General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Anti-vax asshat RFK Jr. on Dr. Oz, promoting his anti-vax asshat book... [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)The reason I ask:
RFK, Jr. is no ''asshat.'' Why would you call a liberal Democrat that and the other things, SidDithers of DU?
I heard him speak at my alma mater, Wayne State University in 2007.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called George W Bush "that sonofabitch" and said the guy was a crook, turning over the government to the lobbyists and gangsters who've emptied our Treasury, polluted our water, land, air and children, and used humanity as cannon fodder and slave labor.
He also pegged ABCNNBCBSFoxNoiseNutwork for what they are. Among other things, he called Antonin Scalia the son of a Nazi and explained why. I would've taken notes, but I wanted to hear everything the guy said.
The writings of law professor Donald E. Wilkes are a good place to start learning about why RFK Jr. matters:
DESTINY BETRAYED:
THE CIA, OSWALD, AND
THE JFK ASSASSINATION
Published in Flagpole Magazine, p. 8 (Dec. 7, 2005).
Author: Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law.
In place of the strong sense of faith in man and mankind, we now have a heavy feeling of a failed mission, of destiny betrayed and unfulfilled. Rav Alex Israel
The deepest cover story of the CIA is that it is an intelligence organization. Bulletin of the Federation of American Scientists
Today, 42 years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, few responsible researchers who have studied JFKs murder accept the Warren Commissions main conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, committed the crime. (The Warren Commission was the body appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the Kennedy assassination; it released its Report in September 1964.) As these researchers have shown again and again in scores of books and articles, evidence available to the Commission but improperly evaluated, erroneously rejected, or simply not pursued by that body, together with new evidence unavailable to the Commission, discredits the principal finding of the Warren Report. JFKs death was, these researchers believe, carried out by a conspiracy; it was not the act of a lone assassin. Different researchers, however, have different conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists also disagree about Oswald: some maintain that he was simply one of the conspirators; others claim that, while he was a member of the conspiracy, he was also unknowingly a dupe of the other conspirators who intended for him to be the fall guy; and still other theorists think that Oswald was a wholly innocent person set up by the conspirators as the patsy. Furthermore, the theorists who regard Oswald as a conspirator disagree as to whether he fired any of the shots in Dealey Plaza.
SNIP...
The theory that JFKs murder was engineered by the CIA (or by persons affiliated with the CIA), and that the CIA covered up its connections to the murder, warrants serious consideration and should not be peremptorily rejected. In the 1960s the CIA more resembled an untouchable crime syndicate than a legitimate government entity. Lavishly but secretly funded, unrestrained by public opinion, cloaked in secrecy, conducting whatever foreign or domestic clandestine operations it wished without regard to laws or morals, and specializing in deception, falsification, and mystification, the CIA was riddled at all levels with ruthless, cynical officials and employees who believed that they were above the law, that any means were justified to accomplish the goals they set for themselves, and that insofar as their surreptitious activities were concerned it was justifiable to lie with impunity to anyone, even presidents and legislators. Many of these individuals, thinking he was soft on communism, that he would reduce the size of the military industrial complex, and that he was to blame for the Bay of Pigs disaster (the failed CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba in 1961), hated and despised Kennedy. The CIA routinely circumvented and defied attempts by the executive and legislative branches to monitor its activities. It was involved in innumerable unlawful or outrageous activities. It illegally opened the mail of Americans. It interfered with free elections in foreign countries and arranged to destabilize or overthrow the governments of other countries. It plotted the murder of various foreign leaders. It arranged to hire the Mafia to help with some of these proposed murder plots. It unlawfully storedin quantities, UGA political science professor Loch K. Johnson notes, sufficient to destroy the population of a small cityexotic toxic agents, including cobra venom and shellfish toxin, for the purpose of committing murders. It manufactured and used sinister lethal weaponry, including what Prof. Johnson calls the ultimate murder weapon, an electric handgun (the CIA called it a noise-free disseminator) with a telescopic sight which could noiselessly and accurately fire poison-tipped darts (the CIA called them nondiscernible microbioinoculators) up to a distance of 250 feet. It undoubtedly carried out multiple secret murders and other heinous crimes which it successfully kept hidden. Furthermore, it is now firmly established that after the JFK assassination the CIA simultaneously lied to, and withheld important information from, the Warren Commission.
