I saw Larisa's "loon" comments on facebook as well. I only know her (besides having previously known OF her thru her writing) because of my friendship with her husband Scott. So I don't feel I can really speak to this exactly, other than to say... on the one hand, she and most journalists are just sick and tired of the worst of the conspiracy community spamming them with what often ARE loony theories. On the other hand, with her husband at least, I know him well enough to try and talk out / talk through some of his own knee-jerk criticisms of the conspiracy community. I love and respect them both and thankfully have never felt shut-down by there skepticism when talking with them face to face. On yet the other hand, it does seem that Larisa has seen enough to know that, yes, sometimes it seems like whistleblowers ARE seemingly killed in America, but than possibility does not seem to extend to journalists in her view:
'Karl Rove's IT guru' Mike Connell dies in plane crash RAW STORY Published: Saturday December 20, 2008
"...I have reason to believe that the alternate accounts were used to communicate with US Attorneys involved in political prosecutions, like that of Don Siegelman," said RAW STORY's Investigative News Editor, Larisa Alexandrovna, on her personal blog Saturday morning. "This is what I have been working on to prove for over a year. In fact, it was through following the Siegelman-Rove trail that I found evidence leading to Connell. That is how I became aware of him. Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened.
"He has flown his private plane for years without incident. I know he was going to DC last night, but I don't know why. He apparently ran out of gas, something I find hard to believe. I am not saying that this was a hit nor am I resigned to this being simply an accident either. I am no expert on aviation and cannot provide an opinion on the matter. What I am saying, however, is that given the context, this event needs to be examined carefully."
"Mr. Connell has confided that he was being threatened, something that his attorneys also told the judge in the Ohio election fraud case," concluded Alexandrovna.
GOP consultant killed in plane crash was warned of sabotage: report John Byrne, David Edwards and Stephen Webster Published: Monday December 22, 2008
RAW STORY Investigative Editor Larisa Alexandrovna said Connell's death should be examined carefully in a blog post Sunday, but stopped short of alleging foul play. She reported on Arnebeck's lawsuit and Connell's enjoined testimony earlier this year.
8bitagent » Wed Jun 19, 2013 11:40 pm wrote:I notice that even amongst the alternative to the mainstream left(your Greenwalds, Cenks, Scahills, etc) that even hinting at foul play in accidents/suicides/etc is taboo.
I'm extremely disappointed in that development. Larisa Alexandrovna Horton, who while working at The Raw Story was bold enough to write pieces documenting attempts by Task Force 20 in Iraq to have WMDs planted for them to find, recently responded to the death of Michael Hastings on Facebook demanding "Internet loons" stop emailing theories of his death to her. She followed that up by stating, "In the U.S. journalists are not killed. They are discredited." Right. I'm sure that Jim Koethe and Bill Hunter, as well as Dorothy Kilgallen might beg to differ. Oh, but that was so long ago, that sort of thing can't happen in 21st century America, right?!
what you don't know is how spooked a given person may or may not be, it's easy to be brave when it's all an abstract unlikely possibility and/or you have no life at stake but ones own.
Larisa's tone is not one of someone spooked by this incident. It's the same smug Bill Maher-esque tone liberal gatekeepers use in their chestpumping. If someone believes they are in danger for their line of work or inquiry, they wouldn't address it at all and especially not in such a smug manner. (Phoenix mayor circa 1997 notwithstanding) I understand the gatekeepers attacking the eye rolling theorist stuff, but there's a lot of reason to at least give pause with this situation. It's bizarre to see the same righteous anger given to people questioning the details and timing of Hastings death as one might with the Sandy/Boston hoaxer trolls.
I ACCIDENTLY POSTED THIS IN THE SNOWDEN THREAD SO I AM BRINGING IT OVER HERE WHERE IT BELONGS:
Here is another good article by Hastings that he recently wrote, this is the CIA probe article that everyone mentions him having worked on recently just before his death, looks REALLY INTERESTING and eerie:
That might be the best thing I have ever read, very very interesting and well done, check it out.
This story obviously tells us how deep Hastings was in, he was a fearless journalist to tell this story, its a literal textbook of the life of a post 9-11 deep cover cia black ops torture guy who was basically driven over the edge. This might be the story that really started to put Hastings on their radar.
