On January 12, the EPA admitted for the first time that three commonly used neonicotinoid pesticides – clothianidin, thiamethoxam and dinetofuran – pose a significant risk to bee populations. The agency’s updated analysis also acknowledged the threat posed by a fourth neonicotinoid compound – imidacloprid – which can harm both pollinators and aquatic insect species.

But on the very same day that the analysis was released, the EPA also announced that it had withdrawn its support for a proposal to introduce limited restrictions on the use of neonicotinoids in fields where honey bees are present. In place of the proposed restrictions, the agency announced a set of voluntary guidelines that do not impose mandatory compliance. (RELATED: Read more news about pesticides at Pesticide.news)

Director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Environmental Health program, Lori Ann Burd, said:

“It’s outrageous that on the same day the EPA acknowledged these dangerous pesticides are killing bees it also reversed course on mandating restrictions on their use. This is like a doctor diagnosing your illness but then deciding to withhold the medicine you need to cure it.”

The fact that the EPA has confirmed the threat to pollinators posed by neonicotinoids, while refusing to restrict their use, speaks volumes about the influence the pesticide industry wields over the agency’s policies regarding their use.

So what exactly are neonicotinoids, and why are they so dangerous to bees and other pollinator species?

From Eco Watch:

“Neonicotinoids are a class of pesticides known to have both acute and chronic effects on honey bees, birds, butterflies and other pollinator species, and they are a major factor in overall pollinator declines. These systemic insecticides cause entire plants, including their pollen and nectar, to become toxic to pollinators. These chemicals are also slow to break down and they build up in soil, where they pose an especially grave threat to thousands of species of ground-nesting native bees.”

In 2016, a United Nations committee published a new study on the subject of pollinators and the danger they face as a result of human activities. The committee found that 40 percent of all invertebrate pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, are threatened with extinction – a prospect that has grave implications for humanity.

Ninety percent of the world’s flowering plants depend on bees and other pollinators. Around 75 percent of all crops depend on pollinators (mainly bees). This represents about 1.4 billion jobs and nearly $600 billion worth of crops. (RELATED: Read more news about the environment at Enviro.news)

It’s becoming clear that neonicotinoids are more of a threat to pollinators than previously believed. In response, the EU has banned neonicotinoids altogether, and in 2016, the pesticides were banned from use in United States national wildlife refuges.

But in spite of all the evidence, the EPA has created a policy that does no more than ask the agricultural industry to consider not spraying neonicotinoids in fields where commercial honeybees are present. In other words, the EPA is doing nothing to address the problem.

“This is a rejection of science that should be deeply troubling to all Americans,” said Burd.

Indeed, it is troubling when an agency charged with protecting the environment refuses to take into account its own findings, but rather rules in favor of an industry that poses one of the most significant threats to the environment – along with the humans and animals who depend on it.

The big question now is: How will the incoming administration handle this and other urgent environmental issues while simultaneously creating a climate favorable to business interests, as it has promised?

The outcome should be interesting, to say the least. …

Sources:

EcoWatch.com

Phys.org

OneGreenPlanet.org

America cannot flourish if the national psyche is being incessantly assaulted by a malicious left-wing media intent on destroying the Republic. Here are ten powerful ways to win the war against anti-American forces inside the media and defend the Republic against domestic enemies:

#1) Banish the left-wing media from the White House Press Corps. Why give them a seat at the table when all they do is LIE all the time? Send a powerful message that says, “If you deliberately FAKE the news, you don’t get to ask questions any longer.” America cheered when Donald Trump called CNN “fake news” at that recent press conference. (See more examples of mainstream media fake news at MediaFactWatch.com)

#2) Halt all interviews with the lying left-wing media. Why appear on their shows and bring them credibility when they’re determined to misrepresent the truth? Announce a new policy that says no member of the Trump administration will lend any further credence to systemic “fake news offenders” who are guilty of deliberately and maliciously spreading fake news. That list, of course, would include CNN, WashPost, HuffPost, NYT, MSNBC The Atlantic and a long list of other repeat offenders who routinely engage in journalistic malpractice. The Trump administration could even have a “three strikes and you’re out” policy where fake news purveyors are warned three times, then banished for a full year if they keep lying.

#3) Unleash anti-trust investigations into the mainstream media’s corporate monopolies. The entire mainstream media is run by just six or seven powerful, monopolistic corporations that almost all answer to the same globalists. I have firsthand knowledge of the fact that nearly every major media organization actively takes orders from a single source that tells them exactly what to print or say each day. There is no “diversity” in the mainstream media. It’s all a “news cartel” and it needs to be broken apart under anti-trust action.

#4) Invite the independent media to press conferences. The real media “of the People” is the independent media. We are the voices of truth, reason and credibility in America now. We are, in fact, the only ones who will report the truth about the Trump administration’s decisions and policies. (See Trump.news for examples.)

