W. Niederhut

Interesting find, Cliff. I've been a Leadbelly fan for many years, and studied and recorded a number of his songs about 20 years ago, using the old Pete Seeger/Moses Asch Leadbelly songbook. (There's also a very good 1976 film about his life entitled, Leadbelly, that hasn't received the notoriety it deserves.) As for Marxism, Huddie Ledbetter was actually a Wendell Wilkie fan back in the days of the Dixiecrat South.

Well, I'm shocked to hear from our long lost itinerant Warren Commission Report salesman, Lance Payette, that most JFK admirers are liberals. Who'd have thunk? Lance, did you figure that one out yourself, or is it a Cognitive Infiltration Association talking point?

Speaking of definitions, can we help Mathew Koch and others from the MAGA-verse define, "woke?" I think John Pavlovitz has an accurate definition here.

Covid Vaccines Saved More Than 3 Million Lives in U.S. Two Years COVID Vaccines Prevented Millions Hospitalizations Deaths | Commonwealth Fund December 13, 2022 “The Covid-19 vaccines have kept more than 18.5 million people in the US out of the hospital and saved more than 3.2 million lives, a new study says – and that estimate is most likely a conservative one,” CNN reports.

Elon Musk is a creep... Musk's Fauci tweet angers medical Twitter https://www.axios.com/2022/12/12/medical-twitter-musk-fauci-tweet December 12, 2022

Ben, I'm responding to your latest comments (below) in red. Ben wrote: I deduce you are referring to me, although I am not from the "MAGA-verse." Ben, in fact, you post the same moronic, biased stories from the MAGA-verse media-- Daily Caller/Fox/Greenwald/Taibbi, et.al.-- on a daily basis, that I see posted by some hardcore, Fox News-watching Trumpsters on a less scholarly forum I visit. I was unaware of Rudy Guiliani's dressing habits. How he dresses in private is his business. And yet you are fully informed about the cross-dressing habits of a minor official in Biden's administration, eh? Meanwhile, the above photo of Rudy Giuliani in drag, with Donald Trump, was not private. He has also performed publicly in drag shows. Hasn't Fox informed you guys in the MAGA-verse about Rudy's cross-dressing history? Perhaps they only focus, selectively, on cross-dressers associated with the Biden administration. Why is that? If Giuliani goes around repeatedly stealing airport luggage (while on camera) then Giuliani becomes a story. If Giuliani wears a dress while stealing airport luggage...well, that becomes part of the story. If Rudy Giuliani jerks off in a Sasha Baron Cohen film, conspires with Trump to set up slates of false electors, and helps stage a mob attack on the U.S. Congress in order to steal a U.S. Presidential election, does that become a story? If he wears a dress while cavorting with Donald Trump...well, is that part of the story? And why do you and your MAGA-verse associates have no interest in those major Rudy Giuliani stories, while posting about a Biden official who stole luggage? Stealing airport luggage while on camera is a laughably tacky crime. I wonder if the luggage thief in question should be entrusted to run an important federal program. The Biden Administration, so far, appears to have no such reservations. So, using your luggage logic, should a man who conspires to steal a U.S. Presidential election be entrusted to run the Executive branch of the U.S. government? Did the Trump administration have any reservations about their criminal conduct in those affairs of state? I think the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop are a story, and I care little that HB appears to be a heterosexual white male, who dresses the way most white heterosexual males dress. So, then, is Jared Kushner's $2 billion dollar Saudi bribe a story-- given that Kushner was working for the U.S. government, in charge of Trump's Middle East policy, at the time, whereas Hunter Biden is not even a government official? In other words, why is Hunter Biden's sex life a story, and Jared Kushner's $2 billion dollar bribe isn't? Explain your MAGA "logic."

