No, not that one, this one:
Full disclosure: I’m not a member of the Tea Party, and both of my parents died of tobacco related illnesses. I’ve got no use for it or the people that make money from growing and selling it. But, since Mann brings up the subject, and since its become SOP for the doomers to equate climate skeptics to tobacco issues through ugly smears, I’ll let Donna Laframboise explain. She writes today:
[…]
On the campaign trail back in 1988, Gore couldn’t boast loudly enough about the central role tobacco has played in his life:
Throughout most of my life, I’ve raised tobacco…I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I’ve hoed it. I’ve chopped it. I’ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it. [bold added]
And let us not forget the World Wildlife Fund’s tobacco connections. The 2011 book, Saving the World’s Wildlife: WWF – the first 50 years was written with the cooperation of WWF officials. It says this organization extended a warm welcome to South African corporations during the apartheid era. According to page 120:
WWF-South Africa was in many ways a special branch of the [WWF]. Instead of appealing to the general public it derived its income from corporate members. Seventy-two companies joined within a year thanks to Anton Rupert’s active canvassing among the South African business community.
Rupert was one of the founders of the WWF and one of the richest men in the world. Where did his fortune come from? Tobacco. An obituary explains:
Calculating that there would always be a great demand for tobacco, regardless of what happened in the world, he developed a cigarette-making company named Voorbrand, soon to be renamed Rembrandt Ltd, whose overseas tobacco interests were eventually consolidated in Rothmans.
The WWF is the largest and wealthiest green lobby group on the planet. One of its founders was a tobacco baron.
Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his climate change activism. He has been intimately linked to tobacco for most of his life.
Will Professor Glantz be writing a paper about these facts? Will he be declaring, in a press release, that both Al Gore and the WWF have “longstanding ties to tobacco companies”?
Read her whole post here: http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/02/11/about-those-tobacco-connections/
NIce catch by Donna.
But just like the ‘Big Oil’ ties to CAGW do not expect the rank and file lemmings to believe you.
Wow. Talk about smear job…
“Will Professor Glantz be writing a paper about these facts? Will he be declaring, in a press release, that both Al Gore and the WWF have “longstanding ties to tobacco companies”?”
Hahahahahaha…breath…hahahahahaha.
Thanks for the afternoon laugh,Anthony,on a lousy Monday.
“Members of the European Parliament have paved the way for hundreds of millions of pounds of subsidies to go to Europe’s tobacco farmers — even though Brussels spends huge amounts on anti-smoking campaigns”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/9844395/MEPs-plan-tobacco-subsidies-as-Brussels-fights-smoking.html
And they wonder why us Brits have a problem with the European Union
To raise tobacco Al would have had to leave his Fairfax Hotel in DC. Apparently, he did spend some of his summers down on the farm in Tennessee, but it would come as a surprise if he ever got his hands in the soil.
DeSmog blog, get your climate science from a P.R. firm. What a joke.
Everything the alarmists label skeptics with, they do themselves. It’s right across the board. You’d think they would notice.
So, not only am I waiting for my checks from the Koch Brothers, but now I’m waiting for payouts from Phillip-Morris Tobacco, too?
If he had any integrity, there would be a new Lewpaper being express mailed to whatever ‘new publication’ wouldn’t give him a hard time.
“conspiracist ideation” and “counterfactual thinking” indeed.
It astounds me the Gore is the guru of the left. I know four things about Algore.
A) He is from tobacco money.
B) He now has $100 million in blood (oh I mean Oil) money.
C) His wife was the #1 enemy of free speech in the 1980s.
D) He cheated on said wife.
Four things you’d think the left would really.. you know.. frown upon.
He’s also now basically a Islamofascist 5th Columnist, but that wouldn’t bother em.
Sorry …. https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann (valid Feb 11th 2013 – 19:22 GMT)
Pathway says:
February 11, 2013 at 11:12 am
To raise tobacco Al would have had to leave his Fairfax Hotel in DC. Apparently, he did spend some of his summers down on the farm in Tennessee, but it would come as a surprise if he ever got his hands in the soil.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
He probably would not know how deep to plant it or even which end of the plant to stick in the ground. Most tobacco farmers use migrant labor and I certainly can not see Al actually getting in close contact with the peasants unless he wanted their vote.
“Study: Tea Party Organizations Have Ties To Tobacco Industry Dating Back To 1980s.”
That’s a neat trick, seeing as the Tea Party movement didn’t exist before 2009.
