You couldn’t really make it up.
As the very real West African Ebola epidemic death toll continues to mount exponentially, and threatens to spill into Europe and the USA, hundreds of delegates are flying into Moscow tonight for the World Health Organisation’s conference on the entirely imaginary global tobacco epidemic.
Tobacco Control flies out to Moscow
There they will be met by Vladimir Putin, and will spend five days discussing ways of imposing a global tax on tobacco, and making life even worse for the 40 million Russian smokers now enduring the public smoking ban that was introduced on 1 June this year.
The only small fly in the ointment will be the absence of the US delegation (and also the Canadian and maybe the Australian delegations) thanks to international tensions surrounding the Ukrainian crisis.
Eve Adams, the parliamentary secretary to [Canadian] Health Minister Rona Ambrose, called the event a farcical international conference.
What we’re seeing unfolding are the consequences of a shift by the WHO, under the leadership of Gro Harlem Brundtland, from classical disease-treatment medicine to preventative “lifestyle” medicine, starting circa 1990. For, with a great many infectious diseases having been brought under control, it was now believed that the principal threat to human health and longevity were “epidemics” of smoking, drinking, obesity, lack of exercise, and so on.
The result – and most likely the inevitable result – was that when the Ebola epidemic got under way in West Africa in late 2013, the WHO failed to respond to it until it had spiralled out of control six months later, as recently detailed by retired professor of medicine Romano Grieshaber.
It remains to be seen how widespread the Ebola epidemic will eventually become, although politicians like Rand Paul and Boris Johnson have begun to sound the alarm. And while civilian populations remain calm, there are increasing signs of confusion within governments and media faced with the kind of epidemic most of them had thought was past history.
But when the dust settles, and the bodies have all been finally buried, is it really going to be possible for the WHO and the medical profession to simply carry on with their lifestyle healthism where they left off? Isn’t it more likely that there will be intense pressure for them to go back to their core function of communicable disease treatment and prevention? For what is the point of trying to prevent disease and death in 30 or 40 years time, when there remain communicable diseases which are capable of killing a great many people inside 2 or 3 weeks? And when furthermore the attempt to prevent non-communicable disease in 30 or 40 years time has diverted scarce resources away from communicable diseases that can kill inside 2 or 3 weeks?
For the money that is now being spent flying ASH’s Deborah Arnott and her fellow delegates to 4-star or 5-star hotels in Moscow could have been (and should have been) spent on real diseases like Ebola, which have been known about for nearly 40 years without either a vaccine or a cure being found.
With luck, the current “farcical” and useless conference in Moscow will be the last of its kind.
Frank Davis 
Today, I stopped by a neighborhood bar, ordered a beer, walked out onto the beer garden and lit up a cigarette, as I occasionally do. However, this time was different. I noticed that all the ashtrays were conspicuously missing from the tables. Halfway through the cigarette, an employee stepped outside to tell me I had to put my cigarette out. I was stunned and unaware that recently (and quietly) the “great” state of Illinois passed an amendment to the smoking ban. This amendment bans smoking in all outdoor beer gardens, with the exception of those considered “self-service outdoor areas,” as follows:
This effectively exempts zero of the beer gardens I frequent here in Chicago, because at the very least a busboy is required to occasionally pick up after lazy patrons and wipe down tables throughout the day. I have never come across a “purely” self-service beer garden. I doubt they exist. The only place I can now enjoy both a cigarette and a beer simultaneously is my own home.
This is especially devastating news for bar owners here who spent money to build beer gardens in order to accommodate smokers after the ban initially took effect, only to see that extra revenue now gone, as smokers like myself take refuge at home.
Those business owners could have joined together to finance a lawsuit against the anti-smokers for their scientific fraud and corruption. But instead, they let the anti-smokers get away with it, and sold out piece by piece. And this is the result of their cowardice.
Yep. These businesses are just turkeys voting for Christmas.
The dust wasn’t settled from 911 before the anti-smokers were back to their usual antics. There will be no end to it until they are BUSTED for their scientific fraud and violation of our human rights.
