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March 31, 2006 |
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Straightening up Drinkers
March 31 -
Prohibitionists strike back -
Over
the past several years alcohol interests, especially the vintners,
have touted studies that show a health benefit when alcohol is
"moderately" consumed. The methods to produce these studies
are the same used to produce anti-smoking studies which is not to
say that moderate alcohol use doesn't lead to improved health.
Epidemiology isn't science and when utilized to prove a point
promoted by special interests it can be manipulated to "prove"
anything.
From the University of California -
San Francisco, the font of much of the anti-smoking junk science,
comes a review of the research that promotes moderate alcohol study.
Not surprisingly the "researchers" conclude that the pro-alcohol
research is flawed. What now follows is an argument between
the pro-alcohol crowd and anti-alcohol, each thrusting volumes of
data into the face of the other. The winner will not be
determined by which position is true, since epidemiology cannot
determine that. Instead the winner will be the faction with
the most political juice. At this time, bet on the
prohibitionists.
Ethics
March 31 -
Futility of the smear -
This
week a representative of FORCES debated a representative from the
American Nonsmokers' Rights about smoking bans imposed upon the
great outdoors. At one point the ANR threw a spit ball at
FORCES by implying the organization is tied to Big Tobacco because
FORCES once hired a lawyer to prepare an application to the Internal
Revenue for tax exempt status. The attorney had done legal
work for a cigarette manufacturer.
This secondhand smear is typical of
ANR, a group that once compiled an enemy list consisting of everyone
and every group that disagreed with its smoke-free agenda. To
the ANR anyone deviating from anti-tobacco orthodoxy is a front for
Big Tobacco. Michael Siegel, himself an advocate for tobacco
control, deplores ANR's smear tactics.
March 31 -
Lying, once again -
Michael
Siegel notes yet another example of an anti-smoking organization
willfully dispersing fallacious information. In this case the
Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights claims that one half hour of
exposure to secondhand smoke damages the hearts of nonsmokers just
as much as a lifetime of smoking.
This tobacco control advocate is
rightfully concerned that in today's environment of wild,
unjustified misinformation legitimate tobacco control goals will be
invalidated as the press and public becomes aware that some
anti-smoking organizations are not telling the truth. When
part of the message is shown to be a lie, why believe any of the
message? |
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Commentary
March 31 -
Big brother or sister? - Last week Texas' finest were
summoned to patrol the bars looking for intoxicated patrons.
The unlucky tipplers were arrested in a preemptive move to prevent
them from driving under the influence. Bob Dyer takes a dim
view of assigning guilt before acting illegally.
Politics
March 31 -
Reiner resigns under a cloud -
As
the scandal over misspent funds escalates Rob Reiner, the chairman
of the state commission he created eight years ago, resigned,
protesting his innocence all the way. His resignation doesn't
mean he is out of the woods yet. Legislators from both parties
are calling for audits and a thorough investigation into the
multi-million dollar television commercials touting pre-school
programs that have become Reiner's latest cause. The scandal
casts doubts on Reiner's voter initiative to raise taxes to
pre-school for all of California's children.
Anti-smoking Backfire
March 31 -
Smoking rates rise after ban -
Prior
to the imposition of the nationwide smoking ban in Ireland the
newspapers couldn't get enough of the propaganda passed out by
anti-tobacco operatives. Paragraph after paragraph in story
after story foretold a booming pub scene after all the nasty smokers
had been eliminated. Smoking rates would dive as smokers gave
up their habit to fit in with the new, healthy, happy and smoke-free
Irish lifestyle.
Two years later terse stories report
the results of the smoking ban. Hundreds of pubs have gone out
of business while the smoking rate has risen. Looks like the
Irish experiment was a failure on all levels. Very bad news
and one that the media is embarrassed to report.
