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Censorship

May 18 [02:30 GMT] –  Are these movie reviews, or just puritan hang-wringing? - From the Weekly Standard, some thoughts on the “new moralism” as it is figured forth in what the writer calls “the ‘family friendly’ film reviewers in the local paper and on various websites,” which take a “Consumers Report” approach, and fret more about rating the acceptability of what’s shown on the screen than they do about the quality of the films themselves.

That there is a problem with films today, we must concur, but permit us to take a slightly different perspective.  The main problem with popular mainstream movies is, first of all, that so many are so very, very, very bad.  Moreover, a great many appear to have been crafted with not-particularly intelligent 13-year-olds in mind as their principal audiences, yet are drenched with often incredibly brutal violence and graphic sex (not to mention frequently rather brutal sex and/or “sexy” violence).

Here’s a wish, born in a wistful reminiscence of what a wonderfully creative world the movies were 20 to 30 years ago:  we’d love to see more well-done and interesting films made for mature and intelligent minds, and to see them reviewed by well-informed and experienced film critics.  We’d also like to see more and better kids’ films, sans the potentially traumatizing stuff, out there for youngsters.  Maybe there should be a ratings system with just three categories: children, adolescents, and grownups.  Just straight age restrictions at the movie theatres.  Then let the parents sort out who gets to watch what DVD at home.

Instead, anti-smoking activists are trying to finesse whether a particular character puffing on a smoke in a particular film is “acceptable” for a particular ratings category. At a time, post-Abu Ghraib, when the movie industry has decided to cultivate what we might call a pornography of torture, what a sad, misguided waste of time it all is. If some sort of righteous “clean-up” is called for,  perhaps it should take place first in our own muddled heads.

Cultural assault

May 18 [02:30 GMT] –  England: churches incensed by stop smoking signs - "Senior clerics were fuming yesterday over Government regulations giving churches and cathedrals until July 1 to post ‘no smoking’ signs at their entrances. Bishops and cathedral deans warned that the ‘nanny state’ rules were unnecessary and would deface their buildings when it was almost unheard of for someone to light up in the pews. The Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev Colin Slee, who is the spokesman of the Association of English Cathedrals, was scathing. 'It is such nonsense,' he said."

Although we certainly agree with the Very Rev. Slee, we don’t think that the good dean gets it: of course the antismoking Nazi government knows that nobody smokes in church, but that’s not the point.  Rather, the point is that there has to be no place where the smoker can turn his eyes without  seeing the 21^st century swastikas. Like the Jews in 1937 Germany, smokers have to see everywhere the symbol that says: “You are not welcome here if you show who you are”.  Get it?... It is a psychological war as well, to force smokers’ behaviour into what “public health” wants them to become.  In that way smokers will feel socially unaccepted by “society”, as envisioned by the criminals endorsing antitobacco, and they will quit smoking – hopefully by using the products of Big Pharma, which controls the criminals in the first place.  At least, so goes the plan.

But a time came when the swastika was associated with filth, displaying it in public was forbidden, and those who saluted it were rightfully persecuted and prosecuted by society.  As hard as it may be to believe today, history usually repeats itself.

Fascism

May 18 [02:30 GMT] –  FDA: we will tell you what your product name must be, or you go to jail – Please be honest: if you see the name Cocaine on cans sitting in a soft drink distributing machine, would you think for a moment that the drink contains cocaine? Of course not, but the name would attract your attention.  Would you think that even a child would think that cocaine is legally distributed in cans through vending machines?  Of course not. But the Food and Drug Administration must pretend outrage and legislate the name away.

“The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter last month that said Redux was illegally marketing the drink as a street drug alternative and a dietary supplement. May 4 was the deadline for the company to respond. The FDA cited as evidence the drink's labeling and Web site, which included the statements "Speed in a Can," 'Liquid Cocaine' and 'Cocaine -- Instant Rush.' The company says Cocaine contains no drugs and is marketed as an energy drink. It has been sold since last August in at least a dozen states.”

The drink has been pulled from the shelves and re-marketed under other names, however, the manufacturers intend to fight to keep their product name. Good luck to them.  But the point stands. The regulatory power of these bureaucratic monsters is unlimited, and it will eventually achieve the ultimate purpose of installing fascism: the assimilation of private industry and initiative into the state, thus killing the industries as we know them.  Under the banner of “public health”, these despots are already establishing what you may see, what you may eat, what you may do with your body, what you may hear on the radio, and even read on magazines.  They want to mould you into being as sick and narrow as they are – because they know better.  Are you going to let ‘em do that to us?  Or are you considering getting rid of them – whatever it takes?

