Monday, October 23, 2006
Senator Edward Kennedy: Traitor
Dizzy has a story about Senator Edward Kennedy contacting the KGB in the early 1980s in order to help them prevent Ronald Reagan being re-elected. There's no other word for this than treason. I certainly hope he gets what's coming to him if this turns out to be true. Needless to say it's being ignored by the liberal media in the US. Kennedy represents all that is bad about American politics. He's never been on the right side of any meaningful argument and did more than most to help Noraid raise funds to buy arms for the IRA. His cowardliness over Chappiquidick barely raises an eyebrow nowadays. America can be relieved that the Democratic Party had the good sense to reject his candidature in 1980.
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42 comments:
His comeuppance is long overdue!
Greg Palast has a story about President George Bush contacting the FBI in the early 2000s in order to help them prevent the Bin Laden family being questioned. There's no other word for this than treason. I certainly hope he gets what's coming to him if this turns out to be true. Needless to say it's being ignored by the right-wing media in the US. Bush represents all that is bad about American politics. He's never been on the right side of any meaningful argument and did more than most to help Al Qaeda raise funds to buy arms. His cowardliness over Vietnam barely raises an eyebrow nowadays. America can be aggrieved that the Republican Party had the good sense to accept his candidature in 2000.
I am not a fan of Edward Kennedy and I don't think he was as good a statesman as his elder brothers, but this story seems a little far fetched!
Looked into this a little bit; Kangor's book is described by critics on amazon.com as "hagiographic" in relation to Ronald Reagan. The book repeats the half-truth that Reagan "won" the cold war - half-truth because at least 50% of the ending of the cold war was down to the varied machinations of the Roman Catholic Church, the people of Solidarity and Poland and the liberal attitudes of Gorbachev. Anyway, putting that to one side, I am sceptical that Kennedy was acting "treasonably" even if the stories are true. This should be seen against the backdrop of many such contacts during the cold war from western figures, ranging from big business people like Armand Hammer and Robert Maxwell to German leaders and even British conservative politicians. I suspect this is just a business as usual case of sideswiping Kennedy from the Republican far right, there have been many such smears against him and he always survives them. We'll see!
Very true Iain. However the USA is a big grown up country that can deal with its troublesome priests all by itself if it wishes to do so.
The lesson we should take from this excuse for a statesman/human being is that we probely have trators like TK in Britain doing very simular things here (for example GG BBC and KL) and we have so far had no idear whatsoever how to "handle" them.
If I was George Gallaway Ken Livingstone or a subversive working at the BBC I would not be so sure this situation will forever continue. It seems lately that things are indead starting to change.
His culpability at Chappiquidick with MJK was astounding and he got away with it! The NORAID was established almost beyond doubt but this latest doesn't surprise. That family has a lot to answer for.
Are you a political historian Iain;this makes me think of the Zinoviev letters back in 1924.They were forgeries;could that letter be one?
Very true Garypowell, Galloway is a traitor and should long ago have been arrested - in fact, he is such a bad advert for the left that the only reason I have been able to think of that he didn't get arrested is that he is in fact an MI5 agent.
It's only "treason" if your country is at war; the USA was never at war with Russia. Iain may be confusing this with the various famous spy trial cases - in those instances, people were charged with other crimes. To be honest Iain, I think your headline above this story is both sleazy and misleading, and a bit beneath your usual standard. Are you desperate for a story this morning or do you just have a think about the Kennedies?
Just so people know, the letter mentioned in my post, which purports to be from the Soviet Archives, is printed in full in the Appendix of the book.
Of course the letter could be a fake, there are many fake and real documents in the Soviet Archive.
However, I don't think comparing it to the Zinoviev Letter is an accurate comparison. This letter is mentioned only in passing in a much larger book published over a month ago. There has been no fanfare surrounding it whatsoever like the Zinoviev letter.
Additionally, this is a letter from the Head of the KGB to the Head of Party providing his review of a meeting with Senator Tunney who, the letter says, was acting on behalf of Kennedy. That doesn't seem totally unreasonable or unbelievable within the scope of the Cold War.
