Richard Booth

Your statement implies that those who take a position contrary to McAdams are fools and deserving of personal attacks. I would suggest that plenty of well informed and intelligent people have a different viewpoint than McAdams did, and moreso, comport themselves in a way that is worthy of respect. The Lone Nutters' position is better served by sophisticated articulation, and there is no room in that debate for personal attacks, deception, omission or inappropriate behavior. Ultimately, the better idea will win the debate. That is, unless you don't have a better idea and need to be persuasive to those who don't know any better by denigrating your opponent. Which is ultimately what McAdams resorted to doing.

I believe that these companies -- Facebook, Twitter, Google -- are indeed all woke and far-left. They most certainly are not very caring and compassionate. You can see that just from listening to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey speak. They are emotionless uncaring billionaires who operate in a way that is orientated towards the bottom line, treating employees like dirt. A lot of the woke-ness and ideological virtue signaling is merely for show, I think. It's just part of cultivating their brand. They all participate in the surveillance state -- look to the PRISM program exposed by Edward Snowden and you'll find that every tech company participated voluntarily in the program. One of the slides that Snowden released showed these companies were willing participants in PRISM. Surely there are "incentives" for going along ... and it's no coincidence that these tech companies have monopolies. Look at what happened with Parler -- a platform that likely would not have participated in any NSA surveillance programs based on their ideology and incidentally a rapidly growing competitor to Twitter and Facebook. Well, in a matter of 48 hours we saw Google, Apple, and Amazon all act in a coordinated fashion to remove the app from both app stores and remove their hosting on the web. They all acted together to essentially destroy, overnight, a competitor.

I feel bad for his family and friends, and it's unfortunate that he could not have grown to become a better person when he was alive. His legacy will be one of using the internet to promulgate ad-hominem attacks, logical fallacies, bullying, and leaving behind a bad book about the JFK assassination and a paper that argues in favor of putting people to death. I am in favor of Lone Nutters being able to present their positions, and argue their case, as I believe that their case will not stand up to a skillful and knowledgeable person arguing for a conspiracy. However, what I did not like about McAdams is that he was unable to do this without resorting to personal attacks or logical fallacies. He always resorted to that, and his behavior towards students on his person blog showed that his conduct in both the JFK debate and as a professor was clearly the result of a character flaw--he was a horrible person, unable to comport himself like a gentleman, and always had to resort to the inappropriate.

The censorship is also worrying to me, especially given how overt it has become in just the last two years. Today, for example, Facebook began preventing people from sharing a story published by the New York Daily News. Admittedly, it was a rather dumb story that essentially excoriated one of the founders of Black Lives Matter for having a few luxurious houses. (Who cares? Good for her.) Facebook essentially arbitrarily applied one or more of their Community Standards to prevent sharing the story. Then we have last October when the New York Daily News broke the story on the Hunter Biden laptop. The NY Daily News was censored, then, too--people were prevented from sharing that story and Twitter even suspended the New York Daily News account for it. Again, misleading and arbitrary rules were cited as the reason for censoring the story. I believe that Twitter claimed the story was about "hacked materials", which was false. They later ended up having to apologize for inappropriately censoring the story based on a false premise, meanwhile, the media largely self-censored and refused to cover the story, while falsely asserting that the story was "Russian disinformation" -- mind you, there was no proof of any Russian plot. At the same time Joe Biden claimed on national television that it was a "Russian plot." In reality, the story was damaging to Joe Biden because his son's laptop was filled with pictures of crack smoking, sex with prostitutes, messages about an inappropriate sexual relationship that Hunter had with a minor family member, and emails and messages about inappropriate Chinese influence peddling. So, we have Facebook and Twitter censoring stories based largely on ideological grounds. We have Google and Wikipedia gatekeeping and excluding links, content and search results, and we have an entire generation of students who believe that dissent or critical debate is equivalent with racism, hate, or creating a physically unsafe environment. I can only imagine what the debate club (if such exists) in modern schools looks like: "John Doe will be arguing for the position of [Progressive issue] and Jane Doe will be arguing the racist side." In saying all this, bear in mind that I am not a Republican nor even conventionally conservative. As an example of that: I believe we should cut our defense spending by more than half, we should have socialized medical care and dental care, and we should have social programs and subsidized assistance available for the elderly and poor, and that JFK and FDR were two great presidents. Jeff Bezos and Amazon should pay taxes. We need a higher minimum wage. With all the trillions of dollars this country makes we can afford to decimate the waste on weapons of war and instead focus on raising the quality of life for every American, and what's more, we could afford to do that if our defense spending were actually lowered to reasonable level.

