Stupid Americans

Yeah yeah, I know that there's 300 million of them and they're not all the same, whatever.

I saw something interesting on teletext a couple of days ago (and that's another stupid thing, they don't have teletext!?) about an American government agency - I think it was some official body, but I may be remembering it wrongly - that had done some kind of assessment of I don't know what, racism in Europe? And we basically came out badly because we're so mean to the Muslims. Boo fucking hoo. Islamophobia, I'm so sick of that term. Supposedly, according to this agency, many European nations need to get a grip on things now because the persecution of Muslims is escalating. Freedom of religion is being restrained, ooh, scary. They mentioned the minaret ban in Switzerland as an important example, apparently. Seriously stupid.

But what makes it grade A dumbness is that the same report that says we need to be more understanding of Muslims and let them be freer in the expression of their beliefs or whatever also warns against increasing anti-semitism in Europe. o_O How stupid can you get?? That is because of the Muslims! When you let Muslims be free to express their beliefs, they persecute Jews! Give me a break. How does anyone do research into this and not know that?? o_O

Then there's another story too, more American stupidity. Philip Morris, purveyor of death, is suing the Norwegian state because of a new law that took effect here on January 1st, according to which no tobacco products can be displayed in stores. I think specialty stores are exempt, ie stores that only sell tobacco. But there can't be more than a handful of those in this entire country. This law applies to grocery stores and newsagents and places like that. They can no longer display cigarettes and related products, they have to store these in opaque cabinets. Philip Morris is against this because, so they claim, it makes competition difficult in this market. I mean, like anyone cares. They think the law should be overturned because it doesn't stop people buying cigarettes anyway. But the stupid thing is that they claim that they think they have a good case. The law's only been in effect for a couple of months here, so it's too soon to tell if it will have any impact or not, but apparently when a similar law was passed in Iceland some years ago, tobacco sales did not go down.

So, Philip Morris want our law gone, because it'll hinder their sales, and their reasoning is that we might as well get rid of it because it doesn't affect their sales anyway. o_O Did no one read through this strategy before they went public with it? But hey, I won't be against anything that means they'll throw a lot of money away on nothing. Stupid Americans.