Many of us have much to be thankful for, and we express it to those we love, and to others, every day. Too many of our fellow humans do not, and it’s urgent to acknowledge that truth.
(Mahmoud Ajjour, a Gazan boy, who went back to rescue his family after Israeli shells began falling on their home, and lost his arms in his heroic attempt. He is 9 years old, the age of my youngest granddaughter. He told the New York Times: “My biggest wish now is to get prosthetics.” Photo by Samar Abu Elouf, appearing in the November 25, 2024, New York Times.)
Please do not avert your eyes.
Try hearing the cries of 9 year olds,
Like Mahmoud,
Who is not blessed with food, like you
And if he were, his mother would have to feed him.
It’s why I’m not grateful for hateful acts of war
And inhumanity, such grotesque profanities,
Demonizing differences, destroying children,
Like 14,000 dead in Gaza, many under 5 years old,
Ten times the number of Israelis killed or raped or kept.
As Jews, we used to think we were better than that,
But we are not, and we continue to delude ourselves
That we were Chosen to Repair the World,
While we turn tens of thousands of our babies,
The world’s children, into amputees or corpses.
No, I cannot give “Thanks” to a world led by
Tyrants or cranks, who deny the existence of laws,
Of war, or peace, or time,
And defy the courts of justice
Which find them guilty of such crimes.
No, I’m not grateful for the hateful,
Who spew their bile,
Over the face of a child,
And delight in the sickly vapor of their own
Vile cruelty, which, after a while,
Becomes the entire point of their actions.
As Americans we used to think we were better than that,
But we are not, yet we continue to delude ourselves
That we are A Promised Land.
Instead we are nothing but a trench between two Oceans,
Filled with the stench of broken promises,
Deeply scarred by the darkening hues of hate.
I will not give “Thanks” or “Gratitude”
For a world gone mad with the attitude,
That only a select few have a right
To health or wealth or life or love,
And believe that any God, on earth or above,
Would bless such evil,
Or leave the task of deciding who shall live
Or who shall die, to shallow beings who do not care,
Stop whining and wringing your hands. DO SOMETHING TODAY. Save our Services (S0S) Non-Profit Organizations deliver to our communities every single day.
(Screenshot from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, November 18, 2024)
Today may be the day when the food bank down the street from you—which keeps hundreds of your neighbors from starving to death each week—could be declared to be a “terrorist organization,” and wiped out.
Insane, you say?
Well that’s what pro-Trump Republicans (and a few too many Democrats) are considering on the floor of the House of Representatives today.
Yes, TODAY. Not after January 20, 2025, although I’m sure they’ll try to sneak it past us then, too. But TODAY.
I don’t want to hear your excuses, or your despair, or the empty words that “it doesn’t matter.” And, please, don’t tell me you are too busy to do it. The grandchild you may save from going hungry might be your own; the young woman you save from having her insides butchered could be your sister; the religious institution where you worship just might be the one being threatened with closure. Yes, really.
For starters, you need to IMMEDIATELY contact your local Member of Congress that they MUST oppose H.R. 9495 which is coming up for a vote in the House of Representatives sometime today. This should take no more than 5 minutes of your time.
You don’t even have to spend time thinking of what to say. Here’s your script:
“Hi my name is [Your Name], and I’m your constituent living in (town]. I’m calling to urge you to oppose H.R. 9495, scheduled for a vote later today.
This bill poses a direct threat to nonprofits by granting the Treasury Secretary and the IRS unchecked power to label organizations as “terrorist supporting” and strip their tax-exempt status.
Even worse, this can happen without evidence or any requirement to disclose the reasons for the designation. The lack of due process and accountability leaves nonprofits defenseless against vague and potentially politically motivated accusations.
If this bill passes, a Treasury Secretary, guided by a grudge-bearing President could use the IRS to strip ANY non-profit organization of their tax-exempt protection to provide healthcare service, feed the hungry, care for the disabled, protect our rivers and oceans, give legal aid to those who can’t afford expensive lawyers, or shut down any religious institution– Church, Synagogue or Mosque—they don’t like.
Please opposeH.R. 9495 to protect nonprofit organizations and the essential services they provide to each of us in our communities. Thank you for your time and consideration.”
