January 08, 2006

• That seems akin to asking someone else what political convictions you should have. If the most important thing to you is quality, buy the best. If it's price, buy the cheapest. If it's environment-friendliness, research that and buy green. But what I think you should buy or not buy, may be completely immaterial.
• Corporate Accountability International has a lot of info on companies that are harming the environment and/or human health. The link goes to a list of their current campaigns.
• Even more, I'd like to know which companies we shouldn't boycott. I mean things like where should I buy gas, since I have to buy gas. Is Chevron better or worse than Shell or Arco? Safeway better than Albertsons? Is there a coffee shop I should seek out for its fair buying and employment practices? Here's what I know, and it's not much: I know that Wal-Mart should be boycotted. Google will tell you why. General Tire in Redwood City, CA should not be boycotted because they do good work and have a history of not charging at all for easy fixes.
• As I understand it, this is basically the service that the UK-based Ethical Consumer provides. I believe they cater to a variety of stances, some of which have earned them criticism. I haven't looked at the project in detail though.
• For the U.S. I've read that Conoco are slightly less evil than the rest.
• As a general rule, I think that boycotts don't really have that much effect. The only one I can really of was the world-wide shunning of South Africa, but I'm not convinced that internal pressure from the oppressed majority wouldn't have had the same result. Now if your intent is simply to not support some behemoth planet-plundering mega-corporation, then the best plan is to shop locally. Patronize your neighbourhood butcher, baker, and candlestick maker.
• If you live in Texas, beware of Promised Land Dairy . It seems like a good company, non-gmo, seemingly happy cows and all that, until you find out that it's run by James Leininger one of the biggest "special interest" republican bank-rollers, who uses the proceeds to fund a myriad of right wing religious causes, from anti-homosexual legislation to "intelligent design" initiatives, to redistricting plans. Promised Land Dairy, it just so happens, also supplies the milk that Texas Whole Foods Stores market under their store label.
• yentruoc: Depending on how you feel about Hugo Chavez, you may want to consider getting gasoline from CITGO if they're in your area... it's owned by Venezuela's national oil company. I'm inclined to support that company because of efforts such as these.
• from anti-homosexual legislation to "intelligent design" initiatives, to redistricting plans. And that's precisely what I meant before. Without bringing my own political affiliation into this at all, it seems that there's a tendency to lump "republican" and "evil" together. I'm not coming down on one side or another, just asking the original post to be more specific. For example, if you support "intelligent design", you might want to patronize Promised Land. If you read the post that started the thread, the flaw in logic is even evident in its language: it mentions "popular targets". We've got a lot of corporations that absolutely shouldn't be supported. But to which an individual does or does not bequeath his or her hard-earned Benjamins should be a decision borne out of research and education, not mindless, en voguebandwagon-jumping. This should in no way be construed as representing my opinion on anything, except on opinion itself. I certainly don't support anti-homosexual legislation, e.g.
• Just, for the love of God, don't shop at Ikea
• Well, of COURSE don't shop at Ikea. For fashion's sake, at least.
• Sony...Thanks for the rootkits...
• .. oops, I might have meant 'sunoco' above, I can't keep US stuff straight in my head.
• I would try to stay away from the law firm of "Slavery, Rape, and Narcoticstein" I hear they're bad eggs...
• Why not Ikea? I don't currently shop there, but that's about the layout more than anything else. Also, AOL is very very bad. (Bad in terms of performance - I don't know their politics/employment practices.) But I don't imagine many of you don't know that already.
• That seems akin to asking someone else what political convictions you should have You do have a point, however... for many of the worst corporate offenders, the ones clearly deserving of opposition or criticism, it is relatively easy to explain their offenses such that reasonable people of any political conviction would find objectionable. Take fiscal conservatism, for example. A characteristic typically defined as being Republican. Except that even the most granola muching liberal is against profligate government waste - they merely have broader definitions of what constitutes reasonable government spending. Meanwhile, any Republican who hues too closely to a goal of fiscal conservatism would be considered a loon by fellow party members. The government could save all sorts of money by equiping the army with swords instead of guns... but this would hardly serve the other Republican touchstone of national defense. Yet this is exactly the sort of irrational behaviour, the type of fanatical devotion to a single goal to the point of ridiculousness, that Walmart is quilty of. The key point, of course, is reasonable people. Those who recognize that issues are almost never black or white, or best characterized by extremes. That life is all about subtlety.
