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The 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's murder is being marked, not primarily by retrospectives on his life and accomplishments, and not by reflections on the myth versus the reality of his presidency, but instead by one of the features of our media age that is poisonous to our cultural health -- a macabre focus on the details of his murder. National Geographic aired a film with the title "Killing Kennedy" (based on a book by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard). Trailers featured images of the first couple in the open limousine and close ups of the actor who played...

<p>JOHN Kerry has added credibility to a conspiracy theory that John F. Kennedy's assassin may not have worked alone.</p> <p>The US Secretary of State has become one of the highest-ranking politicians to publicly doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone conspirator in Kennedy's murder, admitting to a journalist that he was suspicious of the government’s official finding.</p>

In a corner of the Shannon Rose Hill Cemetery, close to a chain-link fence that separates the living and the dead, a patch of ground has been worn free of grass by all who come to stare at one particular gravestone. With just a surname, the marker says it all: OSWALD. But in the half-century since a slight, sallow man named Lee Harvey Oswald killed President John F. Kennedy, so much continues to be said about the assassination that the various conspiracy devices and theories are nearly as familiar as the tragic event itself. The Magic Bullet theory. The Zapruder...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is convinced that a lone gunman wasn’t solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and said his father believed the Warren Commission report was a “shoddy piece of craftsmanship.” Kennedy and his sister, Rory, spoke about their family Friday night while being interviewed in front of an audience by Charlie Rose at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas. The event comes as a year of observances begins for the 50th anniversary of the president’s death. Their uncle was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas. Five...

This Sunday the Discovery Channel is running two back-to-back documentaries -- "Did the Mob Kill JFK?" and "JFK: The Ruby Connection" -- exploring the role of the Mafia behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy: New information and never before heard details of a startling confession raise new questions on just who was behind the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the subsequent killing of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. * * * "I had the little bastard killed. He was a thorn in my shoe" -- according to a secret FBI informant these were the...

While both my Aunt and I watch Bill O'Reilly every weeknight, I was very disappointed to hear him say that his new book says that Oswald shot JFK...... While I will continue to watch the show because there are things I like, my confidence and trust in the things he says has been greatly diminished. You cannot shoot a man in the front from the back. There is no need to go into everything we have written about here many times before, I just thought that rather than have some of you waste your money on the book, I'd share...

A new book by an ex-CIA spook claims that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro knew about Lee Harvey Oswald's plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy and did nothing to stop it. Author Brian Latell was the agency's former national intelligence officer for Latin America and is now a senior research associate in Cuban American studies at the University of Miami. In the upcoming volume, "Castro's Secrets: The CIA and Cuba's Intelligence Machine," Latell writes that on Nov. 22 1963, Castro ordered his intelligence officers in Havana to drop their normal responsibilities and pay close attention to communications coming out of...

(Newser) – Film director cum pot-stirring historian Oliver Stone has blasted the official version of JFK's assassination as a "national fairy tale." To this day, "many key Americans in power are in total denial about this story," Stone told a group of students in Thailand. "They don't want to know about the possibility that he was killed by someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald." Stone's film JFK suggested a massive conspiracy linked to the CIA was behind the president's murder. The director was in Bangkok on a series of talks funded by the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation.

This week is the anniversary of the tragic day in 1963 [11/22/63, 35 years ago today] when John F. Kennedy was assassinated on the streets of Dallas. Looking back, we can see that Kennedy's death marked a turning point, when the political consensus of the time gave way to the confrontational politics that we associate with the 1960s. The upheavals that followed -- along with the bitter partisanship that disfigured political life in the last third of the century, and whose echoes we still hear today -- can be traced back to that day in Dallas. The terrorist attack of...

Link is to various sources.

After the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial came in, Americans heard a new phrase. The term "jury nullification" explained how a jury comprised mostly of African-Americans could let a black man go free, even though there was overwhelming evidence pointing to his guilt. Imagine if there was a videotape of Simpson brutally slaying his wife Nicole and Ron Goldman. Many believe, even with such evidence, the jury still would have found the former football star innocent of the murders. The same can be said about the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Even though there was a film of Kennedy...

