October 24 - Junk science statistics to counter increased awareness of the antismoking fraud -- As resistance grows in France against the health gangs and tobacconists go on strike, the antismokers respond with the production/publication of more pseudo-scientific statistical garbage. 

Presto, in fact, here comes the umpteenth crystal ball “study” that predicts a great rise in lung cancer for French women. “Landing amid a government crackdown on the quintessentially French habit, the study by national health watchdog INVS predicted that 12,000 women will die from lung cancer each year from 2015, six times as many as in 1980.“ … “ ‘Women have not been able to see through the message they are being sold by tobacco companies,’ Sylviane Ratte, of the national anti-cancer league, told the daily Le Monde this week”. Well, it's true: if Nostradamus lived today, he would use statistical software. However, the French and the rest of the world are beginning to see through the message they are being sold by pharmaceutical companies, notoriously generous financers of antismoking and “anti-cancer” leagues all over the world.

This piece of propaganda has a nested disclaimer, of course – but it is skilfully hidden between the lines, and rides on the intentional wave of fear and other emotions the antismoking cons intend to create: “Distorted in part by a rising and aging population, the predicted rise will underscore concern in France over the fact that young women are still taking up smoking in droves and often finding it harder than men to give up later on.”  How much is the “part”, health cons? Impossible to tell, isn’t it? Let us not forget that there are over 40 known concomitant causes for lung cancer, and that the interaction of them is totally unquantifiable, and changing with each individual – but every single lung cancer death in the world is attributed solely to smoking if the patient has smoked more than 100 cigarettes in his life, as if the other factors did not even exist. This is the conmanship of “public health” and its media buffoons; don’t’ be fooled.

October 24 - In Praise Of The Nanny State - In Aldous Huxley's chilling novel "Brave New World" children were taught in school to scorn books and flowers. Today many high school graduates are virtually illiterate, but they may have been carefully taught, not to wear perfume. Scented personal hygiene products have actually been banned in some schools. Their smell is a threat to hypochondriacs, the only citizens, whose "rights" are respected in this era of the Health Cult. 

The cult isn't just out to exterminate smokers. It wants to control every move you make. Satire is meaningless at this point. No intrusion on personal liberty is considered excessive anymore, as ever more common activities, become redefined as threats to public health. Indeed the very concept of personal responsibility, is itself considered ridiculous, in the brave new world of the twenty-first century. 

"Criticism of the nanny state is almost always misplaced and is frequently nonsensical,” says British public health official John Ashton. “Individuals cannot protect themselves from bioterrorism, epidemics of Sars, the concerted efforts of the junk food industry, drug dealers and promoters of tobacco and alcohol,” he contends. Therefore he would apply the prohibitionist anti-smoking model toward governmental intervention in all matters of personal consumption, activity, and lifestyle. "The State is our protector and we must defend its right to fulfil that function.”

Do you feel protected, from perfume, or the hobgoblin of secondhand smoke? Will you feel more protected when your doctor makes you sign a contract, with financial ramifications, if you fail to lose weight? Or when the cult decides elderly persons are too costly to society so should be denied medical care? Will you be old by that time? We had better start protecting ourselves from the State. Let's begin by defying smoking bans, and getting rid of fanatical public health officials, like John Ashton.

October 24 - Indoctrinating The Children - Bullies have been around forever.  Few children make it through childhood without undergoing the angst of having to face a fiend who gets his kicks out of terrorizing the small and the weak. The vast majority get over it, often learning valuable lessons in self-protection and assertiveness.

For the past several years the big bogyman in public education is the bully.  Bullying must be eliminated at all costs.  Needless to say law suits set the tone and now nearly every school district has policies against bullying.  As rules become codified, bullying expands to teasing.  Soon the age-old "dirty looks" will be forbidden.

Of course merely proclaiming that bullying and teasing is forbidden is not enough.  Children must be encouraged to turn in the miscreant.  It used to be called snitching and teachers always made use of it although the kids themselves scorned snitches.  Now schools are making students pledge to report all instances of bullying and teasing.

The anti-bully policies fall into the "zero tolerance" ethos that relieves the adults from having to evaluate situations and use their common sense.  Teasing a student becomes an offence equal to ganging up on one kid and giving him a thorough thrashing.  Turning in "bullies" will become a form of bullying itself.  Rigid rules governing social situations instill cynicism at an early age and condition children to seek out authorities to sort out every situation.  As always the solution for a problem that didn't exist until recently results in more problems and turns the kids into whiners constantly looking for validation from those in charge. 

