John Simkin
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Posts posted by John Simkin
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As far as Cummings is concerned, as far as I know Summers is the one who found him with some good investigative leg work. Anyone taking the time to really make a list of Martino's contacts and associates after his return from Cuba would have come up with Cummings, Summers did. Summers had never surfaced the story nor written about it and simply confirmed that Martino had made the same sort of remarks to him as to Classen in the same few months before Martino's death. Given the elapsed time it seems unlikely Cummings had any plan to make money off the story and he certainly has not sense Summer's published his remarks, not even with a single article.
To my knowledge Summer's first surfaced his research in the Vanity Fair article and later incorporated it into his book update - in terms about his remarks in the book, as far as I know Summers did not begin any major new investigation beyond what he put into the Vanity Fair article and then simply used that material and other items to update the book for another edition. I would love to see him start fresh in a new investigation based on that direction but as far as I know it seems unlikely.
Anthony Summers does not refer to the Vanity Fair article in his updated version of The Kennedy Assassination. In your book you state it was co-written by Robbyn Summers. Maybe it was Robbyn who actually interviewed John Cummings. Is Cummings still alive? Nathaniel Weyl (the ghost writer of John Martino’s book) is still alive. Maybe it is worth interviewing him about the case. Although he might be reluctant to talk.
Has Anthony Summers seen a copy of your book? Maybe it will encourage him to return to the case. Anyway, I doubt if he could find out anything more than you have.
Like you I am fully convinced by the John Martino confession. I also believe that Tosh Plumlee is a credible witness. In fact, his evidence, helps to support your views about Johnny Roselli (more about this later).
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According to Alissa Goodman, of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the British super-rich enjoyed a 30% increase in their wealth last year. A major reason for this is the 40% top rate of tax. The top 1% earns 8% of the nation’s income, while the bottom tenth earns just 3%. The rich pay a smaller proportion of their money in taxes, and that of the poorest is much higher due to regressive VAT. Another interesting fact is that the richest 20% donate just 0.7% of their incomes to charity, while the poorest 20% give 3% of theirs.
A recent survey found that 80% of the population think the gap between rich and poor is too large. However, the 40% top rate of tax is very popular with the owners of our media and this issue is rarely raised in newspapers or on television. This inequality is also favoured by New Labour’s rich backers and therefore it is a problem that is unlikely to be tackled by this government.
I would be very interested to hear what the top-rate of tax is in other countries. Is inequality discussed much in your media?
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Larry starts the book by looking at the confession that John Martino made about his role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. At the end of the chapter he summarizes the reasons why he believes Martino’s confession:
John Martino had pre-knowledge of the plan to kill John Kennedy in Texas. John Martino "talked" in a very believable and credible fashion. At first, he talked only to his immediate family, nervously, hesitantly, and excitedly. Shortly before his death, he talked with two long time friends - part confession and part simply recollection. He made no grand claims, downplayed his own role and limited his statements to things he would have personally come in contact with in playing the role he described with the Cuban exiles whose cause he was demonstrably devoted to at the time. His story is certainly consistent and totally in context with his documented activities and personal associations in 1963. Martino's personal involvement also helps us to estimate the start date and time frame for the plot.
• Martino's method of relating his knowledge of the conspiracy is credible and consistent.
• Martino does not exaggerate his position nor claim knowledge beyond his described role.
• Martino's "switch" from his post-assassination public crusade to his private confession is significant and consistent with his overall remarks about his role.
• Martino was demonstrably connected to the "anti-Castro" people he implicates.
• Martino offers a unique insight into Oswald's role, associations and manipulation - one which can be investigated for corroboration.
• Martino provides insight into tactical details in Dallas which can be investigated for corroboration, including the elements of advance personnel on the ground, a motorcade route known in advance and figuring in the tactical plan, Oswald as a patsy tied to the route,
• Oswald framed as a Castro connected shooter and a planned meeting and extraction of Oswald from Dallas.
John Martino provides a unique insight into a conspiracy by anti-Castro elements to kill President Kennedy in revenge for his perceived betrayal of the exile cause and to tie the President's murder to Fidel Castro and Cuba in a manner which would institute an American invasion of the island.
In the past I have been highly suspicious of confessions by people claiming to have been involved in the assassination. In most cases these individuals are attempting to make money from their confessions. You rightly point out that Martino did not attempt to make money out of his story. However, is it possible that he was trying to get money for others? Did John Cumming, Florence Martino, Edward Martino or Fred Claasen attempt to make money from the story?
Did Cumming write an article or book about Martino’s confession? There is no reference to this in your book.