AUTHOR'S NOTE: For a number of weeks, RFFM.org will write a series of columns on the conspiracies which have helped to form the world we live in today. From the killers themselves to the media's role in conspiracies, RFFM.org will attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff. There will be no discussions of flying saucers, USO's (unidentified submerged objects) or the like in this series. RFFM.org encourages readers to submit intelligent comments about the existence of conspiracies and, who knows, perhaps one of the real killers of JFK might actually write in. Now, before I start receiving weird comments...

DALLAS (Reuters) - A batch of old documents linked to the slaying of President John F. Kennedy has reportedly been unearthed, including a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's killer Jack Ruby, the Dallas Morning News said on Sunday. The newspaper said the Dallas County district attorney's office, which uncovered the documents, would display its discovery at a news conference on Monday morning. The Morning News said the items found in an old safe in a Dallas courthouse included personal letters from former District Attorney Henry Wade, the prosecutor in the Ruby trial....

New footage of JFK in Dallas released By Ed Stoddard Mon Feb 19, 4:52 PM ET DALLAS (Reuters) - Previously unreleased footage of John F. Kennedy's fateful motorcade in Dallas moments before he was gunned down was released on Monday, a surprising new detail in a saga that has gripped the United States for four decades. The silent 8mm film shows a beaming Jacqueline Kennedy close up in vivid color waving to the crowd. A group of excited bystanders -- women sporting big 1960s hairstyles -- waves to the cameraman shortly before the motorcade sweeps past. The president's coat is...

Can anyone generate a large, good quality closeup of just Lee Harvey Oswald's face in this picture? I'm doing it to play a practical joke on a liberal friend of mine (too much of an inside joke to fully explain), and I've scoured the Internet for hours looking for a closeup of his expression in this picture. Don't know anything about Photoshop, but know that there are many wizards here. Thanks to any who respond.

Larry Buchanan, the filmmaker who has died aged 81, specialised in the niche market for what he called "guerrilla filmmaking" - truly dreadful B-movies with such names as Zontar, the Thing from Venus; Curse of the Swamp Creature; Naughty Dallas and Mars Needs Women, a film which reputedly features in every list of the worst movies ever made. But even this last title found a market, and reached its widest audiences in a version dubbed into Yiddish. Buchanan combined the roles of producer, director, screenwriter, editor and, where appropriate, voice-over narrator. He was unashamed, even proud, of tacky production values,...

This on the Anniversary of President Kennedy's killing: New Video Game Recreates Kennedy Assassination LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A new video game to be released on Monday allows players to simulate the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The release of "JFK Reloaded" is timed to coincide with the 41st anniversary of Kennedy's murder in Dallas and was designed to demonstrate a lone gunman was able to kill the president. "It is despicable," said David Smith, a spokesman for Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the late president's brother. He was informed of the game on Friday but declined further comment....

CONSPIRACY theorists are buzzing about John Kerry's connection to Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassina tion. While no one in the lunatic fringe has gone so far as to suggest Kerry helped kill Kennedy — yet — they make much of the fact that a cousin of Kerry's, Michael Paine, was a close friend of Oswald who fre quently had the assassin as a house guest. Paine even stored the rifle Oswald used to shoot Kennedy at his house. Paine's mother, Ruth Forbes, and Kerry's mother, Rosemary Forbes, were cousins.[snip] ...according to documents released under the JFK Documents...

Naushon Island Naushon Island has been a Forbes family retreat for some time, where the opium trader John Murray Forbes and his family summered for more than a century. Sen. John Forbes Kerry and his first cousin Brice Lalonde summered there, and at another Forbes family estate in France, at Saint-Brieuc when he was growing up. The family owns the island through the J.M. Forbes Naushon Island Trust. Naushon island is several miles long, just off (SW of) Cape Cod in the Elizabeth Islands, and NW of Martha's Vineyard. The island is owned by the family and they pay little...

In '64, Ruby trial put shame on DallasCircuslike atmosphere remembered as creating one big judicial mess 10:13 PM CST on Friday, March 12, 2004By MICHAEL GRANBERRY / The Dallas Morning News In the aftermath of the trial known as State of Texas vs. Jack Ruby, the defendant's rabbi, Hillel Silverman, sat alone in the courtroom. History had been made, he knew. But he couldn't stop staring at the ugliness in front of him: Mounds of clutter and debris, the insults and shouting gone. Nothing but a mess left behind. Forty years ago this Sunday, the jury rendered its verdict –...