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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: 5, Funny) by Eunuchswear on Monday July 13 2015, @09:43AM
Shock, horror.
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by zocalo on Monday July 13 2015, @09:50AM
So is smearing like this something PandoDaily is likely to do, or is this just an unfortunate connection someone made while covering the on-going release of documents relating to the tobacco industry's attempts to suppress data about the dangers of smoking?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 13 2015, @10:01AM
Social justice warriors and smoking. I'm sure you don't need much more help than that. The warriors need to be heard now and then, or sink into oblivion.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 13 2015, @10:05AM
You MEANT to say "obscurity", you big dummy!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by Eunuchswear on Monday July 13 2015, @11:01AM
So you've got Greenwald off the hook with your "youthful indescrection" argument.
Now explain the EFF.
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @11:37AM
The EFF isn't on the hook for anything. They needed a test case to challenge advertising restrictions, which basically limits it to tobacco and alcohol advertisers. The ACLU defends neo-Nazis for displaying flags. Same thing. They can't legally oppose laws without a case to bring.
And let's face it, Greenwald is an opportunistic, self-interested whore. He doesn't give a shit about the Snowden files except insofar as he gets to control their release. Didn't he basically leave The Guardian so that he wouldn't have to share any of the files or glory with the other reporters there?
(Score: 1) by Eunuchswear on Monday July 13 2015, @01:27PM
Why? Who, when told of the EFF's fight against the hacker crackdown thought it was all about freedom to advertise?
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:22PM
The EFF is not a single issue organization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:20PM
> And let's face it, Greenwald is an opportunistic, self-interested whore. He doesn't give a shit about the Snowden
> files except insofar as he gets to control their release.
Which is why Snowden picked him in the first place. That guy really didn't really think it through, did he?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:14AM
Didn't he basically leave The Guardian so that he wouldn't have to share any of the files or glory with the other reporters there?
Actually, it was The Guardian that pushed him out because they (understandably) didn't like the pressure from the politicos' mob - such as being forced to destroy evidence (computers, hard drives, etc). The topic just got too hot for The Guardian. Greenwald had to figure out the best way to make the info available, and well, what we have is what he settled on. I personally think the 'control' issue comes more from (justifiable) paranoia & a desire to see it done correctly & effectively than from a selfish ploy for 'glory' or whatever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @11:37AM
They stand up for my right to smoke. I think I'll chip for them some more.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Open4D on Monday July 13 2015, @01:04PM
Well the article hits out at various "journalists, scientists, activists and lawyers" who were paid by the tobacco industry.
To me, banning tobacco advertising is a legitimate option for a government, but opposing such a ban is not immoral. It may not be the EFF's finest moment, but 21 years later I don't see the fact that the "EFF called for using 'content blocking' technologies, rather than 'intrusive' government regulations" to be a big deal.
.
Distorting the truth, however, is potentially another matter entirely. The article mentions scientists like Alvan Feinstein [wikipedia.org]. And it talks about the tobacco industry lawyers (such as law firm Wachtell Lipton) who aggressively targeted whistleblowers. But the focus on Greenwald seems to be more in proportion to the extent that he's now a whistleblowers champion, rather than the extent that he was actually involved in Wachtell Lipton's behaviour.
I already knew Greenwald is not perfect.[1] He struck gold when he was contacted by Snowden. But PandoDaily are overdoing the criticism here.
.
[1] - For example, he is determined to muddy the waters when it comes to the behaviour of Islamists. He equated Charlie Hebdo with racism and bigotry, claiming it "contained a stream of mockery toward Muslims generally". (N.B. If you made the mistake of believing him, see these: 1 [lemonde.fr], 2 [macleans.ca], 3 [wordpress.com], 4 [tabletmag.com].)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:30PM
> N.B. If you made the mistake of believing him, see these
(1) That's the "I'm not racist, I hate everybody equally" fallacy.
(2) Just because you aren't a bully 100% of the time doesn't mean you aren't a bully
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Monday July 13 2015, @04:36PM
You obviously didn't read the articles. Neither of your two points can be taken as a defence of Greenwald, a rebuttal of anything I said, or a rebuttal of anything in the articles. They are just random remarks intended to give the impression of a reasoned response, without any of the substance of one. I might just as well respond back to you with some pointlessly random remarks of my own:
(3) - Some French Muslims believe the murders of caroonists and Jews were done by the government to discredit Muslims.
