Benjamin Cole

24 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

My political views are simple: Trump was the worst President in US history. The election was not stolen. Tucker Carlson is a White Nationalist. And the foreign-owned Fox "News Network" is doing everything in its power to end American democracy and move to an authoritarian, fascist-type government. If you disagree with any of that, I'd love to hear why.

Matt A:

I welcome your views, even though they differ on some points from mine. I do not discourage you from posting your views here, or anywhere else. 

On "left-wing" vs "right-wing" re the JFKA, you are aware that Jacob Hornberger is a libertarian, which some regard as a right-wing philosophy, and major figure in the JFKA community? Many libertarians are migrating to the view that the Deep State is a dangerous apparition, and the signal manifestation of authoritarian government. 

Why the Democrats and left-wing are embracing the Deep State might be of concern to you. 

Trump the worst President in history? 

Depends on who you are. Presidents LBJ-Nixon authored the deaths of six million in SE Asia, and that is the only the beginning of the atrocities in the region. I would believe anyone in SE Asia who says LBJ and Nixon were inhuman. 

Bush Jr.'s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan sucked down $6 trillion and counting US dollars, destabilized the whole region, displaced millions and led directly to hundreds of thousands of deaths, maybe millions total. 

Trump? A loser, but not even in the same league. 

That's my view, and I understand not everyone agrees. 

I am heading out for the day. Back when work is done. 

22 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

Ben- don't you find it odd being a rabid right-winger on a message board about the Kennedy assassination?

Matt A-

Well...I am not a rabid right-winger. In fact, not even a un-rabid right-winger. 

Be careful when you assume....

Sheesh, I think government and lifestyle is probably better in socialized Germany than in the US. Great Britain's NHS seems to have handled COVID-19 better than the US hodge-podge. 

You confuse my distrust of the Deep State, and its relations with the modern Democratic Party, with being a "right winger." 

And let us be honest: If you watch a Tucker Carlson of Fox, you get support for a non-interventionist foreign policy that you do not find on CNN or MSNBC, or mainstream media. 

Sad to say, today's useful idiots are spread across the political spectrum, from the woke Democrats to old-school GOP'ers. The multinationals want that US military global guard service, and the two parties are willing to oblige. 

Note that I do not make any assumptions about your political views. I give you the benefit of the doubt that your views may be quite nuanced and knowledgeable, and may well differ from mine. 

The woke CIA is here! They hire "cisgendered" Latinas who exult in the glories of themselves and the CIA! 

What I think is really going on, is that the CIA-intel community is ginning up yet another reason for constant, ubiquitous US involvement everywhere. 

All through Asia, Africa and Latin America, one can criticize cultures and nations on women's issues. (Afghanistan is a narco state, btw). 

We see this now on Afghanistan, with US military leaders citing women's issues as a reason to stay in. (What happened to women and religious minorities in Iraq after Saddam went down is not a polite topic). 

So, woke multinationals will push the women's agenda globally, hand-in-hand with the US military-intel community. 

The left-wing is co-opted, and become useful idiots (already well underway in the US). 

BTW, this news outfit The Hill is pretty good. 

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Thanks Ben.  

 

BTW, your article is still highly rated at K and K.  Thanks.

Thanks, honored to be on one of the few sites where real history is a topic. 

7 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Swanson's book was pretty interesting I thought.

In this review, I supplement his data with Seth Jacobs and John Newman in order to give a full picture of what happened from 1947 to 1961. Many good parts e. g.  the whole episode of how Allen Dulles discovered Diem; just how idiotic American policy was in Laos; how the British really caused the French Indochina war; how the OSS liked Ho Chi Minh.  But he goes all the way back to the French invasion in the nineteenth century.   He tries to answer the question: What the heck was America doing in Vietnam?  He says that contrary to popular belief, it was not about the Domino Theory. 

https://kennedysandking.com/reviews/why-the-vietnam-war-by-michael-swanson

Great book review. 

About six million SE Asians were killed after the US became involved in Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia.  Let alone other atrocities to numerous to even list. 

For what? 

In a cruel irony, the Vietnamese have for centuries resented Han hegemony. Even Guangxi province, to the immediate north of Vietnam, is regarded as an autonomous zone of China, as they resent Han domination also. 

From Smedley Butler to JFK to the present day, the multinationals-globalists-militarists have become more powerful, and more aligned with a powerful surveillance state. 

Good luck, everybody.

8 hours ago, Mark Tyler said:

I was recently reading a forum post where a lone nut believer was teasing conspiracy believers that there was no grand unified conspiracy theory about what happened in Dealey Plaza.  It occurred to me that the lone nut side of the debate is just as split, but regarding when the so-called missed shot was fired.  Although most believe it was fired a few seconds (or more) before the single bullet theory shot circa Z220, they can't agree on exactly when.  Was it Z150, Z166, or even before Zapruder started his camera?  There is no consensus.  Even the Warren Commission back in 1964 didn't know when the missed shot was fired, and they correctly mentioned that various witnesses identified a shot being fired in more than one place other than the Z210 & Z313 shots:

• Before Z210.
• Between Z210 and Z313.
• After Z313.

Overall I think most lone nut theories are wrong because I can find no persuasive evidence that there was a shot fired before Z170, and clear witness evidence of a late shot or shots after Z313 is disregarded without reason (cherry-picking!).  I also think most conspiracy theories about Dealey Plaza are wrong because they are far too complicated to be plausible.  Sadly, I cannot explain what really happened in Dealey Plaza so I conclude that the crime is unsolved and unexplained.  The best I have been able to do is reduce things down to a gunshot pattern that is consistent with the photos, films, and the majority of early witness statements:

• There were 3 bursts of noisy gunfire (no witnesses heard a fourth burst, although some only heard two).
• Burst 1 was fired Z180-Z230 and contained one or two audible shots.
• Burst 2 was fired Z280-Z330 and contained one or two audible shots.
• Burst 3 was fired Z360-Z400 and contained one or two audible shots.

My current thinking is that Z180-Z230 contained two shots because of the massive disturbance Z190-Z210 which blurs the Z-film (the first gunshot must have really startled Zapruder), but the victims don't react until Z225 and I don't think such serious wounds would have a 2 second delay before a reaction (unless they first reacted behind the sign?).

I'm quite interested to hear what forum members think in terms of the shot sequence they think happened in 1963, and what evidence they use to support their ideas (including how they debunk competing theories).

Lone nut believers - exactly when was the missed shot fired?  What really happened Z180-Z220 before the victims started reacting, and what red herring led me astray in my above scenario?

Conspiracy believers - how many shots were fired, and approximately when relative to the Z-film frame numbers?

As mentioned by others, you have some confusing possibilities.

1. A relatively quiet weapon. 

2. The speed of sound is ~1,125 feet per second. To state the obvious, if a witness is ~140 feet from one weapon, but ~280 feet from a second weapon,  and the first weapon is fired ~1/8th of second after the second weapon, the witness will honestly hear one shot. 

3. Echoes.

4. What is interesting is that some witnesses right outside the TSBD, standing side-by-side by others, heard shots from the Grassy Knoll area, while others thought the shots came from above. 

For me, the key has been that so many witnesses (including veterans and cops) smelled telltale gunsmoke in the Dealey Plaza, down by the Grassy Knoll, in the immediate aftermath of the JFKA. Ergo, there was gunfire in the immediate region. 

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Speaking of these frames, does anyone have a good digital copy of the Zapruder film?

 

Not sure what you mean by "digitized" since I thought anything online was essentially digitized. But new-fangled technology is not my forte. 

This is a frame-by-frame layout: 

https://www.assassinationresearch.com/v2n2/zfilm/zframe290.html

This takes you to Z-290, but scroll down and you have all the frames. 

Somewhere out on the internet-Youtube is a Z-film that has been stabilized with John Connally in the center.  I could kick myself for losing the link. If any readers know what I am referring to....

Watching this version of the Z-film, you see (more clearly) that Connally turns around and looks for JFK, after JFK appears to have been shot in the neck.  Connally certainly appears uninjured after the first shot hit JFK, which is course how Connally and his wife recounted the situation. 

14 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

BC, some thoughts.

In her time living with Lee in Minsk, did Marina ever testify that he exhibited or even talked about the extreme political views ( including aggressive and even killing behavior ) he talked to her about after they moved back here to the states? 

Marina testified that Lee told her about his attempt to kill Walker. He talked about hijacking a plane to fly he and Marina to Cuba. She said she had to lock him in the bathroom to prevent him from going to see Nixon and taking his revolver.

Seriously suggesting hijacking planes and shooting people?

These are the most violent thoughts and suggestions on Oswald's part. Marina described them as crazy talk. It shocked and scared her.

Marina must have thought she was living with an unstable madman, and that she and her daughter could get caught up in the most dire circumstances themselves if Lee kept talking about and doing these most violent and risky things.

My question though is this:

In all their time together in Minsk, did Marina ever say that Oswald talked and acted differently there than he did in their last year in NO and Dallas/Irving/Oak Cliff?

Where Lee said and did things here in the states that were so aggressively political and extreme. His activity in New Orleans, his Walker scheme, his Nixon thing, his hijacking suggestion, his trip to Mexico.

Did Marina get any inkling as to Lee's super extreme political and even violent personal comments ( crazy talk ) thoughts and behavior that he exhibited here in the states when she lived with him back in Minsk?

Or, did Lee just change when he got here?

I think even WC backers concede Marina was an unreliable witness in the wake of the JFKA, and that is putting it mildly. One could not blame her for losing her marbles and saying whatever she thought would please her handlers. 

12 hours ago, Robert Burrows said:

Of course there's a third possibility: Marina was lying about some, or all, of these incidents. 

I think even WC backers concede Marina was an unreliable witness in the wake of the JFKA, and that is putting it mildly. One could not blame her for losing her marbles and saying whatever she thought would please her handlers. 

6 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

So a intend serious thread is denigrated to bashing short people.  I had a short friend once.

 

 

Great song. No, I am not denigrating short people. Those two people in the Denny Z photo look tiny. Like HO scale figures. Something about the photo....maybe a wide angle lens effect? 

I watched the "Killing Oswald" film over the last two night. Short-hand, I give it a "B." 

I will prepare a review in the next week or so. If anyone wants to jot down some comments here for my consideration, have at it. 

56 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

Friendly advice- don't pretend there is an equivalence between nude protests at Parliament and 1/6 if you want to be taken seriously when discussing history and politics...

If there are young women at these nude protests, I think you should provide a photo, as evidence. 

41 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

The WaPo film clips clearly show Brian Sicknick being sprayed with a chemical, then retreating in distress.

Also, I don't want to unfairly impugn Diaz's reputation, but, as a graduate of the top-rated medical school in the U.S., I'm underwhelmed by his C.V.  He's a graduate of a foreign medical school in the D.R. who did a residency in Detroit.

I remain skeptical of Diaz's conclusion that Sicknick's death was unrelated to the January 6th attack.

What potential chemical toxins were screened for at autopsy?  Why the 100 day delay in releasing his findings?

 

I looked at some clips on MSNBC and PBS of tussles between police and protestors, and I do not see Sicknick. There is one clip, that looks like him, after an event and behind the front lines, and he walks to a wall and rests briefly, appear to shake it off, and walks away. 

Are you able to link to a Youtube that shows an identifiable Sicknick being sprayed?

The Diaz autopsy or medical examination is not online, that I can find. I cannot answer any questions about the autopsy. 

Diaz, of course, is from the DR. He was not a US citizen who could not get into a US medical school, and went foreign. Diaz appears to have earned positions of increasing importance through his career.  

It would interesting to have a Cyril Wecht, or someone of that calibre, review the Diaz autopsy. 

My guess is Diaz, an administrator in a Democratic Party stronghold, did not want to release the autopsy as Sicknick was lying in state, and so on. If anything, the pressure on Diaz would be to find that Sicknick died heroically battling  rioters, preferably by a blow to the head. I am sure the Capitol Police wanted that version. 

Sure looks to me like Diaz did his job, kept as low as possible, and then released the results when it would cause less ripples. He played along as much as professional obligations would allow him. 

Probably, Diaz is deserving of admiration. The Democrats are the ruling party nationally, and in DC, and we live in extraordinarily polarized times.  Sicknick had been manufactured into a hero by the Democratic Party, laid to rest in the Rotunda. 

But Diaz did his job. 

That's my take. 

12 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

This was my view from behind the fence in 2010, arrow pointing to the x on the street.

Those two people to the right of the arrow---they look like they are three feet tall. But not shaped like midgets. 

11 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

Nobody says he was totally uninvolved. No one. Why do you think the only options are him in the snipers nest or him being a 100% innocent bystander?

In your scenario he was a professional part of a professional fake flag operation. Why wasn't he in place on the sixth floor at 12:25, the time when Kennedy's car was supposed to pass?

In your scenario, in five minutes he ran up five flights of stairs, ran the entire diagonal length of the sixth floor from the nw corner to the se corner through a maze of boxes, grabbed a rifle of some sort, and fired at the last few possible seconds. That's what he has to do in five minutes.

And then in the next three minutes immediately following, he ran back the full diagonal length of the sixth floor through a maze of boxes, stashed the Mauser, then ran down five flights of creaky stairs, not seen or heard by others also descending at the time.

After all this, he was not sweating or out of breath.

It's just not humanly possible to do all that in that length of time, and not be noticeably sweating or out of breath, it simply isn't.

This isn't a matter of differing opinions and agreeing to disagree about a meaningless piece of trivia, this is about common sense and reality. No matter how young and in shape you are, you're still going to show some signs of exertion running up five flights of stairs, a maze twice, and down four flights all in one go. Olympic athletes are in the best possible physical condition, and even they display physical signs after strenuous exertions. Oswald might have been young, but he was no Olympian. How many years since basic training? Any witnesses say he was exercising regularly? These facts matter.

And we are not even mentioning:

- Lack of nitrates on his cheek.

- That he was not seen or heard by others descending those creaky stairs at the same time. If he was "practically going downhill" then he would be dropping his full body weight repeatedly on those stairs every flight. You know that, I know that, anyone who has ever descended a flight of stairs rapidly knows that.

- The natural stress that would also come along with the act of firing a rifle at the president of the United States.

Not only was he fitter than an Olympian, he was lighter than a feather, invisible, the world's greatest actor, and also had nerves of steel. A real pro, so why wasn't he in position at the time the target was passing?

Denny Z-

People have walked off the lengths and LHO (not LOH) had time to get to where he met Marion Baker. It was tight, but doable. 

Getting upstairs in five minutes is no big deal. Time yourself going up five flights of stairs sometime. 

https://www.studyfinds.org/heart-health-good-climb-four-flights-stairs-90-seconds/

This study suggests between 45 seconds and 90 seconds for four flights, and the latter group is slow. 

LHO was only fleetingly looked at when he was by the coke machine. He may have feigned calm, and no one took his pulse. Remember, LHO was a CIA asset, who got himself into the Soviet Union by faking a suicide attempt. He once slugged a Marine sargeant. Probably participated in a fake assassination attempt on General Walker. Passed out leaflets supporting Castro on the street of NO. He was in his line of work. 

