Russ Baker and Jim DiEugenio: most curious

[Dawn Meredith]

I just read a terrific article about Bob Woodward's new book by Russ Baker and it got me to wondering why Jim Di Eugenio, who I greatly admire and consider a friend , wrote such a scathing review of Russ Baker's wonderful book "Family of Secrets". When I emailed Jim asking questions he did not respond. (Normally he responds to all my email and I have posted his stuff here since we started DPF, at his request).

We in the critical community have for decades been critical of the mainstream media for covering up deep political events, then when a MSM writer like Russ takes on the Bush family and the Kennedy assassination he
is just trashed by Jim D.

Does anyone but me find this disturbing?

I hate how the critical community has been divided so have not ever posted publicly on this because I do not wish to add to the divisions, but ....now that Jim is posting on the "other" forum, I decided to put this question here.

Normally I love Jim's reviews of books and deeply appreciate that he puts such time and thought into them. But this review is both mean, and almost protective of Poppy Bush. Since Jim won't respond to private questions I have decided to ask if I am the only one who was troubled by this particular review. (And I do this with hesitation as I love Jim to death as a person, researcher, writer, and friend. )

Dawn

[Magda Hassan]

Yeah, I'm with you Dawn. I love Jim's reviews and I didn't understand why he did such a job on Russ and his book. Russ has done such a lot of good research on that family.

[Jack White]

I have always greatly admired Jimmy Di until he clashed with
Jim Fetzer regarding 911. He was clearly out of his element and
not up to speed on the facts.

Jack

[Peter Lemkin]

Jim is VERY SHARP on JFK - and I rarely would disagree with him. He is quick to anger and hold a grudge and a bit too sure of himself/quick to form an idee fixe on some other peripheral issues he's not an expert in. I had spent a lot of time correcting and explaining one bash piece he did on me; and about the time he and some others confronted me [unannounced] while I was changing planes to confront me as an infiltrator in his [then] new organization, of which I was a founding member and from that moment on not a member or to be acknowledged. This was all on the 'other Forum' and is of course now gone, with all my 5350 post there. I'll not repeat it all. He's a great JFK researcher, even if he thinks ill of me. His allegations about me were all wrong - completely wrong and he didn't even let me explain.....so he'll fit fine over there.

[Myra Bronstein]

Here's a link to the review in question: http://www.ctka.net/reviews/family_secrets.html

[John Kowalski]

Dawn:

I do not think that Jim's criticism of Russ Baker's books is a problem and it is certainly not a division. Differences of opinions must be expected. We are a critical community and because of that we tend not to accept things unless they have been tested.

Being part of a community of like-minded people where there is a general agreement that a deep political state exists, assassinations are not the work of lone gunmen, media cover-ups of important issues occur etc., does not require that we accept every hypothesis or book written on these issues. People can be united by a consensus on the larger issues while disagreeing on specific issues. We all agree that Kennedy was assassinated by conspirators but we do not need to agree on how many shots were fired or whether or not a certain woman's story about her relationship with Oswald is true or not.

John

[Jan Klimkowski]

Here's the link for Russ Baker on Woodward:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-baker...45865.html

I largely agree with Baker but would go further, as I did here:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/....php?t=296

[Peter Dawson]

I only ordered Baker's Bush book last week, and have only been reading some of DiEugenio's online articles for the first time just today, but fortunately for us all I don't let a lack of knowledge stop me from making a comment when the fancy takes me.

Jim (with Seamus Coogan) criticises people like John Hankey, and Alex Jones, for simplifying things to the point that the simplifications themselves become a source of disinformation, and that, at a guess, would be what makes him hypercritical of Baker's book.

I don't know Baker's work, but with Hankey and Jones, the criticism is obviously fair.

[John Kowalski]

I do not know if this has already been posted elsewhere on the forum; Black Ops Radio is organizing a conference to be held in Hawaii. The purpose of the conference is to, among other things, unite the JFK research community and to focus on how to move forward and resolve differences.

http://www.blackopradio.com/Hawaii_2011.html

John

[Peter Lemkin]

Black Op Radio is fine, and the idea of uniting a very, VERY splintered and fictionalized research community an epiphany, but why Hawaii? Most researchers are as poor as the proverbial church-mouse and it is not cheap to get to Hawaii...though it is a nice place to be......very strange choice, methinks.