Facebook devolves into dark web of anonymous hate speech

(NaturalNews) When broadcast television was first invented in the first half of the 20th century, it was quickly heralded as a technological breakthrough that would inspire, educate and uplift human civilization. Educational programs and useful knowledge could be cheaply and efficiently broadcast to people everywhere, it was thought. The FCC even required television stations to run news programming without commercials as a trade-off for being granted broadcast space in the electromagnetic spectrum. This TV news, it was thought, was the broadcast station’s obligation to the betterment of society. Those were the humble and well-intentioned beginnings of television, a game-changing “disruptive” technology that we now know has actually dumbed-down our population while becoming a cesspool for manipulative corporate advertising and idiotic entertainment. Far from enlightening human civilization, television has arguably enslaved it, seductively luring the population into a downward spiral of runaway consumerism, debt, disease and mainstream stupidity. While educational television programming may still be found through such organizations as Nova, the BBC, The Learning Channel, Discovery and notable others, the bulk of television programming available today is an insult to the potential of human intelligence, and it only contributes to the collapse of meaningful discourse — a fact that becomes grossly obvious during every political election campaign. The age of the internet The internet has often been described as a far more intelligent medium than broadcast television. TV is a one-way street, after all: Program directors and advertisers shout their messages into the minds of passive observers (couch potatoes), none of whom have an opportunity to really participate or respond. The internet is a two-way street, though: People can vote, comment and query. And for this reason, it has long been believed that the internet is healthy for society. Getting people engaged in discussions and participating in creative contribution projects seems a lot smarter than having them sprawled out in front of the old boob tube, mindlessly hypnotized by another episode of some me-too reality TV show. Facebook, of course, has played the role of a key enabler in the online “mass participation” trend. But what has emerged from Facebook and other social network has not been the thoughtful, reasoned discussions and contributions we might idealistically hope to see. Rather, Facebook has, for reasons you’ll soon see, brought out the worst in people , devolving into a tangled web of anonymous hate speech directed to anything and everything within reach. Hence the new nickname for Facebook… Hatebook. How Facebook became a hate engine What could have been a platform for community sharing, idea-gathering and creative problem solving has devolved (with some exceptions) into a juvenile hate-fest of truly idiotic half-thoughts. And the Haters who prowl Facebook looking for something to attack and destroy are not merely a small minority of its population; at times they seem to dominate the conversations there. Yes, there are many thoughtful, positive and intelligent people using Facebook. Quite a few frequent our NaturalNews page, in fact. But far too often their thoughtful ideas are drowned out by what can only be called “mindless hate.” In discussing this, however, let’s differentiate between reasonable criticism and mindless hate . “Reasonable criticism” is a comment or criticism emerging from reasoned consideration of some issue. A lot of what I write, for example, is “reasonable criticism” because it offers criticism and then explains reasons for arriving at that criticism. This article is a good example of reasonable criticism. “Mindless hate,” on the other hand, is a kind of irrational, emotionally-charged hate speech that places no value on facts, reason or logic of any kind. It is merely an emotional discharge, almost a kind of mental vomit that has been splattered across the online world. And it contains some of the most vicious hate speech that has ever been recorded in human history. I once read a post from a person who said, essentially, “I am sending out love to everyone on planet Earth!” From there, one Facebook Hater posted, “That must include the terrorists, too. So you love terrorists!” This was quickly followed by another Hater who chimed in, “I can’t believe she loves terrorists! Terror lover!” From there, if you can believe it, the posts devolved into even more mindless discharges of venomous nonsense against a woman who only sought to post something positive and uplifting. I’ve asked around the natural health community as well as the celebrity community, and I’ve found that nearly every person who gains notoriety is now being victimized by a constant assault of hate speech on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Fine film actors, esteemed scientists, spiritual teachers and authors are all being assaulted by Hatebook vitriol. No person of noteworthiness escapes being targeted by Facebook Haters because they operate 24 hours a day and, most important of all, they operate with complete anonymity . Haters, you see, are emboldened by their anonymity. If real names were required on Facebook, the density of hate