Would a gruesome picture of a cancer-ravaged mouth with rotting teeth make you think twice about buying a pack of cigarettes?
My friends at Health Day News tell me that that’s the goal of new federal regulations expected to go into effect within three years. The rules will require tobacco companies to cover at least half of the front and back of packages with graphic — and possibly gruesome — images illustrating the dangers of smoking.
According to my buddies, U.S. regulations will be modeled after those already in place in Canada and other countries, and the warnings will be shocking: blackened lungs, gangrenous feet, bleeding brains and people breathing through tracheotomies.
Such mandatory graphic delineation should be a fact of life before another three years pass.
And long before our scheduled departure from Iraq and Afghanistan. Which is slated to be, if truth be told, NEVER. Not if you count mercenaries (Second-hand War?). Hey, even if you don’t. The lies about what we’re about are out. Unnecessary*, self-serving, illegal abominations abroad.
*Our interest in cheap oil does not qualify as “necessary.”
U.S. citizens — who supposedly take great pride in the “freedom” they have to speak out and take meaningful action — are complicit in our abominations abroad. Abominations which culminate in more than 6 million deaths a year — with or without our acknowledged wars — more than the total deaths from cigarettes annually worldwide. Documentation upon request, but the reason this article doesn’t provide footnotes and the like is that I want to make a point about there being — for much too long a time now — loads of definitive scholarly “proof” in lieu of action.
But let’s focus here on our wars. Our suicidal confrontations. Our inhumane attitudinal set. Our compounding fear with fear so that we make life not worth living. The ecocidal activities of our military. The human suffering that goes way beyond the neglect of our vets, or the deaths of our soldiers. Beyond the cruel, unnecessary agony of innocent parents being separated from their innocent children forever. Beyond the irreparable damage done to innocence. Beyond the toxification of groundwater at home and abroad… in the name of fighting an imaginary enemy. Or, at least, The Larger Enemy. The Real Enemy. Like the people Obama plays golf with. The same people who Bush played with in some capacity
Where are the WARNINGS AGAINST WAR? The gruesome images. The gruesome truth in everyday conversation with everyone In risky one-on-one on the street talk, in the living room talk during leisure hours? Not in articles and lectures. That we have had for a long time.
This is a call for revolution.
Not the generic kind. Not the kind that gets you slaughtered at the starting gate, at the barricades. But a smarter revolution. Starting with calling a spade a spade… and seeing where it takes us. Toward institutional changes?
Starting with stopping having personal popularity, a career and the like take precedence over participation in Holocaust-level horror. Starting with a fundamental criticism of public schools as the breeding ground for military participation, support for our aggression. Between parents.
Nothing less than calling the country cancerous will do. At each juncture. With every opportunity. Let’s hear our alternative media outlets label Obama as a murderer, not — in the name of unquestioned, traditional propriety, objectivity — President.
Now THAT’S grassroots!
About half the country might not be able to tell you how many days it takes for the Earth to circle the Sun, but the vast majority of our citizens are capable of caring about wanton murder. What goes against their enlightened self-interest.
The unrestrained greed and consumer voraciousness must end.
I am attached to the obligation to help others to see that The Emperor Has No Clothes. I am addicted to the idea of terminating the hypnotism. Not just the hypnotism that serves as a basis for Obama’s tenure. But to termination of the trance concerning American Exceptionalism.
We are not Good People… if we are to be judged by our present actions, deafening silence. And American citizens — with their obliviousness to where their luxuriant lifestyle comes from — ARE responsible for what’s coming down. Ignorant or not. Not the Government. Not the Pentagon. Not the Corporations. The average U.S. citizen.
Where are the WARNINGS? When will be stop executing war in public places?
Each reader — if it’s not too presumptuous to suggest — should tell neighbors, friends and acquaintances NOT to smoke other people.
We are bad for our health.