Last edited by Hunter on Fri Jun 21, 2013 9:57 am, edited 2 times in total.
One thing I got out of that article that stuck out for me was this:
"Around that time, he came to the attention of one of the CIA's "spotters," a de facto on-campus agency recruiter. He was a prime candidate for the agency: ambitious, an effortless overachiever, highly intelligent and a risk taker...– and his dark skin and skill with languages made him ideally suited for assignments in the Middle East, a region that was moving closer to the center of the agency's attention."
So he is recognized by the spotter and then look what happens to his academic arc, overseas programs, fellowships etc, these are the things they use to further the students training before they hire them full time as an agent:
"He took his first trip to the Middle East, for a four-week program in Egypt, in 1993. The next year, he received a fellowship to spend the following two summers at Yarmouk University in Jordan, where he continued his Arabic studies. In 1996, after receiving his master's, he got a job as a language analyst for the National Security Agency. Warren was then hired by the CIA, according to court documents. By 1997, he'd gone into training, and in 1999 Warren's appointment as a foreign service officer was published in the Congressional Record."
I always suspected they had spooks at all the universities keeping tabs on students who excel in certain areas and recruiting them to the agency after graduation, this confirms it.
This story is a real life deep inside detailed look at the agency and the life of one of their deep cover ops, you wont get this kind of detail in a Hollywood movie, very good stuff! Hastings was really good at what he did, what a tragic loss. FUCK ZERO DARK THIRTY, this Hastings article is where it is at...
IF his death was just an accident then we need ask, why does the Universe demand the sacrifice our young and brilliant minds? It seems to take them all from us far too early!
Wednesday, June 19th, 2013 | Posted by Gordon Duff “We Got The Message…” Hastings “Boston Brakes” Killing a Warning?
By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor
Imagine a new “E Class” Mercedes exploding in flames, burning to a cinder. 220 km/hr crashes on the Autobahn are often survived, certainly without a fire.
There is a reason to own a Mercedes, in normal circumstances the chances of dying in one are quite remote unless you are Lady Di or heir to the presidency of Syria or, just perhaps, wrote a scathing expose that dismembered part of one of the greatest drug empires of all time.
“Yes, you got Michael Hastings. We are warned. Lots of journalists are killed each year. Veterans Today loses its share, perhaps a bit more. ”
For those who didn’t watch the entire video, go back. Catch the last few seconds. I was flabbergasted.
Those of us who have “been there and done that,” and come back with more than the T Shirt say goodbye to one of ours.
RIP Michael from “g” and the gang at “VT”
“Boston Brakes” in Paris “BOSTON BRAKES” ASSASSINATION TECHNIQUE BECOMES BIG “PROBLEM SOLVER”
By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor July 25, 2010
I had never heard of “Boston Brakes” until two days ago. I had been on the Kevin Barrett radio show yesterday, discussing, among other things, the endless ways to gain control of an aircraft and plow it into a building, something I had been briefed on by my Air Force buddies. There are a dozen ways to gain control of a plane, in fact, the more “fly by wire” a plane is, the more ways to control it remotely. Now I am told the same thing works for cars, not exactly the same but close enough.
Nothing particularly clever is required, especially when the plane is capable of landing itself or, with a bit of hacking, making an inconvenient stop in the side of a building. I am told this game started with the CIA back in Boston, not with planes but cars. Car wrecks were mechanically staged using the “Boston Brakes” method, not always fatal but always a good way of communicating to someone your displeasure. Sending a college age daughter into a light pole, reporting her speedometer was stuck at 200 mph and fudging her blood test to show she was “double drunk” has been done countless times.
It isn’t just that crash that makes it “Boston Brakes” but the speedometer stuck at some outrageous speed and the blood acohol level, always from a sample that is mysteriously misplaced later. Oh, and I almost forgot, no skidmarks, something accident investigators only see at suicides or murder. Remember, always no skidmarks.
The trail that led me to look into “Boston Brakes” involved the suicide in 2003 of Dr. David Kelly, a suicide now ruled a murder. Kelly was believed to have killed himself because he had been attacked in the press by Prime Minister Tony Blair. Kelly, a prominent weapons scientist had claimed, as we all know is true today, that Tony Blair had falsified intelligence to force Britain into what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has called “the illegal invasion of Iraq.” With evidence finally, years later, piling in showing that Kelly’s body had been moved and a suicide scene staged, pathologist records falsified and that Kelly was murdered with broad complicity by more than one government agency, things have started to take on a life of their own.