Very important thread here. It reminded me of an article that caught my eye back in 2007.* It's one reason I have never considered Wikipedia to be a reliable source of information about military or intelligence ops, as I told David Lifton in a discussion he and I had earlier this year about 9/11. *CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-wikipedia-idUSN1642896020070816 August 16, 2007 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, according to a new tracing program. The changes may violate Wikipedia’s conflict-of-interest guidelines, a spokeswoman for the site said on Thursday. The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a Web site that was quickly overwhelmed with searches. The program allows users to track the source of computers used to make changes to the popular Internet encyclopedia where anyone can submit and edit entries. WikiScanner revealed that CIA computers were used to edit an entry on the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A graphic on casualties was edited to add that many figures were estimated and were not broken down by class. Another entry on former CIA chief William Colby was edited by CIA computers to expand his career history and discuss the merits of a Vietnam War rural pacification program that he headed. Aerial and satellite images of the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were removed using a computer traced to the FBI, WikiScanner showed. CIA spokesman George Little said he could not confirm whether CIA computers were used in the changes, adding that “the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly.” The FBI did not have an immediate response. Computers at numerous other organizations and companies were found to have been involved in editing articles related to them. Griffith said he developed WikiScanner “to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what ‘interesting organizations’ (which I am neutral towards) are up to.” It was not known whether changes were made by an official representative of an agency or company, Griffith said, but it was certain the change was made by someone with access to the organization’s network. It violates Wikipedia’s neutrality guidelines for a person with close ties to an issue to contribute to an entry about it, said spokeswoman Sandy Ordonez of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s parent organization. However, she said, “Wikipedia is self-correcting,” meaning misleading entries can be quickly revised by another editor. She said Wikimedia welcomed the WikiScanner.

Do Benjamin Cole and the guys from the MAGA-verse know that Donald Trump's Stop-the-Steal/J6 coup co-conspirator, Rudy Giuliani, is a cross-dresser? Did Fox News cover that story, fellas? It's one thing for a cross-dressing kleptomaniac to steal people's luggage at airports. It's another matter for a President's cross-dressing attorney to steal an election... 🤥

What utter bunk, Ben. Thanks for slinging more MAGA merde on the wall. But this won't stick, like most of your...uh...theses... If Sinema hates both parties, why did she run as a Democrat and get elected by Democrats-- before betraying her constituents and serving as a corporate lobbyist? She's, basically, an unprincipled traitor, working for the plutocrats and their pachyderms.

So, Bill, you're still struggling with the law of conservation of momentum, eh? Do you think it was just a kooky Newtonian conspiracy theory?

'She's Just Awful': Critics Swing After Sinema Ditches Dems Just Days After Warnock Win "Apparently 'independent' is the new way to say 'corporate lobbyist,'" said one critic. www.commondreams.org/news/2022/12/09/shes-just-awful-critics-swing-after-sinema-ditches-dems-just-days-after-warnock-win December 9, 2022

Roger Stone Thanks Elon Musk for Reinstating His Twitter Account – Rolling Stone December 8, 2022

Thanks for the additional history, John. As I mentioned, (above) I understand, and sympathize, with Irish aspirations for independence and self-determination. In Bono's defense, I have tended to interpret his songs as protests against political violence and murder. I can see why that position might be construed as a betrayal by IRA partisans-- i.e., a lack of patriotic fervor. Incidentally, the U2 anthem, New Year's Day, was written about Lech Walesa's Solidarnosc movement against Soviet imperialism in Poland. It's interesting that Bono was raised by a Catholic father and Protestant mother in the Church of Ireland. The implications and nuances are probably difficult for most of us in the U.S. to understand. I'm reminded of a line in one of James Joyce's novels (either Ulysses or Portrait of the Artist) where someone asked Stephen Dedalus if he had considered converting to Protestantism, and he replied, "I haven't lost all self respect, you know."

John, I asked you (above) to clarify the history of the sectarian strife and civilian terrorist attacks in Ireland for those of us in the U.S. who are not familiar with the details, and I appreciate reading your latest post here on the subject. As I surmised, the civilian attacks have been perpetrated by both the Protestant partisans in Northern Ireland and, in some cases, by the IRA (e.g., the Harrods bombing.) I still don't know which side made bomb threats against the train that my wife and I rode from Dublin to Belfast in September of 1990. Not sure why you keep inaccurately claiming that I "refuse to acknowledge the truth" about the violence in Ireland. On the contrary, I have merely been seeking to learn the truth-- an old habit of mine.

