Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktAbout seven years ago I spent a week touring through southern Germany with my family, culminating with a final 2 days in Salzburg, just across the southeastern border into Austria. Salzburg is a beautiful city, but in order to spend half a day visiting nearby Das Kehlsteinhaus, better known here as The Eagle’s Nest, the only remaining vestige of Hitler’s high command retreat in Obersalzburg, I had to consent to a grueling half day Sound of Music tour with my wife and daughters in and around Salzburg itself. Three hours on a bus with chirpy Julie Andrews singing incessantly in the background. Ugh.
That being said, Maria and the young von Trapps seemed the perfect intro to tonight’s Bits & Pieces, which includes a few of my favorite links that I have collected over the years, ranging from informative to entertaining to complete and utter timewasters. With that in mind…
———————
I can’t remember how I came across this Famous Trials website, but it is fantastic, complete with synopses, trial transcripts, evidence, photos, and more for any number of historically interesting cases, ranging from the Salem Witchcraft trials, to the Alger Hiss perjury trial, to the 3 trials of Oscar Wilde. Legal Eagles, and wannabes like me, dig in.
———————
Boomshine, a totally addicting timewaster. Be warned.
———————
I’m sure few of you would have guessed, but I enjoy arguments. No, really, I’m not kidding. And by arguments I mean formal, logical arguments. Anyone interested in arguing must know, and hopefully avoid, the logical fallacies.
———————
Jim Boeheim, head coach of the Syracuse University basketball team, has long been known for speaking his mind to the media. This tendency towards bluntness has recently gotten him in some reasonably serious trouble, but as a long-time Syracuse fan it also provided my favorite post-game press conference moment. (Warning…earmuff the little ones):
And, weirdly, the same press conference as re-interpreted by girls in bikinis:
As an aside, speaking of Syracuse basketball, I was actually in attendance at the greatest game in Big East history. It was a long night, but well worth it in the end.
———————
Ever since I was a little kid, I have been fascinated by the JFK assassination. One of the first books I ever remember checking out of our local public library was a book about the assassination, and over the years I have read pretty much every book that has been written about it. I even have a condensed copy of the Warren Report on my bookshelf. This is been brought to mind because for Christmas I got Stephen King’s most recent book 11/22/63, about a man who goes back in time in an effort to prevent the assassination. I started it on Tuesday morning and finished it yesterday. Thought it was great. Anyway, if you are at all interested in the assassination and the many varied conspiracy theories (and why they are all bunk), this site by John McAdams is a great place to start.
———————
The Illustrated Road to Serfdom.
———————
I linked to this once before over at the blog whose name dare not be spoken, but everyone should read this book at some point, and it’s free on the web, so I’ll link to it again: The Ultimate Resource.
———————
For movie buffs, I give you another boring-day timewaster, Invisibles. You have to name the movie from a still shot taken from one scene, but there’s a catch. All the people – but not their clothes – have been airbrushed out of the photo.
———————
Another one for movie buffs. Have you ever watched a movie supposedly based on real events and wondered how much of it was true, or what the actual people looked like? Well, now you can find out.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
So, what's your conclusion about JFK? If there was a conspiracy (and it appears the RFK and Jackie seemed to lean towards one) who was behind it? If there was a conspiracy, I'd lean towards the mob for two reasons: RFK's prosecution and the abandonment of the Cuba takeover.
LikeLike
McWing:The chance of a conspiracy is zero. Oswald did it, and did it alone. Did you know that six months before the JFK assassination, General Edwin Walker, a hard right retired military man and resident of Dallas, was almost assassinated in his home? The shooter hit a part of the window frame as he tried to shoot him one night and the bullet glanced off and missed him. Ballistics later showed that the bullet shot at Walker came from the same gun that shot JFK…the Manlicher Carcano. And we know that Oswald tried to shoot Walker because he left his wife a note that night telling her what to do in case he got caught, and then confessed it to her when he returned home. You rarely hear about this in the conspiracy books.I have to run but will say more later. I love to talk about this.