Anti-smokers

May 17 [03:00 GMT] –  Another tobaccophobe dies prematurely - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mould the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University. He was 73, thus he died prematurely in spite of his healthist lifestyle.  He bragged that his school “Is a drug-free zone. It's an alcohol-free zone. It is a tobacco-free zone. No alcohol. No drugs. No tobacco. No coed dorms. We catch a boy in a girl's dorm, we shoot him. Make him wish we had." He also said: “…I'm glad now … that I never used alcohol or tobacco... I've buried a lot of friends who used tobacco or alcohol”.

Wrong, Jerry: the life you spent lecturing people on moral and physical health, taught you nothing.  Now the “lots of friends who use tobacco or alcohol” have buried you.   Not that this is going to serve as lesson for the jackasses who think that an existence of abstention from pleasure, rather than moderate enjoyment, is the secret of long life – no guarantee, of course, for there never is.

The prostitution of “public health”

May 17 [03:00 GMT] –  Scotland: National Health System to market nicotine patches to 12-year old through prescription - Catering to the multinational pharmaceutical corporations, the Scottish NHS will peddle nicotine to the underaged to compete with cigarette products.  Here is what the “public health prostitutes have to say: “Studies indicate that NRT was as well tolerated by teenagers as it is in adults and would certainly be safer than smoking. There was no evidence that indicated adolescents would abuse/misuse NRT."   Of course not – that would be contrary to the interests of Big Pharma.  The writer of the piece puts in her best to reinforce the concept to portray smoking as a disease: “Officials say adolescents …are becoming addicted and have just as much right to the treatment as adults.”  In a nutshell, it is better to be “addicted” to Big Pharma than to Big Tobacco.  You can tell who pays the bills of Big Press with advertisement, and who pulls the political strings of Big Health, nowadays.  Big Pharma has truly found publicly paid-for whores that have become its billboard at no cost to the corporations.  Norman Kjono has highlighted this international marketing scheme for many years, now.

But here is the good news, spoken by one of the main Big Pharma peddlers: “Smoking cessation services are, on the whole, not taken up by young people so we are constantly looking at ways we can tackle this hard-to-reach group”.   Fortunately, the next generation does not seem to be as stupid as the one in power now.  Keep on smoking, kiddoes: soon you will sit on the big chairs yourselves and then - hopefully - you'll clean up the trash.  For further information and comments, visit the site of Freedom To Choose.

Smoking bans are good for business, didn’t you know?...

May 17 [03:00 GMT] –  Minnesota's unemployment rate increases. One of the biggest losing sectors was the hospitality industry: 2,100 lost jobs - A “good” politician is he who torments smokers and uses the passive smoke fraud to do so.  This is the case of  Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, who has just signed a state-wide smoking ban into law.  That will make a bad employment situation worse, as sure as sunset, as Mark Wernimont from Clearing the Air points out.  CTA has chronicled 114 + local bar and restaurant closings since 3 small municipal smoking bans were enacted.  As we know, everywhere there is a smoking ban there is an economic crisis, but that does not matter at all next to the Pharma-frauds of “public health”. Their solution is simple: make the smoking bans wider, so that smokers will have nowhere to go – but who will stay home, save money and knock the economy out.  Good for them.  In the meantime, the US is approaching the dangerous threshold of 50% + 1 states that have a smoking ban.  And you know what happened when 50% + 1 of the states went dry about 90 years ago, don’t you?...

Prohibition

May 17 [03:00 GMT] –  Modern justice: fairness under oppression – This video from You Tube  is important to watch, as it is a classic.  It describes the foolishness of the “level playing field” siren song.

Fairness is very important for children.  If there are two brothers who misbehaved in the same way, the worst thing a parent could do is to spank one and not the other (assuming that you can do that without your kids launching a law suit to “straighten you up”). The essence of this example is that equality in punishment is, for the child, far more important than whether the punishment has a true and fair foundation, as the child does not have the maturity and the knowledge to judge the reasons behind the punishment.

This is also true, unfortunately, for our generation, that, emotionally and intellectually, never grew much beyond childhood.  Papa “public health” must apply punishment to all in the same way or it is “not fair”.  Rather than fighting the fraudulent reason behind the smoking bans (the non existing “dangers” of passive smoke), business owners fight the exemptions to the bans.

