A Response to Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams

Once in a while I listen to a Truther radio show, and one of the host's favourite guests is this strange old woman who spews stream-of-consciousness rants about the perfidy of the FDA, the ADA, the CDC, and pretty much every other health agency on the planet. She reserves particular venom for Morris Fishbein, because he exposed the utter worthlessness of Rife devices (and the bogus goat gland implants of Dr. Brinkley). She expresses deep and abiding adoration for Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, a frequent Jones guest who writes for Natural News (the home of all quackery). Listening to her insane childish bullshit this week, I suddenly remembered that I wrote a response to Adams' article "What Skeptics Really Believe", which was posted at Infowars earlier this year. Here it is. (Adams' words are in bold. He claims to have taken each and every one of the "beliefs" from actual skeptic blogs.)

• Skeptics believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective (even if they’ve never been tested), that ALL people should be vaccinated, even against their will, and that there is NO LIMIT to the number of vaccines a person can be safely given. So injecting all children with, for example, 900 vaccines all at the same time is believed to be perfectly safe and “good for your health.” Wow. That is just wrong. Whoever believes this is not a skeptic, but a complete lunatic. Of course you shouldn't administer untested vaccines, or give a child 900 inoculations all at the same time (first of all, the poor kid would turn as swollen and purple as Violet Beauregard).

• Skeptics believe that fluoride chemicals derived from the scrubbers of coal-fired power plants are really good for human health. Only in very small quantities, and only for a specific reason (dental health). No true skeptic would ever suggest that you chug the stuff, because it is a toxic chemical.

• Skeptics believe that many six-month-old infants need antidepressant drugs. What?! Who the hell would say that? Where are the studies showing that children who can't even walk yet can suffer clinical depression?

• Skeptics believe that the human body has no ability to defend itself against invading microorganism and that the only things that can save people from viral infections are vaccines. Skeptics understand the value of natural immunity perfectly well, thank you, but we've also embraced these crazy newfangled ideas like herd immunity, public health measures, and not letting people die from preventable diseases.

• Skeptics believe that pregnancy is a disease and childbirth is a medical crisis. (They are opponents of natural childbirth.) Okay, skeptics, which one of you said that pregnancy is a disease? Step forward and confess, or I'll punish the whole class. Last I checked, method of childbirth was an individual choice. Skeptics don't hand out position papers demanding that women avoid natural childbirth, and non-skeptics can (and do) choose to have epidurals or C-sections.

• Skeptics do not believe in hypnosis. Generally, that's true. Or rather, skeptics believe that hypnosis has not yet been shown to have consistent therapeutic value. We do believe that you can hypnotize certain people and convince them that they're pirates or chickens for a few minutes.

• Skeptics believe that there is no such thing as human consciousness. They do not believe in the mind; only in the physical brain. Tomato, tomahto. I will admit, though, that human consciousness is a hell of a lot harder to define or examine than the physical brain, so skeptics often leave it to the philosophers and theologians to figure out. It certainly doesn't belong in the realm of hard science.

• Skeptics believe that DEAD foods have exactly the same nutritional properties as LIVING foods (hilarious!). Even as someone who avoids processed foods and doesn't eat meat, I have no idea what Adams means by "living foods". Food typically has to be dead - or at least on its last legs - before you can eat it. You could chew on apples while they're still on the tree, or dig your way down to a carrot to take a very dirty bite out of it, or cram a salmon into your mouth before it stops wriggling, but that's just not very convenient. Or hygienic. Or sane. I think we can all agree, though, that some foods are more "dead" than other foods; a deep-fried Monte Cristo at Denny's has been "dead" a lot longer than lightly steamed broccoli from your local farmer's market, and there's no arguing that these two things don't have the same nutritional properties.

• Skeptics believe that pesticides on the crops are safe, genetically modified foods are safe, and that any chemical food additive approved by the FDA is also safe. There is no advantage to buying organic food, they claim. While I do believe that GMOs could have huge benefits for mankind if handled properly, I buy organic and generally stay away from additives. Not because they're deadly or anything, but because they're not a necessary addition to my diet.

