Headline Nov. 06/ ''' BLACKFISH VOTE *BANDITS* '''

''' BLACKFISH VOTE *BANDITS* '''

BY GOD  -  BY GOD : YOU & YEE The Students of the World, ................  Have no illusions.

Merium, Rabo, Dee, and the Students of the World, bent on a !WOW!, The World Students Society and yet again, most lovingly called, !WOW!, be not under the delusion.........

That this world......... in its present- form and function, will readily allow all of you to come together, and have Global Elections. 

*But try, we must. And never give up and never give in till the world lasts, or till the eternity becomes eternal.* .

The great honors of joining up The World Students Society is mostly about helping you sleep better. 

Just as it is mostly about making the Leaders of the world, sleep a lot worse. ''The !WOW! of lost World.''

Remember Corporate and Company boycotts are one of the ways we have to protect unethical corporate behavior. Outrageous remarks by executives tend, in any case, to be largely a distraction.

Zilli, where is the list of the companies that the Pakistani Students dislike? And for that matter the list of companies that the Indian students dislike, and that list of companies that the World Students  dislike...............

Zilli, you think, we can publish all that? Saima? Haleema? Armeen? Sara? Seher? Malala? Eman?  Lakshmi? Susan? Zainab? Paras? Sorat? Anne? Hadiqa/Australia? Zara? Aqsa? Sanyia? Shahbano?  

These distracting remarks catch our attention and trigger our emotions. Meanwhile, we get bored and look away from the dull crimes companies commit every day, every single day...............   

Like Mylan gouging patients and government healthcare programs with 500 percent markup on   EpiPens Like Volkswagen selling ''clean diesel'' cars that ran clean only long enough to fool emissions testing equipment.

Like Exxon funding climate change disinformation. 

We are terrible, that is, at boycotting business as usual. . 

Ms. Irwin admits for instance, to having test-driven an Audi, manufactured by Volkswagen, after the 2015 revelations that the company systematically cheated its customers on ''clean diesel'' :

The sales guy said, 'What do you think?'' and I said, 'I like it. But I'm mad at you guys,'' and he said, 'No, that was VW.'

He was trying to help me have that cognitive inconsistency, because we like to have those excuses so we don't have to worry about it.''

She didn't buy it. But plenty of other customers did.

Heavy discounting helped make scandal ridden Volkswagen the world's largest automaker in 2016. We do better, Ms. Irwin says, when our ethical issues happen to line up with things we don't actually like.

''Then we can say, 'Oh, I never eat liver,' '' she said.

So how do we make our boycotts more effective? How do we avoid wasting energy on the foot-in-the-mouth moments of dunderheaded executives and instead act on weightier issues?

One answer is to accept that boycotts are about publicity, not consumer choice, and advertise wonky ethical positions like any other product : in vivid emotional terms.

The film ''Blackfish'' didn't just attack SeaWorld for keeping orca whales in captivity. It made Tilikum, taken from the wild in 1983 and kept in captivity until his early death early this year, the personification  -the whale-ification- of that issue.

Likewise, Jimmy Kimmel didn't just add another set of charts to the health insurance debate.

He held up a picture of his infant son born with a heart defect and reshaped the debate in terms of how proposed changes would affect kids like his.

Large-scale institutional forces can also ameliorate the frustrated consumer's abiding sense of inconsistency.

I can't swear off heating oil just yet, but I can support the fossil fuel divestment campaign which has persuaded institutions worth $5.5 trillion to shed at least some fossil fuel investments.

I can also divest individually, in my retirement account, with the help of socially responsible mutual funds, which have lately proliferated, some with impressive results.

[The website Fossil Free Funds allows investors to scan their holdings for hidden fossil fuel investments. And it's not just about climate change: A start-up called Motif investing now also enable investors to construct a portfolio aligned more or less precisely with their individual values].

Am I actually doing these things? Only partly. I have begun the process with my retirement account and will complete it by year's end.

I'm not under the delusion that the investment choices of people like me are going to cause financial harm to socially irresponsible companies, any more than participating in a boycott would.

But I like the idea of helping to move those companies into the pariah class.

It's partly about helping me sleep better. But mostly, it;s about making the managers of those companies sleep really worse. 

Much appreciation and many thanks, yet again, from the The World Students Society for writer, researcher and author, Richard Conniff. 

With most loving and respectful dedication to The Students of the World. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Twitter- !E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Life on Earth '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless