ARTICLES
FROM OTHER SOURCES
Articles logged from March to March 2000
 PERCEPTION CONTROL: ONE OF
THE GREATEST SUCCESSES OF THE ANTISMOKING CARTEL Added
March 11, 2000 - IRISH TRADITIONALISTS WON'T
BUTT OUT - 'As sure of it as anything in this
world, Liam Craven crossed his arms, closed his eyes and announced, as
if it was a solemn oath, ''It'll never happen in Ireland.'' What
Craven insists will never happen is a ban on smoking in Irish pubs.
''The people would revolt,'' said Craven, a bartender at O'Neill's pub
near Trinity College. But... '
' ''Young people, especially, are much more health conscious than my parents' generation,'' said Mannion, 30, who manages O'Neill's. He sees a smoking ban as part of the inexorable change in Ireland, and Dublin in particular, over the last 10 years. Fueled by an economy that has made this nation of just 3.6 million second only to the United States in producing computer software, Ireland has grown prosperous and more European. ' ... And THAT is the perception manipulation that both press and antitobacco cartel is successfully pushing not just on the public in general, but even on some of the pro-choice activists. The elimination and banning of smoking is part of an inexorable process towards a more advanced, progressive society that is "health conscious". And Mr. Craven is one of many obtuse individuals who could not see danger if it hit their faces with a ten-pound fist. Notice the subliminal association between prosperity, computer software (that is, progress) and the elimination of smoking. The message is clear: a prosperous and technologically advanced country DOES NOT SMOKE! It follows that even though we may be able to slow down "progress," we will eventually have to surrender to the inevitable "advancement" of humankind! Says who, but the paid guns of the antitobacco cartel? This distortion is frightening for many reasons, first and foremost because it is characteristic of a disturbing trend toward social control and state-enforced conformity in the name of progress. Those too young to remember should be reminded that the walks on the Moon (the greatest technological achievement of the history of mankind) were achieved in clouds of cigarette smoke. Technological and intellectual advancement DO NOT require a smokeless environment. A trivial point? We think not. Call it human perversity or human glory, but the freedom to mould ourselves and make our own choices is the most dignifying thing about us, and is not only compatible with creativity, but helps to unleash it. The projection of inevitability of certain events is an old technique meant to galvanise one side while demotivating the other, and people on both sides keep falling for it. From what we have seen so far, a regressive and repressive mentality is by far the most common byproduct of smoke-free rooms. Second, since the dangers to health by smoking are not proven by serious science, the "health consciousness" issue is, like the rest of anti-tobacco propaganda, just a play of words with no verification. Many activists on our side seem to think that the scientific issues pertinent to health should not be challenged because the issue here is liberty and choice regardless of the health consequences. While that is true and it should indeed be pursued, it is dramatically insufficient in a world that cares less and less about liberties and choice, while becoming every day more paranoid about health. The fact at the foundation of antitobacco is that smoking is a plague on health, and THAT IS A SCIENTIFIC FRAUD THAT HAS NEVER BEEN PROPERLY ADDRESSED IN THE LAST 50 YEARS. Unless that fraud is exposed and forcefully defeated, and the perpetrators punished and made harmless, there will be always a justification for banning smokers and smoking. And when that will be achieved, it will be the turn of others. So let's not fall for the perception game: let us fight against frauds and keep our eyes on the ball of liberty. An advanced society is not a smokeless one. It is one where choice is respected by state and society, and frauds are not tolerated. Let's have a smoke on that future. 'Justice Charles E. Ramos, in Daycare Council-Local 205 D.C. 1707
Welfare Fund v. Philip Morris, 606240/97, dismissed as "too
remote" claims brought by 14 union trust funds for themselves
against the major manufacturers of cigarettes.' The only positive effect for smokers in this good news is that the
antitobacco cartel and its minions have missed the looting of more
money to enrich themselves and to persecute smokers with. And it is
also a good news because common sense has prevailed, and this court
has sent a clear message to other similar looters. But there is where
the positive side ends for us smokers, for Big Tobacco is no friend of
smokers. Like a prostitute who betrays her paying Johns to save
herself, Philip Morris and the tobacco industry have sold out the
rights and protection of smokers for legal immunity at the expenses of
their best and only customers who get to pay for that protection to
boot. And PM has also allowed the antitobacco cartel to voice its lies
and scientific frauds with impunity, for no serious opposition and
exposure of those frauds has taken place for a long time now. It is not surprising us at all, Mr. Regush. We are smokers, and we
know all about the politics of the health people. These people seek
total control on society all over the world. Many "studies"
are providing the junk science foundations required to categorise
smokers as mentally ill individuals. It follows that, according to the
logic of the new health fascism, that smokers too will have to be
forced, sooner or later, to take medications to get rid of a habit
that is not proven to be harmful by the now obsolete Scientific
Method.
