Is there a future in JFK assassination discssion?

[ajohnstone]

Can i ask a question.

Has the number subscribing to this discussion list been growing or
declining?

Is the number of contributors to it rising or declining?

I'm asking this since it seems the issue about who and how JFK was
assassinated may well fade away and have no interest except to future
historians who will relegate CTers to the foot-notes of text-book.

[bigdog]

My scientific wild assed guess is that the numbers are declining along
with interest in the JFK assassination among the public in general. There
was very little buzz about the release of the remaining documents. I would
bet a majority of Americans don't even realize that's happening. The JFK
assassination is so 20th century. I can't imagine too many millennials
have the least bit of interest in the case.

[John McAdams]

I can assure you Marquette students are interested in the
assassination.

But what they may lack, compared with Baby Boomers, is an intense
emotional investment in the issue. Thus they are relatively
dispassionate students of the issue.

.John
-----------------------
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

[chucksch...@gmail.com]

I don't know if the numbers are still growing (I don't believe they are),
but I am convinced that the "average" person who has a belief in a JFK
assassination conspiracy comes to this board, reads a little, visits
John's excellent website, and subsequently ends up changing their minds
that there was a conspiracy. Belief in a JFK assassination conspiracy is a
mile wide and an inch deep. Lay out the facts to the "average" person (the
buffs who post here are not "average" but instead are hardcore believers
in a JFK conspiracy), and they say to themselves, "wow, I didn't know
there was that much evidence Oswald did this," and then they put this down
as a subject of interest.

The people who post here----Whether believers from the Oswald Alone side
or buffs that believe all or some of the crazy theories---are the ones who
dominate the discussion boards.

John McAdams, through his website, published work, this discussion board,
etc. has probably changed more minds into believing Oswald acted alone on
11-22-63 than any other person in history.

[John McAdams]

That's a nice thought, but probably untrue. The influence of LNs who
are darlings of the media -- Posner and Bugliosi particularly -- has
to have been much greater.

.John
-----------------------
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

[Anthony Marsh]

Usually what happens is that it declines until a new movie or TV show or
release of documents or confessions sparks interest in a new generation
and they wander in here asking beginner questions and then get hooked.
There are very few of us oldtimers left.

[fred....@gmail.com]

John McAdams is one of my heroes. I don't know whether Posner and Bugliosi
have had greater influence. I do know that McAdams website is a testament
to clear thinking. His book, JFK Assassination Logic, is also a must-read.
We all owe John a debt of gratitude for what he has done in shining a
light on the JFK assassination.

[Anthony Marsh]

Maybe support from the CIA made a difference.

> .John
> -----------------------
> http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm
>

[Anthony Marsh]

On 12/11/2017 9:02 PM, chucksch...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 7:20:10 PM UTC-6, ajohnstone wrote:
>> Can i ask a question.
>>
>> Has the number subscribing to this discussion list been growing or
>> declining?
>>
>> Is the number of contributors to it rising or declining?
>>
>> I'm asking this since it seems the issue about who and how JFK was
>> assassinated may well fade away and have no interest except to future
>> historians who will relegate CTers to the foot-notes of text-book.
>
>
> I don't know if the numbers are still growing (I don't believe they are),

Who would have the numbers? Google?

> but I am convinced that the "average" person who has a belief in a JFK
> assassination conspiracy comes to this board, reads a little, visits
> John's excellent website, and subsequently ends up changing their minds
> that there was a conspiracy. Belief in a JFK assassination conspiracy is a
> mile wide and an inch deep. Lay out the facts to the "average" person (the
> buffs who post here are not "average" but instead are hardcore believers
> in a JFK conspiracy), and they say to themselves, "wow, I didn't know
> there was that much evidence Oswald did this," and then they put this down
> as a subject of interest.
>
> The people who post here----Whether believers from the Oswald Alone side
> or buffs that believe all or some of the crazy theories---are the ones who
> dominate the discussion boards.
>
> John McAdams, through his website, published work, this discussion board,
> etc. has probably changed more minds into believing Oswald acted alone on
> 11-22-63 than any other person in history.
>

This newsgroup is dominated by WC defenders only because McAdaams favors
them. The Nuthous is dominated by kooks.

[bigdog]

I'm curious as to the percentage of them that are conspiracy believers.
Can you make a ballpark estimate on that?

I have no doubt that these students do have an interest in the
assassination but I wonder how representative they are of students as
whole or millennials as a whole. Just as Trekkies will congregate at a
Star Trek convention, we could expect a small percentage of students who
have an interest in the assassination to congregate at a class about the
assassination.

I'm basing my observations of interest in the assassination based on my
own experience. Oliver Stone's movie rekindled interest in the
assassination for a brief time but then it waned. I can only remember a
couple of times it came up in conversation since then. I don't spend a lot
of time around young adults but when I have, the assassination never comes
up.

[bigdog]

Having participated in discussion groups like this for about a quarter
century, I've only seen a couple of converts to the lone assassin
position. I've seen none going the other way. One that comes to mind is
Dr. Bob Artwohl who was a regular contributor on the old Prodigy board. He
came to it as a CT and left an LN. I'm not sure if he was a contributor on
this forum but if so it was before I joined it. I've seen his name
referenced but never a post by him. Chris Matthews is another who has
shifted from CT to LN. Back when he was a semi-regular on the McLaughlin
Group, he expressed the opinion that Cubans were behind the assassination.
He didn't say pro-Castro or anti-Castro. More recently he has stated he
doesn't think Oswald was part of a conspiracy because he had his job at
the TSBD well before the motorcade route was selected. That indicated to
him it was a crime of opportunity. That was my primary reason for
switching back to the LN position as well. I have one friend who also
turned from CT to LN. He saw the movie JFK and was convinced there was a
conspiracy. About ten years later when it came up, he had changed his
mind. That was shortly after ABC's Beyond Conspiracy which did a pretty
thorough job of debunking many of the conspiracy claims. I wonder if that
was what changed his mind.