I’m afraid I agree. They know no shame and no limits, are too far out on their limb to ever crawl back, and will certainly never admit a mistake let alone an unconscionable crime. It will take something large and external to bust them and once there’s a real opening, then perhaps the media will start piling on and using the ammo already at their fingertips, if not already in their hands. And yet I’m not sure Ebola is it, or not unless it (God forbid) starts killing thousands in the first world. Even if real scientists by the score suddenly simultaneously got up the guts to come out a scream “Liars” It likely wouldn’t help. Look what happened to the nicely credentialed global warming skeptics. The millions the TC’ers have already spooked with their secondhand smoke stories and the legislators who’ve proudly built laws on the myths will not be quick to retreat either and will not be easily convinced that they’ve been conned as well as deluded. Isms die hard.
The antismokers even used 911 for their own purposes. The twin towers became twin smoking cigarettes.
But 911 was a single event, a terrific shock (I watched it on TV in England, like it was a horror movie). The Ebola epidemic is an unfolding process that we’re only part way through. And it’s already killed more people than 911 (although not in Manhattan). And it’s projected to kill many times more. It’s becoming a different sort of nightmare.
Fancy Joe Jackson reading your blog. I’ve had a comment left by Paul Daniels! For our overseas friends, he’s like David Copperfield, but doesn’t know how to walk through the Great Wall of China or make the Statue of Liberty disappear. I bug him on Twitter from time to time to ask if he’s still an atheist and try to convince him otherwise.
Anyways, the United Nations exists to forge a global government, so ‘climate change’ and the ‘tobacco epidemic’ and ‘human rights’ get (almost) every country signed up to fall under their spell (to keep with the witches theme) by being controlled by them, ergo, that is global government. It just gets worse and worse with the more lies they concoct and all the governments fall into line.
You don’t seriously think they care about genuine, real-time epidemics or pandemics, do you?
Fancy Joe Jackson reading your blog.
Well, he writes pretty regularly about smoking bans in the Free Society, and on his own website (not sure if I have a link in the margin). He takes a continuing interest in the matter. So it’s not very surprising if he reads my blog – and occasionally comments – from time to time.
You don’t seriously think they care about genuine, real-time epidemics or pandemics, do you?
Well, if they don’t care now, I suspect they soon will.
They don’t seem to care too much about most of the other epidemics that cripple or kill 3rd world citizens. Bar perhaps AIDS, which survives in any climate. Oh, and the tobacco ‘epidemic’ of course.
But AIDS has killed rich people, too. Only when ebola snags someone wealthy and/or famous (particularly if they are of the “Dahhhling! group) will these folk snap out of their navel-gazing and act (most probably incorrectly, and ineffectually).
Politics is a funny animal. It sometimes plays possum ie dead and then gets up and runs away.
Or it backtracks to cover its true route or it gets caught in the headlites of the public………..
This morning as I travelled the MSM shows and that includes the leftist MSM news too here in America I noticed but one thing.
7 out 12 channels were running stories on libertarian politics and with Libertarians being interviewed.
Yes Politics is a strange Animal and especially when the MSM starts interviewing people with our mindset involved.
As Joe Jackson said yesterday here……………….It happens rather quickly like a Berlin Wall torn down moment.
I watch and wait hopefully our combined efforts of the last 7 years is having the impact we all hoped for.
Wow even the commies in Australia aren’t buying the lie anymore and they excel at spreading manure.
In a stunning reversal, the Australian labor party bails out on the ‘carbon tax’
Australian Political Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has today stunned observers by reversing his position on a carbon tax – ruling out any future reinstatement of a…
If they bail on the Carbon Tax they will bail on the smoking ban too! They went hand in hand…….
Don’t hold your breath. Smokers are too useful for funding all manner of little extras.
Smokers cough up for Abbott climate policy
2010
“AN INCREASE in tobacco taxes is one option being canvassed within the Coalition to fund its greenhouse gas abatement policy to be unveiled next week.
It is understood the revenue source will be discussed at today’s meeting of the shadow cabinet which will have its first look at the policy the Opposition climate change spokesman, Greg Hunt, developed over the summer.
Under the leadership of Tony Abbott, the Coalition abandoned support for a market-based mechanism such as a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme to reduce emissions.
These schemes are self-funding, using the revenue made by taxing polluters, whereas the ”direct action” measures the Coalition will unveil – including tree planting and soil management – will require extraneous funds.
The tobacco tax increase will be put on the table today as one way of raising the money needed without damaging the budget bottom line or imposing an unpopular tax.”
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/smokers-cough-up-for-abbott-climate-policy-20100128-n1rz.html
without …… imposing an unpopular tax.”
WTF? What the fucking fuck? Are these guys living in a different solar system? And have they never heard of the Laffer curve? Honestly, words fail me…
That was 2010 today is 2014 and the Greens giving up one and Abbotts recent condemnation of the movement going to insanity over a Play then two weeks prior a Australian legislator condemns the bans and other big government programs one starts to wonder what political trickery maybe up……………
Lets not forget ASH Australia is gone…………Whats left in Australia is the state and local Nazi anti-smoking movements. With little funding even for adverts or PSA commercials.
My personal thought is Abbott is preparing for the end of tobacco control policies in Australia…………
Also Rose that was before the government of Australia put out that over 1 billion a year in revenue was lost to the tobacco blackmarkets…………….Chop Chop is very profitable for bootleggers in Australia.
So with regards to those hotels available those attending the “farcical international conference”.
It certainly isn’t farcical prices being charged.
This is the link to their price list. http://cop6russia.org/logistics/hotel-information/
And I’ve taken it that most will stay for five weekdays and one weekend day and as they can bring a spouse, I’ve calculated a double room (after all, they really want to be photographed with Vlad on day one).
The exchange rate for the Rouble has tanked of late, however at todays rate of 0.15 to £1.
The 5* costs £9240
The top listed 4* costs £7860
And the cheapest 3* costs a paltry £4500
(for your American readers they need to divide the £ figure by 0.62, so the cheapo costs $7260).
These rates are only for bed and breakfast.
Transposed the exchange rate. Should read 1 Rouble = 15 pence.
Personally they should be given bed and breakfast at some of Stalins old Gulags in Siberia………..
Good idea.
From one of Dick Puddlecotes tweets :
“The average FCTC executive salary is $216,110 USD per year (tax free)” http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/13/who-tobacco-conference-bans-public-from-meetings-moves-forward-on-taxes/ … <- Why health fascism is hard to quit #COP6
WHO tobacco conference bans public from meetings, moves forward on taxes
Get out
hotair.com
City Spends Months Debating Smoking Ban in Public Parks, Discovers Smoking Was Already Banned in Public Parks
In August, a troop of Turlock, California, Girl Scouts asked the city council to consider a ban on smoking in public parks. Months of sporadic—and occasionally heated—debate followed. The Scouts said they were seeking the ban, in part, to reduce childrens’ exposure to secondhand smoke, though the girls also asked that e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco be included in the ban.
http://reason.com/blog/2014/10/13/city-spends-month-debating-smoking-ban-i#comment_4829291
Activities for Girl Scouts Against Smoking
Antismoking Costume
Have the girls create a costume with an antismoking theme and then volunteer to wear the costumes at an event such as a local Relay For Life. The girls can take turns wearing the costume to promote an antismoking message. The costume can also be worn to preschools where the girls can talk with the children about the dangers of tobacco. Community events, like parades and pride days, present more opportunities for the girls to show off their costume and promote their message.
Poster Making
There are many different ways to create posters. The girls can petition a local printing company to donate their resources to create antismoking posters. Or, they can take up a collection and turn their posters in to a calendar for distribution to the community. The troop can involve the community by asking a local bank, city hall or library to host a poster contest, where the girls each create an antismoking poster and passersby vote on the best poster. The project will be less about the contest and more about getting the public to look at each poster and understand the message. Another idea is to create banners and posters and to donate them to area schools, camps and day care centers.
Volunteering
Have the troop volunteer their time at a hospital or nonprofit organization that specializes in cancer or tobacco awareness. The American Cancer Society hosts annual events that the girls can volunteer to help organize. The troop can also create a petition and ask family members to “pledge to quit” as part of the Great American Smokeout.
