Rfk2 Bak

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NO merri HERE 525

say what you will, he could turn a phrase:

Inhofe doesn’t mention Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comment earlier that week referring to him as “Big Oil’s top call girl.”

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MMA MSNBC

NO LNX

Aug. 10, 2025, 3:00 AM PDT

By Matt Gertz, senior fellow for Media Matters for America

Fox News hosts elevated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to help return President Donald Trump to the White House. They then greased the skids for Kennedy’s confirmation as secretary of health and human services. But as he works to demolish American health care research, they are nowhere to be found.

Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic who once described Covid-19 shots as “the deadliest vaccine ever made,” announced on Tuesday that he is terminating nearly $500 million in federal contracts supporting the development of next-generation vaccines and other treatments based on mRNA technology. “After reviewing the science and consulting top experts at NIH and FDA, HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses,” he said in a video posted online.

Before the pandemic, Kennedy was not a natural fit for the Fox audience.

But Kennedy’s announcement drew harsh criticism from infectious disease experts and other scientists. They warned that the cuts could stall treatments for everything from respiratory illnesses to cancer, leave the nation more exposed to pandemics, undermine public trust in vaccines and threaten U.S. global leadership in medical advances.

While Kennedy’s announcement was widely discussed on MSNBC and CNN, as well as by national broadcast, print and digital outlets, Fox News has almost entirely ignored it. A single 30-second news brief on its “Special Report” program represents the entirety of the Trumpist propaganda network’s coverage through Thursday, according to a Media Matters review.

Fox News may not want to claim credit for Kennedy as he stifles crucial medical research, but it certainly deserves it. You can’t explain the evolution from Trump’s first administration, which fast-tracked the development of mRNA vaccines for Covid-19 through Operation Warp Speed, to the second term’s anti-vax, “Make America Healthy Again” schtick without talking about the network’s role in turning the GOP base against vaccines and toward conspiracy theorists like Kennedy.

'Misinformed' or 'speaking in the wrong terms': Doctor rebukes RFK Jr. over cutting mRNA research

05:03

When pharmaceutical companies began rolling out the vaccines produced under the Trump administration in late 2020 and early 2021, Fox News’ stars could have used the unique influence they have over their viewers to encourage them to get their Covid-19 shots. But Trump had lost his re-election bid, and the network that had worked so hard to keep him in office instead pandered to anti-vaxxers by turning against the vaccination campaign helmed by his successor, President Joe Biden.

Led by its then-prime-time star Tucker Carlson, the network incessantly promoted misleading and false claims about safe, effective vaccines with the potential to save their viewers’ lives — day after day, month after month, year after year. The network uplifted conspiracy theories, gave airtime to conspiracy theorists and culture war vaccine opponents, demagogued against efforts to get more people to receive these lifesaving shots, and propped up ineffective cures as potential substitutes. Fox News continued to broadcast these segments even as more Republican parts of the country, with lower vaccination rates, suffered higher Covid-19 death tolls, as The New York Times’ David Leonhardt detailed.

All of the fawning attention on Kennedy from the right had the impact one would expect.

Before the pandemic, Kennedy, the scion of a Democratic dynasty who once called for a boycott of Fox News host Sean Hannity and described him as a fascist, was not a natural fit for the Fox audience. But with the Covid-19 vaccine campaign underway, his decades of work undermining vaccines and his attacks on the new mRNA vaccines in particular suddenly made him attractive to the right.

When he began his presidential campaign in March 2023 — with Carlson’s show as his launchpad — MAGA media stalwarts saw an opportunity. They treated Kennedy’s bid, first in the Democratic primary and then as an independent candidate, as a potent spoiler candidacy to boost Trump’s return to power. Kennedy became a constant presence on the programs of pro-Trump commentators. Fox provided him with more airtime than many would-be Republican standard-bearers received.

All of the fawning attention on Kennedy from the right — alongside mainstream news coverage of his bizarre history, such as his claim that a parasite in his brain had triggered memory loss — had the impact one would expect: Kennedy became more popular with Republicans than Democrats. As polls increasingly showed that he was pulling support from Trump, though, MAGA media figures like Hannity abruptly turned on Kennedy. After Carlson reportedly helped to facilitate Kennedy’s decision to drop out and endorse the once-and-future president, Fox hosts resumed showering the anti-vax champion with praise.

‘Explosive’ conservative non-doctor turbocharging RFK Jr’s healthcare coup

05:52

As Election Day approached, talk turned to what reward Kennedy could expect in return. Paul Dans, the former head of Project 2025, floated Kennedy’s name for HHS secretary — and that’s precisely the position Trump nominated him for.

Not everyone on the right was willing to accept Kennedy’s ascent. The editorial boards of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and New York Post denounced the decision and called for Senate Republicans to vote down his nomination.

Murdoch’s print voices lost out to his cable news shouters.

But Fox News hosts were elated. As Kennedy’s nomination moved through the Senate, they touted him as a “reformer” and “true health care crusader” who had “the skills, knowledge, and experience” needed for the job.” When Kennedy said he wasn’t going to take away anyone’s vaccines, Fox said he wasn’t going to take away anyone’s vaccines.

Murdoch’s print voices lost out to his cable news shouters — the Senate confirmed Kennedy on a near-party-line vote, with Sen. Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, the sole Republican vote against him.

Publication

The Real Anthony Fauci is a 480-page^[4] book written by anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.^[5][6] The book was published by Skyhorse Publishing^[7] on November 16, 2021.[8][4]

Synopsis

The book accuses American public health leader Anthony Fauci of thirty years of abuse of power, during both the HIV epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic.^[9] It includes dustjacket blurbs by Tucker Carlson, Naomi Wolf, Oliver Stone, and Alan Dershowitz.^[10]

In the book, Kennedy accuses Fauci of pulling off "a historic coup d’état against Western democracy"^[11] and promotes unproven COVID-19 treatments, including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.^[12] The author shares his opinion that COVID-19 vaccines are not sufficiently safety tested,^[8] and likens vaccine mandates in the United States to living under the rule of Nazi Germany.^[13]

The book accuses Fauci of deliberately neglecting to use hydroxychloroquine in order to increase the number of people who would die from COVID-19.^[14] Studies show the drug is ineffective against COVID-19.^[15]

Kennedy also attacks the science of AIDS, spending over a hundred pages quoting HIV denialists such as Peter Duesberg who question the isolation of HIV and the etiology of AIDS.^[16] Kennedy refers to the "orthodoxy that HIV alone causes AIDS",^[4]: 348 and the "theology that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS",^[4]: 351 as well as repeating the HIV/AIDS denialist claim that no one has isolated the HIV particle and "No one has been able to point to a study that demonstrates their hypothesis using accepted scientific proofs".^[4]: 348

Critical reception

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RFK_Jr._book_Dirt_Cowboy_Cafe_7_South_Main_Street_downtown_Hanover_NH_July_2023.jpg)Copies of the book for sale in 2023

The book has sold over one million copies^[17] and remained a *New York Times* best seller for seventeen weeks.^[10]

Noting Kennedy's concern about the safety of vaccines, the Associated Press pointed out the Food and Drug Administration's three phases of testing.^[8] FactCheck.org says "One of Kennedy’s most common and pernicious false claims is that vaccines are not tested for safety in clinical trials," a claim it calls "overtly false."^[18]

Both The Guardian^[5] and Publishers Weekly described the book as controversial.^[7] Newsweek described the book as "inflammatory".^[19] Democratic party State Senator Will Brownsberger described the book as promoting a conspiracy.^[20][14]

Medical doctor Theodore Dalrymple accused Kennedy of paranoia, and criticized his writing for containing contradictions, absurdity, falsehoods, needless exaggerations, and seeing "conspiracy everywhere" while lacking objectivity. Dalrymple's fact checking of five scientific papers cited in the book led him to conclude that Kennedy had interpreted each of them incorrectly and therefore misled readers.^[21]

Molecular biologist and science communicator Dan Wilson devoted seven episodes of his Debunk the Funk video series to refuting claims in the book.^[2] Wilson concludes that Kennedy is a "full blown" HIV/AIDS denialist who makes "disgusting, hateful, and wrong claims."^[2][22]

Infectious disease specialist Michael Osterholm says that Kennedy's anti-vaccine disinformation is effective “because it’s portrayed to the public with graphs and figures and what appears to be scientific data. He has perfected the art of illusion of fact.” Osterholm also adds "this is about people’s lives. And the consequences of promoting this kind of disinformation, as credible as it may seem, is simply dangerous.”^[1]

In the National Review, journalist Matthew Scully wrote "With courtroom standards of proof — everything cited and sourced to government databases and to peer-reviewed publications — Kennedy details egregious wrongdoing and raises entirely legitimate questions about the workings of the federal health bureaucracy during Covid and long before."^[23]

Film

In 2022, Kala Mandrake directed the 111-minute film The Real Anthony Fauci. The Radio Times categorized the film as "crime/detective | fantasy".^[24] The film features Kennedy.^[25]

an 7 23

neo-Nazis and antisemites celebrate “based” Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “100% correct” Jewish conspiracy theory

WRITTEN BY ERIC HANANOKI

PUBLISHED 07/17/23

[pix]

antisemitic and neo-Nazi commentators have been celebrating Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to exclude Jewish people.

They have called Kennedy “based” and “100% correct”; written that “I fully support any presidential candidate saying things like this that make Jews upset”; and told followers: “Kennedy Jr. just opened the door for real truth to spread. We must not let him down - spread the word!!!”

Kennedy is an anti-vaccine commentator who is running for president as a Democrat. Right-wing media figures, including past and present Trump advisers, have been cheering on his campaign.

He and his anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense have a history of right-wing and conspiratorial associations. CHD has sought support from users of the far-right social media platform Gab, including white supremacists, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and an open neo-Nazi. Kennedy has also praised a fringe commentator who previously claimed that “Hitler was a Rothschild” and that he was “utterly set up.”

The New York Post reported over the weekend that Kennedy said that there’s “an argument” that COVID-19 is “ethnically targeted,” adding: “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” Antisemites have claimed during the pandemic that COVID-19 is a Jewish plot.

Kennedy’s remark has led to heavy controversy, with Asian and Jewish groups condemning his statement. (Kennedy has attempted to clean up his remark by claiming the event was off the record and saying he’s being smeared.)

Virulent antisemites and neo-Nazis have applauded Kennedy for his conspiracy theory. Here is just a sampling of the online support.

Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin: “BASED RFK Jr. Says Covid was Genetically Engineered to Spare Jews … a hilarious thing to say, and I totally support it.”Anglin is a neo-Nazi who has harassed and urged violence against Jewish people. He praised Kennedy on his Daily Stormer website in a piece titled “BASED RFK Jr. Says Covid was Genetically Engineered to Spare Jews.” He wrote: “I don’t really even understand exactly what this means, but clearly, the implication is that the Jews designed the virus to spare themselves while killing off the goyim. … However, ‘the virus was engineered to spare the Jews’ is a hilarious thing to say, and I totally support it.”

Holocaust denier Henrik Palmgren: “#RFK is 100% correct.” Palmgren is a streamer who posts antisemitic and Holocaust denying material. He tweeted on his Twitter-verified account: “#RFK is 100% correct.”

Neo-Nazi site Infostormer: “I fully support any presidential candidate saying things like this that make Jews upset.” Infostormer is a neo-Nazi site that has said it’s dedicated to “destroying Jewish tyranny.” In its section “Jewish Problem,” Infostormer wrote: “RFK Jr. said that COVID-19 was engineered and that it was engineered in such a way so that Jews and Chinese people would be the least at risk from it. This is a very funny thing to say because it has caused all sorts of Jews to get really angry and upset. … Regardless of what COVID-19 theory you believe in, I fully support any presidential candidate saying things like this that make Jews upset.”

The site also commented: “This is perhaps the greatest thing he has ever said.”

[twit]**

antisemites and neo-Nazis on Gab: “Someone has to say it”; “Just Opened the Door for Real Truth to Spread. We Must Not Let Him Down - Spread the Word!!!” Gab is a social media platform that caters to far-right users, including antisemites and neo-Nazis. Numerous people on that platform who openly espouse those views celebrated Kennedy for his conspiracy theory; here are four examples:

The Western Chauvinist, a neo-Nazi account that Kennedy’s group previously messaged, wrote: “Pressure release valve or Overton window. Either way someone has to say it.”
An account called “JewsaretheProblem” said of his remarks: “The Truth War Has Officially Been Launched. Robert Kennedy Jr. Just Opened the Door for Real Truth to Spread. We Must Not Let Him Down - Spread the Word!!!”
An account called “HitlerWasRight” shared a link to a piece headlined “RFK Jr. Drops Nuclear Truth Bomb About How COVID-19 Bioweapon Was Designed To Spare Ashkenazi Jewish Bloodlines (video).”
An account called “ItWasTheJews” shared an image from the QAnon account Shadow of Ezra linking Kennedy’s remark to the conspiracy theory that “after the Mossad/CIA knocked down the World Trade Center they instructed Dr. Fauci through various proxies in 2002 to start developing bio weapons.”

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no lnx an 7 23

conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will testify as a witness next week before Chairman Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Jordan has been under pressure from Republicans to produce actual evidence of so-called weaponization. Some have warned his committee may “simply be a Fox News clip generator.”

The announcement that RFK Jr. will be a witness came Wednesday evening, with the Committee saying its “hearing will examine the federal government’s role in censoring Americans, the Missouri v. Biden case, and Big Tech’s collusion with out-of-control government agencies to silence speech.”

Hour later, Fox News ran an article quoting RFK Jr., who said: “I was the first person censored by the Biden administration.”

READ MORE: Mitch McConnell Defends Clarence Thomas

According to Fox News, “Kennedy said the White House entreated Twitter and Facebook to censor him within two days of President Biden’s inauguration.”

“I’m still being censored. We know the FBI is involved in that censorship as well as a whole plethora of other federal agencies,” Kennedy alleged.

Experts note the federal government has spent years under both the Biden and Trump administrations, fighting dangerous misinformation, on issues such as COVID-19 and vaccines, and voting and elections. Legal experts including civil rights groups say notifying social media platforms of dangerous misinformation is not censorship, but a Trump-appointed federal judge recently disagreed.

In April, reporting on Kennedy’s entrance into the 2024 presidential race, the Associated Press described him as “an anti-vaccine activist and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families.”

READ MORE: Inflation Is Plummeting Across America – But Not in Ron DeSantis’ Florida

Noting he is the “nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of his slain brother Robert F. Kennedy,” the AP saidhe “was once a bestselling author and environmental lawyer who worked on issues such as clean water.”

“But more than 15 years ago, he became fixated on a belief that vaccines are not safe. He emerged as one of the leading voices in the anti-vaccine movement, and his work has been described by public health experts and even members of his own family as misleading and dangerous.”

Democrats on Wednesday expressed opposition to hosting Kennedy. “We believe in candidates for president who believe in science and vaccines,” and said his beliefs are not “grounded in reality.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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Former RNC Chair Michael Steele merrily rips into Jim Jordan's selective Jan. 6 amnesia ›

These wealthy megadonors are supporting DeSantis and RFK Jr. at the same time: report ›

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Scientists debunk RFK Jr.’s 'completely unfounded' claim that chemicals can make children gay

https://www.alternet.org/msn/rfk-jr-2662274116/

Alex Henderson July 13, 2023

The saying that "politics make strange bedfellows" has never been more accurate than it is in 2023.

On one hand, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) — an arch-conservative neocon — gets a lot of respect from Democrats these days for aggressively calling out former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. At the same time, Democratic presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. — is being praised by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for his anti-vaxxer views.

RFK Jr. has drawn a great deal of criticism from medical experts for claiming that vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, are dangerous and that childhood vaccines can lead to autism. Now, according to CNN, medical experts are calling him out for promoting "unfounded conspiracies that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making children gay or transgender and causing the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls."

READ MORE: Tucker Carlson rewrites history with claim Big Pharma 'PR campaign' silenced RFK Jr.'s anti-vax lies

CNN reporters Abby Turner and Andrew Kaczynski, in an article published on July 13, explain, "Experts dispute the claims from Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist, and told CNN's KFile his theories that 'sexual identification' and 'gender confusion' among children could be from their exposure to 'endocrine disruptors' found in the environment are completely unfounded."

Turner and Kaczynski report that CNN "spoke to multiple experts who said there is no link between endocrine disruptors and children's gender and sexuality." The journalists stress that although there are legitimate environmental concerns about the quality of drinking water in the United States, nothing in the water will turn a person gay.

"While sex in in frogs is determined by environmental factors such as temperature and chemicals, Dr. Andrea Gore, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at University of Texas at Austin, said the sex of humans is determined at the moment of conception, and cannot later be altered by endocrine-disrupting chemicals," the CNN journalists report. "The baseless claim that chemicals — particularly in tap water — could turn people gay has gained popularity with conspiracy theorists over the years, most memorably with conservative radio host Alex Jones, who said chemicals in the water were 'turning the friggin' frogs gay.'"

READ MORE: Journalist details RFK Jr.’s appeal to a 'crackpot collection of fascists and anti-progressive leftists'

Find CNN's full report at this link.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Tucker Carlson rewrites history with claim Big Pharma 'PR campaign' silenced RFK Jr.’s anti-vax lies ›

'Roiling with conspiracy theories': RFK Jr.’s 'madness' abounds in New Yorker interview ›

These wealthy megadonors are supporting DeSantis and RFK Jr. at the same time: report ›

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RFK Jr.'s presidential campaign is driven by conspiracy theories : NPR ›

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Why Robert Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 Bid Is a Headache for Biden - The ... ›

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7 23 an ah no lnx

supporters of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign continue to hope that he will pull ahead of former President Donald Trump in the 2024 GOP primary, but so far, that isn't happening. An Economist/YouGov poll released on July 12 shows DeSantis trailing Trump by 26 percent.

That poll is hardly an anomaly. A Fox News poll from late June found Trump with a 34 percent lead over DeSantis.

If Trump's status as the GOP primary frontrunner holds up, it is entirely possible the United States will see a rematch between Trump and Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden in 2024. But some affluent donors, according to Axios reporters Sophia Cai and Erin Doherty, are hoping to avoid that scenario by donating to DeSantis and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.— one of Biden's Democratic primary challengers — at the same time.

READ MORE: 'Roiling with conspiracy theories': RFK Jr.’s 'madness' abounds in New Yorker interview

"It's tempting to see the moves by donors in banking, venture capital, hedge funds and tech as part of Republicans' push to move past former President Trump while making Biden's path to re-election more difficult," Cai and Doherty report in an article published on July 12. "But those behind the movement say it's driven by classic notions of liberty, lingering dissatisfaction with COVID-era restrictions — and yes, a sense of Trump-Biden fatigue in the donor class."

The donors who are giving money to both DeSantis and RFK Jr. include Omeed Malik (a former Bank of America executive) and Farvahar Partners co-founder Joe Voboril.

Voboril said of DeSantis and RFK Jr., "I think what's interesting about both of these candidates is they are a challenge not just to the other side, but within their own party."

Cai and Coherty note that Twitter CEO Elon Musk has also "shown an interest in DeSantis and Kennedy."

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis is 'losing' voters and 'alienating' them: columnist

GOP strategist Alex Conant told Axios that people donating to DeSantis and RFK Jr. simultaneously are "kind of like the super-rich Joe Rogan crowd,"adding, "Clearly, both candidates are trying to tap into that."

READ MORE: Robert F. Kennedy Jr: 'I have a lot of conversations with dead people'

Axios' full report is available at this link.

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Journalist details RFK Jr.’s appeal to a 'crackpot collection of fascists and anti-progressive leftists' ›

Facebook and Instagram remove RFK Jr.’s anti-vax nonprofit for promoting misinformation: report ›

Tucker Carlson rewrites history with claim Big Pharma 'PR campaign' silenced RFK Jr.’s anti-vax lies ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

DeSantis's stumbles have GOP mulling other Trump alternatives ... ›

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RFK Jr. Is Our Brother and Uncle. He's Tragically Wrong About ... ›

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an ah 7 23

when Russian President Vladimir Putin was photographed shirtless during the Barack Obama years, many far-right Republicans argued that the United States would be better off if Obama could be that macho. Quite a few progressives responded by mocking their messaging as pathetic and buffoonish, yet that Republican obsession with hyper-masculinity continues.

In an article published by Politico on July 10, journalist Adam Wren focuses on a trend in the 2024 GOP presidential race: male candidates trying to win over voters by showing how "masculine" they are.

"Francis Suarez is bragging about placing sixth in an Independence Day 5K in Cedar Rapids, Iowa," Wren observes. "Vivek Ramaswamy, a former nationally ranked junior tennis player, is flexing his weekly pickup victories over former collegiate athletes at a Life Time Fitness outside Des Moines. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the muscle-bound, 69-year-old longshot Democratic presidential hopeful, went viral for doing pull-ups shirtless at a Gold’s Gym. Even Asa Hutchinson, the 72-year-old former Arkansas governor, is boasting about still playing full-court basketball."

The 2024 election, according to Wren, has "careened into a kind of testosterone primary." And Wren cites GOP frontrunner Donald Trump's influence as a factor.

"Brawn and bravado are in demand, particularly among a GOP base conditioned by a steady dose of both in the Trump era," the reporter observes. "Thirst traps are a new wedge issue."

Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez discussed the Republican obsession with hypermasculinity in her 2020 book "Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation." And that mindset, she says, is showing up in 2024's GOP presidential primary.

Du Mez told Politico, "Republican candidates are now needing to play to a base that has really been defined by the Trump presidency and just the Trump persona. Now, to win as a Republican, you need to play that game. This kind of masculinity — physical fitness — goes hand in hand with masculine toughness."

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https://www.mediamatters.org/ali-alexander/stop-steal-organizer-ali-alexander-im-thinking-about-voting-democrat-primary-rfk-jr

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https://www.alternet.org/roiling-with-conspiracy-theories/

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https://boingboing.net/2023/07/07/rfkjrs-anti-vax-efforts-had-a-devastating-effect-on-samoa.html

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https://www.alternet.org/rfk/ aud cranks

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https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-his-group-are-fans-fringe-streamer-who-claimed

no lnx vid

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his group are fans of a fringe streamer who claimed that “Hitler was a Rothschild” and that he was “utterly set up”

Kennedy to James Corbett: “Thank you for all of your extraordinary work for keeping the public informed”

WRITTEN BY ERIC HANANOKI

PUBLISHED 07/06/23

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his organization Children's Health Defense are fans and promoters of James Corbett, a Sandy Hook and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has claimed that “Hitler was a Rothschild” and “Hitler and the Nazis were one hundred percent completely and utterly set up … by the international banking community and the international crony capitalists.”

Kennedy has thanked Corbett for his supposedly “extraordinary work for keeping the public informed,” and Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group has featured Corbett in numerous videos and at a recent symposium.

Trump and several associates have been praising Kennedy’s presidential campaign, with longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone stating that the Democrat’s candidacy will help “soften Joe Biden up for his defeat by Donald Trump.” Right-wing media figures, including former senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon, have also been propping up his candidacy.

Kennedy’s connections to Corbett add to a growing list of the Democratic presidential candidate’s right-wing media associations, including but not limited to:

Appearances on programs hosted by right-wing personalities, including Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Stew Peters.

Promoting and partnering with QAnon and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists.

Appearing as a “featured” speaker on the right-wing, pro-Trump ReAwaken America tour.

Promoting right-wing organizations Project Veritas, The Epoch Times, and Judicial Watch.

Conducting outreach to neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and antisemitic accounts on the far-right platform Gab.

Corbett is a fringe online host whose website describes him as providing “breaking news and important issues from 9/11 Truth and false flag terror to the Big Brother police state, eugenics, geopolitics, the central banking fraud and more.” In a 2009 interview, Corbett said he was inspired to become a media figure in large part by the work of 9/11 conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

In November 2021, Kennedy appeared on Corbett’s show to promote his anti-Anthony Fauci book.During the introduction, he praised Corbett by stating: “Thank you for all of your extraordinary work for keeping the public informed so that we can actually maybe restore some democracy to the world.”

Corbett has also been a frequent presence in CHD’s anti-vaccine propaganda, where he’s been described as “an expert on geopolitics and open-source journalism.” He is a monthly guest on Good Morning CHD, which is hosted by physician Meryl Nass, who was suspended by the Maine medical board. Kennedy’s group also hosted him as part of a March 4 symposium, where he discussed “The Future Food False Flags.”

CHD.TV and James Corbett

The following are some of the claims made by the Kennedy-backed Corbett:

Corbett claimed that “Hitler was a Rothschild” and “Hitler and the Nazis were one hundred percent completely and utterly set up.” Corbett has claimed that Hitler was actually a member of the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family that has been the focus of antisemitic conspiracy theories for years and been blamed for the world’s problems, including World War II. On his show in July 2013, Corbett said: “Hitler was a Rothschild. … Funny how that works, isn't it? Hitler and the Nazis were one hundred percent completely and utterly set up and made it into what they were by the international banking community and the international crony capitalists, including those in America.”

The conspiracy theory that Hitler had Jewish relatives has been spread since the 1920s. However, as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum noted, “there is no credible evidence that Hitler had any Jewish ancestors.” The claim gained attention in 2022 when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed Hitler “had Jewish blood.”

Video

CitationFrom the July 22, 2013, edition of The Corbett Report

JAMES CORBETT (HOST): Hitler was a Rothschild, the son of Alois Hitler, who was himself the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber, who happened to be a servant girl who got pregnant whilst working at the mansion of Baron Rothschild. Oh, an illegitimate son of a servant girl of Baron Rothschild, and his son ends up becoming Hitler. Yeah, well, funny how that works, isn't it? Hitler and the Nazis were one hundred percent completely and utterly set up and made it into what they were by the international banking community and the international crony capitalists, including those in America. One hundred percent documentable and on the record.

Corbett claimed there are “articles documenting the discrepancies and outright lies in the official narrative of the Sandy Hook shooting.” In 2013, Corbett hosted discredited professor James Tracy, a leading Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist. Corbett introduced him by praising his work for supposedly showing that the “official narrative” of the 2012 tragedy was filled with “outright lies”:

Video

CitationFrom the January 15, 2013, edition of The Corbett Report

JAMES CORBETT (HOST): After writing a series of articles documenting the discrepancies and outright lies in the official narrative of the Sandy Hook shooting, professor James Tracy of Florida Atlantic University shot to international attention when the establishment media began covering his work. Now Dr. Tracey is left trying to explain the misinterpretations, lies, and soundbites that the mainstream media is using to discredit his work.

Corbett later claimed that there were “inconsistencies” in the shooting, inviting Tracy to speculate by stating: “So for people who are really hearing about these inconsistencies and problems for the first time, perhaps we could just go over some of the most glaring inconsistencies that you've seen in the reporting on Sandy Hook.”

Corbett is a frequent promoter of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Corbett has been heavily involved in the 9/11 conspiracy theory movement. He has produced content purporting to show that the terrorist attack was actually a “false flag” event and “the official story of 9/11 is a lie.” He also appears at “9/11 truth” events, where he speaks as a purported expert on what supposedly actually happened.

Corbett is also a promoter of the “dancing Israelis” 9/11 conspiracy theory, which has been spread online in antisemitic circles. He produced a video titled “9/11 Suspects: Dancing Israelis” and claimed: “In a world of true justice, the dancing Israelis and other Israeli spies with insider advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, who openly celebrated those attacks, would be the targets of the 'war on terror,' not its beneficiaries.”

