Repelled by the hyper-close ups of smokers puffing away, a photographic technique that renders everyone unattractive? Prepare yourself for pasty, bare flesh cascading over the belt of a new-found cause of global warming. When human beings are reduced to negative stereotypes in pursuit of money, rest assured that the blueprint against smoking is only a template that can fit all shakedowns. What do the anti-tobacco and anti-fat agendas have in common? Not only are both based upon statistical manipulation, hysteria and outright fraud, both employ negative stereotypes to build popular support against individuals who run afoul of today’s health-obsessed notions of morality. Commonality between anti-tobacco and anti-fat is further demonstrated by the inordinate love of money that motivates those who toil diligently to shape up the masses. Add in the global warming hoax and we have here a wonderful confluence of agenda affliction and corporate mercantilism.
From DailyMail Online, April 21, 2009, Obesity Causes Global Warming, Say Scientists, by staff reporters:
Being overweight is bad for the environment as well as your health, according to a study released today. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that overweight people were likely to be more responsible for carbon emissions than slim people because they consume more food and fuel. The study blamed an increased demand for livestock production for meat, believed to be responsible for 20 per cent of all greenhouse gases due to the toxic methane emitted by cows. They added that a higher dependency on cars was also a contributing factor.
From Reuters, April 20, 2009, Glaxo Launches OTC Weight Loss Drug Alli in Europe, by Ben Hischler:
LONDON, April 20 (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L) said on Monday it had launched its non-prescription weight-loss drug alli in pharmacies across Europe, boosting its line-up of consumer health care products. The move had been expected after Glaxo, the world’s second-biggest drug maker, won final approval for the over-the-counter (OTC) medicine from European authorities in January.
Agenda Affliction has reached “100th Monkey” status. What anti-obesity simians observe their anti-tobacco cousins pull off they will emulate. The bizarre notion of thirdhand smoke has apparently worked so well to peddle Nicotine Replacement Therapy that thirdhand fat has become the mantra du jour to hustle diet pills.
The anti-tobacco conclusion expressed many years ago to the effect of, in order to be politically successful, tobacco control must create a public belief that smokers harm others besides themselves has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hence, the secondhand smoke scam about Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS). News articles about smoking bans soon included obligatory close-up face shots of a person smoking a cigarette and images of overflowing ashtrays, creating an unfavorable stereotype of “Target Group” consumers. Pretty soon, normal folks began to observe the Pristine Clean demanding that everyone, everywhere stop lawfully consuming legal tobacco products to accommodate their preference for “Smoke Free” environments. Tobacco control righteously proclaimed that “it’s the will of the people,” while waving public opinion polls for which they had loaded the questions and jimmied the data. Secondhand smoke claims proved to be so successful that thirdhand smoke was advanced. That mantra played on the now-well-established negative label of persons who smoke as stinkers. Stinkers, it is alleged, harm children when they come home and expose the kiddies to the reek of tobacco smoke on their clothes.
GlaxoSmithKline laughed up their sleeves all the way to the bank, depositing billions from sales of Nicorette gum, NicoDerm CQ patches and Commit lozenges. Johnson & Johnson gleefully tagged along, quite happy with the profits derived from its manufacture of NicoDerm CQ patches and its financial interest in Nicorette. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation gloated over billions in appreciation of its multi-billion-dollar holdings of Johnson & Johnson common stock. Johnson & Johnson common stock appreciation provided a rich return on the foundation’s investment of $465 million in anti-tobacco programs from 1992 to 2005. As of most recent reports the foundation’s grant investment in anti-tobacco programs is about $600 million.
The 100th monkey apparently resides at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Having enjoyed the profits from its anti-tobacco grants, the foundation announced in 2007 it would invest $500 million in anti-obesity programs. Lo and behold, we now observe the same pattern of conduct to hustle diet pills as was successfully employed to peddle nicotine patches, gum and lozenges. The new program comes complete with its unique science scam (Global Warming), perpetuates unfavorable stereotypes and negative labels through pictures (the DailyMail article includes a photograph of a bulging belly), and ties directly to simultaneous announcement that GlaxoSmithKline will market a diet pill in Europe. That pattern of conduct is now so transparent that even a monkey could see it.
But the above-described unseemly pill peddling campaign also presents hope. Those who promote intolerance and hate to line their pockets with pharmaceutical and tobacco settlement grants had best check their waistline. It appears that growing fat at the expense of others presents its own unique risks. From the Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2009, Lawmakers Debate Tax on Health Benefits, by Martin Vaughan
“Senate Finance Committee staff this month began talks in earnest aimed at reaching bipartisan agreement on a broad health-care rewrite. The greatest chance for bipartisan accord, for now, is in the hands of two Senate players — Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and his Republican counterpart, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa. Sen. Baucus favors taxing some employer-provided health benefits. In an informal "white paper" released earlier this year, Sen. Baucus said this could be done without disrupting the employer-based health-benefits system, where nearly three-fifths of Americans get health insurance. . . . For instance, single workers with income under $62,500 could have all their employer-based health benefits excluded from income tax, while benefits eligible for exclusion could be capped for those with income between $62,500 and $125,000. Above $125,000 all benefits may be taxed.”
One can rest assured that the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids will strongly oppose the above tax measures. Having grown both rich and fat off the money stolen from their “Target Group” of choice, persons who smoke, it is doubtful that anyone in that organization earns less that $62,500 per year. We could observe the curious phenomenon of an organization that has promoted taxes on others for more than a decade righteously proclaiming their “right” to be exempt from taxation targeted at them.
Stanton Glantz could prove to be one of the strongest opponents of taxing health benefits. His objection would not be over anything so crass as money, of course, even though his salary from University of California at San Francisco would certainly place him in a bracket where all health benefits would be taxed. Rumor has it that Glantz is working up an epidemiological spread sheet to address the horrible discrimination that would be perpetrated by depriving him of his annual mammogram. He’s reportedly scripting his next talk show appearance around the theme that ETS has been conclusively proven to cause breast cancer, particularly in men. Glantz is said to be collaborating with John Banzhaf of Action on Smoking and Health to calculate his increased risk of breast cancer due to the fact that he once caught a whiff of tobacco smoke while walking through a parking lot. If one can picture Stanton Glantz, John Banzhaf and James Repace standing in line for a mammogram – with their ample buns bulging out of a hospital gown – that would produce about the most revealing insight yet available concerning anti-tobacco and anti-obesity activists.
Those who would like to prevent Planet of the Apes from becoming a living reality may want to consider supporting opposition to the simians running today’s health care zoo.
0 Comments