Now, don’t relax if you live in “Blue” State, and think that you have nothing to worry about. This action would effect non-profitseverywhere and anywhere in the United States. And, some 52 Democrats from states like California, New York, Illinois, New Mexico, Colorado, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Washington State—as well as key Democrats in some “Red” States—did not vote to kill this deadly bill the last time it came up for a vote earlier this month. Why?
Some were out campaigning and some, just didn’t read the entire bill, getting fooled by the deceptive, American-as-apple-pie title of it: “ the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”
Who could be opposed to that?
Well, hardly anyone was opposed to THAT part of the bill, which took up only the first few paragraphs. Then some GOP ghouls in the House of Representatives—taking their cue from the extreme playbook of Pogrom 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s Fourth Reich Manifesto—tried to pull a fast fraud.
They sneakily slapped a provision onto the ass-end of the “Stop Terror Financing” Act, which “authorizes broad and easily abused new powers for the executive branch. It grants the Secretary of the Treasury virtually unfettered discretion to designate a U.S. nonprofit as a “terrorist supporting organization” and to strip it of its tax-exempt status…”
Wonder where they got THAT idea?
Look no further than Page 4 of Project (Pogrom) 2025, written by many of the people Trump is now pumping into his in-coming administration. This is actually what they said, concerning “woke” non-profits, in an eery projection of what they wanted to do to the Civic (non-profit) sector:
“Today, the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject “woke” progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian Schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent. The next Conservative President must make the institutions of American Civil Society hard targets for “woke” culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI, gender awareness, gender sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights…out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant and piece of legislation that exists.”
As if that wasn’t blatant enough, The Non-Profit Law Professor’s Blog underscored Project 2025’s clarion call for “the next conservative Administration to implement policies to counter the growth of “woke,” “leftist”, or “left-leaning non-profits.”
The Propagandists of Pogrom 2025 gave us an even more concrete clue on page 837, when they specifically targeted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for elimination.
The apologists for the corporate interests behind Pogrom 2025 were apoplectic in their rabid attacks on the pro-consumer agency created by Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren in 2010 to reduce exploitative junk fees charged by banks, credit card companies and mortgage lenders– which has saved American taxpayers some $21 billion as of this May.
Sounding like they were ranting from the Reichstag, the Pogrom 2025 authors called the CFPB: “a shakedown mechanism to provide unaccountable funding to leftist non-profits, politically aligned with those who spearheaded its creation.”
That “creation” of the CFPB passed by a 20-vote margin in the US, Senate, 59-39, on May 20, 2010, meaning that both Republicans and Democrats combined to “spearhead its creation.” They did it by comfortably passing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Protection Act of 2009, which by Congressional action created the CFPB, and saved millions of Americans from suffering from another Great Depression, following the financial collapse of 2008.
Pogrom 2025 continued its’ jihad against the CFPB (on page 837) by slamming it as “a slush fund for poverty groups tied to the Democratic Party,” and “bankrolling some 60 liberal non-profits.”
In the eyes of the propagandists behind Pogrom 2025, saving 300 million average Americans from financial disaster was “leftist,” and “liberal,” despite the fact that most of the bailout funds from Dodd-Frank went to the giant financial institutions which caused the financial crisis, and are funding the Heritage Foundation.
Dangerously, the tell in these terrible present-day efforts to eviscerate non-profits they don’t agree with, is that Project 2025’s totalitarians have tipped their hand as to what their true agenda is after January 20, 2025, when the “Conservative Administration” of their dreams come to power. It has clearly framed our fight for existence ahead.
They want to destroy any power that a strong, vibrant, service-oriented civic society may have in rural communities, cities, towns, states and nationally by defunding non-profit organizations they perceive as a threat to them, as if we’re going to thrown cans of peas at them from behind the card-tables at a food bank.
All it takes, in their squinty, evil eyes, is to control the IRS, and wipe out the non-profit status of those religious, social, cultural, fraternal, health-related, and community-serving non-profits they define as “leftist” or “terrorist.”
Today’s battle over protecting non-profit organizations which impact hundreds of millions of lives, is a warm-up of the bigger struggles coming next year and the years ahead, for a more livable, humane and just society. In the Darwinian world view of Pogrom 2025’s progenitors that’s blasphemy, no matter how well-intentioned or effective.
