The Righteous target the Internet.
Over at Righteous Central, aka the British Medical Journal’s sidekick ‘Tobacco Control’, they are beside themselves with excitement.
They have discovered a new ‘policy vacuum’. This isn’t a device for hovering up dubious statements from Public Health Officials detailing the slow and lingering death suffered by a photogenic six year old four years after she accidentally patted an equally photogenic pony on the nose two years after it had been ridden by a filthy smoker. No this is far more exciting than that. This is a whole new area that they seek to exercise their control over. This could generate grants for university Public Health researchers the world over.
Tra La! I give you – YouTube! Not just YouTube either, but because YouTube is hosted on that devilish invention the Internet, they want to control the Internet as well, just in case anybody else pops up like YouTube. You can’t be too careful where the satanic nicotine is involved. Their evidence for this new leap into uncharted ‘policy vacuums’ is breathtaking.
The Internet, they say, ‘is an ideal forum for tobacco marketing, as it is largely unregulated and there is no global governing body for controlling content’…..oooh, scary! The fact that most of the tobacco companies voluntarily signed an undertaking in 2002 not to engage in direct advertising on the web doesn’t get a mention, naturally. Let’s not muddy the sound bite.
Three researchers in New Zealand quickly tapped in the names of the five major brands of cigarettes. Quelle horreurr! YouTube gave them 20 pages of clips that mentioned those evil words. ‘Quick! Grab a grant, we’re onto something here’ they cried.
163 video clips dared to say something like Marlboro in their title, particularly when they were showing a clip of the Marlboro Man…..disappointingly, some of these clips proved to be anti-smoking. Not what they hoped to find at all.
Girding their loins, and having updated their anti-smoking inoculations, for you can’t be too careful, they examined the rest. That is the 115 videos that they describe as a ‘significant presence’ on a channel which carries 120,000,000 videos – 0.00009583333% being significant in tobacco control circles.
‘One pro-smoking video had been viewed over 2million times’ they reported back excitedly. It was probably humorous, something quite outside their life experience. Worse:
The four most prominent themes of the videos were celebrity/movies, sports, music and ‘archive’, the first three of which represent themes of interest to a youth audience.
No! ‘Archive’ is only of interest to the elderly is it? Who could have guessed.
Burrowing ever deeper down their rabbit hole, they found a whole 20 videos, which, in their opinion, ‘appeared’ to be professionally made! Can you imagine! A professional video maker being part of the pro-smoking lobby? Obviously they couldn’t imagine it, because their conclusion from this was that the evil tobacco companies were using YouTube to get round advertising restrictions.
The dangers of an innocent child dropping upon one of these 20 ‘apparently’ professionally made video clips amongst the other 120,000,980 on Youtube, and rushing out to buy a kilo of ‘Old Shag’ is so great that today they have brought out the following statement.
Pro-tobacco videos have a significant presence on YouTube, consistent with indirect marketing activity by tobacco companies or their proxies. Since content may be removed from YouTube if it is found to breach copyright or if it contains offensive material, there is scope for the public and health organisations to request the removal of pro-tobacco content containing copyright or offensive material. Governments should also consider implementing Framework Convention on Tobacco Control requirements on the internet, to further reduce such pro-tobacco content.
See what you have done professional video makers? You were too good, now they want to regulate the Internet. They’ll come after the bloggers next. Leg-Iron doesn’t stand a chance, far too good a writer. Must be one of the tobacco giants in disguise.
Anna Raccoon
- August 27, 2010 at 11:56
-
I don’t smoke, never have, but these people are scum. Thank God for the
internet, and may it stay forever out of the clutches of the fascist
righteous!
- August 27, 2010 at 00:01
-
It seems to me that the only thing to do with control freaks is to accuse
them of being fascists and thus make them cry. Once they are in tears and you
have told them to f*** off they should be strung up from the lamposts and
burned to death with NAPALM to make sure it hurts!!!!
Then the rest of us
can get on with our lives……
- August 26, 2010 at 19:59
-
That’s all I live for. The first cigarette of the day. After that I can
hardly wait for tomorrow. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night so I
can have another one.
An All Day Breakfast Cigarette is just what I need. I could even live
longer if I stop wishing my life away.
