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New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

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Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#101
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google tells me the number of leaders/former leaders assassinations in recent history that have been caught on camera is indeed very low. Kennedy, Gaddafi, Shinzo Abe, Benazir Bhutto, Yitzhak Rabin, Rajiv Gandhi, Anwar Sadat.

Rabin assassination has a pretty weird conspiracy theory though

These ones?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin_assassination_co...

The bullet points seem to be mostly confusion at the scene and shitty police work afterwards.

What is the conspiracy. That he was not killed at that spot, but later by the secret service? Like "that guy fired blanks at him, lets kill the PM and frame him"?

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#102
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large organizations I don’t think large organisations can act in such a coordinated manner at all but they can be manipulated. Cartels with a lot to lose can take their secrets to the grave, in particular if their constituents have a lot to lose. Everyone else has “unfortunate accidents”.

So, just from the top of my head and rather recently: 1. the NSA lost all of its malwares/zero days to the Russians 2. The NSA lost a huge amount of documents detailing a large amount of their billion dollars sigint sources and tech catalog 3. China was able to steal US nuclear weapons design 4. The CIA itself lost its entire internal wiki 5. Top secret documents were on discord for over a month Yet somehow these omn…

The key to all of those is they are digital files easily copied and deseminated online. It hard to hack a mechanical typewriter and or to exfiltrate physical documents locked in a filing cabinet in a secure facility. Then distributing them en mass the way the way digital channels like discord can is just not managable unless your a major news paper publisher. Digital information wants to be free, typewriten documents want to be locked in a documents warehouse missfiled and lost forever.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#103
post #48
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What open questions? He clearly had access to the place where the shots were fired, and knew how to use a gun. The shot was not particularly difficult.

As a wise man once said: ”Back and to the left” Also, was Oswald’s own assassination at the hands of a mob figure ever satisfactorily explained?

Jim Garrison was basically accused of among other things being an outright pederast in the New Orleans papers years ago so his credibility is a little suspect to say the least.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#104
post #17
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Occam's Razor says it was Oswald I think it doesn’t. That’s why the story has never come to rest, there’s simply too many question marks about the whole thing

What open questions? He clearly had access to the place where the shots were fired, and knew how to use a gun. The shot was not particularly difficult.

> the place where the shots were fired

Do we even know that?

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#105
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shots occurred in a span of several seconds, not simultaneously. I don't see anything implausible about a second shooter having Kennedy in his sights, waiting for the initial shots to be fired, and pulling the trigger once he heard the initial shot. There are a lot of implausible aspects to all of this, but that... doesn't seem like one.

But that needs a bigger conspiracy than just kill JFK. Either there are two shooters working together from the beginning, or one knows about the other and the other does not.

    But that needs a bigger conspiracy than just kill JFK.
I don't feel like "two dudes who both want to kill the president in a country where it's really easy to get a rifle and there are ~16mil WWII veterans and millions more who know how to use them" is a really big or implausible conspiracy.

What about that seems implausible to you?

As for coordinating their fire, what about that seems implausible?

"I'll shoot first, once JFK reaches point XYZ. When you hear my shot that's your signal to shoot. Be ready and have your finger on the trigger, because obviously Secret Service is going to floor the gas and GFTO ASAP as soon as the first shot is fired"

That seems entirely within the realm of plans two dudes could come up with. I don't think it necessarily points to some larger conspiracy.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#107
What I find most intriguing about the JFK assassination is the fact that parts of it still can't be declassified.

In 1992, Congress passed a law saying everything was to be declassified in 25 years. October 2017 came and went, and the FBI blocked around 7,500 documents from release. The DEA didn't want CI names related to organized crime in them. The State Department blocked some due to "national security and foreign affairs concerns".

Trump claimed while running for President that he was now going to release everything, yet the FBI and CIA stepped in again and those plans changed.

Trump finally said he couldn't release them due to some being "of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure".

So they remain secret, 60 years later.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#108
post #98

Even if Landis is being honest to the best of his ability, this account seems suspect for one simple reason: human memory is incredibly unreliable even in routine cases. Considering the stress and trauma around witnessing and being so close to an awful event like that, as well as the amount of time that has passed, I don't see how we can consider this story to be even remotely reliable. He may truly remember these ev…

I agree. Having gone through stuff I know how my mind can distort / hallucinate stuff in confusing / high stress situations. Even without questioning the person's honesty.. your brain is not a high quality source of information.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#109
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." History is extremely important. It can help us make predictions about the future and understand circumstances in the past. This specific incident has been researched to death. There is very little we will be able to understand about the sociopolitics of the past that we don'…

That rules quote does not apply in the slightest. Perhaps I was glib about it, but I replied directly to the message at hand. He questioned the validity of studying a (massive) historical event (it “changes nothing”, much like studying a lot of history). You continue the exact same line of reasoning (“isn’t going to change modern sociopolitics very much”, though I find the use of “very much” an interesting use of wor…

Oh, I misunderstood your previous position. Yes, "because it's there" is always a fine reason to climb a mountain.

I guess I'm just personally burnt out on this topic because I've been watching people bandy conspiracy theories back and forth my entire life, and the odds of this changing the understanding of the day's events in any meaningful way aren't larger than the other "revelations" I've seen in my time. I guess upon further reflection, I do have some concern that people will take the stuff too seriously and do something foolish.

To give an analogy, the Titanic disaster is extremely well understood, but the disproportionate obsession with it has recently led to people getting killed again. One could certainly argue that they were free people making free choices and I would agree. But similar obsession in the political spectrum seems to have a nasty tendency to end up with somebody showing up in a pizza parlor with a firearm demanding to see the basement that doesn't exist. So it makes me twitchy.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#110
post #14

I don't know why people are so obsessed with this conspiracy theory. Occam's Razor says it was Oswald. Why invest time speculating and arguing over it when there is no way to verify anything? This new revelation doesn't change anything, it's just hearsay.

Oswald was a marine sharpshooter, and it took him 3 shots with a scoped rifle (probably at point blank range, though I don't know the ballistics of that gun). That suggests it wasn't Oswald. Though even then Oswald clearly would have been standing next to the unknown shooter urging him to do it.

Hitting a moving target is really hard.
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