speech would drop sharply. Because a lot of what people say in their hate rants is so bizarre and defamatory that they would never allow their real names to be attached to such verbiage. So they create fake accounts, then post their hate messages under false identities, allowing their inner hate to scream out to the world without any risk that such bizarre behavior would reflect on them as real people in the real world. Which brings me to a curious question: Who, exactly, are these Haters? The Hater next door As it turns out, these are ordinary, everyday people. These are the people who are frustrated with their jobs, frustrated with their marriages, frustrated with their economic situation and frustrated with life. They have no place to vent this frustration in the real world. You can’t tell off your boss and expect to still receive a paycheck. You can’t scream at your husband or wife without risking a divorce. You can’t go around shooting people on the streets without getting arrested and thrown in prison. But you can assassinate people online. Anonymously… and protected by the very structure of Facebook which seems to be designed to actually encourage argument (because conflict results in more posts, more attention and therefore more advertising revenue). Your typical Facebook Hater is often the same guy you think is “a nice neighbor.” He’s quiet, polite in public, and follows the rules of society in the real world. But in the world of online anonymity, he becomes the Dark Lord Sauron, master of his domain of destruction, destroyer of dreams and all that is good. Mua-hah-hah! He becomes, in other words, an entirely different person. And the extremes expressed by those two people might easily result in him being diagnosed as having “multiple personality disorder” if such divergent behavior were expressed in the real physical world. But in the online world, it now seems all too “normal.” Women, of course, are not immune to this. In fact, some women can be just as vicious as men in the world of social networking. Women tend to understand social complexities better than most men, so they often know where to strike to cause the greatest emotional pain. Women dominate Facebook these days, and some of the most bizarre and truly sickening posts I’ve ever read came from people who claimed to be women (but being in the online world, you never really know…). Facebook, by the way, does not give users the ability to effectively and permanently ban haters from posting on their wall, nor does it offer any sort of “hate filters” or other technologies that might ease this situation. As I hinted earlier, Facebook actually seems to encourage hate speech because it engenders conflict, and conflict attracts attention. That attention, in turn, translates into more page views and more ad revenues. To end hate speech on Facebook could mean losing half its traffic (or more). There’s just no financial incentive to stop hate from propagating across social networks like Facebook. Facebook, you might say, feeds on hate . The destruction of good people The upshot of all this is that online hate speech is destroying the lives of many brilliant people . I know several genius-level individuals from the academic world who just couldn’t take the onslaught of Facebook hate speech and ended up closing their accounts, removing all social networking buttons and retreating to the online equivalent of a hermit’s hut in the woods. What’s sad is that these are tremendously intelligent, talented people who have very important gifts of knowledge and insight to offer humanity. They are being systematically shouted off the stage by what can only be called idiotic hate speech vented from anonymous Haters who truly offer nothing to this world. They are, you might say, “useless Haters.” Imagine if Facebook had existed in the time of Einsten or the famed physicist Richard Feynman. These brilliant physicists — whose ideas literally transformed our understanding of the universe — would have been relentlessly attacked as fraudsters and quacks by the prevailing idiocy of the masses. “Time is relative? It’s absurd! What kind of freakin’ idiot would even believe such a stupid idea?” And this would be followed by a few thousand posts of follow-up haters who neither have the intellectual capacity to understand Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity nor the inclination to learn more about it before lashing out in condemnation of it. The tone of devolving thought What’s really happening with Facebook, Twitter and other social networks is that the conversations that dominate society are devolving into mindless hate speech . Bobby hates Sherry. Sherry hates Cindy’s dress. Cindy hates Bobby’s stupid grin… and Bobby slept with Sherry the other night, even though he hates her, just to take a snapshot and embarrass her online. This kind of thing is then followed by the most inane and utterly useless scraps of non-knowledge, such as: “I burned my toast this morning, and it reminded me of what a bitch you are” except, of course, I’ve spelled it all too well here. In the real world of Hatebook, such an insult would appear more like, “i burnt my tost this mrning, and it rimind me of what a bitch u r” followed by “ur pethetic” from someone else who can’t spell, either. And round and round it goes — a chorus of