[chucksch...@gmail.com]

Absolutely disagree. The accessibility of your site and the ability for
casual visits to this discussion board so the average "Joe" can get their
feet wet on the subject and just lurk without posting and absorb what the
participants are saying cannot be overestimated. Pretty tough for the
average Joe to sit down and read Case Closed or spend weeks or months
reading Reclaiming History.

There are other great websites on the JFK assassination, but this site
assuredly has an outsized influence due to your university-level class on
the subject, your stature within this field, and so on.

I was a buff---granted, a REASONABLE buff as I thought Oswald pulled the
trigger but had help or was put up to it---until the early 2000s when I
became re-interested in the topic for some reason. (The Z film on Good
Night America and the HSCA in my high school years started the interest. I
held a periodic interest in the topic for the next twenty-five years or
so, just reading about the case when there was something newsworthy.) I
found your site on the internet, began reading, and I actually laughed at
how flimsy some of the beliefs I had actually were when compared to what
some of the articles at your site pointed out. My JFK conspiracy beliefs
fell away instantly. I'll bet there are thousands just like me.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 5:10:24 PM UTC-5, John McAdams wrote:

Yes, the emotional detachment is a key contributor to the change of views.
Plus, the 50 plus years of investigations - directly and indirectly - by
the press and historians (Caro et al.) and scholars that have come up with
nothing (but, of course, are part of the coverup!).

I've said tongue in cheek that the conspiracy crowd has to believe in all
kinds of "twos": two Oswalds, two shooters, two rifles, two autopsies, two
caskets, two Z films....

And two Kennedys. That is we have the real one - a domestic pragmatist, an
anti-communist believer in an existential struggle with communism - and
their imaginary one, a man who was (somehow) going to end the Cold War,
stop the Vietnam conflict, end Jim Crow and save America from the evil
minions who had hijacked it. And it was for this that they struck him
down. Even the anti-American Simkins says he is frustrated by this
deifying of JFK (one of the few things he gets right).

If you take away this imaginary JFK and present the man as he was, then
the explanations as to why "they" needed to kill him falls apart. The
emotional explanation - he was going to save the country - disappears and
the dispassionate explanation has to persuade.

And it doesn't. Take away the mythical JFK and the justification for
taking such a profound and dangerous act disappears. Then we have the
facts and logic; and it's on that ground that the conspiracy people fall.

[John McAdams]

On 12 Dec 2017 20:51:02 -0500, "Steve M. Galbraith"

I actually have a page on this idea:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/double.htm

>And two Kennedys. That is we have the real one - a domestic pragmatist, an
>anti-communist believer in an existential struggle with communism - and
>their imaginary one, a man who was (somehow) going to end the Cold War,
>stop the Vietnam conflict, end Jim Crow and save America from the evil
>minions who had hijacked it. And it was for this that they struck him
>down. Even the anti-American Simkins says he is frustrated by this
>deifying of JFK (one of the few things he gets right).
>
>If you take away this imaginary JFK and present the man as he was, then
>the explanations as to why "they" needed to kill him falls apart. The
>emotional explanation - he was going to save the country - disappears and
>the dispassionate explanation has to persuade.
>

I have a bunch of essays on that too.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/stjohn.htm

>And it doesn't. Take away the mythical JFK and the justification for
>taking such a profound and dangerous act disappears. Then we have the
>facts and logic; and it's on that ground that the conspiracy people fall.

My assesment of the JFK presidency is more positive than negative, but
he was not any sort of "great" president.

(To see my article you have to scroll down past Goldzwig's article:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140305112652/http://www.marquette.edu/magazine/recent.php?subaction=showfull&id=1381854706&archive=&start_from=&ucat=7&

.John
-----------------------
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

[John McAdams]

That's good to know!

Might thousands of people have been influenced by my site? Likely. It
gets about 6,000 distinct visitors per day. That's a lot of visitors
in more than 20 years.

On the other hand, most of those people just load a page or two. Some
probably read what they load thoroughly, but a lot probably don't.

But perhaps when people see that this or that conspiracy factoid is
bogus, they approach the whole business with a bit more skepticism.
You know where that leads. :-)

But the social scientist in me simply won't allow me to think that
I've had the influence of mainstream media outlets, or people like
Posner and Bugliosi who are the "go to" people of those outlets.

.John
-----------------------
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

[Jason Burke]

So is the ever-decreasing cohort of looney-tunes folks who still believe
there was a conspiracy.
So what?
Do you have a point?
Or is your last comment just like ever other one of your missives,
Anthony Anthony?


>
>

[David Emerling]

On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 4:08:38 PM UTC-6, bigdog wrote:
> I can't imagine too many millennials
> have the least bit of interest in the case.

I have four children ages 33, 28, and twin boys who are 27. On occasion,
they snarkily tease me, "Dad, have you solved the Kennedy assassination
yet?" They could care less. If it became known that the CIA was definitely
behind the plot to assassinate the president, they'd would probably shrug
their shoulders and not think a thing of it. They'd still probably drive
to Arby's and order a Beef 'n Cheddar.

David Emerling
Memphis, TN

[Steve M. Galbraith]

I heard Matthews say years ago that he thought Castro/Cuba was involved.

Here he is in 2009 discussing US relations with Cuba: "But, you know, I
still hold it against them. They had something to do, perhaps, in knocking
our guy off."

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2009/04/17/chris-matthews-rage-over-bad-guy-castro-surprises-morning-joe

[Hank Sienzant (AKA Joe Zircon)]

On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7:55:13 PM UTC-5, bigdog wrote:

Were you on Prodigy back in the early 1990's? I was. I remember Dr.
Artwohl and remember one conspiracy theorist advancing the notion that
Artwohl was a bogus name, that it really stood for "Lee Harvey Oswald Was
The Real Assassin" backwards.

Boy, you can't put anything past a good conspiracy theorist and his
speculations.

Last I saw, Bob had his medical practice in Alaska. When he was posting on
Prodigy, he was an emergency room physician in Baltimore, Md.


Like Bob, myself and my brother are both converts from CT to LN.

