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.

Socially active environment can cause cancer tumors to shrink and even disappear

(NaturalNews) If you or someone you know ever receives a cancer diagnosis, especially one that is labeled “incurable” or fatal, take heart in the fact spontaneous regression (remission) has been reported in the medical literature numerous times for virtually all cancers. Spontaneous regression has been documented most often in neuroblastoma, renal cell carcinoma, lymphoma and malignant melanoma. And, as NaturalNews has previous reported, scientists have also discovered recently that some invasive breast cancers appear to simply go away on their own (http://www.naturalnews.com/024901.html). Now comes research from Ohio State University that could help explain what triggers spontaneous remissions. The new study, published in the July 9th issues of the journal Cell found that when mice with cancer were given enriched living conditions and a boost in their social life, their tumors shrank — and some of their cancers disappeared completely. That’s powerful evidence, the scientists say, that social connections and an individual’s mental state, play an important role in the way the body responds to malignancies. “Animals’ interaction with the environment has a profound influence on the growth of cancer — more than we knew was possible,” Matthew During, who headed the study, said in a statement to the press. The lab rodents were originally housed in groups of about five, given all the food they wanted and allowed to play all day. However, for the research project, mice with cancer were placed in an even better, enriched environment. They had bigger living groups with 15 to 20 other animals to interact with. They also had more space and extra toys, hiding places and running wheels. During and his colleague, Lei Cao, found that malignant tumors in animals living in this enriched environment started to shrink. In fact, tumors decreased by an impressive 77 percent in mass and decreased in volume by 43 percent, the researchers report. Moreover, five percent of mice with cancer showed no evidence of the disease at all after just three weeks of living in their new home. That seemingly spontaneous cancer cure never happened in control animals kept in standard housing. So what specifically is going on here that impacts cancer? Animals in a regular mice environment in the lab who exercised more didn’t experience improvements in their cancer, so the scientists say more exercise isn’t the total explanation. Instead, they think the complex social dimension in the new living arrangement was apparently the key. The enriched living environment appears to have sparked more, but apparently cancer-fighting, stress in the cancer-stricken mice. The animals showed higher levels of stress hormones called glucocorticoids. What this means, the researchers said in statement to the media, is that low levels of stress, or certain kinds of stress, are probably beneficial. “A lot of people think stress is bad, but our data show the animals aren’t just happy. Antidepressants won’t give you the same effect,” the scientists said in the press statement. “The goal isn’t to minimize stress, but to live a richer life, socially and physically. You want to be challenged.” In addition, the rodents had lower levels of a hormone produced by fat called leptin, indicative of a significant shift in metabolism. Their immune systems also appeared to be “ramped up a bit,” During said. During and his colleague pinned down an increase in a growth factor expressed in the hypothalamus called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the mice living in the improved mouse environment. Further study revealed that manipulations designed to increase BDNF levels also reduced tumor burden. If animals lacked BDNF, the benefits of an enriched environment were not apparent. The findings could ultimately lead to advances in the way cancer and other diseases are treated — perhaps through environmental modifications that offer mental and social stimulation. “We’re really showing that you can’t look at a disease like cancer in isolation,” During said in the media statement. “For too long, physicians and others have stuck to what they know — surgery, chemo, radiotherapy. Traditionally working on the area of lifestyle and the brain has been a ’soft area’. This paper really suggests if we look at people more in terms of their perceptions of disease, their social interactions and environment, we could realize a profound influence on cancer…” For more information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20603014 http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/10/1031.abstract http://yalepress.typepad.com/fightingcancer/2009/11/can-cancer-undergo-spontaneous-regression-1.html http://www.opednews.com/articles/Spontaneous-Remission-Canc-by-Jeffrey-Dach-091105-43.html

For FarmVille, a Crop From a Real Organic Farm

Users of the social network game, who tend virtual crops, will have the chance to plant blueberries from a subsidiary of General Mills.

