Politics & Stuff

[Fernando 6,585]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Not surprising Blinken is a Zionist his Grandad was one of the first Isaraeli settlers

and the 'peacemaker' sent by the US for Israel/Lebanon used to be in the IDF - you couldnt make it up

Bottom line the US could stop the Ukraine and Middle east slaughter tomorrow - but there's money in thar them weapons....

I think Trump will end the war. 

He said and everything he said he has done. 

[Fulham Broadway 17,319]

3 minutes ago, Fernando said:

I think Trump will end the war. 

He said and everything he said he has done. 

He's certainly set himself up for that, saying he would end it in a day - maybe that's a bit optimistic., but if he could would be good - apparently hes jealous that Obama got a Nobel Peace prize so he'll give it a go.

 

[Vesper 30,195]

3 minutes ago, Fernando said:

He said and everything he said he has done. 

How is that Mexico-paid-for wall working out?

How are all those Trump infrastructure projects doing?

How about that new Trump healthcare plan that replaced the ACA (Obamacare) after the ACA was repealed?

How about Covid, as Trump said it would 'just disappear' in a few weeks?

 

Oh, yes, NONE of those things happened.

 

[Fulham Broadway 17,319]

2 minutes ago, Vesper said:

How is that Mexico-paid-for wall working out?

When he said ''its a very high wall, very high, no one can get over it'' ..pause ''unless you had a very long ladder'' 🤪

he could have a 90 minute Netflix comedy slot

[Fulham Broadway 17,319]

Trump, his team, his allies, and his supporters in the right-wing media have been calling his presidential win “historic,” and a “landslide,” while using those provably false claims to declare a mandate. The voting from the election earlier this month is still not complete but Trump’s slim margin of victory is likely to shrink even further.

As The New York Times reports, the results prove Trump’s election claims are false.

Calling it, “The ‘Landslide’ That Wasn’t,” The Times’ Peter Baker reports the “latest vote count shows that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century. But Mr. Trump claims a ‘powerful mandate.'”

[Vesper 30,195]

2 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

When he said ''its a very high wall, very high, no one can get over it'' ..pause ''unless you had a very long ladder'' 🤪

he could have a 90 minute Netflix comedy slot

there were so many late night telly comedy videos about it

[Vesper 30,195]

MAGAts think Trump will build this:

[Vesper 30,195]

Amsterdam Mayor Admits She Was Wrong About Violence

 

[Vesper 30,195]

[Vesper 30,195]

here's Piers Morgan repeatedly lying that "babies were killed in their cribs" as "verified by photo evidence". This is the genocidal atrocity propaganda he and others in the Western media deliberately spread to justify and launder the actual mass killing of Palestinian babies

in the same segment Piers Morgan of course also threw in the rape hoax, and then he was confronted with the obvious point: all genocidal Zionist scum like him always cover for their actual pedophile rapist buddies, or are actual rapists themselves. "Why are you stuttering?"

 

Edited November 24, 2024 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,195]

 

[Fulham Broadway 17,319]

The power of AIPAC to control the US...

The ICC was set up after Nuremberg to stop any country behaving like that again -seems the US and Israel are exempt- when it suits them....

Lindsay Graham tweeted: “Any nation or organization that aids or abets this outrage (The ICC) should expect to meet firm resistance from the United States, and I look forward to working with President Trump, his team, and my colleagues in Congress to come up with a powerful response.”

The South Carolina senator later told Fox News: “If you are going to help the ICC as a nation and force the arrest warrant against Bibi and Gallant…I will put sanctions on you as a nation.

You’re gonna have to pick the rogue ICC versus America. I’m working with [another US senator] Tom Cotton to have legislation passed as soon as we can to sanction any country that aids and abets the arrest of any politician in Israel. What they’re doing in Israel is trying to prevent a second Holocaust. So, to any ally, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, if you try to help the ICC, we’re gonna sanction you.”

