Argos: The Choice Of The Professional, Apparently

In August, Liberal Vision commented on a BBC article which, in turn, unquestioningly regurgitated a load of nonsense produced by New Zealand's University of Otago, one of the world's most ridiculous anti-smoking institutions.

Here was Comrade Beeb's take on it.

The tobacco industry may be using websites such as YouTube to get around a ban on advertising cigarettes, a study says.

The authors analysed 163 clips, of which 20 appeared to be "very professionally made," they say.

Angela Harbutt at LV mirrored my thoughts at the time.

How disappointed must they have been? All that time slaving over a hot pc looking at shed loads of evil…. and their smoking gun (excuse the pun) is …….that 20 pro-smoking videos on YouTube look great?

Who is to say that these brilliant videos were NOT made by a number of motivated, gifted individuals, with a video camera and/or some editing equipment, sharing their passion with the wider world? Why is it that the quality/brilliance of the videos is taken to mean that they are bound to have been made by the tobacco giants or their ad agencies…. Have these people not checked out just how many brilliantly made, professional looking, videos are being put out there on YouTube these days?

I am thinking of emailing the authors of the research study [...] asking if they wouldn’t mind posting links to the 20 videos that looked “very professionally made” so that we cant put them up on LV.

Well, Angela, via an Observer article today, we have a better idea of what they are talking about.

Here is the example they give.

Err, and that's it. 'Very professionally made' with - as the uploader admits - "a digital camera, a mac and too much time on my hands."

Quite obviously, then, categorical proof of tobacco industry involvement for the terminally obsessed - and one must seriously start doubting their sanity soon - tobacco control movement.

Except that stop motion photography isn't new, or even that difficult. For crying out loud, I toured a secondary school this week where 12 year olds were exhibiting more advanced stuff than that clip! In fact, kids were making such films for Screen Test's annual 'Young Film-Makers' competition back in the 1970s, well before the advent of digital cameras and software affordable to just about everyone.

You'd think the BBC might have worked that one out considering they funded the fucking show, and aired the stop motion films. Made. By. Kids!

What's more, just a cursory glance at the other videos uploaded by this user shows that he is a Transformers fan, that's all. He also transforms matchboxes and Durex packets to the theme tune, as well as posting a clip of Transformers in Indonesian.

And ASH - funded by your taxes, remember - describe such an innocent video thus.

Amanda Sandford, research manager at anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) said the study's findings were "disturbing but fairly typical of tobacco industry activity".

Amanda. Seek psychiatric help. No, really.

I wonder what the other 19 'professionally made' videos (that can't be revealed as the report is behind a paywall) were like. Something really advanced like using captions, perhaps? Or daring to employ fade and wipe on a £60 Argos Alba?

Good grief.

H/T The Grim Reaper

Thou Shalt Not Challenge The Green Theocracy

Yesterday, based on the tobacco control template, I predicted the future for Henry Lewis, the disillusioned, climate sceptic physicist.

Lewis will be ostracised, his name blackened, his previous work dismissed as eccentricity, his future work dismissed as funded by oil companies. He will be expunged from the scientific community and threats of similar treatment will be issued to all who dare to commission him.

That's what happens when you disrespect a cult. You become a heretic, and therefore a non-person. To be derided and ignored.

Via Counting Cats, we see that the press will be similarly treated if they ask unapproved questions of the green hierarchy.

Yep, seen that before too. Unbelievers are not to be allowed freedom of speech for fear of the theocracy being challenged by debate.

'Cos, let's face it, when your arguments are rooted in sand, the last thing you want to do is openly discuss them.

'Science' Be Damned

Delingpole today carries an incendiary resignation letter from Henry Lewis, a physicist to the American Physical Society (APS). I'd recommend you read it in its entirety, but here are a few snippets.

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

[...]

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs.

[...]

[The global warming scam] is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.

He then goes on to catalogue the lengths to which the APS went in stifling any opposition to what Lewis termed 'corruption'.

This included silencing of debate; secret committees; denial of member list access; dismissal of opposing views; and contravention of the APS' own constitution. All to continue the charade that their chosen consensus is 'incontrovertible', a word that Lewis contends is a 'poison word' in scientific circles.

