The Alkaline Battery Hoax

Repeatedly disposing of everyday alkaline batteries is completely unnecessary. Its a perfect example of misleading the public in the interests of profit. The environmental effect and the wasted resources from this corporate lie are devastating. Sure there are cleaner methods of disposal being developed in some communities- but that doesn't fix the problem. Improve the product not its disposal; its like fixing a leaky faucet by improving the drain.

Common Batteries can be recharged as safely and effectively as "rechargeable" batteries.

Alkaline batteries all carry a label warning about leaks and explosions. Damaging a household battery is just about as dangerous and squishing a lemon- its a marketing tactic using fear. The technology to make a charger for regular alkaline batteries is incredibly simple. There once was a charger on infomercials, very briefly. I'm sure the company was shut down. There are plenty of people on the internet who have built their own chargers- look it up if you like. Personally, i can't be bothered to build one, nor do i have the right tools or skills- but if they had it at Canadian Tire i would buy one for sure. These are my choices: buy terribly over priced "rechargeable" batteries, or, since im often short on cash, buy the generic coppergizers and throw, throw, throw them away.

"Grassroots"

Another term falling victim to language manipulation in the interest of political gain. Examine the metaphor. Many roots of blades of grass working together to grow into a lawn; many many small additions to the whole, together can create a powerful total. So ‘grassroots’ funding would be many many small sources of funding coming together to create one large pool of money.

Harper is always talking about his ‘grassroots’ campaign fundraising. The budget they recently presented eliminated government funding for political parties, meaning all parties would have to rely on their individual supporters for all campaign funds. The opposition parties are very upset with this because they know that the conservative ‘grassroots’ fundraising is far superior to their own.

So, it leaves the question, why is conservative ‘grassroots’ the most effective? Only recently have they been flirting with majorities, but Harper’s been going on about his ‘grassroots’ since the party was much less popular. Therefore its not by quantity of blades of grass that the conservative lawn is much greener. So where the hell is the conservative party getting all this green? It can only be explained by the quality of the roots. Conservatives must get more funding per source, each root being stronger on its own.

Well, conservative voters are traditionally older and wealthier. They have more money to pass along to the party sure, but that can’t be the only explanation. There have to be a few roots in that lawn that are very very large. Its no secret that the conservatives have many ties in business and receive much of their support from corporate sources.

Sorry but that is NOT ‘grassroots’ fundraising, its corporate. You can’t have a lawn made up of 50 giant blades of grass, it makes no sense. ‘Grassroots’ is a metaphor wherein the many weak bond together to become strong, its not applicable to the many strong bonding together to become even stronger. This is a traditionally lefty term, and Harper has brilliantly stolen it. It makes his party seem like it derives it greatest strength from the people which is total BS; the conservatives are strong because they have a leader whose great at playing the game of politics and a corporately stocked war chest for elections.

I’m sure Harper also can’t resist referring to his party with a term that sounds both populist and environmental.

Its all a sham my friends, we’re not all going to be out of work living in our cars. North Americans have one quality that guarantees our economic survival- we are the perfect consumers. Global conglomerates have invested fortune after fortune for generations convincing us to be the perfect little shoppers. We’ve been meticulously studied and prodded. They know how to sell to us, where to sell to us; they’ve been blasting us with their messages since birth. Think about it, we know the lyrics to jingles, we buy cheap equipment doomed to break constantly- we’ll wait for hours in the cold for a store to open when the latest crap is made available.

Then there’s the infrastructure. Look at a company like Walmart, with the reach and market saturation they’ve got in the USA. Do you think a company like that would want to pack it in and move out. Of course not, sure there is potentially much more consumption to be had elsewhere and they’re expanding abroad, but North American consumption is all set to go. The stores are here everywhere and we’re all salivating at the mouth to get in.

People in other parts of the world aren’t nearly as addicted to shopping as we are, they’re more like our grandparents. One set of dishes washed, none of this paper and plastic shit. A can opener that never broke. Baths instead of long showers. Our corporate masters have too much of a vested interest in this population, they know they can shit any garbage on us and we’ll scoop it up like dogs. They’ve got to keep us working to make this possible. These “economic downturns” are just opportunities for them to freak us out and make it okay that we didn’t get a raise this year, or that we took a terrible job and count it as a blessing. The working man’s slice is always shrinking.

Greatest Depression Ever!

Worst part of the news is the sympathy crap and the disturbing shit- pet care and traffic accidents. Celebrity news of course being comprised of both crap and shit. When it comes to the real stories, the poorer and more foreign you are, the less tragic is your hardship. . . Unless of course something really freaky happened. When there is a disaster, its difficult to get resources and trained people into the region- a bottleneck develops around availability of local transport and expertise. How many educated people with modern equipment descend upon suffering populations purely for the sake of recording them? Can you imagine if only one guy brought a camera and everyone else brought med packs?

Major news media does a great disservice to society. They're biased by their corporate masters. They profit from disasters and suffering. They decide the fate of elections, promote fear and fill the public consciousness with useless nonsense. The people running these "news" sources have so many other motivations, that spreading truth based knowledge becomes a very low priority. some examples:

Martha Stewart and Conrad Black. These people are crooks, pure and simple. They are no different than the teenager who works at the variety store up the street and sneaks $20 from the cash register, or the dude with the green visor who fixes horse races. Martha and Conrad stole and defrauded on a much larger scale, but they also have strong media ties- so what happens? They remain darlings. I remember the out-pooring of crying fans for Martha in prison and John McCain surely welcomed Black's presidential endorsement. - -ha ha, how's your candidate now bitch!?

Here's another one: "worst economic downturn since the great depression". Harper said it, how many times did the news take it and repeat it. This is a completely useless statement. All it does is conjure up visions of people selling apples on streetcorners, it has almost no relevance today whatsoever. The world is a completely different place than it was 80 years ago. Somebody gives an analogy that has a strong image and freaks people out and the news always jumps on it.


In their defense, maybe they're just giving the public what they want. "News that matters to you". If truth matters to you, you could try googling your news or getting an approximation from many sources- but this will take up much of your time. Easier just to flip on the first 15 mins of the 6:00 news and hear "great depression", which should scare people into cinching their wallets and slowing the economy even more. Well at least we know to go out and buy an apple cart, sell one of the children, and start learning how to make cabbage soup.

Good One

Here’s a good trick. Price of oil has potential to go up; gas prices immediately go up by a larger percentage. . . but. . . .oil prices go down in reality, gas prices very slowly and reluctantly go down by a smaller percentage.

They’re just always winning, pure and simple. It’s this perfect industry where it doesn’t seem to matter whether things swing massively one way or the other. Every change in supply or demand is a good thing. I remember, back when i had a car, how everyone kept complaining about how gas was going to hit the $1 a litre benchmark. Of course its been there and above for years; they’ve gotten us used to the idea. Now the price of oil has come down and so has gas, but only to a lesser degree. Eventually, we’ll start hearing about how “the price of oil is going to go back up!”; based on this potential the price of gas will then increase while oil again stays behind.

The price of a litre is slowly drifting closer to the price of a barrel.

That’s the real number to watch, wait until oil is at $50 and gas is at $1. Then we can complain about that benchmark, and nothing will happen.

Corporate Welfare

The North American auto industry is collapsing, it seems as though no amount of propping up is going to help it re-claim its former glory. People will keep making cars here in Canada and the US, but on a much smaller scale. The big three are pleading with the public and the government to save them from disaster. Many people’s jobs and investments hang in the balance. Maybe this stems from a simple twist in accountability that’s crippling us:

Within any corporation, those with the most responsibility have the least to loose in bankruptcy.

Sure sure, loosing 100 million dollars is monetarily more than 10000 dollars, but if you’ve only got 10k- loosing everything is far more devastating than a billionaire loosing a fraction of his wealth. Even if say Richard Branson were to lose 99% of his wealth, he could still live out his days in luxury, never having to work a single day. If i lost 99% i’d be homeless.

Sadly this is what always seems to happen. A company goes bankrupt, who gets paid of first? Creditors (rich people). Second? Investors and upper management (rich people). Last? Workers and pensioners. . ..The rich don’t actually go bankrupt when their companies go bankrupt. Sure they may go down a few notches, but they’re not going to experience any real suffering like the pensioner who gets shafted, or the young parents who loose their jobs. If the rich actually needed to give a shit about running a business properly, this wouldn’t be happening.

CEO’s are pleading for help, and we’re forced to listen because we’re the only ones who actually stand to loose something. Open your own goddamn pockets you wealthy bastards! The public is tired of shelling out corporate welfare because somebody’s great great nephew is too inbred and pampered to understand rudimentary concepts like market demand.