December 14, 1917 U.S. peace activist and suffragist Kate Richards O’Hare was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for a speech denouncing World War I. Occupying a neighboring jail cell was Emma Goldman, the well-known anarchist organizer, feminist, writer and anti-war critic was imprisoned for obstructing the draft. O’Hare was one of a number of prisoners Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs cited in his “Canton Speech” for which he in turn was imprisoned. More about activist Kate Richards O’Hare Read the speech
December 14, 1961 In a public exchange of letters with South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, U.S. President John F. Kennedy formally announced the United States would increase aid to South Vietnam, including the expansion of the U.S. troop commitment. Kennedy, concerned with recent advances made by the communist insurgency movement in South Vietnam, wrote: “We shall promptly increase our assistance to your defense effort.” President Ngo Dinh Diem President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara Kennedy – Diem letter exchange
December 14, 1980 At Yoko Ono’s request, John Lennon fans around the world mourned him with 10 minutes of silent prayer. In New York over 100,000 people converged on Central Park in tribute, and in Liverpool, England, his hometown, a crowd of 30,000 gathered outside of St. George’s Hall on Lime Street. johnlennon.com “You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.” Time capsules to mark John Lennon’s legacy
December 14, 1985 Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe when she took office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Wilma Mankiller on the day in 1985 when her election as chief of the Cherokee Nation was announced
December 14, 1994 After eight years of negotiations, the United States finally agreed to honor New Zealand’s ban on nuclear weapons in its territory. U.S. Navy ships armed with nuclear weapons no longer visited New Zealand’s ports.
December 14, 1995 Leaders of the states that were parts of the former Yugoslavia signed the Bosnia peace treaty, formally ending four years of bloody and vicious ethnic/religious conflict. The Dayton Accords, as they are known, committed the Balkan states of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina to accept a division of territory, a process to deal with the more than 2 million refugees, and the introduction of 60,000 NATO peacekeeping forces. The negotiations were led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, and held principally at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. The Dayton Accords
Israeli strikes pounded the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday, with one attack ripping through a home where displaced people were sheltering in the isolated north. The strikes killed at least 33 people including children, Palestinian health officials said.
Violence also flared in outside Jerusalem, where an Israeli bus came under fire from a suspected Palestinian attacker late Wednesday, wounding three people including a 10-year-old boy, according to the military and hospital officials. The attack took place on a highway near major Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the army was looking for the shooter in the area around Bethlehem.
The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza shows no end in sight, even after Israel reached a ceasefire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants and attention shifted to the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad by insurgents. Both the current and incoming U.S. administrations have said they hope to end the war in Gaza before the inauguration in January, but ceasefire talks have repeatedly stalled.
The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved resolutions Wednesday demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and backing the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees that Israel has moved to ban.
General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, although they do reflect world opinion. The votes in the 193-nation assembly were 158-9 with 13 abstentions to demand a ceasefire. Israel and its close ally the United States were in the tiny minority voting against.
Israeli strike in north Gaza wipes out 3 generations
The strike on the home killed 19 people in the northern town of Beit Lahiya near the border with Israel, according to nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, which received the bodies. Hospital records show that a family of eight was among those killed: four children, their parents and two grandparents.
The Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas militant in the vicinity of the hospital. It said reports about the number of casualties in the strike were inaccurate, without elaborating. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and accuses militants of hiding among them, putting their lives in danger.
The hospital said another strike near its entrance on Wednesday killed a woman and her two children.
The hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, said Israeli drones struck nearby residential blocks overnight, causing explosions that sparked panic among the facility’s more than 120 sick and wounded patients.
“We have received distress calls from neighbors and trapped people, but we’re not able to leave the hospital because of the continued risk,” he said. “We are witnessing a massive loss of life, with many martyrs in the targeted areas.”
Another strike in the decades-old Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least seven people, according to the Awda Hospital. The dead included two children, their parents and three other relatives, it said. Later, the hospital said another attack hit the same camp, killing four people and injuring 16 more.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the other strikes.
In Lebanon, where near-daily Israeli attacks have continued despite the ceasefire, at least five people died Wednesday in Israeli strikes in the south, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry and state news agency.
Elsewhere in southern Lebanon, Israeli forces withdrew from a strategic town and handed it back to the Lebanese army in coordination with U.N. peacekeepers, the two militaries said. It appeared to be the first Israeli pullout from a Lebanese border town captured during the ground invasion.