#5) Start rewarding whistle blowers inside the federal government who expose the corruption and criminality of agencies like the EPA, FDA, CDC, USDA and so on. A deep-rooted cesspool of statism and liberalism festers inside each of these agencies. If the White House rewarded whistle blowers — instead of having them arrested and imprisoned like Obama did — thousands of them would come forward to expose the incredible dereliction of duty that’s now commonplace inside these failed agencies. Even better, connect these whistle blowers exclusively with the independent media so that the indy media can be the first to break these stories. Only in the indy media will whistle blowers be allowed to tell their real stories. (Case in point: I’ve just completed a video interview with a science whistle blower from the EPA, and his revelations are so damning that they would be censored by any typical media outlet.) There are many amazing journalists ready to cover these stories, including Glenn Greenwald, Sharyl Attkisson, Ben Swann, Melissa Dykes, Jon Rappoport, Robert Scott Bell, Mike Adams (that’s me), Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, Mac Slavo and a long list of others.

See Censored.news for some of the most heavily censored websites on the ‘net (which means these sites are truly independent media).

#6) Hold live press conferences with the American people, where citizens can ask questions in real time. Bypass the dishonest left-wing media. Talk directly to the American people. This will de-legitimize CNN and the “fake news” media by making them largely irrelevant.

#7) Remove all CNN broadcasts from federally-funded airports across the nation. Why should taxpayers fund airports that broadcast fake news propaganda from CNN? By the way, without airports forcibly shoving CNN propaganda down the throats of viewers, CNN would hardly have any real audience at all. Most people who watch CNN, it turns out, do so unintentionally.

#8) Document the lies and distortions of the Obama regime. America needs an official report that covers all the outright lies of the Obama years, including lies about unemployment figures, lies about the national debt, lies about Iran and so on. Before we can move forward, we need to make sure the nation knows the truth about the malicious acts of Barack Obama, a person who actively sought to undermine America’s values, culture and economy.

#9) Announce a White House “fact-checking” organization to fact check the lies of the left-wing media (and its own lying fact-checkers who are really propaganda liars). Launch a new site called Factcheck.Whitehouse.gov (or something similar) and start calling out the fake news of the left-wing media. Better yet, ask me about how to run it and use Whitehouse.news, a domain name we already own and would be glad to donate to the cause. Because Whitehouse.news is a private domain name, it would survive any future changes in administrations. (We also run Trump.news.) For the record, my own company personally developed and runs the world’s most advanced multi-site “hack resistant” publishing technology that’s virtually immune to DDoS and hacking attacks. That’s why we already operate over 100 publishing websites with automatic content syndication while none of them run active code (meaning they are extremely difficult to hack or harm via DDoS attacks).

#10) Support the House Un-American Activities Committee investigations in communist influences that have infested the left-wing media. This idea comes from radio host Michael Savage who correctly points out that laws are already on the books to investigate and prosecute communists who actively seek to undermine America. Sounds like something that needs to be applied to Chris Cuomo at CNN, doesn’t it? (Seriously, we have to root out the communists who currently control much of the corporate media. They are a very real threat to the Republic and they are deliberately seeking to undermine America and replace it with a communist dictatorship. See the details from former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov who described the entire plan of subversion to undermine and overthrow America.)

Stay informed about all this at Trump.news, MediaFactWatch.com and NewsTarget.com.

Here’s my own 10-point plan to help Make America Great Again:

In almost 60 years, since the investigations of Big Pharma began, Congress has never passed any kind of legislation to prevent the pharmaceutical industry from charging exorbitant prices — even for products that were developed with taxpayer dollars. (RELATED: Find out more about Big Pharma at Medicine.news)

Corporate greed keeps life-saving drugs from veterans

Just three years ago, in 2014, the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging held a hearing to investigate the skyrocketing price of generic drugs. Drug prices have continued to increase since then, of course.

The following year, Gilead came under fire for their outlandish drug prices — most notably, the sky-high costs of their drugs for hepatitis C. One drug, Solvaldi, was actually developed by a research scientist from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. After being acquired by Gilead, the product was priced so high that the VA — which paid to develop the drug — could not afford to give the pills to their own patients.

Gilead felt that it was fair for them to charge $1,000 per pill for a drug that they themselves had not even created. The retail price for a 12-week Solvaldi treatment is a sickening $84,000; even with a 50 percent discount, the VA was still unable to afford treatment for many sick veterans that contacted Hep C while overseas during the Vietnam War.

Only the lowest of the low could sleep at night, knowing that their price-gouging was preventing veterans from getting much-needed medical care.

Don’t worry, it gets worse.

Dr. Raymond Schinazi, the drug’s creator — owner of Pharmasett and at the time of the drug’s creation, Senior Research Scientist of the VA in Atlanta — admitted in a 2013 trade publication that an entire 12-week treatment of Solvaldi only cost $1,400 to make. A report from Americans For Tax Fairness states that Schinazi and his private company received millions in federal grant money to conduct research and develop treatment for Hep C.

Schinazi sold his company to Gilead in 2012. Shortly after acquiring it, Gilead saw fit to raise the price of the drug — to nearly 60 times what it costs to produce.

Following their investigation of Gilead, government officials concluded that the only explanation for the explicit price-gouging was corporate greed: they charged as much as possible, purely because they could.

(Related: Read more about rigged pricing, rigged polls and rigged systems at Rigged.news)

Other drugs have been created with taxpayer money

ABC News reported that the federal government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) spent some $484 million dollars on developing a cancer drug called Taxol. They entered an agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) in 1993.  A 2003 report by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) revealed that the federal government recovered a mere $35 million in royalty payments — even though BMS had racked up profits to the tune of $9 billion — in just 9 years. That’s a billion dollars a year in profits! And yet it was our tax dollars that paid for all that research.