In March 2023, Mr Lindsey supported the ICC arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin, praising the organisation. He said: “The decision by the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin is a giant step in the right direction for the international community. It is more than justified by the evidence. I hope the international community will continue to support the ICC in their endeavors to hold Putin accountable for the brutal invasion of Ukraine.”

[Vesper 30,195]

12 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

The power of AIPAC to control the US...

The ICC was set up after Nuremberg to stop any country behaving like that again -seems the US and Israel are exempt- when it suits them....

Lindsay Graham tweeted: “Any nation or organization that aids or abets this outrage (The ICC) should expect to meet firm resistance from the United States, and I look forward to working with President Trump, his team, and my colleagues in Congress to come up with a powerful response.”

The South Carolina senator later told Fox News: “If you are going to help the ICC as a nation and force the arrest warrant against Bibi and Gallant…I will put sanctions on you as a nation.

You’re gonna have to pick the rogue ICC versus America. I’m working with [another US senator] Tom Cotton to have legislation passed as soon as we can to sanction any country that aids and abets the arrest of any politician in Israel. What they’re doing in Israel is trying to prevent a second Holocaust. So, to any ally, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, if you try to help the ICC, we’re gonna sanction you.”

In March 2023, Mr Lindsey supported the ICC arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin, praising the organisation. He said: “The decision by the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin is a giant step in the right direction for the international community. It is more than justified by the evidence. I hope the international community will continue to support the ICC in their endeavors to hold Putin accountable for the brutal invasion of Ukraine.”

the Mossad likely have massive proof and pics/videos of closet case Graham getting a BBC up the batty crease and down his throat

[cosmicway 1,333]

ARE YOU A COMMIE, OR A CITIZEN ?
-------------------------------------------
I mean to broaden the horizon of this age old question.
To make you understand let's first look who are the patriotic citizens and who are the commies.
The patriotic citizans are the majority and they also include -by and large- the establishment, the jet sets.
The commies are the minority and they are stereotyped as working class individuals, though that is n't necessary.

So this makes you say "hello, I had better be a citizen".
Not for moral reasons, apart from any moral reasons, this seems to be the best in crowd to belong.

Well if you are jet set it's ok.
But if you are not ?
The mistake you are making is that by being a patriotic citizen you are a pin in the haystack.

Suppose you open a cafeteteria in a smallish but not too small a town.
Say West Brom whose population is about 100,000.
If you open it in one of the tourist spots of the town that's fine.
But that's expensive even if you find such a spot.
So you open it in one of the backstreets ?
But then bliahhh, it will close in three months.
So what do you do ?
You name it "Karl Marx cafeteria" - you attract all the town's commies and you become rich.
You even have a margin to survive with one or two antagonists.
If someone opens another cafeteria called "cafeteria of the proletariat" at half a mile distance from you it's no problem.

So that's why some clever blokes become commies.
This can be enlarged of course to others, neofascists for example, Putin's admirers.
Cafeteria "Benito Mussolini" and cafeteria "tero nero".

Those who are scared of the CIA, FBI, MI6 and such entities are dummies - they stay out of the money.
 

Edited November 24, 2024 by cosmicway

[Fulham Broadway 17,319]

3 hours ago, Vesper said:

the Mossad likely have massive proof and pics/videos of closet case Graham getting a BBC up the batty crease and down his throat

But hes not gay 😁

Lindsey Graham's 10 gayest moments - LGBTQ Nation

[Fulham Broadway 17,319]

 

[Vesper 30,195]

How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world

In the wake of Trump’s unnerving appointees, the investigative journalist and veteran of the libel court offers pointers on coping in an age of surveillance

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/17/how-to-survive-the-broligarchy-20-lessons-for-the-post-truth-world-donald-trump

1 When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Last week Donald Trump appointed a director of intelligence who spouts Russian propaganda, a Christian nationalist crusader as secretary of defence, and a secretary of health who is a vaccine sceptic. If Trump was seeking to destroy American democracy, the American state and American values, this is how he’d do it.