In Syria, the Israeli military estimates it has destroyed 70% to 80% of Syrian military assets in recent days, according to an official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence assessment. The military has said it has carried out hundreds of airstrikes.
Evacuation orders in camp after rocket fire
Militants in central Gaza fired four projectiles into Israel on Wednesday, two of which were intercepted, the military said. The other two fell in open areas, and there were no reports of casualties.
The military ordered the evacuation of a five-block area of the built-up Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, saying the rockets had been fired from there. The orders indicated that Israel would soon carry out strikes in the area.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people, including children and older adults. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 44,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health officials. They say women and children make up more than half the dead but do not distinguish between fighters and civilians in their count. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
UN says Gaza civilians face ‘utterly devastating situation’
Israel has been waging a renewed offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza’s heavily destroyed north since early October. Troops have surrounded Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, allowing in almost no humanitarian aid and ordering tens of thousands to flee to nearby Gaza City.
Israeli officials have said the three communities are mostly deserted, but the United Nations humanitarian office said Tuesday it believes around 65,000 to 75,000 people are still there, with little access to food, water, electricity or health care. Experts have warned that the north may be experiencing famine.
Sigrid Kaag, the senior U.N. humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters on Tuesday that civilians trying to survive all across Gaza face an “utterly devastating situation.”
Kaag said she and other U.N. officials repeatedly ask Israel for access for convoys to northern Gaza and elsewhere, to allow in commercial goods, to reopen the Rafah crossing from Egypt in the south and to approve dual-use items.
The Israeli military says it allows in enough humanitarian aid and blames U.N. agencies for not distributing it, saying large amounts of aid have accumulated just inside Gaza’s borders. U.N. officials say Israeli restrictions, the breakdown of law and order and ongoing fighting make it difficult to access the aid and distribute it, and have repeatedly called for a ceasefire.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar have mediated talks between Israel and Hamas for nearly a year, and diplomats say those efforts have recently gained momentum.
But Hamas has said it will not release the remaining hostages without an end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all the hostages are returned and has said Israel will maintain a lasting military presence in some areas.
___
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
(I’ve been really enjoying this trip of his, through his column. Iceland sounds like my kinda place. -A)
Good morning from American soil, and to be more specific, Baltimore.
Six decades of oppressive dictatorship collapsed Sunday as Syrian rebels entered Damascus and sent tyrant Bashar Al-Assad fleeing to Russia. Russia and Iran were the backers who kept the Assad regime afloat and now have eggs on their faces for betting on the wrong dog.
Syria was Russia’s toehold in the Middle East and Mediterranean as they have two bases in that nation. If Russia wants to keep those bases, they’ll have to negotiate with the people they’ve been dropping bombs on for the past 13 years. They may feel some kind of way about that. For Iran, it could limit its ability to spread weapons to its allies in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and even Gaza. For Syria, this brings an end to 13 years of civil war that pummeled cities and left hundreds of thousands dead. Refugees from all across the region and Europe may finally be able to return home…maybe.
Even as a coalition of rebels liberated the capital and freed thousands of prisoners while promising to build a coalition government, American forces were striking known Islamic State camps inside Syria. Israel sent its military inside Syria to protect its border along the same region it captured from Syria decades ago. Some of these groups in the coalition are considered terrorist organizations by several nations. One of the groups was al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, but now they’re all wearing smiley faces. These groups, backed by Turkey, are saying, “Trust us. We’re the good guys.”
Vladimir Putin granted Assad exile in Russia, but it’s not like the former Syrian dictator will be sleeping on the Russian dictator’s couch. Assad left Syria with about $2 billion in assets that should belong to the people he ruled over. For them, Assad left cities in ruin along with a devastated economy. His people are suffering, but he’ll be OK.
I wonder how much American money Donald Trump will take with him when he flees for exile in Russia.
I’m home.
I’m home, back in my country. Not home home, like back in my apartment or even my city.
I woke up at 5 a.m. because my body still thinks it’s in the London time zone. Sleep has been fighting me for the past two weeks and I don’t think it’s ready to quit yet.
Yesterday morning started in Reykjavik as I got on a shuttle at the Reykjavik Creepy Arms Inn, which took me to a bus station that took me to the Keflavik airport, about 45 minutes from the capital…which was just overrun by Syrian rebels. Kidding.
