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John Simkin

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Posts posted by John Simkin

  1. James P. Hosty died of prostate cancer in Kansas City, Missouri, on 10th June, 2011.

    Gary Mack has pointed out that Paul Vitello's New York Times obituary includes a serious mistake:

    “In 1964, answering questions before the Warren Commission, Mr. Hosty admitted having received a letter from Oswald in the weeks before the assassination and destroying it on the day Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, Nov. 24.

    He said the letter included Oswald’s sharp protest over Mr. Hosty’s having questioned Oswald’s wife, Marina, when the agent made two visits to their home while Oswald was out. Mr. Hosty testified that he destroyed the letter on orders from his supervisor, J. Gordon Shanklin. (Mr. Shanklin denied giving such an order.)”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/us/20hosty.html?_r=1

    Clearly, Vitello did not get his information from my website:

    The message that Oswald handed in to the FBI office in Dallas remained a secret until 1975. It became public knowledge when someone in the FBI tipped off a journalist about the existence of Oswald's letter. Oswald's relationship with Hosty was explored by the Select Committee on Intelligence Activities and the Select Committee on Assassinations. Hosty admitted that he had misled the Warren Commission by not telling them about the existence of the letter from Oswald. Gordon Shanklin denied knowing about the letter but this evidence was contradicted by the testimony of Hosty and William Sullivan, the Assistant Director of the FBI.

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhosty.htm

  2. What should teachers tell their students about Calamity Jane? Jane published Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane (1897. In the book she writes: "As a child I always had a fondness for adventure and out-door exercise and especial fondness for horses which I began to ride at an early age and continued to do so until I became an expert rider being able to ride the most vicious and stubborn of horses, in fact the greater portion of my life in early times was spent in this manner."

    In 1865 the family decided to emigrate to Montana in search of gold. "While on the way the greater portion of my time was spent in hunting along with the men and hunters of the party, in fact I was at all times with the men when there was excitement and adventures to be had. By the time we reached Virginia City I was considered a remarkable good shot and a fearless rider for a girl of my age." Her mother died in a mining camp in Blackfoot and her father died soon afterwards in Salt Lake City.

    In 1868 Jane joined a construction gang building the Union Pacific near Piedmont in what was at that time known as Wyoming Territory. Two years later she was recruited by General George A. Custer as an army scout at Fort Russell. Jane claims that she took part in the Indian Wars and it was during one skirmish she saved the life of Captain Egan. She later wrote that "I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the Fort. Captain Egan on recovering, laughingly said: "I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.'' I have borne that name up to the present time."

    Jane claimed in her autobiography, that in 1871 she accompanied General Custer to Arizona and "during that time I had a great many adventures with the Indians, for as a scout I had a great many dangerous missions to perform and while I was in many close places always succeeded in getting away safely for by this time I was considered the most reckless and daring rider and one of the best shots in the western country." However, the historian, Dan L. Thrapp has argued: "In her purported autobiography she claimed she scouted for the Army between 1870 and 1876, but there is no record that she was was a scout. She said she went to Arizona in this capacity with Custer, but Custer never was in Arizona, nor was Jane at this time."

    Calamity Jane also claims that she worked as a pony express rider carrying the U.S. mail in South Dakota between Deadwood and Custer, a distance of fifty miles: "As many of the riders before me had been held up and robbed of their packages, mail and money that they carried, for that was the only means of getting mail and money between these points. It was considered the most dangerous route in the Hills, but as my reputation as a rider and quick shot was well known, I was molested very little, for the toll gatherers looked on me as being a good fellow, and they knew that I never missed my mark. I made the round trip every two days which was considered pretty good riding in that country."

    In 1872 she joined the army as a scout and over the next few years served under George Crook and Nelson Miles. The historian Dan L. Thrapp has been unable to confirm this but has he points out that this is understandable as according to her own account, she was "disguised by male clothing" and worked under an assumed name. However, in 1875 she was dismissed after it was discovered she was a woman.

