04-05-2010, 09:17 PM
Judyth and I have discussed this and I don't know why you think you can discredit her on this basis. QUOTE 1 is the basic story: she had told her agent at the time, Peter Cox, that they were going to meet in the Yucatan in the vicinity of Chichen Itz. Lee had not used the name "Cancun", which, as you have observed, did not exist other than in the form of the village of Kankun. She put her finger on a map at his request and he said, "Oh, Cancun!", and ran with it. Since in QUOTE 2 Shackelford said what had happened (how the misunderstanding had arisen), there is certainly no inconsistency there. And QUOTE 3 is one where Judyth is being more specific about what they (she and Lee) had actually discussed, where QUOTE 4 expands on their tentative plans. Mexico is a predominantly Catholic country, of course, so they would expect to be married by a priest. There is nothing here that impugns the integrity of Judyth. On the other hand, this appears to me to be a nice example of TRYING TO CREATE A CONFLICT rather than TRYING TO SORT THINGS OUT. I discussed each of the quotes with Judyth and, the more we talked about it, the more it became apparent to me that this arose from violating the condition of translation known as "the principle of charity", where you should (in ordinary conversational contexts) look for interpretations that make what you are being told come out to be true. Instead, you and your allies are looking for an interpretation that makes what you are being to told come out false. But it all hangs together the right way. I have done a YouTube interview with Judyth about this, which I recommend to everyone. This is a great to-do about nothing.
[quote name='David Lifton' post='191328' date='Apr 30 2010, 11:25 AM']
To Pat Speer, and others:
Agreed: the tape of my March 4, 2000 conversation with Judyth is completely unnecessary to evaluate Judyth’s credibility, and grasp the essential absurdity of most of her claims. All of this was debated ad nausea 10 years ago. Prof. Fetzer, perhaps unaware of the extent of this, is recycling the same old/same old.
For example, does Jim Fetzer fully understand the extent to which Judyth is already on record—and in writing—with most of this stuff??
Again, I advise: Just visit Dave Reitzes website—and his section of Judyth.
The link: http://www.jfk-online.com/judyth-story.html
For convenience, below my typed signature is the section in which he narrates the goofy back and forth of the “Cancun” part of the debate, which surfaced after Robert Chapman pointed out that Cancun did not exist as a resort back then, and Judyth was confronted with this major gaffe. As he narrates the back and forth of her “defense” (and the ebb and flow of this “debate”) each of his sentences carries a footnote, and the footnotes themselves refer back to voluminous documentation he culled –and organized—from the Internet news groups (and then printed below his narrative). So each refer back to specific posts of Judyth herself, Platzman, and Shackelford.
Again and again, Judyth offers explanations and excuses for her Cancun gaffe that are the linguistic and syntactical equivalent of “My dog ate it [i.e., my dog ate the homework]”.
Example 1: Judyth Vary Baker, Internet forum post, October 9, 2004:
QUOTE: "The Cancun matter was an insertion by my literary agent that was missed by Dr.Platzman [sic]. He took the blame for allowing it to remain in the manuscript. But it was my fault, too.. . .
Lee indeed said we would meet in a fine hotel, but his tone of voice was so full of irony I didn't know if he was joking. He never said we would meet in Cancun. Typos and errors will happen. That we would meet in an area NEAR present-day Cancun is what was always meant, and if I typed Cancun instead, God forgive me. . . END QUOTE
DSL note: This is after numerous other posts in which she claimed she never said any such thing (and I was accused of malice, simply because I accurately reported what she told me on the phone, on March 4, 2000).
Example 2 (from Shackelford, on September 27, 2004):
QUOTE : "It has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO with the resort being there in 1963--they weren't planning on going to a resort. They were planning to go to the Yucatan and look at the ruins. '' wasn't supposed to refer specifically to the ruins either--just the area." END QUOTE
Example 3—Judyth, newsgroup post, July 5, 2004:
QUOTE: "The actual location was not where Lee and I expected to go to a hotel, only to meet . . . we were going to then go explore Chichen Itza, which was supposed to be relatively close, and ruins, all of which we believed from a book [sic] we read together was in Quintana Roo . . . we were going to go to a fine hotel...maybe that was a joke of Lee's...and we were going to get a Catholic priest to marry us." UNQUOTE
((DSL comment: Attention All Readers Please Note: Lee, an atheist, and married to Marina, loving his daughter June, and happily expecting the birth of his second child. . . was planning to go off with this lady “to get a Catholic priest to marry us” ?! - - -Oh pleeez.))
