Theorist shamers should be ashamed of themselves.

[Mark Ulrik]

11 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

An "apologist" is just a person who defends something considered to be unpopular by the people using the term. If WC apologists were so inclined, they could refer to conspiracy theorists as CT apologists. I see no reason to take offense.

To my foreign ears, the term has always sounded derisive, but my dictionary agrees with you that it's rather neutral. The Education Forum living up to its name!

11 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Third, yes context matters. As I said, the immediate context was "farfetched beliefs." The larger context was "theorist shaming," i.e. the subject of this thread. H&L wasn't the context of that exchange.

To be frank, it's hard to think of "far-fetched beliefs" without the H&L theory. In a thread like this, it's constantly lurking in the background, and most of the participants in the "admins promoting such beliefs" subthread have voiced particularly strong opinions about it. Also, your "to WC apologists, all CTers promote far-fetched beliefs" remark was somewhat cryptic (at least to me). Was the intent to suggest that Jeremy B is at heart a WC apologist?

[John Kowalski]

23 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

John: Is the family still in Connecticut?  I was born and raised in NYC and the northern ‘burbs and MIGHT be able to locate someone from the area, though it has been (gasp!) more than half a century since I was there for more than a day or two.

Found an online article stating that she died in 2020. She was living with someone when I contacted her so there was the possibility that who ever was living with her could be contacted, but her home was sold in 2021.    

Edited January 29 by John Kowalski

[James DiEugenio]

MK :ITS HARD TO THINK OF "FAR FETCHED BELIEFS " WITHOUT THE H AND L THEORY

Not hard at all.

David LIfton's theory of body interception and alteration. All the bullets came from the front and they surgically altered Kennedy's corpse to make it look like they came from the rear.

David Lifton's theory of Zapruder film alteration which goes back to Murder from Within.

Almost any installment of Nigel Turner's series which went on for years e.g. the LIggett undertaker angle which he was sued on,  the metal detection images, Judy Baker etc etc

How many do you want?  There are literally scores of them out there.

Edited January 30 by James DiEugenio

[Mark Ulrik]

37 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

How many do you want? There are literally scores of them out there.

Sure, but not many are being actively promoted by forum members to the extent that H&L is.

[Sandy Larsen]

11 hours ago, Mark Ulrik said:

To be frank, it's hard to think of "far-fetched beliefs" without the H&L theory.

 

Sure, to you.

But H&L theory doesn't seem farfetched to me at all, now that I've studied the evidence for it.

I'll give you an example of what I think is farfetched:  That the gaping wound on Kennedy's head was on the top of the head rather than the back. Again, now that I've studied the evidence.

 

11 hours ago, Mark Ulrik said:

Also, your "to WC apologists, all CTers promote far-fetched beliefs" remark was somewhat cryptic (at least to me). Was the intent to suggest that Jeremy B is at heart a WC apologist?

 

No, not at all.

I used that statement to illustrate that Jeremy's line of reasoning makes little sense. I'll explain.

First, it is obvious and well known that CTers believe a lot of things that are farfetched, from the point of view of WC apologists (i.e. those who believe the WC conclusions).

According to Jeremy's line of reasoning, believers of farfetched ideas should not be moderators.

So I said something like, "Using Jeremy's line of reasoning, no CTer should be a moderator. Because to WC apologists, all CTers promote far-fetched beliefs."

I hope you see how I made a valid point there.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

50 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

David LIfton's theory of body interception and alteration. All the bullets came from the front and they surgically altered Kennedy's corpse to make it look like they came from the rear.

 

Jim,

Isn't there some truth to David Lifton's theory?

I mean, why is it that somebody slashed the top of Kennedy's scalp multiple times somewhere between Parkland Hospital and the autopsy? And why did somebody substitute someone else's brain for what was left of Kennedy's, only for it to fall out during the autopsy without so much as severing the optic nerves or the spinal cord? I mean, that just doesn't happen in real life.