Not as convincing as the "october surprise" whereby it was alleged that Reagan made a deal with Khomeni that the Iranian hostages not be released till reagan was elected.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise#1980_Carter_vs._Reagan
Which doesn't mean I am convinced of it either but not dismissive either.
Whenever I think of the Kennedy Clan I think of sleaze, remember the James Ellroy line.
When the legendary author (and declared Republincan) was asked whether he was worried about the Kennedys suing him for slander when they get mentioned in his crime novels he said it didn't bother him, saying if they sued every time they were offended they would have no time to get drunk and rape girls.
And of course the Republicans would never do such a thing! You conveniently forget about the team behind Reagon's initial election contacting the Iranian mullahs and telling them not to release American hostages because it would help Carter. Is that not also treason by your definition?
Also, I fail to see how Galloway is a traitor. A self-aggrandising doughnut perhaps, but why a traitor? Blair conspired with a foreign regime to lie to the people of this country and our representatives in parliament in order to plan and wage aggressive war. Blair is the traitor here.
Jimmy Carter did something similar as well. Various other Dem congress members have also taken it upon themselves to conduct foreign policy e.g. McDermott (recent),Dellums(80s) Kerry(70s) and of course Clinton and Carter can't stop shooting their mouths off either.
The Kennedy clan are in a class all their own. See www.ytedk.com
antiphallus,
Galloway encouraged terrorists to kill British soldiers. That sounds pretty treacherous to me.
They are all treacherous!
All the politicians who have sold this country to the EU. Losing our fishing rights our border rights. Just what we can and cannot do. Europe has defeated us with the willing participation of ALL the political parties and, therefore, they are all guilty of Treason.
HANG THE LOT OF THEM! oops sorry the EU have banned capital punishment!
Anonymuse 12.12
It's only "treason" if your country is at war
Rubbish.
According to Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983)it defines treason as:
1. The offense of attempting to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance, or of betraying the state into the hands of a foreign power; disloyalty; treachery.
The treason of the murthering in the bed. Chaucer.
☞ In monarchies, the killing of the sovereign, or an attempt to take his life, is treason. In England, to imagine or compass the death of the king, or of the queen consort, or of the heir apparent to the crown, is high treason, as are many other offenses created by statute. In the United States, treason is confined to the actual levying of war against the United States, or to an adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
2. Loosely, the betrayal of any trust or confidence; treachery; perfidy.
If he be false, she shall his treason see. Chaucer.
I really hope this story is true.
Have concerns. It is not on drudge, the be all for all US political stories.
No one else seems to have touched it.
The NORAID thing is quite right and he's no friend to this country - he is unfortunately though a typical Boston "Irish" catholic who believes in loads of romantic rubbish about Ireland but would never in a million years choose to go live there. The chappaquiddick stuff is unfair - it's easy to judge, but many people would not plunge into an icy river to save someone, especially if it meant putting aside a promising political career. His brother John F was a great man - OK, he was a frantic womaniser and he didn't believe a word of all those wondrous speeches - but he was really really good looking. When you weigh all this up, you cannot but admire the contribution of the Kennedy family and the good uses they have put their criminally obtained wealth to. God bless America!
You and Justin are both right, of course.
But the Reagan Administration never extradited a single IRA suspect, and NORAID's own literature regularly made it as clear as could be that the IRA, in its targetted assassinations of the Workers' Party, was acting on behalf of the CIA.
And then Reagan's Best Friend, a significant Unionist hate figure to this day, went and signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement...
Anonymouse,
That was a very clever thing you did with my name there!
It could be argued that Galloway was urging insurgents to defeat the illegal occupation and therefore speed our troops withdrawal, thereby ending their complicity in the supreme international crime.
Teddy Kennedy was scum and it is as simple as that. His actual giving to NORAID was the thing that made me hate him so much after having spent a long time, off and on, in NI.
Same for Clinton.