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/theres-a-reason-were-seeing-videos-of-rfk-jr-shirtless

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June 26, 2023

If you missed the right-wing Road To Majority conference last week, we can pretty much sum it all up for you in just one word: Woke.
Tim Barton says that critics have to use ad hominem attacks on him and his father, Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton, for not having any academic credentials as historians because they know they can’t attack the history they present “because what we’re promoting is actually true.”
The fact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is hosting a “health policy roundtable” featuring unhinged anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Sherri Tenpenny should tell you all you need to know.
Jarrin Jackson is angry that GOP figures talk generically about God: “Be specific. Jesus Christ. The One of Scripture. The One Who rose (bodily) from the grave for the remission of sins. It is a deception to not be specific when He so clearly changed the course of history on the cross. Don’t let Muslims smuggle in Allah. Or Buddhists Buddha. Or Jews ‘not Christ’. Or pagans Thor. Or atheists science & reason. Christ is King.”
Sean Feucht brags that members of Congress helped him sneak into the U.S Capitol so that he could take communion in the Rotunda: “We laid hands all over that place. We brought oil. We brought shofars. We’re crazy.”
Finally, if you arrive at church to find Alex Jones up on stage with your pastor, ranting about how they’ll require you “to cut your children’s genitals off to get ESG money” as they mandate “government-forced suicide” perhaps it is time to find another church?

Tags: Alex Jones Jarrin Jackson Rodney Howard-Browne Sean Feucht Tim Barton Leftovers Road to Majority Conference Faith and Freedom Coalition

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-has-spent-years-promoting-rfk-jr-and-his-crackpot-anti-vaccine-theories

no lnx vid mma 6 23

Steve Bannon has spent years promoting RFK Jr. and his crackpot anti-vaccine theories

Bannon used his War Room podcast to help Kennedy spread conspiracy theories and undermine public health efforts well before he announced his 2024 candidacy

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

PUBLISHED 06/26/23

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has spent nearly two years promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and Democratic presidential primary candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his War Room podcast in a mutually beneficial relationship that could have disastrous public health consequences for the country and the world.

Both men have used their substantial platforms to spread incorrect information about vaccines and COVID-19, which could now reach an even wider audience given Kennedy’s longshot campaign.

Bannon reportedly encouraged Kennedy to run against President Joe Biden in the Democratic Party primary, believing he could be “both a useful chaos agent in [the] 2024 race and a big name who could help stoke anti-vax sentiment around the country,” according to CBS’ Robert Costa. Other right-wing pundits have similarly exploited Kennedy’s run as an attempt to undermine Biden’s support among Democrats with the aim of weakening him in the general election.

Costa’s reporting aligns with Bannon’s public support of Kennedy on War Room. Since July 2021, Bannon has interviewed and provided a platform for Kennedy, his publisher, and colleagues involved in his anti-vaccine work. In addition, Bannon has repeatedly hyped Kennedy’s book, a discredited diatribe against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the face of the United States’ effort to mitigate the risks of COVID-19. Even the magazine of the Trump-aligned Claremont Institute concluded that “Kennedy’s book has all the objectivity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Even relative to other right-wing media, Bannon’s podcast is a hotbed of conspiracy theories, many of which relate directly to COVID-19 and vaccines.He frequently pushes junk science from discredited charlatans like Naomi Wolf, has celebrated efforts to disrupt vaccine distribution, and claimed the pandemic was everything from a way to eradicate religion to a form of global war deliberately unleashed by China.

Given this feverish and paranoid atmosphere, it’s not surprising that Bannon amplified Kennedy’s longstanding efforts to discredit safe and effective vaccines, including those that protect against COVID-19, and has now latched onto his nascent campaign. Both are ecumenical and opportunistic in their conspiracism, including pushing QAnon messages and influencers.

As the son of Robert Kennedy and nephew to John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is unusually well-positioned to attract attention in his almost certainly doomed challenge to Biden. But Kennedy can benefit from even a failed campaign by selling more books and raising the profile of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization he founded.

Bannon likewise benefits from hyping Kennedy’s run. He can use Kennedy to sow chaos in the Democratic primary and push vaccine denialism as a tool to further undermine what he refers to as the “administrative state,” a longstanding goal which would result in a collapse of public capacity to address future pandemics, among other consequences. And although Bannon has provided a platform for Kennedy, it would be a mistake to give him too much credit for the candidate’s larger purchase in the political ecosystem. As is often the case with Bannon, he’s bodysurfing a wave and mistaking himself for Poseidon.

Bannon sows the ground for Kennedy’s eventual candidacy

On July 24, 2021, Bannon interviewed Kennedy twice over the course of two hour-long shows. Although Kennedy’s The Real Anthony Fauci wouldn’t be released for months, Bannon was already hyping it. Tony Lyons, the book’s publisher, would make frequent appearances on War Room in the coming months.

Bannon mentioned the book and disparagingly referenced a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate that listed Kennedy as one of the 12 biggest spreaders of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.

Video

CitationFrom the July 24, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

“When you make your speeches, do your analysis, you’ve got your center, you put out information, you put out reports — do you think that you’re adding to, or your focus is on digital hate?” Bannon asked. “Does that concept apply to any of the work that you’re doing?”

“Not only does it not have anything to do with digital hate, it has to do — we don’t put out any misinformation,” Kennedy responded.

Sound difficulties forced Bannon to cut the interview short and return to it during the following hour’s broadcast. In reintroducing Kennedy, Bannon again promoted the upcoming book, referring to it as something “I know our audience is going to want to pile into.” The interview lasted for roughly half of that episode.

Kennedy’s book was published in mid-November 2021. That month, Stephanie Locricchio — Kennedy’s colleague at Children's Health Defense — appeared on War Room to hype the book and call for a “worldwide walkout” to oppose vaccine mandates. In December, Bannon devoted an entire hourlong episode to an interview with Kennedy to promote the book and his broader anti-vaccine work.

Bannon’s efforts to spread Kennedy’s message only increased in 2022. That April, Bannon reaired their hourlong discussion from the previous December. The following month, Lyons — Kennedy’s publisher – appeared twice on War Room to hype the book. Locricchio also returned in May 2022, once again to promote Kennedy’s anti-Fauci book. Mary Holland, the president and general counsel at Children’s Health Defense, was on War Room a day later and also pushed the book. That August, Bannon praised Kennedy alongside other anti-vaccine advocates like Wolf and Robert Malone.

Between October 2022 and the end of the calendar year, Lyons appeared on War Room at least 8 times, each time mentioning or plugging Kennedy’s book. Producer Jeff Hays, who adapted Kennedy’s book into a film, was a guest on War Room twice in October to promote the movie, once with Lyons and once on his own.

In the lead-up to 2023, Bannon’s War Room had helped lay the groundwork for an old school ratfucking. The next step would be gassing up a spoiler candidate to serve as a “chaos agent.”

Bannon champions Kennedy’s “crusade” to win the Democratic nomination

Kennedy filed his statement of candidacy on April 5. Bannon and his guests immediately began framing Kennedy as a fellow traveler who shared their same enemies, even if not all of their exact policies.

On April 10, days before Kennedy’s official launch announcement on April 19, Bannon and Wolf discussed the opposition he would face from the Democratic National Committee.

Video

CitationFrom the April 10, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

“Any campaign that made a crusade of Wuhan lab, Tony Fauci, the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, and the vax and everything about vaccines, right, all the science and logic of it, would be something that would help the American people. Do you agree with me on that?” Bannon asked. “And look, he’s a very progressive, liberal Democrat and I’m a right-wing populist, but something like that would help the country just basically sort through these issues that have come up so big over the last couple of years, ma’am?”

“Yeah, I’m actually scared to answer that publicly because when you like him, the entire legacy media gets angry at both of you,” Wolf replied.

After outlining how great a Kennedy challenge would be for Democrats, Wolf painted him as a victim of the party’s structures.

“I am not at all persuaded that the DNC, which I see as a group of criminals at this point, are going to let any challenger who’s not wholly owned by the DNC, and wholly owned by whoever owns the DNC, bring up those issues,” Wolf said. “I think there’s going to be a massive mobilization against a campaign like his, and a campaign like Marianne Williamson’s.”

Two days later, Bannon devoted an entire episode to discussing a speech Kennedy had just made at Hillsdale College, interspersing long clips of his remarks with obsequious praise.

Then on April 24, Bannon escalated his rhetoric, arguing that if failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake wasn’t available to be Trump’s future running mate, that Kennedy would make a great choice.

Video

CitationFrom the April 24, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

“Somebody asked about Robert F. Kennedy, and the great speech at Hillsdale, and his opening speech, and what did I think about his prospects,” Bannon said, describing a recent public appearance he’d made. “I said, ‘Look, I’m a Kari Lake person, but if Kari Lake becomes governor, as she should, with this court case, or if not, if she runs for the Senate — if she’s not available to be Trump’s VP, that Bobby Kennedy would be, I think, would be an excellent choice for President Trump to consider.' It was a standing ovation.”

He reiterated the point the following day on Charlie Kirk’s podcast.

“I see a very compelling reason — although I know Bobby Kennedy is terrible on guns, he ain’t great on Ukraine — but he talks about going after the administrative deep state in a very significant way, led by the pharmaceutical industry,” Bannon said. “If we put together a unity ticket of Trump and Kennedy, it would be insurmountable.”

On April 28, Bannon criticized an ABC News segment that fact-checked Kennedy, claiming the network thought “it’s too dangerous to have Bobby Kennedy up there answering a question” and further framing him as a persecuted truth-teller. Bannon went on to praise a separate interview Kennedy did on Fox News for “laying down about how you deconstruct the administrative state.”

Bannon’s guest, the right-wing pundit Darren Beattie, agreed that Kennedy was “introducing a really important topic into the broader sort of campaign discourse, and that is the COVID issue, that is the vaccine issue, that’s the lockdown issue.”

Beattie then suggested Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was another example of a politician who “flanked the system,” but claimed that Kennedy is “so superior to Bernie.”

“It’s not even close,” Bannon agreed.

The same day, Bannon argued that the Republican National Committee should act more like the DNC and rule out primary debates, as is customary for the party that holds the presidency. To support his argument, Bannon claimed Kennedy was polling better than Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and so the RNC should follow the DNC’s lead and shut down the main challenger to Trump.

Bannon continued praising Kennedy throughout May. Early in the month, he repeatedly referred to Kennedy’s campaign as a “crusade,” a description he’d used before. On May 9, Bannon interviewed Rasmussen’s Mark Mitchell to discuss a poll his organization had just released that showed 54% of likely U.S. voters held a favorable view of Kennedy, but also that a majority of Democrats would support Biden in the primary. Bannon described Kennedy as “kind of surging,” which Mitchell agreed was “not a bad first showing.”

The story has been the same in June.

As is often the case with Bannon, he’s bodysurfing a wave and mistaking himself for Poseidon.

“The only two people in a presidential race who are saying anything important and doing anything important is Donald J. Trump, and he’s putting these policy things out every day, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Bannon said on June 7. “This Twitter Space he did with Elon Musk the other day — the New York Times headline the next morning was ‘Kennedy promotes right-wing ideas and misinformation.’ And what was he talking about? The exact things we talk about on War Room every day.”

The next day, Bannon doubled down on his claim that Trump and Kennedy are the only relevant presidential candidates.

“There are two people here — President Trump in his policy statements and his rallies and his movement, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — that are actually speaking in a modern nomenclature of politics and what the issues are of the country,” Bannon said. “I realize Bobby Kennedy Jr. is not everybody’s cup of tea. I understand that he doesn’t have policies on life and guns that are absolutely perfect and aligned with MAGA, there’s no doubt about that, but he’s talking about the central issues facing the country, as Donald Trump is, and that’s why the other stuff is irrelevant.”

On June 19, Bannon interviewed conservative radio show host John Fredericks, another fan of Kennedy. Fredericks said Kennedy had “taken on the entire Democrat, warmonger, pro-vax, government top-down, tell-you-what-to-do, tell-you-what-to-eat — he’s taken them on lock stock and barrel.”

Fredericks then framed Kennedy — who he praised as being “very sane” — as having potential bipartisan appeal due to his purported support from Democrats who had a negative view of federal investigations into Trump.

“What Robert F. Kennedy has done in taking on the vax establishment, big government, is — he is a very sane, noted alternative to what is going on out there,” Fredericks said.

Like Beattie and Bannon, Fredericks also favorably compared Kennedy to Sanders.

“What RFK is doing — he’s bridging the gap of the populist movement of people that are on the left, and he’s not a socialist like Bernie Sanders, right? He’s not a communist.” Fredericks said. “The guy is a moderate Democrat. Pro-business guy.”

On June 21, Bannon braided together several of the strands that jointly animate Trump and Kennedy supporters, flowing seamlessly from anti-vaccine paranoia to a coded embrace of QAnon messaging by praising a new QAnon-aligned film about child trafficking called Sound of Freedom. (The film’s lead actor, Jim Caviezel, recently openly embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory during an interview on War Room.)

Bannon claimed that the country is going through a “massive realignment of American politics” spurred by Trump, that has destroyed the partisan categories of Republican and Democrat. He proceeded to introduce and then play a lengthy clip of NBC misinformation reporter Brandy Zadrozny on All In with Chris Hayes debunking various false claims Kennedy had made.

“This is about this realignment — and guess what it’s about, it’s what I’ve been talking about — the anti-vax, the vaccine-hesitant, anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian,” Bannon said. “You say, ‘Well, why would you be anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian?’”

“Go watch the film Sound of Freedom,” Bannon continued, before referencing wildly disingenuous claims that the Biden administration is aiding a global child trafficking ring. “It’s about DHS officers that are on this professionally, your tax dollars, and they’re pulled off it when it gets to be too uncomfortable to people in power.”

After playing the segment, Bannon again addressed his audience.

“This is not about a spoiler candidate, that’s what they’re trying to throw out,” he said, later adding, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is getting traction for one reason: He’s speaking truth to power.”

Charlatans will reap what they sow

Bannon can’t make Kennedy the Democratic nominee. Whether War Room’s constant cheerleading will have a lasting effect on the Democratic electorate remains to be seen. What is already clear, though, is that Bannon and Kennedy are engaged in a mutually beneficial joint “crusade” – to borrow Bannon’s term — to spread misinformation about vaccines and other effective public health measures. They’re both also helping to further entrench QAnon-style conspiracy theories into mainstream discourse. Both efforts present themselves as being in the best interests of children, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Kennedy’s primary run will almost certainly convince some number of people to reject vaccines. Bannon is playing a key role in promoting that campaign. Both will share culpability when the country reaps the inevitable consequences of the chaos they are sowing.

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https://www.vox.com/2024-presidential-election/2023/6/22/23768864/2024-election-rfk-jr-biden-democratic-primary

Biden is all but assured to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024 as the incumbent. But one of his Democratic challengers, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is gaining a surprising amount of traction for someone who the national party views as a fringe candidate.

Kennedy, who announced his candidacy in April, is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He backed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. But that’s where his relationship with the Democratic political establishment ends.

Disavowed by members of his own family, the previously celebrated environmental justice lawyer who helped clean up New York’s Hudson River now peddles false conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 vaccine, all while receiving the praise of prominent right-wing figures and Silicon Valley billionaires. His campaign is predicated on ending what he says is the “corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country,” he said in his announcement speech.

He sounds more like a MAGA Republican than a Democrat. And Kennedy himself has acknowledged that he holds controversial views. “I am not an ideal presidential candidate,” he said in April. “I’m not one of these people who said I have to be careful because one day I’m going to be in the White House.”

RELATED

Is Biden a strong nominee for 2024 — or is that malarkey?]

Despite all of that, Kennedy seems to have struck a chord with voters. A June poll by the Economist and YouGov found that he had a net favorability rating of 19 percentage points, compared to Biden’s minus-9 and former President Donald Trump’s minus-10 net ratings. Kennedy has almost 16 percent support among likely Democratic primary voters on average as of late June and as much as 20 percent support in a single poll, but is still well behind Biden.

that might be a reflection of the fact that Americans still revere the Kennedy name and are willing to give him a chance because of his place in a storied political dynasty, even if they may not know much about his platform. (Upstarts typically poll well initially, but their numbers tend to go down as voters start to learn more about them.) It might also be a signal of Biden’s difficulties defending his record, particularly on the economy, to a party in search of new blood: In an April Associated Press/NORC poll, most Democrats said they didn’t want him to run again, but would back him in a general election if it came to it.

Biden isn’t currently facing any real threat from Kennedy when it comes to winning his party’s nomination. But Kennedy could prove a damaging distraction, particularly if Iowa and New Hampshire defy Biden’s wishes to put South Carolina first on the Democratic primary calendar. If they do, Biden may not appear on the ballot in New Hampshire, and may not have a significant presence in Iowa before the state’s caucuses. That could create an opening for Kennedy — and potentially generate an awkward news cycle for the president as he tries to harness Democratic enthusiasm.

“There is always a pathway,” said J. Ann Selzer, an Iowa-based pollster, of Kennedy’s prospects in the state. “As I say about the caucuses, anyone can come to Iowa and win, and we’ve seen it happen.”

Kennedy has pushed conspiracy theories and won support from powerful allies across the political spectrum

Biden won’t debate Kennedy or any other of his Democratic challengers, as is typical in a primary where an incumbent is running for reelection. But if he did, a debate would reveal stark differences between them.

Kennedy has become one of the leading voices of the anti-vaccine movement. He’s pushed disinformation about vaccines since 2005, when he falsely claimed that some childhood vaccines had dangerous levels of mercury that could cause autism, despite the fact scientists had already proven that mercury levels in those vaccines were not harmful and did not lead to autism. Some of his family members spoke out against his anti-vaccine rhetoric: “He has helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines,” two of his siblings and his late niece wrote in a 2019 Politico op-ed.

But Kennedy’s profile nevertheless took off during the pandemic. He likened vaccine passports to the Holocaust in remarks at a January 2022 rally in Washington that he later apologized for, and that were even condemned by his wife, Curb Your Enthusiasmactress Cheryl Hines. In a bestselling 2021 book, he accused Anthony Fauci, former chief medical adviser to Biden and a member of Trump’s White House coronavirus task force, of using the pandemic to organize a “coup d’état against Western democracy.” He also founded the non-profit Children’s Health Defense, which has become one of America’s most influential anti-vaccine advocacy groups. Facebook and Instagram took down the group’s accounts, but have since reinstated Kennedy’s personal account now that he’s running for president.

kennedy’s views might resonate with the quarter of Americans who were still skeptical of Covid-19 vaccines as of March 2023. But it’s out of step with the majority who have been vaccinated or plan to get vaccinated. Kennedy seems to recognize that gap, and has largely refrained from discussing his views on vaccines on the campaign trail except in veiled references.

Kennedy’s embrace of conspiracy theories isn’t limited to vaccines. He claims that his father wasn’t killed by Sirhan Sirhan and has pushed for his release from prison, opposed by all but one of his seven siblings. He’s argued that 5G cell phone transmission towers are being used to “harvest our data and control our behavior.” He claimed that Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election. He blames psychopharmaceuticals for mass shootings. And he says the CIA had a role in former President Kennedy’s assassination and that the agency could one day come after him.

Kennedy has drawn powerful allies in advancing his views. Just this week, podcaster Joe Rogan and Twitter CEO Elon Musk tried to publicly goad prominent scientist Peter Hotez (who spent most of the pandemic trying to dispel vaccine disinformation) into debating Kennedy on the subject. Hotez refused, and anti-vaccine activists showed up outside his home to harass him.

Kennedy has also been endorsed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who shares Kennedy’s view that cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is an .” He’s received praise from right-wing figures including Alex Jones of Infowars, former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, and Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk. And former Trump aides Steve Bannon and Roger Stone think he would make an ideal running mate for Trump.

Why RFK Jr. could overperform in Iowa and New Hampshire

Kennedy’s menu of fringe beliefs won’t make a winning candidacy. But some Democrats worry that he could win in Iowa and New Hampshire if they hold the first primary contests. While Biden could win the nomination easily without the delegates from those two states, ceding ground to a longshot candidate could still highlight his weaknesses at a moment when he needs to consolidate the party behind him.

The dispute over the primary calendar is still ongoing and may not be resolved until September. The Democratic Party — and Biden — want South Carolina to be the nation’s first contest, arguing that Iowa’s mismanagement of its 2020 caucuses is disqualifying and that South Carolina better reflects the diversity of the party. New Hampshire Democrats say that state law requires them to set the date for the primary ahead of other states’ contests. Biden’s campaign has suggested that he will refuse to be on the ballot in New Hampshire if the state votes before South Carolina.

RELATED

Democrats have a huge opportunity to win back rural voters

That could be disastrous not only for his campaign — giving credence to narratives about Biden’s vulnerability to more conservative challengers — but also for other Democrats who are relying on a big name at the top of the ticket to raise voter turnout.

“President Biden not appearing on the New Hampshire primary ballot could cause great harm to his own reelection and all down-ballot Democratic candidates in this key battleground state,” state party chair Ray Buckley said. “We strongly believe President Biden should campaign here in New Hampshire to ensure his reelection and to help elect Democrats at every level of the ticket in 2024.”

The Iowa caucuses are a different beast in the sense that Democrats don’t need Biden’s approval to put his name forward. Scott Brennan, an Iowa member of the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, said he’s confident that Iowa Democrats would show their support for the president no matter when they vote.

But Selzer said that it’s too early to rule out the possibility that a candidate like Kennedy could build up his presence in the state and eke out a better-than-expected performance that could be “potentially embarrassing” to Biden.

“It’s going to get a lot of coverage,” she said. “I suspect conservative media will have a heyday: ‘Look how vulnerable Joe Biden is.’ What the long-term lasting consequences [may be] depend on how effectively that is communicated and countered.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-his-group-have-promoted-and-partnered-numerous

no lnx many

robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his organization, Children’s Health Defense, have frequently allied with QAnon conspiracy theorists over the past several years, appearing with them at events, praising them, partnering with them on lawsuits, and featuring them in videos.

Kennedy founded and has chaired the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense (although he is currently on leave from the organization as he runs for president). As Media Matters recently documented, CHD has a history of conducting outreach to neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and QAnon supporters on Gab, a far-right social media platform that has been a haven for violent threats against Jewish people.

In recent years, Kennedy has built alliances with anti-vaccine and far-right figures. He has been a guest on the programs of Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Stew Peters, and Charlie Kirk. He has also promoted right-wing organizations Project Veritas, The Epoch Times, and Judicial Watch.

Right-wing media, in turn, have praised his presidential campaign and expressed hope that it will help Trump win the 2024 election. Trump ally and self-described Kennedy “friend” Roger Stone, for instance, said Kennedy’s campaign “will help in the end soften Joe Biden up for his defeat by Donald Trump in the general election.”

Kennedy and CHD have also allied with numerous QAnon conspiracy theorists. The intersection is part of a larger convergence between the anti-vaccine and QAnon movements that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The following are numerous examples of Kennedy and/or Children’s Health Defense promoting, partnering, or participating in events with QAnon conspiracy theorists in recent years.

Charlene and Ty Bollinger

The Bollingers' QAnon tweet

Screenshot via Center for Countering Digital Hate

Charlene and Ty Bollinger are COVID-19 and health conspiracy theorists.The Bollingers have repeatedly promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, as the Center for Countering Digital Hate has documented, including tweeting the hashtags “QAnon” and “WWG1WGA” (an acronym for the QAnon slogan “where we go one, we go all”). Kennedy has also been incorporated into the Bollingers’ QAnon branding: When Charlene Bollinger interviewed Kennedy, the Brighteon video page of the Bollingers’ PAC included the tag: “truth wwg1wga.”

Kennedy and the Bollingers are closely connected: The Associated Press wrote in a May 2021 investigation that “the couple work closely with others prominent in the anti-vaccine movement — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Children’s Health Defense — to drive sales through affiliate marketing relationships.”

Kennedy also partnered with them in lawsuits over alleged “censorship” and recently tweeted at them: “Love you two warriors!” The Bollingers have also appeared in CHD videos.

Stephanie Locricchio

Stephanie Locricchio, whose Twitter bio includes the hashtag “MAGA,” is the advocacy and outreach manager for CHD. She also hosts videos for the organization. As Media Matters previously noted, she has spread QAnon content on social media.

Larry Cook

Larry Cook is the founder of the anti-vaccine misinformation network Stop Mandatory Vaccination. He has also attempted to increase his influence by pushing QAnon.

In June 2020, for instance, he published “step-by-step QAnon instructions” for people to network with QAnon followers. He added (emphasis in original): “Once you have a firm understanding of what’s really going on, share in social media and defend President Trump and Q with the truth. We are in an INFORMATION WAR. The first step is for us all to be informed – I am giving you the path to that – and then to share it yourself with others.”

CHD featured Cook in a 2022 video on its website, where he discussed “the first in his series of short documentary films about healthy unvaccinated families.”

Kanekoa

Kanekoa is a QAnon influencer who is active on social media. CHD published an anti-vaccine post by Kanekoa in January 2023 and cited the account in another piece. Kennedy has also promoted Kanekoa on his Twitter account.

Mel K

Mel K is a streaming host who has repeatedly promoted QAnon and claimed that “99%” of the conspiracy theory has been proven true. She appeared at an October 2021 anti-vaccine event in New York alongside Kennedy; a CHD tweet embedded a promotional image for the event with an image of Kennedy near an image of Mel K. And CHD’s website streamed her and Kennedy’s remarks.

Zach Vorhies

Zach Vorhies is an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who previously leaked documents to far-right group Project Veritas. He has frequently promoted QAnon, including writing: “We are in full revolution mode. Follow Q and join in”; “Boom, new Q - very important”; and “I use Q as one source of many that I use to share information with you.”

CHD has featured him in videos and quoted him in articles on its website.

Creative Destruction Media

Creative Destruction Media is an outlet operated by L. Todd Wood. It published a November 2020 piece headlined “Q Was Right.” The piece, which carried the byline “CD Media Staff,” told readers: “After exhaustive meetings with sources in Ukraine, who provided reams of documentary evidence for hours, CDMedia has been exposed to a massive international criminal conspiracy which spans continents and decades. Q was right. Our wold is run by a criminal syndicate unlike mankind has ever known.”

Kennedy has partnered with Creative Destruction Media in lawsuits over alleged free speech violations. CHD’s Ohio chapter partnered with Creative Destruction Media for a May 2022 event.

Querdenken 711

Querdenken 711 is a German group that hosted Kennedy during an August 2020 anti-vaccine rally. Querdenken has tied itself to the QAnon movement, as The Daily Beast reported.

The New York Times also wrote in October 2020: “Michael Ballweg, a Stuttgart-based software entrepreneur who founded Querdenken-711, the organization that has been at the center of protests against coronavirus restrictions, recently started referencing QAnon.” (Kennedy claimed in response to criticism that Querdenken is not QAnon.)

The Reawaken America Tour

Kennedy has been a “featured” speaker on the Reawaken America tour, which has frequently featured QAnon influencers. He spoke at the tour’s Anaheim, California, stop on July 17, 2021.

That event also featured, among others, QAnon conspiracy theorists Scott McKay, Rachel Hamm, Charlene Bollinger, and Ann Vandersteel. QAnon supporter Michael Flynn is the co-founder of the tour and spoke in Anaheim.

As The Associated Press noted, Kennedy appeared in a group photo — since removed — with Charlene Bollinger, Flynn, and Trump ally Roger Stone at the time of the event. (Kennedy later distanced himself from the tour after its antisemitic connections, including to McKay, were documented.)

