Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

[Dave Stratman]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Most "conspiracies" are better referred to as lobbies, with yours being a great example.

Actually, just the reverse is true, at least in many cases. "Lobbying" is a euphemism for activities that in many instances would properly fall under the term "conspiracy: a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose." The example I gave--the Obama Adminstration secretly allowing insurance industry lobbyists to write the Health Care bill to benefit the industry at great cost to the American people, in exchange for insurers' funding the Democrats for the next election--may not have been strictly illegal (I simply don't know--it may well have been), but, as a betrayal of the interests of the people, it would certainly fall into the category of "evil."

The term lobbying is very often simply a way of glossing over and legitimizing the systematic betrayal of ordinary people at the hands of the money power and the government that serves that power's interests.

[flintlock]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

The term lobbying is very often simply a way of glossing over and legitimizing the systematic betrayal of ordinary people at the hands of the money power and the government that serves that power's interests.

Very well said!

[c1ue]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

OK, let me see if I've got this straight. Floyd Rudmin is saying that "conspiracy theory" is a pejorative term used to marginalize people who question the officially-approved line on important events. Rudmin maintains that conspiracy theories represent "naive deconstructive history," attempts by people untrained in history or related disciplines who, doubting the official story, do what research they can on their own. Rudmin does not “lump all conspiracy theories into the category of truth,” as you claimed.

In fact, conspiracy theorists discredit themselves through poor logic, reliance on poor sources, and association with wackos.

As I've said many times, it isn't that any given conspiracy theory is guaranteed false, it is that they consistently make many incorrect assumptions while simultaneously refusing to entertain alternatives. 100 years ago, this would be considered superstition; in fact one may argue that conspiracy theory is the descendant.

You, however, have experience arguing with "conspiracy theorists" about 9/11 and have found that they don't do their own research but quote Alex Jones (whom Rudmin doesn't seem to have discovered) and “Professor So and so.” You also apparently have proved mathematically that 19 guys in a cave in Afghanistan blew up the WTC. (You may even have proved that those pesky WMD are still hidden somewhere; in fact, they can probably be found in whatever country it is that our gubmint would like to invade next.)

You have just labelled yourself as a conspiracy advocate; as if it wasn't already clear.

If you examine those 9/11 debate threads, you'll note a very civil conversation where I and others, including EJ, consistently showed that the collapse of the WTC towers was very possible; that there were no glaring violations of physics, nor has there been a single credible proof of anything other thanU multi-hundred ton planes full of jet fuel slamming into 2 enormous buildings composed primary (by volume) of air.

The response was universal: Alex Jones said it was impossible. Professor So and So said it was impossible. Never a successful refutation of the physical numbers out up.

You also claim that Rudmin’s statement, that Oswald could not have successfully fired three shots from 88 yards with the rifle he was supposed to have used, shows that Rudmin is not to be taken seriously. Yet the latest evidence, based on tests by a team of Italian weapons experts supervised by the Italian army at the Terni factory where Oswald’s weapon was produced, shows that your claims are quite wrong. The Italian experts concluded that Oswald could not have fired those shots in the time-frame in question. In addition an article by a former senior FBI metallurgist in the Annals of Applied Statistics shows that the “‘evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed". The report, by William Tobin, a former FBI laboratory metallurgist, and Cliff Spiegelman and William James, of Texas University, is based on new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the batch Oswald purportedly used.” (These tests, incidentally, were published in 2007, after Vicent Bugliosi’s 1600-page book attempting to vindicate the Warren Commission Report. They invalidate Bugliosi’s most important claims.)

Do you realize the irony of this response? You are doings exactly what I noted above: using some Internet data to 'prove' the Oswald conspiracy theory.

Have you ever actuallyd shot a bolt action rifle?

As someone who has, it is completely credible for any person reasonably familiar with a given rifle to fire 3 shots in that period. I personally could not hit a target 2 times out of 3 shots shooting at that speed, but I know for a fact having seen it that an expert can.

