Category: Featured Articles

Fighting back against that system are the courageous individuals who dare to tell the truth. And one of those individuals is Dr. Gary Null, Ph.D.

Gary Null has just released a stunning new video called "GMO Ticking Time Bomb."

Vitamin D3-5

Topics covered at this timely conference included immune, heart, cognitive, muscle and blood sugar health. Also mentioned was that 85 percent of hemodialysis patients are vitamin D deficient, and replenishment could reduce costs per patient by approximately $1,400 yearly. The annual cost for vitamin D supplementation is about $14, so the savings are substantial.

The sunshine vitamin
Some experts recommended spending time in the sun to obtain vitamin D, which costs nothing and may actually reduce costs significantly. An estimated 18 percent reduction in healthcare costs is possible if everyone's vitamin D blood level was above 40ng/ml. This requires substantially more supplementation and sun bathing than most doctors recommend.

One presenter connected the sun-drenched sanatoriums in the early 1900s with recuperation from tuberculosis. High-dose vitamin D has been shown to improve lung function, and to produce antimicrobial peptides that ward off pathogens. Inflammatory bowel disease and dermatitis are also associated with inadequate vitamin D, as are many other inflammatory conditions.

Building better people, young and old
Around 50 percent of pregnant women are vitamin D deficient. Doses of 4,000 IU daily during pregnancy and nursing – deemed safe by the Institute of Medicine – helps prevent preeclampsia, impaired dentition, gestational diabetes, hypertension, infection, bacterial vaginosis and pre-term birth. Clinical trials are under way to support these claims, but many clinicians already recommend taking high doses.

Vitamin D also builds bone and muscle strength to help prevent falls and fractures. Deficiency is tied to muscle weakness, obesity and reduced fitness. Indeed, low vitamin D status is linked to reduced mobility, disability and dependency that reduce the quality of life and markedly increase healthcare costs. It is also associated with depression and cognitive decline. The problem is compounded in the elderly due to decreased vitamin D skin production, reduced dietary intake, intestinal absorption, activation in the kidneys, and calcium absorption from the gut.

How much is too much?
Still, there is no consensus regarding optimal dosing, condition-specific needs, or danger from sun exposure. Recommended vitamin D blood levels of 20ng/ml may be enough for bone health, but the benchmark for optimal benefits is approximately 30ng/ml, despite insufficient human clinical data. Also in question are the needs for different populations, including the elderly, dark-complected, obese, sun avoiders, vegans, and those on certain drugs.

Is there one dose that's best for everyone, or do genetics and disease matter? For example, institutionalized and hip-fracture patients have much lower vitamin D levels than normal people. Dark-skinned people get much less vitamin D from the sun. Roughly every 100 IU of vitamin D raises blood levels by about 1ng/ml, so raising levels to 30ng/ml would require nearly 3,000 IU daily.

One physician at the conference was more hesitant to recommend such high doses. Merely shifting someone's vitamin D status may not be sufficient, and it is never as easy as just taking a pill. Still, he made the case for high-dose vitamin D and diabetes. Apparently, some experts are convinced from the mounting data, while others are awaiting results from controlled clinical trials.

Flax Oil

Last month, Natural News told readers the truth about a much ballyhooed previous study which, according to the inaccurate reporting by mainstream media, meant taking omega-3 fatty acid supplements (almost always in the form of fish oil) was a waste of money and did nothing to protect health (http://www.naturalnews.com). In fact, the study was not the last word about fish oil supplements at all and even the researchers who conducted it didn't make that claim.

It was a meta-analysis of studies involving close to 70,000 people all lumped together and included research subjects who had only taken omega-3 supplements for a short while. Some took very little. Even the authors of the study noted that "…an individual patient data meta-analysis would be more appropriate to refine possible associations related to, among others, dose, adherence, baseline intake, and cardiovascular disease risk group." But that didn't stop the media from ignoring that important point and proclaiming, as ABC News did, that omega-3s are "not a lifesaver" and do nothing for health in general.

Now, a new study by Ohio State University researchers (just published online in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity) found that overweight but healthy middle-aged and older adults who took a substantial amount (either 2.5 grams or 1.25 grams) of omega-3 supplements regularly for four months altered a ratio of their fatty acid consumption in a way that boosted preservation of tiny DNA segments in their white blood cells.