• Skeptics believe that water has no role in human health other than basic hydration. Water is inert, they say, and the water your toilet is identical to water from a natural spring (assuming the chemical composition is the same, anyway). Well, yeah, water is water. It has the same chemical composition all the time. It's the stuff you add to it that makes the difference. Spring water usually has fewer impurities than tapwater, but what if that spring is in Chernobyl? Well water may be "natural", but it might also contain more fluorine than your tapwater. As for "structured water", Kabbala water, "super-hydrating" water, Emoto water, and holy water - it's still just water.

• Skeptics believe that all the phytochemicals and nutrients found in ALL plants are inert, having absolutely no benefit whatsoever for human health. (The ignorance of this intellectual position is breathtaking…) Uh, yes, nutrients are indeed inert. But they are essential for human health nonetheless. They don't have to be "living" to do their job in the human body. It would be breathtakingly ignorant to say that nutrients have no benefit for human health, but I don't know any skeptics who would.

• Skeptics believe that the moon has no influence over life on Earth. Pfft. We all acknowledge the Moon's magnetic influence on the tides and migration patterns, which are major factors for all life on the planet. So, yeah, we believe the Moon has influence over Earth. Skeptics might not agree that it affects human emotional states, though, because the evidence for such influence is dodgy at best.

• Skeptics believe that the SUN has no role in human health other than to cause skin cancer. They completely deny any healing abilities of light. Dude. Now you're just pissing me off. Of course skeptics acknowledge the sun's role in human health. Hell, not just health - life. Photosynthesis? Vitamin D? But unlike numerous non-skeptics (like Alex Jones), we also acknowledge that baking the shit out of your epidermis isn't healthy. Nor do we think that sunscreen causes skin cancer, as Jones does.

• Skeptics believe that Mother Nature is incapable of synthesizing medicines. Now that's just cute. I"m picturing Mother Nature in her calico apron, twiddling with flasks in a cozy lab full of roots, berries, and mushrooms. But seriously, there are some marvelous natural medicines out there - it's just that not everything packaged and sold as a natural product is necessarily good for you. Be selective.

• Skeptics do not believe in intuition. They believe that mothers cannot “feel” the emotions of their infants at a distance. They write off all such “psychic” events as mere coincidence. Generally, this is quite true. Skeptics aren't big fans of paranormal superpower claims that rely on anecdotal evidence. However, I know that if you caught a few skeptics off guard, they'd admit they secretly think there could be something to mother's intuition and other forms of nonverbal communication. I suggest buying them a few drinks.

• Skeptics believe that all healing happens from the outside, from doctors and technical interventions. They do not believe that patients have any ability to heal themselves. Nope, skeptics don't believe in faith healing. Not because we believe the body is just a machine that only a mechanic can fix, but because faith healing just plain doesn't work and we don't want people to die because they thought they could pray or visualize their way out of a life-threatening illness. For example, look at this list of people - including children - who have died from treatable conditions after they or their parents chose prayer over healthcare. Even God is probably wondering why they didn't just go to a damn hospital.

• Skeptics believe that cell phone radiation poses absolutely no danger to human health. Correct. It's just simple science. Well, alright, it's not simple, but it is understandable if you can grasp the basic physical principles of radiation.

• Skeptics believe that aspartame and artificial chemical sweeteners can be consumed in unlimited quantities with no ill effects. Dude, I don't think anything can be consumed in "unlimited quantities" without ill effect. You can't even do that with water. I only believe that moderate use of artificial sweeteners is not a health risk, provided you're not allergic.

• Skeptics believe that human beings were born deficient in synthetic chemicals and that the role of pharmaceutical companies is to “restore” those deficiencies in humans by convincing them to swallow patented pills. I have no idea what you're talking about here, Mr. Adams. Are you referring to Flintstone vitamins or something? If so, then I'll agree with you that children with nutrient-dense, varied diets probably don't need any supplements. And I also know that I don't know very many children with nutrient-dense, varied diets.

