Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Diatribe on Trump

So for all my blog readers this is a diatribe I wrote for a rhetoric class I am in at UC Berkeley as a response to an hour long discussion we had in class.  I refer often to things that happened in class but I think it is clear enough that you don't need to have been in my class to understand the point.  Trump is a fucking asshole.

In class on Tuesday we spoke about some very contentious issues surrounding Donald Trump and the upcoming presidential election.  While our school has its liberal reputation for very good reason, I have no doubt that there are at least a few in our class and many on campus who support Trump.  For this reason, I am writing this, in order to address some of the comments made in class, as well as the issues I hoped to raise but was unable to because so many people wanted to speak.  Since this is a class in rhetoric we focus on words.  I have been reminded many times by our professor that words matter.  This is true, words do indeed matter, but only in the context of the facts that surround them.

Trigger Warning: I will be reprinting here Trumps comments regarding women in the video released over the weekend so that those who haven’t seen what he said can know.

I will also be using foul language because curse words are able to convey a certain intensity and emotion that is valuable when using a written medium rather than verbal communication. 

Early in our class on Tuesday I referred to Donald Trump as a steaming pile of human waste.  I want to begin by apologizing for this characterization as it is abjectly wrong.  The much more correct characterization that I should have used to refer to Donald as is a flaming bag of dog shit; however, I was concerned about using such language in class.  Trump is a bigot, a racist, a xenophobe, and an all-around asshole.  I fully contend that being a Trump supporter in itself is an exercise in self-delusion and truth avoidance.  Trump supporters in the media have irreparably damaged American discourse with their partisan bullshit.  They are able to deflect and deny all of Trump’s wrongs in order to maintain the false reality they desperately want to believe.  The truth, however, is undeniable and no mere words can ever change it. 

All People Deserve Respect, Freedom And Equality Regardless Of Race, Gender, Creed, Orientation, Or Any Other Categorization.

I have but one simple caveat for that statement.  A person no longer deserves respect when they have proven themselves to be unworthy of it.  Trump, more than almost any public figure today has definitely proven himself to be unworthy of respect.  The United States has reached a point in our history where all of the progress we have made through science, logic, reason, and cooperation threaten to be turned around.  I would never suggest that Trump has accomplished this himself, rather that he has given a public voice to the worst dregs of our society; people who had remained relatively silent on the national level for a long time because most people had ignored them.  We can ignore this threat no longer.

The first issue I want to address from class is a comment made that Secretary Clinton could possibly be in prison because of the issue with her Emails.  Those of us who have been motivated enough to do the research know that this claim is almost certainly abjectly false.  It is propaganda widely circulated through the right wing and has been baselessly used to demean her.  I do not expect anyone to take my word for it, but instead you can listen to a Harvard educated Lawyer, Andrew Torrez, explain clearly and efficiently why this is so on a podcast called Opening Arguments by following this link.  You can also read his accompanying blog article on the same topic here.  And of course, there are the words of FBI director James Comey

“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. … In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.”

Secretary Clinton does not deny that using a separate email server was a stupid decision, she accepts full responsibility and has said so multiple times, but under the claims of Donald Trump that she should be in prison are perverse exploitation of what is in reality a dumb mistake.

But Trump’s absolutely fucking idiotic call to lock her up is completely emblematic of his campaign.  As we all saw in the debate earlier this week he was unable to answer most questions and merely resorted to attacking Secretary Clinton.  When asked what he would do about Syria Trump instead turned to attacking Secretary Clinton.  He actually had to be asked the question a second time by moderator Martha Raddatz after he used his initial 2 minutes on attacks.  This is a man whose campaign is so disturbingly distanced from reality that his vice presidential candidate is an evolution denier.  I have a shrimp in my fish tank that is more intelligent than Donald Trump, but none of this comes even close to Trumps treatment of women, minorities, and the LGBTQ community.

While Trump continually tries to claim that he truly cares about African Americans his past is riddled with disturbing truths that show otherwise.  In 1973 Trump and his father were sued for discrimination in housing practices.  The lawsuit claimed that Trump Management Inc. (of which Donald Trump was then the president) either refused to rent to African Americans in some cases, or in others offered only apartments in buildings that were primarily inhabited by other African Americans.  While the lawsuit was eventually settled without an admission of guilt it is but one event in a long chain of discriminatory actions and statements that plague the entire Trump family. 

Not long ago, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a picture of a bowl of skittles with the caption “If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful?”  This disgustingly simple minded evaluation of the Syrian refugee issue is absolutely disgraceful.  Before responding to it myself I want to give you the words of Comedian and magician Eli Bosnick who created a minor internet sensation with his response.  He tweeted the image of the same bowl of skittles with the following caption.

“If I gave you a bowl of skittles and three of them were poison would you still eat them?”
“Are the other skittles human lives?”
“What?”
“Like. Is there a good chance. A really good chance. I would be saving someone from a war zone and probably their life if I ate a skittle?”
“Well sure. But the point-”
“I would eat the skittles.”
“Ok-well the point is-”
“I would GORGE myself on skittles. I would eat every single fucking skittle I could find. I would STUFF myself with skittles. And when I found the poison skittle and died I would make sure to leave behind a legacy of children and of friends who also ate skittle after skittle until there were no skittles to be eaten. And each person who found the poison skittle we would weep for. We would weep for their loss, for their sacrifice, and for the fact that they did not let themselves succumb to fear but made the world a better place by eating skittles.
Because your REAL question…the one you hid behind a shitty little inaccurate, insensitive, dehumanizing racist little candy metaphor is,
 IS MY LIFE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF MEN, WOMEN, AND TERRIFIED CHILDREN…
… and what kind of monster would think the answer to that question… is yes?”

The truth is powerful.  The truth is that we live in one of the most prosperous and well off nations in the world, but many of us suffer from the delusion that we have no responsibility to the rest of the world.  That these imaginary boundaries that we drew and we named countries have any more meaning than we give them and that for some reason being born in one as opposed to another makes our lives more valuable.  Trump initially called for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, and as I have made very clear in class I am an atheist.  I have no love for Islam, or Christianity, or Judaism, or any other religion across the planet, but I do not hate the person who believes something because it is what they were taught.  One’s religious beliefs are usually just a result of what you were taught by your family and the people around you, and they are no reason to hate the person.  The truth is indeed that the vast majority of all religious people are peaceful.  The vast majority of all non-religious people are peaceful, but Trump wants to prevent thousands of people from escaping the absolute horrors of war simply because his xenophobic little mind can’t comprehend that he is no better than they.  Look up pictures of the city of Damascus before and after the civil war.  The difference is heart wrenching.  Any person who can look upon them and feel no ounce of sympathy, no desire to help in any way possible is a cruel heartless bastard who does not deserve to be our president.