Now, I can't claim to be an expert in climate studies - in fact, I've not even looked at one - but boy do I recognise the methods above, and can also fully understand Lewis's damning theory for why they are being employed.

I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst.

Because, you see, I have looked at tobacco control 'science'. Just about all of it. And everything described by Lewis is not only replicated therein, but is more duplicitous, more resistant to debate, more mendacious, more money-oriented, and more corrupt, than anything Lewis will have witnessed.

Based on this experience, I can also offer a prediction. Lewis will be ostracised, his name blackened, his previous work dismissed as eccentricity, his future work dismissed as funded by oil companies. He will be expunged from the scientific community and threats of similar treatment will be issued to all who dare to commission him.

The debate is over, you see? The evidence 'overwhelming'. It has been written.

The problem being that if this were truly so, those subscribing to the consensus would be champing at the bit to debate the evidence at every possible opportunity. It's human nature to enjoy winning. It would be like Chelsea versus Easington Colliery every day, like David Hay versus Mr Bean.

Yet they actively avoid debate; throw a tantrum when challenged; spit vitriol at those who disagree; and condemn rather than engage. Even towards people, like Lewis, with whom they used to be a colleague and friend.

Tobacco control did the same to Michael Siegel, to David Goerlitz, and more recently to James Enstrom, simply for expressing their doubts about the motives (pharma funding and MSA cash, in particular) and/or the paucity of evidence in support of the cult club members movement.

When the science is on your side, there is no need for such avoidance. When you have all the answers, why run away from discussion? When you're confident of your assertions, why is it necessary to maliciously destroy those who disagree?

ASH routinely decline to debate, for example, preferring instead to talk only to sympathetic media. Their only line of attack towards nay-sayers is that they must be funded by tobacco companies. Their only defence is to repeat ad nauseam that the evidence is overwhelming even when it is clearly anything but. They lie and bully instead of engaging and persuading.

I've seen these methods in tobacco control. I've read the studies. I know what they are hiding. So when I see the same desperate carpet-sweeping, misdirection, marginalisation and intimidation in climatology, something niffs like a week old Camembert.

In such circumstances, there's only one conclusion to draw when seeing the rigmarole all faithfully replayed by AGW believers. It must all be bunkum. There is no other plausible explanation. And if any environmentalist wishes to disavow me of such a point of view, they must first take issue with the lucrative anti-smoking industry for peeling the scales from my eyes

It's just another non-altruistic, non-philanthropic, money chase. Science? Pah! That can go hang. It's so last century.

Link Tank 09/10

Links all sorted. Now just to decide between ketchup and HP for the bacon sarnie.

Finland implements the first stages of legislation to prohibit all smoking

Climate change legislation is killing Orangutans

New York Mayor Bloomberg's health crusade moves onto fizzy drinks

A New Zealander in the UK points out the absurdity of recent whinging about welfare 'cuts'

Experimentation, orgasms, and the rise of anal sex

Don't fancy a smokefree German Oktoberfest? Here's a Palestinian alternative

Apparently, temperatures going up may have something to do with the sun. Who'da thunk it?

KISS musician advocates confiscating the homes and cars of file sharers

Preparing for a new market - zero gravity tested beer for space tourists

Breaking lefty habits of mind

Meet Japan's 76 year old male porn star

Libertarian Magic

Via Mises, how about something quite magical to end the week?

I've mentioned before that 'shared space' schemes are one of the best illustrations of libertarianism in action, but moving pictures speak louder than words.

Two aspects of this are very significant.

Firstly, it's quite clear that, whenever tested, projects such as Portishead's are not just mildly successful, they are almost faultlessly so.

Secondly, prior to their implementation, most don't believe it possible.

The former is proof that humans are very capable of interacting with each other with courtesy, the problems occur when a hierarchy - and with it, a superiority - is prescribed by a third party. The latter shows how deeply ingrained the figment of the state (and its delegated local administrators) as sole arbiters of our safety has now become.

Libertarians believe that people are innately social, that they can interact harmoniously with minimal authority. Statists believe that no-one can be trusted to wipe their own nose without someone being paid to instruct them. Libertarians like people, statists fundamentally distrust them.

'Shared space' schemes not only suggest that libertarians have a valid point, they also show that by taking the same line in other areas, society and behaviour may well be improved for the better. Which is a 'good thing', surely.

