Tantaros on Schultz-Ingraham Affair: ‘Hatred Towards Conservative Women is Last Acceptable Misogyny in U.S.’
May 28, 2011 No Comment
Fox News contributor Andrea Tantaros might have had the best take on this week's Ed Schultz-Laura Ingraham affair . Appearing on “Hannity” Thursday, Tantaros accurately said, “It is the last acceptable form of misogyny in this country – hatred, prejudice towards conservative females” (video follows with transcript and commentary): SEAN HANNITY, HOST: All right. Let me ask both of you. Let me just go back to the issue of free speech. Ed Schultz, comments about Laura Ingraham, followed by a suspension, followed by an apology. My attitude is I believe in free speech. Did they handle this correctly? KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, FOX NEWS LEGAL ANALYST: I think they handled it correctly. And really, his conduct was inexcusable. I think his apology was somewhat sincere. But nevertheless, where do you go off like saying something like that about her? It's totally inappropriate. HANNITY: What if I called any Democratic woman a slut? ANDREA TANTAROS, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, forget about it. Look, Laura Ingraham is an attractive, conservative white female, blonde. They hate conservatives. Sean, it is the last acceptable form of misogyny in this country – hatred, prejudice towards conservative females. Look what happened to Don Imus? He was fired. HANNITY: Bachmann and Palin continued. TANTAROS: Yes, Sean, you would be fired too. I'm all for free speech. It is what I do. It lets me sit here but it means responsible speech. GUILFOYLE: You should also be appropriate. HANNITY: Part of my vernacular. You know, go through the alphabet, you know, you can, certain letters, certain words, you never say about a woman, to a woman, ever, ever, ever. (CROSSTALK) GUILFOYLE: OK. So, when you are looking at someone like Ed Schultz, there's a very big difference. So, this guy, I'm sure this is not the last that we hear from him in terms of this… TANTAROS: You know, what, they embarrass themselves when they do this. GUILFOYLE: Yes. TANTAROS: The best traits I think that conservative women have, among all the others, but particularly a Sarah Palin and Laura Ingraham. HANNITY: Smarter? TANTAROS: No. They expose — that's true but they expose, Sean, the worst side of liberals. They make them go crazy. And they expose what ugly, unfair and just hypocritical. Can I point out this morning on MSNBC, the special, how to empower women or some special about knowing your value. How ironic that Mika Brzezinski hosts a special this morning about knowing your value, huh? HANNITY: All right. TANTAROS: Hypocritical. HANNITY: Guys good to see you both. I appreciate it. TANTAROS: Yes. Good to see you, Sean. Of course, Tantaros was correct. What America has painfully learned since former Alaska governor Sarah Palin was first announced as John McCain's running mate in 2008 is that it is completely acceptable for media members to mercilessly attack a woman in print or on television and radio if she is a conservative. In reality, not only is it condoned, it's applauded. You can even win awards for doing so – just ask Katie Couric. Sadder still is that the Left is constantly carping and whining about the scarcity of women in politics. Maybe if they wouldn't attack every conservative female that deigns to enter public life there'd be more of them – or is that just too darned logical for a liberal? Nicely said, Andrea. Brava!
Continue reading …Tobacco giant BAT admits funding retailers’ campaign against ban on cigarette displays
May 28, 2011 No Comment
Tobacco giant financed retail association’s high-profile campaign against a government ban on cigarette displays in shops One of the world’s largest tobacco companies has admitted funding a retail association’s high-profile campaign against a government ban on cigarette displays in shops The National Federation of Retail Newsagents claimed the ban , approved by the government earlier this year, would put thousands of small shopkeepers out of business. But it has now emerged that the federation’s campaign received funding from British American Tobacco (BAT) whose lobbying firm, Hume Brophy, emailed MPs claiming the ban would have a “devastating effect on the small business sector in your constituency”. More than 80 MPs backed the federation’s campaign – and smaller shops were exempted from the ban on behind-the-counter displays for 18 months, which was a significant victory. In a letter to Labour MP Kevin Barron, BAT confirmed: “We have provided financial assistance to the NFRN in relation to this campaign.” It also confirmed that Hume Brophy had attended meetings between BAT and the federation in which the campaign was discussed. However, BAT denied it used “underhand tactics” or that the federation was a front for the company. The revelation that the campaign was funded by BAT is significant. Under international guidelines, the UK government is obliged to ensure the drafting of all legislation is free from tobacco industry influence. Now, the fact some MPs may have been unaware the campaign was backed by tobacco money has angered anti-smoking groups. Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams has written to Hume Brophy, asking it to inform MPs of its links with BAT. The issue of tobacco funding is likely to trigger fierce debate at the federation’s annual conference next week. Some of its 16,500 members have concerns over its links to the tobacco industry. Solly Khonat, president of the federation in 2009, is a spokesman for the Tobacco Retailers Alliance, a trade body wholly funded by the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association. Several alliance officials are members of the federation. Colin Finch, a former president of the federation, told the Observer this year that the federation was a “puppet of the tobacco industry”. BAT’s admission has prompted Barron to write to the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, warning the government’s commitment to tobacco control “is being undermined by covert lobbying by the tobacco industry”. He expressed concerns the tobacco lobby would adopt similar tactics as part of a campaign against plans for cigarettes to be sold in plain packs. A spokeswoman for the federation insisted it had been “very transparent about the commercial relationship that it shares with tobacco manufacturers” and that its campaign had been waged solely in the interests of its members and had not been influenced by the tobacco lobby. Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the anti-smoking group Ash, said the battle lines were now being drawn between politicians and the tobacco firms as details of how they were funding third parties started to emerge. “The UK has committed in principle to protecting public health policy from the tobacco industry,” Arnott said. “The government must prove that it can turn principles into practice when it launches its consultation on plain packaging later this year.” British American Tobacco Tobacco industry Retail industry Smoking Health policy Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Government and social services departments are accused of failing to protect victims Hundreds of children who have been trafficked into the UK are disappearing each year from the care system, amid allegations that government and local authorities are failing to protect them. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, a government agency, estimates that at least 300 juveniles identified as trafficked have disappeared from local authority care over the past three years. Collated figures from the NSPCC yesterday showed they had dealt with 549 trafficked children in the past three-and-a-half years, although there was no indication of how many had since disappeared after being delivered into care. Charities have urged the government to adopt a scheme successfully piloted in Scotland, in which guardians are appointed to act as advocates and points of contact for all children believed to have been trafficked. The government has so far rejected proposals to extend the scheme to England. “Guardianship is an essential cost-effective way to prevent children from going missing from care,” said Christine Beddoe, director of child protection charity Ecpat UK. “It would ensure that victims of child trafficking now in care have access to the safe housing, education and legal support which would prevent them slipping back into the hands of their exploiters.” A policy document by the Conservatives in 2008 estimated that “over half of trafficked children disappear from social services”. The document also criticised the absence of “safe accommodation” providing 24-hour care for trafficked children. But concern is growing that the party has little appetite to tackle the issue now it is in power. Home Office sources have suggested that a forthcoming strategy paper on human trafficking is unlikely to include a specific section on child trafficking, an omission that will infuriate campaigners. “We have worked tirelessly with government officials over the past five years to develop a national action plan and a robust protection framework for child victims of trafficking,” said Beddoe. “To see this washed away almost overnight is a scandal. It’s as if the Home Office have shredded all the facts and figures.” The government has a statutory duty to provide care to children regardless of nationality or immigration status. New figures released by the children’s charity NSPCC show that during the year to April its child trafficking helpline dealt with 146 cases alone, although experts say this is merely a fragment of the true picture. Scotland Yard will launch a freephone trafficking hotline to encourage victims to come forward in response to concern that the scale of the crime remains largely unknown. Detective Inspector Gordon Valentine, the former head of Operation Paladin, Scotland Yard’s specialist anti child-trafficking team of police and UK Border Agency officials, said yesterday that the issue did not seem to be a priority for policymakers. Valentine, who retired on Friday, said that although the Yard had made progress in identifying child victims, there was a concern that the team – which has just five officials – needed to be expanded if traffickers were to be dissuaded from targeting the UK. He added: “Paladin has been a real success and should be expanded, but one issue is that it sits between two stools, the UK Border Agency and the police, and there is an issue about who’s going to drive it. The Met are fully committed to Paladin: it’s just [a matter of] convincing the wider authorities. Logically, [tackling child trafficking] is cost-effective, but because you can’t put costings to it, it’s difficult to sell [to policymakers].” Anne Marie Carrie, Barnardo’s chief executive said: “It is imperative that we identify these children quickly and accurately. Failure to do so means they are left without the help and support they so urgently need.” Anthony Steen, former Conservative MP and head of the UK’s Human Trafficking Foundation, said: “Child trafficking remains unseen and children don’t complain or answer back.” The Home Office said it took the issue extremely seriously and that it remained “core” police business. Child protection Crime Children Social care Mark Townsend guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
• British military personnel run courses for snipers • Human rights groups furious over Riyadh link Britain is training Saudi Arabia’s national guard – the elite security force deployed during the recent protests in Bahrain – in public order enforcement measures and the use of sniper rifles. The revelation has outraged human rights groups, which point out that the Foreign Office recognises that the kingdom’s human rights record is “a major concern”. In response to questions made under the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed that British personnel regularly run courses for the national guard in “weapons, fieldcraft and general military skills training, as well as incident handling, bomb disposal, search, public order and sniper training”. The courses are organised through the British Military Mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, an obscure unit that consists of 11 British army personnel under the command of a brigadier. The MoD response, obtained yesterday by the Observer , reveals that Britain sends up to 20 training teams to the kingdom a year. Saudi Arabia pays for “all BMM personnel, as well as support costs such as accommodation and transport”. Bahrain’s royal family used 1,200 Saudi troops to help put down demonstrations in March. At the time the British government said it was “deeply concerned” about reports of human rights abuses being perpetrated by the troops. “Britain’s important role in training the Saudi Arabian national guard in internal security over many years has enabled them to develop tactics to help suppress the popular uprising in