I was a conspiracy theorist from about 1965 (Weisberg, Lane, Meagher,
etc.) until the early 1980s. I would flip-flop on occasion based on what I
read last during this period. I finally decided I needed to do my own
research instead of relying on the second-hand info I was getting from
various authors.

I converted myself in the early 1980s after I purchased a copy of the WC
26 volumes of evidence from The President's Box Bookshop for $2500 (which
was a lot of money for me at the time). I read through all 26 volumes
(twice) and couldn't believe how badly the conspiracy authors had treated
the evidence. I found, contrary to the allegations of the conspiracy
authors, that it was they, not the Commission, that mostly took stuff out
of context and weren't faithful to the evidence.

About ten years later, myself and my brother were together again for
Christmas (we live in different states) and he happened to mention offhand
how I must be happy that Oliver Stone was making (or had made) the movie
JFK.

I said "there was no conspiracy, Stone's an idiot" (or words to that
effect) and he, influenced to believe in a conspiracy by me prior to my
conversion, and unaware of my conversion, couldn't believe it.

He started to argue for a conspiracy, and it devolved into a shouting
match. We agreed to discuss via mail with long typewritten letters passing
in the mail. Eventually I converted him.

The kicker for him, he told me later, was a minor point by a conspiracy
author. This author claimed that the jacket found after the assassination
in the parking lot couldn't be Oswald's because research established the
jacket was only sold in California, and Oswald was never in California as
a civilian. Makes sense, right? Well, I pointed out Oswald was in
California as a Marine, and could have bought it there (I may or may not
have pointed out he also could have bought it second-hand anywhere he had
been, rendering the author's point moot). He said at that point he knew he
couldn't trust anything those guys said, that there was always something
they were hiding from the reader in advancing their argument.

So that's two more I can personally vouch for.

Hank

[David Emerling]

On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 6:55:13 PM UTC-6, bigdog wrote:

> Having participated in discussion groups like this for about a quarter
> century, I've only seen a couple of converts to the lone assassin
> position. I've seen none going the other way. One that comes to mind is
> Dr. Bob Artwohl who was a regular contributor on the old Prodigy board. He
> came to it as a CT and left an LN.

One of the many definitions of intelligence is the ability and willingness
to change one's mind when confronted with better and more compelling
evidence. Anything other than that is irrational dogma.

For instance, religion is an irrational dogma. There is no proof that God
exists and, in fact, there is rather compelling evidence that there is no
supreme being who is demanding both our obedience and praise, who cares
about what we do in both our personal and public life, can control our
actions at his will, and determines our salvation and damnation. I used to
believe but the was the influence of my childhood. And then I changed my
mind.

In fact, when I first started my journey into the Kennedy assassination
during my senior year in high school (1978), I was inclined to believe
that there WAS a conspiracy - mostly because of the prevailing and
pervasive pop-culture belief that one existed. I didn't know any
different. But my research caused me to change my mind.

In fact, I don't know why more politicians don't simply say, "I changed my
mind." They seem so fearful of allegations of "flip-flopping" and go
through strains to try frame their "evolving" beliefs as NOT
flip-flopping. But I think people might actually respect a politician who
clearly explains WHY they have, for instance, switched from a position of
Pro-Life to Pro-Choice.

David Emerling
Memphis, TN

[mica...@gmail.com]

The new JFK mock trial had that animation traced over the Zapruder Film
was like a rebuttal to Sale Myers. If it is possible to use a group of
photographic experts to make a similar 3D animation which unequivocally
matches all photos from Dealey Plaza, then that might be a way to debunk
the Single Bullet Theory. If the Single Bullet Theory gets officially
debunked, the house of cards falls.

[Mitch Todd]

I prefer to say that there is a large rump of CT's who don't
really have a problem with the WC, HSCA, CIA, FBI, SS, LBJ,
RMN or any other reasonable assemblage of capital letters.
They are at war with reality itself. In a way, a book like
Harvey and Lee is a metaphor for a particular type of
conspiracy theorist: the poor sap who knows --a priori, ex
nihlo and from the pit of their immortal soul-- that there
really was a conspiracy. Therefore, any evidence that doesn't
point to a conspiracy must then be altered, manufactured, or
substituted by the conspiracy.....which is even more evidence
for a conspiracy. And as the evidence piles up against against
a CT interpretation, the enterprising CT has more evidence
of an ever larger, ever more widespread conspiracy It's like
a big bowl o' Chuck Wagon dog food: it makes it's own gravy!

They wind up with their heads jammed in a parallel, fantastical
universe, unable to deal with reality and unable to come
back down to Earth because their egos and concept of self
depends on the continued existence of the conspiracy that
the asserted on day one.

It's like an Eco novel that he should have written instead
of _Foucault's Pendulum_.

[bigdog]

Yes, it's far more inspiring to believe that JFK was martyred for opposing
evil forces in a shadow government than that he got whacked by a little
nobody with a cheap Italian war surplus rifle who took advantage of the
fact JFK opted to ride past his workplace in a slow moving open top car.

To this day, opinion polls rank JFK at or near the top of the greatest
presidents in our history despite the fact his presidency was long on
style and short on substance. JFK demonstrated one thing. Getting
assassinated can do wonders for a President's approval rating.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Thanks for the links.

As to JFK: It seems to me that he was neither a hawk nor a dove but,
instead, what Joseph Nye calls an "owl." He recognized that any indirect
US-Soviet confrontation could quickly escalate into areas where the world
simply couldn't go. Eisenhower's first use and massive retaliation
strategies were simply not tenable.

Of all of his decisions, I think his decision to move away from those
policies may have been his greatest achievements.

[Anthony Marsh]

All the same visitors every time?

Does the OP even know what a lurker is? Do you know what the typical ratio
is for the difference between lurkers and posters? Who would publish such
data?

> On the other hand, most of those people just load a page or two. Some
> probably read what they load thoroughly, but a lot probably don't.
>
> But perhaps when people see that this or that conspiracy factoid is
> bogus, they approach the whole business with a bit more skepticism.
> You know where that leads. :-)
>

It may also be a result of Google searchers and hits leading them to a
topic or file which they are interested in which leads them here. Of
course that may be skewed by you paying Google to make sure your results
go to the top and people too lazy to look through 10,000 hits.