October 23 - Defendant List Grows - The state's tax commissioner was added to the list of people being sued over New York's ban in Internet cigarette sales, lawyers said Monday.

Andrew Eristoff joins Gov. George Pataki, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Health Commissioner Antonia Novello as defendants in the lawsuit filed by the Online Tobacco Retailers Association, or OLTRA, in U.S. District Court in June.

OLTRA, along with a Seneca Indian retailer, two out-of-state online cigarette sellers and two disabled consumers, is challenging a state law's constitutionality. The law bans Internet and mail-order sales of cigarettes to private individuals in New York who are not licensed by the state to receive them.

Faced with the predictable results derived from imposing astronomical taxes on tobacco products, New York state is seething as droves of smokers shun convenience and grocery stores to buy their smokes online at reasonable prices.  It's not like the tax-happy politicians weren't warned.  Before enacting the tax hike, economists, law enforcement professionals and just plain folks who understand human nature predicted that smokers would not take the injustice of the high tax increases lying down.  They would, and have done in spades, exactly what people have done for centuries.  Rather than give any tax to the thieves, they have sought out and found plenty of vendors who charge no state tax at all.

Faced with hundreds of millions of dollars in "lost" revenue, the state then wrote a law that forbids its citizens from buying cigarettes from the Internet unless a special license is obtained.  Dream on, politicians.  This brand new law won't stop the tax drain but it will sporadically nab some poor smoker.  OLTRA sued and the case expands as the list of defendants grows.  Win or lose, the tax hike is a bust.  No mere politician can repeal the economic law that dictates consumers will not pay a higher price when the article is available at a better price.

October 23 - Suit Tossed - Japanese court on Tuesday rejected the country's first lawsuit against Japan Tobacco by cancer sufferers who blamed smoking for their illness.  The court's decision contrasts with similar suits in the US that have embroiled leading tobacco groups in multi-million dollar settlements, partly reflecting Japan's more relaxed attitude to smoking.

If you fall off a sturdy ladder, it's not the ladder maker's fault, if you get a speeding ticket after having one too many, that's not any distillery's fault, if you smoke, however, and come down with any of the ailments associated with living... well, whose fault is that?  A Japanese court says it's not the fault of the Japan Tobacco Company. The Japanese eat a lot of fish. Maybe that really does increase brain power. Further study may be needed.  Reality and rationality win this time.  Anti-tobacco will surely appeal.

October 22 - Fighting Oppression All The Way To The Top - "This [business] is my entire life," he said. "It's not the same as a muffler shop or a newspaper, which might get a $100 fine."

A Florida Restaurant Association [FRA] board member for 14 years, Pace insisted special interest groups are responsible for the regulatory push.

"It was a scam from the beginning," he said, noting that the fallout from the ban is bigger than both the state and the lobbying groups ever realized. "I'm a nightclub first, and I have to compete with the other clubs. I will use every resource I have to take this to the Supreme Court."

"I will use every resource I have to take this to the Supreme Court," says Florida nightclub owner Michael Pace. His business license is threatened if he accommodates his smoking clientele. Still, his livelihood is threatened, if he does not. What's more, he places a value, on self-determination. So he has rebelled against a zealously inspired smoking ban and will fight it in the courts. Not just smoking, but fanaticism turned to tyranny, is at issue. Left unchecked, the ancient evils, may seek to extinguish every personal liberty. 

These are shameful days for the United States of America. Abraham Lincoln's "government of the people, by the people, for the people," is an anachronism in the age of Anti. Through long history, as they have deviated from Lincoln's concept, lots of governments have perished from the Earth. Ultimately, the people decide, how and when that happens. Rebellion will rankle, resentment will grow, until the popular will for self-determination, is once again recognized and respected. We wish Mister Pace good luck in court.

October 22 - In The End Tobacco Wins - Monday we focused on a man in Cambodia who claimed to be the oldest person on earth.  The Guinness folks could not verify the claim to the world's oldest person, owing to destruction of records in Cambodia, under Pol Pot's regime.  Tragically, he died on Sunday, at the age of 122, according to his family and neighbors,  another victim of Big Tobacco, according to the anointed who chant the anti-smoking mantra.

Sek Yi was evidently very old, as is his wife Long Ouk, but was he 122, or is she 108?  Both attributed their extreme longevity to "a mixture of tobacco and prayer"  Anti-tobacco knows better and this old man joins the ranks of those who died prematurely.  His wife, when she finally goes will have been cut low by secondhand smoke.  Poor foolish Sek Yi kept smoking hand-rolled cigarettes every day and he kept believing they were the secret to long life.  What a dupe.