Keflavik Airport was built by the United States military after England invaded Iceland during World War II. Why did England invade Iceland? So the Germans wouldn’t. There wasn’t any fighting when England invaded. They just showed up in four ships one morning and took over like it was India or something. The British built the regional airport in Reykjavik during their occupation. The “invasion” rescued Iceland from the Great Depression as there were just as many foreign soldiers in Iceland as Icelanders. The United States took over occupying Iceland before it entered WWII so England could use more of its troops to fight Nazis (who we used to think were the bad guys before we started voting for them). I think a movie should be made about the invasion of Iceland and it would be a comedy.
I started this cartoon in the airport where NONE of the electrical outlets work. There were dozens of tables in the airport for passengers and each one had at least four outlets…and none of them worked. I charged my phone by draining power from my iPad during the flight, that is, after I had drawn the day’s cartoon of course. I finished the cartoon during my flight and I probably freaked out passengers who walked by as they saw me drawing skulls. People are always sneaking peeks over my shoulder, and often regretting it.
Where I started the cartoon. Every retailer has to scan your boarding pass before they can sell you something, like someone’s going to sneak into the terminal while fighting off the very dickish Icelandic security guards (oh, they suck) to purchase one of the Icelandic hotdogs. You’ll see.
On the plane, I shared a row with a young lady and we started whispering to each other as the plane filled up with people, hoping that nobody would take our middle seat. We were counting the passengers left in the aisle and praying for the doors to close. I was like, “If someone does sit here, don’t let it be another fat guy. Please god, no fat guys.” Nobody did which made it a more comfortable flight for both of us. I had elbow room to draw and she had some extra room to nap. It was a long flight. My back still hurts.
Sorry for not doing all this in chronological order. How long am I allowed to blame jet lag? President Biden blamed jet lag from two weeks before for his dismal debate performance. Maybe he thought he was still on London time and the answer to the next question will arrive in five hours. Anyway, I decided to eat something good the night before for my last meal in Iceland, and I chose well.
Readers LOVE the food pics. At least they do on Facebook. This is a haddock covered in horseradish sauce, and it wasn’t as expensive as I expected. It came with broccoli and potatoes over rice. It was great and there was something done with the potatoes I can’t figure out, but they were excellent. Most of the other diners were eating cheeseburgers.
When I was done, the waitress asked if I wanted dessert…no thank you…or coffee. Coffee? Oh, god yes.
Nectar of the gods, people. Nec…tar…of…the…gods. I almost cried. Of course, I got more coffee the next morning at the airport and I have two cups with me now that I took from the continental breakfast downstairs in my B’more hotel.
After the haddock and coffee (that could be an emo band name), I braved the weather and 55 mph winds (I’m still not on the metric system), and saw my friend Renata one last time and I met her coworker Isak, who was born and bred in Iceland but has spent significant time in Astoria. How expensive is Iceland? Isak thinks New York City is cheap.
The patch Renata is showing off is her football team in Brazil, which her family has been following for decades, something Americans can understand. Also, Renata is reading the blog. Say hi to her in the comments. Renata, there are hellos in the comments.
Renata told me I couldn’t leave Iceland until I could finally accomplish pronouncing “Gull,” a very good lager made in Iceland. It was a constant theme of my stay on that frozen island. I still can’t say it properly. If you go to Iceland, order the beer and ask your server how it’s pronounced. It will fuck with you.
And I was wrong. The haddock was not my last meal in Iceland. Take a deep breath before you look at the next picture. I don’t want to start a panic.
Admit it. You did a little jump in your seat. This is the Icelandic hotdog. Rene, my niece from Alabama, was in Iceland a few months ago and tried it. She hated it. I thought she was probably too good for hotdogs but gave her points for trying it, and then I tried it, and yeah…she’s right. I didn’t love it.
We invented the hotdog so this must be how Don McClean felt when he heard Madonna’s cover of American Pie.
This was purchased from Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, who created this dog. They have stands in the capital and a couple in the airport. It’s not a large airport yet they have two stands for these things. As the young lady handed it to me, she either said, “Have fun” or “Have a great time.” I can’t remember, but I thought it was cute. I saw a few people running for their flights while carrying a hotdog.
