People

I think too much.  That's my problem.  I wonder how much easier or simpler my life would be if I could shut off that annoying, critical thinking facility that truly forces me to scrutinise every thing I hear or read.  What if I could be ignorant to everything but my own immediate needs?  What if I didn't care about anyone or anything but me?  Would I be happier, more sated with life?  I don't know. All I do know is that thinking gets me in trouble.

That's not to say that I'm versed in all subjects of life here on this planet, because certainly I am not -- not even close.  There is so much I do not know and will never know.  Sometimes it's because I haven't learned something because I do not have time to learn it.  Other times it's because I can never know.

Consider this:  I'm white -- my heritage is French, English, Scottish, Irish, and a trace of Native American (from one of my great-grandparents, I'm told). I'm a proper mutt, and clearly my family got around the genetic block a little bit, but then again, not so much really. So I grew up and went to school as a white kid, in an area that was 95% white. I've lived my entire adult life as a white guy.  I can only ever know what it's like to be white.  Because I cannot be anyone else.

No matter how much I read about other cultures, no matter how often I talk about race issues with my friends who aren't white and what's it like for them, indeed no matter what I do, I can never fully understand or appreciate what it's like to be black, hispanic, asian, oriental, or from any other culture or "race" including Native Americans.  It's an impossibility, and any white person who thinks they do understand this is fooling themselves.  You cannot know because you have to live it to truly and fully understand it.

Sure, I can try to make assumptions about what it might be like to be from another culture, yet I suspect these will be false and incorrect. I can draw comparisons to my own experiences and assume what someone else might feel, but I can't really know even if its spelt it out for me.  Certainly, I can learn about someone's culture and I can learn what is acceptable and what is not. I can get by on that much -- I really have no other choice. I can certainly feel for people's crappy situations, but that's an emotion, not an understanding.

The very best I can do is to be what I believe is a decent person and treat everyone equally, on an individual per-relationship basis and learn how that person wants to be treated and treat them that way.  In that regard, that's how I've lived my entire life.  Getting down to brass tacks, the only thing that matters is how we treat each other, regardless of culture, heritage and race. Because I don't think in terms of race. I think only in terms of how you treat me as an individual.

And I think (this is the part where my mind gets me in trouble) that some people too often class someone's actions as racist when in fact it is fear of different cultures, ethnic or religious, or simple ignorance.

You cannot hate something you do not know or understand. You might fear it, because it's unlike anything you do understand, but to instinctively hate it? No, I think that's an impossibility.  You can choose to ignore something, too.  It is true, however, that you can be taught to believe in something, or taught to hate, or both at the same time. You can reject all that you have been taught, too.  You can also choose to embrace anything that is different from yourself and your views and accept the things you see for what they are, or in the case of people, who they are.

Furthermore, I accept that that personal experiences will greatly affect how we interpret and interact with the world around us. For instance, a person who was assaulted by someone of a different culture or race could very well conclude, quite incorrectly, that all people of that culture and heritage are of the same violent ilk.  Logically, we know it's utter bollocks to believe that, but I think something entirely different is likely to be at play here.

We have these big brains in our skulls, which should help us work out if what we think or feel is irrational, and yet our basic instincts for survival, for avoiding pain or harmful situations, predominate our decision-making processes, at times for the worse in respect of personal relationships.  A woman who is raped by a man may conclude that all men are rapists (or at least "potential rapists"). It's not remotely true that all men are potential rapists, but truth in this instance doesn't matter to the woman who was raped. What could matter to her most is never being raped again (note: I have no experience with rape issues at all, and not being a woman I cannot possibly know what matters most to woman who was raped -- consider it a hypothetical statement, please).  Her conclusions about all men may be illogical, certainly reactive, but I think that's how our brains are supposed to work, so that we can learn from the terrible things that happen and make sure it never happens again to us.

In fact, I think all animal life on this planet works precisely this way.  Because it has to, else nothing would survive for very long. If every time I hear a bell ring and someone smacks me in the face, eventually, and I hope fairly quickly, I'm going to start ducking or covering my face when I hear bells ring.  I don't know, though, and maybe I'm wrong. I can accept that my views are incorrect, because I'm not an expert on life, the universe and everything.  I'm only expert in understanding me, and I reluctantly concede that I may not even be expert at that.

Still, I believe there has to be a difference between racism and eugenics -- the Master Race line of thinking that the Nazis idealised -- and just not getting on with a culture that is different from your own because you don't understand it or don't want to understand it. One is based on an idea, and the other is likely based on personal identity or, in the larger sense, belonging to a group.

I almost wrote here that I understand racism because I've experienced it many, many times, but truth be told I'm not certain that is what I actually experienced.  I lived in Japan for a time, and there were several bars and other establishments that would not let me enter simply because I was not Japanese. They were Japanese-only clubs. "No gaijin allowed."  On what basis they decided that particular policy is a mystery to me. Did some British or American servicemen once tear up the joint, or too many times perhaps?  It's possible; it's even likely.  Yes, I was excluded on the basis of my nationality, but was that a racist decision or was it something else?  I'm not sure because I don't know how they came to that decision.

Likewise, I've been refused entry to pubs and clubs that cater to a black crowd. One of these incidents was particularly hilarious to me because my band was playing in the club that night and the doorman didn't believe that I, then a 21-year-old skinny white kid wearing Dr Martens and plaid shorts, would be in a blues and soul band. The doorman was pleasant enough about it, but he wasn't letting me in. I don't remember his exact words, but I remember the look on his face said to me, "Kid, you ain't got no business in this place."  I had to wait outside in the car park until our guitar player, who was the only black guy in the band, showed up and gave the doorman the low-down.  Yet a wonderful thing happened.  We owned the club that night -- this tiny place which could comfortably hold 80 people at best was packed with 200 people, and everyone in there was dancing and had a great time, including me.  There was no stage -- we played in corner of the dance floor, and people were dancing all around us, sometimes chatting us up while we played.  One of my fondest gigs, to be honest.

When I look back on that time, I wonder if the doorman was being racist or was there something else at play? One could argue that I didn't belong in that club because I was white, but I don't think that's a good argument. If I was white and there to cause trouble? Better. Indeed, you could make a compelling argument that some dickhead white guys came in there more than a few times and fought with the black customers, and that the management had decided to keep all of the white guys out in order to preserve the peace and the business.  I really don't know the reason. Maybe it was racism. Or maybe it was something else.

My very first "best friend" came when I was aged eight or nine.  His name was Mark, and Mark was black.  He was one of three or four black kids at my school. I never gave his skin colour much thought because the reasons I liked Mark had nothing to do with race.  We both liked the same things. The same cartoons. The same sports. A little later when we were about ten or eleven, we liked the same girls, so long as those girls also liked the stuff we did, and I think there was exactly one girl who did, which caused a little bit of contention between us.  Anyway....

Mark had this joke about black people that he use to tell all the time to anyone new that he met, and when I think about it now I know that if anyone said it today, it would be branded "incredibly offensive." Or "insensitive." There would be gasps of horror, cries of inappropriateness, and any kid who would dare tell this joke these days would be suspended from school. Likewise, adults who tell the joke will likely lose their jobs, or maybe in Australia or Britain they would be arrested for being racist.  But back then we used to laugh and giggle at Mark's joke, like kids do.  It wasn't offensive, and not because it was the black kid who told the joke so that made it OK kind of thing.

