:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 11.22.2010 ::

:: This Day in Tech ::

Nov. 22, 1963: Zapruder Films JFK Assassination
Wired News

1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated as his motorcade passes through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. Texas Gov. John Connally, riding in the same car as Kennedy, is seriously wounded.

A spectator unwittingly films the assassination on his 8mm home-movie camera, contributing one of the 20th century’s earliest and most significant pieces of user-generated content. The funerary weekend that follows will be telecast by satellite worldwide in the first giant example of the “global village.”

The Warren Commission, set up by order of President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination, concluded that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, firing from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Although the report was widely accepted at first, skepticism grew as more information concerning possible conspiracies leaked out.

Oswald denied having anything to do with the shooting at all, let alone being part of any conspiracy, but he was killed — and silenced — two days after the assassination while in the custody of Dallas police.

That, coupled with the FBI’s miserable handling of the initial investigation, did nothing to quell the suspicions of those who believed Kennedy’s assassination was the work of (pick one, or more than one): the CIA, Johnson, the mob, Fidel Castro, the anti-Castro Cubans, J. Edgar Hoover.

Whether the shooter was acting alone or as part of a bigger conspiracy may never be known. Most of the available evidence, such as the Warren Commission Report, is inconclusive.

But the other big assertion — that Oswald (or whoever the Book Depository gunman was) had help from shooters on the ground — has never been adequately supported by hard evidence, either.

The so-called “grassy knoll” theory maintains that one, or possibly two, gunmen shot from ground level in Dealey Plaza. A number of eyewitnesses claimed to have heard gunfire coming from the grassy knoll, but nobody actually saw a gunman, and no shells were ever recovered.

The Warren Report, basing its findings on the autopsy and forensics reports, concluded that two bullets struck Kennedy. They came from the same weapon, a bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano military rifle of Italian manufacture that was recovered at the Book Depository. Three shots were fired, all from above and behind the target. The first missed. The second, the so-called “magic bullet,” passed through Kennedy and tore into Gov. Connally, causing all his wounds. The third shot, the killing one, exploded into the right side of Kennedy’s head.

Conspiracy theorists point to the impossible trajectory of the magic bullet, and to the 26 seconds of silent film shot by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder, which shows Kennedy’s head snapping backwards as the fatal third shot takes off the right side of his head, as evidence that shots came from more than one direction.

Forensics experts disagree, however, arguing that the described path of the second bullet, while improbable, was not impossible and that Kennedy’s head snap at the moment of impact suggests a reaction to the first bullet striking him and not the second. Forty-seven years on and we’re still not entirely sure what happened in Dallas that day.

The assassination changed the political landscape of the United States. The aftermath changed the media landscape of the world.

Read more here.

A L S O

Photo Gallery
Magic Bullet, Tragic Path — A Look at the JFK Assassination
Wired

Celebritology: DiCaprio to produce, star in JFK assassination movie
Washington Post

Young, old visit Dealey Plaza to mark anniversary of JFK assassination
JFK Interactive Timeline
Dallas Morning News

John F. Kennedy's Secret Service agents break their silence in book, documentary
Dallas Morning News

JFK's Assassination: 'Changing From Memory To History'
NPR (blog)

posted by me

:: 11:28:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Stewart Rally -- Why It Was Vastly Bigger Than The Beck Event ::

Huffington Post

If there's one thing that's certain about the Jon Stewart rally it's that the attendance has been grossly under-counted.

This is not just sour grapes or an effort to re-write history. All anyone has to do is to look at a map.

Let's start with the 1963 March on Washington, the most iconic public demonstration of modern times. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the crowd extended along the Reflecting Pool and beyond. The usual estimate is that 200,000 to 300,000 people attended the King rally.

This summer Glenn Beck held his rally, also speaking from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. By one estimate 87,000 people attended the Beck rally, but photos plainly show that his supporters -- like King's-- largely filled the banks of the Reflecting Pool, meaning that his rally was of similar size.

The rally led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert was plainly larger than the Beck event. Vastly larger.

A L S O

CBS News: estimated 215,000 attend Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

CBS News estimated 215,000 attended the rally organized by Comedy Central late night stars Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert last Saturday in Washington. The news organization based its estimate on a report from AirPhotosLive.com, which uses aerial pictures taken over the rally and which, the company says, has a margin of error of plus or minus 10 percent. During the rally, Stewart joked that there were 10 million Mall attendees.

CBS News had commissioned the same company to come up with a crowd estimate for Glenn Beck's August rally on the Mall and reported the company estimated that crowd at 87,000.

Here is the CBS News report.

Sanity, Iraq, and Jon Stewart's "View From Nowhere"
Huffington Post

For me -- and I think for a lot of people -- the moment that "sanity" left the building in American discourse came in late 2002 and early 2003, when it became clear that Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Paul Halfwits, and their minions were dead set on invading Iraq. This was a country that had nothing to do with supposed issue at hand --the 9/11 attacks or any ongoing terror threat from al-Qaeda -- and, weakened by years of sanctions, an allied no-fly zones, etc., posed no credible security threat to the United States. And so the idea of a U.S.-initiated war with Iraq struck me as so -- and I cannot think of a better word -- "insane" that for months I waited for the forces of reason, such as influential journalists, foreign policy experts, and rational members of Congress, to rise up and swat down such a bad and dangerous idea. In fact, it struck me, foolishly, at the time that an Iraq war debate -- such as it was in that winter of American-flag lapel pins -- would validate the very reason that I and so many others in my generation went into journalism in the late 1970s and the early 1980s -- in aftermath of Vietnam, civil rights but especially Watergate, when it was dogged reporting and the uncovering of facts that proved that an American government had gone way off that tracks. Surely that would happen again in 2002-03.

When that didn't happen -- and when so many of the nation's best-known journalists not only failed to expose the lies surrounding the invasion of Iraq but enabled them -- it radicalized me, and radicalized my ideas about journalists and our responsibilities in a free but fragile society.

Slide Show: Reader Photos from the Rally to Restore Sanity
The Nation

Stewart-Colbert Rally Mixes Fun With Sober Message
ABC News

A N D

The Sanity Song

posted by me

:: 2:59:00 PM [+] ::
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