What does this mean specifically? These miniscule DNA bits are known as telomeres. They shorten over time in many types of cells as a consequence of aging. Stopping this shortening of telomeres has long been thought to be a key to halting the aging process or at least slowing it down.

The Ohio State scientists found that lengthening of telomeres in immune system cells was more prevalent in people who substantially improved the ratio of omega-3s to other fatty acids in their diet. What's more, the substantial and regular supplementation also reduced oxidative stress, known to be caused by excessive free radicals in the blood, by about 15 percent compared to the oxidative stress measured in a control group of research subjects who received placebos instead of real supplements.

"The telomere finding is provocative in that it suggests the possibility that a nutritional supplement might actually make a difference in aging," said Jan Kiecolt-Glaser, professor of psychiatry and psychology at Ohio State University and lead author of the study, in a media statement.

In yet another finding from this study, Kiecolt-Glaser's research team reported that omega-3 fatty acid supplements lowered inflammation in this same group of adults. This blows the assertion that fish oil has no heart benefits out of the water.

"Inflammation in particular is at the heart of so many health problems. Anything that reduces inflammation has a lot of potentially good spinoffs among older adults," Kiecolt-Glaser said. She added that people who are less healthy — especially those who are under chronic stress — may gain even more benefits from omega-3 supplementation.

The scientists also found that decreases in an inflammatory marker in the blood called interleukin-6 (IL-6) in the people taking omega-3 supplements were associated with telomere lengthening. In their earlier paper on omega-3s and inflammation, the same researchers had already reported that omega-3 supplements lowered IL-6 by 10 to 12 percent, depending on the dose. By comparison, those taking a placebo saw an overall 36 percent increase in inflammation-linked IL-6 by the end of the study.

"This finding strongly suggests that inflammation is what's driving the changes in the telomeres," Kiecolt-Glaser said.

The researchers concluded that this combination of powerful and healthy effects suggests that taking omega-3 supplements could represent a rare, single nutritional intervention that has potential to provide extraordinary health benefits. Specifically, taking these supplements regularly may lower the risk for a host of diseases associated with aging, including coronary heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, arthritis and even mind-robbing Alzheimer's disease.

Researchers from the Barcelona Biomedical Research Institute in Spain publishing in the journal, Neurobiology of Aging have found that the combination of two neuroprotective therapies, voluntary physical exercise, and the daily intake of melatonin have been shown to have a synergistic effect against brain deterioration in several common variants of Alzheimer's disease.

The study's authors found that regular, voluntary exercise and daily intake of melatonin, both of which are known for the effects they have in regulating circadian rhythm, show a synergistic effect against brain deterioration that leads to the memory-robbing disease in a mouse model predisposed to develop the illness. Lead author, Dr. Coral Sanfeliu commented "For years we have known that the combination of different anti-aging therapies such as physical exercise, a Mediterranean diet, and not smoking adds years to one's life… now it seems that melatonin, the sleep hormone, also has important anti-aging effects."

Physical activity and melatonin dramatically lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease progression
To determine the effect of physical activity and melatonin supplementation on developing Alzheimer's dementia, researchers divided the genetically-predisposed mice into three control groups, and compared them to animals that had no known inclination to develop dementia. The animals were designated to undergo different treatment protocols including exercise by allowing unrestricted use of a running wheel, melatonin supplementation with a dose equivalent to 10 mg per kg of body weight, and a combination of melatonin and voluntary physical exercise.

After a period of six months, the study's authors concluded "The state of the mice undergoing treatment was closer to that of the mice with no mutations than to their own initial pathological state. From this we can say that the disease has significantly regressed." The genetically predisposed mice demonstrated a general improvement in behavior, learning, and memory with the three treatments. It should be noted that mice are commonly used for this type of research as they share similar neurobiology characteristics with humans.

Numerous prior studies have highlighted the importance of supplementation with melatonin (one to five milligrams, 30 minutes before bedtime) to encourage natural sleep rhythms, and to help lower risks from cancer and cardiovascular disease. We can now add the combination of regular physical activity and melatonin supplementation to the growing list of health benefits, as the therapy is shown to provide another potent tool in the battle to prevent Alzheimer's disease.

