If you read my letters from India during COP7, you might see a lot you recognise here from Reason TV.
Especially worth watching out for is the camera trained exclusively on the public area (around 2:10 mins in) as mentioned in my report from the Monday, as well as the peaceful protest by tobacco farmers being aggressively broken up at behest of the FCTC, and the media being physically ejected.
It seems bizarre after watching this, but the WHO at the time actually tried to say that their obnoxious behaviour was not their fault at all; that instead it was those evil tobacco companies just making it all up.
You have the proof above, what are your thoughts?
I might like, at this point, to remind you that Geneva, the venue for COP8, isn't far away and 2018 isn't either. Keep an eye on flights cos they're cheaper if you book early.
By far the funniest story of this COP7 week for me was the curious case of the voluntary spunking of UK taxes by our delegation, most probably aided and abetted as usual by ASH.
This was the obsequious praise heaped upon our lot in Monday's news round-up.
If you weren't aware of it, this is because when asked for more cash by the FCTC, the UK delegation - while the rest of the world's tobacco tax scroungers at COP7 looked at the floor and wisely sat on their hands - voluntarily coughed up another £15m of your money, with which to bully smokers in other countries. As The Sun explains ...
WHITEHALL busybodies were slammed last night after signing off £15 million of UK taxpayers money to stop people smoking in poor countries like North Korea and Syria. The Department of Health will use Britain’s aid budget to support global quitting measures — prompting calls for the money to be spent on doctors and nurses back in Britain.
The crazy hand out was confirmed yesterday at the UN World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control conference in Greater Noida, India. Britain committed to contributing £3 million per year until 2021 to the ‘Agenda for Sustainable Development’.
Now, if I'm a politician in the UK government, this makes perfect sense to me. Because, you see, they're constantly getting it in the neck for handing out development cash willy-nilly only for governments in developing countries to spend it how they choose (remember India's space programme?).
But this has a tag on it called "bash the smokers" so will be seen as targeted action. Especially since we are talking about those icky foreign smokers, it's just a no-brainer for your common or garden career politician, isn't it? It buys off some of the UKIP-style criticism of overseas aid and is easily explained.
But last night the Department of Health defended the cash boost, saying: “Smoking rates in many countries are much higher than in the UK and all UN members have a role to play in bringing them down to reduce deaths where the need is greatest.”
They're not wrong. UK tobacco controllers have been jubilant about how successful they have been (even though most of the big shift has been down to e-cigs), so why would we need to spend so much cash on UK stop smoking initiatives when attendance at stop smoking services is drastically down?
A sharp decline in the number of smokers using an NHS support programme to help them quit has been linked to the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes.
Nationwide figures have shown a similar trend to those in the south west of Scotland.
In 2013, the Information Services Division reported that the number of attempts to stop smoking had fallen by 13% compared with 2012.
This is just part of a fairly long-running trend, numbers using such services have fallen dramatically since 2010 when widespread uptake of e-cigs started to take hold.
Of course, if user numbers are down, it follows naturally that government would be reluctant to spend the same funding on it, hence why stop smoking services are reportedly strapped for cash. In fact, ASH produced a report recently detailing this very phenomena.
Overall, smoking cessation budgets were down: in 39 per cent of local authorities, smoking cessation budgets had been cut compared to only 5 per cent where they had increased. They stayed the same in 54 per cent of local authorities. More than a quarter of local authorities (29 per cent) had seen cuts of more than 5 per cent.
And rightly so. If fewer people are using the services it's obvious that the funds should be spent elsewhere. As yer man from the Department of Health said above, "smoking rates in many countries are much higher than in the UK", so obviously all committed, upstanding, philanthropic anti-smokers would applaud the cash being diverted from the UK to other places where prevalence is higher. Yes?
Again, as a politician, this is two birds with one stone. I get to give a tangible reason for part of the much-criticised aid budget and also to justify cuts to UK services since it is admitted that tobacco control has been so wildly successful that there is little demand for old-fashioned stop smoking clinics.
My own personal view is that stop smoking services are not required at all, for two reasons. One, it is no role of the state to pay for people to quit something they have chosen to do simply because government doesn't like it; and two, in recent times there are many options other than government interventions which can do the same job. When there are rumours that such services might close, it's a reason for celebration because they are a vast nationwide waste of money. I have to say it is especially sweet to hear about their (quite rightly) being cut in the constituency of one of ASH's lapdogs such as Bob Blackman, something which he complained about recently in the House of Commons. Delicious.
So congratulations to the UK delegation for re-allocating £15m of our taxes from where the tobacco control industry considers it is not needed, to where it is. And it was the UK anti-smoking delegates who went to India and voluntarily signed off the re-distribution.