The obvious basic concept is that exemptions are unfair – and indeed they are.  But exemptions should not be there because there should be no ban in the first place, not because they are “wrong”.  It follows that the correct and effective action should be to sue the “authorities” to stop wrongful laws based on the public fraud of passive smoke – not whine and lobby for universal prohibition!

The sweet illusion is that by applying blanket, “fair” bans to all and by depriving smokers of choice, the smoking customers will surrender their right to smoke and they will happily go to all those mandated no smoking establishments as if nothing happened, because they will accept smoking prohibition as the new social standard. WRONG.  Smokers will stay home instead.  They should and they do, as we see all over the world where the bans are applied: the numbers of cigarettes sold goes up, and thousands of businesses are shut down.  Asking for the level playing field without addressing the passive smoke fraud is, therefore, asking for equal opportunity to either go bankrupt or be economically damaged.  Misery loves company.

As happens with children, however, that does not matter.  What matters, once again, is that the spanking be equally applied to all regardless of the wrongfulness of its reasons. It follows that the oppressor who suffocates everybody  in the same way deserves the obedience of all for his “justice”.  Machiavelli lives.

Anti-tobacco

May 16 [02:15 GMT] –  Dangerous information – Anti-tobacco has been quite successful in implementing its so-called smoke-free agenda.  It's not that people flock to its call to end smoking.  People do respond, however, to the constant drumbeat that smoking, and smokers, are evil.  The drumbeat is provided by the mainstream media, which still wields enormous power.  Tell a lie over and over again and eventually uninformed people will believe the lie is truth.  For anti-tobacco accurate information on tobacco issues is dangerous and must be suppressed.  Suppression, unfortunately for anti-tobacco, is not yet complete as The Dangerous Doug Kendall Show proves in an interview between the host and Norman Kjono.  The topic is Smoking Bans: Behind the Scenes and Norman Kjono knows well the who, why and how of smoking bans.

Prohibition

May 16 [02:15 GMT] –  Arizona smoking ban – A Forces reader sends in this news item.  Arizona enacted a strict smoking ban on May 1 and hasn't yet received coverage on the website.  The law has been in effect for five days and a bar owner is already refusing to comply based on a loophole.   He thinks the readers will enjoy this article and video clip from the Arizona Republic newspaper.

Junk Science and Propaganda

May 16 [02:15 GMT] –  Secondhand smoke deadliest of all –  Quoting a Stanford University study, Dr. P. P. Bose, a chest physician of the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in New Delhi, states that even a brief exposure to outdoor second hand tobacco smoke poses greater health risks than indoor passive smoking. He says: “The already present pollutants in the air along with the toxic pollutants produced during smoking makes it doubly worse. It Is a very bad combination”.  He then adds that one could get asthma attacks, chronic bronchitis, irregular heartbeat, premature death and non-fatal heart attacks.

The ridiculousness of such statements is obvious. One could understand that, if smoking is bad for you, it will be even worse if you smoke where the air is filled with pollutants (outdoor); but, from there to conclude that outdoor passive smoke is even worse than what the General Surgeon rashly stated, is the limit!

Is there anyone with a grain of intellect who could believe such a tall tale, being evident that the tiny streak of smoke from the lit cigarette is instantly dissolved even in still air?  For the sake of argument, however, let’s suppose that a faint cloud of second hand tobacco smoke, mixed with the polluted air, lingers about waiting for the unwary passer-by to inhale it. Still, let’s suppose that he gets one of those ailments mentioned by Bose, how could it be proven that the cause was that “cloud”?

Which medical student or scientist would accept such a theory?  Which prosecutor or defendant would embrace a legal action based on such a premise?  Could a terrorist be interested in bottling up polluted air mixed with second hand tobacco smoke? I doubt it.

But I do believe that the aforesaid study and Bose’s avowals are a terrorist attack against the smokers who should not smoke… not even in the open air.

-- Elio F. Gagliano, MD

There is nothing money can’t buy: pharmaceutical grants in action?

May 16 [02:15 GMT] –  Is this someone’s idea of “faith in action”? - We’d just love to know if this article, from the Baptist Memorial Health Care site in affiliation with the Baptist Church, owes anything to the $35,000 per church Robert Wood Johnson Foundation “Faith in Action” grants, which open independent religious institutions to the pestering of the government-and-corporate health totalitarian agenda, or if it is just spontaneous stupidity.

