re: JFK assassination anniversary conspiracy thread

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He also shruggs off discussion of how a 19 year old with an 8th grade education and a supposed learning disability, who joined the Marines at 17 and was never officially given language training, could show up in Russia speaking Russian, defect, get a job, and meet his wife soon after, who remarked on meeting him that while she could tell he wasn't a native, his Russian was so good she assumed he was Latvian or similar - some place where kids are taught Russian as a second language starting in Kindergarten.

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Because he was never officially involved in a Russian language school or training program. Russian is immensely difficult to learn as a native English speaker. The official story is that he taught himself from "learn to speak Russian" records that he listened to in his spare time. No one who has learned proficient spoken Russian thinks that it is possible to do that. We know from his school history that he was not a genius in any way, so that rules out his having had some sort of savant abilities.

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You're over-valuing formal education. Many of your fellow human beings are quite capable of learning things using self-taught methods from available resources. I learn better on my own than in a classroom where learning is highly scripted. So it is completely plausibe to me that Oswald could have learned whatever the frick he wanted to learn.

His Marine roommate while stationed in CA even provided a sworn statement that Oswald spent a great deal of time reading Russian papers and other Russian language books.