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Lobster magazine/ JFK

12:36 / 02.12.02

I’ve just finished reading the Pocketbook Essentials “Who shot JFK?” by Robin Ramsey. Robin Ramsey is the editor of excellent Lobster magazine so I thought I’d do a bit of resource sharing. Lobster deals with what might be called para-politics, that dark wing of politics where intelligence agencies and big business meet, and thus covers the ground that the mainstream press runs screaming from. And what’s more, bearing in mind all the stuff that usually gets lumped in the conspiracy theory loony bin, it’s all meticulously well researched and referenced. There’s not a tremendous amount on the website but what there is, is all worth reading and should give you an idea of the standard of the scholarship. I particularly enjoyed the article by Jeffery Bale on “Conspiracy Theories and Clandestine Politics” which is one worth lending to anyone who starts banging on about David Icke – it manages to address the concerns conspiracy theories raise and point out where they frequently go wrong. His latter comments about the world of politics / business/intelligence seem a convincing vision of the world to me.

The JFK book is pretty amazing though I’m not that well qualified to review it, JFK research being an information mountain it’d take several lifetimes to wade through. As far as I can judge, in 90 pages, he does a great job. He whizzes through the political significance of the assassination, the major landmarks in assassination research and, amazingly, comes to a conclusion as to who pulled the trigger! Like I say, this isn’t crackpot raving, but it’s well-balanced and thoughtful research, awaiting more evidence and open to debate. The conclusion blew me away (no pun intended) but even if you don’t want to take that leap with him, it’s a useful piece of American history nonetheless. Well worth checking out.

Like to hear anyone’s opinions if you’ve read it, or what you think of the site. You can get the mag in London from Forbidden Planet.

14:15 / 02.12.02

So who pulled the trigger? And why?

16:43 / 02.12.02

17:05 / 02.12.02

He thinks it was a guy called "Mac" Wallace, an associate of Lyndon Baines Johnson, acting in Johnson's interests. As for the "why" well, that's pretty complex, and I can't recall all of it, even though I only read it yesterday. I can't check either as my flatmates nicked the book and took it to work, so you'll have to stay gripped for the next installment, fact fans.

19:06 / 02.12.02

Okay - flatmate has returned with the keys to the mystery. According to Ramsey, LBJ was a throughly corrupt man from the beginning of his career. Around 1962/3, his the network of connections and influence he had built up was about to be engulfed by two major scandals, one a scam around arigculture subsidies involving a businessman named Billy Sol Estes, the other a sex/corruption scandal involving LBJ protege Bobby Baker.

Because of this, Kennedy was about to dump Johnson as a running mate and there was a good chance he would go to jail. To increase his chances of survival and influence - and probably because of a number of other long term rivalries in the Democratic party (though Ramsey doesn't go into it much) - Johnson had Kennedy shot. That's the thesis in a nutshell.

I feel I haven't done a very good job of reporting it, because Ramsey doesn't lay it out in those terms (and as I said above, I'm not that familar with the field). His arguement is built up on a number of interlocking pieces of eveidence - including a positive fingerprint ID of Mac Wallace at the Texas Book Depository, the testimony of Lydon's girlfriend at the time, Madeline Brown and an affadavit sworn by Billy Sol Estes on his release from prison in 1984.

This is why the book is so good. He doesn't just makes assertions, rather he presents evidence, citations and testimonies and critques them from both sides. he doesn't draw a fixed conclusion either, recognising that there's still a lot of unexplained factors in the case, though he may have the bare bones of it.

19:07 / 02.12.02

Okay - flatmate has returned with the keys to the mystery. According to Ramsey, LBJ was a throughly corrupt man from the beginning of his career. Around 1962/3, his the network of connections and influence he had built up was about to be engulfed by two major scandals, one a scam around arigculture subsidies involving a businessman named Billy Sol Estes, the other a sex/corruption scandal involving LBJ protege Bobby Baker.

Because of this, Kennedy was about to dump Johnson as a running mate and there was a good chance he would go to jail. To increase his chances of survival and influence - and probably because of a number of other long term rivalries in the Democratic party (though Ramsey doesn't go into it much) - Johnson had Kennedy shot. That's the thesis in a nutshell.

I feel I haven't done a very good job of reporting it, because Ramsey doesn't lay it out in those terms (and as I said above, I'm not that familar with the field). His arguement is built up on a number of interlocking pieces of eveidence - including a positive fingerprint ID of Mac Wallace at the Texas Book Depository, the testimony of Lydon's girlfriend at the time, Madeline Brown and an affadavit sworn by Billy Sol Estes on his release from prison in 1984.