• Skeptics believe that you can take unlimited pharmaceuticals, be injected with an unlimited number of vaccines, expose yourself to unlimited medical imaging radiation, consume an unlimited quantity of chemicals in processed foods and expose yourself to an unlimited quantity of environmental chemical toxins with absolutely no health effects whatsoever! That's just weird. Where did you find these skeptics, Mr. Adams? In locked-down psych wards?

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the corruption and dishonesty in the pharmaceutical industry. They believe whatever the drug companies say, without asking a single intelligent question. Whoa there! Who do you think got Ephedrin, Laetrile, Vioxx, and about a gazillion other harmful pharmaceutical products off the market? Skeptics, that's who. True skeptics go where the evidence leads, not where the pharmaceutical or alternative health industries want us to go.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about medical journals. They believe whatever they read in those journals, even when much of it turns out to be complete science fraud. You mean like Andrew Wakefield's discredited Lancet article on the nonexistent link between measles and autism, which was funded by mass tort attorneys looking to make mad money out of childhood disorders that have no known cause? Yeah, we're not skeptical about that stuff at all.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the profit motive of the pharmaceutical industry. They believe that drug companies are motivated by goodwill, not by profits. Ha. Speak for your damn self, whoever said this.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the motivations and loyalties of the FDA. They will swallow, inject or use any product that’s FDA approved, without a single reasonable thought about the actual safety of those products. No, but I certainly won't swallow or inject any drug or food item that's been rejected by the FDA.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the safety of synthetic chemicals used in the food supply. They just swallow whatever poisons the food companies dump into the foods. Frankly, this is true of just about everybody. I've seen many a non-skeptic and skeptic alike stuff his face with Cheesy Poofs, brightly coloured candies, sugar-laden "peanut butter" on white bread, then wash it all down with an energy drink containing roughly the same amount of stimulants as an entire Columbian mountainside. You're right, Mr. Adams. It isn't pretty.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the mass-drugging agenda of the psychiatric industry which wants to diagnose everyone with some sort of “mental” disorder. Again, speak for yourself, whoever said this. Skeptics and non-skeptics alike are highly concerned about the overmedication of the populace.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about mercury fillings. What harm could mercury possibly do anyway? If the ADA says they’re safe, they must be! Whatever the ADA's opinion on this, who the hell even has mercury fillings anymore? Besides, if you weren't so freaking terrified of your tapwater, maybe you wouldn't have many cavities to fill...

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the demolition-style collapse of the World Trade Center 7 building on September 11, 2001 — a building that was never hit by airplanes... Controlled demolition experts and the vast majority of structural engineers aren't skeptical about it, either. I'll go with their opinions for now.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the safety of non-stick cookware, or the dangers of cleaning chemicals in the home, or the contamination of indoor air with chemical fumes from carpets, paints and particle board furniture. To the skeptics, the more chemicals, the better! Not quite. Some skeptics, like myself, are into "green cleaning", using natural products that we can actually recognize, like vinegar and baking soda. They smell better, they're less expensive than brand-name cleaning products, and you don't have to worry about your children and pets ingesting or inhaling them.

In short, skeptics don't have some sort of hive mind. Just like non-skeptics, we trust our own judgement - it's just that we usually have the facts in our favour.

Huh?

Moneybombed

You may recall Alex Jones' moneybomb days last year. Throughout the first one, he interrupted callers with weird off-topic comments, cracked gay jokes, and ranted about his spiritual twin Glenn Beck (calling him, among other things, an "effeminate gremlin", "maggot-infested rotten cheese", and an "AntiChrist little bastard").

Yet his moneybomb goal was reached, since his fans actually want to see their cash converted into mediocre YouTube documentaries. He also claimed several people were threatening to sue him, so he needed the money, in part, for a legal defense fund. Or maybe for a legal attack fund that he forgot to mention.

Some of the money raised undoubtedly went toward film-making costs, but where is the rest going? Well, $15,000 it is destined to become cash prizes for "the best naked protest" against body scanning. That's just fine. I'm sure that in this brutal economic crunch time, Americans are happy to sacrifice their hard-earned nickels and dimes so that twentysomethings can be rewarded for running around nekkid in front of their friends' videophones. This will surely put a big dent in the New World Order's plot to see us all nude, then kill 80-99% of us.


Everybody Owns Hollywood

On his January 7th broadcast, Jones declared that he has "woken up" numerous A-list actors, and that most celebrities know Hollywood is fully controlled by the State Department and the CIA.

Wait, what? I thought "Hollywood is owned by the Arabs"? I'm so confused. Not only does Jones contradict himself, another *highly credible* source says CGI is a Zionist tool used for sorcery and brainwashing! "Ancient Egyptian rabbis" (whatever the hell they are) passed "kabbalistic witchcraft" on to the Knights Templar, and it ended up in the Harry Potter movies! Well, if you believe anything you see on Iranian TV, I mean.

Has Speidi Woken Up the Sheeple Yet?

Since Alex Jones loves to trumpet even his most questionable and his least significant "predictions", I'm going to follow his bad example today.

Remember when Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt were on Jones' show last July, telling Jones that his documentaries had "woken them up" to what the world is really all about? They even expressed regret over having been such an integral part of the mind control/entertainment behemoth that conditions America's youth to be superficial idiots. All this time, Heidi moaned, she could have been using her celebrity status to warn her peers about the deadly perils of tapwater, birth control pills, implantable microchips, and the Federal Reserve. Instead, she wasted her time building an entertainment career that could see her through to retirement, if properly invested.

Ah, misspent youth.

Anyway, I had my doubts about Speidi's commitment to fighting the New World Order. This is what I wrote in July:

"somehow I doubt that the Pratts will be developing into hardcore activists anytime soon"

It's been over half a year. Heidi's Twitter feed and YouTube channel consist primarily of promos for her new album. The only thing remotely connected to what she talked about with Jones is an "I Love Jesus!" tucked into her Twitter bio, although it's hard to notice when a photo of herself in black club lingerie dominates the page. Heard any more Patriot radio interviews with the Pratts? Noticed anything about Climategate on Heidi's website? Seen them at any Tea Parties?

Didn't think so. Because this is how Heidi spends a great deal of her time these days - overhauling her already hot 23-year-old bod with a very costly array of cosmetic procedures.



But I guess I should be fair. Maybe Heidi has some fantastic plan for staving off the Commie-Satanic-fascist-eugenicist world takeover with her reconstructed nose and killer thighs. Fighting baddies with boobies.

It could happen.

The Dark Ages

Once in a great while, Alex Jones says something so offensive, so absurd, so wrong that I actually feel unclean after hearing it. My stomach lurches and I think, "Gawd, that's so evil I don't even want to blog about it." The most recent examples are his assertion that the Anti-Defamation League was probably behind the Holocaust Museum shooting*, and that people who suffer schizophrenia aren't mentally ill, they're demons.**

But even those two statements, appalling and untrue as they are, don't quite match up to what Jones said on last Thursday's broadcast. He was talking again about human sacrifice, and this time - to his credit - he actually mentioned Caucasian forms of the practice (Druidic, Nordic, etc). Then he added, "The Jews were constantly turning back to human sacrifice."

Excuse me? Are we in the Middle Ages? First he attributes mental illness to the supernatural, then he dusts off one of the worst anti-semitic slurs of history; that the Jews have practiced ritual sacrifice.

I would like to give Jones the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he's simply confusing Jews with the Molech-worshipping Ammonites and Canaanites of the Bible, who allegedly sacrificed children to their god. He may think that when the Jews turned to worshiping a golden calf during the Exodus, they must have embraced human sacrifice as well. However, that doesn't alter the fact that human sacrifice was repeatedly proscribed in the Old Testament. It has always been reviled by Jews and Christians.

Of course, that didn't stop Christians from accusing Jews of ritually slaughtering Christian children at Passover. Desperate to separate themselves from the religious tradition of which they were only a minor sect, and eager to consolidate their power over the peoples of Europe, Medieval Christians routinely leveled charges of murder and cannibalism at the continent's Jewish population. Most commonly, Jewish men would be accused of abducting Christian, pre-adolescent boys and killing them in hidden chambers beneath synagogues, draining their blood to be baked into their matza. Catholics venerated the relics of these so-called child martyrs. The first, and most famous, was William of Norwich, a 12-year-old tanner's apprentice murdered in 1144. The crime was never solved, but blame fell on the Jews of Norwich. Anti-semitism was already rife throughout England, and the tensions in Norwich came to a bloody end in 1190 - the entire Jewish population of the town was slaughtered.

