|
|
|
|
February 3, 2006 |
|
|
Health Care
February 3 -
A modest proposal -
On
the heels of Action on Smoking and Health's vitriolic campaign to
fire all smokers, Michael Siegel goes one better by advocating the
wholesale sacking of all those who overly utilize their
companies' health care systems. Siegel's plan is far fairer
than ASH's in that it equates workers with their actual health
costs. Better still it takes into account the health costs of
the workers' spouses and dependents.
Unlike the bigots at ASH who don't
really give a hoot about health care costs but merely use the issue
as an excuse to club the evil smokers, Siegel's plan takes into
account the reality of "smoking related" illnesses. Most of
the new cases of lung cancer, for instance,
don't inflict smokers.
His
plan would more honestly address that actuality.
While Siegel's tongue is firmly in cheek
he does make an important point about the more radical anti-smoking
organizations, pointing out that they are very far outside the
mainstream. Legitimate health professionals, admittedly
anti-smoking every one,
do not promote firing employers
to
compel them to quit smoking. ASH has reveled itself to be,
once again, a hate group that deserves universal scorn. |
|
Pro Choice Smokers
Newsletter
February 3 -
Latest
Edition Out Now - The WHO and the FDA are up to their
usual tricks in this week's issue. Check out the news
and views from your neck of the woods.
Straightening up Eaters
February 3 -
Knee-cap the bastards -
John
Banzhaf III, of Action on Smoking and Health, has seen too
many Mafia movies. He fancies himself as some sort of
wise-cracking "muscle" issuing vague but sinister threats to
people targeted for a shakedown. That he makes these
threats in writing indicates how confused the moral climate
has become.
Straightening up Drinkers
February 3 -
History of failure - Lost in the battle to eliminate
smoking is the nascent movement to
reevaluate alcohol prohibition.
Think
the horrors unleashed by alcohol prohibition last
century are dead and buried? Think again. Mark
Thorton's analysis of national prohibition provides the
truth about the "noble experiment" | |
|
|
February 1, 2006 |
|
|
Prohibition
February 1 -
A passel of lies -
The
recently released report on outdoor secondhand smoke issued by the
California Air Resources Board gives the green light to fanatics
such as Action on Smoking and Health to revel in its hatefulness.
With the release of the report less than a week ago ASH is braying
that now is the time to eliminate smokers completely from public
life. Its language is brutal but the brutality the radical
organization inflicts upon scientific integrity is even uglier.
Michael Siegel, an advocate of tobacco
control, is horrified that ASH's deceptive screed against outdoor
smoking will turn the public against what he calls legitimate
efforts to diminish smoking indoors. Obviously we hope the
ugly face of ASH becomes the face of anti-tobacco but we have no
argument with Siegel's point by point rebuttal of ASH's lies about
the health effect of outdoor tobacco smoke.
ASH has a two-pronged
strategy in pushing its outdoor smoking ban. The first is the
pseudo-scientific justification addressed above. The second is
an appeal to the prejudices of those who just don't like smokers but
need help in formulating their prejudices. Basically ASH has a
list of
pet peeves that Michael Siegel contemptuously dismisses.
Commentary
February 1 -
Philosophy - How on earth did we get from the land of the
free and the home of the brave to the fear driven, spineless culture
that will trash liberty to gain a dubious margin of safety?
Smoking bans are only one of the symptoms that indicate an the
country is slowly but surely discarding the principles upon which it
was founded.
Bob Dyer, an educator, gets to the nub
of what ails us as a society. Philosophical discourse such as
that which lead to democracy in Athens, is dead as a door nail in
this country. Freedom needn't have been lost but we needn't
give up hope that it can be regained. |
|
Flash
February 1
-
Washington DC - Mayor Anthony Williams refuses
to sign mandatory smoking ban legislation approved by the
D.C. Council. In the absence of a mayoral veto, the
bill will become law following congressional review.
mandatory smoking ban to be forcibly imposed at district
nightclubs, bars, and restaurant bars on January 1, 2007.
This could be a defining moment
for the prohibition movement since smoking ban legislation
could be subject to discussion on the congressional level.
