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Moderated JFK conspiracy theories: it never ends III

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I know you're an honest man, Jay.

But, according to you, mentally ill. Address that.

I said I will say nothing derogatory about my debate adversaries.

No. You said "about them." The only group mentioned in that sentence, to which that pronoun could refer, is "whose posts are about Robert Harris and are in any way derogatory." Better add grammar to the list of things in which you are demonstrably incompetent. In any case, you inexplicably dropped that from the later repostings of your rules. Since you explicitly say you reserve the right to alter your rules as you see fit, I must assume you have reasserted your "right" to verbally abuse and insult the other members of this thread.

The people who troll and post ad hominem attacks...

Report alleged ad hominem attacks for moderation. Oh wait, you explicitly refuse to do that. Why would you be so afraid of asking someone else to render judgment over whether you're being fairly treated?

...probably never will be.

False. You have engaged both HSeizant and turingtest, neither of which has agreed to your terms. Hence my suggestion that you abandon your foot-stamping "rules" as the rhetorical game they obviously are.

None of them would ever have the courage to engage me in an honest debate.

Fallacy of the complex question.
 
I'm sure there are people around here who have the courage and integrity to engage in honest debate.

How many people have so far agreed to abide by your rules? You asked for such agreements to be posted in public, and I see none. Sounds like you're fresh out of debate partners and serve no further purpose on this forum. Since you admit you will continue posting at will, and since you admit further that you will not engage anyone who does not agree to your terms, can you explain why we should not report your posts as spam?
 
No one has.

Your prediction failed.

It takes a great deal of courage to defy the trollers around here.

Ad hominem fallacy and fallacy of affirming the consequent.

But I'm in no hurry. While I'm waiting, I will continue to post more evidence.

Explain how this would not constitute a violation of the anti-spam rule you agreed to when you signed up. Explain how that would not simply be you using ISF as your personal pulpit from which to preach your gospel.
 
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You really seem like a great guy, Jay.

But let me ask you a hypothetical question, which I'm sure will contain 5 or 6 fallacies.

If by some incredible, billion to one chance, this JFK thing turned out to be a conspiracy, wouldn't you want to know about it?

What would be the worst thing that would happen if you guys engaged in an honest debate on a level playing field - one in which I don't have to deal with a dozen opponents simultaneously?

Surely, whoever debates me will kick my ass all over the place, right? And even though I am undoubtedly too stupid to recognize the beating I am taking, everyone who views the debate will see it and be perhaps a little better prepared for your next victim, er I mean adversary.

So why not pick out your sharpest guy, perhaps Hank, and encourage him to debate me, one on one and humor me by going along with my rules.

What do you have to lose??

Think of all the fun you'll have watching my humiliation, as your man gives me the comeuppance I so richly deserve for all the terrible fallacies I have committed or which you have so wisely predicted I will commit in the future.

Whaddaya say Jay?

LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!
 
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You really seem like a great guy, Jay.

Yet you assiduously avoid telling the rest of the forum why you saw fit to accuse me of mental illness. Why is that, Robert? The insults backfired on you, so now you're falling all over yourself to flatter me. Would that be to curry favor in hopes of convincing me to endorse your childish ploy?

If by some incredible, billion to one chance, this JFK thing turned out to be a conspiracy, wouldn't you want to know about it?

If someone claimed he could prove that Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy, I would be interested in hearing it. And in fact -- although you refuse to see for yourself -- this thread and its two predecessors dating back a number of years contain the record of my hearing of various proposals exactly to that effect. There's a record of my expressing exactly the interest you allude to.

Unfortunately none of them, including yours, rises to even a cursory level of credibility. In the process of hearing them, I've made a list of the common errors they commit. I presented that list to you as a courtesy upon your arrival here, so that if you saw fit you could avoid those common pitfalls. Not only did you mock my offering, you embraced each and every one of those errors as if it were a virtue.

You simply aren't as formidable and respectable in that regard as you think you are. You have absolutely no clue whatsoever what is involved in constructing, presenting, and defending a case. You flounder about in cargo-cult reasoning and pure conjecture, incompetently unaware of even the rudiments of critical analysis, and relying in substantial measure upon the well-worn meme of insulting your critics.

In short, after I admonished you that you'd have to demonstrate you're worth people's attention, you've amply demonstrated that you are not. And as such you do not rise to fill your hypothetical condition.

What would be the worst thing that would happen if you guys engaged in an honest debate on a level playing field

Complex question and begging the question. Your absurd, contrived rules are not "honest debate" just because you desperately want them to govern how your ideas are tested. No one is going to agree to them, and your newfound obsession over foisting them onto the forum only confirms how abjectly desperate you are.

...one in which I don't have to deal with a dozen opponents simultaneously?

What makes you think you're entitled to limit criticism against you? This is the real world. If you make outrageous statements that arouse disputation in a thousand people, you must deal with a thousand rebuttals. That's just life. Deal with it.

You're so incredibly selfish. You want the adulation and glory of standing up to stiff opposition without actually having to do it. Shame on you.

What do you have to lose?

My integrity.

Every conspiracy theorist wants to manipulate the debate in his favor. I showed how your rules were designed to do that. And predictably you ignored that post. You can't justify your rules, and you brush off that the entire forum is laughing at you for proposing them.

The reason every conspiracy theorist wants to manipulate the debate is because he wants to portray the illusion of having endured meaningful criticism, but he knows he can't do it for real. So he has to severely limit the scrutiny to which his ideas will be subjected. He has to script the examination to make sure he comes out on top. It's pure egoism, designed to buttress the conspiracist's image of himself as a talented crusader for truth. And no, we won't be part of it. We're not your obedient, sycophantic stooges. You'll have to get your praise and adoration elsewhere.

It's time to give that ploy a decent burial. You won't obey the rules yourself, and you can't convince anyone else to take you seriously.
 
2. I will debate no one whose posts are about Robert Harris and are in any way derogatory. Nor will I say anything derogatory about my debate opponents.

Oh look, it's suddenly back. And with brand new wording. Thanks for confirming you screwed it up before. You agree that the pronoun didn't refer to what you thought it did, hence the rewording. I don't suppose I can expect an apology from you for your accusation that I failed in reading comprehension.

Since you've narrowly tailored the group to whom you promise to be civil, are we to assume that you reserve the "right" to continue, as you demonstrably have done, to verbally abuse and insult the members of the forum that you don't consider your debate opponents? I mean there's no need to call out a specific group unless to distinguish it from some other group. And the criteria for the distinction appears to be your intention to treat them civilly.

Do tell. What's your intent here? To whom, exactly, do you promise to be civil?
 
Minor update

Thanks to some help from Jay Utah, I have made a minor correction to rule #2. I also want to thank Jay for the beautiful flowers.

My rules for a level playing field:

I WILL DEBATE NO ONE WHO DOES NOT AGREE TO THEM.

1. I will debate one person at a time, until he or I decide he is done.

2. I will debate no one whose posts are about Robert Harris and are in any way derogatory. Nor will I say anything derogatory about my debate opponents.

3. I may presume that I am right just as my adversaries may presume that they are right.

4. I will debate anyone whose theory is different than mine-conspiracy or lone nut, with each of us bearing the burden of proving their own belief.

These rules may be subject to change as I deem necessary.

I will begin debating with the first person who agrees to these rules.
 
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Nothing in any of the responses to your childish games suggests fear. I'd say it's more a mixture of amazement, amusement and pity.

I have sent that particular list of rules to someone who teaches debating, His replay was that I was making it up and nobody would actually write something like that.

I invited him to the thread to witness the unbelievable!
 
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Thanks to some help from Jay Utah, I have made a minor correction to rule #2.

But you didn't apologize for accusing me of misreading it. You obviously agree that you were wrong and I was right. Therefore you reworded it. But you just can't seem to bring yourself to admit any degree of fault or weakness. What sort of insecurity breeds that uncivil behavior?

I assume our most recent posts crossed in the system. Therefore I'll give you some time to contemplate why you're distinguishing "debate opponents" as a special group only to whom you promise to be civil, and to come up with an explanation for how you plan to treat the rest of the forum. Given the lists that others have compiled of your insults and derogatory comments to date, may we assume that you plan to continue that course of action against your critics unless they consent to your absurd ground rules?

I also want to thank Jay for the beautiful flowers.

I also want to point out that this is the second time you've used this phrase to distract from arguments you obviously can't and won't address. I'll also point out that a number of pages have gone by without any discussion of the Kennedy assassination. For someone who professes to want to talk about Kennedy, you seem to be spending an awful lot of effort ensuring that the talk goes only the way you prescribe.
 
Since Robert is a believer in the "Mafia did it" theory of the assassination, I have a few questions for other, more informed people in the thread. This post is mostly directed at BStrong since he has experience in police work, but anyone else that has information is more than welcome to jump in.

My understanding has always been that the American Mafia, especially at that time, had very strict rules when dealing with the authorities. I had always heard that to even kill off a beat cop or a low level judge was something that had to be approved at the highest levels of their organization, since something like that could easily bring down a world of hurt on them, that the authorities would be all over them in order to avenge "one of their own". So why would they jump immediately from "we have to be really careful about taking out a beat cop that won't play ball with us" to "let's kill the President of the United States"? Has anyone else ever heard this line of thought?

Seriously, given Oswald's well known instabilities and anti-social tendencies, how could Carlos Marcello know that Oswald wouldn't crack like an egg once taken into custody and immediately declare who put him up to it and throw himself to the mercy of the authorities by telling them everything he knew?

The other question I had was in regard to American Mafia tactics. Was it really their style to make a hit in a very public venue in front of hundreds of witnesses? In this day and age of the drug cartels and narco-terrorists, I realize it does happen somewhat, although still rarely in the US, but I have trouble thinking of any older mob hits that were carried out in this fashion. When I think of mob hits, I think of stuff like the Hoffa killing, the target simply disappears never to be see again. Even the killings that were supposedly connected to JFK happened in this fashion. Jimmy Roselli, who people claim was killed to hide his role in the JFK case, (ironically enough, he was claimed to be the "storm drainer shooter" by a lot of CTs) just disappeared and was later found in an oil drum in the ocean. Now, obviously the mob wouldn't be able to "disappear" JFK, but it seems they could have figured out something a little less ostentatious than snipers during a motorcade in front of hundreds of people.

Obviously, I'm not an expert in the mob, so if any of these ideas are silly, I stand ready to be mocked and corrected. :)
 
The Ruby Polygraph
by Robert Harris

In 1978, the HSCA polygraph panel of 9 experts was asked to
reexamine the polygraph test given to Jack Ruby in 1964, by
FBI polygraph expert, Bell P. Herndon. To say that the
panel was shocked and outraged by Herndon's procedures, is
an enormous understatement. It is my belief, based on their
report, that first, Ruby was indeed being deceitful when he
denied any relationship to Oswald, or to the assassination,
and second, that Herndon deliberately tried to hide evidence
that Ruby lied.

http://jfkhistory.com/Polygraph/polygraph.html
Edited by Agatha: 
Edited to add the link and to comply with rule 4. Do not post [...] large amounts of material available on other sites.
 
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cmikes,

I lived in Sicily for a number of years, and I was friends with a few members of La Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia. Let me tell you how I think your questions would be answered from that perspective. You can decide how applicable it would be to the American organization. Keep in mind that while I knew these people on a friendly level, conversations about their involvement with organized crime in Italy were general and intentionally ambiguated. Keep in mind also that nearly everyone in that region has some association with LCN. It's a much more common and accepted situation there than here.

Until the 1980s, there was indeed an uneasy but generally quiet three-way detente between the Cosa Nostra, the Italian government, and the Catholic church. Which is to say, any aggressive action contemplated by one of those parties against the other was scrutinized. Government officials who protected LCN, including police officers and their associates, were in a protected class. Similarly clergy were considered generally untouchable. Conversely, it was common in Sicily to assassinate judges slated to hear mafia cases, if those judges weren't part of the arrangement.

I was living in Palermo during the Maxiprocesso, the highly publicized round of trials of high-level mafia officials. That changed a lot of the dynamic. There was a lot more distrust among the parties after that. But nothing either before or after that rose to the level of dealing with heads of state. What I saw of organized crime simply operated at a lower level than that. You're right in assuming that the goal is to fly under the radar to the extent that the detente among low-level officials in all parties remains intact.

What I know of individual murders perpetrated by the mafia comes from public Italian news sources, not my acquaintances. Naturally they never talked about -- and certainly did not admit to -- any role in any such activity. The vast majority of operatives in organized crime there are part of the organization: money laundering, management, etc. The (anti-)romantic notions of armies of soldier-assassins is a product mostly of Hollywood.

Murder in organized crime in Sicily was eminently pragmatic. No, staging a hail of gunfire in a public place was never the preference. Most judges, for example, were gunned down while coming/going from home and work, by lone assassins wielding handguns and disappearing quickly into the urban melee. As with any aspect of their "business," keeping a low profile and avoiding unnecessary scrutiny or complications were just common sense.

The public reaction to all this was simply to sweep it under the carpet. If you saw something you weren't supposed to see, you kept it to yourself.
 
The Ruby Polygraph

Quick! Distract from uncomfortable questions by abruptly changing the subject! Don't address any of the accountability issues that show your lack of integrity.

Since I don't agree to your silly rules, I of course have no obligation to address your latest wall of text. But I will ask you whether you are a qualified polygraph examiner. Please answer with only the word yes or no.
 
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I have been baffled that skeptics here are so overwhelming lone nut believers. I mean, you all admit that there isn't a shred of evidence that isolates Oswald as the only shooter.

Let me put it this way: you admit that Oswald is a shooter, but cannot provide evidence for more shooters other than some vague notion that people on the Z film might have been reacting to a sound. That IS evidence that Oswald acted alone.
 
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