And then, it will be the time of drinkers, eaters, and all those
who do not fit into the plans of the health cartel and its moppets in
politics. The fact is, there are no legal limits imposed on the
authority of the health industry. Supplied with unlimited money and
unbound by any limitation, these people are doing to humanity what any
entity that has no legal limit does: seek (and obtain) total control.
By defining any target as "mentally incompetent," the health
cartel voids and neutralises any rational or legal opposition. By
defining any substance "addictive", the health cartel
obtains total control on it.
Since no massive, forceful opposition is taking place because
individuals, corporations and politicians are either indifferent or
intimidated by the health cartel, we can easily foresee a time when to
eat, drink, smoke or even work a medical permission or prescription
will be necessary. Doctors and health activists will be the ones who
dispense or deny permissions, favours, personal and state loans… the
total Orwellian control which gradually will become a reality accepted
by people - for their own health and good. That is the world cowardice
creates. The Americans For
Nonsmokers' Rights is particularly heavy-handed in its treatment of
professionals who criticize the methods by which anti-tobacco reaches
its conclusions. One and all, any who incur ANR's displeasure,
are labeled tools of the tobacco industry. The linked article from Reason
by Robert Levy of the Cato Institute provides a text-book example
of the ANR's tactics of smear and evasion. Proof is a commodity
that is in short supply when political
agendas collide with rationality and science. Needless to say, they were
lying. The anti-tobacco education produced record numbers
of underage smokers as well as an increase, after a few years decline,
in adult smoking. Far from disdaining the money ripped off from
smokers, the anti-tobacco lobby screeched like angry vultures when
some of the anti-tobacco education money was diverted to actual health
care during California's last recession. When the tobacco industry
capitulated to the gangsters and agreed to a Master Settlement
Agreement whereby the states would steal $260-billion from smokers,
the California pattern of hypocrisy became the norm for the whole
country. From coast to coast, state budgets are now reliant upon
the tribute the tobacco industry collects from smokers then disperses
to the states. From paving roads to settling city
lawsuits, the states are now as dependent upon cigarettes as are the
non-profit body parts organizations. The lawyer faction of
anti-tobacco is threatening to upset the apple cart as an enormous
judgment against the tobacco industry looms in Florida. The same
state governments that sued the industry for public health and for the
children are highly agitated that the tobacco industry is facing
actual bankruptcy if the Florida jury awards what could amount to
$100-billion to compensate "sick smokers".
Instead of celebrating the demise of Big Tobacco, the hypocrites are
wailing and gnashing their teeth over the prospect of their slush fund
disappearing in the wreckage of bankruptcy procedures. For smokers the demise of
Big Tobacco would be a very good thing. The industry is so busy
groveling before its persecutors that it has forgotten how to run a
business. The tobacco industry's boards of directors and
stockholders must face the fact that current management's supine
position is incompatible with turning a profit and demand that the
cigarette companies be divested from the holding companies and spun
off to aggressive management that realizes the value of their
customers. The prohibitionist
psychosis is rapidly expanding from tobacco to encompass all sorts of
behaviors that the Health Gestapo despises. Their despicable
intrusiveness has cost a teacher her job. Her offence was to be
an adult consuming an adult beverage. Had she smoked a cigarette
she would have been lynched. The 30-year old teacher and
swimming coach, is out of a job and has a blemish on her record
because hate-ridden prohibitionists jumped at the chance to ruin
another's career. From the teachers' union to the school
administration, the caving in to a few blue-nosed complainants
over the teacher's beer in a local restaurant has been total.
The teacher violated no school policy but violated something far more
powerful, the sacrosanct credo of Nanny America wherein adults are
really just big children who need a firm and punishing hand. As lives are destroyed,
adults infantilized and freedom trashed, the anti-tobacco,
anti-alcohol, anti-meat and all the other anti-pleasure bullies
chortle at the sheep who remain silent hoping they won't be the next
carried to the slaughter house. In testimony before a House
of Representative Committee, Robert Levy has much to say about the
looting of American industry by legislative bodies who want the cash
but don't have the nerve to lean on the cash cows themselves.
Mr. Levy, co-author of "Lies,
Damned Lies, and 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths,", a highly
critical look at one of anti-tobacco's most famous distortion of
facts, sheds the light of reason on the disgraceful Tobacco
Settlement. Cataloguing the high stakes
maneuvers of the states attorneys general and their political
contributors in the largest shakedown in history, Mr. Levy discusses
the consequences of shredding established legal precedents.
