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Big Oil Benefits From "Divide and Conquer"


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This is you, Mr. and Ms. America, and you allow it to happen

Originally Published May 9, 2006, updated when pissed off enough.

Big Oil and Its Sycophants, Screw America's Economy, Free Will, By The People FOR The People, Foreign Policy, Military Options and Reduces Freedom, While Oil Bought and Paid For Politicians Fiddle-faddle While Americans Burn...ENOUGH ALREADY!

Snides' Remarks - February 27, 2012; Lots of news that reinforces our warning about Big Oil's Divide and Conquer ant-alt fuel strategy (see article below).

This past Saturday President Obama revealed his alt fuels "All-of-the-above" energy "policy", which we believe actually translates to "None-of-the-above", so much so that the WSJ reported that Exxon Mobil became the latest oil giant to unveil a significant capital budget because the price of oil continues its monopolistic climb. Exxon Mobil said that it plans to spend a record $37 billion annually for the foreseeable future to boost production and reserves, hmmm I guess the oil companies are not too concerned that "All-of-the-above" will have any meaningful effect on their anti-American economy growth killing profits.

Also, today Pike Research reported that American feelings about Bio-fuels suffered the most precipitous decline inexorability, dropping 17 points from 56% in the 2009 edition of Pike Research’s survey to 39% by 2011. Divide and Conquer is alive and well, much to the detriment of the American economy...time to get pissed people, time to get pissed. WTF?

Snides' Remarks - January 3, 2012; With the elimination of the Ethanol subsidy, Iran rattling swords, politicians blowing more hot air, and car makers backing off of real and timely altenative fueled vehicles, I thought it once again time to republish this editorial, what say you?...msnide@theautochannel.com

Big Oil WANTS AND NEEDS AMERICANS TO STAY CONFUSED AND DOCILE about alt fuels, so they can continue to profit from their gasoline monopoly.

Opinion by Bob Gordon
President and Co-publisher
The Auto Channel

PHOENIX, AZ - May 9, 2006: After spending time at the 2006 Clean Cities Congress here in Phoenix, and after listening to doomsday speeches, presentations, and facts and opinions promoting only partial and short term energy solutions, I came to the conclusion that the top line ANSWER to the "Energy Crisis" and its progeny the destruction of our earth’s ecology, is and has always been right here in our faces, everywhere on our beautiful fragile planet. The ingredients for the solution are abundant and here for the using and using and using...are 100% self renewing, and leave no harmful emissions behind. Best of all, no single country or group can control or monopolize this magic elixir.

The solution to this ending of “life as we know it” problem is simple and one that everyone (other than the entrenched despots; corporate, elected or appointed) will agree upon and support. The solution results from the technological transmutation of our wind and our water into Electric which we can use to convert water into Hydrogen to power our vehicles and replace oil forever. Wind and water, two of earth's most basic and inherent components, are the solution.

Now with a true concern and recognition of our problems we need to participate to form a “collective will,” and insist that those in a leadership position do everything necessary to direct industry to use its modern technologies and allow the wind and water to give us even more than they already have.

I know I am beginning to sound like a Pollyanna tree hugger, and/or a poet that is communing with nature and has "plugged into our earth". But no, I am the same old car guy who has finally recognized that a single logical, simple and realistic solution to the energy problems has been presented to us by Mother Earth herself… “Take advantage of this opportunity I am providing you with. Here are the elements that can help save you and help save me and I provide them to humankind in an everlasting supply”. Talk about manna in the desert, this sounds pretty biblical to me, and here it is 9 AM with nothing in my system but hotel courtesy coffee.

Okay, so how did this epiphany happen? Well, at the Clean Cities Congress there are lots of well meaning, concerned energy and ecological professionals who are, have, and continue to propose solutions to the energy problems here in this country and around the globe.

A recurrent theme during the presentations, meetings and coffee break discussions by alternative fuel experts and advocates was that there is not just one but many, many, many potential solutions to reduce our energy problems and help reduce the dependence on oil, suggestions and proposals included; vehicles powered by soy bean oil, biodiesel, electric, ethanol; clean diesel, natural gas, liquid petroleum gas, propane, methane, hydrogen made from natural gas, hydrogen from hydrides, hydrogen from nuclear power; hydrogen made at home in our garages, big springs, compressed air, used French fry oil, and so on. If it burns or explodes it is being proposed as a potential solution, and all have some merit, and each has its benefits, its proponents and each its detractors, and that’s the problem.