madness based on a kind of mental derangement that seems to have infected an alarming percentage of the online population. Don’t misinterpret me here, though: In no way am I saying that everyone online behaves in this way. What I’m saying is that those intelligent, thoughtful people who have something important to add to a discussion are frequently being drowned out by the haters who can always scream louder than the person they’re attacking. And yet we still need social networks Why does any of this matter? Because Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are now so popular that integrating with them is essential for the success of just about any online business. You either use them or you miss opportunities for reaching people. And if you use them, you automatically subject yourself to the hate speech of the deranged, creating not merely emotional stress but also an administrative task of trying to remove hate posts and counter the false and misleading “hate liars” who intentionally post information they know to be falsified. This is true regardless of which side of the issue you’re on. Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat; whether you’re into natural health or conventional medicine; whether you believe in global warming or think it’s a hoax… no matter what side you take on any issue, you are going to be targeted for idiotic hate speech by the mindless social networking haters who invoke their hate outbursts as a kind of mental masturbation. They “get off” on destroying everyone else while reducing reasoned conversations to linguistic seizures sprinkled with spite. The big-picture result of this is that people who go online feel increasingly negative and stressful about their lives. Society suffers as a whole when anonymous hate speech is allowed to dominate the bits and bytes of the ‘net. These days, there’s almost no room left for reasoned verbal discourse. Common sense, it seems, can’t fit into a 140-character tweet. Forget the TV sound bite — online bites are mere fragments of thought that often contain nothing other than seemingly random words placed in some bizarre sequence interspersed with insults or profanity. This is the best we can do? Really? This is the civilization that sent men to the moon, that built an atomic supercollider, that has unlocked many secrets of biochemistry and that hopes to someday colonize other worlds? Who, exactly, is going to develop the next generation of technological innovations when our teens are too busy texting and cheating on tests to actually learn mathematics? How are democracies going to survive if there’s no tolerance for rational discussions about political candidates and their policies, and the whole contest comes down to who can spew the most lies to the greatest number of voters? Solutions? So how do we shift the tone of online interactions into a more positive, responsible direction? This is a crucial question for our time, and it’s one that is just barely beginning to be considered. A knee-jerk reaction often leads to the idea of, “Well let’s require everybody to have a license to use the internet, and they can only use their real names.” At first, it might sound like a decent idea, but the more you look into this, the more quickly you realize that this would turn the internet into a virtual police state, with governments monitoring, controlling and censoring online discussions. Anyone “caught” arguing against mandatory vaccination policies, for example, might be banned from using the ‘net. For obvious reasons, governments should never control access to speech. Police State nations like China are already putting such requirements in place, and they are very effective at allowing the government to censor and control online conversations. Such draconian rules don’t make sense in a nation like the USA where freedom of speech is still widely respected. But there are other potential solutions available to us. At the very least, social networks like Facebook could do a lot more to improve the situation. They could provide users with better tools to ban Haters or automatically filter out posts with an overtly negative tone. Facebook could introduce a “reputation” system where people are voted into “white hat” or “black hat” status based on what other users think of their comments. Users could then automatically ban any posts from those with low reputation scores. A reputation system, you see, is what could bring back some measure of civility to the internet, even if real people hide behind virtual names. I believe there is a billion-dollar idea here, where some energetic entrepreneur could introduce a reputation monitor system that could offer internet-wide reputation scores for a given user, allowing websites to use that reputation score as part of their content visibility calculations. In fact, I foresaw the need for such a service nearly a decade ago and registered many domain names back then such as ReputationMonitor.com, ReputationGuard.com and ReputationServices.com. If anyone reading this is interested in creating and launching a reputation technology system that could help solve the problem of Hatebook Haters, I’d be very interested in partnering with you and promoting your solution. While a reputation system is one idea for reducing the tone of mindless hate on the ‘net, there may be other ideas that are just as powerful that we haven’t thought of yet. Keyword analysis systems can easily score posts in terms of their positivity or negativity, and sites like Twitter or Facebook could allow users to control their own “hate filters” (sort of like parental filters for children) that would automatically filter out the most negative posts. (Spam filters often work in much the same way.) This could serve as a kind of “hate firewall” that would greatly reduce the amount of mindless hate that gets spewed across the internet. We have firewalls for viruses and hackers… why not for Haters, too? Here’s another interesting idea: Develop a linguistic analysis engine that can sit on top of a corporation’s data stream and filter all incoming and ongoing text for extremely hate-filled emails or text posts. We actually developed a similar technology that already exists underneath our NaturalNews.com content system: It rates stories for their top concepts and then statistically relates those concepts to other stories in order to make intelligent recommendations for readers. Doing the same thing for emails or text posts is a fairly straightforward matter. But in order to get to these solutions, we as an online society must first recognize that the “Hatebook” approach to online communications is simply not acceptable. We must admit that allowing anonymous hate speech to continue online is destroying our collective quality of life while adding nothing of value to society. And yet, if we take action to reduce the anonymity of Haters, we must take care to preserve the freedoms of speech that make the internet, as a whole, a very valuable tool for the sharing of knowledge, creativity and solutions. This is obviously a difficult balancing act, and I don’t claim to have all the answers. I just know that what I’ve seen coming out of Facebook is some of the most dark, hateful and truly devolved “free speech” I’ve ever witnessed. And it is destroying the good will of good people to whom our world owes a debt of gratitude. We can do better than this. We must do better, in fact, if we hope to survive as a civilization. The open sharing of intelligent ideas is crucial, I believe, to us finding solutions for the really big questions that confront us today: How will our planet survive humanity’s destructive domination? How will we colonize other planets to insulate ourselves against future cataclysmic events? How can we preserve and expand the whole of human knowledge so that future generations are wiser than we? How can we explore the causes of happiness? These questions cannot be discussed in an environment that favors mindless hatred and anonymous stupidity over well-formed ideas and reasoned argument.

Recalled children’s Tylenol products were knowingly contaminated, says FDA

(NaturalNews) The other day I wrote a story about the massive recall by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson, of its infants’ and children’s line of Tylenol products. An FDA inspection report found these drugs to be contaminated with dangerous bacteria (they did not disclose the actual type) as well as “foreign materials” that were visible as “dark or black specks”. But a recent story published by USA Today has revealed that McNeil actually knew about the bacterial contamination and kept shipping the products anyway. Only the drug industry could get away with this type of careless, reckless behavior with nothing more than a slap on the wrist from the FDA. In fact, the FDA did not even require McNeil to issue a recall after discovering the problem; McNeil did so voluntarily over “theoretical concerns” that were expressed by Deborah Autor, an FDA official who was quick to emphasize that the risk to consumers from the tainted products “is remote”. So let me get this straight. An FDA report finds that a pharmaceutical company is knowingly using contaminated raw materials to make children’s and infants’ medicines in a factory that is failing to maintain its equipment, properly train its employees and correctly measure and weigh drug ingredients, and FDA officials consider the problem to be “theoretical”? Can you imagine what would happen if an herbal product manufacturer were found to engage in the same behavior? The FDA would pounce on them, seize their products, issue a public warning and probably fine the company for its reckless behavior. But when Big Pharma pulls the same stunt, it’s just business as usual . To the FDA, it’s all just “theoretical” My favorite part about this is the FDA’s reliance on the word “theoretical” to try to imagine that somehow no actual safety problem existed. According to my thesaurus, some other words for theoretical include unsubstantiated and hypothetical . In other words, the FDA is saying it does not actually believe that a real risk even exists! And yet FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, at the same time as the agency is saying there really is no risk and that the whole thing is just a hypothetical situation, advises parents to “discontinue using any of the name-brand products being recalled.” Overdosing on acetaminophen, especially in children, is a serious issue. The Mayo Clinic website warns parents that overdosing on the drug, even a little bit, can lead to “life-threatening liver problems.” The FDA report