“NCSWIC” and state Sen. Janae Shamp

The Arizona chapter of Children’s Health Defense co-sponsored the May 2023 Novel Coronavirus South Western Intergovernmental Committee, which Republicans call “NCSWIC.” That acronym also happens to stand for the QAnon slogan “nothing can stop what is coming.” In response to criticism, Republicans initially denied that it was a nod to QAnon, but Media Matters later reported that committee chair and state Sen. Janae Shamp is a QAnon supporter who previously used the QAnon phrase. CHD’s website streamed the committee’s activities.

CHD’s Arizona chapter appears to also be familiar with QAnon propaganda — under a directory for “podcasts and live tv,” it lists Brighteon TV, writing that it streams “Matrixxx Grooove,” a QAnon show.

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6 23 judd ymail

every year, vaccines save millions of lives. Polio, which used to cripple and kill thousands of children in the United States, has been eliminated thanks to widespread vaccination. Diphtheria, which used to be the most common cause of childhood death in the United States, isexceedingly rare. Other serious illnesses, including measles, whooping cough, and tetanus, are no longer a pervasive threat. Overall there are more than 25 vaccines that can safely "prevent diseases, protect health throughout the lifespan, and help to prevent and mitigate outbreaks."

But Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent the last two decades of his professional life using discredited, manipulated, and cherry-picked evidence to argue that life-saving vaccines are dangerous. Now Kennedy, part of the most famous family in American politics, is running for president.

Kennedy's candidacy — and anti-vaccine propaganda — has attracted vocal support from a small but influential group of very wealthy people. Their support may not make Kennedy's longshot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination viable. But it could help legitimize Kennedy's lies about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. And the consequences could be lethal.

Last Thursday, Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster who inked an exclusive deal with Spotify for $200 million, hosted Kennedy for a three-hour conversation. Kennedy told Rogan's more than10 million listeners that "vaccines are unavoidably unsafe." Rogan, a comedian and former host of Fear Factor, spent the entire episode validating Kennedy's views. Kennedy was presented as a brave truth-teller, standing up to powerful forces. Anyone who doesn't accept Kennedy's conspiracy theories, according to Rogan, is unable to think for themselves.

Kennedy spent the better part of an hour rehashing an article he wrote in 2005, which falsely claimed that childhood vaccines are linked to autism. The article was so flawed it was ultimately retracted by the outlet that published it, Salon. "[C]ontinued revelations of the flaws and even fraud tainting the science behind the connection make taking down the story the right thing to do," Salon's editor wrote.

In the piece, Kennedy relied extensively on the work of Mark Geier, a doctor whose license to practice medicine was revoked by Maryland in 2011. Geier pushed the vaccine-autism link as a frequent expert witness.He also misrepresented his credentials and developed "a 'protocol' for treating autism that involved injecting children with the drug that is used to chemically castrate sex offenders at a cost of upwards of $70,000 per year."

More broadly, Kennedy alleged a massive, multi-decade coverup by governments, non-profits, and private industry to hide the dangers of "thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative" used in some vaccines. Kennedy quotes Mark Blaxill, a vehement opponent of vaccines, who claims that the harm done by vaccines is "bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you’ve ever seen."

Kennedy's "proof" was the Simpsonwood conference, a gathering of experts to discuss the possible links between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. Kennedy "relied on the 286-page transcript of the Simpsonwood meeting to corroborate his allegations—and wherever the transcript diverged from the story he wanted to tell, he simply cut and pasted until things came out right."

For example, Kennedy quoted developmental biologist and pediatrician Robert Brent as saying: "We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits… This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country.” The implication is Brent was acknowledging the link between thimerosal and autism, and explaining why it should be covered up. But Brent actually said he was concerned that "junk scientist[s]" would misuse data to falsely claim that thimerosal in vaccines is linked to autism at the behest of "plaintiff attorneys."

The link between thimerosal vaccines and autism has been disproven again and again by scientific studies. But even if Kennedy was right (he's not), thimerosal has not been used in vaccines (except certain flu vaccines) since 2001. So the alleged dangers of thimerosal are not a reason to avoid vaccines today.

On the Rogan podcast, Kennedy simply waved away this inconvenient fact and continued to argue that life-saving vaccines are dangerous. Kennedy told Rogan that it could be aluminum in vaccines that is causing problems. But an adult typically ingests "7 to 9 milligrams of aluminum per day" through foods, and a typical vaccine has less than half a milligram. Infants will be exposed to far more aluminum through their diet than vaccines. And there is no scientific evidence that aluminum is linked to autism or any of the other health concerns cited by Kennedy. Perhaps that's why Kennedy hedged. “There’s lots of other toxins in the vaccines that, you know, could be responsible,” he said.

Ivermectin inanity

Kennedy also used his appearance on Rogan's podcast to falsely claim that COVID-19 vaccines are extremely dangerous and that people who take COVID-19 vaccines are significantly more likely to die. The data shows the opposite is true.A comprehensive study by the Commonwealth Fund "estimates that, through November 2022, COVID-19 vaccines prevented more than 18.5 million US hospitalizations and 3.2 million deaths and saved the country $1.15 trillion."

According to Kennedy, thousands of athletes have died on the playing field as a result of taking the COVID-19 vaccines. There is no evidence to support this, and a large Australian study found "no association between out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and COVID-19 vaccinations."

Kennedy claimed that ivermectin, which can treat river blindness in humans and is also useful as a horse dewormer, can effectively treat COVID-19. These facts, according to Kennedy, were covered up so that pharmaceutical companies could make money selling vaccines. At one point, Kennedy alleged that Bill Gates purposely funded studies in which people would be given lethal doses of ivermectin to discredit the treatment.

But ivermectin was studied repeatedly as a potential treatment for COVID-19. And it has been found repeatedly to be totally ineffective.

Joe Rogan told Kennedy that he took ivermectin when he contracted COVID-19 and credited it for his quick recovery. But Rogan also received monoclonal antibodies, an FDA-approved treatment for COVID-19 associated with a faster reduction in viral load.

Dogpile the scientist

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist and Dean of Baylor College of Medicine's National School of Tropical Medicine, tweeted that Rogan's interview with Kennedy was "awful," "absurd," and promoting "nonsense." Hotez has previously appeared as a guest on Rogan's show. Rogan responded by offering Hotez, "$100,000.00 to the charity of your choice if you’re willing to debate [Kennedy] on my show with no time limit."

This, of course, is exactly what the anti-vaccine movement wants. Hotez is a distinguished physician and academic who helped develop a non-commercial COVID-19 vaccine that was administered to "over 100 million people in India and Indonesia." Rogan and others in the anti-vaccine movement want to use the credibility of someone like Hotez to legitimize Kennedy's conspiracy theories and misinformation.

Hotez refused to take the bait and offered to communicate directly with Rogan. "Joe, you have my cell, my email, I’m always willing to speak with you," Hotez said. Rogan rejected the offer. Unless he immediately agreed to "debate" Kennedy, Rogan said it proved Hotez isn't "serious about what you stand for."

Hotez countered by asking Rogan if he was serious about addressing the "fact that 200,000 unvaccinated Americans needlessly perished," including "40,000 in our state of Texas" because "they fell victims to vaccine disinformation."

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter and one of the wealthiest men in the world, jumped into the conversation, saying Hotez's refusal to "debate" Kennedy shows that he "hates charity" and is "afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong." Musk "has opposed the COVID-19 vaccine and spent much of the pandemic railing against Anthony Fauci." Musk recently hosted a conversation with Kennedy in a Twitter space, broadcasting Kennedy's views to his 144 million followers.

Musk isn't the only billionaire to back Rogan and Kennedy. Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager, said he would add another $150,000 to Rogan's offer to induce Hotez to debate Kennedy. Ackman made $2.6 billion for his hedge fund by betting against the stock market before COVID-19 precipitated a crash. Various other millionaires added more money to the pile, but Hotez wasn't persuaded.

Kennedy is benefiting from a steady stream of elite support to boost his profile and anti-vaccine advocacy. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, has formally endorsed Kennedy. Dorsey has avoided discussing Kennedy's views on vaccines specifically but praised Kennedy for having an "edge" and "no fear in exploring topics that are a little bit controversial." David Sacks, an investor and close associate of Elon Musk, and Chamath Palihapitiya, a prominent venture capitalist, hosted a high-dollar fundraiser for Kennedy this month.

Do any of Kennedy's elite backers believe he has a real chance to be the next president? It's unclear. But supporting Kennedy has become a trendy way to signal you have a rebellious streak. It's a very dangerous game.

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https://www.alternet.org/Bank/rfk-jr-2661316163/

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s group Children’s Health Defense sought support from users of the far-right social media platform Gab in 2021, including white supremacists, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and an open neo-Nazi.

Those users have written things including “White people are kings. F--- jews. n--s are animals”; “Against Jewish Control”; and, regarding Nazi Germany: “This is what the Jewish controlled system does not want us to see. When we kick them out and place our value on our own people, we thrive.”

Kennedy is the founder, chair, and chief litigation counsel for Children’s Health Defense, one of the key spreaders of misinformation about vaccines and COVID-19. He is on leave from the group during his campaign. Kennedy has frequently attempted to appeal to right-wing audiences during his run, as evidenced by his campaign site featuring interviews with Elon Musk, Laura Ingraham, Megyn Kelly, and Breitbart News.

Children’s Health Defense has been using Gab to recruit followers since January 2021. Its profile says it is part of Gab Pro, which is a subscription-based program. CHD has posted to the site over 1,500 times and has touted its account as a way to “fight censorship.”

Gab is a social media platform that caters to those deemed too extreme for Twitter and Facebook. Its user base is populated with numerous antisemites, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists. Many of them express hatred toward and issue violent threats against Jewish people. In 2018, a Gab user allegedly killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.

The Stanford Internet Observatory analyzed content on Gab and concluded in a June 2022 report that “extreme anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic content is rife, with open praise of Nazism, encouragement of violence against minorities, and ‘Great Replacement’ narratives.”

Andrew Torba is the site’s founder and CEO. He is a virulent antisemite who has said that Jewish people have too much political power and are not welcome in his preferred political movement: “We don't want people who are Jewish.” He has also reposted praise of Gab as a place where people can find “differing opinions” on the Holocaust.

Media outlets have scrutinized Gab’s links to antisemitism and white supremacy, especially after failed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano paid Torba for campaign “consulting.” But Kennedy’s ties to Gab through his organization have previously gone unreported.

CHD’s pointed engagement with the antisemitic platform comes as observers have noted a general increase in antisemitism in the U.S., especially online. Misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic has also worsened the problem. Kennedy received criticism in January 2022 after he said during an anti-vaccine rally: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”

In addition to maintaining an active Gab account, CHD has repeatedly engaged with users who are antisemites and white supremacists. The group also conducted outreach to a neo-Nazi account. Below are numerous examples from 2021:

CHD asked Gab founder and virulent antisemite Andrew Torba to “follow + support” Kennedy and his group. CHD has reached out to Torba (username “a”) to appeal for support, writing on Gab: “@a Please follow + support Children's Health Defense and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. #Freespeech is yet again under attack.” The organization also promoted an event in Torba’s replies and repeatedly sent him links to its website.

CHD reached out to a former Gab officer who has expressed hatred of Jewish people (“They gotta go. Now”) and support for enslaving Black people. CHD posted a link to its website to “shadowknight412.” The group also tagged that account, along with Gab’s Help account, in asking for “help with analytics for our account.” The shadowknight412 account belongs to Gab’s former chief technology officer Rob Colbert. In more recent posts, he has made clear his hatred for Jewish and Black people. He’s written: “I don't have any questions about why my ancestors kept these retarded man-like creatures locked in sheds with metal collars on their necks that had bells on them. #N-----Bells”; and “N-----s. If only there was a whole continent they could go live on and not have to worry about fitting in with western civilization and our traditions/laws.”

He is also an antisemite who has written, “I don't want to be around ridiculous jews”; “The jew is basically parasitic drag. And engineering has ways of mitigating that”; and “It's always some rat-faced jew. They are schizophrenic and violent. They gotta go. Now. The jew needs to be removed from American education, media, government, finance, and law.”

CHD shared a link to its website with someone whose account states: “F--- jews. n--s are animals.” CHD responded to an anti-vaccine post by “Ytram” by sharing a link to its website. That account states in its “about” page: “White people are kings. F--- jews. n--s are animals.”

CHD reached out to a neo-Nazi account. CHD responded to an anti-vaccine post by “WesternChauvinist1” by posting a link to its website. That account features two SS bolts as its header image with the “14 words,” a white supremacist slogan.

The header image of a neo-Nazi account that Children's Health Defense messaged; screenshot via Internet Archive.

It posts pro-Nazi propaganda, including praising Hitler for being “the only world leader to ever arrest a Rothschild”; claiming that “National Socialism took the German economy from a debt based depression, to a country with the highest standard of living in the world” and “National Socialists valued their own people and Nation as their most prized possession”; and concluding of Jewish people: “This is what the Jewish controlled system does not want us to see. When we kick them out and place our value on our own people, we thrive. When we allow their central banks and debt systems in our homelands, we are reduced to consumers and tax cattle.”

CHD shared a link to its website with an account that’s “against Jewish control.” CHD responded to an anti-vaccine post by “Stevevvs,” which states in its about page that it is “Against Jewish Control.”

CHD posted a link in the comments section of a white supremacist account. CHD responded to an anti-vaccine post by “PoisonDartPepe” by sharing a link to its website. That account’s pinned post is a screenshot of a social media post defending white supremacy; it states: “What they call White supremacy is really just White dignity. The dignity of a homeland. The dignity of cultural integrity. The dignity of communal pride. When they say they want to smash White supremacy it means they want to destroy your dignity as a people and humiliate you.” The account recently stated of Jewish people: “They should stay here in prison forever. A handful might have execution worthy crimes. But the rest - just throw them in gen pop with the n-----s.” Pepe is a common meme name used by the alt-right and white nationalist movement.

CHD also shared links to its website to QAnon influencer Neon Revolt; far-right cartoonist Ben Garrison, who has a history of promoting QAnon, “Pizzagate,” and antisemitism; and far-right bigot Milo Yiannopoulos.

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actor and wife to 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cheryl Hines, is preparing for her life to look somewhat "different" in the coming months, The New York Times reports.

Longtime Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star to Larry David, Hines is not new to the spotlight, or to politics — as she's been married to son of the late U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy for nearly a decade. However, she's never been First Lady before.

In an interview published by The Times Saturday, Hines discusses her expectations as Kennedy campaigns for the presidency.

"I support Bobby and I want to be there for him, and I want him to feel loved and supported by me," she said. "And at the same time, I don't feel the need to go to every political event, because I do have my own career."

The Messenger reports, "Upon request to clarify which issues she and Kennedy differ on," The Times noted "Hines asked for a moment to think, which stretched into a near-minute-long pause," before replying, "I see both sides of the vaccine situation."

Kennedy has been outspoken about his stance against COVID-19 vaccinations.

"There's one side that feels scared if they don't get the vaccine, and there's the side that feels scared if they do get the vaccine, because they’re not sure if the vaccine is safe. And I understand that," Hines said.

Hines also mentioned, according to The Messenger, "her current strategy in discussing her husband's campaign is to employ deflection, using a blanket statement such as: 'This is probably something you should talk about with Bobby, although I'm happy to hear your thoughts.'"

Last year, Hines took to Twitter to speak out against a Holocaust reference her husband made, "implying that Anne Frank had more freedom in hiding from the Nazis than people have today under U.S. vaccination policies," NBC reports.

"My husband's opinions are not a reflection of my own. While we love each other, we differ on many current issues,” she wrote, later calling Kennedy's statement "reprehensible," adding, "The atrocities that millions endured during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything.:{"

Regarding Kennedy's presidential run, Hines told The Times, she is "bracing" herself, because "this feels different," and "it feels like every word is important."

Hines "was informed that her husband is drawing media comparisons to former President Donald Trump," to which she replied, "His skin is much thicker than mine, let's just say that."

The Times reports in the outlet's interview with Kennedy, he emphasized "that he sees his wife as crucial to his success," saying, "I think ultimately if I get elected, Cheryl will have played a huge role in that. She's an enormous asset to me, and I don't think we've really unveiled her in her true power yet."

Hines noted, "Before this, really, my world was just about comedy, so I could make light of things. But now I understand people are listening in a different way."

The New York Times' full report is available at this link (subscription required). The Messenger's report is here.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr: 'I have a lot of conversations with dead people'

Image via Creative Commons

Maya BoddieJune 02, 2023

Conspiracy theorist and 2024 Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recently said he has "conversations with dead people," The Guardian reports.

Son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy — who were both assassinated in the 1960s — the proud anti-vaxxer spoke with the Free Press about "how he thought his father and uncle would tackle challenges facing America today."

Kennedy said, "I do meditations every day," adding, "That's kind of the nature of my meditations. I have a lot of conversations with dead people."

READ MORE: An 'eclectic mix' of anti-vaxxers and 'New England preppies' attended RFK, Jr. campaign launch: report

Per The Guardian, the 2024 hopeful followed up with the Free Press via text, saying, "They are one-way prayers for strength and wisdom. I get no strategic advice from the dead."

Regarding his decision to run against President Joe Biden, Kennedy insisted the Democratic Party has become "a war party … the party of the neocons," adding, "It's become the party of Wall Street and the party of censorship, which, I think [is] antithetical to liberal values."

Furthermore, the longtime lawyer said he "always liked" the Biden, but insisted the president is "a function of a system that a growing majority of Americans don't trust."

He emphasized, "There are people who are angry, and they deserve to be angry, and either Trump is going to sign them up, Donald Trump, for a ride into the darkness, or we can try to capture that energy and turn it into something positive for our country, something that is reflective of the highest ideals of the American experience."

READ MORE: Journalist details RFK Jr.’s appeal to a 'crackpot collection of fascists and anti-progressive leftists'

The Guardian's full report is available at this link.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Matt Taibbi and RFK Jr. on Obama's Sellout to Wall Street ›

Journalist details RFK Jr.’s appeal to a 'crackpot collection of fascists and anti-progressive leftists' ›

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. inoculates himself against financial disclosure ›

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. inoculates himself against financial disclosure

Alexandria JacobsonandRaw StoryMay 23, 2023

The Federal Election Commission granted Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. more time to reveal his personal finances, buying the member of the wealthy Kennedy family an extra 45 days to disclose his assets, income and liabilities as required for all presidential hopefuls.

Kennedy joins several other members of a growing field of presidential candidates who requested and received extensions until June 29 or beyond to file public financial disclosures, including former President Donald J. Trump, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — all Republicans — and author Marianne Williamson, a Democrat, according to a Raw Story analysis of FEC records.

“The reason for the request is that the press of business in the past 30 days, since his announcement has been so extraordinary, the demands on Mr. Kennedy's time have been great, and his presence at various venues across the country, requires extra time to produce the report,” said a May 22 letter from Kennedy’s new campaign manager, former Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, to Lisa J. Stevenson, acting general counsel at the FEC.

Kennedy, the son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of late President John F. Kennedy, must file his disclosure by the July 6, the new deadline the FEC granted.

The environmental lawyer, who has become known as a prominent vaccine skeptic, announced his candidacy in early April. Kennedy's disclosure could potentially confirm the millions the New York Post reported he made from his anti-vax work with charities and his book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health."

Along with Williamson, Kennedy faces extremely long odds in a Democratic primary against President Joe Biden, who announced his reelection campaign last month.

"If it looks like I can raise the money and mobilize enough people to win, I’ll jump in the race," Kennedy wrote on Twitter on March 10 as he was considering a presidential run. "If I run, my top priority will be to end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedoms.Together we can restore America's democracy."

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https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/right-wing-media-and-fringe-figures-are-celebrating-rfk-jrs-run-president

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https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/alex-jones-praises-robert-f-kennedy-jr-listening-infowars

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Alex Jones praises Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for listening to Infowars

Jones: “Kennedy's definitely awake, and knows what's going on, and has been listening to the show for a very long time”

WRITTEN BY MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

PUBLISHED 04/21/23

Video CitationFrom the April 21, 2023, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

ALEX JONES (HOST): The line in the sand, folks, is the children. You let 'em come after our children, you don't fight 'em with everything you've got, God's gonna cut you off for eternity. And we will burn. Absence from God is a hell unspeakable.

Let's go back to the phone calls, I want to hurry through them now. What was your point, Jerry, that you wanted to get to? Thanks for the plugs and things, but what were the points you wanted to make about RFK Jr.?

CALLER: You know, I watched his entire speech the other day, and I listened giving him a chance thinking he was just gonna be another Democrat, but I gotta be honest, I am a two-time Trumper, and I am not a Trumper at all anymore. He's still pushing the shots, I agree with Justin, one of your last callers. Joe Biggs, he's still in jail. He left you standing high and dry at the Capitol. He hasn't come out. I mean if people don't see that he's part of the problem, they're crazy. But after listening to Bobby Kennedy Jr., and I was a Democrat up until I was 22 and I'm 58 and I've switched, but I actually thought to myself after watching that speech, everything he said was fantastic, if he's the real deal -- I mean, I think we gotta give him a look. And yesterday when I was on hold you mentioned you were gonna do a Saturday show on him. Better yet, you should invite him on! I mean come on --

JONES: Well, no, no, here's the deal. I've talked to Kennedy's people and they say, we're talking 20 years ago, 10 years ago, they go, Mr. Kennedy respects you and thinks you're doing great work but obviously you are so toxic with some people that it would hurt some of his long-term plans. He's been planning to run for president forever, he's been building his network. I think he's a good man overall, don't agree with all his policies, but I know he's a real -- I mean you can feel it, discernment, see it, America first, he gets it. And I think he should get the nomination from the Democrats, and then it can be Trump versus him or however that's gonna go down. But I don't think Kennedy should come on because with his constituents that would probably hurt him and might lose it.

But yes, Kennedy is a listener. I'll leave it at that. We have the same publisher of his books, of my book, and I'm not gonna try to get Kennedy in trouble with this, and of course, he can deny it if he wants, that's fine, but Kennedy's definitely awake, and knows what's going on, and has been listening to the show for a very long time. I mean, my gosh, I've been at the forefront of the JFK assassination and Robert F. Kennedy assassination information and of course covered it forever.Well, he knows better than anybody what really happened, so that'll kind of wake you up when the government kills your dad and your uncle.

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04/24/23 1:13 PM EDT

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04/24/23 1:01 PM EDT

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TikTok is enabling a telehealth company under DEA investigation for alleged overprescription of stimulants to advertise on its platform

04/24/23 9:57 AM EDT

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On Fox Nation, Tucker Carlson goes full anti-vaccine with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

11/16/21 9:29 AM EST

Steven Crowder is knowingly violating YouTube’s terms of service by promoting Alex Jones’ ban-evasion links

04/17/23 1:30 PM EDT

On Infowars, Trump ally Roger Stone suggests the “deep state” orchestrated New York indictment to wipe other events out of the news

03/31/23 3

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RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY (CO-HOST): This entry of RFK Jr. into this race is a real problem for Democrats, but it could also be a problem for Republicans should he become the nominee. And that's a big if, of course, but it's interesting, Will, you often talk about how the left and the right, kind of — there is a circle, a place where left and right actually meet — and I think for a lot of Americans it was during COVID where a lot of Republicans and conservatives who had more faith in corporations sort of lost that faith as they saw how horribly pharma and big government had colluded and in many ways to suppress information and take away people's rights. And then people on the left were also going wait a minute, we're health liberty people, we don't like being forced to take things. And a lot of them are old-school liberals who never trusted big pharma.There are a lot of powerful forces that don't want JFK to get elected because he's been a truth-teller in many ways.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/elon-musk/musk-attempts-court-twitter-advertisers-new-data-media-matters-provides-insight

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As Musk attempts to court Twitter advertisers, new data from Media Matters provides insight into the prevalence of COVID-19 misinformation on the platform

Media Matters found that 50% of the top 250 accounts tweeting about COVID-19 were right-wing, while nearly 25% were anti-vaccine

WRITTEN BY CAMDEN CARTER & RUBY SEAVEY

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM CARLY EVANS, KAYLA GOGARTY, SHARON KANN, ETHAN COLLIER, NOAH DOWE, SPENCER SILVA, BEN VAN BLOEM, JACK WINSTANLEY & NATALIE MATHES

PUBLISHED 04/24/23

As Twitter’s advertising revenue has plummeted, CEO Elon Musk is trying to court advertisers and assure them that “ads will not appear next to anything remotely negative.” However, as Musk has continued to roll back Twitter’s policies and reinstate previously banned accounts, hate speech and misinformation have flourished on the platform.

In a new study, Media Matters compiled the top 1,000 tweets about COVID-19 each month from October 1, 2022, to March 31, 2023, and analyzed the 250 accounts that earned the most interactions on those tweets. We found that anti-vaccine accounts have made up at least 24% of the top accounts that tweet about COVID-19 and right-leaning accounts have made up at least 50% — meaning that anti-vaccine and/or right-wing accounts are significantly contributing to the discussion of COVID-19 on Twitter.

Last week at the POSSIBLE conference — which was attended by many major companies — Musk reportedly said that Twitter is “a trainwreck sometimes,” while also reiterating that users have freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach and promising that ads would “not appear next to anything remotely negative.”

Twitter’s ad revenue has plummeted since Musk took over the company, with advertisers reportedly concerned where he's taking the platform. Media Matters has found that Twitter has lost nearly 50% of its monthly ad revenue since Musk took over in October, and according to recent reporting from CNN, “More than half of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers in September were no longer spending on the platform in the first weeks of January.”

Musk has tried to chalk up this loss of ad revenue to “bad timing,” but advertisers have fled the platform over brand safety concerns as a result of Musk’s actions. Under Musk, Twitter is transforming into a chaotic and poorly moderated platform. Musk has reinstated dozens of accounts that were previously banned for hate speech and misinformation and has allowed users that paid for verification to push hate, while simultaneously removing protections for trans users and removing policies against COVID-19 misinformation. In turn, anti-LGBTQ hate speech has increased on the platform and now, Media Matters data reveals with Musk as CEO, anti-vaccine accounts are contributing significantly to discussion of COVID-19 on Twitter.

This data — along with previous Media Matters findings that as recently as February, advertisements for major companies have appeared alongside tweets of antisemites who have denied the Holocaust — contradicts Musk’s assurance that ads would not be shown next to “anything remotely negative.”

Media Matters found that nearly a quarter of top Twitter accounts tweeting about COVID-19 pushed anti-vaccine rhetoric

Media Matters found that between October 2022 and March 2023, at least 50% of the top 250 accounts that received the most engagement on tweets about COVID-19 were right-leaning accounts, while at least 24% of the accounts were either run by anti-vaccine figures or contained anti-vaccine rhetoric. Just under 9% of the accounts had any medical affiliation.

Tweets about COVID-19 from Dr. Eli David, a COVID-19 conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine figure, earned the most combined interactions. Some of the other top 10 accounts that earned the most total interactions on COVID-19 tweets include well-known right-wing and anti-vaccine figures, such as Catturd, Robert Kennedy Jr., Dr. Simone Gold, Robert W. Malone, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY).

Media Matters also found that the COVID-19 tweets from the top 250 accounts earned nearly 70 million combined interactions (retweets and likes). Anti-vaccine accounts earned at least 25 million of those interactions, accounting for more than 37%. Right-wing accounts earned at least 36 of the 70 million interactions, accounting for nearly 53% of interactions.

The top accounts tweeting about COVID-19 pushed dangerous misinformation about the virus and its vaccine

Of the 10 accounts that earned the most total interactions on COVID-19 tweets, 9 belong to known anti-vaccine figures. Popular narratives from these accounts include attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, pushing unproven and potentially harmful treatments for the virus, and undermining the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine. Many of these tweets came from accounts belonging to known COVID-19 deniers and far-right figures, including:

Dr. Eli David attacked and mocked Fauci, claiming he was “wrong on everything” and that he “has caused more harm to humanity than any other scientist in history.” David also undermined COVID-19 mitigation efforts, falsely claiming that “masks had zero efficacy in preventing Covid" and the vaccine is “5 times more dangerous than Covid itself."