The assassination of Dr. David Kelly if prosecuted, and it is now under full criminal investigation, could lead to the highest levels of the British and American governments, the absolute highest. Kelly was that important and the secrets they thought they had silenced when he was murdered point to the heads of state of several countries, not just Britain and America but Israel, North Korea, South Africa and maybe a few more. This was a stupid and clumsy murder of a good and decent man. Selling nuclear weapons to North Korea isn’t a joke, not at least to Dr. David Kelly. This is what cost him his life.
The suicide is now a murder and the wheels of justice have begun to turn. When that happens, nobody can control the outcome, almost nobody anyway.
First of all, even the reason for the supposed suicide was totally false. Kelly was a whistleblower, yes, but not about falsified intelligence regarding Tony Blair and “sexed up” weapons reports. Kelly was spilling the beans on missing nuclear weapons that he, himself, was involved in, weapons involving Israel and South Africa, a big secret that is now at the root of a major investigation in the United Kingdom, an investigation that went critical when one of the missing bombs exploded in North Korea in 2009. This is why that mysterious “Iraq Enquiry” has come back to life but we are not told why.
Kelly was murdered, not just because he was going to rat out members of both political parties for failing to act in the national interest but because tons of money was spent by mysterious parties to cover this up, money that has shown up on the public record as campaign contributions in amounts not even seen in the United States, from bad sources, unimaginably bad sources, the worst.
The question isn’t as much why Kelly was murdered, all this is out now, with a cover story being released, one with no missing nuclear weapons, no Israel and no North Korea for sure, but at least insiders in Britain, key members of the government, the judiciary and the intelligence services will know, some properly informed, some properly castigated and the ones who belong in prison for life, running scott free along with their Yank counterparts, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush.
The problem is the pattern of killings, that 9/11 signature that we call “Boston Brakes.” The mysterious death of Richard Waddington, relative of a potential witness in the Chilcot Inquiry that could have opened an unimaginable “can of worms.” Waddington was to be subjected to an intimidating show of power, an arranged car accident, not a murder as it ended up. Waddington was killed to prevent someone else from confirming Israel’s complicity in building 10 nuclear weapons. The “secret world” says “6.” Keeping an Israeli nuclear test secret, keeping a nuke sold to North Korea secret, keeping an “under the table” deal involving the Thatcher government and gun runners secret cost a life.
In 2008, Jorg Haider, the anti-Zionist ready to take power as Prime Minister of Austria got the “Boston Brakes” treatment when his Volkswagen Phaeton, one of the world’s finest road cars, as with Waddinton, Princes Di and others, rammed into a concrete abutment, “no skidmarks.” I keep going back in my mind to the “dancing Israeli’s” when I think of Lady Di’s death. How does she tie in? The money that flowed into Tony Blair’s political coffers came from the pockets of “Mr. Landmine,” a Rhodesian arms merchant Lady Di may have given her life to stop. Tied to Israel, North Korea and the missing nukes, this trail heads to Paris and perhaps even the white Fiat Uno seen next to the ill fated Mercedes. Was it filled with “dancing Israeli’s?”
Jon King, writing of these incidents, says the following:
“According to former SAS officer and world-famous explorer, Sir Ranulph Feinnes, it is not beyond reason that both Princess Diana’s Mercedes and Jorg Haider’s Volkswagen were remotely hijacked.
feather_men_book_cover In his book, The Feather Men, Feinnes recounts in some detail a highly sophisticated assassination technique which he says has been employed by the world’s intelligence agencies for decades.
A microchip transceiver, he explains, is fitted to the target vehicle’s on-board computer, allowing the vehicle to be controlled remotely.
He says this technique was first deployed by the CIA in Boston, hence its name: the ‘Boston brakes’.
Feinnes also recounts an instance of the ‘Boston brakes’ being successfully deployed in England in 1986, which resulted in the assassination of SAS Major, Michael Marman, and the near-death of a former equerry to the Queen, Sir Peter Horsley.