Bahrain,” said Nicholas Gilby of the Campaign Against Arms Trade. Analysts believe the Saudi royal family is desperate to shore up its position in the region by preserving existing regimes in the Gulf that will help check the increasing power of Iran. “Last year we raised concerns that the Saudis had been using UK-supplied and UK-maintained arms in secret attacks in Yemen that left scores of Yemeni civilians dead,” said Oliver Sprague, director of Amnesty International’s UK Arms Programme. Defence minister Nick Harvey confirmed to parliament last week that the UK’s armed forces provided training to the Saudi national guard. “It is possible that some members of the Saudi Arabian national guard which were deployed in Bahrain may have undertaken some training provided by the British military mission,” he said. The confirmation that this training is focused on maintaining public order in the kingdom is potentially embarrassing for the government. Coming at the end of a week in which the G8 summit in France approved funding for countries embracing democracy in the wake of the Arab spring, it has led to accusations that the government’s foreign policy is at conflict with itself. Jonathan Edwards, a Plaid Cymru MP who has tabled parliamentary questions to the MoD about its links to Saudi Arabia, said he found it difficult to understand why Britain was training troops for “repressive undemocratic regimes”. “This is the shocking face of our democracy to many people in the world, as we prop up regimes of this sort,” Edwards said. “It is intensely hypocritical of our leadership in the UK – Labour or Conservative – to talk of supporting freedoms in the Middle East and elsewhere while at the same time training crack troops of dictatorships.” The MoD’s response was made in 2006, but when questioned this week it confirmed Britain has been providing training for the Saudi national guard to improve their “internal security and counter-terrorism” capabilities since 1964 and continues to do so. Members of the guard, which was established by the kingdom’s royal family because it feared its regular army would not support it in the event of a popular uprising, are also provided places on flagship UK military courses at Sandhurst and Dartmouth. In Saudi Arabia, Britain continues to train the guard in “urban sharpshooter” programmes, the MoD confirmed. Last year, Britain approved 163 export licences for military equipment to Saudi Arabia, worth £110m. Exports included armoured personnel carriers, sniper rifles, small arms ammunition and weapon sights. In 2009, the UK supplied Saudi Arabia with CS hand grenades, teargas and riot control agents. Sprague said a shake-up of the system licensing the supply of military expertise and weapons to foreign governments was overdue. “We need a far more rigorous case-by-case examination of the human rights records of those who want to buy our equipment or receive training.” An MoD spokesman described the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, as “key partners” in the fight against terrorism. “By providing training for countries to the same high standards used by UK armed forces we help to save lives and raise awareness of human rights,” said the spokesman. Labour MP Mike Gapes, the former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said British military support for Saudi Arabia was about achieving a “difficult balance”. “On the one hand Saudi Arabia faces the threat of al-Qaida but on the other its human rights record is dreadful. This is the constant dilemma you have when dealing with autocratic regimes: do you ignore them or try to improve them?” Saudi Arabia Bahrain Arab and Middle East unrest Military Middle East Human rights Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
enlarge Credit: Eric Cantor, Congressional Joint Economic Committee On Thursday, John Boehner and the House Republican leadership team unveiled their ” Plan for America’s Job Creators .” As he repeatedly made clear before the Economic Club of New York and again on CBS Face the Nation , Boehner’s “job creators” are the top two percent of income earners whose Bush tax cuts President Obama has proposed ending. And that presents a bit of problem for the Republicans. After all, George W. Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy sadly coincided with the worst period of job creation of any president since Herbert Hoover. Which means the GOP plan for America’s job creators is just another tax cut windfall for the gilded class . Earlier this month, Speaker Boehner warned that “The mere threat of tax hikes causes uncertainty for job creators — uncertainty that results in less risk-taking and fewer jobs.” As he told Harry Smith of CBS two weeks ago: “The top one percent of wage earners in the United States…pay forty percent of the income taxes…The people he’s {President Obama] is talking about taxing are the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy.” If so, those expectations were sadly unmet under George W. Bush. After all, the last time the top tax rate was 39.6% during the Clinton administration, the United States enjoyed rising incomes, 23 million new jobs and budget surpluses. Under Bush? Not so much. On January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article titled simply, ” Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record .” (The Journal’s interactive table quantifies his staggering failure relative to every post-World War II president.) The dismal 3 million jobs created under President Bush didn’t merely pale in comparison to the 23 million produced during Bill Clinton’s tenure. In September 2009, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee charted Bush’s job creation disaster (above), the worst since Hoover. That dismal performance prompted David Leonhardt of the New York Times to ask last fall, “Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?” His answer was unambiguous: Those tax cuts passed in 2001 amid big promises about what they would do for the economy. What followed? The decade with the slowest average annual growth since World War II. Amazingly, that statement is true even if you forget about the Great Recession and simply look at 2001-7… Is there good evidence the tax cuts persuaded more people to join the work force (because they would be able to keep more of their income)? Not really. The labor-force participation rate fell in the years after 2001 and has never again approached its record in the year 2000. Is there evidence that the tax cuts led to a lot