Dr. Eli David attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci

Dr. Eli David COVID misinfo

Alt-right troll and Holocaust denier Peter Imanuelsen managed to tweet himself to the number two spot of accounts tweeting about COVID-19. Some of his many claims included that the COVID-19 vaccine “hijacks your cells to produce a non-human toxic spike protein,” and he pushed the false narrative that the vaccine leads to an increased chance of a heart attack.

Peter Imanuelsen COVID tweet examples

Right-wing troll Catturd frequently tweeted baseless attacks against Fauci, such as claiming he “lied” about natural immunity or calling him “one of the most evil demons in world history.” (While natural immunity can provide some protection from COVID-19, the risk associated with contracting the virus is much higher than that of the vaccine.)

Catturd2 Covic-19 Tweet examples

James Cintolo, who claims in his Twitter bio to be a medical expert, has repeatedly spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine on Twitter, including a story about a woman who suffered from a severe case of coronavirus despite being vaccinated, largely because of a pre-existing condition. Cintolo has also repeatedly pushed the false anti-vaccine narrative that people have “died suddenly” from the COVID-19 vaccine, and he has spread out of context information to back those claims.

James Cintolo COVID tweet examples

Dr. Aseem Malhotra is a British cardiologist that used a January BBC News interview on cholesterol medication to spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. On Twitter, Malhotra amplified a video of Fox host Tucker Carlson and falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine causes miscarriages and stillbirths. He also baselessly claimed that long COVID, which is a medical condition in which there are long lasting health problems after COVID-19 infection, is “actually synonymous with vaccine injury.”

Dr. Aseem Malhotra pushing COVID-19 misinfo

Anti-vaccine figure Robert Kennedy Jr., who has recently announced a Democratic presidential bid but has earned endorsements from right-wing figures, fearmongered on Twitter about COVID-19 vaccines, attacked Fauci, and sent his followers to his anti-vaccine website. He also shared examples of supposed “injuries” people incurred after being vaccinated against COVID-19.

RFK pushing COVID misinfo on Twitter

Methodology...

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/rfk-jr-nonprofit-facebook-instagram/

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mojo 6 22

...In part, the breathtaking success of worldwide anti-vaccination campaigns is due to the fact that there is an entire, incredibly lucrative cottage industry devoted to pumping out vaccine disinformation. Many of the most successful anti-vaccine activists rake in advertising money from their popular YouTube channels; some further enrich themselves through sales of supplements, detox regimens, and other wellness products, the Center for Countering Digital Hate has found. Social media makes it cheap and easy to reach international customers—and international versions of popular social media platforms lack even the basic disinformation censors found in American versions. Children’s Health Defense, the prominent and influential anti-vaccine group led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recently launched a European version of its site. Joseph Mercola, the influential anti-vaccine osteopath, offers Spanish and French editions of his site; his videos have been translated into many languages, according to the New York Times. In a 2017 affidavit, Mercola reported his net worth to be in excess of $100 million.

American influencers’ messages often resonate with communities that seem to have little in common with the United States, says Joe Smyser, CEO of Public Good Projects, a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that collaborates with UNICEF on studying vaccine hesitancy. Recently, his team followed the path of an American op-ed criticizing pandemic restrictions from its origin in the United States all the way to East Timor, where it took off on local social media. And when Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said he opposed government vaccine mandates, “that got a lot of traction in social networks across Vietnam,” Smyser says. “It was used to push back against the Vietnamese government and Vietnamese public health officials.”

But there is another reason that anti-vaccine content finds its way around the world, with consequences even more dangerous and pervasive than those from anti-vaccine activists. In his study, Wilson’s team found that foreign governments—particularly Russia—were amplifying all kinds of messages both in support of and against vaccines. This is a well-established destabilization tactic that leverages social media to polarize an entire population around a particularly contentious issue—Russia used it to undermine the 2016 US presidential election, for example. The point isn’t to promote any single viewpoint; it’s to sow chaos. “A lot of the time, you’ll have bots pushing six completely contradictory, mutually exclusive stories,” Wilson says. “But what unifies all of them is trying to get people to throw up their hands and say, ‘I guess it’s impossible to know what the truth is.’”

Just as Wilson was wrapping up his study, the pandemic began—and suddenly, his research took on new meaning and urgency. Around the world, social media channels were flooded with wild claims about the new disease and the tools to fight it. He watched in horror as powerful people—even heads of state—amplified the “disinformation campaigns online that have managed to blow it vastly out of the original proportion of a few individuals who were hardcore believers.”

Public Good Project/Nimbus Capture]

Which narrative takes off in any given country depends on the culture and history of the place. In May 2020, Kenyan evangelical pastor Fred Akama posted a rant on Facebook, which began “THE GATES OF BILL SHALL NOT PREVAIL.” Bill Gates “predicted that a viral pandemic would hit the world,” the post continued, with the clear implication that the philanthropist was somehow complicit in and profiting from the creation and spread of Covid. Akama also accused Gates of having unethically close ties with the World Health Organization and vaccine producers and called him an enemy of the Christian faith. He has more than 15,000 followers on Facebook.

Akama wasn’t the only social media influencer in Kenya warning about Bill Gates’ motives. “If you look at the kind of stuff that is circulating in East Africa…you find that the content seems to be very similar,” says Eric Mugendi, who works at Meedan, a San Francisco–based technology nonprofit supporting fact-checking and verification of organizations. “The kind of language that was being used and the types of people who were spreading it—a lot of times it was religious leaders,” Mugendi says, arguing that anti-vaxxers often link their arguments to Gates and liberal philanthropist George Soros. They accuse them of wanting to test vaccines’ efficacy on Africans, profit from vaccine sales, control the human population through microchipping, and prevent the growth of the African population.

“The unifying factor is encouraging distrust of elites and experts and Westerners on any level.”

Disinformation campaigns that play up nefarious motives of powerful people are common worldwide. In the United States, a widely shared video called Plandemic popularized the conspiracy theory about Gates early in the pandemic. This strain of disinformation is particularly effective in Africa because of deep-seated anxiety that Western governments want to slow population growth in the developing world, notes Wilson of Brandeis University. “The unifying factor is encouraging distrust of elites and experts and Westerners on any level,” he says.

Ultraconservative groups in Africa have a long history of spinning a variety of Gates conspiracy theories. The anti-abortion movement in Africa has employed this tactic for at least a decade. In a 2017 article in Pacific Standard, Kathryn Joyce reported on a prominent Nigerian anti-abortion activist Obianuju Ekeocha, who in 2012 spoke out against a Gates Foundation contraceptives campaign. American anti-choice groups helped Ekeocha create a new group, Culture of Life Africa. This complemented an ongoing campaign by Human Life International, a hardline US anti-abortion group operating around the world. Its mission? To spread the message that “Western governments and NGOs are using great sums of money and influence to destroy the traditionally life-loving African culture.”

There’s a convergence these days between seemingly unrelated public health issues, as many of the same US-sponsored organizations that oppose abortion have pivoted their messaging to address Covid vaccinations. One such group is CitizenGO, an ultraconservative petition mill with outposts worldwide. CitizenGO Africa, whose anti-abortion work Mother Jones covered here, is led by a Kenyan woman named Ann Kioko, who was trained in workshops by the American Leadership Institute, a conservative organization that counts former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Karl Rove among its distinguished alumni.

In 2020, CitizenGo posted an online petition titled “Bill Gates and WHO: Hands Off Africa” intended to send a “firm message to the Bill Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization that Africa is not a test lab, Africans are people with human dignity and Africans will not be used to try vaccines whose purpose is not known.” The petition accuses Gates of having Covid vaccines “tested on Africa as he stages them [vaccines] as the only solution to the pandemic.” It also accuses Bill and Melinda Gates of attempting to control the African population via contraception and abortion. “Melinda Gates told the Washington Post she is frustrated with the Trump administration’s decision to cut funding for international ‘reproductive-rights projects,’ (READ ABORTION) calling it ‘incredibly disappointing,’” the petition read. ...

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...Tenpenny has been added to the Center for Countering Digital Hate's infamous "disinformation dozen," a group described as "12 people it said were responsible for spreading a majority of anti-vaxxer falsehoods on Facebook."

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ref report

https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_750e5af82aea4920a270b1c5a8b094c2.pdf

no lnx

KEY FINDINGS

Analysis of a sample of anti-vaxx content that was shared or posted on Facebook and

Twitter showed up to 65% of anti-vaccine content can be traced to the leading online

anti-vaxxers, who we label the Disinformation Dozen.

? Individuals were selected based upon their high social media followings and high

volume production of anti-vaccine content.

? Our sample of anti-vaccine content was shared or posted on Facebook or Twitter a

total of 812,000 times between February 1 and March 16 2021, with 65% of that

sample attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.

? In the last two months, our analysis of anti-vaxx content posted or shared to

Facebook 689,000 times shows that up to 73% of that content originates from

the leading anti-vaxxers included in this report.

? Analysis of 120,000 anti-vaccine tweets and shares during this period finds that

up to 17% feature the Disinformation Dozen.

Deplatforming repeat offenders is the most effective way of stopping the proliferation of

dangerous misinformation.

? The Disinformation Dozen -- including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joseph Mercola, and

Ty and Charlene Bollinger, among others -- continually violate the terms of service

agreements on Facebook and Twitter. While some anti-vaxxers identified by

CCDH have been removed from a single platform, comprehensive action has yet to

be taken, and most remain active on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

? CCDH’s ongoing tracking of 425 anti-vaxx accounts finds that the total following

across platforms reached 59.2 million in December 2020, an increase of 877,000

since June

https://www.counterhate.com/disinformationdozen

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seems to be accurate transcription of his twt, but claim is misleading

world mercury pjt april 7

https://thelogicalindian.com/fact-check/bill-gates-polio-vaccine-covid-19-gates-foundation-21270

site defeats cut and paste?!

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steele deep state qanon BS

https://phibetaiota.net/2020/04/robert-f-kennedy-jr-is-bill-gates-satans-spawn-or-merely-a-geek-gone-mad-and-turned-traitor/

no lnx for prophylatic purposes

2020/04/09

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Is Bill Gates Satan’s Spawn? Or Merely a Geek Gone Mad and Turned Traitor/Murderer?

CORRECTED & TRUMP PLAN ADDED

02 Infectious Disease, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

INSTAGRAM COPY: Robert F Kennedy UNLOADS on Bill Gates

“Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vac ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control over global health policy—the spear tip of corporate neo-imperialism.

Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems fueled by a messianic conviction that he is ordained to save the world with technology and a god-like willingness to experiment with the lives of lesser humans.

Promising to eradicate Polio with $1.2 billion, Gates took control of India ‘s National Advisory Board (NAB) and mandated 50 polio vaccines (up from 5) to every child before age 5. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating vaccine-strain polio epidemic that paralyzed 496,000 children between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian Government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and evicted Gates and his cronies from the NAB. Polio paralysis rates dropped precipitously. In 2017, the World Health Organization reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is coming from Gates’ Vaccine Program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to Gates’ vaccines. By 2018, ¾ of global polio cases were from Gates’ vaccines.

In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by GSK and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.

In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a trial of a GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,049 children.

During Gates 2002 MenAfriVac Campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Between 50-500 children developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for drug makers”

Nelson Mandela’s former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates’ philantropic practises as “ruthless” and immoral”.

In 2010, Gates committed $ 10 billion to the WHO promising to reduce population, in part, through new vaccines. A month later Gates told a Ted Talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”. In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a phony “tetanus” vaccine campaign.

Independent labs found the sterility formula in every vaccine tested.

After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade.

Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines.

A 2017 study (Morgensen et.Al.2017) showed that WHO’s popular DTP is killing more Africans than the disease it pretends to prevent. Vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of unvaccinated children.

Gates and the WHO refused to recall the lethal vaccine which WHO forces upon millions of African children annually.

Global public health advocates around the world accuse Gates of – hijacking WHO’s agenda away from the projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases; clean water, hygiene, nutrition and economic development.

They say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal fetish – that good health only comes in a syringe.

In addition to using his philantropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI and PATH, Gates funds private pharmaceutical companies that manifacture vaccines, and a massive network of pharmaceutical -industry front groups that broadcast deceptive propaganda, develop fraudulent studies, conduct surveillance and psychological operations against vaccine hesitancy and use Gates’ power and money to silence dissent and coerce compliance.

In this recent nonstop Pharmedia appearances, Gates appears gleeful that the Covid-19 crisis will give him the opportunity to force his third-world vaccine programs on American children.”

NOTE Above is original with links. Below is Stone’s version with emphasis.

RELATED:

Martin Armstrong: Gates-Fauci Treason in the Open — Call for Special Prosecutor

Martin Armstrong: Bill Gates is Hitler — Be Chipped or Die!

State of the Nation: OPERATION COVID-19: Desperate Attempt to Deploy 5G Under Cover of Bioterrorism to Activate Global Control Matrix

Mongoose: DNA Frequency BioWeapon Individual Targeting — Don’t Like Bill Gates? You Will Be Vaporized (Worst Case)

no lnx pix twt vid

long Island Protest Praised by Trump Featured Anti-Vaxxer Call to “Hang Fauci”

Robert Mackey

May 17 2020,

THE PRESIDENT OF the United States voiced his support on Saturday for a protest against New York state’s public health orders that was backed by an anti-government militia and anti-vaccine activists who called for the execution of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s senior immunologist.

The “Re-Open NY” rally on Thursday in Commack, New York was organized by a group of Trump supporters who call themselves the Setauket Patriots, but also endorsed by anti-vaccination activists and the Long Island branch of the Oath Keepers, a national organization of current and former law enforcement officers and military veterans who think they are defending the nation from a range of imaginary threats posed by the federal government.

Amid a sea of American flags and Trump banners, several of the signs waved by the protesters referenced conspiracy theories promoted by radical anti-vaccine activists that demonize Fauci and the philanthropist Bill Gates.

051620_commackA protester at a rally in Commack, New York on Thursday displayed a sign calling for the execution of the nation’s leading immunologist and a billionaire philanthropist. Photo: News 12 Long Island]

In addition to placards calling for New York to open businesses, others displayed at the rally channeled conspiracy theories from anti-vaccine activists who believe that Bill Gates is somehow behind the crisis. “Just Say NO to Bill Gates,” read one sign. Another, with idiosyncratic punctuation, read: “My Son’s Are Not Lab Rats For Bill Gates Vaccine.”

The protest outside a shuttered department store was attended by just a few hundred people, but it drew national attention after a local news reporter, Kevin Vesey, posted video of himself being harassed by demonstrators.

Kevin Vesey

@KevinVesey

The level of anger directed at the media from these protestors was alarming. As always, I will tell a fair and unbiased story today.

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The protesters echoed the president’s anti-media harangues by complaining to Vesey that his channel, News 12 Long Island, had “stopped airing the Trump briefings,” and taunted him with the chant, “Fake news is not essential.” One woman told the reporter, “You’re the virus.” Another accused him of “destroying Suffolk and Long Island” through his reporting on the coronavirus crisis.

Suffolk County, where the protest took place, has been among the worst hit in the United States, with 37,942 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 1,733 deaths as of Saturday. That means the suburban New York county of just under 1.5 million people has a mortality rate more than 4 times the national average. One of those cases was News 12’s Vesey, who tested positive last month and recently recovered from a relatively mild case of the illness.

During a longer Facebook Live report from the demonstration, Vesey was menaced at close range by a man in a Trump hat and shirt who was not wearing a mask but said thathe did not need to keep his distance because, “I got hydroxychloroquine; I’ll be fine, bro.”

The man held a sign that called on one side for New York’s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, to be deposed, and on the other accused his brother, Chris Cuomo, of lying about his bout with Covid-19.

Another protester held up a sign saying Fauci “has to go” and falsely asserted that he “works for” for the World Health Organization.

The television report Vesey filed on Thursday evening included video of one of the demonstrators displaying a sign for the camera that read: “Hang Fauci, Hang Gates, Open Up All Our States.”

Kevin Vesey

@KevinVesey

I'll probably never forget what happened today.

I was insulted. I was berated. I was practically chased by people who refused to wear masks in the middle of a pandemic.

All the while, I was there to tell THEIR story. Here's the finished product.

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On Saturday morning, in a tweet that echoed his infamous praise for white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville in 2017, Trump described the protesters who had harassed the reporter as “Great people!”

James Robitsek, a leader of the pro-Trump Setauket Patriots group that organized the protest, confirmed in a Facebook message on Saturday that his call for opponents of the lockdown to rally had been supported by the local chapter of the anti-government Oath Keepers militia. “They copied my post and made up their own for their group,” Robitsek said of the Oath Keepers. “They come to our events and vice versa. We all share events, our group is only 40-50 members.” Thursday’s gathering, he said, included “many people from other groups, or who just saw the post and wanted to come down.”

The Oath Keepers’s name is a reference to the belief of its members that they are bound by their pledge to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” even if that means defying the government. As Justine Sharrock reported for Mother Jones in 2010, a year after the group was founded, some of the group’s first members were convinced then that it would not be long “before President Obama finds some pretext — a pandemic, a natural disaster, a terror attack — to impose martial law, ban interstate travel, and begin detaining citizens en masse.”

In an open letter posted online last month, the Long Island branch of the militia group echoed that belief, by declaring that the state’s orders to shut down businesses, churches and public gatherings were the acts of “an overbearing government acting under the guise of benevolence” and had created “an untenable situation” that justified resistance. “Any government, or governing representative which acts in such a manner, attempts to act outside of the Constitution, and must be put on notice as doing such,” the group wrote.

The national group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, a libertarian trial lawyer and former Ron Paul staffer, mocked Trump earlier this week for tweeting in support of protesters in Pennsylvania who want to re-open businesses. “Uh, they are using YOUR Admin’s guidelines, including the Orwellian ‘essential/non-essential’ paradigm, which is like something out of the USSR,” Rhodes tweeted back at the president.

On Twitter, Rhodes has also shared anti-vaccine conspiracy theories related to the Covid-19 pandemic, including one meme that described Gates as a “vaccine pushing globalist eugenicist” and urged readers “to REFUSE to take ANY vaccine he funds, ‘mandatory’ or not.”

He also encouraged his followers to listen to a podcast in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attacked Gates and boosted a conspiracy theory about Fauci. The baseless smear on Fauci was first made by a discredited scientist who claims, without evidence, that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director buried her research about how vaccines can damage people’s immune systems. Those false claims about Fauci and Gates have been spread widely by the pro-Trump conspiracy group QAnon and by prominent anti-vaccine activists who have taken a leading role in recent protests demanding an end to the emergency public health orders in California, Texas and New York.

desmog 918

new Duke University study concluded that from 2011 to 2016 the amount of water used to frack oil and gas wells rose 770%. But the amount of toxic wastewater produced in that same time period rose 1,440%.:{https://www.}:desmogblog.com/2018/09/18/fra...

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revoke exxon and koch corp charters!

Hysterics at the right-wing think tanks and their acolytes at The Washington Times, talk radio and the blogosphere, are foaming in apoplexy because I supposedly suggested that “all climate deniers should be jailed.” Last week, that canard leapt from the wingnut echo chamber into New York magazine, which reported, under Jonathan Chait’s byline, that “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. shares the opinion that climate denial should be criminalized.” Chait was quoting the National Review‘s Kevin Williamson who made that outlandish claim at one of Heritage Foundation’s annual “Conference for Kooks.” Of course, I never said that. I support the First Amendment which makes room for any citizen to, even knowingly, spew far more vile lies without legal consequence.

I do, however, believe that corporations which deliberately, purposefully, maliciously and systematically sponsor climate lies should be given the death penalty. This can be accomplished through an existing legal proceeding known as “charter revocation.” State Attorneys General can invoke this remedy whenever corporations put their profit-making before the “public welfare.”

In 1998, New York State’s Republican Attorney General Dennis Vacco successfully invoked the “corporate death penalty” to revoke the charters of two non-profit tax-exempt tobacco industry front groups, The Tobacco Institute and The Council for Tobacco Research (CTR). The two groups Vacco annulled were creatures of a decade long campaign funded principally by tobacco giant, Brown & Williamson to avoid costly health regulations that would diminish the profit margins of an industry that was killing one out of five of its customers. “Doubt is our Product,” explained B&W’s notorious 1969 memo outlining the reptilian communications strategy that hatched its front groups.

Vacco complained that these companies were “[feeding] the public a pack of lies in an underhanded effort to promote smoking so as to addict America’s kids.” Attorney General Vacco seized their assets and distributed them to public institutions.

Laws in every state maintain that companies that fail to comply with prescribed standards of corporate behavior may be either dissolved or, in the case of foreign corporations, lose their rights to operate within that state’s borders. These rules can be quite expansive and, in contrast to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rulings on campaign finance law, companies, under state laws, enjoy far less protection than human beings. New York, for example, prescribes corporate death whenever a company fails to “serve the common good” and “to cause no harm.”

Just as Big Tobacco funded the now moribund C.T.R. and the Tobacco Institute to systematically deceive the public about the perils of cigarettes, the carbon cronies, with far larger profits at stake, have funded an army of front groups to persuade the public that global warming is a hoax.

For over a decade, petroleum industry behemoths led by Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, have waged a successful multi-million dollar propaganda blitz to mislead the public about global warming using the same techniques honed by Big Tobacco in its campaign to hoodwink the public about smoking.

In their efforts to impede state, national and international efforts to protect humans from the destructive climate chaos, both companies have engaged in massive spending sprees purchasing phony “junk” science devised to undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming. Between 1997 and 2013, ExxonMobil, pumped over 29.9 million dollars into an elaborate network of over 75 front groups to manufacture skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe. At the same time, Koch Industries has piped at least $67,042,064 to over fifty groups that play central roles in the Koch-funded offensive against climate science.

Two decades after Brown & Williamson’s notorious “Doubt is our Product” memo, the oil industry launched its own anti-science juggernaut replicating Big Tobacco’s and utilizing many of the same corrupt scientists and PR firms. Two secret memos dictated the blueprint for Big Carbon’s anti-science offensive. The American Petroleum Institute — lobbyist for ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips — was the spear tip of a multi-million dollar campaign to confound American citizens about climate science by manipulating the media. On April 3, 1998, API laid out its “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan,” the detailed blueprint of “tactics and strategies” for deceiving the American people and press by sewing doubts about climate science. The API team would create front groups and “educate” editorial boards and corporate CEOs to challenge “prevailing scientific wisdom.” Under “recruiting and training,” API outlines its plan for tapping neophyte — “read malleable” — scientists and tame journalists ( “e.g. John Stossel,” the memo suggests) to bamboozle the public. “Victory will be achieved,” API promises, “when average citizens and the media recognize uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’”

Four years later in 2002, conservative pollster Frank Luntz in an influential memo to President George Bush and oil patch lawmakers, applauded the industry for the success of the API campaign. “Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community.” Nevertheless, he warned Big Carbon’s indentured servants on Capitol Hill “the science [is closing against us] but is not yet closed.” He advised, “therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

Over the next dozen years, a string of front groups conducted the deceptive anti-science campaign outlined in the API’s 1998 plan and Luntz’s 2002 memo and funded primarily by ExxonMobil and Koch.

Among the groups that have received millions from Exxon and Koch Industries are The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the Cooler Heads Coalition, the Global Climate Coalition, The American Enterprise Institute (ALEC), Americans for Prosperity, Heartland Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), George C. Marshall Institute, the State Policy Network, The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Like the Tobacco Institute and CTR, these front groups are snake pits for sociopaths. Run by venomous carbon industry toadies, they stable a craven menagerie of propaganda wizards, slick biostitutes, tobacco scientists, snake oil hucksters, voodoo economists and other so-called “experts” employed to publish beguiling studies, appear on TV and radio, and write deceptive articles critiquing the “flawed science” predicting climate change. They broadcast zany theories to bolster policies that encourage increased energy consumption, torpedo renewable energy, attack pollution rules, maintain Big Carbon’s obscene government subsidies, and, in general provide the philosophical underpinnings for a system of cushy socialism for the “dirty energy” tycoons and bitter, savage capitalism for the rest of mankind.

For example, CEI, which describes itself as being “a leader in the fight against the global warming scare,” spent years denying that warming was real, and then, as the tsunami of evidence made that position untenable, pivoted to the more defensible posture that human beings are not causing it. CEI has more recently beat its final retreat to the terminal default position that global warming is great because it will “create a milder, greener, more prosperous world.” The floods, fires, drought, rising oceans, disappearing ice caps, melting glaciers, drowned cities and refugees have not exactly been “mild.” But things have been prosperous and “green” — if one means greenbacks — for the Koch Brothers and ExxonMobil, who are enjoying the biggest profits in world history. “You’re Welcome, Planet Earth!”

AEI, one of the richest and most influential think tanks in the United States — and the high priest of climate denial — offered a $10,000 bounty in 2006 to any scientist or economist who could produce an article undermining the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) Report. The IPCC report was the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science representing the scientific consensus among thousands of climate scientists comprising the leading and most prestigious and scientific stars from over 130 participating nations.

Any State Attorney General with the will, resolve and viscera to stand to up to the dangerous and duplicitous corporate propagandists, has authority to annul the charters of each of these mercenary merchants of deceit. An Attorney General with particularly potent glands could revoke the charters not just oil industry surrogates like AEI and CEI, he or she could also withdraw state operating authority from the soulless, nation-less oil companies that have sponsored “Big Lie” campaigns and force them to sell their in-state assets to more responsible competitors.

Koch Industries and ExxonMobil have particularly distinguished themselves as candidates for corporate death. No other companies have worked harder or spent more money to impede the government from taking action on global warming to safeguard public welfare. Both companies have employed artifice on a massive scale and spent tens of millions of dollars to purchase fraudulent junk science. The greedy, immoral, anti-social pathology behind ExxonMobil and Koch’s mendacious crusade is even starker given the open acknowledgment since 2007 by the other major oil companies including Shell, Chevron and BP, that burning oil is causing climate change.

Though they like to invoke patriotic themes and drape themselves in the flag, the oil barons have persistently demonstrated their enthusiasm for putting corporate profits ahead of the public welfare.

“I’m not a US company,” Exxon’s legendary former CEO, Lee Raymond told his board, “and I don’t make decisions on what is good for the US.” These companies are not friends to America. They are enemies of mankind.

The notion that a State Attorney General might actually execute one of these villains is not a pipe dream. State Attorneys General have historically shown a willingness to stand up to American democracy’s biggest corporate bullies including, Wall Street, Big Tobacco, coal-burning utilities and the oil titans even in eras, like the present, when corporate money has subverted our democracy and extracted the spinal cords from most politicians. It was 46 courageous State Attorneys Generals who brought down the cigarette companies. It was nine northeastern State Attorneys General who sued the coal-burning utilities for damages to their citizens from airborne pollutants. And it was State Attorneys General in New York, Ohio and Texas who, during the Gilded Age, dismantled the Standard Oil octopus, and restored economic democracy to America. That deadly Frankenstein monster, now reassembled and resurrected as ExxonMobil, poses an even greater threat today to our historical values and quality of life.

