Social fascism scoring points again in Germany

[Skybird]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23514320

:/\\!! :dead:

I am for a smoking ban in public places and buildings. I am for health insurances not paying diseases that a smoker has caused himself by his smoking, for I refuse to pay for somebody else who has worked to make himself sick - I am not solidaric with people behaing stupid and self-damaging.

But I say that forbidding smoking in your private sphere, your own home, goes too far - and let not be mistaken over it: if this sentence survives it through the instances, then Germany is on the path towards such a ban. Whats next? Regulations of healthy diets you have to keep in your own home? Legal obligations to buy only certain brands of tea or coffee? Banning prepration of Pommes Frites due to acrylamid? Censoring what kind of music somebody can hear in his own flat (as long as he does not exceed the volume and makes every neighbour his involuntary audience)?

The court has overstepped a red line here - and it is me saying that, and I am really no friend of smoking, especially cigarettes stink like the plague and even as a passive smoker of some minutes only it sticks to your skin and hair and clothing even days later.

Green politicians over this year have repeatedly demonstrated quite some militant attitude in advocating enforced educational lessons to the population. Totalitarianism is quite popular to push their ideological goals, if one follows Jürgen Trittin or Katrin Göring-Eckhard.

[AndyJWest]

'Social fascism'? You are comparing a dispute between a tenant and a landlord with the rise of the Nazi party?

Skybird, you really are an obnoxious piece of work.

[Skybird]

I label a years/decades-long trend

- in social, paternalistic and control-raising developments, and

- political developments based on PC,

as "social fascism", that always include a very strong component of growing authoritarianism, state-legislation and totalitarianism in the name of social causes, social justice, social well-meaning, social equality, social whatever;

and this is all is something of which this smoker-story is just one more illustration.

[August]

Skybird you're being misleading.

From the article:
A court in Germany has ruled that a man who smokes in a rented flat can be evicted if the smoke gets into public areas of an apartment block.


Then further:
At the same time, the verdict maintained that people had a basic right to smoke in their own homes.

So the fascist German government really isn't intruding into a persons "private sphere" now are they?

[Skybird]

August, I read about this story in German news since several days. The first instance is over, he has lost, and now can appeal in the next higher instance. Anti-smoker activist applaud the verdict, and there is a clear trend towards general tightening of such paternalism in Germany in general. And increasingly courts support it.

And when is "too much" too much? How much smoke is acceptable to be smelled, how much is a reason to throw somebody out? I person like me would be very sensitive to cigarette smoke, others are less. There is even a strong smoker in the six-appartment hpouse where I ,have my appartment, under the roof. When this man opens his windows, you can smell it one house left and right of our property for some minutes.

Still, I leave him alone, and I relaise that he carefully avoids smoking on balcony (which formally he would be allowed by laws - at least for the time being, some already rasie doubts about this law now), or in the garden.

And I am only about the ideological crusading part of these things. Lodger interest organisiation that we have over here says that claims with comparable arguments like in this case have been filed at increasing in numbers in recent years.

It does not stop with imperial health enforcement and social issues missionising. If everything else fails, then you always have the political correctness brigade and the Islamophiles. In more and more federal states, children in kindergarden and school can now get only halal food, and by that are forced to follow Isamic dietary rules, no matter what. Two weeks ago it also was reported that the federal state and city state of Berlin needs to import its school diners from the surroundign state of Mecklenburg Vorpommern now. Because in Berlin, school food is halal only now in general - but the city's laws also ban kosher butchering due to animal protection laws. In Meck-Vorpom such laws are still not yet implemented. - Why must infidels submit to Islamic dietary rules in general at all?

It'S strange. When I complain about neighbours playing their radio so loud that I need to listen in, at the cost of my own life, then you guys in past discussions hang at my throat immediately. But now that I defend a smoker's right to smoke at home, in his own "four walls", you again do not like it.

Damn all that social fascist paternalism, all this enforcement of ideologically correct behavior in the name of good intentions and well-meaning. It is and re,mains to be growing paternalism, authoritarianism, state-obedience, social anonymous pressuring and mobbing. What people lose there, many will not realise before it is lost completely. And then it is gone and regrets come too late.