The GAO report showed that the NIH spent almost half a billion dollars to research and create a new drug, and they then signed a contract that inevitably allowed a pharmaceutical company to patent it and prevent generics from entering the marketplace for years. It is beyond comprehension and totally reprehensible.

Corruption and greed in the pharmaceutical industry are hardly a thing of the past. More recently, pharmaceutical giant Mylan was called out for their price-gouging of the life-saving EpiPen. After acquiring the EpiPen patent — which was initially developed for the Department of Defense — Mylan increased the price of the product by 461 percent over the course of nine years.

There are countless other instances of wrongdoing within the pharmaceutical industry, particularly as it pertains to government regulation and policy.  Clearly, this is an issue that needs to be resolved — and should have been remedied years ago during or after one of the 50 investigations the government has conducted.

Sources:

Workers.org

RT.com

ABCNews.go.com

AmericansForTaxFairness.org

GenomeBiology.BiomedCentral.com

USUncut.com

Now, a new study by the University of Southern California has confirmed what is increasingly noteworthy about American politics: Most of us are stubborn about our political beliefs, even when we are provided contradictory evidence about what we think.

Neuroscientists at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC say their findings from the functional MRI study appear to be especially relevant to how people responded to political news stories—fake ones and real ones—throughout the election (though, as we’ve regularly reported, very often the fake stories were published by the old establishment media, not alternative media). [RELATED: Keep an eye on the fake news media at MediaFactWatch.com]

“Political beliefs are like religious beliefs in the respect that both are part of who you are and important for the social circle to which you belong,” said lead author Jonas Kaplan, an assistant research professor of psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “To consider an alternative view, you would have to consider an alternative version of yourself.”

In order to find out which brain networks respond when a person holds very firmly to a belief or set of ideals, researchers with the Brain and Creativity Institute at the university equated whether and to what extent people change their minds on nonpolitical and political issues when shown contravening evidence.

The neuroscientists found that people exhibited more flexibility when they were requested to analyze the strength of their conviction for nonpolitical statements, like, “Albert Einstein was the greatest physicist of the 20^th century.”

However, when it came to requests for reconsideration over political beliefs—like whether the U.S. should reduce funding for the military—test subjects would not abandon them.

“I was surprised that people would doubt that Einstein was a great physicist, but this study showed that there are certain realms where we retain flexibility in our beliefs,” said Kaplan, according to a press release from USC.

The study was published in December in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. Co-authors of the study were Sarah Gimbel of the Brain and Creativity Institute, and Sam Harris, a neuroscientist from the nonprofit Reason Project in Los Angeles. [RELATED: Stay current with up-to-date research on a variety of topics at Scientific.news]

Why do we so closely hold on to our political beliefs, even if we’ve been shown contravening evidence that we are wrong? The Free Thought Project notes:

Instead of treating a political subject like a normal debate topic – weighing factual evidence and its relation to other significant realities – it can quickly devolve into an irrational state. Enlightenment is sacrificed as the goal becomes defeating ‘the other.’

This has been true throughout American history. In the 19^th century, for instance, political differences were often highlighted and even exacerbated (with the express purpose of enraging the opposition) through political cartoons (which are still used today). But in addition to the old media, the new media and especially social media are used as platforms for heated debate, with sides often exaggerating their point in order to make their argument stronger—even if the argument is wrong to begin with.

The current political climate is the worst it’s been in most of our lifetimes, that is for certain. So-called “identity politics’—political positions based on the interests of social groups people identify with—and political correctness have really poisoned rational discussion. It has made the rancor both President Obama and incoming President Trump engender from political opponents nearly unprecedented. Some have said it is as bad now as it was prior to the Civil War, when discussion of the topics of the day often brought rage and physical violence.

Worse, the situation today is ripe for exploitation by both sides of the political aisle, with the media playing the biggest role. Americans really have to be careful what they read and what they choose to believe, because, as this study indicates, once we do make up their minds it is virtually impossible to change it, politically speaking.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

TheFreeThoughtProject.com

USC.edu

NewsFakes.com

One of the most recent examples proving this was when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the so-called “nuclear option” in 2010 so the Democrat Senate majority could bypass the longstanding 60-vote threshold and usher in Obamacare. The same technique was employed by Reid afterward to help Obama appoint radically Leftist judges to the federal bench.

That’s how Leftists operate. If they win elections, they call it ‘the will of the people.’ They use the Constitution when it suits them, and the federal courts when they don’t get their way. When you hear of “obstructionism” in Washington, D.C., the most prolific and skilled practitioners are Democrats and their Left-wing allies in the bureaucracy.

But they have had help along the way from Republicans, too, and indeed, the congressional GOP majority just gave authoritarian Leftists a huge boost by passing legislation that essentially constructs a “Ministry of Truth” in a country where one of its founding principles is freedom of the press.

A ‘Ministry of Truth’ in the U.S.?

As noted by All News Pipeline, the measure, which was signed by President Obama as part of the most recent National Defense Authorization Act, is the “Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016,” or S. 2692.

Indeed, Obama may have just handed the next president and all future presidents the power to censor and even destroy the mainstream media.

