Troll was back again last night, posting on my blog and Leg-iron’s, and maybe a few others as well. Leggy reckons that he’d found out that it was quite easy to impersonate someone, once he’d got their username and password email address. So I’ve gone back to requiring people to log in. And Leggy’s adopted full moderation, at least for tonight.
I don’t know which is best. Using the log-in option allows people who’ve got WordPress, Facebook, or Twitter accounts to post comments without moderation. That restricts comments to those people who have at least one of those accounts. But the comments appear immediately.
The moderation option will allow anyone to post messages, but they’ll only appear once I’ve read them, which might be 12 hours after they were posted. And that will prevent people from chatting to each other (as was happening here last night).
So it’s swings and roundabouts.
But there is the possibility of switching between modes. If I’m following comments closely, I could switch to open access – no moderation or log-in or anything – until I have to do something else - like sleep – in which case I’d revert back to log-in mode. And maybe I could put a sign in the margin saying what mode the blog is in. I’ll have to think about it.
I’m not sure what troll is trying to do, apart from disrupt things on smoke-happy blogs like mine. Despite his efforts over the past couple of months, my readership seems to keep climbing. It’s been nudging towards 1000 a day recently. And I’ve even begun to get requests to place paid ads on it. A year ago it was more like 300 a day. And a year before that it was maybe 100 a day.
Perhaps, as Harley has suggested, we’re beginning to get effective. We’re getting noticed a bit. And by “we”, I mean all the smoker blogs, of which there are getting to be rather a lot. And collectively we’re broadcasting a louder and louder counter-message to the one being sung from the antismoking hymn sheet (a bit like that scene in Casablanca where Laszlo gets everyone to sing the Marseillaise). And it’s subverting their media hegemony. So troll has been sent to stop it.
Why don’t they just start their own blogs? Stanton Glantz started one a few months back, dunno where. I’m sure Deborah Arnott could write riveting stuff about how good pubs are now that all the smokers have been exiled to the outdoors, and eloquently describe the pleasures of washing down a salt-free and fat-free low-calorie veggieburger with alcohol-free wine in a smoke-free and music-free and conversation-free pub, while reading 30 Ways to Exterminate Smokers in the Sunday colour supplement of Tobacco Control.
”Deborah Arnott could write riveting stuff about how good pubs are now that all the smokers have been exiled to the outdoors, and eloquently describe the pleasures of washing down a salt-free and fat-free low-calorie veggieburger with alcohol-free wine in a smoke-free and music-free and conversation-free pub, while reading 30 Ways to Exterminate Smokers in the Sunday colour supplement of Tobacco Control.”
As always spot on,Frank,spot on!!
I can imagine antis celebrating in the future : Let us raise our green tea & tomato juice glasses!!!!
As for the troll,maybe it’s Rollo Tomassi in disguise now that he can no longer use this alias!!
PS Waiting to celebrate 10,000 per day!You really worth it!
Green tea & tomato juice? Oh surely not!
Determination of the Nicotine Content of Various Edible Nightshades (Solanaceae) and Their Products and Estimation of the Associated Dietary Nicotine Intake
“The edible Solanaceae fruit analyzed in this investigation were found to contain relatively consistent amounts of nicotine in the range of 2−7 μg/kg for fresh fruits.”
“In addition, a variety of black as well as green teas was investigated for the nicotine content. Nicotine content in tea leaves was found to be highly variable and sometimes much larger than in the Solanaceae fruits”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10552617
No safe level remember.
Glycoalkaloid Enzymes in the Nightshade Family
“Other glycoalkaloid toxins found in the nightshade family include tomatine from tomatoes, and nicotine from tobacco.These natural poisons protect the plant from insects and other enemies.”
http://www.promolux.com/english/retail_produce_greening.html#nightshade
4. EVALUATION
“The Committee considered that, despite the long history of human consumption of plants containing glycoalkaloids, the available epidemiological and experimental data from human and laboratory animal studies did not permit the determination of a safe level of intake.