The story does seem far fetched...but then again, Blunt did too.
Kennedys, whole lot of them, are white trash. Father Joe a bootlegger, whoremonger and friend of Hitlers. Teddy left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown in the car he drove off the bridge. He saved himself, ran away, told a pack of lies. Coward. No greater shit in the whole of the USA. Absolute unadulerated scum the whole tribe. The sooner he drinks himself to death the better.
Yawn, the Republicnazis can't even come up with original smears anymore. Surely a man of learning like yourself is familiar with the Zinoviev letter Ian?
Helping NORAID to raise money for the IRA? From 1977 onwards, Kennedy worked with the constitutional nationalists of Northern Ireland, the SDLP. He helped prevent a plan by Charles Haughey to sack Eire's fiercely anti-IRA Ambassador to Washington, Sean Donlon.
For more information, read RJ Briand's article, 'Bush, Clinton, Irish America, and the Irish Peace Process' in The Political Quarterly, April-June 2002.
Pity no one contacted the KGB prior to Blair's third term, then. But then again, maybe they did...
Frankly, I don't have anything against bootleggers, so can't condemn Joe Kennedy for trying to bring liquor to the masses during Prohibition. I do condemn him in no uncertain terms, though, for telling the President, when he was Ambassador to the Court of St James's, that Britain would lose the war.
Jack Kennedy, who had a lot in common with fellow Democrat Bill Clinton, except his wife looked even crazier than Hillary, used the White House as a playpen to bring home girls when Jackie was away. Gore Vidal (they had the same stepfather, but at different times) has a few choice words about Jackie.
Robert had 11 children by his wife, who turned into an alcoholic, and none of them turned out well. Like his brother, he was another well-known swordsman around DC. I believe one of his kids overdosed on a flight somewhere and died in the airplane loo, never a pleasant thought.
They had a mad sister that they had locked up somewhere.
Teddy has never attended a session of the Senate sober. In fact, I don't believe he's ever been seen anywhere sober. It wasn't just that he left poor Mary Jo Kopechne gasping for her dying breath in the little air bubble she'd found in that car in Chappaquikick Bay, but he went home, showered, had a brainstorming meeting with his brothers' aides, and appeared the next morning with his neck in a cast. He'd wanted, of course, to save Mary Jo but just wasn't physically able, having been injured so badly.
His wife, in the tradition of Kennedy wives, became a raging alcoholic.
In the arrogant tradition of the Kennedy's John Kennedy's son John (John-John) insisted that he could fly a private plane in a dense fog although he was a very inexperienced pilot. He killed both himself and his wife and her family are suing the Kennedies for wrongful death.
Their cousin William(?) Smith as a teenager raped and murdered a young girl after a party around 20 years ago. Fortunately, the police kept after him all those years and about three years ago, he was tried and found guilty. Yay! One Kennedy, out of all that festering evil, found guilty.
In my list of the maldoings of the Kennedies, how could I have forgotten poor Marilyn Monroe, who apparently "committed suicide" when she became inconvenient.
John Kennedy got tired of America's vulnerable sex symbol and passed her on to Robert. Robert too, after the conquest, got tired of her. Like so many women who floated in and out of the lives of the Kennedy men, she died mysteriously, just as she had everything to live for. She had a new house she was fixing up (yes, renovating is hell, but most of us live through it), a contract for a new movie, she was chatting away to her maid earlier, and the next thing we know, she is lying in her bed dead, holding her phone receiver. The coroner later admitted that he hadn't look for signs of an injection. He ruled "probable suicide", but later expressed doubts.
Kennedy's are a cross between Blair-like PR creation and the royal family. At least we have a real monarch so PR upstarts like the Kennedys or the Blairs cannot aspire to being 'royalty' here. The Blairs were keen to snub the Queen by Cherie not coutseying, and yawning openly at royal events. The Americans have no choice to suffer the arrogance of such little shits.