In fact, until recently his efforts achieved relatively little traction, but all of a sudden "he appears to be a prophet," a friend told me yesterday. Yep, Ronnie Cummins was right, and the fact that Whole Foods has sternly resisted labeling the GMOs it sells has the company in a virtual P.R. panic.

Why? Because Whole Foods CEO John Mackey confirmed in a blog post three days ago that Whole Foods knowingly sells Monsanto GM corn in numerous products. And yet at the same time Whole Foods refuses to make its day-to-day shoppers aware of this horrifying fact. He says:

The YouTube video showing our store Team Members giving conflicting responses to a question about GMOs reminds us that while we try to keep all our 70,000 Team Members up-to-speed on the latest information, clearly we need to do more. Some products in our stores DO contain GMOs…

As a result, masses of Whole Foods customers and even employees are operating under the illusion that Whole Foods sells no products containing genetically engineered ingredients. This was confirmed by the recent Organic Spies video which was censored by YouTube because it dared to tell the truth about Whole Foods.

Whole Foods shoppers have been betrayed
Imagine the shock of brutal reality when Whole Foods shoppers learn the truth. They will be appalled. They will feel lied to… betrayed. Wasn't Whole Foods supposed to be a place of TRUST? Where the food could be trusted? Where people don't have to conduct their own investigations of all the ingredients because Whole Foods has already done that for them? Isn't that why people are willing to pay a premium for the groceries they buy at Whole Foods?

It turns out that Whole Foods sells a surprising amount of the same GMO-infested processed junk foods that you can buy everywhere else: Safeway, Kroger, etc. It's all emblazoned with the "Natural!" claim, of course, which usually means "Contains GMOs" because the word "natural" has absolutely no regulatory meaning whatsoever. And instead of doing something about it, Whole Foods CEO Mackey just says GMOs are "pervasive" as if there's nothing that can be done about it. Does he not understand that Whole Foods could simply refuse to BUY foods containing GMOs?

Does Mackey not realize that if he had listened to Ronnie Cummins two years ago, his company wouldn't be in this P.R. nightmare right now, with its own employees caught lying about the genetically modified foods sold by Whole Foods? When corporate giants fail to listen to intelligent critics, they only end up destroying themselves, of course. And Whole Foods Market, Inc. (WFM) may yet see extreme losses to investors and shareholders if it doesn't get in front of this GMO issue immediately.

If I owned any stock in Whole Foods — which I don't, of course — I would be SELLING it like mad right now… especially since I have a fairly good idea of what's yet to come out about Whole Foods. It's hard-hitting, I tell you. Their P.R. train wreck is about to get much worse before the November vote on Proposition 37. (There is a solution Whole Foods could immediately embrace to end all this, by the way. Simply announce a $2 million donation to Prop 37 and all the critics are immediately silenced. Problem solved.)

Introducing WholeSanto, the genetically modified corporate logo
All this also means that Whole Foods is a huge indirect financial supporter of Monsanto through the food supply chain. Whole Foods takes money from customers who buy things, then it sends that money to food producers who, in turn, send that money to farmers growing GM crops. Those farmers, of course, send that money to Monsanto for genetically modified seeds. So buying these GMO products from Whole Foods is essentially stuffing dollars into the pocket of Monsanto.

No excuse
Now, what makes all this really special is that Whole Foods flatly refuses to accurately label the products it sells as containing genetically engineered ingredients. So you, the Whole Foods shoppers, don't even have an informed CHOICE about what to buy. Whole Foods is anti-choice, in other words, when it comes to GMOs. It's all about just hiding the GMOs inside "natural" foods and then hoping their customers are stupid enough to not know any better. (Which, shockingly, turns out to be largely true as you'll see in a follow-up article. The vast majority of Whole Foods shoppers are currently clueless about GMOs. That's about to radically change, however…)

In its attempted defense, Whole Foods says it cannot label other companies' products. This is a cop-out, of course. Much like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods has the retailing muscle to make precisely such demands of its product suppliers. If Whole Foods announced, for example, that all the products it carries must be accurately labeled with their GMO content by January 1, 2014, nearly everyone would comply. But no such announcement has ever been made by Whole Foods. Instead of demanding that products tell the truth, Whole Foods seems smugly satisfied with its "Don't ask, don't tell" policy of looking the other way on deceptively labeled foods.

