• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Moderated JFK conspiracy theories: it never ends III

Status
Not open for further replies.
JayUtah said:
I can't really argue with that.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. I tend to say nothing in such conversations by and large because you just know the next thing which will be thrown is the accusation of intellectual elitism. In my 5 years as an educator back in the 90s. I was able to counter that in a benign way. To this day I am able to explain complex concepts in a way that anyone can apprehend. Still every so often you will happen upon some loon who says "you science guys, you just make everything up"

Response, "you religious guys, you just make everything up. But I have evidence."



JayUtah said:
...and calls you names for questioning his methods.
Click to expand...
Dunno, my last encounter was with a pair of JWs on the doorstep. They were astonished that I knew more about the bible than they did. They promptly backed away but I was close to deconversion by logic. Run rabbits, run away.
 
abaddon said:
...loon who says "you science guys, you just make everything up"
Click to expand...

I'll take that over someone like Harris who simply follows a cargo-cult approach to the sciences that pertain to his claims. Better, in my mind, someone who clearly exhibits a dismissive approach to scientific inquiry than someone who pretends to embrace it, yet clearly has not clue what it actually entails or how to do it. An anti-science diatribe fools fewer people, in my estimation, than a pseudo-scientific diatribe complete with footnotes.
 
abaddon said:
The gullible layman is only gullible because the education system has failed.
Click to expand...

I see your point, but disagree.

Gullibility has many root causes. In my case, my fascination the the JFK Assassination and subsequent descent into CT-Lunacy started with my father.

"There's just no way one guy could have pulled that off," he said. I was 6 years-old, and my father (I thought) knew everything. He'd been in the Army, he'd been a medic, understood bullet wounds and so on.

The problem is that dad never served in combat, and never had his hands on an open wound. He did see thousands of color pictures in Combat Medic School (or whatever they call it).

Dad's other handicap was shared by the rest of the country:

He wasn't in Dealey Plaza when the shooting took place.

One of the reasons the JFK CTs were able to gain such a vast foothold was that they took place in a giant gray area. It didn't happen in front of a lot of people, and was not on live TV. Just think about the stories that would have been up made about Oswald's death had it taken place out of view instead of live national TV. There were stills from the Zapruder film made public and published in a number of books, but people never saw the film until 1976.
By then, guys like Mark Lane had done their damage. By then we had come through Vietnam and Watergate and had zero trust in the government.

There were and are a lot of smart people who believe Oswald had help, or there was a second gunman in Dallas. Their gullibility stems from ego, and trusting the wrong sources.

My failure was that I assumed that the people writing the CT books knew what they were talking about, that they had done tests, that their sources were reliable, and that they were objective....I was so very wrong.

This was instantly apparent when I went to Dallas and stood on the sidewalk in front of the Grassy Knoll. It was obviously an easy shot, not seeing this while standing there would be a sign of mental illness. 300 feet for the headshot? EASY. Someone behind the picket fence? NO WAY.

Seriously, a guy firing from the picket fence would have been caught in five minutes or less BECAUSE HE WOULD HAVE BEEN A GALACTIC IDIOT. I mean, hell, why not bring a marching band with you if you're going to fire from the Grassy Knoll? You'd be that obvious.

My failure was I trusted people. Like Neil Simon said in "Biloxi Blues", people will believe anything they read because if it wasn't true it wouldn't have been printed. The intellectual disconnect is that CTists will eschew the "Official Story" without bothering to read it.
 
Last edited:
Robert Harris said:
Yes, I have. Like everyone else, I never came close to firing that rapidly. That doesn't mean much though, since I am hopelessly inept with firearms.

What is infinitely more significant is that none of the FBI or HSCA experts could fire that rapidly and accurately - no exceptions. In fact, all of the FBI people except Frazier, required 3 or more seconds - twice as much time as shots at 285 and 313 would require.

And why would he have been trying to set speed shooting records, firing at a target that was crawling along at 8 MPH? This was the only perfect shot of the day, fired from almost the length of a football field (if it came from the SN). Oswald or whoever, obviously took the time to aim carefully.
Click to expand...


Poppycock.
 
Penn Gilette made the shots, in the time available.

Not sure why anybody thinks the timing is outside of the expectations of reasonable competence.

Is there any point in asking for a citation of the negative. That no testing was able to replicate the timings?
 