• Why not Ikea? I don't currently shop there, but that's about the layout more than anything else. That is why. I am trying to save this man (or woman) from mental harm
• Co-op America has a lot of good info on green businesses ('green' being shorthand for more than just environmental concerns). Also, transnationale.org has a ton of good info, although the format is kind of confusing. Responsible Shopper has great dossiers on lots of corporations, and is a bit more straightforward. ...just some oak and some pine and a handful of norsemen...
• I think the only value of an individual boycott is to the individual doing it - that feeling of being on the right side. And, even in the 1960s, when organizing boycotts was a tactic tried by the radical, pinko leftists, not all that many people stopped buying grapes in support of the farm worker unionization movement. I guess it's kind of like voting. Probably takes a bit of work to figure out whom you want to support and whom you don't. Another source of data is the business pages of your favorite news source. I follow the stock market on Yahoo/finance. You can set up a portfolio of companies you want to track, and the latest news about those companies will appear under their daily stock price reporting. They're required to report significant events that could affect stock prices, so you can find out about suits, disasters and the like, plus, you get analyst discussion of potential problems and recent news articles that mention them. And, as others have said, your best option may be to support local businesses (even though they probably buy their stock from some larger consortium, whom you won't be able to identify.) That does support local owners, and adds a lovely neighborhood flavor to a town. Even then, however, it can be a challenge to identify the good guys. And, you'll probably pay more than you would relying on larger, possibly evil, stores. I don't think there are any easy answers.
• All of them.
• And come now, folks: he expressed concern for his fellow man. Obviously he's not a republican. </snark> Regarding boycotts: I think the short answer is, they CAN work, but they often do not. For starters, it's hard to tell what is impacting what, and businesses aren't likely to publically announce "sales are down because people don't like our sweatshops." But companies ARE certainly concerned about brand image, and will do what they can to preserve and improve that, even if it just means paying lip service to consumer concerns. By all means, consume responsibly and encourage others to do the same. But educated consumers are just a part of the solution.
• I agree with PareidoliaticBoy and Path. I think that boycotts have very little effect other than letting people have a false sense of having "done something". I do try to support companies that I think do good works. But in the mega conglomerate world that we live in, boycotts have limited (if any) impact. In fact, if you are concerned about a specific issue like reproductive freedom, for example, then sending $25 to NARAL or writing a letter to your elected officials will have much more of an positive effect than boycotting Domino's or Curves.
• Thanks for the responses. I'm aware that boycotts by a single person won't make any impact, but it's more of a matter of principle for me, making sure I have no blood on my hands. It's like telling a white lie: it doesn't do a lot of harm, but I still refuse to tell them because lying makes me feel rotten inside.
• boycotts have very little effect other than letting people have a false sense of having "done something" I couldn't disagree more. Money, and the flow of money, are most of what remains of political power. You should take responsibility for the power that goes along with the money. It's the difference between acting the way you wish everyone would - trying to make the world a better place - and acting the way everyone else does, because you can't change the world - succumbing to inertia, and in the long run, the loss of everything important. Besides any particular environmental, political, humanitarian etc. concerns, I would add that whenever possible I like to spend my money at locally owned establishments: every dollar of yours that goes to a national chain, or to any corporation housed away from your home, is some portion of a dollar sucked out of your local economy, and so diminishes your local community's power in the world. I think I have one of those wordy hangovers.
• Boycott everyone in the whoooole woooorld!
• DEFINITELY support local businesses.
• I believe that boycotts do have an effect, and one must view them in the larger context. They are only one player in changing the popular mindset of society, which is where societal change truly occurs. One should not discount boycotts, simply because their effectiveness as a player can vary from profound to negative. That is simply falling into the trap of a black and white mindset - wanting simple answers for everything, expecting one single response to be the only correct one. Will a boycott by a single person have a effect? Likely not, but it could, given the right circumstance...and the most important part is the willingness to truly try and effect change, without which life approaches meaninglessness.

• Who you want to boycott depends on what your politics are: you may see Walmart as a union-busting, worker-exploiting, neighborhood-destroying monster, or you may admire the way they make it possible for even the poorest Americans to live the American consumer dream of owning more stuff than we need.