According to Sir Ranuplh Feinnes, the ‘Boston brakes’ is all fact, no fiction.
Certainly evidence John and I present in our new book Princess Diana The Evidence shows clearly enough that Diana was almost certainly the victim of the ‘Boston brakes’.
And given the startling correlations presented above, one has to wonder if Jorg Haider might also have suffered this same premeditated fate.”
I remember the first time I stood out in the road, Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, staring up at the Texas School Book Depository, supposed sight of Lee Harvey Oswald, once believed involved in the Kennedy assassination. Holding a photo from 1963 in my hand, I could see the Texas live oak was the same size, totally blocking the view from the window, blocking any potential shot on Kennedy. Even without the obfuscations of Arlen Specter and his “magic bullet” it all fell apart then as it does now.
Similarly, I have walked the route of Princess Di’s Mercedes also, walked it when the road is closed for the summer Paris Plages festival and have driven it dozens of times. As with all the “Boston Brakes” killings, no skidmarks. I drive the BMW version of the 12 cylinder Mercedes 600, a car you can dance around curves like a Porsche. The Volkswagen Phaeton is much of the same ilk, powerful engine, race car brakes and suspension and incredible handling. I have driven hours above 150 mph on European roads. Drivers do that all the time, you seldom see a “fender bender.”
Is there a great conspiracy out there, one that kills minor computer programmers in Ohio like Mike Cullen, who threatened to put George “W” Bush in prison for election rigging, one of the endless mysterious plane crashes that clean Democrats out of the United States Senate? Does anyone remember when Ross Perot, a certainty for the oval office, dropped out of the election?
Truth is, we live in a world where it is cheaper sometimes to use simple thuggery, than to go to the bother of rigging a Boeing 767 or running a car into a concrete abutment. When a member of congress is bribed to support a war, vote for a special tax break for a gangster or to submit to some Israeli abuse, did someone send him a photo of his children playing in a school yard or was his brothers wife raped and beaten recently? This is how the game is played.
Between 1995 and 2005, 50 scientists that we know of, all WMD specialists, germ warfare, bio weapons, chemical warfare, died under circumstances, some as plain as an unexpected heart attack in an otherwise healthy young adult to the inevitable “Boston Brakes” crash. NUMBER SCIENTISTS AGE CIRCUMSTANCE DATE
#1 Jose Trias Murdered May 19, 1994 #2 Dr. Tsunao Saitoh 46 Murdered May 7, 1996 #3-7 Microbiologists Plane crash October 4, 2001 #8 Jeffrey Paris Wall 41 Murdered? November 6, 2001 #9 Dr.Vladimir Pasechnik 64 Stroke November 21, 2001 #10-12 Dr.Yaakov Matzner, Amiramp Eldor, & Avishai Berkman 54, 59,50 Plane crash November 24, 2001 #13 Roman Kuzmin 24 Struck by a car December 2001 #14 Dr. Benito Que 52 Mugging December 6, 2001 #15 Dr. David Schwartz 57 Murdered December 10, 2001 #16 Set Van Nguyen 44 Found in airlock chamber December 14, 2001 #17 Don C. Wiley 57 Body found by river December 20,2001 #18 Ivan Glebov Bandit attack January 2002 #19 Alexi Brushlinski Killed/murdered? January 2002 #20 Victor Korshunov 56 Murdered February 9, 2002 #21 Dr. Ian Langford 40 Murdered February 11, 2002 #22-23 Tanya Holzmayer & Guyang “Mathew” Huang 46, 38 Murder then suicide February 28, 2002 #24 David Wynn-Williams 55 Struck by vehicle March 24, 2002 #25 Dr. Steven Mostow 63 Plane crash March 25, 2002 #26 Dr. Leland Rickman 47 Unknown June 24, 2003 #27 Dr. David Kelly 59 Suicide?