TBR News May 17, 2019
The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. May 17, 2019: “Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
His latest business is to re-institute a universal draft in America.
He wants to do this to remove tens of thousands of unemployed young Americans from the streets so they won’t come together and fight him.
Commentary for May 17:”We are betting that Trump will suddenly realize that crazy Bolton is leading him into the swamp and sack his sorry ass. Trump does this all the time and once he dumps someone, he will never bring him back. And then on to some other nut that kisses his sagging ass. Pathetic. We pay their salaries, don’t we? Bolton planned to grab Venezuela but that fell flat and the betting is he will fall flat over Iran. Poor fat Bibi will have a screaming fit over this but no one will care. He can order the IDF to shoot more Palestinian children and feel better
The Table of Contents
- John Bolton: the man driving the US towards war … any war
- Second U.S. appeals court rules Trump cannot end protections for ‘Dreamers’
- Encyclopedia of American Loon
- The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
- Blessed Prozac Moments!
- Orthodox Jewish communities face antisemitism over measles outbreak
John Bolton: the man driving the US towards war … any war
Donald Trump’s national security adviser is stoking tensions with North Korea, Iran and Venezuela, in line with decades of taking the most hawkish position on any given issue
May 17, 2019
by Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian
The US is now engaged in three major confrontations around the world that have the potential to degrade into war. And in the driving seat on all three fronts is John Bolton, one of the most fervent believers in American military power ever to work in the White House.
Donald Trump’s 70-year-old national security adviser has been a fixture in US foreign policy over the past four decades, and has spent that time, whether in or out of government, mostly arguing for the most hawkish position on any issue put in front of him.
“He actually believes when America leads, the world is a safer and better place – not just for us but for the world,” said Mark Groombridge, who worked for Bolton for more than 10 years.
In the Obama era, Bolton’s bristling walrus moustache was a near constant presence on television, almost always Fox News, from where he would vent scorn and spleen on the Democratic administration.
These days, Bolton looks considerably more cheerful, having reached the peak of the policymaking establishment that had once seemed out of his reach.
Bolton seems to have played a key role in the collapse of the second Trump summit with Kim Jong-un in February, when he appeared to have drafted a maximalist list of demands for all-or-nothing disarmament that was presented to the North Korean dictator in Hanoi. A year of diplomacy ground to a halt, and Kim, who had been expecting a more gradualist approach, has now started goading the US with a return to missile tests.
In the standoff in Venezuela, Bolton was again centre stage, making himself the lead US voice for a failed effort at regime change in Venezuela in late April, producing a personal video appeal calling – in vain – on Nicolás Maduro’s top aides to defect. Behind the scenes he has urged a reluctant US Southern Command to come up with ever more aggressive solutions to Maduro’s hold on power.
And in the fast-moving escalation of tensions with Iran, it is Bolton who has seized the initiative, spun military deployments in the Gulf that were already in the pipeline as confrontational steps against Tehran, and reportedly irritated some in the Pentagon and intelligence agencies by putting a sensationalist spin on intelligence about Iranian military movements.
Bolton is reported to have convened a deeply unusual meeting on Iran on 29 April, not in the White House, but at CIA headquarters. It was an echo of the buildup to the Iraq war, when Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice-president, did the same thing.
It now appears likely that Iranian military preparations that the intelligence appeared to suggest, may have been contingencies in anticipation of a US attack – not an unrealistic expectation in view of Bolton’s record. In 2015, he savaged Obama’s diplomatic efforts and penned a now infamous commentary titled To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.
Bolton grew up in a working-class Republican family in Baltimore, and his first political experience was as a volunteer in the doomed 1964 campaign of Barry Goldwater, a staunch conservative from Arizona.
Bolton, who saw Goldwater as having been caricatured by the mainstream media, deepened his dislike of liberal eastern elites at Yale University, where he arrived in 1966 on a scholarship. Unlike many of his fellow students, he fiercely supported the war effort in Vietnam, but not to the point of taking part himself. He avoided the draft by joining the Maryland National Guard.
He put his law degree to use as a counsel in the Reagan administration, and in 2000 Bolton was one of the Republican lawyers flown into Florida to help tilt the deadlocked election in Bush’s favour.
In Bush’s state department, Bolton went to work dismantling US diplomatic efforts. He gleefully described taking a “hammer” to the 1994 Agreed Framework deal with North Korea. It was already fraying but it had at least kept Pyongyang’s plutonium production in check for seven years. The Bush team ruled out talks with the rogue regime, but, argued Christopher Hill, a former US lead negotiator, it had no workable alternative.
“You would think John Bolton wanted to invade North Korea,” Hill said. “I never saw him put on a helmet, pick up a gun, so I’m not sure what he had in mind with that. It wasn’t as if these people had any thoughts on how to go forward on this.”
In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Bolton was serving as under-secretary for arms control in the state department. He was not making the policy, but he was enforcing it.
In one telling episode, he was dispatched to The Hague to get rid of the director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a Brazilian diplomat called José Bustani, who had convinced Libya and Iraq to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention. That would have undermined the case for war with Saddam Hussein, and Washington was furious, insisting Bustani had exceeded his mandate. Bolton arrived in the Netherlands in February 2002 with an ultimatum.
“He came to my office and said: ‘You have 24 hours to quit, and this is the instruction from Mr Dick Cheney,’” Bustani recalls. Bustani refused, pointing out he had only recently been elected for a second term with US support. “And then Bolton said: you better think it over, because we know where your kids are.”
Bustani’s two sons were working in New York at the time. Bustani was stunned and held his ground, but to no avail. The Bush administration convened a special conference of member states and ultimately forced Bustani out.
Bolton has previously denied making the threat about his children.
“It was a very unhappy experience,” Bustani said. “This man is different from anyone I have met in my life. He doesn’t allow for a dialogue. You don’t discuss anything with him. It’s just brute force, that’s all.”
Bolton’s management style came back to haunt him when he applied for his next job, as US ambassador to the UN, in 2005. The Senate refused to confirm him, and Bush had to bypass Congress altogether, putting him in the post with a temporary appointment that ended in 2006.
