I seem to have flipped into some sort of graphics mode over the past couple of days.
Yesterday I constructed an image of The Fighting Temeraire with a government health warning on it.
Today, a comment from Magnetic triggered another idea for an image. The comment started:
Some eugenics propaganda by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for World No Tobacco Day.
Slogans: “I support a world without smoking. Let’s make the next generation tobacco-free.”
And I found myself looking at the sentence “Let’s make the next generation tobacco-free”, and seeing the “make” get emphasized to “Let’s make the next generation tobacco-free.” After all, it is about making people stop doing something. It’s about forcing people.
Next thing, I’d fired up Microsoft Paint ( Version 6.1, which is just a standard paintbox application which comes with Windows 7), and was doing the emphasis graphically. And after a couple of hours, I’d created something in which all that’s left of the sentence is one screaming “MAKE”:
And all I was doing was taking their own slogan, and highlighting the one word which gives their whole nasty game away. For it shows their contempt for the next generation, that they’re going to make it into something that it might not actually want to be.
Anyway, it wasn’t particularly hard to create this image. It’s just a doodle anyway. And now that I’ve created it, I don’t know what to do with it. And I did it without having very much experience of using Paint. In fact, I discovered several capabilities that I didn’t know Paint had.
It’s a similar idea to that of Mr A:
I would love to email Cameron, my local MP etc with a simple “I smoke, I voted UKIP”
It took less than 5 minutes with Paint to create an image:
I’ve emailed Mr A the image. But I think Mr A really wants a website like No Prime Minister.
And I’ve emailed it to my MP. I tried to send it to David Cameron, but couldn’t find an email address.
Frank Davis 
I’ve only watched a few minutes so far but this looks like a major, major propaganda film by the BBC. BTW note that BAT signed up to the MSA.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b045cjmw/burning-desire-the-seduction-of-smoking-episode-1
I’ve just finished watching that film. I have to say that it is the most appalling, repellent and sick propaganda piece I’ve ever seen. No sign whatsoever of any balance.
Thanks, Tony. I’m so glad I missed it (I meant to watch it but something came up). Now I know it would have made me very very angry and unable to sleep.
Like Margo.
It’s UK only. Maybe some description for those of us who can’t watch?
I hope this will be properly covered elsewhere but:
It was an hour long propaganda fest featuring all the old claims. Not only did the usual nonsense about deaths and supposed cost to the taxpayer but also a major push for so called ‘plain packaging’ just as the Government is set to decide on it. Very much a politically motivated film.
There was no balance. Just a BAT man who largely agreed with the propaganda. Presumably he had to do so because BAT are signed up to the MSA and so agree with everything the anti-smoking industry peddles.
From Ohio, USA:
Smoke-free campaign launched by Athens City-County Health Department
The Athens City-County Health Department is partnering with the Perry County Health Department with support from the Ohio Department of Health to address tobacco prevention priorities. The Smoke-Free Home Pledge Campaign is designed to educate the public about health risks to themselves and their children from secondhand and third-hand smoke exposure and encourage them to commit to providing a smoke-free environment in their homes.
While first-hand smoke is inhaled directly by the smoker and secondhand is the smoke exhaled (and inhaled by others), third-hand smoke is the residue of nicotine and other toxic particles that lingers on surfaces for days, weeks and even months. Just like secondhand smoke, children and infants who are exposed to these toxins may experience the same adverse effects as exposure to secondhand smoke.
There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand and third-hand smoke for children, pets or anyone. If someone in your household smokes, ask them to do so outside and ask them to wash their hands and change their clothes before holding an infant.
For more information on the Smoke-Free Home Pledge Campaign or free materials on secondhand and third-hand smoke, or cessation materials, contact Kim Knapp-Browne, Tobacco Education & Prevention Coordinator, Athens City-County Health Department
http://www.athensohiotoday.com/news_briefs/smoke-free-campaign-launched-by-athens-city-county-health-department/article_05c15b1e-9c4b-5f6b-8c8d-53df059c3126.html
Fastest growing area of lung cancer caused by oestrogen, not smoking
http://canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=3517
Neither truth nor sanity were prerequisites for Nazi smear campaigns and the anti-tobacconists cast their net far and wide. Tobacco was viewed as fit only for blacks, gypsies and communists. One Nazi poster declared that smoking was the habit of “Jews, Africans, Indians, loose women and decadent intellectuals.” The 1939 peace treaty with the USSR and the heavy-smoking Stalin posed a public relations problem that was overcome by airbrushing the pipe from his mouth in billboards celebrating the accord. When Operation Barbarossa abruptly ended the rapprochement in June 1941, anti-smokers were again free to publicise the fact that Stalin – like Churchill and Roosevelt – was a ‘nicotine addict’. Hitler was always proud that his allies Mussolini and Franco were both nonsmokers.