/ Murder July 18, 2003 #28 Michael Perich 46 Car wreck October 11, 2003 #29 Robert Leslie Burghoff 45 Hit and run November 20, 2003 #30 Dr Robert E. Shope 74 Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis January 19, 2004 #31 Michael Patrick Kiley 62 Heart failure January 24, 2004 #32 Vadake Srinivasan 78 Stroke/Car wreck March 13, 2004 #33 William T. McGuire 39 Murdered May 5, 2004 #34 Dr. Eugene F. Mallove 56 Murdered May 16, 2004 #35 Antonina Presnyakova 46 Accidental/Ebola May 19, 2004 #36 Thomas gold 84 Heart disease June 23, 2004 #37 Dr. Assefa Tulu 45 Hemorrhagic stroke June 24, 2004 #38 Dr. John Mullen 67 Acute arsenic intoxication June 29, 2004 #39 Dr Paul Norman 52 Plane crash July 2, 2004 #40 Dr. John Badwey 54 Pneumonia like symptoms July 21, 2004 #41 Dr Bassem al-Mudare Murdered July 21, 2004 #42 Professor John Clark 52 Hanging August 12, 2004 #43 Mohammed Toki Hussein al-Talakani 40 Murdered September 5, 2004 #44 Matthew Allison 32 Car exploded October 13, 2004 #45 John R. La Montagne, Ph.D 61 Sudden pulmonary embolism November 2, 2004 #46 Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher Murdered December 21, 2004 #47-48 Tom Throne & Beth Williams 63, 53 Car wreck December 29, 2004 #49 Jeong H. Im 72 Murdered January 7, 2005 #50 Geetha Angara 43 Murdered/Drowned February 8, 2005
Find this a bit overwhelming? This is only one of several lists. If you wondered what intelligence services do, the answer is simple, they murder people. If you wonder who they work for, the answer is simple also, crooked arms dealers, drug cartels and power mad politicians.
How many people will be murdered, how many kids threatened, how many poisonings, how much in bribes before America agrees to attack Iran? How many billions are being paid to keep America in Afghanistan, supporting Karzai and immune to knowlege of the $65 billion dollar a year drug trade? If you don’t think members of congress are at the heart of the conspiracy, you aren’t very good at using the Freedom of Information Act to track travel schedules or see who belongs to what organization along with drug lords and thugs.
Ask Sibel Edmonds.
If, like everyone else, you have come to expect terrorist acts, of late almost comedy routines, the “crotch bomber” and the Times Square Fizzler as potential Vegas headliners, expect that “dirty bomb” we have been warned about. If our “bestest buddies in the whole world” can sell submarines to North Korea or give them atom bombs, don’t be surprised if, in order to push that Iran war we are hearing so much about, you don’t wake up some morning to an American city glowing in the dark.
Within seconds, Fox News will have the whole story, Iranian suspects, airport footage, everything. It is all a game, everything is a game. Everything is a business and our businessmen today are all gangsters, same as our government.
What I meant to suggest upthread is that if there was a bomb under the car it could lift one end up as it was traveling. When the guy said jackknife he was using the term incorrectly, but that's beside the point. He was using a word to describe what he saw, and as a non native speaker of english, he might well use a word incorrectly, but with some semblance to the meaning of the word. A car which has one end up in the air would have an angle to the road which might suggest the image of a jackknife, which is why I suggested it would be interesting to talk with him with an interpreter, so as to get an accurate translation of what he actually saw.
The Alex Jones link upthread is pretty interesting, with a number of good points, although it's annoying to have to sift through his facts which are facts and his facts which are self serving, narcissistic, showmanship non-facts. Not something I would recommend to anyone who isn't prepared to go thru that. And it doesn't help that someone shows up later in the show wearing a Che Guevara costume. Makes it look like more of a clown show.
I'm tempted to drive over there and look at the scene, though I don't know what good that would do. (For many years that corner was on my way home from my job in Hollywood to the West LA area.)
You know what you finally say, what everybody finally says, no matter what? I'm hungry. I'm hungry, Rich. I'm fuckin' starved. -- Cutter's Way
Witness: Hastings’ speeding car ‘shook my car like a freight truck going by’ Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News
A driver who witnessed the fiery crash that killed journalist Michael Hastings says the vehicle the 33-year-old was driving shook his car "like a freight truck" as it flew by early Tuesday morning in Los Angeles.
"Was stopped at a red light tonight when a pearl white Mercedes flew past," Michael Carter wrote on Facebook a few hours later. "It shook my car like a freight truck going by. Saw it burst into flames a quarter mile down the road when it hit a tree."