Did Anthony Summers break this story in 1994 (Vanity Fair) or did it appear somewhere else before this date?
In the updated edition of The Kennedy Conspiracy (2002) Summers does not make a great deal of the Martino confession (it appears for the first time on page 372). I get the impression he is not totally convinced by the confession. I suspect the reason is that Summers did not spend enough time exploring Martino’s activities in 1962 and 1963 (Operation Tilt, etc.)
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I am currently reading Larry Hancock’s recently published book, Someone Would Have Talked. It is the best book I have read on the Kennedy assassination. As Larry is a member of the forum I thought it would be a good idea to use it as a means to discuss the contents of the book. I hope others will join in this discussion.
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I have had several replies to my question about interviewing Marina Oswald. This is what one contributor wrote:
Marina has zero credibility. I know there are lots of researchers who have met her, like her and believe in her. They see her as a victim, which I think she was, too. I can forgive the ridiculous, unbelievable testimony she gave to the Warren Commission. Undoubtedly, it was coerced and she had good reason to feel threatened and tell the authorities what they wanted to hear. However, by the mid-1970s at the very latest, when there was a critical firestorm brewing around this subject, with all public opinion polls showing the vast majority of Americans thought the official story of the assassination was wrong, Marina should have gone public with her doubts. Even when she finally turned around on the subject in the late 1980s, she refused to explain her inconsistent, highly damaging testimony. She was never grilled on her relationship with Ruth Paine. She has not, to my knowledge, ever admitted that any of her testimony before the Warren Commission was untrue. Not even the Gen. Walker story, or the even more absurd locking Oswald in the bathroom to prevent him from shooting Nixon story. I will believe Marina when she admits that she lied repeatedly to the Warren Commission.
I also spoke to someone yesterday who has interviewed her several times. He points out that it is extremely difficult to get her to say anything of worth about the case. She has also refused large sums of money to tell the real story of what happened. Is it difficult to understand why this is. Maybe she is being paid even larger sums not to talk about the case.
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The one exception to this is Dale Spender...Has anyone got any ideas on how female educationalists can be encouraged to be more active in the creation of online materials?
Excuse me, John, as I can see you are an eminent contributor here, but for some reason you are not fully informed on this subject.
Certainly Dale Spender is an effective businesswoman and is a high profile self-elected spokesperson on the issues involved in education and ICT.
To grasp the point I was making it is necessary so see the quote in context:
Every method of mass communication has been dominated by males. This began with the writing of books (religious faith as well as gender was important in the beginning). Women eventually took up the challenge and made great progress and in some areas, such as the novel, they even dominate the sector. The same thing happened in radio and television. However, men still dominate these forms of communication. Despite this history, women have been slow to grasp the importance of the web as a battleground of ideas. The one exception to this is Dale Spender… (John Simkin, 12th April)
Of course I was not saying the Dale Spender is the only academic writing about women and computers. To your list I would add Jan Bruck, Lynda Davies, Pam Dettman, Margaret Fallshaw, Linda Adamson, Irene Grasso, Eileen Green, Jenny Owen, Katie Hafner, Donna Haraway, Susan Herring, Nancy Kaplan, Eva Farrell, Sara Kiesler, Jacqueline S. Eccles, Gill Kirkup, Cheris Kramarae, Margaret McLaughlin, Lana Rakow, Antonia Stone, Jeanie Taylor, Maureen Ebden, etc.
I am not sure what Dale Spender has done to upset you (“is a high profile self-elected spokesperson on the issues involved in education and ICT”) but I think that she has made an important contribution to this debate because she has placed the problem within its historical context.
As you point out there is no shortage of women academics writing about women and computers. However, I am not terribly concerned about that – academics always over-emphasise their importance in what takes place in the classroom. My main concern is over the way males are dominating the creation of online educational materials.
As I said, earlier, this forum was “originally set up by members of the Association of Teacher Websites. The vast majority of our members are men.” The ATW has 101 members. Of these, only 18 are women. I believe the gender of the creator influences the type of material that is created. This in turn will have an impact on the appeal of the material to girls in the classroom.
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Recent polls show that if the United States presidential election only concerned domestic issues, Kerry would have a large lead over Bush. However, the situation is reversed when foreign policy becomes the main issue. The reason for this is that a large percentage of people in the United States have been convinced by government propaganda that the country is under siege from terrorism. Bush is portrayed as Churchill whereas Kerry is Neville Chamberlain.
A study by the University of Maryland shows that 57% of Bush’s supporters believe that “before the war Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaida”. Moreover 65% believe that “experts” have confirmed that Iraq had WMD.