The Nazi anti-smoking effort was part of a broader ‘clean life’ crusade which also attacked caffeine, meat-eating, alcohol and drugs. Organic food and high-fibre diets earned government approval. Foods containing fat or preservatives did not. Nor did anything containing stimulants. The Bureau for the Struggle Against Addictive Drugs spent much of its time attacking tobacco but it also denounced Coca-Cola, sleeping pills and morphine. This healthy living campaign was not without public support – a 1939 rally in Frankfurt held to oppose tobacco and alcohol was attended by no fewer than 15,000 people. Accompanying this obsession with health, country living and racial purity was the assault on liberal decadence, American degeneracy, jazz music, abstract art and swing-dancing. Even white bread fell under suspicion after the Nazis accused it of being a ‘French revolutionary invention.’
The belief that individuals were free to do what they wanted with their bodies was considered a Marxist invention; one that undermined a strong and disciplined society. The doctrine of ‘public health’ disputed the notion that health was an essentially private matter and was fully embraced by a totalitarian regime which viewed it as a suitable target for state regulation. The individual could not make decisions without considering his or her part in the Reich. Citizens had a ‘duty to be healthy’ (Gesundheitspflicht) – to be fit for war and to be fit to breed – a concept epitomised by the contemporary slogan: “Your body belongs to the Fuhrer!”
As future mothers to the master race, women were targeted above all. Tobacco was “a genetic poison” which caused infertility and corrupted the all-important German “germ plasm.” At best, it would undermine and debase future generations and, at worst, leave women unable to conceive at all. Fritz Lickint had already established that nicotine was not a carcinogen but the Nazis used the fact that the substance was present at trace levels in breast milk to support their bizarre rhetoric about ‘racial poisoning'(26). After a campaign by the Federation of German Women, restaurants and cafes were prohibited from selling cigarettes to women and tobacco rations were not given to women who were under 25, over 55 or pregnant. The Anti-Tobacco League went further, demanding a ban on all sales of tobacco to women of all ages.
Hitler remained closely involved with the crusade against tobacco to the very end. He banned smoking at his Austrian base, the Wolf’s Lair, and in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin. In 1942, he voiced regret that he had ever allowed his troops a tobacco ration; a ration he would soon be forced to increase to boost morale when the war went from bad to worse. In 1943 he made it illegal for persons under the age of 18 to smoke in public places. A year later, with the Third Reich crumbling around him, Hitler personally ordered smoking to be banned on city trains and buses to protect female staff from secondhand smoke.
Throughout all this, per capita cigarette consumption continued to rise, nearly doubling between 1935 and 1940; overtaking that of heavy-smoking France in the process. Like Germany’s military success, cigarette consumption peaked in 1942 and only fell when the economy collapsed in the last months of the war. By that time conditions for German troops had become so desperate that even avowed anti-smokers were sympathising with soldiers who wanted to smoke.
Schools were ordered to educate schoolchildren against smoking and the boys of the Hitler Youth were obliged to make a smoke-free pledge in the name of the Fuhrer.
Adolf Hitler smoked two packs a day as a young and aspiring artist but he was forced to give up when he ran short of money. Thereafter, he became a vehement, life-long anti-smoker. He strongly encouraged his close acquaintances to quit and rewarded those who did so with a gold watch
(Goering was never able to summon enough willpower to earn his, and his girlfriend Eva Braun smoked until the end).
In some speeches Hitler even attributed his success, and therefore the success of National Socialism, to the moment he threw his cigarettes in a river. One of these, from May 1942, suggested that the world would never have heard of him had he continued smoking:
“I am convinced that if I had been a smoker, I never would have been able to bear the cares and anxieties which have been a burden to me for so long. Perhaps the German people owe their salvation to that fact.”
http://www.velvetgloveironfist.com/index.php?page_id=18
Perhaps we can conclude Nigel is the next Winston Churchill at least in this fight for freedom!
Michelle Obama’s anti-smoking effort (forced her husband to quit) is part of a broader ‘clean life’ crusade which also attacks caffeine (“we should simply drink more water”), meat-eating, alcohol and drugs. Organic food (e.g. the White House garden) and high-fibre diets earn government approval. Foods containing fat or preservatives do not. (Michelle Obama’s federal school lunch initiative is driving kids and school boards crazy).
If I didn’t know better I’d say that the First Lady is a little Hitler in deeds, except that there’s nothing little about her; her husband is obviously scared shitless of her massive biceps.