I'd also note that even for entire units; a standard of capability in the late 1800s and early 1900s was for 6 aimed shots a minute with 10 foot grouping - I.e. 100 or more random soldiers being able to shoot aimed shots every 10 seconds and get 90% of their shots within a twice man sized target.

Thus while you can say Oswald made extraordinarily good shots, it is completely not credible to say they were impossible. He was skilled, and maybe a little lucky.

As for trajectories, again the real world isn't some ideal gravity based model. Bullets do all sorts of weird things once they hit something.

Governments and their powerful corporate and banker backers lie and their lies are echoed by politicians, endlessly repeated by the media, supported by academics eager for government or foundation grants or just longevity in their careers, and a whole passel of other actors with a stake in the interpretation of social developments. Sometimes that stake is merely psychological: some people are so deeply invested in their respect for authority that they leap to support TPTB, no matter how ludicrous the claims, even if it is against their own interests.


I’m not suggesting that you are one of those people. I am simply trying to point out what I see as the value of Rudmin’s and Roberts’s articles. As our government becomes less and less democratic, and as the Masters of Great Wealth here and around the world tighten their grip, we will be subjected to ever more lying and misinformation, and the willingness to muster the courage and resources to challenge the official line will become increasingly important. In this situation, it will be important not to smear those who have the courage to try to discover the truth, even if they dare cross the line of what is officially acceptable.

Oswald 'had no time to fire all Kennedy bullets'

Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in assassinating President John F Kennedy, according to a new study by Italian weapons experts of the type of rifle Oswald used in the shootings.

In fresh tests of the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action weapon, supervised by the Italian army, it was found to be impossible for even an accomplished marksman to fire the shots quickly enough….

The official Warren Commission inquiry into the shooting concluded the following year that Oswald was a lone gunman who fired three shots with a Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle in 8.3 seconds.

But when the Italian team test-fired the identical model of gun, they were unable to load and fire three shots in less than 19 seconds - suggesting that a second gunman must have been present in Dealey Plaza, central Dallas, that day….

In a further challenge to the official conclusions, the Italian team conducted two other tests at the former Carcano factory in Terni, north of Rome, where the murder weapon was made in 1940.

They fired bullets through two large pieces of meat, in an attempt to simulate the assumed path of the magic bullet. In their test, the bullet was deformed, unlike the first bullet in the Kennedy assassination, which remained largely intact.

The second bullet is thought to have missed its target. According to the commission, the third disintegrated when it hit Kennedy's head. The new research suggests, however, that this is incompatible with the fact that Oswald was only 80 yards away, in a book depository, when he fired. The Italian tests suggest that a bullet fired from that distance would have emerged intact from Kennedy's head, implying that the third shot must instead have come from a more distant location.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1556184/Oswald-had-no-time-to-fire-all-Kennedy-bullets.html

Call for rethink on Kennedy shooting

Fresh debate over the assassination of President John F Kennedy has erupted following a research team's claims that bullet analysis used to show that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone was "fundamentally flawed".

The team of experts, which includes a former senior FBI scientist, is challenging the analysis of bullet fragments on which government officials based their conclusion that Oswald alone fired the two bullets that killed the president in 1963, the Washington Post reports.

At the time investigators concluded that the five bullet fragments recovered from the scene came from just two bullets, which were both traced to the same batch of bullets Oswald owned.

But an article in the Annals of Applied Statistics claims that the "evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed".

The report, by William Tobin, a former FBI laboratory metallurgist, and Cliff Spiegelman and William James, of Texas University, is based on new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the batch Oswald purportedly used.

While the researchers reached no conclusion about whether more than one gunman was involved in the Dallas shooting, they urged authorities to conduct a completely fresh forensic analysis of the five bullet fragments.

The researchers believe that the bullet fragments could have come from three or more separate bullets. If the five fragments came from three or more bullets, it would mean that a second gunman's bullet would have had to have struck the president, the research team has concluded.

Despite the Warren Commission Report findings that Oswald acted alone, many continue to believe others were involved in the shooting or that it was part of a broader conspiracy which was then the subject of an official cover-up.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1551976/Call-for-rethink-on-Kennedy-shooting.html

Whether some corporation, government, or whatever stands to benefit from a status quo report, it does not automatically mean said report is wrong.

Ultimately you have to use your own common sense and judgement.

The other problem I have with conspiracy theories is the assumption of ultimate evil, or at least absolute immorality.

Every large scale incident such as 9/11 would require dozens, if not hundreds of participants. There is no way that every single one of these participants is so evil/immoral as to hold the secret of a fabricated incident that kills fellow countrymen.

Even in the case of Kennedy where the numbers of participants is in the dozens, the qui Bono question arises. Why would the government bother with concealing a second shooter? Why not just have that one 'shot while resisting arrest'?

Sure, there are many real world examples of of groups with dozens of members doing terrible things such as the death squads in Central and South America, but these were groups fighting other groups due to ethnic or deeply divisive political life and death power struggles.

Do these descriptions apply to the US?

[DToM67]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

C1ue? Logic? Bah!

Not worth the keystrokes.

[c1ue]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

More examples of 'cherry picking' of conspiracy data:

The "immaculate bullet" (conspiracy view) vs. head on view:





Clearly one picture is far more misleading than the other.

Here is a picture of Kennedy's shirt. It should be quite obvious that the holes were made by a bullet exiting - entry damage is small while exit damage is much larger:


Next we have Oswald's Mannlicher rifle timeline:

March 12, 1963	Dallas	Lee orders rifle from ad for Klein's Sporting Goods in American Rifleman
March 1963	Dallas	Move to 214 West Neely Street / Lee receives pistol and rifle
March 31, 1963	Dallas	Oswald, in black "hunter of fascists" outfit, gives cheap Imperial Reflex camera to Marina, is photographed with rifle and pistol

Oct. 15, 1963	Dallas	Oswald Hired by Roy Truly at Texas School Book Depository
Oct. 16, 1963	Dallas	Oswald begins work at Depository
Nov. 22, 1963, 12:30 pm.	Dealey Plaza, Dallas	Kennedy Shot, fatally wounded

So Oswald had the gun for more than 7 months before the Kennedy shooting.

C1ue? Logic? Bah!

Not worth the keystrokes.

Indeed. Nothing to say is nothing to say.

[unlucky]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Rather than speaking is generalities, I suggest you examine one or two of the examples that Roberts and Rudmin give and show us wherein they err.

But the generalities are exactly what I want to speak about. I'm not saying that any specific conspiracy theory is right or wrong. I'm saying that the label "conspiracy theory" is useful to the extent that it identifies an assumption of large-scale cooperation between diverse persons/interests for a dishonest purpose. All other things equal, theories/explanations that make this assumption are less plausible than theories that don't.

When the term "conspiracy theory" is used in other ways, e.g. purely pejorative, then it is not particularly useful. But I don't agree with the claims in the above articles that it is a purely pejorative term.

[don]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Some of the truly outrageous explanations for pivotal events are the 'official conclusions' by those organizations that benefit most from the pejorative use of the conspiracy theory label. George Orwell called it doublethink.

[Dave Stratman]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

If you examine those 9/11 debate threads, you'll note a very civil conversation where I and others, including EJ, consistently showed that the collapse of the WTC towers was very possible; that there were no glaring violations of physics, nor has there been a single credible proof of anything other thanU multi-hundred ton planes full of jet fuel slamming into 2 enormous buildings composed primary (by volume) of air. The response was universal: Alex Jones said it was impossible. Professor So and So said it was impossible. Never a successful refutation of the physical numbers out up.