It has been suggested that this is an example of what the philosopher William James has called “the will to believe”. In other words, the American people feel very insecure. Not to believe Bush would increase that sense of insecurity. As long as this sense of insecurity is maintained, Bush is likely to be elected in November.
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The latest details on private education in the UK were published yesterday. Children attending independent schools make up 7.1% of all pupils. This is a 0.1% growth on last year. This is the slowest growth-rate for many years. The main reason for this was a 9.6% increase in fees. Average fees are now £3,074 a term. Boarding fees are up to £5,909. A large percentage of these children come from abroad. Continental Europe contributes 28% of foreign pupils with Germany being the largest single source.
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This message from Teresa Smith has been reposted.
Readers and Members:
I am the daughter of a first generation critic - Shirley Martin - one of the original housewives' underground (who connected with Mark Lane after his National Guardian article in December 1963). Although just a housewife, my mother was visited twice by the FBI in regard to her study of photo evidence. The 26 volumes comment on her activities with four children and dog in tow. The FBI even visited the Honolulu Airport (my father was the airport manager there for many years until he moved to Oklahoma in 1959) and interviewed his former staff. Although I grew up around the case, I have only recently become interested again. I was fortunate to travel with my mother to Dallas early on (January-February 1964 and many times after) and to meet and listen to many of the early critics and witnesseses in the case - Marguerite Oswald, Fr Huber, Roy Truly, Buddy Walthers, Ruth Paine, Acquila Clemons, Penn Jones, Jones Harris, Mark Lane, Joachim Joesten, Harold Weisberg, William Turner, Vince Salandria, Harold Feldman, Thayer Waldo, Sylvia Meagher among others, and to be present in Dallas during the filming of Rush to Judgment. I am interested in finding out who is living and secondarily, who is still actively interested in the case. My mother is living and reasonably well - but is wary of the anti-critics (after bad experiences with the likes of Larry Schiller etc). I have a specific interest in the TSBD employees - does anyone know which TSBD staffers fueled William Manchester's comments that there was strong anti-JFK sentiment in the building? I have not read the book in years and do not have a copy on hand. My mother and I still believe in Oswald's innocence, but tend not to speculate on specific conspiracy theories.
Regards
Teresa Smith
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I imagine you are aware of the articles by Ben Hayes, Deborah Davies and G. J. Krupey on this case:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/death12.htm
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/cia_lsd.html
http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma/hpage.htm
Maybe you would like to post something on the Mary Pinchot Meyer case in the Death of Witnesses thread.
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To quote Martin Niemöller (1946)
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Martin Niemöller was of course a fascist when the Nazis began rounding up communist and socialist teachers. Is the message of this poem acceptable if the first line read:
First they came for the fascists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a fascist.
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However that is not the point. I said that books are for reading not for burning....anyone who wants to know the truth does not need to rely on Andy or on me. Read what Trotsky actually wrote and make up your own mind.
Blunkett believes in imprisonment without trial and condemns as "bonkers" the legal and psychiatric experts who have deprived him of one of his prisoners.....he is not in a good position to talk about anybody being authoritarian is he?
Blunkett and Trotsky should both be judged on what they do rather than what they have said in the past. Most politicians write about the need for freedom when they are in opposition. The problem is that they seem keen on the idea when they are in power.
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It has been reported today that Simon Smith, a maths teacher in Solihull has been suspended from work because he is a BNP candidate in the June European elections. It is tempting to support the idea of removing right-wing teachers from the profession. However, I think it is a dangerous development. How would we respond if they started suspending teachers who were members of the Socialist Worker Party? Is there a danger of reproducing the McCarthyism of the 1950s? This mirrors to a certain extent the debate we had about Jean-Marie Le Pen.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=665
Smith is a member of the NASUWT. It will be interesting to see how the union reacts to this decision. They are on record of being strongly opposed to the policies of the BNP. Should they be willing to defend his right to express political opinions? It reminds me of the time I was NUT rep and I had to defend a fellow member from being sacked from his post. He was charged with being incompetent (he was). I must say I had mixed emotions about defending him (he was a personal friend of long-standing). I definitely did my duty as a union representative but I failed dismally in my responsibilities as an educator.
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I see that George Bush will appear before the national commission’s failure to prevent the September 11 attacks on the US. However, he will give his answers behind closed doors and in the presence of the vice-president, Dick Cheney.