Gesundheitspflicht = Modern Healthism = The never-ending and nauseating Health N’ Safety Twist craze = Michelle Obama and her Let’s Move crusade.
““Your child’s body belongs to the First Lady!”
Gesundheitspflicht (2nd para). What an amazing word.I shall try to remember it – a good one to spit at people who complain – and I can only say it with a spit. What a fantastic language German is!
Harley–
I’d bet you’re an NRA member so you might want to get in touch with them and join forces on this. Saw on the news that the CDC has been given, or is about to be given, huge funding to “study” guns as a (put down liquids, move away from computer) pediatric epidemic that is Killing Our Children, The brief clip i half saw seemed to indicate that the NRA is somehow fighting back– not sure if by lawsuit or lobbying– insisting that the CDC doesn’t study anything objectively but merely seeks to cherry pick backup for its predetermined agenda. Good opportunity to let the NRA know how true that’s always been with smoking studies and try to get that included or used as a prime example. Nice if smokers could get the NRA behind us (talk about “smoking guns.’)
The gov’t tried that pediatric epidemic crap about tobacco back in the late 90s and even Charlton Heston fell for it. A bunch of us then became short term members and pointed out that it would be tobacco today, guns tomorrow. Heston saw the light and recanted both publicly and privately. (I still somewhere have his personal letter of apology.)
Walt I think I just found out how the Nazis have been targeting and getting large corporations to do their bidding and it was my research into the CVS stop selling tobacco products that literally led me down the field to what I now believe is happening and worldwide.
ACTIVIST investors/ Socially responsible investing and its also likely the FED and the federal government doing it especially with pension fund money and likely about 50 billion ACORN supposedly got under the 2009 stimulus package deal. The FED has been doing it manipulation under the guise of the QE deals dumping trillions into the markets and likely by direction from the whitehouse being told what stocks to buy and to get controlling interests thereby forcing the lifestyle agenda to be met and then the Nazis get to say all the private companies are doing it too. In the end all it left was the mom and pops not playing ball with the nannynazis.
Modern applications[edit]
Socially responsible investing is a booming market in both the US and Europe. In particular, it has become an important principle guiding the investment strategies of various funds and accounts.[15] Assets in socially screened portfolios climbed to $3.07 trillion at the start of 2010, a 34% increase since 2005, according to the US SIF’s 2010 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States. From 2007 to 2010 alone, SRI assets increased more than 13%, while professionally managed assets overall increased less than 1%.[11] As of 2010, nearly one of every eight dollars under professional management in the US is involved in socially responsible investing—12.2% of the $25.2 trillion in total assets under management tracked by Thomson Reuters Nelson.
Research estimates by financial consultancy Celent predict that the SRI market in the US will reach $3 trillion by 2011. The European SRI market grew from €1 trillion in 2005 to €1.6 trillion in 2007.[16]
Government-controlled funds[edit]
Government-controlled funds such as pension funds are often very large players in the investment field, and are being pressured by the citizenry and by activist groups to adopt investment policies which encourage ethical corporate behavior, respect the rights of workers, consider environmental concerns, and avoid violations of human rights. One outstanding endorsement of such policies is The Government Pension Fund of Norway, which is mandated to avoid “investments which constitute an unacceptable risk that the Fund may contribute to unethical acts or omissions, such as violations of fundamental humanitarian principles, serious violations of human rights, gross corruption or severe environmental damages.”[17]
Many pension funds are currently under pressure to disinvest from the arms company BAE Systems, partially due to a campaign run by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT).[18] Liverpool City Council has passed a successful resolution to disinvest from the company,[19] but a similar attempt by the Scottish Green Party in Edinburgh City Council was blocked by the Liberal Democrats.[20]
Mutual funds and ETFs[edit]
Socially responsible mutual funds counted by the 2010 Trends Report increased in number to 250 in 2010, up from 173 in 2005 & 2007, 189 in 2003, and 167 in 2001. The overall number of mutual funds incorporating environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) has increased 45% since 2007. Additionally, 26 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that incorporate ESG criteria were identified with $4 billion in assets at the end of 2009, a 76% increase from the eight ETFs with $2.25 billion in net assets identified at the end of 2007 [11]. Unlike the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which severely limits the extent to which socially responsible goals can be considered in managing corporate and Taft-Hartley pension assets (due to ERISA’s overriding goal of protecting employees’ pensions),[21] registered investment companies can take these factors into account so long as the disclosure and other requirements of the Investment Company Act of 1940 are met.[22] US SIF maintains charts describing the socially responsible mutual funds offered by its member firms.