Tobacco control advocates believe they could have preserved Sek Yi's life for another 122 years or so. Had they only had sufficient anti-tobacco education funding they could have forwarded copies of their conclusive studies to his "creaking bamboo hut in the tiny village of Tuk Young," where during Sek Yi's very long life, their frightening alarms had never intruded.  His premature death is a tragedy and his happy ignorance was deplorable.

October 21 - The Strike Begins - French tobacconists have started their first-ever strike in protest at a series of tax increases on cigarettes.  According to Rene Le Pape, president of the Confederation of Tobacconists, some 80% of France's 34,000 tobacconists are expected to close their doors for the day.  In addition, Mr Le Pape said petitions displayed in shops to protest against the "disappearance of tobacconists" had been signed by four million smokers and non-smokers.

C'est une renaissance de la résistance. "This is a war against smoking, and we're attacking from all angles," says Helene Monard, a spokeswoman for the French Health Ministry's anti-smoking division. "We've never had a campaign this strong. Never." Mme. Monard has failed to consider that more than a third of the French population like to smoke. Likewise she forgets that her countrymen have shown a historical tendency to resist oppressors. Apparently Mme. Monard's Health Fascists need a reminder, so French tobacconists, have stepped up to provide this. The war is on, on two sides, now. Countries like Iran, Canada, and now the USA have produced ever-larger cigarette black markets, by over-taxing the product in recent years. Canada had to reduce the taxes in response to a bootleggers' crime wave. The Québécois should wire their forgetful Parisian friends: "Je me souviens."

October 21 - It's Just Not Fair! - Scientists trying to figure out why just 1 person in 10,000 lives to be 100 have found an important clue in the blood.  Centenarians, a new study shows, tend to have larger than average cholesterol-carrying molecules.

Basically this study tells us nothing really new.  Extract all the verbiage, boil it down to its essence and the gaggle of grant junkies have discovered that heredity is a real big factor in how long people will live. All in the genes, they conclude.   We have no problem, however, with scientific inquiry into exactly why some people live to 100 while others drop dead in middle age.  We do have a problem with the mentality of the director of this study who ruefully muses:

"I hate to say it but I think it's true. If you have this gene, you can smoke and you can be fat and you can not exercise. This sounds to me terrible."

Those under the mistaken impression that Puritanism died long ago can take comfort that it lives within the medical community today.  Terrible indeed that stringent exercise, boring diets, restrictive abstinence may not lead to a long life.  Doubly terrible that sinners, who enjoy all that this beautiful and bountiful globe has to offer, may live to a ripe old age without having to suffer pain and deprivations of the pleasures of the flesh.  How distressing for the health zealots who fill the void left by the disappearance of the religious fanatics.

October 21 - Cuff 'Em, Lock 'Em Up And Throw Away The Key - Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, frustrated by stores that continue to sell cigarettes to minors, on Sunday warned that those who let minors buy tobacco will go to jail.

"I don't know what to do next, but I tell you next time we go out, the people selling cigarettes will be put in handcuffs and brought to jail," Arpaio said.

Even though this rooting, tooting tobacco cop wouldn't technically be operating within the law since selling tobacco to a minor is a petty offence and not a misdemeanor, which can result in jail time, we have to applaud Sheriff Apraio for eliminating crime in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Since no murder, theft, assault, vandalism or even speeding plagues the population Sheriff Apraio must find a purpose to keep his law enforcement officers busy.  Welcome to Phoenix, the safest city in the world.

October 20 - Tobacco News From Canada - The people are revolting against the nonsense anti-tobacco has been strewing.  As time goes by people like what they see less and less.  The welcome mat is slowly being withdrawn.  With that in mind, one more Ontario city shows anti-tobacco the door.

In one of the world's largest open pit mines the anti-tobacco crowd has been passing off the high cancer rates as due to smoking.  Now that that con is losing credibility they social engineers have moved on to...obesity as the culprit.

In the North West Territories business is down 80%.  The flunkies down in Ottawa advise patience. See INSIDE.