For those not familiar with Stanton Glantz, he’s the anti-tobacco crusader most famous for co-authoring research which claimed that the adoption of an indoor smoking ban in Helena Montana caused an immediate 60% reduction in heart attacks. (No, that’s not a typo.)
Here’s more detail on that lovely bit of junk science: http://www.velvetgloveironfist.com/index.php?page_id=45
DeSmog Blog – champions of politically correct moral relativism, find themselves without traction and go to the expense of proving it.
Big Tobacco is a flea on the backside of Big Climate, itself the mouse that runs up the leg of Big Government, the elephant of them all.
The DeSmog Blog Tweet is a perfect example of Brownian polemics, a random juxtaposition of emotively loaded words leading nowhere. Hard to believe that someone actually funds DeSmog Blog and believes they’re getting value for money.
Mann and the truth became enemies a long time ago. While this article is sad, it is not surprising. When you hate, any lie will do.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/29/al-gores-weird-explanation-for-taking-100-million-from-climate-change-villains/
News Flash: It has just come to our attention that conservatives fund conservative causes and liberals fund liberal causes. This shocking discovery will be covered in depth by our crack team from the Blatantly Obvious Broadcast Network tonight at 11:00. After that special report stay tuned for the ongoing coverage of the “PETA being funded by animal lovers” scandal.
These guys are such slow learners. They use the Internet but somehow they just do not understand the power of it to find out information and the speed that information can be spread to others.
How did Mann manage to get a PhD ??
I’m a proud member of the TEA Party because a country cannot spend itself into prosperity–it’s a contradiction in reality with catastrophic consequences.
Oh, and the acronymn “TEA” stands for “Taxed Enough Already”. It has nothing to do with tobacco or any other green plant but harkens back to the actions taken by about 700 poorly disguised “Indians” who dumped tea from three British ships into the Boston Harbor. The colonists wouldn’t stand for nefarious taxation ploys imposed by the King of England and we’re against un-budgeted spending that greatly exceeds tax revenues with no end in sight.
If we gather anything from history, it’s the fact that once a country’s debt has reached somewhere between 90 to 100% of its GDP, the economy collapses. These same people who defame and lie about the TEA Party defy reality with their CAGW meme so it isn’t surprising they are also oblivious regarding the laws of economics. Our current debt to GDP ratio is about 75% and will hit the “red zone” before 2016.
Note: Russia is currently stockpiling all the gold it can get because they see economic reality whereas the US continues to borrow, spend, and create fictitious money. I just might have to brush up on my Russian.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I have never received a cent from any TEA Party organizer or organization, although I have contributed small sums to help the cause.
@RossP
MMann received his PhD before Al Gore invented internet. 😉
Whatever they do, they think everyone does.
How’d the TEA Party get caught up in this? How does a group advocating for smaller, less intrusive government that stays within the boundaries originally laid out in the constitution (AS AMENDED) have anything to do with the climate argument. Oh, I see it now…if the government quit spending like a fleet of drunken sailors on shore leave, their grant trough would go empty. OK makes perfect sense now…never mind /sarc (No offense meant to fleets of drunken sailors…they usually quit when the cash runs out)
@RossP says: February 11, 2013 at 11:50 am
These guys are such slow learners. They use the Internet but somehow they just do not understand the power of it to find out information and the speed that information can be spread to others.
How did Mann manage to get a PhD ??
==================================================
Got a grant? ;->
Sometimes I tend to gives these guys more credit for intelligence than they deserve, but something that politicians do these days is to take stock if their vulnerabilities and then accuse the opponent of these things before they can accuse you. So Nancy Pelosi will accuse her opponent of insider dealing and explain how she will drain the swamp if elected. If her opponent then points out that her husband has made his fortune by insider dealings, it will simply look like sour grapes and won’t stick.
It shouldn’t. If the ‘climate argument’ were simply about ‘climate’. As one can plainly see, for Mikey ‘the cause’ Mann (and his chums), ‘climate’ is simply a means to an end. Were global temperatures to plummet over the next few years then they would have to find a new ‘ice breaker’ to lead the good fleet ’cause’.
The Tea Party was created by average American people with a decentralized grassroots presidential campaign movement started in 2007 for the 2008 Ron Paul candidate. The totally un-funded/self funded movement through mainly the internet, organized themselves through Meetup groups and many internet web sites to raised money from hundreds of thousands of small individual donations, and campaign for a Dr Ron Paul win. The “Tea Party” moniker was born out of a major fund raising day based on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 2007.
