CESSPOOL OF HATE - Leave it to the anti-tobacco cartel to convert a public library into a temple of hate. Some thugs in the Massachusetts anti-smoker hate campaign convinced some spineless public servants to cooperate in child abuse. Children were rewarded to hate and vilify smokers. The exercise was also designed to pressure the state to ban smoking everywhere. This story, midway through the article, headed "Smoke and Choke" provides clear evidence that the anti-smoking agenda is a criminal enterprise that threatens the health of this nation.

SMUGGLING ESCALATES - "We are not winning the war - it is a thriving business. Whatever we can confiscate is just seen as an inconvenience or a business overhead to the criminal involved." Well, Duh! When cigarettes (and alcohol) are taxed beyond a reasonable rate, smuggling and black market sales take over. The United Kingdom has been dealing with this for years yet still can't find the will to reduce the country's outrageous tax on these items. Now the Italian and Russian mafias are muscling in to share in the market of un-taxed cigarettes. Clinton clone Prime Minister Tony Blair lacks the spine to take on the anti-tobacco cartel so his country suffers from escalating criminal activity. America is well on its way to joining England in de facto prohibition of tobacco. A big difference is that our black marketeers and smugglers are armed to the teeth. We're on our way to a blood bath reminiscent of the Prohibition Era crime wave.

CIGAR SMOKER ACQUITTED - Farcical story from Florida in which a man was acquitted of battery charges for causing a fracas by smoking a cigar in an intolerant setting. The event occurred in a no-smoking trattoria, an oxymoron that could only exist in the United States. The lesson from this ridiculous incident is that no-smoking restaurants are very bad for civility.

BUBBLE GUM CIGARS - From Oklahoma, a state not generally known for giddy stupidity, comes a double absurdity. An officious state lawmaker is wasting his constituents' time by sponsoring legislation to make bubble gum cigars illegal. The cigars are popular at hospital pediatric wards where the prissier sort of father celebrates the birth of his child by popping the revolting novelty into his mouth rather than light up the real thing. One is torn between astonishment that adult men are so cowed by the nannies that they daren't smoke a real cigar and revulsion over politicians who think the substitute is a danger to children.

Less amusing is the plan by Oklahoma to make sure that the small tobacco companies do not derive any profit at the expense of the large cigarette manufacturers who capitulated to the states' attorneys general. All states participating in the criminal tobacco settlement are concocting legislation similar to Oklahoma's in which state funds will be set up and supported by the small cigarette manufacturers. A few years ago such schemes would be called socialism or fascism. Now it's called Public Health.

BETTER TO KEEP SMOKING - We all know that nicotine substitutes were developed to contribute to the pharmaceutical companies' bottom line. People who wish to stop smoking quit on their own. It's no big deal as millions have discovered but no one gets rich by that method. Pharmaceutical nicotine pushing has become such a big business that the drug companies hold conferences to figure out how to hook more customers. The problem with their products is that they don't work as advertised. The solution? More products, more intervention and more smoking restrictions.

SCREWING THE CARTEL - Health care advocates said that cap defeats the purpose of the state's lawsuit against the tobacco industry, which was to stop Montanans' use of tobacco products. Lobbyists said they plan to offer amendments during the Senate debate.

Give the anti-tobacco cartel operatives credit for creative lying. The stated purpose of the lawsuits against the tobacco industry did not include stopping anyone from using tobacco products. The non-stated purpose, of course, was to effect the largest illegal transfer payment in the history of the country with most of the loot going to the greedy anti-smoking organizations. Some states like Washington State are going along with that program but many shrewder states are grabbing it all for themselves. The cartel is not pleased.

THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION MAY SERIOUSLY UPSET YOUR STOMACH. KEEP THE VOMIT BAG READY - A Centerville couple weren't just blowing smoke when they complained to their downstairs neighbor that his cigarettes were choking them out of their home. They're taking him to court. Legal experts say the lawsuit filed by Matthew and Amanda Parrish is the first of its kind to pit smokers and nonsmokers against each other regarding the right of people to smoke in the privacy of their own home.

ASH MISINFORMS THE PUBLIC ONCE AGAIN - Good old ASH. They do not miss a chance to misinform the public.

WHOSE RISK IS IT, ANYWAY? - The hatred instigated by the criminal propaganda of Kalifornia against tobacco is turning even jurors into criminals. Indeed, it is turning the entire state into a danger for all -- much like the hatred against the Jews in Germany turned the German nation into a danger for the world. You think we are exaggerating? Of course! Then read this article by Jacob Sullum -- and remember one fundamental thing: THE CAUSALITY OF ANY OF THE DISEASES ATTRIBUTED TO TOBACCO HAS NEVER BEEN PROVEN WITH RIGID SCIENTIFIC PROCEDURE. THE ONLY AVAILABLE EVIDENCE IS STATISTICAL -- AND MANIPULATED, TO BOOT.

Even Jacob Sullum seems to make the same mistake in assumption when he talks about the "health risks of smoking." In reality, the "diseases" "caused" by tobacco are simply UNPROVED.

FOLLOWING SUIT - "Long after the hazards of smoking received wide attention, the federal government continued to profit from the tobacco trade through taxes and to actively participate in it by distributing cigarettes to servicemen. For decades, it has forced taxpayers to subsidize other people's health care, knowing that some of those people would smoke and get sick as a result.

Now the administration wants to blame the tobacco companies for that policy. It wants to allocate the blame based on statistical models and market share, and it doesn't want to be inconvenienced by the fact that people know smoking is risky but choose to do it anyway."

This article by Jacob Sullum stimulates an important question: "Why should smokers pay for the diseases of non-smokers?" The question is, of course, academical, since nowadays logic and justice are simply viewed as obstacles that must be circumvented/neutralized to reach the desired goals. Moral juxtaposition has gone full circle: the lunatics and the criminals of yesterday have become the heroes of today, while the defenders of liberty, private enterprise, and personal choice are now the criminals to eliminate.

MAINE TO BAN SMOKING - Less than one year ago a federal judge vacated the Environmental Protection Agency's report on secondhand smoke. This action backed up the consensus of the scientific community that the EPA's report was fraudulent and had been issued to further the political and financial ambitions of the anti-tobacco cartel.

Despite the complete repudiation of the EPA's contention that secondhand smoke poses health hazards, the politicians in Maine are poised to ban smoking in almost all public places. The restaurateurs have been defeated in the legislature and the anti-tobacco cartel now calls the shots in Augusta. Since there are no health considerations involved it should be clear that the issue is one of private property rights. The state does not have the authority to regulate smoking on private property. Until the businesses that are affected by these irrational bans give up on legislative solutions and start taking these bans to court on constitutional grounds this madness.

WE'RE SMARTER THAN THEY THINK - Despite the hysterical shrieks by the anti-smoking fanatics, the American people have not bought the lie that smoking is the most pernicious danger on the face of the earth. A 1995 survey reports that most smokers do not believe they have a higher risk of contracting cancer and heart disease from smoking. This is an amazing, although inevitable, result of decades of relentless propaganda that cigarette smoking is tantamount to Russian Roulette. As the ill health claims become more grotesque, people realize they are being sold a bill of goods that has nothing to do with reality.

The stooge in this story proves that point by stating, "Tobacco, or smoking, kills 500,000 people in this country every year..." For years it was 400,000. Sometimes it's as high as one million. When even the anti-tobacco cartel fronts can't keep their stories straight, it's no surprise that the public isn't buying what they're selling.

CRASH AND BURN - "For tobacco retailers, the price hike has spurred a rash of burglaries throughout the Southland. And, already scorned by civil society, smokers also face aggressive new undercover measures to bust cigarette butt-heads in bars and restaurants."

The disgusting part of this article is not that the crime has increased -- that is to be expected when a pack of cigarette that it's worth $1.90 at best in the Kalifornia has been beefed up to $5.00 to feed the state and the criminals of the local anti-tobacco cartel. What turns our stomach is that the police denies a raise in crime related to the tobacco's price increase. This is a clear sign that the corruption of the cartel has permeated every fiber of California public life, up to and including the police that is now employed to repress the human and civil rights of smokers. We can only hope that the price keeps increasing, and the smugglers and the blood-thirsty criminals really get serious in the business of tobacco smuggling, and even tobacco production. Only ruthless and professional criminals are now a match to the equally ruthless and professional anti-tobacco criminals of in and around the state of Kalifiornia.

When that will happen, the tides will reverse -- and it will be our turn to eliminate the cartel.

ANTI-TOBACCO = NAZISM: DO YOU STILL THINK WE ARE CRAZY? - For a long time FORCES has maintained that the anti-tobacco agenda bears some resemblances to the Nazi philosophy of national health, and that those who support the repression of smoking through force and law and false science are, after all, Nazis somewhere at heart. For this we have been attacked, and often called "lunatics" -- norwitstanding the clear evidence from history.

We are no longer alone in this observation, that goes beyond our colorful, aggressive rhetoric. The Nazi phylosophy of Public Health Uber Alles, and the junk science behind it is a tangible, everyday reality. Nazis are among us.

HOW PUTRID ANTI-TOBACCO CAN GET? WHEN CRIMINALS ARE INVOLVED, THIS PUTRID -- AND MORE! - The ruthless looters of the anti-tobacco cartel are finding new ways to finance their criminal behaviour. Now it is the time of forest fires.

The criminal Junta of Philadelphia is considering a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the tobacco industry to recover the costs of fighting fires caused by cigarettes. Camping equipment munufacturers, careful! It's going to be your turn soon! Remember that these criminals are also suing the gun manufacturers, and probably thinking of a few more litigations to extort more from the surrounding environment.

Indeed, when gangsters are given free rope and powers, they'll do what they do best, and hang liberty and people with that rope, instead of hanging themselves, and free the environment from their unwelcome presence.

DEMON WEED - "Splashed across the front pages of newspapers everywhere last week was the revelation that Johnny may be a murderer because his mommy smoked cigarettes while pregnant. So the demon weed not only causes cancer but crime as well. Not so fast."