Read more : http://www.ehow.com/list_7295126_activities-girl-scouts-against-smoking.html
The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls both published antismoking propaganda, and the Association for the Struggle against the Tobacco Danger organized counseling centers where the ‘tobacco ill’ could seek help” (p.456-457); “Hitler Youth had anti-smoking patrols all over Germany, outside movie houses and in entertainment areas, sports fields etc., and smoking was strictly forbidden to these millions of German youth growing up under Hitler.” (www.zundelsite – January 27, 1998.htm)
References
Girl Scouts of WNC Pisgah Council (NC): CAN-CER-VIVE Patch Program
Girl Scouts Commonwealth Council of Virginia: Relay For Life Girl Scout Patch Program
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: No Smoking with Those Thin Mints
Quit Tobacco—Make Everyone Proud: Join the Great American Smokeout
Read more : http://www.ehow.com/list_7295126_activities-girl-scouts-against-smoking.html
The cheapest for a single was 4200 rubles per night, which equals $103.05. 3-star hotels in Madison WI range from $58 at the Red Roof Inn and $67 at the Best Western East Town, to $111 at the Best Western Inn on the Park, and $143 at the Hyatt Place Downtown. But this is just flyover country. In NYC, rates start at $114 at a 2-star hotel.
Tornadoes AGAIN
Americans have 14 million smoking-related ailments: study
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – About 14 million major medical conditions in the U.S. can be blamed on smoking, according to a study by health officials.
Using surveys, the researchers found that in 2009 roughly seven million Americans reported almost 11 million major medical conditions caused by smoking. Including ailments people don’t know they have or didn’t report, that number climbs to 14 million medical conditions.
“That’s obviously an immense number,” Brian Rostron told Reuters Health by phone. “It’s continuing to be a problem. Even if people are former smokers, they have lasting lung damage.”
Rostron, the study’s lead author, is from the Center for Tobacco Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, Maryland.
These numbers are up from the 12.7 million medical conditions estimated 10 years ago by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The increase over the past decade may be due to improved survey methods or to people with smoking-related ailments living longer), Rostron and coauthors write in JAMA Internal Medicine.
For the new analysis, they combined 2009 U.S. Census Bureau data with national survey data on smoking and disease prevalence from 2006 to 2012.
They found that almost seven million individuals reported a total of 10.9 million major smoking-related conditions that year.
Between 40 and 50 percent of current smokers age 65 or older reported at least one smoking-related condition, and 17 percent of the men and 14 percent of the women reported multiple conditions.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, was the most commonly reported condition with 4.3 million cases. That was followed by 2.3 million heart attacks, 1.8 million cases of diabetes, 1.1 million strokes and over a million cases of smoking-related cancers.
In addition to lung cancer, other cancers that can be linked to smoking can occur in the bladder, cervix, colon, esophagus, kidney, larynx, windpipe, mouth, tongue, lip and throat.
After consulting data from actual tests of lung function, the researchers found people in the surveys were underreporting cases of COPD.
Including the missing cases, about 7.5 million Americans are living with COPD. Overall, the number of illness related to smoking rises to about 14 million.
Lung function naturally declines with age, but COPD makes that worse, said senior author Terry Pechacek, deputy director for research translation at the Office of Smoking and Health at the CDC in Atlanta.
“It’s a creeping disease, and people accept the fact that they can’t walk up two flights of stairs just because of ageing, but that does becomes a clinical condition,” he said by phone.
Dr. Steven Schroeder, who wrote an editorial about the new study, said by phone that smoking may be worse for the body than people think.
“People are walking around with about 14 million chronic diseases that won’t get better,” said Schroeder, an expert on the effects of smoking from the University of California, San Francisco. “It looks like women smokers are particularly vulnerable.”
While men made up more cases of diabetes and heart attack related to smoking, women were more likely to have COPD, lung cancers and other cancers.
Fewer women in the U.S. are smokers, Schroeder said. It could be that women are more susceptible to the negative effects of smoking.
The disease numbers will probably start going down in the next few years following the nation’s declining smoking rates, he said.
Almost half of all smokers try to quit each year, but less than one in 10 succeed, the CDC’s Pechacek said.
“One of the unfortunate things is even if everyone quit right now, we are going to face the morbidity and mortality epidemic for decades,” Pechacek said. “It’s not a statistic. It really is really compromising people’s lives.”
A large part of the financial burden of these diseases falls on Medicare and Medicaid, the government-run insurance programs for the elderly, disabled and poor, Pechacek said.
“But the reality is we’re all paying for it,” he said, adding that there are losses to productivity, physical activity and time with family.
http://news.yahoo.com/americans-14-million-smoking-related-ailments-study-201018028.html
“It could be that women are more susceptible to the negative effects of smoking”!!!!
Well, back in 1960, when women had SIX times less lung cancer than men (at least in the US and UK, check the WHO database), it was supposed to be the opposite (cf. the table on page 246 of Don Oakley’s Slow Burn)!!
The gall of those bastards should not go unpunished!!
And the table is from a CDC MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) from August 27, 1993!!!
The table reproduced in Don Oakley’s book can be found here:
http://www.mindfully.org/Health/Cigarette-Smoking-Mortality.htm
This is what happens when you let them get away with falsely blaming smoking for diseases that are really caused by infection. Plus, most smoking-quitters cite health-related concerns as their main reason for quitting (and very few of them use crap from “Big Pharma”).
NIgel Farage offered slot in TV election debate
One will be a straight fight between Tory David Cameron and Labour’s Ed Miliband, a second debate will also feature Lib Dem Nick Clegg, but in the third Mr Farage will also join the line-up.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2790595/nigel-farage-offered-slot-tv-election-debate-broadcasters-urge-cameron-miliband-clegg-sign-up.html
Chris Snowdon has turned up a great Moscow story.
Margaret Chan: fully occupied?
I tried to post there with my wordpress log in – I was told that I do not own that identity.
Here my reply in the hope that Chris Snowdon addresses this wordpress glitch:
Right now she is one of the many who has for 5 days (?7) a FREE holiday in Moskow.
That will do her.
People like her should be sentenced to 20 years Siberia + £1 Million of their PRIVATE cash to be paid to the people of Liberia.
http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1426888/who-fctc-throws-out-public-at-moscow-meeting-what-do-they-have-to-hide-asks-jti
WHO FCTC Throws out Public at Moscow Meeting: “What do They Have to Hide?”, asks JTI
GENEVA, Oct. 13, 2014 /CNW/ – Today in Moscow the public was forced to leave the public gallery and prevented from observing the WHO FCTC’s Sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP6). JTI’s (Japan Tobacco International) reaction:
“Hidden agendas corrupt policy-making processes”, said Michiel Reerink, Global Regulatory Strategy Vice President at JTI. “Today’s decision to shut out legitimate businesses, expert groups and some media representatives from debates that affect their industry and areas of expertise demonstrates a blatant lack of transparency, accountability and integrity. The FCTC just broke its own rules under the cover of Article 5.3, which is now commonly used as an excuse to shut out the tobacco sector and anyone who is perceived to be linked to us. In the meantime, COP is again hijacked by tobacco control lobbyists who freely exercise undue influence. We urge the FCTC to take every remaining opportunity to fix this broken process and to respect rules of good governance, rather than institutionalizing a policy of closed doors”, he concluded.
What the WHO has to hide? How about it’s utter failure to react to the Ebola epidemic when they were informed by Medicine sans frontieres? Or is it that they are sat (?at taxpayers’ expense) for 5 days in Moskow, lamenting the ‘tobacco-and-now-nicotine-as-vaping-reminds-them-of-smoking instead of being in West Africa and donating money for the local population to act?
I believe the WHO had no problem going there to pester governments for smoking bans!!
http://www.voanews.com/content/liberia-enforcing-public-smoking-ban-130638658/158908.html
And, yes, there is no press coverage of the WHO FCTC club meeting in Moskow; only once – 2 days ago, at about 05:30 there was a mention of this in BBC news, straight after a 30 second slot for Ebola.
Now the BBC news starts with ‘Ebola today’ to keep everyone up-to-date.
I was rather pleased to hear that the health workers in Liberia threatened strike action over pay. They currently receive ca. £400 for nursing/treating Ebola infected people. £400 for a hell of a risk!!
In the meantime many countries have pledged financial help; (the WHO does not need money, it is squandering enough in Moskow’s hotels, discussing the tobacco and the E-CIGARETTE epidemic right now!!!) as Prof. Grieshaber said: ‘the WHO spends it’s money on non-communicable diseases so it has to go round with a collection plate to deal with a REAL EPIDEMIC’.
According to the BBC the WHO stated that by December this year there will be 10 000 new cases of Ebola. Well, WHOSE FAULT is that? How many deaths’ are they responsible for? They were warned in time to act, but the ‘tobacco-epidemic’ got in the way..
Drag the WHO into a court of law!!!! The lot of them!!!
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