of entrepreneurship and innovation? Again, no. The rate at which start-up businesses created jobs fell during the past decade. It’s no wonder Leonhardt followed his first question with another. “I mean this as a serious question, not a rhetorical one,” he asked, “Given this history, why should we believe that the Bush tax cuts were pro-growth?” Or as Mark Shields asked and answered in April: “Do tax cuts help ‘job creators’ or ‘robber barons’?” Just days after the Washington Post documented that George W. Bush presided over the worst eight-year economic performance in the modern American presidency, the New York Times in January 2009 featured an analysis comparing presidential performance going back to Eisenhower. As the Times showed, George W. Bush, the first MBA president, was a historic failure when it came to expanding GDP, producing jobs and even fueling stock market growth. Apparently, America’s job creators can create a lot more jobs when their taxes are higher – even much higher – than they are today. The epic failures of the Bush tax cuts for America’s supposed job creators hardly end there. The U.S. poverty rate began rising in 2005 , well before the onset of the December 2007 Bush recession. As David Cay Johnston document, average household income fell after the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, dropping to about $58,500 in 2008 from $61,500 in 2000. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) found that the Bush tax cuts accounted for almost half of the mushrooming deficits during his tenure , and, if made permanent, over the next 10 years would contribute more to the U.S. budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession put together . As the data show, the Bush tax cuts provided a massive payday for the wealthy , helping fuel record income inequality . Despite that record failure, House Republicans want to give the job creators who don’t create jobs another jaw-dropping tax cut. As Ezra Klein , Paul Krugman and Steve Benen among others noted, the “Plan for America’s Job Creators” is simply a repackaging of years of previous proposals and GOP bromides. (As Klein pointed out, the 10 page document “looks like the staffer in charge forgot the assignment was due on Thursday rather than Friday, and so cranked the font up to 24 and began dumping clip art to pad out the plan.”) At the center of it is the same plan from the Ryan House budget passed in April to cut the top individual and corporate tax rates to 25%. The price tag for the Republican proposal is a jaw-dropping $4.2 trillion. And as Matthew Yglesias explained, earlier analyses of similar proposals in Ryan’s Roadmap reveal that working Americans would have to pick up the tab left unpaid by upper-income households: This is an important element of Ryan’s original “roadmap” plan that’s never gotten the attention it deserves. But according to a Center for Tax Justice analysis (PDF), even though Ryan features large aggregate tax cuts, ninety percent of Americans would actually pay higher taxes under his plan. In other words, it wasn’t just cuts in middle class benefits in order to cut taxes on the rich. It was cuts in middle class benefits and middle class tax hikes in order to cut taxes on the rich. It’ll be interesting to see if the House Republicans formally introduce such a plan and if so how many people will vote for it. If this all sounds hauntingly familiar, it should. When it comes to using the tax code to line the pockets of the wealthiest people in America, House Republicans simply want the next decade to look like the last one. That is, gargantuan tax cuts for America’s so-called “job creators”; no jobs for Americans. (This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
Continue reading …
Health secretary attacked after calls to smoking, drugs and lifestyle helplines plunged following spending freeze The health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has been forced into a major U-turn on funding for public health campaigns, after evidence emerged that the spending freeze had cost lives. An extra £15m has now been set aside for promoting the government’s anti-smoking website and £14m will be made available for a campaign promoting healthy living. The decision has come in response to a damning Department of Health (DoH) report on the consequences of the government’s decision to “all but cease” publicly-funded advertising last year. The DoH found that the number of people ringing the drug abuse support helpline, Frank, had fallen by 22%, that visits to the Smokefree website had fallen by 50% and that the number of people joining the government’s lifestyle website was down by two-thirds. Most worryingly, the report said, there was evidence that “the cessation of marketing activity [had] resulted in declining quit attempts, and subsequent loss of life from smoking-related illness”. It added: “Following the coalition government’s freeze on non-essential marketing expenditure, all social marketing programmes were reduced and expenditure on advertising all but ceased. “We have now had the opportunity to learn from the freeze and to assess where the loss of mass communications had a negative impact… We now recommend that some advertising, and other forms of mass communication such as sponsorship, paid media partnerships and PR, be resumed.” The revelation follows savage criticism of the DoH decision last year to axe the £1.5m awareness campaign for flu vaccinations. Figures released this month showed there had been a rise in deaths from 474 in 2009/10 to 535 in 2010/11 and that a disproportionate number had been among the young. Lansley justified the freeze on marketing spending last year as a departure from the “lecturing” attitude, which he said characterised some previous government’s interventions. But shadow health secretary John Healey said Lansley needed to publicly apologise for his mistakes: “Mass publicity must play a part in good public health. This report shows that Andrew Lansley made the wrong judgment in axing anti-smoking promotions, just like he did on the flu-jab adverts last autumn. “The health secretary needs to tell people that he’s learnt the lessons and won’t make the same mistake again.” Key evidence for the loss of life caused by the government’s policy was provided in a submission to the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health by Professor Robert West, director of Tobacco Studies at Cancer Research UK. West told the group: “Evidence shows that total spending on government