Ironically, the more these amoral, shrivel-souled ideologues cut from government programs, the greater the need for non-profit organizations to stitch together the safety net, and save lives. Unless, of course, they intentionally don’t want to savethose lives.
We must start by beating back H.R. 9495 today if we are to galvanize our forces to fight again tomorrow. Call you Member of Congress NOW, and demand that they save the life and death services provided by non-profit organizations in your schools, on your block, in your community and across the country.
What good is mouthing empty rhetoric about “honoring our Veterans,” when this country voted for a leader who dishonors them with every breath he takes.
NOV 11, 2024
(My father, Alphonse Villano, “courting” my mother, Margaret DeSimone, in 1939, before they were married, and before my father went off to fight against Fascism in WWII.)
My father was an Anti-Fascist,
A child of immigrants
who worshipped free elections,
And not some flaccid erections of impotent potentates,
Who pump themselves up
On the deaths of humans and institutions great,
Unlike themselves.
My father curses you from his grave,
You bottom-sucking losers, depraved
Beyond redemption, not to mention how
Deprived you are of any shards of soul,
You democracy desecrating domestic terrorists.
My father didn’t want to leave three kids
But yet he did, to fight the Fascists and keep
Us safe from hate-filled fanatics, intent
On killing mothers & babies, and tearing them apart.
My wife’s uncle, at 20, had reasons plenty to stay home
And not run off to Rome, to spend his youth fighting Nazis
So uncouth they pissed on Jewish graves, including his own,
Dug deep into Europe’s hills, before The War was won.
And now, you smirk, you feces-smearing Trumpholes,
White faces contorted into masks of hate, voices vicious howls,
To tear down the democratic fortress Our Fathers’ blood sealed,
Defeating & containing anti-democrats for 75 years,
You chin-thrusting shills for criminals & cretins, you pig squeals.
My father and other fathers curse you from their graves,
You fucking, Fascist-loving inanities,
Depraved more than the jackals
Who feasted on the entrails of dead soldiers and civilians,
Growing fat, feasting on the flesh of humans,
In the crassness and crapulence of your full inhumanity.
Our Fathers of democracy’s fortune,
Curse you from their graves — you failures;
Knowing the courage of their brave friends,
Who, of all colors and faiths,
Came together for a cause,
Not simply for revenge, profit or applause,
But to save the world,
From avaricious, grotesque garbage pails like you.
My Father was an Anti-Fascist,
As were 300,000 of his brothers who perished,
And 700,000 more who bore bullets in their spines & rumps,
Fighting to save his loves, from soul-less terrorists,
Pissing in the halls of Congress,
Like Nazis desecrating synagogues,
Taking orders from deranged demagogues.
My father, your father, our fathers
Were Anti-Fascists, and Anti-Racists,
Who believed that by fighting hate anywhere,
The threat to life and love could be kept from everywhere.
So how dare we, abandon the cause, forget their cost,
And yield our freedom, our breath, to those already lost?
The overturning of Roe vs. Wade in 2022, the earthquake for fundamental human rights ripped away by Trump & his trolls, and an extremist hate campaign vs. women, will elect Kamala Harris President.
I walked up to a a group of women waving “Harris/Walz” banners this weekend, joyous over what they sensed was happening.
They carried home made signs stating: “Real Men Vote Harris,” “Roe, Roe, Roe Your Vote,” “I’m Not Going Back to 1950”, and “When We Fight We Win.” Cars drove by, with drivers honking car horns, and passengers waving in support.
I was wearing my “White Dudes for Harris” baseball cap, and a rainbow-colored“Ka-Ma-La” button on my sweatshirt. The women let out a big cheer when they saw me, and I thanked them, and said, “We are ALL going to win!”
I chatted with a number of pro-Harris supporters who, while enthusiastic, expressed some nervousness about the outcome of the election. I said that I believed Harris/Walz would win at least 320 Electoral Votes and Democrats would take back the House of Representatives and keep control of the US Senate—defeatingboth Donald Trump AND Ted Cruz in the same election— if we kept working hard up until the last vote is counted.