The Committee recognized that the development of empirical data to support such a level would require considerable effort.
http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v30je19.htm
Don’t forget, they chose the battleground, not me.
In some ways the Trolls help us more than they think they hurt us. No matter what tactics they use, they demonstrate to the “passers by” (who are the main audience many of us are hoping to reach and wake up) that there’s a real lack of serious challenge to our ideas in a medium where things are inalterably written down, points can’t be “ducked” without being caught, and where claims can be checked instantly and easily.
On Television, or even on the radio, they’re often able to have the host(ess) on their side, and even when they don’t, they’re often skilled speaking professionals with a bookful of authoritative sounding sound bites and talking points that they can roll out by the dozen in a minute or two — while we’re faced with having to spend SEVERAL minutes on EACH ONE in order to show people without a background in the area why the points are actually invalid.
Since they can’t actually compete with us in this medium, they’ve moved into the troll attack tactics and into trying to get us censored in various ways. Outright widespread effective internet censorship would indeed make life very difficult for us — I don’t think I’m telling them anything new with that — but they’re not close to it yet. We need to take FULL advantage of this window though: five years from now things may be different and the Antis will be pushing with their “protect the children” and “We need the powers to combat international terrorism” apporaches to convince the public that internet control is needed.
Truth will beat out lies any day of the week: but only if we can get it heard. We haven’t had much success in the broadcast media, and only limited success in the print media, but on the internet we RULE … despite being outspent by probably well over a million to one (with the one really being our own pocket dollars outside of a few efforts like FOREST.)
Dimi: I’ll join you in that toast… but make sure you bring at least a BIT of vodka to add to those drinks! LOL!
- MJM
Since they can’t actually compete with us in this medium,
But why can’t they compete?
They can’t compete because at the base of most of their arguments and claims we find lies. And in this medium those we have the time, space, and instant “authority” (through people being able to instantly check our statements and references on Google) to expose those lies.
On TV, in addition to their greater communications experience and the sympathy of the hosts, the “power” of their statements is far greater than ours — simply because they are saying things that support what have largely become mainstream beliefs, because they often have positions of authority themselves that make people be inclined to believe them, and because they can so readily cite “higher authorities” as supposedly backing them up.
On the net most of them are afraid to sign their real names because they know that the arguments they’re going to make are shaky and misleading so they lose the power of their own authority positions, the statements that are “mainstream beliefs” can be analyzed and exposed through clearly expressed arguments and quickly checkable citations, and their “higher authorities” argument can be countered with “So show me exactly what EVIDENCE their opinions are based on.”
That’s why they can’t compete and why most of them stay wisely away or, occasionally, show up under anonymous handles.
- MJM
Certainly they are authoritarians. They always fall back on authority. I think I’ve lost count of the number of times Deborah Arnott (a one-time TV executive) has fallen back on the authority of the BMA, RCP, WHO, BHF, and so on.
Vodka,Whisky,ciggies and whatever your heart desires!!!
“Why don’t they just start their own blogs?”
A couple of months ago, there was one on Facebook. But after people like Simon Chapman were confronted with very well founded criticism by us, the group page was turned into a closed group so they can reinforce themselves without their dreams being disturbed by educated criticisms.
They’ve always been a closed group. They’ve only ever talked to anybody except themselves.
Uh,weve roasted a few nazis in our day! ehh mike.
Paul Austin posted this over at the club,anybody got any ideas:
While poking around looking for the differences between 501 (c)(3) (tax exempt, tax deductible contributions. supposedly non-lobbing) verses 501 (c)(4) (not tax exempt, no tax deduction for contributions, CAN lobby for political purposes) I came up with this IRS 909 disclosure form for ACS Products, INC:
http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/conten … 005950.pdf
where on page 4 they reported:
ALSO, THE SALE OF TOBACCO CESSATION PRODUCTS.
Well, Duuuuuuh.
