother teaching her wayward children some important lessons they will never forget.........
""Why?
Because BP must pay.
Eleven oil workers are dead. One of the largest oil spills in U.S. history continues to worsen. BP's oil gusher at the floor of the Gulf of Mexico may be 100 times worse than BP first estimated (and 20 times worse than the company presently claims). 100 times!""
**********************
That wouldn't matter to them. Kind of like how fred silverstein 'bought' the wto buildings just a few months before the attack on 9/11 for about $14,000,000.00 and through some cozy insurance finagling was able to collect around $8,000,000,000.00 for the 2 attacks. He said he felt for the victims and their survivors, but of course he would, he sure wouldn't gloat about that kind of payoff bonanza, might seem suspicious. And 2700 lost their lives that day and so did many many more from the american retaliations of a 'ghost war on terror'.
Teddy ... Bob Herbert's article was the first thing I read this morning. He speaks truth so well, so clearly, so consistently.
We Progressives have to keep our movement going forward. Our voices have to be loud. Our numbers have to be known. Talk. Write. Picket. Protest. Boycott. Organize.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE NOW!
ECONOMIC JUSTICE NOW!
SOCIAL JUSTICE NOW!
PEACE NOW!
There is much symbolism to be gleaned in this disaster, Teddy.
I heard some testimony the other day. The first empassioned person i heard, in front of congressional committee. A scientist. He was really pissed. He was saying that the 'dispersant' made it impossible to contain the oil because it is easier to round up think gooey mass than if it has become more water like itself.
He said they poisoned it all just so that it would look like there was less. All for appearances. It made it worse and they knew it. They were trying to cover their tracks. And i thought of how superficial this society is. It is all about what is on the surface and what is going on , in deep levels, can be ignored. And this is yet another 'moment' in our wake up call as far as not wanting to look too deeply at anything.
Also. I saw a man near Penasacola who is in charge of an agency which i can't remember. About Blue Oceans....And he is refusing to send his water samples to the labs in texas that BP is trying to make everyone send their samples to. Which happens to have BP as their biggest client. And.....BP has their own contractors to do the work with wildlife. They are not allowing conservationist organizations to go near the animals that are effected.
This is a crime scene of the highest order.
What good would that do? Shell or exxon/mobile will just buy them or merge and retain all of the same damn scoundrels that have done their worse for their profits.
"A boycott will express the organized consumer anger that BP so fears"
How angry could you expect a nation of heroin addicts to get over soil depletion in the poppy fields?
Yes. This is an elegant post.
Read it and see that the problem is not the supplier. It is the user. The term user covers everything from mankind, where it has to be applied somewhat judiciously, through industry, with far greater consistency, to the individual, with almost absolute consistency.
Then understand that the only 'angry' ones will be those who wish to seize the moment to rid themselves of a competitor with regard to not only production, but also access to the user, or market. Otherwise the anger will simply be an expression of craven fear.
After this, search the posts for those who can see this, and get truly worried.
Finally, fix the problem.
DO NOT BOYCOTT BP, THEY WILL DECLARE BANKRUPTCY DUE TO LOW SALES AND THEN GO AWAY, AND THERE WILL BE NO PAYOUT IN CLAIMS OR MONEY SPENT ON CONTAINMENT OR CLEANUP.
BUY BP !!! MAKE THEM STAY ACCOUNTABLE.
USE YOUR MINDS, DONT BE EMOTIONAL ABOUT THIS ACCIDENT. THERE ARE 4000 WELLS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO UP AROUND THE TEXAS PAN HANDLE.
4000 WELLS, GOOGLE IT.
THEY ARE NOT GOING AWAY.THERE WILL BE OTHER ACCIDENTS, AND OIL LEAKS INTO THE GULF BY THOUSANDS OF BARRELS EVERY DAY,WE JUST DONT KNOW ABOUT IT.
OIL COSTS US IN SO MANY WAYS, ENVIRONMENTAL, FINANCIALLY THROUGH WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST , AND ARE LOCAL ECONOMY.
THEY RULE THE ROOST RIGHT NOW BECAUSE OUR GOVERNMENT IS RUN BY BIG OIL,,, JUST ASK GEORGE BUSH AND HIS PALS WHO RUNS AMERICA.
UNTIL OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS GROW BACK BONES, AND ALLOW INVESTMENT AND INNOVATION IN DEVELOPING ALTERNATIVE ENERGY RESOURCES BY SHUTTING OUT THE CONTROL OF BIG OIL,,,,
THEY OWN US.