And so far that formula of deception has worked. Not only are many Whole Foods customers totally ignorant about this fact, but as the Organic Spies video recently showed, Whole Foods employees are also outrageously misinformed about GMOs, too. Many Whole Foods employees literally looked right into the camera and said, with a straight face, things like, "Whole Foods sells NO GMOs whatsoever."

Really? Are they seriously that ignorant of the products they're stocking on the shelves and helping customers purchase?

Now, granted, Whole Foods is a large company with tens of thousands of employees. You can't expect every employee to know everything, of course, but this issue of GMOs is the No. 1 concern among informed consumers. It's number one, folks. There is nothing else more important to them right now. So how can Whole Foods fail to at least release a memo to its employees on the number one health concern sweeping America right now?

What this failure reveals is that Whole Foods practices a cover-up culture. It's almost a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy about GMOs. It's the shhhhh! secret at Whole Foods. Don't talk about it! Don't ask questions about it! And for God's sake don't label it! Because the truth would freak out all our customers! How dare you even ask about this? Hush! Hush!

Whole Foods has built itself on a treacherous lie
And so Whole Foods has built itself on a terrible lie: Whole Foods sells masses of products made with Monsanto's genetically modified corn — the very same strain of corn that French researchers linked to horrifying cancer tumors in rats.

It's only a matter of time, of course, before more and more Whole Foods customers figure this out. And as they do, the tide of anger against Whole Foods will continue to gain steam. There will be outrage. There will be protests. There will be masses of people returning products to Whole Foods and demanding their money back.

In fact, that day has already been scheduled. It's October 16th, the "take your GMO junk back" day — actually known as "World Food Day" — where Whole Foods customers are being encouraged to return masses of GMO products they purchased at whole foods.

Much more coming soon
Folks, you have no idea what's about to hit the 'net regarding Whole Foods over the next three weeks. I can tell you it is the most hard-hitting tidal wave of grassroots activism I've ever seen in my ten years of writing about the natural health industry. By the time this is over, people will be dressing up as Whole Foods for Halloween because it's so scary to shop there.

And it's not just Natural News that's openly and justifiably criticizing Whole Foods in the public interest. It's a long list of grassroots activists, all doing their own thing, completely decentralized and individually motivated for their own reasons. You are about to witness a REVOLT against Whole Foods, the likes of which you have never witnessed before, and this revolt has no leader! It's everyone who feels betrayed by Whole Foods and wants this company to change — IMMEDIATELY!

Because behind closed doors, even all of us who are criticizing Whole Foods secretly hope the company sees the light and comes out in support of Proposition 37 and GMO labeling. After all, Whole Foods is worth saving. Myself and countless others would love to return there one day and start shopping there again, and we'd love to publish words of praise instead of criticism. I've even written glowing reviews of Whole Foods in the past, and I'd like to do it again. But we won't do it if the company hides behind deceptive labels and fails to do the right thing on GMOs.

I believe this is a do-or-die moment for Whole Foods. History in the making. If this company doesn't come out in support of Proposition 37 in a huge way, I think Whole Foods is done for, and I think we will see it abandoned by its customers and then end in a downward spiral of bankruptcy. I don't want to see that happen, though. Like I said, Whole Foods is worth saving. The question is: Will Whole Foods take the necessary actions to save itself? Or will its arrogance prove to be its undoing?

Back on May 1, Occupy Gardens and its allies reportedly planted the garden, which they dubbed "People's Peas Garden," with the intent of creating a massive public demonstration in support of food freedom and sovereignty. With both unemployment and food costs on the rise, and more people than ever reliant on the government for food assistance in order to survive, Occupy Gardens had hoped to create a place where anyone could come and harvest food for free from public land.

But Toronto officials, presumably behind closed doors, conspired to eliminate People's Peas Garden before the culmination of its harvest could be fully realized. On the evening of September 28, workers were observed uprooting scores of fresh produce and dumping it into taxpayer-funded city vehicles to be hauled off to the landfill. And in its place, workers laid over fresh sod, which serves absolutely no purpose, especially during tough economic times such as these.

