Valete, Ted Kennedy

So Ted Kennedy is dead. His life, as summarised in this obituary, is a classic lesson in the complexity of mankind. Monstrous son of a monstrous Nazi-supporting bootlegger, brother to two assassination victims, he juggled a cruel and selfish private life, leading to the death of a young woman, amongst other things, but he was also a principled liberal leader who reached out from a position of the utmost privilege to the poorest and most oppressed in his country.

Seymour Hersh's Camelot is a no-holds-barred examination of the Kennedy dynasty, well worth reading, but the Kennedy mystique is as golden as it is appalling. JFK started the Vietnam war, but RFK would have ended it, had he not been shot dead. It was RFK who took on the Mafia, despite the fact that his brother's election (opposed by Nixon) in 1960 was achieved through widespread vote-rigging and corruption. Edward Kennedy would have been one of the best presidents had he won the nomination in 1980 - but his alcohol, sex and drug-fuelled private life put paid to that, and nice Jimmy Carter went on to lose to that evil hack Reagan.

So Ted Kennedy - proof that bad/good co-exist in us all…

Don't worry - there's already at least one of the next Kennedy generation in power: Patrick is a state senator in Rhode Island, and Caroline ran for New York, unsuccessfully. Arnie's wife is a Kennedy too!

Is the worm turning?

I've always thought that the UK has been a puppet/client state of the US, since 1945. However, according to Seymour Hersh, David Miliband and the head of MI6 visited Syria without permission from the Americans. This really is a shocker. Reagan of course invaded the former British territory of Grenada without mentioning it to his friend Thatcher, but the British haven't done anything without clearing it with Uncle Sam since Suez, which was a disaster.

The way Hersh tells it, Cheney was furious. How dare the Brits use their initiative?