> But the social scientist in me simply won't allow me to think that
> I've had the influence of mainstream media outlets, or people like
> Posner and Bugliosi who are the "go to" people of those outlets.
>

Or maybe it's because of your book. You've sold millions of copies of
your book and people Google your name to learn more and stumble into
this newsgroup.

Or maybe people saw you at the conference and were so impressed by your
bravery that they wanted to learn more about you.

> .John
> -----------------------
> http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm
>

[Anthony Marsh]

Sure, but you're just not trying hard enough. There should be a double
for EVERYTHING, including JFK and you.
SO lazy!

>> And two Kennedys. That is we have the real one - a domestic pragmatist, an

What about parallel worlds? Ever see the show Sliders?

[Anthony Marsh]

I'm always fascinated by the science fiction that tries to go back and
change history. One ended up having JFK as the shooter on the grassy
knoll.

[Anthony Marsh]

I like that. So you thought it was a very small conspiracy, maybe just a
contract hit paid for by one person?
Maybe H.L. Hunt?

[Hank Sienzant (AKA Joe Zircon)]

On Wednesday, December 13, 2017 at 5:19:05 PM UTC-5, mica...@gmail.com wrote:
> The new JFK mock trial had that animation traced over the Zapruder Film
> was like a rebuttal to Sale Myers.

And a rebuttal to your own theory of the assassination, as I pointed out
here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12113016&postcount=3226

I also pointed out some issues with his claims here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12112529&postcount=3220

and in the following posts.

> If it is possible to use a group of
> photographic experts to make a similar 3D animation which unequivocally
> matches all photos from Dealey Plaza, then that might be a way to debunk
> the Single Bullet Theory. If the Single Bullet Theory gets officially
> debunked, the house of cards falls.

And if it buttresses the Single Bullet concept, will you admit you were
wrong? Based on your posting history here, where I see you posting the
same claims that were shot down elsewhere, I'd have to venture a 'no' as
an answer. Like many others, you'd either ignore the contrary evidence or
claim it's more evidence of the conspiracy.

Hank

[Anthony Marsh]

So you claim, but I was there and I have the messages and I knew him.
He was always a WC defender.

> this forum but if so it was before I joined it. I've seen his name
> referenced but never a post by him. Chris Matthews is another who has

Under which alias? I think on Prodigy we used our real names.
I don't remember you posting with an alias.

> shifted from CT to LN. Back when he was a semi-regular on the McLaughlin
> Group, he expressed the opinion that Cubans were behind the assassination.

Chris Matthews is an odd duck. He knows it was a conspiracy, but he
wants it to be a very tiny conspiracy and definitely not involve his
buddies at the CIA.

> He didn't say pro-Castro or anti-Castro. More recently he has stated he

He was fed the Castro conspiracy theory by the CIA.

> doesn't think Oswald was part of a conspiracy because he had his job at
> the TSBD well before the motorcade route was selected. That indicated to
> him it was a crime of opportunity. That was my primary reason for
> switching back to the LN position as well. I have one friend who also

CHildish logic.

[Anthony Marsh]

Maybe they're afraid to bring it up because they know that you'll turn
them in to the Secret Service, the way someone here did.

[bigdog]

It hardly surprises me that Matthews would be two faced about this. He
correctly sees Oswald's employment at the TSBD well before the motorcade
route was selected as a reason to doubt conspiracy but then he turns
around and suggests Castro's regime might have somehow put Oswald up to
it. How would anybody at the Cuban embassy have any idea the opportunity
Oswald would later have. As he pointed out at other times, it was a crime
of opportunity. I have also heard him blame the climate of hate that
permeated in Dallas for JFK's assassination, suggesting it might have been
right wing extremists responsible, ignoring the fact that Oswald was a
Marxist.

[bigdog]

Yes, I was on Prodigy. Back then I don't remember anybody using
screennames. I first joined that group shortly after Oliver Stone's movie
rekindled my interest in the case. Artwohl was a Loon (our term of
endearment for CTs back then), at the start but somewhere he had an
epiphany and became an ardent Nutter (the Loons's term of endearment for
us). Marsh doesn't seem to remember Artwohl as a Loon but back then he was
the newbie who joined the part late, probably after Artwohl converted to
becoming a Nutter.

> Boy, you can't put anything past a good conspiracy theorist and his
> speculations.
>

I lived in Omaha at the time of the assassination. Aksarben was both a
civic organization and the name of the horse racing track my Dad worked at
during the summers. One of the railroads had a train named Aksarben too
which is Nebraska spelled backwards. The track and the train are long gone
but I'm guessing the civic association survives.

I very briefly became a Loon back in the 1980s. It followed the
documentary produced by investigative reporter Jack Anderson who at the
time was highly regarded. The argument that Oswald had his job at the TSBD
long before the motorcade route was selected was what converted me back to
my senses. I couldn't come up with an answer for that. Still can't. No one
else I've ever come across has an answer for that either.

[bigdog]

I generally don't get into arguments about religion because I have no
strong viewpoint one way or another. I'd probably be an atheist if atheism
could answer all my questions, but it can't so I remain agnostic. I accept
that the cosmos is the result of the Big Bang. I want to know what
happened before the Big Bang and what caused the Big Bang. So far I have
yet to see a compelling answer for that.

[bigdog]

On Wednesday, December 13, 2017 at 5:19:05 PM UTC-5, mica...@gmail.com wrote:

It is hard to debunk something that actually occurred. One of the few
things in the WCR that I take exception to is that the SBT is not
essential for the finding that Oswald was the sole assassin. That simply
is not true. JFK and JBC were hit at virtually the same instant. If they
were not hit by the same bullet they were hit by two different gunmen. I
have no doubt they were hit by the same bullet.

[Jason Burke]

Oh geez. Looks like this fellow finally got tired of getting spanked at
the Skeptics Forum.

If the moon landing photos show the edge of the backdrop, the whole
house of cards fails there also.

But it ain't gonna happen. Mainly because, you know, it didn't.