As a result, from now on the bleating about how stop smoking services are struggling for cash really should cease, because after Monday any sane politician wouldn't even consider changing their mind. After all, ASH and the DH have just admitted that the funding is needed far more elsewhere than in the UK.
I've been home for just a couple of hours after a particularly revealing week in India for the COP7 conference, and I have to say I'm feeling quite smug.
Long-term readers here will remember that I've been writing for nearly six years now about how e-cigs have the capacity to show up the tobacco control industry for the corrupt, self-perpetuating, anti-social, health-be-damned gravy train that it has been since the early 1970s. This week has proved that hypothesis 100% correct.
Trading only on prejudice and the pursuit of power and tax-funding, this gargantuan enterprise has been perverted to such an extent that it is now incapable - due to a tangled web of prior deceit and funding arrangements - to cope adequately with a nimble breakthrough technology such as vaping. The FCTC has spent so much time setting itself up to be untouchable on tobacco, parroting junk science at every opportunity and routinely exploiting children, that it is now so heavily bureaucratic and conflicted that it finds itself totally stuffed and flailing now they have decided (wrongly) that they should deal with e-cigs.
So what we have seen this week is their usual disingenuous tactics fail miserably, so much so that when the light of publicity is shone in their direction, they scuttle like cockroaches muttering the same old canards they have managed to get away with before, but which simply won't wash anymore.
Let's list the main ones, eh?
1) Everyone who objects is a shill.
Perfectly exhibited by this clown, although he is only one of many to have tried this utterly pathetic defence in the past few days.
Delegates attending #COP7FCTC : #Vape "advocates" are the same as #BigTobacco mercenaries. Do not get distracted! Protect your people!
I don't know why such idiots seem to think that accusing perfectly normal, everyday people of being shills is going to help them? It won't make vapers go away, instead it just reinforces the injustice that he and his colleagues are inflicting on them and makes it more likely that they will be active in the future. He is in a political arena but seems incapable of understanding this.
This dismissal of opposing opinions has been a central tactic of anti-tobacco frauds for decades, but it used to be just one of their tools for misleading the public; with e-cigs is has become almost the only one, simply because they don't know how to handle the public they claim to understand because they've never had to before. Therefore it doesn't work, because the storm of social media outrage was overwhelmingly from members of the public who are appalled at the disgusting behaviour of the FCTC in New Delhi.
The FCTC has installed article 5.3 to purposely silence debate; it is its only purpose. But this goes out the window when private citizens get involved. Clinging to such a stupid policy when real people are trying to send messages their way just shows what charlatans tobacco control execs are.
2) Junk science
Debate at the venue in Noida this week has been based entirely on a fabricated fantasy in the form of the laughable COP7 report on e-cigs. It includes every pile of shit that its pharma-conflicted buddies have concocted to try to quell this inconvenient fly in their ointment, and refuses to consider any science - however rigorous and weighty - that might derail their pre-conceived judgement.
I read the documents that were put to the COP7 meeting this week on the subject, and nowhere was it mentioned that the COP7 report had been ripped to shreds by more honest colleagues in their profession. The science on e-cigs only points one way, but the delegates at COP7 think that - just as they did with tobacco - if they just keep lying for long enough, it will all go away and they don't have to change course. They will have to in the end or continue to be mortally embarrassed as they have been this week. But here we are, over a decade since e-cigs arrived on the scene, with their still being incapable of recognising how their reputation is being trashed by their own incompetence.
And talking of incompetence ...
3) Manipulation of the media
The tobacco control industry has relied for many years on the "science by press release" approach whereby a pliant media just parrots what they're told without asking any questions. This just doesn't work when the world can see what tobacco controllers refuse to; that e-cigs are quite obviously a remarkable invention.
The huge uptake of vaping around the world is something the press are now very interested in, and they are asking questions themselves. Apart from a few very lazy hacks, the ears of journalists have been pricked by the visibly accelerating prevalence of vaping and they are curious, especially since vapers tend to be engaged and hunger for news stories about the subject. The upsurge in vaping is a rich seam of visitor clicks for the new online media
In the past the FCTC hasn't needed to be bothered about such things so just trundle out bland - and almost invariably inaccurate - messages to the media before retiring to their state-funded hotels to get pissed and plan their next jamboree.
It doesn't work with vaping and leads to crashingly embarrassing occasions such as this where their spokesperson not only has no clue about the subject matter, but also seems not to understand how their own processes work.
Do watch this, because it highlights how extremely incompetent the organisers of COP7 really are.
5) David fighting Goliath
This deliberately constructed fallacy is one which has served the tobacco control industry well for many years. They tap into the public's mistrust of big businesses - the ones who make cigarettes in particular - and portray themselves as poor, marginalised, under-funded philanthropists fighting against an incomparably-funded enemy.