LikeLike
I lean towards the side of no conspiracy, but still have niggling doubts (not in Oswald's complicity) but in other actors. For instance, suppose Johnson had proff it was the Russians? What would be the proper American response that did not result in Nuclear war? I submit it's to suppress the information.
LikeLike
It's interesting that you don't believe in a conspiracy but still have a life long interest in it. Usually, once you're convinced of Oswald/ lone gunman, interst wanes.
LikeLike
Scott, I haven't had time tonight to check out all your interesting links but will later or in the morning. Having been 13 when JFK was shot that day has always lived in infamy for me. I haven't read as extensively as you have but have nonetheless been fascinated by the various conspiracies surrounding Oswald and the shooting. I've never found anything too credible to keep my attention for long though, and always ended up believing the lone gunman scenario. I was in my 8th grade homeroom class and we were in a weird mood already, practicing levitation (don't ask), when our teacher sent me to the library to find a book. The TV was on and the news was just breaking. I was literally transfixed and then had to go back and tell the classroom what had happened. We were all sent home and didn't go back to school until after the funeral. His was my first political campaign and debate. I was in fifth grade when he was elected and had a teacher who was a political junkie so we learned a lot and as a child it was the first time my parents and I really disagreed in a fundamental way…..lol.
LikeLike
McWing:It's interesting that you don't believe in a conspiracy but still have a life long interest in it. I was a conspiracy guy for a long time. That's why I read all the books, trying to figure out which conspiracy was the right one. But over time I started to change my mind, as the possibility of any kind of fully plausible theory seemed more and more remote. By the time Oliver Stone's JFK came out, I was pretty doubtful about any conspiracy.Gerald Posner's Case Closed put to rest any remaining doubts for me, and Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History was just piling on, although Bugliosi's treatment is, I think, by far the best and most thorough debunking of all the conspiracy theories. If you still have doubts, I would highly recommend Bugliosi.
LikeLike
Like I said, not a full believer in a conspiracy, but if there was one, I'd lean towards the mob. I've heard that Posner's book was pretty conclusive but have not read it. The older I've gotten the more I've realized that to keep a conspiracy of that magnitude secret, assuming it conducted by the Johnson Administration, or the Mafia for that matter, for this long is impossible. I'm still curious about what the proper response would have been if, for example, Johnson had conclusive proof the USSR had killed JFK.
LikeLike
I am 99% confident that Oswald acted alone but he might have been nudged a little along the way.I find the conspiracy theories interesting in that they are the ur-theory for a lot of other crackpotism.
LikeLike
Salzburg is a gorgeous city, if a bit on the touristy side. In addition to The Sound of Music there is also the Mozart connection.Here are some photos I took when I was there summer before last.
LikeLike
ScottC,On the group tour I was on, we were told that all of The Eagle's Nest had been destroyed to keep it from becoming a mecca to Nazi sympathizers. What is left to see up there? Genuinely curious.Instead we toured a salt mine, which was very cool in its own right.
LikeLike
yello:On the group tour I was on, we were told that all of The Eagle's Nest had been destroyed to keep it from becoming a mecca to Nazi sympathizers. What is left to see up there? The Eagle's Nest refers to a specific building that was built for Hitler by Martin Borman as a birthday present. It was essentially a small tea house built on the very peak of the mountain above the area of Obersalzburg and the town of Berchtesgaden. The town itself was the home of Hitler's Bavarian retreat called the Berghof, and the surrounding area was eventually built up with other houses for top Nazis along with army and SS barracks. Essentially the town became a military outpost during the war.The allies bombed out most of the town and residences during the war, and after the war almost all of the buildings were torn down for exactly the reason you say. However, The Eagle's Nest itself was not part of the town. It was/is accessible only via a single lane road that climbs the side of the mountain almost to the very peak, and then an elevator built into a tunnel in the mountain which gets you to the very top, and The Eagle's Nest. Since it wasn't a part of the military complex below in the town, the allies never bombed it, and it was not destroyed after the war. So it really is still there, and in almost exactly the same condition it was in during the war. The only change that has been made is that the main sitting room has been converted into a restaurant/diner.In one room there is a huge fireplace with a marble mantle. If you look close, you can see areas of the marble that have been chipped away, apparently the result of allied soldiers seeking souvenirs. As far as I know, that is the only damage that has ever been done to it. I've been there twice, including just this past summer. I was there at the end of June, and it snowed on us while we were up there.