I wasn't able to find that thread, not being very good at navigating iTulip. But knowing the intelligence and work of The Pythonic Cow, who participated in the debate and who is passionate and deeply informed on the issue, and the abilities of some others on this list, I am certain you are misrepresenting it. Just your brief statement here about two enormous buildings composed primarily of air gives me a pretty clear indication of the quality of your side of the thread. (Has WTC 7 gone missing?)

Do you realize the irony of this response? You are doings exactly what I noted above: using some Internet data to 'prove' the Oswald conspiracy theory.

You are misrepresenting what I did, which was much more limited. I used published data and analyses to refute your claim that Oswald's gun was unqualifiedly the assassination weapon.


I’m not clear on your attitude towards evidence. Are you saying that, because the two articles I found from the Telegraph (UK) are on the Internet, they are therefore inadmissible? Or are you claiming to have some inside info (a mathematical proof, perhaps?) that the work of the senior FBI metallurgist and two Texas U. professors showing that all the bullet fragments could not have come from the same rifle is bogus? Or are you simply saying, “Experts? We don’t need no stinking experts.” You just post your own unauthenticated crap and call anything else conspiracy theory. (Uh-oh. I've just spotted your latest post, complete with pictures of a deformed bullet and a bloody shirt...taken from the Internet!!!! Lordy, it must be a conspiracy theory.)

Have you ever actuallyd shot a bolt action rifle?

Yes, I have. In fact, I have fired a Mannlicher-Carcano (Oswald's type of weapon) a number of times--but not at a moving target. A friend of mine owned one when we lived in Maine. I had a .30 Remington and a Winchester 30-30 at the time.

As someone who has, it is completely credible for any person reasonably familiar with a given rifle to fire 3 shots in that period. I personally could not hit a target 2 times out of 3 shots shooting at that speed, but I know for a fact having seen it that an expert can.

I'd also note that even for entire units; a standard of capability in the late 1800s and early 1900s was for 6 aimed shots a minute with 10 foot grouping - I.e. 100 or more random soldiers being able to shoot aimed shots every 10 seconds and get 90% of their shots within a twice man sized target.

Thus while you can say Oswald made extraordinarily good shots, it is completely not credible to say they were impossible. He was skilled, and maybe a little lucky.

As for trajectories, again the real world isn't some ideal gravity based model. Bullets do all sorts of weird things once they hit something.

Shooting at a moving target is actually a different matter from shooting at a stationary one. It requires not only working the bolt action quickly and smoothly, but instantly recalibrating your aim as you lead the target consistent with its speed.

I notice that you ignore--or rather reject--the tests done by the weapons experts under supervision of the Italian Army at Terni. It can't be for the reason you claim--that the information was found on the internet--because then you couldn't use the pictures you provided us of the bullet and shirt. So what's the answer? Are things from the internet only credible when they bolster your or the government's position?

Whether some corporation, government, or whatever stands to benefit from a status quo report, it does not automatically mean said report is wrong.

Ultimately you have to use your own common sense and judgement.

The other problem I have with conspiracy theories is the assumption of ultimate evil, or at least absolute immorality.

I think that there is no evil our government and the powers that it represents will stop at to insure its domination of US society.

Every large scale incident such as 9/11 would require dozens, if not hundreds of participants. There is no way that every single one of these participants is so evil/immoral as to hold the secret of a fabricated incident that kills fellow countrymen.

The lies about WMD were systematically promulgated by the government and the corporate media and the country was drawn into a war of aggression, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 1.4 million Iraqis, the displacement of 4 million more, the deaths of more than 1,400 US servicemen and women, with barely a peep from any Establishment figures. The continuing War on Terror has involved the active participation of many thousands of political and media actors, many of whom must understand that it's all bullshit. The Manhattan Project, whether you think it was a good thing or not, involved something like 500,000 people at many different locations around the country and stayed secret for four years, until Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Even in the case of Kennedy where the numbers of participants is in the dozens, the qui Bono question arises. Why would the government bother with concealing a second shooter? Why not just have that one 'shot while resisting arrest'?

As Oswald said, "I'm just the patsy." If I recall correctly, he was killed rather soon after his arrest, no?

Sure, there are many real world examples of of groups with dozens of members doing terrible things such as the death squads in Central and South America, but these were groups fighting other groups due to ethnic or deeply divisive political life and death power struggles.

Do these descriptions apply to the US?

Leading elements of the death squads in Central and South America were trained in torture and other relevant matters at the School of the Americas. The death squads are instruments of U.S. policy. They are used against union activists, peasant organizers, and other forces which threaten U.S. business and strategic interests in the region.

The fact that death squads are not operating in the U.S. is not a function of the humanity or good manners of our government but of the low level of class struggle here and also the tradition of an open society. I fear, however, that thse freedoms we expect here are being quickly undermined and may disappear. We have a president who has drawn up a list of Americans he claims the right to assassinate. What's next?

[c1ue]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

But knowing the intelligence and work of The Pythonic Cow, who participated in the debate and who is passionate and deeply informed on the issue, and the abilities of some others on this list, I am certain you are misrepresenting it.

You can think whatever you like: the discussion wound up exactly as I characterized it.

TPC asserted the evidence held by a prominent (and multi-area) conspiracy theorist and maintained that any other outside corroborating evidence was suppressed by the government. He furthermore refused to acknowledge or provide clear disproof of (which is, of course, impossible) countervailing views and calculations provided by myself and others.

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...eories?p=90182

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...ermite?p=89469

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...tag-is-burning

And the half dozen attempts to resurface this nonsense afterwards can be found using Google:

site:itulip.com thermite

I’m not clear on your attitude towards evidence. Are you saying that, because the two articles I found from the Telegraph (UK) are on the Internet, they are therefore inadmissible? Or are you claiming to have some inside info (a mathematical proof, perhaps?) that the work of the senior FBI metallurgist and two Texas U. professors showing that all the bullet fragments could not have come from the same rifle is bogus? Or are you simply saying, “Experts? We don’t need no stinking experts.” You just post your own unauthenticated crap and call anything else conspiracy theory. (Uh-oh. I've just spotted your latest post, complete with pictures of a deformed bullet and a bloody shirt...taken from the Internet!!!! Lordy, it must be a conspiracy theory.)

The point of what I posted was that the evidence shown can easily be manipulated; actual data is verifiable.

The photo used by the conspiracy theorists is only 1 of many - yet the 2nd photo which is also available is not because it doesn't fit in with the narrative being imposed by the conspiracy theorists.

Similarly the shirt photo is easily verifiable independently and contradicts the conspiracy theory narrative.

Not so with so called 'studies' - there can be no counter-narrative from 'experts'.

Yes, I have. In fact, I have fired a Mannlicher-Carcano (Oswald's type of weapon) a number of times--but not at a moving target. A friend of mine owned one when we lived in Maine. I had a .30 Remington and a Winchester 30-30 at the time.

So are you saying that it is impossible to get 3 shots off in 8.3 seconds?

Very difficult to hit, that may be.

But impossible isn't the same as difficult - especially for a trained and highly motivated (if crazy) person.

Shooting at a moving target is actually a different matter from shooting at a stationary one. It requires not only working the bolt action quickly and smoothly, but instantly recalibrating your aim as you lead the target consistent with its speed.

I notice that you ignore--or rather reject--the tests done by the weapons experts under supervision of the Italian Army at Terni. It can't be for the reason you claim--that the information was found on the internet--because then you couldn't use the pictures you provided us of the bullet and shirt. So what's the answer? Are things from the internet only credible when they bolster your or the government's position?

Things from the internet are not credible when there is a clear agenda behind them.

The problem with the internet is exactly that you cannot verify anything about the data presented: whether it is credible, whether it is complete, whether it is unbiased, etc etc.

I've never said that anything from the internet is automatically wrong, but I have said that anything put up by someone with an agenda cannot be trusted. The information may well be accurate in detail but inaccurate in context.