Heal yourself in 15 days by listening to your body’s cries for help

(NaturalNews) Continuing with our 15-day self-healing series, today we’re going to shift focus inward. This chapter on self-healing is about learning how to listen to your body and understand what it’s really trying to tell you. In medicine, the word “symptoms” is thrown around as if it were something bad. Doctors talk about the “symptoms of disease” and then they prescribe chemicals to suppress those symptoms. If you have pain, they prescribe painkillers. If you have high blood pressure, they prescribe chemicals to artificially lower blood pressure. This practice of detecting and then suppressing symptoms is called “mainstream medicine.” But what if that entire approach were wrong? What if symptoms were gifts rather than curses? What if the messages they were sending actually contained important information about your health? That’s exactly what you’re about to learn here (if you don’t already know this, that is): Symptoms are messengers… cries for help from your body. And learning how to listen to those messages rather than suppressing them may be the key to unlocking your greatest health potential. Medications dull your body and mind Conventional medical doctors have been trained that symptoms are things to be suppressed, negated or destroyed. These doctors don’t consider symptoms to be a holistic part of your healing experience, but that’s in fact exactly what they are. If you sprain your ankle playing frisbee, for example, your body sends you a pain message. This message contains important information: “This tissue is injured. Do not use it until it is repaired.” If you heed the message, you will allow your ankle time to heal. Once it’s healed and safe to use again, the pain will disappear. It is now safe to put weight on your ankle again. In this context, pain is an intelligent regulator of your activities. It can direct you to avoid further injury. But pain killers dull the pain and artificially block the pain messages. They allow you to keep playing on an injured ankle to the point where you are likely to cause further injury, resulting in even more suffering and perhaps permanent damage that cannot be healed. That’s why pain is something to be listened to, not ignored. But pain isn’t the only messenger you’ll want to pay attention to… What your skin and nails are telling you Your skin is also a messenger. What’s happening with your skin is a reflection of what’s happening with your internal organs. If you have acne on your face, for example, you have much the same thing happening in your digestive tract. Facial acne is a sign to clean up your diet, eliminate all animal products for a while (dairy, meat, etc.) and detox with a plant-based diet. If your skin is dry, itchy or flaky, it’s a sure sign that you’re deficient in omega-3 fatty acids and possibly some other key vitamins or nutrients. Increase your intake of omega-3s through fish oils, marine oils or plant-based sources like chia seeds, and add superfoods to your diet to cover any vitamin deficiencies you may have. Your fingernails can tell a lot about your health, too: Misshapen or discolored fingernails point to chronic nutritional deficiencies in minerals and certain vitamins. If your fingernails have ridges, cracking, discoloration or any other symptoms, get yourself to a naturopathic physician right away. Fingernails, you see, indicate what’s going on with the rest of your body because your nails are, of course, grown out of your body. If you have nutritional deficiencies or chronic organ problems, they will be revealed in your nails. Your tongue can tell a wealth about your health, too. Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners use tongue diagnosis (and pulse diagnosis) to assess symptoms and clues about what’s happening with your internal organ health. Tongue diagnosis is remarkably accurate: A tongue that’s discolored, has a layer of mucous, has deep ridges on the sides or other non-healthy characteristics directly indicates problems with your liver, kidneys, heart, lungs or digestive tract. If you’re curious about this, seek out a TCM practitioner for a tongue and pulse diagnosis. Sadly, American TCM practitioners have a watered-down approach where they are afraid to offer any medical diagnosis for fear of being arrested by state medical authorities, but in China, an experienced TCM practitioner can tell you more about your health from a simple diagnosis than you would typically learn from an MRI. What goes in must come out To pay even closer attention to your body’s symptoms, observe what’s coming out of your body: • Do you have body odor? If so, your diet is unclean. Too much milk, butter and meat. • Does your breath smell bad? Same problem: Unclean diet or poor digestive health. • Are your stools too hard, too soft or not healthy looking? Check with a naturopath — the health of your stools indicates the health of your digestion. • Does your urine smell strange? It will after eating asparagus, of course, but normally your urine should not have an offensive odor. If it does, go visit a naturopathic physician for some advice. • Are you hyperventilating at times? It may be a sign of consuming a diet that’s too acidic. Or could also mean pre-diabetes. Check with a naturopath. What comes out of your body, you see, is a very accurate indication of what’s going on inside your body. Did you know that physicians actually used to taste the urine of patients? They could diagnose disease just from tasting the urine. Of course, these days mainstream doctors don’t taste your urine anymore. Instead, they give you expensive urine by pumping you full of HRT drugs, psych meds and other expensive pharmaceuticals that you pee down the drain while you’re literally flushing your money away. Listen to your cravings Your body will also tell you what it wants through cravings . These are little subconscious messengers that direct you to eat something your body needs. Most people, however, misinterpret those cravings and end up eating something bad for their health instead of what the body actually craves. For example, if your body craves salt — real salt, not the processed sodium found in junk foods — you may feel an urge to eat a salty snack food. But that urge is often just a craving for full-spectrum salt. Try eating some fresh nuts dusted with full-spectrum sea salt and see if that takes care of your craving. Cravings for chocolate may often be just your body crying out for magnesium . Your body sends you the message, “Eat more magnesium!” but your conscious mind mistakenly thinks you just need more chocolate. The problem is that most of the processed, store-bought chocolate on the market today is overly processed and has little or no magnesium left in it. Buy real chocolate if you want it to contain the minerals it’s supposed to. Is your body crying out for water? Dehydration can cause all sorts of symptoms that are often misdiagnosed as other diseases. Chronic dehydration can appear as all the following symptoms or diseases: Asthma, high blood pressure, hunger, kidney disorders, heart problems and constipation. Drinking more water on a regular basis (and avoiding dehydrating beverages such as sodas) can solve these underlying problems, and you may actually see many of those symptoms vanish within a few days, weeks or months. What’s beneath the symptom? If you do go see a regular mainstream doctor, you may in fact receive a quite useful diagnosis of specific symptoms. Western doctors are quite good at determining what’s wrong with you on a superficial level even if they have no idea about underlying causes. So if you receive a diagnosis from a western doctor, you can often take that diagnosis home and do something useful with it. For example, if your doctor says you have high blood pressure and recommends you start taking toxic blood pressure drugs, the best thing you can do for your health is tear up the prescription, go seek a naturopathic physician and ask what you can do to resolve the underlying causes of high blood pressure rather than trying to artificially medicate yourself with chemicals. Chances are, you have various nutritional deficiencies (lack of omega-3s, often), combined with dehydration and poor dietary choices. Correcting those three things will often resolve blood pressure symptoms. Of course, your specific case may be different, so be sure to check with your naturopathic physician about what’s best for you. Use the symptom as information Never be tricked into taking a medication that masks the symptom. Use the symptom as a clue to look for root causes that can be corrected through more holistic, natural means. This is how you can listen to your body and interpret its messages in useful ways that lead you in the direction of health. It takes no intelligence whatsoever to mask symptoms with medications. Any fool can accomplish that by popping pills, much to the delight of pharmacies and drug companies. But an intelligent, mature person will listen to their body’s many messages (symptoms) and learn from them to discover what’s really going on with their health. Masking symptoms, in other words, is a childish, adolescent approach to medicine. But listening and learning from symptoms in order to take a more holistic approach to health is characteristic of an intelligent adult. Which approach will you decide to take? Previous articles in this 15-day “Heal Yourself” series Part One – Remove barriers to healing http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_self_healing_quality_of_life.html Part Two – Unleash your inner healing potential http://www.naturalnews.com/028060_self_healing_immune_system.html Part Three – You are what you absorb http://www.naturalnews.com/028067_self_healing_digestion.html Part Four – Transform your health by making new blood http://www.naturalnews.com/028075_blood_health_transformation.html Part Five – Experience the healing potential of living plant juices http://www.naturalnews.com/028100_self_healing_fresh_juice.html Part Six – Accelerate your healing with a 24-hour fast http://www.naturalnews.com/028117_self_healing_fasting.html Part Seven – Heal yourself by rejecting the mainstream crowd http://www.naturalnews.com/028136_self_healing_crowd_psychology.html Part Eight – Stop making disease http://www.naturalnews.com/028153_self_healing_disease.html Part Nine – Correct your nature deficiency http://www.naturalnews.com/028203_nature_deficiency_self_healing.html Part Ten – Protect your skin exposures http://www.naturalnews.com/028249_skin_health_consumer_products.html Part Eleven – Eat MORE, not less http://www.naturalnews.com/028298_superfoods_self_healing.html Part Twelve – The Attitude of Gratitude http://www.naturalnews.com/028399_gratitude_self_healing.html Part Thirteen – Secrets of Social Healing http://www.naturalnews.com/028456_self_healing_family.html Part Fourteen – How to make exercise fun http://www.naturalnews.com/028531_exercise_outdoors.html

Heal yourself in 15 days with the joy of exercising in nature

(NaturalNews) In our 15-day self-healing series, we’ve so far covered everything from juicing and fasting to how to stop making disease. But we haven’t yet covered one of the elements most commonly associated with self-healing: Exercise! But don’t groan: This isn’t going to be some boring rehash of the same old stuff you’ve always heard about exercise, such as “you have to exercise an hour a day.” Rather, I’d like to invite you to think about exercise in a whole new light… about finding the FUN in exercise ! In my view, exercise shouldn’t be something that’s a daily grind. If it feels like work, something’s not right with it. I’m all about finding ways to exercise that don’t even feel like exercise at all — the kind of things that, when you’re finished an hour later, you say to yourself, “Wow, that was exercise, too? Cool!” Obviously, I’m not talking about a treadmill grind here. Sure, a treadmill can burn off the calories and do wonders for your stamina and muscle tone, but to me it still feels a lot like work. That’s why I try to find alternative fun things to do. In fact, I don’t even call them WORKouts. I call them FUNouts! What’s fun? If you think about it, the most fun ways to exercise are things that give your mind something to focus on rather than the exercise . In fact, the “fun” versus “work” factor of exercise is all about your FOCUS . When you mind is focused on the work, every step feels like a mountain to climb, but when your mind is experiencing something else (such as the scenery around you), then suddenly your work is no longer the focus of your attention. That’s why the real secret to effortless, joyful exercise is so incredibly simple that you’ll probably find it funny. Here it is, just three little words that contain a whole lot of wisdom and experience about making exercise fun: Exercise in nature. That’s it: Exercise in nature. And it doesn’t even matter what kind of exercise you do, really, as long as it’s outside, in nature. You can walk, ride, jump, skip, swim, shuffle, push, pull, roll, lift, surf, sail or do just about anything else that involves moving your bod for an hour or so. Walk along a city park or a nature trail. Toss a frisbee with a friend. Slap a volleyball over the net or hurl some horseshoes on a piece of lawn. Jump rope on the sidewalk or swing on a tree branch. Don’t forget how to play Do these things sound silly to you? One thing I’ve noticed about adults is that too many adults have forgotten how to play like children . We all played like children when we were children, right? But when we grow up, we no longer think it’s “mature” to skip along in a game of hopscotch on the sidewalk or toss a frisbee in the park. But in my opinion, we need to relearn how to play like children because “playing” is the best way to get exercise without feeling like it’s work. That’s why I’ve found lots of joy in playing for exercise . I like to ride a trike (a recumbent bicycle with a really comfortable seat) on the sidewalk or do bear crawls in the grass. Neighborhood playgrounds, I’ve found, are filled with all kinds of useful equipment that even adults can often use, from climbing the ropes to swinging around on the “monkey bars” as we used to call them. Part of this successful habit of playing, of course, involves you rejecting the mainstream crowd and getting comfortable just doing what’s healthy and fun, regardless of what the other limited-thinking people might say about it. Just because they forgot how to play doesn’t mean you have to limit YOUR fun to THEIR lack of imagination. In fact, “rejecting the crowd” is the topic of part seven of this 15-day series on self healing: http://www.naturalnews.com/028136_self_healing_crowd_psychology.html If you open up your options, there’s fun to be found everywhere around you in nature. You can play catch with a baseball, kick around a soccer ball or roll around in the spring grass with your family dog. You can learn to juggle, or spin poi (as I do), or take on a serious hike at an exotic natural destination. I do many of these things on a frequent basis, from juggling and playing catch to walking, hiking and biking. My exercise is always fun … and it never feels like work to me. While indoor gyms can be great places to go (especially during the winters), they are not my first choice for FUNouts. That’s why I encourage everyone to follow these three simple steps for finding the joy in your exercise: Step 1) Get outside. Let nature be your playground. Step 2) Learn how to play, and play outside the box! Step 3) Play regularly and with lots of variety. And, of course, don’t listen to non-fun people who judge you for playing. Don’t be that snooty, stodgy grown-up who has forgotten the simple joys of outdoor playtime. Life can be recess, folks! And you can have recess every single day. Just get outside, have fun, re-learn how to play and turn your WORKouts into FUNouts! Previous articles in this 15-day “Heal Yourself” series Part One – Remove barriers to healing http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_self_healing_quality_of_life.html Part Two – Unleash your inner healing potential http://www.naturalnews.com/028060_self_healing_immune_system.html Part Three – You are what you absorb http://www.naturalnews.com/028067_self_healing_digestion.html Part Four – Transform your health by making new blood http://www.naturalnews.com/028075_blood_health_transformation.html Part Five – Experience the healing potential of living plant juices http://www.naturalnews.com/028100_self_healing_fresh_juice.html Part Six – Accelerate your healing with a 24-hour fast http://www.naturalnews.com/028117_self_healing_fasting.html Part Seven – Heal yourself by rejecting the mainstream crowd http://www.naturalnews.com/028136_self_healing_crowd_psychology.html Part Eight – Stop making disease http://www.naturalnews.com/028153_self_healing_disease.html Part Nine – Correct your nature deficiency http://www.naturalnews.com/028203_nature_deficiency_self_healing.html Part Ten – Protect your skin exposures http://www.naturalnews.com/028249_skin_health_consumer_products.html Part Eleven – Eat MORE, not less http://www.naturalnews.com/028298_superfoods_self_healing.html Part Twelve – The Attitude of Gratitude http://www.naturalnews.com/028399_gratitude_self_healing.html Part Thirteen – Secrets of Social Healing http://www.naturalnews.com/028456_self_healing_family.html

Chevron hires twelve public relations firms to discredit indigenous Indians in Ecuador

(NaturalNews) In response to an environmental lawsuit filed against the oil giant, Chevron has fortified its defenses with at least twelve different public relations firms whose purpose is to debunk the claims made against the company by indigenous people living in the Amazon forests of Ecuador. According to them, Chevron dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon between 1964 and 1990, causing damages assessed at more than $27 billion. The company is being criticized by people and organizations from across the social and political spectrum for its unethical behavior in regards to the case. Originally filed in U.S. federal district court back in 1993, the lawsuit was eventually moved to courts in Ecuador at Chevron’s behest. Having initially lauded Ecuador’s legal system in an effort to have the case moved there, Chevron later changed its mind and began attacking the system when that system found the company liable for damages. Shareholders are also upset with Chevron for its gross mismanagement of the case in which it has sidestepped the rule of law and employed guerilla-style tactics in a last ditch effort to fend off an unfavorable ruling. Part of this includes hiring Hill and Knowlton, the same firm that represented the tobacco industry during its indictment over tobacco causing cancer, to perform the same task concerning toxic oil contaminants. Evidence presented at Chevron’s trial included over 50,000 chemical samples taken by the company itself which proved that all of its former oil drilling sites are contaminated with toxic byproducts that cause cancer. Many of these wells have contaminated rivers, streams, and other water sources which natives use for drinking water. Despite all the undeniable evidence, Chevron is working hard to cover up the facts and dismiss its responsibility in the matter. Speaking of responsibility, Chevron’s other hired firms are trying to claim that the company worked out a deal with the government in Ecuador back in the mid-1990s that released it from cleanup responsibility. However the terms expressed in the current case regarding cleanup are exempt from the former agreement which, in and of itself, was determined to be fraudulent. Two former Chevron lawyers and a handful of former government officials were indicted because of that agreement which makes it ludicrous to try to use the incident as a defense in the current case. A final ruling on the case is set to be made sometime this year. Most likely, Ecuadorian courts will find Chevron guilty as charged despite its lobbying efforts. Sources for this story include: http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2009/1120-chevron-using-six-public-relations-firms-to-discredit-indigenous-groups-in-environmental-case.html