(4) - Just because Greenwald is right some of the time doesn't mean he is right all of the time.
Profound, I'm sure you'll agree ...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:17PM
> So is smearing like this something PandoDaily is likely to do
I stopped reading Pando over a year ago because of their deliberately obtuse coverage of the Snowden fiasco. While they had some good articles, they had way too many that blatantly distorted the facts. I figured that if their editorial policy was so loose as to let them do that for a topic I knew a lot about, how could I have any trust in them for the topics that I didn't already know much about?
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Tuesday July 14 2015, @05:52AM
Pando is home to a number of self-described assholes (*cough* Paul Carr *cough*) who might come out with a smear piece just for the fun of it. Mark Ames may join in the fun himself from time to time, though it's generally not his primary motivation. Since before he worked for Pando, he's been very suspicious of Libertarians and has regularly written about their hypocracy and/or doing what appear to be the right things for the wrong reasons.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 13 2015, @09:57AM
"most deadly crime in human history"
Hyperbole, much? Yeah, smoking is bad, but no one comes by with a gun, and FORCES you to smoke a cigarette. Freedom of choice counts for a lot, you know. Taking choice into consideration, how does the smoking industry's crimes stack up against the holocaust, or the Soviet purgings, or the millions who died in China in successive uprisings, revolutions, and invasions in the 1900's?
If I wanted to get a little radical here, I could make a case that the "most deadly crime" is having children. Every time a child pops out, he is condemned to death, isn't he?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Eunuchswear on Monday July 13 2015, @10:59AM
Yeah, somewhat exagerated.
But don't forget that the guilt of the tabacco companies isn't that they sold addictive substances that were dangerous to health, it's that they knew what they were selling was dangerous and attempted to hide that information. They also knew what they were selling was addictive, attempted to hide that information and make the stuff more addictive.
They went as far as to bribe the people in charge of fire standards to insist on (poisonous) fire retardant chemicals in furniture, rather than introduce cigarettes that went out when you stopped smoking them.
Pretty bad people.
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by schad on Monday July 13 2015, @12:02PM
First, it's a good idea to have fire resistant furniture anyway. Perhaps a less-toxic additive would have been a better fit, but it's not a bad idea. Lots of (primarily) stationary stuff in your house is designed either not to burn or to burn more slowly.
Second, the anti-burn stuff they put on cigarettes doesn't work. I say this as an ex-smoker, so I have firsthand experience but also no horse in the race any more. You actually end up smoking more. (If your cigarette goes out halfway, there's not enough to relight -- not that you can always relight a cigarette that went out at the no-burn mark anyway -- so you have to smoke a new one. And obviously you're going to smoke until it's done, because otherwise it's a waste. It's irrational, but it's the way addicts think.)
And it tastes like burning glue. That can't be good for you. I mean, it's not like cigarettes ever taste good or are healthy. But... maybe we shouldn't be making them worse on those two fronts than they already are, you know?
Ultimately, I question whether this is really a serious enough problem to warrant doing anything at all. According to NFPA [nfpa.org], there were 610 deaths in 2010 due to smoking-related fires. There are roughly 42 million smokers in the US. Even allowing for the fact that there are surely fires caused by cigarettes that don't result in any deaths, but do result in injury or significant property damage, that's an awfully tiny fraction. How much time, money, etc. do we spend chasing that last fraction of a percent?
Honestly, aren't these resources better spent trying to get people to quit smoking? That's the only surefire solution.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Eunuchswear on Monday July 13 2015, @01:14PM
And do you think the things they put in cigarettes to make them taste "better" are good for you?
Anyway, you're missing the point -- it's documented fact that they paid people to influence these decisions. Do you think they did that for your good?
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by schad on Monday July 13 2015, @02:49PM
I'm going to repeat the sentence immediately following the one you quoted: "I mean, it's not like cigarettes ever taste good or are healthy. But... maybe we shouldn't be making them worse on those two fronts than they already are, you know?"
Of course not. They did it for their own good. Are you one of those people who thinks that smokers believe cigarettes are made of vitamins?
In this specific context, probably they resisted the idea for the exact reasons I mentioned. In short, it makes smoking a worse experience, and that may translate to an increased willingness to quit. I don't know if it does, but it's an obvious enough worry that I can definitely imagine cigarette makers spending money to stop it. So actually, in this particular case, the companies' sociopathic interests quite nicely aligned with mine, though for entirely different reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @03:22PM
> First, it's a good idea to have fire resistant furniture anyway. Perhaps a less-toxic additive would have been a better fit, but it's not a bad idea.