Ive been dealing with back strain and pain for 2 weeks now and was at the ER this morning at 3;30 am. Ive been told to lay off everything for the next several weeks to get the sciatica style throbbing pains to heal themselves. But this angle above I describe needs to be deeply researched and pulled together. Ive a feeling what we all know we will find behind the scenes and how the asswipes were able to pull off corporate control while at the same time screaming its the corporations and their lobbyists controlling Washington.
As they say when a group points the finger at the other side to blame them its nearly always true its the finger pointer who is the guilty party!
If theres any say professional investors that understand the activist investor angle and how they manipulate company after company please fill us in. The biggest one google pops up is activist investors forcing insurance companies to charge smokers higher premiums………….YES THATS CORRECT.
Republicans Attack CVS Ban on Cigarettes as Ruinous for the Economy and the Company
SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) — Last week, in what Republicans labeled a socialist plot, CVS Caremark announced plans to stop selling tobacco products, including cigarettes, in its stores beginning October 1. This move makes CVS the first national pharmacy to pull tobacco products from its shelves. Executives for the drug chain said selling cigarettes runs contrary to the company’s core mission to promote the health of its customers. “Put simply, the sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose,” said CVS Caremark CEO Larry Merlo. But influential members of the GOP now question the legality of a commercial enterprise deciding what it will or won’t vend. On Monday, the head economist of a local Republican think tank said he was in the process of filing a formal complaint against CVS with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Conservative pundits with Fox News joined the attack, chastising the decision as another Obama administration tactic to destroy the economy. “The Real Story” host Gretchen Carlson asked: “Is it OK legally … to restrict tobacco availability in a private store like this?”
“For people who smoke, you know, they have a right to buy cigarettes. It’s not illegal,” she added in a panic.
During the same segment, Melissa Francis, host of Fox Business, worried about a slippery slope where CVS transforms itself into an anti-capitalist, communist hate machine that bans sugary snacks, soda and even alcohol from stores. And after President Obama weighed in to support CVS’ decision, it became evident that the move was indeed driven by the administration’s socialist agenda, primarily where Obamacare is concerned.
Typically, the business decisions such as this would fall in line with the ethos of free markets that Republicans endorse. But as Len Waybill, head economist for the conservative Peter Pinguid Society, pointed out, CVS’ strategy is not rooted in free market thinking. It actually violates business corporation acts, which legally mandate that publicly traded companies make as much money for shareholders as legally possible.
“Corporations are bound to pursue their own self interests, meaning the financial interests of their shareholders,” Waybill noted. “They have a legal and fiduciary responsibility. CVS’ decision, in my opinion, breaks not only the law but also its promise to investors. Simply stated, CVS is no longer trustworthy, and I struggle to see how its representatives can claim that this is for the wellbeing of their customers.”
Prominent Republicans blame the president and his policies directly. In February 2011, Obama told the press he had quit smoking. Sources inside the White House said Mr. Obama’s decision to quit tobacco came after daughters Malia and Sasha asked: “You don’t smoke, do you, Dad? You’re not going to turn orange from cigarettes and cry a lot like John Boehner, are you?”
Obama’s healthier lifestyle choice drove a larger wedge in the already fractured divide between the White House and Republican lawmakers.
House Speaker John Boehner, his eyes welling with tears, told reporters at that time: “This is just another elitist attempt to undermine American values. Tobacco was one of the country’s biggest cash crops back in the good old days, and it helped propel the nation to economic power. President Obama’s decision to quit smoking could serve as a dangerous example to millions of other smoking Americans. Then what happens? People stop buying the product, that’s what, and an entire industry crumbles. It goes to show how empty the president’s rhetoric is when it comes to being ‘business friendly’ and ramping up the economy he sabotaged with bank bailouts and unemployment.”
The real problem, according to Len Waybill, who filed the charges with the SEC today, is that CVS is denying its customers access to goods and its shareholders opportunities to generate revenues — just as Obamacare robs hospitals and insurers of their honest rights to earn profits.
“CVS told the American people it had decided, without their consent, to part ways with a product that contains known carcinogens. And that probably seems pretty tame,” Waybill explained. “But those cancer causing substances also create one in five cancer patients who need expensive medical treatments and drugs: drugs they buy from pharmacies like CVS. Not only will the chain lose $2 billion in profits from selling tobacco products, which it admits will happen, it has also put nearly 60 percent of its core earnings — pharmacy services — at risk. I mean, 30 percent of CVS’ valuation comes right from the sale of specialty drugs, which a lot of people aren’t going to need if the store forces them to be healthier. It’s insane.”
Waybill said that if the SEC fails to impose penalties or tougher regulatory controls over CVS Caremark, the move to ban tobacco products could bankrupt the chain within 12 to 24 months.
http://www.benningtonvalepress.com/2014/02/republicans-attack-cvs-ban-on.html
BTW my gut instincts have a bad habit of being right most of the time.
With CVS its was directly after J and J’s former CEO was elected to the board of directors that they went str8 for a vote to use CVS money to buy up and or get as many voting proxies as they could garner to get full control of the company. Then they immediately went and did pull tobacco products and much other things we didn’t even know about.
Its th Johnson family under another company name that came in and bought up even more CVS stocks and they’ve always owned about 6% of voting stock in CVS since back in the 1980s from what Ive read.
No doubt the same underhanded trickery is being don’t in every gun company out there too if they can get it. That’s what brought me back to the fact the FED and Federal stimulus money and much more worldwide is being channeled inti this course of action.
That’s why I state this subject must be deeply investigated as much as we can by those who have the time to tie in the names and the actions that happened as these Nazis gain control of select corporations to do their nannynazi will in a takeover.
On another note Obama was trying to find a way to get corporations that have been sitting on nearly 4-5 trillion in cash reserves for the last 6 years to spend it or give it up. Activist investors play a game of buying up enough stocks to try and force the companies to give that reserve money to the stock owners rathe than share it,if that’s done then the cash is taxed by Obama at much higher rates and back into the federal government. This money hen cant be used as camoaign donation cash to bank roll obamas opponents in future house and senate races around the country. Shakedowns come in many suits and wear many hats.
This is satire. Dateline: San Narciso, Calif. was the tip-off for me. No such place. It’s actually some pretty funny stuff. Probably a left-of-center orientation (it’s California based after all) but humorous nonetheless.
I’m intrigued by jax’s late post yesterday and, if I understand her point, it seems as though the theory behind it is that cancer is a single general disease which, if you’re genetically or otherwise programmed or set up to get, you’ll get willy nilly though just more likely at the site of irritation.
I’d propose as a counter that it’s not “cancer” that’s programmed, but the spot at which you’ll get it (IF you get it– enter those Multi Factors).
Further, I think cancer itself isn’t really a single disease (like chicken pox, say) but is quite differentiated, and a different disease (or disease process, because I think it’s as much a process) depending on its site. Among skin cancers, for instance, there’s basal (least serious, usually self-contained), squamous (more serious, more likely to grow rapidly with a slight chance of metastasizing) and melanoma (deadly). Lung cancers, too, come in different varieties (the ones found in smokers are said to differ from the ones found in nons) and then there’s small cell vs non-small cell. I believe these are different diseases grouped together as “cancer” simply because they each cause cells to misbehave in pretty much the same dangerous way.
I do however tend to believe that the seeds of our particular deaths (unless by truck or brawl or Afghanistan) or eventual diseases are already implanted from the moment of conception, but only to the extent that each of us has a biological weak spot, a part more likely to fail under the stress of living, less likely to be able to fight off invasions by irritants or viruses (yes, Carol) or even the normal biproducts of our own biochemistry, or perhaps we’ve got a missing or defective or errant protein or hormone or enzyme that we do or don’t naturally make enough of (or make too much of) and which, through some unknowable but ineluctable process sets off a deadly domino effect in a related organ.
What i’m trying to say is that I think the weak spot is the only preprogrammed target, not any generalized propensity to cancer. If anyone else– definitely including the estimable jax– wants to play, I’d be curious to hear your ideas.
We’re all cancer theorists, aren’t we?
I’ve got my own ideas too about cancer. In fact I have several different competing ideas.
I read Jax’s post, and it sounded a bit like one of my ideas. Which was that if cells in some piece of tissue get killed off in large numbers due to some injury or irritation, then adjacent cells will start to multiply into the spaces vacated by the dead cells, like fast-growing weeds and shrubs into a forest clearing. What kills off cells can have as many causes as what creates clearings in forests. Once the space has been created, something will opportunistically grow into.
But, above all, I think that the “experts” don’t have very much better ideas than any of us do. Which is why we’re all thinking about it.
That same old crap has been around for decades. Antique theories like that are exactly what the anti-smokers want you to believe in, because it’s totally harmless to their scientific fraud.
The final version nicely captures the obsessive compulsive nature of the Antis. It’s like a drawing a deranged school bully would produce in art class, which is what Tobacco Control operatives are, in effect. Bullies who never grew up. “Let’s make the next generation give us their lunch money.”
Scratch the surface of anyone involved in Tobacco Control and you will find a festering, glaring case of OCD coursing through their twisted and tortured psyches.
