Shanet Clark

PROBLEMATICS OF PIERRE BOURDIEU Introduction Sociology, the science (or study) of contemporary human group behavior, is an oft-maligned discipline. Dismissed as hopelessly left or worse, as irrelevant, Sociology is perceived as a recent upstart among the sciences, and only a minor player in the humanities, arts and sciences. The situation is rather the inverse, however. Pierre Bourdieu, although contributing important theories, concepts and ideas to the fields of linguistics, philosophy, politics and history was first and foremost a working sociologist; Pierre Bourdieu may be the greatest thinker of the late 20th century, and by this I mean he is the senior contemporary of Edward Said, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Noam Chomsky, Fernand Braudel, and Michel Foucault. Whereas structures are pre-formative, constraining determinants, post-structural theory is liberational, open to human innovation, self-direction, agency, etc. Thus a dialectical materialist and structural social philosophy has given way to a post-modern and post-structural critical theory corrosive of sustained social inequities. Thus the pitiful, limited, but self-empowering existential will has returned, inside its new Bourdieuian cultural economy, its habitus and field. Whereas capitalism and globalization (neo-liberal globalism) is highly structural, contemporary social theorists have returned to a more nuanced and transactional analysis, which once again gives substantial credit to human agency, contingency, enlightened self-interest and moral value choice. Existential free will is back as pessimistic materialists grumble and adapt, favoring Bourdieu’s most structural and determining aspects. The Bourdieu Thought System To problematize Bourdieu, several things must happen simultaneously. His theories and terms have been studied, rebuked and enthusiastically twisted, and the core Bourdieu philosophy is a problem—I will try to give a consensual account and highlight the major rebukes and assaults that the critics have launched against him. Another problematic is the various impacts of Bourdieu’s approach, or theory. The sociologist’s cannon of texts, Bourdieu’s own and his critics, form a system, a structure, an intelligence ready to analyze, with interior logic and compelling rationales, where schools, workplaces, social spaces, families, history, psychological assumptions, linguistic and anthropological models are all vehicles of gain within the cultural exchange of a market, the new theory’s “cultural economy.” His tint (or taint) is etched, now, in thought, in practice, in discourse. Of this range we will focus on the educational structures and the new sociology which informs family rearing, aspirations and theories of development. Certainly a major problem of Bourdieu theory, to thoughtful critics, is over-determinism. Second, his convertible cultural ‘Capital’ analogy is debatable. Thirdly, general questions are addressed to his theory of “misrecognized symbolic violence.” This part of his approach sees him at his farthest ‘left’ and in his most sweepingly critical mode, and I mean critical in its newer theoretical sense. This approach to schooling is sweeping, fearless, exhaustive and corrosively deconstructive. Bourdieu, Class and Marx Bourdieu specifically disavowed being Marxist, although his penetration into social philosophy meant that a great many powerful 20th century social theorists adopted and approved his theories. He was Marxist by adoption and general acclaim, so to speak, and many casual readers and harried graduate students probably find a general Marxism inherent in a universal theory of social and cultural capital. This core analogy has branded Bourdieu, unfairly, with a red capital ‘K.’ Bourdieu probably moved to a more conservative position over time as his generational habitus (if not his field) would suggest (although as a media savvy French public intellectual he was well known late in his life for consistently opposing neo-liberal globalization). Certainly these are the bundle of problems inside the intelligence system that is the Bourdieu approach to society; its level of old-style Marxian thought, the extent of his determinism and his naiveté vis a vis “symbolic violence” are three principle problems. Broadly, the class structure, free will and the nature of human political relations are the triple problematic of Bourdieu’s new sociological model. Power, the question of the nature of individual agency in the social world and the ideas of class and capital are all under review and post-modernists have only been able to engross parts of Bourdieu, as do liberals and moderate thinkers. Conservatives have no use for Bourdieu as he exposes (or proposes?) deep structural power imbalances and methods of elite reproduction of advantages (in ways they had always suspected sociologists of doing). In fact, liberational transformation, the very stuff of the new critical theory and philosophical Marxism (as opposed to post 1917 militant national communism)—the project of unmasking hidden social imbalances and oppressive routines, which sociologists and political scientists focused on in the 20th century, reached its zenith in the Bourdieu mentality. Not really Marxist, but relying on class differences and a capital market analogy, Bourdieu transcended dialectical materialism and elevated the discourse to a more subtle and nuanced level. Most interesting is the calm comprehensiveness of Bourdieu, which straddles and encompasses previously polarized theories and concepts, he shed light on dark ideational spaces. For example, the field and habitus theory fully allows for the sociologists’ inherent need to see heavy social influences in individuals’ behavior, and he shows the potentials and limits of people’s general range of actions, without denying human agency and freedom to act. The habitus is only the arrangement of controlling (limiting) factors, within the mutually legitimized field and habitus the individual is relatively free and often acts unpredictably. Most properly, to those who accused him of over-determinism, Bourdieu would contend, ‘I am not talking about the individual; I am talking about the behavior off the large numbers, the statistically significant populations.’ In other words Bourdieu was writing about class—a chronic structural problem to many, a merit-denying fiction to others. Bourdieu knew more about class than anyone else at the turn of the millennia, his Distinction and the supporting books and articles show a mastery of class variations and manifestations unmatched by anyone else, a colossal mentation upon strata, doxy, consciousness, reproduction and identity (in their theoretical senses). So only in the broadest sense can it be said that Bourdieu followed the reductionist class approach of the Victorian thinker, Karl Marx. The Style and Impact of Bourdieu Stylistically, Bourdieu’s language has caused some difficulty, but I find it tolerable in translation. His asides are logically related to the main clauses and the level of the detail and articulation are only equal to the fineness of his fluent discrimination. His uplifting and eye-opening scientific literary style is an inherent standing argument for free will, independent moral action, human agency and intellectual production. While my reading of Foucault, Adorno and Derrida are often slowed by obscurant and meandering digression, Bourdieu retains clarity, thematic focus and sharpness in all but the rare passages. Even his transcribed spontaneous phrases are variegated in cohesive and compelling subtlety—although this clarity I perceive is not always so clear to his critics, interpreters and fellow sociologists. I would say Bourdieu is less bluntly materialist than Marx and has a more complex, yet compelling concept of ideation and social conflict than Hegel. Bourdieu is commonly said to be the heir to Weber and Durkheim. What the