The blood libel continued long past the Middle Ages. In 1911, a young Ukrainian boy named Andrei Yushchinsky was killed and a Jewish man, Menachem Mendel Beiliss, was charged with murdering him. The lead detective in the case was fired for refusing to hew to the ritual murder theory of the crime. Investigating on his own, he learned that a criminal gang with which Andrei was associated was probably responsible. They had feared the boy would rat on them.
One of the state's expert witnesses was Professor Ivan Sikorsky, a psychologist at Kiev State University (and father to the man who developed the first helicopter). Sikorsky gave his opinion that Andrei's death was, indeed, a ritual murder committed by a gang of Jews.
Beiliss was acquitted in 1913.

In 1928, a four-year-old girl named Barbara Griffiths wandered away from her home in the village of Massena, New York. Because Yom Kippur was two days away, some locals immediately leapt to the conclusion that the village's small Jewish community had abducted her for a ritual sacrifice. The police began questioning Jews, including the rabbi, in the belief that this was entirely possible.
One day later, little Barbara was found in the woods - alive and well. She had simply gotten lost.

In 1986, Syria's completely insane defense minister, Mustafa Tlass, published a book entitled The Matzoh of Zion. You can guess what it was about.

I would love to say that Christians and Muslims finally smartened up and stopped spreading this horseshit, but the sad fact is the blood libel persists to this day in certain quarters. The Yushchinsky murder is still cited by anti-semites and religious supremacists, who claim it was covered up and that the prosecuting attorney in the case, G.G. Zamyslovsky, was put to death for writing a book about it. Recently, someone erected a sign on Andrei's gravestone: "Ritually murdered by Jews in 1911". Other instances:

• In 1955, a retarded bitch Chicago woman named Lyrl Clark Van Hyning (publisher of Eustace Mullins) attributed the brutal murders of three young boys to a Jewish ritual. Brothers John and Anton Schuessler Jr., along with their friend Bobby Peterson, had disappeared en route to a movie matinee. They were found a short time later, strangled and beaten to death. Frau Van Hyning believed that details in a Chicago Sun Times article were indicative of Judaic human sacrifice: an unidentified grain was found on the bodies (flour for the blood matzo, founding John Bircher Revilo P. Oliver contended), and "Kabalistic symbols" were carved into the boys' flesh (though an entry in the ragingly anti-semitic Ziopedia referred to the patterns, correctly, as being caused by the floor mat of a car, "probably a Hewitt or some other luxury brand such as a rich Jew might possess". Actually, it was a Packard.) The ritual murder theorists insisted that Anton Schuessler, Sr., was also murdered by the city's Jewish community, specifically a psychiatrist. Mr. Schuessler did die during electroshock treatment administered for his crippling depression, but the stories of his widow being paid off by Jews are unfounded. Nearly 40 years later, the Schuessler-Peterson murders were found to be the work of Kenneth Hansen, a pedophile who belonged to the local "Horse Mafia", the same group of cons and crooks responsible for the disappearance of candy heiress Helen Brach. Though the leader, Silas Jayne, bore a slight resemblance to Norman Mailer, not one of these men was Jewish. Sadly, though, when you Google "1955 Chicago murders", most of the top hits involve "Jewish ritual murder".
• If you search for "ritual abuse" on YouTube, one of the first vids you'll find is a clip from an 1989 Oprah show about Satanic ritual abuse. A heavyset, thirtyish woman called "Rachel" (real name Vicki Polin) explains that her outwardly Jewish family has practiced Satanism since the seventeenth century. Like all SRA victims of the '80s, Vicki was sexually assaulted and forced to participate in human sacrifice from a tender age. Some of the women in her family, being overweight, were able to successfully hide pregnancies - enabling them to be "breeders" for the cult. Their infants were born in secret, then ritually sacrificed. Vicki was impregnated by her own father five times, and forced to have abortions. But like most SRA victims of the '80s, Vicki had no idea that everyone in her family worshipped Satan. She really thought they were nice, middle-class Jews living in the Midwest. Then, as an adult, she recovered her repressed memories. Unlike the average '80s SRA victim, Vicki is still telling her story. She moved to Baltimore, became a therapist, and established The Awareness Center Inc. A bio of her that appeared on Henry Makow's website last year provides additional information: Vicki's family was part of the Illuminati, which evolved from the Frankist movement of the 18th century. (I guess Makow missed the part about Vicki's family practicing Satanism in the 17th century, but that's understandable. I'm pretty sure a guy who calls his website "Save the Males" doesn't watch Oprah often.) All of this is in complete contradiction to what Vicki's therapist, Tina Grossman, said on Oprah in '89. Grossman related Jewish/Satanic ritual abuse to pre-Judaic Paganism that incorporated human sacrifice. In 2004, Vicki told a rabbi that many rabbis imported "Sabbatean Satanism" to the U.S. from Europe, and her family's rabbi was a member of the cult. She was sexually abused on top of Torah scrolls laid on the floor of the synagogue.
• In 2005, 500 Russian clerics, Duma members, and intellectuals supposedly signed a petition calling for the government to outlaw all Jewish organizations. The signatories believe that all Jewish groups are "hate groups", and in support of this contention the petition cited an 1884 work incorrectly attributed to Dr. Vladimir Ivanovich Dal: “Criminal investigation into the murder by Jews of Christian infants and the use of their blood". The same year, Russian anti-semites fingered Jews in the still-unsolved murders of five young boys and demanded that the authorities begin searching bakeries that produce matzo.
  
• Every year, Catholics in the village of Rinn, Austria, still trot out the preserved remains of a 3-year-old boy named Andreas Oxner. He apparently died in 1462, but it was not until 1642 that his death was openly blamed on Jews.
  

Among all these absurd and implausible allegations, you will fail to find one very important thing: Evidence. There is simply no evidence. There is no reason to believe that Jews practiced human sacrifice at any time in the history of Judaism. Whether you're talking about Hebrews in ancient Egypt or baby-killers in Chicago, it just didn't happen.


*If you hate the Anti-Defamation League as much as Jones does, you should consider blaming anti-semites for its existence. It was created in response to the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, president of the Atlanta chapter of B'nai Brith. He had been falsely convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a young girl who worked in his uncle's pencil factory. When locals learned that his death sentence had been overturned, a mob stormed the jail and lynched Frank.
**If schizophrenics are demons, then demons spend a great deal of their time embroidering tea towels and taking in stray cats and watching game shows, because my grandmother is schizophrenic.

And you thought reality television was rock bottom...

Watch this clip of Alex Jones talking about the New World Order depopulation agenda on Jesse Ventura's TV show Conspiracy Theory, then tell me if that isn't the hokiest piece of television you've seen in a long time. Jones is described as Ventura's "source". They meet "privately" in a bar, surrounded by a film crew. Jones lays out an abridged version of his theory that They - represented in this particular show by the Bilderberg Group - want to kill 80% of us (I guess 99% was too scary even for a cable channel), without giving a single source for his information. Ventura pretends he's hearing all this for the first time. Then, rather than asking any hardball questions about this stuff, he says, "So it's like The Godfather?".

Conspiracy Theory airs on TruTV, formerly Court TV. Instead of getting trial coverage and recaps of famous trials, we're now getting conspiracy theories from professional paranoids. Yet Jones complains on the show that They control our culture and our media for Their own ends?

By the way, TruTV is owned by Turner Broadcasting (a subsidiary of Time Warner). Jones has identified Ted Turner as one of the "eugenicists" who want to kill us all. But then, in Jones' world, every liberal wants to do that: During his February '09 interview of Dr. Stanley Monteith, Jones told his audience that if you take any liberal aside and mention Margaret Sanger or Madame Blavatsky to him, the liberal will snarl, "That's right, you sonofabitch, and we're gonna get you too. We've gotta exterminate the blacks and the Mexicans."