Despite mouthing they’re profit neutral, the end of the doc (page 44) shows 11,406 contributions totaling $273,552 for an average of $24 per transaction. Furthermore the officers, while being paid by the Williams Street main office for the lions share of their salaries raking in 287, 237, & 175 thou (page 24) respectively for full/part work (page 35) running the retail arm of the ACS.
Curious, I looked for ACS Products, INC. and found this website:
http://www.cancer.org/Treatment/Support … -a-magalog
and their online catalog:
http://www.tlcdirect.org/
and searched all over for tobacco cessation products (and/or services) and found ZIPPO!
So where does these (“cough, cough, bullshit, bullshit.”) contributions for tobacco cessation products come from?
Sounds like a kickback scheme if I heard one, doesn’t it?
I’m reminded of an earlier post concerning the association between the pharmaceutical companies and non-profit advocacy groups:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126022195983380765.html
yet the matter seems to have disappeared from the medias radar.
Next time we hear hear some selfless ACS wonk spew their trash here’s proof they’re nothing more than shills for the drug companies, PERIOD!
http://forum.smokersclubinternational.com/viewtopic.php?f=88&t=17107
I wonder if the Aunts’ failure on the net isn’t somewhat akin to the failure in America of Liberal talk radio, as opposed to the success of Libertarian/ Conservative talk radio. The thing is the Liberals and the Aunts aren’t saying anything new on the net– nothing you can’t get by reading any newspaper or watching the nightly news or the seeing or hearing their ubiquitous Public (Dis)Service campaigns which bombard you from every side. So why bother logging on? And the only people who do are the hard core obsessed-with-the-cause clientele, as MJM just observed.
It’s only our side here that’s saying something new, not to mention that it has all the crackle of samizdat. In fact, I believe that it IS samizdat, with all that implies.
Oddly parallel to what we’ve been discussing…
Of trolls, skeptics and Global Warming:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/why-climate-skeptics-are-winning_631915.html?page=1
Snap!
“As fully as amaranth was appreciated by the indigenous population of what is now Mexico, it was just as fully reviled by the Europeans, as one of the foods they associated with “pagan practices.”
“When the Spaniards landed in the New World, immediately undertaking the zealous, often forceful, conversion of the inhabitants to Christianity, one of the first things they did was to outlaw foods involved in indigenous religious festivals.
Diego Duran, in compiling this long list of forbidden foods chronicled in the Book of the Gods, noted amaranth as something to be particularly shunned, the consumption of amaranth idols being considered a blasphemous parody of the Christian communion. The friars were quick to issue a ban against its cultivation.”
http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/2276-mexico-s-grain-of-the-gods-cooking-with-amaranth
Sound familiar?
“And now good Countrey men let us (I pray you) consider, what honour or policie can moove us to imitate the barbarous and beastly maners of the wilde, godlesse, and slavish Indians, especially in so vile and stinking a custome?”
“In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming your selves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the markes and notes of vanitie upon you: by the custome thereof making your selves to be wondered at by all forraine civil Nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned.
A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.”
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/james/blaste/blaste.html
Does anyone know if Amaranth tastes nice? I may have to grow some on principle.
I agree with you, Mike, to an extent – these angry, frothing-at-the-mouth-type trolls do more harm to the anti-smoking cause than they help it, which is good news for us. But I’m not sure that they are actively sent (or tacitly “encouraged”) by any of the big anti-smoking groups – in fact I think they are a minor embarrassment – because, for all their faults, the one thing that anti-smoking campaigners are is media-savvy, and I just don’t think that they’d ask someone who can’t spell, doesn’t know the meaning of the word punctuation, can hardly string a coherent sentence together, and whose arguments amount to little more than “Pooh! Stinky pooh! I don’t like you!” to try and counter the opposition which is mounting in blogs like these, because this would detract from the authoritative, serious, “scientific” image which they strive to project for themselves.
I rather think that the kind of trolls who plague blogs like these are little individual anti-smokers who are furious that smokers, rather than bowing their heads and giving up like good little forelock-tuggers, have simply found another way of enjoying each other’s company via the internet – and, worse still, this new way of socialising with each other also effectively excludes anti-smokers like them – thus denying them one of their greatest pleasures of being in the same place as people to whom they can feel superior for a while.