We'll keep you posted.
Straightening up Eaters
February 1 -
Licking their chops -
The
shakedown artists and con men may have extracted as much as
they can from smokers through high taxes and the tobacco
settlement but those exercises in theft were only a warm up
to the rape of the food industry. As the biggest
food maker in America Kraft Foods, Inc. is in the crosshairs
Expect to see more articles such
as this as the gangsters gear up their campaign against Big
Foods. Boiled down to its essence this multi-paragraph
story reveals that Kraft Foods conducted research to find
out how to make its food products taste good. Pretty
innocuous stuff but when linked to the same sort of research
conducted by its sister corporation, Philip Morris, the
nation's largest cigarette manufacturer, the implication is
clear. Big Food is addicting the populations just as
Big Tobacco did.
Fight for FreedomFebruary 1 -
Don't take it - Lynda Farley is fed up with the
silliness of the anti-tobacco movement. Unlike many
she is not willing to take it. Her fighting spirit is
awesome and she hasn't lost her sense of humor in the face
of irrational hate. She presents a list of actions,
some hard but many not, that smokers can do to maintain
their dignity. | |
|
|
January
30, 2006 |
|
|
Straightening up Drinkers
January 30 -
Eliminating alcohol sales -
San
Francisco Bay Area Muslims accused fellow Muslims who own liquor
stores of abandoning their faith and poisoning their communities.
The condemnation follows several disturbing incidents last November
when gangs of young men trashed liquor stores shouting anti-alcohol
slogans as the terrified shop owners looked on.
The anti-alcohol crusaders have adopted
the "progressive" tactics that infect the Bay Area by setting up a
group with a soothing name and staging nonviolent marches to liquor
stores run by Muslims. Their goal, however, is as coercive as
that espoused by the rampaging marauders; and end to sales of a
lawful substance legally enjoyed by consumers. Perhaps the
"grass roots" organizations set up by tobacco control can join
forces with the Muslims to bring the shop keepers to heel.
Hate
January 30 -
Motiveless malevolence -
Recently
Michael Siegel exposed the hatefulness of an anti-smoking group that
is advocating the wholesale termination of employees who smoke.
Siegel's concerns were two fold. Not only are such calls for
employment discrimination repugnant but such fanatical hatred is
hardly the message tobacco control wishes to present.
Siegel takes of the
gloves in this subsequent commentary on the outrageous proposal
issued by Action on Smoking and Health. While one can argue
whether tobacco control has any place in a free society we concur
heartily with Siegel's condemnation of ASH.
Health
January 30 -
One trick pony - Søren Højbjerg, our correspondent from
Denmark, zooms in on a contradiction in the anti-tobacco movement
that needs more exposure. An anti-tobacco organization finds
itself on the outs with most other anti-smoking groups because it
doesn't limit its message to hectoring smokers into quitting smoking
and hooking themselves up to smoking cessation devices. The
heretics suggest that perhaps a bit more resources should be poured
into cancer research, looking for the cause of cancer and ways to
eliminate it. Such research would help the growing numbers of
nonsmokers who contract lung cancer and who cannot, as anti-tobacco
preaches, give up smoking and go on pharmaceutical nicotine.
Discrimination
January 30 -
Why
not try slavery? -
Since
smokers are not a group that is ensured equal rights, Danish
companies are allowed to pay them less than nonsmokers. Such
is the ruling by the Danish employment minister. Of course the
companies justify their theft by the usual nonsense of missed days
and lower productivity. And whence originate the data that
provide the rationale for neo-slavery? From the anti-tobacco
organizations that will stop at nothing to force people to quit
smoking. |
|
Commentary
January 30 -
Thank
you - Bob Dyer looks at that most elusive, and
diminishing, aspect of American life; choice. Why is
it disappearing? Why do some individuals and groups
believe their choice to stamp out particular lawful behavior
trumps the choices of everyone else?
Prohibition
January 30 -
Outdoor smoking bans - Michael Siegel, a tobacco
control advocate, takes a dim view of the recent trend in
California and other "progressive" locales to ban smokers
from truly public places such as parks and beaches. As
localities rush to embrace the lowest form of discrimination
a city in Southern California proposes a smoking ban on its
streets and sidewalks.