Junk Science
March 31 -
Global warming cools -
Despite
the claims of the true believers, the question of whether human
activity causes global warming is far from settled. The
scientific consensus invoked by the global warming crowd is as
fictitious as is the "proof" they cite to justify curbs upon energy
use.
While most who disagree with the
theory that mankind is responsible for warmer temperatures back up
their position with arcane formulas and masses of data, Alan Caruba
takes the common sense approach. This short and delightfully
non-technical article packs a punch that cannot be attained by
scientists who entangle themselves in minutia that the layman will
not understand. | |
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March 29, 2006 |
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March 29 -
The rewriting of history continues on
- The worst, most sinister depiction of the future in Orwell’s
dystopian masterpiece “1984” was the relentless rewriting of history,
which constituted most of the work of bureaucrats in a dark,
collective, state-run world. The bureaucrats used sophisticated
machinery to erase unwanted information from the past and to make
sure that the past fit the present.
The
rewriting of history has always been a dark crime of sick minds — and sick minds always and obsessively
fixate on health. The diseased
minds of antitobacco operatives are constantly at work rewriting history making sure that the greatest men and women who ever lived, most of them smokers, never touched a
cigarette. Antismoking operatives instil fear so that production companies, television
stations and so on are intimidated into never portraying smoking and smokers. The latest
example of that is the
new release of the “Twist and Shout” Beatles album, where
cigarettes have been airbrushed from the hands of all four great
smoking musicians. Even two fingers of Ringo have been mutilated to
get rid of the "fag" he was holding! This is not an isolated case,
and it goes beyond the curious and the bizarre. It is part of a
steady process to mutilate our heritage "for our own good".
So,
now the Beatles never smoked — nor did Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Humphrey Bogart, Winston Churchill, and
thousands of other great people. Smoking is a “bad example”, it
“kills” — thus it has to be forgotten; rather, it never existed.
But we are proud to smoke with “them of the past” as we shall be
proud to smoke into the future right in the face of antismokers
– now more than ever, as we’d rather be like Winston Churchill than
Stanton Glantz and other antitobacco scum who profit from
fraud and hatred.
The
bureaucrats of today rewrite history with sophisticated machinery to
make it fit the dark present. They rewrite it for the criminal
entity that “public heath” has become — an entity that speaks of a
pandemic not one death of which can be proven and with which
it is constantly at war. Orwell’s dark world was constantly at war,
too. Never ending war kept the slaves in order and distracted
them from their condition. Today's behaviour control also keeps the slaves in order, full of guilt and submission, so that they don’t arise and
forcefully take what is rightfully theirs. Oh no, my God,
smoking is such a trivial thing, why get so upset about a
cigarette? – you are ridiculous! That’s the small mind at work
for you: why, then, are billions spent in fraudulent campaigns against
such a “triviality” in the rooms 101 of the ministries of “health”? Because smoking is not trivial — and because
the largest fraud Mankind has ever known must be kept going — and
kept profitable. People must believe.
How
long before Churchill is an abstainer, and Oliver Hardy looks like
Stan Laurel? Not long. It’s just a matter of time and it is a mouse
click away: health before all — Big Brother says so — and slaves
obey. Was Orwell right all they way? Have the ministries of health
become the ministries of love? Will we end up by confessing our
subversive sin, the sin of enjoying life,
like the hero of Orwell’s book, and will we publicly tell Big
Brother that we love him? After all, many ex-smokers have done that
already, kissing the bat that broke their will "for their own good".
Yet, that may be the part where Orwell was wrong, and the time to
even the score may be at hand as we approach our darkest moments:
the awakening cannot come one minute too soon.
And
if this is thought crime, then we are very proud to be
criminals. |
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Prohibition
March 29 -
Justifying the
unjustifiable - KGO radio in San Francisco featured a
discussion about the city's latest proposal to persecute smokers.
Anchors Rosie Allen and Greg Jarrett hosted Maryetta Ables,
representing Forces International, Cynthia Hallett of the Americans
for Nonsmokers' Rights and Phillip Matier, reporter for the San
Francisco Chronicle.