new model of ‘cultural capital’ has done is to raise the social values and the values of mental or spiritual feelings of Weberian well-being (satisfactory self-placement in class rank) to the level of (roughly) the pound sterling. If fields engage the energy of dominated fractions of the dominant majority, in other words, if intellectuals, philanthropists and policy makers are engaged full time in these competitive games for limited and ritualized totemic rewards, programmatic bestowals and calibrated affirmations, then this non-material, non-physical, non-pound sterling resource—Bourdieu’s cultural capital—must be of a value somehow equable to the obvious, gross economic value system, the material base, Kapital. And here is Bourdieu’s greatest achievement. The language of cultural capital runs parallel to, is linked to, and is obviously related to wealth, but cultural capital has a somewhat different distribution, a varied concentration, and an ambiguous overall relation to tangible wealth. Far from being a callous offer of inane sophistry to the less well off, Bourdieu theory critically assails, but objectively validates, the status seeking dominated fraction of the dominant minority; it offers cynics and critics an unflinching look inside the logic of merit, bureaucracy and wealth-influenced upper middle class passages. Bourdieu, ever the conscientious social scientist, describes rather than prescribes; he validates and raises questions about class behavior and reproduction of elite advantages via amassed cultural capital. I will state here what many think, but what few sociologists will state aloud, i.e., “We read Bourdieu with pride, we internalize his jargon and world view and we feel empowered, elevated—we know, cynically, we are amassing cultural capital, we even know that the Machiavellian mastery of Bourdieu theory is enhancing our cultural capital, our self-esteem, our symbolic status, importance and distinction.” Bourdieu’s work suggests this line of thought, a post-modern aspect, a self-referencing and ironic awareness of the oppressive nature of one’s own self-interested lifestyle and language choices. The intellectual is faced with an awkward paradox, where contemporary social theory critically empowers one, and may hold the capacity to transform the individual and society, but in the status system of the cultural capital exchange market (the site of reproduction) the practicing intellectual forms a defensive coalition with wealth and capital systems to legitimate the oppressive and deplorable status quo. Is this problematic? We must see that it is. The Plongeur and the Professor It is important to remember that advances in one’s recognized mental wealth, one’s cultural capital, must be based on distinct structural machinations of the rewards-giving group within one’s field—not on one’s own independent learning, like deeply reading, for example. The plongeur who has read Proust, Erich Fromme, Marx, Derrida, Foucault and the great sociologists is still a plongeur, while a Ph.D., Chair and Society President, who may not have read as widely or as incisively as the plongeur, is still the Chair. The Chair has amassed the cultural capital (along with Weberian self-esteem and other intangibles) from the institutions, the field of organized competitive endeavor he inhabits. The Toynbee-reading plongeur has more cultural capital than the ‘tabloids and porno’ reading plongeur, but only a limited trickle of cultural capital can be independently garnered, to get culturally “wealthy” one must interact with others in the field one has entered, buffets, boards, clubs, auctions, journals, etc., must be employed. Sadly the Foucault-mastering plongeur is not only relegated to the lower working economic class, but to the “literate tavern employee” cultural field, i.e., oblivion. Of course a plongeur washing dishes forty hours a week has to devote more marginal time to reading than the lecturer, subsidized graduate student or the sabbaticalist doctor of letters. Leisure is the key to cultural distinction (both subjectively and objectively) and here Thorstein Veblen is the precursor to the new economic model. A Night at the Opera: The Paradox of Class and Wealth Whether hierarchically stratified according to the Cohen model or ordinally numbered in the Cambridge ranking system, the social classes offend one another and commit symbolic violence to one another and to those below. The chauffeured executive’s younger, third, “trophy” wife gamely apes the coiffed symphony board dames, while the classically literate patron disdains the downtown banker and all the above ignore the proletariat on the sidewalk beyond the lobby of the opera house. As certainly as these lower, middle and upper classes know there own net assets and debts, they know their rank in the world of “culture.” This is undoubtedly what Emile Durkheim would call a social fact. Stepping into the lobby, the banker may think, “One more board museum appointment and one more fund-raiser for the college and I will surpass So-and-so, although I will never match the worth What’s-his-name, I am light-years beyond the slovenly You-know-who.” Here You-know-who may be a wealthy classmate, one economically stratospheric but without foundations, degrees or honorary board memberships—or more likely, there is rough parity of their economic levels, and this cultural capital is the deciding factor in the sum of “class status.” Since this is the knowledge interior to the mind, and manifest in social behavior, certainly the reality of an encompassing value system of cultural capital is “true” or a social fact. Does this approach devalue class tensions? Probably. Does it weaken the contrast of economic of economic class distinctions—yes, because the distinctions are weakened “out there” or “in reality” by the encroachments on oligarchic cultural hegemony by savvy cultural actors in their fields, behaving within their habitus. Does all this ignore or minimize chronic economic disparities? Again, yes, probably because that is not the social issue Bourdieu addressed. By exposing to other intellectuals, in somewhat convoluted French, this system of domination, reproduction and one-upmanship in their competitive arena, Bourdieu acts to transform, empower and liberate—mentally if not politically or financially—all who can appreciate his thought system, his new intelligence system. Which is to say those who most need the theory, the less educated and advantaged masses, are unable to sup upon wry Bourdieu. Thus intellectuals, with their personal investment in the institutions and assumptions of their fields and habiti, are the only receivers attuned to the Bourdieu frequency. Bullwinkle, Gilligan and Jerry Springer all reach mass markets multiplied many times over the numbers of Bourdieu readers. The working and middle and professional and high elite classes (with the exception of some graduate level social scientists) are utterly blind to the linguistic, psychological and philosophical keys to their own liberation. Meanwhile the intellectuals, the gate keepers and symbolic assailants active in the competitive cultural market are forced to read about their own bourgeois clannishness, their pecking orders, arbitrary self-promoting aesthetics and snobby aggrandizement methods. The paradox and central irony (the big problematic) of Bourdieu is that the ones he speaks to, he doesn’t speak for, and the ones he speaks for, he doesn’t speak to…and it is likely to stay this way for some time. In the 21st century, in a postmodern period, intellectuals will continue to read Bourdieu with deflated jadedness and hidden pride, while most everyone else (highly literate plongeurs excepted) will watch Springer and remain quite ignorant of reproduced advantage, the limitations due to habitus, the cruel generational machinations in various cultural fields and the misrecognition of the symbolic violence in the structures.

