kennedy assassination

[Graham]

So why didn't the Mafia then have to take Ruby out?

I'd guess because he was instantly arrested and placed somewhere where the Mafia couldn't get to him. And so far as I recall he kept his trap shut until the day he died, saying only that he shot Oswald 'because he lurved JFK', or words to that effect.

Of course he did.

And he was a sick man, too. I think he died in prison of cancer. If the Mafia set him up to kill Oswald, then perhaps Jack thought he'd got nothing to lose one way or the other.


Graham.

[dougie]

graham,
i doubt whether capitalising would make my posts any more interesting or any less boring been in touch with stephen thomas i take it? ill leave you lot to this thread else itll turn into the "why doesnt dougie capitalise his arrrrrrs thread" now that REALLY would be an exceedingly interesting thread im sure .

[Graham]

graham,
i doubt whether capitalising would make my posts any more interesting or any less boring been in touch with stephen thomas i take it? ill leave you lot to this thread else itll turn into the "why doesnt dougie capitalise his arrrrrrs thread" now that REALLY would be an exceedingly interesting thread im sure .

gothewholehogdougieanddontbotherwiththeapostrophek eyorspacerbareitherwhostephenthomasgraham

[dougie]

if there were any doubts whether you were a prick graham..then congratulations! youve just removed them.

[Ally]

I find it interesting that someone who doesn't have the basic respect for the people reading his posts to even attempt to make them legible would call someone a prick because they show similar lack of syntax and clarity of writing to make a point.

Oh well, some people think nothing of talking while chewing with their mouths full of food too. It's about equivalent.

[Graham]

I find it interesting that someone who doesn't have the basic respect for the people reading his posts to even attempt to make them legible would call someone a prick because they show similar lack of syntax and clarity of writing to make a point.

Oh well, some people think nothing of talking while chewing with their mouths full of food too. It's about equivalent.

Ally,

Hear, hear!

Regards,

Graham

And I just saw that you pulled Dougie's resultant, highly abusive and childish post, too.
Good on you. Graham.

[Doctor X]

A coincidence does not make conspiracy.

--J.D.

[Graham]

A coincidence does not make conspiracy.

--J.D.

And you're right, of course, but I've always thought there was something fishy going on.

Graham

[Ally]

Hi Graham,

Nope, didn't pull it, didn't even see it. I am sure I didn't miss much though.


Moving on...

The main problem I have always had with conspiracy theories is, what really are the chances that there could have been an organization involved? The inherent weakness of conspiracies is that it relies on humans. Humans can rarely keep their mouths shut and if indeed there had been anything to it, I have no doubt something would have surfaced by now.

[Graham]

Hi Graham,

Nope, didn't pull it, didn't even see it. I am sure I didn't miss much though.


Moving on...

The main problem I have always had with conspiracy theories is, what really are the chances that there could have been an organization involved? The inherent weakness of conspiracies is that it relies on humans. Humans can rarely keep their mouths shut and if indeed there had been anything to it, I have no doubt something would have surfaced by now.

Hi Ally,

He must have removed it himself after having second thoughts. It was about the most nauseating piece of obscenity I've seen. He's also removed himself from these boards too, I believe.

Re: Conspiracy.

I just finished an excellent book called 'Killing Hitler' by Roger Moorhead. All about the various attempts to bump off the Fuhrer. The only two I ever knew about were the beer-hall bomb and the July Plot. However, it appears there were loads of plots to kill or kidnap Hitler, but surprisingly for some strange reason very little of any of them have ever been made public. Roger Moorhouse said that he had to dig very deep to find details of most of the 'other' plots - many of which originated within the German Army, so that high-ranking officers who either plotted or knew about plots all put on their old school tie and kept their traps shut so as not to cast a poor light on their own class. Maybe re: JFK it's possible something similar went on (and is still going on) in that there perhaps are people who know more than they are prepared to tell. Who knows? Not me, that's for sure.

Cheers,

Graham

[Doctor X]

Graham:

I think the basic problem with the Kennedy assassination that drives conspiracy theories is that it does not seem to "balance." On the one side you have Kennedy. He was at his peak--though he probably would have gone down in popularity as his foray into Vietnam, et cetera, came home to "roost." Be that as it may, he was young, popular and . . . then he was dead.

That point is important: it allows fans to blame later Presidents for Kennedy's mistakes--Johnson and Nixon made enough of there own, thank you. However, fans can read onto the Mythic Kennedy [Staring Mel Gibson--Ed.] all sort of dreams and think, "if ONLY" he lived there would have been no Vietnam, no deficits, the Cold War would have ended in 1968, and disco never would have happened! Utopia!!" That is all just dreaming, but such drives conspiracy theories. Make no mistake, I am not saying that drives your questioning at all. No! It drives a lot of conspiracy theories and when you sit in a sea of conspiracy claims, it is hard not to pay attention.

Heck, how many HERE started because they had learned Jack the Ripper was a Free Mason Prince who was really a woman when she was not traveling to America to kill people during the Chicago Worlds Fair? Then you started digging. You learned the myths and the basic facts.

On the other side of Mythic Kennedy you have . . . a complete failure for all intents and purposes! He could not even defect to Cuba--they did not want him because he was a whack job. The clown defected to Russia . . . only to defect back!

However he almost killed a retired General who was part of the John Birch Society, if my memory serves me correctly, about a week prior to the assassination. "Missed him by that much" to paraphrase Maxwell Smart, with the same gun.