I have not read all 91 posts, so this may be a double post, but I did want to let people know about a story by Abraham Lustgarten on ProPublica (www.propublica.org)--currently the lead story--that reports on an EPA proposal to stop all government contracts to BP. This may be an alternative or an additional approach to opposing BP. The Public Citizen proposal does seem quite weak and timid. I am finding that the nonprofit sector often lags behind some elected officials when it comes to pushing for really effective campaigns.
Boycott for 3 months? Really, what difference would that make? We should refuse to buy BP oil FOREVER.
When I was in college we boycotted lettuce and grapes to support Chavez's farm workers. And we did that for years. After the battle was won, and the boycott was called off, I really appreciated that first head of lettuce I bought because of what it meant.
I learned then that we must vote with our dollars. Buying BP gas makes you a participant in their horrific deeds. Besides, if we do nothing it will only encourage them.
Of course we should all boycott BP, with warnings to the other profit-drenched corporados.
Remember, BP also owns ARCO.
Remember, BP took over the national petroleum company of Iran, while the Washington regime overthrew the democratically elected government and forcibly returned the hated Shah to his throne in 1953. (Again, why do they hate us in the Middle East?). BP has a long history of take-overs, shady deals, collusion with right-wing regimes, etc.
I've tried to convince well-meaning people to NEVER use BP solar panels. BP splashes its sham "green" image every where it can. In fact, the criminal, Earth-destroying corporate mafia spends about 1% on renewables, and many times that on PR. Any money spent on BP solar panels is really just giving the crook more undeserved funds to rape Alaska, the Gulf, the Middle East and our bank accounts.
Please join the Facebook community page "Boycott Arco/BP":
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-Arco-BPs-US-Brand/123645604331773?ref=mf
A three month boycott of BP is a joke. Pledge to boycott them for the rest of your life and get thousands of others to join and you'll make an impact.
If you limit it to three months BP won't even notice. Get REAL!
I'm in. No more BP. I bought an electric bike. Hasta BP.
BP--"Big Polluter" needs to be taken behind the wood shed and be put out of business for good.
Chelsea
DESTROY BP.
you idiots think one oil company is better than another, LOL am thinking president Barry Hussein should nationalize them all
Maybe we should start throwing bricks at BP signs... or black paint...
I don't know if my point was previously mentioned, but tracking BP product to your gas tank is a lot harder than you might imagine.
You won't pull off a full boycott by just boycotting ARCO stations and BP labeled products.
Refined fuel is purchased in bulk from many different refiners who buy raw materials from many different sources. The local gas station owner doesn't know with 100% certainty where the fuel comes from even if it comes with a BP trademark. "Gas" at the pump might say "EXXON" or "BP", but it isn't necessarily true.
Roughly 60% of all crude oil on the West Coast comes from BP, but BP doesn't own 60% of all gas stations...see where I'm going?
You don't have to take my word for it. Do a little background check on the distribution of the final product.
My suggestion is if you're going to boycott gasoline and fuel oil have no exceptions: 100% boycott of all oil based fuel.
...that way you are certain to hit your mark.
Otherwise, BP will just sell their stuff "off label" and the boycott is circumnavigated.
Also see the boycott of Exxon circa 1989 as example
Yeah, no one can tell which oil company's oil is in any one gas station because oil is just shipped to a refinery and made into the varying products. What seems to the confused idea of boycotting bp could only really be to just don't fill up at bp. But then it still isn't as easy as that, one needs to know what companies bp owns and controls so as to be able to boycott those businesses if possible. Really seems worth the effort to name these subsidiaries and try boycotting them.
The best thing would be for our sorry ass congress getting off their duff and slapping the fines and investigating the company in the hopes of dismantling this corporate bunch of crooks, but we are or some of us all too well know what a useless idea that is.
you are correct in saying you cannot tell,where gas comes from. i used to haul fuel,at the racks,there where several companies loading the same product for different stations. as far as the boycott is concernede,what a joke! when these hopheads pay my gas bill then i will listen,untiul then i will spend my money where i see fit.
The problem of placing blame on ONE company for the choices of MANKIND seems to be a little skewed to me.
BP sucks, and we could sit here all day to try and figure out which oil is coming from their company, but the fact is that EVERY oil company that's pumping out the guts of the earth is to be blamed for these travesties (which go far beyond the gulf oil spill).
Even so, the consumer is to be equally blamed for this tragedy. Much of why we are in the situation we are in at this very moment is because so many of us refuse to take responsibility for the choices that we are making every day. A dollar paid to the pump, regardless of which company it is paid to, supports drilling. It supports all of the nasty shit that goes with it, and I can guarantee you that there are not ethical oil companies out there that care a speck about the fate of the earth.
