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Martin Hay's review of David Von Pein's book


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I've read a lot of book reviews and a lot of articles on the Kennedy assassination, and Martin has written one of the best, IMO. He identifies the cognitive dissonance so prevalent in the LN community, and makes a fine argument for the possibility of conspiracy.

http://www.ctka.net/2015/Ayton%20Review.html

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RONALD WIECK SAID (AT FACEBOOK):

I just received a copy of "Beyond Reasonable Doubt". Having read the first fifty pages, I can state that book promises to become the One-Stop Shop for everyone tired of the incessant yammering of agenda-driven conspiracy peddlers.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Thank you, Ronald, very much.


TRACY RIDDLE ["TLR"] SAID:

A detailed critique of the book by Martin Hay:

http://kennedysandking.com/ayton-mel-and-david-von-pein-beyond-reasonable-doubt


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

What a surprise --- a conspiracy theorist (Martin Hay) disagrees with LNers.

~yawn~

And it's no surprise to see Martin Hay doing what all Internet CTers do every day---trying to explain away all the evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald.

Martin believes all the evidence is fake and phony. If he didn't believe that, then Oswald's guilty. And Martin doesn't like that idea at all. So, the evidence is ALL fraudulent---from the rifle to the paper bag to Howard Brennan and everything in-between.

And I'm wondering why Mr. Hay is telling this false tale in his BRD book review at CTKA?.....

"Although the precise location of the back wound was not recorded by Kennedy's pathologists..." -- Martin Hay

Hay is dead wrong about that statement. The autopsy Face Sheet records the exact location of the upper-back wound. It's the precise location of the throat wound which wasn't recorded by Humes, Boswell, and Finck. Maybe Hay meant to say "throat wound" instead of "back wound" above. ~shrug~

But, in any event, Martin knows full well that no bullets were found inside JFK's body, and there was very little damage inside Kennedy's upper back and neck that could have stopped a rifle bullet, let alone stopping TWO such bullets, which is the number of missiles (two) that Hay needs to disappear into thin air if he thinks the bullet that struck JFK's back did not transit the President's body.

But common sense was never a strong suit of JFK conspiracy theorists. Their constant refusal to accept the truth of the Single-Bullet Theory has been proving that fact for fifty years.


TRACY RIDDLE SAID:

That's it, David? You found a typo error? You can't refute anything else he wrote? No, all we get is more bold assertions and hyperbole.

Howard Brennan? Most LNers on the internet gave up using Brennan a long time ago.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Tracy,

I've seen all of the silly excuses for ignoring all of the Oswald-Did-It evidence before. Nothing Martin Hay had to say in his review surprised me. I expected it. Hay's review is merely the most recent excuse for conspiracists like him to raise their Internet voices so they can (once again) pretend that Oswald never ordered the rifle and never took the rifle into the TSBD and never shot at General Walker, etc., etc. to absurdity.

If you want to see each foolish claim made by CTers debunked, I've got pages on my websites that accomplish that task fairly well (IMO). But I'm not going to type out 5,000 words on these [Amazon.com] forums to refute Hay's fairy tale beliefs. That's why I've archived everything at my own sites, so I don't have to type it all out again every time these things come up (which they constantly do).

Regarding Howard Brennan....

Do you think LNers like myself (and Mel Ayton) should just completely IGNORE Mr. Brennan, is that it? We should just toss Howard under the wheels of SS-100-X and pretend he never told the Warren Commission that the man he saw shoot JFK was, in fact, Lee Harvey Oswald? Is that it?

And do you think the whole case against Oswald rests on the shoulders of only Howard Brennan? Why would anyone think that? Even without Brennan, Oswald is still guilty as ever. And the evidence proves it. Brennan's testimony merely corroborates and buttresses what all reasonable people can already figure out for themselves based on the physical evidence and Oswald's own actions---i.e., Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy.

MARTIN HAY SAID:

Nowhere in my review do I state or even suggest that "all the evidence is fake and phony". .... I never suggested that there was anything "fraudulent" about the rifle.
 

DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Good. Then Oswald is guilty. He has to be guilty if the evidence is not "fake" or "phony" or "fraudulent". Right? Because how could he possibly be innocent if the evidence is truly legitimate?