This is the first attempt that Siegel is aware of where a
locality has banned smoking from city sidewalks. In
1997 the small village of Friendship Heights in Maryland
proposed just such a law. The law was enacted but
never went into effect because the Montgomery Maryland
county determined the village didn't have the authority to
pass such a law. When the anti-tobacco mayor of
Friendship Heights was later convicted of molesting a boy in
the Washington Cathedral all talk of banning smoking from
the sidewalks ceased.
Straightening up Eaters
January 30 -
Suing to eliminate free speech -
A
non-profit "health" advocacy group is targeting a breakfast
cereal manufacturer and the cable channel that carries its
advertising. Issuing a ultimatum, the Center for
Science in the Public Interest, demands that Kellog
Co. and the Nickelodeon cable network radically alter
their advertising to children. If the companies don't
commit to changing their marketing approach within 30 days
CSPI will file a lawsuit in a Massachusetts court asking to
stop Kellog's advertising campaigns.
While CSPI is not known for its sense of humor, one of
the plaintiffs it has dug up to provide the human face for
its anti-corporate agenda provides some laughs:
"It's hard for a parent to compete with so many ads
making junk food fun and cool," Sherri Carlson, a mother
of three who would be a plaintiff in a lawsuit, told
reporters. "Although I have a strict policy against junk
cereals in my house ... this doesn't stop my children
from asking me for them, especially after seeing
enticing ads."
Got that? This mother, who refuses to
buy the Kellog "junk food", is willing to sue the company
because she is annoyed her children are asking for the
Frosted Flakes. In today's American inconvenience and
offense is not to be tolerated and batty pet peeves must be
allowed to clutter the over-worked courts. | |
|
|
January 30 -
Marlboro man
— a follow up -
His
name is James Blake Miller. This photograph of him standing
before the gates of Fallujah in late 2004 became an icon of the Iraq
war. By then the public's view of the war had become
ambivalent as the overwhelming support for the venture had declined
as an ostensible early victory had deteriorated into a violent and
seemingly endless conflict. Miller's weary and bloody face,
cigarette smoke encircling eyes that had seen it all hit a chord
with the public. So disturbed with what could be regarded as a
positive portrayal of a smoker, the loonier fringe of the
anti-tobacco movement assailed the image as subversive to the goal
of labeling smokers as weak and ineffective losers.
The San Francisco
Chronicle this week took a look at the man who unwittingly became
the visual symbol of American troops fighting on foreign soil.
As the meaning, goal and operation of the Iraq war have become more
ambiguous as time goes by so too has the man behind the image
revealed himself to be a man more complicated than a hard-eyed
warrior wholeheartedly on a mission.
This being the rabidly
anti-tobacco San Francisco Chronicle the reporter delves into
Miller's tobacco use a bit, relating that Miller went from a
pack-and-a-half a day to 2 1/2 packs a day right before shipping out
to Iraq. In Iraq he smoked 5 1/2 packs a day. Back home
he is back to a pack-and-a-half a day. According to the
physically soft and mentally twisted Stanton Glantz, an anti-tobacco
activist who makes a very good living demonizing smokers like James
Miller, soldiers, cops and fire-fighters are unable to do their jobs
if they smoke. No matter the demons Miller is now fighting it
is obvious we could use more of him and far less of the Glantz's of
the world. |
|
|
FORCES INTERNATIONAL (Forces, Inc.) is a
non-profit educational corporation organized under the laws of the
Commonwealth of Virginia, USA. Forces, Inc. has received a
charitable tax exemption under Internal Revenue Code 501(c)3.
Your contribution is tax deductible.
FORCES INTERNATIONAL ©
trademark, logo and original material copyright © 1995-2004 is
property of FORCES INTERNATIONAL unless otherwise indicated.
Original FORCES material may be reprinted or used in any
non-commercial form if proper credit is given to FORCES and original
intent remains intact. All other material remains property of its
creator/owner. | |
|
Now you can use Paypal!
Donate today!