Not quite correct, John. If you read what I wrote, my negative "judgment" is mainly about the sectarian violence (depicted in Kenneth Branagh's autobiographical film, Belfast) and the IRA's civilian bombings-- as in the case of the Harrods department store bombing. In his memoir, Surrender, Bono also described narrowly avoiding a deadly IRA bomb attack in Dublin when he was a teenager. And, as I mentioned, (above) there was a bomb threat against the train that my wife and I rode from Dublin to Belfast in September of 1990-- an Irish train on Irish soil! It was puzzling to me at the time. Why were they threatening to bomb an Irish train with civilian passengers? (I didn't know if the guys making the threats were IRA partisans or Protestants from Northern Ireland.) So, I haven't passed judgment on the movement for Irish independence, per se, but on violence against civilians. As for U2, I never realized that Bono had been denounced by Gerry Adams and the IRA until I read his memoir recently, along with your commentaries about U2 and Irish sentiment toward the band. As for the Russian Federation, I have followed its history with considerable interest, since I have been a member of the Russian Orthodox Church for the past quarter century, a Russophile. The evidence of Russian bombing of civilian targets in Ukraine has been quite convincing, IMO -- well-documented by photographs and videos. The first thing I posted about it here on the forum last March was about the bombing of a residential apartment building in Kyiv. I was shocked and appalled. Do you doubt the evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine?

John, The short answer is that I don't fully understand the subject of British imperialism in Ireland and the military resistance of the IRA. In the U.S., we would mainly hear about IRA bombings of civilian targets back in the day, like Harrod's department store in London. I am strongly opposed to the bombing of civilians anywhere -- by the U.S.A. (in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) and by anyone else, including Putin. I was, frankly, shocked and appalled when Putin started bombing residential buildings in Ukraine, as I said here on the forum back in March.

For those interested in the subject of our epidemic of mass shootings in the U.S., there's some disturbing information emerging in the case of the Club Q mass shooter from Colorado Springs, Anderson Lee Aldrich. The red flags were even worse than I thought. As it turns out, the young man had threatened to kill his grandparents in June of 2021 if they moved to Florida-- because, as he told them, he needed to use their basement to stockpile weapons and body armor so that he could become a mass shooter!! So, what happened? The grandparents fled, called 911, and the cops came to the home, where Aldrich threatened to blow up the building, a standoff which he livestreamed on Facebook. The neighborhood was evacuated, and guns and bomb making materials were found on the premises. Charges were mysteriously "dropped," and the Republican El Paso County Sheriff refused to confiscate the guns-- in violation of Colorado's red flag laws. The grandparents moved to Florida. Mom hired a lawyer, and there was, apparently, no further intervention by law enforcement. The details are sealed. Club Q shooting: Dropped 2021 case foretold bloodbath (denverpost.com)

John, I'd, certainly, like to understand that history better. For example, have the Protestants in Northern Ireland been aligned with the Brits, or with their fellow Catholic Irishmen in Northern Ireland against British rule? For some reason, I thought the Orange Protestant sectarians in the North were aligned with the British against the Catholics. When my wife and I traveled from Dublin to Belfast in September of 1990, there was a bomb threat against our train. I assumed it was made by the IRA, but I didn't really understand the whys and wherefores-- especially since we were traveling through Ireland proper for most of that trek.

John, I think I understand what you're getting at, although Irish history is not my forte. When I was a medical student in Boston circa 1980, my housemates and I had two young women from Ireland living at our house for several months, (one of whom later married my housemate.) They were "illegal aliens" and refugees from the civil war and violence in Northern Ireland. I used to ask them to read Yeats' poems to me so that I could hear the verses recited with proper Irish accents. By the way, Boston is a very Irish city. I may have misperceived U2's songs from that era as lamentations about the sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. And I don't really understand the historic relationship between the IRA and the sectarian violence at that time. Obviously, the IRA was fighting against British rule, but were they also aligned with Irish Catholics against Irish Protestants in the North?