-
August 26, 2010 at 17:11
-
There is a well researched website that goes into details about
anti-smoking from early on in the last century unto today called perhaps
smokershistory dot com (maybe, I cannot find the link). The highly detailed
research was assembled by someone called Carol (I forget the last name) and in
it she goes so far as to point out that the early popularization of smoking
campaigns promoted by tobacco companies would do things like sponsor social
events in NYC and invite all the wealthiest socialites to show up, everyone
wearing green. Originally, back then, “green” became synonomous with tobacco,
the exact same way today “green” has become synonomous with something else,
the exact opposite of tobacco smoking and free choice, but rather conformity
to anti-smoking healthist dictates and green/healthist/fascist/conformist
totalitarianism.
She then goes deeper into her research and discovers the names of some of
the philanthropic organizations that were financing these campaigns and
uncovers some of the same names then funding tobacco smoking soires as are
today funding anti-smoking eugenics and genocide pogroms, the YouTube campaign
being the latest assault on free speech under the guise of “saving the
children”.
Her conclusion is that tobacco control is not something new that just
popped up out of nowhere but it was quite carefully planned, from the very
beginning, to first promote the use of tobacco in order to later on, when it
became a political requirement for what is trying to establish itself as the
totalitarian mainstream ideology of today, have a scapegoat upon which it
could gain its energy, in the second phase.
Tying that in with reports also found online, including from University of
Chicago School of Cancer Research, on the Richard Doll affair of the 1950′s,
which diverted attention from all the truly harmful industries gaining steam
such as nuclear, chemical, asbestos, petroleum, pharmaceutical, others and
placing all “the blame” for the world’s ills on tobacco, it may be that “the
powers that be”, the elitists with the most money, control and intertwined
incestuous relationships among one another, may have purposefully set tobacco
up, in the early stages of the last century, for the express purpose of
bringing it all back down again, to create and maintain, vis-a-vis
anti-smoking, a constant sense of rage among the people, dead-set against “big
tobacco” (whom they set up) and “the smokers” – so that later on, in the final
phase, the majority of people would willingly permit what is fascist in nature
to ascend to maximum control and become the overriding legitimate ideology,
the one we see coming into sharp focus in this, the later times of a political
manipulation started nearly 100 years earlier.
The fact that it will soon be said that control of the internet, censorship
of ideas contrary to “the one party” in control and eventually forced
submission to abortion/euthanasia/eugenics/genocidal can be twisted into
something entirely “good” and that enough of a majority will believe, endorse
and support such a way of thinking, will bully it onto others non-complying,
could well be at the root of what anti-smoking is really about and one of the
most sublime magick tricks to be pulled off in plain daylight within full view
that the world has ever seen.
Control of the internet and censorship is not that far off as the
“news”papers have already been infiltrated and controlled for years now and
there is no way to imagine that tide turning anytime soon.
It is alarming that .0000000000000001% will become the new “danger” and
“risk” that will be used to force acceptance of the final stamping out of free
discussion and exchange of ideas in this world, but it is a battle for control
of the entire globe and high-stakes for those with the most to gain, the elite
within each culture, who need their antichrist to amalgamate the entire planet
under their iron fisted fascist regime.
Imagine the internet and mainstream broadcasts of the not too distant
future when anything sourced from free opinion and thought has been replaced
by the equivalent of the Romans feeding Christians to the lions, only in this
case it will be the elite of this age submitting “the smokers” to the death
squadrons of children indoctrinated into the belief system.
Oh wait, that is already the case, as per the Cig Busters video of youths
attacking “the smokers” out in public.
I predict bad times are coming, much worse than have been seen thus far. It
is happening in broad daylight too, in front of everyones’ eyes, much the way
it happened in the 1920′s and 30′s – and the greater majority will be lured
into supporting it, fearful for their own survival, like cattle driven into
the stockyards for the slaughter.
Anti-smoking is just the vehicle, upon which all this rest comes
riding.
-
August 26, 2010 at 15:57
-
I did enjoy reading this post… almost as much as I enjoyed smoking my All
Day Breakfast cigarette.
Say, have you found out about All Day
Breakfast cigarettes?
They sure beat my regular smoke, and I’ll be staying
with All Day Breakfast from now on.
You know how good that first cigarette
of the day tastes? You just can’t beat it, right?
From the second you tap
the first one of the day out the pack, and take it between your lips… that
moment of anticipation as you strike a flame and light up… that special first
taste as the smoke rolls across your tongue and its fragrant tendrils caress
the back of your throat. Suddenly, your whole body feels alive, vital, at one
with the world – set up for the day.
That’s the magic of the first
cigarette of the day. Nothing else is quite as good, no matter how many
cigarettes you smoke – you could even wind up getting Over Smoked.
If only
every cigarette could taste as good…
Well now it can, thanks to All Day
Breakfast cigarettes.
A special blend of tobaccos and a secret ingredient
created in our laboratories by our smoking technicians give All Day Breakfast
cigarettes their special, unique, flavorsome character.
Simply, with All
Day Breakfast cigarettes, every cigarette is as special as that first one of
the day.
Now you can have a cigarette whenever you want, confident that it
will be as good as your first cigarette of the day, whenever you reach for an
All Day Breakfast cigarette.
I think I’ll smoke another All Day Breakfast
cigarette right now – why don’t you join me?
Just tell your regular
stockist to carry All Day Breakfast cigarettes.
Thank you, Anna, for
allowing me the opportunity to spread the Good News about All Day Breakfast
cigarettes.
Say, why don’t you light one up right now!
- August 26, 2010 at 14:14
-
As Ciaran said
- August 26, 2010 at 13:50
-
You might think, “So what. The offending Internet content will just be
hosted in a jurisdiction with a greater commitment to freedom, and we can get
it from there. After all, they couldn’t build a Great Firewall of China and
block access, could they? They might be technically able to do so, but there
would be riots in the streets. And anyway, we could still use proxy servers to
access the forbidden sites”.
Now consider these two points.
1. In Australia, the (perhaps no longer governing) Labor Party has argued
for mandatory Internet filtering – a Great Firewall of Australia. They may not
get what they want, but the idea is not regarded as loopy, even in a country
with largely British traditions and a robust attitude of the Bruce in the
street towards politicians.
2. We now have the Digital Economy Act 2010, available here:
http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?activeTextDocId=3699621
Section 17 allows the making of regulations to permit blocking sites, on
the basis of copyright infringement. So Parliament has already legislated for
the principle of permitting blocking. Why not move on to blocking on the basis
of damage to public health? Even the existing legislation could be used
against cigarette videos that included enough copyright material. And it could
also be used to block all access to proxy servers, on the ground that they
could be used to facilitate copyright infringement – section 17(4)(c).
- August 26,
2010 at 12:42
-
“They have discovered a new
- August 26, 2010 at 12:19
-
I slightly disagree with Dick in that tobacco control are not mad because
they are smart enough to get paid by us to essentially lie to politicians and
dream up new ways of being well financed non-productive mouths. Why on earth
do we fund tobacco control groups in UK universities when we have the
strictest tobacco control laws this side of California? Another thing that
vexes me is why the Scots keep voting SNP. Do they really hate the English
enough to put up with obnoxious autocratic Scottish rulers? Who could possibly
elect Nicola Spurgeon for heaven
- August 26, 2010 at 12:10
-
Abstract
Background The internet is an ideal forum for tobacco
marketing, as it is largely unregulated and there is no global governing body
for controlling content. Nevertheless, tobacco companies deny advertising on
the internet.
Specky says ..
So they want to close down the Forest
website and any other supporting civil liberties.
Objective To assess the
extent and nature of English language videos available on the Web 2.0 domain
- August 26, 2010 at 11:40
-
How terrible it would be if we the little people were left to make up our
own minds about something!
- August 26, 2010 at 11:28
-
Grab a grant: I like the sound of that.
I can see it now. A host of hi-viz garbed researchers interviewing every
fifth driver leaving the M4 at junction 15. “Sir, did you feel like a fag when
you read the sign for the junction?”
Expert reports for the public consultation on renaming the town. Local
economy impact research in the aftermath.
Lovely!
-
August 26, 2010 at 11:05
-
I don’t smoke…so I’ll get started by looking on YouTube!
Surely, you will only come across these so called
- August 26, 2010 at 11:03
-
“163 video clips dared to say something like Marlborough in their
title…”
Something like it, yes. Like Marlboro.
- August 26,
2010 at 10:50
-
Hooray for control freaks… what would we have to write about if they didn’t
exist?
As ever Anna a most excellent post.
- August 26, 2010 at 10:48
-
Yep. Tobacco controllers are mad as a skipload of jelly beans, and possibly
suffering from mental health issues to boot.
Well done for spotting their odd definition of ‘significant’. They’ve been
describing null hypothesis studies as proving a ‘significant risk’ for
decades.
{ 18 comments }