Theorist shamers should be ashamed of themselves.

[Roger Odisio]

42 minutes ago, Pamela Brown said:

It seems to me that our accepting the term 'theory' is just playing into the hands of the WCR apologists. 

A better term might be "hypothesis" or even "working hypothesis"...

Should we decide to present on an hypothesis that we have tested and believe to be valid, the hypothesis becomes a thesis, which can then be debated at the level of the public...

We can also say "my position" (on this issue, on this day) is...

I should think there might be less hysterical reaction if we were to tweak our terminology...

Yes, in the well known 1967 memo, the CIA suggested the term "conspiracy *theory*" be used to try to discredit all who challenged the WR.  The idea was that the WR conclusion of a LN assassin was based on the facts; all those who dissented were merely offering theories without the facts.

It can now be seen by anyone who cares to look that this was backwards. It was a lie upon which all of the lies in the WR were built.

In fact it is the WR conclusion that requires acceptance of a theory--the single bullet theory--which is contradicted by the facts.

The term conspiracy theory has grown to be used everywhere as a primary tool to cut off dissent. Conspiracies are everywhere.  People, particularly people here, should think twice before appending "theory" to the term when discussing them

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

John Kowalski writes:

Quote

Is there an objective way by which each theory can be evaluated in terms of being far-fetched?

Of course! A claim is inherently far-fetched if it proposes something that is not known to have happened before, or which contradicts our current understanding of how the world works, or for which no plausible mechanism has yet been identified.

• Claim: 'JFK was killed as the result of a conspiracy' = not far-fetched, because there are numerous examples of political figures who have been killed as the result of conspiracies.
• Claim: 'JFK was killed by creatures from the planet Zog' = far-fetched, because there is currently no evidence that creatures from the planet Zog exist.

Of course, if sufficient evidence is produced, an apparently far-fetched claim will turn into a plausible claim. Plenty of far-fetched claims have turned into plausible claims, once sufficient evidence has been produced. But you need a higher standard of evidence to justify an inherently far-fetched claim than an inherently plausible claim.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Now let's see how this definition applies to three of the essential elements of the 'Harvey and Lee' claim:

1 - The CIA recruited two unrelated boys, one American and one from eastern Europe, in the hope that when they had grown up, a decade or so later, they would resemble each other so closely that they would be mistaken for each other.

This claim is far-fetched because it proposes two things which are very unlikely to have happened.

Firstly, it is a fact that as two unrelated boys get older, the differences in their physical features are much more likely to increase than to decrease or remain the same.

The more distinct the unrelated boys' features were at the beginning of the scheme, and the longer the scheme continued, the greater the boys' eventual physical differences were likely to be, and the less likely it is that the scheme would succeed.

Secondly, because intelligence agencies operate according to rational organisational rules, it is far-fetched to suppose that the CIA or any other intelligence agency would have committed itself to a decade's worth of trouble and expense for a scheme with an extremely low chance of success. 

To give itself a reasonable chance of success, the CIA would have had to set up numerous such schemes, in the hope that one of them would work. But the more such schemes the CIA would have set up, the more failed schemes there would have been, the more trouble and expense it would have had to waste, and the more far-fetched the claim becomes.

2 - The CIA's purpose in setting up this scheme was to produce someone with an authentic-looking American background who knew enough Russian to be able to understand what was being said around him when he defected, a decade or more later.

It would be obvious to any reasonable person that the CIA could accomplish its purpose much more easily, and much more quickly, and at a much lower financial cost, and with a much greater chance of success, simply by:

• recruiting someone with a genuine American background who had a knack for learning languages;
• and making sure that this person acquired a sufficient amount of competence in Russian.

It is far-fetched to claim that a large organisation would prefer a scheme with a very low chance of success over a scheme with a very high chance of success.

3 - The CIA recruited the eastern European boy specifically for his native command of Russian, but during the course of the scheme, while the boy was under its care, the CIA allowed the boy to forget so much of his Russian that he was obliged to learn the language all over again.

It is not merely far-fetched but laughably preposterous to claim that the CIA would allow the boy to forget his native language, the very skill for which he was recruited in the first place. This claim requires the CIA to be absurdly incompetent.

A reasonable, intelligent member of the public, with no preconceived ideas about the assassination, would find the central elements of the 'Harvey and Lee' notion to be inherently very far-fetched indeed. It isn't surprising that the vast majority of serious researchers also consider the notion to be too far-fetched to be worthy of belief.

