TICAP, The Hague, March 15th 2010

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Writing That Really Is Worth Reading

By Blad Tolstoy

I should like to draw the reader’s attention to two articles that really are worth reading.

The first is an essay by Vaclav Klaus, the current and popular President of the Czech Republic. For the readers’ information Klaus does not agree with smoking bans and does not believe the anthropogenic theory of global warming.

This week, I should like to recommend Klaus’ essay: “The Intellectuals and Socialism: As Seen from a Post-Communist Country Situated in Predominantly Post-Democratic Europe.”

In this essay Klaus illustrates the damaging current predominant intellectual ethos of “soft” socialism and how it has facilitated the creation of to-day’s illiberal society. Klaus’ writing is insightful and a superb aid to our understanding of the political world in which we now live.

Click here to visit Vaclav Klaus' article


The second article is by our pal Ed Contoski, and also an essay, entitled: “Death by Smoking Ban.”

I shall use Ed’s words to describe his own piece:

“Death by Smoking Ban shows that far more people die because of smoking bans than because of secondhand smoke. It quotes several important studies that debunk the claims of health dangers from secondhand smoke, and it cites evidence that smoking bans are causing deaths in unexpected ways. The public has been deceived into believing secondhand smoke is dangerous by pseudo-scientific propaganda of more than a hundred well-organized, well-funded anti-smoking organizations. Their dishonesty and the phoniness of their claims is evident in examples cited from a recent Most Ridiculous Secondhand Smoke Claim Tournament run by Michael Siegel, a physician who specialized in preventive medicine and public health.”

Click here to visit Ed Contoski's article

(The link to Michael Siegel’s blog is provided in Ed’s essay as well as on this site: see under our links for Blogs: The Rest of the Story.)