[David Von Pein]

On Wednesday, December 13, 2017 at 4:41:55 PM UTC-5, Hank Sienzant (AKA Joe Zircon) wrote:

Hey, that's a pretty good one! ~grin~

Do you recall who the inventive CTer was who came up with that clever
decoding of Artwohl's name? (It wasn't Tony Marsh by any chance, was it?)
:-)

[Mark OBLAZNEY]

The future lies. So does the present, it would seem. Lee killed Jack.
Period. Who cares why?

[chucksch...@gmail.com]

Bugs is gone. Reclaiming History was a great book but unreadable to all
but the most interested people in the subject. (I read it cover-to-cover,
but I'm not your average Joe who is curious about a few things regarding
the events surrounding 11-22-63.)

Posner is invited on radio talk shows and television shows right around
the assassination anniversary date every year, is eloquent, and then
disappears. He obviously retains an abiding interest in the topic, but he
will also tell you that he's moved on, has other interests, and has
written on many other subjects.

Think of your website like a business lit up in neon on the side of a very
busy highway called the internet that is open 24/7, 365, with no entry
fee, and accessibility to free "merchandise" in the form of the articles
it contains. Loitering is allowed, no shoes, no shirt, you still get
service. I'll add Dale Myers, Dave Reitzes, David Von Pein (and there are
others as well) to the list of people with websites who I think are gently
changing minds and turning the page on the ugly chapter of JFK
assassination conspiracism that---in my opinion---wounded our country.

In fact, I believe that had the internet been around when JFK was
murdered, the depth and penetration of JFK conspiracism into the American
culture would've been dulled. One of the problems in the 60s, 70s, and 80s
was that almost everything produced, written, or broadcast was of a
pro-conspiracy nature. There was no counter point. We need look no further
than the 9-11 Truther movement which has been halted in its tracks by the
flood of websites that sarcastically mock Truthers, tear apart the Loose
Change video(s), crush the Nutty Professor, Jim Fetzer, and his beliefs on
the subject in YouTube debates, promote the real science behind the tower
collapses, etc. and thus this event never made deep inroads into the
culture that the JFK assassination "conspiracy" did.

[Anthony Marsh]

How many lies would they have to tell?

[Anthony Marsh]

Why do you hate JFK? Because he was a Liberal and proud to call himself
a Liberal.

I don't think they had invented neo-cons yet.

[Anthony Marsh]

Well the physical facts alone prove that there was a conspiracy.
One man alone can not simultaneously fire from behind AND in front.
Then we want to know the who and why. There are millions of theories
about that.

> point to a conspiracy must then be altered, manufactured, or
> substituted by the conspiracy.....which is even more evidence

But you don't mind is evidence is covered up or destroyed. That's OK
with you. You don't need no damn stinkin evidence.

[Anthony Marsh]

Which SBT?

[Anthony Marsh]

On 12/13/2017 5:02 PM, David Emerling wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 6:55:13 PM UTC-6, bigdog wrote:
>
>> Having participated in discussion groups like this for about a quarter
>> century, I've only seen a couple of converts to the lone assassin
>> position. I've seen none going the other way. One that comes to mind is
>> Dr. Bob Artwohl who was a regular contributor on the old Prodigy board. He
>> came to it as a CT and left an LN.
>
> One of the many definitions of intelligence is the ability and willingness
> to change one's mind when confronted with better and more compelling
> evidence. Anything other than that is irrational dogma.
>
> For instance, religion is an irrational dogma. There is no proof that God
> exists and, in fact, there is rather compelling evidence that there is no

Do you always need just and only one God to have a relgion? What about the
Greek Gods? Then you can have a God for every litle thing.

> supreme being who is demanding both our obedience and praise, who cares
> about what we do in both our personal and public life, can control our

You mean the Old Testament God, Yahweh.

> actions at his will, and determines our salvation and damnation. I used to
> believe but the was the influence of my childhood. And then I changed my
> mind.
>
> In fact, when I first started my journey into the Kennedy assassination
> during my senior year in high school (1978), I was inclined to believe

Did you hear about the HSCA then? It was in the newspapers.

> that there WAS a conspiracy - mostly because of the prevailing and
> pervasive pop-culture belief that one existed. I didn't know any
> different. But my research caused me to change my mind.
>

Hey man, if you're not hip to the latest theory, you must be working for
the Man.

> In fact, I don't know why more politicians don't simply say, "I changed my
> mind." They seem so fearful of allegations of "flip-flopping" and go
> through strains to try frame their "evolving" beliefs as NOT
> flip-flopping. But I think people might actually respect a politician who
> clearly explains WHY they have, for instance, switched from a position of
> Pro-Life to Pro-Choice.
>

Are those the only choices?

There was a cute show last night where this cult doesn't believe in blood
transfusions, but the only way to save the life of the baby was an
operation which required a blood transfusion, so some doctor invented a
machine that could do it with artificial blood. Everyone wins.

> David Emerling
> Memphis, TN
>

[Anthony Marsh]

On 12/13/2017 4:41 PM, Hank Sienzant (AKA Joe Zircon) wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7:55:13 PM UTC-5, bigdog wrote:

>> On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 9:02:09 PM UTC-5, chucksch...@gmail.com wrote:

>>> On Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 7:20:10 PM UTC-6, ajohnstone wrote:
>>>> Can i ask a question.
>>>>
>>>> Has the number subscribing to this discussion list been growing or
>>>> declining?
>>>>
>>>> Is the number of contributors to it rising or declining?
>>>>
>>>> I'm asking this since it seems the issue about who and how JFK was
>>>> assassinated may well fade away and have no interest except to future
>>>> historians who will relegate CTers to the foot-notes of text-book.
>>>
>>>