But is it? First, the retardants that the tobacco lobby got mandated don't delay the burning very long and second, the number of people in non-smoking households who are injured or killed by burning furniture approaches zero. Second, everything has a price, doesn't seem like there is not much potential return in that area.
> Lots of (primarily) stationary stuff in your house is designed either not to burn or to burn more slowly.
Name two that aren't construction materials.
(Score: 2) by bootsy on Monday July 13 2015, @05:31PM
All those 80s computers, consoles and peripherals that went that horrible yellow colour due to bromide were all done so they were more fire resistant.
Cooking accidents and candles have caused most of the house hold fires I have experienced.
One smoker colleague of mine has a burnt hand due to a fire started by a candle as he always smoked outside to cut down on the smell.
I've seen a fire started by an acyclic ball next to a window as well.
According this link
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/410287/Fire_Statistics_Great_Britain_2013-14___PDF_Version_.pdf [www.gov.uk]
37% of UK household fires were connected to smoking.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:30AM
I used to smoke rollies. With thin paper, they went out when you stopped smoking them. The cigarette companies had to work to make cigarettes that didn't go out.
You list number of people killed by fires started by smoking. You also can add the number of forest fires started by cigarettes to the downside of cigarettes that keep burning. Long time ago around here, during fire season, only the thinnest of papers were allowed to be sold to the workers in the bush.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @11:02AM
If the radical militant feminazis get their way, every male child will be aborted at birth by decapitation. Because let's be honest, men have no place in today's society. Best to kill them before they grow old enough to realize they have no future.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Monday July 13 2015, @11:27PM
Yeah, smoking is bad, but no one comes by with a gun, and FORCES you to smoke a cigarette.
I mean, I do that, but maybe that's just me.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:39AM
While true that no-one uses a gun to make people smoke a cigarette, propaganda is very powerful and people do not have as much free will as they like to think they do. There's a reason that some of the biggest companies specialize in advertising.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @12:17PM
Amazingly, if you look into the evidence that smoking causes cancer, it is extremely weak. There is some association there, but it could just as well be that smoking speeds up the growth of preexisting tumors. Or that it increases the proportion of tumor cells that survive (eg by suppressing immune surveillance).
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Monday July 13 2015, @12:26PM
No, smoking does cause cancer. Seen it firsthand in at least three people.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @12:35PM
Oh really? What methods did you use to 'see it happen'? How did you distinguish from amongst the possibilities I mentioned?
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Monday July 13 2015, @12:43PM
Well, a friend, grampa on my dad's side, and some friend of my mother's died from lung cancer from smoking all their lives.
Granted, they were all old. I think there's a paper that says it's far less risky to smoke if you're under 40.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Monday July 13 2015, @12:43PM
Oh and a neighbor died from COPD caused by smoking. She was like 55.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @01:03PM
Caused by smoking means a specific thing, it means a tumor cell formed due to smoking. Your observations are not detailed enough to rule out the explanations I mentioned that do not involve smoking causing cancer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:27PM
Your theory is not backed up by statistics.
Look no further than the insurance companies. They knew well before anyone else. They have the actuarial tables to back it up. If I remember correctly the correlation was 98%. Which means a 2% error rate. But if 9 out of 10 smokers and 1 out of 10 non smokers get tumors, you can say it probably causes cancer. Is it the *only* cause? No. But it is a major one.
Having had 4 family members die from lung cancer, three family friends from lung/throat cancer, I find your ideas rather manipulative. The other members of the family who *dont* smoke are still alive. Maybe that is survivor bias. But come on... Even the cig companies have finally admitted it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:53PM
I'm not sure why this is so difficult to understand. You have moles don't you? The same things can exist inside your body where you can't see. So one explanation is that the cancer is already there, it is just growing slowly. Smoking, etc may just speed it up so it becomes a problem before you die of something else. This is different from smoking "causing" cancer. It is an important distinction, because understanding what is going on helps us to develop treatments. That is just one possibility, there are others.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Monday July 13 2015, @06:01PM
I think it's correct to say that it causes deaths from cancer. To the smokers who die that way and their loved ones, I imagine your distinction might sound a little beside the point.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @06:18PM
That sounds foolish. There is no reason to take a doctor/scientist seriously who is satisfied with that level of knowledge. It means they aren't really trying to understand cancer at all and you should fire them.