What these women understood, and what many male political pundits, and polls (with the exception of the latest poll out of Iowa conducted by a highly regarded woman pollster) were failing to see, was that this was the culmination of a decades long-rumbling revolution, which would no longer be postponed: Women were not going to tolerate the denial of their rights anymore, and would take control of the levers of power to guarantee that themselves.
Many of these same women, and their male allies, marched together on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump’s Inauguration, in defiance of the election of the most extreme, misogynistic, racist & rhetorically violent President in US history. In small towns, as well as larger cities across the nation, thousands upon thousands of women of all ages, races and backgrounds marched arm in arm along with men who would fight to our last breath for our partners, mothers, daughters, granddaughters and friends.
Together we fought every anti-democratic action, every violent utterance (and as would later be proven in the E. Jean Carroll case —Trump’s abusive physical actions) against women, and every one of Trump’s anti-Roe. v. Wade appointments to the US Supreme Court and other federal courts. Kamala Harris, then our Senator from California, led those fights for women’s rights, as a fearless member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her leadership on the issue prompted Joe Biden to select her as his choice for Vice President in 2020.
Roe had been a brilliant judicial balancing act of a woman’s right to make her own decisions about reproductive rights, decided 51 years ago. It found practical, medically supported common ground for a fundamental individual right: splitting the legally permissible period for an abortion between competing religious and personal beliefs. Many Christians believed that life began at conception; while Jewish law emphasized the supremacy of the existing life of the woman, requiring abortion as a necessary medical procedure if the life of the woman was ever at risk, even up to the moment of birth. Roe v. Wade established a careful legal and medical procedure to be followed.
From Shirley Chisholm to Bella Abzug, Sandra Day O’Conner to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, many devoted much of our adult lives to achieving equal rights for women, and dismantling the rotting infrastructure of discriminatory laws which dating back over 200 years.
For me, the clarity and simplicity of a woman’s right to fundamentally make decisions about her own body, came down to a Hula Hoop and a large, white bedroom pillow, with a leather belt tied tightly around its’ waist to underscore the question of when life actually begins.
That visual image and message were implanted in my brain 54 years ago, when I sat in the New York State Senate gallery, witnessing the live debate on New York’s liberalized abortion law, enacted in 1970.
I was a 21-year old Legislative Assistant that spring in Albany, and marveled at how a liberal Republican State Senator from Manhattan, Roy Goodman, had perfectly framed the issue of when, precisely, life began.
“Imagine this is the unfertilized egg,” Goodman said, holding up a Hula Hoop for all to see. Then, with his other hand he held up a white bedroom pillow, with a leather belt tied around the pillow’s middle.
“And, imagine this is a sperm cell, looking for an egg to fertilize,” Goodman smiled, knowing all eyes were riveted on him. Laughter rippled throughout the gallery where I sat. Think Woody Allen’s parachuting sperm in his movie “Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex.”
Goodman began to guide the “pillow”—with its leather spermatozoa tail– into the opening of the Hula Hoop.
“At what point does actual life begin?” he bellowed throughout the Senate Chamber? “Here?” He brought the belted pillow across the bottom of the Hula Hoop.
“Here?” he pushed it all the way through. “Or, someplace else, way down the road?”
Goodman’s brilliant and simple illustration of a complicated question was clear to everyone. If a potential life began immediately at conception, what about the life of a sperm cell or an egg before conception? How far back before conception were religious fundamentalists willing to go to mark the “potential” for life? Pre-ejaculation? Pre-menstrual cycle? He reduced the anti-abortion absolutists screed to the theatre of the absurd, with the help of a Hula Hoop, a pillow, a leather belt and common sense.
The New York State Legislature settled on 6 months after the moment of conception, as the precise time of fetal viability, despite the fact that Senator Goodman’s own Jewish faith taught that life did not begin until the moment of birth. It would be three more years before Roe v. Wade settled upon that same 6-month standard.
The most liberal abortion law in the nation—following 142 years of New York having one of the most restrictive statutes—was an early earthquake for women’s rights, the right to privacy, and the guarantee for women of equal protection under the law, to exercise a legally protected right of personal control over their own bodies. At last, it was actual life—the woman’s life—not the promise of “potential life,” that mattered.