As reported by Zero Hedge, the site noted in June 2016 that the bill to create a de facto Ministry of Truth was quietly introduced. As with other controversial legislation Congress would rather keep from the public, the then-named bill, “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016,” was just the latest attempt by the governing elite to curtail press freedoms—that is, the press the establishment of both major parties disagrees with most.

Introduced in mid-summer by Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and Ted Lieu, D-Calif., H.R. 5181 sought to create a “whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions” to allow the government to counter “foreign disinformation and manipulation,” which the two lawmakers said they believed threaten the world’s “security and stability.” As if no great nation’s intelligence services have ever engaged in propaganda before. It’s only a staple of intelligence an counterintelligence operations.

Nevertheless, a similar bill was introduced in the Senate (see above) by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, which essentially represents a return to Cold War-era government-led propaganda engagements. (RELATED: See more examples of left-wing fake news propaganda at Propaganda.news)

“These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to advance key audiences and populations,” Portman said, noting that while the U.S. government spends a modest amount on Voice of America, the Russian government provides substantially more funding to Russia Today, or RT.

Where did this effort come from? What sparked it?

A narrative months in the making

Months before the phony “fake news” narrative began, compliments of a disgruntled, defeated, and thoroughly compromised Democratic Party—with its willing accomplices in the discredited ‘mainstream media’–H.R. 5181 would task the secretary of state with coordinating with the secretary of defense, the director of national intelligence and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response”—responsible for identifying what they believe is disinformation, then analyze data and, in dystopian fashion, then develop and disseminate “fact-based narratives” that are created to counter the offending propaganda.

And where would these fake counter-narratives be published? You guessed it: The same lamestream media that discredited itself over the course of the latest presidential campaign cycle.

As Zero Hedge noted:

In short, long before “fake news” became a major media topic, the US government was already planning its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label “fake news.”

“There’s no question that CNN, WashPost and the NYT are all working against the interests of America and the Constitution,” said Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.

“The NYT is owned by a foreign socialist. The Washington Post is owned by a left-wing globalist, and CNN is a puppet propaganda mouthpiece for George Soros,” he continued. “These left-wing propaganda rags are deliberately harming America and seeking to bring down the Trump administration by any means possible, including fabricating false accusations and publishing deliberate faked news stories to push their propaganda. They are subversive and a clear and present danger to our democracy.”

And now, it seems, fake government narratives will become official.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

ZeroHedge.com

AllNewsPipeline.com

NaturalNews.com

Since then, of course, many of those same outlets have continued to publish fake news or, at a minimum, push a fake narrative that they manufactured out of whole cloth, just to superimpose their Left-wing agenda onto the daily news cycle.

But one of the most heinous of all media ‘crimes’ are when MSM outlets push made-up “hate crimes” that turn out to be nothing of the sort. And in fact, as we saw recently in Chicago, it’s very likely that pushing phony hate crimes stories is having the effect of causing the ill-informed to act out, believing it’s some sort of retribution largely against Caucasians that is justified.

One of the biggest recipients last year of hate crimes hoaxes was President-elect Donald Trump. To wit:

— ‘Vote Trump’ black church arson: In the days before the Nov. 8 election, a historic African-American church in Greenville, Miss., was set on fire, gutting the institution making it a total loss. The alleged perpetrator even left a spray-painted message on the scorched brick: “Vote Trump.”

Well, that’s proof that a white, angry, bigoted, racist Trump supporter was the culprit, right? Only it wasn’t. In fact, as Bugout.news reported, the suspected arsonist was not only black but a member of the same church he allegedly burned up. And, we presume, not a Trump supporter.

— The lying hijab: A female college student from Lafayette, La., filed a complaint with local police claiming that two men attacked her and robbed her of her wallet and hijab, the head covering that Muslim women wear. She also claimed that they shouted racial slurs at her and that one of the alleged attackers was wearing a Donald Trump hat.

Didn’t happen. In fact, the woman wound up facing criminal charges herself for filing a false report.

— Black woman ‘harassed’: A black woman’s story about how a group of white, male Trump supporters harassed her at a gas station in Delaware went viral after she posted the alleged incident on Facebook. Then police began investigating, then suddenly she deleted her post and recanted her story.

And police said, according to this report, she never even filed an official report.

— The gay Canadian: A gay filmmaker from Canada claimed that he was assaulted by a gaggle of Trump supporters on Election Day. He claimed that the attackers shouted abusive slurs at him earlier in the evening at a bar, before he was then beaten in a nearby alleyway. As ‘evidence,’ he posted a bloodied picture of himself in an emergency room, saying the attackers smashed a beer bottle over his head and shouted a number of homosexual slurs.

Except that the whole story was a lie. The filmmaker, Chris Ball, never filed a police report, according to Santa Monica Police Department officials, and a police investigation revealed there was no record of Ball being treated at a local emergency room, as he claimed. So, with no official record of the “assault by Trump supporters” and no official hospital record, one can only assume this is a hoax as well.

— Trump supporters hate Muslims: Another alleged incident involving an 18-year-old Muslim woman, this time in New York City. She claimed that she was attacked by a trio of drunk males who screamed “Donald Trump!’ and called her a “f**king terrorist,” admonishing her to “get the hell out of the country.” She said they tried to pull at her handbag and yank her hijab off of her head.