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More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote in a book called “The Art of War”, that success will come from the strategy of “divide and conquer” …a strategy that is at work today in our efforts to solve our nations and the world’s Junkie Like Dependence on fossil fuels and the companies and countries that sell us the needed “smack”.

Many solutions are not the solution; each suggestion has a counter suggestion, each need for support and love (both financially and logistically) cancels out another's need for money and support. And all the while we driver drones fill up our tanks, complain about cost, stay depressed yet stick our heads in the sand so we can, like a junkie, enjoy our highs without a concern for the lows we know will soon come, the result of immature and premeditated commercial and government policies.

I believe it's time to take matters into our own hands and lobby to use what Nature has provided. Combined with our God given intelligence and survival instincts, and a lot of smart folks, we must generate a country wide and then a world wide Collective Will to ensure the adoption and implementation of what’s logical, safe and will work in all respects.

It’s time for our government and our leaders to govern and lead. Just as JFK energized this country and the world with a call to place a man on the moon, so must President Bush, and his successor, and our congress energize our citizens once again, but this time with the message and goal that a future with unlimited, non-polluting energy that is abundant, available and uncontrolled is here under our noses. If he and they follow this I can virtually guarantee that approval ratings will jump and the economy will get even better, and the democracy of cheap and plentiful hydrogen fuel will help transform those countries under the yoke of despots into the modern era. Details and ideas on how it can be done will come. I promise you that.

To that end, we must all be educated about the possibilities and benefits of this non-polluting and renewable source of energy, that everyone on earth owns and can benefit from. Hydrogen, in its iterations and applications, can power our vehicles and heat our homes, and run the machinery of modern life here on earth. And the way to get it in abundance is to borrow its power from the water we drink through the harnessing of the wind around us…what’s wrong with this scenario?

From now on The Auto Channel will be regularly adding links to information and data that supports this hypothesis. Anyone out there who thinks I’m nuts, is a victim of the depression caused by “Divide and Conquer.” It’s time to support a single realistic solution to our problems.

Getting Us Off Gasoline: Electric Vehicles-Solution or Diversion?

What We Believe; Reducing the United State's dependence on oil by an additional 75% is now realistic and relatively easy...we need to just replace Regular (E10) and High-Test (E-10) with a single High-Test Flex Fuel (E85) for our cars and light trucks, and Replace Oil Based Diesel With CNG(Natural Gas) and soon Bio-Diesel for trucks, buses and other heavy duty vehicles, and we must begin today.

During the past 15 years The Auto Channel has invested its editorial and economic resources to research, understand and provide in-depth and many times exclusive text and video coverage of ALT Fuels including Electric vehicles, Wind, Hydrogen, Fuel-cells, CNG and Propane, and have done it far more vigorously than any other mainstream automotive web site.

Today more than ever we continue to strongly support our belief that some day domestic non-polluting sustainable bio fuels, electric, hydrogen or a yet unknown fuel must and will power all of our vehicles.

But America cannot afford to wait for that some day, when “the” Alt fuel had been discovered, invented, tested and made available commercially. All of the facts agree that now is the absolutely correct point in our history to mandate a ubiquitous replacement for our 115 year old gasoline dependency. NOW!

In spite of all of mainstream media's noise about Electric Vehicles, PHEV's and new battery technology, most independent automotive futurists, and every auto manufacturer's published sales projections for their electric vehicle production concurs with our supposition that electric vehicles are not a near or even a mid-term solution to our festering gasoline dependency, there will be just to few EV's to make a meaningful difference in gasoline use, even over the next 40 years or longer.

Today's oft repeated fairy-tale of electric replacing 300 million plus gasoline powered vehicles on U.S. roads is not only an impossibility, but we believe, is another insidious example of a well planned diversionary tactic used to turbo charge Big Oil's “Divide and Conquer” strategy. Big Oil's frequently chanted mantra is that “there is not just one replacement for gasoline but many” a message that is the spear point of a misinformation campaign designed to marginalize and delay the logical and patriotic mandate for implementation of the real, domestic and readily available replacement for gasoline; alcohol. Big Oil's goal is to continue the status-quo monopoly that they love (and profit from – big time) for as long as possible into the future, or until they own and can monopolize oil's replacement.