So that’s a dog made from lamb mixed with beef (I think) and it’s covered in APPLE ketchup, sweet mustard, remoulade, and crispy fried onion. At least that’s what it says on the website (I research for you). I’m religiously opposed to ketchup on hotdogs and any red-blooded American caught doing so should be sent to Guantanamo to think about what he did, but I tried this. I figured if I was going to try an Icelandic dog, then I should try it the way the Icelanders intended, but even with apple ketchup, it’s still not right. My defense for the ketchup is that I was on foreign soil.
On my flight, I saw a young man with two slices from Sbarro, which is worse than putting ketchup on a hotdog. He probably thought it was real pizza. I saw a lot of pizza in Iceland and I was like, “Nope!”
Yes, I am a bit of a food snob, but I’m the kind of food snob who enjoyed that Icelandic haddock but can also appreciate a Whopper and will eat a hotdog (a real American hotdog) from a Manhattan street cart.
By the way, four things Iceland doesn’t have: Snakes, mosquitos, an army, or McDonald’s. For awhile, I didn’t think it had coffee either. I should also mention I never got coffee in Liverpool either, but there was tea. It sufficed.
I’m a member of an author’s group in Fredericksburg. I think the rule for membership is that you have to have written a book. My two cartoon books count and I was invited after I won my RFK award, when I officially became a big shot. Basically, all it does is have dinners every few months which are usually held at a nice expensive German restaurant next to the train station. There’s lots of schnitzel. There was a dinner last night and the leader of the group was pushing me to make it.
My plane landed at 5:20 p.m. in Baltimore and the last train to Fredericksburg was leaving at 6 p.m. I was gonna have to get off the plane. Anyone who’s ever flown can tell you it can take 20 minutes to get off a plane. After landing in London, an old lady was telling her husband to look in the overhead bin again to make sure they didn’t forget anything. She kept saying, “Look in the bin, Harold.” He’d say, “I did look in the bin.” And she’d say it again. “Look in the bin, Harold.” “I looked in the bin.” “Look again,” Harold.” “I looked.” This went on a few more times. As they were holding everyone up over this bin shit, someone still in their seat, unable to get out because of this couple, shouted, “Look in the goddamn bin, Harold.” Ok. That person was me. And guess what. There was something in the bin Harold missed. Anyway, after getting off the plane in Baltimore, I would have to get through U.S. Border Patrol and Customs, whose employees are a LOT nicer than the Iceland Asshole Patrol posing as airport security. I asked a suit-wearing security guy where my airline’s check-in counter was located, and he interrupted, saying “I’m security, I don’t take questions.” He wouldn’t even hear the question and as I tried to say something else, he interrupted me again, and again. Finally, I told him he was a dick which made him look at me as if nobody had ever told him that before which is impossible when you’re a real dick. I saw him again later and he glared at me, so I said, “And your haircut’s stupid too.” And it was stupid, as it was some self-inflicted mohawk-looking thing. Who wears a suit with a mohawk? And how did a guy with a mohawk get a job in security without it being in a place like a casino in Atlantic City? Anyway, after getting through Customs, which can take from two minutes to an hour, I would have to get my luggage from baggage claim, catch an airport shuttle (which can take longer than Customs), get to the train station, and catch the train. There was no way I was going to do all that in an hour.
I took a shuttle to my hotel and got to talk to a nice lady from London as if I knew London. Oh, yes…don’t get me started on the Tube. Harumph.
So, I spent the night in Baltimore. Unfortunately, because I didn’t want to spend a lot of money just to sleep over for one night, I stayed in the same inexpensive hotel where they once gave me a room they had already booked, and I ended up walking in on a large hairy naked guy doing things to himself. Thankfully, that didn’t happen this time, and nobody has walked in on me either…yet.
Listen, I don’t really hate large people and I kinda am one myself, but it shouldn’t make me intolerant if I don’t want to sit next to them on an airplane or walk in on one while he’s naked doing things to himself. Get a room! Well, he had one. It wasn’t his fault.
I was also invited to a lunch today hosted by the Fredericksburg Advance, the local publication I’ve been drawing a weekly (most weeks) cartoon for over the past year or so. I’m not making that event either. I have to take a train from Baltimore to take a train from DC, and that one’s leaving until 1 p.m. Hell, I should get moving now.
I grabbed dinner last night at Glory Days (think Applebees, TGY Fridays, Ruby Tuesday, etc), had an American beer (not Coors), and watched American football. I had fried haddock.