mass media campaigns in a given quarter is associated with smoking cessation activity in that quarter. If, as seems likely, this association is causal, the recent suspension of mass media campaigns will lead to significant loss of life, and with every month that passes without further activity the death toll will grow.” West told the Observer that the most recent figures on giving up smoking confirmed his fears: “For smoking, most of the population are in a state of motivational tension, they are a bit dissonant about it and what the marketing does is tip them over the edge into activity. So if you stop doing that they carry on being dissonant. “We looked at a number of objectives – markers of cessation activity, attendance at clinics, hits on the website and the quit line – and the correlation is very striking. The association between marketing activity and spend was very strong. “It [lack of marketing] will have cost lives. For every year that someone over the age of 35 carries on smoking they lose three months of life expectancy. So if you just lose a year of significant activity you have already lost lives. That is the inescapable logic of it.” Research by the DoH suggests smokers’ motivation to quit is in decline, with the number of people saying they do not want to quit at all at 30%, its highest level since tracking began in 2007. Over recent years, there has also been a year-on-year decline in people trying to stop smoking, from 43.5% in 2007 to 35.8% in 2010. On top of the spending on anti-smoking and the healthier living campaign, Change4Life, a further £4m will be spent on marketing targeted at young people, and £11m on advertising issues related to older people. Professor Geof Rayner, an adviser to the Change4Life programme, said he was delighted: “I am pleased the civil service has put this in front of the politicians and that the politicians have seen some sense. They should be pragmatic, not ideological, about public health.” However, the total spending is still less than half the £93m spent by the Labour government in 2009/2010. A DoH spokesman denied the decision to start spending again was a U-turn but claimed that the freeze had been an opportunity to test the efficacy of previous spending. “Our campaigns have a high impact,” he added. “A study found that two-thirds of the public think advertising is vital to the success of government campaigns.” Health policy Andrew Lansley Health & wellbeing Smoking Drugs policy Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Health secretary attacked after calls to smoking, drugs and lifestyle helplines plunged following spending freeze The health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has been forced into a major U-turn on funding for public health campaigns, after evidence emerged that the spending freeze had cost lives. An extra £15m has now been set aside for promoting the government’s anti-smoking website and £14m will be made available for a campaign promoting healthy living. The decision has come in response to a damning Department of Health (DoH) report on the consequences of the government’s decision to “all but cease” publicly-funded advertising last year. The DoH found that the number of people ringing the drug abuse support helpline, Frank, had fallen by 22%, that visits to the Smokefree website had fallen by 50% and that the number of people joining the government’s lifestyle website was down by two-thirds. Most worryingly, the report said, there was evidence that “the cessation of marketing activity [had] resulted in declining quit attempts, and subsequent loss of life from smoking-related illness”. It added: “Following the coalition government’s freeze on non-essential marketing expenditure, all social marketing programmes were reduced and expenditure on advertising all but ceased. “We have now had the opportunity to learn from the freeze and to assess where the loss of mass communications had a negative impact… We now recommend that some advertising, and other forms of mass communication such as sponsorship, paid media partnerships and PR, be resumed.” The revelation follows savage criticism of the DoH decision last year to axe the £1.5m awareness campaign for flu vaccinations. Figures released this month showed there had been a rise in deaths from 474 in 2009/10 to 535 in 2010/11 and that a disproportionate number had been among the young. Lansley justified the freeze on marketing spending last year as a departure from the “lecturing” attitude, which he said characterised some previous government’s interventions. But shadow health secretary John Healey said Lansley needed to publicly apologise for his mistakes: “Mass publicity must play a part in good public health. This report shows that Andrew Lansley made the wrong judgment in axing anti-smoking promotions, just like he did on the flu-jab adverts last autumn. “The health secretary needs to tell people that he’s learnt the lessons and won’t make the same mistake again.” Key evidence for the loss of life caused by the government’s policy was provided in a submission to the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health by Professor Robert West, director of Tobacco Studies at Cancer Research UK. West told the group: “Evidence shows that total spending on government mass media campaigns in a given quarter is associated with smoking cessation activity in that quarter. If, as seems likely, this association is causal, the recent suspension of mass media campaigns will lead to significant loss of life, and with every month that passes without further activity the death toll will grow.” West told the Observer that the most recent figures on giving up smoking confirmed his fears: “For smoking, most of the population are in a state of motivational tension, they are a bit dissonant about it and what the marketing does is tip them over the edge into activity. So if you stop doing that they carry on being dissonant. “We looked at a number of objectives – markers of cessation activity, attendance at clinics, hits on the website and the quit line – and the correlation is very striking. The association between marketing activity and spend was very strong. “It [lack of marketing] will have cost lives. For every year that someone over the age of 35 carries on smoking they lose three months of life expectancy. So if you just lose a year of significant activity you have already lost lives. That is the inescapable logic of it.” Research by the DoH suggests smokers’ motivation to quit is in decline, with the number