2 Journalists are first, but everyone else is next. Trump has announced multibillion-dollar lawsuits against “the enemy camp”: newspapers and publishers. His proposed FBI director is on record as wanting to prosecute certain journalists. Journalists, publishers, writers, academics are always in the first wave. Doctors, teachers, accountants will be next. Authoritarianism is as predictable as a Swiss train. It’s already later than you think.

3 To name is to understand. This is McMuskism: it’s McCarthyism on steroids, political persecution + Trump + Musk + Silicon Valley surveillance tools. It’s the dawn of a new age of political witch-hunts, where burning at the stake meets data harvesting and online mobs.

4 If that sounds scary, it’s because that’s the plan.  Trump’s administration will be incompetent and reckless but individuals will be targeted, institutions will cower, organisations will crumble. Fast. The chilling will be real and immediate.

5 You have more power than you think. We’re supposed to feel powerless. That’s the strategy. But we’re not. If you’re a US institution or organisation, form an emergency committee. Bring in experts. Learn from people who have lived under authoritarianism. Ask advice.

6 Do not kiss the ring. Do not bend to power. Power will come to you, anyway. Don’t make it easy. Not everyone can stand and fight. But nobody needs to bend the knee until there’s an actual memo to that effect. WAIT FOR THE MEMO.

7 Know who you are. This list is a homage to Yale historian, Timothy Snyder. His On Tyranny, published in 2017, is the essential guide to the age of authoritarianism. His first command, “Do not obey in advance”, is what has been ringing, like tinnitus, in my ears ever since the Washington Post refused to endorse Kamala Harris. In some weird celestial stroke of luck, he calls me as I’m writing this and I ask for his updated advice: “Know what you stand for and what you think is good.”

8 Protect your private life. The broligarchy doesn’t want you to have one. Read Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: they need to know exactly who you are to sell you more shit. We’re now beyond that. Surveillance Authoritarianism is next. Watch The Lives of Others, the beautifully told film about surveillance in 80s east Berlin. Act as if you are now living in East Germany and Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp is the Stasi. It is.

9 Throw up the Kool-Aid. You drank it. That’s OK. We all did. But now is the time to stick your fingers down your throat and get that sick tech bro poison out of your system. Phones were – still are – a magic portal into a psychedelic fun house of possibility. They’re also tracking and surveilling you even as you sleep while a Silicon Valley edgelord plots ways to tear up the federal government.

10 Listen to women of colour. Everything bad that happened on the internet happened to them first. The history of technology is that it is only when it affects white men that it’s considered a problem. Look at how technology is already being used to profile and target immigrants. Know that you’re next.

11 Think of your personal data as nude selfies. A veteran technology journalist told me this in 2017 and it’s never left me. My experience of “discovery” – handing over 40,000 emails, messages, documents to the legal team of the Brexit donor I’d investigated – left me paralysed and terrified. Think what a hostile legal team would make of your message history. This can and will happen.

12 Don’t buy the bullshit. A Securities and Exchange judgment found Facebook had lied to two journalists – one of them was me – and Facebook agreed to pay a $100m penalty. If you are a journalist, refuse off the record briefings. Don’t chat on the phone; email. Refuse access interviews. Bullshit exclusives from Goebbels 2.0 will be a stain on your publication for ever.

13 Even dickheads love their dogs. Find a way to connect to those you disagree with. “The obvious mistakes of those who find themselves in opposition are to break off relations with those who disagree with you,” texts Vera Krichevskaya, the co-founder of TV Rain, Russia’s last independent TV station. “You cannot allow anger and narrow your circle.”

14 Pay in cash. Ask yourself what an international drug trafficker would do, and do that. They’re not going to the dead drop by Uber or putting 20kg of crack cocaine on a credit card. In the broligarchy, every data point is a weapon. Download Signal, the encrypted messaging app. Turn on disappearing messages.

