<p>Is the tradition of the British pub headed for extinction? If recent predictions about the effect of smoking bans on pubs prove to be true, it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that the government is bent on calling "time" on this time-honored part of the UK lifestyle.</p>
<p>While it is well known that we do not subscribe to any of the superstitions about smoking, we always said that <a href="https://www.forces.org/evidence/papers/paper3/forces_international_0506.htm">there is no doubt that the way to make a cigarette safer is to increase its level of nicotine contents</a>.</p>
<p><strong> <span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></strong><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">It is absolutely natural that a hospital coerces the will of a patient, isn’t it? It is also absolutely natural that, after paying your fee either privately or through Medicare, you are denied the service you paid for because your behaviour is contrary to the will and the superstitions of the people you have paid. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><strong> <span lang="EN-GB"> </span></strong></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Yes, it is true: the famous Dutch coffee shops will be liberty-free starting July 2008, when the Netherlands complies with the WHO dictatorship and proceeds as if the passive smoke were a real danger for non smokers. </span></p>
<p><strong> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The current round of societal paranoia about eating and obesity was bound to generate a counter-reaction among the savvy and hip. Witness the recent nude debut of hefty pop-punk singer Beth Ditto on the cover of a British pop magazine “w</span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">earing nothing but a lipstick tattoo on her tush…</span></p>
<p><strong> <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">It’s long past time, but finally the hospitality industry is waking up to the fact that it needs to address the whole bogus ETS issue if it’s ever going to successfully fight smoking bans. </span></p>
<p><strong> <span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></strong><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">What is the definition of paradox? The <a style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/paradox">On Line dictionary</a> reports four possible descriptions, but it seems to us that one is missing. The missing definition is, perhaps, the must current of them all: <em>“An observation that goes against what has been <strong>portrayed</strong> by ‘public health’ as a scientific reality that, however, was never scientifically proven”.</em></span></p>
<p><strong> <span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></strong><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Soon to be a correspondent of the FORCES Multimedia project, Michelle Gervais from Ontario has set out to relieve the segregation of her smoking colleagues, who have been progressively pushed out of their offices into the smoking room first, then out of the smoking room outdoors, then away from the buildings and now… who knows. </span></p>
<p><strong> <span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></strong><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">When a particular group of citizens is targeted, one of the most important things to do is to erode their sense of <strong>unity</strong> and their <em> cultural solidity</em>. Of course we are stating nothing that Machiavelli did not write already in his masterpiece The Prince. In the case of smokers we can see the social disintegration at work with the prohibition of assembly, for example, and with the attack on their self esteem by public humiliation – smoking outside and at a distance from buildings, for example. But a good despot who knows what is doing must do more than that: he must destroy the target’s <strong>culture</strong>. So, that is what Canadian “public health” has set out to do with Indians. The last lesson from Machiavelli is that — of course — the cultural disintegration must be implemented under the guise of “help”.</span></p>
<p><strong> <span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></strong><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Once upon a time there were distinctions between totalitarian regimes: Communism was different than Nazism on the basis of ideology, although the methods were identical. Now that we have replaced the cross with the no smoking sign, God with “public health” and real scientific facts with opinion attributions, we can get rid of the ideology altogether and keep just the methods and the techniques, happily marrying Hitler with Stalin.</span></p>