"We are experiencing a 'glocal' food crisis, where more and more people are lining up at food banks for kraft (sic) dinner and peanut butter, waiting lists for community gardens are growing, food prices rising, and our leaders are nowhere to be seen," writes Jacob Kearey-Moreland for TMC. "Rather, they are hiding behind their desks ordering the workers to destroy whatever hope we have left."

The Autumn Jam reportedly went on as planned, but without the garden that had been carefully cultivated for nearly five months as its focal point. And just a week earlier, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) reportedly stomped out and destroyed another community garden planted at Ottawa's Parliament Hill. During this occasion, police actually threatened to arrest garden volunteers that were onsite, before finally overlaying the edible plot with sod.

I tried watching the debate. I got so bogged down in numbers I gave up.

"No, it's not the 600 percent added on to the rebate on the other tax, it's the minus 40 percent, and then you divide by 2, not 3. And that's what I've been saying since day one."

"Well, if you divide by 2, the figures don't match up to what happened to my grandmother."

The postmortem media reaction was, of course, all about performance. The pundits were schoolteachers in a public speaking class.

"You looked down at the podium. You didn't stand straight. You were slumping. You have to keep your shoulders back and your head level. Try to smile more. Never look at your hands. The moderator is your friend. Don't interrupt him…"

The country is falling apart, the economy is taking hits from all sides, the food supply is brimming with GMOs, the US is fighting covert wars all over the Middle East, crime in the streets is spreading, the surveillance state is recording everything that moves, the Fed is printing money like it's toilet paper, but…Obama kept looking down at the podium, that's the takeaway from the debate.

The stretch I watched was two accountants trying to figure out how to cook the books.

I would have preferred matching clips of Romney water-skiing versus Obama shooting hoops on the White House lawn.

Here are a couple of the incisive after-debate poll questions from CBS and CNN: how do you feel now about (candidate) caring about your needs and problems; did (candidate) perform better than you expected.

Caring about my needs and problems? What the hell does the president have to do with my needs and problems? I need the dissolution of the two American political parties. My problem is they're actually one party with two heads.

Perform better than I expected? I expected both of them would be mind-numbing, and they exceeded even Dr. Phil.

The psychology of elections boils down to something simple. If people see two guys in suits disagreeing about something, people think what they're disagreeing about must be important. That's it. That's all you have to know.

That's how you stage politics. The real issues and the real crimes are buried, because the candidates agree on what they're supposed to argue about up front.

They won't take questions on the obscene number of medically caused deaths, on GMO destruction, on the explosion of surveillance, on the phony war on terror or drugs, on the patent crime of stock manipulation, on black budgets, on the encroaching forces of Globalism, on the fake science behind global warming, on chemtrails, on the massive failure of public education, on US-government empire building, on corporate statism, on the bureaucratic army of unelected regulators who run federal agencies and illegally make laws, on Agenda 21, and on a host of other issues.

They'll skirt all that.

They'll fiddle while Rome burns.

You want a Monsanto president? Elect either Obama or Romney. Facts show both men are in the pocket of that heinous corporation.

CBS, NBC, and ABC accentuate "performance" in the debates. FOX slams Obama; MSNBC slams Romney. CNN tries to look neutral while supporting Obama. It's all for show. Nobody dares say both candidates (and thus both political parties) are disasters. That would derail the ratings of the stage play. That would blow the ongoing cover-up.

During the run-up to every presidential election since 1980, I have heard people say that THAT ELECTION was the most important in history, and a failure to vote would be treasonous. That's because engendering fear is the primary way to keep the population locked into two-party electoral politics. In every election season, there is always some "overriding issue" that demands picking sides. There is always a new disaster, a new crisis.

In that sense, the purpose of the election is not to solve the crisis; the crisis is generated to make the election seem vital.