    By this time Calamity Jane was an alcoholic. Her biographer, James D. McLaird, has argued in Calamity Jane: The Woman and the Legend (2005): "Sadly, after romantic adventures are removed, her story is mostly an account of uneventful daily life interrupted by drinking binges." The author of the Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography (1988) has pointed out: "Occasionally she tried acting in vaudeville houses, and while she ever was popular with rough miners, her inclination to get drunk and shoot up the place inevitably precipitated her dismissal... She was generally drunk, often shooting up bawdy houses or saloons, but there was no mean streak in her, and was generally liked, if little respected."

    Margot Mifflin has argued: "As a public figure, Canary was the Courtney Love of her day: A talented pioneer in a man's world, she was a chronic substance abuser prone to outrageous behavior and forever linked in the public mind to a dead man whose fame overshadowed her own... The seeds of her legend planted, Canary became a dime-novel heroine, inspiring writers to work her into their stories of frontier bravery, even though her daily life involved a string of low-paying jobs and bouts of heavy drinking. She lived all over the Northwest, marrying at least three men (one of whom was jailed for attacking her) and working - intermittently - as an attraction in Wild West and dime museum shows. She bore a son who probably died in infancy... and later Jessie, who, before she was given up for adoption at around age 10, was taunted at school because of Canary's reputation. Wherever she could, she sold photos of herself for extra cash."

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWcalamity.htm

  3. The ethnographer, Dorothy Demetrocopoulou, interviewed a very old Wintu woman in 1930:

    The white people never cared for land or deer or bear. When we Indians kill meat we eat it all up. When we dig roots we make little holes. When we build houses we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers we don't ruin things. We shake down acorns and pine nuts. We don't chop down the trees. We use only dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull up the trees, kill everything. The tree says, "Don't. I am sore. Don't hurt me." But they chop it down and cut it up. The spirit of the land hates them. They blast out trees and stir it up to its depths. They saw up the trees. That hurts them. The Indians never hurt anything, but the white people destroy all. They blast rocks and scatter them on the earth. The rock says, "Don't. You are hurting me...." The water, it can't be hurt. The white people go to the river and turn it into dry land. The water says, "I don't care. I am water. You can use me all you wish. I am always the same. I can't be used up. Use me. I am water. You can't hurt me." The white people use the water of sacred springs in their houses. The water says, "That is all right. You can use me but you can't overcome me." All that is water says this. "Wherever you put me I'll be in my home. I am awfully smart. Lead me out of my springs, lead me from my rivers, but I came from the ocean and I shall go back into the ocean. You can dig a ditch and put me in it, but I go only so far and I am out of sight. I am awfully smart. When I am out of sight I am on my way home."

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWwintu.htm

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAamericanwest.htm

  4. Robert F. Heizer, published an interesting book called "The Natural World of the California Indians" in 1980. It included the following:

    All over California rituals of supplication, appreciation, and condolence were made in connection with hunting or plant-food gathering, an acknowledgment by man of the crucial help he had received. These feelings were given tacit expression in rituals such as the first-salmon ceremony among the Yurok Indians of Northwestern California. The ritual was designed to assure a constant and adequate supply of salmon, even for tribes living above the Yurok on the Klamath River. Hunters had to be physically clean if deer were to allow themselves to be shot, and so the hunter bathed, stood in fragrant smoke, avoided sexual contact for a certain period before he hunted, and thought pure thoughts. Where some, today, might say that a hunter purified himself to remove the human odor, which would alarm the deer, Indians would have said that that was the way the deer wished it if they were to permit themselves to be shot. A Wintu hunter had to possess two things. First was skill in stalking deer and the ability to use his bow. Second was what was called "luck," by which was meant ensuring that the spirit of the deer was not offended by the failure of the hunter to go through the proper ritual preparation. A Wintu hunter who had lost his luck that is, could not succeed in killing a deer - did not say. "I cannot kill deer any more"; he said, "Deer don't want to die for me."

  5. When I was a teenager I used to listen to music by Moondog. At the time I did not know anything about the artist. Today, I did a search of the web and discovered that his real name was Louis Thomas Hardin, and that he was a blind musician in 1999. His music sounds fairly ordinary today but it seemed very strange in the early 1960s.