LikeLike
yello:I see you also went to Dachau on your trip. I was there this past summer as well. Pretty depressing place. That gate with the sign, Arbeit Macht Frei, really gets me.
LikeLike
McWing: I've heard that Posner's book was pretty conclusive but have not read it.The best part of Posner's book, I thought, was his analysis of the Zapruder film and his conclusion that the Warren Report actually had the timing of the shots wrong. Based on Posner's analysis, Oswald had even more time than the Warren Commission had thought to take the shots. But really, Bugliosi's book is better. Even though Bugliosi reaches basically the same conclusions as Posner, he's fairly critical of Posner's book.I'm still curious about what the proper response would have been if, for example, Johnson had conclusive proof the USSR had killed JFK.Bomb 'em, I suppose.
LikeLike
Thanks for the description, Scott. Sounds like an impressive place to see if not particularly accessible.When we were in Berlin we took a walking tour and at one point our guide said that we were very close to Hitler's bunker which is also unmarked for the very same reasons. Many of the Nazi-era buildings are still there but have been repurposed. Nowadays it's the Cold War stuff that draws the tourists. Dachau is just draining. I was taken with how detailed and mater-of-fact the museum exhibits are. They really don't pull any punches.
LikeLike
"Arbeit Macht Frei"Has there ever been a more brutally ironic phrase than that?Here is a picture of it just in case anybody else wants to see it but doesn't feel like hunting through my 10,000 other snapshots.
LikeLike
yello:Here's a good video of the Eagle's Nest, including the spectacular drive up to it.
LikeLike
yellow:I was also in Berlin this past summer. Did you see the memorial at the (no longer in use) Grunewald train station? That was where Jews were shipped out from to all of the various concentration camps. The memorial is essentially a section of the train platform on each side of the tracks, with a series of simple metal plaques, each representing a single day on which Jews were put on the trains. Each plaque gives the date, the number of Jews on the train, and the destination. It was simple but chilling, especially as you walked along the platform and you could see the number of people sent to camps growing day by day, peaking, and then dwindling as the war came to an end.I'm not sure if this will work, but here is a picture of one of the plaques, and here is another one to give you a sense of the whole platform. The plaques lined both sides.The other really interesting place we saw just outside of Berlin was the site of the Wannsee Conference, which was essentially the meeting at which the Final Solution was set out, and was dramatized in a great movie called Conspiracy. See it if you haven't already.(Hopefully those links to the pictures work. Let me know if they don't.)
LikeLike
No. I never heard of that train station. Those photos are very moving and effective. We didn't get out to that side of Berlin. Our hotel was a converted East German apartment building near Shonefeld. I managed to short out the antique fuse box in our room with my AC power adaptor.
LikeLike
The whole purpose of our trip was to visit WWII sites. We started in Normandy and worked our way through France, up into Belgium and thru to Luxembourg, then flew into Munich, travelled to Salzburg, and then finally flew to Berlin. It was the trip of a lifetime.There was also a museum in Berlin the equivalent to the one in Dachau in its brutal honesty. One of my favorite pictures from the Berlin museum was this one, of a huge crowd of people at a Nazi rally, all giving the Nazi salute, but if you look closely you can see there is a single, brave protester in the middle of the crowd, standing with his arms crossed and refusing to salute. I think that is a great photo.
LikeLike
Now you've got me looking through the pics from my trip. Check out the contrast between the American cemetery in Luxembourg, where General Patton is buried, and the German cemetery, also in Luxembourg. The German cemetery is maintained by a private organization through donations because the German government will have nothing to do with it.BTW, each stone in the German cemetery marks the graves for 4 different soldiers, 2 buried on each side of the stone. One of the soldiers marked by the stone in the picture is an unknown soldier, hence the simple "Ein Deutscher Soldat", or One German Soldier.
LikeLike
Write up of the Berghof in the 1938 Homes & Gardens magazine:Homes and Gardens November 1938 – 'Hitler's Mountain Home'
LikeLike