The truth (which is sublimated by Divide and Conquer) is that today there already exists a domestically produced, sustainable and cleaner fuel than gasoline, a fuel that has already replaced gasoline in 7 million American flex-fuel cars and trucks and is realistically available to eliminate the use of 85% of gasoline today, not in 10, 20 or 100 years, but now. Now before more heroes have given their lives or limbs to sustain the criminal status-quo, now before we purchase and pollute our world by burning another trillion dollars worth of gasoline.

Replacing gasoline with flex-fuel today will end our export of a billion American dollars each day to people who not only hate our way of life and our freedoms but are financing the wars to destroy us. Replacing gasoline with flex-fuel today will radically minimize the influence and mammoth lobbying power of Big Oil, an industry that presently takes a trillion dollars a year from the American economy just when we need it the most. Imagine the positive impact that a trillion dollars multiplying within our economy will have on our families, our farmers, our green industries, America's labor force and our government's ability to do the right thing for our citizens.

So we scream with outrage, NOW! Now is the time for every American to tell their representatives in government to stand up and remove themselves from under the thumb of the oil lobby, because fellow Americans, we must not take it any more; not now, not ever again, it's time NOW for Flex-fuel, an American Solution to America's Problem.

SEE ALSO: Yes Viginia There Is a Silver Bullet Solution To Our Gasoline Addiction
www.hydrogen.gov
Discover the unique power of the wind

New Addendum - Published October 7, 2010

New Survey From MBUSA and Harris Research Finds Majority of Americans Are Confused About Alternative Fuel Options

SEE ALSO: Electric Vehicles-Solution or Diversion?
SEE ALSO: The Ultimate Driving Distraction Electric Vehicles
SEE ALSO: NO NEW GASOLINE-POWERED VEHICLES IN THE U.S. BY 2014...Can It Be Done?
SEE ALSO: Alcohol and Driving DO Mix
SEE ALSO: The Stagnation of Natural Gas Vehicles in America
SEE ALSO: America's Problem-American Solution!
SEE ALSO: The Auto Channel Fights For The Truth About Gasohol

But First Snide's Remarks This research comes as no surprise to us, because since 2006 we've told you that it is in Big Oil's interest to continue to decimate the big lie that "there is no silver bullet, not just one solution to get America off of gasoline". As we've preached over the past 4 years if there are "many solutions" there is no solution, continuing the status-quo through Big Oil's strategy of Divide and Conquer

So today we want to thank Mercedes-Benz USA and Harris Research for placing into the record indisputable evidence of the success of the Divide and Conquer effort, which continues to work for Big Oil and its masters and against the interests of the citizens of every country in the world (with the exception of…oh you know who).

Big Oil NEEDS AMERICANS TO STAY CONFUSED AND DOCILE about alt fuels, so they can profit from their monopoly, and continue to force us to buy a TRILLION DOLLARS worth of their old fashioned gasoline every year (for how long?). Adding to the confusion are the oil company's "green fuel" TV ads that exclaim "how hard they are working on many ALT fuels”, we see these commercials and print ads as a well thought out and executed element of Big Oil's successful campaign of confusion.

Unwittingly (or not) the U.S. government is an enabler of Big Oil's status quo strategy, with daily rhetoric of increased MPG and the fairy-tale of a replacement of gasoline by electric vehicles. Over the past few years we have stated that "MPG is a code word for screw Americans, and "let them keep using gasoline"...because if we were all using domestic, sustainable and green, High-test Flex-fuel (e-85),CNG, Propane, Biodiesel or even a Flux Capacitor, MPG would become what it should be, just a personal economic choice, not a national security issue. What is actually important is not a vehicle's MPG but which fuel a car or truck uses.

So we scream isn't it time for patriotic Americans to get pissed off, and demand that their government, as a first giant step, clear up the alt fuel confusion and get us out from under the ticking diplomatic and military time-bombs, by mandating the immediate drop-in replacement for OPEC dominated, monopolistic and criminal gasoline, by patriotic, sustainable and green High-Test Fuel; Gasohol(E85), this would buy us the luxury of time and provide the capital resources to research an eventual replacement (or not) of Gasohol with a yet unproven or undiscovered future fuel. What Do You Think? msnide@theautochannel.com.

