All Corporation, All the Time

Big Oil Advertises on Oil Boycott Petition Sponsored by Consumer Group
 
ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP Boycott

Is it hubris, a coincidence, or just a computer thing? Is it just me? Maybe, I’m the problem; but I just don’t see why Mr. Made Up Juristic Corporate Person should be peddling oil on a petition site aimed at signing real humans up to boycott their product. Sure corporations have free speech rights - but they shouldn't, and they shouldn't be able to put money into our political process either.

Consumers for Peace issued an updated Consumer’s Guide to Gasoline in December 2007 detailing the profits various oil corporations are making off the continuing Occupation of Iraq. Consumers for Peace correctly points out that while all brands are “pretty much the same in the way they power our vehicle”; the are much different in the power they power our country and our world. As Consumers for Peace puts it:

“But all brands are not the same in terms of what their companies do in the world, not only to the environment but also with respect to war and peace.”

Consumers for Peace’s goal is to “help you buy gasoline from companies that appear to be uninvolved, or less involved, in getting oil at gunpoint, in selling ‘bloody’ oil.” A much different purpose from the “market forces” that drive most oil corporations. One has to wonder: Why, if markets are supposed to be free; do they need to be enforced at the muzzle of a gun?

And, talking about killing, isn’t the placement of these ads for cheap gasoline overkill? They’re everywhere. They’re on every page of the petition:

ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP Boycott
Sign the Petition
View Current Signatures
View Signatures: 146
View Signatures: 96
View Signatures: 46

And, who are they selling to? How many gallons of gas and gas credit cards and gas stations (of all things!) do the ad boys at BP and Shell and Google and Petition on Line think they are going to sell to the kind of people who might visit Consumers for Peace’s petition site? Is it hubris? Are we having our faces rubbed in the overweening power and pride of the multinational corporation? Is it stupidity? Theirs or ours? Or, is it just plain, old fashioned, unadulterated greed? I don’t know. All I know is that the oil corporations are making a killing - literally, a mass killing.

Do me a favor and visit Consumers for Peace and sign onto their ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP Boycott.

Then do a little complaining: Contact Petitions on Line’s Please send us your suggestions, questions, & comments page and Ads by Google’s Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw.