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Why Jeremy Bojczuk is wrong about the Harvey & Lee theory and Lifton's body alteration theory.


Sandy Larsen

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In another thread, I wrote the following:

"Most researchers believe that contradictory evidence should be explained. That is what the H&L and body alteration theories attempt to do. And unless more likely theories are produced, people will (and should) continue considering those theories as real possibilities."

To this, Jeremy Bojczuk replied:

"The problem with far-fetched tin-foil-hat theories like the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense and Lifton's body-alteration nonsense is that the explanations they provide are implausible."

And in fact, Jeremy reminds us regularly that we shouldn't be wasting our time studying or believing the H&L theory because it is "implausible. "

Well if that is the case, then we also shouldn't be here wasting our time studying or believing in a massive government cover-up of the JFK assassination. Because as implausible as the H&L and body alteration theories are, the massive government cover-up theory is even more so! Consider the number of people who would have been involved but who never talked; the scrutiny of a major investigation; the release of millions of documents; and still no smoking gun after 57 years of conspiracy theorists studying the case.

Using Jeremy's criterion, the government cover-up theory is nothing but a "far-fetched tin-foil-hat theory like the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense."

Jeremy went on to say:

"If there are reasonable, everyday explanations for inconsistencies in the evidence, it's irrational to use far-fetched  explanations such as long-term doppelganger schemes or presidential body-snatching squads."

Given how implausible the government cover-up theory is, Jeremy says that we should instead use everyday explanations for inconsistencies in the assassination evidence. For example, rather than thinking two shooters were required to account for all the wounds in Kennedy and Connally, we should consider a single bullet hitting both to explain all that damage. (Thank you Arlen Specter.)

Of course, I don't believe any of this or any of Jeremy's nonsense. He is only showing his bias for what he considers to be far-fetched. I'll bet that he would dismiss a number of well-known and documented government plots and activities if they weren't so widely accepted as fact. For example, Operation Northwoods (where the CIA would be tasked with terrorist attacks against American civilians) and Project MKUltra (where the CIA secretly experimented with LSD on unwitting American civilians).

 

And so, Jeremy Bojczuk is indeed wrong about the Harvey & Lee and Lifton's body alteration theories.

 

P.S. There are some problems with both the H&L and body alteration theories. But rather than throw the theories out because of this (which is what Jeremy would do), it makes a lot more sense to first try and fix the problems. That is what I do.

 

Edited by Sandy Larsen
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Sandy Larsen writes:

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we also shouldn't be here wasting our time studying or believing in a massive government coverup of the JFK assassination. Because as implausible as the H&L and body alteration theories are, the massive government coverup theory is even more so!

What? The "massive government coverup" isn't implausible at all. Political cover-ups happen all the time. There is plenty of evidence that a cover-up happened in the JFK assassination. There are plausible explanations for the behaviour of the people involved in that cover-up.

Body-alteration schemes and long-term doppelganger schemes, on the other hand, do not happen all the time. There is no serious evidence for either of them that does not have an alternative, more plausible, explanation.

More importantly, both the body-alteration nonsense and the long-term doppelganger nonsense contain internal contradictions, as I pointed out in the thread which seems to have prompted Sandy's outburst (http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26441-dieugenio-cranor-and-the-mole-my-mole-33120/). Let's look at each in turn.

According to David Lifton's body-alteration theory, the wounds in the rear of JFK's head and torso were manufactured in order to implicate Oswald as the lone gunman firing from the sixth floor. But that can't be true, because the pathologists' location of the wounds, when combined with other, uncontroversial evidence, showed that the wounds were too low to implicate a sixth-floor gunman, whether Oswald or anyone else.

Lifton also claimed that all the shots were fired from the front. But that can't be true either, because we know that a bullet struck Governor Connally in his back and came out of his chest. As we discovered on the thread I mentioned, Lifton seems to think that Connally's wounds were manufactured too.