One has to wonder about the level of social integration (ban or no ban) of someone whose enjoyment is conditional upon being enabled to feel better than others, and where that feeling is so essential to their enjoyment that any threat to it makes them angry enough to sit and drum out finger-pointing comments on a site where they (yet again?) don’t fit in and are so clearly unwelcome.
Leggy reckons that our troll is being paid, because he’s been at it for months. I’m not so sure. I think he gets a kick out of it, judging from this comment of his yesterday (2012/02/25 at 10:06 am):
back to the drawing board frank….lmao
Either way, people like him are as much the public face of antismoking zealotry as someone like Deborah Arnott. They’re a bit like the hooligan fans of a football club (Millwall comes to mind, somehow or other). Which is the true public face of Millwall? Its team or its fans? Does the team behave better than its fans? One things for sure, and that’s that there are far more fans than there are players in the team.
And people like Deborah Arnott never call on their antismoking “fans” to behave better. And so they are tacitly approving of that behaviour. And why not? If they want to denormalise smoking, they need an army of finger-waggers out there, backing up their message of disapproval.
And also, is Deborah Arnott really any better than our troll? She may not tell smokers to their faces that they stink, and that she hopes they all die, but isn’t it hatred that motivates her all the same? My Dr W – the first antismoker I ever met, and whose house I lived – certainly hated smoking with a passion. I’ll never forget the day in 1965 I came across him standing alone in a room, ranting out loud against the “filthy, filthy, filthy” habit. Even today I could point to the spot where he was standing in the room in that house. I instantly concluded that he was insane, and never changed my mind. I was just glad that there were hardly any other doctors like him. In this, unfortunately, I was mistaken.
I think your football analogy is a good one, Frank. The fans are loose cannon, but nevertheless further the cause, even though publicly they may be disowned by the team they support. They make up the essential army of useful idiots, to be deployed when the protagonist doesn’t want to get his hands dirty.
I think another thing to bear in mind is that the antismokers think that people like me are being paid to write the stuff I do. After all, I’ve been banging on about the smoking ban for coming up to 3 years. Which is a lot more than 3 months. In their eyes, I MUST be being paid. Why else would I do it?
“I think I’ve lost count of the number of times Deborah Arnott (a one-time TV executive) has fallen back on the authority of the BMA, RCP, WHO, BHF, and so on.”
She really needs to be challenged when she mentions the RCP. I’ve heard her say things like “Well, what I’m saying is backed up by the Royal College of Physicians – are you doubting their word?” What she neglects to say is that RCP pronouncements on smoking come from their Tobacco Advisory Group, of which she herself is a member. In other words, she’s saying “I’m right because I’m right”.
Rick S
Rick,
Good point. The BMA is a Trades Union. The RCGP is a membership body.
http://www.rcgp-foundation.org.uk/the_foundation/working_with_other_orgs/other_organisations.aspx
Both were excluded from Cameron’s tet a tet last Monday about reforming the NHS.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-shutting-out-nhs-reform-critics-says-ed-miliband-7197018.html
The general public may stand in awe at these august bodies, but it’s a measure of these blogs that we no longer Give a Toss and call ‘em for what they are – severely politicised and way out of control.
.
Frank.
Just a small point. You referred to this troll having access to ‘username and password’. Leg Iron told me: “The troll is using the username and Email of commenters”. It seems that there are servers which can bypass the usual safeguards, which is how the troll can also use your avatar.
Better to make it clear that he/she/it cannot access your password?
If he could get passwords he could log in to WordPress. The flaw in the ‘approve first comment’ system is that the system will then allow comments from anyone typing in that username and Email. That’s all he needed. No password required.
Currently he’s filling my mod box with rubbish. I’m thinking of switching to login for a while to save wear and tear on my delete button.
You’re right. He has the emails, not the passwords.
I’ve corrected my post.