Now, that’s an American haddock. Eh, the haddock in Reykjavik was better.
Now, can I pat myself on the back to end this? I just spent two weeks traveling abroad and produced a brand new cartoon and blog EVERY FUCKING DAY while doing it. Am I insane or what? During my trip, every cartoonist back in the states took the weekends off. And, I think I did a pretty good job of covering the issues during those two weeks, which involved a lot of drawing and researching on planes, trains, buses, and other things.
Some of my colleagues say I’m the hardest-working political cartoonist in the business. Well, yeah. It’s not like I’m expecting a Pulitzer Prize for this, but can I at least get a cookie?
On that note, don’t you dare call what I just did a “vacation.”
(This is a valid POV. Also, if you go ahead and click the links, you’ll get simply the embed you clicked on. If you click the link above, you can see the whole story with the embeds. The whole story is here, with the embed links.)
The response to UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson being shot and killed in Manhattan last week has been…interesting, to say the least. Dude, whose identity remains unknown and is probably somewhere cooling in Istanbul while the Feds and everyone else continue searching for him, has turned into a something of a pop culture icon.
The online reactions of Black folks to the killer and Thompson himself have run the gamut, from outright hostility, like this guy…
…to intellectually nuanced and dense articulations of why they are unmoved about the killing of this white man who theoretically became rich off the back of the misfortunes of the sick. (Let’s call this intellectual hostility.)
What’s most surprising is the amount of love this hoodie wearing, N95-masked gentleman who used a silencers to kill a man in broad daylight in the heart of New York City is receiving. There has not been this much adoration for a white man since Channing Tatum took his clothes off dancing off beat in Magic Mike. I mean, there’s already been a lookalike competition:
…ain’t no damn way a Black man would get this kind of love if he pulled the trigger. I’m quite positive that there are white people in the sundown town of Cullman, Ala. who are fine with a white man doing this crime but would pull out their big ass trucks with a Confederate flag on the front to find the perpetrator if he was Black.
Denzel Washington could have pulled the trigger, and folks would have thanked him for the years of joy he brought to their lives and thrown his ass under the jail.
The response to this murder (I refuse to call it an “assassination” because Thompson could have caught some lead for something as simple as sleeping with the nanny and her boyfriend pulling out the .44 on him.) is at once expected in our society and, well, pretty nonsensical.
And like all things that make no sense anymore, I blame this on Donald Trump…and that dude hasn’t even moved into the White House yet. I’m just glad the killer wasn’t a Black man, because we’d all be face-down in handcuffs getting profiled throughout the damn country.
There was always waiting in our mother’s eyes, Anxiety and wonder and surmise, Through the long days, and in the longer, slow, Still afternoons, that seemed to never go, And in the evening, when she used to sit And listen to our casual talk, and knit. And when the day was dark and rainy, and Not fit to be abroad in, she would stand Beside the window, and peer out and shiver, As small sleek raindrops joined to make a river That rushed, tempestuous, down the window pane, And say, “I wonder what they do in rain? Is it wet there in the trenches, do you think?” And she would wonder if he had his ink And razor blades and toothpaste that she sent; And if he read much in his Testament, Or clean forgot, some mornings, as boys will. But always the one wonder in her eyes Was, “Is he living, living, living, still Alive and gay? Or lying dead somewhere Out on the ground, and will they find him there?” She closed her lids each night upon that look Of waiting, as a hand might close a book But never change the words that were within. And when the morning noises would begin A new day, and a young sun touched the skies, Again she woke with waiting in her eyes.