Let’s all hope for and vote for a home state Attorney General candidate who promises to stand up against carbon’s duplicitous proxies and fight for truth, justice and democracy and to provide our children with safe, healthy, dignified and wholesome communities and the prosperity that should not be exclusive to the Koch Brothers and ExxonMobil.

http://www.ecowatch.com/kennedy-exxon-trump-tillerson-2148709224.html

mercury

rfk2 12/15

http://ecowatch.com/2015/11/01/cdc-vaccine-cover-up-autism

---

The mercury tipping point came to Robert F. Kennedy more than a decade ago. A champion of the environment, he was on a national speaking tour telling people about the dangers of coal power plants spewing tons of mercury into the air that, in essence, were poisoning humans and wildlife.

In each city he visited, parents of autistic children told him that too much mercury—in the form of the vaccine preservative thimerosal—was being used in the manufacturing of immunization shots. The more he heard about the problem, the more he started to look into the matter as a public health issue.

What he found disturbed him.

Kennedy learned he would also be practically alone on the radioactive issue from a political vista. That’s because the pharmaceutical industry had bought off U.S. politicians long ago via lobbying and mainstream media with its advertising juggernaut in the 1990s.

As the vice chairman and chief prosecuting attorney at Riverkeeper, a New York based non-profit organization chartered to preserve the conservation of the Hudson River, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took on this new crusade to make vaccines safer, greener, while curbing the program’s mandatory doctrine and excesses that enrich big pharma.

Kennedy chats with Bill Maher

On Friday night (4-24-15), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a guest on the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher. In a lively discussion with the host (Episode #351), he laid out the facts that even small amounts of mercury, which was never eliminated from vaccines but merely reduced in the manufacturing process, contributed to the explosion of “ADHD, ADD, speech delays, neurological delays, peanut allergies, and autism,” he said.

Bill Maher replied in his casual style, “It just seems like we’re calling each other kooks and liars. And it seems like common sense that vaccines… I mean… even thimerosal, probably don’t hurt most people. I mean, if they did, we’d all be dead, because they’re in a lot of vaccines that we all took. But some do. Obviously, some minority gets hurt by this stuff. I don’t understand why this is controversial.”

The interview segment didn’t afford Kennedy the time to explain how the scale of the “minority” group might one day become a majority. Or that in the 1970s 1-in-10,000 babies got autism, only to watch that ratio spike skywards with each new round of shots added to the vaccine schedule. By 1990, 1-in-2,500 would jump up to 1-in-1,000 at the turn of the century. In the past 15 years, it has climbed swiftly from 1-in-500 to 250 to 100 to 88 to… this year 1-in-68 children. For boy’s it’s a whopping 1-in-42.

So when will our government, industry leaders, and mainstream media begin to recognize the neurological poisoning as an epidemic?

Will it be 1-in-25? Or does that ratio have to balloon to an irreversible 1-in-10?

From a brief on Mercury Poisoning from Coal-Fired Power Plants, by the National Wildlife Federation, it states:

“Mercury is a highly potent neurotoxin that adversely affects the function and development of the central nervous system in both people and wildlife. Exposure to mercury is particularly dangerous for pregnant and breastfeeding women, as well as children, since mercury is most harmful in the early stages of development.”

So if mercury particulates are dangerous to the long-term health of adults to breathe in the air, how much more harmful is it for infants to have mercury injected directly into their tiny bodies that are under development?

It’s even worse for fetuses in the womb when pregnant mothers get flu shots, which are loaded with thimerosal.

The Only Ones Immune are the Vaccine Makers

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did have time, however, to spell out the quarter century that it took for the U.S. government to fully shield the pharmaceutical industry from product liability lawsuits. That was back in 1988 when Congress injected the provision in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) Act.

From there, all big pharma had to do was buyoff the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ensure that more vaccines were added to the schedule, which for the past 15 years has three times the number of shots in the U.S. vaccine schedule than any other nation in the western hemisphere.

Then the crafty feint the U.S. government did with NVICP, or “Vaccine Court” as it’s known, was to gut the spirit and charter of the act. They rewrote the standard of injury to a victim of thimerosal by protecting mercury itself from such lawsuits.

In dismissing more than 5,000 cases, including that of my autistic son who suffered from thimerosal poisoning, Vaccine Court saved billions of dollars in compensation, tons of time at trial, while whittling the scope down to a few dozen cases out of more than one million children who live on the autism spectrum today.

By sweeping the autism epidemic under the rug, the CDC has saved money to U.S. taxpayers for now, but the problem won’t be going away. It will get far worse.

The government’s action with the stroke of a pen passed the problem of the delayed and dysfunction generation to a future president, congress, state and local governments. And it won’t be confined to healthcare or federal disability benefits. This tragedy will take more than 2 million (and counting) future productive adults out of colleges, universities, and the job market. Instead of making money, paying taxes, and contributing to the economy, they will become a major burden on society.

A Book and a Movie

Much of what Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—he took out a full-page ad in USA Today (4-24-15) weekend edition—said for the past decade can be found in his well-researched book he edited, Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak (Skyhorse Publishing).

It’s a book that this author read and found the purported bedrock studies, upon which the CDC built its claims that all vaccines are safe, have proven to be false, with skewed and manipulated data, and worse. More troubling is the fact that there has never been a real clinical trial (only studies of back-tested data) on vaccine safety. So what we know is next to nothing about the true effects of what vaccine ingredients, from thimerosal to three types of aluminum salts, does to an infant’s brain, nervous and immune systems.

This spring, a documentary film called Trace Amounts takes a blowtorch to the safety of mercury. There is no safe amount; it highlights Kennedy’s book.

What’s interesting about the film, a single tetanus shot several years ago derailed the career of a 27-year-old engineer, when he cut himself in the field on a rusty fence. It was the vaccine—not the metal disease of tetanus—that crippled Eric Gladen overnight.

What did Gladen discover? His life was brought to a near-death spiral by “trace amounts” of thimerosal in a single dose vaccine that injured his adult body and brain with symptoms of autism. Gladen’s recovery took him and environmental filmmakerShiloh Levine on an odyssey from infant vaccines to coal-fired power plants and the dangers that mercury poses to society.

Mercury is not an element natural to human physiology. There is no vitamin ‘M’ that can be found at your local heath store. So why do we allow big pharma and the U.S. government to inject it into us at any level?

==

great analysis

9/15

The crowd roared. But Kennedy wasn’t finished yet.

“These are the apocalyptical forces of ignorance and greed. These are the four horsemen from the book of Revelations herding humanity toward a dystopian nightmare of their creation. Koch Industries is not a benign corporation. It’s a suicide pact for creation. It’s the archetype of ‘disaster capitalism.’ It’s the command center of an organized scheme to undermine democracy and impose a corporate kleptocracy that will allow these greedy men to cash in on mass extinction and the end of civilization.”

Kennedy went on to explain, “These men claim in their rhetoric to embrace a theology of free market capitalism. But if you look at their feet instead of listening to the seductive noises that issue from their mouths and their phony think tanks, the truth is clear. These men hate free markets. They want a system of cushy socialism for the rich and a savage, merciless capitalism for the poor. The real purpose of their ‘think tanks’ they created and fund—like the Heritage Foundation and the CATO Institute—is not to promote free market capitalism, but to gin up the philosophical underpinnings for a scheme of uncontrolled corporate profit taking. And the press, consolidated as it is into private monopolies, and relieved of social obligation are on the carbon and pharma pay role and in full cahoots with the scheme. They don’t love markets—they despise them. The Koch Brothers’ purpose in purchasing our political system is to engineer monumental subsidies and market failure, which are their formulae for profit. And the winds, the storms, the floods, the heatwaves, the fires and the melting continents that they cause, the cities that they drown, the refugees they drive from their lands all provide new opportunities for profit and authoritarian control.”

Kennedy shared a story about the commercial fisheries on the Hudson River, among the oldest commercial fisheries in North America. He began his career as an environmental lawyer representing these fishing families. He explained how the fisheries regulated themselves as a sustainable industry for more than three centuries.

“The fishermen had a business model that worked,” he said. But then General Electric “used its political clout to cheat the free market and to arrange vast subsidies for itself by externalizing its costs and dumping its toxins into the river. In this way, GE privatized the fish in the Hudson River. New York’s constitution says that we, the people of New York State, own the waterways of the state and we own the fish in the Hudson. But we don’t own them anymore. The General Electric Company owns every fish in the river because they privatized them. They put their toxins in our fish and our cash in their pockets.

“While we own to fish legally, we can’t use them. GE has liquidated a public asset for cash and profit. All those men and women who made their living on the river and lived decent lives—they are all out of work and out of luck and General Electric has liquidated their assets and their livelihoods for corporate profit.”

He went on to explain; “Now the coal industry has done the exact same thing to every freshwater fish in America.” The National Academy of Science found dangerous levels of mercury in every American freshwater fish. The mercury is mainly coming from coal fired power plants. Since there is no known safe level for mercury consumption, the fish are no longer suitable for public consumption and are effectively privatized. “King Coal has privatized every fish in America by putting toxic mercury in every filet,” he said.

“Whether we recognize it or not, we are all locked in a life and death struggle with these corporations over control of our landscapes and political sovereignty,” Kennedy said. “If a foreign nation did to our country what the coal and oil barons do every day, we would consider it an act of war! They poison our rivers and aquifers, steal our fish, flood our cities and trample our democracy. They are pilfering our values, robbing our culture, impoverishing our lives, sickening our children and stupefying our minds with pollution. They subvert our heritage by privatizing our patrimony. They are turning America into a colonial economy.

“Under the colonial model multinational corporations exploit weak political systems to commoditize and privatize a nation’s resources. A robust democracy would never allow a foreign company to plunder the nation’s natural resources, poison her landscapes and subjugate her people. So colonialism requires the multinationals to weaken and capture the indigenous political system of the target nation. They do so by making alliances with local oligarchs with military and intelligence apparatus and conservative religious organizations and buying off the media. All these indigenous elites get a share of the profits in exchange for allowing the theft of their country’s resources. Pollution is not just theft—it is treason. The Koch brothers are not just America’s biggest polluters—they are thieves and they are traitors to our country and their crimes against America and humanity have made them the richest men on Earth.

“The colonial model results in the evolution of an upper class with massive wealth and political power, the elimination of the middle class and the exponential increase of an impoverished class who eke a declining meagre living from the barren polluted moonscapes left behind by greed and pollution. And, when you have a wealthy class and a poor class and no middle class, you get extreme political division. The role of one political party devolves into a single minded mission of protecting the perks and power of the wealthy class and the rights of corporations to rape the land and enslave the people.”

This is why, as Kennedy explained, we have another precedented divide between Democratic and Republican parties in this country. Since tax breaks for billionaires and unregulated pollution are not potent vessels for populism, the corporate kleptocracy must steal elections, eliminate poor voters from the rolls, lie about the issues and employ propaganda and all the lowest alchemies of demagoguery, including appeals to religious and patriotic symbols and dividing the electorate using bigotry, greed, and racial and religious prejudices—the “wedge” or “cultural war issue,” according to Kennedy.

Even using these techniques, as Kennedy says, the policies they advocate are so viscerally unpopular that their hold on the voting public is always remaining tenuous. “Politics,” Kennedy explained “Is driven by both money and political intensity. Since they don’t have reliable ground troops, they must overwhelm the system with their money.” For this reason, “The hostile takeover of our democracy by polluting corporations and our country’s transition into a colonial economy is completely reliant on the financial floodgates opened by Citizens United.”

To further make his point, Kennedy said, “So you have the Koch’s who have deployed their front group ALEC—American Legislative Exchange Council—in every state working with local legislators in the anti-American enterprise of impeding the transition to new energy by bribing and blackmailing politicians to weaken support for wind and solar and foster a hostile environment toward renewables.

“The Koch brothers understand that renewables are good for the economy, good for our security and good for democracy. They create high paying jobs, promote small businesses, create wealth, democratize our energy sector, give us local, resilient power and reduce dependence on foreign carbon that makes them for the country, but bad for the Koch brothers.

“Renewables fill the Koch brothers with fear. In order to compete, they have to rig the rules that govern energy in this country to favor the dirtiest, filthiest, most destructive, most poisonous and addictive fuels from hell over the cheap, clean, green, local and patriotic fuels from heaven. But even with market and utility rules against them, new renewable technologies are so efficient that the allow wind and solar to beat the carbon industry even in their rigged markets and slanted playing fields—the only way for carbon to survive is by massive subsidies. The Koch brothers cannot compete against renewables in a free market without their subsidies.”

A recent report by the International Monetary Fund said, global energy subsidies amounts to $5 trillion annually, with the U.S. providing $700 billion in subsidizes to big oil “the richest industry in the history of the planet,” remarks Kennedy.

“Why would we be doing that?” he asks. “The only reason we’d give subsidies to a century old industry with the biggest profits in human history is because the oil barons own our government. There is no economic reason. Carbon’s economic model is looking at the same bleak future as the horse and buggy industry faced in 1903. So what do you do when your profits rely on a fading economic model? You use your money and use the campaign finance system that consists of legalized bribery to get your hooks into a public official who allows you to privatize the commons, dismantle the market place and rig the rules to give you monopoly control,” Kennedy explained.

Free market capitalism is the most powerful economic engine ever devised. But, according to Kennedy, it must be harnessed to a social purpose, as it will drag us down the path of political oligarchy and environmental destruction. Free market rules should allow people to make themselves rich by doing good things for humanity. But under the Koch’s scheme, oilmen get rich by dong bad things to humanity, he said.

Corporations are a useful economic tool. However, “corporations should not be running our government because they don’t want the same thing for America as Americans want,” he continued. “They don’t want democracy. They want profits. They want no competition. They are corrupting our democracy. They are stealing everything that we care about in this country.

“I believe in a true free market where you can’t make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community, where we properly value our national resources and where we reward efficiency. But polluters make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves while lowering quality of life for everybody else. They undervalue natural resources or take them for free. And they do it all by escaping the discipline of the free market. Polluters externalize their costs to artificially lower the price of their product. The 28 environmental laws that we passed after the first Earth Day in 1970 were intended to restore true free market capitalism by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true cost to bring their product to market. There is a huge difference between true free market capitalism—which makes a nation more efficient, more prosperous and more democratic—and the kind of corporate crony capitalism which we have today.”

...

http://ecowatch.com/2015/09/10/robert-kennedy-jr-koch-brothers/

my sum

rfk2

1/Sep/2011

unrelated epi

Thurber; before die all men shd know what they are running from and to

When fascism comes to US, wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross

Crimes Against Nature Harper Collins 2004

c1 mess in Tx

1999 houston smoggiest city, #1 in childhood asthma bd air and water, drop to 49 on ecology spnding p12

p13 sent most chemicals and toxins in air, co2 (10 % of US); most chem spills and made the most toxic waste

shortly after inaugm tort reform emergency issue and appt's judges accordingly p 13

1995 takings bill mafe taxpayers pay for cleanup (overturns longtime legal notion that X can't damge y's proprty/comons

property w/o compensation Lincoln freeing slaves ? 14

tx envro stocked w/ pesticide friendly anti union guy, ex monsanto lobbyist ecec (chemical assoc), and another pro pest guy 14 TRNCC aka train wreck, eliminated public input on permits and plant inspections, slasheed budgey by 20%, avg ozone over larger areas 15

grandfathered many on air including TXI and cement capital, produced 1/3 of smog 16. clinton epa wn after, but big donors to bs; alcoa, exxon, shell, amoco, enron, dow etc 1.5m$ 17

2 laws make all vol (chems founf to be 6-15x higher than reported by mfg 18 almost 300 schols 2 mi from grandfathered; 9 gave at least 100K to be pioneers (Baker and Botts law firm, also vinson and elkins (alcoa) ceo Paul Oneil (fired b/c?)

energy dept tranit team headed by DC incl 3 tx pioneers incl Lay 19

dep commerce don Evans, oil delay ("epa is the Gesapo of gov't")

ch2

always been illegal to pollute all the way back to Justinian Code: commons can't be pvt property, including wandering animals, fisah, wetlands 20. Robin Hood fought King John's reservation of deer etc for upper classes; tried to sell fishery and enact tolls on Thames led to battle Runnymede loss led to Magna Carta (free access to waters). c13 coal burners executed in London 21 until 1873 illegal to emit smoke onto pvt or public ; 1918 scotus said inconceivable that pub;lic trust assests could slip into pvt hands " 21

eastern anatum facon goneafter earth day 1970 (20 mil in street, #1 in us hist), 28 mrs laws passed in 120 yrs 22; b2 is win of 30 yr stealth attack. 1976 coors Mtn states Legal fdn to ctr eco law (one of colo biggest poluters) also philips petrol, exoon, texaco, amoco , shell ford chevron; coors also heritage doc to news dir, staffers, hate radio 23 heritage wants ot "strangle the envio movment...the greatest single threat to the Am economy" hw etc "henny-pennyism" 24 #1 w/ top 5 fdn: olin, scaife, coors, koch, bradley (40Mil saince 1985. exxon chev dupont etc give 34m/yr

1980 coors etc spearheaded Sagebrush Rebellion (corp and rw) turned ctt into pol power 25 RR: I am a S rebel" Heriage shadow cabinet, 2k pp Mandate for Change became blueprint (Coors in kitchen cab). Coors picked assoc Anne Gorsuch for epa; hubby cattle baron to head BLM, tho had declared to shut it 25

Watt dominion theology, "subdue" nature is duty; sold off pub;ic assets at fore sale prices : GAO 26 "I do not know how many gneerations we can count on till the Lord returns" grens are plot to delay energy development and "weaken Americ" , a "left-wing cult which seeks to bring down the type of gov't i believe in" 26

Gorsch cut budget 30% so no new laws or enforcement; killed Superfund at start, beame a welfare pgm of corp lawyers 26 appt lobbyist to run depts CoS timber lawyer, enforecenmt chief ex-exxon

by 81 1.1 mil signatures on pet to get rid of watt; after out, 25 counts felony, perjury, cocealment and obstr of justice. Gorsuch and 23 others forced to resign, swethear deal w/ coors (her #2 Rita :aVelle jaied perj and obstr. 26

blow to sagebrush be regrouped at aug '88 nugget hotel reno and rename Wise Use"arnold; our goal is to destrroy, to erradicate the env move. we want you to be able to exploit the env for pvy gain, absolutely" p 27 lobbyists guided grassroots activists thru signals" some real but mostly greewash , a 1/2 billion$/yr? industry 27. Cit for the Env has no cits (against clean air act etc) Env Conservation Org, Evergreen fdn, Cits for Sensible Control of Acid Rain 27

hate radio bob grant

Wise Use plus Xian Moonie (arnold head of Wa State Am Freedon Coalition (moonie pol arm) 28 also Pat Rob CC, 1991 cNew Wolrd Order best seller , fed gov alien trying to wreck family and take guns. on gren see mike Lind NY rev bks 2/2/95 env evil pagan preists; opened door of militia, racist and other fringe to be anti green (?) r reed his #2, gave seminars to corps on how electronic and grassroots to ctr green; ant-gr staple of C B network 29 ind $ behind Xian 1st x, so its pols got elected 29 by 94 got most ~ eco congress in hist, wise use helped gingrich revo (Contr w/ A, ~ grn) assist by consigiore sp delay, w/ "biblical worldview" 30 TD: DDT as safe as aspirin", ~ESA; colunbine b/c teach evol

1/95 TD invites 350 lobbyists to dismantle regs 30 learned from watt disaster PR, so plant tree foto op and used free mkt rhet to hide; Luntz did PR (wrote Cont for Am) snuck riders on key bills, "supermandate" regulatory reform, ~ unfunded mandates etc but PIRG etc caught them, 1 mil signatures, so mod gop opposed; after gov't shutdown newt lost public support. TD: we lost debate on envir"

b2 pick DC ensured Wise Use backing. go to guy for wise use and oil in 80's; aranged /led 1st veto of wilderness bill in hist under RR, big win psychol. 1992 to 2000 "dist advisor" to Ctr for Def of Free Ent (WU) arnold exec VP. DC also on bd of Nat'l Legal Ctr for Publix Intrerst, WU CTT 31

inaug day, andy card froze all clinton pending regs

wu #1 Norton, 2 griles (mining lobby), mark rey (timber lobby); doj asst ag for env and nat res WU leadr Sansonetti p 32

EPA fisher and horinko lobby.consult to Koch; Holmstead (lobbyist and WU cfront gp)

Connaughton

quick permits waivers, cut$ for implement; dropped cases ~ oil and coal; reinterpret law (eg used farmed salmon to remove from ES list so logging co did not have to protect wild ! 33

epa 3 rules, 2 ct ordered and one a rollback (vs 30 BC and 21 b1 33

9/23 tried to weaken #1 green law NEPA, which req public input June 2003 USForst S tried to exclude EIS and hearings. Made it tough to get FOIA info 33 210 enforcement job wants cut, violation notices down 58%, fines 28% 34

2001 told epa no action on fac farms w/o top ok; eap a "country club for corp poluters' 34

dropped cases ~ oil and coal Koch 97 felony counts on Koch, knowlingly dumped 90 tons benzen in Corpus Cristi Tx and hid from regulators; cd be 352 M fines, but dropped to 9 counts and 20 mil$ 34-5 dropped invst of coal, army corp req ok from top for wetlands citations 34

12/27/2001. 86 bill to prevnt gov contract for co's w/ repeated safety and eco vio (could mean up to 138B$) 35 BUT John Ashcroft used sailor mongering act ~ Greenpeace for 1st x in 132 yrs (fines and probation 5 yrs) fed judge threw out (!?)

JD gave ron arnold 325K to study eco-terror, JA sasys #1 terror threat krugman jn 22 nyt 2004

norton in charge of 450 m acres land, 3 bill acres coastal waterways; year after law school grad, MSLN under Watt; grazing limits, oil offshore and in wilderness and wildlif refuges 36 9funders Burlington N, exxon, Indep Petrol ssoc and rocky mtn oil and gas assoc 37. in 84 after 2 yrs at Hpoover, got into dept of agric, then int, then RR CEQ. at Pacific Res Inst ofr Public Pol, her takings rule would end enforcement. did not win senate seat v37 advsor to TASSC, Defnders of prop Rights WU, PERC, founded Council for Rep for Env protection (Newt on bd) $ from Coors, arco, am forest and paper assoc, chem mfg assoc 37

at WU mtg, trashed wheelchair ramps, smog cjeck, Fair labor St'd act, rid schools of asbestos and Vio ~ Women Act 38

Griles ass't Cason vJmes E made #2 b/c no congr approval needed (ex #2 to Watt, swetheart dals , strip mining in parks; dep soliciter Wm G Myers, dir of WU front for cattelmen. H VCraig Hanson (ex gov Sison F&G, ~ ESA

Mining lobby Rececca Watson asst sec of land and Min magmt . WU bennet Raley assty sec water and Sci (~ 1994 CW actreauthor)

Lynn Scarlett ex pres Reason Fdn (~ curbside rcycle and food labels) 39

Jeff D Jarrett dor office of surface mining reclam and enfoprce ex coal exec 39 (had been inveast by that org for obstr of j in 90's)

Norton approved biggest pit mine near Az's Gila mtns saying 3,360 cu mine no impact. reverse limits on mining waste; opened oil in AK and utah; redraw monument lines for oil; 1st admin since ESA to list zero ( tired to make grey wiolves easier to ki;ll. petitoned UN to remove yellowstone as world heritage site 41

demands obedience and fired moved or demotes longterm employees 41

Sierra Framework 10 yrs in making; bs admin asked gocv arnold to drop, refused unless sci say change; rove said ok, but FServ 3x cut vs plan; fantic calls never ret. 43 watt said in 2001 that b2 was doing what he wanted to 44.

ch3

b2 said gw needed to be taken serioisly in 2nd debate, tho ~kyoto; 3 mos into office 180 on pledge (record?) 45

in McC-Liberman Climate Stew act JC held phtos of artic sea melt 46

MIL: rep commissed by Andrew Marshall, fr of SW and emince gris on strategy says disater if climate shifts over a couple decades, as 1`2k yrs ago. 47 N Eur freeze b/c of gulf stream, famine, drought refugees "elevated beyond sci debate to US nat'l sec concern " cf Schwartz and Randall Encri Def oct 2003 ems.org

Rio climate treaty signed by b1 1992and ratified; co2 not covered in CA act b/c of lobby, but the law allows reg of all, not just lised ones (eg pb, sulpfur etc not listed but acted on

CTW sold as green, but NJ gov rec'd not good; NJ open for biz, but approved 99-0 (looked good comp to WU) cf Ron Suskind Price of Loyalty. wanted to repair rep on GW, which she saw as real; triest mtg pre kyoto talk; talked w. O'N, good on gw at alcoa; cd not get mtg w/ b2, but rice and and card ok on co2 reg. after crossfire, 4 sen Hagel, pat roberts, idso, larry craig WU, helms sent ltr (may have been propted/writtn by DC; b2 met but held up ltr in reply. kyoto wd hurt us economy

"clean kill" --> "wind dummy" (c powell) CTW tried to recover w/ arsenic, which blew up (jeffords in part b/c of defected to dems, tilting power (epa wrong on danger by 10x 911 ended issue 55-6

ch 4 Office of Info and Reg Affairs under OMB all powerful; job is to report on fiscal impact of legis; John Graham head(fdr Harvard Ctr of Risk Analysis WU hack, Mercatus Ctr ASSC, AEI; An Council on Sci and Health (tobacco tactics)"At Xmas, let us be thankful for pesticides and safe food"; can kibosh law 6-7 yrs in making w/ public input; est 1980

dark soothsayer" of cost -benefit analysis, which is easy to manip, esp w/ green (eg massive fish kill measured by price of fillet of one of the few edible ones 60-1 got start w/ air bag study in 80's, got adjunct gig at harvard, then sold its rep, which got more funding which got him tenure (dean pushed for , several signed ltr ~) HCRA $ from monsanto, dupoint, ge, union carbide, dow, boise cas, api, am chem council 62-3 bd has dupont, exxon ecol lawyer, NAM, eastman cghem, Am elec Pwr. JG worked for PM, on 2ndhand smoke (launder $ thru kraft subsid, then worked w/ them on pesti in food 64). then his air bag report reviwed, not 400k$ for each year of life saved by 61K$. 1996 study said 60K lives could be savbed by change regs and resource alloc "statistical murdr' picked up by rwi. during confirmation, 1st peer rev: 79 of the rules never enacted (only 11 of 90 had een); also "grossly understanted the value of hu life' p65 2 ltrs, 11 ppl from harvard ~; rendered opinon on many complex issues, tho no hard sci degreee 66 routinely made deceptive comments to media; he has solcitied $ from indiusties affected by his work w/o saying he did 67 (only got 37 no vties , 2nd to JA. GAO found he hobbled health and eco rules incl epa 67 w/ Am Chem C, Mercatus and API hit list of regs, 23 vpresented to Congr (incl arsenic, snowmoblies in parks, roadless aras, coal plants 68

fac farms: pigs 10x ppl waste

pfiesteria piscicida cell from hell, lesions and brain damage to ppl too! 70

leopld ctr for family farm atteneded rfk2 talk on water, got funing cut 85%

small farmers build hog house to spc, own only the shit; Missouri and Illin illegal to foto fac farml 13 states veggie libel lws 71

pork WU from goon followed rfk2, thretened

Am Farm Bur lobby front

Fed judge said animal fac needed water permit like any other fac; JG called mtg w/ ind and Mercatus bd member was partn in McGuire Woods LLP, in the suit. Merc wrote paln, sent to epa ok'd by ex Farm Bur Adam Sharp --> build hog house to spc, own only the shit; they make almost no $, so no one to sue when pollute w. shit; write own shit mgmyt plan w/ no public; even weak rules weakend more, shit relgated to states; only tool for small fartmers ~ int' corp gone 74 ~TJ vision.