He spent his years outside government in high-paying jobs at the American Enterprise Institute, the premier conservative intellectual hub in Washington, as a Fox News pundit, and most notably a paid speaker for the cult-like Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation (MeK), which was for many years categorised as a terrorist group by the US and EU.
It is that background that has convinced Tehran that Bolton is implacably set on forcible regime change. If there is to be an off-ramp on the road to war, and a return to dialogue it may require Trump to fire Bolton.
Trump has joked with other officials and foreign leaders that Bolton wanted to get him into a war. “I actually temper John, which is pretty amazing,” the president told reporters last Thursday.
But there have been reports that the joke may be wearing thin and that Trump is growing concerned about the direction Bolton is leading him.
“John played Trump like a Stradivarius,” Groombridge, Bolton’s former aide, said. “John understands and knows the president very well … He knows to keep it very simple.
“[But] I think his influence has waned in the last month or so because he was, unfortunately, in my opinion, factually wrong about the strength of opposition in Venezuela. And now you’ve got a number of people squabbling … about what’s going on with respect to Iran.”
Groombridge added: “The problem is that we have a president who is so mercurial that you know he could wake up at four in the morning and just randomly tweet: John is gone.”
Second U.S. appeals court rules Trump cannot end protections for ‘Dreamers’
May 17, 2019
by Tom Hals
Reuters
WILMINGTON, Del (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that President Donald Trump cannot end a program that shielded from deportation immigrants brought into the country illegally as children, the second time the administration has lost an appeal on the issue.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, said in its ruling that the 2017 rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program violated administrative law because the policy change was not adequately explained.
The ruling reversed a decision by a federal court in Maryland, and sent the case back for further proceedings.
The Department of Justice declined to comment.
Republican Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, began DACA in 2012. It shielded a group of immigrants known as “Dreamers” and has given them work permits but not a path to citizenship. About 800,000 people, mostly Hispanics, have received DACA protection.
Trump has taken a stern stance against illegal immigration. His administration announced plans in September 2017 to phase out DACA, arguing that Obama exceeded his constitutional powers when he bypassed Congress and created the program.
Rights groups, states and individuals filed numerous lawsuits against the Trump administration over the decision to end the program. A series of lower courts have generally ruled against the government, leaving DACA in place for now.
The appeals court in Virginia found by a 2-1 decision that the rescission of DACA was arbitrary and capricious and violated administrative law.
Judge Robert King, appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, and Judge Albert Diaz, appointed by Obama, formed the majority. Judge Julius Richardson, who was appointed by Trump, dissented.
A similar decision was reached by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in November, which upheld a lower court injunction against ending the program.
The Supreme Court currently has three Trump administration appeals pending that seek to revive the administration’s DACA proposal but the justices have so far delayed acting on them. It is likely the conservative-leaning court will ultimately have the final say on the issue.
On Thursday, Trump unveiled a proposed overhaul of the U.S. immigration system to favor educated English speakers over people with family ties to Americans, a plan he will push in his 2020 re-election campaign.
But the plan did not include protections for ‘Dreamers,’ a sticking point for Democratic lawmakers who say a permanent fix for this group of immigrants must be part of any proposed policy changes.
Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis
Encyclopedia of American Loons
Robert J. Rowen
Robert J. Rowen is apparently an MD, but probably one you should stay clear. Rowen is also an “integrative physician”, and his probably most famous for his promotion of ozone therapy. Indeed, Rowen claims that ozone therapy even cures Ebola. He does seem to be a true believer rather than an outright fraud, however, since in 2014 he even went to Sierra Leone at the height of the Ebola outbreak, together with fellow crank Howard Robins, to offer ozone therapy and ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy to Ebola patients. (He was not the only lunatic to go there; infected areas were also invaded by homeopaths trying to push worthless nonsense to people in desperate need of real healthcare – the most ridiculous suggestion being perhaps this.
Ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy is one of the most ridiculous forms of quackery out there, though ozone therapy comes close; in Rowan’s very much alternate reality, both are “oxidative therapies” that supposedly increase the oxygen content of the blood. There is no evidence that UV radiation does that; ozone therapy will, but not in any way that will make any beneficial difference insofar as it doesn’t increase the hemoglobin content, and the hemoglobin is usually maximally saturated anyways. Rowan not only thinks it works, but even issued a press release where he suggested he had actually managed to cure a patient with Ebola. Of course, there is no reason to think that the patient in question ever had Ebola, since he refused to be tested – the evidence being solely that the patient had possibly been exposed and was stressed out about having been exposed. It is striking that Rowan did not do his obvious professional duty and reported the case to the authorities to prevent others from being infected, however, though we suppose that duty would only apply if Rowan actually suspected that the patient might have contracted the disease. We leave readers to assess Rowan’s ethical standards here. If you do, you should also consider the fact that the press release was issued only eight days after the supposed exposure incident, that Ebola has an incubation period of up to 21 days, and that the patient was, as mentioned, never actually tested for the disease. Evidence, documentation and accountability: these people really do not know how any of that works, and people are all the more at risk for it.
“I sure hope the people of the world will begin to stand up to the forces of disease-maintenance evil that has taken over the world to pharm us,” said Rowan, since the fact that Big Pharma is evil somehow vindicates his own type of quackery.
Rowen is apparently recognized as one of the great experts on ozone therapy and related quackery in various pseudoscience circles (Edward Kondrot is a fan, for instance), and he gives talks and presentations at various cargo-cult conferences, such as World Oxygen and Ozone Congress, on the supposed benefits. But Rowen’s promotion of quackery doesn’t end with ozone therapy. Rowen is also an advisor of the American Board of Chelation Therapy which is a system created by chelation therapists (dangerous quackery) in order to be “board certified” in clinical metal toxicology without really knowing anything about the field. It is basically just a board set up by quacks to give themselves credentials and write capital letters behind their names. Rowen also recommends laetrile, no less, through something called the Cancer Control Society, a group whose website states that they do “not believe in the Traditional methods of Surgery, Radiation and Chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer by doctors in California hospitals.”