The LHO cheek nitrates test was administered too late, and LHO may have washed his face in the interval.  Speaking of perspiration, too much face sweat can wash off the nitrates. Also, if LHO fired a single shot, or there was a flow of air from the window outwards, the amount of nitrates would have been less. Pat Speer addressed this issue at length, even getting into Guinn's super-duper nitrate tests...but by then the casts had been washed....I would not consider the cheek tests indicative of anything. 

But hey, maybe LHO was not in the sniper's nest. Maybe it was Eladio Del Valle. 

My best guess is that what happened on Nov. 22 was a fake false-flag assassination attempt, piggy-backed on by people who shot for real. This fits all the evidence we have. 

9 hours ago, Robert Burrows said:

Why do you abbreviate Lee Harvey Oswald as LOH? Just curious. 

A senior moment. OK, moments. OK, I sometimes forget what day of the week it is. BTW, what were we talking about? 

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Benjamin,

Here are the newly released WaPo/DOJ videos showing precisely where Sicknick was standing when he got sprayed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2021/sicknick-attack-video/

Behind a paywall...

On 2/16/2021 at 9:36 AM, Chris Barnard said:

 

I think one of the most frustrating things is that if you were to mention in social circles that you believe that 35th US President, John F. Kennedy was murdered as part of a conspiracy (ie a plot involving more than one person), that people will look at you as if you think the moon is made of cheese or, that you have a poster of David Icke or Alex Jones on your wall. That is a generalisation, society is certainly staggered in terms of peoples capacities to critically think and question conventional narratives. At least in my observations, there seem to be at least five types of people who seem to indulge in conspiracy theories. 

• There are low IQ, or limited education types who are incredibly impressionable and would believe just about anything that is in front of them, without questioning it, they are also the same type that nods slack-jawed, glassy-eyed when a president says anything at a rally. 
• Next, there are the resentful types that hate the government, because they don't drive a new Mercedes and live in Malibu, so they will spew anything that attacks anybody or anything linked to wealth, success or authority, as it makes them feel good. 
• Then you have the people with a decent level of education or life experience, who try to weigh things up and see what seems logical or probable based on their understanding of how things work or can work. I suspect that describes many of the people here. 
• Next are the people who could be any of the above who have the first-hand experience witnessing a conspiracy at play, no matter how big or small, they have experience of such a thing happening. That could be a fireman, lawyer, soldier, diplomat, journalist or even Lee Bowers working on the railroad.
• Lastly, you have highly intelligent people who are extremely well-read and who may have studied various fields, they have a strong understanding of domains such as psychology, history, political science and anything that would allow them to efficiently analyse scenarios in a logical and informed fashion. 

For anyone who really gets into the JFK evidence, there can only be one conclusion, and that's that there was more than one person involved and more than one shooter. But, how many people in the public domain just will not listen or even look at it, because of the stigma attached to such a belief? I am sure you've all experienced that when talking to friends, family, or even partners at times. It is very frustrating and when you make your clear case so that a toddler can understand it, they then change the subject or make a throw-away comment to devalue the truth they've just been told. Very few people like being wrong but, there is a much deeper reason why they are reluctant to accept even when your argument is compelling, logical and backed by evidence. The main reason is that they have trouble accepting is their trust for the mainstream media and google search results. 

Britain's use of propaganda during the Boer Wars and WW1 was so powerful as a tool, that governments began to mimic the tactics used in peacetime. Logically, why wouldn't you make use of something that is such an effective tool in persuading the masses to comply with a government directive. For those of you who don't know, Britain was telling its citizens that Kaiser Wilhelm II's German soldiers were taking babies and driving bayonets into them on their march through Europe. You can imagine the profound effect this had on the citizens of Britain and other nations, hearing this unimaginably reprehensible thing. The result was you had the allies understandably full of passion and raring to fight this evil sweeping Europe. The problem was; none of it was true about the bayonets and babies, it was an outright lie by the British, a deception. A young German soldier who was wounded in Ypres, Belgium, toward the end of WW1, recovered and when the war was over, began to study the British propaganda campaign during WW1 very carefully. That young man was Adolph Hitler, the effectiveness of the Third Reich's use of propaganda under a man called Joseph Goebbels. led to disastrous consequences. They used a series of lies to agitate passions amongst the German people during a very depressing time for the German economy, suggesting the Jews were responsible for many of the country's misfortunes. Anti-semitism turned into people wearing badges, working as slaves and genocide. In the Soviet Union under Stalin and various propaganda chiefs (Suslov, Shepilov etc) we saw an equally effective use of propaganda which resulted in mass murder in numbers never seen before on the planet, intellectuals executed, networks of forced labour camps (The Gulag Archipelago) where innocent farmers were dehumanised, in what is now the Ukraine, who earned just a little bit more than other people were brutally raped & murdered. Because they were murdered, there was nobody to produce the food and an estimated 10,000,000 starved to death. China adopted similar methods and all told in the 20th-century experts state the number between 50,000,000 and 100,000,000 were dead as a result. There are lots of lessons to be learnt in that period but, propaganda was the tool to achieve it all. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda

It may seem I have sidetracked there but, it seems what is fundamentally not understood by most of the public is how powerful propaganda is as a means of persuasion. The former paragraph is ample evidence that people can be made to do just about anything. It is also evidence that human beings have a natural proclivity to conform to authority. If we think the Germans during WWII were all made to do the reprehensible things they did by force, we're wrong, some were but, it's overwhelmingly the case that most people just conformed to propaganda and the words of authority. This correlates to the conspiracy theory argument. If a human being told repeatedly, for days, weeks, months and years that something is so, it becomes truth to that person in most cases. In the same way if you repeatedly receive ads about a certain product with positive language, a lot of people will end up buying it. That is a tried and tested formula, that plays out in many forms but, works very effectively. Ideas and products are sold to the public in the same ways. 