>>> I don't know if the numbers are still growing (I don't believe they are),
>>> but I am convinced that the "average" person who has a belief in a JFK
>>> assassination conspiracy comes to this board, reads a little, visits
>>> John's excellent website, and subsequently ends up changing their minds
>>> that there was a conspiracy. Belief in a JFK assassination conspiracy is a
>>> mile wide and an inch deep. Lay out the facts to the "average" person (the
>>> buffs who post here are not "average" but instead are hardcore believers
>>> in a JFK conspiracy), and they say to themselves, "wow, I didn't know
>>> there was that much evidence Oswald did this," and then they put this down
>>> as a subject of interest.
>>>
>>> The people who post here----Whether believers from the Oswald Alone side
>>> or buffs that believe all or some of the crazy theories---are the ones who
>>> dominate the discussion boards.
>>>
>>> John McAdams, through his website, published work, this discussion board,
>>> etc. has probably changed more minds into believing Oswald acted alone on
>>> 11-22-63 than any other person in history.
>>

>> Having participated in discussion groups like this for about a quarter
>> century, I've only seen a couple of converts to the lone assassin
>> position. I've seen none going the other way. One that comes to mind is
>> Dr. Bob Artwohl who was a regular contributor on the old Prodigy board. He

>> came to it as a CT and left an LN. I'm not sure if he was a contributor on
>> this forum but if so it was before I joined it. I've seen his name
>> referenced but never a post by him. Chris Matthews is another who has
>> shifted from CT to LN. Back when he was a semi-regular on the McLaughlin
>> Group, he expressed the opinion that Cubans were behind the assassination.
>> He didn't say pro-Castro or anti-Castro. More recently he has stated he
>> doesn't think Oswald was part of a conspiracy because he had his job at
>> the TSBD well before the motorcade route was selected. That indicated to
>> him it was a crime of opportunity. That was my primary reason for
>> switching back to the LN position as well. I have one friend who also
>> turned from CT to LN. He saw the movie JFK and was convinced there was a
>> conspiracy. About ten years later when it came up, he had changed his
>> mind. That was shortly after ABC's Beyond Conspiracy which did a pretty
>> thorough job of debunking many of the conspiracy claims. I wonder if that
>> was what changed his mind.
>
> Were you on Prodigy back in the early 1990's? I was. I remember Dr.
> Artwohl and remember one conspiracy theorist advancing the notion that
> Artwohl was a bogus name, that it really stood for "Lee Harvey Oswald Was
> The Real Assassin" backwards.
>

Could have been a joke. I like anagram better than backwards.
Did you ever meet him? Nice guy. I saw him at the Chicago Mid-West
conference and he said some pretty silly things.

> Boy, you can't put anything past a good conspiracy theorist and his
> speculations.
>

You could if you tried hard enough.

> Last I saw, Bob had his medical practice in Alaska. When he was posting on
> Prodigy, he was an emergency room physician in Baltimore, Md.
>
>
> Like Bob, myself and my brother are both converts from CT to LN.
>
> I was a conspiracy theorist from about 1965 (Weisberg, Lane, Meagher,
> etc.) until the early 1980s. I would flip-flop on occasion based on what I
> read last during this period. I finally decided I needed to do my own
> research instead of relying on the second-hand info I was getting from
> various authors.
>
> I converted myself in the early 1980s after I purchased a copy of the WC
> 26 volumes of evidence from The President's Box Bookshop for $2500 (which
> was a lot of money for me at the time). I read through all 26 volumes
> (twice) and couldn't believe how badly the conspiracy authors had treated
> the evidence. I found, contrary to the allegations of the conspiracy
> authors, that it was they, not the Commission, that mostly took stuff out
> of context and weren't faithful to the evidence.
>

I think I've only said about 2 million times that most WC defenders
never actually read the WC.
I once had the entire set in the trunk of my car. Then a buddy of mine
left them out in the rain and they got ruined.
How many copies of the report do you have?

> About ten years later, myself and my brother were together again for
> Christmas (we live in different states) and he happened to mention offhand
> how I must be happy that Oliver Stone was making (or had made) the movie
> JFK.
>
> I said "there was no conspiracy, Stone's an idiot" (or words to that
> effect) and he, influenced to believe in a conspiracy by me prior to my
> conversion, and unaware of my conversion, couldn't believe it.
>
> He started to argue for a conspiracy, and it devolved into a shouting
> match. We agreed to discuss via mail with long typewritten letters passing
> in the mail. Eventually I converted him.
>
> The kicker for him, he told me later, was a minor point by a conspiracy
> author. This author claimed that the jacket found after the assassination
> in the parking lot couldn't be Oswald's because research established the

OK, cute, but what does Oswald's jacket have to do with who killed Kennedy?
I don't need the jacket to convict Oswald of killing Tippit.

> jacket was only sold in California, and Oswald was never in California as
> a civilian. Makes sense, right? Well, I pointed out Oswald was in

I like that. The counter argument is that he stole it!

> California as a Marine, and could have bought it there (I may or may not
> have pointed out he also could have bought it second-hand anywhere he had

What about the laundry tag? He could say it was only put on in Russia.

> been, rendering the author's point moot). He said at that point he knew he
> couldn't trust anything those guys said, that there was always something
> they were hiding from the reader in advancing their argument.
>

We can't trust anything in the Warren Report.

[Anthony Marsh]

> I heard Matthews say years ago that he thought Castro/Cuba was involved.
>
> Here he is in 2009 discussing US relations with Cuba: "But, you know, I
> still hold it against them. They had something to do, perhaps, in knocking
> our guy off."
>
> https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2009/04/17/chris-matthews-rage-over-bad-guy-castro-surprises-morning-joe
>
>

That comes directly from the CIA. It's a technique known in the trade as
False Flag.


"I didn't do anything wrong, it was Hillary."
"Hillary hacked her own e-mail server to blame it on me!"
"Believe me."

[Anthony Marsh]

So you deny any facts which disprove your predetermined conclusions.

[Anthony Marsh]

Sure, but then WHO caused the Big Bang? And don't say ABC.
It was The Doctor.

> happened before the Big Bang and what caused the Big Bang. So far I have
> yet to see a compelling answer for that.
>

Watch Doctor Who.

[David Von Pein]

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2017/12/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-1268.html

[Steve M. Galbraith]

This is a classic Marsh drive-by post.

Completely irrelevant to the discussion and completely inapposite to what
I wrote about JFK.