But not only was this a lie, it turns out she told it as an excuse to avoid the wrath of her parents for being late for curfew.

Side note: The Washington Post, itself one of the biggest creators of fake news, described her faked incident in this way:

The highly publicized incident bore many of the same hallmarks as scores of other anti-Islamic hate-crime incidents reported in the wake of Donald Trump’s November victory in the presidential election.

“Scores?” Since when?

— The Swastika hoax: We’ve been told repeatedly throughout the campaign that Trump and his supporters were Nazis, so it only figures a couple of those knuckleheads would act like Nazis at some point, right?

Two Northwestern University freshmen were accused of spray-painting racist, homophobic graffiti, along with Trump’s name, inside the university’s chapel, accompanied by some other derogatory things defacing photos of Muslim students and the word “God.”

The obvious implication was that the graffiti was intended to make it seem as though the accused were Trump supporters, even though news stories do not specifically state this. But that’s the only reasonable explanation for why the two students would even mention our new president.

— Hateful notes [not]: When Taylor Volk, a North Park University student, claimed she was receiving hateful notes and emails containing threatening language and mentions of support for Trump, school officials investigated.

The found nothing. In fact, they discovered that those “threats” were fabricated.

— Trump hates Latinos too: Anti-Latino graffiti at Elon University stating, “Bye Bye Latinos Hasta La Vista,” was actually spray-painted by a Latino student, who later tried to claim it was all just a “joke.” And of course, the mainstream media jumped right on the story before looking into its veracity. As usual.

— But he LOVES the KKK: Police said that a black man faked a hate crime, then set his girlfriend’s car on fire and staged his own kidnapping, using his own blood to write “KKK” and “Trump” in a bid to throw detectives off the trail of his deceit.

— ‘Rock’-ing it for Trump: A black, female student attending Bowling Green State University said that white male students wearing Trump shirts launched rocks at her and yelled the typical racial slurs that you hear about the day after Trump won the election. But, as police found out, she wasn’t even in the location she claimed to be in, and she regularly changed her story.

— Hillary Clinton gets involved: After three black students claimed to have been attacked by some white guys on a bus, a number of protests broke out and there was outrage expressed all over social media and their campus, the University of Albany. The alleged incident even earned a shout-out tweet from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Uh, but in reality, the three black students were the aggressors, and teamed up to harass a 19-year-old white female.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

NaturalNews.com

MediaFactWatch.com

TheNationalSentinel.com

Bugout.news

WWLTV.com

WashingtonPost.com

ChicagoTribune.com

NYTimes.com

For weeks since President Donald J. Trump vanquished two-time presidential loser Hillary Clinton, a narrative emerged that “fake news,” as in propaganda, fed to hundreds of alternative media news sites by Russian intelligence swayed voters away from Clinton and into Trump’s corner.

No proof has ever emerged substantiating this tin-foil-hat conspiracy, mind you.

Nevertheless, this narrative has been expanded and made “official,” so to speak. President Obama has used it, in part, as his justification for sanctioning Russian intelligence and diplomatic missions and operatives. And it has been used by Congress and the president as justification to create a de facto Ministry of Truth within the U.S. government, ostensibly to identify and counteract the “fake news” and propaganda coming from foreign governments (a long-accepted intelligence/counterintelligence technique which happened all through the Cold War and remains in use today).

And who will disseminate the government’s version of what is supposedly ‘the truth’? You guessed it: The very same ‘mainstream’ media institutions and outlets that have been creating and distributing fake news for decades.

With that in mind, we bring you the 10 worst offenders of fake news in 2016:

1. ‘The Russians did it’: The Washington Post— The paper mainstreamed the narrative that “The Russians Hacked the Election” with a shoddy piece of journalism reporting that Russian intelligence gave hundreds of alternative media sites (including ours) “propaganda” in the form of “news” aimed at helping Trump and hurting Clinton [playing her role, Clinton would later blame it on some grudge Russian President Vladimir Putin held against her].

The sole “source” for the story was some shady, never-before-heard-of group of “experts” in various fields who claimed their “analysis” concluded without a doubt that Russian counterintelligence had meddled in our election. So flimsy and fake was the story that the Post eventually had to publish a sort-of retraction, admitting it’s story about fake Russian news was itself fake.

What is even more pathetic is the Post’s attempt to deflect from its own journalistic failings by lashing out at social media giants like Facebook…for publishing fake news (which, of course, included those fake stories from the Post). In a post-election rant, the paper’s own editorial board laughably pointed fingers at social media for allowing stories to be published that no doubt hurt Clinton’s chances of victory but which were nonetheless truthful and full of unassailable details. The Post however, as we’ve demonstrated, is a purveyor of fake news.

2. ‘Hands up, Don’t Shoot’: The Mainstream Media—This phony narrative stems from the Michael Brown shooting death by Ferguson, Missouri, police office Darren Wilson, though arguably, CNN is most responsible for it. As noted by The Daily Wire, the MSM pushed the narrative that 18-year-old Brown, a black man, had his hands in the air (he did not) and shouted, “Don’t shoot!” (he didn’t) when Wilson killed him. Truth of the matter is, Brown began fighting Wilson and tried to grab his gun, which a grand jury later confirmed (as did a number of witnesses on the scene).

