When is an "Anti-IMF" Demo a PRO-IMF Demo?
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Over the years, we have watched Earth Day devolve into an exhibit of corporate Greenwashing. Corporations that do damage to the planet and its wild and human inhabitants now replace those who work to protect the planet from these very industries.

There is another way to distract and derail consumer and environmental activism against the toxics/cancer-causing industries: it's the Pretend Enemy tactic. Industry PR agents may from a group, or convince an existing group, to "organize" against this or that notoriously Bad Industry...except the idea is to MINIMIZE the damage. It's to become like the cops in "Chinatown" who do, as Jack Nicholson's character said, "...as little as possible".

Perhaps the most successful use of the Pretend Enemy ploy occurred when Big Asbestos entered into a "settlement"... and thereby avoided bankruptcy, avoided full responsibility for harms, and screwed untold numbers of victims out of rights to challenge or to get compensation.

On Sept 23, a week before the REAL IMF protests, a group called "Essential Action" demonsrated at the IMF building. They used a big "Marlboro" box labeled as "Pack of Lies". If the lies of omission and commission by both the Cigarette Cartel AND these "anti-tobacco" entities were put into a "pack of lies" it would be about the size of the UN building. (See "IMF tobacco protest tomorrow" on DC indymedia site at dc.indymedia.org/front.php3

Described as a "small protest", at IMF headquarters, a Wash. DC group called Essential Action (sad to say, a spin-off from Nader groups) demonstrated that the IMF wasn't doing enough to fight "smoking" and was, in fact, promoting it. Sounds quite wholesome, doesn't it? Well, to all appearances, this constitutes either an intentional fraud on the public, or an abysmally ignorant action that actually benefits the Cigarette Cartel, the very industry it purports to condemn. Are we supposed to believe that the "anti-smoking" crusade, as seen in Corporate Media about every two minutes...as promoted by top corporations and top gov't recipients of corporate funding...is a "grassroots"....almost anarchistic...movement?
Not flipping likely.

Here's a list of points to consider about this event, and this crusade. Apply these to not only "Essential Action" but virtually any of the well-funded "anti-smoking" groups around the land:

* They never define "smoking" or "cigarette" or even "tobacco", the very things they say they oppose. This isn't just junk science,it's NO science. "Smoke" can mean emissions from anything burning. Smoke from a burning Vinyl factory is catastrophically different from smoke from, say, burning natural plants. It can mean smoke from tobacco. HOWEVER, smoke from a typical cigarette contains FAR more than tobacco smoke...IF it contains tobacco smoke.
It's got radiation from the still legal use of contaminated phosphate tobacco fertilizers; there's dioxin from a host of chlorine adulterants; and more smoke from any number of many hundreds of untested, often toxic and carcinogenic non-tobacco additives. Generally, this is smoke that is outlawed from industrial incinerators but, to protect the complicit industries from liability, it is still, incredibly, permitted in cigs despite the famous health problems. Honest science and medicine REQUIRES that this smoke be analyzed and described...certainly before any claims are made about dangers of tobacco.

* Essential Action's ignoring of the MANY secret, untested, deadly non-tobacco parts of cigs HELPS cigarette makers by bringing the liabilities and even possible criminal charges down to a bare minimum...as if they only sold natural tobacco...as if this is what Native American peoples used for 10,000 years.

* They ignore the 450 still legal (!) tobacco pesticides and the residues that contaminate cigarettes and unwitting consumer's lungs. This protects the entire Big Oil and Big Pharmaceutical which make tobacco pesticides. Essential Action, helpfully, casts all blame for diseases on the tobacco plant. This gaping hole in their information also protects the industry-funded legislators who, to this day, ignore and allow pesticide residues in typical cigarettes, despite indisputable and unavoidable harms.

* Essential Action ignores dioxin, from chlorine, not tobacco, in cigarette smoke. Dioxin is a by-product of incineration of chlorine elements...such as chlorine-bleached cigarette paper, chlorine pesticides, pesticide contaminated agricultural additives and chlorine contaminated industrial waste cellulose used to make fake tobacco. (See US Patents about that.) One CANNOT, now, ignore dioxin. There is no safe dose and it bioaccumulates. The US has finally declared it a KNOWN Human Carcinogen, and the US actually signed an international treaty to globally eliminate dioxin. Dioxin's noted effects include...besides cancer...hormone disruption, nervous system damage, learning disabilities,birth defects and pregnancy disruption....for starters.
Why then are chlorine elements still permitted in cigarettes? To indict it and remove it would cause liability problems, to say the least, for Big Oil, Big Pesticides, Big Paper and Pulp, the Agricultural conglomerates, Pharmaceuticals and others...all who are driving forces of the IMF....and World Bank.

* Essential Action has never revealed, or even raised the question about just how harmful TOBACCO, itself, is. If real or determined effects of using plain tobacco proved to be significantly different than the well-noted effects from using the typical Dioxin Dowels (or Pesticide Pegs?), this would constitute a massive indictment of the cig adulterants industries, the cig makers, and the paid-off officials who coldly let this continue for decades. It would also severely indict the media for gross failures to question a bit of this.

[ NOTE: This is NOT to say that even the purest tobacco is without SOME risk, like anything else. The thing is, no studies have been presented to SHOW what the risk IS. Also, tobacco smoke, as opposed to typical cigarette smoke, is INCAPABLE of causing all the diseases laid at it's door. Dioxin, on the other hand, IS known to cause those things. ]

* Essential Action fails to say a word about top US Health (!) Insurers ownership of holdings in top cigarette firms. Insurers and investors in the Cig Cartel (manufacturers and ingredients suppliers), like Essential Action, prefer to ignore everything except tobacco. No one except God or Mother Nature can be sued for "manufacturing tobacco"...but these entities CAN be sued, and rightly jailed, for mass poisoning (and killing)of uninformed consumers.

* Essential Action claims to want to "protect the kids". Really? It ignores
"burn accelerants" in cigs that cause thousands of fires a year that injure, orphan or kill kids. As noted above, it ignores dioxin which is especially harmful to the young. And it ignores all the sweet and flavorful and soothing additives that make typical products so appealing to young tastes.
Essential Action, in the glorious tradition of Police Security States everywhere, promotes "tougher" laws ON THE KIDS!...the victims! It also supports "tougher" laws on shop owners (who had NOTHING to do with creating Marlboros or other mini-toxics-incinerators) and on others...anyone BUT the perpetrators.

* Essential Action has no concerns about the inevitable consequences of any potential Prohibition...of yet another natural plant...for the economic benefit of pretty much the SAME industries that benefit from Prohibition of cannabis.
(Remember...hemp, pot's non-psychoactive cousin...is a threat to Big Oil in that it could REPLACE a wide variety of oil/petrochemical products. And, since hemp is non toxic...it's use would make petrochemicals look even worse than seen now, by comparison. There would BE no comparison of harms because hemp doesn't HAVE any.)

* Essential Action calls this "tobacco". That, coincidentally, is JUST what the cigarette makers themselves call it! This, despite popularity of the term, is INCORRECT. If one knows better, it may a LIE. If one knows better and uses the term under oath...it's perjury and other crimes relating to evasion of process of law. An ally of Essential Action is a smarmy group called "Tobacco Free Kids". Funny...if kids smoke certain cigarettes, they may ALREADY be "tobacco free".
There is no requirement that a cigarette contain any tobacco at all! A typical cig may be partly or entirely made, in many patented processes, of fake tobacco derived from things like Paper Manufacturing Waste, Municipal Paper Waste, Timber Products Waste, Food Processing Waste and so forth.
One would THINK that if a group works to condemn Big Cig, it would mention this, and other, scandalous, indicting facts. Essential Action has nothing but blind eyes and shut mouths about all of it.

* Essential Action claims to frown on "addiction"...but, oddly, refuses to condemn the STILL LEGAL (forgive caps) addition of Addiction Enhancing substances in typical smokes.

* Essential Action demands "openness in government" etc...but, strangely, fails to ask for a listing of cigarette ingredients. The US Senate was scheduled to recently address the issue of the FDA regulating cigarettes...which would, of course, entail listing and testing of ALL non-tobacco constituents. Essential Action's "tobacco" e-mail list and its web site forgot to announce this possible legislation (S. 2626).

* Essential Action purports to be a Crusader Against Corporate Crime and misdeeds etc. Not so sure. It ignores the juicy fact that the famous cigarette "settlements" with states are so fraudulent that they actually PERMIT the money (from smokers, not from investors) to be RETURNED to various parts of the cigarette industry!!
Dave Barry, in Wash. Post, mentioned this money going to tobacco growers in one case. But...it may also go to insurers that insure cig makers and additives suppliers, it may go to insurers that have huge investments in manufacturers and suppliers, it may go to pharmaceuticals that make tobacco pesticides and additives, and it may go to cig advertisers.
Where it is NOT going is to prosecution of those responsible for putting non-tobacco toxins and carcinogens into cigarettes. It is NOT going to health care for uninformed, unprotected and insufficiently warned victims. It is NOT going for any campaign to REPEAL the insane 1984 Comprehensive Smoking Education Act...that FORBIDS even Congress members or Public Health officials (or liability lawyers) to reveal what's in a cigarette!
And it's sure not going to subsidize organic tobacco farming...to prevent farm land loss, to eliminate one of the two most pesticide drenched crops (cotton being the other), to mitigate risks, to lower smoking rates, to produce bio- mass for non-smoking uses, and to prevent the nightmare of another "drug" Prohibition.

So...what's Essential Action doing "protesting" at the IMF?? In light of the above, it seems clear that the goal is to take advantage of the great successes of REAL protesters and demonstrators and to trick activists into JOINING the "war on tobacco" that, as noted above, serves the IMF and World Bank and top polluting, health damaging industries so well.

I haven't seen further news of this Essential Action "protest" but it's doubtful if there was any tear gas, arrests or trouble with cops that would be signs of a real, potentially-effective action against corporate/gov't crime. Essential Action didn't choose to join the legitimate protests a week later.
This "protest" might be compared, for the sake of illustration, to a protest at the Torture Device Industry...for not hiring the handicapped.

Just one place to start self-educating about this so-far "Taboo" issue is at www.ktc.com/~bdrake There's links there to all sorts of interesting things that, so far, have not appeared in the papers...even most progressive ones, for some reason