    Bird's Lament:

    Symhonique #3

    Elf Dance op. 78 No. 5

  6. I see that Wikipedia has now created an entry for Carl Jenkins.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Elmer_Jenkins

    The page includes a link to my page on Jenkins but does not repeat my claims that he was involved in the assassination of JFK.

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKjenkinsC.htm

    Wikipedia says he should not be mixed up with Karl Jenkins, the composer.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jenkins

    Indeed, the two men are very different. Karl Jenkins is one of the most important composers in recent times.

    The other Karl Jenkins:

    http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17824

  7. In his book, Who Was Jack Ruby? (1978), Seth Kantor had some interesting things to say about Relich's role in the cover-up:

    The Belin Theory was that the city bus transfer in Oswald's shirt pocket might well have been his basic "passport" to Mexico. Oswald had been reported to have been in Mexico two months earlier and having gotten there by bus. Belin also was aware of the Warren Commission testimony given by Nelson Delgado, who had served in the Marine Corps with Oswald. Delgado had recalled Oswald once telling him that the best way to escape from authorities in the United States to Russia was by way of Mexico, where a plane could be caught to Havana, and then another plane to Moscow.

    The Belin Theory was innovative and extremely logical but suffered a fatal axing within the Warren Commission when Belin figured out that Oswald probably was in the act of escaping to Mexico when encountered by officer Tippit on Tenth Street. That injected a foreign connection into the escape which blew the Warren Commission's mind. Mexico. Cuba. Russia. Belin had practically invented World War III.

    It was Norman Redlich who put the ax to the Belin Theory. Redlich had a great deal of control over what would appear in the Warren Report. Redlich, remember, had survived the communist witch-hunt aimed at him on Capitol Hill three months earlier when the granting of his security clearance had been threatened. And now Redlich wanted to keep from stirring up any more problems for Earl Warren, so he argued that Belin had come up with nothing more than supposition, which had no place in the Warren Report. Belin argued in return that the Commission had a public obligation to disclose the existence of Oswald's possible escape plan, even if it were removed from chapter six of the Report and relegated to the 31-page section in the appendix of the Report, entitled "Speculations and Rumors." But Redlich instead saw to it that the Warren Report made no attempt to explain why Oswald, the fast-moving young man on the run, appeared to be heading directly toward Jack Ruby's apartment with a gun. Instead, the Warren Report simply said, "There is no evidence that Oswald knew where Ruby lived."

  8. Norman Redlich died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. In 1963 J. Lee Rankin appointed Redlich as his special assistant on the Warren Commission in the investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Gerald Ford provided J. Edgar Hoover with information about the activities of staff members of the commission. Hoover ordered that Redlich's past should be investigated. He discovered that Redlich was on the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, an organization considered by Hoover to have been set-up to "defend the cases of Communist lawbreakers". Redlich had also been critical of the activities of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

    This information was leaked to a group of right-wing politicians. On 5th May, 1964, Ralph F. Beermann, a Republican Party congressman, made a speech claiming that Redlich was associated with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Beermann called for Redlich to be removed as a staff member of the Warren Commission. He was supported by Karl E. Mundt who said: "We want a report from the Commission which Americans will accept as factual, which will put to rest all the ugly rumors now in circulation and which the world will believe. Who but the most gullible would believe any report if it were written in part by persons with Communist connections?"

    Gerald Ford joined in the attack and at one closed-door session of the Warren Commission he called for Redlich to be dismissed. However, Earl Warren and J. Lee Rankin both supported him and he retained his job. However, as the New York Times pointed out today:

    In that job, he and several other staff lawyers, including Arlen Specter, the future Pennsylvania senator, devised the single-bullet theory — which explained how Gov. John B. Connally of Texas and President Kennedy could have been struck almost instantaneously at one point, without there having been a second gunman.

    The widespread doubt cast on the theory in later years caused Mr. Redlich to tell a Congressional subcommittee reviewing the commission’s findings in 1977, “I think there are simply a great many people who cannot accept what I believe to be the simple truth, that one rather insignificant person was able to assassinate the president of the United States.”