But that is over now. She does not read The lists of casualties, since that one came A week or two ago. There is no need. She’s making sweaters now for other men And knitting just as carefully as then. There is no change, except that as she plies Her needles, swift and rhythmic as before, There is no waiting in our mother’s eyes, Anxiety or wonder any more.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
This one address the mistaken idea that anti-trans stuff worked to win the presidency for tRump. In fact it was not a factor according to surveys however the only ones talking about it were the tRump people. Harris never mentioned trans except for one time saying that they followed the law on treating trans prisoners with the hormone care they were prescribed or needed before incarceration. Again it is the law and tRump also did it in his first term. Hugs
More on the trans issues and the bathroom ban for trans people in the capital. Trans issues in the 2022 midterms showed that trans issues was a losing issue for them. It was the same this election. The larger problem is the democrats being too cowardly to stand up for the abused minority. Hugs
We hear about the genocide by Israel of the Palestinians. He talks about hate on the internet by right wing forced paid for and encouraged by people who want to normalize this level of violence and convince people it is good to be this bloodthirsty. Hugs
To the hostages of our policies, my apologies— the petty stenographers of the crooked rulers in the once fancy now crumbling cities of our fading Empire lied then. They lied then and they lie now. Everything they say and write is a lie, about law and freedom, about equality and justice, in the rubble of the bombs we make and sell, in the silent cries of limbless orphans, in the night lit by white phosphorous and the relentless sound of buzzing drones. They tell us we used to have things of value, even things we ourselves made, and that it was a place like no other. All I know is that Sinbad once sailed to Gaza and so to Gaza he’ll sail once again.
Sadly a lot of stories about Kennedy never mention the verified deaths his crusade against medical science. Below is a quote from the article which points the cost of his inability to understand or comprehend the science behind vaccines. Hugs
A measles outbreak began a few months after his visit. Eighty-three people died, most of them children, a staggering loss in a nation of about 200,000 people.
The health secretary pick and his organization have worked around the world to undermine longstanding policies on measles, AIDS and more.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, has spent years working abroad with organizations and associates that undermine longstanding global health policies, records show.Credit…Uli Seit for The New York Times
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is in line to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the next Trump administration, is well-known for promoting conspiracy theories and vaccine skepticism in the United States.
But Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has also spent years working abroad to undermine policies that have been pillars of global health policy for a half-century, records show.
He has done this by lending his celebrity, and the name of his nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, to a network of overseas chapters that sow distrust in vaccine safety and spread misinformation far and wide.
He, his organizations and their officials have interfered with vaccination efforts, undermined sex education campaigns meant to stem the spread of AIDS in Africa, and railed against global organizations like the World Health Organization that are in charge of health initiatives.
How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Fights Health Policy Abroad:
Along the way, Mr. Kennedy has partnered with, financed or promoted fringe figures — people who claim that 5G cellphone towers cause cancer, that homosexuality and contraceptive education are part of a global conspiracy to reduce African fertility and that the World Health Organization is trying to steal countries’ sovereignty.
One of his group’s advisers, in Uganda, suggested using “supernatural insight” and a man she calls Prophet Elvis to guide policymaking. “We do well to embrace ethereal means to get ahead as a nation,” she wrote on a Ugandan news site this year.
These people, more than leading scientists and experienced public health professionals, have existed in Mr. Kennedy’s orbit for years. The ideas spread by him and his associates abroad highlight the unorthodox, sometimes conspiratorial nature of the world occupied by a man who stands to lead America’s health department, its 80,000 employees and its $1.8 trillion budget.
Mr. Kennedy did not respond to a list of questions about his organization’s work abroad. His personal email automatically replied with a link to a Google form for people to apply to work with him in government — and name their own job titles. Mary Holland, the chief executive of Children’s Health Defense, said that Mr. Kennedy was the group’s “chairman on leave” and had not been involved in the day-to-day operations in over a year.
As health secretary, Mr. Kennedy would have the opportunity to reshape health policy. The department has a hand in negotiations for an international pandemic-response treaty, is the parent agency of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and finances global projects like vaccine campaigns.
He undermined confidence in the measles vaccine ahead of a deadly outbreak in Samoa.
Mr. Kennedy visited the Pacific island of Samoa in June 2019 in the aftermath of a public health tragedy.
During routine measles immunizations a year earlier, nurses had mistakenly mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxant, leading to the death of two infants.
Measles, a highly contagious disease, is preventable, thanks to vaccines that have been proven safe since the 1960s.
But vaccine skeptics seized on the death of the two children as evidence that the vaccines should not be trusted. The Samoan government temporarily suspended its immunization program.
Image
Mr. Kennedy visited the Pacific island of Samoa in June 2019 and met with the prime minister.Credit…Misiona Simo/Samoa Observer, via Associated Press
Mr. Kennedy arrived in Samoa, on the invitation of a local anti-vaccine activist, and amplified doubts about the vaccine’s safety. It was a crucial moment. Vaccination rates had plummeted, and the World Health Organization called for Samoa to ramp up immunization as soon as possible.