The best after-debate comment of the night was delivered by Al Gore. Obama coming to Denver at the last moment, Al opined, could have created, at that altitude, a brain oxygen deficit. On this basis alone, if Obama is reelected, Al should win the directorship of the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

Speaking of brain cells, any American with at least two functioning cells should realize that the road to the presidency, coming up through the two-party system, means any puppet who gains the job is a lowest common denominator. It's not just about party, either. It's about the men who control the parties. The Rockefeller types who run the whole show delight in superficial presidential thinkers who can't separate the real wheat from the phony chaff.

These presidents actually believe their own "secret agendas" have a chance of success. They refuse to understand that what they want is just a minor flea on the body of the true Plan: global takeover by Globalist elites.

This isn't conspiracy, this is history going back at least as far as 1913.

Why don't people want to see it? Because they've struggled to assert and cement in a picture of reality by the time they've reached the age of consent. And having done that, they can't face the idea that what they've begged, borrowed, and stolen might be completely wrong.

During my life, I've met two significant politicians. Norman Thomas, who for years ran for president on the Socialist ticket, came to our house for dinner. He was a bore. Nothing I heard or saw reflected a vigorous mind at work. As far as I could tell, he was just going over old cliches for the thousandth time.

The other politician was Senator Hubert Humphrey. My parents dragged me to a lecture of his when I was 16. I listened to the Hump talk for close to three hours, and at the end of it, I was convinced he was the greatest man in the world. At that time, he was at the height of his oratorical powers. He was something to see.

A week later, I couldn't recall a single thing he'd said. It was then I began to wonder what politics was all about.

Last night, I watched two sold-out specimens take their show on the road in Denver. It was so, so tired. I waited for the water-skiing and the hoops, but they never came.

Democrat-Republican politics in America is a walking dead man. We who know this are trending, as they say. We need to expand our ranks. Two pernicious book-end gargoyles aren't going to save the day.

That said, how much trust would you place in us if, say, we were being paid to put out certain information or relate only a singular point of view? We're guessing that number would be much, much smaller.

Yet that's what one establishment media organization – CNN – appears to be doing, according to multiple sources who say the network has begun engaging in a practice of killing stories that portray governments and countries which have become the network's sugar daddies in a bad light.

Silencing government response to the 'Arab Spring'

In March 2011, you may recall, much of the Middle East began to erupt. This "Arab Spring," as the general movement has been labeled, began as simple protests by seething opposition groups against long-time Arab dictators but soon exploded into full-fledged revolution and, in the case of Libya and Syria, civil war.

Early on, CNN sent a four-person crew to Bahrain to do an investigative piece "on the use of internet technologies and social media by democracy activists in the region," Glenn Greenwald, of Britain's The Guardian newspaper, reported in September.

The team, led by veteran reporter Amber Lyon, a three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, had a most eventful eight-day stay in the small Washington-backed kingdom, which is home, by the way, to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

By the time Lyon and her crew arrived, a number of sources who had previously agreed to speak to them had either disappeared or took to hiding. Opponents of the Bahraini regime who did speak to them suffered government-led recriminations, "as did ordinary citizens who worked with them as fixers," Greenwald wrote.

'It made clear just how willing the regime is to lie'

In one case, leading human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was arrested for allegedly fabricating a photo of a dead man who appears to be on a table in a medical examiner's office (no details were provided by the Bahraini police site about how the man died).

In another case, Saeed Ayyad, a doctor who gave the crew a tour of his village before arranging meetings with government opponents, had his house burned down shortly thereafter.

In still another case, the crew's local fixer was fired 10 days after working with them.

Lyon and her crew were even violently detained by agents of the regime in front of Rajab's house. They later described the encounter after returning to the U.S. as being accosted by "20 heavily armed men" whose faces were "covered with black ski masks" and who "jumped from military vehicles" before they "pointed machine guns at" them, then forcing them all to the ground. The security forces proceeded to seize the crew's cameras, deleting photos and video footage before interrogating them against their will for six hours.

The experience "both shocked and emboldened" Lyon, Greenwald wrote.

The following morning after her detention, she said newspapers in the kingdom prominently featured reports about the incident that contained what she described as "outright fabrications" by the government.

"It made clear just how willing the regime is to lie," Lyon told Greenwald last month.

But the episode strengthened her resolve as well; she committed to exposing how abusive and thug-like the regime had become in attempting to quash the fledgling democracy movement, as well as any negative coverage of the government's inevitable response.