Why is the Deficit off the voters' Radar? What happened to the Business Model of State? This is truly awful. Reagan, nitwit and "big picture" guy waited for the Soviets to come to him, and they did...but he largely refrained from instigating War...in Nicaragua or anywhere else larger than the mythical liliput, Grenada. This is a whole different bag.... Kerry did pretty well. he held the Gore states. No major gaffes. Bush took the rural and suburban counties. the November 4th New York Times had blue and red counties. Memphis, Atlanta, New orleans, were southern blue cities. Bush won some cities, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Phoenix, but Kerry took El Paso Brownsville and Las Vegas. We have a replay of 2000 but with shades of 1860... its really Lincoln verson Breckinridge/DOuglas, the race card has been played. The democrats need to win a southern state next time. Gore couldn't carry Tennessee. Edwards couldn't carry North Carolina. John Rockefeller should have pumped 10 million into West Virginia. West Virginia went for Mondale, Dukakis and McGovern, but turned RED. Ohio turned Red, the southern rural "thing" they have down in West Virginia and Indiana pincered in Ohio. Of course the Bush family had industrial interests in Ohio , back before the Union Pacific and Brown Bros. Harriman days... The Well Informed Party was defeated by the Less Well Informed. States went for Bush by inverse of SAT scores. Authority, fear and security trumped "liberalism" and civil rights... Rove put the gay marriage bans on state ballots to help get out the vote and establish linkage. Late night TV made it clear evangelicals were divinely and en masse BUSH voters Deficits are still off the radar, and the war spending, and the economy. Shanet

