Moderated JFK conspiracy theories: it never ends III

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KwamiFabu said:
In the amazing, highly improbable event that some piece of solid-gold, smoking-gun evidence were to emerge, such that everyone from Oliver Stone to Gerald Posner rose as one and said "Yes! It's solved, once and for all! Now we can go one with our lives!" there would still be those who would look askance and say "I knew it! This solves nothing! Stone and Posner are in on it too! Those sellout bastards!"

Because in fact nobody really wants to know who killed JFK. The assassination industry is making too many people too much money, writing books and giving lectures and making movies about the thing. And Americans love a good mystery, especially if it can be shrouded in conspiracies involving such dark forces as the CIA, the FBI and the mafia, just to scratch the surface.

To me, the die was cast when the Secret Service burst out of Parkland Hospital with that casket and raced to the airport. If they'd left the body at Parkland, a thorough autopsy would've rendered moot most of the subsequent CT catechism.
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Agree with your point about the "assassination industry"; these are folks who would rather not have their bottom line threatened by acceptance of the mundane truth (as opposed to their more exciting "truth").

I'm not so sure, though, that an autopsy at Parkland would have made moot any of the catechism (good word for it- theology is what it amounts to). It would have been (necessarily) seen by CTists as just one more piece of the cover-up, only in Dallas instead of DC; same scenario, different setting.
 
turingtest said:
Agree with your point about the "assassination industry"; these are folks who would rather not have their bottom line threatened by acceptance of the mundane truth (as opposed to their more exciting "truth").

I'm not so sure, though, that an autopsy at Parkland would have made moot any of the catechism (good word for it- theology is what it amounts to). It would have been (necessarily) seen by CTists as just one more piece of the cover-up, only in Dallas instead of DC; same scenario, different setting.
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I agree. The shock and disbelief that was created by a lone nutjob with a rifle killing the leader of the free world, IMO almost guaranteed the appearance of the JFK CT phenomenon. I also like your use of the word catechism, so I'm going to steal it ;)
 
turingtest said:
I'm not so sure, though, that an autopsy at Parkland would have made moot any of the catechism (good word for it- theology is what it amounts to). It would have been (necessarily) seen by CTists as just one more piece of the cover-up, only in Dallas instead of DC; same scenario, different setting.
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Maybe so. It just seems that all hope of a forensically sound investigation of the murder flew out the hospital doors along with that casket. Sure, any high-profile assassination inevitably attracts CTs, but the SS and Kennedy family did much to ensure their permanence.
 
turingtest said:
Agree with your point about the "assassination industry"; these are folks who would rather not have their bottom line threatened by acceptance of the mundane truth (as opposed to their more exciting "truth").

I'm not so sure, though, that an autopsy at Parkland would have made moot any of the catechism (good word for it- theology is what it amounts to). It would have been (necessarily) seen by CTists as just one more piece of the cover-up, only in Dallas instead of DC; same scenario, different setting.
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Excellent point. The conspiracy theorists would then argue it was mostly a Dallas (instead of a federal government) job, with the Dallas Police controlling the crime scene and the chief suspect (AKA 'the patsy'), the Dallas coroner's office controlling the body, and the Dallas courts controlling the trial.

It's actually a good thing the body was taken away, despite the cries to the contrary... it means the CTs have to enlarge the conspiracy beyond reason (to all but them, of course), putting the Secret Service in on it too, the FBI in on too, the Warren Commission in on it too, the CIA in on too, the DPD in on it too... etc.

Hank
 
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KwamiFabu said:
Maybe so. It just seems that all hope of a forensically sound investigation of the murder flew out the hospital doors along with that casket. Sure, any high-profile assassination inevitably attracts CTs, but the SS and Kennedy family did much to ensure their permanence.
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You've bought into the conspiracy literature on the botching of the Bethesda autopsy argument, it appears.

It's not a coincidence that the nine forensic pathologists on the HSCA panel who reviewed the extant autopsy materials all agreed that the original autopsists got it right -- two shots from above and behind struck JFK, and only two shots from above and behind struck JFK.

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0016a.htm

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0036b.htm

Hank
 
HSienzant said:
Excellent point. The conspiracy theorists would then argue it was mostly a Dallas (instead of a federal government) job, with the Dallas Police controlling the crime scene and the chief suspect (AKA 'the patsy'), the Dallas coroner's office controlling the body, and the Dallas courts controlling the trial.

It's actually a good thing the body was taken away, despite the cries to the contrary... it means the CTs have to enlarge the conspiracy beyond reason (to all but them, of course), putting the Secret Service in on it too, the FBI in on too, the Warren Commission in on it too, the CIA in on too, the DPD in on it too... etc.

Hank
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David Lifton should get down on his hands and knees and thank the CT gods for that turn of events; without it, he'd just be another run-of-the-mill acolyte of the CT theology, instead of standing out as one of its loonier prophets. Wanna sell books? You gotta be Ezekiel with a flashy wheel, not just Obadiah peddling a party line.

The fact that it makes the CT idiocy more transparently beyond reason is, for some of them, a feature, not a bug.
 
Axxman300 said:
Secrecy has a place in American society.

I accept that there are things I just don't need to know right now. Those 28 pages from the 9-11 Commission annoy me, but the fact is that there are a lot of people who have read them. I have to assume that in the 14 years since the attack the information in those pages has been acted upon. I know that the Saudis cleaned house in 2002.

The JFK stuff annoyed me too, but lost in all the JFK-Woo is one simple fact:
RFK was the guy who classified it and gave the information its shelf-life.​

I don't think there's a smoking gun in those files. It likely covers the Kennedy White House's activities against Cuba. Most of that is known already.
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Do you actually think Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin and responsible for John Kennedy's murder?

Do you think the Kennedy assassination was investigated properly?
 
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Tony Szamboti said:
Do you actually think Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin and responsible for John Kennedy's murder?

Do you think the Kennedy assassination was investigated properly?
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Perhaps you should start a poll Tony.

You could call it something like " Is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative?"


(You'll need to specify what you mean by 'legitimate' though, or we'll have another productivity sinkhole on our hands)
 
Tony Szamboti said:
Do you actually think Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin and responsible for John Kennedy's murder?

Do you think the Kennedy assassination was investigated properly?
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RoboTimbo said:
Do you have evidence of another assassin?


Clarify your question. In what way do you think it wasn't investigated properly?
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The framing implicit in asking those two questions together like that is a CTists slippery delight; they get to avoid the obvious counter-question to the first- "who do you think, if not Oswald?"- by claiming the begged "improper investigation" makes it impossible for them to answer.
 
turingtest said:
The framing implicit in asking those two questions together like that is a CTists slippery delight; they get to avoid the obvious counter-question...
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As usual, avoiding any semblance of an affirmative claim or a burden of proof. They have affirmative beliefs, but they carefully hide them from public scrutiny.

It is the same question by which every conspiracy author retreats behind a comically-drawn line that purports to be a reasonable standard of proof. "Is there any legitimate reason to question the conventional 9/11 narrative?" "Are you 100% sure about the Bilderbergers?" "Do you think the Kennedy assassination was properly investigated?" The underlying scrimmage in each case attempts to force the opponent to take either an unreasonable position, or to acknowledge that the conspiracy proponent just might have a case.

There is even a name for this fallacy, obscure as it is. It is to Deny the Inductive Leap. Which is to say, it is to wrongly assert the level of certainty that must prevail in order to preclude a conspiracy theory cannot be met by an inductive line of reasoning. It is essentially to deny, in straw-man fashion, that no reasonable person would attest to absolute certainty "beyond the shadow of doubt" in any proposition. But conversely it is to demand (again wrongly) that the inductive leap is big enough to admit the wedge the conspiracist is firmly trying to drive into it. The existence of an inductive leap is not ipso facto to admit it will hold the proffered conspiracy theory, or any conspiracy theory.

...by claiming the begged "improper investigation" makes it impossible for them to answer.
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This is the peculiar JFK rhetoric. All conspiracy genres vigorous seek to trick their critics into accepting an affirmative burden of proof for the conventional narrative, either as an evasion tactic or as a ploy to find a proxy for the evil powers they wish would pay attention to them. Conspiracy theories walk a thin line between attracting attention and avoiding accountability. But in the JFK case, the conspiracy theorists believe the debate should closely mirror the mechanics of the criminal trial Oswald would have stood, were he not himself killed. Thus they style themselves as defense attorneys who need only cast enough doubt on the Warren Commission (inexplicably styled as prosecutors) to win their case according to a standard of proof they claim applies.

Nick Terry wrote eloquently on this a few months ago, to be found a few pages up the thread. I can't really say it much better than he. Mounting a mock trial and declaring according to one's own judgment that Oswald would have been acquitted is simply a pseudo-legal veneer over the same tap dance that occurs in every conspiracy genre.
 
Jango said:
I've already answered that: the Zapruder film is evidence of a second shooter.
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Where is your evidence? lol, the Zapruder film, what is the evidence, the Zapruder film. Can you explain? No.

Where is the evidence; you can't say, it will ruin the failed BS circular logic.

Have you been to Dallas to see how easy the shot was? I could have hit the president with a tomato from that window.

The Zapruder film makes the area look bigger, and invites fantasy BS claims, like "the Zapruder film is evidence of a second shooter" to exist in the fertile minds of BS artists, and conspiracy theorists who have no evidence.

When can you follow up on this claim? 1. Never 2. Soon 3. Too busy to earn a Pulitzer for this overwhelming evidence.
 
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turingtest said:
Taftfan himself, on his website, says this:

The film alteration theory cannot be dismissed out of hand. Indeed, given the fact that the violent backward movement defies all the known laws of physics and wound ballistics, film alteration is a distinct possibility.
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So we see here two aspects of CT methodology-

1) In order for the theory to work, the conspiracy itself must be made more complicated. It wasn't enough to have more (un-evidenced) shooters, and someone (un-evidenced) monkeying around with the body at autopsy- now the film has to be faked by another (un-evidenced) someone. Layers piled upon layers, not because there's any evidence for them, but strictly out of necessity- they're needed to sustain the theory, not because they were ever realistic in a working conspiracy.

2) Eating their cake and having it too- if the film can be used to support the CT, it's perfectly reliable. If not- if any little bit of it contradicts the CT- then it's a fake. Of course, if CTists were faithful to a principle of consistency, they wouldn't be CTists.
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Well this Taftfan's knowledge of physics seems not to be large. He seems to belong to the Hollywood school of TV and Movie physics. In those worlds when someone is hit by a bullet they are knocked back by the bullet hitting them. That is simple nonsense. the mass of a bullet is only a small fraction of the mass of a person so its chances of imparting enough energy to knock a human being back is not large. Has a experiment hang up a Pig carcass and then spray it with machine gun bullets from say 20 feet away. It won't move much. So a single bullet s unlikely to knock someone back like they do on movies and TV in real life.

Given the mass of the bullet and the mass of Kennedy's head any forward momentum imparted by the bullet would be easily overcome by any involuntary movement of various neck muscles. Further the bullets ability to impart a noticeable movement to Kennedy's head in the first place would be minimal.

People should really stop taking their physics from Movies and TV.
 
RoboTimbo said:
You've still failed to answer any of the outstanding questions:



You ran away before you could.
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Tell me how to turn on quote notifications so I can bypass those stupid childish accusations of "running away".

And sorry, no, I do not have an answer for you as to where the frontal shot specifically came from. The President's head/body movement and brain matter exiting out the back of his head and unto the trunk is a dead giveaway of a frontal headshot though.
 
Jango said:
Tell me how to turn on quote notifications so I can bypass those stupid childish accusations of "running away".



And sorry, no, I do not have an answer for you as to where the frontal shot specifically came from. The President's head/body movement and brain matter exiting out the back of his head and unto the trunk is a dead giveaway of a frontal headshot though.
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So, where did the shot come from? There is no place in front where a shooter could have made a shot from and remained concealed.
 
Jango said:
And sorry, no, I do not have an answer for you as to where the frontal shot specifically came from. The President's head/body movement and brain matter exiting out the back of his head and unto the trunk is a dead giveaway of a frontal headshot though.
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Sorry but TV and Movies are really bad sources to how bullets actually work in the real world. Contrary to what you say the effects you describe are not a "dead giveaway" of a shot to the front at all. May I suggest the book Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics, by Tom Rogers, it has a chapter on precisely this point. (Chapter 13: JFK and Momentum: Hollywood's Conspiracy to Assassinate History, pp. 195-211.)
 
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