Ah, but remember Robert has inserted an extra shot in at frame 285...and his contention is no one can make that shot as well as 235 and 315.
 
I may not have been paying close enough attention, but why does Robert think there was an extra shot (or shots) for which there appears to be no need or evidence, from a second shooter who has left no trace?
 
He feels the apparent movement everyone in the car makes a few frames later is due to startle reactions to a shot and not, as suggested by others here, due to the car slowing down...or anything else in fact.
 
Tomtomkent said:
I refuse to believe this was a double post. I think it was a whole new post, based on the reaction of readers.:boxedin:
Click to expand...

But it can't have been me posting, as no one could post that quickly...so there must have been a second poster.

I blame the mafia.

(ETA: this would have worked better had my posts not been 10 minutes apart!)
 
zooterkin said:
I may not have been paying close enough attention, but why does Robert think there was an extra shot (or shots) for which there appears to be no need or evidence, from a second shooter who has left no trace?
Click to expand...

As Tolls has posted (twice, once from the Grassy Knoll), Harris' argument takes a cargo-cult approach to the sciences of physics and psychology. He claims he can determine from the Zapruder film, based on attributed "startle" movements, that the passengers must have been reacting to a shot when other evidence tells us there was no shot. That's the misuse of psychology.

Harris further assures us (by misusing physics) that it would have been impossible for bystanders and passengers not to have been startled by the earlier shots had they been fired from Oswald's rifle. Thus he explains that the earlier, visibly unreacted-to, shots (whose injuries are evident in the film and thus can't be dismissed) had to have been fired by a different weapon equipped with a silencer, so as not to startle anyone. Thus he shoehorns all the other evidence into his miraculous personal ability to determine reliably from a silent film exactly when people were hearing loud noises and when they weren't.

He spackles over the gaping cracks in that theory by saying that (some) witnesses heard the last shots too close together to be fired from a single bolt-action rifle. So in addition to the guy with the silencer who fired the first shot(s), there has to be another guy with a loud rifle to fire right before or after Oswald right around the fatal shot to Kennedy's head.

Got it?

And the backstory for all this explains that it's a Mafia hit -- although admittedly not a "typical" hit (thus getting around the evidence's poor fit to that scenario) ordered by some butt-hurt low-level don, and admitted to in a some utterly unquestionable jailhouse braggadocio.
 
JayUtah said:
As Tolls has posted (twice, once from the Grassy Knoll), Harris' argument takes a cargo-cult approach to the sciences of physics and psychology. He claims he can determine from the Zapruder film, based on attributed "startle" movements, that the passengers must have been reacting to a shot when other evidence tells us there was no shot. That's the misuse of psychology.

Harris further assures us (by misusing physics) that it would have been impossible for bystanders and passengers not to have been startled by the earlier shots had they been fired from Oswald's rifle. Thus he explains that the earlier, visibly unreacted-to, shots (whose injuries are evident in the film and thus can't be dismissed) had to have been fired by a different weapon equipped with a silencer, so as not to startle anyone. Thus he shoehorns all the other evidence into his miraculous personal ability to determine reliably from a silent film exactly when people were hearing loud noises and when they weren't.

He spackles over the gaping cracks in that theory by saying that (some) witnesses heard the last shots too close together to be fired from a single bolt-action rifle. So in addition to the guy with the silencer who fired the first shot(s), there has to be another guy with a loud rifle to fire right before or after Oswald right around the fatal shot to Kennedy's head.

Got it?

And the backstory for all this explains that it's a Mafia hit -- although admittedly not a "typical" hit (thus getting around the evidence's poor fit to that scenario) ordered by some butt-hurt low-level don, and admitted to in a some utterly unquestionable jailhouse braggadocio.
Click to expand...

I will paraphrase myself from elsewhere. You have no bullets, no weapon, no witnesses, no ballistics, no scene, no nothing. How is this anything but idle speculation?

Oh and BTW spackle=polyfilla on this side of the pond.
 
abaddon said:
I will paraphrase myself from elsewhere. You have no bullets, no weapon, no witnesses, no ballistics, no scene, no nothing. How is this anything but idle speculation?
Click to expand...

And because it is Robert's opinion, anyone questioning it is making it about "Robert Harris".

Gotcha!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom