Kevin Trudeau and “Them”

You really have to see this guy to believe. If you have not already, then you may have missed your chance.

From VisibleFriends.net

If you don’t already know Kevin Trudeau, here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

After being incarcerated for fraud in the early 1990s, Trudeau joined a multi-level marketing firm, Nutrition for Life. The firm was successful until the Attorney General of Illinois charged that it was running a pyramid scheme. Trudeau and Nutrition for Life settled cases brought by the state of Illinois, and seven other U.S. states, for US$185,000.

Next, Trudeau produced and appeared in a series of late-night television infomercial broadcasts throughout North America. They promoted a range of products, including health aids, dietary supplements (such as coral calcium), baldnessremedies, addiction treatments, memory-improvement courses, reading-improvement programs and real estate investment strategies. The FTC took regulatory action against Trudeau, alleging that his broadcasts contained unsubstantiated claims and misrepresentations. In 1998, he was fined. In 2004, he settled a contempt-of-court action arising out of the same cases by agreeing to a settlement that included both payment of a $2 million fine and a ban on further use of infomercials to promote any product other than publications protected by the First Amendment.

In 2004, Trudeau began writing books and promoting them with infomercials on U.S. television. The first book he published was a medical guide titled Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About, which was published in 2005. The book was criticized for containing no natural cures. Trudeau said he was not able to include them because of threats by the FTC. The book became a bestseller selling 5 million copies.

Two years later, Trudeau published a second medical book titled More Natural Cures Revealed: Previously Censored Brand Name Products That Cure Disease (ISBN 0-9755995-4-2). According to Trudeau, the book identifies brand name products that will cure myriad illnesses. Trudeau’s books claim that animals in the wild rarely develop degenerative conditions like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease, and that many diseases are caused not by viruses or bacteria, but rather by an imbalance in vital energy. Science writer Christopher Wanjek critiqued and rejected many of these claims in his July 25, 2006 LiveScience.com health column. While some experts criticized the book, it received average reviews on a number of online book stores and review sites.

Trudeau went on to publish The Weight-Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About and Debt Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About. His writing has been commercially successful. In September 2005, Natural Cures was listed in the New York Times as the number-one-selling nonfiction book in the United States for 25 weeks. It has sold more than five million copies.

[Extraneous links removed]

Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About is typical of Kevin Trudeau’s product. Prospective buyers just can’t get around the part that says “They Don’t Want You to Know About.” It’s so intriguing. Who are the “they?” And why don’t “they” want you to know about it? There’s a conspiracy. “They” have the answers, and “they” are keeping the truth from you. “They” are ganging up on you. Your troubles are due to what “they” are doing. You can take action. You can do something. You are empowered. You buy the book.

Trudeau makes a plausible case. “They” really don’t want you to know. To keep you from knowing, “they”shut him up, “they” haul him into court. And “they” do more:

U.S. TV pitchman Trudeau found guilty of criminal contempt

BY ADAM KIRBY

CHICAGO Wed Nov 13, 2013 4:35am IST

Nov 12 (Reuters) – A federal jury found pitchman Kevin Trudeau guilty of criminal contempt on Tuesday for exaggerating the contents of his weight-loss book in infomercials, and he was taken into custody, prosecutors said.

Jurors took less than an hour to find Trudeau, 50, guilty of violating a 2004 federal court settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that barred him from misrepresenting the contents of his books in advertisements, said Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago.

Trudeau, who was jailed twice in recent months for civil contempt by a different federal judge in Chicago, faces potential prison time for the criminal contempt conviction in the trial before U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman.

Prosecutors had argued Trudeau knowingly violated the 2004 agreement while marketing his book, “The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You To Know About,” in infomercials made in 2006 and 2007 that aired about 32,000 times.

That story was the inspiration for Wally Colgan’s post on Visible Friends Network last November:

The Prison Escape Plan ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About

Schadenfreude may not be classy or dignified, but sometimes it just feels good to get down and muck about in the dirt. If ever there was a time to point, laugh, and revel in someone’s misery, this is it.

One of the infomercial world’s most notorious peddlers of scams and snake oil, Kevin Trudeau, is finally behind bars. After almost 25 years of law suits, fines, injunctions by both the SEC and FTC, with fines totaling more than $37 million, Trudeau is off the air.

To many this will seem to confirm that oppression awaits those who dare to speak the forbidden truth. It’s the persecution syndrome. Our ideas don’t work out. It’s not our fault. “They” are pulling strings behind the curtain. “They” are manipulating the stock market, oil prices, the weather, and worse:

The chemtrail conspiracy theory posits that some trails left by aircraft are chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed in the sky for purposes undisclosed to the general public and directed by various government officials.^[1] This theory has been refuted by the scientific community: such trails are simply normal contrails (condensation trails).

Because of the popularity of the conspiracy theory, official agencies have received many inquiries from people demanding an explanation. Scientists and government officials around the world have repeatedly needed to respond, repeating that supposed chemtrails are in fact nothing but normal contrails.

The persecution syndrome is the basis of commercial pitches too numerous to track. One such is Natural News:

NaturalNews (formerly Newstarget) is a website operated by Mike Adams. It is dedicated to alternative medicine and various conspiracy theories, such as “chemtrails“, the alleged dangers of fluoride in drinking water, (as well as those of monosodium glutamate and aspartame) and alleged health problems caused by “toxic” ingredients in vaccines,including the now-discredited link to autism.

It features guest authors such as anti-vaccinationist Joseph Mercola, and anti-vaccinationist and conspiracy theorist Jon Rappoport, and has featured interviews with Russell Blaylock, Sandor Katz, and others. It defends Andrew Wakefield‘s fraudulent 1998 study linking autism to vaccinations, is outspoken against gun control, Transportation Security Administration screening procedures, and genetically modified organisms, and claims that CT scans and mammograms cause cancer. It claims that amalgam fillings are dangerous and need to be removed and defends Scientology.

[Edited]

I subscribe to Mike Adams’ newsletter, but I quickly grew tired of tracking down all his wild assertions. Here’s the edition I received yesterday. It reads, in part:

How cell towers are frying your brain and causing mass confusion

NaturalNews Insider Alert ( www.NaturalNews.com ) email newsletter

Dear NaturalNews readers,

The brains of everyone living within range of cell towers are being damaged by electropollution.

A hard-hitting new scientific study published in the British Medical Journal reveals how cell towers cause mental confusion, irritability and loss of sleep, among other brain-altering side effects:
http://www.naturalnews.com/044464_cell_towers_EMF_pollution_mental_confusion.html

If you follow that link it takes you to:

Americans’ brains being fried by cell towers: New scientific evidence reveals shocking extent of electropollution damage

Wednesday, March 26, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) Exposure to cell phone towers alters brain function in alarming ways, causing a lack of concentration, irritability, difficulty sleeping and lack of appetite. That’s the conclusion of a new study just published by the British Medical Journal.(1)

The study, authored by Professor Enrique A Navarro, concluded that the severity of such symptoms directly correlated to cell tower exposure levels. In other words, the closer a person lives to a cell tower, the greater the severity of their symptoms. This was true regardless of race, income level and other demographics.

Cell towers, of course, broadcast and receive electromagnetic switching signals. Human biology — and the brain in particular — relies on electro-biochemical pathways for healthy function. Many scientists have long suspected that chronic exposure to low levels of EMF pollution (electropollution) may interfere with healthy functioning of the brain and body. This latest research adds yet more support to that alarming idea.

It’s not your imagination: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is real

Electromagnetic hypersensitivity has long been dismissed as non-existent by some doctors and industry-funded scientists. After all, if EMF pollution from cell towers really does harm public health, then the implications are truly massive, both economically and in terms of human suffering.

I had a lot of fun with stuff like this back in 1995, and I wrote it up for The North Texas Skeptics. Here’s an excerpt from the repost:

Paul Brodeur has been a writer for The New Yorker for 35 years, and has published several books on issues of environmental hazards, including Currents of Death, The Zapping of America, and Asbestos and Enzymes. His book The Great Power-Line Cover-up (Little, Brown and Company, paperback, 351 pages, $12.95) was published in 1993, and an updated edition was released earlier this year.

The story according to Brodeur begins with “The Calamity on Meadow Street.” Two hundred and fifty yards long with only nine houses, Meadow Street in Guilford, CT, has had more than its share of cancer cases since the 1970s. It didn’t take the residents long to spot the culprit, a prominent electric substation on the street. After explaining the travails of the Meadow Street residents, the author spends the remainder of the book detailing his evidence that man-made electromagnetic fields in general and power lines specifically are a cause of cancer in humans.

The unfortunate inhabitants of Meadow Street are not the only victims. Brodeur describes endangered sites as diverse as Slater Elementary School in Fresno, California, and Essex County Vocational Technical High School in West Caldwell, New Jersey, both of which are located adjacent to high voltage transmission lines. Throughout the book he seeks to show the magnitude of the risk. Using his relentless, well-crafted journalistic style, the author builds a powerful argument for the hazards of electromagnetic fields and for the cover-up he says is concealing the truth from the public. The book includes numerous interviews with residents, who recount their efforts to obtain redress from bureaucrats and elected officials. There are also quotes and interviews with scientists, who all this time have been having trouble finding a link between electromagnetic fields and human health problems.

I am not going to wish for every Kevin Trudeau, Mike Adams, Paul Brodeur to vanish immediately from the face of the Earth. For one, what would I do on a rainy afternoon were it not for the likes. I look to a fun-filled future poking into the witless outpourings of these honorable witnesses. And those who follow them.