perfidy

Clearly, posts based on the contents of one or more of the roughly 200 non-SPAM email messages I get per day are easy. Why, they practically write themselves!

But that's not the point. The point is to give me a jumping off point to opine about one thing or another, and Steve Elliot, of Grassfire.org, has done just that. I have no idea how I ended up on their mailing list - I'm not aware of anything they've had to say (at least in the periodic "Please sign this petition!" emails I've gotten from them) that I think is worthy of even clicking the link to go to their site. That, plus internet petitions are generally tools for twits. This latest, however, coerced me to action.

That action? To ridicule the silliness of the Grassfire.org actions, if not their intentions. Actually, come to think of it, I'm ridiculing their intentions, too. Here's an excerpted version of their 'plaint for this week:

If you didn't see Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez call President Bush "the devil" during his U.N. speech, go here and see for yourself: redacted

Thanks, Steve - I didn't see it, but I read about it, and have no need to go watch Chavez make an ass of himself on tape delay. Continuing:

Here is what Chavez said:

"Yesterday, the devil [President Bush] came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of."
--Hugo Chavez

Then Chavez made the sign of the cross as if praying to God for deliverance from the "devil" (President Bush)! This was one of the worst mockeries of a U.S. President ON OUR OWN SOIL by a foreign leader in history!

Did you know this fascist thug also own (sic) Citgo oil company and is making untold millions on Citgo profits to undermine our President and the troops?

Chavez is using OUR MONEY to attack and undermine our President and our nation!

In response to this outrage, thousands of citizens are sending Chavez a message by joining the Citgo boycott. Go here to send Chavez a message: (also redacted) We want to rally 100,000 signers in the next 7 days and deliver these petitions to the main distributors of Citgo Gas, including 7-Eleven.

Thanks for your immediate action!

Steve Elliott, President
Grassfire.org Alliance

So, if I read him correctly, Hugo Chavez "own" Citgo Oil? Technically, as well as factually, no, he doesn't. He controls it, as part of his country's nationalized OPEC member, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, and controls it quite poorly, on reflection. So any damage "needed" to Citgo, he seems clearly able to inflict on his own without the help of me or any of my more gullible co-mailinglist-members.

And, about those gullible souls who might "Take ... immediate action!" because of Chavez's actions "ON OUR OWN SOIL!" and what he does to us with "OUR MONEY!" (yeah, I added a couple exclamation points, but only because Steve must have forgotten these guaranteed-to-enflame necessities from the toolbox of all rabble-rousers), I hope there are few, not because I wish Elliott or Grassfire any particular harm, but because this is a meaningless gesture, designed to enflame the rubes among us and generate funds for Grassfire, nothing more.

I consider it no different than the several-per-week pretend-solicitations of my opinion or involvement in some God-forsaken pretend-grown-up activity put together by the Republican Party. And, lest Ross get all chubby, the DNC is no different, and no more intelligent in its pretense to actually give a shit what any of its Middle America adherents think, only about the money they can milch (or would that be "mulct"?) for the latest cause du jour.

Puh-leeze. If you don't want to buy Citgo gas, go buy some other gas. But don't pretend Chavez's distributors will give a fat rat's ass about some Intertube-circulated pseudo-petition expressing the nation's indignation about the way he acted at the U.N. toward GW Bush.

Here's a couple clues for those who might think Elliott has a point: Bush almost certainly doesn't care about Chavez's opinion of him, and less so about any words he might use to enunciate it. Including this nugget, from a NY Times story on the matter:

[Chavez] brandished a copy of Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance" and recommended it to members of the General Assembly to read. Later, he told a news conference that one of his greatest regrets was not getting to meet Mr. Chomsky before he died. (Mr. Chomsky, 77, is still alive.)

I mean, "everyone" knows Bush is dumb as a bag of hair, right? But even Bush knows Mr. Chomsky is still alive.

Furthermore, he made this speech at the United Nations General Assembly, and nobody who's got a lick of sense actually believes the General Assembly is worth the powder it would take to blow it to hell. The UN does such a poor job at most of what it does that the few good things it does are lost in the backwash. So who cares where he made this inane statement?

Elliott does, or claims to. Whatever nit-wits sign his petition do, or claim to. I do not.

[wik] No, I don't know why I turned into the hyphenation queen for this post. It's just how it came out.

[alsø wik] Odd, this entire embargo thing must not be working out. I got a follow-on from Steve today (9/26/2006) informing me that:

In the next seven days, I want to deliver 50,000 petitions
to 7-Eleven which distributes Citgo gas at thousands of
locations. Please help.

No offense, but tough shit, snookums - boycotts of volatile commodity items seldom make sense, and seldom achieve the desired effect. I hope that the shortfall in signatures is because most of his recipients realize this. Otherwise, it means the internet is broken, and that would suck. Too bad about the inability to meet the reduced and extended expectations. And, yes, I've unsubscribed from his mailing list.