So, it's good to have that cleared up. You've just admitted that Mannlicher-Carcano Rifle No. C2766 is not "fraudulent". And you've admitted that you DON'T think "all the evidence is fake and phony". Which I assume would indicate that you think at least SOME of the evidence is real and legitimate and worthy of being utilized to try and solve the JFK murder case. Correct?

At this rate, you'll be an LNer before you know it, Martin. Because there are very few Internet conspiracists who are willing to stipulate that ANY of the evidence against Oswald is legit.

Lots more here....
jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2015/04/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-918.html

-----------------------

Edited by David Von Pein
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It seems to me that conspirators assassinating the president of the United States would manufacture, destroy, or tamper with all the evidence necessary to create a patsy and cover their own tracks. There is sufficient evidence that this was done. All they needed was the power to do it, and they obviously had it. That gives us a good idea of who they were without positive identifications (i.e. the case is still unsolved). Yet Von Pein considers such evidence tampering to be a "fairy tale," and thinks it's the CTers who don't use "common sense." (Ironically the one big fairy tale in the JFK assassination is the Single Bullet Theory.) Well I've seen this movie before, and can only watch it so many times before quoting Von Pein himself: "Yawn."

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Here we see how a LN par excellence, DVP twists things the people write.

Quote from above.

"MARTIN HAY SAID:

Nowhere in my review do I state or even suggest that "all the evidence is fake and phony". .... I never suggested that there was anything "fraudulent" about the rifle.

DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Good. Then Oswald is guilty. He has to be guilty if the evidence is not "fake" or "phony" or "fraudulent".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note the devious omission by Von Pein of the simple word "all", in Martin's statement.

Changes the meaning completely.

Shame on you, VP.

Therefore, according to your logic shown above, because some of the evidence is "fake" or "photo" or fraudulent" then Oswald was framed.

Edited by Ray Mitcham
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You miss the point, David. Martin's review was not a well-constructed review because he presented a different viewpoint, but because he demonstrated why your book was flawed. You presented old old arguments while ignoring much of the evidence. It's a lawyer's brief, written by non-lawyers who twist the meaning of the term "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" to suit their own agenda.

I know you love Vince but c'mon, the people buying your book deserved better than a summary of his book.

If you want to defend your book, the best way to do so is to present some well-rounded detailed arguments from your book in which you present new evidence, or acknowledge weaknesses in the Oswald did it proposition. Failing that, it would seem to me that Martin's review will stand as the definitive statement on your book by anyone who knows enough about the case to write a review.

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Here's how Oswald did it. He somehow got his disassembled rifle onto the sixth floor and quickly assembled it with a dime, leaving no fingerprints on the rifle. Scrunching down, he rapidly fired three shots, cleaning the rifle barrel of any corrosion. By the time Robert Frazier examined the rifle the next day, the barrel had become badly corroded. At least one of the rounds Oswald fires is a re-load. Oswald did not possess re-loading equipment.

Oswald makes his way down the stairs, after stashing the rifle, and is encountered appearing calm by Marion Baker just inside the door to the second floor lunch room.

Oswald returns to his lodging, gets his pistol, and walks quickly to a place where he encounters and kills J.D. Tippit.

Shortly thereafter, Oswald is arrested in the Texas Theater.

This statement of facts raises no questions and is completely verifiable beyond a reasonable doubt. Case Closed.

Eh, DVP?

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Books like DVP's are destined to fail because the story was never sellable in its long history. The public didn't buy the 'Oswald did it' explanation 51 years ago & still want the truth today.

BM

edited to make a kinder, gentler statement.

Edited by Brad Milch
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Yet Von Pein considers such evidence tampering to be a "fairy tale,"...

It is a fairy tale, Ron. Especially when we factor in ALL of the evidence. And most conspiracy believers I've ever talked to DO indeed think that EVERY last piece of evidence leading to Oswald was tampered with in some fashion -- bullets, guns, shells, prints, the paper bag, the backyard photos, the autopsy photos, the autopsy itself, every incriminating document with Oswald's handwriting on it, everything.