I think it's a little bit of both. The changes that have come with living in the information age have naturally progressed to produce young people accustomed to immediate gratification and at the same time our news media and sources of information have been subject to influence operations. The information age has also provided new ways to manufacture consensus that are probably more effective than the methods employed in the early days of MOCKINGBIRD. I see Wikipedia and Google as both subject to censorship, and at once also heavily relied upon by young people as the arbiter of what is truth. Ask a young person how they would find something out and they would tell you to "research it." Ask them what "research" is and they're likely to tell you they would "Google it" or "read the Wiki" At the same time, we also find a great deal of bogus information and misinformation spread out among the fringe to such an extent that a person who actively seeks out countervailing narratives is incredibly likely to come across bogus information that misinforms them. Those forces who would seek to create bogus alternative narratives--or even controlled opposition--have had 60 years to perfect that art within the JFK assassination community: the mafia did it, Castro did it, the driver shot JFK, the three tramps are x/y/z. Whatever successes, sources and methods have proven a success on that subject are likely readily utilized and expanded upon to poison the well on other subjects.

Indeed -- for people under 30 years old, they pretty much default to using Google and Wikipedia to find out anything and they call it research. A young person might say "you need to research that" and in their mind "research" consists of simply googling something or reading the Wikipedia entry. When you consider how information on Google and Wikipedia is increasingly curated, tended, crafted, culled, polished and sanitized -- it becomes rather frightening how little critical thinking young people are doing. Young people who have grown up with the Internet, born in the 2000s, are accustomed to instant gratification and instant access and it increasingly seems like they're not interested in reviewing any critical debate, or multiple positions on a subject -- they don't want to think critically and decide for themselves which position on issue is correct. Rather, they want to be spoon-fed "the facts" in an environment where there is zero diversity in thought. Indeed, presenting counter narratives has been described as "potentially confusing" on college campuses, such as the case with critical race theory. One university said they could not present an African-American academic speaker (who was against critical race theory) because that might be "confusing" for students. This presumes that young people have zero critical thinking skills and would not be able to decide what narrative is stronger on their own. It used to be we could have debate, and I'll always believe that the counterveiling opinion must be given equal time because doing so will allow the incorrect narrative to be shown as inadequate as it actually is. Let all the positions be shown, and let people use their critical thinking skills to discern which position is correct. I agree with Jim DiEugenio that in the JFK assassination debate, for example, simply let both sides lay out their case because when you do that the critics will always win because their case is stronger. The trend today is to present only one narrative, to exclude and stifle any and all dissent lest people not be "confused"

Thanks for the contribution, Jeff. This is really valuable information if someone wants to research the dark underbelly of gatekeeping and mockingbird media narrative manipulation. Great addition to the links in the OP -- which were simply posted by me because I had been reading about those things that day and thought others who may be unaware of the information might find it as interesting as I did.

The dumbest thing I have read in a JFK book is this line from "INSIDE THE ARRB": "The very unpleasant and tentative possibility exists that limousine driver William Greer fired a fourth head shot into the President's left temple with his revolver." What is the dumbest thing you have read in a JFK assassination book?

I suspect that the wikipedia gatekeeper "Gamaliel" will take McAdams' place as the voice of the CIA in the research community.

There are some who are proponents of the LN position who I can disagree with and not have any problem with them. The main problem I had with McAdams was his downright nasty, ad-hominem attacks and belittling of people. He was sneaky, crafty, underhanded, unprofessional, and rotten. This kind of behavior might win you some points with the choir, but to an objective and impartial observer, it did little for his own case except impress those who were already shallow and felt intellectually superior to their opponents.

Time to start filing FOIAs with the CIA...

https://wikipediaonlineatrocity.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/anatomy-of-an-online-atrocity-wikipedia-gamaliel-and-the-fletcher-prouty-entry/ http://proutypedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia#Prouty_and_Wikipedia https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/will-the-real-wikipedia-please-stand-up http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1890084,00.html

Weitzman claims that he had to chase a couple Cubans out of his house at gunpoint. Sounds similar to some of the stuff that Roger Craig experienced. Beyond that, I can only speculate. Perhaps he was fearful because he testified that he ran to the grassy knoll because that is where the shots came from but the authorities were saying the shots came from the TSBD. Perhaps, too, he was fearful because he learned in 1964 when the WC report came out that what the authorities were saying about that day just didn't jibe with what he heard that day. If I were a witness to an event and saw a few things that didn't jibe with the official story to such an extent that I realize the official story is in fact a lie, I would probably feel a little uneasy about it. Perhaps, too, he DID observe a 7.65 Mauser with a 2.5x Weaver scope on it, and then watched as that turned into a 6.5 Manlicher-Carcano with a 4x scope. If THIS is the truth, he would find himself in an episode of the Twilight Zone--he would absolutely have reason to be fearful if he knew for a fact the weapon found was a Mauser, he writes out an affidavit that says that, and then he watches as that changes, informing him pretty much immediately that there was a conspiracy. I suspect that he had some justifiable paranoia.