 

50 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

David Lifton's theory of Zapruder film alteration which goes back to Murder from Within.

 

You do believe, don't you, that there is a black patch painted on the back of Kennedy's head at >Z313, as well as a painted in blob coming out the side? These are rather obvious alterations that only an anti-alterationist could deny IMO.

 

[Mark Ulrik]

14 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I used that statement to illustrate that Jeremy's line of reasoning makes little sense. I'll explain.

First, it is obvious and well known that CTers believe a lot of things that are farfetched, from the point of view of WC apologists (i.e. those who believe the WC conclusions).

According to Jeremy's line of reasoning, believers of farfetched ideas should not be moderators.

So I said something like, "Using Jeremy's line of reasoning, no CTer should be a moderator. Because to WC apologists, all CTers promote far-fetched beliefs."

I hope you see how I made a valid point there.

I doubt that you really believe that this forum is run by WC apologists.

[Sandy Larsen]

22 minutes ago, Mark Ulrik said:

I doubt that you really believe that this forum is run by WC apologists.

 

Using Jeremy's line of reasoning, that is precisely what he is calling for. That the forum be moderated by WC apologists.

But from your response I can see that you really don't get my analogy, if that is what it can be called.

Perhaps because English is your second language. Or maybe different thinking due to cultural differences.

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

According to Jeremy's line of reasoning, believers of farfetched ideas should not be moderators.

My position is that people can believe what they like, but those who actively promote beliefs which a reasonable member of the public would consider to be far-fetched, should not be moderators.

That's because whenever such a moderator imposes penalties on someone who disagrees with those far-fetched beliefs, reasonable people might suspect, rightly or wrongly, that the moderator is not acting fairly.

Quote

Using Jeremy's line of reasoning, that is precisely what he is calling for. That the forum be moderated by WC apologists.

That is nonsense. I'm not calling for that at all. Sandy has repeatedly failed to understand what I mean by 'far-fetched'.

As I've explained several times, the standard for what should be considered far-fetched in the context of the JFK assassination is not what Sandy would consider far-fetched (there's not much that he would consider far-fetched, is there?), or what a lone-nut believer would consider far-fetched. It is what a reasonable member of the public, with no preconceived opinions about the assassination, would consider to be far-fetched. 

All of the topics Jim DiEugenio mentions would fall into this category, as of course would anything involving long-term mother-and-son doppelgänger projects. Any reasonable member of the public would consider all of these topics far-fetched because they would not match his or her understanding of how the world works.

In the real world, body-snatching squads do not kidnap presidents' bodies and perform surgery on them; there are no instances of the mass alteration of photos and home movies of presidential assassinations; and intelligence agencies do not set up schemes involving long-term doppelgängers in the hope that when two unrelated boys grow up they will turn out to look identical. If anyone wants to convince a reasonable member of the public that any of these things happened, for the first and only time, in the JFK assassination, they need to provide very strong evidence indeed.

Sandy also writes:

Quote

Isn't there some truth to David Lifton's theory?

Oh dear.

Edited January 30 by Jeremy Bojczuk
corrected a typo

[Sandy Larsen]

57 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Quote

Using Jeremy's line of reasoning, that is precisely what he is calling for. That the forum be moderated by WC apologists.

57 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

That is nonsense. I'm not calling for that at all. Sandy has repeatedly failed to understand what I mean by 'far-fetched'.

 

Not so. As I will show below.

 

57 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

As I've explained several times, the standard for what should be considered far-fetched in the context of the JFK assassination is ... what a reasonable member of the public, with no preconceived opinions about the assassination, would consider to be far-fetched. 

 

A reasonable member of the public, with no preconceived opinions about the assassination, would believe that the government-issued Warren Commission Report is the definitive guide to the assassination. And thus would consider most of what conspiracy theorists believe to be farfetched.

Since Jeremy says that those who promote farfetched things (according to the standards of a reasonable member of the public) should not be moderators, then according to him no conspiracy theorist should be a moderator. (Unless he keeps his thoughts to himself.) Which would leave only WC apologists for that role.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Quote

Isn't there some truth to David Lifton's theory?