Fair warning, dear readers: I am going to write the joke below. I am fully aware that some truly sad people out there, in Australia and Britain no doubt, will complain that it's racist and and offensive and I will have yet another takedown, but screw it -- I'm telling you a true story and you need to understand what the actual joke was in order to ken what I'm on about.  If you can't deal with that, I would humbly suggest voluntarily leaping from a great height to end your miserable, pathetic and humourless life. Just a suggestion, really.  Because it's a joke, people. And some jokes, like this one, quite often hit home with the painful truth of what so many are unwilling to face.

The joke went like this.

Mark would hold up both of his hands and say:

"Why are black people's palms lighter than the rest of their body?"

Dramatic pause, murmurs of I dunno. Mark would then turn and face a wall and put both hands on it.

"Because they all had their hands up against the wall like this when God spray-painted them black," he'd say.

That's the joke. Is it really suspension-worthy these days? Arrest-worthy? I hardly think so. But then I always think too much. I don't know who would be more offended by it -- those who actually experience racism or those who perpetrate it and feel guilty about their actions. My guess would be the latter.

Of course, I know now that the joke had more to do about the endemic racism and race profiling in the police forces, but as a young kid I really didn't understand that aspect of it. That was way above my head.  I laughed back then because the idea of people being spray-painted by a god was utterly absurd, even for an eight-year-old, and of course one's cartoon-brain kicks in and that made it funny to me.  I have to also wonder if Mark fully appreciated the scope of his joke. I don't know, but I'd bet he did.  In the summer when I was twelve, Mark's family moved away and I've never heard from him since.

A year or two later, I had a brief summertime girlfriend who was black, but in all honesty I never thought about her skin colour, because we had grown up together and she was a friend. When I was sixteen and seventeen, I dated a Korean girl.  I also fell in love for the first time at seventeen with a Chinese-Hawaiian girl.  At nineteen, I got engaged to a different woman, whose parents were bigots and racists, and it was the very first time I had ever met anyone openly racist. I despised my fiancée's parents. It strained our relationship. Fortunately, our engagement ended when I went to live in Japan (which may be why I chose to go to Japan).  There I dated several Japanese girls, and to this day I'm still trying to remember how we got past the language barrier.  My Japanese was horrible at first. The relationships were a funny mix of sweetly humorous misunderstandings and an intense curiosity about a culture I could never fully understand but really wanted to know better.

After Japan I was in America and there I dated a number of other girls (as you do when you're young and you play in bands), and one I had fallen for was Mexican-American. Again, I didn't really think about her heritage -- I just really liked her.  But I also remember a conversation I had had with someone around that time, who asked me, "Don't you like white girls?"

Well, yeah, I did. I liked all women. Race, culture -- what did that have to do with anything?  But then I started thinking about it (because I think too much) and realised they had a point. I looked back at most of my ex-girlfriends and realised only a few had been white. I had not considered this at all before.  I briefly entertained the notion of being racist against your own race. Was that even possible?  I suppose anything is possible, yet I did not feel this applied to me. No. I liked white girls too. I was certainly not prejudiced against white girls. But the truth was, I liked people who were different than me even more, so I was more likely to be attracted to girls who were not white.

I also came to understand that I'm not alone in this preference for things outside of my own culture. In some regards, it's built in to all of us.

For instance, Americans hear a British accent and say, "Oooh! You're British. How wonderful to meet you! I just love your accent. It's awesome! Say something. Oh! Say it again! Hey everybody, come over here, we got ourselves a Brit! Listen to that accent! Go on, say something. Isn't that great? I love it. By the way, have you ever met the Queen or Prince Charles?"

Whilst Britons hear an American accent and say, "Is that a Canadian accent I detect there, mate? No? Oh, terribly sorry. You're American. Gotcha. And em, sorry about that, mate -- Canadians get a bit tetchy if you ask if they are American. Safer to ask if you're Canadian, you know since Americans don't get offended by that, but the Canadians...Good christ.  By the way, you didn't vote for Bush, did you? No? Fucking tosser, that man. Right, then. Lovely to meet you."

Speaking of voting. The Americans are having an election in November. I'm sure you've heard almost nothing about it.  I gotta say that I'm truly disinterested in all things political, except that I think we should vote them all out to end the career politician corruption thing.  Churchmouse Campanologist has been ringing some bells about the Obama/Romney matchup for a few weeks now. Well worth checking out. Seriously. Do. I hope to cover the election in a different post later this week, but read CC's for a primer.

If I had a point to this post -- and I'm not certain that I do any longer -- it would be that some things aren't necessarily racist. Sometimes it's "culturalist."  I think it depends on intent, primarily.  We are too quick to categorise something as racist when it is merely ignorance, or something far more sinister: Class-ism.

Humans are tribal, group-oriented beings. We instinctively yearn to be part of a like-minded pack of similar beings, some kind of group identity to associate ourselves with and feel like we belong to something greater than ourselves and for our survival.  Politics manipulates and exploits that human yearning magnificently, to our great detriment.  Likewise, the Public Health and The World Is Doomed Because of Mankind's Carbon Emissions Global Warming religions do the same. It is no coincidence that anti-smoker / anti-drinker / anti-everything prohibitionists align themselves with the Green and Global Warming movements. It is all much for muchness to them, different but with the same end result. Save everyone from themselves. It's about power and control. And that's why politicians embrace it.

Some of us, however, do not require any sort of group to identify with in order to feel fulfilled. These peculiar people recognise our greatest strength lies within our individuality and differences, an acceptance of all people for who they are and how they act and treat others, not the colour of their skin, or what religious beliefs they hold, or where they hail from.  I try to be one of these people.  I should also add that I love your imperfections, for these are things that make you special and unique. I do not want to change you into some idealised version of a human, because then you wouldn't be the person I loved.

Right. This epic post is ends with this observation:

I can trace almost every great evil inflicted on the populations of the world throughout all eras of human existence to a groupthink, hive-mind, propagandised crusade for an unachievable construct of perfection or an ideal existence for a particular group of people.

Perhaps if we just let people be themselves, perhaps if we stopped trying to control others by forcing a set of beliefs upon them, the combined sum of our imperfections and differences would result in a much more perfect world than we can possibly imagine.

Or not.

Worth a go, I think, for the craic.

Measuring Civilisation

I really like old people. They're pretty awesome, and I love to listen to their stories and hear their opinions. To be certain, not all old people are sweet old granny types -- some are downright mean and nasty.  But on balance, I tend to enjoy their company and they make me laugh, especially the cantankerous ones.  I think it's pretty shabby how a good portion of society treats old-age pensioners as if they're children or somehow incompetent, or worse, sending them off to a care home and deliberately forgetting about them.

My grandmother died earlier this year. She was 88-years-old, and she smoked and drank most of her life. Not exactly what one would classify a premature death. My family never put her into care either -- instead she lived part-time with my uncle and part-time with my mother.  In the last few years of her life, her body may have been fragile, her legs a bit weak (we sometimes made use of a wheelchair to get her around if her legs were sore and tired), her vision had deteriorated greatly, but her mind remained razor-sharp. She remembered everything and she didn't need a diary. She never missed anyone's birthday -- children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even the great-great-grandchild -- all of us got a card with money in it every year no matter how old we were. Same for Christmas.