The lies about WMD were systematically promulgated by the government and the corporate media and the country was drawn into a war of aggression, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 1.4 million Iraqis, the displacement of 4 million more, the deaths of more than 1,400 US servicemen and women, with barely a peep from any Establishment figures.

Quite true.

But the direct deaths which resulted were almost exclusively foreigners.

And the source of the lies was a literal handful of people - all of whom had direct interest and benefit from promulgating the lies. The NY Times and other MSM, for example, almost certainly did not know the truth.

And yet we know now after less than 10 years.

Why then are the multi-decade conspiracies still not revealed?

As Oswald said, "I'm just the patsy." If I recall correctly, he was killed rather soon after his arrest, no?

Any cursory examination of his history showed a long pattern of erratic behavior. Are you then saying the shooting of the Texas policeman was faked? His suicide attempt was faked? His disciplinary problems in the military were faked?

Ruby equally was a 'character' - a strip club owner in the lines of the Mitchell Brothers in San Francisco: one brother which shot the other, and the son of which was just arrested for killing his wife.

Leading elements of the death squads in Central and South America were trained in torture and other relevant matters at the School of the Americas. The death squads are instruments of U.S. policy. They are used against union activists, peasant organizers, and other forces which threaten U.S. business and strategic interests in the region.

That may be, but the point was that a small group of people shooting ethnic or ideological enemies is far more reliable in terms of cohesive information security than said same small group blowing up 3000 random countrymen with no ideological differences.

Ditto that somehow the assassination of Kennedy was covered up yet somehow WaterGate was revealed.

[Dave Stratman]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

[QUOTE=c1ue;201458]More examples of 'cherry picking' of conspiracy data:

The "immaculate bullet" (conspiracy view) vs. head on view:





Clearly one picture is far more misleading than the other.

QUOTE]

The picture of the bullet you present here is irrelevant to two of the three points concerning the assassination bullets I cited.

Point #1: An article "by William Tobin, a former FBI laboratory metallurgist, and Cliff Spiegelman and William James, of Texas University, is based on new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the batch Oswald purportedly used." The article claims that the "evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed." "The researchers believe that the bullet fragments could have come from three or more separate bullets. If the five fragments came from three or more bullets, it would mean that a second gunman's bullet would have had to have struck the president, the research team has concluded." Note that this report has nothing to do with the extent of distortion of the bullet that passed through Kennedy's body.


Point #2: "In a further challenge to the official conclusions, the Italian team conducted two other tests at the former Carcano factory in Terni, north of Rome, where the murder weapon was made in 1940. They fired bullets through two large pieces of meat, in an attempt to simulate the assumed path of the magic bullet. In their test, the bullet was deformed, unlike the first bullet in the Kennedy assassination, which remained largely intact." This may be relevant to the picture you posted or it may not, since the article presents no picture to show what it means exactly by "largely intact."


Point #3: [In the tests at Terni] "The second bullet is thought to have missed its target. According to the commission, the third disintegrated when it hit Kennedy's head. The new research suggests, however, that this is incompatible with the fact that Oswald was only 80 yards away, in a book depository, when he fired. The Italian tests suggest that a bullet fired from that distance would have emerged intact from Kennedy's head, implying that the third shot must instead have come from a more distant location." In other words, the Terni tests show that the third round, if fired from the Book Depsitory, would not have disintegrated as did the round that struck Kennedy's head. Again, the picture you posted is irrevant to this point.


To sum up: 1) the bullet fragments could have come from three or more separate bullets, thus suggesting that the "evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed." 2) A test bullet fired through a piece of meat meant to simulate a human body was "deformed, unlike the first bullet in the Kennedy assassination, which remained largely intact." Without knowing the extent and nature of the deformation of the test bullet, it's hard to know the significance of this. 3) The tests show that the third round, if fired from the Book Depository, would not have disintegrated as did the round that struck Kennedy's head, thus suggesting another shooter firing from a greater distance.

These points are not invalidated by the picture of the bullet you posted.