1. "Only Yesterday" 2. "The Glory and the Dream" Wm Mancester 3. "Disraeli" Andre Maurois 4. "Detroit" Thomas Sugrue 5. "Democracy in America" Alexis de'toqueville 6. Anything by Eric Foner, especially "Reconstruction" 7. "Distinction" by Pierre Bourdieu 8. "America" by Alistair Cooke 9. Gore Vidal's "Burr" "Empire" "Lincoln" and "1876" 10. McCardell "The Idea of a Southern Nation" 11. "Miracle at Philadelphia" by Catherine Drinker Brown 12. "The Power Elite" C. Wright Mills 13. "The Organization Man" 14. Anything by Vance Packard Shanet Clark, Woodruff Fellow of Southern History GSU Atlanta

Thank you Jim that is exactly the kind of rich factual detail this forum is known for. Taylor did'nt emerge in se Asia -- he and his generation had strong WWII experiences, and his emergence was earned in a merit based way. But informal relations for recombining overseas, military and intel projects under army, corporate and proprietary cover, Maxwell Taylor made sweeping allowances the norm, and did not give proper oversight, even Britains conservative journalis Guenter Lewy states this. This is also the era of systematic and gross overestimates of the Soviet national economy, technology level and military readiness. Chronic and fateful overestimation. Political manipulation of joint staff plans. This set the stage for weak oversight of FOIB and weak oversight of National Security Council and Advisor. I.E. Havoc, as we had under Nixon/Kissinger/Haig Havoc under Tenet, havoc under poindexter and casey, havoc....etc to today... shanet