[OHLeeRedux]

Maybe you could give them some help, being an expert and all.

[Anthony Marsh]

But you still have to wear SOME clothes. No posting in the nude!

> service. I'll add Dale Myers, Dave Reitzes, David Von Pein (and there are
> others as well) to the list of people with websites who I think are gently
> changing minds and turning the page on the ugly chapter of JFK
> assassination conspiracism that---in my opinion---wounded our country.
>
> In fact, I believe that had the internet been around when JFK was
> murdered, the depth and penetration of JFK conspiracism into the American

The government would have shut down the InterNet lest its rumors start
WWIII.

> culture would've been dulled. One of the problems in the 60s, 70s, and 80s
> was that almost everything produced, written, or broadcast was of a
> pro-conspiracy nature. There was no counter point. We need look no further

What do you mean there was NO counter Point? I remember that show.

> than the 9-11 Truther movement which has been halted in its tracks by the
> flood of websites that sarcastically mock Truthers, tear apart the Loose

I like the way you accidentally tell the truth. So it wasn't facts which
knocked down the Truthers. It was slander and personal attacks.

[OHLeeRedux]

Says Anthony "Alternative Facts" Marsh.

[OHLeeRedux]

Thanks for the reco. But I'll read a book instead. You should try reading
sometime, Anthony. It might help you avoid looking foolish so often. If
you even want any help with that.

[recip...@gmail.com]

If the "physical facts alone" proved a conspiracy, then
you would have physical facts. Over the years, you've
conspicuously delivered a paucity of them.

> > point to a conspiracy must then be altered, manufactured, or
> > substituted by the conspiracy.....which is even more evidence
>
> But you don't mind is evidence is covered up or destroyed. That's OK
> with you. You don't need no damn stinkin evidence.

So you could prove a conspiracy...if the CIA hadn't
compromised your dog so that it ate your homework.
I'll bet you named him "Angleton", too.

[Anthony Marsh]

On 12/15/2017 9:48 PM, David Von Pein wrote:
> http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2017/12/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-1268.html
>


The advantage of a blog is that you can make up any false version of
what others said and attack them for things they didn't say and they
can't correct you.

[Anthony Marsh]

I never had a dog. The government, including the CIA destroyed OUR files.
And you're happy with that.
We already DID prove conspiracy.

[David Von Pein]

And you think I do that, eh?

[OHLeeRedux]

Anthony Marsh

You do that every day here, without a blog.

[Jason Burke]

The advantage of being Anthony Anthony is that you can make sh*t up and
claim it's true.

[OHLeeRedux]

Anthony Marsh
- hide quoted text -

The only thing you proved was the gullibility of politicians.

And the ability of psuedoscientists to take advantage of that gullibility.

[Hank Sienzant (AKA Joe Zircon)]

That is lost in the mists of time.

I don't recall Tony Marsh being on Prodigy at all, but that could be just
poor memory on my part. I remember Jean Davison and John Corbett as
'nutters' and Ron Carmichael as a 'loon'.

Hank

[Hank Sienzant (AKA Joe Zircon)]

Doesn't make it more true no matter how many times you repeat it.

> I once had the entire set in the trunk of my car. Then a buddy of mine
> left them out in the rain and they got ruined.
> How many copies of the report do you have?

Just one, and I honestly hardly consult it anymore. It's in my basement,
on bookshelves, and it's a bear to actually type in the testimony (which
is what I had to do back in the early 1990s if I wanted to quote
something). Now I just use the online sources for the same stuff. And I
can just cut-and-paste the quotes.

>
> > About ten years later, myself and my brother were together again for
> > Christmas (we live in different states) and he happened to mention offhand
> > how I must be happy that Oliver Stone was making (or had made) the movie
> > JFK.
> >
> > I said "there was no conspiracy, Stone's an idiot" (or words to that
> > effect) and he, influenced to believe in a conspiracy by me prior to my
> > conversion, and unaware of my conversion, couldn't believe it.
> >
> > He started to argue for a conspiracy, and it devolved into a shouting
> > match. We agreed to discuss via mail with long typewritten letters passing
> > in the mail. Eventually I converted him.
> >
> > The kicker for him, he told me later, was a minor point by a conspiracy
> > author. This author claimed that the jacket found after the assassination
> > in the parking lot couldn't be Oswald's because research established the
>
> OK, cute, but what does Oswald's jacket have to do with who killed Kennedy?
> I don't need the jacket to convict Oswald of killing Tippit.

It doesn't. It has to do with whether conspiracy authors were playing fair
with their readers. My brother pointed out that was the point that
converted him (after six months of going back and forth on other points he
gleaned from conspiracy authors). That was, in effect, the straw that
broke the camel's back.

>
> > jacket was only sold in California, and Oswald was never in California as
> > a civilian. Makes sense, right? Well, I pointed out Oswald was in
>
> I like that. The counter argument is that he stole it!

Or bought it second-hand in Texas, or bought it while he was stationed in California as a Marine. There's a lot of possibilities, and the conspiracy author pretended by eliminating one, he eliminated Oswald as the owner of the jacket. He didn't.

>
> > California as a Marine, and could have bought it there (I may or may not
> > have pointed out he also could have bought it second-hand anywhere he had
>
> What about the laundry tag? He could say it was only put on in Russia.

It's not a Russian laundry tag.

>
> > been, rendering the author's point moot). He said at that point he knew he
> > couldn't trust anything those guys said, that there was always something
> > they were hiding from the reader in advancing their argument.
> >
>
> We can't trust anything in the Warren Report.

Because... you read that in a conspiracy book.

[bigdog]

Marsh joined the party fairly late. I think it was shortly before Prodigy
changed their pricing policy from flat rate to a usage charge which
effectively killed the discussion group. Martin Shackelford was another
name I remember. He was a participant on this forum but left before I
joined. Every once in a while I see his name pop up when someone
resurrects an old thread. Ron Carmichael is a name I don't remember but
I'm sure that is just poor memory as well.

[Anthony Marsh]

OMG!!
You cut and paste?
Our Russian Troll says that's a sign of the Devil because I cut and paste.