"I realized there was a correlation between the amount of media attention activists receive and the regime's ability to harm them, so I felt an obligation to show the world what our sources, who risked their lives to talk to us, were facing," she said.

CNN's cost for the team to travel to Bahrain to get the story was north of $100K, "an unusually high amount for a one-hour program of this type," according to The Guardian; the story was titled, "iRevolution: Online Warriors in the Arab Spring," and it took up a 13-minute segment of the program, (it is now available on YouTube).

Per Greenwald:

In the segment, Lyon interviewed activists as they explicitly described their torture at the hands of government forces, while family members recounted their relatives' abrupt disappearances. She spoke with government officials justifying the imprisonment of activists. And the segment featured harrowing video footage of regime forces shooting unarmed demonstrators, along with the mass arrests of peaceful protesters. In sum, the early 2011 CNN segment on Bahrain presented one of the starkest reports to date of the brutal repression embraced by the US-backed regime.

The highly award-winning segment, which was praised by thousands of Bahrainis on Facebook as well, aired just once in the U.S.

Internationally, on CNN's sister network, CNNi, it never aired.

An expensive piece of hard-hitting, award-winning journalism never aired overseas. Why?

Government sponsorship of 'reporting'

"CNNi has aggressively pursued a business strategy of extensive, multifaceted financial arrangements between the network and several of the most repressive regimes around the world which the network purports to cover," writes Greenwald. "Its financial dealings with Bahrain are deep and longstanding."

Specifically, he notes, the network aggressively pursued – and then came to rely on – revenue from several Middle East regimes, in order to remain viable, especially after the 2008 economic recession, "which caused the network to suffer significant losses in corporate sponsorships."

The result: The employment of journalistically dubious ways to earn revenue from the very governments the network was created to cover.

The arrangement goes far beyond simple advertising agreements. According to CNN, programming is produced in what the network describes as an "in association with" type of arrangement with a government.

"These programs are then featured as part of CNNi's so-called 'Eye on' series ('Eye on Georgia,' 'Eye on the Philippines,' 'Eye on Poland'), or 'Marketplace Middle East,' all of which is designed to tout the positive economic, social and political features of that country," says Greenwald.

As you might have guessed, disclosure of these arrangements is often deft and wholly unnoticeable by all but the most trained journalistic eye.

In mid-July, Myles Smith, a Central Asia-based consultant, pointed out that a series CNNi produced on oil-rich Kazakhstan was similarly skewed – and similarly government-sponsored.

Paid coverage is akin to tainted coverage

"Most of the spots are quirky, soft-core reportage and travelogue sprinkled with carefully framed shots of the glitziest parts of Astana and Almaty. Topics include economic diversification, transportation infrastructure, skiing, and dating games," he writes. "CNN International offers no coverage of labor strikes, human rights abuses, nascent violent insurgencies, violence against women, or any other diversions from the narrative of relentless growth and limitless opportunity."

Smith notes, "…[W]hat looks to the unsuspecting viewer like more of CNN at its finest appears in fact to be sponsored advertisements paid for by none other than Kazakhstan's oil-rich government."

As for Lyon, she says that China and many other foreign, authoritarian regimes also pay CNN and other mainstream networks to run flowery, flattering propaganda pieces. And what's more, she says a number of reporters and producers at the network have privately complained about the paid-sponsorship of programming, but believe they can't complain publicly out of fear they will be blacklisted within the news industry and branded troublemakers.

Couple this revelation with our earlier coverage of an admission by The New York Times that many mainstream media stories are actually scripted by the White House, and you get a sense of why Natural News and a number of other leading "alternative" sites are where information consumers are increasingly turning to for honest reporting.

Two independent research bodies have been released that implicate poor sleep with increased risk of insulin resistance leading to full-blown diabetes as well as higher incidence of heart disease beginning in adolescence through the teen and young adult years. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry have published the result of a study in the journal, Sleep suggesting that increasing the amount of sleep that teenagers get could improve their insulin resistance and prevent the future onset of diabetes.