After a short spot of news the program
begins with background and a series of bizarre statements by an
anti-tobacco flack named Alyonik Hrushow who works for the city's
health department. Hrushow's generous salary is provided
courtesy of California smokers who are taxed to finance "tobacco
control sections" in each of the counties. As you listen to
her pedantic statements realize that her comfortable lifestyle is
provided by the very people she works eight hours a day to demonize.
Needless to say, every word she spews about secondhand smoke is a
flat out lie and that she knows full well what she says is untrue.
The only truth she does utter, and utter it she does proudly, is
that one primary goal of the outdoor smoking bans is to further the
"denormalization" of smoking.
Points of interest include Ms. Ables
forcing Ms. Hallett to admit that the ANR receives funding from the
pharmaceutical front group, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Ms.
Hallett's inept attempt to tar Forces as a tool of Big Tobacco; Ms.
Ables pointing out the Occupational Health and Safety
Administration's refusal to ban smoking; Ms. Ables putting Ms.
Hallett's fear-mongering to rest regarding the "dangers" of a minute
component of tobacco smoke into perspective.
In all the segment was fair with each
side getting equal time. Ms. Hallett, as a highly paid
anti-tobacco professional, is poised and smooth, performing as well
as can be expected considering that she surely knows that smoking at
a bus stop poses no hazards to nonsmokers. Ms. Ables, as
reflects her unpaid status as a volunteer for freedom, is a slightly
less polished but held her own with the pro, often scoring points at
the expense of the programmed anti-tobacco operative. The
hosts and the newspaper man seemed in the end to sympathize a bit
more with the plight of the smokers than with the rigid ideology of
the professional kill-joy. The public is well-served when the
foolishness and downright hatred of anti-smoking zealots are
exposed. |
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Hate
March 29 -
City of hate -
The
San Francisco Board of Supervisors (City Council) prides
itself on its progressive politics and its tolerance for
diversity. Its actions, however, reveal that this once
great city is run by the spiritual heirs of every repressive
regime that polluted the earth. The target, for now,
of the "progressive" regime's hate are the smokers.
Recent legislation banished taxpaying residents who chose to
enjoy a legal product from the city's parks and recreation
centers. Soon transit stops, outdoor transits stops at
that, will be rid of the evil smokers.
One could remark that
worrying about a wisp of tobacco smoke wafting at a transit
stop where tons of fossil fuel pollutants fall each year is
an example of insanity that bodes ill for the real health of
San Francisco but worse is the amnesia of the particular
supervisor who wrote the law banning smoking from bus stops.
Fiona Ma's ancestors and their countrymen were specifically
prohibited from immigrating to California under the
so-called Chinese exclusion acts. The "yellow peril"
was last century's boogeyman and now one who should know
better is herself demonizing those whom she hates.
Lest we give the impression
that San Francisco's only manifestation of intolerance
concerns smokers we present another recent example of hatred
directed against those whom the elite hate and fear.
"They're loud, they're
obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should
get out of San Francisco,"
says
Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.
And who are they that have so
riled this "progressive" politician? A bunch of
Christian youth who held a two-day rally in the city.
So much for tolerance. So much for honoring free
speech. So much for good manners. Proving that
the fools who run this city have absolutely no sense of
irony, the Board of Supervisors issued a hilarious
denunciation of the Christian youth:
"Earlier this week, the Board
of Supervisors passed a resolution condemning the "act of
provocation" by what it termed an "anti-gay," "anti-choice"
organization that aimed to "negatively influence the
politics of America's most tolerant and
progressive city." | |
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March 27, 2006 |
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Prohibition
March 27 -
Mercantile social engineering -
The
spate of new restrictions in the United States and abroad is being
driven by business interests, according to Maryetta Ables, president
of FORCES, or Fight Ordinances and Restrictions to Control and
Eliminate Smoking. Ables said she believes smoking bans are being
promoted and funded at least in part by pharmaceutical companies
that sell stop-smoking products.