  The real trouble comes when you dislike a company for one thing, but admire it for another. I avoid Kraft Foods because their subsidiary Gevalia has been spamming me - but I like the fact that when the American Family Association tried to blackmail them, they told the AFA where to go. And everyone knows how greedy and evil Microsoft is, but the Gates Foundation does excellent charitable work, giving large sums of money to some intelligently-chosen causes.

  By the way, just to make you really pessimistic about the chances of changing anything, consider this encouraging line from a novel by Scottish writer Alasdair Gray: "Any man with ten pounds in a savings account has unwittingly invested half of it in practices that would disgust him if he only knew." The sad fact is that he's probably right: almost every commercial venture is ethically compromised to some degree.

• I try to boycott but I'm a diva and it doesn't always work out. That said, I think writing the CEO, public relations firm (or whatever they're calling themselves) and CFO of a company, say Wal-Mart, has a bigger impact than one would think. I once heard of a equation some companies go by-1 letter of dissatisfaction =1,000 dissatisfied customers who didn't write. But are still dissatisfied. My numbers could be wrong. And I hope it's not just urban myth.
• IIRC, the Rainforest Action Network set up a boycott of Home Depot that resulted in changes to their lumber purchasing, and somebody else had a mining reform boycott ('No Dirty Gold', maybe?) that resulted in Tiffany's changing their metal-buying practices. And those are just the few that I remember off the top of my head. So it seems like it works sometimes.
• it's more of a matter of principle for me, making sure I have no blood on my hands You have blood on your hands. You're swimming in it. We all are. There's no way to avoid that, save absenting yourself entirely from society - and I'd argue that that's just a great a sin as being complicit in society's crimes. That's not an argument for doing nothing, sure. But it means you have to look a little bit beyond a desire for purity, and identify what really matters the most to you. And, as others have said, to not just withdraw your support from one area, but to positively encourage things you do believe in. Because while we all bear some responsibility for the ills caused by a system we support, the good it bit is that we can also take credit for the good things it can do. Basically, what I'm trying to say is, DON'T SHOP AT IKEA. That's my message. That's the code by which I live my life. Join me, brother - and together, we can bring those god damned Swedes to their knees.
• I once heard of a equation some companies go by-1 letter of dissatisfaction =1,000 dissatisfied customers who didn't write. But are still dissatisfied. I first heard of that ratio when NBC was canceling the original Star Trek and the letter writing campaign started. For those of you boycotting Sony, do you boycott just the Sony music label or is it all encompassing? No Sony music, no Sony movies, no Sony electronics? Sony was one of the DVD inventors, I can't imagine not buying or renting a movie ever again myself if we were to say no to everything they have a finger in.
• They obviously pay attention to boycotts, witness the recent fiasco in which Ford was willing to drop advertising in certain magazines oriented toward the homosexual demographic due to a threatened boycott by conservative groups. But, perhaps more important than the effect of an individual boycott is the effect of overall increased awareness as to what politics, ethical mindset and business practices, exactly, you are buying along with your Cheerios, so to speak. If everyone pays more attention to these things than companies will begin to change their practices to suit an emerging consumer mindset.
• For those of you boycotting Sony, do you boycott just the Sony music label or is it all encompassing? I'm also a bit unclear on the Sony boycott. Boycotting Sony Music I could understand, but that applies to just about any major label CD, and Sony's such a schizophrenic company it doesn't really make sense to hold the electronics arm directly accountable. Boycotting Sony music players I could understand, but that's because they're so poorly designed as far as usability. Anyone who did their homework would stay away from most Sony music players, simply because they're crappy. Not really what you'd normally consider boycott material. Is there a specific reason to boycott the Playstation? etc.
• To partially answer the question whether individual boycotts of companies as big as WalMart have any effect: "Wal-Mart Warns 4Q Profits Could Disappoint" "Wal-Mart aside, retailers on track for December"
• Boycotts totally work.
• Whether they "work" or not isn't something I'm really intersted in. I just don't want to give my money to people I think are asshats. I don't want to give them my money to continue doing the things I don't agree with. Orson Scott Card doesn't like gay people or support gay marriage. Fine. He doesn't have to. I also don't have to give him a dime of my money. So I don't. If that's a boycott, then so be it. Will it get him to change his mind? No. But there is such a large number of written works out there that I could read good quality work the rest of my life without ever reading it all. So if not reading stuff written by asshats will help me cut down my list of things to read, then all the better.