For weeks CNN especially pushed this blatant lie, with some of its “news” hosts even putting their hands up on screen one morning, as a “symbol” of their “support” (for the lie).

3. ‘Trump told his supporters to vote multiple times’: CNN—Like him or not, there is no doubt that the MSM did its best to destroy Trump during the campaign, and that, of course, included ginning up fake news. CNN was, of course, in the thick of that. As Mediaite reported, the bottom-feeder “news” network made up a claim that Trump told his supporters to commit voter fraud by voting early and often. In fact, Trump was lamenting that in some polling places in Colorado, where he was attending a campaign event, void ballots four or five times, meaning they could probably vote four or five times. “But we don’t do that,” Trump also said, which was edited out of the original CNN story.

4. Helping Hillary cheat before a ‘debate’ against primary opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders: CNN: Longtime Democratic operative (which is why the network hired her) Donna Brazile worked behind the scenes to warn and inform the Clinton campaign about tough questions she was going to get ahead of a primary debate. Then, in what can only be adding insult to injury, the network executives acted shocked that a former associate of Clinton’s would actually use her media position to help an old friend.

And of course, CNN has waxed sanctimonious about “fake news” also.

5. ‘Natural News is full of fake news’: Forbes—In recent days Forbes columnist Kavin Senapathy, the site’s “myth buster on health, food and science,” wrote a hit piece attacking Natural News and its founder, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, as a “fake news” apparatus that pushes bogus theories and unscientific information. The defamation, of course, included all Natural News writers and correspondents, of which yours truly is a part of.

But in fact, the communist-Chinese-owned magazine and website couldn’t be more wrong in its indictment of Adams as a pioneering scientist and journalist because we deal in often very inconvenient facts about health, foods, genetically-modified organisms and the scoundrels, politicians, fools and corporations that push unhealthy lifestyle choices and medical Stalinism on all Americans.

We don’t deal in scientific conjecture, we deal in scientific facts. As for Adams, all of his research is hands-on; we’re betting that Senapathy, from her self-anointed position as arbiter of all that is and is not scientifically true, hasn’t been inside a lab conducting real research anytime lately, if at all. So all she is left with is creating a false narrative that we’re the quacks when in reality we are the ones with facts, data and research on our side.

But we’ve come to expect this, as Adams noted:

Every few months, Forbes.com runs a hit piece on Natural News, targeting me personally by gathering up a slew of circular logic quotes from representatives of the biotech, pharma and vaccine industries who ridiculously proclaim they all have a monopoly on science.

They don’t. And especially Senapathy.

6. Janet Cooke’s imaginary 8-year-old heroin addict: Washington Post—As noted by Breitbart, Cooke, a reporter for the Washington Post, completely fabricated an eight-year-old heroin addict in Washington, D.C., in a report on growing addiction that actually won her a Pulitzer Prize (which has since been revoked).

While the story was written in the early 1980s, the Columbia Journalism Review did an extensive piece dissecting it this year dubbing her “the fabulist who changed journalism” (they should have added, ‘for the worse’).

7. Fake newsman Brian Williams slams ‘fake news’: MSNBC—Some of this stuff you just can’t make up (which is hard not to do for a real story about fake news), but it doesn’t get any better than this.

You may recall former NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who fell from grace this year after it was discovered that he faked or lied about several events he allegedly covered while on assignment in various parts of the country and the world. The most [in]famous is his lie that, while in Iraq, he was nearly shot down in a helicopter, while receiving no ground fire whatsoever while in-flight.

“It’s curious that Williams is becoming the face of the legacy and establishment media charge against ‘fake news,’ the matter that such media luminaries are rallying around to blame their widely inaccurate reporting of the 2016 presidential election. Williams lost his slot as anchor of the NBC Nightly News after he made up scores of accounts, passing off completely fabricated stories as journalism,” Breitbart news reported, adding that, in 2015, the site published a full accounting of all the lies and fake news passed off as legitimate by Williams—32 times.

Embarrassed and hard-pressed to make it “right,” NBC suspended Williams…only to reinstate him on MSNBC, the cable news network with the least amount of viewers (for a reason).

8. Trump ‘poll-watchers’ sought to intimidate voters: Huffington Post—In October, the Left-wing lunatic “news” site of record sought to peddle a phony story about Vote Protectors, an organization dedicated to ensuring that voter fraud does not occur at various polling places. The linked Vote Protectors to one-time Trump advisor Roger Stone, and thus to Trump himself. The undertone of the story was that a) this was a thinly veiled attempt at voter intimidation; and b) it was inherently racist because Vote Protectors personnel were being sent to nine metro locations “with high minority populations.”

They were even making up “official-looking” ID badges—you know, so the “intimidation” would “officially” be tied to Trump’s campaign.

Only nothing like that was planned nor was anything like that actually carried out. In fact, the last time real voter intimidation was reported was when members of the Black Panthers political organization tried to browbeat white voters at polling stations in Philadelphia during President Obama’s first run at the Oval Office. But alas, the Obama ‘Justice’ Department, led by Eric Holder, dropped the case.