On LGBTQ rights Trump’s position is as hypocritical as humanly possible.  Trump openly says that he is a better choice for the LBGT community while also openly opposing marriage equality.  His reason? Of course it is blame Secretary Clinton.  Since the Clinton foundation once received donations from Saudi Arabia he is suddenly better for some reason.  Of course that’s if you don’t consider the millions Trump has made in business with the Saudis.  Or the fact that donations to the Clinton foundation are irrelevant to Secretary Clinton’s support of human rights.  I say let’s take all of the money we can get from the Saudis and funnel it directly to humanitarian projects WHICH IS WHAT THE CLINTON FOUNDATION FUCKING DOES.  I’m sure Trump also thinks that his support of the North Carolina is also a pro-LGBT move (sarcasm).  Of course it’s no surprise that Southern Poverty Law Center listed hate groups like the Family Research Council, the Ku Klux jackasses and David Duke support the upstanding hatemonger that is Donald.

Of course no conversation on Donald Trump can ignore his views on women… As property.  Since women are half of the population it surprised me greatly that someone would suggest there were things more important than this.  We live in a country where women are still treated as inferior to men, a country where nearly 20% of women report having been raped or experiencing sexual assault.  In short we live in a country where rape culture is alive and well.  Here at UC Berkeley in the past few months we have had several instances of rape and sexual assault reported and undoubtedly there have been more that, sadly, the victims have not been able to report.  It is an uncomfortable thing to think about, but beyond that it must be discussed and it must be confronted.  We must also recognize that the culture of masculinity is the problem. 

At this point I am going to discuss the recent video of Donald Trump talking about women with Billy Bush.  In the video, the asshole says

“I moved on her actually. You know she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her, and I failed. I'll admit it. I did try and fuck her, she was married”

Followed later by

“I moved on her like a bitch. I couldn't get there and she was married. Then all-of-a-sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony tits and everything. She's totally changed her look.”

Then

“I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

And the worst

“Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

That anyone would try to apologize for or distract from the disgusting nature of Trump’s comments is insulting to the women of our country.  This is not locker room talk.  I have, in my life, played just about every sport there is to play, from soccer to ice hockey, and I have never heard anything that disgusting.  This is not how men speak when we are alone.  It is the way a desperate sad narcissist talks about people he views as mere objects for his pleasure.  Do we want someone leading our country who doesn’t respect half of the population?  Someone who even the Westboro Baptist Nutjobs see as “too fringe”.  Do we want a president that says he wants to take away a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body?  Do I even need to remind everyone that Trump currently stands accused of sexually abusing a 13 year old girl at parties hosted by a convicted sex offender?  Do I have to point out that Anderson Cooper had to ask that disgusting excuse for a pile of rotten flesh three times whether he had ever done the things he said in the video before Trump finally said no.  I desperately hope not.

I could write for hours, I know, and not do any good.  The Trump supporters would point out that Trump has not been convicted of rape (yet), that he settled his housing discrimination lawsuit and never admitted guilt.  They would deflect and bring up the emails, and the Saudi donations and all the bullshit claims Trump has made.  I know this because at one point in my life, that I am not proud of, I was one of those idiots.  I was raised in a republican household and I went through a phase where I was a radical conservative.  I thought it was cool, and that I was so much smarter than those stupid liberals.  I called democrats communists and made a general ass of myself.  I opposed what I now see as the basic human freedom of the right to love and marry anyone you wish.  I suppressed my own sexuality, unwilling to admit that I was bisexual because of the oppressive religious ideas I was raised with.  I am disgusted with who I once was, but I understand the mindset.  Trump supporters live in an echo chamber where the only information they see is that which re-confirms their pre-determined conclusions.  If they encounter contradictory information they label it lies by the liberal media.  My parents still live like that and it pains me deeply.

But at the same time I can’t blame Trump supporters for believing a lie.  I can’t do that because it truly isn’t their fault.  We are all just products of our surroundings, and most likely they were raised in households where they were taught to think that way.  It is an incredibly difficult thing to escape, and it only happened for me when I became an atheist.  I can, however, blame Donald Trump for promoting the toxic ideas he does.  He has millions upon millions of dollars, enough to have access to any information in the world.  He is surrounded by advisors who cannot ignore the truth and effectively do their jobs, and he was given by his father one of the best educations that money can buy at Wharton.  There is no excuse except malicious intent to obviously know the truth but ignore it.
So with all of this the only thing that really matters is how do we fix it?  I think the answer is an incredibly hard one.  I think it takes all of us confronting the issues we face as a society.  It takes white, middle class, educated, men like myself confronting our privilege and realizing that we, more than everyone else, have a duty to work to fix what our ancestors have caused.  This doesn’t mean we have to walk around apologizing for the way we were born, but it means actively working to support those who were not born with the advantages that we were.  It means educating others who want to maintain the status quo, because education is truly the only way to break them from the ideas they were raised with.  It means being an ally to the LGBTQ community.  But most importantly it means trying to understanding one another.  People are the same all over.  We all want to live happy healthy lives in the presence of those that we love.  We should all live in a society that doesn’t make anyone feel that they are an outsider.  I know that this seems like a pie in the sky fantasy world that we will never get to, but it truly is closer than we suspect.  We came to Berkeley because we believe in change.  We want to better ourselves so that we can better the world, and in a few short years most of us will be out there actually trying to do so.  I hope that we can all stand by each other one sunny day in a world where there is no more hatred, oppression, and division. 


If you managed to make it all the way to the end, thank you.  I completely realize the irony that this rant is almost as long as the midterm I turned in last week, but I find it quite cathartic to put my thoughts down in writing.  I know much of my anger came through as well as some of my sappy optimism and other emotions but I truly do believe every word.  If you take offense at anything I wrote or think I am wrong feel free to tell me.  There are few things I relish more than a good debate. 

Thursday, September 8, 2016

A Reason To Have Faith In Network Television, Courtesy Of The Blacklist.

Like many people today I rarely watch T.V.  In fact, in my dorm I don't have access to cable, or satellite.  So like most, I rely on Netflix, which means waiting months for the next season of any show I like to pop up and then binge-watching the whole season while neglecting my studies.  Well that is exactly what happened today when I noticed that season three of one of my favorite shows The Blacklist starring James Spader.  The particular episode is episode 4 of season 3 entitled "The Djinn".  While many viewers may have just watched for the action and suspense, or perhaps for Spaders' witty quips, but at the end of the episode Spader has a monologue that absolutely made me light up.