of people saying they do not want to quit at all at 30%, its highest level since tracking began in 2007. Over recent years, there has also been a year-on-year decline in people trying to stop smoking, from 43.5% in 2007 to 35.8% in 2010. On top of the spending on anti-smoking and the healthier living campaign, Change4Life, a further £4m will be spent on marketing targeted at young people, and £11m on advertising issues related to older people. Professor Geof Rayner, an adviser to the Change4Life programme, said he was delighted: “I am pleased the civil service has put this in front of the politicians and that the politicians have seen some sense. They should be pragmatic, not ideological, about public health.” However, the total spending is still less than half the £93m spent by the Labour government in 2009/2010. A DoH spokesman denied the decision to start spending again was a U-turn but claimed that the freeze had been an opportunity to test the efficacy of previous spending. “Our campaigns have a high impact,” he added. “A study found that two-thirds of the public think advertising is vital to the success of government campaigns.” Health policy Andrew Lansley Health & wellbeing Smoking Drugs policy Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
If South African president Jacob Zuma’s peace mission fails, Nato will deliver its heaviest blow to Libyan leader’s forces Nato has only one question as it prepares to unleash Apache helicopters against the forces of Muammar Gaddafi this week, and Captain Ali Mohammed, one of the defenders of the besieged rebel city of Misrata, can supply the answer. If, as most pundits predict, tomorrow’s peace mission to Tripoli by South African president Jacob Zuma fails, Nato will hit the Libyan leader harder than it has ever hit him before. British Apaches, together with French Tiger attack helicopters, will launch surgical strikes on Gaddafi’s forces besieging Misrata. They have the ability to destroy individual gun positions in the town of Zlitan, west of Misrata, with less risk to the civilian population kept there as human shields. But there is a problem. This kind of war takes time, and time is the commodity Nato does not have as critics complain it has extended the original United Nations no-fly zone mandate into what is regime change in all but name. The big question is whether the defenders will crumble under the onslaught, or fight with the same tenacity shown by their rebel enemy in Misrata. “If you use Apaches, it is sure they will run away,” said Mohammed. “There is a big difference between Gaddafi’s men and ourselves. I am defending my home, my family, my city. But Gaddafi’s forces do not believe in what they are doing.” The captain has led a band of fighters in this shell-scarred city, not just surviving the onslaught but pushing pro-Gaddafi forces back to the outskirts. Yet Gaddafi’s troops continue to rain death on the city outskirts, which shuddered under a bombardment of hundreds of mortars and missiles on Friday, fired from launchers too far back for the rebels to counter. To respond, they need the Apaches, four of which are on the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, cruising somewhere beyond the horizon visible from Mohammed’s position. A second vessel, the French amphibious assault carrier Tonnerre, has four equally ferocious Tiger attack helicopters, plus a dozen of the more elderly Gazelles. All are armed with Hellfire missiles which have the ability to be launched from five miles off with pinpoint accuracy, precisely destroying gun positions and machine gun nests, leaving the local civilians unharmed. It is these weapons that the alliance hopes will finally break the will of Gaddafi’s forces. Fast jets continue pounding targets in both Tripoli and behind the front lines. In the skies across Libya, British and American Reaper drones, which can stay on patrol for 14 hours, circle endlessly. They watch the few highways out of Tripoli day and night, using their own Hellfire missiles to destroy any vehicle they see, in effect making it impossible for Gaddafi to reinforce or supply his units at Misrata and those further west near Benghazi. But his firepower has its limits. The UN resolution mandating Nato’s action prohibits the use of ground troops, leaving the alliance needing to win with only the lightly armed rebel troops to actually take and hold ground. Additionally, Apaches are vulnerable; slow and ponderous, they dare not venture over enemy territory for risk of being shot down by machine gun fire. Instead they are likely to linger over rebel lines, engaging only Libyan positions in the immediate vicinity. Given enough time, the Apaches can take out gun positions one by one, but time is not on Nato’s side. Many members, notably Germany and Turkey, were reluctant partners from the start and at the United Nations China and Russia have complained that the western alliance did not consult over the extension of a mandate designed to protect civilians into what is a full-scale war. Nato needs victory quickly by breaking the will of Gaddafi’s troops. “Sixty per cent of Gaddafi’s army do not want to fight,” says Abdulla Ali, a rebel army spokesman in Misrata. “They are forced there. If they do not fight they are shot.” Mohammed says Nato has instructed his forces to stay behind a “red line” marked out along the Misrata front, allowing Nato to kill anything it sees west of that line. It is an instruction he intends to obey. His dark eyes betray the strain of fighting through the streets of his city for the past 70 days. He stands, clad in a green shirt, pale jeans and black sandals amid a sand-encrusted checkpoint of corrugated iron and a few battered plastic chairs. Around his chest is the shoulder strap of a battered AK-47 machine gun, on his shirt a small badge with the picture of Ramadan Swehli, hero of the city’s resistance against Italian occupation nearly a century ago, superimposed over the rebel red, green and black tricolour. However, before the Apaches are unleashed, Nato has decided to give diplomacy a final shot. The key part of this plan fell into place on Friday when Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev announced – possibly through gritted teeth – that he now supported Nato’s demand that Gaddafi step down immediately and unconditionally. That message will be delivered by Zuma in Tripoli tomorrow, coupled with the threat that if the Libyan leader refuses, Nato will unleash what will be the heaviest attack the alliance has mounted. Yesterday