What it comes down to? Ther ewill always be some smoke movbing into the public sphere, a smoker cannot prevent that completely, its impossible. And the question of how much is too much is a question that is set to be answered increasingly to his disadvantage. yesterday, a random interview I saw on TV, a jurist indicated that the legal permission to smoke on your balcony could have a limited time left only from now on. Chances when sueing people to make them stop smoking on their balcony, are currently seeing steep climbs. Not everywhere. But in ever more places.

[Skybird]

Ah, just in: (in German)

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/rauchender-mieter-in-duesseldorf-weitere-kuendigungen-befuerchtet-a-914026.html

[AndyJWest]

Skybird, given your endless insistence that you have the exclusive right to tell everyone how to think about just about everything under the sun, I'd suggest that accusing others of 'social fascist paternalism' might be pushing your luck.

[Skybird]

Skybird, given your endless insistence that you have the exclusive right to tell everyone how to think about just about everything under the sun, I'd suggest that accusing others of 'social fascist paternalism' might be pushing your luck.
Don't be shy, let it all out.

[Tchocky]

At the same time, the verdict maintained that people had a basic right to smoke in their own homes.

...

[Gerald]

Can actually be said that the judgment rules that Sky talks about in this article,are in Sweden too.

[August]

While this case may not be the best example of it I do think Skybird is right about the erosion of personal liberty.

[August]

A big part of the problem is also how humans are being shoehorned into increasingly tight quarters with each other. I have a lot less tolerance for somebodies personal habits the closer I am to them.

[Jimbuna]

A big part of the problem is also how humans are being shoehorned into increasingly tight quarters with each other. I have a lot less tolerance for somebodies personal habits the closer I am to them.

That's actually a very good point and one I must admit I increasingly find myself subscribing too.

[Fubar2Niner]

A big part of the problem is also how humans are being shoehorned into increasingly tight quarters with each other. I have a lot less tolerance for somebodies personal habits the closer I am to them.

That's actually a very good point and one I must admit I increasingly find myself subscribing too.

Totally agree. The old phrase 'Your/my own space' is becoming less space, more sardine can.

[Jimbuna]

Precisely :yep:

[Catfish]

OT a bit, @August:

... about erosion of personal liberty ?

Erosion ? Everyone is suspicious in the eyes of America.
You have no personal liberty anymore. Manning and Snowden have just uncovered it all.

'XKeyscore' is the real deal. Sorry in german only (though i doubt you will find such an article in the US)
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/xkeyscore-wie-die-nsa-ueberwachung-funktioniert-a-914187.html

Cheers indeed,
Catfish

[Spiced_Rum]

As far as I am concerned, anyone with bad body odour (BO) in a supermarket should not be tolerated. They stink and need removing from a public place. :nope:

[August]

As far as I am concerned, anyone with bad body odour (BO) in a supermarket should not be tolerated. They stink and need removing from a public place. :nope:


I feel the same way. Unfortunately though from everything I read the public is the least smelly of all time. I think the only saving grace is there was too much coal and tobacco smoke to notice it. :)

[the_tyrant]

'Social fascism'? You are comparing a dispute between a tenant and a landlord with the rise of the Nazi party?

Skybird, you really are an obnoxious piece of work.

Did you know that it was the Nazis who introduced anti-smoking legislation first?

[Skybird]

Did you know that it was the Nazis who introduced anti-smoking legislation first?

Finally! I applaud you. :salute:You are the first having taken note of this little ironic implication that I inidrectly hinted at and which maybe was a bit too subtle this time (or that got missed because I also used the term before, in other contexts).

The Nazis campaigned strongly against smoking, and the German medical research on the negative effects of smoking was the most modern and enlightened of it'S time, the data collected was superior to other states' projects on examining health implications from tobacco - if they even ran such projects. Smoking was prohibited by law in certain public places and public transport.

[AndyJWest]

Finally! I applaud you. :salute:You are the first having taken note of this little ironic implication that I inidrectly hinted at and which maybe was a bit too subtle this time (or that got missed because I also used the term before, in other contexts).

The Nazis campaigned strongly against smoking, and the German medical research on the negative effects of smoking was the most modern and enlightened of it'S time, the data collected was superior to other states' projects on examining health implications from tobacco - if they even ran such projects. Smoking was prohibited by law in certain public places and public transport.

Never let the facts get in the way of good propaganda:
....in 1840, the Prussian authorities re-instated a ban on smoking in public places. Thus, state restrictions on tobacco long predated the Nazi era http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2441844/

[Oberon]

.