In a Facebook message to Yahoo News, Carter explained in detail what he saw:
I was stopped at the light at Santa Monica [Boulevard], headed south on Highland [Avenue]. I looked down to turn my radio down, and this car just blasted past me through the red light—it shook my car. No telling how fast the driver was going. A taxi driver was in the far right lane and we looked at each other, both saying, "What the hell was that?"... By the time the light changed, I could only see the tail lights of the white Mercedes—it was probably past Willoughby by then which was the next red light that I got stopped at. The Mercedes was flying down Highland. The same cab driver pulled up to the light at Willoughby [Avenue] and I looked over at him again in disbelief. Right as I did, the cab driver said something to the effect of, "He didn't make it." The [Mercedes] was all the way south of Melrose [Avenue] at this point.
I looked down Highland and saw a giant fireball at the base of one of the palms that line the medians on Highland. It was surreal. Even from as far away as I was, I could see how violent an impact it had been. I live in the area so parked near my place and sprinted over the the scene of the accident. As I was running, a couple of workers from the service station at the corner of Melrose and Highland were also running over. In broken English, one of them and I traded stories of what we saw as we ran. From what I could understand, he saw the car come off the ground at some point—maybe when [it] crossed Melrose.
A Hancock Park resident was already spraying the car with his water hose when we got to it, but wasn't making any progress. The car was engulfed. I couldn't see inside it. Fire trucks and police cars were at the scene almost immediately, it seemed.
I stayed and watched firefighters extinguish the the blaze. Bummed a cigarette from a guy named Jeremy and traded stories about what we saw. He was right around Melrose and Highland when it happened. I gave a statement to police and walked home.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the driver was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after 4:25 a.m. Initially, neither the department nor the Los Angeles County coroner's office could positively identify the victim because the body was too badly burned. On Wednesday, the coroner confirmed the body taken from the vehicle was Hastings but said it would likely take several weeks to determine a cause of death.
Raw video taken from the scene—posted on LAWeekly.com—shows Hastings' vehicle engulfed in flames. The crash remains under investigation, the LAPD said on Thursday, but police officials told the Los Angeles Times they do not suspect foul play.
Hastings, a Vermont native whose 2010 Rolling Stone profile of U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal ("The Runaway General") led to McChrystal's resignation, was hired by BuzzFeed last spring to cover President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign and had been working for the site's 6-month-old Los Angeles bureau.
News of Hastings' death was met with a variety of conspiracy theories.
According to the Times, he had been working on a story about Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite who recently filed a privacy lawsuit against the Department of Defense and the FBI.
On Wednesday, WikiLeaks claimed Hastings had contacted a lawyer for the anti-secrecy organization shortly before the crash.
"Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him," WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter:
Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 19, 2013
But on Thursday, the FBI said it was conducting no such investigation. "At no time was journalist Michael Hastings ever under investigation by the FBI," the bureau said in a statement to the Burlington Free Press.
Hastings is survived by his wife, Elise Jordan, a journalist and former speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians," BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said in a statement announcing Hastings' death. "He wrote stories that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great stories that will go untold."
"Great reporters exude a certain kind of electricity," Rolling Stone Managing Editor Will Dana said in a statement of his own. "The sense that there are stories burning inside them, and that there's no higher calling or greater way to live life than to be always relentlessly trying to find and tell those stories. I'm sad that I'll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write."
Here's what I really don't get about events like this, and my problem ties in directly with what I was saying about skeptics in other threads last night and today.
A person with a large number of powerful dangerous enemies fully capable of and willing to murder him dies in a fiery car crash. If this is a detective /police show on TV, the first thing the detectives do is to fully analyze the crime scene for any and all signs of foul play. They may not find any signs, but nobody is ever surprised when they do find them.
But what happens in real life? Before any shred of forensic evidence is in, LA cops announce they "do not suspect foul play." Will the car wreckage even be analyzed for such signs? Not if this follows the general script, which will result in a statement to the effect that "no evidence was found (or looked for) that would indicate that this was foul play."
What we have have here is two competing explanations:
1) This reporter willfully blew through a couple of spotlights after willfully accelerating down a narrow city street to about 100 mph before his engine and transmission ejected from his car and his car burst into a giant ball of fire, or
2) something went terribly wrong such that he could not control his car, either by accident or design.