As a population, most of us trust the government and the news. We may disagree with some things but, many things we might be on the same page. The human mind trusting news networks or governments is down to several variables but, ultimately as a voter or reader we must subscribe to the concept that government is doing us good, that it is in the interests of humanity, compassion and Judeau-Christian values. If a news network persistently runs stories about kindness, compassion and improving things for everyone, and exposing injustice we are likely to trust them, as it fits our values. When that same network tells us Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK and acted alone, we think, why would they lie? When that same network tells us some middle eastern or African leader is a bad guy, and we need to help restore democracy in that country for the good of its people, the same again, we think; that sounds good, why would they lie? 

What if the public understood that the news networks were just a bunch of people like you or me, earning a lot of money, and sorted into a hierarchy. That hierarchy has the owners at the top, then an editor and so on. Instead of our concept that all journalists are like Lois Lane or an Erin Brokovich type character exposing truths and corruption. What if the reality at a news network like Fox or CNN is that the owners/editors dictate what is covered and how? It's them who have the decision if a story goes to press or how it is told, it is they who refuse a story or assign a journalist something else to cover. Not the idealistic young Vicky Vale. We know about the late 50's Dulles moles in the press like Ben Bradley, why would we assume that those 8 or so weren't the tip of the iceberg? Why were we assume that those numbers haven't multiplied exponentially? Someone would have talked? A Dorothy Kilgallen type perhaps? For those of you that buy into Fletcher Prouty explanation of assets being placed at high levels of the military-industrial complex or FBI, why wouldn't they do the same with the press, considering its power? The press carries an enormous amount of power, the people who carry that power are not elected to that position. There is enough public information available to see how media networks are funded, we don't even need to get into special handshakes at high-brow country clubs or anything too elaborate. Let me asks the sceptics, what if they turned a blind eye to high-level corruption and were being used as a piece of apparatus for private entities to make as much money as possible? This argument will vary depending on the country and the network, the BBC for example works almost like a counterpoint in the UK. At a glance they seem at loggerheads with the conservative party, in reality, the BBC assists policy. We never sit and think; hang on, the BBC is mostly funded by the state. But, if it was Russia or China we'd make a flippant remark about the people of those countries being under a spell or brainwashed, as the government owns the media. 

The subconscious plays a huge part in absorbing propaganda and shaping our thoughts. I sometimes wonder how much of part it plays in whether we accept a conspiracy theory or not. If you've just had 50 years of the words; freedom, liberty, & democracy drummed into your brains through government and media channels, as well as film, documentaries, TV & books, what chance do you have of believing the US government on some levels isn't virtuous? Perhaps the most staggering example is that a person can believe there was a conspiracy to kill JFK but, that a 9/11 conspiracy is inconceivable. One apparent thing is that people from both sides will never accept the opposing view, no matter how much evidence is in front of them. But, some people are not logical thinkers. Does patriotism and love for one's country play a part in preventing you from finding the truth? It almost certainly does. As does being at the epicentre of the propaganda, being a direct target of it. I would be more blind to any British related deception, which Americans might easily see. I might identify American government propaganda much more easily than an American person. Someone in the middle east might see both America and Britain with perfect clarity. Some will seem out of "left field" and they'll be some curveballs in there. We can judge them vs what the news networks and what our governments told us.

Let's take some popular conspiracy theories in relatively recent history and ask ourselves which are credible, probable or something deserved of a tin foil hat wearing loony. 

The Federal Reserve Creation & Fractional Reserve Banking 

The Iranian Coup - Mossadeq

The death of UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld 1961

The assassination of John F Kennedy 

The assassination of the Diem brothers 

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr 

The assassination of Robert F Kennedy 

Watergate & Nixon's resignation. 

Iran Contra

The Oklahoma City Bombing 

9/11

War in Afghanistan

War in Iraq II



To be honest, could look at many of the coups in South & Central America, many have been touched upon by researchers here. For a lot of this, you don't need to read authors embellishing, you can now read declassified papers from the government and see the evidence. Then we can get into the following:

Operation Paperclip

Project Bluebird & Artichoke

Project MK ULTRA, Midnight Climax

Operation Northwoods

Operation Mockingbird

etc etc 

All these are things that started as conspiracy theory or still are considered as so. We may as well consider some of the ones that get the worst reputation in the public domain. 