One of the first serious investigators to raise credible claims that CIA operatives or ex-CIA operatives were involved in the JFK assassination was Jim Garrison, who served as the district attorney in New Orleans, Louisiana from 1962 to 1974. (A brief chronology of Garrisons life and investigation is set forth at the end of this article.) Garrison and his office investigated the assassination for about five years, from late 1966 until early 1971. His investigation led Garrison to believe that, regardless of whoever actually fired the shots in Dealey Plaza, the assassination was the result of a plot hatched in New Orleans by persons with CIA connections. Furthermore, Garrison concluded, following the assassination the CIA engaged in a coverup to protect itself and the assassins. Garrison brought to trial the only criminal proceeding in which someone was actually charged with involvement in the JFK assassination. Garrison wrote two important books, the first published in 1970, the second in 1988, in which he recounted his investigation and shared the important new facts he had discovered.
In the words of journalist Fred Powledge, who wrote a magazine article on Garrison published in 1967, Garrison thought that the assassins were CIA employees who were angered at President Kennedys posture on Cuba following the Bay of Pigs disaster, and that the CIA was frustrating his investigation, although the agency knew the whereabouts of the assassins. Philosophy professor Richard H. Popkin, in another magazine article published in 1967, summarized Garrisons views on the assassination as follows: The thesis Garrison has set forth is that a group of New Orleans-based, anti-Castroites, supported and/or encouraged by the CIA in their anti-Castro activities, in the late summer or early fall of 1963 conspired to assassinate John F. Kennedy. This group, according to Garrison, included (Clay) Shaw, (David) Ferrie, (Lee Harvey) Oswald, ... and others, including Cuban exiles and American anti-Castroites.... (T)heir plan was executed in Dallas on November 22, 1963. At least part of their motivation ... was their reaction to Kennedys decisions at the Bay of Pigs and the changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba following the missiles crisis of 1962.
In a 1967 interview, Garrison himself phrased his basic conclusions this way: (A) number of the men who killed the President were former employees of the CIA involved in its anti-Castro underground activities in and around New Orleans.... We must assume that the plotters were acting on their own rather than on CIA orders when they killed the President. As far as we been able to determine, they were not on the pay of the CIA at the time of the assassination.... The CIA could not face up to the American people and admit that its former employees had conspired to assassinate the President, so from the moment Kennedys heart stopped beating, the Agency attempted to sweep the whole conspiracy under the rug.... In this respect, it has become an accessory after the fact in the assassination.
CONTINUED...
http://www.law.uga.edu/dwilkes_more/jfk_22destiny.html
Prof. Wilkes' bibiliography is an excellent survey of what was available at the time of his writing that article. Several new works have been published since. I'll try to get back and recommend them to you when I get the time. In the meantime, here's why it's important to hear RFK, Jr. rather than "think" asshat:
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy believed President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy.
That's what his son and daughter, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Rory Kennedy, reported in an interview with Charlie Rose last weekend in Dallas.

It's also what author and Salon founder David Talbot reported, when he called Robert F. Kennedy the "first conspiracy theorist" in 2007.
Here's why the news from Robert and Rory is so important:
RFK called the Warren Commission report "shoddy workmanship."
Attorney General Kennedy knew about the Ruby-Mafia connections immediately, which is vital when considering the Mafia were hired by Allen Dulles and the CIA during Eisenhower's administration to murder Fidel Castro -- an operation which the CIA failed to inform the president and attorney general.
The interview with Charlie Rose marked the first time members of the immediate Kennedy family have voiced the attorney general's doubts about the Warren Commission and its lone gunman theory.
Those are the facts we learned Friday, Jan. 11, 2013. It's called history.
Remember: Like medical researchers discerning truth from falsehood for the sake of the pharmaceutical industries, remember that readers are leaders -- especially when it comes to politics in and age of NSA/CIA/ABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutworks. Those who believe Corporate McPravda tend to go along with the illegal, immoral, disastrous and endless wars of choice in Iraq and Vietnam and wherever else there's money to be had.

Also remember: RFK, Jr'.s father and his uncle stood against all that.