After the loss to McCain and Obama, the status quo establishment republicans co-opted and astroturffed the grass roots movement by Dick Army, Freedom Works, FOX News, and Glenn Beck in order to control the message and steer it back toward the establishment talking points. The original Ron Paul Liberty movement has since completely removed itself from any association with the co-opted Tea Party. We continued the grassroots Liberty movement in the 2011-2012 Ron Paul Presidential campaign with much greater success, however the loss of the big prize. The most important thing we had to accomplish was the spreading of the message of real Freedom and Liberty, and we did, even though the establishment corporate propaganda mainstream media fought us every steep of the way.
Boston Tea Party World Record Attempt for Ron Paul
Sniff, sniff. I smell tobacco investments from some of the Warmists at the BBC.
In BOLD are tobacco companies.
BBC Pensions – “Top equity investments at 31 March 2012″
Investment Holding £m
British American Tobacco
BG Group [gas]
BP
Royal Dutch Shell
Imperial Tobacco
Reynolds American
Oao Gazprom [gas]
Total SA [oil]
Occidental [oil & gas]
Philip Morris International
Source BBC Pensions:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mypension/aboutthescheme/topinvestments.html
Desmog, the creation of Jim Hoggan, Chairman of the Suzuki Foundation, architect of BC Hydro’s $500million -cost to date- Power Smart marketing campaign…
On the subject of those who make money from growing or sellling tobacco. That would include Al Gore.
The old saw about 3 fingers, fingering yourself, when you point at others has never been so true,as to the CAGW team.
I suspect any charge made by these scammers will turn out to be true. Of them.
Their attack have turned out to be pure projections. They are guilty of the accusations they have made against others, the CRU emails being a shameful example, the SS exposure of the pathetic plotting and the Mann and his funding issues.
So using the famous UN IPCC precautionary principle, I will now insist that each accusation of dishonesty, criminal intent and malice toward life, made by the team; Is actually an admission of guilt. No need for a trial, evidence or lawful judgement, they be guilty by their own admission, bring out the stocks.
Pathway says:
February 11, 2013 at 11:12 am
—
During one of his campaign stops, Big Al talked about pushing a plow while walking behind to mules. He made a comment about how hard going up and down those hills was.
Real farmers know that you don’t plow “up and down” the hills. You plow around the hill, following the contours of the land.
A.D. Everard says:
“Everything the alarmists label skeptics with, they do themselves. It’s right across the board. You’d think they would notice.”
John Robertson says the same thing.
I’ve often commented that if it were not for psychological projection [imputing one’s own faults onto others], the alarmist crowd wouldn’t have much to say. Just about everything they say is a lie — but it would be the truth if they said it about themselves.
michaelwiseguy says:
February 11, 2013 at 12:29 pm
No, the individuals you mention are ANYTHING but “establishment republicans”. Had you listed politicians and their cronies like McCain, Graham, Rove, Romney, Cristie, Pawlenty and the like, you’d be correct. And I don’t consider Ron Paul to be a Republican; he’s a RINO but only to hide his Libertarian ideology, which is still going strong in the TEA Party.
And I’m sure that any minute now the Smoggies will be tweeting (and Mann dutifully retweeting) the fact that Mann’s very own Legal Counsel (in his frivolous libel suit vs Steyn):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/23/yay-mike-mann-took-the-bait-intends-to-file-lawsuit-against-steyn-and-nro/
Al Gore on tobacco:
said in 2011:
and we have this:
Does Al Gore, the Qatar oil cash receiving hypocrite, think of himself as “evil, evil, evil” having sold tobacco and received campaign funding from evil tobacco?
Mpaul says:
February 11, 2013 at 12:17 pm
“Sometimes I tend to gives these guys more credit for intelligence than they deserve, but something that politicians do these days is to take stock if their vulnerabilities and then accuse the opponent of these things before they can accuse you.”
Nothing to do with intelligence, they learn it in PolSci.
Lenin: “Accuse your enemy of being what you are, of doing what you are doing.”
Pull My Finger,
Since when has the left ever cared about marital infidelity? It didn’t seem to cause Bill Clinton any political problems.
More tobacco hypocrisy.
How the T.E.A. Party became included in this defamation broadside I’m still not sure! That said, there are probably folks out there that do not really know what the T.E.A. Party stands for. Here is a bit of background.
T.E.A. stands for Taxed Enough Already! It is not a political ‘party’ like the Democrats and Republicans. It is a wholly grass roots politically conservative collection of hundreds of small groups all across the USA dedicated to electing candidates at all levels of government that embrace the following:
1) Fiscal Discipline – Balance the federal and state budgets and pay down the $16.4 Trillion dollar national debt.
