Christopher Hitchens is a twat

In his excellent review of Allan Brandt's The Cigarette Century, Robert N. Proctor reminds us that every year five million people die prematurely from smoking and the number will grow to about ten million in the next two decades. A hundred million people died prematurely as a result of smoking in the 20th century and ten times that will die in the present century if trends continue.

It was not until the 1990s that manufacturers admitted any real harms caused by smoking. Part of this about-face was dictated by a change in legal strategy, which by this time had recentered around the argument that 'everyone has always known' that smoking is bad for you--so people have only themselves to blame for whatever diseases they contract from the habit.

What a disappointment after this to come across Christopher Hitchens, opposing a ban on smoking in public places -- or keeping an end of the swimming pool for peeing in.

See also Chris Jordan's Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait (scroll down for image of 65,000 cigarettes, denoting the number of US teenagers who become addicted every month).

Hubbard

There's fuss about John Sweeney's outburst after he was bullied by Thetans. For a cool, calm and collected approach, try Alex Gaeta's investigation.

"The Ultimate Staff Guy"

“The irony of the whole situation is, he was bluffing,” [George Tenet] Slam said of Saddam on “Larry King Live” on Monday night, adding, “And he didn’t know we weren’t.” Mr. He-Man Tenet didn’t understand the basics of poker, much less Arab culture. It never occurred to him that Saddam might feign strength to flex muscles at his foes in the Middle East? Slam couldn’t take some of that $40 billion we spend on intelligence annually and get a cultural profile of the dictator before we invaded?...

“By your silence you helped build the case for war,” the former C.I.A. officials wrote [to Tenet]. "....Although C.I.A. officers learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered Bin Laden an enemy ... you still went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to Al Qaeda. ...your tenure as head of the C.I.A. has helped create a world that is more dangerous. ... It is doubly sad that you seem still to lack an adequate appreciation of the enormous amount of death and carnage you have facilitated.”

-- Maureen Dowd Better Never Than Late.

Swindle

George Marshall asks Why was the Great Global Warming Swindle was so persuasive? and comes up with some useful and thoughtful observations about media manipulation.

Bowdlerowitz

John Cassidy's long New Yorker profile of Paul Wolfowitz, purporting to be warts and all, is worth a look. But it has at least one glaring ommission. Referring to the time in early 2003 when the Turkish parliament turned down a request by the United States that Turkey allow U.S. troops through Turkey in order to invade Iraq, Cassidy reports an innocuous comment Wolfowitz made later about the virtues of democracy. What he does not say is that at the time Wolfowitz criticised the Turkish army for not intervening over the decision made by the civilian government.

[P.S. 1 May - Cassidy's article, and my post, just predate the whole scandal blowing open. One of the most amusing takes on that scandal, by Kenneth Rogoff no less, was published in Foreign Affairs for here].

"anti-educational and misleading"

Carl Wunsch responds to Channel 4 and WAGTV on RealClimate.

For those in the UK, Sonny Kahn has advice on how to complain to Ofcom at comment 51 of Swindeled!.

Left behind

[The] lie is up. What is now blindingly clear to the naked eye, for anyone who cares to look, is that the neocon agenda vis-a-vis Iran has never been about democracy or human rights. What the neocons want in Tehran is a pro-U.S. and pro-Israeli regime; whether it’s a democratic one or not is an entirely secondary matter to them. And Iranian dissidents know this, which is why they want nothing to do with the neocons. Note that the funds the State Department earmarked last year for democracy promotion in Iran met with a resounding thud among dissidents, who see right through the neocons and their agenda.

This is not only a critique of the neocons, though; it’s also a challenge to those on the Left who have bought into the neocons’ Big Lie about being the bosom buddies of Iran’s dissidents. Due to intellectual laziness, a preference for moral simplicity, existential bad faith, or some combination thereof, lots of leftists have opted out of even expressing moral support, let alone standing in active solidarity with, Iranian dissidents, often on the specious grounds that the latter are on the CIA’s payroll or are cozy with the neocons. Utter and complete tripe.

-- Danny Postel, talking about Reading "Legitimation Crisis" in Tehran

Sharing the joy

This message has gone to Channel 4 and WAG TV, broadcaster and production company behind "The Great Global Warming Swindle":

It is fantastic news that Channel Four and WAG TV are collaborating to tell the British public about the fraud that is the so-called scientific case for anthropogenic climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the national science academies of Canada, China, Brazil, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, India, Japan, Russia and the United States can finally be consigned to the dustbin of history -- along with those who claim that millions of Jews and other human vermin were exterminated by the Nazis and those who say that smoking is addictive and bad for your health.

Please do confirm that Channel 4 is going ahead with this broadcast, and will not be daunted by any controversy.

May I suggest that Channel 4, whose chief executive was the genius behind the "I can't believe it's not butter" campaign, continue to demonstrate signal courage and foresight by broadcasting O J Simpson's interview in which he talks about "If I did it"?