We tolerate upstarts like Cherie Blair as we know they get binned like all the rest eventually, but in the US, without a monarch, the quasi-royalty can never be got rid of. They get endless members of the same few families running the country regardless of ability or suitability.
If only the Americans had kept on with George the Third, they could have got their need for a dynastic family from real royalty, and booted their politicians out unceremoniously like we do. Much healthier. Blair will soon be on his way, but Bush The Second will no doubt push forward Bush The Third in due course. Americans just cannot get rid of the buggers.
Antipholas papus
So by your logic Lord Haw Haw was not a traitor either, because he encouraged the British people to surrender to Hitler and the Nazis ASAP.
As this would have stopped the 150 thousand deaths during the bombing of Dresden, the over 15 thousand French civillian deaths during the Normandy landings alone, and poor old Adolf and his charming new wife would not have ended up shooting themselves.
Where did you get your education from fairy land or the BBC?
It may have escaped your small brain that Britain was never invaded during WW2 and that British commonwealth and American forces waged tottal war in other peoples countrys. A fact that almost all the people of Britain at the time were very thankfull for. I suspect you would have been one of those that was not. We had British antisemitic Nazis here then too.
BTW the invasion of Iraq was not illegal under international law.
However what KL and GG say on a regular basis is staight forward treachery. Just try to imagine how reading your comments seems to a family member of one of our armed forces fighting for our security. Which I am.
Ted Kennedys father was a Nazi and thought the sun shone out of AH ass. If the American people had listened to Joe Kennedy in 1940 My mothers entire family would have ended up takeing a wash in one Himlers infamous showers.
Mr Osatao, the Republicans are not pushing this. As I;ve said, more than once now but you're obviously not reading comment here or on my blog.
The Zinoviev letter was a fake that was sent to a paper. This is a memo found in the Soviet Archive that is referenced in a little known book that no one has paid much attention too. And when I say no one, I mean no one.
Whilst the contents of the memo may indeed be false, it is by no way historically comparable to Zinoviev in it's discovery or obvious scope.
To my knowledge there's no evidence that this memo wasn't genuinely found in the Soviet Archive by an academic researching a book. The real question one has to ask is, if the memo doesn't contain true information, then why was it written back in the 1980s. What reason would Chebrikov have to tell Andropov about a meeting with an obscure US senator and then link it to Kennedy?
Dismissing the memo out of hand, and using rather emotional and intellectually unsound phrases like republicnazi isn't particularly wise. Likewise accepting it as gospel is not aiwse move also given the knowledge we have about the Soviet Union archives being fall of as much turth as half truth.
The Kennedy clan are scum...what exactly is the surprise here? Fortunately it seems their dominance of Massachussets politics is waning.
I don't think Jack was any more pro-Hitler than many members of the British upper class in the 30s.
The view that Hitler was likely to win in 1940 & that it was in the US interest to keep out was not an unreasonable one at the time. I suggest less unreasonable than Chamberlain's that we ought to keep out of any war between Germany & Russia.
The point to remember is that he was US ambassador & owed loyalty to the US not Britain. Had he believed it was risky for the US to get into the war & not said so that would have been treason.
Remember that we all have 20 x 20 hindsight.
Why are people here referring to this family as "the Kennedy Clan", as though that were some special title that elevated them above being "the Kennedy family"?
Styling them "Clan" was a pr move by their army of pr strategists (yes, Pierre Salinger; I'm looking at you). That posters on a conservative blog on the other side of the Atlantic, 30 years (or whatever; I'm not going to look it up) are still referring to the family as "the Kennedy Clan" demonstrates how ruthlessly efficient their pr machine was - and how the carriers of the flame have energetically perpetuated this utterly pointless usage. For at least 20 years after John Kennedy's death, the Kennedys and their court still regarded themselves as the government across the water, as though LBJ and subsequent elected governments were somehow not quite legitimate.
Liberal media?
'Iain Dale in crack-smoking shock'?
Here is an update. An article from 2003 which refers to the same emos and others as well here
Verity, you've combined two events into one. The recent conviction, was for a cousin, Michael Skakel for murdering a fifteen year old girl thirty years ago. He got twenty years to life.
