The killer Kennedy
RFK, Jr. is trying to scare African-Americans away from getting vaccinated now.
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The Kennedy family has a long history of dedicated public service - and more than a few skeletons in its closet.
And somehow, this one manages to be the worst of the bunch. Yes, worse than the one who left a women to drown after driving his car off a bridge.
When a filmmaker asked medical historian Naomi Rogers to appear in a new documentary, the Yale professor didn't blink. She had done these "talking head" interviews many times before.
She assumed her comments would end up in a straightforward documentary that addressed some of the most pressing concerns of the pandemic, such as the legacy of racism in medicine and how that plays into current mistrust in some communities of color. The subject of vaccines was also mentioned, but the focus wasn't clear to Rogers.
The director wanted something more polished than a Zoom call, so a well-outfitted camera crew arrived at Rogers' home in Connecticut in the fall. They showed up wearing masks and gloves. Before the interview, crew members cleaned the room thoroughly. Then they spent about an hour interviewing Rogers. She discussed her research and in particular controversial figures such as Dr. James Marion Sims, who was influential in the field of gynecology but who performed experimental surgery on enslaved Black women during the 1800s without anesthesia.
"We were talking about issues of racism and experimentation, and they seemed to be handled appropriately," Rogers recalls. At the time, there were few indications that anything was out of the ordinary — except one. During a short break, she asked who else was being interviewed for the film. The producer's response struck Rogers as curiously vague.
"They said, 'Well, there's 'a guy' in New York, and we talked to 'somebody in New Jersey, and California,' " Rogers told NPR. "I thought it's so odd that they wouldn't tell me who these people were."
It wasn't until this March that Rogers would stumble upon the answer.
She received an email from a group called Children's Health Defense — prominent in the anti-vaccine movement — promoting its new film, Medical Racism: The New Apartheid.
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The free, online film is the latest effort by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder of Children's Health Defense. (He's the son of the former U.S. Attorney General Robert "Bobby" Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.) With this film, Kennedy and his allies in the anti-vaccine movement resurface and promote disproven claims about the dangers of vaccines, but it's aimed squarely at a specific demographic: Black Americans.
The film draws a line from the real and disturbing history of racism and atrocities in the medical field — such as the Tuskegee syphilis study — to interviews with anti-vaccine activists who warn communities of color to be suspicious of modern-day vaccines.
At one point in Medical Racism, viewers are warned that "in black communities something is very sinister" and "the same thing that happened in the 1930s during the eugenics movement" is happening again.
African-Americans are already dying of COVID-19 at a much higher rate than white people, which is proof of conspiracy. Kennedy and his allies (including a Nation of Islam representative, because why not) promote conspiracy bullshit to discourage them from getting vaccinated, which makes COVID-19 hit the community even harder, which is more proof of conspiracy. It’s a lucrative scam.
Speaking of American political dynasties, the great Republican civil war over Trump has Bushes turning on each other:
“Takes one to know one” department:
An activist who sparked outrage after she sprayed “Free Gaza and Palestine” on the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto is helping to organise “Understanding Antisemitism” workshops for Britain’s biggest education union.
Ewa Jasiewicz was condemned in 2010 after she daubed slogans on a wall at the site of the former ghetto in Poland where thousands of Jews were imprisoned and starved to their deaths under the Nazis.
Attempting to justify the vandalism – which included the wording “liberate all ghettos” – Jasiewicz said Israel had “co-opted” the Holocaust to serve “agendas of colonisation and repression”.
Jewish News can reveal that in her role as an organiser with the NEU North West Region, National Team, the 43 year-old has been behind three recent sessions called “Understanding Antisemitism”, held for members of the National Education Union (NEU).
It’s a teacher’s union, of course. If this generation of Brits won’t elect Corbyn, maybe the next one will.
Euro 2020 starts, one year late, this Friday. I am curious to see how England will disappoint us this time around. (The Toronto Maple Leafs already set a high bar this year for choking.)
American right-wingers complain about the NBA and NFL being “too political,” but they have nothing on The Beautiful Game.
Ukraine’s football federation has unveiled the national team’s Euro 2020 kits that features Russian-annexed Crimea and popular nationalist slogans, prompting Moscow’s ire.
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In a statement published on Facebook on Sunday, Andriy Pavelko, president of the Football Federation of Ukraine, said Ukrainian players will wear “special uniforms” and posted photos of the jerseys in the blue-and-yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag.
The football kits feature the contours of Ukraine that include Russia-annexed Crimea and the separatist-controlled regions of Donetsk and Lugansk as well as the words “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!”
“We believe that Ukraine’s silhouette will give strength to the players because they will fight for all of Ukraine,” Pavelko said.
There’s projection, and then there’s projection:
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova derided the football kits, saying Ukraine’s football team “attached Ukraine’s territory to Russia’s Crimea”.
The design, she said, brings to mind the art technique of “trompe l’oeil” that tricks the eye and creates the “illusion of the impossible”.
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RFK Jr and Naom,i Wolfe are proof that politics is circular, not linear - the whackjobs from "right" and "left" - the "Stalinists" and the "Nazis" - are all together in their one big steaming pile of....