UFO's

Chemtrails 

Covid

Vaccines

Eugenics 

Fluoride in the water supply

Bayer Monsanto chemicals changing the sex of frogs

How many of the above are just plain absurd or ridiculous theories? How many have some truth in what is being alleged? How many have had their original context taken and distorted into something else? These are all questions we should ask ourselves before dismissing them. Of the ones above that are true or have some truth in them, they would all need the complicity or apathy of the media to succeed without a pubic outcry. 

It's all very well me pointing to significant world events, but, many JFK researchers here have also come across this on more of a macro level. How many of us have seen character assassinations? Is Jim Garrison the most famous? Or JFK himself? Or the many people that spoke out in the direct aftermath of the assassination, up until the present day. Mainstream media plays a huge role in facilitating that, and as pointed out above, they are trusted by most of the public and they have the loudest voice. It simply is not possible to destroy the reputations of upstanding citizens without the use of media tools, that's the only way you convince the public. Should I add Sprague to the list? Or Gaeton Fonzi? Or even Oliver Stone, who was on top of the world after Platoon and a pariah even before the launch of JFK the film. I am sure many of you are astute enough to identify people with axes to grind in your everyday lives, why don't you see it when it comes from the media? If we take away the Republican/Democrat bias here and look at a conspiracy theory that hit the headlines in late 2019, (which should be free of that political bias). What are your thoughts on Jeffrey Epstein and how the mainstream media has covered the case? Is that good investigative reporting? Is it honest reporting? Was the president and the former president, WBC investigated enough? Were the answers satisfying in terms of what he'd been up to and with who? Were the circumstances of his death satisfying in terms of having answers? It's taxpayers money that paid for the investigation. It was a sham. 

Another topic relating to the media is the acceptance of 'coincidences' or ' incompetence' as a determining narrative to explain something that looks deliberate, suspicious or corrupt. We hear phrases like; "coincidences happen" or "we are all human" to explain away something that looks entirely improbable. Of all the very talented, highly educated reporters, not one of them seems to understand mathematical odds or probability. Similarly, of all these exceedingly smart media people, nobody seems to understand the concept that if you are someone who has a degree from a first-rate institution, and you have climbed your way to the top of society, that you are a very competent human being, often in multiple domains. The world is so competitive, you have to be. When people at that level make a series of catastrophic errors that costs the taxpayer a fortune, you should be raising your eyebrows. The ones who raise their eyebrows now, are the "conspiracy theorists". That, in a roundabout way, has created an environment of soft-censorship. Nobody dare speak up about what they are seeing. That is a chief complaint we see on the forum, if you question a president's motives for going to war, you're a conspiracy theorist. 

In the past year, we've seen press agencies and politicians reportedly warn of the dangers of conspiracy theories, there has been a concerted effort. That will now look justified after the attack on the US Capitol. But, the cost to us all is free speech. On top of that, we have big tech zealously censoring the public, removing channels, content, comments, and it's implied its because they are compassionate or woke. The MSM has openly supported social media and internet censorship, even the BBC suggesting we follow China on this. That kind of talk would be unheard of 20 years ago. What was one with the legal apparatus and framework prosecuting individuals for breaking laws? Did it work right? Yes. Now we have another unappointed, unelected body deciding what enters our thoughts daily. Young people are sometimes spending 5 hours+ on social media each day, the impact is profound on the human mind and tech companies are deciding what we are exposed to and what is hidden. Their algorithms will throw up what they think is best from a web search, their social media platforms will show you content based on their engineering. If you're thinking, who cares?! Just consider how that works in the run up to elections promoting candidates. I would highly recommend you have a look at how Cambridge Analytica did this in 2015/16. If you're writing articles about JFK conspiracy or any others, don't expect it to get seen. Those organisations have tremendous power. Others are more qualified than I who could perhaps shed light on the origins of some of these tech giants, leading back to DARPA/ARPA and the Pentagon. That's another conspiracy theory you may want to look at. 

Interestingly, since Covid began, the sales of "1984" by George Orwell (Eric Arthur Bair) have rocketed. Another author from that same ilk is Aldous Huxley who (he coincidentally died on the same day as JFK, along with CS Lewis), wrote "Brave New World". The two of them differed in their opinions on where the next big threat would come from and how, and the two books have been much debated by intellectuals. Huxley's book was released in 1931, but, in 1958 he released another version having changed his mind. In 1961 he felt that the next threat of totalitarianism or tyranny would not come overtly through force, but, through the subconscious, he said:

“There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will, in fact, have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGkymdspups&t=4s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

If you struggle with that concept of freedom being an illusion, this video makes you ponder your current situation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92GG5k6aUfs
 

If I look at Robert F Kennedy's "Ripples of Hope" speech in South Africa, Some of the warnings are so prescient, they so aptly describe what we are seeing now and so many of the mistakes made between 1966 and 2021. The reference regarding timidity rings particularly true in terms of the pubic apathy toward the loss of our rights, free speech and resistance to immoral things. 

"First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills – against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

"If Athens shall appear great to you," said Pericles, "consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty." That is the source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key to progress in our own time.

The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course if we must act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people across the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspiration and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs – that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities – no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hard-headed to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgement, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief; forces ultimately more powerful than all the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.

It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common heritage of a generation which has learned that while efficiency can lead to the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of Budapest, only the ideals of humanity and love can climb the hills of the Acropolis.

A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us "At the Olympic games it is not the finest or the strongest men who are crowned, but those who enter the lists. . .so too in the life of the honourable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort; the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty, but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged - will ultimately judge himself – on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

So we part, I to my country and you to remain. We are – if a man of forty can claim the privilege – fellow members of the world's largest younger generation. Each of us have our own work to do. I know at times you must feel very alone with your problems and with your difficulties. But I want to say how impressed I am with what you stand for and for the effort you are making; and I say this not just for myself, but men and women all over the world. And I hope you will often take heart from the knowledge that you are joined with your fellow young people in every land, they struggling with their problems and you with yours, but all joined in a common purpose; that, like the young people of my own country and of every country that I have visited, you are all in many ways more closely united to the brothers of your time than to the older generation in any of these nations; you are determined to build a better future. President Kennedy was speaking to the young people of America, but beyond them to young people everywhere, when he said "The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it – and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."

And, he added, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo_91HbhHTo 

 

President John F Kennedy said:

"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know."

https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-newspaper-publishers-association-19610427

That was taken from the 1961 speech to the American press, which was largely centred around the threat of the Soviet Union but, he makes it very clear about an internal threat in that passage. That speech was one week after the Bay of Pigs failure. He references that nobody should attempt to stifle the news, he probably had experienced that first hand.




I see most of the public are now like the toddler who falls over, and before crying, looks at his parents to see their reaction to see if they should cry or not. Society does that with the news. The human neurochemistry is being cheated by all manner of things, including the blue light emitted by your phones and computer screens, which induces the release of dopamine, a chemical associated with pleasure. That same chemical is released when we get likes on Facebook or Instagram, the more likes we get, the better we feel. It's no wonder people are running about virtue signalling to collect likes. It's no wonder there is so much attention-seeking behaviour in general. Our body is supposed to function on an effort vs reward system. If you complete a difficult task, you get a flood of dopamine in the brain. If you do exercise, you get serotonin release too, a chemical associated with feeling happy. Originally we needed those chemicals to motivate us to get out of our cave and go hunting to feed our family. What tech giants, food manufacturers, or any manufacturers of stimulants have tapped into, is that our neurochemistry can be hacked. You may say, oh that's great, people feeling happy or pleasure but, there is a big downside, depression and feeling low. Alcohol for an example is a depressant, initially, you get this flood of dopamine, you feel great and the next day you have never felt lower, emotions all over the place. We wonder why so many kids and teenagers are self-harming now, it's because they are tracking their social status on Facebook, Instagram etc and they feel incredibly low when they can't get the 'likes' or engagement. The government knows the reason for this, as do psychologists, as do the media, as do tech companies, as do those marketing and selling products. When I read the words of Huxley above, I see another facet of this manipulation of society. If we are a democracy, which means "rule by the people, for the people", then why are government, big tech, and the mainstream media doing this directly to the detriment of the many and only benefitting the few? We can say it's just capitalism, the best system so far but, it is not democracy. If we have our thoughts shaped by news sites, academia, film, tv, documentaries, social media ads and books, to our detriment, is that democracy or something dystopian? 


To me, the question is not whether the mainstream media and government are deliberately complicit in suppressing conspiracies, the question is; to what extent are they doing it? 

Great stuff, Chris. Not a dull moment. I am in agreement. 

Though I get some flak for it, I repeat:

One reason to study the JFKA in depth is to understand how government, media and commerce work together---in the present day, more so than ever, due to the internet, and the scale of the multinationals. 

1 minute ago, Denny Zartman said:

This was my view from behind the fence in 2010, arrow pointing to the x on the street.

Denny Z--

Great picture. Thanks for posting. There is the x. So, it appears the concrete wall would present a problem, until the limo emerged from behind it. 

Funny how small those people in your photo look, to the right of the red arrow. They look shorter than the red sedan going down the road, like people in a H0-scale railroad display. 

1 minute ago, Denny Zartman said:

Benjamin, why do you persist in believing Oswald was on the sixth floor shooting?

Oswald was seen on the first floor at 12:25 and on the second floor at 12:32, and he was not sweating or out of breath. That's just not possible. Do the facts not matter to you at all?

Denny Z-

OK we just have a different take on this one. No biggie.

LOH was a young man, former Marine. It was cool day in Dallas (note people wearing coats). 

Surely, LOH could ascend the floors to the sixth floor in a few minutes. As for coming down---sheesh, when you are 24, going down a flight of stairs is nothing. It is literally downhill. 

As for the 12:25 sighting of LOH...is that a hard time, or could be off a minute or two? The 12:32 time is solid, but the 12:25 time is witness testimony. People do not monitor each other by the minute. 

But, you could be right. It may be LOH agreed to be the patsy in a false-flag fake assassination attempt, and then edged to a place where he could make a quick getaway. Someone else (Eladio Del Valle?) was to take to fake shot at the President, and then run down the back stairs and get out. The plan was for the rifle to be traced to LOH, but by then he would be long-gone. But Del Valle shot in earnest as did another gunman, and possibly someone from the Grassy Knoll.

The problem with LOH being totally uninvolved and a patsy is his CIA background, and his going home to get his gun, by taxi too. He knew he had been set up. How could LOH know he had been set up if he was a mere box-boy doing his job? 

3 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

DOJ releases new videos showing Jan. 6 assault on Officer Brian Sicknick (msn.com)

And where is Sicknick? 

This seems like just the type of coverage I was pointing out.

I see there are, in fact, images of a protestor spraying something. Also the Capital Police appeared to have sprayed something.  

But where is Sicknick? 

The invisible man!

3 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

DOJ releases new videos showing Jan. 6 assault on Officer Brian Sicknick (msn.com)

Ron--

And where is Sicknic

1 hour ago, Matt Allison said:

Anytime someone suggests Trump "took on the deep state" I just laugh. That ship sailed the day Pompeo told him not to declassify the JFK files, and Trump just did what he was told.

Trump didn't take on jack sh*t.

There's the imaginary person people wanted him to be, and pretend he was, and then the cold hard reality of him being a fragile-ego'd incompetent dolt.

Pretending he was "taking on the deep state" was a ruse concocted by Roger Stone and it's pathetic how many suckers bought into it.

Thanks for reading. 

I concur that Trump should have released all the JFK files. 

I think a good case can be made the Deep State took on Trump, if not the other way around. 

But hey, different opinions we all have. 

46 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

A.  Shot to the throat, 22, over the wall.

B.  One of the head shots (right part of the picture), past the wall, from something bigger and a different shooter.

Food for thought?

More thoughts,  guns in a car trunk immediately.  Walk away, mingle, mix in.  Secret Service, DPD credentials

  

Those are great photos, thanks. 

1 hour ago, Chris Davidson said:

PhotoCredits: Greg Davidson(miss you brother)

 

Those are great photos, thanks. 

Certainly looks like a shot is possible from that section of fence, except possibly if the limo were behind the protruding corner of the wall. 

I have always wondered about the shot to the throat---do you posit it went through the windshield?

Also, I think I see the "X" on the pavement (right-hand photo), which supposed to line up with the fatal shot to JFK. This does suggest the shooter had to wait until the limo cleared the corner of the wall. 

12 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Respectfully, I dunno, Ron.  In the last seconds before JFK exited the plaza without a mortal wound, there may have been a "Free fire" order, or a call for shooters who hadn't fired many rounds to risk exposure and open up.  But I feel those last seconds were a frenzy to complete the mission, hence the "flurry" of shots that Kellerman reported.  Shots fired in the last few seconds of an an ambush that was only seconds long in total would seem synchronized.  I'd imagine that every shooter was tracking the head and ready in the last seconds, and the spotters called in the "flurry" they'd been trying to avoid until those seconds arrived.

I roughly agree.

Even if the shooters had walkie-talkies, they cannot simultaneously shoot (well, depending on your definition of "simultaneous," but generally speaking). Human reaction time, sighting in, and so on.

My guess is LOH (the patsy, he believed he was in a false-flag fake assassination attempt) fired one shot as an intentional miss (possibly the Tague shot), and that was the signal to others to fire away. 

The other shooters may have almost simultaneously fired as a result. 

BTW, if there was a Grassy Knoll shooter, he could not fire on the limo until it cleared one of the walls around the colonnade (to the left of the Grassy Knoll-picket fence), and the parapet, pedestal upon which Zapruder stood.  That is, the wall obscured the view of the limo. 

There is, of course, endless controversy whether JFK was shot from the front. My guess is the Grassy Knoll shooter was a decoy, or diversion, and it worked. The Grassy Knoll shooter (with Secret Service credential) covertly fired an intentionally smoky round from a snubnose .38. Snubnose are loud, and issue a lot of smoke-muzzle blast especially if the right ammo is chosen. That explains why so many people smelled gunsmoke in Dealey Plaza in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. 

My guess is the true assassins fired from behind, with near simultaneous strikes, and one miss that hit Connally. 

Interestingly, before they were put under control, the JFK autopsy-ists speculated there had been two shots to the rear of JFK's head. Thereafter, the wound on JFK rear head wanders up and down by a few inches, depending on which report you read. 

9 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Benjamin,

      The conclusion that Sicknick died of mere "natural causes" unrelated to the mob attack is improbable on two counts-- 1) the low probability (p1) of a fatal basilar stroke in a man of his age, and 2) the coincidental timing (p2) shortly after the assault.  So we get p1 x p2-- a very low number.

      Another unknown is the nature of the toxins.  What exactly were these rioters spraying at the cops out there?  I saw a recent story about a January 6th rioter who was spraying the police with some kind of aerosol wasp killer.

      What toxins were screened for at autopsy?  What are the elimination half-lives of possible toxins used by the mob?

      Was Sicknick sprayed with something that caused a fatal hypertensive crisis or cardiac arrhythmia (resulting in basilar ischemia?) 

      As for Glenn Greenwald, my impression is that he sold out to Rupert Murdoch.  I know that he had a falling out with the guys at The Intercept-- including such esteemed investigative journalists as James Risen and Jeremy Scahill.