And other than the prints on the TSBD boxes, I'd like to have some CTer explain to me (in a believable way) just how Lee Oswald could be innocent if all of the remainder of the evidence is truly legitimate. That'd be a neat trick. And I notice that Martin Hay hasn't come forward with any response after I said this to him a few days ago:

"Good. Then Oswald is guilty. He has to be guilty if the evidence is not "fake" or "phony" or "fraudulent". Right? Because how could he possibly be innocent if the evidence is truly legitimate? .... You've just admitted that Mannlicher-Carcano Rifle No. C2766 is not "fraudulent". And you've admitted that you DON'T think "all the evidence is fake and phony". Which I assume would indicate that you think at least SOME of the evidence is real and legitimate and worthy of being utilized to try and solve the JFK murder case. Correct?"

Edited by David Von Pein
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RONALD WIECK SAID (AT FACEBOOK):

I just received a copy of "Beyond Reasonable Doubt". Having read the first fifty pages, I can state that book promises to become the One-Stop Shop for everyone tired of the incessant yammering of agenda-driven conspiracy peddlers.

DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

David Von Pein said on this very Forum that just a "little bit" of JFK's jacket was bunched up in Dealey Plaza.

His observation demolishes the SBT -- the bullet holes in the clothes are too low to have been associated with the throat wound.

This also demolishies Pat Speer's claim that the back wound was at T1 and Martin Hay's claim that the back wound location is in doubt.

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PAT SPEER SAID:

I know you love Vince but c'mon, the people buying your book deserved better than a summary of his book.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Well, Pat, to tell the truth, I wanted to include a whole lot more conspiracy-debunking stuff in the book, but I wasn't allowed to do that because of space restrictions. The book's primary author, Mel Ayton, told me that the book shouldn't be more than 100,000 words in length. (Mel says that the publishers he has dealt with frown on manuscripts that are too much longer than that.)

So it's a bit like being caught between a rock and a hard place. The problem then becomes: What should we include and what should we leave out?

But prior to becoming fully aware of the "100,000-word limit", I had actually submitted to Mel a total of (gulp!) 27 appendix sections (totaling 24,000 words), in the hope that ALL of that material would end up in the finished book. After Mel then told me that we had a fairly strict limit as to the book's length, I was quite embarrassed for having flooded him with so much material that could obviously not be used in the finished manuscript.

But if anybody has any suggestions on how to write a "Lone Assassin" book of a limited length (approximately 100,000 words or so) and still cover every last thing that conspiracy theorists think should be covered in an "LN" book, I'd be pleased to hear their suggestions on how to do that. Heck, Vincent Bugliosi's mammoth 2,800-page behemoth still doesn't come even close to satisfying the requirements of most CTers. So a book that is one-fifteenth the size obviously doesn't have a prayer of meeting the requirements of the world's demanding conspiracists.

But "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" wasn't written with the "Internet Conspiracy Theorist" in mind. Both Mel and I know full well that the "Internet CTer" who posts regularly on JFK forums will never be satisfied with ANY lone-gunman book---regardless of its depth and breadth. (Bugliosi's 20-year, 2800-page effort is the proof of that.)

"BRD" is aimed more at the "middle of the road" person or the person who is "on the fence" about the JFK case, with the book presenting the raw facts and evidence relating to the murders of Kennedy and Tippit without resorting to speculation (except for the topic of Oswald's motive, which can't be discussed without "speculation" entering into it).

Here's what Mel Ayton said....

"There are hundreds of books on the market that rely on rumour, innuendo and the promotion of a particular conspiracy theory without any credible, factual and documentary evidence to back their claims up. I became aware that Vincent Bugliosi’s 'Reclaiming History', which I consider to be the definitive account of the assassination, had not had the impact on the American public it deserved. It had not satisfied a great many Americans about the truth of the assassination. The authors [of 'Beyond Reasonable Doubt'] do not claim to surpass Bugliosi’s work, but complements it by telling the true story of the assassination in a comprehensive way which Bugliosi failed to do. Essentially, our book seeks to show the general reading public that the conspiracy theorists’ claims do not hold up under close scrutiny." -- Mel Ayton; 2014




jfk-archives.blogspot.com / Q&A Edited by David Von Pein
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DVP,

The weakness in your approach is to ignore or disparage wholly the notion that certain government officials acted to obscure the facts of the assassination. If one admits this possibility, one must concede the possibility these officials did everything in their power to obscure the facts.

Conversely, if the central facts of the assassination are obscured by being debatable, one must assume those who had the power to reveal the facts chose not to do so.

The mere fact there is debate over the location and nature of JFK's wounds, as witnessed on these pages, by individuals of good will, is proof that powerful U.S. officials obfuscated the facts. There is no satisfactory explanation, for example, why the autopsy materials are not utterly clear, convincing, and beyond any question whatsoever. None.

If nothing centrally important about the JFK assassination was debatable, one could feel sure the government had done its job in revealing all the important facts of the assassination. In which case, neither this site nor your book would exist. The mere fact you and Ayton authored "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" is proof of the weakness of your approach. You have to maintain nothing is debatable about the JFK case contrary to the fact that almost everything about the case is fiercely debated.

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Jon G. Tidd,

Everything in human life can be "debated" in one way or another. I saw something the other day on the Internet about a debate that was going on concerning the color of someone's dress. Is it black or is it gray or is it blue? A whole article and video spot on that "debate".

So every single thing we humans do (or SEE--like the color of a dress) can be subjected to scrutiny and some level of debate and controversy. But in the JFK case, the "debate" reaches absurd levels concerning topics that, IMO, are not really debatable at all. Such as (off the top of my head):

...Did Oswald take a package into the TSBD?

...Did Oswald pull a gun on Officer McDonald in the theater? (Some CTers are now insisting that even THAT fact is "debatable".)

...Could Oswald (or ANYBODY) get down to the second floor of the TSBD from the sixth floor in less than 90 seconds? (This is another thing that many CTers refuse to let go of, despite the many re-enactments done by both the Warren Commission and the HSCA, in which that journey was accomplished in less than 80 seconds at a WALKING speed. And the HSCA did it in, I think, about 46 seconds.)

...Was Oswald "planted" in the Depository Building by Ruth Paine (or others)?

...Was Oswald standing in the TSBD doorway at the time of the assassination?

Those "debates" have been settled, in my view. And many others have been settled too. But CTers disagree. So, we have "debates". It never ends and never will. But I'm glad to have helped Mel Ayton put together a book that includes a concise look at the evidence in the JFK and Tippit cases which both Mel and I feel is the "real" and accurate evidence in those cases. Others will, naturally, vehemently disagree. And so the cycle continues...

Edited by David Von Pein
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DVP,

There are opinions, and there are facts. Opinions are debatable. Facts are not.

Matters of perception partake of both fact and opinion. The color of a dress, for example, is arguable I've learned.

Facts are facts. What's lacking in the JFK assassination are facts on which everyone agrees. Pat Speer, for example, argues that there was no blow-out to the back of JFK's skull; that the blow-out was to the the top of the skull. Others here, on the same side of the fence as Pat, disagree. They argue with Pat. Pat argues back. There is a debate.

Paul Trejo argues Oswald took a shot at General Walker. And that Walker had JFK killed. Many here disparage or otherwise disagree with Trejo. And yet all involved are on the same side of the fence. Oswald didn't do it.

The mere fact there are such debates is consistent with your position everything in life can be debated. But certain things are not debatable. Vital facts and records are not debatable. In the JFK case, vital facts and records are debated, as if they are pliable. You may argue they're debated for no good reason. The mere fact of debate debases your contention there is no good reason. Good reason exists because humans disagree. Humans shouldn't have to disagree about how, or even why, JFK was killed.

Edited by Jon G. Tidd
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DVP,

The weakness in your approach is to ignore or disparage wholly the notion that certain government officials acted to obscure the facts of the assassination. If one admits this possibility, one must concede the possibility these officials did everything in their power to obscure the facts.

Conversely, if the central facts of the assassination are obscured by being debatable, one must assume those who had the power to reveal the facts chose not to do so.

The mere fact there is debate over the location and nature of JFK's wounds, as witnessed on these pages, by individuals of good will, is proof that powerful U.S. officials obfuscated the facts. There is no satisfactory explanation, for example, why the autopsy materials are not utterly clear, convincing, and beyond any question whatsoever. None.

If nothing centrally important about the JFK assassination was debatable, one could feel sure the government had done its job in revealing all the important facts of the assassination. In which case, neither this site nor your book would exist. The mere fact you and Ayton authored "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" is proof of the weakness of your approach. You have to maintain nothing is debatable about the JFK case contrary to the fact that almost everything about the case is fiercely debated.

If one accepts your suggestions here, then NO evidence can ever be trusted to be 100% genuine,

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