You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2010.
Just Spreading the word here at the quaking in their boots err..Word Press Blogosphere.
Just a quick note, a wordpress blogger Micheal Hawkins had their blog removed at the spurious threats issued by the quack below. Reposting in the name of free speech and keeping quacks firmly in the cross hairs of skeptical inquiry and criticism.
Andreas Moritz is a cancer quack
Category: Skepticism
Posted on: February 18, 2010 5:07 PM, by PZ Myers
The Prime Quack has been identified: Andreas Moritz. He has admitted to getting WordPress to pull Michael Hawkins’ blog, and is also threatening me, now.
Michael Hawkins,
You may blame me for having your blog pulled. WorldPress had to remove your blog because otherwise it would have faced a hefty lawsuit, given the nature of the defamation campaign you had launched against me, and having positioned your blog link second place on the search engines.
I have not yet decided whether to sue you for defamation. I have asked my attorneys to assess the damages your defamation campaign has done to my work, business, and reputation since your blog has been up. I know that they are significant, but if they turn out to be an excessive loss of revenue and reputation and/or if I see any more defaming publications by you or your blog friends against me or Dr. Makoney, I will not hesitate to launch an expensive lawsuit against you that you will not forget for a long time. I have collected all the data of your blogs and publications involving me. Your last email to Dr. Makoney clearly shows that you are instigating a new defamation campaign, at least against him.
My investigations show me where you live and where you study (Augusta, Amine), and if I hear or see any further activities that involve me or Dr. Makoney you will need to hire a good attorney to defend your slanderous actions and campaigns.
My close friend, Dr Deepak Chopra, who in addition to Dr Makoney and myself have been viciously attacked by your friend, the fish zoologist, PZ Myers, are considering a lawsuit against him. Slander is slander, whether it is done online or offline. If your friend is wise, he will immediately remove those blogs from his site.
Just in case you are not aware of it, below are stated the laws that protect people like me against people like you.
Sincerely,
Andreas Moritz
Hmmm, misspelling names seems to be an epidemic among quacks. It’s also interesting that he’s openly threatening an expensive legal campaign against Hawkins.
If the threats of lawsuits and his own crazy snakeoil site aren’t enough to convince you that he’s a loon, consider that he was written up favorably on NaturalNews.com (you may recall Mike Adams, whose mind snapped under the weight of our criticism). Michael Hawkins wrote up an angry rebuttal to Moritz, as did I. He’s not a good person.
Moritz is a cancer quack. He is an evil man who takes advantage of others’ pain for his own profit.
Here’s what he says about cancer.
Cancer has always been an extremely rare illness, except in industrialized nations during the past 40-50 years. Human genes have not significantly changed for thousands of years. Why would they change so drastically now, and suddenly decide to kill scores of people? The answer to this question is amazingly simple: Damaged or faulty genes do not kill anyone. Cancer does not kill a person afflicted with it! What kills a cancer patient is not the tumor, but the numerous reasons behind cell mutation and tumor growth. These root causes should be the focus of every cancer treatment, yet most oncologists typically ignore them. Constant conflicts, guilt and shame, for example, can easily paralyze the body’s most basic functions, and lead to the growth of a cancerous tumor.
After having seen thousands of cancer patients over a period of three decades, I began to recognize a certain pattern of thinking, believing and feeling that was common to most of them. To be more specific, I have yet to meet a cancer patient who does not feel burdened by some poor self-image, unresolved conflict and worries, or past emotional trauma that still lingers in his/her subconscious. Cancer, the physical disease, cannot occur unless there is a strong undercurrent of emotional uneasiness and deep-seated frustration.
Note that he has absolutely no credentials or expertise in medicine; he calls himself a “medical intuitive”. Yet he is dispensing dangerous, defeatist advice on how to manage cancer, such as recommending against chemotherapy. Have you had a loved one die of cancer? It was their fault. Do you have or have you had cancer? It’s your own damn fault for being so negative.
Switch your target from Makoney, errm, Maloney to Moritz: he’s even crazier and more dangerous.
By the way, here is Andreas Moritz.
He’s peddling something called a liver flush — you gulp down a nasty concoction of Epsom salts, olive oil, and grapefruit, and then you go lie down for a while and suffer nausea and diarrhea. If you’re really dedicated, you can poop into a colander and collect strange lumps, as much as 2″ in diameter, that he claims are liver stones flushed out by the oily glop. This will make your knees feel better.
Seriously.
We in the Western world are merrily two-stepping toward authoritarian government. Appeasement of vested interests and distinct lack of judicial fortitude on behalf of the current American administration are tacitly condoning the use of torture by the security forces of the US. Al-Jazeera reports on the failure of justice in the US.
“Two Bush administration lawyers who authorised harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects will not face punishment, according to a US justice department report.”
Yes, expecting justice apparently is a little too much to expect within the context of the current American body politic.
“The report, released on Friday by the department’s office of professional responsibility, originally found that John Yoo and Jay Bybee had engaged in professional misconduct.
The report also urged that criminal prosecution be considered for interrogators who relied on their advice.
The harsh techniques Yoo and Bybee authorised included waterboarding of terrorism suspects as the Bush administration tried to elicit intelligence after the September 11, 2001 attacks for capturing or killing anti-American al-Qaeda fighters.” [hyperlinks added by me]
Oh…so they were responsible and will be prosecuted….hurrah US Justice department! (please note the statement that we need to go after the actual interrogators, because those damn bastards made the policy that gave them the mandate to torture in the first place)
Oh wait.
“The two lawyers “exercised poor judgment by overstating the certainty of their conclusions and underexposing countervailing arguments,” Margolis said.
While he declined to refer concerns about the conduct by Yoo and Bybee to the state bar associations for possible disciplinary action, Margolis said they “can choose to take up the matter.”
Ah, so they were mendacious and the arguments they made were of questionably spurious logic, but we won’t do a damn thing about it.
So to summarize, torture, including the crushing of childrens’ testicles, is a-okay in the U-S-A.
Well other than the largest presence on the ground since the disaster ocurred in Haiti, nowhere I guess (ghosts?).
“One major international news agency’s list of donor nations credited Cuba with sending over 30 doctors to Haiti, whereas the real figure stands at more than 350, including 280 young Haitian doctors who graduated from Cuba. The final figure accounts for a combined total of 930 health professionals in all Cuban medical teams making it the largest medical contingent on the ground.”
This is not just Haiti, Cuba has a history of being among the first responders to crisis situations worldwide.
“Cuban medical teams played a key role in the wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and provided the largest contingent of doctors after the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. They also stayed the longest among international medical teams treating the victims of the 2006 Indonesian earthquake.
In the Pakistan relief operation the US and Europe dispatched medical teams. Each had a base camp with most doctors deployed for a month. The Cubans, however, deployed seven major base camps, operated 32 field hospitals and stayed for six months.”
Cuba, a nation still in an economic stranglehold enforced the the US, still has the resources to send to other disaster stricken countries around the world. Do they vie for international resources or media time like other NGO’s? Rarely. No, rather they are have been, on many occasions, the first ones on the ground and the last ones to leave stricken areas of the world.
How do they do it? Cuba is a poor island nation, but yet they get it done. There is not glitzy flavour of the day fundraising and the enormous overhead that goes along with such hoopla; they just get there and start helping people to the best of their limited ability.
Do we hear about the outstanding work that Cuban doctors are doing in our filtered and standardized media. Not a peep of course. Being on the official US enemy list makes you magically disappear from positive media coverage.
Cuba sets the gold standard on what effective crisis response should look like. Imagine how much Cuba could achieve if the West were not determined to strangle their nation economically.
I like cdk007’s videos. They are always well put together and ask tough questions to people who insist on following dogmatic patterns of thought. Enjoy. :)
The southern offensive against the Taliban in the town of Marjah continues. The cost so far has been twelve civilians from an errant rocket attack.
“But the offensive, known as Operation Moshtarak, was overshadowed on Sunday by the death of 12 Afghan civilians killed when two rockets missed their target and landed on homes in Nad Ali district, where Marjah is located. Nato acknowledged responsibility for the deaths.”
I guess you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. But we are sorry:
“General Stanley McChrystal, the head of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, called the loss of life “regrettable” and said the operation was being conducted with “the protection of Afghan people in mind”.
“We extend our heartfelt sympathies and will ensure we do all we can to avoid future incidents,” he said in a statement on Sunday.”
What I wonder is if those 12 people’s families really understand what is going on? I mean do they really fathom the strategic importance of what Western forces are doing in their country? Do they think the Taliban is evil and must be banished by force of arms from their area? Or are they just devastated that they have lost family members and will blame whomever caused their deaths?
The fighting has been raging across Afghanistan for years, what guarantee is there that this will not happen again? Why of course let us put our faith in government in a box…and other nifty statements that do not address the endemic problems of Afghanistan.
“Afghan officials say they have a “government-in-a-box” ready to sweep in and set up institutional services and security that will ensure the Taliban do not return to areas captured by US-led forces.”
Somehow I get the feeling this is the same old rhetoric repackaged for this media cycle.
As I was assiduously avoiding planning my lessons for my upcoming classes, I happened to redirect myself to this list from the Blog Mistress Mom.
It is a simple post really, just a list of reasons as to why her son is wearing pink. I stopped at this particular point:
“Because even if pink is for girls, what’s wrong with being (like) a girl?”
What a brilliant question. What brilliantly loaded question!
Just what exactly is wrong with being like a girl? I mean, women represent more than half of our population and are prominent role models in the majority of our lives (for better or worse).
So what is wrong with being like a girl?
When I deal with problems I rely on my critical thinking skills and rationality; they are the first responders to the majority of situations. Even when I need to produce a response with a emotional basis there is that precursor thought of ‘oh…this requires my emotional intelligence…lets spin up the empathy/feelings centers and put them to work’…(I realize this is quite “meta” and is certainly not 100% accurate, but necessary for where I am going.) So my first response to this question was of course what I’ve learned of feminist/gender theory:
The hetronormative values of our Patriarchal society implicitly and explicitly diminish, dismiss and marginalize females and the idea of femininity. The assumption: To be female or associated with femininity is to be inferior.
This underling assumption is appallingly prevalent in our society, it permeates every facet, every interaction, every assumption we base our reality on.
What this question did was prompt one of those delicious “Ah-Ha!” moments when a deeper understanding of a theory or notion finally sinks in. Where does rape culture come from? How can women still be oppressed when they have, in theory, equal rights? Why are the standards we live by so permeated by hetronormative values?
“To be female or associated with femininity is to be inferior.”
I am usually quite a fan of gaining knowledge and expanding my horizons and what not, but sometimes I wish I could claim the protection of ignorance, to shield myself from the profound sense of injustice and sadness that accompany such melancholy revelations.
Studying history brings similar moments; for instance discovering that we in the West are not the ‘good guys’ and more often than not are just as ruthless and inhumane as our official ‘evil’ enemies. What is worse (of course it gets worse) is that most of the people refuse to accept their unhappy role in this oppressive, exploitive, blood-drenched narrative we as a race have written. It is the same with the patriarchal nature of our culture, people refuse to see the superstructure because they have internalized the values the patriarchal structure presents. They are not defending “oppression” they are defending what is “right”. And what is “right” is rape culture and the oppression of half the human species…how dare you challenge those assumptions?
I challenge those patriarchal assumptions because they are fundamentally unjust and irrational. By default that makes my opinion an outlier…*sigh*… but given my political and historical views of history, this is nothing new under the sun.
All I can say now is thanks for the “Ah-Ha” moment Mistress Mom, I owe you one.
With reluctance, I share this video with you my viewing audience. Please be warned it does have some strong language at time. Also, please please do not quote to me from the original sketch. I like Python, but only in small doses.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…