• Note to self:

  • Buy farm
  • Subscribe to Mother Earth News - build everything in every issue
  • Milk cows and goats - learn to make butter, yogurt and cheese
  • Keep bees - harvest and sell honey
  • Learn to make soap and beeswax candles
  • Keep poultry for meat and eggs
  • Cut wood to heat home in winter
  • Grow a big garden and can the surplus
  • Barter for products and services one can't provide for oneself
  • Boycott everyone else

  Damn. I never should have rented the DVD of Off the Map.
• Cuba?
• DEFINITELY support local businesses. Yeah, but what if the local business is a lousy one?
• Then move to Portland.
• Thanks for that link, mecurious. I haven't seen that one. GhostDad, this might be a handy tool to help you decide.
• Yeah, but what if the local business is a lousy one? Well, don't support that one. But, in general, if our consumer dollars go to support many local businesses instead of only a few megacorps, than that results in more choices overall. Which is an aspect of capitalism that I'm pretty much down with.
• The reasons behind boycotting Sony is that they've been caught actively and blatantly trying to do harm to their own customers. If you give them money, you are paying them to attack you. Sony wants to burn the people who give them money; the best way to avoid this burn is to not give them money.
• I'd boycott Sony just for the Michael Jackson factor. ;>
• I'm currently boycotting stripe for getting that Ikea song stuck in my head.
• as a corollary to multiple comments above re ikea, you must also boycott habitat.
• You can set up a portfolio of companies you want to track, and the latest news about those companies will appear under their daily stock price reporting. They're required to report significant events that could affect stock prices, so you can find out about suits, disasters and the like, plus, you get analyst discussion of potential problems and recent news articles that mention them. This looks like very helpful info from path *applause* I doubt that boycotts have much effect, but I just refuse to give money to any company I find objectionable (Walmart, Starbucks). So what if they never notice, at least they don't have *my* money. You can always find a reasonable alternative, even if you have to pay a few pennies more.
• Orson Scott Card doesn't like gay people or support gay marriage. WTF? Where does a sicko like Orson Scott Card get off making moral judgments about anybody? Has he read his own work?!? Yes, we've all got some blood on our hands, but we can try to keep it to a minimum. Sleeping a bit better at night isn't always a selfish, deluded thing to do, and the "in for a penny, in for a pound" philosphy of moral accountability doesn't always work for everyone. I'm down with the local business thing. I also think it's important to eat foods that are as close to locally-grown as I can afford. Better for nutrition, and don't have to be hauled across country in them diesel-guzzlers.
• 'What are you boycotting against?' Ghost Dad: 'What have you got?'
• roryk - huh?
• But, in general, if our consumer dollars go to support many local businesses instead of only a few megacorps, than that results in more choices overall. Somehow i have difficulty justifying the local angle. I try to give my business to the best companies, regardless of locality. Doing otherwise seems counterproductive to me. I get your point about corporate concentration being a bad thing if overdone though. The other thing about shopping local: I have a choice between buying an expensive chair from a local manufacturer or a cheap hand made chair from a third world country. Should I deny the third world artisan in favor of "locality".
• On the general subject of boycotts and whether they work or not, it comes down to whether enough customers can be convinced to vote with their wallets. One boycott that worked (eventually). Another.
• Why boycott Ikea -- is it because they're a megacorp? I didn't realise they were bad. Dammit. /fondles curvy Ikea desk lovingly
• yentruoc ikea owns habitat since 1992
• Did anyone post the article recently about a small Italian town that pushed Mcdonald's out simply because the local baker's product was better? And apparently San Luis Obispo's Burger King was forced to shut up shop because of a boycott by locals. They also had to close their second BK by the freeway. I don't have a link for that one, though; heard it from a friend who lived there.
• what's wrong with starbucks, as a matter of interest? my understanding was that the company was quite good about extending healthcare to workers' partners. i know they over-roast their coffee.
• Starbucks buys out the leases of local coffee shops, thereby putting them out of business, all because they have to have a Starbucks on every goddamn street corner. Plus their coffee tastes like dirty dishwater. Plus they symbolize the rampant, cancer-like spread of mediocrity.