As a skeptic, secular humanist, and fervent believer in equality, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I support gay rights and especially detest religious hatred aimed at members of the LGBTQ community.  Furthermore, as a political science major, I wouldn't have chosen UC Berkeley if I didn't believe in social justice.


SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!
IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE END WATCH THE EPISODE FIRST BEFORE READING ON.


So the premise of the episode is that a woman named the Djinn allows people to torture or otherwise take revenge on people who have wronged them.  Midway through the episode an Iranian businessman dissapears and it is revealed his Daughter Nasim kidnapped him for revenge. Reddington (played by Spader) and Keen (played by Meghan Boone) eventually find out that Nasim is the Djinn and then procede to reveal her secret.

Here is the transcript of the inspiring speech given by Spader about the situation:

Reddington:  Was it so horrific to discover that your 19 year old son, your eldest son was gay.  So horrific that you forced him against his will to go under the knife, change his gender, to give you a daughter instead of your son?  Who was gay.

Father: The clerics accept.  People can get trapped in the body of the wrong sex.

 Nasim:  I wasn’t trapped.  I liked my body, I liked men.

Father:  I wanted to protect you Nasim.  They could have killed you.

Reddington:  For being Gay!  They’re so homophobic that being gay is a hideous crime, but chopping off a man’s penis isn’t?  Honestly is it just me or is the human race armed with religion, poisoned by prejudice, and absolutely frantic with hatred and fear Galloping pell mell back into the dark ages?  Who on earth is hurt by a little girl going to school, or a child being gay?


For more on this real issue view the Vice News report on the subject from 2015.  Religious fundamentalism truly is trying to drag us back into the dark ages and it is up to individuals of rational mind to fight against it.  Every person in the world has the intrinsic right to live free of judgement about their sexual preference, free of persecution, free of fear of death and imprisonment over issues that no one else has any right to even know about.

I am encouraged by knowing that many others like me continue to become the majority, but religion continues to be the main enemy in the fight towards equal rights for all.  I haven't touched on religion much throughout my blogging, but I feel any decent skeptic (or sceptic for the Brits) must look at the scientific data and say religion has no place in the making of policy or determining how to treat our fellow humans.  Only reason, and the simple idea that we must care for one another, should guide our interactions.

So in closing I recommend the Blacklist to all of my readers.  I may enjoy it for the simple entertainment value most of the time, but it is also heartening to know that the typically shallow entertainment sector does manage to sneak in SJW topics from time to time.











Friday, August 19, 2016

I'm So Sick of Mike Adams' Racism and Bullshit

After my several week long hiatus on writing about the Health Ranger, today I decided to peruse several of the most recent articles he has written.  Recently he has been on a political kick, writing about things like the election, Black Lives Matter, and of course the ever coming collapse of America.  Over the years, and certainly in this election cycle, the Trump supporting megalomaniac Mike Adams has become increasingly caustic and racist.  In one of his most recent about how apparently we are in the middle of a race war he babbles about how BLM is really a black terror group and the race war Obama has been planning for years is finally upon us.  Of course Mike Adams doesn't miss an opportunity for product placement!!  He conveniently links his reader to an online gun store Bud's Gun Shop, so you too can shoot people in the pelvis just as Mike describes in the article.  One of his more sickening quotes is this,

"Remember, much of today's violence is being carried out by racist, angry, bigoted HATE MOBS, 

not just individuals. This means you will likely need to reload. Don't get caught with only one 

magazine in your gun. Like I always say in my tactical handgun classes, if they ever find me beat to 

death by an angry mob, there are going to be shell casings and empty magazines (and lots of dead m--

-er f---ers) all over the place"

Of course I have come to expect this type of sick and twisted bullshit from naturalnews, but the sheer hypocrisy of it is most striking.  This is the type of person that wants to highlight small groups of people that mainstream Black Lives Matter supporters would definitely condemn , and characterize that as the entire movement.  Meanwhile, back in the fortress of solitude, anytime a gun nut shoots someone, or a school, or a church, they are in no way characteristic of the mainstream gun owners in society.

You also get the sense throughout that he had to go back through after he wrote this and change all of the places where it blames black lives matter protesters, where before it probably just said black people.

I myself own a shotgun that I use for shooting clays.  It's entertaining and I enjoy it.  I'm no gun nut, but it is legal and I know my gun is safely locked away.  I know many other gun owners and the majority of them are just normal people that either hunt or target shoot for fun, but the audience Mike Adams appeals too is the type of person that is foaming at the mouth just hoping they someday get the chance to shoot somebody (a black somebody in most cases).  Neither the rioters who claim to be affiliated with BLM, or the murderers who commit mass atrocities are representative of their respective groups, but the Health Ranger would have you believe that at this moment the streets are filled with roving bands of racist black thugs, just waiting to see a white person so they can kill them.  I know there isn't much rebuttal in this post, but I am simply drained from having to read David Duke's fever dream channeled through the dripping conspiracy sponge that is Mike Adams.   There is only one way I can end this post because I am just too frustrated to think right now

Fuck You Mike Adams You Racist Delusional Piece Of Human Garbage.  

Why I Haven't Been Writing

As some of you may know, I am a college student, and for the last several years I have been attending American River College in Sacramento California.  Well my ship has finally come in and earlier this year I found out I had been accepted to UC Berkeley.  Needless to say I am incredibly excited to start at one of the top academic institutions in the world.  My hope is that the people I meet there will give me new resources to draw upon and allow me to write better, more informative articles about all the pseudo scientific woo I abhor.  Between my recent vacation and my frantic preparations for my move this Sunday I have not had time to write about the lunacy of your favorite online gurus, but rest assured I shall return.  In the meantime GO BEARS!!!


Monday, August 1, 2016

My Vacation.

Tomorrow at 6 in the morning I am leaving for a weeklong vacation canoeing in the boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada.  I did this trip a few years ago with my Dad and younger brother, and we had such a great time we decided to go again.  I have to say, being absolutely alone in the wilderness for days, when you see not one single other human being, is amazing.  The stars are brighter than I have ever seen them, we catch more fish in one week than I think I've ever caught in a lifetime of going to Minnesota for summer vacations.  I cannot recommend it enough to those who love the outdoors.  So for the time being you will not be getting new blog posts from me unfortunately, but rest assured that when I return I will have plenty of pictures and stories to share.

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Changes to blog layout

I'm doing a bit of fooling around with my layout and such for a few days so be patient with me, things might seem a bit weird for a bit.  Hang in there, more great stuff to come.