According to John Armstrong's 'Harvey and Lee' theory, the long-term doppelganger scheme required the defector to be a native speaker of Russian so that he could understand the language that was being spoken around him when he defected a decade or so after the scheme had been set up. But that can't be true, because you don't need to be a native speaker of a language in order to understand that language.

The hypothetical long-term doppelganger scheme was unnecessary, as I explained in these two comments:

- http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26571-oswalds-language-abilities-and-evidence-related-to-his-soviet-soujourn-1959-63/?do=findComment&comment=427301

- http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26441-dieugenio-cranor-and-the-mole-my-mole-33120/?do=findComment&comment=428197

Since JFK's wounds did not do what Lifton's theory claimed they did, the theory is internally inconsistent. Since Armstrong's theory required the doppelganger to be a native speaker of Russian in order to perform a task which did not require him to be a native speaker of Russian, that theory too is internally inconsistent. If a theory is internally inconsistent, it cannot offer a correct explanation, and should be discarded.

The "government coverup" which prevented an honest investigation of the assassination:

(a) was perfectly plausible, since cover-ups are a common feature of the political world; and

(b) made sense on its own terms, since there are obvious institutional reasons to explain why it was done.

Sandy's theories, on the other hand:

(a) were implausible, since presidential body-alteration schemes and long-term doppelganger schemes are not common features of the known world; and

(b) did not make sense on their own terms, since the wounds were put in the wrong places and the defecting doppelganger did not need to be a native speaker of Russian.

Quote

There are some problems with both the H&L and body alteration theories. But rather than throw the theories out because of this (which is what Jeremy would do), it makes a lot more sense to first try and fix the problems. That is what I do.

As I've pointed out, there's more than enough reason already to discard both of these far-fetched theories. If Sandy wants to try to rescue them, that's fine with me. He could start by returning to the unanswered question which seems to have generated this thread, and explain why the 'Harvey and Lee' theory required its defecting doppelganger to be a native speaker of Russian in order to perform a task which did not require him to be a native speaker of Russian.

Sandy is to be commended for admitting that those far-fetched theories have problems. I don't recall Jim Hargrove ever admitting to such a heretical notion. Perhaps Jim could try to restore his credibility by answering the reasonable question posed by Mark Stevens here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26571-oswalds-language-abilities-and-evidence-related-to-his-soviet-soujourn-1959-63/?do=findComment&comment=427419

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1 hour ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

The "massive government coverup" isn't implausible at all.

 

Name one other instance of a head-of-state assassination in modern times where the government successfully covered up what really happened.

If you could do that, you'd be able to use it to show that successful, large, government cover-ups are plausible. But you can't do it, so I maintain that the JFKA government coverup is implausible -- more so than the H&L story because it required a lot more people to cooperate and keep a secret than the H&L affairs did.

 

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Political cover-ups happen all the time.

 

Oh really? How do you know that?

I'll tell you how: Because those cover-ups failed. And you are trying to use failed cover-ups to show that a successful cover-up is plausible.

 

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There is plenty of evidence that a cover-up happened in the JFK assassination.

 

Yes, there is. Just as there is plenty of evidence that there were two boy LHOs.

 

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There are plausible explanations for the behaviour of the people involved in that cover-up.

 

Yes, there are. Just as there are plausible explanations for the behavior of the people involved in the H&L story. 

 

Edited by Sandy Larsen
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1 hour ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

[Sandy] could start by returning to the unanswered question .... and explain why the 'Harvey and Lee' theory required its defecting doppelganger to be a native speaker of Russian in order to perform a task which did not require him to be a native speaker of Russian.

 

I answered that question with a reasonable hypothesis weeks ago. Jeremy Bojczuk acknowledged seeing my response. And yet he continues to claim that this question has gone unanswered. For that reason I refuse to answer any more of his questions.

 

Edited by Sandy Larsen
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5 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

According to John Armstrong's 'Harvey and Lee' theory, the long-term doppelganger scheme required the defector to be a native speaker of Russian so that he could understand the language that was being spoken around him when he defected a decade or so after the scheme had been set up. But that can't be true, because you don't need to be a native speaker of a language in order to understand that language.