• I would also like to know what's wrong with Ikea, as I'm planning on buying a bed from them fairly soon. If you don't tell me, I'm just going to go ahead and buy it :-P
• There are several reasons for trying to buy local, instead of just from corporations whose ethics you are happy with. First off, if it's local it's probably NOT a large corporation, which, to generalize, means you are supporting actual working people instead of some faceless investors. (less middle men, that sort of thing) Second, while large corporations can indeed be more efficient than smaller operations, you are also far less likely to see the hidden costs of their business. By favoring local products you have a much greater control over the businesses themselves: through local government, for example, or because your dollar is simply a greater percentage of their income. There are exceptions (e.g. Fair Trade), but as a rule the less local a product is, the less of the final retail price the actual workers see. Third, it's generally in your own self interest to improve the local economy. You may care about people in other countries too, but there are not a lot of countries that have better labor laws than ours (not counting western europe, at least), and few corporations that don't take advantage of that fact. Finally, there are a number of sociopolitical reasons (consolidated corporate power is bad for representative democracy, advertising is bad for you... that kind of thing) to support local businesses, that I won't go into in depth here.
• Koko, I know you're joking, but the whole point of being a resonsible consumer is caring enough to inform yourself. I did look around online for you a bit and couldn't find much.
• if it's local it's probably NOT a large corporation, which, to generalize, means you are supporting actual working people instead of some faceless investors. If I buy from the local company (likely a corporation), profits go to the stockholders of that company. Aren't those stockholders as faceless as the stockholders of a larger regional or national corporation? I'm not sure I get what you mean about supporting working people. What is the wage of the person working at Starbux compared to the wage of the person at a locally-owned cafe? Is it much different?
• From tracicle's link to the entrepreneurial baker who put a MacDonald's out of business in Italy: "It was a David versus Goliath contest because McDonald's had 10 staff and Mr DeGesu, 35, was a one-man show". Ten working people put out of work by a locally-owned business.
• Boycotts are alright, but voting is better. MORE LAWS AND TAXES are what we need people. If someone says they want to increase taxes, vote for them. If they want to vote laws (with claws) to protect the people or their interests (the environment, in the long term), vote for them. Richer, supporter of the HIGHER TAXES NOW movement.
• Boo-yah! Stickin' it to Tha Maayan!
• You're more than welcome to pay mine, if you like them so much.
• I have to echo what jccalhoun said. It's not a matter of thinking my shopping or not shopping at a specific place will change the world. It's a matter of not wanting to give my money to companies whose ethics or practices I disagree with. Every dime I don't give to a company I find objectionable is one less dime said company has to grow itself. My dime won't put it out of business, but I haven't funded it either. And I don't get the "boycotts don't make a difference, so why bother" mentality. It's not like an internet petition. Companies survive based on people spending money on their product or service. I think that's just a way of saying "I hate Wal Mart, but damn, their toothpaste is cheap and that makes it ok."
• What are we Girlcotting?
• No, pete, you've got it backwards. When a girl avoids a guy, then that guy has been girlcotted. (Eg.: "Quid has been girlcotted since 1998.")
• zing!
• StoryBored: If it's local it's less likely to be a large corporation or corporation at all. And even local corporations have more of an interest in promoting the local economy. Regarding supporting working people, I was thinking more of production industries, where the 'working people' might be in another country. I wasn't trying to argue that you should patronize local service-industry businesses for the sake of their lower-level employees, per se. Anyhow, IANAEconomist, but at least in terms of Starbucks vs the local cafe, with the cafe, the money is at least staying in the local economy instead of heading off to Seattle.
• roryk - it finally occurred to me when you say 'habitat', you must be referring to a store and not Habitat for Humanity, which we just call Habitat in these parts.
• Hmm... I like this girlcotting talk! I'm feeling frisky and feel like get on a cot with a girl! Maybe an old army cot and we could dress up like soldiers and play WWII bunkhouse. Probably would end up with some hippie granola chick that smells of patchouli that hates corporations and only buys fair trade food and goods from the co-op.
• local corporations have more of an interest in promoting the local economy Perhaps the difference in viewpoint is that I prefer to do business with companies that a) have integrity b) can deliver the goods c) do it competitively. I like the idea of rewarding integrity regardless of where they are based. I make my choices on a case-by-case basis rather than on a general scheme that puts locality into the equation. On the subject of local companies doing more for the locality, last year our city newspaper did a story on health-code violations in our city restaurants. There were about 20 or so eateries that did some not-so-nice things. *All* were local businesses. Small ain't always beautiful.