It is one thing to simply be working under conditions of limited information, it is quite another to say "it's beside the point to investigate any further" and purposefully perpetuate that condition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @12:10PM
The job of a doctor is to make you better, they don't need the level of understanding you are implying they should have. They only need to pay attention to the science and perhas differentiate the good science from the bad, though that could be done by a competent third party.
And while scientists need to keep pursuing a better understanding, how many people in this discussion are cancer scientists?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:23PM
Even if either of those were true, those are still awful possibilities.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 13 2015, @07:47PM
I'm having a hard time parsing your logic. If without the tobacco your immune system would suppress the cancer, but the tobacco keeps it from the suppression, how is that not causing cancer? You have cancerous cells in your body all the time, and you have since you were an infant, but normally the immune system gets rid of them, or at least suppresses them.
That's like saying depriving a person of food isn't starving them. After all, they weren't starving when you first stopped them from getting food, so it's only that their body has been consuming the food they already had. If they'd just dropped dead immediately they would never have starved.
You have to consider normal processes as being a part of the base state.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @08:09PM
Yes, from the uninformed patient's perspective the two may be similar. I am thinking from a scientific and treatment perspective. Tumors are usually considered to be clonal (descended from a single cell), the "cause" is whatever brought that cell into existence. Without that first step, the other factors cannot lead to cancer. Thus we should try to prevent or address that first step, whatever it is. Imprecise use of the term "cause" is apparently an obstacle to communicating that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @12:18PM
Tumors also mutate. If tobacco smoke causes a tumor to mutate into something more aggressive and harmful, then it is effectively tobacco that caused the cancer.
Although if you wanted to take your logic a step further, you could argue that if a persons parents didn't copulate to bring that person into being that person would never have got cancer, so perhaps your parents are the cause of all your illnesses.
(Score: 2, Informative) by tripstah on Monday July 13 2015, @07:47PM
The industry's former, and occasionally, current stance is that the "link" between smoking and cancer hasn't been proven. This is, in fact, true. No one has determined the exact mechanism for any carcinogen or cancer. To that end, you could also say that being exposed to any known carcinogen doesn't cause cancer. Of course, we do know that certain compounds cause cancer and how to establish statistical models to validate the existence of a "strong" correlation.
--trip
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @08:04PM
Precisely. I don't think we know what the mechanism of carcinogenesis is in any case (well, maybe retinoblastoma). However, I am confident it is either not accumulating somatic mutations, or these are orders of magnitude more common that thought.
I disagree about the use of the word "cause". Show me one paper that distinguishes between the possibilities mentioned in the OP. Note I am not arguing anywhere there is no correlation between smoking and cancer, or that smoking is not bad for your health.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @01:19AM
Then you're in luck. If you can establish that uncertainty with anything approximating the scientific method, tobacco firms like RJR will throw grant money at you faster than you can say, "intellectual whore."
My apologies to any self-respecting sex workers who frequent SN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @01:23AM
Why would they do that?
(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.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tripstah on Monday July 13 2015, @07:30PM
As for the EFF, I can tell you that I've litigated on behalf of a few open source projects (pro bono of course) and on at least 3 occasions I've gone up against attorneys that sat as members of the EFF's "board of advisors" who were fighting against open source. After the second time, I stopped donating and strongly suggest everyone else does too. That's not something I say lightly.
Having dealt with both entities for a number of years at this point, I'm, sadly, not surprised by this article.
--trip
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @10:10PM
Blaming tobacco companies for pursuing commercial advantages? If the filter isn't effective in reducing tar, that's a matter for the government to enforce.
Knowing several more people that suffered from the bad effects of alcohol, rather than cigarettes, how come that industry is (currently) getting a pass? Advertising restrictions have actually been lifted there.
I am expecting to pretty soon hear of the *evil* *evil* soft drink executives attracting children to their poisonous brews with bright colors and ads of people having fun.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by moondrake on Tuesday July 14 2015, @08:42AM
Can you provide any evidence for the statements Re:EFF?
In addition, advisory board members do not have to be aligned with the foundation as long as their advice is useful (though I agree that the EFF should try to select decent people).