9. Politics had nothing to do with the creation of the ‘fake news’ narrative: The New York Times—In a Christmas Day piece that trashed conservative voices and alternative media—nothing new for the reporters and editors at the Old Gray Lady—The New York Times claimed, incredibly, that politics had nothing to do with the crusade against so-called fake news from everyone else:

Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online. …

Journalists who work to separate fact from fiction see a dangerous conflation of stories that turn out to be wrong because of a legitimate misunderstanding with those whose clear intention is to deceive. …

“Fake news was a term specifically about people who purposely fabricated stories for clicks and revenue,” said David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, the myth-busting website.

In just a few short paragraphs, the Times tells three monumental lies: That alternative media is filled with “fake news;” that Times’ critics like Trump are misconstruing the term “fake news;” and that the Times and other now-discredited mainstream news outlets are the only real sources of legitimate news. The Times even quoted Snopes co-founder Mikkelson, who is now married to a former prostitute who serves as a “fact-checker” on a website that has been proven to be biased against conservatives and libertarians in its ‘myth-busting.’

10. Facebook users are ‘fed up with fake news’: USA Today—Perpetuating the ‘fake news’ lie and narrative, USA Today published a piece in mid-December claiming that “Facebook users are fed up with fake news” [are you starting to see a pattern develop here?]. Naturally the story quoted a couple of Facebook users who, indeed, sure sounded like they were ‘fed up with fake news’ on Facebook.

But there are multiple lies being told or implied here. First of all, this piece was about as unscientific as it gets; the writer and the paper make a blanket claim implying that most Facebook users 1) can even identify “fake news;” and 2) are tired of seeing it in the site’s News Feed. The piece even declares:

Facebook has a fake news problem. And some of its users are fed up with it. They’re not sure if the solution is to let the social network, with its own biases, decide what’s true. Or whether they themselves should become better fact-checkers.

Say what? How is Facebook to know whether stories its news aggregators place into the feed are “real” or “fake,” especially given the examples shown on this list? These are all supposedly “reputable” news organizations, yet we’ve shown clearly how they have invented narratives, pushed falsehoods, and lied to their readers repeatedly—yet their stories make the Facebook News Feed.

What’s more, who gets to decide what is and is not ‘fake news’? For Facebook, anyway, it is going to be some of the very news and ‘myth-busting’ organizations that themselves have been discredited.

Adams has it figured out.

“There’s no question that CNN, WashPost and the NYT are all working against the interests of America and the Constitution,” he told me. “The NYT is owned by a foreign socialist. The Washington Post is owned by a left-wing globalist, and CNN is a puppet propaganda mouthpiece for George Soros.

“These left-wing propaganda rags are deliberately harming America and seeking to bring down the Trump administration by any means possible, including fabricating false accusations and publishing deliberate faked news stories to push their propaganda. They are subversive and a clear and present danger to our democracy,” he added.

Read more examples of fake news from the “fakestream media” at NewsFakes.com and Hoax.news

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

Freedom.news

USAToday.com

DailyCaller.com

NYTimes.com

Breitbart.com

HuffingtonPost.com

NaturalNews.com

Even though the original perpetrator of that hoax, The Washington Post, later published a sort of-kind of retraction, social media and major news aggregator Google, along with Facebook, announced they would no longer publish ‘fake news’—that is, news that their editors simply don’t like because they are opposed ideologically to the news site and/or media company publishing the story.

So, Google is against fake news—but you can still find plenty of fake news stories in Google News feeds, so what gives? [RELATED: Keep up with all the Google- and Facebook-censored news at Censored.news]

For instance, a recent search of Google News using the phrase “Russian hacking U.S. election” turned up hundreds of stories from so-called ‘mainstream media’ sources reporting as fact that the Russian government hacked the November elections, via stealing data from the Democratic National Committee and handing it to WikiLeaks to influence the election in favor of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

Two problems with those claims, which have also been made by the Obama administration using the “assessment” of careerist bureaucrats in the intelligence community:

1) They are completely unproven and unsubstantiated, and;

2) Even today the intelligence community, Democrats and the White House admit there is no way to tell if the leaked damaging information (which no one has denied is true) had any effect whatsoever on the election outcome.

But you find stories like this all over Google News feeds, and on news feeds picked up and distributed by Facebook. (RELATED: See more examples of fake news from the left-wing media at MediaFactWatch.com)

There are other examples, including the recent fake news involving bogus, fabricated charges that Russia backed Trump because Moscow has ‘incriminating evidence’ against him, including of a perverted sexual nature—again, completely unproven. In fact, these charges—contained in a 35-page ‘dossier’—have been floating around media newsrooms for months, and no one would touch them until CNN did, followed quickly by Buzzfeed, which published the entire dossier.

The Washington Post has become nothing more than a fake news operation, shilling for and protecting Left-wing Democrats, as Mark Dice notes in his own special way in this video:

The hack establishment media is not interested in fairness. It’s not interested in informing. It’s not interested in unbiased reporting. And, until Republicans came to power again in the White House, was not interested in holding the administration to account. But there are solutions for those who crave honesty, truth in reporting, freedom from censorship and news information they can trust.

Censored.news is a news aggregation site listing alternative media sources that are quickly becoming the new ‘mainstream’ media. The news sites listed here are likely to be among those soon to be targeted by Google, Facebook and other Left-wing aggregators not because they produce “fake news,” but because the regularly publish truths and facts the Left finds inconvenient. Rather than debate on the merit of ideas, Google and Facebook would rather censor and ban facts they don’t like.