Friday, July 29, 2016

Consumer Wellness Center Labs Identity Crisis


When Kevin Jenco Talks About Kevin Jenco on Kevin Jenco's blog, Kevin Jenco usually uses the words I or my.  When Mike Adams Talks about himself on the bowl of pig rectums he calls a web site, he talks about Mike Adams.  I just couldn't help but notice in a recent article Mike wrote titled :CWC Labs announces heavy metals water and soils testing services to the public; 20 toxic metals, minerals and trace elements analyzed via ICP-MS, he refers to himself in the third person.  He writes

"The director of the laboratory, Mike Adams, author of the No. 1 bestselling science book on 

Amazon.com entitled "Food Forensics," directs the scientific analysis of all water and soil samples. 

His recent analysis of hundreds of water samples from across America revealed that 6.7% of 

municipal water systems contain very high levels of lead and other toxic elements in violation of 

EPA limits. "The citizens of America no longer trust cities to provide them with safe, clean water," 

Adams explained. "Our private testing service allows water consumers to get their water tested from 

a trusted, accredited, independent science lab that can't be influenced by local city politics." 

As a writer this just bothers me so fucking much.  Mike essentially pretends to be a third party, hoping the reader won't look at the picture of his sunburnt muffin basket of a head right above the article.  It is an intellectually and morally bankrupt practice that helps give himself legitimacy by pretending he is an expert.

Of course the other option is that someone else wrote the article and is lying about Mike writing it, but I'm no conspiracy theorist, so I wouldn't think that.  

In case you are unfamiliar with CWC labs, you are far from alone. Figuring out exactly what it is is a bit difficult because of the web of businesses Owns and the dozens of different names, web sites etc. that he uses.  But I have been able to track down a few details about the lab.

The adress is not listed on the web site itself, but it is on the Lab Certificate of Accredidation.  The Adress it gives is 704 Highway 71, Bastrop Texas.
From Google Maps
Conveniently it is located next to a portable toilet & septic business.  COINCIDENCE!?!?! I THINK NOT.


Also, on the certificate the name of the lab is 

"Consumer Wellness Center Lab aka Natural News Forensic Food Lab"

CWC Labs also claims it is only open to commercial clients, which raises another question about another conflict of interest.  In another post on this site I wrote called Jerking off In the Mirror: The Mike Adams Story, I discussed how Adams is the sole listed board member of the nonprofit Consumer Wellness center.  The connection between the lab and the charity are hard to discern.  Adams call the lab the "analytical science branch of the consumer wellness center".  The Consumer Wellness Center is located in Cody Wyoming and has no listed upcoming activities.  But it does have a web site OF COURSE.  I don't think Adams can resist the urge of going more than a week without making a new web site.  other than links on their web sites it is unclear how the lab is connected, bringing up the question over conflict of interest if the lab is performing for-profit work like commercial testing.  It seems that perhaps Adams created a charity in order to use the name and establish legitimacy for his lab.

Compounding this question is the recent announcement that CWC labs will be doing water and soil testing for individuals, through a mail in kit available on Adams' Healthrangerstore.com 

FOR $150

All I had to do was one google search to find a number of mail in water testing kits for much less than that price.  For example, a kit from KAR Labs, a much older laboratory with a very good reputation is only $59.99 with prepaid postage both ways.

Mike Adams calls himself the lab director and claims he oversees all scientific analysis, making me further question the credibility of any results that come from what appears to be a scetchy outfit.  The lab is one of the most cited sources in recent years for articles on Adams' many other "news" sites, but as far as I can find Adams has published no true scientific studies and very little of even basic test results.  I encourage my readers to flood the CWC with email queries so that Adams will answer the many questions that surround the CWC lab.














Joseph Mengele, I Mean Mercola DAMN YOU AUTOCORRECT!!

Image Credit asciencenthusiast.com
"Dr" Joseph "don't talk about any of my FDA letters, the FTC settlement, or my Better Business Bureau report" Mercola, is an osteopath who's clinic in Illinois is permanently closed (thankfully).  Unfortunately, however, his web site Mercola.com remains one of the largest quackology outlets on the web.  He peddles all of the usual bullshit, homeopathy, natural remedies, anti-vax rhetoric, but of course as he says on his web site

"Mercola.com is not, in other words, a tool to get me a bigger house and car, or to run for Senate. I 

fund this site, and therefore, am not handcuffed to any advertisers, silent partners, or corporate 

parents."

So it is just coincidence that his site contains a store selling products with his name on them.  The quackwatch article on Mercola reveals that he has an incredibly large home and actually has made a lot of money from his bullshit web site and products.  At the time I  visited the Mercola store section of the site displayed a message saying it was down for maintenance.  I don't know how long it's been like that, but I am curious if it might have something to do with the 5.3 Million dollar settlement Mercola just made with the FTC in April for selling tanning beds that he claimed prevented cancer.

How this man still has a medical license I cannot fathom.  With several letters from the FDA and orders to stop selling fraudulent or dangerous products, the Illinois Medical Board, must have their heads up Bruce Rauner's ass.  You can look up Mercola's medical license and see that they have never even disciplined him since at least before 1990.  However the look up also reveals that in 2014 Mercola settled a malpractice lawsuit for almost $400,000.  The only description of the suit I found was on a law blog, where MERCOLA PRESCRIBED THE WRONG THING TO A PREGNANT WOMAN AND HER CHILD WAS BORN WITH COGNITIVE BIRTH DFECTS!!!

This anti-vax piece of shit caused the very same thing he claims vaccines do, using "medicine" he claims is safe, natural, and harmless.  If you see him in public call him a douche for me please, and if you read this Joseph, Fuck You.







Jerking Off In The Mirror: The Mike Adams Story

I have to imagine that Mike Adams' morning routine starts with him looking at himself fully naked in a mirror doing his very best Buffalo Bill impersonation from the Silence of The Lambs.  That is the only way I can visualize the amount of absolute narcissism displayed through his writing, twitter, you tube videos and every damn thing he does.  The clear efforts at deception he employs at hiding his involvement in so many different thing is disgusting.  I mean I recently read an article on his site, naturalnews.com by S.D. Wells that listed the Top 6 most influential leaders of the clean food movement in 2016 and beyond, or, as S.D. humbly refers to them, heroes.  The list includes the usual suspects, Vani Hari, David Wolfe, Dr. Oz, but I bet none of my readers could possibly guess who #1 is.  Mike Adams The Fucking Health Ranger Himself.  How strange that he would be named the number one health leader by a writer  That Fucking Works For Him.  Of course the article contains no traces of self awareness or recognition of the fact that Adams owns this web site, pays this writer, or is even affiliated in any way.  If this weren't enough for you to picture mike making out with himself, try to also picture the mostly blank mind that is able to come up with such gems as;

The EPA Wants To Kill You With Radiation So Buy This Water Filter I endorse,

  The Bird Flu Is Going To Cause Mass Hysteria And Economic Collapse So Buy My Book "How To Beat The Bird Flu".

or (and I'm not even joking, he wrote this)


I have to admit that the Terminator movies is probably one of the most legitimate sources Mike has ever used on his site, but holy shit he actually believes an AI is going to destroy humanity.  