Ch 5 Sci Fiction

1st supprtess since Inquisition

Luntz infamous memo 2003 says envrio is gop weakness: doubt, recruit experts. ind always had hacks, but gop got tem in the gov 77 echo "more study" mantra, then cut $ to do it 77 b2 propsed budget double digit cuts in epa, usgs, dept agr, energy's Office of Sci etc 77 "biostitutes"

ctw hubby interests in Citigp, which owns Traveler's (also Port Authoprity) so incentive to downgrade risk of air 79 moved robt martin omsbudsman (dep of labor rules no cause), cancelled the position, on weekend sent agents to grab files and padlock office. Kaufman Resigned. air said ok before all test results in. IG said risk downplayed, raw data blocked 80-1 3x safe level asbstos Connaughton leaned on Thernstrom (commun dir, now works for Norton) CEQ screamed at epa's Kreisher, T 81 ground zero levels were record 81. admon gagged epa on perc, mercury toxicologist quits 83

GW reports altered, dismissed or hid 12 in 10 yrs 84: N Ac Sci, noaa, nasa and 2002 rept by combined agencies 84.

9/2002 epa air roport left out usual secvtion on gw; same with june 2003; july 2003 epa sci leaked report that gw could be dealt w/ at small cost. b2 in response spent 100m for 10 yr study to prove gw is natural 84

Princeton Oppenheimer said pres does not believe in evol, what kind of sci would convince him on gw 85

epa report said fracking (Haliburton #1) wd exceed benzene, data revised so not 85 (waxman q never answered) 85

Norton said drill no harm caribou; she altered sci; 17 major changes; she attributed them to typos 86

win/spr 2002 norton and rove pressured nat'l martine Fisheries to alyter salmon on klamath; lack of water led to 33K sdalmon dead, biggest kill in West 86 biologist resigned

norton ordered rewrite on artic wildlife b/c of drill; snowmobiles (fed judge reprimanded)

epa sci govt reprisals for dioxin sludge fertilizer 87 dept of agr superbugs from hog farms ordered not to pub;ish or talk; resigned.

CDC replaced health advis panel w/ industry reps incl VP of Heritage , denounced by 10 sci on Sci Jrnl apr 12 2002 p89 "regulatory paralysis appears to be the goal here"

Dr kim thonpson HCRA picked for cdc

Gov Acct Pjt on whistleblowers says gag sci unprecedented (goldwater gop guy) p 90

2003 PEER found widespread demoralization of sci, feared reprisal in energy states Co ut, mon, dakotas

OMB found 420K jobs outsourced to industry; risk of not being able to analyze risks 91

atratzine #1 in US, tho provblems found in 80's; frog deform at 1/30th eap level; lawsuit firced gov to look into. Gov hired Syngenta, a mfger 92

July 2003 epa regional office approved study by developer funded study that wetlands put out pollutants, then used to justify replacve wetlands w golf courses etc 92-3 biologist quit "bushwacked" 93

9/2003 Graham grabbed authority to review all, as oppsed to usual for external review 93 opposed by NAS, Nat Assoc frro Adv of sci, fed am sci, regulators going all the way o nixon 94 OIRA became law??

UCS rep 2/2004 60 sci, 20 nobels, scope and scale ... of manip, suppression, and misrep of sci by bush admin unprecedented 95

Ch 6 blueprint for plunder

energy co 48.3m to b2 and gop 2000, 58m since inaug 96 31 of 48 trans team energy ties; cab and staff 4 cab sec, 6 powerful WH and 20 high level apptees

rove owned 250K enron stock early 2001 while energy pol made; also BP, amoco, royal dutch shell 97 but involved in all decisons (scoter sold a bunch early 2001 dept comm ceo of cabot chem; undersec chief econ for exxon

secret taks force; Nat Energy Pol Dev gp right after inaug 97 but Fed Advisory Comm Act says any mtgs of pvt and public be disclosed, so official members all gov as end-run 98 DC #2 spenser abrams (2000 failed relect sen after one term MI 700K from car industry) killed fuel effic; Joe Allbaugh dir F Energy Reg Comiss (tx "iron triangle) wife lobby for reliant, entergy and txu); also Don evans tx, norton (1/3 sen camp energy co's), amd Paul O'Neill SIC vowed to sell alcoa stock but stalled till after rep out, stock went up 30% 99 thot he cd have good impact, but relaized not goal 101

may 17 01 rep released --> energy bill ; exxon record profits, 2x prev yr 99

for 1st x, GAO sued for info, redently appt judge denied, no appeal , but Sierra C and Jud watch won. scotus delayed till after election; scalia had gone to oil co duck hunt junket refused to recuse, tho msny demands 100 docs heavy redeacted, and nothing from CD mtgs 100

task force got input from API, Am Gas assoc, nat mining assoc and edison 101 400 co's combined in Alliance for Energy and ec growth to lobby.

B2 campaigh workers became lobbyists; mtgs w/ task force; am gas at least 8 480 K cantrib 1999-02 etc, api, exelon, westinghouse, enron 10x, 6 w DC (who refused to cap CA energy prices) 103 RELIANT engineered CA scam 103 Westar exec email said $ to delay PAC was proce for "seat at table" of the task force 103. DC says just b/c somoen gave $ to camp does not mean shd not have "express views " to gov 103

suskind bk says DC orchestrated idea of energy crisis, permitted no discuss and said pres wd not read anyone's reports 104 day before rep released, foto op w/ green energy

chevron big input, api lang on exec order verbatim 104-5

19 mtgs/contacts w/ nuke ind over 1/2 mil contrib

So Co 1.6 m 99-02 met 7x, hired haley barbour and current rnc Marc Racicot SIC to lobby esp on co2, NSR rule key, req gpa plants to intall control when upgrade or expand 106 prosecuted by BC (8 of 51); dpet Just forced to drop suits EPA cheif enforcement officer quit 106 "if yo have a good lobbyist, you can just buy your way out of trouble" 106 joined by edison's Tom Kuhn, b pioneer college roomate edison 600k to gop 99-02 and its mmbers almost 20 mil since 98 106

rep rec'd exempt old power plants from CAA; barbour raisedf 250K at may 21 gala, 150k from So co.107

Haliburton gave 1 mil gop 97-02, and all soft money 1/2 mil to gop ; incentive to polute added to rep.bill, tho O'N says does not cost more to do right. conservation a private virtue, noy basis of pub;lic poliocy DC TO speech mo before rep released 107 but 1 mpg increase = ANWR 2.6 = iraq and kuwait import, 8 all of ME 108 JC cafge up 7.5, shorage --> glut 108, 86 rolled by RR; lovens says if not, we need no persian gulf oil after 86; no need for wars; since 1990 80 mil car $ , cancelled tax decd for gren cars, less effic st'ds 100K tax break hummers etc. result worst effic in 20 yrs 109 tax cuts to offset energy prices [basically another subsidy !?] bill ~ Daschle but end-run, by june 02 3/4 of 105 recs in place

oct 01 weakend regs on mining and air pollut

power plants kill a Trillion fish/yr 111

took pwer from states to limit offshore drill, b2 resfued to suppoert Superfund (hid as reform) but 1:4 Us ppl live near one 112 10c bbl cheap b/c excluded from liability under cost recovery 112 normally epa can clean site then charge 3x to poluter, so big leverage ; w/o tax, no cleanup; oct 03 fund went bankrupt, so cost shifted to public.

ch 7 king coal

mtntop 400k acres wasteland biorich temp forests; cutrrent rate 1 mil more in a decade(size of delaware0 115 2,500 tons explisive in WV per day! 115

strip mine started in west in 40's to get shallow coal, but used in Appal to get dep, reduce workers, bust unions (120K wVa to 15 ) 116

coal mine and pwer plants 20mil$ 2000 and another 21 since. unprec acces to task force; peabody execs on trans team ; bill has 2b for r&d, 5 days later IPO got 60M more than predicted. wanted to build biggest pwr plant upwind of mamoth cave unesco site and biosphere res; 450K to gop in 3 mos, w Griles ok'd; pol appt w/ no sci bkgd overtuned air study.

top lobby Quin Shea declared kyoto dead 119 undo all epa ability to reg co2 in months

1972 buff ck coal slurry dam collapse lilled 120 ppl. 2000 Massey 300 m gallon, biggest disaster in East US; 60 posions, 100 mi of river ; of 650, 1/2 dangerous ; 122 study thwarted by admin: chao her9tage, hubby got 100K from masey. chao appt coal exec to head MSHA (#2 amax mine, dep ast amax and peabody. sludge study boss fired on inaug day ; 8 crim cts -->2 weakest, one tossed by admin jusge so 5600$ fine for billions in damage 123. 8 member team peress ti sign off, one w/ wife w cancer, Spadaro invstigator lured to DC for mtg, his office searched (frames pix of family) changed locks"Gestope'd me" 123 OSC invest whtleblower; demotred and reassigned

Jeff Holmstead EPA office of air and radiation, then pal got gig at Baker and Hostetler, So Co lobby 124 after gpa, hold#2 took job at Bracewell and Paterson, houston co lobby for So co on NSR . Sen Edwards called for holm resig supress sci and lying 125. Oct 03 GAO rep said he's lied that elim NSR wd not affect ongpoing invest and proec of corps that broke rules incl So co. but he had talked to epa about it (3 quit)

Mike Leavitt of Ut repl CTW, 1st act waken merc rgs fom coal (40% or airborne merc) most cd be elim for 1% of plant rev. lev and Holm scrapped BC reforms; much reform" came from Latham and Watkins law firm (holm fmr co) 128

1/04 conf folowed gop fundraiser at Az Biltomore; solicited changes to ESA, Nat Env Pol Act, CAA, access to publ land, tort reform organized by coal lobby/DC task force spkesman Jim Sims 129 connaught and griles there

GRILES 1970-81 pernitted Va; Buff Ck --> SMCRA, ~, lost 9-0 scotus, but watt appt him to Office of Surface Mining he's repoertdly vowed to "turn out the lights" 130 cut staff 1/3, morale down " we tore the agency to hell" Wa Post 130 Dept int RR in 85, got rec'd for oil and gas leases ofshore 82K acres for 2.50 ea (17k acres sold for 42.5K then flipped for 37 m 131. trtied to open ANWR CA and Fla coast, hid risks. 89-95 sr vp United Caol ,supervised one of biggest mtntop, 95 formed lobby shop for 40 co's, merged with Nat Env Strats (barbour) : NMAssoc, Dominon, EEI, shell, texcaco arch coal etc etc 131 2001 sold client list to NES partner Himmelstein for 1.1 mil in 4 payments so in essence on payroll (dept of Int refused req for info ;sen made him agree not to meet w/ former clients, but met chevron while appt pending (paid 46mil not to drill off fla coast ?! (helped jeb?) Griles press Fisher at epa to overrule pipeline study, coal-bed mehane, met w/ nat'l mining assic to lax mtntop; himmel gave party w/ griles and bunch of b of int ppl who reg mining 134 , liberman demanded ehtic invest: dept of int Insp Genl said he "did not take ethics seriously" "train wreak waiting to happen" ; he paid $180. to himmel for dinner. changed stories several times on shell and chevron; rep went to Norton, who closed case.

Griles at least 30 WH mtgs, B2 2 w/ rove; met w/ indistry 37x on Clear Skies, New Src Rev and CAA rollback, tho Int has no jurisdiction 136 (but he had lobbied on air for 13 co's)

Since 1975 "fill" meant no waste, but Army corps allowed mtntop even tho no authpority to 137 Griles pused EPA on this, tho violates CWA (intent, nit explicit). Chf Judge Haden tossed, but rw 4th curcuit upheld change. Griles rewrote EIS, 8 mil $ worth of studiesd relgated to appendix; 80K ppl weighed in,but one day after comment period closed, stream buffer rule changed

ch 8

dascle held energy bill 18 mos till gop got both hpuses in 1/2003 Delay and energy comm chair Billy Tauzin passed, but know it cd not pass, so bait andswitched: passed dem bill then rewrote it w/o dems 145, just energy lobby ;released the bill Sat night, 3 dfays to review 1200 pages 147 damge env and add to deby (100B tax breaks McC: no lobbyist left behind" for Hootrers and Poluters. Halib tax brak to frack ; worst bill for envir in 25 yrs (back to newt Reg reform" More for oil, more ghg. ethaol subsid peeled off demos, incl daschle and harkin; DC and lobbists worked hard; even WSJ deplored pork for votes 149

House passed Domenici onmibus? bill [same as energy bill?], but sen filibuster. WSJ "cornucopia of special interst payoffs" 151 some gop sununu held out, big deby and MTBE outrage (delay, tauzin and barton)"Major Threat to Beter Earnings' etc shell jokes; used b/c lobby tho more $ than ethanol 155 cost to clean cd be 29-46 b, co try to dodge .

Ch 9 nat' sec

7 weeks after 911 NY Corzine propsed lesn dangerous chem inventory in stock and use less harmful when cost okpasse env and public wks comm 19-0. ACC lawyers James Conrad on trans team, fred webber ex pres Bush pio got 25 other chem co's to give $ 38m to gop 95-2002, another 30m lobbying 158; while fighting bill, another 1/3m PAC 159 bill called Stalineque, heritage said real "goal of a chemical-free world" CEI" radical env agenda" jihad 159 8 gop incl inhofe (chair) (8 got 750K since 95 160 ctw tried to do x b/c of pressure, but authority taken away by homeland. odd that Pitss Trib Rev reporter 2002 critical Carl Prine entered pants unchallenged [thus proving?]

Entergy gets 1m/day from Indian Pt (NYC within 50 mi, evac plan a joke NRC did not cite for sleeping guards b/c not same one within 6 mos) entergy big funder of NEI, big donor lobby

ch 10 what lib media

63 gaylord nelson made xcross cttry trip w/ jfk on enviro, but pres asked about defense and power politics; inspired Earth day. crisis predicted now happeneding: ashtma, fish pooison, agw, end species at same rate as dinos 175

fed radio act 1927 "public interst' kids and community pgm, divrse ownership; in 60;s FCC used Fair Doctr to make cigs co incl surgeon warning in ads; car co ads hadto be balanced by those promong fuel effec!?) Moyers; clear intent was to keep commerical values from overwhelming demoicratic values" so fiicial view (corp or gov) would not be the only view of rality 176-7

88 RR 86 FDoct as favor to studio donors. NY sttion that aired 9 pro nuke ads rfused = time; 3 FCC appts who ran FCC said b/c of cable, FD obsolete. chair Mark Fowler said tv "just another appliance--it's a toaster with pictures" 177. Congress tried to reinstate, but vetoed.

Clear Channel SIC 1995 40 radio stations now 1200, 11%. News corp #1 in world, one of 7 in us own or control all 2k tv, 11k radio, 1100 paprrsand mag [now?]; stations no longer run by city, news no longr by jrnlists 178. few or none reporters at statehouse; none at B if Int.

Ailes says no eco news b/c not fast-breaking

GE owns nbc, world's #1 polluter w/ 86n superfind sites (westinghouse cbs 39 biggest maker of nuke plants and 3rd in weapns 180

fox fla jane akre and steve wilson 9 mos 83 drafts on bgh; fired, sued 425K damges whistleblow overtined b/c rule created by judges not legis/ 182 5 networks amicus briefs, makes it ok to lie; jeb judge will rule? on whether reports must pay 1.7m in legal fees!? 182

cbs pulled RR docudrama . msnbc fired donohue for michael savage

Disney 86's Fahr 9/11 rfk2 got grodin fired too. Bill o interv rfk, but not live; nbc bumped for jackson

last vestige of free media is ownership, but b2 changed. clear ch and cumulus (dixie chicks) Michael Powell gave waivers to overages. corp get up to 45% of nation viewers and can have paper, tv and radio in same city 187

rules done in secrt w/ only 1 pub;ic mtg led to protest (2.4 mil ltrs) . sen votd to halt, house about to but delay and lobbyists blocked vite; fed ct rejected b/c of lack of "reasoned analysis"

ch 11

corps don't want free mkt but to use govt to quash compet. biggest subsid go to extractive indust. subsid make millionaires who fund pols. abe: confed in front and bankers behind me and fear them most

dict def of fascism fits now; Muss called it corptaism

Goering said all you have to do is say attack, denounce peacemakers as unpatriotic; works anywhere 194

hist alex carey; 3 c20 trends; growth demic, corp pwr and corp propatanda as a means of protecting corp pwr ~ democ" 195

John Winthrop City on Hill cooperative

Lincoln Steffens 1904 The Shame of the Cities all problems rootd in self-interested ologarchy 198

===

Hysterics at the right wing think tanks and their acolytes at The Washington Times, talk radio and the blogosphere, are foaming in apoplexy because I supposedly suggested that “all climate deniers should be jailed.” Last week, that canard leapt from the wingnut echo chamber into New York magazine, which reported, under Jonathan Chait’s by-line, that “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.shares the opinion that climate denial should be criminalized.” Chait was quoting the National Review’s Kevin Williamson who made that outlandish claim at one of Heritage Foundation’s annual “Conference for Kooks.” Of course I never said that. I support the First Amendment which makes room for any citizen to, even knowingly, spew far more vile lies without legal consequence.

In 1998, New York State’s Republican Attorney General, Dennis Vacco successfully invoked the “corporate death penalty” to revoke the charters of two non-profit tax-exempt tobacco industry front groups, The Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR). The two groups Vacco annulled were creatures of a decade long campaign funded principally by tobacco giant, Brown & Williamson to avoid costly health regulations that would diminish the profit margins of an industry that was killing one out of five of its customers. “Doubt is our Product,” explained Brown & Williamson’s notorious 1969 memo outlining the reptilian communications strategy that hatched its front groups.

Just as Big Tobacco funded the now moribund CTR and the Tobacco Institute to systematically deceive the public about the perils of cigarettes, the carbon cronies, with far larger profits at stake, have funded an army of front groups to persuade the public that global warming is a hoax.

For more than a decade, petroleum industry behemoths lead by Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, have waged a successful multi-million dollar propaganda blitz to mislead the public about global warming using the same techniques honed by Big Tobacco in its campaign to hoodwink the public about smoking.

In their efforts to impede state, national and international efforts to protect humans from the destructive climate chaos, both companies have engaged in massive spending sprees purchasing phony “junk” science devised to undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming. Between 1997 and 2013, ExxonMobil, pumped more than $29.9 million into an elaborate network of more than 75 front groups to manufacture skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe. At the same time, Koch Industries has piped at least $67,042,064 to more than 50 groups that play central roles in the Koch-funded offensive against climate science.

Two decades after Brown & Williamson’s notorious “Doubt is our Product” memo, the oil industry launched its own anti-science juggernaut replicating Big Tobacco’s and utilizing many of the same corrupt scientists and PR firms. Two secret memos dictated the blueprint for Big Carbon’s anti-science offensive. The American Petroleum Institute (API)—lobbyist for ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips—was the spear tip of a multi-million dollar campaign to confound American citizens about climate science by manipulating the media. On April 3, 1998, API laid out its “Global Climate Science Communications action plan,” the detailed blueprint of “tactics and strategies” for deceiving the American people and press by sewing doubts about climate science. The API team would create front groups and “educate” editorial boards and corporate CEOs to challenge “prevailing scientific wisdom.” Under “recruiting and training,” API outlines its plan for tapping neophyte—“read malleable”—scientists and tame journalists (“e.g. John Stossel,” the memo suggests) to bamboozle the public. “Victory will be achieved,” API promises, “when average citizens and the media recognize uncertainties in climate science;” recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the “conventional wisdom.”

Four years later in 2002, conservative pollster Frank Luntz in an influential memo to President George Bush and oil patch lawmakers, applauded the industry for the success of the API campaign. “Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community.” Nevertheless, he warned Big Carbon’s indentured servants on Capitol Hill “the science [is closing against us] but is not yet closed.” He advised, “therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”... 10/14

===

see links below

Crimes Against Nature

(and each and every human by extrapolation)

"The George W. Bush administration is plagued by more than a dysfunctional management style. It has the arrogance to create a one-party state that elevates politics over governance. It has fostered a government-hating radical ideology that has seen people with contempt for government acting contemptibly in government roles." - Charles Berezin

"The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights." -Sir William Blackstone

"Each time the message was this: ‘Turn from the evil road you are traveling and from the evil things you are doing.'" - Jeremiah 25:5

Throughout Western history the first acts of tyrants has been attempts to control the commons which include the air we breath and the water we drink.

Ancient Rome had the Code of Justinian which guaranteed to all citizens the use of the public commons

which included air, water, wandering animals, fisheries, wetlands and aquifers.

During the thirteenth century it was a capital offense to burn coal in London.

It has never been legal in any society or culture to pollute or destroy

the common environment upon which all humanity depends for sustenance.

When James Watt took over the Department of the Interior he began selling off America's resources, public lands, water and mineral rights. During a Senate hearing James Watt, a ‘dominion theologist', declared that he was giving away America's heritage because ‘I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.'

Since the beginning of the environmental movement corporate industrialists have established 'foundations', better known as 'think tanks', to counter the reach of environmental law.

The list of industry sponsored pollution and junk science promoters, entities described as "think tanks", include the Heritage Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Marshall Institute, the Mercatus Center, Citizens for a Sound economy, the Environmental Conservation Organization, the Evergreen Foundation, Citizens for the Sensible Control of Acid Rain, Mountain States Legal Foundation, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition and the Sagebrush Rebels. (Later reincarnations listed above.)

"American Enterprise Institute is heavily funded by corporate philanthropy." - Christopher Levenick, former AEI fellow

Ronald Reagan claimed to be a Sagebrush Rebel.

The purpose of industry sponsored think tanks is to run interference for their corporate industrialist funders and act as a counter weight to public interest groups shining a light on the antisocial activity of the destruction of the commons by corporate industrialists.

In August 1988 the Sagebrush Rebels became Wise Use and founder Ron Arnold stated, "It is our goal to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want you to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely!"

The Christian Broadcasting Network of Pat Robertson supported Wise Use making anti-environmentalism one of it's main themes.

Wise Use, basically a front group for the resource extraction industry, propelled Newt Gingrich to the Speaker's chair.

Wise Use spun off the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Defenders of Property Rights, Public Lands Council, Property and Environment Research Center and National Legal Center for the Public Interest.

Wise Use help install George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House. George W. Bush installed Wise Use radical Gail Norton and Wise Use leader Thomas Sansonetti. Other Wise Use followers took control of every single federal agency that dealt with the environment. Existing environmental laws were no longer enforced. Waivers and exemptions to corporatist polluters and campaign contributors is the standard.

George W. Bush marketed Gail Norton as a lifelong conservationist even though Gail Norton advocated an end to the enforcement of environmental regulations while working for the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in 1989 (liar!). Gail Norton stated, in regard to the end of the enforcement of environmental regulation, "I view that as something positive."

In a 1996 speech Gail Norton listed federal incursions into the private domain as atrocities. These included American with Disabilities Act requirements for wheelchair ramps, Environmental Protection Agency requirements to remove asbestos from schools and the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Gail Norton has suggested that no National Park, National Monument or National Forest land should be exempt from mineral extraction, oil extraction, and timber extraction. If rare and endangered species are present it is decreed they do not exist. No endangered plant or animal = no protection problems!

"Gail Norton's five-year tenure as Interior secretary has irreparably damaged our country. Under her leadership employees in the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service have been demoralized into leaving their positions - replaced by people who don't mind giving away our public lands to the energy and timber industries. Our national parks are in their worst shape ever. When Gail Norton next visits her cherished Western mountains. She will find the scenery altered; it now includes drilling rigs, clear-cutting and new roads churned by off-road vehicles. Gail Norton's oil and gas friends will probably take good care of her; they owe her big time." - Crista Worthy

Wise Use ideologues have tried to con-vince us that American government and its laws are illegitimate and that the illegitimacy makes it permissible for them to violate laws. Wise Use ideologues subvert the law, corrupt American democracy, distort science and deceive the very people they have been appointed to serve - Americans.

"The Environmental Protection Agency is no longer a public health agency. With the George W. Bush administration, whether or not environmental laws are enforced depends on who you know." - former chief enforcement officer of the Environmental Protection Agency Eric Shaeffer

"The George W. Bush administration routinely mismanages scientific information through distortion and omission whenever scientific truth is inconvenient to its industrial allies. It's hard to decide what is more demoralizing about the administration's politicization of the scientific process - its disdain for professional scientists working for American government or its willingness to deceive the American public." - Roger G. Kennedy, former director of the National Park Service.

"The current George W. Bush administration has taken intolerance of science dissent to a new orbit. The repression against internationally renowned professionals and experts in their fields just for exercising the scientific method objectively is unprecedented." - Tom Devine, a Goldwater Republican who monitors the treatment of federal whistleblowers for the nonpartisan Government Accountability Project.

Science, like theology, reveals transcendent truths about a changing Earth. The best scientists are moral individuals who seek the truth. Corruption of the process of seeking the truth undermines not just democracy but civilization itself.

John Graham, a Wise Use sycophant, founded the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis in 1989 and started the junk-science of cost-benefit analysis which claims to be able to compare the monetary cost of the implementation of new laws against that laws benefit to the social culture. In John Graham analysis' if a fish has no commercial value and 10 million fish die because of toxic pollution the economic cost is zero, as they have no commercial value.

{"It's easier to kill a number than an individual, whether we're talking about so many tons of fish,

so many board feet of timber, or so many boxcars of untermenschen." - Derrick Jensen}

John Graham's cost-benefit analysis in conjunction with a corporatist interpretation of Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Economics ideology is spiritually corrupt because both neglect to take into account the effects produced on the lives of the citizens of the civilization they pretend to serve!

In John Graham's cost-benefit analysis it does not matter if the value of the life that is being analyzed is fish or human. People are going to die anyhow. Baby boomer retirees have given all they can give to the economic system and as such in any cost-benefit analysis it is economically better for society if these used up hulks just die as they are no longer producing for the system. (Perhaps if industry developed many different types of chemicals that ultimately cause premature death Social Security costs would fall. Oh wait they already do - in the food - trans fat, high fructose corn syrup and chemicals, like the artificial butter flavoring, diacetyl and melamine - and in the air, earth and water - fluoride, perfluorooctanoic acid, methyl tert-butyl ether, bisphenol A, phthalates, pyrethroids, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, polytetrafluoroethylene, perchlorate, mercury, trichloroethylene, polychlorinated biphenyls, lead, asbestos and organophosphates.

"At the shallowest level cost-benefit analysis' is a cheap deception of the general public. At its worst this approach represents a serious erosion in the way a democracy deals with science. You create high-sounding credentials and talk in tones that appear scientifically sensible, while all the time you are just fronting for a political agenda. If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge, and in a search for the truth the George W. Bush White House is an absolute disaster." - Princeton University scientist Michael Oppenheimer

"Environmentalists do not view economics as the enemy because cost-benefit analysis is thoroughly unromantic; economics view the environment as invisible because their cost-benefit analysis is fatally flawed. A full cost accounting of industrial practices reveals how much the natural services of ecosystems threatened or destroyed by development and industrial pollution are actually worth in addition to the real value of natural resources consumed and wasted. Environmentalists are simply not in thrall to the church of neo-liberal economics and the priests of predatory corporatism, who are spending our principal and deferring environmental debt like there's no tomorrow."- Andrew Christie

John Graham was appointed by George W. Bush to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in 2001.

John Graham's central role is undermining environmental protection through ‘research' papers based on cost-benefit analysis. John Graham has blocked every rule change that protects the environment including two dozen proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Rules John Graham has fought to have rescinded include reduced arsenic levels in drinking water, reduced pollution from coal burning plants and regulation of fecal waste from industrial factory farms.