Why must the "default assumption" be willful vehicular suicide? Why is any consideration of mechanical failure, by accident or design, derided as a conspiracy theory?
Yes, most people who die in one vehicle crashes are at fault. But most people who die in one vehicle crashes are not high profile investigative reporters with scores of powerful enemies who jack their cars up to 100 mph on a city street, then manage to eject their cars' engines and transmissions and explode their cars up in giant fireballs.
So why is one theory automatically preferred over the other, by law enforcement, corporate media and all "reasonable" people? Who benefits by the automatic assumption that accidents happen and that foul play that looks something like an accident does not?
justdrew » Thu Jun 20, 2013 6:56 pm wrote:Koethe? I thought that was a typo, and Keith was meant. Also, Danny Casolaro... and, Steve Kangas (not to be forgotten).
Thanks, I had not heard of Steve Kangas, but I found this link interesting:
It is believed that Kangas was working on a book about CIA covert activities when on 8th February, 1999, he was found dead in the bathroom of the offices of Richard Mellon Scaife, the owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune. He had been shot in the head. Officially he had committed suicide but some people believe he was murdered. In an article in Salon Magazine, (19th March, 1999) Andrew Leonard asked: "Why did the police report say the gun wound was to the left of his head, while the autopsy reported a wound on the roof of his mouth? Why had the hard drive on his computer been erased shortly after his death? Why had Scaife assigned his No. 1 private detective, Rex Armistead, to look into Kangas' past?"
I don't know what's sadder, the "suicides" themselves or how Salon Magazine evolved from asking uncomfortable questions about a reporter dying under suspicious circumstances to demanding that readers Stop Speculating About Hastings' Death. I'm sure somewhere Scaife and McChrystal are raising a glass to that turnaround.
RAW STORY Investigative Editor Larisa Alexandrovna said Connell's death should be examined carefully in a blog post Sunday, but stopped short of alleging foul play. She reported on Arnebeck's lawsuit and Connell's enjoined testimony earlier this year.
Wow, totally not hypocritical
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
Not to start with the syncs...but what is it with the age of 33? I just saw the new Superman movie. He's 33. Christ was allegedly 33. And Hastings died at 33. Just saying.
stickdog99 » Fri Jun 21, 2013 2:28 pm wrote:Here's what I really don't get about events like this, and my problem ties in directly with what I was saying about skeptics in other threads last night and today.
A person with a large number of powerful dangerous enemies fully capable of and willing to murder him dies in a fiery car crash. If this is a detective /police show on TV, the first thing the detectives do is to fully analyze the crime scene for any and all signs of foul play. They may not find any signs, but nobody is ever surprised when they do find them.
But stickdog, it's not even the LAPD or media assuming it was an accident that's bizarre...it's THE SO CALLED ALTERNATIVE LEFT that has this iron clad "don't question it, it was an accident"
I personally thing, from seeing his recent work, he was going balls out further than even Jeremy Scahill. The #1 journalist going to great lengths to expose evil in the government, intel, black ops world and military dies in a mysterious explosive car crash at 4:30 AM in Los Angeles with an engine that flies out 100 feet...and not even his so called colleagues seem to even hint at anything strange. As in, from Salon to former Raw story editors and other "liberal" writers: NOTHING TO SEE HERE. Not even from a fear perspective as I mentioned, but this smarmy smug authoritative position. Not a position of fear(which is understandable)
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
"..not even his so called colleagues seem to even hint at anything strange. As in, from Salon to former Raw story editors and other "liberal" writers: NOTHING TO SEE HERE. Not even from a fear perspective as I mentioned, but this smarmy smug authoritative position. Not a position of fear(which is understandable)"
Another way to view this 8-bit, is to see that the smarm, the smug, and the authoritative tone all extend from the fear. It's not enough to merely deny the obvious. For safety's sake, it must also be condemned.
That's one reason Hasting's death feels to me like a significant ratcheting forward of the emergent police state. If I was now an "alternative left" journalist, I'd be looking into another line of work; or I'd be willing to die for writing and speaking truth. That's the message here.
The ubiquity of mobile surveillance devices....uh, sorry, I mean cell phones....must have a stifling effect on even occasional speculative discussion among these people.
