This award goes to Principal Research Scientist (retired) Dr Viera Scheibner PhD, for her site Shaken Babies or Vaccine Damage? When I tell people about this site, they don't believe me and have to go and see for themselves that someone is actually claiming that brain damage, dislocated retinas, bruising and other damage observed in some young children is caused by vaccination, with almost no possibility that it might be the result of abuse. I don't know what she says about the broken bones, cigarette burns and genital injuries that some of these children exhibit, but I have no doubt she could link these to vaccines as well. It was bad enough when this evil woman just increased the distress of parents mourning the loss of children through SIDS by lying about its cause, but the venality of whoring as an expert witness for the defence of child abusers indicates a hatred of children that can only be a mystery to those of us who are sane.

The Army of God is the sort of place that gives religion a bad name. While I respect their right to be opposed to abortion, I think that encouraging the murder of doctors is a bit outside what I would expect to find in normal Christian teachings today. Abortion is a sensitive (and legitimate) moral issue and quite properly engenders strong feelings on both sides of the debate. I just wonder who the Bible will tell these people to murder next. Jews? Muslims? Atheists? Catholics? Anglicans? Police? Musicians? Hairdressers? Do you feel safe?

It's hard to go past NAMBLA, those champions of paedophilia. It would be particularly hard to go past if you were carrying, say, a flame thrower or a grenade or a small automatic weapon. Like the anti-vaccinationists, these vermin say they are acting in the interests of children. Like the anti-vaccinationists, they lie. As NAMBLA members would probably enjoy a Rectinol treatment, it will be applied to the prize recipient with a chain saw.

As these awards are being announced on December 31, 1999, it is only fitting that an award should be given to Gary North's Y2K Links and Forums which has been telling us for so long that there will be no tomorrow. It has always been a mystery to me how people did not see through North's bizarre religious motivations for predicting the end of the world as we know it. A large part of the hysteria surrounding potential computer problems is due to this idiot's rantings. Yes, computers can have problems with dates. Yes, some computers will have problems. We will all be back next year, but I wonder what Gary will be doing.

When I first read about Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto I found that some reviewers treated it as a kind of joke and others seemed to perceive some deep philosophy. It is not a joke and it is not philosophy. I want you to imagine the press coverage you would get if you tried to promote something called "The Society for Cutting Up Women". You would be vilified, quite properly, and you and your ideas would be treated with the contempt they deserved. That the demented ravings of this obviously deranged woman could have ever been taken seriously shows that there is a serious imbalance in our society which allows the madness of ideas to be judged on who says them, not on the intellectual content.

It is traditional to picture racists as red-necked white people, but racism takes a lot of forms. Just to be different, I have decided to give this award to a black racist site, the Blacks and Jews Newspage. This site contains such wonderful stuff as proof that the Jews were behind the black slave trade and that Jewish writers (like Moses, presumably) wrote the Bible to make black people look bad. Apparently, Jews have undue influence over Jesse Jackson, Coretta King and the NAACP. Read it all here.

A good example of an egregious alternative medicine site can be seen at International Bio Care. These people used to be called American Biologics, but I guess they had to change their name after they participated in the death of Tyrell Dueck. If you look at the site, you may get the impression that they can cure all sorts of diseases, like cancer, arthritis and chronic fatigue syndrome. They can't. The only thing they can cure for you is wealth. You might have heard of being poorer but wiser. Here you can get poorer but dead.

The first Encouragement Award goes to Amway for their MagnaBloc site. This combines the financial and mathematical fraud of multi-level marketing with the medical fraud of magnetic therapy. Many useless medical treatments are distributed through multi-level marketing, but this site exemplifies the genre – useless product, useless marketing model, fancy web site, catchy name not associated with an existing brand name. I am surprised the lawyers let the name "Amway" stay on the site. Surely lawyers who can argue that a solid shape made up from one square side and four isosceles triangles is not a pyramid could have done better. If Amway want some better lawyers, I have a system of legal advice where you buy some advice for yourself, but you can reduce the costs by getting your friends to buy as well. If your friends can get their friends to join, you could even get an income for life. It's not a pyramid scheme. I asked my lawyer.

Once one of the most reviled sites on the web, the Westboro Baptist Church is now a tame shadow of its former self. I remember when you couldn't read a page there without being told a dozen times what it said in Leviticus about who you could lie down with. I am giving this site an Encouragement Award in the hope that they can lift their game and restore the site to its former glory. Come on, Fred, get in off the streets and back in front of the computer, fire up the Rantomatic™ and give us some of that old-time gay bashing. Everybody needs somebody to hate, and we want you back.