In any case, Baptist Memorial clearly makes the list of among the most gullible when it comes to accepting the frauds of anti-tobacco. Check this out:

“Toxic chemicals linger long after the cigarette smoke has cleared. ’If you smoke in your house at all even if you’re not in same room or not at home, people are still exposed to secondhand smoke,’ said Robert Higginbotham, MD, a Memphis pediatrician. ‘Smoke particles get in the upholstery, rugs and drapes and continue to be re-circulated for years. The same holds true for cars – even when people smoke with the windows open.’”

If this is true, it’s time for a moratorium on cooking in your kitchen. Time to go after people who fry food in their homes, time to go after restaurants that create “toxic chemicals” in the course of food preparation.

And what about restaurants and bars and casinos where smoking was once permitted but is no longer?  As one wag suggested when he read this article, why not require the every bar, restaurant or casino that has ever permitted smoking be razed to the ground and rebuilt?  The wonder is that people continue to circulate this crap and believe it.

Big Pharma

May 16 [02:15 GMT] –  Big Drugs Thwarted – The Texas legislature dealt a terminal blow to a drug company's scheme to impose a mandatory vaccination program on all adolescent girls in the state.  Despite the governor's support for vaccinating the school girls with a new drug that is promoted as a prevention for a sexually transmitted disease and an aggressive campaign by Merck & Co, the manufacturer, to buy political support, the legislators put an end to the marketing scheme.

The vaccination in Texas provided a surprising glimpse into the mercantile machinations of the pharmaceutical industry.  People are aware that anti-tobacco legislation, especially smoking bans, are a construct of the drug industry.  The pharmaceuticals distribute millions of dollars to researchers to make up studies that purport to show secondhand smoke is harmful for nonsmokers.  While the resulting "studies" never prove the dangers they are used to back up legislation that bans smoking.  Big Drugs then wildly promotes smoking cessation devices to smokers who are no longer allowed to smoke tobacco.  It's a con job of massive proportions.

The same interference in politics is being conducted by Merck.  The company is marketing a vaccine that protects girls and women against strains of the sexually transmitted virus that cause most cases of cervical cancer and genital warts.  Rather than building a customer base by marketing an effective product, Merck is taking a shortcut by advocating that the vaccine be a requirement for school.  An audacious scheme but one that is finding favor with politicians throughout the United States including the governor of Texas who issued an executive order mandating the vaccine for all sixth-grade girls. 

Once the word got out there was an outcry from parents and civil libertarians.  The legislature crafted a law that blocks state authorities from following the executive order, which passed so overwhelmingly that the governor won't have the support to override the veto.  Merck's nefarious plan, however, will be tried in other states where opposition is weaker or where big money talks louder.

Junk science

May 16 [02:15 GMT] –  Well, blow me over!  Something may be as dangerous as smoking – Embracing the green ethos, you buy into the the appeal of the British Optimum Population Trust think tank to make no more children, since having and rearing a child pollutes more than SUVs.  Now if, by chance, you consider turning to oral sex as a contraceptive measure think again—especially after reading this antitobacco-style study just published by the New England Journal of Medicine.  As happens with tobacco studies, one must dig into the complex scientific jargon and skip the laboratory experiments to get to the issue beyond the scientific truth that human papillomavirus has a role in cancer.

"Painstaking academic research indicates that promiscuous oral sex can carry a higher risk of throat cancer than smoking or boozing."

Post Clinton, many people don't even consider oral sex to be real sex but researchers have transformed the venerable blow job into a cancer-causing behaviour more risky than smoking and heavy boozing.

“We defined a drink-equivalent as one 12-oz beer, one 6-oz glass of wine, one 3-oz mixed drink, or one 1.5-oz shot of liquor. The number of drink-equivalents per week was determined for each patient within each 5-year age interval and combined into a measure of lifetime alcohol use, defined as the number of years during which 15 or more drink-equivalents (hereafter called "drinks") per week were consumed.”

“We calculated cumulative tobacco use in pack-years using information about the frequency of use (number of cigarettes, pipes, or cigars smoked per day) and duration of use (during 5-year age intervals) and accounting for gaps in use. Four cigars or five pipes per day were deemed equivalent to one pack of cigarettes in the calculation of pack-years.”

How do they know about alcohol and tobacco use, for example?  Simple: they asked and compiled the data on questionnaires on memories.  Then they used fantasy to imagine the amounts taken in.  Could they actually measure the consumption?  No.  How did they know about the numbers and frequency of oral sex performance?  They asked.  Were they actually there to tabulate each act of cunnilingus and fellatio? Mmmhhh…

Make no mistake: blow jobs kill just as much as smoking.  Conclusion: anything that looks like a cigar must not be in your mouth.  Give up oral sex along with all the rest: you don’t really want to kill your partner, do you?  And don’t even think of oral sex with condoms: only God knows what terrible – poisonous! – chemicals they are made of.  But don't despair: there are brand new vaccines that were approved less than one year ago by the FDA to save the day.  Isn't that a lucky coincidence?

