#FreeTobaccoTacticss

Unsatisfied with bullying their way into our cars yesterday, the tobacco control industry's zealots -- this would be ASH, Bath University's Tobacco Control Research Group, CRUK, TobaccoFreeFutures, Fresh Northeast, et al -- are now attempting to bully, harass and censor the @TobaccoTacticss parody account on Twitter. It is a blatant attack on protected free speech. It's fucking bullshit. If you're on Twitter, please join in with the #FreeTobaccoTacticss hashtag and don't let these hateful bastards destroy any more of our liberties and freedoms.

Because the only reason why this shit happens is because we can't be bothered to fight back. If we let them do this to us without a fight, it's our fault.

PS: This is my 300th blog post.

PPS: Yes, I know I haven't blogged in over half of a year.

PPPS:  There will be another blog post in a few weeks' time.

PPPPS:  God damn it, stop letting these arseholes push us around.

The Root of All Evil Goes Too Far? - An Investigation

I know that I have been a bit quiet on the blogging front of late, but even so I have remained busy keeping an eye on the absurd antics of the health zealots.  A month ago somebody created a parody account on Twitter to mock Carl Phillips.  It came to my attention because that somebody followed me on Twitter.  Parody accounts are a dime-a-dozen on Twitter and sometimes they can be funny, but as a general unwritten rule you parody and make fun of the person only -- you should not involve the subject's family. Ever. Not only is that incredibly poor taste, it's just fucking wrong.  The somebody parodying Carl Phillips broke that rule with his very first tweet by mentioning and including an image of the real Carl Phillips's child (note: I've blurred the image of the child):

So when I saw the above tweet, I decided that I would never follow that evil fucker's account and I didn't want it to follow me.  I didn't block the account, merely forced the account to unfollow me. The reason I did not block this bastard's parody account is because I knew someday I might have to tweet to it (today is that day), and if the account is blocked, Twitter won't let you tweet back and forth. 

Despite my beliefs about what is and what isn't acceptable parody material, I decided to ignore it even though I had a good idea who created the parody and why they created the account.  A month ago, I saw little point in bringing any exposure to this cunt's hateful account on Twitter.  But the shitbag decided to follow me again, and that is why I decided to confirm my suspicions about who is behind this travesty of a parody and to write this blog post today.

Here's the thing. Everybody has a unique "writing style." I'm not talking about handwriting analysis (although that's a related discipline). We all have peculiar habits of speech, preferred word choices, grammar issues, punctuation usage, etc.  Do you prefer the Oxford comma or not?  Do you use single quotation marks or double quotation marks? Do you prefer certain abbreviations or writing short cuts? And so on. It is likely that you are not even aware of your own writing style. But you do have one, as do I. Indeed, I began this paragraph with one of my oft-used habits of speech: "Here's the thing."  I also like to begin sentences with a conjunction (often considered naughty), or I overuse the word "indeed."   Sometimes I confuse tenses or slip into a passive voice writing style because I often attempt to write as though I am speaking to a person in real life, and my real life speech is grammatically lazy.

It is not difficult to discern a person's writing style. Simply, you will need to pay close attention to how things were written over many samples of writing and then look for patterns.  By using this method, I believe that I have deduced precisely who created the Carl Phillips account. Whilst I cannot prove conclusively that my deduction is correct without having access to Twitter's IP logs or this somebody's computer, I feel about 95% confident that I am right.

Who is it?

I believe that Professor Simon Chapman, a.k.a. The Root of All Evil, created the parody account of Carl Phillips. What follows are the reasons why I believe this.

As of this writing, the parody account has tweeted twelve times.  This is a small sample, but it is enough. Here are the tweets in reverse-chronological order:

Click to enlargify image

* * *

Now, the first tweet in the list, which was tweeted today, is incredibly informative and interesting.  It reads:

I know there are "completists" out there who want to collect everything I write. See end of http://t.co/B7Tv1wYVvb #onanism #vanity

There are two important items in that tweet to notice.

The first item is the hashtagged word "#onanism."  This is an obscure word. I would think that few people know what it means.  You almost never hear anybody use this word in everyday speech, and rarely do you see anyone write it. It is uncommon. There may be a good reason for that, however, because the word either means "masturbation" or "withdrawal of the penis in sexual intercourse so that ejaculation takes place outside the vagina; coitus interruptus" so not exactly something you're going to hear in grandma's knitting circle, or any circle for that matter.  In the above tweet's context, I presume that the intended meaning is "masturbation."  But Simon Chapman knows what this word means; he has used it before.

Here on the Watching The Deniers blog, one of the Root of All Evil's favourite hangouts, is a comment by Professor Simon Chapman -- note the highlighted text and the bit that follows that says "not her words," which can only be interpreted as "Simon Chapman chose the wording 'onanistic rubbish'":

Not convinced?  OK, how about this tweet by Professor Chapman where he attacks an anti-windfarm advocate:

I checked the web page mentioned -- not one instance of "onanist" or "onanism" or "onan-anything" appears on that page. I also checked @stopthesething's tweets, and out of 450 total tweets at the time of this writing, not one tweet by @stopthesethings uses the words "onanist" or "onanism."  So we have another instance of Simon Chapman choosing the wording to describe an individual as a masturbator. I am beginning to believe that The Root of All Evil touches himself each time he has occasion to use any of these "onan-something" words.  