{Cost-benefit analysis = only 50 humans out of a thousand will die prematurely from cancer over the next five years and the cost to save the 200,000 thousand or so people that will die prematurely would require entire industry upgrades costing 200 billion dollars or a million per individual saved from premature death and is therefore not economically feasible. Since American aristocracy can and does chose to live far from toxic polluters their chance of dying from cancer due to toxins approaches zero. Must be nice!}

"Factory farmed animals such as cattle, pigs and chickens, live in unnatural and cruel conditions, which do not allow them to live the way nature intended. Factory farmers treat them as commodities rather than living, breathing, sentient beings that feel pain and suffer, just as we do. It's time to make changes, not just because of the harm to our health and environment but because having respect for all beings will help create a more humane world." - Valerie Belt

Wise Use ideology has engineered the passage of laws in Missouri and Iowa making it a crime to photograph industrial factory farm animals!

{The 2009 swine flu pandemic started at a Smithfield Foods - the world's largest pork packer and hog producer - massive hog-raising operation in Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz. A Smithfield subsidiary, Granjas Carrol, raises 950,000 hogs per year. Residents of Perote believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area which polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies and in turn led to the disease outbreak.

A municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the industrial pig farms. According to residents the organic and fecal waste produced by Granjas Carrol isn't adequately treated. Swarms of flies hovering around waste lagoons transfer respiratory ailments.

Mexican health agency Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social has acknowledged that the original carrier for the flu could be the "clouds of flies" that multiply in the Smithfield subsidiary's manure lagoons.

The increased use of antibiotics in animal production has gone hand-in-hand with the development of factory farms - industrial-style livestock operations. Thousands of animals are crammed into the unhygienic, crowded quarters of a typical industrial-style livestock operation, and antibiotics are dispensed constantly through the animals' feed.

Twenty-five million pounds of antibiotics are fed to livestock in the United States annually - eight times more than the amount used as human medicine. Six of the 17 classes of antibiotics used to promote growth in animals are also used to treat diseases in humans. A Harvard University study showed that antibiotic-resistant genes found in bacteria infecting humans were identical to some of the same bacteria infecting animals.

The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production recommended: "Ban the non-therapeutic use of antimicrobials in food animal production to reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance to medically important antibiotics and other microbials."

In 1998 in the nation's largest pig farm, a North Carolina factory farm, an aggressive H3N2 virus of a never-before-described triple hybrid of three viruses - a human virus, a pig virus and a bird virus - was discovered.

"Recently evolving intensive farming practice of raising pigs and poultry in adjacent sheds is unsound. Within the swine population, we now have a mammalian-adapted virus that is extremely promiscuous." - Dr. Robert Webster, world's leading flu virus evolution expert

"If you wanted to create global pandemics, you'd build as many of these factory farms as possible. That's why the development of swine flu isn't a surprise to those in the public health community. In 2003, the American Public Health Association - the oldest and largest in world - called for a moratorium of factory farming because they saw something like this would happen. It may take something as serious as a pandemic to make us realize the real cost of factory farming." - Dr. Michael Greger

Industrial farming has also been labeled as CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations).

"Adrian Gibbs, 75, who collaborated on research that led to the development of Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu drug, said in an interview that he intends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus's origins by analyzing its genetic blueprint." - Jason Gale and Simeon Bennett}

Thirteen states have laws making it illegal to criticize produce!

Strip mining was just the start. In Appalachia they do not just strip the Earth for coal seams lying a few feet under the surface they take the entire tops off mountains and dump them in streams! A rule change allowed strip mining waste to be reclassified as ‘fill'. Between 1992 and 2002, twelve hundred miles (1200) of stream bed was 'filled'.

"Mountaintop removal is not only stupid, as the habitat of wildlife is destroyed in the name of profit and greed, it is immoral and shortsighted." - Gail Rubio

In 2004 a judge revoked 11 permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers under the Nationwide Permit 21 process which allowed 'streamlined permitting'.

In November 2005 'steamlined permitting' for mountaintop removal and streambed filling was reinstated on appeal.

The United States 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mountaintop removal and streambed filling complied with the Clean Water Act.

"I've been regulating mining since 1966 and this is the most lawless administration I have encountered. They have no regard for protecting miners or the people in mining communities. They are without scruples. The corruption and lawlessness goes all the way to the top." - Jack Spadaro, former superintendent of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (see canary in a coal mine)

The pillage of Appalachia by the coal industry is being made possible by officials who view public service as an opportunity for wholesale plunder.

In the flurry of rule changes that took place on George W. Bush's exit many environmental regulations were gutted. A change to the rule on mountaintop removal and stream filling was changed to circumvent government oversight. The rule gives coal corporations a legal right to do what, in the past, they could do only in exceptional circumstances, with special permission from the government.

"The Environmental Protection Agency's own scientists have concluded that dumping mining waste into streams devastates downstream water quality. By signing off on this rule, the agency has abdicated its responsibility." - Edward C. Hopkins

"This is unmistakably a fire sale of epic size for coal and the entire fossil fuel industry, with flagrant disregard for human health, the environment or the rule of law." - Vickie Patton

"With less than two months left in power the Bush administration is determined to cement its legacy as having the worst environmental record in history." - Joan M. Mulhern

"Federal law allows coal mine waste to be placed in streams." - Peter L. Mali, a spokesman for the Interior Department office that wrote the new regulation (I'll bet that water sure tastes good!)

"The George W. Bush administration and the coal industry have teamed up to wipe Appalachia off the map. This is Appalachia's last stand. When the mountaints go, so goes our culture and our people, and it will be the George W. Bush administration that pushes the stake through our heart." - Judy Bonds

On Friday the 13th of February 2009 the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., overturned a 2007 decision that supported environmentalists' claims that the Army Corps of Engineers had improperly issued permits for mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia. Now "clean coal" companies will be able to continue blasting the tops off mountains and dumping the leftover rock in valleys, burying streams forever. (Arsenic, cadmium and mercury sure tastes good in water!)

"The scientific evidence of the severe environmental and human impacts from mountaintop mining is strong and irrefutable." - Margaret Palmer

1 in 6 American women have mercury levels in their blood streams that carry levels of mercury dangerous enough to cause neurological damage in their unborn children.

"The science is certain -

from http://www.unique-design.net/library/word/ecology.html

Crimes Against Nature

(and each and every human by extrapolation)

"The George W. Bush administration is plagued by more than a dysfunctional management style. It has the arrogance to create a one-party state that elevates politics over governance. It has fostered a government-hating radical ideology that has seen people with contempt for government acting contemptibly in government roles." - Charles Berezin

"The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual'sprivaterights." -Sir William Blackstone

"Each time the message was this: ‘Turn from the evil road you are traveling and from the evil things you are doing.'" - Jeremiah 25:5

Throughout Western history the first acts of tyrants has been attempts to control the commons which include the air we breath and the water we drink.

Ancient Rome had the Code of Justinian which guaranteed to all citizens the use of the public commons

which included air, water, wandering animals, fisheries, wetlands and aquifers.

During the thirteenth century it was a capital offense to burn coal in London.

It has never been legal in any society or culture to pollute or destroy

the common environment upon which all humanity depends for sustenance.

When James Watt took over the Department of the Interior he began selling offAmerica's resources, public lands, water and mineral rights. During a Senate hearing James Watt, a ‘dominion theologist', declared that he was giving away America's heritage because ‘I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.'

Since the beginning of the environmental movement corporate industrialists have established 'foundations', better known as 'think tanks', to counter the reach of environmental law.

The list of industry sponsored pollution and junk science promoters, entities described as "think tanks", include the Heritage Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Marshall Institute, the Mercatus Center, Citizens for a Sound economy, the Environmental Conservation Organization, the Evergreen Foundation, Citizens for the Sensible Control of Acid Rain, Mountain States Legal Foundation, theAdvancement of Sound Science Coalition and the Sagebrush Rebels. (Later reincarnations listed above.)

"American Enterprise Institute is heavily funded by corporate philanthropy." - Christopher Levenick, former AEI fellow

Ronald Reagan claimed to be a Sagebrush Rebel.

In August 1988 theSagebrush Rebels became Wise Use and founder Ron Arnold stated, "It is our goal to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want you to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely!"

The Christian Broadcasting Network of Pat Robertson supported Wise Use making anti-environmentalism one of it's main themes.

Wise Use, basically a front group for the resource extraction industry, propelled Newt Gingrich to the Speaker's chair.

Wise Use spun off the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Defenders of Property Rights, Public Lands Council, Property and Environment Research Center and National Legal Center for the Public Interest.

*Wise Use help install George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House. George W. Bush installed Wise Use radical Gail Norton and Wise Use leader Thomas Sansonetti. Other Wise Use followers took control of every single federal agency that dealt with the environment. Existing environmental laws were no longer enforced. Waivers and exemptions to corporatist polluters and campaign contributors is the standard.

George W. Bush marketed Gail Norton as a lifelong conservationist even though Gail Norton advocated an end to the enforcement of environmental regulations while working for the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in 1989 (liar!). Gail Norton stated, in regard to the end of the enforcement of environmental regulation, "I view that as something positive."

"Gail Norton's five-year tenure as Interior secretary has irreparably damaged our country. Under her leadership employees in the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service have been demoralized into leaving their positions - replaced by people who don't mind giving away our public lands to the energy and timber industries. Our national parks are in their worst shape ever. When Gail Norton next visits her cherished Western mountains. She will find the scenery altered; it now includes drilling rigs, clear-cutting and new roads churned by off-road vehicles. Gail Norton's oil and gas friends will probably take good care of her; they owe her big time." - Crista Worthy

"TheGeorge W. Bush administration routinely mismanages scientific information through distortion and omission whenever scientific truth is inconvenient to its industrial allies. It's hard to decide what is more demoralizing about the administration's politicization of the scientific process - its disdain for professional scientists working for American government or its willingness to deceive the American public." - Roger G. Kennedy, former director of the National Park Service.

Science, like theology, reveals transcendent truths about a changing Earth. The best scientists are moral individuals who seek the truth. Corruption of the process of seeking the truth undermines not just democracy but civilization itself.

{"It's easier to kill a number than an individual, whether we're talking about so many tons of fish,

so many board feet of timber, or so many boxcars of untermenschen." - Derrick Jensen}

John Graham was appointed by George W. Bush to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in 2001.

Wise Use ideology has engineered the passage of laws in Missouri and Iowa making it a crime to photograph industrial factory farm animals!

Industrial farming has also been labeled as CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations).

Thirteen states havelaws making it illegal to criticize produce!

"Mountaintop removal is not only stupid, as the habitat of wildlife is destroyed in the name of profit and greed, it is immoral and shortsighted." - Gail Rubio

In 2004 a judge revoked 11 permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers under the Nationwide Permit 21 process which allowed 'streamlined permitting'.

In November 2005 'steamlined permitting' for mountaintop removal and streambed filling was reinstated on appeal.

The United States 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mountaintop removal and streambed filling complied with the Clean Water Act.

The pillage of Appalachia by the coal industry is being made possible by officials who view public service as an opportunity for wholesale plunder.

"This is unmistakably a fire sale of epic size for coal and the entire fossil fuel industry, with flagrant disregard for human health, the environment or the rule of law." - Vickie Patton

"With less than two months left in power the Bush administration is determined to cement its legacy as having the worst environmental record in history." - Joan M. Mulhern

"Federal law allows coal mine waste to be placed in streams." - Peter L. Mali, a spokesman for the Interior Department office that wrote the new regulation (I'll bet that water sure tastes good!)

"The scientific evidence of the severe environmental and human impacts from mountaintop mining is strong and irrefutable." - Margaret Palmer

1 in 6 American women have mercury levels in their blood streams that carry levels of mercury dangerous enough to cause neurological damage in their unborn children.

"The science is certain -

from http://www.unique-design.net/library/word/ecology.html**

http://www.alternet.org/story/17252/crimes_against_nature

Crimes Against Nature

Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America's environment for more than thirty years.

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. / Natural Resources Defense Council

November 24, 2003

COMMENT NOW!

George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats. The Bush attack was not entirely unexpected. George W. Bush had the grimmest environmental record of any governor during his tenure in Texas. Texas became number one in air and water pollution and in the release of toxic chemicals. In his six years in Austin, he championed a short-term pollution-based prosperity, which enriched his political contributors and corporate cronies by lowering the quality of life for everyone else. Now President Bush is set to do the same to America. After three years, his policies are already bearing fruit, diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.

I am angry both as a citizen and a father. Three of my sons have asthma, and I watch them struggle to breathe on bad-air days. And they're comparatively lucky: One in four African-American children in New York shares this affliction; their suffering is often unrelieved because they lack the insurance and high-quality health care that keep my sons alive. My kids are among the millions of Americans who cannot enjoy the seminal American experience of fishing locally with their dad and eating their catch. Most freshwater fish in New York and all in Connecticut are now under consumption advisories. A main source of mercury pollution in America, as well as asthma-provoking ozone and particulates, is the coal-burning power plants that President Bush recently excused from complying with the Clean Air Act.

Furthermore, the deadly addiction to fossil fuels that White House policies encourage has squandered our treasury, entangled us in foreign wars, diminished our international prestige, made us a target for terrorist attacks and increased our reliance on petty Middle Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are hated by their own people.

When the Republican right managed to install George W. Bush as president in 2000, movement leaders once again set about doing what they had attempted to do since the Reagan years: eviscerate the infrastructure of laws and regulations that protect the environment. For twenty-five years it has been like the zombie that keeps coming back from the grave.

The attacks began on Inauguration Day, when President Bush's chief of staff and former General Motors lobbyist Andrew Card quietly initiated a moratorium on all recently adopted regulations. Since then, the White House has enlisted every federal agency that oversees environmental programs in a coordinated effort to relax rules aimed at the oil, coal, logging, mining and chemical industries as well as automakers, real estate developers, corporate agribusiness and other industries.

Bush's Environmental Protection Agency has halted work on sixty-two environmental standards, the federal Department of Agriculture has stopped work on fifty-seven standards, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has halted twenty-one new standards. The EPA completed just two major rules -- both under court order and both watered down at industry request -- compared to twenty-three completed by the Clinton administration and fourteen by the Bush Sr. administration in their first two years.

This onslaught is being coordinated through the White House Office of Management and Budget-- or, more precisely, OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, under the direction of John Graham, the engine-room mechanic of the Bush stealth strategy. Graham's specialty is promoting changes in scientific and economic assumptions that underlie government regulations -- such as recalculating cost-benefit analyses to favor polluters. Before coming to the White House, Graham was the founding director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, where he received funding from America's champion corporate polluters: Dow Chemical, DuPont, Monsanto, Alcoa, Exxon, General Electric and General Motors.

Under the White House's guidance, the very agencies entrusted to protect Americans from polluters are laboring to destroy environmental laws. Or they've simply stopped enforcing them. Penalties imposed for environmental violations have plummeted under Bush. The EPA has proposed eliminating 270 enforcement staffers, which would drop staff levels to the lowest level ever. Inspections of polluting businesses have dipped fifteen percent. Criminal cases referred for federal prosecution have dropped forty percent. The EPA measures its success by the amount of pollution reduced or prevented as a result of its own actions. Last year, the EPA's two most senior career enforcement officials resigned after decades of service. They cited the administration's refusal to carry out environmental laws.

The White House has masked its attacks with euphemisms that would have embarrassed George Orwell. George W. Bush's "Healthy Forests" initiative promotes destructive logging of old-growth forests. His "Clear Skies" program, which repealed key provisions of the Clean Air Act, allows more emissions. The administration uses misleading code words such as streamlining or reforming instead of weakening, and thinning instead of logging.

In a March 2003 memo to Republican leadership, pollster Frank Luntz frankly outlined the White House strategy on energy and the environment: "The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general and President Bush in particular are most vulnerable," he wrote, cautioning that the public views Republicans as being "in the pockets of corporate fat cats who rub their hands together and chuckle maniacally as they plot to pollute America for fun and profit." Luntz warned, "Not only do we risk losing the swing vote, but our suburban female base could abandon us as well." He recommended that Republicans don the sheep's clothing of environmental rhetoric while dismantling environmental laws.

I prosecute polluters on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Riverkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance. As George W. Bush began his presidency, I was involved in litigation against the factory-pork industry, which is a large source of air and water pollution in America. Corporate pork factories cannot produce more efficiently than traditional family farmers without violating several federal environmental statutes. Industrial farms illegally dump millions of tons of untreated fecal and toxic waste onto land and into the air and water. Factory farms have contaminated hundreds of miles of waterways, put tens of thousands of family farmers and fishermen out of work, killed billions of fish, sickened consumers and subjected millions of farm animals to unspeakable cruelty.

On behalf of several farm groups and fishermen, we sued Smithfield Foods and won a decision that suggested that almost all of American factory farms were violating the Clean Water Act. The Clinton EPA had also brought its own parallel suits addressing chronic air and water violations by hog factories. But almost immediately after taking office, the Bush administration ordered the EPA to halt its Clean Air Act investigations of animal factories and weaken the water rules to allow them to continue polluting indefinitely.

Several of my other national cases were similarly derailed. Eleven years ago, I sued the EPA to stop massive fish kills at power plants. Using antiquated technology, power plants often suck up the entire fresh water volume of large rivers, killing obscene numbers of fish. Just one facility, the Salem nuclear plant in New Jersey, kills more than 3 billion Delaware River fish each year, according to Martin Marietta, the plant's own consultant. These fish kills are illegal, and in 2001 we finally won our case. A federal judge ordered the EPA to issue regulations restricting power-plant fish kills. But soon after President Bush's inauguration, the administration replaced the proposed new rule with clever regulations designed to allow the slaughter to continue unabated. The new administration also trumped court decisions that would have enforced greater degrees of wetlands protection and forbidden coal moguls from blasting off whole mountaintops to get at the coal beneath.

The fishermen I represent are traditionally Republican. But, without exception, they see this administration as the largest threat not just to their livelihoods but to their values and their idea of what it means to be American. "Why," they'll ask, "is the president allowing coal, oil, power and automotive interests to fix the game?"

Back to the Dark Ages

George w. Bush seems to be trying to take us all the way back to the Dark Ages by undermining the very principles of our environmental rights, which civilized nations have always recognized. Ancient Rome's Code of Justinian guaranteed the use to all citizens of the "public trust" or commons -- those shared resources that cannot be reduced to private property -- the air, flowing water, public lands, wandering animals, fisheries, wetlands and aquifers.

When Roman law broke down in Europe during the Dark Ages, feudal kings began to privatize the commons. In the early thirteenth century, when King John also attempted to sell off England's fisheries and erect navigational tolls on the Thames, his subjects rose up and confronted him at Runnymede, forcing him to sign the Magna Carta, which includes provisions guaranteeing the rights of free access to fisheries and waters.

Clean-air laws in England, passed in the fourteenth century, made it a capital offense to burn coal in London, and violators were executed for the crime. These "public trust" rights to unspoiled air, water and wildlife descended to the people of the United States following the American Revolution. Until 1870, a factory releasing even small amounts of smoke onto public or private property was operating illegally.

But during the Gilded Age, when the corporate robber barons captured the political and judicial systems, those rights were stolen from the American people. As the Industrial Revolution morphed into the postwar industrial boom, Americans found themselves paying a high price for the resulting pollution. The wake-up call came in the late Sixties, when Lake Erie was declared dead and Cleveland's Cuyahoga River exploded in colossal infernos.

In 1970, more than 20 million Americans took to the streets protesting the state of the environment on the first Earth Day. Whether they knew it or not, they were demanding a return of ancient rights.

During the next few years, Congress passed twenty-eight major environmental statutes, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, and it created the Environmental Protection Agency to apply and enforce these new laws. Polluters would be held accountable; those planning to use the commons would have to compile environmental-impact statements and hold public hearings; citizens were given the power to prosecute environmental crimes. Right-to-know and toxic-inventory laws made government and industry more transparent on the local level and our nation more democratic. Even the most vulnerable Americans could now participate in the dialogue that determines the destinies of their communities.

Earth Day caught polluters off guard. But in the next thirty years, they mounted an increasingly sophisticated and aggressive counterattack to undermine these laws. The Bush administration is a culmination of their three-decade campaign.

Strangling the Environment

In 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan declared, "I am a Sagebrush Rebel," marking a major turning point of the modern anti-environmental movement. In the early 1980s, the Western extractive industries, led by one of Colorado's worst polluters, brewer Joseph Coors, organized the Sagebrush Rebellion, a coalition of industry money and right-wing ideologues that helped elect Reagan president.

The big polluters who started the Sagebrush Rebellion were successful because they managed to broaden their constituency with anti-regulatory, anti-labor and anti-environmental rhetoric that had great appeal both among Christian fundamentalist leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and in certain Western communities where hostility to government is deeply rooted. Big polluters found that they could organize this discontent into a potent political force that possessed the two ingredients of power in American democracy: money and intensity. Meanwhile, innovations in direct-mail and computer technologies gave this alliance of dark populists and polluters a deafening voice in American government.

Coors founded the Mountain States Legal Foundation in 1976 to bring lawsuits designed to enrich giant corporations, limit civil rights and attack unions, homosexuals and minorities. He also founded the right-wing Heritage Foundation, to provide a philosophical underpinning for the anti-environmental movement. While the foundation and its imitators -- the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Marshall Institute and others -- claim to advocate free markets and property rights, their agenda is more pro-pollution than anything else.

From its conception, the Heritage Foundationand its neoconservative cronies urged followers to "strangle the environmental movement," which Heritage named "the greatest single threat to the American economy." Ronald Reagan's victory gave Heritage Foundation and the Mountain States Legal Foundation immeasurable clout. Heritage became known as Reagan's "shadow government," and its 2,000-page manifesto, "Mandate for Change," became a blueprint for his administration. Coors handpicked his Colorado associates: Anne Gorsuch became the EPA administrator; her husband, Robert Burford, a cattle baron who had vowed to destroy the Bureau of Land Management, was selected to head that very agency. Most notorious, Coors chose James Watt, president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, as the secretary of the interior. Watt was a proponent of "dominion theology," an authoritarian Christian heresy that advocates man's duty to "subdue" nature. His deep faith in laissez-faire capitalism and apocalyptic Christianity led Secretary Watt to set about dismantling his department and distributing its assets rather than managing them for future generations. During a Senate hearing, he cited the approaching Apocalypse to explain why he was giving away America's sacred places at fire-sale prices: "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns."

Meanwhile, Anne Gorsuchenthusiastically gutted EPA's budget by sixty percent, crippling its ability to write regulations or enforce the law. She appointed lobbyists fresh from their hitches with the paper, asbestos, chemical and oil companies to run each of the principal agency departments. Her chief counsel was an Exxon lawyer; her head of enforcement was from General Motors.

These attacks on the environment precipitated a public revolt. By 1983, more than a million Americans and all 125 American-Indian tribes had signed a petition demanding Watt's removal. After being forced out of office, Watt was indicted on twenty-five felony counts of influence-pedaling. Gorsuch and twenty-three of her cronies were forced to resign following a congressional investigation of sweetheart deals with polluters, including Coors. Her first deputy, Rita Lavelle, was jailed for perjury.

The indictments and resignations put a temporary damper on the Sagebrush Rebels, but they quickly regrouped as the "Wise Use"movement. Wise Use founder, the timber-industry flack Ron Arnold, said, "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely."

By 1994, Wise Use helped propel Newt Gingrich to the speaker's chair of the U.S. House of Representatives and turn his anti-environmental manifesto, "The Contract With America," into law. Gingrich's chief of environmental policy was Rep. Tom DeLay, the one-time Houston exterminator who was determined to rid the world of pesky pesticide regulations and to promote a biblical worldview. He targeted the Endangered Species Act as the second-greatest threat to Texas after illegal aliens. He also wanted to legalize the deadly pesticide DDT, and he routinely referred to the EPA as "the Gestapo of government." In January 1995, DeLay invited a group of 350 lobbyists representing some of America's biggest polluters to collaborate in drafting legislation to dismantle federal health, safety and environmental laws.

Gingrich and DeLay had learned from the James Watt debacle that they had to conceal their radical agenda. Carefully eschewing public debates on their initiatives, they mounted a stealth attack on America's environmental laws. Rather than pursue a frontal assault against popular statutes such as the Endangered Species, Clean Water and Clean Air acts, they tried to undermine these laws by attaching silent riders to must-pass budget bills.

But the public got wise. Moderate Republicans teamed up with the Clinton administration to block the worst of it. My group, the NRDC, as well as the Sierra Club and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, generated more than 1 million letters to Congress. When President Clinton shut down the government in December 1995 rather than pass a budget bill spangled with anti-environmental riders, the tide turned against Gingrich and DeLay. By the end of that month, even conservatives disavowed the attack. "We lost the battle on the environment," DeLay conceded.

Undermining the Scientists

Today, with the presidency and both houses of Congress under the anti-environmentalists' control, they are set to eviscerate the despised laws. White House strategy is to promote its unpopular policies by lying about its agenda, cheating on the science and stealing the language and rhetoric of the environmental movement.

Even as Republican pollster Luntz acknowledged that the scientific evidence is against the Republicans on issues like global warming, he advised them to find scientists willing to hoodwink the public. "You need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue," he told Republicans, "by becoming even more active in recruiting experts sympathetic to your view."

In the meantime, he urged them to change their rhetoric. "'Climate change,' " he said, "is less threatening than 'global warming.' While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge."

The EPA's inspector general received broad attention for his August 21st, 2003, finding that the White House pressured the agency to conceal the public-health risks from poisoned air following the September 11th World Trade Center attacks. But this 2001 deception is only one example of the administration's pattern of strategic distortion. Earlier this year, it suppressed an EPA report warning that millions of Americans, especially children, are being poisoned by mercury from industrial sources.

This behavior is consistent throughout the Bush government. Consider the story of James Zahn, a scientist at the Department of Agriculture who resigned after the Bush administration suppressed his taxpayer-funded study proving that billions of antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be carried daily across property lines from meat factories into neighboring homes and farms. In March 2002, Zahn accepted my invitation to present his findings to a convention of family-farm advocates in Iowa. Several weeks before the April conference, pork-industry lobbyists learned of his appearance and persuaded the Department of Agriculture to forbid him from appearing. Zahn told me he had been ordered to cancel a dozen appearances at county health departments and similar venues.

In May, the White House blocked the EPA staff from publicly discussing contamination by the chemical perchlorate -- the main ingredient in solid rocket fuel. The administration froze federal regulations on perchlorate, even as new research reveals alarmingly high levels of the chemical in the nation's drinking water and food supply, including many grocery-store lettuces. Perchlorate pollution has been linked to neurological problems, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses in some twenty states. The Pentagon and several defense contractors face billions of dollars in potential cleanup liability.

The administration's leading expert in manipulating scientific data is Interior Secretary Gale Norton. During her nomination hearings, Norton promised not to ideologically slant agency science. But as her friend Thomas Sansonetti, a coal- industry lobbyist who is now assistant attorney general, predicted, "There won't be any biologists or botanists to come in and pull the wool over her eyes."

In autumn 2001, Secretary Norton provided the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with her agency's scientific assessment that Arctic oil drilling would not harm hundreds of thousands of caribou. Not long afterward, Fish and Wildlife Service biologists contacted the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which defends scientists and other professionals working in state and federal environmental agencies. "The scientists provided us the science that they had submitted to Norton and the altered version that she had given to Congress a week later," said the group's executive director, Jeff Ruch. There were seventeen major substantive changes, all of them minimizing the reported impacts. When Norton was asked about the alterations in October 2001, she dismissed them as typographical errors.