Anyway, my grandmother did not die from drinking (about 4 to 5 pints per day up until she died) or from smoking, which she quit in her mid-70s, because it got too expensive. She never got lung cancer or had COPD or any of those smoking-attributable diseases.

She died from complications due to getting pneumonia, and her body was too old to recover.  See, she was independent, impatient and feisty, and she went outside on a cold winter's day to get something she had left in the car and didn't tell anyone that she was doing so. She was like that, my grandmother. "Don't tell me what to do. I'm fine," she would say ... a lot.  But on this day she slipped on a patch of ice and fell, fracturing her hip. She was not wearing her coat. And because she didn't tell anyone she went outside, no one knew she was out there.  She may have been outside for thirty to forty-five minutes before she was found.  And that's how she got pneumonia.

Which is how a lot of old people die, to be fair.

Around the corner from my home is a care home for the elderly. Smoking is not allowed in that facility, apparently, because every now and then when I walk past, I see an elderly resident outside, in the cold and wet weather, standing in an uncovered area, having a fag.  He's got to be in his mid-80s, I would think.  And when I see him out there, always alone, not another person in sight, I get angry about the public smoking ban. Really angry.  What if he falls?  How long before he gets pneumonia because of the anti-smoking public health zealots' insistence on saving everyone from themselves?

Is it fair to force old men and women into the cold so that they can smoke?  These people worked all of their lives, paid their taxes, raised families, fought wars in terrible conditions some of them, and so much more ... and we treat them like this?  Couldn't the care home at least provide a smoking room for their residents? Wouldn't that be the decent, humane thing to do?

I think it would. But what I do know? I suppose that while we pretending that we're protecting the health of the care home's workers, we are simultaneously killing off our most valuable members of society, the elderly, by forcing them outside.

And it pisses me off how the overly-restrictive public smoking ban is destroying our society and ruining people's lives, including our elderly, and that's a major reason why I'm writing this blog almost every day.  Maybe someone who does care will read this, and then we can roll back the smoking ban for our old-age pensioners.

Or we can just do nothing and continue to let them be treated worse than cattle and sheep.

How does that saying go?  Civilisation can be measured by how it treats their elderly?  Something like that?

Well, in my view, our civilisation has become even more barbaric and cruel.  I dare someone to defend the smoking ban in respect of forcing old people outside to my face. Because I will fucking clock you.

Mean-Spirited Horrible People

You know those professional anti-smoker campaigners who say they care about smokers?  Don't believe them.

Now before I get into that, let me say that I can appreciate irony and black humour as much as anyone, perhaps more than most. I have a wicked, dark sense of humour. Sometimes people have no idea if I was joking, because I usually say things deadpan. If I get the sense that someone thinks I was being serious, I can tell them it was a joke. Once people get to know me, they realise not to take the dark things I say at face value. I am, after all, trying to make them laugh.

Sometimes we laugh and joke about tragedies as a means of coping with how awful things are. We don't do it to be hateful or mean-spirited. It's not even a question of right or wrong, offensive or inoffensive, although political correctness has tilted the landscape in favour of it being unacceptable, often with legal consequences if we go by recent events. There can be humour in most anything. I believe there is a bit of darkness in everyone, and one way of managing that darkness is to laugh at it. 

Some people find dead baby jokes funny, because these are often absurdly implausible and so awful in their bad taste that they transcend all vestiges of common decency and float in the murky realm of black improbability.  The majority of these jokes are not malicious, nor are they aimed at actual baby deaths and real people's tragedies (although some are indeed). They are generic by design and they are not meant to hurt anyone, yet some people (859 people in the UK at the time of this writing) are genuinely aggrieved by such jokes so much that they believe government should do something about them.

Old Warner Brothers cartoons (Bugs Bunny and Road Runner for instance) are a perfect example of using using over the top violence and black humour to make you laugh. Perhaps it helps a great deal that we know these cartoons are not real, that the hand-drawn violence depicted in glorious artistic detail is meted out on fictional characters in a fictional two-dimensional universe. The same goes for many campy horror films. The violence is often so extreme and bizarre that it is simultaneously disgusting and funny.  Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies are a brilliant example of camp horror.

But the above are all fictional things, and that makes it easier and more socially acceptable to laugh at them.

It's an entirely different thing when we laugh at the circumstances and tragedies of real people. Joking about real people can be just as funny to some people as laughing at cartoon scenarios. It's not nice nor politically correct; it's usually inappropriate for polite company, but that inappropriateness coupled with the darkness within each of us makes many people laugh nevertheless. Quite simply, some people laugh because they are shocked at how inappropriate the joke is. And some laugh because they are shocked that the joke teller had the temerity to say exactly what they had also been thinking but would never dare say aloud themselves for fear offending others. Perhaps that laughter is a form of releasing the guilt they felt. I don't know, everyone is different.

With every inappropriate joke, it all comes down to the joke teller's intent. Is the joker trying to make you laugh, to bring out that darkness in you, or is the joker being incredibly hateful, derisory, and mean-spirited by ridiculing those who they disagree with and falsely dressing up their beliefs as jokes and attempting to pass it off as "irony."

This sense of passing off one's hate as irony brings us back to the anti-smoker crusaders. To be honest, I wasn't certain if I was going to write about this.  Knowing my own inclination for black humour and my appreciation for it, I had to sleep on this one before coming to a decision on whether to write this post or ignore it. Am I singling out these people because I strongly disagree with their views on tobacco control? Is my personal bias affecting me in some way, making me read more into something than what it really was?  Am I just being a prick about this?  I wasn't sure yesterday, so I talked to someone else about it for their opinion, and then I slept on it.

When I woke up this morning, it was the first thing on my mind and all I could think about was the human tragedy aspect of it. Some people are going to lose their jobs, their livelihoods because of this due to no fault of their own.  That's not funny.  If the situation had gone another way and unnoticed (or if no one bothered to care) then people could have become very ill and likely would have died a horrible, painful death from caesium-137 radiation poisoning.  Not funny either.

Upon waking, I came to the conclusion that only mean-spirited, horrible people would find irony and/or humour in other people suffering; that their agenda to destroy tobacco companies, tobacco farmers and those who use tobacco products has clearly blinded them to the reality that there was a huge potential for gross harm far beyond any dangers that smoking may cause to some smokers. We don't laugh at people who get cancer because that's cruel. We don't laugh at people who get radiation sickness because that's hateful and mean-spirited. When your beliefs and ideology makes you hate things so much that you fail to recognise that people will suffer, then you're an asshole.  Only the True Believers in the Public Health religion would find irony and humour in this, and in my opinion, that makes them evil.

So what's the story?

"Fukushima tobacco contaminated with radiation"
Japan's largest cigarette maker has cancelled the purchase of tobacco leaves from Fukushima after they were found to be contaminated with elevated levels of radiation. Japan Tobacco says routine checks of dried tobacco leaves from Fukushima have revealed that some of the crop is contaminated with radioactive caesium above the company's safety limit.