It is claimed that one of the reasons for this is that Bush is concerned about the images that would emerge during his testimony (it is currently believed that dominant images help to win or lose elections – another reason why there was so much fuss recently about showing coffins of US soldiers killed during the Iraq War).
US satirists are having a field day producing their own images of the event. Here is one that I thought you might like to see.
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I have made several postings about the violent deaths of witnesses to the JFK assassination. However, I suspect very few of these deaths in the 1960s had anything to do with the assassination.
Why for example would the conspirators have had to kill these witnesses? One of the reasons why they are seen as suspicious deaths is because they had already spoken out about what they knew about the events in Dealey Plaza. Their deaths only drew attention to the fact they were saying things that were different to what was in the Warren Commission report. It is possible that several important witnesses were killed in the 1960s. However, their names would not have been linked to the assassination and therefore we are unaware of this.
For example, whatever happened to the gunmen who actually fired the shots? I think there is a very good chance that these men were Cuban exiles (probably members of Alpha 66). If I had organized the assassination I would have been very keen to get rid of these men as soon as possible. My strategy would have been to give them another job soon after they killed JFK. One possibility is that they were sent to Cuba to assassinate Fidel Castro. I would then have tipped off the Cuban security services they were coming and where they would be. I suspect the gunman were executed in Cuba in 1964.
However, I do believe that several of the deaths in the 1970s were linked to the Kennedy assassination. This is as a result of the Select Committee on Intelligence Activities and Select Committee on Assassinations investigations. The deaths of Sam Giancana (1975), Jimmy Hoffa (1975), Johnny Roselli (1976), William Harvey (1976), George De Mohrenschildt (1977), William Pawley (1977), Charlie Nicoletti (1977) and Carlos Prio (1977) are all probably linked to the fact they were likely to be called before Senate committees.
In Anthony Summers’ book, Conspiracy, he reports that the HSCU manages to obtain the records of an FBI wire tap on Santo Trafficante. On the tape, Trafficante was heard to say “now only two people know who killed Kennedy and they aren’t talking.” Obviously Trafficante was one of these. Who was the other person who was not talking? My guess was that it was David Sanchez Morales. He was to die soon afterwards on 8th May, 1978. When Trafficante died in 1987 the chances of ever finding who killed Kennedy came to an end. However, that is not to say it is impossible to find out who organized the crime of the century.
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It is possible that most countries now have policies that ensure girls are given equal access to computers in schools. (Although I am not convinced this is true of the home). I suspect therefore that our current Student Forum receives a balance of postings from boys and girls.
The fact that women produce fewer educational websites than men and contribute less to this forum is mainly due to the fact that their first encounters with computers took place many years ago when sexist attitudes were more prevalent.
Has anyone got any ideas on how female educationalists can be encouraged to be more active in the creation of online materials? I believe that this is an important issue because men see the world in a slightly different way to women. As a result, materials produced by men, are more likely to appeal to boys, than girls. This in itself will have an impact on girls’ attitudes to online learning.
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Details of your offer appeared in today's Education on the Internet (49,580 subscribers).
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Can these teachers come from anywhere in the world?
Do they still have to be in the classroom?
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Google Bombs: A new strategy has been developed by political groups called google bombs. Recent victims have been George Bush, John Kerry and Silvio Berlusconi. (see recent discussion on Google search-engine jokes).
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=502
A google bomb is an attempt to influence the ranking of a given site in results returned by Google. Due to the way that Google's algorithm works, a website will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page all use consistent text. Googlebomb is used both as a verb and a noun. For example, if a user registers many domains and all of them link to a main site with the text "... is a living legend" then searching for "living legend" on Google will return the main site higher in the ranking, even if the phrase "living legend" doesn't appear on the main site. A common means of exploiting this is through weblogs, where although the entry may disappear from the main page quickly, the short-term effects of a link can dramatically affect the ranking of a given site. Empirical results indicate that it does not take a large number of websites to achieve a Googlebomb. The effect has been achieved with only a handful of dedicated weblogs. See
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The CIA has launched a website for children, guiding potential future spies through the world of covert operations under the guidance of a cartoon bear named Ginger. A large section of the site is dedicated to the war on drugs. It urges its visitors to shun illegal substances and instead to "get high on intelligence". It also claims that drug cultivation causes global warming. Potential recruits are warned that mandatory medical and polygraph tests for all CIA personnel will root out those who experiment with drugs. I could not find anything on the website about the CIA's involvement in the Kennedy assassination.