This is why the book is so good. He doesn't just makes assertions, rather he presents evidence, citations and testimonies and critques them from both sides. he doesn't draw a fixed conclusion either, recognising that there's still a lot of unexplained factors in the case, though he may have the bare bones of it.

I'd be interested to hear of any other seriously convincing arguemnts - anyone else take an interest in the case?

20:38 / 02.12.02

Well, some of the most interesting evidence points to bullets coming from somewhere other than the Texas Book Repository (the Grassy Knoll being the most popular spot).

According to some, blood splash patterns and JFK's head motions seem to support this (although, from where I sit, it's pretty hard to say), along with the wound patterns (the wounds from a single shot were so widely distributed in the car that the official, single shooter explanation is dubbed "magic bullet theory" in conspiracy circles, since a bullet would have to magically disappear and reappear to zip around to all the spots it'd have to hit).

I've also seen a rather convincing documentary that had a photoraph of and witness testimony concerning three guys on the grassy knoll (The Three Uniforms) who were in the perfect spot to fire and were dressed in such a way not to arouse suspicion - a policeman and two other guys, a fireman and a maintenance worker/construction worker, I think. One guy claims he either saw them getting into their uniforms in a nearby parking lot or else getting out of them and leaving right after the shooting. They were, he says, carrying a box (toolbox? briefcase?) that could have concealed a sniper rifle. I think... it may have been that the guy actually saw the rifle, I can't recall. I remember he was deaf and couldn't get close to the motorcade for some reason (wheelchair?).
One photo taken at the scene does show a figure in the background who appears to be a policeman, but he's so small in the photo, it's hard to tell.

The stuff in the documentary (I reviewed it for Amazon - the filmmaker was British, and it was called something like JFK:uhh, some subtitle - no, wait, it's here!) wouldn't necessarily be in opposition to another gunman being in the book building, but it might diverge from the story built in the book in some other ways.

23:40 / 02.12.02

What's American Tabloid's truth:fiction ratio here? Educated guesses, please.

Ellroy has it down as a French mercenary called Mesplede, IIRC, and I think that's been suggested elsewhere.

Good book, anyway.

07:33 / 03.12.02

I forgot to say that Robin Ramsey supports the Grassy Knoll theory as well. Too much information to recall - he presents evidence that the thing with Oswald in the book depository as a set up - and a clumsy one at that. I think he suspects that Oswald was meant to be killed "resisting arrest", but he when he was apprehended in a cinema, he had the presence of mind to shout out "I am not resisting arrest" in front of the dozen or so witness present.

.

12:29 / 03.12.02

The most interesting book that I've read concerning the JFK conspiracy (and I've read hundreds- I've even sat through the three hours of Oliver Stone's film) is "Not in Your Lifetime" by Anthony Summers. Summers, rather than start with a theory and then jam the evidence into it, examines the evidence in all it's contradictory detail, as well as a thorough examination of all the key players, and concludes, well, not very much. But that is really the beauty of the book.

Summers proposes that it is fairly likely that Oswald was the gunman that killed Kennedy, although he was almost certainly not the only gunman in the area. He suggests that the most likely explaination is that Oswald was sympathetic to pro-Batista (spelling?) Cubans who felt betrayed by JFK after the failed Bay of Pigs counter-revolution. The pro-Batistas had been trained and armed by the CIA (hence any possible CIA connections), and had allies in organised crime (the mob had all been expelled from Cuba by Castro).

Does this scenario sound familiar? Rebel forces trained and armed by the CIA for US political gain, then abandoned, only to turn on their former allies? Ironic isn't it, how what was once "conspiracy theory" has now become mainstream political fact...

17:43 / 03.12.02

I remember seeing a show (accuracy unknown) that showed how it was physically impossible for Oswald to fire the shots in the 3.6 seconds they were fired in.

I thought people were just shot whenever Nixon was running in the election (Kennedy, Wallace, RFK, etc. etc.)

(The Three Uniforms) who were in the perfect spot to fire and were dressed in such a way not to arouse suspicion - a policeman and two other guys, a fireman and a maintenance worker/construction worker.

You mean the Village People killed Kennedy?

19:31 / 03.12.02

The Village People were just a collective unconscious echo of the grim fact that America had been stripped of even the pretense of Democracy; that we were indeed living in a time of Empire, with all the corruption and decadence that entails.