But the vast majority of e-cig manufacturers are small independent businesses, which the Goliath of tobacco control is putting to the sword at every opportunity worldwide. There were around a thousand activists at COP7, almost exclusively funded by global governments and with the added bonus of patronage from multi-national pharmaceutical companies.
When you have government representatives on all your delegations; are funded generously by one of the most lucrative transnational sectors of big business; spend a week calling unpaid citizen vapers shills and encouraging governments to put small independent start-ups out of business with impossible regulations and state-sanctioned bans; and have the power to ban the press from reporting on what you are doing, you are no longer the fucking David you like to pretend to be!
The tobacco control industry has never been the poor underfunded underdog, and the FCTC's approach to e-cigs proves this fact categorically.
So what now?
Now, I might be wrong but I believe I was the only vaping consumer to be afforded one of the restricted 30 public places to attend COP7 in India (see report of the day here). I was, of course, then banned from observing further detailed proceedings about vaping along with the press and any other interested parties.
However, I'm already hearing that vapers are so consumed with anger at the way COP7 has treated the subject that the next conference in Geneva in 2018 will be attended by many hundreds more. The FCTC now has a two year period of warning to stop being so lazy and to develop some understanding of the products and the people who make and consume them. Personally I hope they don't, because just following the same idle and mendacious lines as they've done for decades with tobacco is working very well for someone like me who just wants to see their total destruction.
I don't believe I'll be disappointed, either, simply for the fact that the FCTC is not fit for purpose. I will write up the quite ridiculous procedure tomorrow on how COP7 debated vaping for 5 days but ended up with exactly the same ill-researched crap that they had produced in Moscow in 2014. The only teaser I'll give is that it's hardly surprising when you allow third world nations the ability to display their ignorant opinons with the full backing of a UN-backed and unelected global quango Goliath.
Those organising COP8 now have two years to start learning about vaping while the science has another two years to further show up their stupidity. If the FCTC thought this year was a trifle uncomfortable, that will be nothing compared with when hundreds of the vapers they have insulted this past week - and hopefully unnecessarily-impoverished manfacturers and vendors too - turn up on their doorstep in 2018.
New Delhi will look like a maiden aunt's garden party by comparison.
I travelled down to the Ojas Art Gallery last night for the much talked about Indian screening of A Billion Lives, scheduled to coincide with the FCTC's COP7.
For Delhi, it was a rather plush venue, but the journey there was quite incredible. On Tuesday evening, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a shock policy which declared that 500 and 1000 rupee notes (about £6 and £12 respectively) cease to be legal tender in 72 hours; the result here has been chaos. India's economy is overwhelmingly a cash one and - although banks will accept the notes for another 50 days - most people don't have a bank account or even ID and the banks were shut yesterday anyway because they had no new notes to give out. So shops and traders have been refusing to take the notes for fear of being left with obsolete cash, and ATMs have been limited to giving out the equivalent of £24 per day. Tourists have also suffered, I was speaking to an Australian last night whose travel cash is now unwanted by restaurants and bars, most of which don't take cards.
One of the only ways of locals being able to get the notes accepted, then, has been through ticket machines and petrol pumps which are programmed to take them, and there just happened to be three large petrol stations on the route I had to take, all of which had massive queues out onto the road as people scrambled to get something for their soon-to-be redundant money.
Fortunately, one of the Indian vapers I met in the afternoon had warned me that although the journey should take 30 minutes, I should leave an hour, so I got there in time after a 50 minute taxi ride from hell. If you've ever been to India you'll know that the roads are anything but ordered, in fact it is every man for himself; it's not so much traffic as a stampede. Well just add in travelling in rush hour with panicking citizens, in the dark, and you can imagine the experience.
After almost an hour in a chaotic, unordered melee of bumper to bumper, wing to wing travel accompanied by a cacophony of vehicle horns, what a welcoming sight the calm red carpet approach was for the screening.
It was beautifully laid out, with flower petal arrangements on the fringes of the carpet, flickering candles lighting the way, and a big sign saying "INDIA" in case you had forgotten where you were.
This led us up to the venue for the evening, the outdoor cinema specially-built for the screening. It was to be A Billion Lives al fresco which was a trifle irritating since I'd not brought a jacket. Ordinarily that wouldn't be much of a problem in India at this time of year, but what with the sun being blocked out by the smog, there was no warm air around and it was quite chilly at times.
The art centre does have a cinema as I understand it but, according to Director Aaron Biebert, Indian rules mean that a film has to be approved a full 12 weeks beforehand, so a privately-built cinema was the only way to get it shown. Still, it meant that vaping was permitted throughout which made the many vapers in attendance very happy.