Exactly how narcissistic do you have to be to constantly pay people to praise you on your own web site as the greatest fucking human to ever live?  Maybe the answer is that you have to be the kind of person who starts a 'charity" called the consumer wellness center.  Maybe on that site is a link to the page for the board of directorS (I made that S large for a reason, you'll know in a moment).  Of course when you look at the board of directorS you encounter something that made me laugh for a full minute. 

From Consumerwellness.org

Either the person who wrote the site doesn't understand that an S indicates there are multiple of something, or Mike is just a jackass who relies on people to only read headlines and not dig into anything.  I mean who else but a narcissistic douchebag would have the balls to have multiple websites that post dozens of articles every day making health claims about products he sells and other bullshit, and then at the very bottom in script so tiny and hard to read that they are not responsible for any of the content they publish and that this is not a substitute for real medical advice?  The same asshole that criticizes pharmaceutical companies, food manufacturers, and just about god damn everybody out there for hiding the truth, not putting proper warning on labels or online and and any other crackpot conspiracy that makes it through his tin foil hat is a god damn hypocrite.

So the world would be a better place if Mike just stuck to sitting in a padded room all day telling himself how great he is.  Unfortunately this relic of the 19th century snake oil salesman isn't going anywhere for the time being.














Thursday, July 28, 2016

A Broken Clock Twice A Day, Mike Adams And Pizza The Bear

While almost all of my posts so far have been highly critical of Mike Adams, I have to admit that very, very, very, very occasionally he posts something good.  Usually this takes the form of animal pictures he tweets or benign memes riddled with platitudes, but recently he did release a story authored by one of his staff writers Amy Goodrich.  The story is about the polar bear Pizza whose home is a Chinese shopping mall, and to be completely fair the article Mrs. Goodrich wrote is just straightforward reporting of what other groups have said and done regarding the bear.  It is a sad story, and the bear looks very sad, if one wishes to indulge in anthropomorphism.  Having visited China in 2008 for the Olympics i can say that I would not be surprised at all if the bear was not treated well by Western standards.  I saw things on that trip like dozens of live chickens crammed into cages so small they were popping out the sides, people beating dogs in the street, and the many stray dogs roaming Beijing.  I understand that these are cultural differences and it's considered bigoted to apply our values to them, but that does not make it any less sad for an animal lover like myself.  So on this count I agree with Amy Goodrich.  If they could just post these articles quit the conspiracy shit, I would be a fan.





For another source on Pizza try this article from the BBC.

Late To The Party, A brief outline of Miracle Mineral Solution

Mmsforlife.com
I have to admit that up until about three months ago I had never heard of Miracle Mineral Solution.  I have no idea why, but it was simply something that had never crossed my radar.  The first question anyone should ask about a product like this is does it work, the second, is it dangerous.  Well does MMS work? Absolutely not, and is MMS safe?  I'll give you three guesses.  Called many things by many different people, what it really comes down to is Sodium Chlorite, NaClO2.  Sodium Chlorite is industrial bleach used in paper mills.  I'm not using that like Vani Hari or other fearmongers would, making a wild claim about part of a compound or mixture that is similar to an industrial chemical, Sodium Chlorite is literally the exact same chemical used to bleach paper.  Simply checking a Material Safety Data Sheet for Sodium Chlorite shows a myriad of harmful side affects and conditions it can cause.  The MSDS I link to is for a 25% solution admittedly, of course proponents will likely point out that this is far different from the 28% Solution!!! that is MMS.  When used "properly" the solution creates Chlorine Dioxide another hazardous chemical.  This warning letter to consumers from the FDA warns that MMS "poses a significant health risk to consumers".  I'm sure many of the MMS users are either the religious who are fooled by the word miracle in its name, or otherwise probably the usual conspiracy crowd who believe that the government and medical establishment are evil and engaged in a conspiracy to keep us sick, but most of us actually have a functioning brain and should realize that this is a dangerous false panacea, just one more in a long line of them.

I encourage anyone who encounters this product being sold on the net to spend five minutes online and file a complaint with the FDA or FTC.  It is simply one small thing that we can do other than pointing out on our blogs how wrong these people are.

Deconstructing Danger, The Story of Mike Adams, The Health Ranger: Part 1


I thought that for one of these first few blog posts a good idea would be to let my audience know about my little ball of yarn, The Health Ranger.  The man behind the self aggrandizing pseudonym is actually Mike Adams, an ex-software company CEO whose advice should be labeled under the category "the idiots guide to experiencing natural selection first hand"  There are a number of articles out in publications and blogs about Adams that any reader should go to in order to better understand who he is and what he does.  Dr. David Gorski has written a number of good articles about Mike Adams an example of which can be found here.  Brian Dunning of Skeptoid.com, a terrific science education site, called Adams' main site, Naturalnews.com, "Without a doubt, the wrongest site on the internet"  But I figured a novel way to go about it is to dissect Adams' own biography on his web site Healthranger.com.  I encourage anyone who wants a good laugh to read it, as it reads like a child describing how great he is to his friends at summer camp.

On the home page of his personal site Healthranger.com, the first thing a person sees is a photo slide show, showing several awards Adams has won for outstanding journalism, followed by (when I visited) a photo of Mike with the caption "Health Ranger calls for improved science education in America".  i can assure you all that the very last thing mike Adams wants is improved science education because it would drastically reduce his own income.  These awards for journalism were given at the Sacred Fire Of Liberty Gala.  A few google searches reveals that the event was sponsored by Emord & Associates, a law firm notorious for defending the fringe supplement and natural products industry.  They are also, according to The HuffingtonPost, attorneys for Mike Adams. 