“Suddenly, New York had the most liberal abortion law in the world, ” said Dr. Alan Guttmacher, a leading pioneer in the field of birth control. Other states—Hawaii, Washington and Alaska—quickly followed suit, passing similar laws before Roe v. Wade was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Roe clearly drew upon those State Legislative legal precedents and practical experience.
But that was not all. Writing after the repeal of Roe in a New Yorker article entitled “What’s Missing from Alito’s Decision to Revoke the Right to Abortion,” following the majority decision written by US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Jessica Winter noted that :
“No State law outlawed marital rape until 1975; no man was found liable for sexual harassment until 1977; and, pregnancy was a fireable offense until 1978.”
Ironically, the most recent change in the Rape Laws of New York State, passed earlier this year, is directly attributable to Donald Trump’s legal conviction for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll.
After 12 years of failed attempts, New York State revised it’s Penal Code in early 2024, with the State’s first female Governor Kathy Hochul signing the new law and declaring “Rape Is Rape,” expanding the technical legal definition of “rape” well beyond the old, parochial parameters of “vaginal penetration by a penis.”
And none of it could have been done, without a hand from Donald Trump–or, more accurately, a few of his teeny, chubby fingers and, what may or may not have been, a flaccid penis.
Mere days after Trump was found guilty, this year, by a unanimous jury, for repeatedly sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll to the tune of $83 million (on top of the $5 million he already lost to her) New York State moved its Rape Law into the 21st Century and into compliance with federal law, practice, and most modern law-enforcement definitions of rape.
The new law—which should, perhaps be named, “The Trump Middle Finger Rape Law,” broadens the definition of “Rape” to include nonconsensual anal, oral and vaginal sexual contact. That means that whether the perp (Trump) forcibly used his or her fingers, a sex toy, a baton or anything else, or his penis in any penetration of a vaginal, oral or anal opening—on a woman or a man—the sex offender is guilty of rape.
New York State’s new definition of rape makes it comport with Federal standards, including those of the FBI, established under former FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2012, whose Uniform Crime Reports define rape as:
“penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
It took Trump’s adjudicated sexual assault of Carroll, and the first woman Governor in New York State’s history, to change New York’s archaic rape law. If that isn’t a direct example of a specific act of violence against a woman, having a real and revolutionary effect on the law, nothing is.
Now, the continuing acts of violence against the individual and constitutional rights of millions of women in the United States, led by Donald Trump, perpetrated by Donald Trump, his judicial appointees, fanatical Christian Nationalists, and cult-like followers in some individual States, are finally, finally, being held to account.
With Trump’s anti-Roe appointees to the Supreme Court blowing up such a carefully balanced, fundamental right for women, it unleashed two revolutions:
1. Far right lawmakers and Governors in 21 States around the country exposed their own Taliban-like jihad against womens’ basic freedoms, by passing extremist Trump Abortion Bans which imposed severe penalties upon women and their health care providers. Those draconian statutes exacted punitive, and—in some cases deadly—penalties for women’s health procedures as medically straightforward as saving a woman’s life post-miscarriage, ectopic pregnancies, having a standard D & C procedure, or as morally clear and personal a matter as not wanting to bear a child out of rape or incest;
2. The political power of women—young, old, black, brown, white, straight or lesbian—building for decades— exploded into the open, and will no longer be held back at the State or Federal levels anymore.
State after state, including many so-called “Red States” like Kansas & Ohio passed constitutional amendments enshrining into law a women’s right to make her own healthcare decisions. Ballot initiatives were passed overwhelmingly with bi-partisan support.
This year alone, two full years after the repeal of Roe by the Trump Supreme Court, another 10 States, have women’s Reproductive Rights initiatives on their statewide ballots, appearing on the very same ballot with the election for President: : Those States are:
Arizona, Proposition 139;
Colorado, Amendment 79;
Florida, Amendment 4;
Maryland, Question 1;
Missouri, Amendment 3;
Montana, Ballot Issue, 14;
Nebraska, Initiative 439;
Nevada, Question 6;
New York, Proposition 1;
South Dakota, Constitutional Amendment G.
