April 3 - FORCES Moments 2005 - A bit late but not forgotten we are happy to present the winners of our photo contest.  Smokers throughout the world sent us pictures of themselves, happily smoking and enjoying themselves.  It was hard to pick the winners but we feel those we have designated are representative of the diversity and breadth of people who are happy in their own skins and who dismiss the anti-smoking tirades as so much ugly noise.

April 3 - Thank you for smoking - Twelve years ago when extreme anti-smoking activism was just a gleam in the eyes of a few loud, self-promoting ideologues Christopher Buckley's satiric novel about the vilification of the tobacco industry made a surprisingly large splash on the literary scene.  As the anti-tobacco movement reaches its peak a movie based on the book is opening in the nation's cinemas.

Brooke Oberwetter's review in Reason Magazine examines the movie and pronounces it a refreshing take from a Hollywood that is far too often hobbled by its innate politically correct dogma.  While the reviewer wishes the timeframe of the movie had taken place in the present rather than in the relatively innocent early 1990's the libertarian reviewer appreciates the message of personal responsibility and individual choice that has been all but obliterated by the therapeutic society that is eliminating the core values of the republic.  Check it out.

April 3 - Anti-smoking Taliban - Anti-tobacco operatives protest bitterly whenever they are compared to unwholesome political movements or regimes.  To be fair there is a tendency in today's hyperventilating society to call opponents names rather than rationally discuss differences of opinion.  Certainly anti-tobacco is very guilty of this sloppiness although its name-calling generally is limited to labeling its opponents as tools of Big Tobacco.

Betsy Hart is a nationally syndicated columnist who, after careful reflection, sees disturbing parallels between anti-tobacco and the infamous Taliban regime that nearly ruined Afghanistan.  The equivalence between the two ideologies is based more upon how each demonize opponents in starkly religious terms.  While some my consider anti-tobacco's goals and tactics up-to-date and modern, Hart sees lurking underneath a zealotry and orthodoxy that has nothing to do with facts but plenty to do with sin, as practiced by unpopular groups.  Region it is, although like Satanism, anti-tobacco's strain of faith reflects the dominant culture of "anything goes" except for a few, trivial activities, like smoking, that function as the elitists' scapegoats.

April 3 - Is Diabetis a Plague? - [New York City Health Commissioner] Friedan envisions regulations for chronic disease control including "local requirements on food pricing, advertising, content, and labeling; regulations to facilitate physical activity, including point-of-service reminders at elevators and safe, accessible stairwells; tobacco and alcohol taxation and advertising and sales restrictions; and regulations to ensure a minimal level of clinical preventive services."

A dark and scary preview of the future is occurring right now in New York City where a powerful public health bureaucracy is inexorably replacing choice and personal responsibility with the dictates of governing class that has never been elected and whose platform is imposed by fiat.  The growth of Public Health has been gradual but has now reached a tipping point where it is emboldened to propose policies that would have resulted in termination had public health workers proposed them only a few years ago.

April 3 - Derailing the gravy train - It's not often that a politician these days displays courage so it is a pleasant shock that Mississippi's governor is facing down one of the most vicious special interests groups operating in the country.  Haley Barbour last week vetoed a bill that would have continued the multi-million payment to a private nonprofit, anti-tobacco organization.

Set up in 1998 The Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi is a result of a deal between that state's attorney general and Big Tobacco that halted the state's suit against the industry.  The attorney general, Mike Moore, after a failed political bid, then maneuvered himself into running the Partnership.  In the past five years alone the Partnership has received $100-million.  Governor Barbour accurately describes the Partnership as cloaked in politics and cronyism.

Looking out for his constituents does come with a cost as Barbour is finding out.  A flack for the Partnership calls the governor....a tool for Big Tobacco.  How novel and how typical.  The governor of this sometimes despised state shows his peers how to stiffen their spines in the face of the inordinate greed of anti-tobacco special interests.

April 3 - Where are we headed? - The level of control exerted upon the supposedly free citizens of Western Europe and North America is reaching a critical point.  People today submit to a level of control that our grandparents would have found unbearable yet we, the product of their sacrifices to maintain liberty, grumble and grouse but ultimately shrug off the responsibility of taking positive action.

While we have focused primarily on the anti-smoking movement we are aware that that agenda is only one of the manifestations of the control that is tightening like a vise.  Anti-tobacco, of course, has gone the farthest and has paved the way for all the other efforts to remove freedom in the name of safety and health.

Michael Siegel, a tobacco control advocate, could be considered a cog in the machine that is flattening variety and eliminating choice.  He, however, for quite some time has been looking critically at the movement in which he has worked for so long.  He has, in his own words, been challenging the dogma of anti-tobacco.

Gian Turci addresses the dogma that Dr. Siegel challenges but wonders whether the dogma is being challenged at all.  He looks at the core assertions of the tobacco control movement and finds they do not measure up to any standard of scientific reality.

Challenging Dogma?
The Real Dogma Is Not Challenged At All

Olivia Anne Mac Diarmid places the anti-smoking movement in perspective by noting that while smoking is a trivial issue to most people, including smokers who are the victims of anti-smoking policies, its place in the overall agenda to protect people from themselves is crucial as a marker to just how much the controllers can get away with.  Ms. Mac Diarmid responds to Michael Siegel's horror over policies such as that enacted in Calabasas California which take punitive measures against smokers to a new height.  She finds disturbing that "health" is being used to whip up hatred against "the other" while simultaneously layering its agenda with an aura of religiosity.

Tobacco Control: The Canary In The Coalmine

April 3 - 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.

April 3 - 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-schoolr all of California's children.

April 3 - 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.

April 3 - 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.