A mathematical reason to study the JFK assassination

[Albert Rossi]

I think Charles is referring to the entirety of the event and on its many levels of comparmentalised effects. Forensic, psychological, political etc. How can any one really 'know' what happened? Even those participating in it don't really 'know' any thing except their own particulat role in it. Like the blind Indian men describing an elephant from the one part of the elepants body they can touch and describe. Charles will correct me if I am wrong.

Granted. But I believe the spirit of the statement concerns modeling. Isn't that what Deep Political thinking is supposed to be -- an attempt to derive an explanatory model? What is being proposed is that in an attempt to grasp the JFK assassination one can come to some understanding at least of a pattern which manifests itself much more generally.

[Magda Hassan]

True enough. The assassination is replete with examples of the machinations of power.

[Steve Minnerly]

As Jim DiEugenio said on Black Op Radio - (paraphrase ) "When you know the Kennedy assassination you know how the world works".

-- or at least U.S., quite possibly international, power politics work. That is absolutely correct. I've been saying it for 45 years. It's my political credo.

So who "knows" the Kennedy assassination?

What does "know the Kennedy assassination" mean?

The way Jim used it was that he went to see Gary Web and he got the impression that Gary was a bit naive.

Jim said that he thought back to the railroading and harassment that Jim Garrison got and he thought that Gary would have been a lot better off if he knew what he was up against and the kind of dirty opposition he was gonna be facing.

[Charles Drago]

I think Charles is referring to the entirety of the event and on its many levels of comparmentalised effects. Forensic, psychological, political etc. How can any one really 'know' what happened? Even those participating in it don't really 'know' any thing except their own particulat role in it. Like the blind Indian men describing an elephant from the one part of the elepants body they can touch and describe. Charles will correct me if I am wrong.

You're not "wrong," Maggie. I, on the other hand, may have been less than artful in composing my previous post.

In point of fact my questions were prompted by my long-standing frustration with the severely limited language and, by logical extension, cognitive skills of many who would tout themselves as leaders of the JFK assassination research community based in large measure upon their scholarly and literary contributions to our common cause.

I most certainly do NOT subscribe to any sort of post-modern "we can't know anything" worldview. We know that JFK was killed by conspirators. We know a great deal about the structure of the conspiracy and the motives driving its creation. We know all too well many of its dire consequences. We know, for the most part, its historical, cultural, and spiritual antecedents and contexts.

(All of which is dwarfed by what we don't know.)

Let me cite a recent example -- without naming names -- of the sort of fatally flawed reasoning that masquerades as deep analysis by self-proclaimed deep thinkers in deep politics research:

Celebrated author X negatively criticized Tom Wilson's controversial, cutting-edge method of photographic analysis by noting that in all his/her years of study of film and photography (no specifics offered), he/she had never encountered said methodology. The implication: it must be fraudulent. After all, he/she continued, the history of film is well over a century old, and photography is even older.

Which is the equivalent of stating that never in all his/her great-great-grandfathers' years of riding horses did they ever come across anything like a Ferrari. And horses have been ridden for thousands of years. Therefore, Ferrari's cannot exist.

When one compares the depth of such thinking with that contributed by the likes of Salandria, Meagher, Weisberg, Evica, Scott, and Douglass (among others), one is left all but bereft of hope for the success of our common cause.

All of which, by the way, does not begin to address the wholly undocumented -- and, if I may be permitted the editorial license -- arrogant claim of comprehensive knowledge implicit in the statement, "When you know the Kennedy assassination you know how the world works".

And so the question is prompted and appropriately addressed:

How does the world work?

[Phil Dragoo]

Or false turtles.

Saxon answered, no I wasn't surprised the Federal Reserve board opposed all my reforms. It represents powerful state banks such as Chase Manhattan.

Six degrees of David Rockefeller is not a parlor game.