15 Remember. Writer Rebecca Solnit, an essential US liberal voice, emails: “If they try to normalize, let us try to denormalize. Let us hold on to facts, truths, values, norms, arrangements that are going to be under siege. Let us not forget what happened and why.”

16 Find allies in unlikely places. One of my most surprising sources of support during my trial(s) was hard-right Brexiter David Davis. Find threads of connection and work from there.

17 There is such a thing as truth. There are facts and we can know them. From Tamsin Shaw, professor in philosophy at New York University: “‘Can the sceptic resist the tyrant?’ is one of the oldest questions in political philosophy. We can’t even fully recognise what tyranny is if we let the ruling powers get away with lying to us all.”

18 Plan. Silicon Valley doesn’t think in four-year election cycles. Elon Musk isn’t worrying about the midterms. He’s thinking about flying a SpaceX rocket to Mars and raping and pillaging its rare earth minerals before anyone else can get there. We need a 30-year road map out of this.

19 Take the piss. Humour is a weapon. Any man who feels the need to build a rocket is not overconfident about his masculinity. Work with that.

20 They are not gods. Tech billionaires are over-entitled nerds with the extraordinary historical luck of being born at the exact right moment in history. Treat them accordingly.

Edited November 24, 2024 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,195]

The ideology of Donald J. Trump

Trump’s ideology blends mercantilism, profit-driven capitalism, anti-immigration stances, and nationalist anti-imperialism—offering a unique lens on how he views America’s role at home and abroad.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-ideology-of-donald-j-trump

 

Does Donald J. Trump have an ideology, and what it is? The first part of the question is redundant: every individual has an ideology and if we believe that they do not have it, it is because it might represent an amalgam of pieces collected from various ideological frameworks that are rearranged, and thus hard to put a name on. But that does not mean that there is no ideology. The second part is a million-dollar question because if we could piece together Donald J, Trump’s ideology, we would be able to forecast, or guess (the element of volatility is high), how his rule over the next four years might look like.

The reason why most people are unable to make a coherent argument about Trump’s ideology is because they are either blinded by hatred or adulation, or because they cannot bring what they observe in him into an ideological framework, with a name attached to it, and to which they are accustomed.

Before I try to answer the question, let me dismiss two, in my opinion, entirely wrong epithets attached to Trump: fascist and populist. If fascist is used as a term of abuse, this is okay, and we can use it freely. Nobody cares. But as a term in a rational discussion of Trump’s beliefs, it is wrong. Fascism as an ideology implies (i) exclusivist nationalism, (ii) glorification of the leader, (iii) emphasis on the power of the state as opposed to private individuals and the private sector, (iv) rejection of the multi-party system, (v) corporatist rule, (vi) replacement of the class structure of society with unitary nationalism, and (vii) quasi religious adulation of the Party, the state, and the leader. I do not need to discuss each of these elements individually to show that they have almost no relationship to what Trump believes or what he wants to impose.

Likewise, the term “populist” has of late become a term of abuse, and despite some (in my opinion rather unsuccessful) attempts to define it better, it really stands for the leaders who win elections but do so on a platform that “we” do not like. Then, the term becomes meaningless.

What are the constituent parts of Trump’s ideology as we might have glimpsed during the previous four years of his rule?

Mercantilism. Mercantilism is an old and hallowed doctrine that regards economic activity, and especially trade in goods and services between the states, as a zero-sum game. Historically, it went together with a world where wealth was gold and silver. If you take the amount of gold and silver to be limited, then clearly the state and its leader who possesses more gold and silver (regardless of all other goods) is more powerful. The world has evolved since the 17^th century, but many people still believe in the mercantilist doctrine. Moreover, if one believes that trade is just a war by other means and that the main rival or antagonist of the United States is China, mercantilist policy towards China becomes a very natural response. When Trump initiated such policies against China in 2017, they were not a part of the mainstream discourse, but have since moved to the centre. Biden’s administration followed and expanded them significantly. We can expect that Trump will double-down on them. But mercantilists are, and Trump will be, transactional: if China agrees to sell less and buy more, he will be content. Unlike Biden, Trump will not try to undermine or overthrow the Chinese regime. Thus, unlike what many people believe, I think that Trump is good for China (that is, given the alternatives).