MONTVALE, N.J., Oct. 7. 2010; For 50 years, Americans focused on things like horsepower, color, and design when deciding which car to buy. Today, that decision includes even more mystifying choices, including how the vehicle is powered; Is it a hybrid? Is it electric? Does it take regular gasoline or diesel fuel? A new survey from Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) conducted online in July 2010 by Harris Interactive suggests that Americans are having a hard time figuring out what to make of all these choices, and as a result, many are holding off on purchasing an alternative fuel vehicle (AFV). (Divide and Conquer)

The survey found that nearly one in two adults (48%) would be interested in purchasing an alternative fuel vehicle but are not sure about what type to get (e.g., hybrid, electric, diesel) and only about one in three (35%) say they know which types of AFVs are best for various driving situations (e.g., city, suburban, highway). In fact, more adults claim to be knowledgeable or very knowledgeable about the causes of the global financial crisis, the difference between good and bad cholesterol and the amount of oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, than they are about the difference between various types of alternative fuel vehicles.

"The end game is zero-emissions driving that doesn't simply transfer the problem. And, while that is still in the future, each alternative fuel vehicle we introduce is a step in that direction, providing key findings and helping acclimate consumers to new technology," said Sascha Simon, head of advanced product planning at Mercedes-Benz USA. "Our goal at Mercedes-Benz is to provide a portfolio of options for our customers so they can choose the vehicle that best suits their lifestyle and to further the understanding and, ultimately, the adoption rate for these new technologies."

Detailed information on each option is available on the "Thinking Green" section of Mercedes-Benz's website at http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/innovation/thinking_green/overview. The site includes information on Mercedes-Benz's BlueTEC clean diesel vehicles (E350 BlueTEC, ML350 BlueTEC, GL450 BlueTEC and R350 BlueTEC), hybrid vehicles (S400 HYBRID, ML450 HYBRID and hydrogen electric vehicles (B-Class F-Cell), flexible fuel options as well as tips for driving green.

Among the findings from the MBUSA/Harris Interactive survey:

  • A vast majority of U.S. adults (71%) say they are not at all or only somewhat knowledgeable about the difference between various types of alternative fuel vehicles.
    • One in four adults (25%) is not at all knowledgeable about the difference between various types of alternative fuel vehicles.
    • More adults claim to be knowledgeable or very knowledgeable about the causes of the global financial crisis (34%), the difference between good and bad cholesterol (45%), and the amount of oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico (46%) than about the difference among various types of alternative fuel vehicles (29%).
    • Men are more likely than women to say they are knowledgeable or very knowledgeable (41% vs. 18%, respectively).
  • More than half of adults (58%) have never considered purchasing an alternative fuel vehicle, while nearly two in five (39%) have. Only three percent already own one.

About the Survey

This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of Mercedes-Benz USA from July 9-13, 2010 among 2,242 adults ages 18 and older. Results were weighted as needed to reflect the composition of the U.S. adult population. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please contact Donna Boland.

About Harris Interactive

Harris Interactive is one of the world's leading custom market research firms, leveraging research, technology, and business acumen to transform relevant insight into actionable foresight. Known widely for the Harris Poll and for pioneering innovative research methodologies, Harris offers expertise in a wide range of industries including healthcare, technology, public affairs, energy, telecommunications, financial services, insurance, media, retail, restaurant, and consumer package goods. Serving clients in over 215 countries and territories through our North American, European, and Asian offices and a network of independent market research firms, Harris specializes in delivering research solutions that help us - and our clients - stay ahead of what's next. For more information, please visit www.harrisinteractive.com.

About Mercedes-Benz USA

Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA), headquartered in Montvale, New Jersey, is responsible for the distribution, marketing and customer service for all Mercedes-Benz and Maybach products in the United States. Â MBUSA offers drivers the most diverse line-up in the luxury segment with 12 model lines ranging from the sporty C-Class to the flagship S-Class sedans and the SLS AMG supercar.

MBUSA is also responsible for the distribution, marketing and customer service of Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Vans in the US. More information on MBUSA and its products can be found at www.mbusa.com and www.mbsprinterusa.com.