Adams' biography is incredibly long and self aggrandizing, playing himself as a savior sent to save the world from just about everything.  It seems to have been written around 2012 because of some dates used, but for this article's sake, I'll assume not much has changed.  To start with, Mike calls himself an outspoken health advocate, award winning investigative journalist, and science lab director among other things.  I'll come back to the science lab director part later, but first I want to address the award winning journalist claim.  I am unaware of when and if Mike Adams currently is or ever was a client of Emord & Associates, however if, as the Huffington Post claims, Adam's is a client of Emord, and if he was their client before 2014 when he received his awards, then it certainly takes much of the wind out of those awards he prominently displays on his site.  Most of the other mentions of awards I was able to find were from small radical groups in the same vein as Adams.  Next, a list of several of Adams' websites, Naturalnews.com, CounterThink.com, Foodinvestigations.com, Healingfoodreference.com, and Honestfoodguide.com are listed, leaving out others like Newstarget.com Naturalpedia.com and many others.  All of these web sites are continuously linked, citing each other as primary and secondary sources, to the point where it seems Mike has built the worlds largest ideological echo chamber completely online.

Biographical History


Next comes the biography, giving the usual date of birth and such, but also claiming that he:

 "scored in the 99.9th percentile across all U.S. students. He aced the English, Mathematics and

Science sections of college entrance exams, scoring 100% on 3 out of 4 sections earning numerous

offers of scholarships from various universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

(which he chose not to attend)."

Of course, who would ever choose to attend stupid old MIT?  That's where all the idiots go to school. The biography does not say where Adams actually went to college, but only that he has a bachelors in science from "a prominent university in the midwest".  It is somewhat strange that the man who loves to trumpet his achievements and awards does not say where he went to college or display his diplomas. The biography does say that Adams chose not to attend graduate school, begging the question how can he claim a scientific expertise in nutrition and health.  This section also describes Mike's experience as a CEO of what he merely calls a "software company".  For a very good detailed history of this company and what it did, read this excellent article in Health Wyze, part of a whole series on little Mikey.  What Mikes software company was best known for is developing ways to get spam email past spam prevention programs.

Education


The next interesting section is on little Mikey's education.  Claims made here include that he started college before graduating high school, a practice common for many seniors at least in California where I grew up, that he studied many different topics (in other words a general lib arts education), and that he was offered a position as head of sound design for a theater department at a "large university", which of course he turned down.  Then come some of my favorite claims.  The bio says that he

"was found to extraordinarily gifted in music composition. He began studying piano and keyboard at

the age of five. He took on percussion studies at age six. By age twelve, he was creating elaborate

keyboard compositions and publicly performing at music talent competitions."

I have listened to some of Mikes music videos on his sites and I would describe him as anything but "extraordinarily gifted".  My little brother and i recently spent about half an hour on You Tube laughing our asses off at the amazing impression Mike does of a two-bit karaoke star (oh wait, those are his music videos).  I encourage anyone who is a fan of listening to a washed up backstreet boy with a head cold and a recent conversion to the church of what the fuckery to check it out.

Technical Projects


Continuing on are a series of claims that read as though the dorky kid in class is claiming he lost his virginity over the summer to a girl from out of town that you don't know, and he lost her number so don't even try to reach her guys. I'll go through them in order.

1.  Adams was accused by a teacher of practicing witchcraft for writing computer code on paper in 5th grade.
   
  •  I'll say this one could be true, I'm not going to do the math and figure out how old Mike was in fifth grade to see what computers were available at the time and make a guess at whether this story is a fabrication or not, but since he made his money in programming, I'll mostly believe this one. 


2.  In seventh grade Adams was able to solve a Rubik's cube in under a minute and had a record time of under 26 seconds. 
  
  •   Funny that Adams has never demonstrated this in any of his hundreds of YouTube videos, at least as far as i can find, but I invite him to demonstrate the ability and I will gladly say it is true.


3.  That at 14 Adams was a completely self taught computer programmer doing his own complex algorithms and developed one of the first "cannon wars' games for the Apple IIe.
  
  •   Again believable but not provable.


4.  That at 25 he built a program that could beat the stock market averages by 20%, of course he chose to pursue his software company making spam email instead.
    
  • This one makes no sense.  Being able to beat market averages by 20% is incredible and would have made him incredibly wealthy.  Either it is not true, Mike has very bad judgement, or he is a crazy super genius that was bored with stocks and wanted to make spam email software instead.  I can guess which one he would choose, but I'll keep my guess to myself.


5.  That at its peak his software was used by 100 fortune 500 companies
  •      Fine, I believe it, his terrible software company was successful after all.


6.  Some technical jargon about search engines and Natural News' popularity that the programmer friends and Redditers I asked all said is not that uncommon anyway

7.  Adams' web site Science.naturalnews.com publishes 10 million abstracts from the National Library of Medicine. 

  • In other words he thinks it is an amazing achievement to have access to part of what is already freely available through PubMed, located on his site.  Of, course his site doesn't get advertising revenue when people use PubMed, so making himself more money I guess is the accomplishment here.



8.  Adams created Naturalpedia.com, which he calls "a database of hundreds of thousands of quotes from over 1,000 books on health and nutrition."


  • Out of context quotes from 1000+ books that likely had to Pass Adams' test before they were included.  As flawed as Google may be, it still provides amazingly better results than anything you will find on Naturalpedia.

9.  My favorite paragraph is the last one of the section, which reads as follows:

"Adams' technical specialty is in the use of computer science algorithms to parse written text. Over

the years, he has developed numerous algorithms for finding hidden signals in large bodies of text.

Adams possess the technology to monitor trends and make predictions about bank runs, epidemic

disease, race wars and other issues reflected in human communications on the 'net. To date, he has

not deployed such a technology and has not announced any plans to do so."


  • I swear that the first thing I thought of when I read this was a memory from kindergarten having someone say "well yeah I have superpowers, I just don't want to use them right now, because i'm tired".  But what if Adams really does have such technology? (Which I doubt).  Would it not be absolutely immoral for him to withhold life saving technology that could incredibly benefit the human race?  So either way, whether this is a lie, or a truth, i think all can agree Mike is an asshole because of it.

Patents


If there's anything we have learned about Mikey so far it is that he is a very special boy, that's really smart and had every idea first. 

So it comes to no one's surprise that Mike was the original inventor of a Google Glass-like device.  Unfortunately he just didn't have the money for the patent process in 1995 (after he has already started his software company). Today, the cost of a patent application is a $150 filing fee, attorneys fees, some drawing fees and others that attorney Gene Quinn estimates average to about $14,080.  That's no chump change, but for someone who at that time had their own software company and who claims to have already invented software at that time that could beat market averages by 20%, it probably should have been do-able.

