Saturday, August 10, 2019

Federal Judges Are Waging War On The Fourth Amendment

Federal Judges Are Waging War On The Fourth Amendment 

Who's Afraid Of Tulsi Gabbard?

Who's Afraid Of Tulsi Gabbard? https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-10/whos-afraid-tulsi-gabbard

Who's Afraid Of Tulsi Gabbard?

Who's Afraid Of Tulsi Gabbard? https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-10/whos-afraid-tulsi-gabbard

Doxxing Trump Donors Is Just The Beginning

Doxxing Trump Donors Is Just The Beginning 

Jeffrey Epstein Dies Of “Suicide”

ORIGINAL LINK

Disappointing everyone yet surprising no one, accused sex trafficker and alleged billionaire Jeffrey Epstein has “committed” “suicide”. Details are muddled and conflicting, with CNN reporting that Epstein “was taken from New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center at 3:30 a.m. Saturday in cardiac arrest and died at an area hospital” and the New York Times reporting that “Mr. Epstein hung himself and his body was found this morning at roughly 7:30.”

Some reports claim that Epstein has been on suicide watch due to a prior alleged suicide attempt three weeks ago when he was found unconscious with bruising on his neck, others deny it. If he wasn’t it’s weird because he obviously should have been, and if he was it’s weird because it failed. Prisons vary greatly in how they implement suicide watch protocol, but at bare minimum it should mean that unsafe objects have been removed from the prisoner’s cell and monitoring has been greatly increased. Stockton University criminal justice professor Christine Tartaro told CNN in an interview on the subject in 2017 that on suicide watch “there should be constant, one-on-one eyes on (suicidal) inmates.”

How is Jeffery Epstein going to commit "suicide"?

 — @FloridaDude297

Following Epstein’s arrest last month on federal sex trafficking charges, many people predicted that exactly this would happen, some half-jokingly and some not. This is because, as Whitney Webb of Mint Press News documented in a recent article titled “Mega Group, Maxwells and Mossad: The Spy Story at the Heart of the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal”, Epstein appears to have been involved in a complex Mossad-tied sexual blackmail operation and had close ties with many powerful people, including Donald Trump and the Clintons. The narrative that the Clintons have a penchant for “suiciding” their enemies was already a viral idea in right-wing conspiracy circles, and many of the early prognostications of Epstein’s fate came from that side of the political aisle.

But those voicing skepticism about Epstein’s death today come from all across the political spectrum, from left to right and from fringe to mainstream.

“People close to Epstein fear he was murdered… as Epstein told authorities someone tried to kill him in a previous incident weeks earlier. He was described as being in good spirits in recent days,” claims The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig.

“Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, various billionaire wall st. goons, hollywood elites and royal family creeps breathe a sigh of relief. He happens to have dirt on every powerful scumbag alive, how mighty convenient!” tweeted Secular Talk’s Kyle Kulinski.

“If Epstein’s death is still under investigation, and no one can explain yet how he killed himself, why is mainstream media reporting it definitively as a suicide? Even the FBI is calling it an ‘apparent suicide’,” tweeted journalist Max Blumenthal.

“How was Epstein not on the most intensive suicide watch protocol available???” tweeted journalist Michael Tracey.

“Scandalous. I supervised jail suicide investigations at DOJ. Experts will tell you that it’s essentially always true that jail inmate suicides are preventable, so when one happens it represents a major failure on the part of the jail,” tweeted human rights lawyer Sam Bagenstos.

“Something about this whole situation stinks,” legal analyst Rikki Klieman told CBS today. “What you have is someone who attempted suicide and now is on a suicide watch, and in the midst of the suicide watch manages to commit suicide? There are gonna be heads that will roll from the Bureau of Prisons looking at the [Metropolitan Correctional Center], because this is the type of situation where you do not know if it’s a suicide or you do not know if it is something else.”

A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men's lives ends up dead in his jail cell. How predictably...Russian.

 — @JoeNBC

Others, of course, have been bleating about Russia for no reason.

“A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men’s lives ends up dead in his jail cell. How predictably…Russian,” tweeted MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough to thousands of retweets and tens of thousands of likes.

This story is nuts. I personally am on record disagreeing with those on both sides of the aisle who’ve been claiming that the Epstein scandal was going to lead to mass arrests of extremely powerful people in Washington, because the swamp protects itself. We see that today clearer than ever. Whatever happened in that prison cell today, it made some nasty swamp monsters very happy.

“Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide ends the criminal case against him because no one else was charged in the indictment,” tweeted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, adding, “Epstein’s death means that there won’t be a public trial or other proceedings that could reveal evidence of his wrongdoing. Evidence collected via grand jury subpoena won’t be released to the public.”

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The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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AUDIO: Jeffrey Epstein DEAD FOR HOURS On Suicide Watch With Cameras In Cell Before EMS Arrived - Laura Loomer Official

https://lauraloomer.us/2019/08/10/audio-jeffrey-epstein-dead-for-hours-on-suicide-watch-with-cameras-in-cell-before-ems-arrived/

"They Were Saying Horrible Things" - How Monsanto Tried To Discredit Journalists, Rockstars And Other 'Roundup' Critics

"They Were Saying Horrible Things" - How Monsanto Tried To Discredit Journalists, Rockstars And Other 'Roundup' Critics 

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Killing Free Speech in France, Germany and on the Internet

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14678/free-speech-france-germany-internet

Throwing cold water on extreme heat hype - Weather Blog

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/realimpactofweatherwithdrjoelnmyers/throwing-cold-water-on-extreme-heat-hype/70008963

Brazil Supreme Court Minister Rules to Protect Press Freedom for Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept

ORIGINAL LINK

In a crucial victory for press freedom in Brazil, Minister Gilmar Mendes, a member of Brazil’s Supreme Court, has barred the Bolsonaro administration and Justice Minister Sergio Moro from investigating The Intercept Brasil and journalist Glenn Greenwald for its reporting on unethical and potentially illegal conduct involving Moro.

Mendes, in a sweeping decision, wrote that any attempt to investigate journalists for their reporting would “constitute an unambiguous act of censorship” and would violate Brazil’s constitution.

Over the past two months, Greenwald and The Intercept Brasil have published a series of damning articles on Moro’s role as a judge in Operation Car Wash, a string of supposedly anti-corruption prosecutions of Brazil’s political elite. The stories were based on Telegram chats given to The Intercept Brasil by an anonymous source.

The stories, which have dominated the political conversation in Brazil for weeks, showed Moro closely coordinating with prosecutors over their strategy in an apparent attempt to steer the cases and help convict defendants — all while Moro publicly portrayed himself as an unbiased and independent judge.

Most critically, Moro presided over the trial of leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and barred him from running for reelection in 2018 — just as polls showed he was the heavy favorite to win. Hard right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro ended up winning the presidency and immediately appointed Moro as his Justice Minister.

But rather than addressing the questions of Moro’s conduct head on, President Bolsonaro has instead attacked Greenwald. Bolsonaro has publicly stated multiple times in recent weeks that Greenwald has “committed crimes” and that he “may do jail time.” In July, a right-wing publication, which regularly publishes anonymously sourced leaks and rumors that benefit members of Bolsonaro’s party, reported that Greenwald’s finances were under investigation by prosecutors controlled by Justice Minister Moro in relation to The Intercept Brasil’s publications.

After Mendes’s opinion, however, any investigations by the government into Greenwald should halt. The petition to the Brazilian Supreme Court was originally filed on July 11 by the center-left environment-focused political party Rede Sustentabilidade, which translates to the Sustainability Network. The leadership of Rede Sustenabilidade was a strong supporter of Justice Minister Moro, until the revelations by The Intercept Brasil and their concerns about the effects any investigation of the journalists involved would have on press freedom in Brazil.

In a win for all Brazilian journalists, Mendes’s stirring opinion went far beyond the case at hand and invoked a powerful and broad defense of journalists’ rights. “The immediate right of free speech is the right to obtain, produce and disseminate facts and news by any means,” Mendes wrote. “The constitutional secrecy of the journalistic source makes it impossible for the State to use coercive measures to constrain professional performance and to impede the form of reception and transmission of what is brought to public knowledge.”

Mendes and the Car Wash task force have long been at odds. The minister has repeatedly publicly criticized the operation and granted habeas corpus to many suspects that the prosecutors argued should be kept behind bars. This Tuesday, El País published Telegram conversations in partnership with The Intercept that showed Car Wash coordinator Deltan Dallagnol and his colleagues attempted to gather evidence in Switzerland that could possibly provoke Mendes’s impeachment from the court. Such an investigation is illegal since, under Brazilian law, the Supreme Court must approve any investigation into its own members, and no such request was ever filed by the Car Wash task force. Another article from the online news site UOL, published in partnership with The Intercept, showed that the Car Wash prosecutors clandestinely used a third party to contest a ruling by Mendes, in an runaround of their own institutional hierarchy.