See, JTI did the right thing here by refusing to purchase contaminated, radioactive tobacco, and you can see how the True Believers in the tobacco control industry would relish this event. On the other hand, what if JTI had bought and used the tobacco anyway?  Can you imagine how the tobacco control industry would have relished that as well?  They would have had a field day.  But JTI made the right decision, and the only thing left for the True Believers is satirical "irony."

To wit, here is the green-energy campaigning schoolteacher Fran Barlow's tweet about it (a chronic re-tweeter of the Root of All Evil's tweets, by the way):

Naturally, such delicious hateful irony appeals to the Root of All Evil's prurience, and he tweeted thusly:

And just so you don't think it's an isolated event and limited to these Australian twats from hell, here's another piece of shit's take on it, a guy named John M. Watson who works for ASH Scotland:

This brings us to a on-line journalist named Adam Westlake, who works for the Japan Daily Press website. He's a guy who is clearly trying to make a joke out of it, but it falls flat on its face and merely comes off as being insensitive and cruel to any smoker who gets cancer (emphasis added):

Smokers in Japan are in for a bit of an eye-opener about their already unhealthy habit: Japan Tobacco Inc. has stated that some of its dried tobacco leaves coming from Fukushima Prefecture this year tested positive for radioactive cesium at levels above the 100 becquerels per kilogram limit. While this shouldn’t cause a panic, as the tobacco conglomerate will cancel the order for the 4.5 tons of leaves, but would it really have been that much worse if some cigarettes, which already cause cancer, had some radiation thrown in too?

Why, yes, Adam, it would have been a lot worse.  There's a huge difference between accepting the risk that smoking may cause cancer, and unknowingly using a product that is contaminated with radioactive caesium. This attitude towards smokers is what denormalisation of smoking is all about. Smokers are sub-human in these people's minds.

But what about the farmers?  Does anyone care about them?  Well, no. Tobacco farmers are every bit as guilty as tobacco companies in the Root of All Evil's view.  For example:

By the way, 30 million farmers is greater than combined population of Australia and New Zealand

Or this:

 

Simon Chapman clearly believes that anyone who has anything to do with tobacco should be destroyed. I doubt he cares about smokers. He only wants to destroy the tobacco industry and anyone who gets in his way must be obliterated too. His lack of empathy or sympathy for those who do suffer is astonishing considering that he claims that he's trying to protect people. He's not, though. This makes him a hateful cunt.

And yeah, let's talk about suffering. The Japanese farmers are suffering from this incident due to no fault of their own. They didn't cause the nuclear incident in their area. All they do is grow tobacco. That's not a crime... yet. The real story, the real human tragedy can be read here (note: the article is badly translated from Japanese to English, so it is difficult to read and more than a bit weird (possibly a bit funny in its own way due to the translation), yet the sentiment of hardship and struggling is clear and you need to read the whole thing to really understand it all):

7 years ago, at the age of 27, Naoya Ohashi from his grandparents who took over the farm, continue to maintain their tobacco.He is very proud to be able to stably supply against a variety of diseases of tobacco.He said, when forced to dispose of so much seedling when, he is ready to collapse.

[...]

Fukushima growers because land nuclear contamination and had to give up a smoke, this makes a lot of farmers to leave, and this is planted tobacco.But for the cigarette quality and public health, the tobacco companies of Japan before the acquisition of tobacco leaves of a radioactive substance undertakes detecting strictly, if exceed the standard, the tobacco can only be destroyed.The farmers strike would be great, because once the tobacco was declared the death penalty, Fukushima Prefecture tobacco planting industry will face the crowning calamity.

Better translation: Farmers who historically grow tobacco in the Fukushima Prefecture have had to dispose of their tobacco crops due to caesium contamination. Many farmers had to abandon the area and leave because they couldn't survive.  Those who remain are struggling to get by, since they cannot sell their crops. These people may lose their farms, and then what will they do? None of this is their fault.

But you won't find people like the Root of All Evil, Fran Barlow, or John Watson giving a flying fuck about the Japanese farmers' plight.  I wonder if they all secretly hope that all of the farmers in Fukushima will die from caesium poisoning themselves.

It wouldn't surprise me if they do think that, because they are all mean-spirited horrible people.

What Nightmares May Come

Do you recall this vitally important blog post by Anna Raccoon? I'll give you the salient points in case you missed it:

The Department of Health is concerned that fully competent adults, who are not suffering from any mental incapacity, may not be asking for help on health matters. They want the power to forcibly burst through your front door and give you that advice. Or ‘make your voice heard’ as they put it. Do you really fancy a Social Worker standing over you at bed time reminding you to put on a condom before engaging in sex?

[...]

They are basing the need for this new power on the fact that 66% of the sort of people who respond to vague questionnaires published on the Department of Health’s web site 3 years ago, thought that Social Workers should be able to burst through your front door if they wished to harangue you on their latest fashionable cause.

Fancy a Social Worker standing over you as you light your fifteenth cigarette that day? Or fry up that pan of chips? Go ahead, ignore this post…

[...]

Smokers, drinkers, all those who eat what they fancy, the world will be their oyster if they get this power.

[...]

This is about having the right to forcibly enter your home even though they have no reason to believe that you are mentally ill, the victim of violence, the victim of fraud, the victim of domestic violence, that there is a child at risk there, or any of the other above categories. They don’t want to have to show evidence to a judge, they want to be able to act on instinct alone.

While that is certainly frightening, let us also consider this recent study, "England's legislation on smoking in indoor public places and work-places: impact on the most exposed children," which was, interestingly, funded by the Department of Health. It's got the words "smoking" and "children" in it, so you just know it's a doozy.  They were concerned that since they exiled smokers back into their homes, that the kiddies would be exposed to even more second-hand smoke than before.  That's not the case, however. The study found that far fewer children are exposed to second-hand smoke in the home now than in earlier years. It should be job done. Right?  But no. This is not good enough, because some of you are practically murdering your children anyway. Something must be done!

Here's an image of the abstract, and note the Conclusions:

Click the image to enlargify

The Conclusions reads (emphasis added):

Legislation to prohibit smoking in indoor public places and work-places does not increase the proportion of children exposed to damaging levels of second-hand smoke. Even in a country with a strong tobacco control climate, a significant proportion of children remain highly exposed to second-hand smoke and future policies need to include interventions to reduce exposure among these children.

So even though trends are going down by a significant percentage, some children (about half of the kids who live with at least one smoking parent) are still exposed to levels of second-hand smoke so dangerous and toxic that we must believe these hapless children are about to drop dead any second now.

By the way, who wrote this paper?  Michelle Sims (Bath), Linda Bauld (Stirling), and Anna Gilmore (Bath).  Naturally, considering the authors, we know that it's 100% objective and factual probably a huge pile of bollocks. Why? Because the study stops only one year after the public smoking ban took effect. One fucking year! From Bath's Tobacco Control Research Group blog:

We analysed data from the Health Survey for England conducted between 1996 and 2008. These surveys measured cotinine, an indicator of tobacco smoke exposure, in the saliva collected from 16,000 children aged between 4 and 15.

We found that the proportion of children exposed to damaging levels of second-hand smoke has fallen over time. Amongst children in England, the percentage fell from 24% in 1996 to 13% in 2008.

[...]

The research also reveals that legislation did not increase the proportion of children exposed to damaging levels of secondhand smoke. This strengthens evidence from England and other countries of the United Kingdom that legislation to prohibit smoking in public places and work-places does not displace adult smoking to the home.

Bullshit.

So one year of data (2008 -- the smoking ban was enacted in 2007) is enough to conclude that the smoking ban hasn't driven people into their homes? Christ on a bike! What about the next four years? These people consider themselves academics to make that bold statement based on one fucking year?  Seriously?  But even so, they still conclude that smokers are exposing their children to dangerous levels of second-hand smoke even though their own evidence suggests otherwise. You couldn't make this up!

The DH, staffed by those in the tobacco control industry, will buy it though. They'll say, "Look, a study confirms it!" and that study will run with yet another public consultation designed to deceive the public. Expect it. It will come.

Here's what we know:  Public smoking bans are not enough. Increasing the legal age which a person can buy tobacco is not enough. Raising duty to extortionate levels on tobacco is not enough. Display bans are not enough. Plain packaging for tobacco is not enough. Mass media campaigns are not enough.  It is never enough for these people in the tobacco control industry.

And so now they are going to lobby our government ministers, who are clearly inept and gullible morons, through the Department of Health Hate's minions certainly, using an extremely dodgy study, to ban smoking in your own home.  There will be no exemptions, no exceptions. Regardless if you have children. No smoking in any home anywhere. They'll come for the old-age pensioners too; grandma and grandpa smoker will be made examples of. No visiting grandma, kids. She's a filthy smoker. Count on it.

Do read the commentary on the study by Abraham Brown [Centre for Tobacco Control Research, UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, Institute for Social Marketing, University
of Stirling] (emphasis added):

Sims et al.’s work therefore underlines the importance of continuing to undertake interventions and legislated policies to make smoke-free environments, especially in homes and cars, the societal norm. Such efforts should include community-level campaigns and programmes to raise awareness of the damaging effects of SHS exposure and support adults, particularly those living in smoking homes, to enforce smoke-free policies voluntarily in their homes and cars. The balance of evidence from several studies suggests strongly that the primary objective of reducing second-hand smoke exposure has been achieved, particularly among non-smokers in workplaces and the hospitality industry [15–17]. Nonetheless, to the extent that smoking in domestic settings remains evident in several jurisdictions [1], there is the need to encourage governments to enact policies that will make smoke-free homes the accepted norm.

If you're thinking, so what? It's unenforceable. You would be wrong. Let me tell you exactly how they're going to enforce it. They will use your children to enforce this legislation. Of course they will. Because they always use your children.

They will make educators responsible for asking children if any of their parents, siblings, or grandparents smoke. If the child answers affirmatively, expect a visit from a social worker. 

They will insist on mandatory cotinine testing of every child in school.  If any child tests positive for any trace amount of cotinine, expect a visit from a social worker.

Naturally, some of you may not smoke. You abhor smoking, and no one smokes in your home. But taking this to plausible absurdity: What if your teenager was sneaking a crafty fag with mates now and then?  He or she will definitely test positive for cotinine.  Because your teen smoked a few naughty ciggies, expect a visit from a social worker.  Do you think it matters that you don't allow smoking in your home?  You failed, non-smoking parent, because your child somehow ended up with cigarettes. It will be your fault.

Oh, and don't trust your neighbours. They will snitch on you, too, and they will be rewarded for it.

You will be fined. You will be branded a bad parent. They may put a hazardous warning sticker on your front door to let your neighbours know that you're a baby killer. It is conceivable that they might take your kids away because you are killing children, and your neighbours' children with your smoke drift -- all of them helpless and entirely unable to speak out against the horrible violence you are inflicting upon them. The Department of Health Hate will insist upon doing something about this.

That's how this is going to work. 

They will come into our homes, and if you do not toe the line and conform in accordance with the diktats of the Public Health crusade, they will crucify you.

Expect it.

The Writing on the Wall

I know some of you don't care about plain packaging because smoking was never about the packaging for you. We all know that plain packs won't change smoking uptake or cause anyone to quit smoking.  I also know that many of you buy your tobacco abroad, which I fully support. So I'm addressing this primarily to those of you who cross-border shop.

Your cross-border shopping trips are in real danger, and I'm not talking about HMRC and UKBF screwing you over when you come back to the UK, although that's a problem too.  Cross-border shopping is in danger because the zealots know that it too needs to be banned in respect of tobacco products in order to maximise the plain packs effect.  If you can legally buy branded goods in other countries and bring them over, you are a danger to their plan. So they have to deal with you. Harshly.

First, let's look at what's already happened. I'll use Australia as an example out of necessity. (I know that Simon Clark said that he didn't believe the Australian legislation would set a precedent, but I don't think he's right on this one.) 

Australia passes plain packaging laws, and at the same time they limit bringing in duty-free cigarettes to a single packet. That last bit is very important.

Why would they do that?

Well, I believe they did it to make sure that genuine, branded duty-free tobacco products would not be seen out and about in Australia. Gasp! Kids might see a gold packet of B&H! The True Believers will dress up the duty-free limitation as a tax issue, but it's yet another confidence trick.  It's also about ensuring that only their message of hate appears on tobacco products. Most of them anyway.

And if you think that won't happen here, then do think again, and please think real hard on it.  I see several possibilities that may happen. This list isn't exhaustive, mind you.

1. The UK does not implement plain packs and nothing changes in the EU. (obviously best case, but very improbable)

2. The UK chooses not to implement plain packs knowing that the EU will do so anyway within a year or two. (probable)

3. The UK implements plain packs and the EU does not follow, leaving plenty of branded legally-bought tobacco in the UK. (improbable, but I'll explain why below)

4. The UK implements plain packs and the EU does as well.  (probable to most likely scenario)

There are few other possibilities, but these are the important ones, particularly to cross-border shoppers. 

Consider item number three. I said it's improbable. But let's say that does happen for the sake of argument. What would the Public Health lobby do?  You know that answer to that, just as I do.  They would demand that the UK limit or cease all importation of branded tobacco products bought for personal consumption.

Because remember, they are arguing that the packet design itself is harmful and that you are walking billboard for the tobacco industry.  And if that argument is accepted, then they will need to ensure that no branded goods can enter the UK legally.  The Department of Health Hate will then insist on limiting any importation of tobacco products for personal use, and this will kill off the cross-border shopping trade as well as duty-free tobacco shopping outside of the EU.  (Legally, we are now bound by our EU Free Trade agreement, but do not dare to think for a moment that an exception won't be made in respect of tobacco, and later alcohol.)

Naturally, if items 2 and 4 happen, then it's a moot point. All packs in the EU will be "anything but plain." That just leaves the duty-free stuff to deal with.

I hate to say it, but Item 1 is just never going to happen unless the world goes tits up this year or next year. Even if common sense prevails in this country, we cannot control the monster that is the EU Parliament and it's unelected committees.

I could be wrong, though. I hope I am wrong. And it's possible the UK may seek to address the cross-border shopping "problem" by continuing to harass those who do buy stuff from Belgium, or even prohibit personal use shopping due to revenue-gathering reasons. But then I read stuff like this letter from Sheila Duffy of ASH arguing for plain packs, and I see the writing on the wall immediately:

In addition, illegal brands from overseas, and legal brands imported illegally, would be easier to spot if lawful products were in plain packs.