Nevertheless, over time, every part of the assassination has been recreated--even with the type of gun--even the "magic bullet" which proved not very magic. All of the claims that the head went the wrong way, or that the bullet "had to change direction in mid-flight, then grab a cup of coffee," or that the shot was "impossible," or that "no one can get off that many with that gun in that amount of time," to the bloody grassy knoll all faded away.

Still . . . how could a LOSER do that?

It runs against our sense of "fairness."

For that reason I agree with Posner that a lot of conspiracists simply label Oswald a "patsy" and forget about him. He is inconvenient.

Imagine if Reagan actually died--calm down my Liberal Friends! I just washed the seat cushions! He was pretty damn popular.

His killer? A big loser with an obsession with Jodie Foster. HOW CAN THAT BE TRUE?!!111! I guarantee we would be on our fifth Reagan Assassination film by now. Mafia, KGB . . . you name it! Why? Because it just does not balance.

Fine. There is one other problem: the various US governments from Republican to Democrat have proven utterly unable to hide conspiracies. Kennedy could not keep his adultery out of the papers. Nixon could not keep Watergate under wraps. Iran-Contra. Whitewater.

I do not want to turn this into a big political discussion since I get enough of them as it is, but if there was a "Cabal" that could keep a Presidential assassination secret for this long, in the face of everyone trying to crack it, how the [CENSORED--Ed.] did anyone find out about Watergate? Why is Monica Lewinsky still alive? Why did a bunch of guys not bury a crapload of sarin in Iraqi deserts?!

Conspiracy theorists will counter that of course we know about those because t3h r34l conspiracies are hidden!! Well . . . fine. Then give up.

Going back to HERE--I do not have to tell anyone HERE that Ripperology is filled with myths. How do you tell which are myths and which are not? You have to sit down and do the research, obviously.

How do you do that with JFK? Just as some Ripperologists research to prove a suspect--t3h MASONS!!!1!!--and cherrypick the data accordingly--so too do JFK conspiracists. People still parrot the "back and to the left nonsense" even though that was debunked decades ago: it is the nature of such head wounds that the head moves towards the direction of the bullet. That seems counter-intuitive until one studies the physics of through-and-through gunshot wounds.

So Oliver Stone bleats it over and over again and it seems reasonable, just as an example.

I see I am pontificating, so I will stop . . .

. . . do understand, none of the above in anyway contradicts the most likely explanation: Kennedy assassinated himself on the urgings of a janitor, hologram, cat, and robot from the future searching for curry. . . .



--J.D.

[sdreid]

Going through the Zapruder film frame by frame, it does appear to me that the head does move ever so slightly forward at the frame where the bullet hits. It then is quickly thrown back either by the exit jet or a muscle contraction. If the bullet had been stopped by the head, I don't think there would be the near instant rearward motion.

[Doctor X]

This is what happens.

We think of a bullet hitting a head like a billiard ball hitting another billiard ball--it transfers part to all of its momentum--depending on the type of collision and . . . like . . . math--to the other billiard ball which then moves away in a semi-predictable fashion.

Heads are not billiard balls.

When a bullet of large kinetic energy impacts the skull, it transfers relatively little energy to the skull or, especially, to the soft brain inside. As the bullet travels, it pulls brain and fragments with it, effectively gaining mass. As the bullet passes again through the skull as it exists, this transfer of energy--bullet, fragments of skull, and chunks of brain--provide the force that propels the head away and towards the gun. This is a form of action and reaction. Rather than the bullet imparting a force on entry, it and the fragments of bone and brain provide the force on exit. Spheres filled with water burst on the site of exit. Since force equals the mass multiplied by the acceleration, as the bullet decelerates, it transfers force. The brain offers little resistance to the bullet. Imagine then, the reactive force that occurs as the bullets and fragments exit. I think the reason why it seems intuitive that the head should snap in the direction of the bullet is the believe it represents a Type 1 elastic collision; the cue ball strikes a billiard ball as described above. This is the wrong model to explain a bullet passing through a head.

In the Zapruder film and in pathological evidence--of Kennedy and others so shot--you will see that the President's head explodes in the right frontoparietal region and snaps back. Incidentally, his entrance wound--as it usually is in these cases--is small.

Physicist Luis W. Alvarez performed studies on this back in 1969, which he subsequently published in the September 1976 issue of the American Journal of Physics. As far as anyone knows, Oliver Stone does not subscribe to that journal.

As Alvarez demonstrated--and Penn & Teller have repeated . . . I think even the Mythbusters have done this . . . I know various documentaries have--if you wrap a grapefruit with one-inch Scotch glass filament tape to recreate a skull around a brain, and then shoot it with a high velocity bullet that will pass through it, it will jump towards you.

Human skulls, when tested, behave in the same manner.

Yours truly,

--J.D.

[Vila]

I've seen films of different things being shot with rifles: pumpkins, jugs of water, blocks of balistic gelatin... At certain distances from the target, and again at certain ranges of bullet speeds, the targets moved slightly away from the shooter and then moved back *towards* the shooter. I don't remember the exact explanation offered in the videos, but it appeared to me that a narrow range of bullet mass and speed was the root cause of the observed motion.

I'm not laying claim to being a balistics expert of any kind. I'm just relating something that I saw on some videos of balistic tests done for some TV shows. It might be that the videos shown were cherry-picked to support someone's theory.

As always, Your Mileage May Vary

Vila

[sdreid]

You also have the added dynamics of supersonics with shock waves and such.

Yes, the entry wound is almost always smaller except in the case of a very near contact wound which this wasn't.