It is, by the way, actually remarkable to look at the legal troubles various people affiliated with the American Board of Chelation Therapy have landed themselves in. Rowen himself, for instance, got in trouble while practicing in Alaska (before he moved to California): to avoid federal income tax, Rowen set up “asset protection” trusts and did not file returns for 1992 through 1997. In 1997, he pled guilty to a federal felony charge of “corrupt endeavor to impede” an agent of the IRS and was sentenced to 10 months of probation and ordered to pay $10,003.91 in restitution and a $2,000 fine; Rowen subsequently filed for bankruptcy but in 2003, the court ruled that this did not discharge his tax debt, and in April 2007, after appeals had been denied, the court issued an abstract of judgment for $1,124,800.90. Though not directly related to his medicine, of course, it’s just the kind of thing that might give one a bit of insight into Rowen’s attitudes toward honesty and accountability.
Rowen is predictably also one of the woo promoters who rushed to the defense of anti-vaccine apologist Bob Sears when the latter got in trouble with the California medical board. That itself doesn’t necessarily entail that Rowen himself harbors antivaccine sympathies, but might rather just mean that he doesn’t like the fact that authorities hold MDs accountable for their actions toward patients – Rowen is, after all, affiliated with the American Association of Health Freedom, an organization mostly lobbying for the removal of oversight and accountability for doctors who wish to sell quackery and unproven treatments; apparently, Rowen is, according at least to himself, known as “The Father of Medical Freedom” for “pioneering the nation’s first statutory protection for alternative medicine in 1990.”
Then again, Rowen also appeared on at least one list of vaccine-skeptical doctors circulated among antivaccine groups (somewhat parallel to the Discovery Institute’s laughable petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism – petition signing is a gambit apparently loved by everyone who doesn’t know how science works). And Rowen has at least basically stated that death is better than autism, which is stupid and strictly speaking also irrelevant to vaccine discussions since vaccines don’t cause autism in the first place (Rowen, of course, being a dangerous moron, seems to think otherwise; he also thinks that vaccine-preventable diseases are nothing to worry about.)
And just to demonstrate the powers of crank magnetism, Rowan has also contributed to anti-GMO conspiracy theories. In his article “Is GMO worse than nuclear radiation?” (remember Betteridge’s law of headlines; it appears that Rowen’s answer is that GMOs are worse since radioactive substances have a half-life whereas GMOs are forever, which doesn’t exactly suggest a deep understanding of radioactivity, or GMOs), Rowen argues – notice the complete lack of facts and evidence – by FUD that the US is in a conspiracy to empower Monsanto (the whyis left open, but apparently the claim sounds truthy to his intended audiences) and persecute free-thinking scientists, but is mostly a promotion of unhinged conspiracy screeds and books by Jeffery Smith, a former yogic flying instructor, who certainly has no scientific credentials or relevant scientific background whatsoever.
Diagnosis: The embodiment of post-truth activism, really. Little or nothing of what Rowen says is true, and none of the quackery he promotes will do anyone any good. But we’re less sure it is accurate to call him a “liar”; Rowen simply doesn’t seem to care. It’s been common to distinguish those who act against better knowledge when promoting the kinds of therapies Rowen promotes, on the one hand, and deluded true believers, on the other, but people like Rowen really force one to question how meaningful this distinction actually is.
The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
May 17, 2019
by Dr. Peter Janney
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.
Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.
After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.
The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.
When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..
A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.
The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.
Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks. ”
Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.
Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.
Conversation No. 96
Date: Friday, August 1, 1997
Commenced: 9:35 AM CST
Concluded: 9:50 AM CST
GD: Some unknown person with the name of Vitter called me early today and offered me what he called very secret and important CIA documents. He said they would be important for my Mueller books or perhaps something to be published in the Spotlight or some such paper. Now, in the first place, Robert, I have an unlisted phone number under another name. The obvious question is how this jerk got the number? Not ever published nor in the phone book. One of yours?
RTC: Could be. Did he give you a call back number?
GD: No. I asked for one and he waffled on me.
RTC: Well, what can I say?
GD: Well, I pretended to be interested but said, very clearly, that if these were classified documents, I would not be interested in them. Seemed to lose steam after that.
RTC: They never seem to think these things out fully. I get calls about you and how evil you are and why I should never, ever, ever talk to you. They come from concerned friends like Kimmel, Corson and Trento plus Bruce Lee and others. I thank them for their concern and hang up.
GD: Oh, some person with a tiny brain went to the place where I get my mail and tried to find out where I lived but never got to first base. The owner called me up and told me all about it. He went outside and got their license number so I can find out where they live.
RTC: Not an outraged husband, Gregory?
GD: I never mess with married women, Robert. No, some official pinhead. My house and utilities are in my son’s name and the phone is on under the name of Buster Minge so I imagine these twits must have a merry time.
RTC: Minge?
GD: A woman’s private parts in Cockney, Robert. Shame on me corrupting you at your age. I love it when the boobery get me with a wrong number. They want to know if Lucinda is home. I don’t tell them they have the wrong number. I say that Lucinda is up with a customer now and I can have her call back when she’s finished.
RTC: (Laughter)
GD: Or if some creep wants to talk to Maudie Mae at one in the morning, I act very sad and tell them Maudie passed early this morning and the visitation will be tomorrow. When they get all upset, I tell them that it was for the best, what with the police after her and all. Or that her doctor said whe was a real venereal Typhoid Mary.
RTC: (Laughter) I’ll just bet you do this, Gregory.
GD: Oh, with glee. Or if it’s a free thinking type, and they ask for Clyde, I tell them with a lowered voice that I can’t talk now because the police are there. One jerk shouted to someone that they had found the stash. Always keep them off guard, Robert, and try to keep their bowels open. Or if someone calls up and asks for Annie, and it’s a man, I tell them that I’ve moved in now and Annie doesn’t want to talk to them any more. Not for nothing Heini Mueller called me Mr. Sunshine. Eh, Robert?