I’m convinced that the TC community is the equivalent of a big warm-fuzzy support group of OCD sufferers who gather together around a common obsession (the tobacco plant) and normalize themselves so as not to seem to be the sickies and social outcasts that their cruel disorder renders them as.
By spreading their condition far and wide to the general population via their PSA’s and hate campaigns and backroom manipulations they no longer feel so all alone in their nuttiness.
They’ve had great success as far as I can see. OCD is at epidemic levels among the yoof of the world. I watched an RT segment the other day that featured a bunch of lame-o 20/30-somethings out marching for GMO labeling with tears in their eyes.
How does anyone get so worked up into a slobbering, fist-pumping lather over the pedigree of a carrot or a head of broccoli? Mass healthist OCD, that’s how.
I mean really? That corporate carrot done me wrong and I’m now taking it to the streets!
There is a way of dealing with health fanatics albeit somewhat unethical,maybe considered by some as,”over the top”. Not by words ,not by petitions,not by spluttering on the web nor by
appealing to reason. When and only when, sufficient numbers are prepared to activate rebellion in the true sense of the word,then will the wet health freaks get the shivers
Look closely at the leading lights in the anti tobacco frenzy,wishy washy,pansified,noisy puppets
and pond dwellers ,who would melt away if faced with some abrasive attention.
A little comment to that, Perse: these pond-dwellers are, based on my observations, in it for exactly that: they WANT the attention! Even “negative” attention, they want you to confront them – because they never GOT any attention before these health-crusades came along. Short of physical abuse, they will gladly play the game. First they “bully” and accuse you of wrong-doing, then once they’ve got your attention, and you confront them and verbally shoot them down, they switch to playing the “victim” – see? It’s sort of like a win-win situation for them.
It can be compared to the young trouble-maker, the bullying schoolboy who’s always looking for the next way to cause a ruckus or vandalize something – because he’s a little brat who gets ignored too much, especially by his father. Just act up and cause mayhem, and that’s when dad finally comes around, screaming and yelling at him – the only time he acknowledges the actions of his bratty offspring.
I suspect anti-smokers brains are wired in a similar fashion, like the bratty schoolkid.
Ah, The Children™….. The Children™. Cue The Children™; send in The Children™…. stage right. And send in the council Clowns©.
The Children™, that can barely wipe their noses and beautifully indoctrinated into antismoking fanaticism from an early age, are now directing public policy in Ohio.
“ROOSEVELT – Roosevelt City Councilmen continued their review and discussion of a new ordinance that will ban tobacco usage in city parks at their meeting on Tuesday, May 20.
The ordinance has been under discussion by the Roosevelt City Council since members of OUTRAGE, an anti-tobacco student group from Union High School, first proposed the idea in March of this year. Students from OUTRAGE approached the council asking that they consider taking legislative steps to make use of tobacco products illegal in Roosevelt city parks.”
http://www.ubmedia.biz/ubstandard/news/article_f3e68e46-e5e9-11e3-8f1a-001a4bcf887a.html#user-comment-area
That’s a good looking graphic for a limited application like Paint. I have of course, nicked it :-)
Good!
I’d created something in which all that’s left of the sentence is one screaming MAKE
I think their hijacking of the word “help” is the most sinister.
“Help” can now mean state sanctioned defamation of character, excessive taxation, rumour mongering, social isolation, mobbing and relentless bullying.
WHO LAUNCHES PARTNERSHIP WITH THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY TO HELP SMOKERS QUIT
http://web.archive.org/web/20130530064615/http://www.who.int/inf-pr-1999/en/pr99-04.html
And we all know how that’s turned out.
I still can’t quite believe that a Conservative government would carry on with it.
Perhaps I should do another one, in which all that’s left is one screaming HELP.
Slipped up there using the M word didn’t they? Using the anti-tobacco industry’s template is should have read ‘Let’s SUPPORT the next generation to be tobacco-free. But good to see the mask slip thanks to their egregious over-confidence.
Mike Im surprised you got approved I put up simply 2 posts destroying what you just covered in the normal site comments and under face booke comments I had 3 an they were there for 4 hours upon renewing the site and then poof they were gone.
http://www.athensohiotoday.com/news_briefs/smoke-free-campaign-launched-by-athens-city-county-health-department/article_05c15b1e-9c4b-5f6b-8c8d-53df059c3126.html#user-comment-area
Athens, your article notes that “Just like secondhand smoke, children and infants who are exposed to these toxins may experience the same adverse effects as exposure to secondhand smoke” and “There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand and third-hand smoke for children, pets or anyone.”
Is it too much to ask that you offer any actual scientific citations to back up your two claims? I ask because I do not believe any exist, and I have read and written widely in this field for more than twenty years.