Later, she and White House political adviser Karl Rove forced National Marine Fisheries scientists to alter findings on the amount of water required for the survival of salmon in Oregon's Klamath River, to ensure that large corporate farms got a bigger share of the river water. As a result, more than 33,000 chinook and coho salmon died -- the largest fish kill in the history of America. Mike Kelly, the biologist who drafted the original opinion (and who has since been awarded federal whistle-blower status), told me that the coho salmon is probably headed for extinction. "Morale is low among scientists here," Kelly says. "We are under pressure to get the right results. This administration is putting the species at risk for political gain -- and not just in the Klamath."

Norton has also ordered the rewriting of an exhaustive twelve-year study by federal biologists detailing the effects that Arctic drilling would have on populations of musk oxen and snow geese. She reissued the biologists' report two weeks later as a two-page paper showing no negative impact to wildlife. She also ordered suppression of two studies by the Fish and Wildlife Service concluding that the drilling would threaten polar-bear populations and violate the international treaty protecting bears. She then instructed the Fish and Wildlife Service to redo the report to "reflect the Interior Department's position." She suppressed findings that mountaintop mining would cause "tremendous destruction of aquatic and terrestrial habitat" and a Park Service report that found that snowmobiles were hurting Yellowstone's air quality, wildlife and the health of its visitors and employees.

Norton's Fish and Wildlife Service is the first ever not to voluntarily list a single species as endangered or threatened. Her officials have blackballed scientists and savaged studies to avoid listing the trumpeter swan, revoke the listing of the grizzly bear and shrink the remnant habitat for the Florida panther. She disbanded the service's oldest scientific advisory committee in order to halt protection of desert fish in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that are headed for extinction. Interior career staffers and scientists say they are monitored by Norton's industry appointees to ensure that future studies do not conflict with industry profit-making.

Cooking the Books on Global Warming

There is no scientific debate in which the White House has cooked the books more than that of global warming. In the past two years the Bush administration has altered, suppressed or attempted to discredit close to a dozen major reports on the subject. These include a ten-year peer-reviewed study by the International Panel on Climate Change, commissioned by the president's father in 1993 in his own efforts to dodge what was already a virtual scientific consensus blaming industrial emissions for global warming.

After disavowing the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush administration commissioned the federal government's National Academy of Sciences to find holes in the IPCC analysis. But this ploy backfired. The NAS not only confirmed the existence of global warming and its connection to industrial greenhouse gases, it also predicted that the effects of climate change would be worse than previously believed, estimating that global temperatures will rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees by 2100.

A May 2002 report by scientists from the EPA, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, approved by Bush appointees at the Council on Environmental Quality and submitted to the United Nations by the U.S., predicted similarly catastrophic impacts. When confronted with the findings, Bush dismissed it with his smirking condemnation: "I've read the report put out by the bureaucracy. . . ."

Afterward, the White House acknowledged that, in fact, he hadn't. Having failed to discredit the report with this untruth, George W. did what his father had done: He promised to study the problem some more. Last fall, the White House announced the creation of the Climate Research Initiative to study global warming. The earliest results are due next fall. But the White House's draft plan for CRI was derided by the NAS in February as a rehash of old studies and established science lacking "most elements of a strategic plan."

In September 2002, administration censors released the annual EPA report on air pollution without the agency's usual update on global warming, that section having been deleted by Bush appointees at the White House. On June 19th, 2003, a "State of the Environment" report commissioned by the EPA in 2001 was released after language about global warming was excised by flat-earthers in the White House. The redacted studies had included a 2001 report by the National Research Council, commissioned by the White House. In their place was a piece of propaganda financed by the American Petroleum Institute challenging these conclusions.

This past July, EPA scientists leaked a study, which the agency had ordered suppressed in May, showing that a Senate plan -- co-sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain -- to reduce the pollution that causes global warming could achieve its goal at very small cost. Bush reacted by launching a $100 million ten-year effort to prove that global temperature changes have, in fact, occurred naturally, another delay tactic for the fossil-fuel barons at taxpayer expense.

Princeton geo-scientist Michael Oppenheimer told me, "This administration likes to emphasize what we don't know while ignoring or minimizing what we do know, which is a prescription for paralysis on policy. It's hard to imagine what kind of scientific evidence would suffice to convince the White House to take firm action on global warming."

Across the board, the administration yields to Big Energy. At the request of ExxonMobil, and with the help of a lobbying group working for coal-burning utility Southern Co., the Bush administration orchestrated the removal of U.S. scientist Robert Watson, the world-renowned former NASA atmospheric chemist who headed the United Nations' IPCC. He was replaced by a little-known scientist from New Delhi, India, who would be generally unavailable for congressional hearings.

The Bush administration now plans to contract out thousands of environmental-science jobs to compliant industry consultants already in the habit of massaging data to support corporate profit-taking, effectively making federal science an arm of Karl Rove's political machine. The very ideologues who derided Bill Clinton as a liar have institutionalized dishonesty and made it the reigning culture of America's federal agencies. "At its worst," Oppenheimer says, "this approach represents a serious erosion in the way a democracy deals with science."

Inside the Cheney Task Force

There is no better example of the corporate cronyism now hijacking American democracy than the White House's cozy relationship with the energy industry. It's hard to find anyone on Bush's staff who does not have extensive corporate connections, but fossil-fuel executives rule the roost. The energy industry contributed more than $48.3 million to Republicans in the 2000 election cycle, with $3 million to Bush. Now the investment has matured. Both Bush and Cheney came out of the oil patch. Thirty-one of the Bush transition team's forty-eight members had energy-industry ties. Bush's cabinet and White House staff is an energy-industry dream team -- four cabinet secretaries, the six most powerful White House officials and more than twenty high-level appointees are alumni of the industry and its allies (see "Bush's Energy-Industry All-Stars," on Page 183).

The potential for corruption is staggering. Take the case of J. Steven Griles, deputy secretary of the Interior Department. During the first Reagan administration, Griles worked directly under James Watt at Interior, where he helped the coal industry evade prohibitions against mountaintop-removal strip mining. In 1989, Griles left government to work as a mining executive and then as a lobbyist with National Environmental Strategies, a Washington, D.C., firm that represented the National Mining Association and Dominion Resources, one of the nation's largest power producers. When Griles got his new job at Interior, the National Mining Association hailed him as "an ally of the industry."

It's bad enough that a former mining lobbyist was put in charge of regulating mining on public land. But it turns out that Griles is still on the industry's payroll. In 2001, he sold his client base to his partner Marc Himmelstein for four annual payments of $284,000, making Griles, in effect, a continuing partner in the firm.

Because Griles was an oil and mining lobbyist, the Senate made him agree in writing that he would avoid contact with his former clients as a condition of his confirmation. Griles has nevertheless repeatedly met with former coal clients to discuss new rules allowing mountaintop mining in Appalachia and destructive coal-bed methane drilling in Wyoming. He also met with his former oil clients about offshore leases. These meetings prompted Sen. Joseph Lieberman to ask the Interior Department to investigate Griles. With Republicans in control of congressional committees, no subpoenas have interrupted the Griles scandals.

With its operatives in place, the Bush energy plan became an orgy of industry plunder. Days after his inauguration, Bush launched the National Energy Policy Development Group, chaired by Cheney. For three months, the task force held closed-door meetings with energy-industry representatives - then refused to disclose the names of the participants.

For the first time in history, the nonpartisan General Accounting Office sued the executive branch, for access to these records. NRDC put in a Freedom of Information Act request, and when Cheney did not respond, we also sued. On February 21st, 2002, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and other agency officials to turn over the records relating to their participation in the work of the energy task force. Under this court order, NRDC has obtained some 20,000 documents. Although none of the logs on the vice president's meetings have been released yet and the pages were heavily redacted to prevent disclosure of useful information, the documents still allow glimpses of the process.

The task force comprised Cabinet secretaries and other high-level administration officials with energy-industry pedigrees. The undisputed leader was Cheney, who hails from Wyoming, the nation's largest coal producer, and who, for six previous years, was CEO of Halliburton, the oil-service company. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was chairman of the Aluminum Company of America for thirteen years. Aluminum-industry profits are directly related to energy prices. O'Neill promised to immediately sell his extensive stock holdings in his former company (worth more than $100 million) to avoid conflicts of interest, but he delayed the sale until after the energy plan was released. By then, thanks partly to the administration's energy policies, Alcoa's stock had risen thirty percent. Energy Secretary Abraham, a former one-term senator from Michigan, received $700,000 from the auto industry in his losing 2000 campaign, more than any other Senate candidate. At Energy, Abraham led the administration effort to scuttle fuel-economy standards, allow SUVs to escape fuel-efficiency minimums and create obscene tax incentives for Americans to buy the largest gas guzzlers.

Joe Allbaugh, director of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, sat next to Abraham on the task force. Allbaugh's wife, Diane, is an energy-industry lobbyist and represents three firms -- Reliant Energy, Entergy and TXU, each of which paid her $20,000 in the three months of the task force's deliberation. Joe Allbaugh participated in task-force meetings on issues directly affecting those companies, including debates about environmental rules for power plants and -- his wife's specialty -- electricity deregulation.

Commerce Secretary Don Evans, an old friend of the president from their early days in the oil business, was CEO of Tom Brown Inc., a Denver oil-and-gas company, and a trustee of another drilling firm. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, a mining-industry lawyer, accepted nearly $800,000 from the energy industry during her 1996 run in Colorado for the U.S. Senate.

In the winter and spring of 2001, executives and lobbyists from the oil, coal, electric-utility and nuclear industries tramped in and out of the Cabinet room and Cheney's office. Many of the lobbyists had just left posts inside Bush's presidential campaign to work for companies that had donated lavishly to that effort. Companies that made large contributions were given special access. Executives from Enron Corp., which contributed $2.5 million to the GOP from 1999 to 2002, had contact with the task force at least ten times, including six face-to-face meetings between top officials and Cheney.

After one meeting with Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, Cheney dismissed California Gov. Gray Davis' request to cap the state's energy prices. That denial would enrich Enron and nearly bankrupt California. It has since emerged that the state's energy crisis was largely engineered by Enron. According to the New York Times, the task-force staff circulated a memo that suggested "utilizing" the crisis to justify expanded oil and gas drilling. President Bush and others would cite the California crisis to call for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Energy companies that had not ponied up remained under pressure to give to Republicans. When Westar Energy's chief executive was indicted for fraud, investigators found an e-mail written by Westar executives describing solicitations by Republican politicians for a political action committee controlled by Tom DeLay as the price for a "seat at the table" with the task force.

Task-force members began each meeting with industry lobbyists by announcing that the session was off the record and that participants were to share no documents. A National Mining Association official told reporters that the industry managed to control the energy plan by keeping the process secret. "We've probably had as much input as anybody else in town," he said. "I have to take my hat off to them -- they've been able to keep a lid on it."

When it was suggested that access to the administration was for sale, Cheney hardly apologized. "Just because somebody makes a campaign contribution doesn't mean that they should be denied the opportunity to express their view to government officials," he said. Although they met with hundreds of industry officials, Cheney and Abraham refused to meet with any environmental groups. Cheney made one exception to the secrecy policy: On May 15th, 2001, the day before the task force sent its plan to the president, CEOs from wind-, solar- and geothermal-energy companies were granted a short meeting with Cheney. Afterward, they were led into the Rose Garden for a press conference and a photo op.

While peddling influence to energy tycoons, the White House quietly dropped criminal and civil charges against Koch Industries, America's largest privately held oil company. Koch faced a ninety-seven-count federal felony indictment and $357 million in fines for knowingly releasing ninety metric tons of carcinogenic benzene and concealing the releases from federal regulators. Koch executives contributed $800,000 to Bush's presidential campaign and to other top Republicans.

Last March, the Federal Trade Commission dropped a Clinton-era investigation of price gouging by the oil and gas industries, even as Duke Energy, a principal target of the probe, admitted to selling electricity in California for more than double the highest previously reported price. The Bush administration said that the industry deserved a "gentler approach." Administration officials also winked at a scam involving a half-dozen oil companies cheating the government out of $100 million per year in royalty payments.

Southern Co. was among the most adept advocates for its own self-interest. The company, which contributed $1.6 million to Republicans from 1999 to 2002, met with Cheney's task force seven times. Faced with a series of EPA prosecutions at power plants violating air-quality standards, the company retained Haley Barbour, former Republican National Committee chairman and now governor-elect of Mississippi, to lobby the administration to ignore Southern's violations.

The White House then forced the Justice Department to drop the prosecution. Justice lawyers were "astounded" that the administration would interfere in a law-enforcement matter that was "supposed to be out of bounds from politics." The EPA's chief enforcement officer, Eric Schaeffer, resigned. "With the Bush administration, whether or not environmental laws are enforced depends on who you know," Schaeffer told me. "If you've got a good lobbyist, you can just buy your way out of trouble."

Along with Barbour, Southern retained current Republican National Committee chairman and former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot. Barbour and Racicot repeatedly conferred with Abraham and Cheney, urging them to ease limits on carbon-dioxide pollution from power plants and to gut the Clean Air Act. On May 17th, 2001, the White House released its energy plan. Among the recommendations were exempting old power plants from Clean Air Act compliance and adopting Barbour's arguments about carbon-dioxide restrictions. Barbour repaid the favor that week by raising $250,000 at a May 21st GOP gala honoring Bush. Southern donated $150,000 to the effort.

Cheney's task force had at least nineteen contacts with officials from the nuclear-energy industry -- whose trade association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, donated $100,000 to the Bush inauguration gala and $437,000 to Republicans from 1999 to 2002. The report recommended loosening environmental controls on the industry, reducing public participation in the siting of nuclear plants and adding billions of dollars in subsidies for the nuclear industry.

Cheney wasn't embarrassed to reward his old cronies at Halliburton, either. The final draft of the task-force report praises a gas-recovery technique controlled by Halliburton -- even though an earlier draft had criticized the technology. The technique, which has been linked to the contamination of aquifers, is currently being investigated by the EPA. Somehow, that got edited out of the report.

Big Coal and the Destruction of Appalachia

Coal companies enjoyed perhaps the biggest payoff. At the West Virginia Coal Association's annual conference in May 2002, president William D. Raney assured 150 industry moguls, "You did everything you could to elect a Republican president." Now, he said, "you are already seeing in his actions the payback."

Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal company and a major contributor to the Bush campaign, was one of the first to cash in. Immediately after his inauguration, Bush appointed two executives from Peabody and one from its Black Beauty subsidiary to his energy advisory team.

When the task force released its final report, it recommended accelerating coal production and spending $2 billion in federal subsidies for research to make coal-fired electricity cleaner. Five days later, Peabody issued a public-stock offering, raising $60 million more than analysts had predicted. Company vice president Fred Palmer credited the Bush administration. "I am sure it affected the valuation of the stock," he told the Los Angeles Times.

Peabody also wanted to build the largest coal-fired power plant in thirty years upwind of Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, a designated UNESCO World Heritage site and International Biosphere Reserve. With arm-twisting from Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles and another $450,000 in GOP contributions, Peabody got what it wanted. A study on the air impacts was suppressed, and park scientists who feared that several endangered species might go extinct due to mercury and acid-rain deposits were silenced.

At the Senate's request, Griles had signed a "statement of disqualification" on August 1st, 2001, committing himself to avoiding issues affecting his former clients. Three days later, he nevertheless appeared before the West Virginia Coal Association and promised executives that "we will fix the federal rules very soon on water and soil placement." That was fancy language for pushing whole mountaintops into valleys, a practice worth billions to the industry. As a Reagan official, Griles helped devise the practice, which a federal court declared illegal in 2002, after 1,200 miles of streambeds had been filled and 380,000 acres of Appalachian forestlands had been rendered barren moonscapes.

Now Griles was promising his former coal clients he would fix these rules. In May 2002, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers adopted the language recommended by his former client, the National Mining Association. Had Griles not intervened, the practice of mountaintop-removal mining would have been severely restricted. Griles also pushed EPA deputy administrator Linda Fisher to overrule career personnel in the agency's Denver office who had given a devastating assessment to a proposal to produce coal-bed methane gas in the Powder River basin in Wyoming. Although Griles had recused himself from any discussion of this subject because it would directly enrich his former clients, he worked aggressively behind the scenes on behalf of a proposal to build 51,000 wells. The project will require 26,000 miles of new roads and 48,000 miles of pipeline, and will foul pristine landscapes with trillions of gallons of toxic wastewater.

Blueprint for Plunder

The energy-task-force plan is a $20 billion subsidy to the oil, coal and nuclear industries, which are already swimming in record revenues. In May 2003, as the House passed the plan and as the rest of the nation stagnated in a recession abetted by high oil prices, Exxon announced that its profits had tripled from the previous quarter's record earnings. The energy plan recommends opening protected lands and waters to oil and gas drilling and building up to 1,900 electric-power plants. National treasures such as the California and Florida coasts, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the areas around Yellowstone Park will be opened for plunder for the trivial amounts of fossil fuels that they contain. While increasing reliance on oil, coal and nuclear power, the plan cuts the budget for research into energy efficiency and alternative power sources by nearly a third. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue," Cheney explained, but it should not be the basis of "comprehensive energy policy."

As if to prove that point, Republicans simultaneously eliminated the tax credit that had encouraged Americans to buy gas-saving hybrid cars, and weakened efficiency standards for everything from air conditioners to automobiles. They also created an obscene $100,000 tax break for Hummers and the thirty-eight biggest gas guzzlers. Then, adding insult to injury, the Energy Department robbed $135,615 from the anemic solar, renewables and energy-conservation budget to produce 10,000 copies of the White House's energy plan.

To lobby for the plan, more than 400 industry groups enlisted in the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, a coalition created by oil, mining and nuclear interests and guided by the White House. It cost $5,000 to join, "a very low price," according to Republican lobbyist Wayne Valis. The prerequisite for joining, he wrote in a memo, was that members "must agree to support the Bush energy proposal in its entirety and not lobby for changes." Within two months, members had contributed more than $1 million. The price for disloyalty was expulsion from the coalition and possible reprisal by the administration. "I have been advised," wrote Valis, "that this White House 'will have a long memory.' "

The plan represents a massive transfer of wealth from the public to the energy sector. Indeed, Bush views his massive tax cuts as a way of helping Americans pay for inflated energy bills. "If I had my way," he declared, "I'd have [the tax cuts] in place tomorrow so that people would have money in their pockets to deal with high energy prices."

Looting the Commons

Although congress will have its final vote on the plan in November, the White House has already devised ways to implement most of its worst provisions without congressional interference. In October 2001, the administration removed the Interior Department's power to veto mining permits, even if the mining would cause "substantial and irreparable harm" to the environment. That December, Bush and congressional Republicans passed an "economic-stimulus package" that proposed $2.4 billion worth of tax breaks, credits and loopholes for Chevron, Texaco, Enron and General Electric. The following February, the White House announced it would abandon regulations for three major pollutants -- mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

Early in the Bush administration, Vice President Cheney had solicited an industry wish list from the United States Energy Association, the lobbying arm for trade associations including the American Petroleum Institute, the National Mining Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Edison Institute. The USEA responded by providing 105 specific recommendations from its members for plundering our natural resources and polluting America's air and water. In a speech to the group in June 2002, Energy Secretary Abraham reported that the administration had already implemented three-quarters of the industry's recommendations and predicted the rest would pass through Congress shortly.

On August 27th, 2002 -- while most of America was heading off for a Labor Day weekend -- the administration announced that it would redefine carbon dioxide, the primary cause of global warming, so that it would no longer be considered a pollutant and would therefore not be subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. The next day, the White House repealed the act's "new source review" provision, which requires companies to modernize pollution control when they modify their plants.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, the White House rollback will cause 30,000 Americans to die prematurely each year. Although the regulation will probably be reversed in the courts, the damage will have been done, and power utilities such as Southern Co. will escape criminal prosecution. As soon as the new regulations were announced, John Pemberton, chief of staff to the EPA's assistant administrator for air, left the agency to work for Southern. The EPA's congressional office chief also left, to join Southern's lobbying shop, Bracewell, Patterson.

By summer 2003, the White House had become a virtual pi-ata for energy moguls. In August, the administration proposed limiting the authority of states to object to offshore-drilling decisions, and it ordered federal land managers across the West to ease environmental restrictions for oil and gas drilling in national forests. The White House also proposed removing federal protections for most American wetlands and streams. As an astounded Republican, Rep. Christopher Shays, told me, "It's almost like they want to alienate people who care about the environment, as if they believe that this will help them with their core."

EPA: From Bad to Worse

On August 30th, president bush nominated Utah's three-term Republican Gov. Mike Leavitt to replace his beleaguered EPA head, Christine Todd Whitman, who was driven from office, humiliated in even her paltry efforts to moderate the pillage. In October, Leavitt was confirmed by the Senate.

Like Gale Norton, Leavitt has a winning personality and a disastrous environmental record. Under his leadership, Utah tied for last as the state with the worst environmental enforcement record and ranked second-worst (behind Texas) for both air quality and toxic releases. As governor, Leavitt displayed the same contempt for science that has characterized the Bush administration. He fired more than seventy scientists employed by state agencies for producing studies that challenged his political agenda. He fired a state enforcement officer who penalized one of Leavitt's family fish farms for introducing whirling disease into Utah, devastating the state's wild-trout populations.

Leavitt has a penchant for backdoor deals to please corporate polluters. Last year he resurrected a frivolous and moribund Utah lawsuit against the Interior Department and then settled the suit behind closed doors without public involvement, stripping 6 million acres of wilderness protections. This track record does not reflect the independence, sense of stewardship and respect for science and law that most Americans have the right to expect in our nation's chief environmental guardian.

The Threat to Democracy

Generations of Americans will pay the Republican campaign debt to the energy industry with global instability, depleted national coffers and increased vulnerability to price shocks in the oil market.

They will also pay with reduced prosperity and quality of life at home. Pollution from power plants and traffic smog will continue to skyrocket. Carbon-dioxide emissions will aggravate global warming. Acid rain from Midwestern coal plants has already sterilized half the lakes in the Adirondacks and destroyed the forest cover in the high peaks of the Appalachian range up into Canada. The administration's attacks on science and the law have put something even greater at risk. Americans need to recognize that we are facing not just a threat to our environment but to our values, and to our democracy.

Growing up, I was taught that communism leads to dictatorship and capitalism to democracy. But as we've seen from the the Bush administration, the latter proposition does not always hold. While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government.

America's most visionary leaders have long warned against allowing corporate power to dominate the political landscape. In 1863, in the depths of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln lamented, "I have the Confederacy before me and the bankers behind me, and I fear the bankers most." Franklin Roosevelt echoed that sentiment when he warned that "the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling power."

Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free-market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process, strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures.

Corporate capitalists do not want free markets, they want dependable profits, and their surest route is to crush competition by controlling government. The rise of fascism across Europe in the 1930s offers many informative lessons on how corporate power can undermine a democracy. In Spain, Germany and Italy, industrialists allied themselves with right-wing leaders who used the provocation of terrorist attacks, continual wars, and invocations of patriotism and homeland security to tame the press, muzzle criticism by opponents and turn government over to corporate control. Those governments tapped industrial executives to run ministries and poured government money into corporate coffers with lucrative contracts to prosecute wars and build infrastructure. They encouraged friendly corporations to swallow media outlets, and they enriched the wealthiest classes, privatized the commons and pared down constitutional rights, creating short-term prosperity through pollution-based profits and constant wars. Benito Mussolini's inside view of this process led him to complain that "fascism should really be called 'corporatism.' "

While the European democracies unraveled into fascism, America confronted the same devastating Depression by reaffirming its democracy. It enacted minimum-wage and Social Security laws to foster a middle class, passed income taxes and anti-trust legislation to limit the power of corporations and the wealthy, and commissioned parks, public lands and museums to create employment and safeguard the commons.

The best way to judge the effectiveness of a democracy is to measure how it allocates the goods of the land: Does the government protect the commonwealth on behalf of all the community members, or does it allow wealth and political clout to steal the commons from the people?

Today, George W. Bush and his court are treating our country as a grab bag for the robber barons, doling out the commons to large polluters. Last year, as the calamitous rollbacks multiplied, the corporate-owned TV networks devoted less than four percent of their news minutes to environmental stories. If they knew the truth, most Americans would share my fury that this president is allowing his corporate cronies to steal America from our children.

For more information on the Bush administration's environmental actions, seeThe Bush Record from NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council.

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Rfk2 Bak

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an 7 23

neo-Nazis and antisemites celebrate “based” Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “100% correct” Jewish conspiracy theory

Is Biden a strong nominee for 2024 — or is that malarkey?]

Kennedy has pushed conspiracy theories and won support from powerful allies across the political spectrum

Why RFK Jr. could overperform in Iowa and New Hampshire

Democrats have a huge opportunity to win back rural voters

Ivermectin inanity

Dogpile the scientist

seems to be accurate transcription of his twt, but claim is misleading

mercury

The mercury tipping point came to Robert F. Kennedy more than a decade ago. A champion of the environment, he was on a national speaking tour telling people about the dangers of coal power plants spewing tons of mercury into the air that, in essence, were poisoning humans and wildlife.

What he found disturbed him.

Kennedy learned he would also be practically alone on the radioactive issue from a political vista. That’s because the pharmaceutical industry had bought off U.S. politicians long ago via lobbying and mainstream media with its advertising juggernaut in the 1990s.

Kennedy chats with Bill Maher

So when will our government, industry leaders, and mainstream media begin to recognize the neurological poisoning as an epidemic?

Will it be 1-in-25? Or does that ratio have to balloon to an irreversible 1-in-10?

From a brief on Mercury Poisoning from Coal-Fired Power Plants, by the National Wildlife Federation, it states:

So if mercury particulates are dangerous to the long-term health of adults to breathe in the air, how much more harmful is it for infants to have mercury injected directly into their tiny bodies that are under development?

It’s even worse for fetuses in the womb when pregnant mothers get flu shots, which are loaded with thimerosal.

The Only Ones Immune are the Vaccine Makers

Then the crafty feint the U.S. government did with NVICP, or “Vaccine Court” as it’s known, was to gut the spirit and charter of the act. They rewrote the standard of injury to a victim of thimerosal by protecting mercury itself from such lawsuits.

By sweeping the autism epidemic under the rug, the CDC has saved money to U.S. taxpayers for now, but the problem won’t be going away. It will get far worse.

A Book and a Movie

Much of what Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—he took out a full-page ad in USA Today (4-24-15) weekend edition—said for the past decade can be found in his well-researched book he edited, Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak (Skyhorse Publishing).

This spring, a documentary film called Trace Amounts takes a blowtorch to the safety of mercury. There is no safe amount; it highlights Kennedy’s book.

What’s interesting about the film, a single tetanus shot several years ago derailed the career of a 27-year-old engineer, when he cut himself in the field on a rusty fence. It was the vaccine—not the metal disease of tetanus—that crippled Eric Gladen overnight.

Mercury is not an element natural to human physiology. There is no vitamin ‘M’ that can be found at your local heath store. So why do we allow big pharma and the U.S. government to inject it into us at any level?

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great analysis

9/15

The crowd roared. But Kennedy wasn’t finished yet.

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Crimes Against Nature

"Each time the message was this: ‘Turn from the evil road you are traveling and from the evil things you are doing.'" - Jeremiah 25:5

Throughout Western history the first acts of tyrants has been attempts to control the commons which include the air we breath and the water we drink.

In August 1988 theSagebrush Rebels became Wise Use and founder Ron Arnold stated, "It is our goal to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want you to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely!"

Science, like theology, reveals transcendent truths about a changing Earth. The best scientists are moral individuals who seek the truth. Corruption of the process of seeking the truth undermines not just democracy but civilization itself.

Crimes Against Nature