Plain packaging is a measure to protect children and young people – and is not expected to cause many adult smokers to quit.

She doesn't come out and say we need to stop cross-border shopping, because that would show her cards and it would start a battle with those who do cross-border shop or trade in cross-border shopping (ferries, etc.), and that would weaken the Public Health zealots' campaign for plain packs. She knows it. But read between the lines and see it for what it is.

I've seen several variations of the "legal brands imported illegally easier to spot" comments over the past week. They are gearing up towards this end. They want to make legal, branded goods from anywhere illegal. Say goodbye to cross-border shopping and duty-free cigarettes. It's all part of the WHO's plan, after all.

But imagine if the UK is the only EU country to adopt plain packaging. And there you are, standing outside trying to roll up a fag in the wind and cold rain, and you take out your Belgian-bought Golden Virginia hand-rolling tobacco, displayed in public in all its children-harming glory.  What happens then?  Do the police start asking you questions about your branded tobacco pouch? Do they come and search your home?  Do you get arrested and have to prove that it's legally bought?

I can think of far worse than only that. But the anti-smokers want any and all of these things to happen. They want to put smokers in jail, because they believe you are killing babies. Think about the possibilities of plain packaging laws. They will harm a great number of people, and will save no one.

So, for those of you who don't care about plain packaging, but you do shop in Belgium or wherever in the EU to get your tobacco, you might want to jump on board here, guys. You may not care about plain packaging, but the anti-smokers care a lot about your shopping habits.

And you, too, drinkers. You're next!

Kiddies' Hate Group Disables User Posts

Further to yesterday's post, I note that all of the links to Helen Casstles's posts on D-MYST's page no longer work.  D-MYST has disabled the ability for users to leave posts on their page, but comments on the posts that D-MYST makes are still open.  This act of cowardice by the adults responsible for D-MYST illustrates two very important things:

1.  Always, always, always screen capture comments, tweets and Facebook posts, because these could be deleted at any time. 

2.  The anti-smokers are clearly worried that their Public Health crusade through unnecessary hate campaigns using children are backfiring and they are covering their tracks. Public figures, like Councillor Helen Casstles, do not want you to know how insane they really are. 

I've decided to create a Submit a Tip page so that you can let me know about stuff you find. There is now a permalink up in the menu bar at the top of every page.  Please screen capture every loony thing you see. You can save your images on imgur.com and share that link rather than e-mailing images to me.

Please note that if you antagonise or factually-challenge the anti-smokers (or even comment at these haters' sites and tweets), there is an excellent chance they will delete the stupid things they've said.  So, I would strongly recommend avoiding commenting if you can, but that is obviously your choice.  At the very least, screen capture everything before commenting in order to maintain a record of it. Try to be thorough about it, too. Show everything in context, and save the links to the page.  If you have to, save the entire page as an HTML file.  Believe me, there is no engaging in rational debate with many of these people. Commenting is pointless 99.9% of the time, although I do understand that challenging these idiots is fun for some of you.

Do what what you will, but also note that when I link to people's comments and pages, that is not an invitation to antagonise or harass them, no matter how stupid and insane they are.  Not that I think any of you are doing that. I'm just saying, is all.

Image via www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk

Do Sheep Dream of Non-Smoking Androids?

Last month I wrote about D-MYST and its creator Helen Casstles. That post was quite long, so I had to leave out a few things. Today, I'd like to return to Councillor Casstles, particularly her fantasy world where smoking should never be depicted in movies past and present.

UPDATE: Many of the below links are now broken. Read this post to find out why.

Take this example of a comment she left on D-MYST's Facebook page:

Just watching an old sci-fi film - Blade Runner. Set in the future, 2019 - the amount of smoking in it is outrageous!

Blade Runner, one of my favourite films of all time, was released in 1982.  It won 6 awards and was nominated for more than twice that number.  The film regularly appears on all-time best film lists.  Wikipedia states that in "1993 the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.'"   Oh, and Sean Young and others smoke in this film.

Sean Young in Blade Runner.  And she's smoking.

Here's a tip for you, Helen.  Smoking was normal in 1982; it is normal now in 2012; and I know it will still be normal in 2019 despite your best efforts.

Helen is so blinded by her belief system, her faith in Public Health, that she obviously doesn't get the reasons why smoking is important in this film.  The androids or "replicants" believed they were human, particularly the character Rachel. The main premise of the film was that it was nearly impossible to determine if someone was a replicant or human, thus the use of the empathy test. Since many humans do smoke then by logical extension, some (but not all) androids will smoke. It makes them seem more human.  "More human than human" was the Tyrell Corporation's motto after all.

The Voight-Kampff empathy test scene with Sean Young was so beautifully acted, filmed and edited that it is legendary in the world of film-making. It is iconic. Photos and images of Sean Young in that scene are also iconic. People make artworks based on that scene to this day. I take great joy knowing that people like Helen Casstles never will be able to airbrush that scene or stills out of history. Never.  All they can do is bitch about it.

Still, such a shame that Helen's view of acceptable fictional entertainment is so utterly warped and deluded that she cannot enjoy a classic, much-loved film because people are smoking in it. Did she even notice the severe class division between the rich and poor in that film?  I wonder if she thought that it was normal and acceptable for most of the population to be living on the fringe of society, barely surviving, while the rich were safe in their penthouses protected from the riff-raff below. This woman is fucking insane to be worried whether people (or androids) are smoking in a film.

Another example then -- one she wrote today:

Went to see Looper yesterday. How disappointing to see smoking being promoted in new movie and even more disappointing that the director's vision of our future still includes smoking.

What about the Olympic ceremony? you ask:

So, why exactly does Kenneth Brannagh have to have a cigar in his mouth during the Olympic opening ceremony? Even if it's historical for the character - I bet no one would miss it. 

That cigar is not even lit, for fuck's sake! Might as well be chocolate biscuit curl from M&S.

 And to round it all off, she shared this old anti-smoker propaganda video with her D-MYST kiddies:

Thought you'd like this Health Education circa 1976

People like Helen Casstles have no business infecting our children's minds with their brand of hate against a significant percentage of the population, and ultimately it seems the kids are unable to separate fiction from reality.

Yes, him too. His name is Daniel, by the way, kids.

Coincidentally, there's more here on D-MYST's latest hijinks, which I just noticed.  Just bizarre.

The Tobacco Control Crusade

Avast, ye!  Batten down the hatches, me hearties!

The Dreadful Arnott has declared that the tobacco control industry is on a crusade. The evidence is from the below slide, taken from a presentation she gave last May at a tobacco harm reduction conference:

OK, I know, this isn't exactly news. We've all known they've been on a crusade to eradicate smokers. But there's the proof. Consider it official.

The Dreadful's presentation video is about 24 minutes long, if you can stand it. The take-home lesson is that nicotine is harmless to everyone, except to pregnant women, only if it's regulated by Big Pharma and government.  Alternative nicotine products, such as e-cigs and vapourisers, are only safe if they are regulated by Big Pharma, too.  She calls it "clean nicotine." Nobody else can be trusted.  And she's angry that Big Pharma missed several opportunities to corner the clean nicotine market.  She also mentions that a government decision on the legality of unregulated e-cigs will come in May 2013, so stand by to stand by.