After a bit of mingling and a drinks reception with spicy hors d'eouvres (which they all are over here, I'm gagging for a bland burger!), the film screening began in front of an attendance of around 70 by my estimation. Most of whom were local vapers or otherwise interested Indians.
Much to the irritation of many vapers who have only seen trailers, I expect, this is the second time I've seen A Billion Lives and I'm by far it's biggest fan. So I don't need to say much about the film itself because I've already done so; you can read my review from the Warsaw showing here. I had heard that a few edits had been made but I didn't notice them, and I felt I enjoyed the film more on this occasion, but that could have been due to the far more salubrious surroundings this time rather than being hemmed in at a Polish cinema with only one entrance/exit.
It was followed by a Q&A with Director Aaron Biebert and Julian Morris of The Reason Foundation while most attendees listened from the bar at the back of the seating area.
Oh, and that isn't a vape cloud you can see in the picture, by the way, the fog was from a smoke machine you may be able to spot to the left of the screen.
Then, finally, to top off a rather top notch presentation, the post-screening entertainment by Indian song and dance band Rajasthan Josh struck up (see teaser taster below) as guests chatted and networked.
However - much as in life generally - just as everyone was enjoying themselves, the dark cloud of 'public health' interference came in and wrecked it. Because this was the day that the regulations on e-cigs were being debated at COP7 and word had reached us that an unholy alliance of India, Kenya, Thailand and Nigeria were demanding that the WHO recommend a global ban on the manufacture and sale of all vaping devices and liquids.
In fact, at time of writing, the horse trading and negotiations are still going on at the COP7 venue, and a lot of it is quite shocking stuff. Maybe that'll be my next article from India, who knows? Stay tuned.
Last night I travelled down to Le Meridien Hotel here in New Delhi for an auspicious awards ceremony. Well, I say awards in the plural but there was only one; and unlike other awards ceremonies there were no other nominations simply because no other organisation even comes close to the winner in this category.
The award was for "The Least Transparent Organisation in the Galaxy" and was won by ... drum roll please ....The World Health Organisation!
This exquisite trophy - made out of $8 worth of reclaimed Lego from a loose Lego shop in Germany - is described by Students for Liberty, who made the award, as follows.
The Least Transparent Organization of the Galaxy Award is a Bricked-Up Door held up by four pillars – one pillar representing the common good, one for superiority, one causes harm as it prevents harm reduction, and one holds the door firmly shut.
In his pre-award speech, Frederik Cyrus Roede announced that, "sadly, the WHO can't be with us tonight" because "they wouldn't reply to our calls or emails". Standard stuff.
It is well-deserved, especially when you see what the FCTC organisers are doing to journalists at COP7. Watch the film below and be amazed and disgusted at the same time.
Last night's award ceremony isn't the only event staged by Students for Liberty during COP7, they also protested in the plenary on Monday morning and their Indian members staged a protest in support of tobacco farmers (whose living the FCTC wants to destroy purely based on ignorant ideology) outside the COP7 venue.
This short 2 minute film explains why and gives you more background of what has been going on at COP7.
As mentioned in my last article, I also met A Billion Lives Director Aaron Biebert last night. We had a good hour long chat about David Goerlitz's Indian visa refusal, how the film is being received and on his future plans amongst other things. Oh yeah, and he called me "a legend", which was nice except aren't legends supposed to be dead?
Biebert is, of course, in India for a special screening of his film tonight at the Ojas Art Gallery up the road. He couldn't have timed it better seeing as the FCTC are today debating what they intend to recommend to member states about e-cigs. So why not tweet the latest trailer on the #COP7FCTC hash tag and let the least transparent organisation in the galaxy know about it.
So Monday was the day that the WHO's biennial back-slapping jamboree comprising the world's most accomplished miserable tax troughers began. COP7 was to take place at the Expo Mart complex in Noida, about an hour's drive from New Delhi centre.
I travelled with two Indian vapers and a representative of the newly-formed Association of Vapers India to the venue in the worst smog I've seen so far. This is just one of the pictures I took on the way; to be clear, it is not supposed to be in black and white.
The sun was up and is in that shot, not that you'd notice at first glance. After a trip up the expressway with the odour of sulphur blowing out of the car's ventilation system, we arrived at a heavily-guarded convention centre in the middle of absolutely nowhere, equally shrouded in dank mist.
On arrival, there were a dozen or so people hanging around who we'd later find out were Indian tobacco farmers, justifiably concerned about what those inside were threatening to do to their livelihoods. More about them later.
We entered the venue at just before 7:30am and joined the queue to apply for the limited number of public passes for the event at a registration plaza which catered for all different types of attendee ...
... and there we waited - in a stationary queue - for another three and a half hours!