Oh dear.

 

Well, why do you think somebody slashed the top of Kennedy's scalp multiple times somewhere between Parkland Hospital and the autopsy? His scalp wasn't shredded at Parkland but it sure was at Bethesda.

Or is this just another one of those things you sweep under the rug and shrug your shoulders?

 

[Mark Ulrik]

10 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

But from your response I can see that you really don't get my analogy, if that is what it can be called.

Perhaps because English is your second language. Or maybe different thinking due to cultural differences.

Or maybe your "analogy" was lacking.

4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

A reasonable member of the public, with no preconceived opinions about the assassination, would believe that the government-issued Warren Commission Report is the definitive guide to the assassination. And thus would consider most of what conspiracy theorists believe to be farfetched.

Must our reasonable member have been living under a rock? Maybe he or she has watched the movie "JFK". Or been vaguely impressed by some documentary pushing mainstream JFKA conspiracy theory on YouTube.

Edited January 30 by Mark Ulrik

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

A reasonable member of the public, with no preconceived opinions about the assassination, would believe that the government-issued Warren Commission Report is the definitive guide to the assassination.

I beg to differ!

Our hypothetical, reasonable member of the public would not consider the lone-nut explanation to be far-fetched in principle, because he or she would be aware that lone nuts are occasionally responsible for assassinations.

But he or she would certainly not "believe that the government-issued Warren Commission Report is the definitive guide to the assassination"! Any reasonable person knows that official commissions into politically sensitive subjects will be subject to political pressure and are likely to produce a report that reflects such pressure. He or she, knowing that the subject was controversial, would be appropriately sceptical of the Warren Report's conclusions.

Quote

And thus would consider most of what conspiracy theorists believe to be farfetched.

Again, no.

A reasonable person would be aware that assassinations of prominent political figures are often the result of conspiracies. There are numerous well-known and entirely uncontroversial examples of such conspiracies throughout history: the assassinations of Julius Caesar, Indira Gandhi, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and Abraham Lincoln, to name but a few.

The reasonable member of the public would consider neither the lone-nut interpretation nor the conspiracy interpretation to be inherently far-fetched.

As for "most of what conspiracy theorists believe", the reasonable person would accept as inherently plausible all sorts of claims by conspiracy theorists in this case. For example:

• that foreign powers instigated a conspiracy to kill JFK;
• that domestic political institutions or individuals instigated a conspiracy to kill JFK;
• that domestic criminal groups instigated a conspiracy to kill JFK;
• that those who instigated a conspiracy set up one or more patsies to take the blame;
• that as part of this setting-up, the patsy was impersonated in incriminating situations;
• that those conspirators ordered or encouraged the murder shortly afterwards of the selected patsy;
• that political expediency demanded an official lone-nut explanation;
• that some witnesses were coerced into changing their testimony;
• that one or more items of evidence were planted at the crime scene.

A reasonable person would require appropriate evidence to be presented before accepting that any of these things happened in this case, but he or she would not consider any of these claims to be inherently far-fetched, because a reasonable person would be aware that examples exist of things like this happening in real life.

What he or she would consider to be far-fetched would include those conspiracy-theorist minority beliefs that were mentioned earlier: presidential body-snatching squads, the mass alteration of photos and home movies, and long-term double-doppelgänger projects.

Why would the reasonable member of the public consider these claims to be inherently far-fetched? Because, as far as he or she is aware, things like this do not happen in real life.

He or she would continue to regard these claims as far-fetched until very strong evidence indeed was presented. Trivial anomalies in written documents, images, or witness statements would not be sufficient, because the reasonable person would know that trivial anomalies are not uncommon. They do happen in real life.

What a reasonable person would consider far-fetched in this case is not these elements of the standard conspiracy-theorist argument, but the sort of stuff Sandy believes and actively promotes.