Example 4: --Judyth herself, Internet post, October 9, 2004:
QUOTE "Lee never mentioned the name of this city as a meeting place. He spoke of Merida in other contexts. I decided this must have been the 'city' in the Yucatan where we hoped to marry - on my own, as he mentioned we would be flying from the city where we would marry on the Cayman islands. When, later, I learned that flights from Merida to the Cayman Islands were known to occur, I then assumed the city was Merida." UNQUOTE
And Jim Fetzer thinks a tape made in March, 2000, is necessary to see whether Cancun could perhaps have been confused (by me) with Kankun, and that “that” offers an explanation for this farce?
DSL
4/30/10 2:30 AM PDT
Los Angeles, CA
Copied below from the Reitzes website, the section on Judyth, and specifically, the part of the narrative about her meeting Lee at Cancun. Each of the numbered notes refer to his documentation, which appears beneath the essay, at his website.
NOW QUOTING. . . :
Had Oswald escaped Dallas alive, he and Judyth planned to meet at a fine hotel in Cancun, Mexico, and get married. (It was subsequently pointed out by David Lifton and Robert Chapman that Cancun was an uninhabited jungle in 1963; the resort city was conceived years later.) (96)
Judyth never said that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in Cancun! This is a malicious fabrication by David Lifton.(97)
Judyth never said that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in Cancun! This is a malicious fabrication by David Lifton and John McAdams. (98)
Judyth never said that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in Cancun! This is a malicious fabrication by Dave Reitzes. (99)
Judyth never said that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in Cancun! This was erroneously inserted into her manuscript by co-author Howard Platzman. (100)
No, it wasn't.(101)
Judyth never said that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in Cancun! This was erroneously inserted into her manuscript by her former agent, Peter Cox.(102)
No, it wasn't.(103)
Well, maybe it was.(104)
Hypothetically speaking. (105)
Okay, Judyth said it after all. (106)
But she didn't mean it. She only meant Cancun as a rough geographical indicator of where the planned meeting-place actually had been. (107)
What she meant was that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in the rustic village of Kankun, Mexico.(108)
Actually, Cancun and the fine hotel had nothing to do with each other; some of the words were accidentally reversed in that particular draft of her manuscript. (109)
Perhaps "fine hotel" was merely a joke on Oswald's part. (110)
Of course "fine hotel" was merely a joke on Oswald's part, and Judyth knew that at the time. (111)
Nevertheless, she and Oswald might have ended up staying in a fine hotel just the same. (112)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to meet in Chichen Itza, Mexico -- 125 miles from present-day Cancun. (113)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to meet in Merida, Mexico -- 200 miles from present-day Cancun. (114)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to meet in Belize, Mexico -- 350 miles from present-day Cancun. (Note: There was no Belize in 1963; it was called British Honduras until years later.) (115)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to meet in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico -- well over a thousand miles from present-day Cancun. (116)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to marry in the Cayman Islands of the Caribbean; Cancun was just a stopover. (117)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to marry in Mexico. Exploration of ancient Mayan ruins and a visit to a large city in the Yucatan were additional possible plans. After marriage, their final destination was probably going to be the Cayman Islands. (118)
END QUOTE
Again, for a detailed exposition of all the footnotes (and much other information on the Judyth story), just go Reitzes website (and again, to this link, for the footnotes):
http://www.jfk-online.com/judyth-story.html[/quote]
[quote name='David Lifton' post='191328' date='Apr 30 2010, 11:25 AM']
To Pat Speer, and others:
Agreed: the tape of my March 4, 2000 conversation with Judyth is completely unnecessary to evaluate Judyth’s credibility, and grasp the essential absurdity of most of her claims. All of this was debated ad nausea 10 years ago. Prof. Fetzer, perhaps unaware of the extent of this, is recycling the same old/same old.
For example, does Jim Fetzer fully understand the extent to which Judyth is already on record—and in writing—with most of this stuff??
Again, I advise: Just visit Dave Reitzes website—and his section of Judyth.
The link: http://www.jfk-online.com/judyth-story.html
For convenience, below my typed signature is the section in which he narrates the goofy back and forth of the “Cancun” part of the debate, which surfaced after Robert Chapman pointed out that Cancun did not exist as a resort back then, and Judyth was confronted with this major gaffe. As he narrates the back and forth of her “defense” (and the ebb and flow of this “debate”) each of his sentences carries a footnote, and the footnotes themselves refer back to voluminous documentation he culled –and organized—from the Internet news groups (and then printed below his narrative). So each refer back to specific posts of Judyth herself, Platzman, and Shackelford.
Again and again, Judyth offers explanations and excuses for her Cancun gaffe that are the linguistic and syntactical equivalent of “My dog ate it [i.e., my dog ate the homework]”.
Example 1: Judyth Vary Baker, Internet forum post, October 9, 2004:
QUOTE: "The Cancun matter was an insertion by my literary agent that was missed by Dr.Platzman [sic]. He took the blame for allowing it to remain in the manuscript. But it was my fault, too.. . .