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKredlich.htm

  9. Errol Morris is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. His movie “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara” won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2004. Some of his other films were The Thin Blue Line, Gates of Heaven, Tabloid. and the quirky Vernon, Florida. Morris has produced many innovative television commercials.

    He invented the Interrotron, a fascinating device used in the McNamara interviews: http://www.errolmorris.com/content/eyecontact/interrotron.html

    This is one of his essays, detailing JFK, Johnson, McNamara and the plans to withdraw from VietNam: http://www.errolmorris.com/content/argument/argument_alterman.html

    Morris is currently considering a weekly TV series on the Kennedy assassination. Some EF members could get their fifteen minutes of fame.

    This is from a recent Boston Globe story on Morris. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/06/12/the_truth_is_in_there/

    An excerpt:

    As reluctant as Morris is to speak in detail about those projects, he sounds extra apprehensive when discussing another idea he has in the works: a TV series on the Kennedy assassination. It’s a topic that he has long sworn he’d never come near — one that has consumed the minds of many people less obsessive than Morris. He calls it the “rabbit hole of all rabbit holes.”

    He’s working with Rosenbaum, a journalist with similarly obsessive tendencies, and what he has in mind is a typically oblique approach: Instead of confronting the assassination directly, he wants to interview all the people who have been driven mad trying to unravel the conspiracies they detect there.

    Due to his accomplished career, Morris just might have the ability to sell his project. His search for victims, I mean characters, could start right here.

    http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5616

    http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6908

    This is one of the most interesting developments I have heard about in sometime. However, it might never happen because he is surely right when he says: It’s a topic that he has long sworn he’d never come near — one that has consumed the minds of many people less obsessive than Morris. He calls it the “rabbit hole of all rabbit holes.”

  10. I see that Wikipedia has now created an entry for Carl Jenkins.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Elmer_Jenkins

    The page includes a link to my page on Jenkins but does not repeat my claims that he was involved in the assassination of JFK.

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKjenkinsC.htm

    Wikipedia says he should not be mixed up with Karl Jenkins, the composer.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jenkins

    Indeed, the two men are very different. Karl Jenkins is one of the most important composers in recent times.

  11. After visiting President Thomas Jefferson in Washington in 1806 Meriwether Lewis was appointed Governor of the Louisiana Territory. Lewis was unpopular with the people living in the area and in 1809 he was asked to return to Washington to discuss these problems. On the night of 11th October, 1809, Lewis stayed at a cabin in Tennessee. The next morning he was found dead from gunshot wounds. It was unclear whether he had been murdered or had committed suicide.

    Most modern historians accept that Meriwether Lewis committed sucide. However, Xaviant Haze and Paul Schrag, argue in their book, Suppressed History of America: The Murder of Meriwether Lewis and the Mysterious Discoveries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (2011) that he was murdered. Another book on the case, Uncovering the Truth about Meriwether Lewis by Thomas C. Danisi, will be published next year.

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWmerwether.htm

  12. I am a Professor of Film Studies at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. My undergraduate degree in Math/Computer Science and my graduate degree in Comparative Literature both reflect a joy in analyzing complex systems. As this Kennedy assassination certainly qualifies as complex, I have been captured by the addictive qualities of the documents.

    My interests in particular run to the women involved in these operations/events and how their stories have been told, discounted, and overlooked.

    I think the main reason is that most JFK researchers are men. It is definitely true that most posters on this forum are men. Maybe it is because men tend to be more obsessional than women. I remember trying to persuade Deborah Davis, the first journalist, to identify Operation Mockingbird, to take an interest in the case. She refused, claiming that she got into too much trouble with her work on Watergate. Some women who have contributed a great deal to JFK research include Mary Ferrell, Sylvia Meagher, Joan Mellen, Lisa Pease, Dorothy Kilgallen, Debra Conway and Priscilla Johnson (maybe more disinformation than information).