specifies that McNeil’s had not been properly formulating the drug dosages in its children’s and infants’ medicines, which is part of the reason for the recall. Improper concentrations of active ingredients in these products potentially puts millions of children at risk. But apparently this is no big deal to the FDA which sees it as nothing more than a “hypothetical” problem. Yet, just prior to its expression of “theoretical” concern in the current recall, FDA officials met with McNeil back in February to express “serious concerns” about the company’s poor manufacturing processes and failures to follow good manufacturing practices. So which is it? This kind of double-speak is typical of the FDA when a case involves a beloved drug company. If this had been a supplement that was “hypothetically” thought to be contaminated (even if conclusive evidence revealed there was no threat at all), health food stores everywhere would be ordered to strip it from their shelves. But when drug company negligence leads to the contamination of children’s medicines with bacteria, unknown particles and improper drug dosage levels, the FDA leaves it to the company to “voluntarily” recall their own products. There will probably be no fine levied against the company, either. The FDA may not even hold McNeil responsible for its gross negligence According to a recent Los Angeles Times article , the FDA has not even decided what corrective action it is going to take. According to the story, “options range from sending a warning letter to seeking criminal penalties.” So in essence, the options include doing nothing or actually holding McNeil responsible for putting the lives of millions of children at risk. To me, only one of these is a really a viable option. But based on the FDA’s track record in dealing with McNeil (and all other drug companies, for that matter), the agency is likely to just sweep the whole thing under the rug. Never mind that a warning letter had already been sent to a McNeil plant in Puerto Rico several months ago over wooden shipping pallet chemicals that had been found in other McNeil drugs, causing 70 people to became ill with digestive problems. When it comes to regulating drug companies, the FDA has a very short memory. Can any children’s medicines be trusted? Johnson and Johnson is one of the world’s largest companies, and is consistently rated by both Harris Interactive’s National Corporate Reputation Survey and Barron’s Magazine as being one of the top, most well respected companies in the world. If the world’s most respected company, a “family company”, is operating a subsidiary that is knowingly manufacturing contaminated children’s medicines in factories that are in violation of numerous safety protocols, what does that say about the entire drug industry? If the safety and quality of children’s medicines from one of the world’s most respected companies cannot be trusted, then what over-the-counter medicines can you really trust? Most children’s medicines are filled with chemical toxins anyway Bacterial contamination and poor manufacturing procedures are not the only problems with popular over-the-counter (OTC) children’s medicines. Even if McNeil had been operating up to proper standards, many of its children’s formulations are still filled with questionable chemical ingredients like aspartame, high-fructose corn syrup, sucralose (Splenda), artificial colors and preservatives, and even parabens, all of which are approved by the FDA for use in children’s and infants’ formulas. (Seriously.) The shocking truth is that, even in their approved and “safe” forms, most OTC children’s medicines are nothing more than dangerous chemical cocktails being peddled as medicine . They’re filled with so much harmful garbage that they can hardly be considered beneficial. Most of them are outright useless. These OTC children’s medicines are the quackery of modern medicine . Back in 2004, I wrote a story about a U.K. study which found that children’s cough syrup is medically ineffective . In tests, it proved to be just as effective as corn syrup at alleviating a cough, so basically it did nothing at all. Most cough syrup is composed primarily of corn syrup anyway, so it is no surprise that the stuff causes the same effect on the body — basically just a sugar overload. Pharmaceutical drugs are almost never a good choice for children. Not only do the active ingredients cause serious side effects and liver problems, but the chemical additives make them even more harmful. I think if more parents became informed about what’s really in children’s medicine, they would never willingly give it to their children. All these things really just illustrate the FDA’s corruption and behind-the-scenes protection of drug company interests. Even when a serious problem arises above and beyond the known risks, the agency acts as if it is no big deal. The health and well-being of millions of children is put at risk but it’s all just make-believe to the FDA. To them, all risks and side effects of pharmaceuticals are merely “theoretical.” But in their (warped) minds, the dangers of herbs and vitamins are all “very real!” It raises a very important question: How many children need to be harmed or even killed by the Big Pharma / FDA conspiracy before the American people will demand real FDA reform?

Shorty Awards exposed as rigged contest; legitimate votes zeroed out by Shorty Awards operators

(NaturalNews) NaturalNews has learned that the Shorty Awards are being operated fraudulently and that the voting results are fixed to exclude candidates who the editors at the Shorty Awards don’t want to win. In addition, the Shorty Awards, by refusing to police its own contests, actually encourages false and defamatory campaigning while ignoring legitimate complaints of vote fraud. The Shorty Awards, in short, has been revealed as wholly discredited. This all started when Dr. Joseph Mercola and myself (the Health Ranger) were nominated for Shorty Awards in the category of health. Although I didn’t know much about the Shorty Awards at the time, I thought that winning such an award would have been a positive step towards mainstream recognition of the popularity of natural / alternative medicine. I first wrote about it here: http://www.naturalnews.com/027966_Health_Ranger_Shorty_Awards.html Within a few days, thanks to the votes of our very large base of readers, myself and Dr. Mercola were leading the health category, having taken the #1 and #2 positions. This was all done with legitimate votes from real people from all over the world who support our work. I was set to take the top prize, and Dr. Mercola was in a solid second place when some vaccine pushers got word that a couple of “natural medicine whackos” (as they described us) were about to win the award, and they organized an opposition campaign to elect their own candidate — a virtually unknown doctor from Australia who held a strong opinion against homeopathy and natural medicine while pushing vaccines and pharmaceuticals. They began to call for others to vote for this “pro-vaccine” candidate, even though most people had no idea who she was and had never even read her work. But the opposition didn’t stop there: They unleashed a campaign of slanderous and false accusations against NaturalNews readers, accusing the readers of somehow engaging in fraudulent voting. Without a shred of supporting evidence (because none exists), they accused us of rigging the contest. It’s ridiculous, of course. I personally have well over a million readers around the world. We are legitimate producers of natural health content who are both known all over the world, and we have very large numbers of followers and readers spanning well over a hundred countries. The fact that our vote numbers climbed rapidly was merely a reflection of the level of support for NaturalNews and the Health Ranger. It wasn’t really surprising to see the vaccine quacks engaging in their false accusations, of course: Lying and cheating is par for the course for the vaccine and pharmaceutical industries. Their supporters apparently reflect that same lack of ethical behavior. They will apparently do anything to win , even if it means engaging in widespread false accusations and trying to get natural health people removed from the contest altogether. The voters for the opposition mostly had no idea who or what they were even voting for. They were just doing what they were told by someone else in order to “beat the alternative medicine quacks.” Their votes contained reasons like, “I nominate Dr. __ for a Shorty Awards because I was told to .” In addition to the false accusations of vote fraud — because these people just couldn’t stand being beaten fair and square — the vaccine pushers began tweeting votes aimed at myself and Dr. Mercola in their own made-up categories, some of which use profanity so I won’t repeat them here. A voting competition can be a lot of fun, but when it starts to become a platform for profanity, false accusations and juvenile behavior, enough is enough. So I personally wrote the Shorty Awards editors and asked them to put a stop to these highly unprofessional practices. In that letter, I wrote: “If you allow this to continue, the integrity of the entire Shorty Awards will be destroyed. I had hoped this would be a fair, honest competition that highlights the usefulness of short-form content, but thanks to the rogue voters who are supporting Dr. Rachael Dunlop, the Shorty Awards are quickly becoming a platform for defamation and false accusations where those who can spread the most aggressive insults are allowed to win.” I furthermore asked them to disqualify the vaccine doctor candidate because the votes for her were mostly from people who had no idea who she was in the first place. She was merely picked as a puppet to stand in opposition against myself and Dr. Mercola. Within 24 hours, we received word from our supporters who were confused: The Health Ranger was deleted from the Shorty Awards health category and all the votes from all our supporters were wiped out! That’s right: After pointing out how the opposition was cheating and posting false accusations, the Shorty Awards decided to simply delete the Health Ranger from their contest, thereby nullifying all the votes from NaturalNews readers and handing an automatic win to the vaccine pusher who was dishonestly propped up to the #1 position by voters who mostly had no idea who they were even voting for. Shorty Awards destroys its own credibility In deleting, without justification, all the votes from NaturalNews readers and deleting the Health Ranger from the contest, the Shorty Awards has destroyed its own credibility . It has essentially announced to the world that they will decide who wins and who loses, not the voters . If they don’t like you as a candidate, they will simply delete you from the contest — even if you’re legitimately winning! I received no contact from the Shorty Awards. No warning. No accusation of vote fraud. We were never accused of any improper behavior whatsoever. In fact, we conducted our campaign with the utmost professionalism, encouraging our readers to help us win honestly and legitimately, which they attempted to do. But our success was just too much for the opposition to believe. They couldn’t believe that natural health is now so popular all over the world. They couldn’t believe that people would actually go out of their way to vote for me because they wanted to support our work. And so the Shorty Awards simply nullified all those votes, slapping the NaturalNews readers in the face by zeroing out their candidate. That’s what the Shorty Awards thinks you are worth, by the way: Zero! Your vote doesn’t count, you see. Only the votes for vaccine pushers count. Shorty Awards come up short In investigating this issue, I also learned that the Shorty Awards actually encourages defamatory attacks, slanderous accusations and profanity as part of their voting process. They do this by ignoring their responsibility to police and remove such unprofessional behavior on the part of candidates and voters. The vaccine-pushing candidate now “winning” the Shorty Awards in the health category has text on her website that says, “If water has memory, then homeopathy is full of shit.” This is the mindset of the people the Shorty Awards is now supporting to win. They’ve essentially handed them the victory. In doing so, they have destroyed their own credibility. In the end, I suppose winning a Shorty Award wasn’t really such a big deal. We don’t need recognition from some tiny website to legitimize our existence on the ‘net. But seeing how the Shorty Awards engages in outright vote fraud while rigging the awards just goes to prove, once again, how supporters of pharmaceutical medicine lie and cheat their way into getting what they want — ethics be damned! This contest also goes to show you that vaccine pushers will do almost anything to shut down the opposition and try to silence anyone who has the intelligence to question the so-called “science” behind vaccines. Since they can’t win in an honest contest, they are forced to resort to cheating and lying in an attempt to rig the outcome. The Shorty Awards allowed them to do precisely that. You could accurately say, in essence, that the Shorty Awards has conspired with a group of liars and cheats to rig the outcome of their awards competition. That is a factual statement that will stand up in a court of law. Let the Shorty Awards know what you think If you voted for the Health Ranger, you should know that the Shorty Awards company has nullified your vote , deleted your nomination and essentially handed an automatic win to a vaccine pusher who has been shoved into the top position by a group of voters engaged in dirty, dishonest campaign tactics. I’m already out of the Shorty Awards, and as the entire thing has now been discredited as a rigged operation, I don’t need your vote anymore (but thanks to all who did vote, as we were winning!). But I would like to ask you to do several things: ACTION item #1) Vote for Dr. Mercola. Dr. Mercola and I agree nearly 100% on issues like vaccines and health freedom. Your vote can help Dr. Mercola win this award over the vaccine-pushing candidate that has been fraudulently thrust into the #1 position. You can vote for Dr. Mercola here: http://shortyawards.com/mercola ACTION item #2) Email your complaints directly to Sawhorse Media: Tell them why you don’t appreciate your very REAL vote being nullified and your candidate being deleted from the contest: twitter@sawhorse.com hello@sawhorsemedia.com info@shortyawards.com ACTION item #3) Link to this article from your website using the words “Shorty Awards voting fraud.” This will help this article appear near the top of the search engine rankings any time someone searches for “Shorty Awards.” ACTION item #4) When any other newspaper or website writes about the Shorty Awards, email them a link to this article so they know the truth about how the Shorty Awards have been rigged. ACTION item #5) Finally, tweet your complaints on this matter to the organizers of the Shorty Awards. Here are their names and Twitter addresses: Lee Semel @semel Gregory Galant @gregory Natan Edelsburg @twatan Sawhorse Media @sawhorse Thank you for your support Finally, I thank you for your support , and I feel very sorry that this company has decided to treat your vote as worthless. They should be ashamed of their actions. They have harmed the reputation of NaturalNews and insulted us all. They need to hear from you what you think about their actions. Imagine their surprise when they start receiving a flood of email complaints from thousands of REAL PEOPLE who they offended by deleting their votes. We have been victimized by blatant vote fraud here, folks, and now’s your chance to say something about it. The contest itself doesn’t matter that much. What matters is the principle . Don’t let them get away with censoring natural health advocates and treating you as if you don’t even count.

« Previous Page