---------

Here, on the topic of Lobster Magazine, I sent their free article on UFOs to a ufologist friend of mine, and he spotted something odd about the author's name. Correspondence follows:

> > That's kinda fascinating, Grant. But back in
> > the 1970s there was a somewhat shady character
> > in England with a name that sounds similar to
> > Armen Victorian. Unfortunately I cannot
> > remember what the name is. Perhaps you father
> > knows the name Armen Victorian.
> >
> > How did you find this site?
> >
> > Bob
> >
>
--- "grant b, sun reporter" wrote:
>
> I found the site because an online friend found a
> book on JFK written by the editor, Robin Ramsay.
> His article about being "infiltrated" in the
> 1980s when he was basically the only employee
> of the magazine was kind of funny.
>
>
> A Google search on Armen Victorian turns up
> this skeptical biography of him:
> http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/1997/apr/m19-006.shtml
> Apparently he was a former Soviet Armenian
> refugee named Henry Azadehdel, gotten in
> trouble for phone fraud and orchid smuggling, and has
> some enemies in the British UFO community after
> stealing supposed photos of a crashed triangle.
>
> Oh, and apparently he's also gotten really,
> well, *pissy* with botanists about orchids, at least
> according to some online UFO archives:
> http://www.ufomind.com/misc/1997/sep/d27-002.shtml
>
> So he's definitely cranky, that guy.

02:17 / 04.12.02

I think the Oswald/Pro-Batista theory doesn't hold up when you consider that there was direct government involvement. That is, I mean to say that the government has made an effort to falsify, destroy, and modify evidence. Take the Zapruder film for example. This also goes for the Mafia theory and all the others. As long as they do not provide a reasonable explanation as to how a lot of the evidence was... tampered with I think that they should be considered either false or grossly incomplete.

On an unrelated(?) sidenote:

Can someone do a lookup on the major players of the present Bush Administration other than Bush Jr. himself? Take Donald Rumsfeld for instance. I'm interested in what these people were doing 20 maybe 30 years ago. Possibly even more way back. Also anyone with any internal links to the Democrat/Republican parties please post any knowledge of internal party politics that you are willing to reveal. Although I'm quite sure no one on this board has ever been deep inside one of these parties.

.

09:38 / 04.12.02

I think the Oswald/Pro-Batista theory doesn't hold up when you consider that there was direct government involvement. That is, I mean to say that the government has made an effort to falsify, destroy, and modify evidence. Take the Zapruder film for example. This also goes for the Mafia theory and all the others.

See, that's the beauty of the Pro-Batista theory, since the Pro-Batistas had allies in the mob and were essentially sponsored by the CIA (hence the government involvement in any "cover-up"). So it's the Pro-Batistas that tie up all the various theories. In fact, the only people not involved were the Soviets...

14:49 / 04.12.02

More on that UFO article:

The ufologist friend of mine zeroed in on this footnote:
1. My archives contain several military intelligence records of unevaluated reports on UFO conferences and symposia. Most of the better known UFO organizations have deep, as well as casual, penetration by both military and intelligence agencies. This has been brought to my attention on several occasions by individuals who were assigned to such missions.

…and got the following response from well-known ufologist (a friend of my aforementioned friend):
>>>>>
> > Bob,
> > Thanks for sending this. I think he is right in footnote #1 about how
> > things were done the past. However, surveillance is so good now that they
> > don't need to waste personnel by putting them in UFO organizations.
> Nothing flies that they don't measure and record.
> All Internet messages are watched
> > for code words and then monitored. All
> microwaved telephone messages are
> > monitored for code words and then recorded.
> The only time they would waste time infiltrating now is if they detected something they didn't already know
> > and I venture to say that no UFO organization
> >is going to be able to do that now.
> > Some people will continue to think they are
> so important that someone will
> > want to get close to them, but that is just
> ego talking.
> > John
<<<<<<

==============================

The problems Enamon brings up are the basic problems with JFK investigation in general: almost all the evidence has been compromised over time. Something definitely happened that diverges from the official story (in small or large ways). The death served certain purposes rather well. Each of those purposes can be made into a hypothesis - the Bay of Pigs veterans, revenge killing. Senatorial warhawks, JFK's plans to back out of Vietnam - and evidence can be assembled to support it. But the evidence always falls short of reasonable doubt, of absolute proof.

JFK's assassination points out the failure of the justice system to correctly interpret events... and, even larger, the failure of scientific method to deal with a chaotic and multivalent reality.

15:17 / 04.12.02

So it's the Pro-Batistas that tie up all the various theories. In fact, the only people not involved were the Soviets...

and that would be my cue

The Pro-Bautistas had been infiltrated by Soviet sleeper agents in order to put their agent LBJ in the White House with the intent of
1)domestically introducing his socialist "Great Society" programs,
2)internationally involving the US in a struggle waged incompetently and immorally in order to destroy any credibility that the US had as a moral force in world affairs.

10:50 / 05.12.02

The level of truth of this statement is unknown, as it was found in "The Big Book of Conspiracies":

"The cliché that everyone over the age of 45 remembers exactly where he or she was when JFK was assasinated does not apply to George Bush and Richard Nixon. Although claiming lack of memory, both men were in Dallas."