Profit-making. Like all Republicans, Trump believes in the private sector. The private sector, in his view, is unreasonably hampered by regulations, rules, and taxes. He was a capitalist who never paid taxes, which, in his view, simply shows that he was a good entrepreneur. But for others, lesser capitalists, regulations should be simplified or gotten rid of, and taxation should be reduced. Consistent with that view is the belief that taxes on capital should be lower than taxes on labour. Entrepreneurs and capitalists are job-creators, others are, in Ayn Rand’s words, “moochers”. There is nothing new there in Trump. It is the same doctrine that was held from Reagan onwards, including by Bill Clinton. Trump may be just more vocal and open about low taxes on capital, but he would do the same thing that Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. did. And that liberal icon Alan Greenspan deeply believed in.

Anti-immigrant “nationalism”. This a really difficult part. The term “nationalist” only awkwardly applies to American politicians because people are used to “exclusive” (not inclusive) European and Asian nationalisms. When we speak of (say) Japanese nationalism, we mean that such Japanese would like to expel ethnically non-Japanese either from decision-making or presence in the country, or both. The same is true for Serbian, Estonian, French, or Castellan nationalisms. American nationalism, by its very nature, cannot be ethnic or blood-related because of the enormous heterogeneity of people who compose the United States. Commentators have thus invented a new term, “white nationalism”. It is a bizarre term because it combines colour of the skin with ethnic (blood) relations. In reality, I think that the defining feature of Trump’s “nationalism” is neither ethnic nor racial, but simply the dislike of new migrants. It is in essence not different from anti-migrant policies applied today in the heart of the socio-democratic world, in Nordic and North Western European countries where the right-wing parties in Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, and Denmark believe (in the famous expression of the Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders) that their countries are “full” and cannot accept more immigrants. Trump’s view is only unusual because the US is not, objectively by any criteria, a full country: the number of people per square kilometre in the United States is 38 while it is 520 in the Netherlands.

A nation for itself. When one combines mercantilism with migrant dislike, one gets close to what US foreign policy under Trump will look like. It will be the policy of nationalist anti-imperialism. I have to unpack these terms. This combination is uncommon, especially for big powers: if they are big, nationalist, and mercantilist, it is almost intuitively understood that they have to be imperialistic. Trump, however, defies this nostrum. He goes back to the Founders’ foreign policy that abhorred “foreign entanglements”. The United States, in their and in his view, is a powerful and rich nation, looking after its interests, but it is not an “indispensable nation” in the way that Madeleine Albright defined it. It is not the role of the United States to right every wrong in the world (in the optimistic or self-serving view of this doctrine) nor to waste its money on people and causes which have nothing to do with its interests (in the realist view of the same doctrine).

Why Trump dislikes imperialism that has become common currency for both US parties since 1945 is hard to say, but I think that instinctively he tends to espouse values of the Founding Fathers and people like the Republican antagonist to FDR, Robert Taft, who believed in US economic strength and saw no need to convert that strength into a hegemonic political rule over the world.

This does not mean that Trump will give up US hegemony (NATO will not be disbanded), because, as Thucydides wrote: “it is not any longer possible for you to give up this empire, though there may be some people who in a mood of sudden panic and in a spirit of political apathy actually think that this would be a fine and noble thing to do. Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go”. But in the light of Trump’s mercantilist principles, he would make US allies pay much more for it. Like in Pericles’ Athens, the protection will no longer come for free. One should not forget that the beautiful Acropolis that we all admire was built with gold stolen from the allies.

This article was first published on Branko Milanovic’ Substack

[Fulham Broadway 17,319]

Good site for independent news -set up by disenchanted NYTimes and other journos who were fucked off with the corporate editorial control

Welcome to The Free Press

[Fernando 6,585]

16 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Good site for independent news -set up by disenchanted NYTimes and other journos who were fucked off with the corporate editorial control

Welcome to The Free Press

They seem honest and not with an agenda. 