Sorry, I'll have to miss this event. Best wishes, though, travel safely. Shanet

This thread sucks shanet

The birchers were the sincere true believers, and Edwin Walker was their man.. creepy MAXWELL TAYLOR 1965-1969 The Joint cheif and FIOB the foreign intelligence oversight board chairman. Well, that says a lot, Joint Chiefs and FOAIB for the President, Johnson. General Taylor was a crucial linchpin in the 1960's era loosening of relationships between the CIA and Defense. Operation Phoenix and general commando ops were smoothly fronted and supported by armed forces, under the political leadership of Taylor (Guenthr Lewy, America in Vietnam 1974). Taylor was crucial to the new easy front interface of military and covert civilian ops, and he set the stage for a series of exposes (Colby, Church, Rockefeller) of proprietaries and illegal domestic MI and CIA activities, runaway illegalities... Taylor was a Cabinet Level advisor as described in the 25th amendment. He and Marshall Carter inherited the censored and classified system from the WWII generation of General Marshall and Mark Clark, and ran it into a mixed and poorly compartmentalized "rogue Elephant" with high classificatory and surveillance and self-proclaimed executive domestic prerogatives. The Vietnam War's top political General Maxwell Taylor is on the short list, here, for our purposes, in this context. Shanet

Jules Col Fletcher Prouty addressed the situation from his unique point of view. He knew that without courtroom rules of evidence, the false trail could grow without end. He had flown Chiang Kai-scheck into the big three conference with Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt at Tehran I believe. He was ordered to the Antarctic South Pacific right before 11/22/63 and he read the November 23 Christchurch New Zealand paper about Lee Harvey Oswald. Investigating Atsugi, the radio frequency radar skills and knowlege of Oswald, the defection, counter-defection and provocative acts of Oswald, this US intelligence veteran became a strong critic of the Warren Commission...and states clearly that Col. Lansdale was involved Was the Francis Gary Powers 1960 U2 spyplane over Russia shot down because of air radio/radar frequencies provided by Oswald to the Soviets? A reasonble question. A counter-intelligence plan is an unpredictable and counter-intuitive field........... Shanet

Tosh We are all looking forward to your long signed statement. Vernon's reputation is below comment. You have a lot of credibility. Thanks for working with us all. Shanet

James Thanks for a straight answer on the three tramps identity. You think Charles Harrelson is strong, and Chauncey Holt less so. Wim has a lot invested in Holt, very committed to that, and he does look like the old bugger in the films...Howard Hunt resembles him less than Holt, but Holt's story ...not so compelling. Well, you know Woody Harrelson was a great National League shortstop, Cardinals or Cubs, I think...Charles named his kid (tv.cheers) after the baseball player...but Charles Harrelson confessed... What do you mean Look-alikes? I thought they were the principal players gathered to witness and participate...back on Main Street where it was safe and the parade was supposed to go through...we'll hear about the group gathering during the online conf....like mccord and barnes, lookalikes? shanet

Keep bringing on the good photo evidence...what do you thnk of Holt's story about being up in the railway car with a radio and the other two tramps?

John As you know, my approaches to History includes strategic, cultural and climatic geography... In this I follow the annales school of Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel. Textual and critical post-modern approaches have discouraged the study of history's structural and strategic underpinnings, but the new digital capacities and continuing interest in cartography and geographic factors can make a difference in history. When I address the OAH or the state historical conferences, My historical map lectures are very well received and my strategic geographic reasons for cultural and political events always stimulates debate. Finally I notice a number of USA universities want to teach DIgital GEographic Systems, but need to bring in British Geographers because of shortfalls in staffing pool of american geography Ph.D.'s Did You Know That/ many British geographers are finding work in the growing geography departments in the states. The technology is driving the field as it diversifies from its strategic/mineral roots and climatology/weather training roots. For example at Georgia State the Geography Department is the Anthropology/geography department ....state schools do better than the private universities ....some private universities have no geography department....shocking. Shanet Clark, Woodruff fellow

Tim, Ron I think you're getting ahead of yourself. He was in the lobby of the Texas state bookstore facility and bought a standard physics lab text. Not very suspicious. Why not a retail interface? It was a big bookstore/depot. Arnold Rowland saw a gunman, heard fire in three rounds, and ran circles around Gerald Ford and Arlen Specter... Spector doesn't even appear to know what a thirty ought six is. We are treated to the amusing fact of Gerald Ford trying to trip up a witness who uses triangulation to measure and physics to testify on acoustics. No return fire. He tells the Warren Commission that the Dealey Plaza gunfire didn't include any defensive return fire from the 1963 Secret Service. Six to eight seconds is a long time to drive slowly through an ambush. The missing Zapruder frames are trying to speed up a limo that slowed to walking speed for a twelve second triple barrage, with no return fire, or securing of parade route windows. Great Post Shanet