Switching to biodiesel, ethanol, or driving around an electric car (oil is still burned for you to get your electricity, and if it's not, you're damming up a river or harvesting energy in some other, non-earth friendly way) is not a solution either, as those all come with their own political, social, environmental, etc, burdens.
If you really want to make a change, start with taking responsibility for what you have control over - your dollar bill. Start making changes in your family and in your community. Move closer to where you work, shop, go to school, etc. Grow food in your yard so that it doesn't have to be shipped insane distances with petroleum products. Push for depaving our communities and getting away from reliance on cars. This is the true solution. It is the true revolution.
Many claim that the boycott does nothing. I know that at least it will impact their brand name. And I think that it is fair - These risks should be reassessed because the damages are not only invaluable but also irrecoverable. What just happened is very bad; perhaps if the petroleum industry is aware that people will take action, they will do something else to prevent these catastrophic spills (for example, redesigning their drilling equipment). They make a LOT of money, they have the resources to take action. Our planet is at stake.
YES boycott us (I am a BP employee - 3..2..1..let the insults begin) but do it RIGHT! I am a fan of boycotts and buycotts but only if they are done correctly. The consumer has the ultimate power provided they care enough to respond. In this case if there was not so much demand for petroleum we would not be drilling off-shore.
Don’t just stop buying at BP stations stop buying at any station not branded with a big oil company logo; because there is a very good chance it is BP gas as well. The only way to be sure you are not getting BP gas is to buy Exxon gas (the Alaskans will be not pleased) or Chevron gas (the Ecuadorians and Burmese will not be pleased) or Shell (the Nigerians will not be pleased) or ConocoPhillips (the Native Americans in northwestern Canada will not be pleased). Valero, Marathon, and CITGO use our crude oil in their refineries so skip those stations as well.
While you are at it turn off all your electrical devices because a significant percentage of your electricity is generated from the natural gas we produce.
Do not buy anything plastic because a significant percentage of the plastics you buy are made from chemicals we produce. Only eat organic food or wear organic based fabrics because, like plastics, a significant percentage of the fertilizer used world-wide is made from chemicals we produce.
Cancel any flights you might have planed because (you guessed it) we are a major supplier of aviation fuel world-wide.
Solar panels, yes we make those also so you can choose between ours and those made in Chinese sweat shops.
So if you don’t use electricity or plastics, don’t use fossil fuel based travel but do eat and wear organic, then good for you!! You have every earned the privilege of complaining guilt free. The rest of us are part of the problem.
Yes boycott us but have the intestinal fortitude and commitment to do it right, otherwise you are nothing more than whiners who are doing nothing more than making your self feel good by pretending to do something.
Hey Wiessman
Why are you so shortsighted. Do you know that most BP ARCO stations are owned by small business and they are family owned?
Boycotting ARCO only means destroying small businesses and families who have invested their life savings in buying a gas station and oweing to the bank huge mortgages. Don't be so ill informed and simple minded. You are hurting families.
I am a gas station owner and have signed a 15 year deal with ARCO to sell their gas. If you boycott my station you are not hurting BP you are hurting me. I won't be able to pay BP and go bankrupt and then take your money in public assistance.
Please get educated first wiessman!
No small business can own what belongs to a big corporation. Small business and family owned gas stations were gutted a long time ago. Hurting BP would actually save you money, doofus. You must be a well paid BP spokesman rather than some small gas station owner.
I can understand the edginess of this, but crap, if anything, service stations are now bascially carbohydrate shops, corner markets, that the oil industry uses for their cut of the frivolous items market. As far as gas goes, which every oil company that pumps it out of the ground ends its ownership when the refinery buys it from them to make gas. So boycotting arco or bp by stopping in other service stations means you probably are buying gas that was a crude owned by bp/arco.
These poor people buying up franchises, for people to fillup their vehicles and bloat their bodies with carbs, would be hurting the owners of the franchise by a boycott. Might really think about alternatives to oil, if that is possible.
Sad thing about this disaster is that everyone will once again get to see, just like exxon/mobile's razzle dazzling and stalling of that spill to get courts to lessen the fines and hope the people involved die, so will bp/arco do their utmost to keep from owning up to their responsibilities as this quaint little questions of tony haywire yesterday demonstrated with his 'I don't know, I wasn't in the loop and I was really drunk at the time, etc etc etc, is just the beginning.
And if worse comes to worse the whole corporation of the oil wells will bail them out by merging or buying them and that means keeping some of the same faces and especially corporate agendas. I would not be surprised to see deep water exploration and drilling cranking back up sometime next year at least, maybe earlier.
Too bad we have such an apathetic population so well understood by the aristocracy, who know that we won't stop filling up and going on those endless empty trips to nowhere for nothing in particular.