Wikipedia

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Richard Booth said:

On the Wikipedia entry for Sammy Davis Jr, it says that JFK would not allow Davis to perform at his inauguration because Davis was black and married to a white woman.

On the Wikipedia entry for John F. Kennedy, it says that JFK increased soldiers in Vietnam.

Wikipedia contributes to the posthumous assassination of JFK.

 

Same thing with the Joseph P Kennedy. 

Wiki- He was an anti-semite. 

Reality- he tried to get European Jews out of Germany, cognisant that an atrocity was about to take place. It was proposed that the USA take some

of them as their immigration quota. FDR: it’s not our problem.
 

One of the problems is society half a century ago being judged by today’s standards. We’d have all used racial slurs to refer to pals and foes alike. The Irish got a lot of that, just like the Jews, Italians, Hispanics etc. 
 

Wiki- He was a bootlegger

Reality- Rumours start years after his death, one Mafia guy being the source. No credible evidence thus far. Just a couple of unrelated Kennedy’s working out of the docks in NY. 
 

To me this is the establishment sullying reputations. The last thing they would want is the public craving idealists, advocates of peace or, a more even distribution of wealth. If the public look upon JFK that way, they’ll wonder why he died and follow the crumbs. Eventually having a different view of government. 

[Cliff Varnell]

On 4/16/2021 at 4:34 PM, Richard Booth said:

I think it's a little bit of both. The changes that have come with living in the information age have naturally progressed to produce young people accustomed to immediate gratification and at the same time our news media and sources of information have been subject to influence operations.

And this is different from American society in the 1950's -- how?

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The information age has also provided new ways to manufacture consensus that are probably more effective than the methods employed in the early days of MOCKINGBIRD. 

What consensus among the young would that be?

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I see Wikipedia and Google as both subject to censorship, and at once also heavily relied upon by young people as the arbiter of what is truth. Ask a young person how they would find something out and they would tell you to "research it."  Ask them what "research" is and they're likely to tell you they would "Google it" or "read the Wiki"

And you don't think a lot of young people have developed a healthy skepticism of what they read on Wikipedia?

The thing about kids today is they have ready access to more than seven decades of post -WW2 anti-establishment youth culture -- the Beats and the Jazz players in the 50's, LSD and anti-war in the 60's, punk rock in the 70's and hardcore punk rock in the 80's and 90's, woke hip hop from the 80's on.

I find boomer researchers far more brain washed than the kids I know.

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At the same time, we also find a great deal of bogus information and misinformation spread out among the fringe to such an extent that a person who actively seeks out countervailing narratives is incredibly likely to come across bogus information that misinforms them. Those forces who would seek to create bogus alternative narratives--or even controlled opposition--have had 60 years to perfect that art within the JFK assassination community: the mafia did it, Castro did it, the driver shot JFK, the three tramps are x/y/z. Whatever successes, sources and methods have proven a success on that subject are likely readily utilized and expanded upon to poison the well on other subjects.  

See LIFE Magazine Nov. 25, 1966 -- "A Matter of Reasonable Doubt"

https://www.originallifemagazines.com/product/life-magazine-november-25-1966/

There is no reasonable doubt about conspiracy.  The bullet holes in JFK's clothes are too low to associate with the throat wound, as Gaeton Fonzi established on June 28, 1966 when he confronted Arlen Specter with the clothing evidence and the author of the SBT suffered a nervous breakdown.

The LIFE Magazine article rehabilitated both Arlen Specter and the SBT while promoting Connally's Z-film conspiracy case.

The Big Lie is the parlor game -- "Answer the Question of Conspiracy"

Micro-analyzing the acoustics, the NAA, the provenance of CE399, the head wound/s and other lesser proofs keep this parlor game going,  even tho the researchers have the best intentions!

Edited April 21, 2021 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

On 4/16/2021 at 5:09 PM, Richard Booth said:

The censorship is also worrying to me, especially given how overt it has become in just the last two years.

Today, for example, Facebook began preventing people from sharing a story published by the New York Daily News. Admittedly, it was a rather dumb story that essentially excoriated one of the founders of Black Lives Matter for having a few luxurious houses. (Who cares? Good for her.) 

Facebook essentially arbitrarily applied one or more of their Community Standards to prevent sharing the story.

Should the State dictate such an arbitrary application of editorial discretion illegal?  It's a free speech issue -- the First Amendment guarantees I can post anything I want on a privately owned internet forum?

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Then we have last October when the New York Daily News broke the story on the Hunter Biden laptop. The NY Daily News was censored, then, too--people were prevented from sharing that story and Twitter even suspended the New York Daily News account for it. Again, misleading and arbitrary rules were cited as the reason for censoring the story. I believe that Twitter claimed the story was about "hacked materials", which was false. They later ended up having to apologize for inappropriately censoring the story based on a false premise, meanwhile, the media largely self-censored and refused to cover the story, while falsely asserting that the story was "Russian disinformation" -- mind you, there was no proof of any Russian plot. At the same time Joe Biden claimed on national television that it was a "Russian plot." In reality, the story was damaging to Joe Biden because his son's laptop was filled with pictures of crack smoking, sex with prostitutes, messages about an inappropriate sexual relationship that Hunter had with a minor family member, and emails and messages about inappropriate Chinese influence peddling.

And this outrages you?  Why would anyone care about Hunter Biden?

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So, we have Facebook and Twitter censoring stories based largely on ideological grounds.

Oh?

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/08/07/reports-facebook-fires-employee-who-shared-proof-of-right-wing-favoritism/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/03/tech/facebook-right-wing-misinformation/index.html

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We have Google and Wikipedia gatekeeping and excluding links, content and search results, and we have an entire generation of students who believe that dissent or critical debate is equivalent with racism, hate, or creating a physically unsafe environment. 

Richard, I question your understanding of what today's students think.  What do you define as "dissent" -- someone protesting environmental damage, or someone sticking up for the polluters?

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I can only imagine what the debate club (if such exists) in modern schools looks like: "John Doe will be arguing for the position of [Progressive issue] and Jane Doe will be arguing the racist side."

Hmm.  You don't know if debate clubs exist but you know what they'd say?

Here's the top 500 HS debate clubs.

https://www.speechanddebate.org/rankings/

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In saying all this, bear in mind that I am not a Republican nor even conventionally conservative. As an example of that: I believe we should cut our defense spending by more than half, we should have socialized medical care and dental care, and we should have social programs and subsidized assistance available for the elderly and poor, and that JFK and FDR were two great presidents.

Bravo!

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Jeff Bezos and Amazon should pay taxes. We need a higher minimum wage. With all the trillions of dollars this country makes we can afford to decimate the waste on weapons of war and instead focus on raising the quality of life for every American, and what's more, we could afford to do that if our defense spending were actually lowered to reasonable level. 

I'm with you all the way on all of that.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

On 4/20/2021 at 5:26 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

I find boomer researchers far more brain washed than the kids I know.

Case in point:

https://cuban-exile.com/doc_001-025/doc0006.html

Interview With Gaeton Fonzi
8 October 1994

16.  In your discussions with Mitchell Livingston WerBell III, did he discuss any of the ultrasophisticated assassination weapons he had developed for the CIA at all?  Anything that comes close to Livingstone's reference to "ice bullets" used in Dealey Plaza?

GF:  Mitch WerBell discussed almost [everything].  I spent almost a whole day with him up in his farm, as he called it, in Georgia.  His training ground for guerrillas.  And he covered almost everything.  He was half bombed.  He had been coming off the wagon and he covered almost everything in terms of questions that I was interested in.  I don't recall him saying anything about an ice-bullet.  Not at all.
 

16.a. An ice hatchet?  A machete?

GF:  (Laughter).   </q>

It's hard for silent gen and boomer types to take the ice  bullet scenario seriously because of pop culture conditioning.

https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/Athnel_Jones

When Addie Gothorn was found dead in a hotel, Dick Tracy combined efforts with FBI agent Jim Trailer to find the killer. A bullet hole was apparent in the back of Gothorn's head, but there was no bullet to be found.

Soon after, a bellhop at the hotel was killed in the same manner. Athnel's eyeglasses had been found at the scene of the crime, which prompted Tracy to plant Junior in disguise as a bellhop to spy on Jones. After an attempt on Junior's life, Tracy and Trailer broke into Athnel's room. They discovered a refrigeration unit that Athnel used to produce his unique bullets which were made of ice.

Athnel returned to his room and found Tracy and Trailer, who were able to stall Athnel until the ice bullets in his gun melted. Athnel was arrested and his guns were taken to Washington D.C. by Trailer for further study.  </q>

From 3 Days of the Condor, the Robert Redford character:

Joe Turner : Ice! The murderer pours water into a .38 caliber mold, freezes it, and keeps it solid until the crime. Then he shoots the guy with the ice bullet. Cops show up, there's just a few drops of water. No bullet, no ballistics.- That's great.

 

Millennials, on the other hand, grew up on The Matrix and anti-establishment high tech.

This is an anecdote I never tire of re-telling.

I once pointed out to a millennial friend of mine that her generation didn't appear all that interested in the Kennedy assassination.

"That's because they make it so boring," she said, and the subject dropped.

A couple weeks later she asked me what I'd been up to and I said --"Giving people hell about the central question of the JFK assassination." This was in the late summer of 2013.

"What is the central question of the JFK assassination?"

"You don't want to know--"

"No, tell me."

"JFK was shot in the back, there was no exit wound and no bullet found in the autopsy; he was shot in the throat, no exit, no bullet found in the autopsy. The central question is --what happened to the bullets that caused the back and throat wounds?"

She thought for a second, then said -- "But was it a real autopsy?"

"A lot of problems with the autopsy, but that was the situation...Some people think the bullets were removed prior to the autopsy."

"Or it was some government sh-t that dissolved!" she said with an air of triumph.

About a year later I told this story to another millennial friend of mine and when I got to the line "--some government sh-t that dissolved--" she blurted:  "That's what I was gonna say!"
 

Edited April 25, 2021 by Cliff Varnell