In a statement to The Intercept and Freedom of the Press Foundation, Greenwald said: “A free press is a pillar of any democracy because it is one of the few tools for shining a light on the corrupt acts carried out by society’s most powerful actors in the dark. That’s precisely why those same powerful actors so frequently want to punish journalists for doing our jobs, as Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro and his Minister of Justice and Public Security Sergio Moro have been explicitly threatening to do in response to our exposés.”

Greenwald added: “The Brazilian Constitution robustly and expressly protects exactly the work we’re doing, and I’m grateful that the Brazilian Supreme Court has applied those guarantees against the repressive, retaliatory acts threatened by the Bolsonaro government against us. This crucial precedent ensures that not only we, but all Brazilian journalists, can do our jobs even in the Bolsonaro era without fear of official retaliation from the state.”

Rede Sustentabilidade was able to petition the Supreme Court directly instead of first going to a lower court because the issue touched on core constitutional rights protected under the Brazilian Constitution. Rede Sustentabilidade also asked for an “urgent” ruling, given the timely nature of the potential press freedom implications. In Brazil, a single minister in the Supreme Court can rule on such urgent requests in advance of a full panel of judges hearing the case.

Minister Mendes’s ruling is only preliminary, but the full court may take months or years to take on the case, so Mendes’s ruling may stand for a significant length of time. It is a powerful rebuke of those in the Bolsonaro government who have indicated they would like to sweep aside important press freedom rights for all journalists.

The post Brazil Supreme Court Minister Rules to Protect Press Freedom for Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept appeared first on The Intercept.



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Warning: This Blog Provides Material Support for Extremist Conspiracy Theories 

ORIGINAL LINK

The left, rallying behind a seething hatred of Trump, is tossing around ideas on how best to criminalize their political opponents. 

Mike Giglio writes for The Atlantic:

At the moment, there is a significant disparity in the amount of funds, personnel, and law-enforcement tools that America devotes to combatting Islamist versus white-nationalist terrorism. Finding a way to add white nationalists to the list of U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations could help address that, Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told me. It would lower the bar for law enforcement to be able to charge a person for providing material support to white-nationalist terrorists.

#WhiteNationalism must be exposed, denounced, and resisted https://t.co/hUykiGZ11Y

— Phillipe Copeland (@GandalfDaBlac) August 8, 2019

How do we identify white nationalists? 

There are the obvious candidates—shaved head guys standard bearing Nazi flags (now inseparable from Gadsden and Confederate flags), marching in torchlight processions, or marked for life with Odal rune and Iron Cross tattoos. 

After Charlottesville and the so-called “Unite the Right” rally, the corporate media made it look like these people are a national security threat. The SPLC and the ADL would have you believe there are hundreds of thousands of violent racist white evil-doers spread across the country. 

But not even the SPLC can give you an accurate count—or even a clear definition—of what and who these terrible people are. 

From the Daily Beast:

The Southern Poverty Law Center hasn’t counted the members of the so-called “alt-right.” A press representative tells The Daily Beast that they’re not aware of any nationwide surveys designed to count them.

Even so, the SPLC claims to know the numbers:

However, they estimate that the KKK counts between 5,000 and 8,000 members nationwide. Back in the 1920’s, when cities across the south were erecting monuments to Confederate generals, the Klan had 4 million members. As Roger L. Simon points out, this would be an impressive decrease even if the population of the U.S. hadn’t swelled since the 1920’s. Back then, the Klan constituted about 4 percent of the entire U.S. population. Now, the KKK is near its nadir. That would make them less than 0.003 percent of the population, even on the higher end of the SPLC’s estimate. 

In the past, these folks were basically ignored, derided as anachronistic paranoiacs, even laughed at, but now, since the election of Trump, they are everywhere, more lethal and worrisome than the jihadi serial murderers of the Islamic State. 

The hysterical claim we face the threat of white terrorism is promoted by the corporate media. For instance, the Daily Beast (a subsidiary of IAC, a transnational media corporation):

Now, before it grows any stronger, should be the time to move against it with the same kind of concerted international focus of attention and resources that were trained on Osama bin Laden. Now is the time for a global war on white nationalist terrorism…

Networks of white nationalist apologists, sympathizers, supporters and facilitators—vital to any terrorist movement—are deeply embedded in the political and social fabric. They are literally the enemy within…

Voters in Western nations have to understand that the fellow travelers of white nationalist terrorism are not acceptable participants in modern democracies, and vote them out, or see that they are prosecuted, or both.

The FBI was instructed by Congress to provide a definition of a white domestic terrorist. It released a bulletin claiming for “the first time [the FBI] has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat,” according to Yahoo News. 

This recent intelligence bulletin comes as the FBI is facing pressure to explain who it considers an extremist, and how the government prosecutes domestic terrorists. In recent weeks the FBI director has addressed domestic terrorism multiple times but did not publicly mention this new conspiracy theorist threat.

The FBI is already under fire for its approach to domestic extremism. In a contentious hearing last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray faced criticism from Democrats who said the bureau was not focusing enough on white supremacist violence. 

The FBI—forever motivated to stay relevant and get its chunk of the federal budget— overshot the target.

The new focus on conspiracy theorists appears to fall under the broader category of anti-government extremism. “This is the first FBI product examining the threat from conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists and provides a baseline for future intelligence products,” the document states.

In other words, if people believe “conspiracy theories”—for instance, the events of 9/11 are misrepresented by the official narrative—they are “extremist” and “not acceptable participants in modern democracies,” and should be “prosecuted” as criminals providing “material support” to white supremacist terrorists more dangerous to America than ISIS. 

Meanwhile, conspiracy theories pushed by the state—Russia sabotaged the 2016 election—are elevated to unquestionable gospel truth. If you question this fairy tale, you’re either a Putin dupe or a believer in bad conspiracy theories, those that expose the crimes of government. 

How long before this blog and thousands of others are accused of providing “material support” for terrorists? Because “conspiracy theories” are now a national security threat, should I expect to be interviewed by the FBI, surveilled (more than usual), and possibly put in “protective custody” or sent to a mental hospital? 

It sure looks like things are going that way. 

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"Just Stab The Motherfu*ker": Twitter Suspends McConnell Campaign For Posting Video Of Violent Threats

ORIGINAL LINK

Twitter has suspended the campaign account for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) after his social media team shared a video of left-wing protesters gathering outside the Senator's Kentucky home - with one activist calling for someone to "just stab the motherfucker in the heart." 

"I just want him to have a stroke, that is all," the woman added. "One of those heart attacks where they can’t breathe, and they’re holding their chest and they fall backwards" 

He’s in there nursing his broken arm. He should have broken his raggedy, wrinkled-ass neck,” she said at one point in the video. 

“Everybody needs to show up wherever this ho is at and make him just regret his fucking life, period,” she added.

At one point in the protest, a male protester commenting on McConnell’s recent injury said that he may have been the victim of a “voodoo doll” curse. -Daily Caller

Kevin Golden, McConnell's 2020 campaign manager noted that "Twitter will allow the words of ‘Massacre Mitch’ to trend nationally on their platform, but locks our account for posting actual threats against us." 

Golden says that they appealed to Twitter, which stood by their decision, saying that the account will remain locked until they delete the video.

Daily Wire reporter Ryan Saavedra was similarly locked out of his Twitter account for posting the video. 

"Twitter asked me yesterday to delete this tweet," Saavedra recounted in a massive tweetstorm. "It showed a person allegedly calling for violence against Mitch McConnell. The person appears to be a BLM activist who has met with Elizabeth Warren."

Saavedra then pointed out several instances in which Twitter allowed content advocating violence against conservatives to trend;

They told me, in a private message, that they were going to remove the video contained in the tweet, which was embedded from someone else's account

They also asked me to delete my tweet, which was separate

My tweet was newsworthy and factually accurate

I said no

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) August 7, 2019

This pic is of Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann, who was falsely smeared by the media

Sandmann and his school received death threats over what happened

Twitter took no action against this tweet

Sandmann is a minorhttps://t.co/FuPhmcH4Hq pic.twitter.com/paUNr2Gl3t

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) August 7, 2019

Peter Fonda called for women in the Trump administration to stripped naked and physically beaten

He called for Trump admin officials to have their kids taken from them and thrown in cages with pedophiles

Twitter allowed him to keep his verified account https://t.co/Zww5HmvDUt

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) August 7, 2019

Back to convo w/Twitter:

They said that they were concerned about McConnell's safety, yet the Black Lives Activist / Warren supporter who called for McConnell's death is still allowed to have an account on Twitter

Keep in mind, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is a big BLM supporter

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) August 7, 2019

That far-left activist is a member of Louisville Democrat Mayor Greg Fischer's "Synergy Project," which essentially is an anti-violence taskforce

Reminder, this activist allegedly said McConnell should be stabbed in the heart and have his neck broken https://t.co/lePC1pTdG0

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) August 7, 2019

But there's no bias in Silicon Valley, of course.  



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Through the Looking Glass at Concordia University - Quillette

https://quillette.com/2018/07/02/through-the-looking-glass-at-concordia-university/

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Google Is Burying Alternative Health Sites to Protect People from “Dangerous” Medical Advice

ORIGINAL LINK

In Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451, firemen don’t put out fires; they create fires to burn books.

The totalitarians claim noble goals for book burning. They want to spare citizens unhappiness caused by having to sort through conflicting theories.

Censorship Is Control

The real aim of censorship, in Bradbury’s dystopia, is to control the population. Captain Beatty explains to the protagonist fireman Montag, “You can't build a house without nails and wood. If you don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood.” The “house” Beatty is referring to is opinions in conflict with the “official” one.

"If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it."

A Nobel Laureate Copes with Conflicting Opinions

When making decisions, we often face conflicting theories. Daily, we face choices about what to eat. Although the government issues ever-changing dietary guidelines, thankfully, the marketplace supports personal dietary decisions ranging from carnivore to vegan. We are free to choose our diet based on our evaluation of the available evidence and the needs of our bodies.

When we face health issues, decisions become tougher. There is an orthodox opinion, and there are always dissenting opinions. For example, the orthodoxy recommends statins to reduce high cholesterol. Others believe high cholesterol is not a health risk and that statins are harmful.

Nobel laureate in economics Vernon Smith was taking a prescribed statin and recently observed the impact it was having on him:

"In the last week I had a very clear (now) experience of temporary memory loss. I did a little searching and found this article summarizing and documenting the evidence over many years."

Smith continues,

"Such incidents have been widely reported, but the problem did not arise in any of the clinical trials, but neither were they designed to detect it."

Smith had to weigh the purported benefits against the side effects:

"Statin effectiveness in reducing heart/stroke events needs to be weighed against this important negative. Since I am actively writing, this is a primal concern for me, and I have stopped taking it."

A free person understands that there is no one “best” pathway. Although experts have knowledge, a free person takes responsibility, makes a choice, and bears the consequences. We never know what the consequences would have been had we made a different choice.

Health Care 451

Some people don’t like to take responsibility for health choices. They prefer to do what they’re told by the doctor.

“Do you understand now why books are hated and feared?” asks Ray Bradbury’s character Professor Faber in Fahrenheit 451. Faber responds to his own rhetorical question:

"Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless."

Bradbury is reminding us that life is messy. Often there is no comfortable one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges we face.

Despite the evidence against statins, the medical orthodoxy would like you to believe that those who question statins are being hoodwinked by fake news. The orthodoxy wants you to believe there is one size for all.

There are good reasons to be concerned that we are losing access to information with which to evaluate opposing sides of health issues

Duke University’s Dr. Ann Marie Navar is the Associate Editor of JAMA Cardiology. In her article, “Fear-Based Medical Misinformation,” she rails against the “fake medical news and fearmongering [that] plague the cardiovascular world through relentless attacks on statins.”

She writes many patients remain concerned about statin safety. In one study, concerns about statin safety were the leading reason patients reported declining a statin, with more than one in three patients (37 percent) citing fears about adverse effects as their reason for not starting a statin after their physician recommended.

Dr. Navar takes the position that concerns about safety are “fake medical news,” spread in part by ignorant patients via social media. Don’t worry, she counsels, reports are incorrect when they claim “that statins cause memory loss, cataracts, pancreatic dysfunction, Lou Gehrig disease, and cancer.”

Fake news? Dr. David Brownstein (no relation) disagrees:

"The Physicians Desk Reference states that adverse reactions associated with Lipitor include cognitive impairment (memory loss, forgetfulness, amnesia, memory impairment, and confusion associated with statin use). Furthermore post-marketing studies have found Lipitor use associated with pancreatitis. Other researchers have reported a relationship between statin use and Lou Gehrig’s disease. Finally, peer-reviewed research has reported a relationship between statin use and cataracts. Statins being associated with serious adverse effects has nothing to do with fake news. These are facts."

To be sure, more physicians would agree with Dr. Navar than Dr. Brownstein, but should treatments be dictated by those on one side of the argument? After all, due to human variability, statins may both save some lives and impair or kill other people.

With some doctors questioning whether to prescribe statins for everyone, there is a large financial incentive to stifle debate.

Can you imagine a future government-controlled health care system, completely captured by the pharmaceutical industry, mandating statins for everyone? I can.

There are good reasons to be concerned that we are losing access to information with which to evaluate opposing sides of health issues, like the statin debate. Already Google is “burning” sites that question the medical orthodoxy about statins.

Google Tips the Scales

Mercola.com, operated by Dr. Joseph Mercola, is one of the most trafficked websites providing alternative views to medical orthodoxy. If I were researching statins, I would certainly read several of the numerous essays questioning statin use and the cholesterol theory of heart disease. Essays at Mercola.com usually provide references to medical studies. Personally, since Dr. Mercola sells supplements and I am a supplement skeptic, I read his essays—like I read all medical essays—with a grain of salt.

Dr. Kelly Brogan is a psychiatrist who has helped thousands of women find alternatives to psychotropic drugs prescribed to treat depression and anxiety. In her book, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives, Brogan reports that one of every seven women and 25 percent of women in their 40s and 50s are on such drugs. She explains,

"Although I was trained to think that antidepressants are to the depressed (and to the anxious, panicked, OCD, IBS, PTSD, bulimic, anorexic, and so on) what eyeglasses are to the poor-sighted, I no longer buy into this bill of goods."

For their unorthodox views, Dr. Brogan, Dr. Mercola, and others like them are treated as medical heretics. Dr. Brogan and Dr. Mercola have documented (here and here) how a change in Google’s search engine algorithm has essentially ended traffic to their websites.

From time to time, Google updates algorithms determining how search results are displayed; there is nothing inherently nefarious in such actions. Google has achieved its market position by doing a better job than other search engines.

According to Dr. Mercola, before Google’s most recent June 19 algorithm update,

"Google search results were based on crowdsource relevance. An article would ascend in rank based on the number of people who clicked on it."

After their June 19 algorithm update, Google is relying more on human “quality” raters. Google instructs raters that the lowest ratings should go to a “YMYL page with inaccurate potentially dangerous medical advice.” YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life.” Google says,

"We have very high Page Quality rating standards for YMYL pages because low-quality YMYL pages could potentially negatively impact users’ happiness, health, financial stability, or safety."

Does that sound reasonable? If a site argues for treatments other than the medical orthodoxy then, by definition, the site can arouse readers' cause for concern and, for some people, unhappiness. Do we really want Google to assume the role of Bradbury’s firemen?

Google wants to protect you from conflicting opinions. And if you don’t think that’s a problem, imagine sometime in the future when searching for information on monetary policy you only find results for Modern Monetary Theory.

Google thinks its intention to “do the right thing” is enough to prevent abuses; some Google employees would disagree.

Google Plays the Happiness Doctor

Google is not eliminating access to alternative health pages; it is making it harder to find them. Typical health searches will still generate plenty of “facts,” just not conflicting facts. In Fahrenheit 451 Captain Beatty explains the government’s strategy: “Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year.”

Instead of “conflicting theory,” Captain Beatty explains the strategy is to “cram” the people “full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information.”

Filled with “facts,” Captain Beatty explains, people will “feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving.” Beatty assures Montag that his fireman role is noble. Firemen are helping to keep the world happy.

"The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, to our happy world as it stands now."

The only way Google will maintain its dominance is to continue to meet the needs of consumers. Whether Google continues to “burn” websites is up to us. Google will continue to sort out unorthodox views as long as “we” the consumer continue to rely on Google’s search engine.

--

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article. 

[Image credit: The Pancake of Heaven via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0]



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"The Average American Should Be Terrified" - Fourth Turning Economics

"The Average American Should Be Terrified" - Fourth Turning Economics

FOURTH TURNING ECONOMICS – The Burning Platform

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2019/08/04/fourth-turning-economics/