James, so it is at Elm and Houston a good while after the shooting. Do you think the man in the jacket looks like the Harrelson/Sturgis figure? His jacket looks too short in this photo, and where are his buddies? So I agree with Wim, this isn't really a Three Tramps photo. Isn't the crowd there still lined up, wasn't that the corner that had tracy barnes and des fitzgerald "cognates" garry hemmings, you have makes on a bunch of known "miami/mexico city station" types right there at 12.30, on the turn between Main Elm and Houston, the fatal detour, don't you? Shanet

Sidney Blumenthal is accurate as far as he goes, and I highlight main points which I agree with. The neoconservative agenda was to reverse the strategic results 1979, the Fall of the Shah. I link the aggressive Iraq pre-emptive war effort to the Carter administration's notorious "loss" of the Shah of Iran as air/ground ally to the Radical Students of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Without the great Soviet counterweight on the north border, the strategic Iran-like ground base can be regained. Mr. Helms would be pleased. Jimmy Carter's "loss" of the Shah sets the stage for Cheney and Rumsfeld view of the strategic ground game in the middle east - they saw a status quo ante visavis the 1978 Carter administrations relationship to the Shah - in Iraq as a goal for Bush II. The Shah in the early 1970's had cooperated with Libya Muammar Khadafi and Iraq's Saddam Hussein (protege's of Nasser) in the oil price hike. Jack Anderson (FIASCO 1976) shows the Nixon administration weak and poorly united in addressing the commodity price re-arrangements which Carter and Ford inherited, the inflation which destroyed them both. The Middle East with allies only on Israeli and Saudi bases was too 'weak' and a return to the Pre-1978 situation was the burning desire of neoconservatives, and after the cold war ended, the Iran Iraq area became a less globally volatile place, (ie no nuclear or US/USSR war would now follow). Iraq with its notorious bogeyman Saddam Hussein became a pretext for the strategic return of Iran 1978 style US Middle East presence. Reversing of all things Carter, fear of conservation, cabinet turnover or environmental law on the domestic level is overshadowed by the neoconservatives willingness to commence and initiate aggressive war to turn the clock back to the good old days of the shah of iran as our western US air/ground ally in the Middle East....... Shanet Clark

Look how the Lansdale character has squeezed past a policeman, into a tight fence position, close enough to whisper or even take a handoff from the tramps. Like I said, no civilian could get exactly there, The slope shoulder is the big Lansdale identifier, and signet ring. Holt says there is a high fidelity crystal radio tuner scanner in the paper bag. Were they a reserve team of observer/back up patsies? Radio/gunman/lookout team? Where they really in a boxcar from 12:30 to 2:30? Shanet

James My estimate would be around the Dallas Textile building, somewhere in the vicinity of the Elm/Houston/Main area. White granite corner building is a landmark. Does Robardeau have an orange firetruck being used for crowd control?-- that is the major landmark. Notes: Crowd of seventy people in twenty yard span--parade route. The Fire truck is visible, with a dallas [?] squad car and an unmarked white sedan. Three men with their back to the camera. The crew cut looks familiar...can't tell much though. Shanet

They're KNEELING They're bloody MUSLIMS They're facing bloody MECCA they are!

Shanet, John's got a good page on Wallace. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwallaceM.htm James <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes that is a good page. I haven't read the book, but I read the website and saw the TV version. So apparently Ed Clark co-ordinated Mac Wallace, LBJ's hit man. Barr McClellan says it is all on file in a legal office safe, with LBJ's papers. Shanet