And of course, Mikey is developing the world's greatest battlefield soldier active camouflage ever.  Because I'm sure Mike's superpower as a kid was always invisibility... and every other superpower (we all remember that kid).  Well Mike there's one thing we can agree on here, I also wish you could dissapear.

If you've made it this far CONGRATULATIONS.  I know this was a very long article, but I'm not joking when I say how long, redundant, and unbelievable his own Bio page is on his web site.  Please look for yourself at this link to the the Mike Adams Biography.  Unfortunately I'm not even done writing about this pile of slop, I'm barely even halfway, but for my readers enjoyment and my own sanity, I will stop for the time being until I can muster up the intestinal fortitude to write part two.  As always, thank you for reading, and science is power.


Update 7/29/16:  In this article I referenced an outfit called Healthwyze.  I should have mentioned that Health wyze is an alternative medicine and naturopathy outfit that supports many thing that have no scientific basis, the usual natural cancer cures etc.  However, much of the report they wrote on Adams is quite good journalism if you ignore the wacky health bits they claim.  I reached out to the editor to ask for an interview regarding their reporting on Mike and have not heard back yet, but hope I will get to hear more about why they wrote it and how they feel now, three years later.  Hopefully soon I'll have that story for my readers.









Wednesday, July 27, 2016

The Value Of Open Discussion and Debate

While on twitter I may seem to be a bit of an asshole, and it does seem very one sided to just write refutations of other people's work, there is incredible value to be found in discussing these issues.  Mainly that value lies in the ability to make people aware of the facts.  As far as I am aware I have only ever convinced one hardcore conspiracy theorist that they were wrong about something, and that was a close friend and it took quite literally hours to convince him.  All I was able to convince him was that Fluoride was not poison.  He still thinks 9/11 was an inside job, that Kennedy wasn't shot by Oswald, and a myriad of other conspiracy theories, but I'm proud of that one little breakthrough.  It took hours of discussion, lots of googling, and a ton of explaining basic science and pointing out the flat out deception of the online conspiracy buffs.  So my policy on this blog will be to not censor any comments at all unless they cross very clear lines of using racist slurs or other solid lines of human decency.  If i do remove a comment I will let you know why and give you a chance to repost.

I want to do the best i can of addressing any evidence anyone thinks they have that for alternative medicine conspiracies etc.  I will either respond in my own comment or write a post if the answer is lengthy.  Please, ask questions, point out my faults and discrepancies, because this is how we reach a conclusion that we can say is true.  I may not change your mind, but I hope I can make you think.

Ignoring, Well... Everything. Mr. David "avocado" Wolfe

David Wolfe may be one of the most clueless alternative health and lifestyle gurus on the net today.  How he arrives at his conclusions, I do not know.  Whether he reads articles before he allows his team to post them, I highly doubt it.  In a story by Katherine Crofton on David Wolfe's blog, she claims that birth defects, still births, and miscarriages have risen significantly since the Fukushima incident.  Somewhat hilariously the link for birth defects goes to a story about birth defects among the survivors of the nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  A Story That Says: 

 "No statistically significant increase in major birth defects or other untoward pregnancy outcomes was seen among children of survivors"

I'm not joking, that is the very first line of the linked article.  I have to imagine that Mrs. Crofton didn't even bother to read it, but just picked a page she assumed no one else would look at beyond the headline.

The only other sources listed are a you tube video interviewing survivors that is entirely in Japanese with subtitles, and is the very un-provable or irrelevant anecdotal evidence that the nuts thrive on, as well as a link to a story by counterpunch.org, a radical left wing site with a strong anti nuclear stance.  While I have no issue with counterpunch taking ideological stances on issues, but when it comes to provable science they should defer to the experts.  For a very excellent and unbiased look at the Fukushima disaster 5 years later (that provides real sources), try this article from Popular Mechanics.

Baking Soda and lemon, a combination to... taste gross

I keep tabs on the various internet ignoramuses primarily through social media.  That way I don't have to keep visiting their web sites every time they post a new article.  Most of the sites I keep tabs on post a large amount of articles every day.  Joseph Mercola posts three to five a day, the Food Babe seems to post nonstop, Mike Adams has so many web sites and writers it's hard to even say exactly how much he spews about the web each day.  So twitter and facebook are valuable resources for keeping tabs on the nuts.  Mike Adams usually posts at least one item an hour and I often notice that the twitter headline is much different from the article headline, which is commonly much different from the article's actual content.  One such example occurred today.  The twitter post read:

"Alkalize your body to prevent cancer"

Of course anytime i read a cancer claim i have to look, as these are the most dangerous claims of all that often convince people not to pursue real cancer treatment.  So when i clicked on the article I was not surprised to read the headline on Mike Adams' newstarget.com that said:

"Baking soda and lemon - A combination to HEAL Cancer" (Emphasis added)


I have found that conflicting messages are a regular mainstay in the world of alternative medicine so this was absolutely right at home.

Of the three links provided in the article two of them go directly to another site selling products.  One link to a water filter, and the other to some vegetable growing apparatus.  The third link leads to fresh.news, another site that appears to be a subsidiary of Adams' main site, Naturalnews.com.  Rather than linking to any article that provides supporting evidence for what the writer, Vicki Batts, claims, the link goes to the home page of fresh news.

The main claim of the article is that a study published by Cancer Research says sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) has been shown to alkalize the environment around the cell and prevent cancer growth etc.  The leap then made is that eating more alkaline foods can prevent cancer, claiming that eating alkaline foods will make the body alkaline.  This of course completely is at odds with the truth, since homeostasis keeps the body's PH at a relatively stable level. and the old Vitamin C is more powerful than chemo bit.  To be honest Vicki did cover her ass by saying that studies suggest these things rather than making the blanket unsupported claim, but did not link to any of the claimed studies, did not list them after the article, and did not give hardly any identifying information that could be used to identify and track them down.  However, Dr. David Gorski, the amazing Orac has repeatedly debunked the vitamin C claim here, here and here.  now perhaps Vicki has access to elite information us mere mortals could not hope for, but I highly doubt it.  So for the time being, since there is no reputable research to support these claims just try to stay away from the usual B.S. about alternative cures and prevention to cancer.  I repeat, all reputable scientific information refutes these claims, and with no sources i am able to look into, i must conclude that Vicki Batts engaged in very creative or deluded writing that Mike Adams was more than happy to publish.