At that event there was another presentation on harm reduction given by Dr Karl Fagerström.  This slide is particularly interesting:

That last bullet point tells us all we need to know. Smokers are the enemy, too. I do not care what it says on ASH's web site. They are lying to everyone; they are quite happy to attack smokers and condemn smoking. You cannot destroy Big Tobacco without destroying tobacco consumers first.  Tobacco companies would not exist if people didn't want to use tobacco products.

So, jump to 9:40 in the vid to hear Fagerström explain the above slide, where he said this:

"Being against the smokers is a little odd. But that would mean we would stigmatise smoking and we would denormalise smoking and I'm sure that can drive down prevalence a bit."

It's not odd, doctor, it's evil.  You know it is.  Of course, any act is acceptable in the Public Health religion's quest to save us all from ourselves.  Right? 

Make no mistake, me hearties. It's a crusade. And they're coming straight for us! Extermination is their dastardly plan!

Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen, ye scurvy dogs.  Prepare for battle!

Image via Get a Life Now

H/T:  Dick Puddlecote

Deception Comes Easy For Them

It takes no courage at all to sit down and write posts for this blog. It's mostly easy to do. The difficult part, as any writer will tell you, is forcing yourself to sit down and write.  Motivation, inspiration, determination and time are the things that are required. There are a hundred things I could be doing (or sometimes should be doing), but I write when I can because we need more voices out there providing an opposing viewpoint to the anti-smoker, anti-drinker, anti-civil liberties and pro-Public Health crusaders.

The hard-to-swallow truth, however, is that there are not enough voices in opposition. People are afraid to say what they think. People are afraid to stand up for themselves. And too many people simply do not care either way. This leaves the unenviable task of challenging the prevailing and truly evil Public Health crusade to a few disparate voices willing to stand up and say something.

Whether a loose collective of bloggers has any relevancy to the debate can be argued, certainly, but I take it as validation knowing that the tobacco control industry views free speech and bloggers as a threat to their campaign by including them on their wiki of shame.  In any case, what we all have in common is that we'll write what we think, promoting freedom of choice and liberty for all. More or less.  Sometimes we feel obligated to write in support of those who often do not stand up for themselves, which is curiously both gratifying and disappointing.  It's disappointing because if more people did fight back then we would not find ourselves in this situation where governments believe they have the moral authority to dictate how you live your life. 

Every so often someone outside the collective does stand up to the bullies. And when this happens it's an absolute joy to read and write about.  I'm talking about Bandit Brand, the California-based T-shirt peddlers who Simon Clark wrote about a few days ago.  I'm not going to recover that part of the story, though, suffice to say that Bandit Brand was not cowed by the Public Health nutjob puritans in New Zealand who objected to a seeing a woman smoking on a poster. Bandit Brand made no apologies for their poster and told the nannies to fuck off.

That act of defiance endeared me to Bandit Brand, because how many other small, medium or large companies would have backed down and apologised and removed their ad campaign?  Most? Certainly too many.  Anyway, they are awesome as far as I'm concerned, and I immediately "liked" Bandit Brand's Facebook page, which put their posts into my news feed. And from that I learned that there is another part to this story, which I feel is certainly worth covering. This other part of the story is about deception and cowardice. Maybe. Make of it what you will.

I mentioned at the start that it takes no courage at all to write posts for this blog. Indeed, you could say I am mostly anonymous. Except that I'm not.  Jay is my real name; it's the name I use in real life every day. I have never given you my surname because it's unimportant. I don't tell you much about my life because that is also unimportant. What I think is important is the message. It makes no difference who I am, where I live, where I've been and what I do for work. Knowing those things won't change the message, so I don't feel obligated to provide them.  "Jay" suits me just fine as an on-line persona, and honestly I prefer to keep my on-line life apart from my real life, just as I keep my work life separate from my private life. I am a private person.

This is why I keep relatively anonymous. It is more to do with that there is way too much information about every last one of us on-line and our governments and other organisations are keen to exploit that. Of course, sometimes it's our government that "accidentally" puts that info out there in the first place, which allows people like me to learn things about you, if I so desire. And in some cases I do desire it.

Most of the collective of liberty-loving bloggers and a few of my readers do know my real full name. I don't believe that it makes one bit of difference to any of them. I know some of their names, too, and really, so what?  The only people who would care are those that would try to hurt, villify, and denigrate you.  They're the ones who complain about people being anonymous on-line.  And, as you will see, that makes them hypocrites.

So Bandit Brand got an e-mail from a Public Health nutjob, and Bandit Brand posted that correspondence on their Facebook page.  It appears to me that message came via Bandit Brand's contact page on their main web site. The message simply said:

How uncool to be promoting smoking to young women.

And Jen, of Bandit Brand, replied as follows:

As awesome as that response is, now I wish to draw your attention back to the original message sent to Bandit Brand.  The sender's name is Lou Scott, and the e-mail address is louscott49@gmail.com. 

I'm always suspicious of people who send messages like that, thinking they probably work in tobacco control. My suspicions are often correct. So my first act was to plumb in the e-mail address into Google. It came back with only one hit.

Following that link led to a written submission (PDF) to the New Zealand Parliament in respect of their Alcohol Reform Bill.  I've screen-capped a portion of the first page (redacted - something that was requested but apparently the NZ Parliament committee couldn't be bothered with (do not trust your governments!), so I'll be kind and remove almost all of the contact details), and the highlighted parts are relevant:

Oops! The NZ government really messed up here.

Initially, I believed that the e-mail address belonged to Penelope's husband and that they shared it. It wasn't until I began to search on both Lou Scott and Penelope Scott that I realised something wasn't quite right.  Let's focus on who Penelope is for the moment.

Penelope Scott is a True Believer. She is the Health Promotion Manager at Cancer Society of New Zealand (Otago and Southland Division), as you can see here (warning, slow-loading and bandwidth heavy page due to huge images not properly thumbnailed), or you can just click here for a more reasonably sized image.  And lest you might be tempted to think she is not in the tobacco control industry, I give you this which indicates she works on behalf of Smokefree Otago:

Source: NZ Parliament

So, I kept on searching and found  more than a few other things, but you get the point. She's one of them.

I then wanted to find out who Lou Scott was. Another Public Health believer, possibly with the dubious title Professor of Public Health or something? Were these two people a husband and wife team, a dynamic duo fighting the evils of smoking, alcohol and freedom of choice in Kiwi land?

I searched for Lou Scott. And searched. Then I searched some more.

Nothing. I couldn't find any trace of Lou Scott involved in Public Health. That would not be unusual per se, but I had a feeling that Lou Scott was not who he claimed to be.  I had a hunch.

In order to be certain about my hunch, I had to do two more things. The first was to locate Penelope Scott's Facebook page with the hope that some of her personal information was publicly available, and I was not disappointed. (Although easily found, for the moment anyway, I will not link to Penelope's page.)  None of her Facebook friends are named Lou, or Louis or anything like that. Although this Penelope Scott "liked"  the plain packs NZ Facebook page. That is not proof, though.  The second thing I did was search for "Penelope Louise Scott" because I thought Lou might be short for Louise, and again I was not disappointed.