It was quite clear what was happening. Delegates were turning up in regular coachloads, and it didn't matter how late they were, they were seen before anyone in the public queue. We watched as the inept registration system processed people lazily wandering in as late as 10:45, kept them in a queue of their own for a while before issuing them with a photo ID with which they then entered the venue for the joyless day ahead.
Finally, when the hall was emptied of about a thousand people it had seen that morning, the organisers contemptuously decided the public had waited enough and reluctantly accepted our registration forms and gave us a badge ... a full hour after the conference had started.
Now, no matter how paranoid they are about tobacco industry personnel applying for passes - and there were some there, all of whom declared their affiliations on the form as far as I could ascertain - to treat interested observers so shabbily illustrates the utter contempt they have for the public. If the FCTC really doesn't like the idea of allowing observers in to watch their dreary deliberations, they should be more honest about it and not offer the passes in the first place. They didn't seem to care that ordinary members of the public could be kept standing for such a long period of time, instead more interested in inconveniencing a few tobacco company employees who their skewed priorities have declared as the enemy rather than smoking, which they claim to be acting against.
Amongst those being treated so badly were a group of elected Mayors from Brazil, who jabbered entertainingly away in Portuguese before noticing one of the Brazilian delegation wandering through the hall. On seeing this, they surrounded him to make the case for the thousands of tobacco farmers in their constituencies, while he smiled weakly and tried to placate them.
Who knows what he said to them to ease their concerns, but it wouldn't matter one iota because the COP7 conference doesn't give a shit if farmers lose their businesses and die in poverty; the crusade against the tobacco industry is far more important to their neurotic bigotry than the small matter of people earning a living.
Talking of which, by this time word had reached us that the farmers we saw outside had held a brief protest before heading for a building down the road to have a meeting.
They weren't quite far enough away for the elites of the tobacco control industry though, so the police used a new rule that had been implemented the night before - banning more than four people walking together - to tell the farmers they had broken the law and that their meeting was cancelled. They were then told to get back on their buses and leave the area or be arrested. Most did but some were, indeed, arrested.
They were then escorted 40km away and told to go home and not venture back. It was a little after this that it was announced that delegates would come out to address the farmers' concerns ...
... but they were long evacuated and, d'you know, I think the delegates were well aware of the fact.
Which reminds me, while recording a sweeping shot of the hall, I inadvertently captured the Indian Health Minister thanking the police for not letting anything go wrong at the conference.
Like ensuring objecting farmers are kept miles away, does he mean? Now that's service!
Anyhow, back to your humble host's experience. Eventually, at just vefore 11am, I and others in the public queue managed to receive our passes and entered the venue. Quite impressive it was too.
I sat, with the others in the pen sectioned off for the public, and watched for the best part of two hours; I would like to say I was equally impressed with the speakers, but that would be a lie, I wasn't. What surprised me most was how amateurish and disorganised the whole thing was. It was clear that none of those I saw were good at public speaking, and amongst the mumbling and incoherent newspeak were long pauses while the room waited embarrassingly for something to happen. At one point, the whole thing was stopped while the head of the secretariat had a chat backstage with the Sri Lankan Prime Minister. It was quite surreal.
And as for the subject matter, well it was the same old tired paranoia, sadly.
More than half of the @FCTCofficial conference has been about rules about who can enter the #COP7FCTC. Very Orwellian.
This is very true. A large part of the COP events now seem to be taken up with justifying the FCTC's pathetic obsession with excluding anyone who doesn't agree 100% with their policies. Bizarrely, following this chain of deranged thought, Vera da Costa condemned "those amongst us" who worked for tobacco companies but sullied the public pass system by, erm, applying for one. I must admit to finding her concern for the public rather hollow considering the 300 minute wait her administrators had inflicted on us. But then, I don't think her focus was on the public at all, she - along with everyone else there - are just miffed they have to pretend to be transparent at all! A fact borne out at last knockings on the day as the customary evacuation of the heretics was announced. No public or press allowed for the rest of the week's proceedings, and that included even being in the grounds of the venue!
DESPICABLE: Every country at the WHO anti-tobacco meeting voted unanimously to kick out the press & the public #cop7fctc#UndemocraticWHO
Not that those present had any intention of making the public feel welcome anyway, there was a camera trained constantly on our area ...
... and every now and then a delegate would come up and take pictures of the public gallery before scuttling off again, presumably to tell all their friends how nasty we were for coming along to watch. The most prominent of these - and the most hilariously surreal moment of the day - was Debs Arnott who darted, weasel-like, around us to take about five swift pictures from a number of different angles.
She then trotted off to complain - like some pinch-lipped puritan seeing vape in a Polish assembly room - to an anonymous someone by furiously tapping at her phone's keyboard. All very amusing, I have to say.