As for sharing news, information and ideas without having to worry about the heavy hand of censorship, Share.NaturalNews.com is a growing Internet social community of like-minded individuals who cherish freedom, liberty, and above all, real freedom of speech and expression. Join today by clicking here [Full disclosure: I’ve already joined!]

Finally, to complete the freedom of expression and speech circle, search for your information via independent, non-corporate owned alternative media at GoodGopher.com, which protects your privacy and refuses to allow any links to the establishment media, the real purveyors of fake news. [RELATED: Stay up to date on all the fake news revelations at NewsFakes.com]

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

NaturalNews.com

Freedom.news

TheNationalSentinel.com

Out-of-pocket expenses have been rising for health insurance premiums, deductibles and prescription medications, with Big Pharma operating as a legalized drug cartel. Keeping prices high while greasing the federal regulatory system (and politicians’ reelection funds) has really taken its toll on our pocketbooks.

But we may have a knight in shining armor riding to the rescue: President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has pledged in recent days to take on the Big Pharma drug cartels with regulatory reforms that will most certainly result in lower prices.

In his first press conference recently, Trump discussed how the pharmaceutical industry has far too much power and influence over U.S. lawmakers and policymakers.

“Pharma has a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power,” said Trump. “There’s very little bidding on drugs. We’re the largest drug buyer in the world, and we’re going to start bidding. We’re going to start saving billions of dollars on drugs.” (RELATED: See more coverage of President Trump at Trump.news)

The president-elect is talking about the fact that every other president and Congress in recent history, including Clinton, Bush and Obama, have maintained what is essentially a “monopoly drug-pricing cartel” in the U.S. through the adoption of policies that eliminate outside and foreign competition, ensuring that the largest buyer of healthcare products—the U.S. government—pays the highest prices possible for drugs. While Medicare and Medicaid do not pay full price for most healthcare services, prescription drugs are often way over-priced. (RELATED: Learn about pharmaceutical price fixing at Rigged.news)

But the government also pays through federal health coverage plans and via the VA hospital system, where there is little competitive pricing. Much of this is due to an army of Big Pharma lobbyists who pretty much ‘bribe’ lawmakers and presidents to enact policies that keep prices high by eliminating true competitive bidding for prescription medication contracts [RELATED: Keep current with daily medical news coverage at Medicine.news]

Just how much money are we talking about here? In 2015 alone, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, “Spending on prescription drugs outpaced all other services,” with the government shelling out an incredible $324.6 billion for prescription drugs only.

The same report notes that healthcare spending in the United States has risen in the age of Obama and Obamacare, to $3.2 trillion annually, or roughly $10,000 per person; little wonder why the industry wouldn’t want to change the way things are.

But the fact is, the spending level on healthcare is breaking our bank. During Obama’s eight-year tenure, our national debt doubled from roughly $10 trillion to nearly $20 trillion today. If healthcare spending is not curbed and soon, it will consume 25 percent of our annual gross domestic product, meaning one out of every four dollars generated in the entire U.S. economy will be going to drug makers, cancer treatment centers, physicians, hospitals and medical device manufacturers.

As reported by Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger:

Obviously, that rate of expenditure is unsustainable. It also makes U.S. workers far more expensive than workers in overseas regions, harming the economic competitiveness of U.S. companies. In order for U.S. workers to remain competitive, U.S. health care costs need to be drastically reduced… and that means finally forcing drug companies to compete on pricing rather than receiving “full retail” monopoly-priced reimbursements from the federal government.

It should be noted, as documented in “The Hillary Files,” a white paper by the editors of NewsTarget, that had Hillary Clinton won instead of Trump, nothing would have changed because she was bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry she claimed to want to “reform.”

Trump hasn’t taken office yet so it’s unclear at this point if he’ll be able to do what he says. But at least he’s talking about reining in out-of-control drug pricing, as well as repealing and replacing Obamacare.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

NaturalNews.com

Trump.news

NewsTarget.com

Almost without exception, those individuals who are celebrated by mainstream media and pop culture are the most deceptive, destructive and dishonest people in society. At the same time, anyone who makes it a point to tell the truth and contribute to human knowledge and awakening is attacked, slandered, vilified and blacklisted. It’s totally twisted!

“If you’re a journalist and you report the truth, you will be fired… you will be censored.”

Today I’ve released a new mini-documentary that explains all this in more detail. It’s a 15-minute video that explores this disturbing phenomenon across our twisted society.

“Voices of truth that cannot be silenced will be destroyed by the status quo…”

Watch it at this link or view it below: (share with everyone!)

Also, check out the following new websites we’re launching to turn the tables on the liars and deceivers in our society, exposing truth in every sector:

Trump.news – Brings you independent news on the Trump presidency, without all the hatred and fakery of the “fakestream media” like CNN.

Censored.news – Real-time aggregation of headlines from across the most heavily censored independent news sites on the ‘net.

GoodGopher.com – The privacy-protected search engine that indexes thousands of independent media websites.

TalkNetwork.com – Breaking news podcasts, video and audio on current events, featuring independent, courageous voices.

MediaFactWatch.com – Exposes the news fakery of the mainstream media and covers the rise of the new media.

FakeScience.news (launching soon) – Exposes all the fake science of the vaccine industry, Big Pharma, global warming temperature fraud and more.