Note also that you have not dealt with the expert testimony from Terni that it was impossible to fire three rounds accurately in the time alotted with the weapon in question.

My point, again, is not to debate the JFK assassination but your offhand dismissal of Rudmin's article, "Conspiracy Theory as Naive Deconstructive History," because it did not accord with the Warren Commission's findings concerning the rifle and the bullets. The published research quoted above has shown that these findings were "fundamentally flawed" or simply impossible. So Rudmin was right.

[c1ue]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Point #1: An article "by William Tobin, a former FBI laboratory metallurgist, and Cliff Spiegelman and William James, of Texas University, is based on new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the batch Oswald purportedly used." The article claims that the "evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed." "The researchers believe that the bullet fragments could have come from three or more separate bullets. If the five fragments came from three or more bullets, it would mean that a second gunman's bullet would have had to have struck the president, the research team has concluded." Note that this report has nothing to do with the extent of distortion of the bullet that passed through Kennedy's body.

a) the investigation assumes Oswald used bullets all from 1 batch. There is no reason why this must be the case; he could well have had a can full of bullets he reloaded from.

b) As for Tobin - the original article included another author: Erik Randich. Randich subsequently published a rebuttal to the 2002 article in 2006; the present situation now has Tobin and another professor: Rahn duking it out vs. Randich.

Hardly a resounding conclusion.

Point #2: "In a further challenge to the official conclusions, the Italian team conducted two other tests at the former Carcano factory in Terni, north of Rome, where the murder weapon was made in 1940. They fired bullets through two large pieces of meat, in an attempt to simulate the assumed path of the magic bullet. In their test, the bullet was deformed, unlike the first bullet in the Kennedy assassination, which remained largely intact." This may be relevant to the picture you posted or it may not, since the article presents no picture to show what it means exactly by "largely intact."

You didn't respond to my point: the Terni test - which is clearly a publicity stunt given that it was performed at the former Mannlicher factory, something which is completely irrelevant except in terms of marketing - supposedly states that it is impossible to load and fire 3 shots in 19 seconds with the rifle in question.

This is crap of the highest order.

You 100% can load and shoot in that time.

It is very difficult to hit, perhaps, but it is not impossible, and any such conclusion which states so is extremely suspect.

11 volunteers - all able to shoot within 6 seconds, at least 2 of which made 2 hits (of 3 shots).

37 attempts to fire 3 shots at moving target - 17 failed attempts due to rifle problems. Of the 20 which went off (60 bullets), average was 5.6 seconds. Fastest was 4.1 seconds. At least 2 scored 2 hits out of 3 - none of which were Marine sharpshooter qualified (presumably, not noted specifically).

I'd say the Terni publicity stunt is clearly discredited.

Point #3: [In the tests at Terni] "The second bullet is thought to have missed its target. According to the commission, the third disintegrated when it hit Kennedy's head. The new research suggests, however, that this is incompatible with the fact that Oswald was only 80 yards away, in a book depository, when he fired. The Italian tests suggest that a bullet fired from that distance would have emerged intact from Kennedy's head, implying that the third shot must instead have come from a more distant location." In other words, the Terni tests show that the third round, if fired from the Book Depsitory, would not have disintegrated as did the round that struck Kennedy's head. Again, the picture you posted is irrevant to this point.

Terni is already discredited with their statement of "impossible to fire 3 shots in less than 19 seconds".

The bullet - again the problem is the details. Were the bullets the same? Was the meat the same?

Maybe Kennedy just had a really hard skull; skull bone is far different than a side of beef, for that matter an upper chest shot which doesn't hit bone is far different than a haunch of bull muscle.

Still not credible.

[bart]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

[don]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

"It systematically undermines the solidarity of the family, and it calls its leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty. Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, no do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely. In no other way can the ancient cycle be broken. If human equality is to be forever averted - if the High, as we call them, are to keep their places permanently - then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity."

George Orwell, 1984