The study author, Dr. Karen Matthews noted "High levels of insulin resistance can lead to the development of diabetes… we found that if teens that normally get six hours of sleep per night get one extra hour of sleep, they would improve insulin resistance by nine percent." The study team tracked the sleep patterns, duration and insulin resistance levels of 245 healthy high school teens. Participants had their fasting blood glucose tested and kept a sleep log for a period of one week. Weekday sleep duration averaged 6.4 hours, significantly lower than times recorded on weekends.

Sleep is found to directly impact insulin metabolism and disease risk in adolescents and teens
The study demonstrated that higher insulin resistance is associated with shorter sleep duration independent of race, age, gender, waist circumference, and body mass index. The study team concluded that interventions to promote metabolic health in adolescence should include efforts to extend nightly sleep duration.

In an independent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, scientists found an association between sleep disturbance and cardiovascular risk in adolescents, as determined by high cholesterol levels, increased body mass index (BMI) and hypertension. Researchers determined that 20 percent of adolescents have significant sleep problems, such as sleep disturbances or sleep deprivation which was associated with a higher cholesterol level, higher BMI, larger waist size, higher blood pressure and increased risk of hypertension.

Researchers concluded "that sleep disturbance in adolescents may significantly impact their cardiovascular risk in adulthood. Efforts to improve sleep habits early in life could be important for the prevention of cardiovascular disease." Children, teens and young adults typically demonstrate poor sleep habits due to increased stress and workload from studies and peer pressure. Additionally, diet is frequently suboptimal, placing them at even greater risk of chronic health issues later in life. This body of research clearly demonstrates the need to encourage a sound night's sleep of between seven and nine hours to lower risk of insulin resistance, diabetes and heart disease in adolescents and teens.

"NK603 must be immediately withdrawn from the market and all GMOs must be subjected to long-term testing," the briefing concludes.

In a two-year study, a team of French researchers led by Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini found that rats fed Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" corn developed significantly more tumors than a control group not fed GM corn. The rats fed a GM diet also developed tumors that appeared earlier and behaved more aggressively, and died sooner than rats in the control group.

The study found similar effects in rats exposed to Roundup herbicide at levels currently considered safe by most regulators.

"Roundup Ready" crops have been engineered for resistance to Monsanto's top-selling herbicide glyphosate, marketed under the trade name Roundup. In the scientific literature, Roundup Ready corn is also known as NK603.

Monsanto's faulty defenses
Responding to the study, Monsanto claimed that the findings were not significant because tumor rates in the rats fed GM corn were "within historical norms for this strain of laboratory rats, which is known for a high incidence of tumors." In other words, the company has claimed that the rats developed tumors simply because of their genetics, and that the tumor rates seen in the rats fed GM corn were similar to tumor rates in rats not fed GM corn in other studies.

In response to Monsanto's "tumor prone rats" argument, the briefing notes that while tumors did in fact occur in both groups of rats, they were both more common and more aggressive in the experimental group – and it is the difference between the two groups that is relevant for scientific study.

"This is a basic principle of science and it is worrying that attempts are being made by pro-GM lobbyists to override it in the interests of keeping the products of powerful multinational biotechnology companies on the market," the briefing reads.

The briefing also debunks Monsanto's "historical data" argument. First of all, the historical tumor data cited by Monsanto actually comes from a completely different strain of rats (Charles River Labs SD rats) than those used in the study (Harlan SD rats). In fact, the researchers did compare their findings to historical tumor rates in Harlan SD rats, and found that all their results remained statistically significant. For example, the rate of tumors in rats fed GM corn was three times higher than the historical average tumor rates for the same strain of rats.

The briefing further notes that the very idea of using "historical data" to dismiss statistically significant findings is shoddy science, and the technique is rejected by serious scientists. Any legitimate scientific study includes a control group that is tested at the same time as the experimental group, because this is the best way to actually control as many variables as possible and make sure any differences observed are due to the variable being tested (in this case, consumption of GM corn). Rats in other studies may have been fed different diets, been at different phases of their life cycles, been exposed to other environmental pollutants, had a different genetic background, or been exposed to any number of other potentially relevant factors.

"The use of historical control data is an unscientific strategy used by industry and some regulators to dismiss statistically significant findings of toxicity in … studies intended to evaluate safety of pesticides, chemicals, and GMOs," the briefing notes.