For example here on this board they criticize RFK Jr as a conspiracy theory. 

Look at how they report it:

A Simple Litmus Test for RFK Jr.’s Ideas

The media describes the new HHS chief as a conspiracy theorist. But how many of his ideas are actually used in Europe? More than you’d think.

By Vinay Prasad

November 18, 2024

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A number of American commenters have been hand-wringing about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be the secretary of Health and Human Services, which would put him in charge of such critical agencies as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

“He supports people being able to purchase raw milk, don’t you know!” 

“He wants to discourage municipal water plants from adding fluoride!” 

“He says MMR vaccines cause autism!”

After Donald Trump nominated RFK Jr. for the post, Time magazine called him “a vaccine skeptic who spreads medical disinformation and conspiracy theories,” and quoted Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law as saying of his nomination, “I can’t think of a darker day for public health and science.”

But I think we need to draw distinctions. 

After looking at the whole range of RFK Jr.’s positions, I’ve come to the view that while some are extreme, others are genuinely worthy of debate—and still others are correct. And there is a way to sift the good from the bad and the debatable. When you hear one of RFK Jr.’s ideas, ask yourself a simple question: Do other nations do what he thinks the U.S. should do? If the answer is yes, then the HHS nominee’s idea is not necessarily apocalyptic, and we should be able to discuss it openly. 

Let’s take a look at some of his most controversial opinions:

 

Raw Milk

The government has mandated that milk be pasteurized since 1924. It is a process that prevents the growth of bacteria that can lead to illness. But RFK Jr. wants Americans to be able to buy raw milk, which has many adherents who believe, as Bon Appétit once put it, “the lack of processing makes the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and fats easier for our bodies to absorb.” Others think it simply tastes better. This will mean, however, that healthy people will have to tolerate some risk of infection. Brown University economist Emily Oster calculates that this would mean an annual risk of infection of 7 in 100,000 unpasteurized milk drinkers. That might be a risk some people choose to accept. Soft cheese also carries health risks, and the FDA currently allows it to be sold in America. If the agency were to minimize all dangers, soft cheese would be banned, but it isn’t.

And now, for my litmus test: Do other nations do it?

The answer is yes. Raw milk is legally available from farms in England, New Zealand, France, Italy, Germany, Norway, and many other countries. I should also note that it is available in most American states via private buying clubs and farm gate sales but, as The Free Press has reported, the government has targeted those who make and sell it. 

Just because other nations do it doesn’t mean we should go all-in on raw milk. I personally think healthy adults should be able to accept the risk of choosing to drink raw milk if they want to. Americans are allowed to bungee jump, smoke cigarettes, and take part in all sorts of activities riskier than consuming raw milk. It is not the job of the state to eliminate all possible risks at the expense of pleasure.

The MMR Vaccine

For years, RFK Jr. has pushed the long-debunked link between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. He has, in fact, made millions from peddling this bunk through a best-selling book and nonprofits that pay him a salary. He picked up on the idea from a disgraced British scientist, Andrew Wakefield, who argued a causal link in an article published in The Lancet in 1998. That article was retracted in 2010, and Wakefield was stripped of his UK medical license that same year, but unfortunately RFK Jr. has still continued to push the idea.

It is true that, in the U.S. and throughout the West, there has been a shocking increase in childhood autism, but as Jill Escher, the mother of two severely autistic children, noted in The Free Press last week, “Every epidemiological study on the topic has confirmed zero association between vaccination status and the development of autism.” I don’t know what is causing the rise in autism, and I would be hesitant to venture a guess. But I agree with both RFK Jr. and Escher that the rise in childhood autism needs to be studied more formally.

In the meantime, let’s return to my litmus test: All European countries recommend using MMR vaccines in children. No country I am aware of warns against using it because it leads to autism. If RFK Jr. uses his perch as HHS secretary to discourage parents from getting their children inoculated with the MMR vaccine, severe negative repercussions could result, including measles outbreaks and childhood deaths. This is not a good policy.