When considering the confessions of Charles Harrelson, Jimmy Sutton/Files, Tosh, Chauncey Holt, Arce, etc., please give a thought to some recent psychological experiments on memory... Journal of cognitive MEMORY 1/2004 : ”Where a lie becomes the truth: The effects of "self-generated misinformation" on eyewitness memory “ [Excerpt of Research Paper by K. L. Pickle,Ph.D.] Dr. Pickle writes: This research investigated whether generating misinformation impairs memory for actual information…. Experiment I. Those who fabricated a description … remembered fewer correct derails than did truthful witnesses or those who fabricated about another person. Witnesses who fabricated about robber also reported more incorrect details than did truthful or non-interviewed witnesses…. Experiment 2. Witnesses who fabricated about the robber also reported as poorly on the memory test as did witnesses who answered questions using false information prepared for them. …In both experiments deceptive witnesses sometimes reported invented details on the memory test. This is suggesting that they may have come to believe some fabrications, or misinformation. ‘People lie to us eight hours a day. Evervbody lies to us: offenders, victims, witnesses. They all lie to the police.” (Chicago police officer interviewed by Fletcher. 1991, p.255) In her behind-the-scenes examination of the work lives of Chicago law enforcement personnel, journalist Connie Fletcher found that police are aware that the people they interview during crime investigations may deliberately give them false information. … There is a psychological term known as the ‘misinformation effect” (e.g.. Bekeñan & Powers, 1983; Beth, 1989: Ccci, Ross. &Togha, 1987; Loftus, Miller, & Burns. 1978; McCluskey & Zaragoza. 1985). Witnesses first observe some event, which may be presented either on videotape, as a slide sequence, or as a live, or staged event. At some point afterwards, witnesses in the “Misled” condition (but not in the control condition) are exposed to misleading information related to the event. The final step in the procedure is to test witnesses’ memory for the original event. Usually, some proportion of the witnesses given misleading information will report details consistent with that information on the memory test. One interpretation of these results is that misled witnesses sometimes commit a ‘source monitoring error (Lindsay, 1990, 1994; Lindsay & Johnson, l9S9 Zaragoza & Lane, 1994. 1998). That is, a memory derived from one source (the postevent information provided by the experimenter) is misattiributed to another source (the witnessed event) or is attributed to both sources. Errors can occur even if the post-event data clearly refers to a separate incident rather than the witnessed event, at least as long as two accounts are similar and contain similar details… (Allen & Lindsay, .1998). This interpretation is based on the work of Johnson and her colleagues (see Johnson. Hashtroudi. & Lindsay. 1993). who proposed that memory representations include perceptual, contextual, emotional, and semantic information that reflects the nature of the encoding environment and that may be used by the rememberer to determine the source of a memory. Source attributions are usually made swiftly and without conscious awareness, although systematic or strategic processes such as judging whether a source attribution seems plausible in light of other knowledge may also be used. Many times the attribution will be accurate. Sometimes however, errors will occur, especiallv if the source cues are not clearly remembered. Or if the cues related to two different source sources, are similar, or if the source attribution is made hurriedly. A monitoring framework can explain how witnesses might confuse information provided to them by two different external sources the witnessed event, and the “researcher”. “monitoring errors” Johnson, Foley, and Leach’s (1988) finding that participants where a confederate say some words and imagine that confederate saying other words may be unable to determine whether a particular word was actually heard or merely imagined. In another study, participants’ estimates of the number of times they had seen a picture increased with the number of times that they had imagined the picture, especially for participants who were classified as “good imagers” (Johnson, Raye. Wang. & Taylor, 1979). Other research shows that when adults imagine in detail childhood events that they initially said they probably never experienced, their confidence that the events actually occurred inflates (Garry, Manning. Loftus, & Sherman, 1996). Similarly, adults instructed to create mental images of fictitious childhood events sometimes eventually “remember” these events (e.g., Hyman & Pent- land, 1996; Porter, Yuille, & Lehman, 1999). Hyman and Pentland suggested that the process of imagining a false event may lead to the creation of plausible and vivid details connected with the event, which in turn increases the chance of a reality monitoring error. This hypothesis meshes with the finding that inducing witnesses to visualise a post-event narrative enhances the misinformation effect (Carris, Zaragoza. & Lane; Cited in Lindsay. 1994). And never-experienced events can also be “remembered” and colleagues invented. K. L. Pickle, Ph. D. 2004 MEMORY (excerpt from the introduction) (((some recently published psychology on lies, lying and remembering.)))