October 20 - Man Smokes His Way to 122 Years -- This person is not dead – but he will be soon. It is inevitable. Mr. Sek Yi, a Cambodian, is a smoker. Need we say more. Sek Yi claims to be 122 years old, but unfortunately he cannot get into the Guiness Book of Records because he does not have a birth certificate. But he cannot be that old, because he is a smoker. Thus, he can only be a fluke that confirms the con conventions of crystal ball statistics. In fact, not only do we know that smokers die sooner, but also that they poison others with their addiction. This is the case with Sek Yi’s wife, Long Ouk, who at the age of 108 has been exposed to maybe even eighty years of passive smoking while smoking herself – a true double-header that will cause her premature death as a victim of a modern-day plague that started with Columbus in 1492 or so. Why have these two lived so long? They joke about the causes: a mixture of tobacco and prayer – certainly more likely to be true than the joke about tobacco mortality and disease, a mixture of statistical trickery, medical immorality and pharmaceutical interests. Keep on smoking, Sek and Long: you have already proven who’s real and who are the cons – although, honestly, your evidence is not really necessary. For more evidence on the deadliness of smoking, click here.

October 20 - Ageist Slurs From A Politically Correct Party - Canada's Globe and Mail wants its countrymen to get with it. They should be more health-conscious, like the Americans, when it comes to politics. Canadian politicians should be forced to reveal their hemorrhoids just like Jimmy Carter did. Canadian politician Paul Martin is about to assume leadership of the Liberal Party, and by god, the man is sixty-five! How can he possibly serve out a four year term? Sure, he has no evident health problems, but at age sixty-five, "the average life expectancy of all Canadians Mr. Martin's age is 81, which rises to 82.5 for non-smokers." Well, thank heaven for the absolute predictive power of statistics, within a half year. Of course Paul doesn't smoke. If he did the Liberal Party would likely ostracize him altogether. Still the Globe and Mail finds Mr. Martin's longevity safety margin of great concern. The country obviously should rid itself of any leader not young, slim, generally abstemious, and absolutely smoke-free. Think of the alternative. You could wind up with a Churchill!

October 20 - FDA Regulation Facing Big Roadblocks - Congressional movement toward giving the Food and Drug Administration regulatory power over tobacco products is slowing at this time. There may be a reprieve but this is not the end of such movement. Anti-tobacco supports more definitively prohibitionist legislation than has been discussed so far in Congress. So our loving Anti will keep haunting the halls of Congress. Any pause in the battle will likely be brief.

The lesson from this congressional excercise is that shining a light on particular legislation is the best defense against backroom deal making.   Although regulating tobacco has been a key component of the tobacco control industry, getting political support in Washington has proven to be difficult.  By piggy-backing the FDA scheme upon legislation addressing a separate issue, anti-tobacco hoped to con the legislators into rushing through regulation provisions.  Once the spotlight focused on their scheme, the whole process began to fall apart.  We're not out of the woods by any means but it's less likely that anti-tobacco will be able to quietly sneak its prohibition into law without a thorough debate. 

October 17 - Cutting Out The Trial Lawyers - When Maggie Heath visited her cardiologist recently, she was asked to sign an arbitration agreement. Heath, a paralegal, read it, then refused. An office manager told her if she didn't sign, after 30 days she'd no longer be considered that physician's patient.

It's a situation more patients are encountering when they seek medical help, even from physicians who have treated them for years.  Arbitration agreements are nothing new. But they are becoming the medical community's response to what they say is a too-litigious society.

An encouraging trend is developing that is bad news for trial lawyers.  Crushed by escalating malpractice insurance premiums, the medical profession is finally fighting back.  Although arbitration will be fought tooth and nail by lawyers who grow rich of medical lawsuits, the high cost of health care is prodding politicians to do something about the suit-happy culture that is America's biggest problem.

October 17 - Vendors Plan To Strike - French tobacco shops vowed on Thursday to halt cigarette sales across the country for a day next Monday to protest against planned tax hikes which they fear will hit revenues.  Rene Le Pape, head of the Confederation of Tobacco Outlets of France, told a news conference up to 85 percent of vendors were expected to joint the "strike" on Monday, when a hike of some 20 percent in tobacco tax is due to take effect.

Cigarettes cost too much everywhere.  The anti-tobacco control industry proposes higher taxes and when those are imposed runs back to the governments and demands yet more tobacco taxes.  In the meanwhile the pharmaceutical industry launches massive marketing campaigns pushing their ineffective and dangerous smoking cessation products on the over-taxed populace.  

Refusing to sell cigarettes even for a short while deprives the thieving government of much needed tax revenue.  A serious strike by the French tobacconists is just the prod the French government needs to get its priorities back in order.