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from the smoking-gun-found-next-to-skeleton-in-closet dept.
PandoDaily's Mark Ames has published a paywalled article [archive] entitled "Shillers for killers: Revealed: How the tobacco industry paid journalists, scientists, activists and lawyers to cover up the most deadly crime in human history." The article draws upon a new round of documents that was recently added to the University of California San Francisco's Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. The library contains 14 million documents and is growing, as noted on the Library's blog. Some bits are more relevant to our community.
In 1994, marketing director at the RJ Reynolds tobacco company wrote to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to discuss topics related to protecting tobacco advertising on the Internet. Later that year, EFF's executive director sent a proposal to RJ Reynolds's direct marketing manager, Peter Michaelson, soliciting money to fund an EFF project that would oppose government regulations on commercial tobacco advertising on the Web. An alternative plan is suggested:
"We are also prepared to pursue a legal test of this alternative approach to regulation. For example, if MARC [RJR's direct marketers] or RJR decided to put one or another sponsored on-line service up on the Internet or via America-on-Line or other on-line service, the white paper could become the basis of a legal brief challenging the constitutionality of any governmental effort to block the programming on the basis of current advertising bans in electronic media... We have not budgeted for this alternative at this point."
Years before Glenn Greenwald teamed up with Laura Poitras and whistleblower Edward Snowden to expose the NSA, he worked as a lawyer for Wachtell Lipton, a law firm that sued ABC-TV for $10 billion and helped to gag smoking industry whistleblowers. This had a chilling effect on CBS, which prevented the airing of a 60 Minutes program covering Merrell Williams and Jeffrey Wigand until the next year. These events were covered by the 1996 Frontline documentary "Smoke In The Eye" [Internet Archive] and Wigand's story inspired the 1999 film, The Insider.
It's reasonable to assume Greenwald—ever the diligent researcher—must have joined Wachtell fully aware that they were helping gag whistleblowers and threatening journalists: Greenwald says that he chose to work for Wachtell in 1994 after being recruited by over a dozen top law firms. But of course that doesn't necessarily mean he worked on the specific Philip Morris case. Except that a billing ledger discovered in the tobacco library shows Greenwald's name in a Wachtell Lipton bill to Philip Morris... Other Wachtell Lipton memos show Greenwald's name prominently displayed on the letterhead in aggressive, threatening letters against ABC-TV, against whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, and against whistleblower Merrell Williams...
[...] Again, in the two decades since, whistleblower champion Glenn Greenwald has never said a single word about this case or about the role his law firm played in crushing TV investigative journalism. As far as our research can tell, Greenwald has never taken a position on tobacco laws or spoken about the horrific death toll smoking is taking.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Subsentient on Monday July 13 2015, @12:20PM
Phillip Morris, the guys who make Marlboro and a ton of others, along with R.J. Reynolds who make Camels and Kools and a ton of other stuff,
are the two most insanely evil companies I have ever known. People offer me Marlboros and I straight up refuse them. They ARE more addictive. They give me a headache for two hours after I smoke one. I personally find it a lapse in ethics that people still give them any business knowing what they do, and most of them know. What puzzles me is that most of these people know these companies are insanely evil, but are still happy to give them their money and smoke their Castoreum (aka Beaver Anus Juice) laced cigarettes.
I smoke mostly pipe tobacco rollies. I like a brand called Talon.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2, Touché) by Eunuchswear on Monday July 13 2015, @01:24PM
So you congratulate yourself that you're not taking the dangerous product made by those evil mexican gangsters, you do nothing but pure blue from Heisenberg himself.
Is your nick a clue?
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Monday July 13 2015, @10:26PM
I smoke for the concentration since I'm a programmer, and because it helps the OCD that my medication misses around the edges. I don't recommend it however, I cough like I'm in a gas chamber for the first two minutes of every day.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 13 2015, @07:52PM
FWIW, in order to quit smoking I first switched to Shermans. They're a bit stronger, but they don't have the supplementary addictive chemicals added. Then I quit slowly.
(Well, admittedly the first time I just quit. I made the bad mistake of assuming that that proved it was easy to quit, and allowed myself to start again. Bad mistake. The quitting the second time was *much* harder. But a friend suggested that an "organic cigarette" would make quitting easier, and he was correct, though it still wasn't as easy as the first time.)
Smoking tobacco is a bad idea, but if you're going to do it, don't smoke adulterated shit.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.