my head in dirty oil

A thoughtful and provocative quote from George Orwell – “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”


First of all, I don’t usually do this but I would like to take this opportunity to talk about a personal pet peeve of mine - email abuse. Email abuse or dare I call it spam comes more from people I know than outside sources or at least it seems that way. I'm sure you know what I mean if you are shaking your head in agreement at this point. If you aren't shaking your head in concurrence then you are probably one of the guilty ones.

Do you ever get odd emails and wonder how they got your email address? Never been to the porn site and yet get porn emails? Do you get the viagra emails? Or any medication emails? Home mortgage emails? If so, follow some of my guidelines below and it may help...

Don't forward an email and leave all the email addresses it has been sent to showing. Why you might ask? There are programs out there that real spammers use to grab email addresses. When you forward (or even reply) with all the addresses showing you just gave spammers the opportunity to get all those email addresses. Imagine if the email went out to 10 people who sent it on to another 10 people, before you know it, there's my personal email address and yours vulnerable again and again.

Another thing; don’t send every joke to everybody. I, for one am hard on humour and something you’ve just pulled out from a box of cracker jacks just doesn’t cut it these days. Some people seem compelled to send every joke they get to every person in their address book. Don't waste my time only sending me what you think I might be interested in. If I miss out on a joke I'm sure I will live to see another day.

How about this; don't forward emails and consider that keeping in touch. A lot of people happen to think that keeping in touch is forwarding an email. No, it's not. Once in a while send that person a note and see how they are doing. And stop forwarding the "too good to be true" emails. Disney World and Pepsi will give you money to forward this to all your friends, Microsoft and AOL will send you money or little doodads, send this to everybody in your address book and you will have good luck,...you get the idea. Spammers love this because these things make their way around the Internet quickly.

I received the following in the mail today, aside from nameless deciding to roll out my e-mail address and I having to acknowledge there should be more security offered guards against spam adverts and possible viruses while mitigating the dangers of these zero-day exploits, the ludicrous title had me up the wall. GAS WAR - an idea that WILL work. The first thing I remember saying to myself was, you have got to be kidding me.

GAS WAR -- Join the resistance!!!! I hear we are going to hit close to $1.50 per litre by next summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea.

This makes much more sense than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.

BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read on and join with us! By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $.80 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $1.08 for regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a liter of gas is CHEAP at $.90 - $1.00, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace..... not sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

HERE'S THE IDEA:

For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies , PETRO CANADA and ESSO. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out at this point....

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. (If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million,all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... I'm a mathematician, so trust me on this one.)

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!

I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you? Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from Petro Canada/Esso until they lower their prices to the $0.60 range and keep the man down!

Do I sense fantastic logic? If this even happens to work, it will only prove there are a lot of veracious intellectually challenged people out there that make up this worlds key demographic.

If you're not a fan of spam, I suggest seeking further information on ways to fight back by visiting the following website, titled Death to Spam. Why visit? Because spam related activites are highly more questionable than you may happen to think.


I’m not sure if you have come across this, but there was this group of kind, cheerful characters who once lived in harmony with nature. Then one day and from there on their idyllic surroundings were threatened by these garbage-strewing characters anchored offshore from their home. That's right! The Smoggies! And without becoming too comparable, the three shit disturbers, in reality are the the most bellicose of foreign policy initiatives in history that pursue intimately with the petroleum industry. So what have these Saturday morning cartoons taught me? There is a horrific cost to our hypocrisy.

Beneath it all, our land is all in private hands, much of it foreign-owned, and has already been destroyed. Canada's near to being one of the #1 sources of air pollution, this problem among plenty others basically makes Canada’s Kyoto commitments unreachable.

Canada is second only to Saudi Arabia in global oil wealth. Granted, the majority of it is Bitumen, not oil. This leads most to wonder why it costs $75 dollars to fill a car up with gas today. Reliant as we are, if this is our strategy for helping it is working brilliantly. Unfortunately, I’m not in the oil business like the Bush family so much like anyone else, one way or the other we’re all pretty much screwed by these rising fuel prices. Better yet, why aren’t the majority of next year’s domestic automobile releases hybrid? Why are there only a handful of alternatives out there when gas is over a dollar a litre at the pump?

Using your computer? It needs oil, believe it or not. So doe’s agriculture, major industry, recycling, medicine - the list is endless. So is it just an automobile problem as said in this outrageous spam mail? Or is it an oil problem?

And how should the world view those who claim to have a seemingly endless supply of oil, when they rig their own oil fields and refineries with high explosives in the event that the Monarchy is threatened? As possibly prophetic? If the estimates produced massively contradict the claims of vast reserve left, then perhaps we’re a lot closer to Mad Max than you think.

Take into consideration that oil is a tightly controlled and regulated resource that is primarily traded at two world exchanges, both of which are steeped in the US dollar. You must also realize that we are so utterly dependant on oil that the loss of automobile use is actually the least of our concerns. That the production of food, and its dependence on oil, is a far greater problem that could lead to very real and terrible occurrences in the not so distant future.

I suppose then we might have another laugh at the idea of waging against our leaders in the oil industry. Being able to control the world’s water supply may just be a lot easier for a country that practices pre-emptive and unilateralist military policies, and god knows if we drink it or use it for other purposes we’ll all be hypocrites by then.