People often ask me how I have come to know things, and I tell them that all of the information is out there on the Internet.  It's no big trick. You only need a little determination and motivation to look -- anyone can do this. I mean that. Anyone. It helps to know how best to use various search engines; how to make them give you the results you want and to limit the scope so you don't waste time trawling through irrelevant web pages. But any of you can do this just as easily as I can, if you have the inclination and time to do it.

So I found a Penelope Louise Scott on a few genealogy web sites, and by comparing the info to her publicly-available Facebook friends list, and by looking at what Penelope's friends have posted publicly, I know that I have the right person.  I did do a bit more to confirm, although I probably didn't need to.

Anyway, Penelope Louise Scott is also Lou Scott. If the New Zealand Parliament had not made Scott's e-mail address public, I might not have ever known that. But if you have received a scathing, puritanical e-mail from someone named Lou Scott, now you know who it really is.

The question I have is why she won't send her e-mails using her real name? Why hide that?  Why use a pseudonym?  I think I know the answer to that.

A lot of people in the Public Health religion pretend they are caring, loving, decent people, out to save everyone from all of the harms that people could possibly inflict on themselves. But peel back that false veneer and you will see them for who they really are. Hateful, spiteful, mean-spirited people who feel at ease lording their moral superiority over those who fail to follow the commandments of the Public Health religion. And they will use any tactics they feel are necessary to advance their agenda, to promote their propaganda, to force us all to kneel down at the altar and partake of the sacrament for our own good. It's a crusade, and they do what they like.

If Penelope had any moral conviction about her beliefs, she wouldn't hide behind a pseudonym to send an e-mail to Bandit Brand. She would have sent that e-mail as herself, the same name she uses in her tobacco control industry work for the Cancer Society and Smokefree Otago (which, by the way, the Cancer Society is responsible for the plain packs campaign in New Zealand, the web site is registered to them).  But she didn't.

Somehow, I really don't think her role at the Cancer Society would have been compromised if she had used her real name. I have a feeling the Cancer Society would approve, to be honest. Dunno. Maybe it's because Penelope lobbies the NZ government regularly?  Perhaps Penelope was using simple deception to make Bandit Brand think it was an ordinary consumer who was complaining.  Yeah, that seems likely in my opinion.  If so, it's also cowardly, disingenuous, and typical of people who work for or support the tobacco control industry.  No lie too great or small.  Hell, it takes even less courage to send an e-mail under false pretences than it does to write a blog.

But even so, Penelope has every right to write under any name she chooses.  Just as I do, and as any of you do too. It's not her fault that the NZ government is incompetent and outed her.  It's also possible that she prefers to be called Lou rather than Penelope, Penny, Pen, Nelly or any other possible derived nicknames of her first name.  Just as I prefer to be called Jay, rather than Jason.  (Ah... another bit of info about me -- do with it what you will, you evil bastards!)  We all have our reasons for the things we do. Given what I know of the tobacco and alcohol control industries, how they operate, how they aim to deceive, I simply remain suspect of Penelope's motivations in this case, as one is wont to do.

There was a further e-mail exchange between Bandit Brand and Penelope "Lou" Scott. You can read it here on Bandit Brand's Facebook page, but I've screen-capped Penelope's e-mail for your ease of reference:

Is that a plain packs supporter saying that advertising alone doesn't make people smoke?
Why, yes, I believe it is.

Anyway, Jen at Bandit Brand is unafraid to say what she thinks, and she'll stand up for herself and her company. She doesn't need us or anyone to do it for her. She puts it all out there, from the heart, and she is refreshingly honest and unashamed.  Jen's a hero in my book.  I truly hope she has great success with her company.

Penelope Scott, however ... well, she's a anti-smoker, anti-drinker, a True Believer Public Health nutjob in my opinion.  I have no hope for people like her.

Penelope Scott
Photo: Cancer Society of New Zealand

Free Speech Sense From Across The Pond

I'm feeling a bit uninspired lately and others are covering recent events quite well enough.  So, today I'd like to highlight that there are two articles over at Popehat written yesterday and today that I think are worth reading.

The first one is called Confronting Junk Science: Keep Calm And Carry On, and dare I say that Ken, who is American, has a better appreciation for Britain's lack of freedom of speech than perhaps a truly sad majority of Britons? For instance:

In the United Kingdom, you have an arena with a level of protection for free speech that — and I say this out of love, with a debt of gratitude for my common law heritage and the language I love — sucks donkey balls. It sucks so badly that we've had to pass laws specifically providing that your ludicrous defamation judgments usually aren't enforceable here. My point is this: to the extent you employ censorious measures, you can expect them to be turned against you later by your foes, with the cooperation of your largely censorship-indifferent government. Do not take up any weapon you don't want used against you.

The whole post is awesome and truly destroys the arguments that some people's views aren't worth hearing from.  Public health zealots, including the entirety of the WHO, believe that only some people should be allowed to present a viewpoint to the public, and those zealots will go to great lengths to demonise anyone who disagrees with them.

And when you've finished that blog post, you should consider reading the next blog post, which is Subjectivity Is Slippier Than Any Slope.  (Yes, that slippery slope we've all been warning you about, well it can be applied to everything people don't like, which is why we keep warning you about it.) It is equally awesome, and covers the salient dangers of making exceptions to free speech.  Ken writes: 

But there's a third bucket of free speech exceptions — and it's slippier than the slippery slope. The third bucket contains arguments that speech should be illegal when it offends or upsets people. The slippery slope metaphor is inadequate to capture the danger of the contents of this bucket, because you don't need to posit the subjective decisions of future litigants and judges and prosecutors and jurors. The subjectivity is already build in to the model.

I truly wish someone would clone him and then export about a million Kens over here, because we need more voices to stand up for free speech and civil liberties, and far fewer "censorious douchebags" (as Ken would call them) in our government and public health bodies.

I don't always agree with everything Ken writes, but he always educates and entertains me regardless.  I also have no idea how Ken feels about smoking, smokers, or specifically about whether tobacco companies should be able to use a shiny trade mark on their packs. Based on Ken's views in all of the stuff I have read from him, I really do not think I need to ask.

Octabber Starts Today

A few weeks back I wrote about this month's #Octabber campaign here and said:

We'll  be tweeting the hashtag #octabber throughout the month of October.  No doubt some twat will say we're encouraging children and women to smoke (keeping in mind that the tobacco control industry typically disregards men as victims of big tobacco subliminal marketing campaigns).  We aren't doing that. We're just saying we're not going to quit.

So, I was partially correct.  Via Simon Clark at Taking Liberties, we learn that the Mancunian Matters web site has ill-informed its readers about #Octabber:

"A rival campaign called ‘Octabber’ has been set up which encourages people to smoke though Mr Clark was keen to make clear he did not endorse the campaign at all."

Octabber isn't about encouraging anyone to smoke.  It is for those who aren't going to quit smoking this month despite a 28-day long campaign of anti-smoker propaganda aimed right at them.

Feel free to drop by the Octabber Facebook page* and join the conversation.

*while the page is still up, because the nannying tyrants might complain about it. Hopefully that doesn't happen.