My New Book, A Heritage of Nonsense: Jim Garrison's Tales of Mystery and Imagination

[Joseph McBride]

Fred Litwin, like Jonathan Cohen, seems to visit

this site just to keep repeating "It's not true" about

any assertion that contradicts the lone-nut theory.

It gets tiresome real fast and is not helpful discourse.

It's just a mantra that one-liner specialists such

as Jonathan toss out for no apparent purpose other

than to try to discourage genuine researchers. That

tactic is meaningless; it doesn't work.

[David Von Pein]

44 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

Fred Litwin...seems to visit this site just to keep repeating "It's not true" about any assertion that contradicts the lone-nut theory. .... It's just a mantra...

Maybe you should try actually clicking on (and reading) some of the many many links that Fred has provided to back up his "It's not true" assertions.

When a person backs up what he says with documented information (as Fred Litwin has done time and time again over the last several years, via links to his blog articles), shouldn't that make even a hardened conspiracy believer sit up and take at least a little bit of notice?

P.S. -- And anyone who thinks Mr. Litwin is not a "genuine researcher" should probably go have his or her head examined. (IMO.)

 

Edited Friday at 02:15 AM by David Von Pein

[Jean Ceulemans]

14 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

Maybe you should try actually clicking on (and reading) some of the many many links that Fred has provided to back up his "It's not true" assertions.

When a person backs up what he says with documented information (as Fred Litwin has done time and time again over the years), shouldn't that make even a hardened conspiracy believer sit up and take at least a little bit of notice?

P.S. -- And anyone who thinks Mr. Litwin is not a "genuine researcher" should probably go have his or her head examined. (IMO.)

 

That´s why I quoted my old professor : the don´t study, the believe... It´s these guys that destroy topics by using bad language, ad hominem stuff, you name it.  Like: it´s from him, so it´s bad... They dont even read... No discussions with evidance to back it up.  Just killing topics by such doings. When a mod starts finding this is all normal.... crazy world... Greg D. posted a nice review with the pro´s and con´s in the book.  He was immediately accused by the mod of being CIA funded... Childish behaviour and IMO the mod should go, or take his medicine in time...

Edited Friday at 02:14 AM by Jean Ceulemans

[W. Niederhut]

24 minutes ago, Jean Ceulemans said:

That´s why I quoted my old professor : the don´t study, the believe... It´s these guys that destroy topics by using bad language, ad hominem stuff, you name it.  Like: it´s from him, so it´s bad... They dont even read... No discussions with evidance to back it up.  Just killing topics by such doings. When a mod starts finding this is all normal.... crazy world... Greg D. posted a nice review with the pro´s and con´s in the book.  He was immediately accused by the mod of being CIA funded... Childish behaviour and IMO the mod should go, or take his medicine in time...

Geez... This is a depressingly clueless, inaccurate characterization of the actual dialogue on this thread-- including my request for an explanation of Greg Doudna's dubious claim that Fred Litwin had "debunked the Rose Cheramie story."

There's a lengthy backstory here-- going back to the publication of Mr. Litwin's Teenage Conspiracy Freak opus, and his Trail of the Delusion sales work -- that Mr. Ceulemans, apparently, knows nothing about.

To be honest, I have serious concerns about the quality of some of our recent Education Forum debates-- aside from the obvious spelling errors and impaired reading comprehension.

We used to have some high quality, scholarly discussions here a few years ago.

Conversely, it's a relief to hear from our esteemed colleague, Joseph McBride, who hit the nail on the head, as usual.

 

Edited Friday at 02:36 AM by W. Niederhut

[Denny Zartman]

23 minutes ago, Jean Ceulemans said:

He was immediately accused by the mod of being CIA funded... Childish behaviour and IMO the mod should go, or take his medicine in time...

The only thing more unbelievable than the idea forum members are spreading disinformation and being paid by the CIA to do it is the idea that forum members are here spreading disinformation for free.

[Joe Bauer]

Did Melba Mercedes's son ever say anything about her mentioning JFK being killed in Dallas two days before he was? Whether be believed she did or did not?

Or perhaps saying he didn't know either way, or even not mentioning the subject at all?

He wrote a book about her life.

Maybe he was advised not to go into this part of her story by his publisher.

It could be a sales killer either way.

[W. Niederhut]

20 minutes ago, Denny Zartman said:

The only thing more unbelievable than the idea forum members are spreading disinformation and being paid by the CIA to do it is the idea that forum members are here spreading disinformation for free.

LOL, Denny...  😬

Perhaps there are people who get their jollies by propagating historical falsehoods, gratis, but it seems like an odd avocation.

I would classify them with people who key cars in parking lots and tip over port-a-potties in public parks.

[Ron Bulman]

8 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Did Melba Mercedes's son ever say anything about her mentioning JFK being killed in Dallas two days before he was? Whether be believed she did or did not?

Or perhaps saying he didn't know either way, or even not mentioning the subject at all?

He wrote a book about her life.

Maybe he was advised not to go into this part of her story by his publisher.

It could be a sales killer either way.

No Joe, not to her son.  He only met her a very few times in his youth.  Maybe why he sought in depth to find out about his mother, as a professor?

Rose Cherami: Gathering Fallen Petals: Marcades, Michael, Shaw, J Gary, Kirkpatrick, Norma: 9780578645377: Amazon.com: Books

[Ron Bulman]

11 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

LOL, Denny...  😬

Perhaps there are people who get their jollies by propagating historical falsehoods, gratis, but it seems like an odd avocation.

I would classify them with people who key cars in parking lots and tip over port-a-potties in public parks.

Dern it W, that did it.  Now I've got a song stuck in my head.

They been kicked out of high school several years ago
For pushin over port-a-cans at the 4-H rodeo

Never saw this version before.  Anyone with any kind musical bent should watch.  Masterful.

 

 

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Denny Zartman said:

The only thing more unbelievable than the idea forum members are spreading disinformation and being paid by the CIA to do it is the idea that forum members are here spreading disinformation for free.

There's this place...called the internet...where people go to spew whatever pops in their head or whatever makes sense to them...and where virtually no one is paid to do so. 

I used to spend time on music forums, movie forums and sports forums, and the exchanges can get just as heated on those forums as they do here. People claiming Jordan is better than Kobe or Shaq is better than Kareem on the sports forum. Or endless debates about whether or not Ben Affleck has any talent on the movie forum, or if Michael Bay is the worst film-maker ever etc on the movie forum. The internet is a place where people get to spew, and people who've read Case Closed or Reclaiming History are just as likely to spew as people who have read Best Evidence, and maybe High Treason. 

Edited Friday at 04:23 AM by Pat Speer

[Denny Zartman]

40 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

There's this place...called the internet...where people go to spew whatever pops in their head or whatever makes sense to them...and where virtually no one is paid to do so. 

There's this thing...called a joke... remind me to explain it to you sometime.

[Greg Doudna]

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Geez... This is a depressingly clueless, inaccurate characterization of the actual dialogue on this thread-- including my request for an explanation of Greg Doudna's dubious claim that Fred Litwin had "debunked the Rose Cheramie story."

If this doesn't take the cake. You refuse to read Litwin himself on principle, then demand that I recite the entire chapter of Litwin to you personally, as if that is something I owe my time and energy to do.

Check out this article by Greg Parker on the Rose Cheramie story. He doesn't think there's anything to it either. 

https://gregrparker.substack.com/p/rose-cheramis-story-is-still-being 

[Paul Rigby]

7 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

There's this place...called the internet...where people go to spew whatever pops in their head or whatever makes sense to them...and where virtually no one is paid to do so. 

Really? This is only the UK, and long before Covid and Ukraine. The US effort dwarfs Britain's.

Inside the British Army's secret information warfare machine

They are soldiers, but the 77th Brigade edit videos, record podcasts and write viral posts. Welcome to the age of information warfare

https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-77th-brigade-britains-information-warfare-military/

A barbed-wire fence stretched off far to either side. A Union flag twisted in a gust of wind, and soldiers strode in and out of a squat guard’s hut in the middle of the road. Through the hut, and under a row of floodlights, I walked towards a long line of drab, low-rise brick buildings. It was the summer of 2017, and on this military base nestled among the hills of Berkshire, I was visiting a part of the British Army unlike any other. They call it the 77th Brigade. They are the troops fighting Britain’s information wars.

“If everybody is thinking alike then somebody isn’t thinking,” was written in foot-high letters across a whiteboard in one of the main atriums of the base. Over to one side, there was a suite full of large, electronic sketch pads and multi-screened desktops loaded with digital editing software. The men and women of the 77th knew how to set up cameras, record sound, edit videos. Plucked from across the military, they were proficient in graphic design, social media advertising, and data analytics. Some may have taken the army’s course in Defence Media Operations, and almost half were reservists from civvy street, with full time jobs in marketing or consumer research.

From office to office, I found a different part of the Brigade busy at work. One room was focussed on understanding audiences: the makeup, demographics and habits of the people they wanted to reach. Another was more analytical, focussing on creating “attitude and sentiment awareness” from large sets of social media data. Another was full of officers producing video and audio content. Elsewhere, teams of intelligence specialists were closely analysing how messages were being received and discussing how to make them more resonant.

Explaining their work, the soldiers used phrases I had heard countless times from digital marketers: “key influencers", “reach", “traction". You normally hear such words at viral advertising studios and digital research labs. But the skinny jeans and wax moustaches were here replaced by the crisply ironed shirts and light patterned camouflage of the British Army. Their surroundings were equally incongruous – the 77th’s headquarters were a mix of linoleum flooring, long corridors and swinging fire doors. More Grange Hill than Menlo Park. Next to a digital design studio, soldiers were having a tea break, a packet of digestives lying open on top of a green metallic ammo box. Another sign on the wall declared, “Behavioural change is our USP [unique selling point]”. What on Earth was happening?

“If you track where UK manpower is deployed, you can take a good guess at where this kind of ‘influence’ activity happens,” an information warfare officer (not affiliated with the 77th) told me later, under condition of anonymity. “A document will come from the Ministry of Defence that will have broad guidance and themes to follow.” He explains that each military campaign now also has – or rather is – a marketing campaign too.

Ever since Nato troops were deployed to the Baltics in 2017, Russian propaganda has been deployed too, alleging that Nato soldiers there are rapists, looters, little different from a hostile occupation. One of the goals of Nato information warfare was to counter this kind of threat: sharply rebutting damaging rumours, and producing videos of Nato troops happily working with Baltic hosts.

Information campaigns such as these are “white”: openly, avowedly the voice of the British military. But to narrower audiences, in conflict situations, and when it was understood to be proportionate and necessary to do so, messaging campaigns could become, the officer said, “grey” and “black” too. “Counter-piracy, counter-insurgencies and counter-terrorism,” he explained. There, the messaging doesn't have to look like it came from the military and doesn't have to necessarily tell the truth.

I saw no evidence that the 77th do these kinds of operations themselves, but this more aggressive use of information is nothing new. GCHQ, for instance, also has a unit dedicated to fighting wars with information. It is called the “Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group” – or JTRIG – an utterly unrevealing name, as it is common in the world of intelligence. Almost all we know about it comes from a series of slides leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Those documents give us a glimpse of what these kinds of covert information campaigns could look like.

[Sean Coleman]

56 minutes ago, Paul Rigby said:

Really? This is only the UK, and long before Covid and Ukraine. The US effort dwarfs Britain's.

Inside the British Army's secret information warfare machine

They are soldiers, but the 77th Brigade edit videos, record podcasts and write viral posts. Welcome to the age of information warfare

https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-77th-brigade-britains-information-warfare-military/

A barbed-wire fence stretched off far to either side. A Union flag twisted in a gust of wind, and soldiers strode in and out of a squat guard’s hut in the middle of the road. Through the hut, and under a row of floodlights, I walked towards a long line of drab, low-rise brick buildings. It was the summer of 2017, and on this military base nestled among the hills of Berkshire, I was visiting a part of the British Army unlike any other. They call it the 77th Brigade. They are the troops fighting Britain’s information wars.

“If everybody is thinking alike then somebody isn’t thinking,” was written in foot-high letters across a whiteboard in one of the main atriums of the base. Over to one side, there was a suite full of large, electronic sketch pads and multi-screened desktops loaded with digital editing software. The men and women of the 77th knew how to set up cameras, record sound, edit videos. Plucked from across the military, they were proficient in graphic design, social media advertising, and data analytics. Some may have taken the army’s course in Defence Media Operations, and almost half were reservists from civvy street, with full time jobs in marketing or consumer research.

From office to office, I found a different part of the Brigade busy at work. One room was focussed on understanding audiences: the makeup, demographics and habits of the people they wanted to reach. Another was more analytical, focussing on creating “attitude and sentiment awareness” from large sets of social media data. Another was full of officers producing video and audio content. Elsewhere, teams of intelligence specialists were closely analysing how messages were being received and discussing how to make them more resonant.

Explaining their work, the soldiers used phrases I had heard countless times from digital marketers: “key influencers", “reach", “traction". You normally hear such words at viral advertising studios and digital research labs. But the skinny jeans and wax moustaches were here replaced by the crisply ironed shirts and light patterned camouflage of the British Army. Their surroundings were equally incongruous – the 77th’s headquarters were a mix of linoleum flooring, long corridors and swinging fire doors. More Grange Hill than Menlo Park. Next to a digital design studio, soldiers were having a tea break, a packet of digestives lying open on top of a green metallic ammo box. Another sign on the wall declared, “Behavioural change is our USP [unique selling point]”. What on Earth was happening?

“If you track where UK manpower is deployed, you can take a good guess at where this kind of ‘influence’ activity happens,” an information warfare officer (not affiliated with the 77th) told me later, under condition of anonymity. “A document will come from the Ministry of Defence that will have broad guidance and themes to follow.” He explains that each military campaign now also has – or rather is – a marketing campaign too.

Ever since Nato troops were deployed to the Baltics in 2017, Russian propaganda has been deployed too, alleging that Nato soldiers there are rapists, looters, little different from a hostile occupation. One of the goals of Nato information warfare was to counter this kind of threat: sharply rebutting damaging rumours, and producing videos of Nato troops happily working with Baltic hosts.

Information campaigns such as these are “white”: openly, avowedly the voice of the British military. But to narrower audiences, in conflict situations, and when it was understood to be proportionate and necessary to do so, messaging campaigns could become, the officer said, “grey” and “black” too. “Counter-piracy, counter-insurgencies and counter-terrorism,” he explained. There, the messaging doesn't have to look like it came from the military and doesn't have to necessarily tell the truth.

I saw no evidence that the 77th do these kinds of operations themselves, but this more aggressive use of information is nothing new. GCHQ, for instance, also has a unit dedicated to fighting wars with information. It is called the “Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group” – or JTRIG – an utterly unrevealing name, as it is common in the world of intelligence. Almost all we know about it comes from a series of slides leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Those documents give us a glimpse of what these kinds of covert information campaigns could look like.

….more Grange Hill than Menlo Park….

That’s put a shine on my day! 😂 

[W. Niederhut]

5 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

If this doesn't take the cake. You refuse to read Litwin himself on principle, then demand that I recite the entire chapter of Litwin to you personally, as if that is something I owe my time and energy to do.

 

Nonsense, Greg.

You posted an assertion and I asked you to explain-- in plain English-- why you believed it to be true.

A few if us have subsequently discussed the evidence that Dr. Victor Weiss and Lt. Fruge clearly both believed that Rose Cheramie had foreknowledge on November 20th of the JFK assassination plot.

Fruge also contacted the Dallas PD about Cheramie after JFK's murder.

As for Litwin, we have discussed his dubious work here on multiple previous forum threads, dating back to the publication of his book, I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak.

See my thread, I Was a Teenage Warren Commission Report Dupe.

Edited Friday at 01:24 PM by W. Niederhut