All in all, a day packed full of the usual COP wince-inducing hilarity, but almost hypnotic despite the incredibly dull and colourless content being presented on stage; I find that observing events at the FCTC's flagship biennial events is one of those things you know you shouldn't do because you won't like what you see, but you can't help yourself ... rather like rubber-necking at a three car pile up.
Sadly - or not as the case may be - I was forced to exit at just before 1pm as my lift was leaving and I didn't fancy getting stranded miles from my hotel or to face getting a pricey cab without sufficient rupees on me. So we set off to sample some Indian street food before heading over to the Royal Connaught Hotel to meet some inspiring Asian vapers.
I'll tell you about that event in the next article because I wouldn't do them the disservice of sticking them on the same page as the lifeless, state-funded, soul-sucking, freedom-hating bog trolls at COP7 an hour up the road. Watch this space.
If any of you have been following my tweets recently, you'll have gathered that I'm in India to experience the World Health Organisation's COP7 farce first-hand. Well, not exactly first-hand since the conference itself is notoriously known to exclude anyone and everyone who might offer a different slant on proceedings than that preferred by the WHO's junk science-laden FCTC.
Still, COP6 two years ago in Moscow was such a hilarious exercise in incompetence that I made a note then to go to the next one. I thought it might be hard to top that but before the bansturbator beano has even begun, the jokes have already started.
Chain smokers moving to Delhi to save money after hearing that breathing there is like smoking 40 cigarettes
That satirical headline has been prompted by widespread reports of appalling pollution in New Delhi where COP7 is taking place. Apparently, it is the worst the city has seen for 17 years.
According to one advocacy group, government data shows that the smog that enveloped the city midweek was the worst in the last 17 years. The concentration of PM2.5, tiny particulate pollution that can clog lungs, averaged close to 700 micrograms per cubic meter. That’s 12 times the government norm and a whopping 70 times the WHO standards.
Sustained exposure to that concentration of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day, said Sarath Guttikunda, the director of Urban Emissions, an independent research group.
And delegates should be aware of what this means to their pristine lungs as they arrive for the 5 day misery-fest.
Particulate matters (PM) are tiny particles in the air that cause visibility problems and health hazards. The permissible level of PM 2.5 is 60µg/m³ while PM10 is 100 µg/m³. Levels beyond that can cause harm to the respiratory system as the ultra fine particulates can embed themselves deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream.
Best invest in a mask, FCTC boys and girls.
If you want to know what it looks like, by the way, here's a lovely view of sunrise over Delhi on my flight in.
To clarify, those aren't clouds we were flying over, because there weren't any, that was on the approach to land and is a thick immovable bank of grime sitting stubbornly over the city. Here's the view from my smokefree (natch) hotel window.
So it seems that anti-smoking obsessives from all over the world - who constantly bark that choosing to smoke, vape or use smokeless tobacco is a health crisis - are walking into a solid gold, proper, bona fide public health crisis which puts their pathetic bleating exaggerations to shame.
It is in this atmosphere that the FCTC are going to spend hours arguing that smoking in a windy park and entirely harmless vaping in public should be banned. Risible, huh? I spoke to Jeff Stier of Washington's National Centre for Policy Research who is also here, and he commented "The WHO are summoning their tobacco control elites here, and in their minds this smog is about as dangerous as one vape!". Sadly, if you read some of the utter garbage that the FCTC cite in their pre-COP report, he is probably right.
I had to laugh on seeing the COP7 help desk in the airport arrivals hall, just next to an exit where people were donning masks just to step out into the 'fresh' air or choking if they didn't have one. It kinda puts it all into context, doesn't it?
"Hello Sir, here's your agenda, security pass and gas mask"
There have been numerous articles in the media about this event in recent weeks as the world has started to wake up to the secrecy and paranoia of the FCTC, so there might be quite a few eyes on what goes on this week. It's not the start the tobacco control industry Goliath would have wished for is it?
I'll be here for a while yet and, as someone with grizzled old lungs think I should survive the duration. I will keep you posted.
With the FCTC's anti-smoker, anti-free speech, anti-decency, anti-democratic, truth-free, ethics-free, integrity-free and thoroughly nasty dictatorship-fawning COP7 beano for hideous prohibitionists beginning on Monday, here's a handy guide from the US-based Taxpayers Protection Alliance as to what to expect in the next week.
I've screened some highlights.
I think they understand the WHO's FCTC very well, don't you?
As the biennial comedy-fest known as the FCTC's Conference of the Parties approaches (COP7 begins in New Delhi on Monday the 7th), you might like to stick this little nugget in the file marked "you couldn't make this shit up".