Among those states, six have hotly contested Senate, and House, races in which the issue of Women’s Reproductive Rights may well determine control of Congress. Those states, and their US Senate candidates favoring restoring women’s Reproductive Rights include: Arizona, Reuben Gallego (v. Kari Lake); Florida, Debbie Mucarsel Powell (v. Rick Scott); Maryland, Angela Alsobrook (v. Larry Hogan); Missouri, Lucas Kunce (v. Josh Hawley;), Montana, JonTester, (v. Tim Sheehy;), and Nevada, Jacky Rosen (v. Sam Brown).
Additionally, in Texas, strongly pro-choice candidate Colin Allred, is expected to unseat long-time Women’s Rights opponent Ted Cruz, who has crusaded for a national abortion ban.
Kamala Harris’ election as the first woman President of the United States, is not something which “just fell out of a coconut tree.” It is a monumental movement for human rights, individual dignity and personal freedom which has been growing, and building strength, for a very long time.
RFK, Jr’s Lies, lunatic fringe healthcare ideas, and widely disproven theories about vaccines causing Autism and the HIV Virus NOT causing AIDS, have wormed their way into Trump’s mind.
(Cartoon by Bob Englehart, courtesy of Cagle Cartoons, Inc)
On the day Donald Trump made an overt death threat against Vice-President Kamala Harris’ supporter and long-time public official Liz Cheney (“have guns trained on her face”), he also promised to let RFK, Jr, “go wild on health” and be in charge of “women’s health and children’s health.” Both ideas are bonkers.
The utterly insane suggestion that Trump would appoint someone who “supported Junk Science and crazy conspiracy theories,” as Harris described RFK, Jr., drew a scathing response across the nation, including from The New Republic magazine which warned: “Trump Unleashing RFK Jr. on Public Health Would be a Disaster,” calling Kennedy an “anti-vaxxer with a chilling past.”
The New Republic story (November 1, 2024) written by Melody Schreiber, quotes Dr. Peter Hodes, Dean of Baylor College of Medicine, and the author of The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science saying:
“This unbridled assault on science and scientists, it’s highly destabilizing for the country. This is what authoritarianism is all about, and the collateral damage that’s its going to do to our democracy.”
Dr. Hodes went on to point out that Russia’s dictator Josef Stalin—another one of Trump’s strongmen heroes who killed millions of his own countrymen— portrayed scientists as public enemies during his Great Purge. Kennedy would lead such a purge in a Fascist rerun of a Trump presidency.
Last year, when RFK, Jr., declared his own candidacy for President, multiple media outlets reported on his long-debunked claim that the HIV virus didn’t cause AIDS—despite medical and scientific research repeatedly proving that HIV was the cause of AIDS.
NPR reported on the cacophony of crazy conspiracy theories advanced by RFK, Jr, including, “Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain;” Antidepressants are to blame for school shootings; chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender; and that AIDS may not be caused by HIV—which he he has suggested over decades, despite years of medical research finding exactly the opposite.
In last month’s issue of AIDS & Behavior, an article entitled “HIV Denial in the COVID Era”, the journal dug into Kennedy’s lunatic litany of lies about Dr. Anthony Fauci and AIDS:
‘The merger of vaccine and pandemic denial was bolstered with the 2021 publication of Kennedy’s “The Real Anthony Fauci” [4], which is rife with tactics and tropes common in science denial [3, 41,42,43] (see Table 1). Kennedy begins Chap. 5, “The HIV Heresies,” saying he hesitated to include the chapter “because any questioning of the orthodoxy that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS remains an unforgivable—even dangerous—heresy among our reigning medical cartel and its media allies.” Though he claims to “take no position on the relationship between HIV and AIDS,” the book quotes HIV deniers approvingly over hundreds of pages, including Duesberg and Christine Maggiore, whom he never notes died of AIDS along with her daughter.”
The AIDS & Behavior Journal article continued: “Like the HIV denial groups mentioned above, Kennedy can’t make up his mind about the existence of HIV itself, criticizing HIV scientist Robert Gallo’s delayed release of a blood test Kennedy claims resulted in “thousands of hospital patients and hemophiliacs received tainted blood from blood banks and became infected with HIV,” yet states just a few pages later that “…it is unclear whether Gallo or any other researcher was ever able to isolate HIV”.