Or we could just carry on encouraging people to be selfish 'entitled' bastards at the state's behest, I suppose.

No, actually, I don't suppose that at all. Freedom works, we should aspire to more of it.

Denial, Thy Name Is Hairy

I was truly shocked when I saw this article in the Daily Mail today.

Pronounced Labour Euro trougher, Hairy, on Tuesday ...

It would seem that the pressures people are under to conform to some image of the ideal human being – male or female – is seriously skewing our sense of what is important in our lives.

I think you know what's coming, don't you.

She was reacting to this particular Wail piece.

Experts say that the stigma surrounding being overweight has become so great that it can affect almost every aspect of life.

Shocked, she is. Shocked! And also possessed of breathtaking chutzpah since she is a member of the party which has spent the past 13 years bullying the public into 'conforming to some image of the ideal human being'.

Hairy herself, earlier in the very same article, had even contributed a little bit more abuse herself.

Before I go on, I should add the health warning that the article deals with women who are obese rather than those who are within an acceptable range but still feel fat.

So, being 'obese' is not 'acceptable' anymore?

Hmm, those 'pressures' you talk about, Hairy. You know, the ones you say are 'skewing our sense of what is important in our lives'. D'you reckon it might help if condescending shitsticks like you, and your health-obsessed colleagues, just shut the fuck up about what's 'acceptable' or not, once in a while?

Go on, give it a try.

Are The Coalition Eclipsing Even Labour's Electoral Deceit?

Cast your mind back to that May press conference in the garden of number 10. Cameron and Clegg, the shiny new boys offering us a 'new politics', spoke of how their respective election promises shouldn't be taken too literally since they were now expected to work together.

Cameron, particularly, was clear about that.

"If it means swallowing some humble pie, and it means eating some of your words, I can't think of a more excellent diet."

Since then, we've had Lib Dems pretty pissed off with coalition policies and berating their party in Liverpool as a result. Likewise, Tory rank and file have been frustrated at Lib Dem ideology bleeding into what they see as a predominantly Tory government.

To be expected, really. Some pre-election promises are always going to fall by the wayside when faced with working in coalition. But surely it should be different if both parties were advancing exactly the same reservations before May 6th?

Perhaps not, despite the wise words in opposition.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary Norman Lamb said [the tobacco display ban] was "the nanny state going too far."

One presumes he was briefed by his party before saying that.

Fortunately, their coalition partners agreed.

Mike Penning, the shadow health minister, told the National Federation of Retail Newsagents: "I am not a lawyer but I have always been concerned whether the Government's legislation on this is legal. Therefore a challenge by way of a Judicial Review seems a sensible thing to do."

Mr Pelling said the Conservatives, if elected, would bring the matter back before Parliament.

Well, that's the end of that nonsense, then. Lumpen-headed, evidence-free, fake charity-led, dictatorial insult to personal responsibility and freedom that it was.

But hold on, what's this?

The government is planning to reverse its decision to ditch a ban on the display of tobacco in shops, the Mail understands.

The previous Labour government passed legislation in 2009 to ban retailers from having cigarettes on display from 2011, with the Coalition parties voting overwhelmingly against the proposals.

A Department of health spokesman said the government was considering all options.

Err, what is there to consider?

Both parties now in government were united in condemnation a few short months ago, and quite rightly, too. It's a no-brainer, isn't it?

Especially since there was no call for the measure by voters, it wasn't in any party's manifesto, the 'public' consultation was rigged, one of the most prominent Scottish pro-ban advocates has admitted there isn't any concrete evidence, research shows its effect to be possibly ruinous to corner shops, and the act was only passed in the first place after a clever misleading of parliament by a coalition of fake charities, civil servants and quangocrats.

Add into the mix that we're supposed to be in an age of austerity, with unnecessary expenditure being cut (it's incontrovertible that this law will cost the country in both private profits and public sector enforcement) and the notion becomes quite inconceivable.

As I mentioned last month, though, this administration are giving off signals that they are actually considering letting this crap through.

Funny that. I didn't think for a minute that when they talked of the 'new politics' that it involved raising the bar on deceit.

Watch this space, 'cos if this isn't scrapped there are some serious questions which require answering (and a stubborn Lib Dem Minister who deserves a public spanking).

H/T The excellent Belinda at F2C Scotland