I would go further and say that I believe your article is simply an uncritical reprint of a press release from the “Tobacco Education & Prevention Coordinator, Athens City-County Health Department” folks noted in its last sentence.
Would you print a press release from Philip Morris claiming that thirdhand smoke was harmless in the same uncritical way? Of course not. And given the record of shoddy research and misinformation rolled out by those on the payrolls of the “Tobacco Control” industry (See examples analysed at http://bit.ly/TobakkoNacht and at Antibrains dot com) you should not be so accepting of such antismoking press releases either.
In their defense, the antismoking researchers may claim that thirdhand smoke residue has been found to produce carcinogens known as NNN and NNK. However, they are unlikely to mention two things: (1) that those carcinogens would normally be found only in homes having 600% or more of the average levels of nitrous acid in their air (not a home you’d want to be in anyway!), and (2) that even in such homes a child or infant would likely be exposed to amounts measurable only in femtograms.
Do you know what a femtogram is? It is 1/1,000th of a picogram. A picogram is 1/1,000th of a nanogram. A nanogram is 1/1,000th of a microgram. A microgram is 1/1,000th of a milligram. A milligram is 1/1,000th of a gram. A single, barely visible grain of salt weighs on the order of 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) femtograms.
To warn parents that their children are “at risk” from such amounts is similar to warning parents not to let their children sit near windows if there’s a full moon because the reflected moonlight might give them skin cancer.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains
What smoking ban? The Middle East sticks the law in its pipe and smokes on
http://www.albawaba.com/slideshow/world-no-tobacco-day–580036
Al-Bawaba
Image 1 of 8: Jordan: The jury’s still out… Cigarette smoke is like oxygen for Jordanians. Who can handle Amman’s stressful traffic without lighting up?
There is no safe level of second-hand smoke
There is “no safe level of second-hand smoke”. A deceptive construct if there ever was one.
This “no safe level” is a contradiction in terms since there are “levels”(read “amounts”) of smoke be it “second-hand”, “first-hand”, or “third hand” of whatever type of smoke or even smog for that matter. It does not necessarily have to be cigarette, pipe, cigar or more precisely ‘tobacco-related’
smoke.
As many have pointed out, there are safe levels of everything including nuclear, x-ray, etc., radiation.
Unless you are a smoker(“first hand”), it goes without saying that “second-hand” smoke is an entirely “different level” and therefore “a safer level”.
As with potatoes, presumably there is no safe level of smoke because no one has ever bothered to calculate one.
No safe level of potatoes
“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
More usefully they measure the level that kills half of the test subjects instead.
Lethal Dose 50% = LD50
You may find Table 3 rather interesting.
Table 3. Summary of published reports of solanine poisoning in humans
So you see potatoes can kill and there is no safe level of them either.
Feds Attack U.S. Businesses in ‘Operation Choke Point’
Thursday, 29 May 2014 10:11 AM
In an administration that has pioneered the use of regulatory power to bully businesses into doing “voluntarily” what the bureaucrats can’t require by law, a secretive federal program that has become public in the last few months stands out as an especially disturbing abuse of power.
The program’s name, “Operation Choke Point,” is a pretty strong indication of trouble — an eerie way for bureaucrats to describe their conduct toward private citizens.
It’s a reference to the banking system as the “choke point” of businesses, a critical piece of the economic infrastructure which government can co-opt to strangle legal activities it doesn’t favor.
The revelation is alarming in part because it suggests federal officials have realized that they can leverage their strong regulatory authority over one industry, financial services, to exert broad control over many others.
The “choke point” initiative, a joint project of the Department of Justice, the FDIC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other agencies, started by targeting payday lenders. Officials approached banks and third-party payment processors, advising them that they could be held accountable if regulators concluded that any of their customers (the payday lenders) engaged in illegal behavior. The feds suggested ominously that banks ran a “reputational risk” if they serviced such clients.
The banks got the message: Nice bank you’ve got there. Shame if something happened to it.
As the Independent Community Bankers of America, an industry association, said in a letter to the Justice Department regarding Operation Choke Point, the program “gives community banks the untenable choices of either severing valuable and legal customer relationships or risking DOJ enforcement actions.”
It could “close access to the financial system to law-abiding businesses,” the letter continued, “because the mere prospect of an enforcement action is sufficient to cause financial institutions to restrict access to their payment systems to only established companies that present low risks.”
Heeding the feds’ thuggish warning, the banks have been dropping the payday lenders as customers en masse. In a recent story on this phenomenon, the Washington Post quoted a letter from a banker to a payday lender with whom the bank was ending its relationship.