Kennedy’s utterly insane and defamatory statements about the HIV virus were out-and-out lies, disproven over-and-over again some three decades before he published his book full of falsehoods—which sold one million copies—on two of the leading HIV/AIDS doctors and scientists of our time, Drs. Fauci and Gallo.
But RFK, Jr. was no stranger to spreading blatant falsehoods about health care conditions effecting millions of people. Prior to his attacks upon Anthony Fauci, Bob Gallo, and AIDS research, Kennedy had already devoted decades of his life to spreading the wild, and highly irresponsible and damaging conspiracy theory that standard MMR childhood vaccines, or other “post-birth events” caused Autism.
Dr. Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, and an attending physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of the 2008 book “Autism’s False Prophets,” told the WashingtonPost in a telephone interview that “there is no evidence that post-birth events, like the environment, result in a diagnosis of ASD, whereas there is increasing evidence of pre-birth factors.”
Steve Silberman’s book, “NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity,” the brilliant 500+ page examination of Neurodiversity—considered the modern day “bible” in the field— smashes to smithereens the extraordinarily damaging lies sold by RFK, Jr., and swallowed and regurgitated by Donald Trump, before a massive national audience.
Silberman’s incredibly important and remarkable book has been available since 2015, well before RFK, Jr.’s hateful, hatchet job on Dr. Fauci and HIV research, and well before RFK, launched his own ill-fated Presidential campaign.
Silberman—a first -rate writer for Wired Magazine who died earlier this year at age 66—described in meticulous detail how complete areas of medical and scientific research, diagnosis and treatment advances for Autism, were decimated for decades by vile anti-Vaxxer vitriol, lies, and coo-koo conspiracy theories—all of which were pushed by Kennedy.
With Donald Trump promising to appoint RFK, Jr, to “go wild on health—women’s and childrens’s heath,”—which Kennedy had already been doing without government power for years—it’s instructive to look at how long these lies about vaccines and their “causes” have been going on, and the kind of sinister snake-oil salesmen who would spread such slime.
For nearly two decades, before RFK, Jr.’s, massive disinformation bombardment against the COVID-19 vaccine — applauded by every extreme Right Wing anti-vaccine, anti-science group of fanatics, including Q-Anon, Christian Nationalists and the John Birch Society — the son of Robert F. Kennedy did enormous damage to millions of Neurodiverse individuals, by slathering the long-discredited lie that vaccines were the cause of Autism on every form of media.
Those bold-face lies — disproved by dozens upon dozens of medical studies — resulted in the loss of the medical license by Andrew Wakefield, the British researcher who originated and propagated the destructive anti-vaxxer propaganda. Wakefield may have been booted out of the medical profession for fraud, but RFK, Jr. picked up where that disgraced charlatan left off.
Kennedy, Jr., knowingly disseminated and profited from peddling such widely disproven, and damaging, lies about a non-existent link between standard, childhood MMR vaccines and autism, blocking legitimate research, diagnostic advances and treatment for autism for many years, and directly causing flare-ups of measles outbreaks—and childhood deaths— around the world. His intentional spreading of ignorance caused direct harm to many of the same marginalized communities — communities of color, the poor, and the disabled —that his father championed during his own public career.
Now, RFK’s, Jr., disease-ridden delusions about public heath are cause for even graver concern, since he has flattered and wormed his way into the Trump’s inner circle, being elevated as the single person Donald Trump wants to put in charge of all health care in this country. Based upon Kennedy’s infamous and well-documented track record of spreading dangerous health-related conspiracy theories which have resulted in multiple deaths, putting him in charge of the public health of all Americans is both an abrogation of all modern science and a completely insane “concept”, and carries potentially dire consequences for all of us.
The depth of RFK’ Jr.’s Vaccine Derangement Syndrome ( over HIV and AIDS, as well as Autism and COVID) can be found in the cringe-worthy book entitled, “The Real Anthony Fauci.” The book was widely promoted all over social media by the John Birch Society, Q-Anon, and other anti-government wackos. In it’s literature boosting the book, The Birch Society shrieks that “Fauci and Bill Gates are using the COVID Pandemic to put humanity under totalitarian rule,” and it quotes Kennedy as saying they “must be stopped.”