'XKeyscore' is the real deal. Sorry in german only (though i doubt you will find such an article in the US)
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/xkeyscore-wie-die-nsa-ueberwachung-funktioniert-a-914187.html

Cheers indeed,
Catfish

You didn't look very hard, just googling 'XKeyscore' gives me this on the second sentence:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/07/presenting-xkeyscore-what-the-nsa-is-still-hiding.html

And on the next page there is:

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/how-nsas-xkeyscore-program-works-6C10812168

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/07/31/xkeyscore_nsa_targets_internet_users_who_search_fo r_suspicious_stuff.html

And then if you combine the relevant words you can also find:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/gigaom/articles/2013_07_31_xkeyscore_program_indexes_everyday_inte rnet_activities_snowden_documents_show.html

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/31/nsa-program-reportedly-allows-analysts-to-track-emails-chats-web-searches/?test=latestnews (http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/07/31/xkeyscore_nsa_glenn_greenwald_s_latest_snowden_lea k_details_the_nsa_s_widest.html)

Der Spiegel isn't the only news-source in the world, nor in Germany, although you'd be hard put to believe it... :hmmm:

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

A big part of the problem is also how humans are being shoehorned into increasingly tight quarters with each other. I have a lot less tolerance for somebodies personal habits the closer I am to them.:agree:
“I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad. I've found that to be so true.

[Takeda Shingen]

I assume that I will be informed when the time comes to rip my hair out and cry hysterically.

[Penguin]

Some years ago, there was an article in the Taz, about the most common complaints folks have about their neighbors. To my surprise the second biggest complaint next to noise was smell - about 40% of all interviewees were ticked off about this. :o
So with this in mind, it is very, very, very sensational and astonishing that German courts deal with this stuff. :88)

Btw the article is not 100% correct. Smoking is banned on a federal level onlay inside all federal buildings and further as part of labor-protection laws at the workplace. Each state has its own smoking laws - sadly most banned smoking in bars. However there is nothing as a smoking ban in public places - for example parks or streets are also public space, it is still legal in every German state to have a smoke there.

Never let the facts get in the way of good propaganda:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2441844/

Glad there are still people out there who read sources which cover pre-1933 history - or who inform themselves at all! :Kaleun_Applaud:
I assume that I will be informed when the time comes to rip my hair out and cry hysterically.

Hey Tak, nice to see that you're posting on here again! :up:
You have no time to rip out your hair, because the socialist-feminist-muslim-green-fascists will shave you, before its time to take a smoke-free shower. :arrgh!:

[Oberon]

I assume that I will be informed when the time comes to rip my hair out and cry hysterically.

You mean you've been told to stop?! :o

[Skybird]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobacco_movement_in_Nazi_Germany


fter German doctors became the first to identify the link between smoking and lung cancer,[1] Nazi Germany initiated a strong anti-tobacco movement[2] and led the first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history.[3] Anti-tobacco movements grew in many nations from the beginning of the 20th century,[4][5] but these had little success, except in Germany, where the campaign was supported by the government after the Nazis came to power.[4] It was the most powerful anti-smoking movement in the world during the 1930s and early 1940s.[6] The National Socialist leadership condemned smoking[7] and several of them openly criticized tobacco consumption.[6] Research on smoking and its effects on health thrived under Nazi rule[8] and was the most important of its type at that time.[9] Adolf Hitler's personal distaste for tobacco[10] and the Nazi reproductive policies were among the motivating factors behind their campaign against smoking, and this campaign was associated with both antisemitism and racism.[11]

The Nazi anti-tobacco campaign included banning smoking in trams, buses and city trains,[6] promoting health education,[12] limiting cigarette rations in the Wehrmacht, organizing medical lectures for soldiers, and raising the tobacco tax.[6] The National Socialists also imposed restrictions on tobacco advertising and smoking in public spaces, and regulated restaurants and coffeehouses.[6] The anti-tobacco movement did not have much effect in the early years of the Nazi regime and tobacco use increased between 1933 and 1939,[13] but smoking by military personnel declined from 1939 to 1945.[14] Even by the end of the 20th century, the anti-smoking movement in postwar Germany had not attained the influence of the Nazi anti-smoking campaign.[13] The use of Nazi and health fascism rhetoric can be regarded as part of an institutionalised practice of the tobacco industry and its front groups to discredit tobacco control activities and prevent the introduction of effective policies