Covid-19 Policy

RFK Jr. has said a great deal about the government’s Covid-19 policy: He opposed masking kids. He opposed Covid-19 vaccines for kids. He said that Covid vaccines wouldn’t stop transmission. And he railed against lockdowns, noting they were not effective for children, and actually led to learning loss. Much of what he said was treated as “misinformation,” resulting in Facebook and other social media sites removing posts made by his organization, Children’s Health Defense.

But in each case he was right. Sweden never masked kids under the age of 12, nor did it mandate lockdowns or other severe measures. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2020 and 2021, the U.S. had a 19 percent excess death rate, compared to four percent for Sweden. Although cross-country comparisons are never perfect, all data suggests that Sweden did quite well, and did not pay a massive price for its decisions.

Many European nations did not give Covid vaccines to kids, and that makes sense. Although the CDC was never willing to acknowledge this, children were at far lower risk from becoming infected than their elders. And it is now widely accepted that school lockdowns harmed the health of kids long-term a great deal more than they ever protected them in the short-term.

RFK Jr. also said Covid was a great opportunity for corporations like Pfizer and Moderna to make hundreds of billions selling vaccines to people who didn’t need them. I think the vaccines did save lives—especially when given to the elderly or the immunocompromised when they were first made widely available in early 2021—but here too, I also think he is mostly correct. The companies pushed vaccinations and repeated boosters on kids to make more money without proof this was ever necessary.

Finally, this all relates to another RFK Jr. policy: that vaccine manufacturers should not be indemnified from prosecution for negative side effects. A 1986 law prevents vaccine makers from being litigated in court—even though drugmakers can be litigated. This is based on the idea that the manufacturing of vaccines is not a lucrative business, and indeed this has been true for the tried-and-true vaccines that have been in use in the ’60s and ’70s. Yet, in the modern world, vaccines can generate large profits. For example, the new maternal RSV vaccine costs nearly 10 times the cost of DTap, the series of shots for kids under 7 that protect against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. For Pfizer alone, the Covid vaccine earned $100 billion just in 2022. 

I tend to agree with RFK Jr. that makers of the new, costly vaccines should be held accountable when their products lead to harm. This means vaccine makers could be sued for Covid vaccines that caused myocarditis in young men, and Johnson & Johnson could be sued for causing VITT (vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia thrombosis) in young women. Litigation is an important check and balance on drug safety.

What’s more, RFK Jr. wants to put an end to FDA officials cashing in on their government stints by joining pharma companies as soon as they leave the agency. To give just three examples: Mark McClellan, who was the FDA commissioner under George W. Bush, is on the board of the giant pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. Scott Gottlieb, who headed the FDA during the Trump administration, is on the board of the giant pharmaceutical company Pfizer. And Stephen Hahn, who succeeded Gottlieb at the FDA, is now the CEO of Flagship Pioneering, the venture capital firm behind the Covid-19 vaccine manufacturer Moderna. In The BMJ, my research team showed that over 60 percent of FDA cancer drug reviewers go to work in biopharma when they leave the agency.

This policy proposal from RFK Jr. is most definitely not a crazy idea. In fact, I think it would be incredibly popular with Americans—and might help restore trust in the government’s vast health apparatus.

Fluoride

Like pasteurization, adding fluoride to drinking water has been going on for a long time—since 1951. The primary reason is it prevents cavities and other forms of tooth decay in children. But on November 2, RFK Jr. tweeted that “the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.” 

It is true that the benefits of fluoride have eroded over the years, especially since most toothpastes contain fluoride. Harvard researchers state that there have been reductions in cavities even in countries without routine fluoridation of water. Finally, some economic literature has sought to connect fluoride in the water to lowered cognitive performance, but in my opinion, these papers remain weak and uncertain. Having said this, I think this is a topic that warrants further discussion and cannot be summarily dismissed.