Utter nonsense.  The H&L analysis doesn’t require anything like the above; the Oswald Project only required a false defector who secretly understood the Russian language. The theory that the Russian-speaking Oswald learned the Russian language as a child arose through a process of elimination.  There has never been evidence that he was given instruction, openly or secretly, in that language, and John A. interviewed a number of Marines who indicated Classic Oswald® simply wasn’t in a Russian language program prior to the fall of 1958, when the Russian-speaking Oswald suddenly became known as “Oswaldovitch” in MACS 9 at the small Marine Corps facility in Santa Ana, CA.

Serving with the Russian-speaking Oswald in MACS 9,  Sergeant Erwin Lewis said,  "It was a matter of common knowledge that Oswald could read, write, and speak Russian.”

Lewis.jpg


Time and time again, Mr. Bojczuk misrepresents H&L and then analyzes what’s wrong with his own mischaracterization.  

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I wrote:

Quote

According to John Armstrong's 'Harvey and Lee' theory, the long-term doppelganger scheme required the defector to be a native speaker of Russian so that he could understand the language that was being spoken around him when he defected a decade or so after the scheme had been set up.

Jim Hargrove disagreed:

Quote

Utter nonsense.  The H&L analysis doesn’t require anything like the above; the Oswald Project only required a false defector who secretly understood the Russian language.

But in another thread, I asked for clarification on this point of doctrine, and Sandy confirmed that "John Armstrong's H&L theory states that Oswald was a native Russian speaker." (The emphasis was Sandy's.)

So what is the accepted wisdom? Was the defecting doppelganger a native speaker of Russian or not? Either way, there's a problem for the 'Harvey and Lee' faithful:

- If the doppelganger was a native speaker of Russian, why was this necessary if his task was to understand the people around him who were speaking Russian? You don't need to be a native speaker to do this.

- If the doppelganger was not a native speaker of Russian, why was the long-term doppelganger scheme necessary? You don't need such a scheme in order to send to the Soviet Union a false defector who understood spoken Russian.

Whether the defecting doppelganger was a native speaker of Russian or not, the long-term doppelganger scheme was redundant. The masterminds behind the scheme needn't have bothered recruiting two Oswald doppelgangers, two Marguerite doppelgangers, and all the background staff required to make the scheme work. They needn't have spent a decade and who knows how much money keeping this unnecessary show running.

All the masterminds needed to do was recruit one American with a talent for languages. There were 2.5 million American servicemen active at the time of the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald's defection, of whom 175,000 were Marines. There must have been any number of candidates who were capable of learning sufficient Russian for the task.

Not only that, but the chosen candidate would have had a genuine American background, thereby eliminating the need for the defecting doppelganger to fake the identity of the non-defecting doppelganger, and causing another requirement of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory to go up in smoke.

Once the 'Harvey and Lee' brains trust has finally agreed on whether its fictitious doppelganger was or was not a native speaker of Russian, perhaps it could get its collective heads together and decide on what, exactly, the point of the 'Harvey and Lee' double-doppelganger scheme was, and why it was necessary.

Edited by Jeremy Bojczuk
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45 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Once the 'Harvey and Lee' brains trust has finally agreed on whether its fictitious doppelganger was or was not a native speaker of Russian, perhaps it could get its collective heads together and decide on what, exactly, the point of the 'Harvey and Lee' double-doppelganger scheme was, and why it was necessary.

More nonsense from Bojczuk, who simply repeats the same talking point over and over.  Nature abhors a vacuum, and Bojczuk is incapable of offering an explanation for the overwhelming evidence that there were two men concurrently in the Marines named Lee Harvey Oswald.  One of the two men attempted a false defection during the Cold War.  I concur with Sandy that there is no point in writing answers to his questions.  His only purpose on this forum is to sow discord.

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1 hour ago, James Norwood said:

I concur with Sandy that there is no point in writing answers to his questions.  His only purpose on this forum is to sow discord.

About time.

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2 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:
Quote

Jim Hargrove said:
Utter nonsense.  The H&L analysis doesn’t require anything like the above; the Oswald Project only required a false defector who secretly understood the Russian language.

But in another thread, I asked for clarification on this point of doctrine, and Sandy confirmed that "John Armstrong's H&L theory states that Oswald was a native Russian speaker." (The emphasis was Sandy's.)

 

You said that the H&L theory requires a native Russian speaker.

Neither Jim nor I said anything about that being a requirement.

 

Edited by Sandy Larsen
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9 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

You said that the H&L theory requires a native Russian speaker.

Neither Jim nor I said anything about that being a requirement.

 

Now that I have corrected Jeremy's mischaracterization of what I said, I will have no further dialog with him. It's just a waste of time.

 

Edited by Sandy Larsen
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  • Sandy Larsen changed the title to Why Jeremy Bojczuk is wrong about the Harvey & Lee theory and Lifton's body alteration theory.

 

I had a computer glitch when writing the first post of this thread and had to reconstruct it from a text editor I was using. I just noticed that I didn't get the title right. I had it as:

Jeremy Bojczuk is wrong about the Harvey & Lee theory and Lifton's body alteration theory.

It was supposed to be:

Why Jeremy Bojczuk is wrong about the Harvey & Lee theory and Lifton's body alteration theory.

There is a subtle difference. Or maybe a big one?

Well anyway, to anybody kind enough to read my post, now you know why I wrote it.

 

Edited by Sandy Larsen
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6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Now that I have corrected Jeremy's mischaracterization of what I said, I will have no further dialog with him. It's just a waste of time.

But if we don't continually correct his mischaracterizations of H&L research, the bs may be repeated forever on the internet without correction!  Why should we let that happen?

Mr. Bojczuk will be back in a few hours posting about the mastoidectomy and falsely claiming that John A. is actually a “snake oil salesman.” He has posted this again and again and again and again and again and again in just the last year or so. Although he accuses me of being a spammer, he is actually the one who has made SCORES of nearly identical posts in the last year about the mastoidectomy.  Watch for it soon….

In the meantime, if anyone who happens to read this wants to see some SERIOUS JFK ASSASSINATION research, just click this link:

HarveyandLee.net

 

 

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Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

I refuse to answer any more of his questions ... I will have no further dialog with him. It's just a waste of time.

James Norwood concurs:

Quote

I concur with Sandy that there is no point in writing answers to his questions.

John Butler agrees:

Quote

About time.

We established several threads ago that none of you have answers to the points I've just raised.

When you started this thread, what were you expecting me to do? Were you expecting me not to raise those points again? Did you think I was going to wave my hands in the air, shout "Praise Armstrong!", and apply for my Harvey and Lee Fan Club membership cards (two per member, of course)?

James thinks that

Quote

His only purpose on this forum is to sow discord.

One of my interests in being here is to question nonsensical theories. I looks as though there aren't any answers to my questions about the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense. There was no long-term double-doppelganger scheme, and Lee Harvey Oswald was one person and not a pair of doppelgangers. I'm glad we've finally sorted that out. Does anyone have an answer to the points I made about Lifton's body-alteration nonsense?

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James Norwood writes:

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Bojczuk is incapable of offering an explanation for the overwhelming evidence that there were two men concurrently in the Marines named Lee Harvey Oswald.

What James means is that there is some evidence that can be interpreted in that way. As with every area of the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense, that evidence can also be interpreted in other, more plausible ways which do not require the existence of a far-fetched and internally incoherent long-term double-doppelganger scheme that was debunked two decades before the Harvey and Lee book was published.

Plenty of those alternative, more plausible explanations can be found here:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1588-harvey-lee-links-to-alternative-explanations

Others can be found here:

http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/f13-the-harvey-lee-evidence

James is a member of that forum, as far as I'm aware. He should try to argue his case there, and let us know how he gets on.

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