If Barr McClellan can seriously charge Lyndon Johnson with this assassination, I would hasten to add three significant points- Lyndon Johnson participated and benefitted, but did not initiate or co-ordinate the murder in Dallas, it was brought to him as a fait accompli which he accepted - which is different from a plan to save Lyndon from the Bobby Baker and Billie Sol Estes scandals... If Lyndon Baines is seriously engaged, I insist on reviewing Clarence D. Dillon's actions as Treasury Secretary and behaviour as the top of the 1963 Secret Service's command structure. When I say militant reactionaries killed John F. Kennedy, I don't mean low level criminals and mercenaries: I am talking about people in high offices, like Douglas Dillon, J.E. Hoover and Maxwell Taylor, men like Robert Lovett and Allen Dulles... The 25th amendment sheds light on the VP and Cabinet secretary's role.

That's the way it shapes up........ The big tramp strongly resembles both Sturgis and Harrelson. BUT Sturgis Fiorini was a darker man than the sheepish big anglo tramp. The young tramp strongly resembles Mr. Christ, with his pointy nose. The older tramp strongly resembles Hunt, but looks more like Chauncey Holt. I would be interested in a photographic comparison of Chauncey Holt vs. Howard Hunt. I am less familiar with Rogers (Montoya). Some theorize the Christ/Rogers(Montoya) tramp is a French nationalist assassin for the OAS, along the lines of the fictional "Jackal" i.e. Frenchy. It is assumed that David Ferrie or someone like Tosh hustled the french oas hit man out of the country. I have seen video of Harrelson being confronted with his lookalike, and he later admitted (from jail) to being the big tramp. He is a Giancana made-man, and the actor woody harrelson's father. Weberman cites an expert who finds the TEAM of Hunt and Sturgis to resemble TWO of the three tramps compelling, more than individual I.D.'s would. AJs material is dated, I tend to believe Wim's theory that the tramp is Holt, but strongly doubt his story. Why the big show of marching them under guard across the Plaza, if no arrest was made? Was Lansdale in the middle of it? Holt's story of sitting in a train car with a receiver and saying "we're federal agents" to the Dallas police doesn't ring true to me. What is going on here? Holt's comments have some common ground with Tosh's story, but read like someone with only second hand information. Weberman claims to have Solved the JFK murder by naming Christ, Hunt and Sturgis....while our colleague Wim claims 'JFK murder solved' because of the confessions of Holt, Files (and Harrelson). murky, important, perplexing. I think they were gunmen, and I no longer find the Hunt Sturgis OAS team as strong or stronger theory than the Holt, Harrelson theory, but would be eager to learn the sense of the Forum and see more photo comparisons, especially of Chauncy Holt and (Montoya) circa 1963. WHo is the Young Tramp, Frenchy? What does the perp walk tell about Dealey plaza that day? Shanet

Fellow Forum Members--- Chauncey Holt claims to be the tramp that is often identified as E. Howard Hunt. His statement can be read at http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/holt1.htm Is this disinformation? Does the story make sense? I was on AJ Weberman's website last night, and although I reject much of AJW's tactics and approach, he has posted a fairly High Resolution series of about eight 'Tramp Photos.' Look at the photos and read the confession. I'm sure many of you have evidence against the Holt material. Weberman also shows a larger format picture of the Dallas cops, the three tramps, and the man identified as counter-insurgency expert Col. Ed Lansdale. The Lansdale character is positioned between the tramps the cops and the fence in such a way that no citizen would have been allowed to be there, adding to the strength of that case. I dont have AJ's URL but Google his Coup Detat in America site and find the photographic evidence. (AJW also presents pretty good photo evidence for a second "ringer" Mannlicher/Carcano rifle being in play, as the serial numbers look different.) Shanet

Mac Wallace?

The real model for Roselli's relationship with the Dulles people was Lucky Luciano, not dutch schultz or lepke (morons) Charles Luciano knew how to play the Feds, am I right? He took WWII contracts to keep the longshoreman together. He had the goods on John Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn. He got cushy neopolitan exile rather than life imprisonment in the US c. 1960. John's from Britain and his Spartacus material is comprehensive, but I don't think he wants to see how intertwined the mafia and CIA really were. They were the same thing, the same guys, like Roselli........... HITMEN, WHERE DO WE GET EM??? shanet clark, saturday night