RTC: You missed your calling, Gregory.
GD: What is my calling Robert? A werewolf?
RTC: A disturber of the peace.
GD: A disturber of the peace is someone who shines a spotlight on cars parked at a drive in movie.
RTC: How do you spell that? Peace I mean.
GD: Well, you can spell it two ways, Robert. Pay your money and take your choice. I worked the desk at an upscale hotel in Canada once and my co-worker was even more warped than I was. Put a small speaker into one of the booths in the ladies’ toilet and used to get on the mike and ask some squatting tubbo to please move over to the next stall because they were painting back behind her. We could hear the screaming in the lobby sometimes. Of course once he put a very lifelike rubber baby down into one of the heads along with the contents of a bottle of red ink. Tiny pink feet in a sea of red And Moses not in sight. That got the cops out there and the day manager was not amused.
RTC: You would never last with us, Gregory.
GD: No, your people have no sense of humor but a very inflated sense of your importance. Remember, Robert, that man proposes but God disposes.
RTC: I hope you don’t expose poor Tom to your little adventures.
GD: I have and like Queen Victoria, Tom is not amused.
RTC: Well, I am used to you but I doubt if he ever could be.
GD: Tom takes himself too seriously. And imagine the fun I could have in your office down at Langley? I would take an official note form, address it to one of the bigwigs and scribble a note on it that you could only read a few words of. Jesus H. Christ, can you imagine the frenzy when the words are ‘missile launch at noon’ ‘sorry to tell you about your wife,’ or ‘left the whole secret file on the bus’?
RTC: (Laughter) Yes, as I said, you wouldn’t last very long.
GD: No, but I would have some fun while I lasted.
(Concluded at 9:50 AM CST)
Blessed Prozac Moments!
ALL VACCINATIONS ARE CAUSING IMPAIRED BLOOD FLOW (Ischemia), CHRONIC ILLNESS, DISEASE AND DEATH FOR US ALLŠ PROVENŠ see for yourself.
By Andrew Moulden MD, PhD; www.BrainGuardMD.com
Medical & Neurobehavioral Therapies Director
www.Therapies4Kids.com www.BrightStepsForward.org
Former Leader – www.CanadianActionParty.ca
Dr. Moulden has joined and supports the Christian Heritage Party of Canada
This is a stern, yet humble, warning to all citizens of the globe. It is now proven that we are all being harmed by repeat vaccinations. This evidence must be circulated broadly in light of the imminent Fall, 2009 plan to turn North American schools into MASS vaccine centers to institute triple flu vaccine to us all. Children will be the first to be injected with experimental flu vaccines. The entire vaccine industry, as it turns out, has been experimental. We did not know that we were causing damages – for us all.
In case you are wondering what will happen, the answers are contained in this article. The same thing will happen as has been happening with all vaccines. Clinically silent ischemic brain and body damages will happen. The only difference is that you can now see these damages, with your own eyes, in the here and now, in real time, and in your family photos going back fifty or more years if you have to.
ALL vaccines are causing immediate and delayed, acute and chronic, waxing and waning, impairments to blood flow, throughout the brain and body. This IS causing us all to become chronically ill, sick, and causing brain damages along a continuum of clinically silent to death. This is causing ischemic “strokes”. In some respects, this is also “aging.” Since the damages are microscopic, we cannot see them as they occur. However, we can now see the neurological aftermath of these damages – within hours and days of vaccination – all vaccinations.
In Revelations 18:4 by the epistle of Saint John we are told: “And I heard another voice from Heaven saying “Come out of her my people that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues.” All vaccinations, as you can now clearly see, are causing chronic illness and mass disorders on mass scales. The global health consequences clearly amount to plaques.
As a medically trained Doctor, a PhD trained neuroscientist/neuropsychologist, with a Masters degree in Child/language neurodevelopment, I have been trained to follow clinical observations to empirical assessment couched within the scientific model we rely upon to answer questions of: What is normal and what is not? What is cause? What is coincidence? What is factual? What is fancy? What is reproducible? What is random? What is measurable? What is predictable? What is truth? What is consequence? What is “going on”?
Science is only a man made truth-seeking tool. It is fallible. It is a statistical, probabilistic mathematical model. It has limitations. Wielded for profit – truth can become lost.
Scientific methods, design, and analyses can just as soon hide the truth as they can discover truth, or create ‘truth” de-novo.
Science cannot replace God-given tools of common sense and observation we all have. You do not need statistical probabilistic mathematical models, wielded by experts, to deny what you can see with your very own eyes.
If you place your hand on a hot stove element, you will be burned. If you do not experience pain and you cannot see the burn, then you will not learn that touching hot stove elements is harmful.
All vaccines have been causing “burns” to body and brain. The brain has no pain receptors. You will not feel the pain. You can, however, see the footprints of these “burns” immediate and delayed, from each vaccination. The evidence was before our eyes all along. We simply did not appreciate what these “burns” meant let alone that they were emerging, after each vaccination. The “burns” are largely to internal organ systems. We can ALL now see the damaging effects of these “burns” with our own eyes.
As a physician, it is my sworn duty to cause no harm. As a human being, it is my duty to watch over my fellow beings. As an educator, it is my responsibility to teach awareness and understanding. As a scientist, it is my duty to separate cause from coincidence. As a Christian, it is my value to do unto others, as I would have others do unto myself. As a man, it is my responsibility to stand up to power, with truth and understanding, when those that wield power are in error.
My statements are not the words of a zealot. These are the words of integrity, couched with understanding, that has the potential to reside in every one of you.
Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you. I have sought. I have knocked. The door has been opened. I have found the truths I was seeking. The answers have not come from my own understandings. The answers are simply self-evident – res ipsa loquitur – the thing speaks for itself.
All vaccinations cause brain damage, disease, chronic illness, aging, and death – res veritas loquitur – the truth speaks for itself. If you do not seek, if you do not knock, if you do not look, if you trust your own understandings, then caveat emptor – buyer beware.
We have answers. We have solutions – www.Therapies4Kids.com . We cannot provide solutions or treatments to a medical system and model that denies it is sick.
My training has taught me how to translate anecdotal clinical observations into empirically sound clinical measurements in medicine, neurodevelopment, and human physiology. This is especially so in dealing with functions of the human brain and behavior.
The pictorial evidence attached to this article represents a small sample of the data I have now collected from thousands. The truth about all vaccinations causing harm is now available for your understanding.
The truth is frightening, disheartening, alarming, and now self-evident.
We have made a global medical mistake based on a lack of knowledge and understanding. We have translated forest fires for 1% of the population into chronic brush fires for the entire population. The brush fires are chronic illness and disease, least of which are the neurodevelopmental disorders.
12-IMAM Brain Damage measurement system
The measurement system I have created is based on the 12 cranial nerves and the clinical skills Doctors are supposed to use to assess brain function and integrity. I have called the measurement system the 12 “Eye” M.A.S.S. Anoxia Measures (12-IMAM).
M.A.S.S. is an acronym for many chronic illnesses and diseases that impair blood flow – “Moulden Anoxia Spectrum Syndromes.” One-size-fits-all global vaccination schemes have created M.A.S.S. disorders on MASS scales. MASS disorders, from infectious diseases to vaccinations, have a common sequence of injuries which includes impaired blood flow, oxygenation, blood carrying capacity, and non-specific immune hyper-stimulation.
In essence, we are creating disease and chronic illness by an over-zealous activation of a natural set of healing mechanisms in human physiology – a component phase of the MASS physiological response.
Remarkably, it is not so much the specific “germs and toxins” that are causing death and disease. It is the response of the body and blood to foreign substances entering the blood and tissues that causes pathology. The state of the blood, the nature of the triggers, the state of the immune system relative to repeat antigenic challenges, conspires to effect damages along a continuum of harm – all organ systems can be affected.
The cellular and tissue damages are additive with each exposure. Direct vaccination is no longer necessary to be vaccine injured. Vaccinations are not the only trigger to pathology. Serial (repeat) vaccinations aggravate the core problems. Once the blood vessels are damaged, to a critical point, the pathological process can take on a self-perpetuating life of its own – from infants to teenagers to adults, to companion pets alike.
Four features of the 12-IMAM measurement system that you can now see, include the eye turning in, the eye turning out, the smile becoming asymmetrical, and the eye blinks coming out of sync. These are strokes, from ischemia, throughout the brain and body, for all. Repeat vaccination is the primary culprit, however, vaccination is not the only cause of this MASS problem in human physiology.
WHITE BLOOD CELL IMMUNE RESPONSE – CAUSING DISEASE
If you repetitively dump a million rubber duckies at the mouth of the Mississippi river, where they become lodged downstream will vary from truckload to truckload. Repeat vaccination, by its effects on the non-specific immune system, is like dumping the triggers which call for repetitive “dumping” of millions of rubber duckies (white blood cells) at the head of the Mississippi river. Once the “triggers” are sequestered in various bottleneck end tributary river branches, they continuously attract more “rubber duckies” to these areas. This impairs blood flow and leads to a net loss of tissue by acute or slow strangulation.
It is the act and magnitude of the “rubber duckies” being called to these end vascular areas that causes congestion, impaired blood flow, lack of oxygen, glucose and nutrients to the affected tissue areas. Without oxygen or nutrients, he cells lining the walls of capillaries self-cauterize (clamp shut). This is a healing mechanism that must be instituted in order to prevent leakage of plasma and or blood into tissues.
With MASS impairs blood flow and oxygenation to the tiny blood vessels in the eye, we sometimes see “retinal hemorrhages.” When MASS occurs in the brain, we call it intracerebral bleeding. When MASS occurs to the bones, we call it brittle bones. Collectively, we label this “shaken baby syndrome.”
A HORSE BY SEVERAL NAMES
When the blood sludging MASS process happens to brainstem areas controlling automatic respiration, the central drive for respiration is lost. We call this sudden infant death or sudden death.
When M.A.S.S. happens to the descending motor tracts in the brain, we call this paralysis, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, infantile paralysis, seizures, encephalopathy.
CBS News has found that since 1988, the vaccine court has awarded money judgments, often in the millions of dollars, to thirteen hundred and twenty two families whose children suffered brain damage from vaccines. All of these children will show the same IMAM-12 ischemic brain damages as children who have been rendered autistic, learning disabled or dead after vaccinations. The process that causes brain damages from vaccination is also the same MASS process that causes all damages after vaccination – all vaccinations. It is not the vaccines doing this. It is “M.A.S.S.” ischemia. Vaccines have been inadvertently concocted to induce MASS.
When M.A.S.S. happens to internal organs or connective tissue, we call it colitis, irritable bowel, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, post-concussion syndrome, a psychiatric disorder.
When M.A.S.S. happens in infants, and children, we call it autism-spectrum disorders, specific learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, Aspergers syndrome, global developmental delay, and some childhood cancers. Sometimes M.A.S.S. causes or compounds cerebral palsy – both conditions result from impaired oxygenation and blood flow to the brain.
Sometimes we call M.A.S.S. “Kawasaki” syndrome, “Moyamoya”, ‘aseptic meningitis”, “encephalopathy”, “Meningitis”, hypsarrythmia, infantile spasms, West syndrome, or febrile seizures. It is all simply M.A.S.S. ischemia.
Autism and schizophrenia are the same ailment, in physiology, albeit the triggering pathways for schizophrenia (loss of immunological tolerance) has a different trajectory than acquired autism-spectrum disorders. Nonetheless, a similar mechanism is at work for both ailments – MASS ischemia from derailed blood flow.
When MASS happens in teen girls after Gardasil vaccination, it creates death, disease, illness, clouded thinking, and paralysis. Remarkably, the Gardasil shots are simply completing the silent ischemic vascular damages, to body and brain that were caused from each childhood vaccination the girl received. Sudden death is due to loss of central drive for respiration in the same manner that vaccinations are causing many cases of sudden infant death. Sometimes seizures may also occur. The course can be waxing and waning. All vaccines are causing these problems – silently, in an additive manner over each vaccination, for all of us. No one is spared.
When MASS happens in military and armed services personnel, this causes “Gulf war Syndrome.”
When MASS happens to schizophrenia patients being treated with powerful psychotropic drugs that de-rail white blood cell functions, sudden “unexplained” death can occur by the same MASS sudden death sequence that vaccinations sometimes induce in infants and teen girls.
When MASS happens in the elderly, it causes a slow, step-wise deterioration in cognitive functions – we call this dementia. This is slow strangulation of brain tissue from ischemia at the microscopic level.
Febrile seizures are not caused by “fever”. The fever expands the diameter of the tiny blood vessels so that more white blood cell infection fighting “soldiers” can traverse down the ‘roads.” When the blood vessel roads become jammed, by too many white blood cells, and altered fluid dynamics, there is ischemia. Ischemia causes a lack of oxygen to the brain.
No oxygen to electrically active cells causes depolarization. In the heart, ischemia causes arrhythmia – a seizure to the heart. In the brain, ischemia causes seizures – arrhythmia to the brain. Seizures are a symptom of impaired blood flow and oxygenation just like vaccine induced autism-spectrum is a symptom of the same process.
You can have autism without seizures. You can have seizures without autism. You can have brain damages with or without autism or seizures. This is all ischemia – immediate and delayed, from instability of blood flow dynamics.
I can make these statements of fact, and so can you, since the photographs you can now see, before and after vaccination, show we are all having ischemic microvascular strokes – silently. Some of these damages are called “bulbar palsies” and they are the exact same damages we saw from wild polio exposure as we now see from vaccinations. Remarkably, no one ever told you that wild polio and other infectious diseases, were inducing the body to cause ischemic strokes to the brain. Vaccinations induce the same process – albeit in an attenuated and chronic form.
The ischemic brain damages, after vaccination, from infants to adults, cut across all symptom based medical diagnostic end points.
Type 1 insulin dependent diabetes mellitus is a MASS disorder, as is Parkinson Disease, Tourette’s syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis, and several other neuropsychiatric disorders.
Aphasia and loss of expressive speech functions with vaccinations is called “isolation of speech syndrome” or “transcortical motor aphasia.” This is caused by ischemia to end blood vessel watershed vascular territories in the brain – period.
Silent MASS ischemic strokes is how the body caused paralysis and respiratory failure from wild polio virus exposure. This is how death occurred from Smallpox. This is how swine flu vaccine caused paralysis and Guillain-Barré syndrome. This is how thalidomide caused infants to be born with no arms and legs. This is how a series of anthrax vaccines causes military veterans to give birth to children with no arms and legs 18 months after receiving the vaccine series. This is how Vioxx caused heart attack and stroke. This is how pre-natal German measles caused autism-spectrum and organ damages. This is how a systemic drop in maternal blood pressure, during gestation, causes Mobius syndrome (and autism-spectrum). This is how repeat vaccination is causing dementia.
M.A.S.S. is how vaccinations are causing a multitude of chronic illnesses and disease. It is not the germs causing this problem. It is the response of the body to de-railed and unbalanced immune challenges.
THE ROADS TO ROME ARE LOST
When microscopic end blood vessels are destroyed (closed off), as blood flow diminishes and starts to “sludge”, this impairs healing, cellular functioning, and promotes build-up of toxins, heavy metals, and pathogens in circumscribed tissue areas. The ischemia causes disease, autoimmunity, and some cancers if the cells are forced to function in a low energy, low oxygen state. It is not so much “Rome” that is being damaged as it is the roads to and from Rome that are being damaged first. The “fall of Rome” follows as the Romans are starved, strangulated, and forced to live in a “City” that can neither bring supplies in to repair damages, nor can it remove waste from within its central territory by efficient means to meet supply and demand. This is an example of too many Roman Centurions (white blood cells) called to Rome to protect the City. The Centurions, by magnitude and response, block the roads to Rome by virtue of a chronic “Call to Arms.”
There is a better way to prevent disease. Vaccination only masks the cause of disease, it does nothing to address the core problem in physiology – the non-specific M.A.S.S. response and colloidal stability of blood flow dynamics. There are alternative solutions to controlling infectious diseases in populations that do not require injecting foreign substances into your body.
Doctors, pathologists, and coroners cannot see what is right before their very eyes. The cause of sudden infant death, and dementia, in life, is impaired microscopic blood flow. In death, there is no blood flow. Medical science cannot find cause of death and disease, in life, from looking at dead tissue, when the dead tissue exhibits the same cause of death during life – no microscopic end vascular blood flow.
ELECTRODYNAMICS OF BODY FLUIDS – CAUSING DISEASE
A 300 foot Giant Redwood can transport water (nutrients and oxygen) against gravity from the ground to the very top of the tree. The redwood has no moving parts or pump. This transpiration feat is accomplished by the electrodynamics nature of water.
Human blood is 95% water. The human body is 75% water by weight. In physiology, when the electrodynamics quality of water is de-railed by heavy metals, infectious diseases, vaccinations, and other adverse influences, the water which carries oxygen, nutrients, glucose, and healing cells cannot traverse tiny blood vessels to deliver their life sustaining cargoes. This is especially true in end vascular “pipes” that are uniquely oriented against gravity. Blood flow is a function of the colloidal stability of the blood and its products.
The human blood is a colloidal suspension. Proteins. Amino acids, heavy metals etc.. are carried in suspension within the blood as a function of the net negative charge within the system. Drop the net negative charge, flow pressures in tiny end blood vessel “pipes” will start to sludge, agglomerate, and increase viscosity of blood in circumscribed microscopic vascular areas. Medical science has no live imaging tool powerful enough to see this process as it is happening.
By analogy, coffee cream remains in a fluid state when it is moving. If the cream remains stagnant in your coffee cup for several days, it will phase change into a gel. Stagnant blood also turns to sludge and “gel” when it stops moving in a spiral column. Stagnation causes an increase in mass as blood products “come together” to form various degrees of sludge and “gel”.
Agglomerates of sludged blood products cannot traverse microscopic blood vessels designed to carry oxygen transporting red blood cells, in single file. Capillary blood vessels oriented against gravity are uniquely susceptible. Forward blood flow momentum is a function of the negative charge and “spin” in fluid dynamics which keeps particles with mass separated from one another.
Newtonian laws of physics govern how objects with mass move in our universe . The “Big G” is Newton’s Universal Law that Force equals Acceleration x MASS. Increasing MASS (as in sludged blood) with no net increase in Force causes deceleration and no forward flow. No forward flow translates into no oxygen or fuel delivery. For the brain, and body, this causes hypoxia (low oxygen), anoxia (no oxygen) and ischemia (impaired blood flow).
In terms of vaccine damages, impaired forward blood flow in end vascular territories creates brain and organ damages – in us all. These damages have been clinically silent – for millennia. This ischemic process, from germs, toxins, to vaccinations, is the cause of much human disease, pain, and suffering. All vaccines are causing chronic disease, in our attempts to prevent acute disease. We never got rid of the problem, as we did not know what the problem was – until now.
There are some common “end vascular” blood vessels in the human brain, irrespective of age. It is for this reason that we see the exact same measurable signs of brain damage, immediate and delayed, from all vaccinations, for us all in the same manner we saw identical damages from the wild polio virus in the 1950’s. Some of these damages are called bulbar palsies (paralyses) from impaired blood flow through the brain and brainstem. They were present from deadly infectious diseases as much as they are now present from vaccinations. This is slow death, for us all, rather than a fast death, for the few.
When there is impaired blood flow there is impaired oxygen delivery to tissue. Vaccines cause impaired blood flow in an immediate, delayed, waxing and waning pattern. This impairs oxygen delivery throughout the 60,000 miles of microscopic end blood vessel networks in the brain and body. Microscopic brain tissue regions can only survive 4 minutes in an absolute oxygen deprivation state.
Cerebral Vascular Network
Whenever you impair “flow” in any riverbed system, the first areas to “dry up” downstream are the weakest trickling streams furthest from the flow source. These areas are called “end vascular networks.” If an area of tissue is served by a singular blood vessel branch, these areas are called “watershed vascular territories.” These tissue areas are most susceptible to damages when blood flow is partly or completely impaired upstream. For example, the finger-tips, toe-tips, nose-tips, and ear-tips are most susceptible to frost bite as they are end vascular, watershed areas in the human body.
The evidence you can now see, represents the beginning of the end of a flawed medical model and system that has caused the greatest harm, by man-kind to man-kind, in the history of recorded history. Remarkably, we managed to perpetrate these acts under the guise of the greater good, for handsome profit, endorsed by political leaders, corporate merchants, public health officials, and medical professionals alike – they don’t know what they don’t know – a part of the problem.
WHERE HAVE WE BEEN
Debates over the safety, efficacy, and utility of the one-size-fits-all global vaccination programs has reached a fervent pitch. According to the World Health Organization there are 43 million vaccinations administered globally, on any given day. As citizens, we are told “leave the science to scientists.” If you do not have a medical or advanced science degree, your input is irrelevant.” You are told children can handle ten thousand vaccinations safely as they are all attenuated, killed germs, or weakened.”
The problem is that medical science has not known what to measure in order to ensure safety – for all. Now that we have the hard, clinically reproducible, see for yourself measures of neurological damages, we can now see that ALL vaccinations, just like the wild viruses in the pre-vaccine era, are causing tissue, organ, and brain damages. These damages exist along a continuum of harm. The damages are additive with each vaccination received – you can now see this. The clinically silent adverse effects include derailments of all organ systems, to death. We call these adversities by a plethora of clinical labels that are seemingly unrelated to the causal event – repeat vaccinations.
Remarkably, I can now make these bold statements as we can all now see, with our own eyes, the ischemic brain damages, for us all, across ALL vaccinations, from infancy to adulthood, immediately and delayed, irrespective of the end organ damages or clinical diagnostic labels that emerge.
We are selling you vaccines, for profit, which are causing illnesses and death. We then sell you symptom based pharmaceutical products, for profit, to treat the damages and disorders we have caused.
Remarkably, I can now say that the vaccine damages extend to the realm of cancers in addition to varied autoimmune and neurodevelopment disorders.
1-877-NOW-I-CAN
Determining the cause of a particular disease or disorder, in medical physiology, is the first “Bright Step Forward” towards providing rational, targeted, therapeutic interventions to recover from the damages by which a particular disease and disorder state emerged.
All vaccinations are causing “silent” brain and organ damages in exactly the same way that wild polio virus caused paralysis and respiratory failure and how other infectious “plaques” of days gone by, have crippled, maimed, paralyzed, and killed. This is now proven. The damages are additive and summative with each vaccination given. The organ, tissue, and brain damages have been clinically silent, – until now.
You may now see, with your own eyes and understanding, amongst your own family and loved ones,. Evidence now before the United States federal Circuit Courts on vaccine injuries proves that we have ALL been harmed, and are being harmed, by this universal one-size-fits-all vaccination program. Some of this evidence is compiled in an educational 3 disk, 6 hour DVD series entitled: “Tolerance Lost – Volumes 1 to 3.
The Tolerance Lost DVD series, a USA vaccine legal exemption guidebook, and a evidence of harm materials are available at www.BrainGuardMD.com, , or by calling 1-877-NOW-I-CAN.
For answers, solutions, assessment, and help – please contact us directly at 1-877-NOW-I-CAN. www.Therapies4Kids.com, www.BrightStepsForward.org.
There are ways to address the MASS problem and to enable healing to occur even for those that have been damaged. This does not require placing foreign substances or synthetic drugs in the human body – MASS FLO2 LIFE is where the answers must start.
God heals, and the doctor collects the fee. We have reached a time, in history, that we must return to paying fees to the master physician as the medical sciences, in dogma and discourse, has clearly led us a stray.
“Be the change we must see in the worldŠone Bright Step Forward at a time.”
NEXT EDITION OF SPECTRUM MAGAZINE
The global vaccination program is an evil deed, perpetrated by mankind against mankind, for profit, based on a fallible man made tool (‘scientific method”) that can just as soon convince you that the what you see with your own eyes is not true as it can be wielded to “prove” the non-existence of G-D.
These vaccines, as it turns out, are like a maddening wine, which political leaders and “Kings” of the earth have enabled merchants of the planet to grow rich from, at the expense of our collective health and wellness.
The next issue of Spectrum magazine will contain more of the empirical, see for yourself, data and science to explain how this has happened, why it is happening, and what we must now do to help us all.
Matthew 13:41 “The Son of man shall send forth his Angels and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend them which do iniquity.
These autism children are Angels. These vaccines are iniquity. The evidence now before you beckons your spirit, body, mind, and soul to “come out of her my people” as you see God’s desire and character more clearlyŠ. Mystery, Babylon the Great.
Without Faith, without hope, we are lost. Faith and hope can be found. 1-877-NOW-I-CAN
Dr Andrew Moulden MD, PhD
BrainGuardMD.com “12-IMAM”
Therapies4Kids.com ; BrightStepsForward.org
1-877-NOW-I-CAN for assessment and help
Orthodox Jewish communities face antisemitism over measles outbreak
Incidents such as a bus driver allegedly refusing to stop for a Hassidic man occur as New York City has nearly 500 measles cases
May 17, 2019
by Erin Durkin in New York
The Guardian
Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn grappling with a measles outbreak say they are now dealing with a second scourge: fear, profiling and antisemitism inspired by the outbreak.
Incidents have piled up in recent weeks as measles cases continued to rise, community leaders say: a bus driver allegedly refused to stop for a Hassidic man, and then covered her face and shouted “measles” at him when he eventually got on.
A flight crew sparked a brief quarantine when they saw an Orthodox Jewish child with mosquito bites and mistook them for measles.
In other cases, advocates say, business associates have declined to meet people in person and asked to do transactions over the phone. Hassidic passengers have hailed Uber pool rides and seen their fellow passenger get out when they enter the car.
“There have been many incidents where there have been these antisemitic, biased slurs against members of the community,” said Rabbi David Niederman, president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg. “It’s like a license to be antisemitic and say what’s on your mind, and you don’t have to hide it.”
As of 13 May, there have been 498 cases of measles in New York City, according to the city’s health department. Most of the people getting sick are members of the Orthodox community in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood and to a lesser extent Borough Park, though a handful of recent cases have happened outside those neighborhoods.
The mayor, Bill de Blasio, issued an emergency order last month making vaccines mandatory for everyone living in parts of Williamsburg, with $1,000 fines for those who refuse to comply.
Anti-vaccination activists have targeted the Orthodox community, with handbooks and hotlines touting the supposed dangers of vaccines, which have no scientific basis. The propaganda has spread in a tight-knit community where many people do not have exposure to mainstream sources of information.
But rabbis and community leaders have united in urging parents to get their kids vaccinated, stressing there is nothing in Jewish teaching that opposes vaccines.
An analysis by public radio station WNYC found that 3.8% of students were not vaccinated for measles in yeshivas in Williamsburg and Borough Park in 2017, compared with 1% of public school students and 2% of private school students citywide.
“You’re talking about a small percentage of anti-vaxxers – vocal, obviously organized, entrenched in their position, who do not speak for the vast majority of the community,” said community activist Chaskel Bennett, who helped organize a letter from 500 doctors stressing the need for vaccination.
“People should not be profiled based on who they are and what they look like,” he said.
Hassidic Jews have been singled out in part because of their distinctive style of dress, including black hats for men and long skirts for women.
“Suddenly people are looking askance at a whole community of folks, when the only reason you can target these folks any different from anyone else is they look different,” said David Greenfield, the head of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
“You wouldn’t know what an anti-vaxxer in Park Slope looks like, because he or she dresses just like you do,” he said.
The measles outbreak comes amid a broader spike in antisemitic acts across the city and nationwide. Hate crimes have surged in New York City this year, up 66% compared with the same period last year, according to police statistics released this month.
The majority of those crimes have been motivated by antisemitism – 82, nearly double the 45 at this time last year.
There have been no reported crimes where the perpetrators specifically referenced measles, the police commissioner, James O’Neill, said.
There have been two recent alleged attacks against Jewish men in Williamsburg who have been punched by strangers while walking down the street.
Last week, a volunteer emergency medical technician with a Jewish ambulance service came to the aid of a non-Jewish resident and was shouted at by bystanders who told him to “go back to Israel”, according to United Jewish Organizations.
“We’re caught between the anti-vaxxers on one side, and the antisemites on the other,” said Mark Levine, chair of the city council health committee. “We’ve seen a really reprehensible level of rejection directed at Hassidic New Yorkers.”
The health department closed a Jewish school on Monday for failing to turn over records showing all students are vaccinated. Officials previously closed eight other yeshivas, but those have all been allowed to reopen after coming into compliance.
Ninety-eight people have been hit with summonses for defying the mandatory vaccine order. Nearly 23,000 children in Williamsburg and Borough Park have been vaccinated since the outbreak began in the fall.
Alexander Rapaport, who runs the Masbia chain of kosher soup kitchens, was working on a public service announcement with staffers from the mayor’s office to promote vaccination as part of the broader Jewish tradition of caring for the health of neighbors.
Many New Yorkers, he said, have misinterpreted warnings from public health officials to mean that they need to steer clear of Orthodox neighborhoods.
“A lot of the traditional antisemitic tropes are that Jews spread disease. It plays into a very old concept. It plays into a stereotype that’s out there,” he said.
A businessman he knows asked an associate about meeting to pick up a check, and the colleague jokingly wondered if it was safe to allow him in his office, Rapaport said. “Even as a joke, it’s unnecessary. It’s very uncomfortable,” he said.