William (Kennedy) Smith is another cousin who was romping with his Uncle Ted in their Florida mansion; he was accused of rape, acquitted but is still carrying on as usual
The Kennedys make Clinton look like a fumbling amateur !
yak 40 - thanks for the correction. I didn't combine two events, but I did get the two names mixed up. It was actually Michael Skakel to whom I referred. Thank you.
Someone connected with Vanity Fair magazine (I can't remember his name offhand) wrote a fictionalised account that was very good indeed. He captured the Kennedy ethos, self-regard and bullying with exquisite precision.
Yes, William Smith was up on a rape charge in FL. I was so surprised I almost yawned. And, of course, Teddy was there. Another inexplicable coincidence. But what does it say about the people of MA that they keep re-electing him? Obviously, they have a screw loose as this is a state in which you cannot keep a gun for self-protection. (If nothing else, you'd think the citizenry would want to protect themselves from Teddy.)
IIRC, Teddy was arrested for kerb crawling, drunk, in DC once, but I guess it wasn't really him because it all went away. (Perhaps he went home and put his neck in a brace.)
yak40 - I went to your link! Ugh!!! The arrogance, the assumption of power over others, the will to prevail regardless ... that family is so disgusting. Fortunately, a lot of them are dead.
I've never understood the adulation that the Kennedy clan attract. Beyond their telegenic looks (something Teddy missed out on) and the much hyped tragedies of John and Bobby's assassinations I've never found much that was admirable about any of them.
They've always struck me as being obsessed by power, amoral and opportunistic to a degree that is unusual even amongst politicians.
And the Democratic Party have conspirted in the deification of the Kennedies because it suits their agenda. Conveniently they neglect to mention that JFK was responsible for the illegal (and ultimately failed) invasion of a neighbouring state; brought the world closer to nuclear war than their bete noir, Ronald Reagan; and effectively began America's involvement in Vietnam.
Whether Teddy actually stooped as low as is alleged, I do not know. But somehow the story does not surprise me.
Perhaps the people of the US and the West should count themselves fortunate in that the allure of the Kennedy name is fading and it seems unlikely that there will be future members of the clan polluting the world of politics.
A state of war need not exist for one to commit a treasonous act, but at least one poster here is apparently ignorant of the conflict that existed between the US and USSR during the so-called cold war. The hostliities were real and the consequences deadly with the Soviets and their proxies killing hundereds of US and allied servicemen.
My father's USAF outfit lost several crewmen directly to Soviet aggression (shootdowns) over international waters. Any unilateral negotiations on TK's part with the USSR would constitue treason.
The in my opinion vile scum filth unAmerican elite class spit-on-the-common-folks Ted Kennedy whose daddy amassed immense wealth at least partially by breaking numerous state and federal laws assisted in starting the ongoing class war in the USA and who has assisted in making the USA a bad place for working-poor Americans due to his push for the 1965 immigration "reform" bill in Congress.
Mega-millions of uneducated poor immigrants flooded in at rates even higher than the Ellis Island crowd of the early 1900s.
Additionally. a large percentage of those legal immigrants after the scum putrid (my opinion) Ted Kennedy "reformed" immigration were unable to adapt to the USA and its general culture so resorted to crime AND extended hand-outs that you and I paid for.
Ted Kennedy also did nothing to stop the invasion of illegal invaders who especially harmed working-poor citizens.
As for class warfare, I believe the evidence is overwhelming it actually exists. Decades of research led to the conclusion THEN, I was heartened when I read the quote from the super-wealthy Warren Buffet:
"There's class warfare, all right," Mr. (Warren) Buffett said, "but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
Ted Kennedy hoodwinked many people and the elite class and their cohorts will praise him but it is my opinion he isn't even worthy of being spat upon by the vast majority of American citizens.
Of course Obama praises Ted "killer" Kennedy. Obama is just another figurehead for the elite class who will be well-rewarded when he leaves office.
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