It's worth pointing out, just in case anyone isn't already aware, that none of the far-fetched stuff is necessary in order to undermine the lone-nut case. You don't require altered presidential corpses or the widespread alteration of films and photos, and you certainly don't require magical Oswald doppelgängers.

The far-fetched stuff is not only supported by grossly insufficient evidence, but it actually harms the rational case for conspiracy, because it makes rational critics look like idiots by association. It isn't a coincidence that some of this nonsense was invented by a guy who believed that the moon landings didn't happen.

Quote

Since Jeremy says that those who believe farfetched things (according to the standards of a reasonable member of the public) should not be moderators, then according to him no conspiracy theorist should be a moderator. Which would leave only WC apologists for that role.

As I have just demonstrated, Sandy's argument is flawed. Only a minority of the claims made by conspiracy theorists are far-fetched according to my definition of the term. I'm sure that a large majority of conspiracy theorists would make perfectly acceptable moderators, as we saw here before Sandy took over.

Sandy still doesn't seem to accept that some of the ideas he promotes here would meet any reasonable person's definition of 'far-fetched', while the ideas which the majority of conspiracy theorists promote would not.

If you want to know whether or not your claim is 'far-fetched', just ask yourself whether this thing that you're proposing for the JFK assassination has ever happened before or since. I bet you won't find any examples of intelligence agencies setting up long-term mother-and-son doppelgänger projects!

[Michael Griffith]

On 1/20/2024 at 7:28 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

Absolutely!  There is a ton of evidence that “Lee Harvey Oswald” was stationed near Ping Tung, Taiwan (aka Formosa) at the very same time he was being treated for VD in Japan, two locations roughly 1400 miles apart.  I’ve already shown in this very thread the DoD report indicating he was shipped to the “South China Sea area” on 9/14/1958 and the USMC unit diaryindicating he was in Ping-Tung, Taiwan a couple of weeks later. 

But there’s much more evidence than this.

Marguerite Oswald told the Warren Commission, "Lee was in Japan, Lee was in Corregidor, Lee was in the Philippines, Lee was in Formosa."

Priscilla Johnson interviewed Harvey Oswald at the Metropole Hotel in Moscow in 1959.  She wrote, “At 17 he entered the Marine Corps and was discharged in September, having spent 14 months in Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Formosa [Taiwan]....”

A U.S. Navy message dated November 4, 1959 said that “Oswald served with Marine Air Control Squadrons in Japan and Taiwan with duties involving ground control intercept.”

 

A message from the Chief of Naval Operations to “ALSUNA” in Moscow said, “Oswald served with the Marine Air Control Squadron operations in Japan and Taiwan.”

There is plenty more evidence, a lot, indicating Oswald was in Formosa, but are people here so desperate to discredit Harvey and Lee that they will seriously argue Oswald was not in Formosa?  Really? 

Why don’t you folks just relax and let the truth settle in?  For most of its existence, that Oswald Project was an entirely patriotic program.  It just got tragically misused and misdirected in 1963.  That’s no reason for us to be misdirected more than 60 years later.

(Sorry about the duplicate graphic at top.  I can't seem to delete one)

I find this evidence compelling. 

Mary Haverstick's new book, A Woman I Know, contains a lot of revealing information about the CIA's program of using two people for a single identity, with one person being the real person and the other person pretending to be the real person at certain times. 

[Tom Gram]

51 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I find this evidence compelling. 

Mary Haverstick's new book, A Woman I Know, contains a lot of revealing information about the CIA's program of using two people for a single identity, with one person being the real person and the other person pretending to be the real person at certain times. 

Malcolm Blunt has said that this is why he had a falling out with Armstrong and they didn’t speak for a year or so. Blunt believed that the anomalies he’d uncovered in Oswald’s background as Armstrong’s researcher were evidence of use of the Oswald identity by intelligence agencies. Then when Armstrong told him he was going with the long-term two Oswald theory for his book he disowned the project. 

I might be missing something here but that’s what I remember from listening to a couple of Blunt’s interviews.