Human rights experts hear from the Head of the Convention Secretariat
Human rights experts meeting at the Palais des Nations in Geneva heard how the global tobacco control treaty is increasingly relevant to advances in public health and human rights.
The United Nations Human Rights Council’s Second Session of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group (OEIGWG) on transnational corporations (TNCs) and other business enterprises with respect to human rights heard from Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, Head of the Convention Secretariat, to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).
Yes, you really did just read that.
It gets more bizarre the further down you read.
The basis of the WHO FCTC is to assert the individual’s right to protection from powerful organizations which, left unchallenged, will knowingly cause harm.
The FCTC is a powerful organisation which will be doing its level best next week to encourage bans on e-cigs and vaping despite being quite aware of their harm reduction potential (for background on the FCTC's appalling pre-COP7 report on vaping products and a devastating critique of it, do go read here).
You could arguably say that could "knowingly cause harm", yes?
The importance of human rights is foundational to the WHO FCTC.
Apart from if you're talking about the murder of thousands of drug users in the Philippines without trial and without even an attempt at establishing credible evidence of guilt, in which case Vera and the FCTC are very happy to turn a blind eye.
Parties to the WHO FCTC acknowledge the individual’s right to the highest attainable standard of health ...
Presumably, "the highest attainable standard of health" involves actually being alive instead of being gunned down in the street by death squads paid by governments such as, oh let me think, the one run by FCTC darling Rodrigo Duterte.
Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva suggested the intergovernmental working group to consider cleansing the public policy arena of corporations whose actions or products threaten human rights.
But deranged blood-thirsty dictators are quite welcome to join the party and will be fully encouraged.
Two years ago COP6 delivered some top drawer moon-howling craziness, but strap yourselves in because already COP7 is promising to excel even the FCTC's own high standards of insanity.
Y'see, Dr Vera da Costa e Silva - head of the secretariat of the World Health Organisation’s FCTC - posted this incredible tweet congratulating the Philippines and their genocidal President Ricardo Duterte who has encouraged the murder of thousands of people and boasted that he wants to "slaughter" 3 million.
In fact, not only did they not cancel it, the Director General Margaret Chan then held a photo opp and supped from the same samovar as Russia's leader to thank him for his, erm, trouble.
But dancing to Staying Alive the day after one of their senior spokespeople has praised a political leader who is happy that, daily, bodies of healthy people increasingly litter the streets of a country within their jurisdiction is truly jaw-dropping.
They may as well walk up to the grief-stricken families of the Philippines dead and slap them in the face. These rancid tax-draining animals have absolutely no shame whatsoever, do they?
Not content with telling Syrians that the most important thing to worry about right now - over and above being one of the hundreds of thousands killed by barrel bombs or brutally executed by ISIS - is how to best quit smoking, the WHO's FCTC have found a way to disgust us even more.
The excitement Dr Vera da Costa e Silva - head of the secretariat of the WHO’s FCTC - is enjoying at this great news almost leaps off the page, doesn't it? He's such a nice man, that Duterte, he's one of the FCTC in-crowd and no mistake.
If you're not familiar with President Duterte, here's a quick primer. He is the President of The Philipines and has told his people that it is perfectly acceptable to just, you know, pop out onto the street and kill drug users. No evidence needed, no arrest, no trial, no courts; just see someone you don't like, slaughter them in cold blood, wrap their head in gaffer tape and say he was a druggie. The authorities won't bother you, in fact you'll be celebrated or even salaried.
He has said that he would happily "slaughter" 3 million drug addicts and is proud to compare himself to Hitler ... and da Costa is likewise very proud to be associated with him too, as her tweet shows.
The Inquirer has set up a regularly updated 'kill list' in an attempt to document the misery and carnage this disgusting dictator has wrought on his country, it's an imprecise science but at time of writing his policy has resulted in over 2,500 extra-judicial killings, with corpses just left on the street. Yet da Costa thinks he's just a regular decent guy.
Now, I've written before about how the FCTC does very much love a dictatorship so, including countries like Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan which boast shameful human rights records; today Guido published a picture of FCTC delegates all smiles on a Maldives beach treating delegates from North Korea and Burma amongst others; and the last major conference (COP6) of this group of extremist ghouls was held in Moscow, where Margaret Chan - Director General of the WHO - chose to simper over Putin just after Russia had blown a packed passenger plane out of the sky killing 298 innocent people instead of being at a summit to discuss tackling the scourge of Ebola in Africa.
DG of the WHO Margaret Chan, all of a flutter in Moscow 2014
As an offshoot of the United Nations, you'd think da Costa, Chan and all the other repellent hangers-on to this anti-smoking cult might be a bit embarrassed about being in cahoots with some of the most brutal and murderous people on the planet. After all, the UN carries a commitment to the protection of human rights and and aspiration to improving living conditions throughout the world in its principle goals.