“Based on your performance, there’s no way we shouldn’t be a credit provider,” the banker wrote. “Our only issue is, and it has always been, the space in which you operate. It is the scrutiny that you, and now that we, are under.”
Could it be any clearer?
The lenders aren’t the only legal businesses the regulators are using their authority in financial services to “choke.” A document the FDIC released in 2011 warns third-party payment processors that the agency is concerned about their business with “disreputable merchants” in 30 industries.
In addition to “payday loans,” the document warns about “ammunition sales,” “firearms sales,” “coin dealers,” “online gambling,” “tobacco sales,” “racist materials,” “pornography,” and “telemarketing,” among others.
Bureaucrats, it seems, are indeed deputizing bankers and payment processors to cut off these industries from the financial services they need to survive. The Washington Times reported last week that banks and payment processors have been terminating the accounts of law-abiding gun dealers across the country.
Much like the letter to the payday lender in the Post, the Times quotes a bank assuring a gun dealer that its decision to drop him as a client “in no way reflects any derogatory reasons for such action on your behalf. But rather one of industry. Unfortunately your company’s line of business is not commensurate with the industries we work with.”
There are reports of similar account terminations in many other industries the FDIC has labeled “high-risk.”
These developments should concern every American. For the government to hold banks responsible for monitoring the business of all their customers is unprecedented. To do so with the explicit aim of chilling the perfectly legal economic activities of private citizens is such a jaw-dropping abuse of power that it would have been unbelievable from any previous administration.
If the Department of Justice has evidence that particular businesses have broken the law, it should prosecute them. Lacking that, it certainly has no right to attack entire industries through the banking system. This story is as outrageous as they come. The federal bureaucracy has gone completely off the rails.
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/fdic-newt-gingrich-doj/2014/05/29/id/573961#ixzz33Cx6a3kz
What more evidence my gut feeling was right on target
In addition to “payday loans,” the document warns about “ammunition sales,” “firearms sales,” “coin dealers,” “online gambling,” “tobacco sales,” “racist materials,” “pornography,” and “telemarketing,” among others.
Id betcha the UK government has the exact same choke point game operating right now!
Frank,
Fallout hypothesis again and my thoughts on why Swedish cigarettes cause lung cancer in the year of purchase but American cigarettes take 20 years to do the same job.
Thanks.
This is the most convincing theory, as far as I’m concerned, and it’s the reason why smoking has been scapegoated.
Smokers are cutting back on food to fund their craving
Just what lengths smokers will go to to feed their habit is borne out in a separate study by Pfizer Ireland which found:
– 10% cut back on buying food
– 35% said they cut down on eating out
– 24% pulled out of social engagements
– 22% also said that they cut back on holidays to avoid cutting their smoking budget.
More than half of the smokers interviewed admitted to spending between €50 and €100 per week on cigarettes.
Former Cork senior footballer Dan Dineen, a 47-year-old plumber, is a prime example of the lengths smokers will go to.
At the height of his habit he sold his beloved Harley Davidson to fund an addiction that was costing €800 a month.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/smokers-are-cutting-back-on-food-to-fund-their-craving-270414.html
Sold his Harley I don’t even believe that with a rampant irish blackmarket available the story has to be LYING
Taxes Provide Best Incentive to Stop Smoking
Voice of America
A lot of smokers start using cigarettes when they are teenagers, only to find later on that they can’t kick the habit. It’s a huge public health concern.
http://www.voanews.com/content/taxes-provide-best-incentive-to-stop-smoking/1925671.html
What smoking ban? The Middle East sticks the law in its pipe and smokes on
The Middle East is a safe haven for smokers. Whether that be in taxis, supermarkets or even the doctor’s office – yep, no smokescreen there, we ain’t kidding you! So implementing a ban might set off a few angry smoke detectors in the form of grumpy puffers!
Shisha and smoking have become an important part of Arab culture. Those opposed to the ban insist that businesses will be negatively-affected, while the pro-ban (healthy, party poopers) brigade want some fresh air without those nasty “cancer sticks” in their faces all the time.
What seems like a sensible way to curb passive smoking has worked out well in European countries, but will it ever happen in the Middle East or is it just a smoky fantasy? A progress report of the smoking ban and how much traction it has had in the region follows in honor of WHO’s World No Tobacco Day.
Fun Fact: Believe it or not, Syria pioneered the smoking ban in the region as early as 2010 before the country went up in smoke.
http://www.albawaba.com/slideshow/world-no-tobacco-day–580036
Cameron.
This has an e-mail address:
http://www.davidcameron.com/2007/06/contact-david-cameron.html
Or here’s the official way of doing it:
https://email.number10.gov.uk/
I smoke. I Voted UKIP
It is as simple as that.