• Somehow i have difficulty justifying the local angle. I try to give my business to the best companies, regardless of locality. Doing otherwise seems counterproductive to me. Well, "best" is subjective, isn't it? Is "best" determined stricktly in terms of price? Or is it determined in terms of other things? I don't think that anyone is saying buy the crappy not as nice couch from the local guy rather than the nicer well made couch from a big company just because the local guy is local. However, if the item is identical, then is price the only consideration to take into account? That's a decision each of us have to take into account. As a starving grad student, I may think it is a good idea not to go to Wal-Mart, but sometimes if I want something, I can't afford to go to someplace that I think is nicer, but more expensive. As far as Ikea goes, I've not only not been to one, but I've never even seen one, so I have no first-hand experience with it, but I do remember some gossip about the founder Ingvar Kamprad taking part in some Nazi rallies during WWII. If true, and if he was a true supporter, that would probably be a reason to avoid Ikea. Wikipedia states that he "bitterly regrets that part of his life, calling it his greatest mistake." So who knows... Untill they open an Ikea closer than 197 miles away (the distance their "find the nearest store" gives me), I won't have to worry about the moral implications of shopping at Ikea.
• If you're interested in your investment dollars going toward companies which share your values, you can always do a google search for "socially responsible investing" and go from there.
• I like Ikea. They make nice furniture for poor people with small houses. All of the other furniture stores assume you have 1000s of square feet. Very classist. I also like Starbucks. Good coffee, fair trade is available. And they pay their their workers better than any other coffee shop I have heard of. I used to work at a mom and pop coffee shop - minimum wage, no benefits, no weeks off and they didn't even give us our legal vacation pay. If you're all concerned about workers' rights, then you should like Starbucks. People just like hating on these businesses because they are successful. Sure, Starbucks is overly agressive at moving into places, and Ikea's box stores are impossible on public transit and contribute badly to urban sprawl. But having had friends working in both places, they were apparently quite good places to work. And the workers should know. Also, most of the shops in Toronto that Starbucks put out of business were scuzzy Second Cups - another big chain, but one which generally paid it's workers terribly and had bad coffee. Seriously no loss.
• Starbucks also has better coffee than Cafe Nero in Britain. I like my plain brewed coffee, and with thermoses it's not hard to carry. This poor country needs more nice coffee shops. If I were God-Emperor, I would turn every other pub into a coffee shop. With Donuts.
• (Sorry - I meant thermos urns for the coffee shop. It's the best way to preserve brewed coffee after you have made it without it getting burnt (as hotplates do). They seem to have been introduced to Toronto in the mid-90s, perhaps through the influence of Starbucks - nowadays, donut shops tend to have hotplates (with Tim Horton's throwing out the coffee every 20 minutes), while nicer coffee shops like Starbucks, Second Cup or Timothy's use thermos urns. Yes, I think too much about coffee.)
• no such thing.
• Boycotts definitely can work to some degree, but generally they need to be organized, and they need weight of numbers. Ultimately, they rely on convincing a corporation that a measurable amount of revenue is at stake. Even the most organized boycott probably wouldn't change the fundamental business principles of a company like Wal-Mart, but they certainly can impact on aspects of it. But you can do small things that make a difference. OxFam, for example, is attempting to educate people in first world nations regarding the true cost of the coffee we love to drink on 3rd world coffee producers, where it's common for harvests to be purchased for less than the cost of living in those nations. You can participate by either locating a "Fair Trade Coffee" supplier (the OxFam site has lists for a number of countries), or by discussing Fair Trade Coffee with the owners of your favorite cafes (many people have no idea that the people who grow the beans are working hard to slowly starve for the sake of that double-decaff-mocha-choca-latte), or both. Or, of course, neither. It's only one example where your spending decisions can do some good.
• So...by not drinking coffee, I'm actually helping people? *feels warm & fuzzy inside*
• Wasn't Starbucks named after the character in Moby Dick?
• no, battlestar galactica, though i can understand the confusion. big whale = earth. ahab = adama. &c.
• earth = big whale adama = ahab muffit = ??
• I'm boycotting Moby Dick because of the whole whale cruelty thing, so I couldn't tells ya.
• Good thing Greenpeace weren't around in Ahab's day.