brought a clear sign of its increasing impatience with the regime as a rare daytime air strike was launched on the capital of Tripoli. For diplomats, the problem is not with Zuma’s negotiating skills, but with the fact that the message he conveys to Gaddafi offers no carrots, only sticks. Capitulation means he faces certain death if he stays in Libya. If he flees, any country willing to take him will shortly receive demands from the UN to hand him over to the International Criminal Court, whose judges are expected to issue an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity within weeks. The chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, has already called for one of his sons, Saif, to be indicted, and more charges against three more members of the regime are expected to follow later this year. In Misrata, few rebels expect the Libyan dictator to agree to step down, even in the face of Nato’s bolstered firepower. “He will not listen – he will stay and fight,” said Osama Alfitory, a fighter from Benghazi who volunteered to come and help in Misrata, for him a brother-city. “This guy is insane. I think he believes he will win in the end.” Nato hopes that if its renewed assault begins – which could happen as early as Tuesday night – Gaddafi’s army will start to think differently. Muammar Gaddafi Nato Libya Jacob Zuma Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Africa guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …If South African president Jacob Zuma’s peace mission fails, Nato will deliver its heaviest blow to Libyan leader’s forces Nato has only one question as it prepares to unleash Apache helicopters against the forces of Muammar Gaddafi this week, and Captain Ali Mohammed, one of the defenders of the besieged rebel city of Misrata, can supply the answer. If, as most pundits predict, tomorrow’s peace mission to Tripoli by South African president Jacob Zuma fails, Nato will hit the Libyan leader harder than it has ever hit him before. British Apaches, together with French Tiger attack helicopters, will launch surgical strikes on Gaddafi’s forces besieging Misrata. They have the ability to destroy individual gun positions in the town of Zlitan, west of Misrata, with less risk to the civilian population kept there as human shields. But there is a problem. This kind of war takes time, and time is the commodity Nato does not have as critics complain it has extended the original United Nations no-fly zone mandate into what is regime change in all but name. The big question is whether the defenders will crumble under the onslaught, or fight with the same tenacity shown by their rebel enemy in Misrata. “If you use Apaches, it is sure they will run away,” said Mohammed. “There is a big difference between Gaddafi’s men and ourselves. I am defending my home, my family, my city. But Gaddafi’s forces do not believe in what they are doing.” The captain has led a band of fighters in this shell-scarred city, not just surviving the onslaught but pushing pro-Gaddafi forces back to the outskirts. Yet Gaddafi’s troops continue to rain death on the city outskirts, which shuddered under a bombardment of hundreds of mortars and missiles on Friday, fired from launchers too far back for the rebels to counter. To respond, they need the Apaches, four of which are on the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, cruising somewhere beyond the horizon visible from Mohammed’s position. A second vessel, the French amphibious assault carrier Tonnerre, has four equally ferocious Tiger attack helicopters, plus a dozen of the more elderly Gazelles. All are armed with Hellfire missiles which have the ability to be launched from five miles off with pinpoint accuracy, precisely destroying gun positions and machine gun nests, leaving the local civilians unharmed. It is these weapons that the alliance hopes will finally break the will of Gaddafi’s forces. Fast jets continue pounding targets in both Tripoli and behind the front lines. In the skies across Libya, British and American Reaper drones, which can stay on patrol for 14 hours, circle endlessly. They watch the few highways out of Tripoli day and night, using their own Hellfire missiles to destroy any vehicle they see, in effect making it impossible for Gaddafi to reinforce or supply his units at Misrata and those further west near Benghazi. But his firepower has its limits. The UN resolution mandating Nato’s action prohibits the use of ground troops, leaving the alliance needing to win with only the lightly armed rebel troops to actually take and hold ground. Additionally, Apaches are vulnerable; slow and ponderous, they dare not venture over enemy territory for risk of being shot down by machine gun fire. Instead they are likely to linger over rebel lines, engaging only Libyan positions in the immediate vicinity. Given enough time, the Apaches can take out gun positions one by one, but time is not on Nato’s side. Many members, notably Germany and Turkey, were reluctant partners from the start and at the United Nations China and Russia have complained that the western alliance did not consult over the extension of a mandate designed to protect civilians into what is a full-scale war. Nato needs victory quickly by breaking the will of Gaddafi’s troops. “Sixty per cent of Gaddafi’s army do not want to fight,” says Abdulla Ali, a rebel army spokesman in Misrata. “They are forced there. If they do not fight they are shot.” Mohammed says Nato has instructed his forces to stay behind a “red line” marked out along the Misrata front, allowing Nato to kill anything it sees west of that line. It is an instruction he intends to obey. His dark eyes betray the strain of fighting through the streets of his city for the past 70 days. He stands, clad in a green shirt, pale jeans and black sandals amid a sand-encrusted checkpoint of corrugated iron and a few battered plastic chairs. Around his chest is the shoulder strap of a battered AK-47 machine gun, on his shirt a small badge with the picture of Ramadan Swehli, hero of the city’s resistance against Italian occupation nearly a century ago, superimposed over the rebel red, green and black tricolour. However, before the Apaches are unleashed, Nato has decided to give diplomacy a final shot. The key part of this plan fell into place on Friday when Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev announced – possibly through gritted teeth – that he now supported Nato’s demand that Gaddafi step down immediately and unconditionally. That message will be delivered by Zuma in Tripoli tomorrow, coupled with the threat that if the Libyan leader refuses, Nato will unleash what will be the heaviest attack the alliance has mounted. Yesterday brought a clear sign of its increasing impatience with the regime as a rare daytime air strike was launched on the capital of Tripoli. For diplomats, the problem is not with Zuma’s negotiating skills, but with the fact that the message he conveys to Gaddafi offers no carrots, only sticks. Capitulation means he faces certain death if he stays in Libya. If he flees, any country willing to take him will shortly receive demands from the UN to hand him over to the International Criminal Court, whose judges are expected to issue an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity within weeks. The chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, has already called for one of his sons, Saif, to be indicted, and more charges against three more members of the regime are expected to follow later this year. In Misrata, few rebels expect the Libyan dictator to agree to step down, even in the face of Nato’s bolstered firepower. “He will not listen – he will stay and fight,” said Osama Alfitory, a fighter from Benghazi who volunteered to come and help in Misrata, for him a brother-city. “This guy is insane. I think he believes he will win in the end.” Nato hopes that if its renewed assault begins – which could happen as early as Tuesday night – Gaddafi’s army will start to think differently. Muammar Gaddafi Nato Libya Jacob Zuma Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Africa guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
enlarge Credit: Bradblog James O’Keefe has had a mixed blessings week. The IRS has granted his ridiculously hacky “investigative” group C3 (non-profit) status . In its application, Project Veritas said it planned to pursue as many as a half-dozen journalism projects and conduct five two- to three-day training sessions for people interested in learning how to do such projects on their own. “I can’t tell you the secret sauce of it, but we do have a training method,” Mr. O’Keefe said. “There are many people learning this method and learning how to expose abusive power in creative ways.” He said he would work as the organization’s “muckraker in chief,” for which he will be paid about $120,000 a year, according to the group’s application. It raised $2,367 last year, according to the filing, and expects that figure to grow to $1.65 million over the next three years, though Mr. O’Keefe described that as “a sort of dream.” The group has hired a firm led by Richard Viguerie, a conservative strategist, to help it raise money. Charities are constrained by law from participating in lobbying and political campaigns, and in response to a question posed by the I.R.S., Project Veritas specifically said it had no plans to lobby on behalf of specific legislation.“We’re designed to expose malfeasance, waste, fraud and corruption, to expose things for what they are,” Mr. O’Keefe said. “That’s not policy work, that’s educational work.” Jeffrey S. Tenenbaum, a lawyer specializing in nonprofit matters, looked at the Project Veritas Web site and said he could see nothing that would cause the group to run afoul of the rules on politicking. I don’t know, seems to me that illegal acts like attempting to break and enter into Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office for the purpose of illegally wiretapping her and whatever creepy plans he had with CNN journalist Abbie Boudreau on the boat might have tipped off the IRS that O’Keefe deserves no such classification. It’s not his partisanship; Heritage Foundation is a C3 organization too. It’s his fast and loose playing with ethics and rules that should work against him. But luckily for all of us, a federal judge is not so easily persuaded by O’Keefe’s machinations. O’Keefe and his partner Hannah Giles are being sued in San Diego by ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera. Giles previously tried to get out of the suit by claiming that all the recording was done by O’Keefe and she was there merely as a prop. O’Keefe, for his part, claimed that his First Amendment right as a “citizen journalist” absolved him of liability. The judge didn’t buy either argument. Bradblog : According to Maria Dinzeo of Courthouse News Service : Juan Carlos Vera claimed James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles visited his office in August 2009, and conspired to create video and audio tapes of him, even after asking him if their conversation would be confidential. … [Lorenz ruled] that the law “is directed to the surreptitious recording of confidential communications and not the manner or method of recording the conversation.” Given the meaning of the word “record,” Lorenz found Giles equally responsible. Lorenz also rejected O’Keefe’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, in which he argued that First Amendment protections for journalists supersede the California Privacy Act. Since there was a mutual understanding that the conversation was confidential, Lorenz found that the privacy law “is not an overbroad intrusion on exposé newsgathering in which O’Keefe participates.” “Exposé newsgathering” is not what O’Keefe traffics in, as demonstrated again most recently by, ironically enough, the “news” website of Fox “News” host Glenn Beck after a similarly deceptive and secretly video taped smear of an NPR employee by O’Keefe last March. But O’Keefe’s long track record of deceptive video hit-jobs was not at issue in this particular legal argument. In his ruling [PDF] , Judge Lorenz highlighted specific portions of the CA law which is violated by “Every person who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, by means of any electronic amplifying or recording device, eavesdrops upon or records the confidential communication.” The ruling goes on to further cite the statute which reads “The term ‘confidential communication’ includes any communication carried on in circumstances as may reasonably indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto.” “California’s law is quite clear,” Lorenz wrote in response to the First Amendment arguments by O’Keefe and Giles , “that persons who engage in news gathering are not permitted to violate criminal laws in the process.” Now the question remains if the IRS will continue to allow Project Veritas (a misnomer if ever there was one) its C3 status with a convicted criminal at its helm.
Continue reading …