Why do governments want to ban smoking? I mean, it’s not as if they actually care about their citizens’ health. If so, they would spend more on healing than killing. But, more to the point, they would address the far more personally and socially destructive effects of alcohol and refined sugar, (which of course, are one and the same) evidenced by alcohol fueled late night violence and sex between drunken obese teenagers (and beyond), who cram casualty departments and make our city centres no-go areas until the sun comes up.

Yet, regardless of this epidemic, because the sugar/alcohol multinationals’ influence is so powerful, health is a minor distraction – however, tobacco companies carry the same political influence, so this is not the reason. In addition, governments make billions annually from smoking: taxes, needless to say, but also in terms of unneeded pensions and the extraordinary savings in health care which escalate dramatically in old age.

Given this perspective, is it not strange that whilst not exactly pushing it, (they would not want to appear heartless now, would they?) governments do not offer smoking the same tacit approval they give to alcohol, junk food and gambling – all of which are many times more socially destructive?

So why do they hate smoking so much?

It was a question that had tumbled around in my head for months. The best I could come up with, was that they wanted to use the fields for a more lucrative crop. But what, barring illicit drugs, could generate such revenue? (Particularly with Heroin production back up to pre Taliban levels.) It just did not make sense.

Then, by chance i happened upon ‘Political Ponerology’ by Andrew Lobaczewski, which considers how wicked, power hungry people gradually take control over society. And he points out, that the last organised attempt to stifle smoking on the scale now under way in Europe and the United States was in pre-war Germany, under the Nazis. (P.156)

You see, what Nazi scientists discovered very soon into their research, was that carbon-monoxide, a central component of tobacco smoke, creates resistance to pathocratic influence: i.e. imbibers are more likely to question and less likely to blindly follow orders from psychopathic leadership (perhaps we could think of it as ‘attitude’, as symbolised by ’50s icons like James Dean and Marlon Brando). What is more, research also suggests ’second-hand smoke’, as breathed by children of smokers, may in fact immunise them against the influence of psychopaths. Hardly useful, one would suggest, if the objective is filling heads with supremacist beliefs and obtaining undivided loyalty.

To Nazi leadership, with their early, unsophisticated attempts at propaganda, reducing peoples’ critical thinking and increasing their susceptibility to messages of hate and fear and identification were central to their objective. So while the government made supply of tobacco increasingly difficult, and smoking areas increasingly limited, the Nazi propaganda machine set about pushing the party line, vilifying and condemning “red-man’s weed” and persecuting those who would smoke it. It was a campaign begun in the mid 1930s and continued and intensified until they were finally overthrown. (The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis – http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/313/7070/1450 )

Today, when one considers the enormous advances in psychological warfare, be it for product sales, national/religious/corporate identity or fear of the other, and the increasingly sophisticated delivery techniques, the need for smoking to be eradicated becomes blazingly obvious. What government or corporation (or religion) in their right mind, whose primary goals are submission and association, cannot see the benefit of losing a few million in taxes, pensions, operations… for the benefit of a compliant, malleable ready made workforce, and market. From such a perspective, considering our current political and corporate leadership, it is clear, smoking never stood a chance.

What a good job we have a free and independent news media to stand up for the citizen, expose authoritarian lies and ensure governments and corporations cannot cynically manipulate and frighten people into servicing their nefarious goals… oh, err… looks like we’re in big trouble.

Better get puffing guys!

Original Article From HERE

The bulk of conflicts throughout history have been driven by groups that, in their collective ego state, initiate all manner of suffering. Often the so-called leaders within these groups are simply the ones whose egos are the most developed and consequently the ones who are most mentally ill, ie psychopathic. Stalin, Hitler, Churchill and Mao fulfill the stereotype; recently we’ve had George Bush Sr and Jr, Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair and so on. This “condition” is not limited to well known political figures but has been and continues to be prevalent within the higher orders of religions, private banking dynasties, multinational corporations and so on. The list is a long one and the names familiar.

Throughout history these are the individuals who act as a fulcrum around which other mentally ill people gravitate. The end result is that they, the inner members of the group, take up ever more extreme positions against an enemy which they have brought into being and which justifies their existance. In most cases however, the mass of people are deceived by these individuals and groups because they are always told that the actions that are to be taken are in their best interest. It’s always portrayed as beingfor the good of all of us and only trouble makers would disagree.

These patterns of apparent logic as spewed forth by our “would be leaders” are beginning to lose their hold on the people. An awakening is taking place. For example, it is becoming ever more obvious that the EU exists primarily for the benefit of the ego driven originators and supporters of the plan, and to the detriment of the mass of people who live within the area currently designated as the EU.

