US activist pushes 'terror-free' gas
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The first "terror-free" gas station was inaugurated this week in Omaha, Nebraska aiming to send a message to Middle Eastern oil producers thought to sponsor terrorism.Congress may refuse to drill in ANWR but The People will lead.
The station in the central US state greets customers with large "terror-free" signs and the pumps proudly proclaim that the oil being drawn is "terror-free premium" or "terror-free super."
Messages plastered inside the station's convenience store drive home the message that it only sells oil from Canada and the United States and supports the war on terror.
"We know that when we go to the pumps we are sending our hard-earned dollars to a part of the world that wishes to destroy us," Joe Kaufman, who is behind the "Terror-Free Oil Initiative" (TFO) which runs the station, told AFP.
The TFO logo combines the twin towers of the New York City World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, and designations for United Airlines flight 93 and three other aircraft which were hijacked and crashed into those buildings in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
"We created this initiative to make a statement to those gasoline companies that purchase their crude oil in the Middle East, that we as Americans are sick and tired of financing our own demise," Kaufman said.
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"We're not under any illusion that we're going to make a dent in the oil market or in the oil or gasoline business, but we're just trying to make a statement," he said. "We believe in the war on terrorism and we're doing our small part as Americans to fight that war."
This is a small gesture, but it shows a critical mass of people have awoken to the problem at hand -- and are doing something about it.
Imagine millions of such "small parts" mobilized in the GWOT!
As Belmont Club has discussed for years, non-government action works both ways, and one should worry much more about the private resources of the educated and affluent West.
Warfare was once the province of states, but as al-Qaeda proved, probably to the cost of everyone on the planet, small extremist organizations can wage combat effectively. In discussing portable and deniable nuclear weapons, I noted that there was no reason in principle why anti-Jihadi or anti-anyone extremist groups couldn't come up with them. After all, why should a bunch of Pakistani scientists be able to come up with something that an equivalent group of Indian or Israeli private citizens couldn't.Perhaps not coincidentally, my old posting on Letters of Marque and Reprisal has been getting lots of google search hits lately.
Bill Roggio is probably correct in thinking that coincidences like this are really suspicious. But it would probably be more frightening if none of the secret services all around the world knew who blew up the IGRC [Iranian military] bus.
My Mother remembers, as a small child during WW2, collecting and flattening tin cans for the war effort. It was a small, but important, part on the Road to Victory.
Find your own small part, and do it secure in the knowledge that it belongs to a larger, unstoppable wave.
Even a tsunami is just lots of little drops.
Terror Free Oil is one of them.