>
>>
>>> About ten years later, myself and my brother were together again for
>>> Christmas (we live in different states) and he happened to mention offhand
>>> how I must be happy that Oliver Stone was making (or had made) the movie
>>> JFK.
>>>
>>> I said "there was no conspiracy, Stone's an idiot" (or words to that
>>> effect) and he, influenced to believe in a conspiracy by me prior to my
>>> conversion, and unaware of my conversion, couldn't believe it.
>>>
>>> He started to argue for a conspiracy, and it devolved into a shouting
>>> match. We agreed to discuss via mail with long typewritten letters passing
>>> in the mail. Eventually I converted him.
>>>
>>> The kicker for him, he told me later, was a minor point by a conspiracy
>>> author. This author claimed that the jacket found after the assassination
>>> in the parking lot couldn't be Oswald's because research established the
>>
>> OK, cute, but what does Oswald's jacket have to do with who killed Kennedy?
>> I don't need the jacket to convict Oswald of killing Tippit.
>
> It doesn't. It has to do with whether conspiracy authors were playing fair
> with their readers. My brother pointed out that was the point that

I forget how that is supposed to work. What's the bargain again? When you
buy a book the author is supposed to play fair? How about when it's
non-fiction? They have to prove everything in court?

> converted him (after six months of going back and forth on other points he
> gleaned from conspiracy authors). That was, in effect, the straw that
> broke the camel's back.
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>> jacket was only sold in California, and Oswald was never in California as
>>> a civilian. Makes sense, right? Well, I pointed out Oswald was in
>>
>> I like that. The counter argument is that he stole it!
>
> Or bought it second-hand in Texas, or bought it while he was stationed in California as a Marine. There's a lot of possibilities, and the conspiracy author pretended by eliminating one, he eliminated Oswald as the owner of the jacket. He didn't.
>

I know, I know. So which one is your favorite?
Maybe we should do a poll.
How about he could only have bought it at the KGB store and it still had
the GOM tag on it? My Russian cigarettes could only be bought in a GOM.

>
>>
>>> California as a Marine, and could have bought it there (I may or may not
>>> have pointed out he also could have bought it second-hand anywhere he had
>>
>> What about the laundry tag? He could say it was only put on in Russia.
>
> It's not a Russian laundry tag.
>

You're no fun anymore. Do you know how many gullible people fell for
that? At least 2.

>
>>
>>> been, rendering the author's point moot). He said at that point he knew he
>>> couldn't trust anything those guys said, that there was always something
>>> they were hiding from the reader in advancing their argument.
>>>
>>
>> We can't trust anything in the Warren Report.
>
> Because... you read that in a conspiracy book.
>

I didn't start reading any conspiracy books until about 1969. My sister
gave me Six Seconds in Dallas. When I met Carl Oglesby who was writing for
the Boston Phoenix I bought his Yankee and Cowboy War, the book and the
theory.

But I never believed anything from the government. I knew better because
my dad was a spy.

[Anthony Marsh]

Whatddya say, I can't remember. Well, somewhere I have my old Prodigy
contract and some messages. I think I might even have them on 3-1/2"
disks. Remember those? But I quickly switched to CompuServe.

#2801 10 003 0825280
Code name TMHM68A in 1993.
I can't remember ALL your old aliases, but on CompuServe we were
supposed to use our REAL names unless you were a CIA agent.

[OHLeeRedux]

Anthony "Strawman" Marsh.

[Steve BH]

On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7:16:39 AM UTC-8, Fred....@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 9:03:47 PM UTC-5, John McAdams wrote:

> > That's a nice thought, but probably untrue. The influence of LNs who
> > are darlings of the media -- Posner and Bugliosi particularly -- has
> > to have been much greater.
> >
> > .John
> > -----------------------
> > http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm
>

> John McAdams is one of my heroes. I don't know whether Posner and Bugliosi
> have had greater influence. I do know that McAdams website is a testament
> to clear thinking. His book, JFK Assassination Logic, is also a must-read.
> We all owe John a debt of gratitude for what he has done in shining a
> light on the JFK assassination.


Hear, hear! Way to go, John.

[TJ Scully]

On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 5:10:24 PM UTC-5, John McAdams wrote:
> On 11 Dec 2017 17:08:37 -0500, bigdog <jecorb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>

> >On Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 8:20:10 PM UTC-5, ajohnstone wrote:
> >> Can i ask a question.
> >>
> >> Has the number subscribing to this discussion list been growing or
> >> declining?
> >>
> >> Is the number of contributors to it rising or declining?
> >>
> >> I'm asking this since it seems the issue about who and how JFK was
> >> assassinated may well fade away and have no interest except to future
> >> historians who will relegate CTers to the foot-notes of text-book.
> >

> >My scientific wild assed guess is that the numbers are declining along
> >with interest in the JFK assassination among the public in general. There
> >was very little buzz about the release of the remaining documents. I would
> >bet a majority of Americans don't even realize that's happening. The JFK
> >assassination is so 20th century. I can't imagine too many millennials
> >have the least bit of interest in the case.
>
> I can assure you Marquette students are interested in the
> assassination.
>
> But what they may lack, compared with Baby Boomers, is an intense
> emotional investment in the issue. Thus they are relatively
> dispassionate students of the issue.
>
> .John
> -----------------------
> http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

The young have to contend with an explosion of competing topics and
details and recently the all Trump all of the time phenomena. The
Education Forum exhibits a steady stream of new names posting lately,
ironic as it seems to have lost its way as a place to learn interesting or
accurate evolving details. The CT (vs the facts rooted splinter) faction
seems to me distancing itself from the moorings of facts and even less
tolerant of being reminded that facts matter. But English speaking world
lately seems less inclined to pursuit of facts.

[Anthony Marsh]

The WC defenders here who are also Trump defenders don't seem to mind
the irony that Trump promotes conspiracy theories.

[David Von Pein]

ANTHONY MARSH SAID:

The WC defenders here who are also Trump defenders....


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Such people *actually* exist? Amazing, if true.