Trine "Two Shoes" Tsouderos - Barrett's Tokyo Rose...

Opinion by Consumer Advocate  Tim Bolen 

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

The Desperation Level in the Quackpot camp has reached an all-time high.  The Doctor's Data v Stephen Barrett Federal Court case is so devastating to them that they are, without doubt, at a point similar to where the Japanese High Command was when the Americans were designing the attack on their mainland towards the end of Word War II.

The Japanese, at that point, put together a very desperate three-part strategy:  (1)  Kamikaze airplane pilots who would sacrifice their lives driving their airplanes into American naval ships.  (2)  An organized "fight to the death" to defend the homeland, and (3)  a continuing propaganda effort to do two things (a) convince the Japanese people to keep fighting, and (b) convince the American soldiers that millions of them would die during an invasion attempt of the mainland.

The last tactic (3)(b) was conducted through Japanese radio broadcasts out of Tokyo, and, as in broadcasts conducted throughout the war, centered around an English speaking female figure known to US servicemen as "Tokyo Rose."

Did the tactics work?  Well, yes and no.  The Kamikazes were not particularly successful, and the organized "fight to the death" and the supposed killing of millions of US servicemen in an invasion issues were solved, very effectively, by the employment of the two nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Then, as history points out, the US High command simply parked the battleship  USS New Jersey off the Japanese coast and said "Come on out here and sign these "Unconditional Surrender" papers before we decide to get angry and REALLY do you some harm..." 

Just so you know - "Tokyo Rose" was actually twelve different women, one of which was an American citizen, who, after the war, was arrested, tried for Treason, convicted, and spent six years in a Federal prison.

Barrett's Masters and Minions are reeling...

The Doctor's Data v Stephen Barrett Federal Court case has the quackpots, simply said, up against the wall.  They can see the invasion fleet sitting there at the outer islands, so to speak.  And, it's anxious move time.

Keep in mind that virtually everything Barrett and company do has to do with smoke and mirrors.  It is all illusion.  Stephen Barrett is not in charge, and did not design the project.  Someone else did, and someone else is running it - not Barrett.  And, that "somebody" is manipulating the Defense case to try, frantically, to keep from being officially "Discovered."

Of course I know who is running the illusion, and how it is done, and "No" I am not going to tell you all about it today.  You are going to have to keep reading my newsletters.  (smile here).

But let's get back to Trine "Two Shoes" Tsouderos, and her pathetic attempt at fifteen minutes of fame.

American newspapers are on their ass... as well they should be.

Trine "Two Shoes" Tsouderos is a writer for the failing, failing, failing, failing, failing, failing, failing, failing, failing Chicago Tribune.  These days she virulently attacks the Autism bio-medical treatments and parents.  Not long ago little Trine (with only one shoe) was writing suburban restaurant reviews. Then, I suspect, probably on the edge of being laid-off, she was recruited to become part of the new breed of so-called "Investigative Reporters," the ones that get funded by outsiders for their work.

Yes, that's what I said "funded by outsiders for their work."

American newspapers are nearly dead - for they held on to old ideas about news distribution way too long.  Now they are playing catch-up - as fast as they can, and they are WAY behind the ball in this market.

Way behind the ball...

So what are the newspapers doing?  They are scrambling to find anything, virtually any kind of crappy tactic, to get readers - for it is numbers of readers that generate advertising dollars.  News vehicles that formerly relied on printed pages are suddenly thrust into the internet competition for readers.

One of the tactics beginning to be employed is a thing called "paid content," and it is controversial.  It comes in two parts:  The first, where a reader pays to log on to a news source, and the second, something called "crowdsourcing"  where a so-called "Investigative Journalist" gets funded by someone.  See the quote from the Wikipedia article:

"The increased accessibility and interactivity of online journalism has also created new opportunity in the guise of crowdsourcing, enabling people to get investigative journalists working on stories that they themselves have suggested and funded.[8]"

"Basically it works by members of the public providing suggestions and tips for stories. When a journalist accepts a suggestion, he creates a pitch, which is then funded by those who are interested, in a piecemeal fashion. Once written, the story is published or sold to a mainstream media outlet."

The North American Health Freedom Movement's communications network...

There is a BIG difference in the way that members of the North American Health Freedom Movement and the quackbusters  communicate with the public.  Health Freedom people communicate with massive email lists.  Small State or regional groups run lists of 40-50,000 reachable by pressing the SEND key.  Larger groups normally run in the hundred thousands, with many running in the millions of email addresses.  It is how we roll.

The quackbusters, on the other hand, can't compete for that kind of interest.  Probably the biggest email list in quackbusterland is Barrett's Consumer Health Digest, which runs around 12,000 emails.  This small group uses an entirely different communications route to meet the public - they use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tactics to dominate the search engines so that when an unsuspecting member of the public types in a key-word on a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing) their articles come up fist on that search engine.  That is how Barrett's poorly written, crappy articles appear on the first page of Google.

Why the difference?  Because the North American Health Freedom Movement is so large - dominating the quackbusters 100,000 to 1.  Maybe more.

So, let's put this into perspective.  What I'm saying here is that it sounds impressive to have a writer from the Chicago Tribune commenting on something, but the reality is that even an average size newsletter for a Health Freedom Movement group has a bigger circulation than the entire Chicago Tribune.  Put the Health Freedom lists together over an issue and we can generate in the tens of millions of emails.  And, we do that regularly.

So, where's the part about "Tokyo Rose?

Trine Tsouderos is hosting Stephen Barrett today on her blog.  The subject of which is:

"Join us at noon CT (1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT) on Tuesday, Jan. 25, for an hour-long chat about detoxing with the Tribune's health reporter Trine Tsouderos and panelist Stephen Barrett, M.D..

This chat will take a skeptical look at "detoxing"--the popular, age-old therapy for a wide range of ailments, from Alzheimer's disease to autism. What's the scientific evidence supporting the therapy? Are detoxing treatments like chelation safe? How reliable or interpretable is the lab testing done to measure metals and other chemicals in the body?"

Pay attention to the words above "This chat will take a skeptical look at "detoxing." "  Pay attention to the word "skeptical."  Virtually ALL of the promo for this blog comes from the "Skeptic" SEO network - the same network that puts Barrett's crappy articles at the top of the search engines.

Now comes the good part...

The way a blog works is that the owner of the blog, in this case Trine "Two Shoes" Tsouderos, has control of who can comment, and then, consequently, what the public actually sees - in short, giving the blog owner editorial control over the content, which, in legal terms, means that Trine "Two Shoes, and her so-called "panel," is about to involve herself, and her personal assets, in the Doctor's Data v Stephen Barrett Federal Court case.

I love it.