September 21, 1998 - Fresh from having watched the deposition of Clinton on television, I feel compelled to write a few comments about the situation, and how it affects the fight for our rights as smokers.
Bill Clinton has turned himself and his country into an international joke, and made a mockery of truth and integrity. This does not apply just to Monica Lewinsky, but to many other topics, like anti-tobacco.
Thank largely to him and his support to anti-smokers, science has been corrupted and distorted, and organizations like the EPA or the WHO have been transformed from monitoring means into instruments of political propaganda and dissemination of fraudulent science.
Secondhand smoke has been turned into a health danger in the same way and with the same technicalities (and crooked morality) that originated the ludicrous contention that oral sex is not sex when performed in the White House.
Some of us in the Smokers' Rights Movement have criticized me for concentrating on the demise of President Clinton, for this is a distraction from our task.
The fact is that Clinton IS anti-tobacco. Clinton is the reason why the criminals of the anti-smoking cartel can create prohibition and grief for smokers in particular and societies in general in many area of the world, and get away with that. The demise (and hopefully the fall) of Bill Clinton means the severe damage -- or even the death -- of his legacy of lies and deception. Anti-tobacco will be affected by this fall in a very fundamental way.
The legacy of Clinton is an unprecedented danger for much of the world -- a danger topped only by fascist regimes. This legacy means a philosophy for which lies, frauds, misleading information, borderline legalities, and social outcast of citizens are justified to achieve ends that in the mind of the beholders (or according to political propaganda) are "right".
Anti-tobacco is a prime example (though not the only one) of this dangerous mentality that sells to the world the unachievable dream of a "perfect" or "better" society, thus it demands the enforcement of behavioral controls regulated and implemented by institutions and bureaucracy.
The common citizen, who nowadays is better to rename "the commoner", is either bamboozled into believing the state lies -- and used as instruments for such propaganda -- or is totally ignored.
It is not a coincidence that television interviews involve a great number of lawyers, and doctors, and very little representation from the commoners.
Doctors are supposed to cure disease, lawyers to defend the accused, judges to settle disputes, and politicians to administer the resources of the state. Under the present socialist regimes of USA, Canada, Australia, and England, this natural order of things has been scrambled, or inverted.
Doctors are establishing how we MUST behave, state-financed health activists drum up propaganda, intimidation and hysteria, politicians sing the paternalistic song, and lawyers do the legal work to coerce those who dissent, and resist.
And all this is perpetrated with great self-righteous contempt, as well as disregards for civil liberties and scientific integrity. Arguments concerning personal liberties and protection of privacy are dismissed, if not ridiculed. Nothing can stand in the way of anti-tobacco, not even the truth. Not even due process.
The demise of Clinton offers a splendid opportunity for our side, and it should be exploited to its fullest.
I personally believe that helping to discredit Clinton is totally consistent with our final goals here at FORCES: the destruction of anti-tobacco, and the criminal prosecution of those who have lied.
Gian Turci
FORCES International, C.E.O.