2) Constitutionally Limited Government – If it isn’t enumerated in the Constitution and Amendments, the federal government should have no regulatory or taxation authority over it. All functions and rights not described and limited in the federal Constitution and Amendments devolve to the individual States and their governments to decide and resolve.
3) Free Markets – Free markets provide the most efficient allocation of resources, goods, and service. Free enterprise is the economic standard for any freedom loving society.
That’s it. Fiscal Discipline. Constitutionally Limited Government. Free Markets.
MtK
Looks like Al and the WWF are the ones hiding the evidence again.
They knew they were lying and they knew they were killing people.
The CAGW lie will kill people, too but they don’t care.
Just like selling their tobacco they know what they’re doing and they don’t care.
I believe Al has a minor background with big oil as does the WWF.
cn
Stanton Glantz, acting as the poster-boy for “presentism” (anachronistic fallacy) which is a ‘mode’ of historical analysis wherein present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically (in other than proper chronological or historical order) introduced into perspectives and interpretations of the past.
As in, smoking used to be cool, and now it’s not, but, he ‘projects’ that we ‘knew’ all this “back then” in a time when human ‘struggles’ were *more* than just a little pronounced AND lifetimes overall were shorter due to a variety of *other* factors …
Large parts of the world’s population STILL to this day ‘struggle’ for existence and resulting short lifetimes, and smoking is both a diversion and relief.
One might be prone to think that Stanton Glantz has too much ‘free time’ on his hands, or is trying assuage his own guilt for some reason …
.
Al Gore is not new to taking “dirty” oil money. He inhereted lots of stock in occidental that got special help from Gore’s father who was involved in questionable oil deals..
http://www.democracynow.org/2000/1/21/gore_attacked_over_ties_to_occidental
“…, but Gore’s connections to Occidental sprang to the headlines this week when the Financial Times carried a story about environmentalists’ request to the Vice President that he call for Occidental to abandon their drilling plans in Colombia. Gore owns up to half a million dollars of the company’s stock.”
“And Gore is also facing heat for his involvement in the sale by the Clinton administration of thousands of acres of oil-rich, publicly owned land to Occidental in 1997. The area is known as Elk Hills and it is located in Bakersfield, California. It is known as an ancestral land for Native American communities.”
“Two prior Republican presidents–Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan–had attempted to put Elk Hills on the auction block, but backed down in the face of widespread opposition. It was President Clinton, under the advice of Vice President Gore, who approved a deal to let oil companies buy some of the reserves, pushing a bill through Congress that made it possible to sell the government’s interest in the 47,000 acre Elk Hills reserve to Occidental Petroleum for $3.65 billion. It was the largest privatization of federal land in the country’s history, and it tripled Occidental’s reserves overnight.”
Does the UN like big tobacco money? You decide.
Mann is a sewer and what passes through him is sewage.
There is a perverse irony in someone whose grandfather was a Russian immigrant given refuge in the free and democratic United States, trying to silence those who question his beliefs by way of vindictive labeling and political propaganda.
Rocky Road- The so-called Tea Party, who stole the honorable name of Americans who did something incredible and kept their mouths shut for their whole lives, is nothing but a joke. How dare they even try to compare themselves to those 120 brave men?! The best chance and only chance for the US to have any kind of democracy is for Republicans to take back their party from these morons. The WWF has roots in the Nazi Party- look it up. Maybe it;s time to take these non profits and cancel their tax exemptions for producing anti American and anti human propaganda!
DavidG,
Mac the Knife makes a good case. How can anyone argue with the goals of grassroots organizing for fiscal sanity — unless they want to sow dissension?
The so-called Tea Party- small minded wing nuts who stole the name of approximately 120 of the greatest patriots this country ever had is a joke Rocky Road! It’s time for real republicans to take back their party from these people or we will be stuck with one party. It’s also time to take away non profit status from the WWF with its nazi background and the rest of these propagandist twerps. Let them function on their own dimes.
Fiscal sanity? Do you know any history? It’s better to have an economy that runs rather than one stuck in park. Do you think these idiots of the TP could solve any real problems?! Don’t make me laugh. If I was president I’d print money and start a 20 year energy Manhattan style project. You want to make progress it takes money. Let’s not hear about the Republicans and their fiscal sanity, which they trot out only when others overspend. When they overspend as they always do, they just blame others.