To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and religion; and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
How fawning over leaders who shoot planes of holidaymakers out of the sky, and murder many thousands of their own citizens without trial while comparing themselves to Hitler fits in with that motto is anyone's guess.
Still, it's nearly time for COP7 where these vile human beings will be trotting down to New Delhi to shower praise on India for its efforts in jailing vapers for the hideous crime of quitting smoking ... something the FCTC is supposed to be in favour of.
After reading the above, you'd think the UK would have nothing to do with such a revolting, corrupt and morally-bankrupt collection of utter bastards, wouldn't you? Well you'd be wrong. The Department of Health's Andrew Black will be there glad-handing these repulsive people, as will Deborah Arnott of ASH. And you're paying them to do so.
Doesn't that turn your stomach? I really don't know how such foul and sickening people sleep at night.
UPDATE: Fergus has had his say on this too.
When an organisation that’s supposed to be promoting health becomes so corrupted by prohibitionist zealots that it’s willing to endorse a madman who massacres his own citizens in the streets, it is no longer fit to exist. The WHO’s senior staff need to be swept away and replaced by sane adults. And until people like the odious da Costa are gone, no civilised government or organisation should have anything to do with the FCTC. Tobacco control fanatics are now so extreme that they’re openly allying themselves with Hitlerian criminals like Kim and Duterte. It’s time for the world to stand up and stop the bastards.
Cafes and bars can continue to set up special smoking rooms where customers can light up, judges in The Hague said on Wednesday.
Good. As it should be.
Anti-smoking lobby group Clean Air Nederland had gone to court in an effort to have all smoking rooms abolished.
Yep, that's what disgusting anti-social fuck-knuckles do. They would never go into these rooms themselves, but they went to court to stop everyone else from choosing to and to stop businesses choosing to provide them.
And the reason?
It argues that allowing cafes and bars to sanction smoking in certain areas conflicts with international treaties signed by the Netherlands.
Note the absence of any mention of bar staff? That's old hat now. What this hideous bunch of interfering spooge-gobblers were complaining about is that the elected Dutch government was not adhering to a rule laid down by a cabal of unelected extremists at the WHO.
Fortunately, the Dutch court system recognised a very salient fact that tobacco controllers would prefer politicians didn't know.
The court ruled that CAN cannot call on the World Health Organisation treaty which requires signatories to actively combat the use of tobacco and to protect people against tobacco smoke.
The text of the treaty does not state that there should be a ban on smoking or that countries are obliged to introduce one, the judges said in their ruling.
This is article 5.3 of the FCTC (and even the FCTC in its entirety) being called out for what it is ... a big empty threat that the lying bullies in tobacco control wave around as if it were legally enforceable. Now, I don't know if they're just incredibly dense or that they actually believe their own lies, but we should thank the Dutch legal system for stating the bleeding obvious and ruling that FCTC guidelines (the clue is in the name) are nothing to do with the rule of law or legislation in any country which has ratified it. They are quite simply a mendacious tool that the tobacco control industry uses to control dissent and ensure their incompetence isn't challenged by people who know what they are talking about.
As Snowdon explained last year, tobacco controllers have built an elaborate fantasy around article 5.3 which they regularly try to use as a club against civil consultation and common sense policy-making.
This document articulates the legal obligations placed on public authorities by the Treaty and illustrates established best practice for those working in the sector.
The 'Treaty' has never been enshrined in law in Britain or the EU, so this is wibble from the outset. There are no 'legal obligations'. From a legal perspective, the FCTC is nothing more than a bunch of aspirations, but even if Article 5.3 was the law, it clearly refers to health policy, not trade policy, smuggling or waste disposal.
None of this stops ASH from making thinly veiled threats like this...
[Article 5.3] could be relied upon in legal proceedings brought by an individual or other non-state body against a public authority. An authority that does not act in compliance with the convention may be exposed to risk of judicial review. If a local authority decides to diverge from the guidelines it is suggested the reasons for doing so should be documented.
This is intimidation, plain and simple. It raises the spectre of lawsuits (that will never be filed) to coerce councils into taking an extreme position to suit ASH's comic book worldview.
Except, of course, in the Netherlands a bunch of deluded cranks thought that FCTC guidelines were so powerful that they could file a court case. They have now found out that their fantasy of legislative status for a wish-list written by vile tax-spongers, and a puerile "na-na-na-not listening" clause drafted by some of the world's biggest lunatics, aren't actually legally enforceable after all.
CAN said immediately that it would appeal.
Of course they will. The illusion they are trying to create dies and reality gets noticed if they don't.
Let's all look forward to their lying asses being whipped again in due course.