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According to a study carried out by the New Economics Foundation, primary schoolchildren are a lot happier than their secondary counterparts. The study looked at two measures of well-being in more than 1,000 youngsters aged 7 to 19 attending Nottingham schools. The study claims that the well-being and overall happiness of young people drops drastically when they switch from primary to secondary school, with significant effects on their personal development. It finds that a third of children are so badly affected by the transition that they become vulnerable to mental illness.
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Bliss, the magazine for teenagers, claims it has just carried out the most comprehensive study to date of teenagers' views on their own education. Maths teachers were labelled as the "most evil" with a quarter of all votes, followed by science teachers (20%) and language teachers (17%). Overall, only three in ten secondary school pupils think they are getting a "very good" education while science, maths and languages are singled out as the "worst taught subjects", according to this survey of 2,000 students.
Nearly half of secondary age pupils think their teachers are flirts while 45% said "perving on students" is thwir most disgusting habit - marginally behind bad body odour.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsi...000/3665743.stm
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In this article Charles Wheeler looks at the so-called special relationship between Britain and the United States. Wheeler argues that this special relationship has been the foundation of Britain's foreign policy for over 60 years. Wheeler claims that there have only been two examples when the British government refused to accept the policies being pursued by the American government. The first occasion was in 1954 when the government refused to agree to an Anglo-American military intervention in Vietnam. The second was in the 1960s when Harold Wilson repeatedly rejected President Johnson's demand that he support America's war in Vietnam by sending out a contingent of ground troops.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,...1204868,00.html
Wheeler argues that it is time for the UK to question the value of this special relationship. What do members think? Do other European countries have their foreign policies controlled by another power?
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Derek probably believes these governments were right to do this.
Trotsky was the first to expose the use of repression by Stalin, to be accused of supporting it is merely bizarre. Any historian knows that the repression was aimed primarily against working class activists who were accused of being "Trotsky-fascists" so it is scarcely likely that they would support their own jailers.
You are right to point out that Trotsky was a strong believer in the right of the individual to openly express political opinions. Unfortunately, he only believed in this during two periods of his life: (1) before he had power; (2) after he had gained power. This was not true of all Bolsheviks. Some retained their belief in free expression and were eventually forced from power while others refused to become involved with such a dictatorial government. See for example the biographies of Victor Serge, Alexander Shlyapnikov, Alexandra Kollantai, Julius Martov, Maxim Gorky, etc.
In January, 1918, Gorky led the attack on Lenin's decision to close down the Constituent Assembly. Gorky wrote in the New Life newspaper that the Bolsheviks had betrayed the ideals of generations of reformers: "For a hundred years the best people of Russia lived with the hope of a Constituent Assembly. In this struggle for this idea thousands of the intelligentsia perished along with tens of thousands of workers and peasants."
Lenin did not take too kindly to these comments. The Bolshevik government controlled the distribution of newsprint and in July, 1918, it cut off supplies to New Life and Gorky was forced to close his newspaper. The government also took action making it impossible for Gorky to get his work published in Russia. After this the Bolshevik government (including Trotsky) did everything it could to prevent people expressing views that differed from those of the government.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSserge.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSshlyapnikov.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSkollontai.htm
Future of the History Curriculum
in History:Curriculum Issues
Posted
One of the major problems is that the History National Curriculum was originally drawn up with the brief that it was going to be taught to all students until the age of 16. This created serious problems when the government reneged on this promise and made it optional at Key Stage 4 (later they made the problem worse by reducing the time spent on the subject at Key Stage 2). This completely undermined the idea that all students should study certain topics. It also meant that students had to repeat things they had studied in Key Stage 3.
I am also very concerned about this attempt to cover too much content. Students need to be given time to ask questions and debate key issues. Dale Banham raises this issue in his excellent article on teaching an in-depth study of John F. Kennedy (Teaching History). He argues that if teachers “are always pushing for the next level of attainment, there is little hope that pupils will develop the thinking they need to make real progress. If pupils are spoon fed information and ideas much faster than they can integrate them… They will also lack the ability to think creatively, to make connections and reconstruct new and original lines of argument.”
Even before the arrival of the National Curriculum it was difficult to study subjects in too much depth. This was largely a problem of resources (publishers of school textbooks did not provide the material to do this). This is the main reason why I first began to produce my own resources in the 1970s. Other teachers committed to the in-depth approach had to adopt similar tactics.
The arrival of the National Curriculum increased this problem (by this time educational publishers had begun to produce in-depth materials). The development of the web has increased the opportunities to carry out in-depth investigations. The problem is, how do you find the time to allow the students to do that? The only answer is to reduce the amount of content that you are expected to cover. This will involve some hard questions about what content should be studied by all students.