D.B., of course, there has sprung up an entire ‘industry’ sector for social workers (my parents’ term for them), community organizers, and the cadre of activists that exist in a ‘remedial atmosphere’ which government programs have been created to ‘solve’ (e.g. ‘the war on poverty’ et al) … to oppose any ‘cuts’, in any way (including rates of ‘increase’) to these programs, against an established ‘baseline budgeting’ norm (with planned yearly increases) results in the awakening of these zombies.
For you see, D. B., they are quite literally fighting for their financial livelihood; the very ‘atmosphere’ in which they live and breathe …
.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
The Taxed Enough Already party, much like the ‘skeptics’ who rationally abjure the man made global warming hypothesis, has arrived at a point somewhere in the then they ridicule and fight you range of opposition attacks.
You can hear the acerbic vitriol aimed at the T.E.A. party groups on many mainstream media outlets, from democrats, republicans, greens, and socialists, as well as in some of the comments above. They have noted the successes of T.E.A. party backed conservative candidates in local and state elections over the past 6 years and perceive a real threat to the status quo. Their very real perception of threat from the T.E.A. party groups comes from the primary principle of Fiscal Discipline. Many of their wasteful, ineffective programs will be sent deservedly to the ash heaps of history, when tax payer dollars are focused on priority needs and debt reduction.
“….And then you win.”
MtK
Now that’s funny right there! Oh, you’re serious. Well you have absolutely no clue about what you are talking about, I know because I was at a few (huge!) rallies. I know what we were doing there and what 99% of us want. There was more respect and reverence for our brilliant founders at those rallies than anywhere else ever seen, particularly when compared to the average (R) and (D) conventions. The photos are all over the place, do your homework before putting your foot in your mouth.
And the (R)epublicrats cannot take the party back from TEA partiers because it is not in their hands at all. (R)epublicrats control the (R) party, always did and probably always will. They did even during the Reagan years, and except for a short time in the 104th Congress has always been (R)epublicrat control.
Next thing you’re gonna tell us is that Eisenhower, Nixon, Agnew, Ford, Rockefeller, Bush, McCain, Romney, ad nauseum were all Conservatives. The (R)epublicrats are merely watered-down (D)emocratic-Socialists and the lesser of two evils. Your salvation, will not be found there.
I still see no credible arguments against an organization that promotes fiscal responsibility. Plenty of strawman arguments, though.
RockyRoad says:
February 11, 2013 at 1:14 pm
” No, the individuals you mention are ANYTHING but “establishment republicans”.”
No. Ron Paul republicans are Old-School Republicans, not Neo-Conservatives, infiltrating and taking back our republican party. You have to work within the two party system because of the laws in place, or you can never win.
JohnMac says:
Also have a look at the good work Anton Rupert (Rembrandt) did in his Peace Parks. Transfrontier parks projects.
Does two wrongs make a right? Anybody who’s associated with Big Tobacco, now or then, are disingenuous. Right, left, pro, skeptic. Doesnt matter. Less greed more facts, please.
DavidG says:
February 11, 2013 at 4:33 pm
“Fiscal sanity? Do you know any history? It’s better to have an economy that runs rather than one stuck in park. Do you think these idiots of the TP could solve any real problems?! Don’t make me laugh. If I was president I’d print money and start a 20 year energy Manhattan style project. You want to make progress it takes money.”
One could say a lot of stuff about that but I’ll just say yes, to make progress you must
a) spend money
b) spend it on something that has a chance of delivering a return on investment.
All governments are very good in a) and very bad in b).
The money that Obama currently spends and prints will with absolute certainty deliver a negative return on investment. You are headed for another default and devaluation.
To RockyRoad:
You wrote in part: “If we gather anything from history, it’s the fact that once a country’s debt has reached somewhere between 90 to 100% of its GDP, the economy collapses.”
Bzzt. Wrong. Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio reached this level years ago, and is now over
200% and the economy has not collapsed. What is correct is that above the level you
cite, huge borrowing by the government distorts the economy so badly that economic
growth is poor and a robust economy is impossible. While serious, that still doesn’t equate
to an economic “collapse”.
I am not a member, but like the TEA party I believe that I am Taxed Enough Already. So now whenever I hear the TEA party mentioned I automatically think of Taxed Enough Already.
Therefore guess what I thought of when Wayne Swann mentioned the TEA party in his last lecture… I thought wow! Wayne wants more tax out of me and he is actually telling everyone that Abbot wants less to tax us less. No wonder everyone I know calls him a goose!