Allen Dulles didn't summon Howard Hunt November 1961 (the month the little Dulles left his blessed agency) to assemble three-by-five cards for The Craft of Intelligence

Montagu Norman and Hjalmar Schacht didn't walk in the woods to hear the whip-poor-will

In Network it's laid out, albeit with more bombast than the screen demanded (scaled for the stage)

O'Brien told Winston Smith of power sans ideology

The manipulation of the Lees began when Ike was supplanting Harry

Limit CIA to Intelligence Role--seriously? That train left Switzerland in 1917

Gladio from the mind of Allen Dulles, said Sibel Edmonds

Jack didn't play well with hawks; they knew that. They were playing with their food.

Comes Angleton with his files and associates, a tight knot

Harvey was sent, and Marina confused him with Webster

She was Alice from the looking glass--both sides conspired to kill

each prince of peace

no profit in

entropy

[Charles Drago]

I think Charles is referring to the entirety of the event and on its many levels of comparmentalised effects. Forensic, psychological, political etc. How can any one really 'know' what happened? Even those participating in it don't really 'know' any thing except their own particulat role in it. Like the blind Indian men describing an elephant from the one part of the elepants body they can touch and describe. Charles will correct me if I am wrong.

You're not "wrong," Maggie. I, on the other hand, may have been less than artful in composing my previous post.

In point of fact my questions were prompted by my long-standing frustration with the severely limited language and, by logical extension, cognitive skills of many who would tout themselves as leaders of the JFK assassination research community based in large measure upon their scholarly and literary contributions to our common cause.

I most certainly do NOT subscribe to any sort of post-modern "we can't know anything" worldview. We know that JFK was killed by conspirators. We know a great deal about the structure of the conspiracy and the motives driving its creation. We know all too well many of its dire consequences. We know, for the most part, its historical, cultural, and spiritual antecedents and contexts.

(All of which is dwarfed by what we don't know.)

Let me cite a recent example -- without naming names -- of the sort of fatally flawed reasoning that masquerades as deep analysis by self-proclaimed deep thinkers in deep politics research:

Celebrated author X negatively criticized Tom Wilson's controversial, cutting-edge method of photographic analysis by noting that in all his/her years of study of film and photography (no specifics offered), he/she had never encountered said methodology. The implication: it must be fraudulent. After all, he/she continued, the history of film is well over a century old, and photography is even older.

Which is the equivalent of stating that never in all his/her great-great-grandfathers' years of riding horses did they ever come across anything like a Ferrari. And horses have been ridden for thousands of years. Therefore, Ferrari's cannot exist.

When one compares the depth of such thinking with that contributed by the likes of Salandria, Meagher, Weisberg, Evica, Scott, and Douglass (among others), one is left all but bereft of hope for the success of our common cause.

All of which, by the way, does not begin to address the wholly undocumented -- and, if I may be permitted the editorial license -- arrogant claim of comprehensive knowledge implicit in the statement, "When you know the Kennedy assassination you know how the world works".

And so the question is prompted and appropriately addressed:

How does the world work?

For the record: In writing the above it was not my intention to endorse Wilson's methods and findings.

Also, while I'm at it, it may help for me to provide another example of flawed reasoning emanating from the commonly if often erroneously perceived top of the heap of JFK scholars:

Recently a celebrated researcher's negative review of Wilson's work included the observation that, once explained, the "ideas" of Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo no longer are "mysterious" and in fact are "easy to grasp" -- even for high school students.

The implications: A) Since this researcher (whose science-related credentials have yet to be produced) cannot "grasp" the science driving Wilson's methodology, it simply cannot be valid; B) by extension, what he/she cannot understand simply isn't worth understanding.

In addition, this researcher neatly avoids acknowledging that the methods utilized by Wilson have yet to be disclosed in full and rigorously tested under the strictures of the scientific method -- let alone "explained" to the satisfaction of students of chemistry and photography at Estes Kefauver High School in Dacron, Ohio (which, for all I know, very well may be this researcher's alma mater).

[David Josephs]

thanks Phil... once again.