His indictment is damning and alarming as the looting moves from
industry to industry with nary a word of protest from those who, on
obtaining political office, swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution. The first, and
most outrageous, lie is that a government has the right to ban smoking
on private property. Anti-tobacco and its stooges in government
impose their bans on the fallacious basis that they are protecting the
health of those who frequent or work in "public places".
Public places do not include restaurants, bars and businesses.
Those locations are private property that the public is free to CHOOSE
to enter. The Health
Commission of Princeton New Jersey, goaded on by the thugs from the
Body Parts organizations, have enacted a ban on smoking in all
locations except cigar shops and cars and homes. By
exempting individual homes and people's cars, the Health Commission is
asserting its right to ban smoking from those locations if they see
fit. When an un-elected gaggle of nitwits claims the right to
regulate smoking in your home and car, it's time to get a lawyer and
file a suit. That's what
Princeton business owners are planning to do if Princeton does trample
on property rights in its unseemly rush to curry favor with the
pharmaceutical front groups who, unlike the Princeton public, demand a
smoking ban. Unfortunately the business owners will base their
suit on financial hardship scenarios. They may win on that
narrow issue but, as has been seen in California where bars and
businesses have lost at least 20 per-cent of their revenue because of
the state-wide smoking ban, economic hardships of the taxpayers also
take a back seat to the tactics of fear and intimidation. The American
public will loose until those affected challenge the un-American
concept of private property theft. If the right to abortion can
be found within the Constitution, surely the right to smoke on private
property is also protected by that document. Board of Health
Chairman Patricia Andrade is having conniption fits because the New
Bedford citizens have let it be known loud and clear that Public
Health is subservient to the will of the people. Despite all the
spin that the well-financed anti-tobacco interests shovel out to their
goons in Public Health, the public demands choice and is increasingly
vocal in taking their demands to City Hall. It's long overdue
for Public Health to be ripped down from its self-erected pedestal and
get back to the business of real health. As the Clinton
Era oozes into a squalid puddle and the Gore/Bradley/McCain Era is
only an unrealized dream, the prohibitionists are working overtime to
launch their millennium of control before they are crushed by the
incoming tide of public revulsion. Before they are
ejected from the gravy train, an outfit named The Toxic-Tobacco Law
Coalition has issued a call to outlaw tobacco production in 20 years.
The press release describes the group as a national grass-roots
movement which is a description as accurate as the prediction that
this year would be "Smoke Free 2000". As the public
rediscovers the pleasures and benefits of smoking and the backlash
against smoke nazi's and prohibition continues to build, the
never-to-be-enacted Toxic-Tobacco Law may be the final shriek of
anti-tobacco psychosis. "The labor arbitrator said a heavy addiction is a physical
disability and the ban imposed by Cominco Ltd (Toronto:CLT.TO - news)
in 1998 at its smelter complex in Trail, British Columbia, violated
the province's human rights code." The politically correct garbage language, while reaffirming a false
antitobacco cartel concept (nicotine is an addiction), nevertheless it
highlights a new legal angle to fight the repression of the right to
smoke -- something that FORCES has said for a long time: smoking bans
are a violation of human rights.
This is an important precedent that should be kept in mind for
future fights against health nazism. ``The region didn't appear like they were hearing our cries that we
were suffering,'' said Sonia Adlys, who runs the Huether Hotel in
Waterloo with her husband. Adlys said business was down by $11,800 in
one of the Huether's several lounges in January, compared with the
same month last year. Our most appreciated support to thse fighters who are not just
fighting for the economic life of their buisinesses and their
families, but also for liberty and truth. The dangers of ETS are a fraud, and those who
instigate them on this pseudo-scientific basis are criminals. It is about time! Smokers, stop patronising any place where
smoking is forbidden. On the job, boycott the fascists by doing only
and strictly what the contracts establish, and refuse
overtime. Don't fly on antismokers airlines unless strictly necessary,
and always fill a complaint card. Those are just two examples
of a myriad of other ways
you can use to throw a monkey wrench in the antitobacco cartel's
machine. Protect your choice and liberty against scientific frauds and
persecution, and restore equality. Use your economic power,
which is the only thing the corrupt people of antitobacco understand.
Use the FORCE of your choice and wallet. Rebel against health
Nazism -- hit them where it hurts - and where it causes problems for
them. The cigarette
smokers could be shaken down to the tune of $500-billion if a jury in
Miami decides to endorse the lawless ethos of the trial lawyers
and their patrons in the Democrat Party who have made several states,
most prominently Florida, veritable fiefdoms for organized shakedown
rackets. Their success in
Virginia will be a Pyrrhic victory unless the tobacco industry obtains
new management with the balls to go after the gangsters who have made
the American legal system the laughingstock of the civilized world. |