I wasn't aware of that -- though I do not think that a person receiving treatment for psychological problems means their eyesight is bad or they're necessarily a xxxx. It certainly doesn't look good for his credibility. However, in my view I look at this hypothetical scenario: five people observe a robbery take place. All five people identify the robbery. One of those five witnesses was once a mental patient. Does that mean the robber can't be identified, or that it didn't happen? Food for thought. Then there is this: "Weitzman's mental problems, which appear to stem from acute paranoia about his experiences related to the assassination of JFK" Can't say that I blame the guy -- you're the one guy who interacts with a man on the grassy knoll who has secret service credentials, and then you watch as the Warren Commission tells you that there were no Secret Service agents on the gnoll and that Oswald did it. That's gotta really weigh on a guy. Would kind of make you question your sanity, and reports of witness deaths would make a person a bit paranoid if you're the guy who may have seen and interacted with one of the conspirators...

Well, it should be noted here that Weitzman made the ID many years later. He never ID'd Barker to the WC, or even said his name, nor was shown photos. He merely testified that a man presently secret service credentials was there. It was only after Canfield and Weberman showed Weitzman a photo spread that Weitzman ID'd Barker. It's a pretty shocking, and if true, explosive revelation. We have to view it with some skepticism, I suppose, given the ID was for a guy that Weitzman saw for less than a minute ten years before. I know that if I saw a guy for less than a minute it would be difficult to ID him, especially after ten years. However, it's interesting... As for the Mauser, you are correct about Weitzman having owned a sporting goods store and being an engineer. The Mauser subject is really frustrating--always has been--and I don't know what to make of it. It's a real head scratcher. If there were a conspiracy--and I believe there was--then wouldn't the people involved in that conspiracy not make such a sloppy mistake as leaving the wrong kind of weapon in the building to be found? We are to believe they left a Mauser in there and then later did some kind of switch, replacing it with a 6.5 Carcano? Right under the nose of the DPD? Even if they had people inside the DPD (and I think they did) that's a tall proposition, hard to reconcile. You see why then the issue is so frustrating.

I also believe The Oswald Code is useless. Coup d'etat in America, however, is another story. A groundbreaking book. While I disagree with the central thesis that the tramps are Hunt, Sturgis and Christ, I believe the book has otherwise important information in it such as the significance of the Harlandale safe house, and the fact that the man on the grassy knoll showing Secret Service ID was ID'd by Seymour Weitzman as Bernard Barker. That book also had a good deal of good documentation in it.

That's not cool. No bueno.

I kind of like him. He is a real character.

LOL right. Everyone would have believed it.

The only one I can think of is The Scorpions and there are a few things about them that cause them to be a good candidate. Firstly they are a German band--so technically it would not be a domestic operation which the CIA supposedly doesn't do. Then you have the fact that their song Wind of Change was released in Russian, Spanish, and English--that's unusual. But it reminds me of how military intelligence will broadcast in foreign languages via Voice of America, or drop foreign language flyers like we did in Iraq, Guatamala, and other countries. If Wind of Change was a messaging op it would make sense to release the song in several languages whereas if it's just this pop song it's weird to have these other versions.

This was over a decade ago, and my memory is a bit hazy, but I remember very clearly one letter we received. This was about 2002. I opened the envelope, and pulled out a strip of paper that was inside of it. Written on the piece of paper in marker was "infowars.com" Not knowing what it was, I visited the website. Said to myself "they're still 10 for 10."

PJM was perhaps one of the worst parts of the entirely slanted PBS Frontline special. I mean, she's sitting there with a straight face claiming that Oswald is sitting on his porch firing his rifle at leaves. Picture that: a guy just sitting around firing a rifle and no neighbors complain, there aren't any police, he's just sitting there firing that rifle. As if that ever happened. Meanwhile, Oswald didn't even have ammo for the rifle.

The one I am remembering was before this, it was a black and white interview looked to be from the 60s, before Garrison. I think it might have been featured in "JFK: A Revisionist History"

It is. She also laughed like that when she was asked about CIA in another interview. She laughed and said she had never heard that before, something to that effect.

Barf