Just look at this recent piece from The Economist on Kennedy’s concerns that excessive fluoride consumption could lower IQ: “As far-fetched as that sounds,” the outlet says, “it is something scientists are investigating. A report by the National Toxicology Program within HHS found that high levels of fluoride exposure, at twice the legal limit, were associated with lower IQ in children. Other researchers found that even fluoride levels within the legal range were associated with that risk. And one study of American mothers found that pregnant women who drank fluoridated water were more likely to give birth to children with lower IQs.”

And again, here is the litmus test: Germany, Norway, and Sweden don’t put fluoride in water. Neither does Portland, Oregon. Again, we can debate the policy, but it is not crazy to think fluoride is unnecessary.

Hepatitis B Vaccine

In the U.S., the hepatitis B vaccine is recommended within 24 hours of a baby’s birth, and that’s what happens most often. The likely reason is that doctors worry parents won’t come back in, so they insist all vaccinations are done as soon as a child is born. 

RFK Jr. does not like administering this vaccine at birth, and he has good company in countries like Switzerland and Austria, which do not recommend hep B vaccination at birth for low-risk babies.

But take a look at the chart below. It shows all sorts of different schedules in 14 European countries for the hep B vaccine. Only two of them follow the U.S. recommendation of inoculation immediately after birth. Three countries—Finland, Hungary, and Iceland—don’t require it at all. 

 

(via European Center for Disease Prevention and Control)

The point here is that an honest scientist would admit that we have no idea which country has the correct schedule, and some childhood vaccines should be reconsidered. 

Moreover, doctors who say “all vaccines are safe and effective” are usually idiots. They haven’t studied the topic or thought about it for one second. Some vaccines are vital. Some are debatable, and some can be harmful (mRNA for young men during Covid, for instance, too often led to myocarditis). Vaccines are like drugs. We need better evidence.

A simple way to answer definitively which childhood immunization schedule works best is to conduct a series of cluster randomized control trials in the U.S. Have different states or counties or cities give vaccines with different schedules. This would allow researchers to account for additives or combined side effects, a claim that vaccine-hesitant folks have made for years. If he were the head of HHS, RFK Jr. could certainly do this. And he should.

Additives in Food

RFK Jr.’s stance on food dyes in breakfast cereals was recently fact-checked by The New York Times. And, as a result, The New York Times ended up with egg on its face. 

In the original version of the Times article, reporters stated that RFK Jr. objects to the U.S. version of Froot Loops because it contains artificial colorings that are not used in the Canadian and European versions. On this point, he is correct. Those foreign versions use “concentrated carrot juice, annatto turmeric, concentrated watermelon juice, concentrated blueberry juice” instead of the American version, which uses the colorings Red 40, Yellow 5, and Blue 1. 

In a later version of the article, the Times claimed RFK Jr. was objecting to the total number of ingredients being lower abroad—which the outlet said is untrue. But, when you consider all of Kennedy’s statements, it is clear he objects to the dyes, not the number of ingredients. By the Times’ twisted logic, Kennedy would object to Indian food over sushi because it has more spices added. That is not his position.

What’s more, he might even be right about fewer ingredients appearing in U.S. cereals. Just look at this example:

 

via (FoodBabe.com)

In Conclusion

Just because another nation does things differently does not mean it is correct. What it usually means is the other country’s health rules are worth studying and debating. Right now, the media is covering RFK Jr. poorly and unfairly, giving him no credit for ideas that are well within the bounds of discussion. My simple rule makes sense: If other nations are doing it, we should be willing to look into it. And RFK Jr. should not be called a conspiracy theorist for holding that view.

 

 

Vinay Prasad is a hematologist-oncologist and a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. This article is adapted from his Substack, Vinay Prasad’s Observations and Thoughts. You can follow him on his YouTube channel Vinay Prasad MD MPH, or on Twitter (now X) @VPrasadMDMPH.

 

Edited November 25, 2024 by Fernando