    Women involved in the JFK case that need more research include: Madeleine Brown, Judith Campbell, Rose Cheramie, Acquilla Clemons, Nellie Connally, Jeanne de Mohrenschildt, Silvia Duran, Adele Edisen, Anne Goodpasture, Katharine Graham, Jean Hill, Lisa Howard, Josefa Johnson, Mary Jo Kopechne, Janet Leddy, Evelyn Lincoln, Marita Lorenz, Clare Booth Luce, Helen Markham, Mary Pinchot Meyer, Mary Moorman, Silvia Odio, Beverly Oliver, Delphine Roberts, Ellen Rometsch, Mary Sherman, Florence Smith, Saundra K. Spencer, Nancy Carole Tyler and Carolyn Walther.

  13. I am a Professor of Film Studies at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. My undergraduate degree in Math/Computer Science and my graduate degree in Comparative Literature both reflect a joy in analyzing complex systems. As this Kennedy assassination certainly qualifies as complex, I have been captured by the addictive qualities of the documents.

    My interests in particular run to the women involved in these operations/events and how their stories have been told, discounted, and overlooked.

    Welcome to the Forum. The role of women in the JFK case deserves its own thread.

    http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17804

  14. McCann benefited more from the re-appointment of Ferguson Jnr than any other player at Posh.

    Ferguson switched him to playing in front of the back 4 where he quickly excelled.

    He also contributed some vital goals, scoring in each of the 3 play off games.

    Moving on, I think Sears showed enough out on the right wing (and scoring a couple of goals) after returning from his loan spells to warrant a run in the side next season. I'm mystified as to why Avram Grant put Hines out there instead of him on several occasions during the run in. But then I'm mystified by a bunch of things...

    I also thought Sears did very well in his new role as a wide player who did good work in defence. I could not see the point of playing Hines. I had high hopes of him before his serious knee injury but his form this season was just not good enough.

  15. Any visiting "aliens" might be in the form of artificial intelligence, and may have as much interest interacting with us as we do with the fish in the ocean.

    Stephen Powers was an anthropologist who studied Native Americans in California. He published "Tribes of California" in 1877. He argues in the book that the tribes in California did not go to war with each other. The reason was that the area supplied all their needs and because of the region's geography, they were not overpopulated. Therefore, they did not feel threatened by the initial arrival of the Europeans and were willing to share their resources with the visitors. Of course, times have changed, and the arrival of aliens would obviously cause panic as we would consider they were after our limited resources.

  16. On 17th June 1579 Francis Drake landed in a bay on the the coast of California. It seems that the Miwok Indians thought they were being visited by aliens. A local group of Miwok brought him a present of a bunch of feathers and tobacco leaves in a basket. John Sugden, the author of Sir Francis Drake (1990) has argued: "It appeared to the English that the Indians regarded them as gods; they were impervious to English attempts to explain who they were, but at least they remained friendly, and when they had received clothing and other gifts the natives returned happily and noisily to their village."

    On 26th June a large group of Miwok arrived at Drake's camp. The chief, wearing a head-dress and a skin cape, was followed by painted warriors, each one of whom bore a gift. At the rear of the cavalcade were women and children. A man holding a sceptre of black wood and wearing a chain of clam shells, stepped forward and made a thirty minute speech. While this was going on the women indulged in a strange ritual of self-mutilation that included scratching their faces until the blood flowed. Robert F. Heizer has argued in Elizabethan California (1974) that self-mutilation is associated with mourning and that the Miwok probably thought the British sailors were spirits returning from the dead. However, Drake took the view that they were proclaiming him king of the Miwok tribe.

    When the The Golden Hinde left on 23rd July, the Miwok exhibited great distress and ran to the hill-tops to keep the ship in sight for as long as possible.

    The Native Americans also welcomed the Spanish as Gods. It took them some time to realise that these strange aliens had not come to help them but to destroy them.

    I wonder if those people living in America today would be so generous if they were really visited by "aliens".

  17. This is one of the things that perhaps the Higgs-boson particle might explain. If the particle exists, it might be possible to manipulate mass whilst leaving dimension unchanged. If that were possible, then faster-than-light would not be impossible (as you approach the speed of light, your mass increases; if you were to hit the speed of light your mass would be infinite).

    If FTL travel were possible, then visitation by other races becomes possible, perhaps even likely.

    That may solve the distance problem but not that of time.

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