Tuesday, July 26, 2016

A MASSIVE Leap for logical fallacy

My favorite whipping boy Mike Adams never fails to present me with countless articles and you tube videos every single day, all ripe for the picking with juicy low-hanging fruit of absolute stupidity.  I was absolutely overjoyed when I saw an article that Mike himself wrote with the wonderful headline "Leaked DNC emails prove once and for all that the conspiracy theorists were RIGHT all along".  I just knew that this one would be golden, and it did not disappoint.  The article starts of with the perfect line:

"To anyone who has ever been called a "conspiracy theorist," the world owes you a massive apology"

Well i'm getting ready to apologize Mike, what have you got for me?


"The only thing that makes this conspiracy any different than all the other true conspiracies 

happening right now is that they got caught."


The premise? Because this really happened and it was technically a conspiracy all conspiracies must be true.  From there Mike goes into a diatribe about the Russian explanation being an excuse and 



"democrats are corrupt criminals who are willing to sell anything to the Russians (as long as the 

donation fee is high enough to the Clinton Foundation)."


I have to admit that when I read the majority of the article I imagined Adams speaking incredibly fast like a rambling maniac, which actually made it sound much more logical.  

Rest assured, little Mikey has much more absurdity to come, and i will be there to laugh my ass off while I read it.  But for now, I'm not going to apologize.

Mike, you are a conspiracy theorist, and beyond that, also a conspiracy nut, and you are disastrously wrong about almost everything you believe.  

Fighting the Danger Ranger

The Health Danger
                I first became interested in investigating pseudoscientific health claims years ago after seeing my first episode of Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit”.  At that time I was in my late teens and hadn’t quite dipped my toe fully into the Skeptical pool yet.  However, my skeptical energy was renewed a few months ago by a statement my mother made.  She told me, very matter of factly, that her friend had  that lemon water is more powerful than chemotherapy.  Naturally I was alarmed that people believed something so obviously false, especially my own mother.  I wondered who could possibly be saying these things, since as far as I was aware no doctor with a conscience would ever make such outrageous claims.  Then I remembered pseudoscience exists.
                So from there I began asking Dr. Google what diseases I could cure with lemon water, and as it turns out it’s just about everything.  Also unsurprisingly, I quickly realized a striking similarity that the vast majority of these dangerous and unscientific claims shared.  A very significant portion of them can be traced back to my own personal Darth Vader, Mike Adams A.K.A the Health Ranger.  It was on Adams’ site Naturalnews.com that I first encountered the lemon (and baking soda of course) water fallacy portrayed as fact.  Adams, who has been quite deservingly derided by the skeptical community and individuals like Dr. David Gorski, is one of the world’s preeminent peddlers of pseudoscience, naturopathy, anti-vax rhetoric, conspiracy theories, Anti-GMO bullshit, and just about any other area of stupidity you can imagine.  Adams owns several web sites, most of which can be found by clicking the embedded links in any of his sites various articles, giving them the feel of a choose your own wacky conspiracy theory adventure story.  The chain of web sites forms a sort of self-referencing echo chamber, in which just about anything can sourced from another article on another one of his sites.  External sources are rare, and when used usually dubious, misinterpreted, or taken out of context.  In a recent article from July 20, 2016 Adams quotes a statement from Project TENDR that was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, which holds an impact factor of 8.44 for 2015.  Not a bad score compared to many of his usual sources, however rather than reporting on the statement’s call to restructure the system for evaluating health based risks of environmental chemicals, Adams’ article claims that the environmental chemicals warned about in the study have caused brain damage to millennials (of course in Adam’s view the brain damage really is the cause of liberalism).  My favorite quote from that article is of course the giant subtitle that reads “They used to be designated as mentally retarded... now they're called "millennials”.  I attempted to contact one of Project TENDR's listed co-authors of the statement, but received no reply 
While childish insults and stupidity from Adams are to be expected, the disturbing fact is that so many people actually follow and believe him.  On YouTube Adams has over 104,000 followers[1].  On Twitter he has again over 100,000[2].  Many of these are almost certainly following Adams’ advice, which includes not seeking chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery for cancer, he claims that cancer treatments kill more people than cancer does (his story tends to change but often he cites the big pharma and the cancer conspiracy).  In an article from March 2015 that Adams reposted on twitter just a day ago, one of his writers claims that Vitamin C is a “silver bullet” that can cure all variety of diseases from polio to diphtheria, and insinuates that Vitamin C can cure cancer.  Rather unsurprisingly, Adams sells his very own Health Ranger’s Nutrition Rescue™ Vitamin C for a mere $19.95.  While it is not very strange for a health web site to sell vitamins, when reading through his articles one can see that Adams seems to sell the vast majority of solutions for various ailments in his very own store, and conveniently most of them are bear the quality seal of the Health Ranger himself a.k.a. the Health Ranger Select brand.  A question that crossed my mind while looking through both the store and the thousands of articles and YouTube videos Adams has posted was, where does this cross the line from the FDA’s allowed structure function claims and allowable vagueness into the realm of outright illegality.  While the products themselves may not bear any medical claims on them, taken as a whole, the claims made on his sites about items sold in Adams’ store could constitute an infraction of FDA and FTC guidelines. 
                While Adams masquerades as a pioneering Health guru focused on saving the human race, what his articles all seem aimed to do is guide the reader towards purchasing any of the innumerous products available in the Naturalnews.com Store  and reap advertising income.  Indeed my biggest regret in investigating the “Health Ranger” is that I have to visit his sites and bring him ad revenue.  Adams hypocritically admonishes pharmaceutical companies, GMO developers, the medical community, and any other group he feels like attacking for greed, while simultaneously reaping massive amounts of money from the boom in pseudo medicine that he has helped to create.  In fact it seems that Adams is very keen to brag on the wealth he has accumulated, as seen in the threats he sent to Jon Entine for an expose Entine wrote about Adams in Forbes.  Adams stated “You are also aware that I am in command of the financial resources to see these efforts through, regardless of their cost or duration”.  In fact Adams is notoriously fond of sending threatening letters claiming the lawsuit is on the way, writing threatening articles that Libel and Defame skeptics (most notably in recent months Dr. David Gorski).  In a long winded rambling letter to the FBI and other authorities posted on his site, and in numerous other articles written both by mike Adams and his proxy writers at Natural News, News Target, and the web of other Adams owned sites.  While the threats have been reported, I can find no information online that Adams has ever actually filed suit.  My personal belief is that this is because he knows that filing a lawsuit could lead to him being called to the stand, where all of his dirty laundry and utterly false statements could be questioned on record.  It is a case I actually hope to see someday actually, Mike Adams destroyed by his own words.






Web Sources (this below is the same way Adams and his crew list their sources because Fuck letting you know what they actually used or read)

Naturalnews.com

Newstarget.com

Sciencebasedmedicine.org

Techdirt.com

Forbes.com