You may find it challenging to not automatically move into a state of reactive anger when you view these videos. On one level that response is wholly understandable. On another, it isn’t a response that has much to recommend it, for should you act out of it, out of anger, it will simply perpetuate the ego virus and spread it more rapidly.

Most of us are, to lesser or greater degrees, suffering from this mental illness that is the ego. We have to watch it in ourselves to understand that in collective structures such as the EU, this disease is in full bloom. We may have a slight cold of the ego but these characters are suffering pneumonia of the ego and the intense nature of their mental suffering can be seen in the underhand plans that they repeatedly draw up and seek to implement against the mass of humanity (the “enemy” as far as they are concerned).

“The Impact Of Science On Society” a book written by Bertrand Russell in the early 1950′s is for all purposes a confession of the diseased ego, in this case Russell’s. Bewailing the fact that two world wars had failed to cull the population down sufficiently, he longed for the regular visitation of plagues to cut back the population to more manageable levels. If these could be scientifically regulated he wrote, so much the better.

Although not as violent (yet), the EU is heading in the same direction of all encompassing control as these videos show.

-START-

How hard it is to live with yourself! One of the ways in which the ego attempts to escape the unsatisfactoriness of personal selfhood is to enlarge and strengthen its sense of self by identifying with a group–a nation, political party, corporation, institution, sect, club, gang, football team.

In some cases the personal ego seems to dissolve completely as someone dedicates his or her life to working selflessly for the greater good of the collective without demanding personal rewards, recognition, or aggrandizement. What a relief to be freed of the dreadful burden of personal self. The members of the collective feel happy and fulfilled, no matter how hard they work, how many sacrifices they make. They appear to have gone beyond ego. The question is: Have they truly become free, or has the ego simply shifted from the personal to the collective?

A collective ego manifests the same characteristics as the personal ego, such as the need for conflict and enemies, the need for more, the need to be right against others who are wrong, and so on. Sooner or later, the collective will come into conflict with other collectives, because it unconsciously seeks conflict and it needs opposition to define its boundary and thus its identity. Its members will then experience the suffering that inevitably comes in the wake of any ego-motivated action. At that point, they may wake up and realize that their collective has a strong element of insanity.

It can be painful at first to suddenly wake up and realize that the collective you had identified with and worked for is actually insane. Some people at that point become cynical or bitter and henceforth deny all values, all worth. This means that they quickly adopted another belief system when the previous one was recognized as illusory and therefore collapsed. They didn’t face the death of their ego but ran away and reincarnated into a new one.

A collective ego is usually more unconscious than the individuals that make up that ego. For example, crowds (which are temporary collective egoic entities) are capable of committing atrocities that the individual away from the crowd would not be. Nations not infrequently engage in behavior that would be immediately recognizable as psychopathic in an individual.

As the new consciousness emerges, some people will feel called upon to form groups that reflect the enlightened consciousness. These groups will not be collective egos. The individuals who make up these groups will have no need to define their identity through them. They no longer look to any form to define who they are. Even if the members that make up those groups are not totally free of ego yet, there will be enough awareness in them to recognize the ego in themselves or in others as soon as it appears. However, constant alertness is required since the ego will try to take over and reassert itself in any way it can. Dissolving the human ego by bringing it into the light of awareness-this will be one of the main purposes of these groups, whether they be enlightened businesses, charitable organizations, schools, or communities of people living together. Enlightened collectives will fulfill an important function in the arising of the new consciousness. Just as egoic collectives pull you into unconsciousness and suffering, the enlightened collective can be a vortex for consciousness that will accelerate the planetary shift.

—Excerpt from A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

The society pronounced, “Killer games are landmines for the soul of young people,” noting that the games give players bonus points for each person they kill. The “image of man” disfigured in this way in the minds of young people, is inhuman, and must therefore be banned by law. (Take note that the word they used, “das Menschenbild”, which translates as “the image of man”, is highly reminiscent of Friedrich Schiller and is rarely heard today outside of church services.)

Politicians must act, the society demanded, “before an entire generation of children and youth are pulled into a whirl of violence… Computer killer games are inhuman,” they say, “and therefore violate the constitution.” The GwG is the largest psychotherapists’ association of its kind in Europe.

www.larouchepac.com/node/9107/print

PS – The following podcast from Alan Watt (Nov 30th 2007) features a call in from a computer games developer which supports the above most ably.