"It's going to take the American
people to get righteously indignant and force our legislators to
stop allowing commercial industry to purchase social legislation to
promote their products," Ables said.
There is no doubt that the pharmaceutical industry is a prime
mover in the anti-tobacco movement. The Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation's billions came directly from Johnson & Johnson.
The foundation has spent hundreds of millions of dollars financing
anti-smoking "research" and aggressively lobbying politicians to
enact policies designed to switch customers from the tobacco
products of Big Tobacco to the smoking cessation products of Big
Drugs.
March 27 -
Religious fervor -
A
new statewide ban prompts newspaper man Jay Ambrose to list the
legitimate reasons for banning smoking from private property such as
restaurants and bars. There aren't any but he does list the
garbage that is used to promote prohibition. Smoking bans
have become an article of faith for the ignorant and a club for the
social engineers to increase their power.
March 27 -
Refusing to bend over -
While
much of the United States and Western Europe should hang their heads
in shame, the Spanish are showing that they at least learned some
lessons from the decades in which they were oppressed by a fascist
regime. The socialist government passed a nationwide smoking
ban and the people are refusing to comply. America needs a
spine transplant but it appears Spain is using its spine to great
effect.
Pharma Cartel
March 27 -
Big Drug wins again -
To
no one's surprise the multi-national pharmaceuticals prevented the
Food and Drug Administration from imposing warning labels on the
dangerous drugs that are overly prescribed to America's youth.
This may be a Pyrrhic victory since more and more experts are
demanding that the promiscuous labeling of boys as suffering from
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder be curbed.
Social engineers and the pharmaceuticals will fight tooth and nail
any attempt to halt the drugging of our nation's children. |
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Business
March 27 -
Protection Racket -
Many people and
most of the media operate under the misunderstanding that Big
Tobacco has been completely defeated. What with bans, higher
cigarette taxes and smoker demonization it's understandable that the
naive believe that smoking and tobacco production is on its way out.
Michael Siegel, as a tobacco control
advocate who has followed the issue closely, knows better. Big
Tobacco is doing very well thank you. While its customers are
being treated terribly its profits are up, mostly because of the
partnership it has developed with politicians and the anti-tobacco
industry itself. Money is the name of the game. That is
the one thing that all factions can agree on and each, in its own way,
supports the other components. The big losers are the smokers
and society as a whole.
Junk Science
March 27 -
Crying wolf begins to take its toll -
Michael
Siegel's worst dream is coming true. As a tobacco control
advocate, Dr. Siegel has been aware for quite some time that the
clumsy, crude and completely fallacious studies that have been
cranked out by anti-smoking ideologues will, over time, tarnish the
research that at least adhered to some sort of basic standard.
Dr. Siegel notes that inquisitive laymen are figuring out that anti-tobacco research is garbage and
should never be the basis of social policy.
March 27 -
Bad air, damaged sperm -
Cribbing
once again from the pioneers of junk science, "researchers" attempt
to panic men by focusing on sexual organs and their impairment due
to environmental factors. Impotence caused by secondhand smoke
may have been laughed out of the public arena but the
panic-mongering tactics that extracted huge
grants for that failed scam could work for the clean air advocates
hoping to make a buck off male insecurity.
Theatre of the Absurd
March 27 -
Wisps of smoke on the freeway -
At
some point the elite little community of Calabasas California will
cease to be the butt of jokes but that day is far off as absurdities
pile on absurdities as its anti-smoking law is closely examined.
The good city fathers graciously do allow smokers to smoke in their cars but
only if all windows are securely shut. Can't have any of that
tobacco smoke imperil the numbskulls who live in Calabasas even
though pollution from the car itself dwarfs the "pollution" created
by a burning cigarette by millions to one. Witch doctors rule
in today's California. | |
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