Behavior control

May 15 [02:45 GMT] –  Is having children the next frontier of repression? –  “Having large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags, says a report to be published today by a green think tank.”

One does not have to be dismissive of concerns about the size of the human population to be troubled about this report.  In step with many Non Governmental Organization pressure groups and even governments, the Optimum Population Trust think-tank seeks to create an environment of social sanction – the prelude for repressive legislation – by making emotionally-laden and odious comparisons between the behaviour it disapproves of (child-bearing in this case) with dubious panic-inducing ideas that are widely shared in the public consciousness.  Here, the notion of child-bearing as an “environmental misdemeanor” equivalent to the production of a certain quantum of air pollution, is a barely concealed invitation to think of human life as a kind of rubbish.  An alienating and alienated attempt to jump on the climate change bandwagon with an anti-human message.

We link to the report’s press release . Readers will notice that the UK population projection figures here are, according to the press release’s own footnotes, accounted for by immigration, and not by present trends in birth rates.  The real message of intolerance for reproduction seems to be directed against the peoples of the Third World, where poverty continues to ensure a cycle of subsistence survival and population explosion.  But there are no suggestions about how to overcome the enormous problems faced in the parts of the world where “driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags” are failings that don’t even exist, since there are no big cars to drive and the plastic bags are used as roofing material.

The equations of “public health”: choice = disease

May 15 [02:45 GMT] –  The totalitarian implications of public health - Is this issue finally starting to go mainstream? The May cover story of Reason magazine is tackling the issue of health totalitarianism more or less head-on, from a Libertarian perspective.

The cover story is by Jacob Sullum: “What do these four “public health” problems—smoking, playing violent video games, overeating, and gambling—have in common? They’re all things that some people enjoy and other people condemn, attributing to them various bad effects.  Sometimes these effects are medical, but they may also be psychological, behavioral, social, or financial.  Calling the habits that supposedly lead to these consequences “public health” problems, “epidemics” that need to be controlled, equates choices with diseases, disguises moralizing as science, and casts meddling as medicine.  It elevates a collectivist calculus of social welfare above the interests of individuals, who become subject to increasingly intrusive interventions aimed at making them as healthy as they can be, without regard to their own preferences.”

Hysteria

May 15 [02:45 GMT] –  Bar staff 'should wear ear plugs' - Involved as everyone is with the bombardment of frauds and fatwas against eating, smoking, drinking alcohol and so on, it is difficult to keep all hysterias in mind at all times.  So we ask forgiveness of our readers for having neglected yet another rampant, un-requested crusade for the “health & safety” of YOU: the busybodies' crusade against “noise pollution”. Yes, the hippy generation (for which music was not music without 10,000-watt power consumption), is not only sick enough to legislate smoking bans, but also to ban music and human sounds and voices.

“Campaigners have attacked the music and entertainment industry for not preparing measures to protect the hearing of bar and club workers. … The Royal National Institute for Deaf People said staff working where loud music was played should get ear plugs. … A poll of 200 businesses showed that over half of employers have no plans to make hearing protection available - despite new laws coming in next year.”

The idiotic EU laws make live performances of Wagner illegal because they exceed 85 decibels – for the “good” of public and musicians!

Of course ear plugs are known to cause ear infection - and no epidemiological junk science in this case (click here, here and here).  But that is irrelevant as, later, it will be part of another campaign against the despicable ear plug industry, which ignored and hid the evidence without promptly bankrupting itself in guilt and shame for the diseases it "caused", like all industries should do according to the Health & Environment Marxists.

Nihilism is rampant: no smoking, no eating, no alcohol, no cars, no wooden shoes, no industries, no sound, no BBQs, no fat, no soft drinks, no nothing.   Exist... but don't.  The capricious hippy mentality was put to music, in 1967, with a simple song written by a hippy from France, Michel Polnareff. This song should truly become the anthem of these nihilistic times:  La poupée qui fait non, non, non… Toute la journée elle fait non, non, non, non  -- The Doll Who Said, no, no, no… all day, she said no, no, no no… (and nobody understood how to make her say yes). Click here to hear the symbolic song – and, please, use ear plugs for your own good!

Straightening up eaters