Not only are the claims far-fetched to begin with, but they remain far-fetched because no direct evidence exists to support them.

Although numerous records have become available from intelligence agencies during the period in question, there appears to be no direct evidence at all that any intelligence agency in the world has even considered the possibility of setting up a far-fetched H&L-type scheme:

• No memos exist which propose such a scheme.
• No documents exist which give approval to the non-existent proposal.
• No documents exist which discuss the search for candidate doppelgänger boys and their doppelgänger mothers.
• No financial records exist for any such decade-long schemes which would have involved numerous support staff.
• No memos exist which ask why a Russian-speaking boy was allowed to forget his native language and was then obliged to learn it all over again.

Finally, the claims remain far-fetched because they are supported only by circumstantial evidence which does not apply uniquely to the claim in question: anomalies in written documents and photographs, and decades-old recollections.

Any reasonable person knows that plausible alternative explanations exist for these types of evidence. Written documents often include mistakes, typos and other inaccuracies, as well as ambiguous information which is open to more than one interpretation. Copies of photographs often generate visual anomalies. Decades-old recollections are often mistaken.

[Sandy Larsen]

48 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Quote

Is there an objective way by which each theory can be evaluated in terms of being far-fetched?

Of course!

 

Not so.

With the billions of people in the world, there is a virtually smooth and continuous range of opinions as to where a line could be drawn for farfetchededness. There is no specific line over which something clearly becomes farfetched.

 

48 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

• Claim: 'JFK was killed as the result of a conspiracy' = not far-fetched, because there are numerous examples of political figures who have been killed as the result of conspiracies.

 

What if there had been just one prior example of a political figure having been killed as a result of a conspiracy? Would that be enough to consider the idea to be non-farfetched? Not enough? How about two? Three?

And if you think one is enough to make a second one not farfetched... consider the possibility that there are might have been a number of undetected prior cases. So even if there had been zero known cases, the idea might still not be farfetched at all.

This idea that there is a determinable line over which something becomes farfetched in nonsense. It's a continuum and drawing the line is completely subjective.

 

[Pamela Brown]

15 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

Yes, in the well known 1967 memo, the CIA suggested the term "conspiracy *theory*" be used to try to discredit all who challenged the WR.  The idea was that the WR conclusion of a LN assassin was based on the facts; all those who dissented were merely offering theories without the facts.

It can now be seen by anyone who cares to look that this was backwards. It was a lie upon which all of the lies in the WR were built.

In fact it is the WR conclusion that requires acceptance of a theory--the single bullet theory--which is contradicted by the facts.

The term conspiracy theory has grown to be used everywhere as a primary tool to cut off dissent. Conspiracies are everywhere.  People, particularly people here, should think twice before appending "theory" to the term when discussing them

Well said. Also, a good point about the SBT...

I have to wonder if the WCR was not left in an intentionally ridiculous and incomprehensible state in order to use a mind control type tactic on the American public. When it was first published it seemed that If you did not 'believe' the WCR you were disloyal, and worse, you were probably a Communist.  The WCR is a classic appeal to authority...

[Roger Odisio]

5 hours ago, Pamela Brown said:

Well said. Also, a good point about the SBT...

I have to wonder if the WCR was not left in an intentionally ridiculous and incomprehensible state in order to use a mind control type tactic on the American public. When it was first published it seemed that If you did not 'believe' the WCR you were disloyal, and worse, you were probably a Communist.  The WCR is a classic appeal to authority...

Yes, LBJ's picking the 7 great Americans to front the WC, which hired a bunch of lawyers to cherry pick, distort, and ignore evidence in order to frame Oswald was a straightforward appeal to authority.  

Vince Salandria came to believe that the WR story was intentionally riddled with holes, which over time would be realized. It was intentional because the murderers *wanted* people to figure out what they had done.  The message:  Yes, we have done it, we're in control, and there is nothing you can do about it.

In part, Salandria's thought came about because he himself was so quick to realize what had happened.  The weekend of the murder he was telling his brother in law, if they kill Oswald, we will know who is behind it. He focused on the "upper echolons" of JFK's own government.

35 years after the murder in a famous speech, he was imploring researchers to stop inspecting the endless rabbit holes the murderers had laid out for them and try to finish off the details of what we already know about what happened. 

His words are still largely ignored today. 

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

there is a virtually smooth and continuous range of opinions as to where a line could be drawn for farfetchededness.

Of course people will define this term in different ways, as people do with all sorts of other terms. Political terms are a good example: 'left-wing' and 'right-wing' are used in so many different ways that it's often difficult to tell what someone means when they use these terms.

But it's still possible to find an objective definition which creates a useful distinction. In the case of 'left-wing' and 'right-wing', such a definition might refer to objectively defined principles rather than any one person's subjective opinion about something. In the case of 'far-fetched', we should use the objective definition I gave in my reply to John, unless Sandy can think of a better objective definition.

Quote

What if there had been just one prior example of a political figure having been killed as a result of a conspiracy? Would that be enough to consider the idea to be non-farfetched?

Yes, it would. If it has been demonstrated that a type of event has occurred, any claim that a very similar type of event has occurred would not be inherently far-fetched, although of course the claim would still require proof before being accepted.

And even if a previous example had not been demonstrated, a claim should no longer be considered far-fetched if sufficient evidence has been provided that would convince a community of reasonable people that the claim was justified.

In the case of 'Harvey and Lee', however, no previous examples exist. No-one has demonstrated that any intelligence agency has ever set up a long-term doppelgänger project involving two unrelated boys, or anything close to it. The claim is inherently far-fetched.

The evidence that has been produced for the 'Harvey and Lee' mother-and-son doppelgänger project, over the last two decades or more, has failed to satisfy any but a very small proportion of JFK assassination enthusiasts, a group which would take the claim seriously if it had any merit. I dread to think what the general public would make of it.

As with the claim that the moon landings were faked, the 'Harvey and Lee' claim was objectively far-fetched to begin with, and it remains objectively far-fetched, no matter how plausible its few believers consider it to be.

[Pamela Brown]

On 2/5/2024 at 11:04 AM, Roger Odisio said:

Yes, LBJ's picking the 7 great Americans to front the WC, which hired a bunch of lawyers to cherry pick, distort, and ignore evidence in order to frame Oswald was a straightforward appeal to authority.  

Vince Salandria came to believe that the WR story was intentionally riddled with holes, which over time would be realized. It was intentional because the murderers *wanted* people to figure out what they had done.  The message:  Yes, we have done it, we're in control, and there is nothing you can do about it.

In part, Salandria's thought came about because he himself was so quick to realize what had happened.  The weekend of the murder he was telling his brother in law, if they kill Oswald, we will know who is behind it. He focused on the "upper echolons" of JFK's own government.

35 years after the murder in a famous speech, he was imploring researchers to stop inspecting the endless rabbit holes the murderers had laid out for them and try to finish off the details of what we already know about what happened. 

His words are still largely ignored today. 

 

Interesting. That doesn't surprise me at all.  And speaking of rabbit holes, the ongoing coverup had them coming from two directions -- the WCR and its apologists, such as McAdams and the loony fringe, of which Fetzer's rabbit trails, such as the limo 'spiral nebulae' are a good example. And of course both of them were profs, so we were supposed to let them do our thinking for us...

[John Kowalski]

On 2/5/2024 at 4:34 AM, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

John Kowalski writes:

Of course! A claim is inherently far-fetched if it proposes something that is not known to have happened before, or which contradicts our current understanding of how the world works, or for which no plausible mechanism has yet been identified.

• Claim: 'JFK was killed as the result of a conspiracy' = not far-fetched, because there are numerous examples of political figures who have been killed as the result of conspiracies.
• Claim: 'JFK was killed by creatures from the planet Zog' = far-fetched, because there is currently no evidence that creatures from the planet Zog exist.

Of course, if sufficient evidence is produced, an apparently far-fetched claim will turn into a plausible claim. Plenty of far-fetched claims have turned into plausible claims, once sufficient evidence has been produced. But you need a higher standard of evidence to justify an inherently far-fetched claim than an inherently plausible claim.

Have you read Harvey and Lee?

[John Kowalski]

On 2/5/2024 at 4:40 AM, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

The CIA recruited two unrelated boys, one American and one from eastern Europe, in the hope that when they had grown up, a decade or so later, they would resemble each other so closely that they would be mistaken for each other.

MK-Ultra sub-project # 103 was created to study European children to see if they could be used in future CIA operations.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/abilene-reporter-news-mkultra-and-childr/7536363/

https://humansbefree.com/2017/06/cia-using-mk-ultra-mind-control-on-children.html

 

Edited February 11 by John Kowalski

[John Kowalski]

Jim:

Has John Armstrong done research on these experiments?

Edited February 11 by John Kowalski