Following Kennedy’s crazed canards, Bill Gates spoke to CNBC and told the network that such scurrilous rumors and mountains of intentional misinformation are “keeping many Americans from getting vaccinated against COVID, and delaying the end of the pandemic by doing so.” More than 1.2 million Americans died from COVID, and COVID-related diseases. The prospect of another pandemic hitting the United States with an anti-vaxxer like RFK, Jr, in charge of public health—and a belching, bleach-pushing President like Donald Trump—is too terrifying to imagine.
Additionally, RFK, Jr, intentionally deceived Americans for years by founding a fraudulent public health group called the “Children’s Health Defense,” to purposely sow confusion with the highly respected Children’s Health Fund(childrenshealthfund.org) headed for years by Dr. Irwin Redlener — one of President Biden’s COVID-19 advisors, and a strong and consistent proponent of the COVID vaccine.
Such deceptions and outright lies are nothing new for RFK,Jr, who has devoted the last two decades to disseminating the scientifically discredited fabrications that vaccines caused autism — most of it after Wakefield, who first advanced the falsehoods linking autism to vaccines, was stripped of his medical license. Kennedy was clearly on notice that he was perpetuating a fraud.
The medical publication Lancet retracted Wakefield’s article that it had printed, and the British Medical Journal in 2011 denounced Wakefield’s “studies” as an “elaborate fraud.”
None of that mattered to RFK, Jr, but perversely, it may have attracted Donald Trump to Kennedy, who knows a thing or two about fraudulent scams.
The Craig Newmark Center’s Poynter Institute reported that “RFK, Jr. said the COVID-19 vaccine was the deadliest vaccine ever made.” His litany of flat-out falsehoods has earned Kennedy the title of “one of the biggest sources of anti-vaccine rhetoric today,” from the Poynter Institute.
In an article entitled the “Anti-Vaccine Propaganda of RFK,Jr,” McGill University’s Office of Science & Society— one of Canada’s leading Medical university’s — called Kennedy “one of the princes of the anti-vaccine movement, if not its king.” Little wonder Trump was drawn to him.
During the peak of the COVID Pandemic, RFK, Jr., was welcomed like a conquering hero by anti-vaxxers in Louisiana, when he testified before the Louisiana House Oversight Committee, opposing a proposal requiring public school students to be vaccinated. Think about that: the son of Robert F. Kennedy crusading against a proven public-health measure that protected people of color. Astonishing.
Kennedy’s, “scientifically inaccurate, misleading and irresponsible lies,” as the CDC called his dangerous misuse of the agency’s data, not only gave cover to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ anti-science, anti-vaxxer, anti-mask campaign, it reinforced vaccine hesitancy among the poorest populations, which have, historically, had higher rates of death from ALL major diseases, because of poverty, pre-existing conditions, and lack of access to affordable healthcare.
RFK, Jr., and the rabid right-wing extremist groups who have always opposed more funding for health care for the poor, for women, working families and the disabled —and the Affordable Care Act—want to continue to harm the progress made in public health, and endanger more lives. Kennedy, now Trump’s future Health Care Czar, has continued to wage a full-frontal assault on medical science, facts, history, human decency, and upon millions of children who are Neurodiverse, whom Kennedy has not only negatively restigmatized, but has denied vital research, diagnosis & treatment dollars.
Kennedy’s crazed, decades-long crusade linking vaccines to autism — despite clear and convincing evidence to the contrary — and his outright lies about HIV/AIDS, the COVID & MMR vaccines— have poisoned peoples minds, and set back vaccine research and trust in public health initiatives for decades to come, undermining faith in yet another critical American institution.
The election of Donald Trump would not only destroy American democracy, fundamental freedoms, healthcare protection and individual rights, such as a woman’s ability to make decisions about her own reproductive rights, it would, as Dr. Peter Hodes, Dean of the Baylor College School of Medicine said, usher in the destruction of science, scientists and medical research, since “that’s what authoritarianism is all about.”
Josef Stalin—or Vladimir Putin—couldn’t be happier with Trump/RFK,Jr’s handiwork.