Mr. Kennedy met with the prime minister and other officials. He told activists that vaccines shipped to Samoa might be of a lower quality than those sent to developed countries.
“With his last name, and the status attached to it, people will believe him,” said Dr. Take Naseri, who met with Mr. Kennedy at the time as Samoa’s director general of health.
A measles outbreak began a few months after his visit. Eighty-three people died, most of them children, a staggering loss in a nation of about 200,000 people.
During the outbreak, Mr. Kennedy falsely suggested that defective vaccines could have caused the deaths. He later dismissed the outbreak as “mild” and denied any connection to it. “I never told anybody not to vaccinate,” he said last year.
When Edwin Tamasese, the anti-vaccine campaigner who arranged Mr. Kennedy’s visit, was arrested and charged with incitement for interfering with vaccinations, Children’s Health Defense helped him obtain legal advice and paid for his lawyers, according to Mr. Tamasese.
The measles outbreak in Samoa ended after 95 percent of the eligible population received vaccinations, according to the W.H.O.
He and his organization promote AIDS falsehoods.
Sex education has been central to the global fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa for decades.
But officials with Children’s Health Defense Africa, one of Mr. Kennedy’s nonprofit groups, see a conspiracy at play.
Wahome Ngare, a Kenyan physician who sits on the group’s advisory board, argued at a conference in Uganda this year that contraception and health education were part of a global plot to reduce Africans’ fertility. He attended the conference alongside the head of the Children’s Health Defense Africa, who presented slides bearing the organization’s logo and web address.
Mr. Kennedy himself has questioned the accepted science behind AIDS. He falsely said that AIDS may have been caused by the recreational use among gay people of the drug amyl nitrite. It is caused by the virus H.I.V.
Last year, Children’s Health Defense posted a video promoting a book that questions the link between H.I.V. and AIDS. Another of the group’s interview subjects this year said that the former U.S. government scientist Anthony Fauci should be imprisoned or “taken off this Earth.”
Dr. Ngare is among the many people in Mr. Kennedy’s orbit whose views conflict sharply with those of the health agency that Mr. Kennedy stands to lead.
In an interview with NPR in 2015 before joining Children’s Health Defense Africa, Dr. Ngare mused about stories that “vaccines have been used for spread of H.I.V.” and called for a boycott of polio vaccines. The U.S. government is a major sponsor of polio vaccine campaigns worldwide. Dr. Ngare did not respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Holland, the chief executive of Children’s Health Defense, said those were Dr. Ngare’s personal views, not those of Mr. Kennedy’s organization.
At the conference in Uganda, Dr. Ngare spoke to far-right lawmakers and activists who support draconian punishments, including life in prison, for people convicted of having gay sex.
He aligned himself with fringe figures, including people who ended up on German security watch lists.
When Mr. Kennedy started his nonprofit group’s European chapter in August 2020, he floated questions about whether the Covid-19 pandemic was part of “a sinister game” played by governments to control people.
“A lot of it feels very planned to me,” he said in Berlin.
The next day, he rallied about 38,000 people at a protest over Covid-19 measures. The protest was organized by a German group called Querdenken. Its leaders have since ended up on a government watch list for fomenting antigovernment sentiment.
Image
Mr. Kennedy speaking during a protest over coronavirus pandemic regulations in Berlin in 2020.Credit…Clemens Bilan/EPA, via Shutterstock
Promoters used Mr. Kennedy’s name to drum up attendance, saying that he personally wanted people to take to the streets and fight back. After the event, hundreds of protesters tried to storm the Reichstag, Germany’s Parliament.
Mr. Kennedy was not in attendance at the Parliament. “That whole Reichstag thing was completely unrelated to the demonstration,” Ms. Holland said.
Mr. Kennedy’s influence in Germany lives on, at least in online forums. Recent data from CeMAS, a research group that monitors conspiracy movements, shows that his name is often invoked on conspiracy-focused German Telegram channels, coming up more than 6,000 times this year alone.
His European chapter paid a British lawmaker to speak at a conference promoting vaccine skepticism.
Children’s Health Defense’s chapter in Europe has cultivated relationships with members of the European Parliament.
In January 2022, the organization held a news conference in Brussels demanding a “moratorium on health restrictions.” An anti-vaccine rally that followed the event turned violent, with protesters smashing windows at the European Union’s diplomatic headquarters.
