I was out at a city park today to play some racquetball. While taking a break, I noticed four guys playing handball nearby. They were playing a hard-fought game. But wait a minute! What is that tobacco-y smell? Why, it's tobacco! Two of the handball players were smoking cigarettes (the coffin nails were actually in…
Humans are creatures with limited attentional capacity. We don’t have the time or brainpower to personally investigate every claim that comes our way. We don’t like questioning ideas to which we’ve become accustomed. Evil-minded people only need to get those lies into our heads. Once in there, those false ideas rattle around for a long time. How to best get false information into people’s heads? Employ a Trojan horse maneuver, i.e., plant credible-seeming information into our brains when we are young using credible intermediaries (such as our parents) through the use of the mass media. And it always helps if the proponents of deceit are well-financed while the proponents of the truth are not. Once false information is safely in their heads, humans are willing to carry it around for decades, disseminating it to yet others and even fighting for it. No, I’m not writing about Iraq. Today’s case study is cow milk. Yeah, the kind of milk you probably drink. Why drink milk? You’ve probably seen lots of those slick ad campaigns. You’ll hear lots of claims that it is important for humans to drink cow milk. Before I go further, here are my disclaimers. For my first 4 ½ decades on this planet, I poured milk on my cereal. About five years ago, my wife and I began to suspect that our youngest daughter was lactose intolerant. People who are lactose intolerant can’t properly digest milk. We thus switched over to soy milk for her. I also switched …
Is terrorism really the biggest threat facing the United States? TomPaine.com recently commented on a report of the libertarian Cato Institute arguing that terrorism is really just not that big of a threat to the average person. For instance, about as many Americans have been killed by terrorists as have been…
A couple days ago, after much work and careful deliberation, a federal court declared the obvious:
A federal judge Thursday ruled that cigarette makers were liable for a decades-long conspiracy to hide the dangers of smoking but declined to impose financial penalties on the industry.
In her 1,653 page opinion, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler wrote:
Cigarette smoking causes disease, suffering, and death. Despite internal recognition of this fact, defendants have publicly denied, distorted, and minimized the hazards of smoking for decades.
Why is this story even news? The dangers of tobacco and the deceit of tobacco companies have long been obvious. There has never been a more damning case against any industry. See here. See also, the Executive Summary of Preliminary Proposed Finding of Fact in US v. Philip Morris, et al.
…Cigarette smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke kills nearly 440,000 Americans every year. The annual number of deaths due to cigarette smoking is substantially greater than the annual number of deaths due to illegal drug use, alcohol consumption, automobile accidents, fires, homicides, suicides and AIDS combined. Approximately one out of every five deaths that occur in the United States is caused by cigarette smoking.
At the end of 1953, the chief executives of the five major cigarette manufacturers in the United States at the time – Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, and American – met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City with representatives of the public relations firm Hill
President Bush and Republican leaders in Washington have failed America by not stopping importation of heroin from Afghanistan which has become a “narco-state” in the aftermath of the toppling of the Taliban regime which had supported Osama bin Laden and global terror through sales of drugs. A resurgent Taliban uses drug sales as an instrument of terror and finances international terrorism. The warlords which grow and process the drugs are supported by the US in our continuing efforts to prop up the post-Taliban government of Hamid Karzi. The flow of more potent Afghan drugs into the US has caused carnage among users, some as young as 11.
In 2001, the Taliban had banned opium production in Afghanistan to increase the price of its stocks which it apparently used to supply funds to Osama bin Laden and other terrorists for their attacks upon the United States and others. Opium production in Afghanistan fell to just 74 metric tons. After the overthrow of the Taliban, opium production capacity skyrocketed to 1,278 metric tons in 2002, according to DEA statistics. Production more than doubled in 2003, and then nearly doubled again in the next year according to James Risen, in his book “State of War.” Risen also writes that “by 2004, Afghanistan was producing 87 percent of the world’s opium supply. In late 2004, the CIA estimated that 206,000 hectares were under poppy cultivation and that the new crop would generate $7 billion worth of heroin.”
Congress and the Bush administration were aware …