Now I'm supposed to boycott buying gasoline at BP?
A bunch of local environmentalists singled out a BP station in Lake Worth for a sign-waving, slogan-chanting protest against the oil company responsible for the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
I'm trying to be sympathetic to this latest David-like strike against an energy Goliath. But my symbolic protest file is bulging.
Let's see, in my alphabetical protest file BP goes right before Chevron.
What's that? You didn't know you were supposed to be boycotting Chevron?
Maybe you don't remember those brave Burmese monks who rose up in a "Saffron Revolution" over the brutal military regime in Myanmar, which is partnering with Chevron in a natural gas pipeline.
BP, Chevron, Citgo and ExxonMobil ...
If Southeast Asia is too remote for your protest awareness, you can also protest Chevron for the $30 million it paid the U.S. panerai gmt government to settle a claim that the oil company was involved in illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime as part of the United Nations' oil-for-food program.
Oh, and by the way, Chevron merged with Texaco. So check that one off, too.
Then there's Citgo, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company.
panerai gmtVenezuela is run by Hugo Chavez, the guy who loves to bad-mouth panerai gmt our country, buy arms from the Russians and team up with Iran and Cuba.
"I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet," Chavez has said.
Yet Venezuela is our fourth-largest supplier of oil.
Go figure.
Maybe that's because we're also boycotting ExxonMobil.
The largest oil company in the world has been in the sights of protesters ever since one of its tankers, the Exxon Valdez, ran aground 21 years ago, devastating the fishing industry in Alaska's Prince William Sound and creating an enduring legacy of disputed legal claims.
Longines Evidenza Ladies Watch L2.142.0.73.6Shell, too: Better walk to the protest
These days environmental protesters cite ExxonMobil for its opposition to climate change initiatives, its huge political donations to Washington lawmakers, its meager investments Longines Evidenza Ladies Watch L2.142.0.73.6 in alternative energy and its campaign to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
But if your sympathies Longines Evidenza Ladies Watch L2.142.0.73.6 lie more in Third World exploitation, then you're probably more apt to be a Shell protester.
The Ogoni people of Nigeria have reaped little from Shell's oil operation that has put pipelines all over their farms and degraded their land. An Ogoni uprising against the oil exploitation on their land led to the hanging of nine protesters by a government that gets about 80 percent of its revenue from the oil business.
So I'll add BP to this boycott list. But here's the problem:
If you have to drive your gas-powered car to a gas station protest, you're going to have to replace that fuel somewhere.
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