In April 2023, Children’s Health Defense Europe helped organize a conference on the grounds of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. At the conference, lawmakers criticized a proposed pandemic treaty being considered at the World Health Organization.
The chapter has hosted press events with European lawmakers and encouraged Parliament to reject vaccination certificate rules.
In 2023, the European chapter paid a member of Britain’s Parliament, Andrew Bridgen, to speak at a conference it had helped organize. The conference discussed opposition to government pandemic measures and promoted vaccine skepticism. The sum was small, at just under $800, according to Mr. Bridgen’s financial disclosures. Such payments are legal in Britain.
Image
Andrew Bridgen, left, a member of Parliament at the time, in London in 2022. He has compared the Covid-19 vaccine rollout to the Holocaust.Credit…Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mr. Bridgen has repeatedly compared the Covid-19 vaccine rollout to the Holocaust, including in an interview with the Children’s Health Defense online television station.
Children’s Health Defense spent $315,000 in Europe last year, including in Iceland and Greenland, its U.S. tax filings show. Ms. Holland said that as of this year, the European chapter was run by volunteers and no longer funded by the U.S. operation.
His Africa chapter pushes measles misinformation and risky remedies.
In 2021, a South African herbalist named Toren Wing reached out to Mr. Kennedy about his effort to ban 5G cellphone towers over health concerns.
In an email, Mr. Wing recalled in an interview, he invoked a rousing speech about liberty that Mr. Kennedy’s father had delivered as a senator visiting apartheid South Africa in 1966.
“This is so cool,” Mr. Kennedy responded, according to a copy of the email. He looped in a Children’s Health Defense lawyer. The anti-5G effort fizzled, Mr. Wing said, but it laid the groundwork for a Children’s Health Defense chapter in Africa.
At the chapter’s launch, Mr. Kennedy said the continent was “a testing and clinical trial laboratory for multinational pharmaceutical companies that see African people as commodities.” His group sent just over $15,000 for “setup expenses” in 2022, U.S. tax filings show.
Shabnam Palesa Mohamed, who leads the chapter, is a frequent host of the nonprofit’s online show. She interviews doctors promoting unproven Covid-19 remedies and rails against vaccines.
After a measles outbreak started in Cape Town, Ms. Mohamed appeared in a video discussing supposed negative effects of “alleged measles injections” in South Africa.
In 2023, Unicef reported a 30 percent decline in confidence in childhood vaccines in South Africa after the Covid-19 pandemic, coming amid the world’s “largest sustained backslide in childhood immunization in 30 years.” The group cited factors including “growing access to misleading information.”
Ms. Mohamed and others affiliated with Children’s Health Defense Africa pushed the discredited theory that the drug ivermectin will treat Covid-19. They also sued the South African government, unsuccessfully, to stop Covid-19 vaccinations. Ms. Mohamed thanked Children’s Health Defense for supporting the case.
Ms. Mohamed has promoted conspiracy theories against the World Health Organization, Bill Gates and two of the world’s biggest money managers, BlackRock and Vanguard. Ms. Mohamed declined to answer questions about her work.
“I don’t think she was speaking on behalf of C.H.D.,” said Ms. Holland, who said the Africa chapter was a volunteer organization. “She’s an individual. She has her own views.”
Kimon de Greef contributed reporting.
Selam Gebrekidan is an investigative reporter for The Times whose work focuses on accountability — of governments, companies and people who wield power.More about Selam Gebrekidan
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 1, 2024, Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Kennedy Has Worked Abroad to Undermine Global Health Policies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
The paragraph below shows that what happened then is happening again now. It was scary for me as a teen back then. Gay people in deep country settings in the backwoods, especially gay teens desperately trying to keep people from finding out. Especially abused gay kids who felt that abuse was written all over them for people to see. I was so happy to see that time gone for most of the school kids by the 2010s. Kids accepted in their class by their peers, the fellow students. That very acceptance terrified the conservative religious, but I have never understood why? Why is terrifying and hurting kids so pleasing to them? But the quote from the article below says it all. Hugs
The late 1970s was a somber, frightening time in queer history. The rise of a Christian right – branding themselves the “moral majority” – in conjunction with an energized Republican party began a culture war against women, people of color and queer people. The combination of religious rhetoric, nationalism and economic conservatism – Reaganomics, in other words – created a groundswell of contemporary far-right politicking that became the template for our contemporary political world.
Scottie's Playtime 