Of course two instances of using "onanism" or "onanist" proves nothing. So we need to find more writing style patterns.

The second thing to notice in the tweet above is the use of double quotation marks to emphasise a word on Twitter (note: you cannot italicise or bold words on Twitter, you must find another means for emphasis). In this case it is the word "completists."  Some people prefer to use single quotation marks for emphasis, others prefer to capitalise a word, and still others prefer to surround a word with asterisks like so -- *completists* -- to show only but a few ways one can employ emphasis on social media that lacks text formatting. The use of double quotation marks proves nothing, it is simply a marker or an indicator of one's preference, or more precisely, of one's style. The Root of All Evil is consistent in his use of double quotes in tweets for word emphasis when he's being nasty or for other ad hominem attacks on people, as shown in the following three examples (there are many, many more examples than only these):

Twitter link

Twitter link

Twitter link

Out of 2,037 tweets from Simon Chapman's tweet history (excluding retweets of others'), he used double quotes 253 times (12.4%).  Obviously, not all of those double quotes usages are for word emphasis, but the majority certainly are.

So in only one tweet we now have two examples of Chapman's preferred writing style -- word choice and punctuation style (double quotes) for emphasis.  Bear with me, though, we are not done yet.

* * *

Let's look at another peculiar quirk of the parody account's writing style. Out of the twelve tweets, two of them use a shortened ellipsis (which should be three dots "...") by using only two dots as so: " .. ":

Anna Gilmore is a pretend economist, unlike me..I've never published a single thing in the dismal science, but don't let that fool you (https://twitter.com/CARLVPHlLLlPS/status/327115880582496256)

and this tweet (which I will cover again below):

Going to THR ball soon as Emperor with No Clothes. Hope my pony tail grows long enough to preserve my modesty. But hey .. not into modesty (https://twitter.com/CARLVPHlLLlPS/status/324444806417874944)

Simon Chapman, The Root of All Evil, uses this odd shortened ellipsis at least 40 times. Here are few examples, and please note that there are at least 37 more tweets where this quirky convention for ellipses is used:

Twitter link

Twitter link

Twitter link

Well, even I have to admit that this is not incontrovertible proof ... yet.

* * *

Let's find another habit of speech.  Looking over Simon Chapman's tweet, it seems he loves to use the word "Guess" to start a sentence, almost always when being hateful and putting other people down. And will you look at this? The parody account does, too:

Guess who cites my research most? It's ME! (https://twitter.com/CARLVPHlLLlPS/status/325706117441286146)

And a few of Chapman's tweets:

Twitter link

Twitter link

* * *

I know some of you may not be convinced yet. To be honest, I couldn't stand up and say for certain that the parody account was definitely Simon Chapman's by this point.  No, I needed to find more examples.  So I did.

The abbreviation of the word "committee" to "c'tee" for instance.  Here is the parody account's second tweet:

Hope RJR doesn't publicize my membership of BAT's scientific c'tee. Doing best to make out CASSA is grass roots pure  (https://twitter.com/CARLVPHlLLlPS/status/322289135148744704)

Here is one by Simon Chapman:

Twitter link

Mere coincidence? It might be if it were not for all of the other coincidences listed above.

* * *

How about this, then?  The use of the words "pretty much."  The parody account's profile reads:

Parody account of Professor CarlVPhillips, self-declared & undisputed world authority on tobacco control & pretty much anything really.

Here's a tweet by Chapman:

Twitter link

* * *

Do you need more? Fine. In an earlier tweet I already covered above, here's a literary reference to the Emperor's New Clothes (or No Clothes):

Parody account:

"Going to THR ball soon as Emperor with No Clothes. Hope my pony tail grows long enough to preserve my modesty. But hey .. not into modesty" (https://twitter.com/CARLVPHlLLlPS/status/324444806417874944)

From Chapman's account:

Twitter link

* * *

What? Did you think we were finished?  Hell, no. Here's another coincidence: using the words "snout" and "trough" (albeit a common expression, it serves to show that Chapman uses it, too):

Parody:

@Dick_Puddlecote what sort of a retainer are you on, Bigus Dickus? Keen to get my snout deeper in the tobacco trough. Can we share notes? (https://twitter.com/CARLVPHlLLlPS/status/329885237628780544)

Chapman's:  

Twitter link

* * *

I don't know about you, but I think those are quite a few "coincidences" in only twelve tweets from the parody account.  Still, it is all circumstantial. There's no "hard evidence" that Simon Chapman, The Root of All Evil, is the shitbag behind the Carl Phillips parody account.  But the patterns in writing style certainly appear to the be same as Chapman's.  If only I had another dozen tweets from the parody account then I could be more certain.

There is something else to cover. Every crime needs a "motivation" and when someone goes on trial the prosecution presents its theory to explain the defendant's motivation for committing the crime.  So I'm going to present a theory as to why I believe Simon Chapman created the parody account to attack and defame Carl Phillips.

I'm going to call it "The Butt-hurt theory."  Yes, our little Root of All Evil is thinner-skinned than he would like everyone to believe. Chapman is the kind of guy who posts up a link to a PDF containing quotes from his "critics" on his Twitter profile, because he probably feels that some people were unfairly criticising him, to wit:

What a jerk!

But I think the reason that Simon Chapman created the parody account of Carl Phillips is because Chapman believes that Phillips created this parody account of Chapman, @SlMONCHAPMAN.

Loving the Kim Jong Un background.

And the reason I think that Chapman believes that is because of this tweet by the real Carl Phillips:

Twitter link

I think this tweet made The Root of All Evil very suspicious indeed. In fairness, the "whoever you are" could be interpreted as a sly wink of some kind. But I personally do not believe that the real Carl Phillips created the fake Simon Chapman parody account. I say this because Carl asked me over a month ago if I knew who created the Chapman parody, and I truly doubt he would ask me that in order to create some kind of misdirection or trickery to cover himself.  Why would he? We're on the same side of the debate. I am certain that Carl would have told me if he had created the parody.

But Simon Chapman doesn't know who created the Chapman parody (nor do I, for that matter), which has been silent on Twitter for almost a month, so Chapman can only surmise like the rest of us. And I think the Root of All Evil got butt-hurt that someone would dare to create a parody of himself and retaliated by creating a parody of Phillips. To be honest, using "onanism" is the big giveaway. Nobody uses that word. Chapman slipped up there.

Nevertheless, if Professor Simon Chapman is in fact the Phillips parody account, and I have every reason to believe that he is based on everything I have shown you above, then it makes you wonder all sorts of things.

Like:  Why is a supposedly "respected" and tenured academic at the University of Sydney attempting to defame another individual through a shabby parody account on Twitter?  Surely a man in Chapman's position would be able to rise above such pettiness.

Oh, wait. No, the Root of All Evil is all about the pettiness.

He always has been. 

The real mystery is not whether Simon Chapman is behind the Carl Phillips parody, a vile and hateful account on Twitter that stoops so low as to attack and degrade an innocent, newborn baby in the very first tweet.  The real mystery is why anyone bothers to listen to such an awful, despicable human being?  And with all of the hateful, petty things the Root of All Evil has done (and will continue to do), why does he still have a job at the University of Sydney? And should he continue to be educating our young adults with his brand of filthy hatred towards others?

I cannot know the answers to those questions. I do know what I think and believe.  I'd be ashamed to be an alumnus of the University of Sydney, and I'd never consider sending my children to a school that condones of hate campaigns by one of its professors. Every day that Chapman remains a professor at that institution is another day the university is further tarnished.

Perhaps it does not matter what I think.  But I wonder:  What do you believe?  Does the evidence above convince you?  Has the Root of All Evil gone too far?

UPDATE (Monday, 6 May 2013)

If the above evidence isn't enough, then here's another "coincidence" with the abbreviation "supplt" that I missed the first time around:

Parody account:

All authors of @TC_BMJ's Endgame supplt are liars & jokes! Only I possess TheTruth. So why am I in the wilderness?(https://twitter.com/CARLVPHlLLlPS/status/324444237351497728)

Simon Chapman's:

Twitter link

And here's something else to consider. Both the parody account and Simon Chapman occasionally tweet from an iPad (not all the time, only sometimes) as you can see from the two images below:

Back in Black

Just about everybody knows by now that the UK is not planning to proceed with plain packaging (or standardised packs, as the anti-smokers are now calling them) for tobacco products.  And while it looks we've finally had some success after over a decade of being denormalised and tortured by public health zealots, I'm not holding my breath that this is the end of it. It is possible, perhaps you could say very likely, that plain packs will be mandated through back door EU legislation at some point in the future.  But for now, I'm pleased to say that it appears, as of today anyway, that common sense has prevailed for once.

Naturally, the anti-smoker rhetoric from the True Believers on Twitter has reached hyper-hysterical proportions. You know it's bad for the anti-smokers when they tweet to random celebrities, who were never part of a conversation on Twitter, in a sad, desperate attempt to find someone -- anyone -- famous to support their cause. Like this one from Nick Hopkinson (@COPDdoc) trying to drag Owen Jones into the plain packaging debate:

Twitter

If the name Nick Hopkinson sounds familiar, he's that ... er... annoying twat? ... hopeless lunatic? ... let's just say "that guy" who incessantly tweets about Tesco's tobacco displays.  I admit that I had great fun winding him up with the following petty tweet on Twitter yesterday:

Twitter

Well, I don't really want to spend more time writing about anti-smoker morons on Twitter.  No, there's something far more serious to blog about.

I would like to tell you a story.

This is a story about deception, about lies through omission, about mainstream media propaganda, and at the heart of this torrid tale both the evil villains known as The Dreadful, and her faithful minion, the Department of Health's Tobacco Programme Manager, Mr Andrew Black.

Without further ado, let us don our tin-foil hats and travel Back in Black.

Back in Black

A Tale of Deception

by Jay

Once upon a time there was a journalist named Sam Masters who wrote an article for The Independent.  He titled this shabby piece of anti-smoker propaganda "Tobacco lobby told Government: branding ban will cost you millions."  The article Sam Masters wrote began with:

"Department of Health civil servants met lobbyists from the cigarette manufacturer Imperial Tobacco before the Government shelved proposals to introduce plain packaging laws this week, it can be revealed."

The journalist's use of the word "lobbyists" to describe two representatives from Imperial Tobacco was an inaccuracy. One might be tempted to say it was a bald-faced lie. But let us not quibble over semantics, for we only need to read a bit more of the article to understand why journalist Sam Masters used the term lobbyists instead of representatives.  

From a top-floor office in Hatton Garden in central London, the headquarters of the New Inquisition in England, the evil queen of propaganda known colloquially as The Dreadful opened her gob, revealing her dangerous, pointy fangs, and let out the most horrible, ear-piercing scream anyone in the world had ever heard. Children up to fifty miles away suffered The Dreadful's wails and cried for help, but there was no help to give. Some have said that The Dreadful's scream caused several signal failures on the Tube's Central Line, and chalk cliffs to crumble and fall into the sea on the Jurassic coast in Dorset, but these claims cannot be substantiated. And when the scream finally died out, The Dreadful, still hysterical and drenched with her venomous spittle, said, "The tobacco industry clearly tried to use this meeting with officials to lobby against standard packaging rather than provide any hard evidence."

This was also inaccurate.  Yet hardly surprising, for no person can remember the last time The Dreadful spoke the truth.  Indeed, it was always The Dreadful's job to lie or distort the truth to support her wicked agenda of denormalisation.

An artist's stylised depiction of The Dreadful, presumably in happier days

The truth was that The Dreadful's minion, who is a friend of fellow Australian, The Root of All Evil, had invited the representatives of Imperial to his lair at Wellington House near Waterloo Station. Because The Dreadful's minion, Andrew Black, had to do this as part of the Impact Assessment of the so-called public consultation on plain packaging of tobacco products, a process by which everyone knew was always designed to destroy tobacco companies' ability to distinguish their brands from their competitors' brands.  So to see the truth, one must be willing to look at the actual freedom of information release:

How strange that journalist Sam Masters failed to mention this information. Stranger still is this anonymous minister's quote in Sam Master's propaganda piece:

"[a] minister familiar with the consultation process, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Independent: “My concern is that the tobacco companies have inveigled their way into persuading a number of important players to reject standardised packaging.”

Which minister said that and why would he or she choose to be anonymous?  This was suspicious. Some had claimed that it came from a member of a secretive cabal hell-bent on eradicating a quarter of the British population, a nasty and vile group called the APPG on Smoking on Health. Alas, no evidence was to be found that the quote did come from that cabal.

And even stranger than all of what has already been written is the Department of Health's decision to once again selectively release a sole freedom of information request ("FOI") when almost all other FOIs are not published on-line and kept hidden from the public's view, unless a brave warrior knows the precise magic words and means to release the FOI from the Department of Health's information repository.

There can be only one reason for the Department of Health to do this (we can never know if Andrew Black is responsible, however, but it does seem possible):

To deceive the public with false propaganda.

But it came too late. Because good people like you thwarted the anti-smokers' New Inquisition by writing to your MPs and telling them to oppose plain packs. You and countless others won the battles on Facebook and Twitter, too! You are heroes, all of you. Yes, you, dear readers! Your herculean efforts foiled the New Inquisition's dastardly plans for control and domination. The world is a safer place. The world thanks you.

And so the Dreadful and her minions have lost the war for plain packaging and they have grown most desperate. Everything that the New Inquisition will spew forth now and in the future will be woeful pleas and hateful deceptions designed to fool the unwary and unthinking.

Beware! Beware all Britons! Beware world! These are dark, Black days and you must remain vigilant. The Dreadful and her sheep-minions from hell will stop at nothing to make you believe in their fairy tales and sorrowful conspiracy theories. Armed with brainwashing ray guns, they will use slogans obtained from the darkest pits of the anti-smoker underworld that say "Put Our Kids First" and "Put Kids First," which are designed to make you feel, not think.  Do not be fooled by these powerful deceptions. Know that only the evillest of all evil beings will invoke the "protect the children" incantations to sway opinion.

There is nothing to fear, however. In the fullness of time, in a more enlightened era, it will come to pass that the world will not look kindly upon The Dreadful and Andrew Black and the others who belong to the New Inquisition. These evil creatures who believe in censorship, bans and prohibition, and those who give them quarter will be despised for all eternity.

And the world will once again be a happy place full of sunshine and bunnies, with freedom and civil liberties for all.

The End

Update (Sunday, 5 May 2013):  Simon Clark also writes about the Independent article here.  I wonder if he saw the above?  And the Guardian also covers the story with another nasty quote from The Dreadful:

"It looks as if the noxious mix of rightwing Australian populism, as represented by Crosby and his lobbying firm, and English saloon bar reactionaries, as embodied by [Nigel] Farage and Ukip, may succeed in preventing this government from proceeding with standardised cigarette packs, despite their popularity with the public."

Translation:  Toys. Thrown. From. Pram.

My Sincere Request to Simon Chapman

I broke one of my social media rules on Twitter yesterday.  Before I did it, I gave the pros and cons ample consideration.  The "Compose New Tweet" window was open on my screen for about five minutes while I mulled it over -- the tweet had been written and the only choices from there were to either click the Tweet button to send it or click the X button to cancel it.  In the meantime, I rolled a cigarette, lit it, and by the time I had finished smoking I had decided to send the tweet.  Rules are sometimes meant to be broken, when it seems necessary anyway. This rule was "never tweet to the tobacco control industry."

Sometimes people surprise you, but mostly they do precisely what you think they'll do. You do not need to be a learned sociologist to understand human behaviour. Nobody likes to be called a hypocrite, and one can expect that a person's reaction to such a claim will be negative and defensive -- you expect that statement to be challenged and denied. But when the evidence is clearly against you, when it is indefensible, then your choices are limited to admitting your error, or simply ignoring it and hope it goes away mostly unnoticed. 

Few people will admit they were wrong; most will try to brush off their error and ignore it or, worst case but certainly typical of many in the public eye, blame someone else for it.  It takes a certain strength of character to stand up and say, "You know, I really ballsed that up."  Or to say, "This is my fault and I take full responsibility." 

Or in the matter I will cover in a moment, to say, "Yes, I admit we also did the same thing, and we were wrong to do it."

I don't remember who it was that once told me:  "Do not point out the faults of others for the same things you do yourself."  I have never forgotten those words, though.  I honestly try to live by them, but I'm not 100% certain that I always do. I'm not perfect. I make mistakes; I have made a few here on this blog.  When I realise I make an error, I apologise for it. I own up to it and I will accept the consequences of my error, no matter how bad it makes me look. 

At my last job, one of my colleagues used to call me Mr Integrity.  He -- indeed everyone I worked with -- knew that I would always do what I said I'd do, and that I would always say precisely what I honestly believed about something, even if it would not make me popular by saying it.  One day I really ballsed something up. I missed an extremely important deadline. It was the first and only time I had ever done that.  I was mortified.  My error cost my company about £10,000 I think.  People get sacked for lesser offences.  I could have covered up my error. I could have blamed it on someone else.  I could have lied. I could have ignored it and quite possibly no one would have caught it.  But I didn't do any of those things.

I walked right into my boss's office and said, "I really fucked this up. I'm sorry. I don't have any excuse -- I blew it. I may be able fix it, but I'm uncertain that I can.  Even if I can correct it, this will be the costs to do so and we're still going to have further issues down the line."

I didn't get sacked.  My boss nodded, said thank you for letting him know and go fix it.  A few months later, during my performance review, my error was noted on my appraisal, and I did not receive the highest score I could have. This meant that I wasn't going to get the maximum pay rise possible, nor would I receive the highest bonus possible.  I accepted this and did not complain, because this is result I had truly earned.  More important, however, is that I learned from my mistake and changed my working habits to ensure that I would never again miss a deadline.

It would have been so easy to ignore my error, or to blame it on someone else. But the truth is, I would have hated myself for it. It goes against everything I believe in.

So back to the Twitter thing from yesterday.  I saw a tweet from Simon Chapman that said this:

Indeed, if you go to that link, you see that way back in 2008 someone asked for help in responding to a poll to fight an ordinance in Maine, USA. Well, yeah, doing this is wrong, but we also know that it happens all the time -- most groups on any issue whatsoever, tend to do this too.

To imply that only "pro-tobacco" groups would rig polls, that this is a standard for pro-smokers, is disingenuous and dishonest.  Simon Chapman knows this, of course.  We all know that on-line polls will be manipulated by people if it's possible to do it. People will rig general elections if they can get away with it.  It's not right. It's not fair. We should speak out against it when it happens, and the Root of All Evil has every right to point out that someone was manipulating an on-line poll.  I don't fault him for doing so, even though it happened four years ago.

But since the Root of All Evil mentions sanctimony, as if "his side" of the smoking issue is somehow perfect, righteous, truthful and beyond reproach, I had to say something. I could have ignored it.  I mean, this is what Chapman does all the time -- standard practice for him, if you will, to find fault with everyone and everything that is "pro-tobacco" no matter how petty it is.

So after careful deliberation, I tweeted this response:

I thought my tweet to Simon Chapman was polite. Well, I did add a #hypocrisy hashtag -- as you do on Twitter.  I had no intention of tweeting to him further. If it's not clear from my tweet above, back in late April of this year, I discovered that ASH Australia was asking supporters to rig a petition in the Netherlands.  So I tweeted about that with this image:

Source via ASH Australia's Facebook Page

Well, it is clear that ASH Australia was trying to influence another nation's tobacco control policies. Obviously, it's wrong to do that. It seems both sides of the smoking issues debate are capable of asking people to manipulate polls and petitions. 

Now, I knew that by tweeting that to Simon Chapman (note: I think this was the first time I have ever tweeted to him) that he would block me on Twitter or he has somehow protected his tweets.  I knew he would do this because he has done it to a number of other so-called "pro-smoking/tobacco" accounts on Twitter who have called him out in the past.  Certainly, I did not expect any kind of reply, like ""Yes, I admit the people on my side also did the same thing, and we/they were wrong to do it."

I was not surprised, though. Simon Chapman, who I call The Root of All Evil, did precisely what I thought he would do.  Because I know precisely how he operates and people rarely surprise me.

But since I also know that Chapman visits this blog occasionally, I'm going to offer him a chance to make it right.

I would like to know if Chapman is capable of surprising me.

I would like to know if Simon Chapman has any integrity. 

For if he does surprise me and admits that ASH Australia was no better than the people on the Forces forum, I will stop calling him The Root of All Evil.

I will then go through every post on my blog that he's tagged in and remove the label "Simon Chapman is Most Definitely a Hateful Cunt". 

I will stand up and admit "I got it wrong about him in this case."

I don't care where or how Simon Chapman says it -- Twitter, on a blog somewhere -- I would be grateful, however, if Simon would let me know so that I can live up to my end of the deal.  I am on Facebook here if you or someone else would like to message me privately with the location of any response you make.

So what say you, sir?  Are you a man of integrity?  Or will you consider yourself above this request from a guy "who never exaggerates and has the gift," and ignore it?  The choice is yours.

Mean-Spirited Horrible People

You know those professional anti-smoker campaigners who say they care about smokers?  Don't believe them.

Now before I get into that, let me say that I can appreciate irony and black humour as much as anyone, perhaps more than most. I have a wicked, dark sense of humour. Sometimes people have no idea if I was joking, because I usually say things deadpan. If I get the sense that someone thinks I was being serious, I can tell them it was a joke. Once people get to know me, they realise not to take the dark things I say at face value. I am, after all, trying to make them laugh.

Sometimes we laugh and joke about tragedies as a means of coping with how awful things are. We don't do it to be hateful or mean-spirited. It's not even a question of right or wrong, offensive or inoffensive, although political correctness has tilted the landscape in favour of it being unacceptable, often with legal consequences if we go by recent events. There can be humour in most anything. I believe there is a bit of darkness in everyone, and one way of managing that darkness is to laugh at it. 

Some people find dead baby jokes funny, because these are often absurdly implausible and so awful in their bad taste that they transcend all vestiges of common decency and float in the murky realm of black improbability.  The majority of these jokes are not malicious, nor are they aimed at actual baby deaths and real people's tragedies (although some are indeed). They are generic by design and they are not meant to hurt anyone, yet some people (859 people in the UK at the time of this writing) are genuinely aggrieved by such jokes so much that they believe government should do something about them.

Old Warner Brothers cartoons (Bugs Bunny and Road Runner for instance) are a perfect example of using using over the top violence and black humour to make you laugh. Perhaps it helps a great deal that we know these cartoons are not real, that the hand-drawn violence depicted in glorious artistic detail is meted out on fictional characters in a fictional two-dimensional universe. The same goes for many campy horror films. The violence is often so extreme and bizarre that it is simultaneously disgusting and funny.  Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies are a brilliant example of camp horror.

But the above are all fictional things, and that makes it easier and more socially acceptable to laugh at them.

It's an entirely different thing when we laugh at the circumstances and tragedies of real people. Joking about real people can be just as funny to some people as laughing at cartoon scenarios. It's not nice nor politically correct; it's usually inappropriate for polite company, but that inappropriateness coupled with the darkness within each of us makes many people laugh nevertheless. Quite simply, some people laugh because they are shocked at how inappropriate the joke is. And some laugh because they are shocked that the joke teller had the temerity to say exactly what they had also been thinking but would never dare say aloud themselves for fear offending others. Perhaps that laughter is a form of releasing the guilt they felt. I don't know, everyone is different.

With every inappropriate joke, it all comes down to the joke teller's intent. Is the joker trying to make you laugh, to bring out that darkness in you, or is the joker being incredibly hateful, derisory, and mean-spirited by ridiculing those who they disagree with and falsely dressing up their beliefs as jokes and attempting to pass it off as "irony."

This sense of passing off one's hate as irony brings us back to the anti-smoker crusaders. To be honest, I wasn't certain if I was going to write about this.  Knowing my own inclination for black humour and my appreciation for it, I had to sleep on this one before coming to a decision on whether to write this post or ignore it. Am I singling out these people because I strongly disagree with their views on tobacco control? Is my personal bias affecting me in some way, making me read more into something than what it really was?  Am I just being a prick about this?  I wasn't sure yesterday, so I talked to someone else about it for their opinion, and then I slept on it.

When I woke up this morning, it was the first thing on my mind and all I could think about was the human tragedy aspect of it. Some people are going to lose their jobs, their livelihoods because of this due to no fault of their own.  That's not funny.  If the situation had gone another way and unnoticed (or if no one bothered to care) then people could have become very ill and likely would have died a horrible, painful death from caesium-137 radiation poisoning.  Not funny either.

Upon waking, I came to the conclusion that only mean-spirited, horrible people would find irony and/or humour in other people suffering; that their agenda to destroy tobacco companies, tobacco farmers and those who use tobacco products has clearly blinded them to the reality that there was a huge potential for gross harm far beyond any dangers that smoking may cause to some smokers. We don't laugh at people who get cancer because that's cruel. We don't laugh at people who get radiation sickness because that's hateful and mean-spirited. When your beliefs and ideology makes you hate things so much that you fail to recognise that people will suffer, then you're an asshole.  Only the True Believers in the Public Health religion would find irony and humour in this, and in my opinion, that makes them evil.

So what's the story?

"Fukushima tobacco contaminated with radiation"
Japan's largest cigarette maker has cancelled the purchase of tobacco leaves from Fukushima after they were found to be contaminated with elevated levels of radiation. Japan Tobacco says routine checks of dried tobacco leaves from Fukushima have revealed that some of the crop is contaminated with radioactive caesium above the company's safety limit.

See, JTI did the right thing here by refusing to purchase contaminated, radioactive tobacco, and you can see how the True Believers in the tobacco control industry would relish this event. On the other hand, what if JTI had bought and used the tobacco anyway?  Can you imagine how the tobacco control industry would have relished that as well?  They would have had a field day.  But JTI made the right decision, and the only thing left for the True Believers is satirical "irony."

To wit, here is the green-energy campaigning schoolteacher Fran Barlow's tweet about it (a chronic re-tweeter of the Root of All Evil's tweets, by the way):

Naturally, such delicious hateful irony appeals to the Root of All Evil's prurience, and he tweeted thusly:

And just so you don't think it's an isolated event and limited to these Australian twats from hell, here's another piece of shit's take on it, a guy named John M. Watson who works for ASH Scotland:

This brings us to a on-line journalist named Adam Westlake, who works for the Japan Daily Press website. He's a guy who is clearly trying to make a joke out of it, but it falls flat on its face and merely comes off as being insensitive and cruel to any smoker who gets cancer (emphasis added):

Smokers in Japan are in for a bit of an eye-opener about their already unhealthy habit: Japan Tobacco Inc. has stated that some of its dried tobacco leaves coming from Fukushima Prefecture this year tested positive for radioactive cesium at levels above the 100 becquerels per kilogram limit. While this shouldn’t cause a panic, as the tobacco conglomerate will cancel the order for the 4.5 tons of leaves, but would it really have been that much worse if some cigarettes, which already cause cancer, had some radiation thrown in too?

Why, yes, Adam, it would have been a lot worse.  There's a huge difference between accepting the risk that smoking may cause cancer, and unknowingly using a product that is contaminated with radioactive caesium. This attitude towards smokers is what denormalisation of smoking is all about. Smokers are sub-human in these people's minds.

But what about the farmers?  Does anyone care about them?  Well, no. Tobacco farmers are every bit as guilty as tobacco companies in the Root of All Evil's view.  For example:

By the way, 30 million farmers is greater than combined population of Australia and New Zealand

Or this:

 

Simon Chapman clearly believes that anyone who has anything to do with tobacco should be destroyed. I doubt he cares about smokers. He only wants to destroy the tobacco industry and anyone who gets in his way must be obliterated too. His lack of empathy or sympathy for those who do suffer is astonishing considering that he claims that he's trying to protect people. He's not, though. This makes him a hateful cunt.

And yeah, let's talk about suffering. The Japanese farmers are suffering from this incident due to no fault of their own. They didn't cause the nuclear incident in their area. All they do is grow tobacco. That's not a crime... yet. The real story, the real human tragedy can be read here (note: the article is badly translated from Japanese to English, so it is difficult to read and more than a bit weird (possibly a bit funny in its own way due to the translation), yet the sentiment of hardship and struggling is clear and you need to read the whole thing to really understand it all):

7 years ago, at the age of 27, Naoya Ohashi from his grandparents who took over the farm, continue to maintain their tobacco.He is very proud to be able to stably supply against a variety of diseases of tobacco.He said, when forced to dispose of so much seedling when, he is ready to collapse.

[...]

Fukushima growers because land nuclear contamination and had to give up a smoke, this makes a lot of farmers to leave, and this is planted tobacco.But for the cigarette quality and public health, the tobacco companies of Japan before the acquisition of tobacco leaves of a radioactive substance undertakes detecting strictly, if exceed the standard, the tobacco can only be destroyed.The farmers strike would be great, because once the tobacco was declared the death penalty, Fukushima Prefecture tobacco planting industry will face the crowning calamity.

Better translation: Farmers who historically grow tobacco in the Fukushima Prefecture have had to dispose of their tobacco crops due to caesium contamination. Many farmers had to abandon the area and leave because they couldn't survive.  Those who remain are struggling to get by, since they cannot sell their crops. These people may lose their farms, and then what will they do? None of this is their fault.

But you won't find people like the Root of All Evil, Fran Barlow, or John Watson giving a flying fuck about the Japanese farmers' plight.  I wonder if they all secretly hope that all of the farmers in Fukushima will die from caesium poisoning themselves.

It wouldn't surprise me if they do think that, because they are all mean-spirited horrible people.

Yes, He is Still a Petty Hateful Bastard

It's been a while since I've last written about the Root of All Evil.  If you were wondering, yes it's true that he remains a hateful, petty bastard.  I suppose the question that often comes to my mind is why do people willingly associate themselves with this tyrant? Have a look at this latest tweet:

The video's premise (whether it is real or staged I cannot say) has very young children in Thailand asking smokers if they have a light. In all cases, the smokers tell the kids no, and that these kids shouldn't smoke, lecturing the kids about how bad smoking is.  Then the kids give the smokers a brochure that suggests that if they care about the kids not smoking, maybe the smokers should think of themselves first.  All of this is well and good, but the Root of All Evil cannot be satisfied by merely promoting the video.  No, no, no. He has to attack Snowdon and the HOOPs campaigners by implying that they would want the children to smoke.  What a dickhead.

Now, Snowdon and HOOPs can defend themselves if they feel it is necessary.  I have never seen them suggest any such thing.

The reason I'm blogging about this is because I feel it's necessary to point out how much the tobacco control industry reveres hateful, petty fuckwits like Simon Chapman.  They have been following his lead for decades, and they all believe like he does that you smokers are out to make every child become a smoker.  This isn't about attacking Big Tobacco. This is about attacking you for disagreeing with their fascist nannying belief systems. This is about attacking you for using a legal product.  This is about denormalisation. This is about vilification. This is what hate campaigns look like.

In a comment made on the previous post, Henry said that "Twitter is just haiku for morons."  That's often very true. But Twitter is also a platform for malicious hate campaigns. The Root of All Evil is a master of hate, and anyone who would agree with him and his Nazi-like tactics deserves endless scorn.

Morons in Paper Bags

In what I can only describe as sheer twattery of the highest magnitude, the latest Twitter craze for the packet racket sheep minions is to upload a photo of yourself wearing a paper sack.  For some this might be viewed as a cosmetic improvement.  We can only hope this craze catches on and we can't wait to see what you sheep come up with next. It's almost as good as kids wearing khaki shirts.

Here are the first three I've seen, and may we suggest that you wear them all the time, please? No, seriously...

Big Soda is the New Big Tobacco

I have said it before, and so have others far more often than I have, but it's always worth repeating:  "Of course tobacco is unique. There is nothing else like it."  Except for Big Soda. Yes, Big Soda they are calling it now.  Does that sound familiar?  There is another war afoot and it's against sugar. Sugar is the new tobacco. Fresh off the heels of Bloomberg's latest insanity, we see the freshly-oiled gears of the health racket machine whirring into action in Washington DC with the National Soda Summit (PDF) on 7th and 8th June.  And although you probably missed it and didn't even know about it, Twitter was thrumming with endless tweets about how Big Soda was killing everybody. 

Michele Simon, a health lawyer and food activist advocate who has a book and corresponding web site called Appetite for Profit, tweeted:

Here is the link to that USA Today article Michele had tweeted, where Coca-Cola President and General Manager of Sparkling Beverages, Katie Bayne, attempts to defend her brand.  Poor Katie. They will vilify you.  We welcome you into the fold nevertheless.

Katie Bayne - Image via Coca-Cola

Here is one more tweet from Michele to for good measure:

Note the responses in the above tweet. Do these at all sound familiar?  They should to those familiar with the attacks against smokers and tobacco companies.  The web site tweeted is http://www.letsclearitup.org/ and there the American Beverage Association attempts to separate myth from fact. They will of course fail because they and Katie Bayne have learnt nothing from the fight against Big Tobacco.  Evidence does not matter.  In the exclusive interview with USA Today, Katie was asked if sugar is addictive. Here's the exchange:

Q: What do you say to those who believe that sugar — particularly in soft drinks — works on the brain like an addictive substance?
 
A: There is no scientific evidence. 

See? There is no scientific evidence. This is the same argument that Big Tobacco and its proponents have used for decades, and yet we know (or should know by now!) that this response does not work even if it is true.  If there is no true scientific evidence, then someone in the health racket industry will invent and publish a peer-reviewed study that claims sugar added to carbonated water is a gazillion times more addictive than it otherwise would be, thereby making everyone helplessly obese and diabetic. There is no safe level of sugar intake. That study will be cited endlessly by other studies and in the media until it becomes fact. Because the truth is only what we choose to believe. If someone debunks the gospel against sugar in soft drinks study, then the zealots of health control will attack the scientist as a stooge for Big Soda.

Some others you are likely to be familiar with who have jumped on the bandwagon are Gabriel Scally and Simon Chapman - Root of All Evil. There is always room for another cause. Right, guys?  Of course there is.

Gabriel Scally

Simon Chapman - Root of All Evil

Lastly, here is someone you should keep an eye on, if you are not already aware of her. Her name is Megan. Do not be fooled by her sweetly innocent looks - she is a true believer . She's not only a anti-soda health activist, she's also quite active in anti-tobacco campaigns, where I think she started her career in health zealotry. She's young and will be around for years to come probably, long after the Root of All Evil retires and fades into obscurity. Indeed, she is very likely to become the Spawn of Root of All Evil. We shall see. Here's a retweet with reply in respect of Big Soda being the same as Big Tobacco.

Megan Yarbrough

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