New Documents Shed Light on CIA's Connection to Lee Harvey Oswald (newsweek.com)

Bob, For the record, I agree with your comments about the staying on topic here. Just to clarify, I didn't bring up the topic of the Shroud. I merely responded to scientifically inaccurate comments about the Shroud by Pat Speer and Miles Massicotte. I studied the scientific and historic data on the Shroud in considerable detail about 30 years ago, and even met with Air Force Academy physicist John Jackson at the time, who led the 1978 Shroud of Turin University Research Project (STURP.). Jackson is sort of the James DiEugenio of Shroud research-- a scientist and walking encyclopedia. I probably should have said nothing, but I deplore ignorance and public misperceptions.

Miles, Your post is bunk. You, obviously, need to do some remedial reading on the subject of the remarkable scientific phenomenology of the Shroud of Turin. Nor do you understand the perceptual impact of your own positivistic assumptions. I should know. I've been there and done that in my younger years. What's interesting about your profound ignorance on this subject is that, in modern culture, we tend to believe that confirmation biases only obtain in the case of religious believers. The truth is that atheists and agnostics have their own positivistic a priori beliefs and confirmation biases that may impair their ability to accurately perceive the scientific data. You cannot accurately perceive the scientific phenomenology of Shroud because you begin with the assumption that it is bunk-- i.e. that such a radiographic image could not possibly have been imprinted on a Hebrew burial shroud. Your perceptual problem is what St. Augustine was getting at when he wrote, in the 4th century, that "sometimes we need to believe in order to see." In terms of modern cognitive psychological theory, Augustine was correct. As for the 1988 carbon-dating, do you know anything about the fabric sample that was used? (It's not that the C14/C12 ratio wasn't measured accurately in the lab, it's that the sample used for the dating was part of the fabric used during the 16th century repair of the burned Shroud.) If the Shroud originated in the 13th century, how could the facial blood stains precisely match those on the Sudarium of Oviedo, brought to Spain in the early 7th century? Explain your "logic." And explain how the anatomically exact, reverse, 3-D image was imprinted on the cloth-- including microscopic details that are invisible to the naked eye. Back up your bunk. I'm all ears.

Well, Pat, I shouldn't hijack this thread to discuss the scientific phenomenology of the Shroud of Turin, but there is far, far more to the scientific story than you imagine-- including the issue of the carbon-dating, which has been widely misinterpreted by the mainstream media and the general public. There are a number of significant problems with the carbon-dating of the Shroud, including the fact that the Shroud was burned in a 16th century fire, and patched with fabric at the time. More significantly, people who have studied physics and human anatomy will recognize that the image on the Shroud is an exact micro- and macro-anatomical reverse, 3-D, radiographic image of a crucified man. No artist could have rendered such anatomic exactitude in a reverse, 3-D image. Nor could any artist have "forged" the micro-anatomical details that are scarcely visible to the naked eye-- including the back wounds from a three-pronged Roman flagrum. It was not painted, but "burned" onto the 1st century herring-bone fabric, causing a uniform discoloration of the micro-fibrils of the cloth. Forensic pollen analysis has shown pollen from the Jerusalem area, Syria, and Eastern Mediterranean, consistent with the history of the Shroud being stolen by Frankish Crusaders from the Blachernae Church at the Phanar during the sack of Constantinople in 1204 A.D. Facial blood stains on the Shroud are also an exact match with the facial blood stains on the Sudarium of Oviedo, which has been enshrined in a reliquary in Oviedo Spain since the early 7th century. So, no, the Shroud is not a "forgery" of any kind, not is it Medieval in origin. Former Air Force Academy physicist John Jackson has demonstrated quite convincingly that the anatomic image on the Shroud could only have been imprinted on the cloth by some unusual type of radiation emanating from the body of a crucified man. (PDF) John P. Jackson and the Shroud of Turin Research Project | Joe Marino - Academia.edu New test dates Shroud of Turin to era of Christ (usatoday.com) New test dates Shroud of Turin to era of Christ (usatoday.com)

Yes, Pat Speer's scientific ignorance is on full display here, Mathew. Did you ever visit physicist John Jackson at his Shroud of Turin Research Center in Colorado Springs? Interesting man. Most people know very little about the remarkable scientific phenomenology of the Shroud. Jackson led the STURP group of scientists who first analyzed the Shroud in 1978.

Yes, now we know why that lady who co-starred in the Elvis movie was hitting on Joe back in the day.