Lee indeed said we would meet in a fine hotel, but his tone of voice was so full of irony I didn't know if he was joking. He never said we would meet in Cancun. Typos and errors will happen. That we would meet in an area NEAR present-day Cancun is what was always meant, and if I typed Cancun instead, God forgive me. . . END QUOTE
DSL note: This is after numerous other posts in which she claimed she never said any such thing (and I was accused of malice, simply because I accurately reported what she told me on the phone, on March 4, 2000).
Example 2 (from Shackelford, on September 27, 2004):
QUOTE : "It has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO with the resort being there in 1963--they weren't planning on going to a resort. They were planning to go to the Yucatan and look at the ruins. '' wasn't supposed to refer specifically to the ruins either--just the area." END QUOTE
Example 3—Judyth, newsgroup post, July 5, 2004:
QUOTE: "The actual location was not where Lee and I expected to go to a hotel, only to meet . . . we were going to then go explore Chichen Itza, which was supposed to be relatively close, and ruins, all of which we believed from a book [sic] we read together was in Quintana Roo . . . we were going to go to a fine hotel...maybe that was a joke of Lee's...and we were going to get a Catholic priest to marry us." UNQUOTE
((DSL comment: Attention All Readers Please Note: Lee, an atheist, and married to Marina, loving his daughter June, and happily expecting the birth of his second child. . . was planning to go off with this lady “to get a Catholic priest to marry us” ?! - - -Oh pleeez.))
Example 4: --Judyth herself, Internet post, October 9, 2004:
QUOTE "Lee never mentioned the name of this city as a meeting place. He spoke of Merida in other contexts. I decided this must have been the 'city' in the Yucatan where we hoped to marry - on my own, as he mentioned we would be flying from the city where we would marry on the Cayman islands. When, later, I learned that flights from Merida to the Cayman Islands were known to occur, I then assumed the city was Merida." UNQUOTE
And Jim Fetzer thinks a tape made in March, 2000, is necessary to see whether Cancun could perhaps have been confused (by me) with Kankun, and that “that” offers an explanation for this farce?
DSL
4/30/10 2:30 AM PDT
Los Angeles, CA
Copied below from the Reitzes website, the section on Judyth, and specifically, the part of the narrative about her meeting Lee at Cancun. Each of the numbered notes refer to his documentation, which appears beneath the essay, at his website.
NOW QUOTING. . . :
Had Oswald escaped Dallas alive, he and Judyth planned to meet at a fine hotel in Cancun, Mexico, and get married. (It was subsequently pointed out by David Lifton and Robert Chapman that Cancun was an uninhabited jungle in 1963; the resort city was conceived years later.) (96)
Judyth never said that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in Cancun! This is a malicious fabrication by David Lifton.(97)
Judyth never said that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in Cancun! This is a malicious fabrication by David Lifton and John McAdams. (98)
Judyth never said that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in Cancun! This is a malicious fabrication by Dave Reitzes. (99)
Judyth never said that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in Cancun! This was erroneously inserted into her manuscript by co-author Howard Platzman. (100)
No, it wasn't.(101)
Judyth never said that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in Cancun! This was erroneously inserted into her manuscript by her former agent, Peter Cox.(102)
No, it wasn't.(103)
Well, maybe it was.(104)
Hypothetically speaking. (105)
Okay, Judyth said it after all. (106)
But she didn't mean it. She only meant Cancun as a rough geographical indicator of where the planned meeting-place actually had been. (107)
What she meant was that she and Oswald planned to meet in a fine hotel in the rustic village of Kankun, Mexico.(108)
Actually, Cancun and the fine hotel had nothing to do with each other; some of the words were accidentally reversed in that particular draft of her manuscript. (109)
Perhaps "fine hotel" was merely a joke on Oswald's part. (110)
Of course "fine hotel" was merely a joke on Oswald's part, and Judyth knew that at the time. (111)
Nevertheless, she and Oswald might have ended up staying in a fine hotel just the same. (112)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to meet in Chichen Itza, Mexico -- 125 miles from present-day Cancun. (113)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to meet in Merida, Mexico -- 200 miles from present-day Cancun. (114)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to meet in Belize, Mexico -- 350 miles from present-day Cancun. (Note: There was no Belize in 1963; it was called British Honduras until years later.) (115)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to meet in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico -- well over a thousand miles from present-day Cancun. (116)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to marry in the Cayman Islands of the Caribbean; Cancun was just a stopover. (117)
Judyth and Oswald actually planned to marry in Mexico. Exploration of ancient Mayan ruins and a visit to a large city in the Yucatan were additional possible plans. After marriage, their final destination was probably going to be the Cayman Islands. (118)
END QUOTE
Again, for a detailed exposition of all the footnotes (and much other information on the Judyth story), just go Reitzes website (and again, to this link, for the footnotes):
http://www.jfk-online.com/judyth-story.html[/quote]