Comment by Taylorious | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Taylorious | Hacker News Reader

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Foul play is almost always a possibility if you over analyze things and don't have a lot evidence. If someone randomly kills them self by jumping off a bridge and no one sees it happen, there is no suicide note, or any other signs, then there could have been foul play because there is no evidence to prove or disprove it. For all anyone knows the person was pushed off the bridge by a passer by.

The whole NSA story is disturbing but I don't get how it is connected to a journalist dying in a car crash like 30k or so people do every year do in the USA. The NSA violating peoples internet/phone privacy is a far cry from killing journalists.

It is baffling that a story where there is so little evidence of foul play has popped up on HN multiple times and has received such wild speculation. I get that there are a lot of people who are very upset at the US government right now (I'm one of them) and that there is very title trust towards the US government (for good reason), but it is crazy that such wild speculation is going on in a community that is supposedly made up of highly educated, intelligent, logical, tech people.

1. Why is it practically impossible to crash this car? Its well engineered, yeah so what? Accidents still happen no matter how good the safety tech is.

2. Why is it impossible for a car to catch fire after it has been in a high speed crash? It is filled with a highly combustible liquid for Christ sake.

3. Why would his car get hacked into and forced to crash? There has to be about a million easier ways to make a death look like an accident. It also doesn't seem like something that could be done at the spur of the moment. If "they" had time to plan all of this out, why wouldn't they kill him some easier, safer, more efficient way?

4. Why are people saying he may have been drugged with something that causes a psychotic episode etc. I mean really WTF, this is straight up crazy conspiracy nonsense. Of all the crazy conclusions to jump to, why is that more likely than him being drunk, having a psychotic breakdown, insomnia, or using drugs voluntarily (I believe he was even a drug addict in the past, lots of addicts fall of the wagon).

5. Why do people automatically assume that he was actually being investigated by some government organization? Don't all we have is his word?

And suddenly the conspiracy theorists are wondering if Taylorious works for the NSA ;)

Your points are well organized and I tend to agree (especially that there would be an easier way to get rid of him), but I don't think you'll stop those that see a conspiracy around every corner.

I tend to see our government (today) as a very mismanaged large corporation. There are people over-reaching and those above them are trying to hide the damage and spin the conversation.

I am afraid Taylorious misses the point. I am afraid sage_joch misses the point in an even worse way. You may be surprised to hear this: it does not matter politically one tiny iota whether the FBI killed Michael Hastings. He's just one journalist, there are many like him.

What matters is what happens after Mr. Hastings' death. If the FBI is to be trusted, they will deny involvement on the low and the high: a trustworthy organization does not want to create even the slightest perception that they would kill a journalist. A trustworthy organization does not wish to instill fear in Hastings' colleagues. If, however, the FBI is not to be trusted, they will spread rumors that they are responsible: even if they did not kill him, it benefits them that journalists would be nervous to investigate them. This was the tactic of the KGB in the Soviet Union: they would stoke rumors of their ferocity by claiming responsibility for the otherwise-natural deaths of political contrarians.

What is truly to be feared is not that the FBI killed Michael Hastings, but that the FBI would like people to believe they killed Michael Hastings. Therefore, a rational yet paranoid individual might suspect sage_joch of being an NSA provocateur, but not Taylorious. That is the sort of corruption that will send a country into the dark ages for a century.

Well, this comment made me think. It's not every day you get called a potential NSA provocateur. But I'm not sure what you're suggesting with respect to my future comments. When I comment on political topics, I have a couple motivations: to shine light on a potentially bleak-looking situation, and to bounce ideas off a community of incredibly smart people. Are you saying I should avoid any kind of speculation? That might be reasonable, but sticking to hard facts doesn't make the situation look much better. If you count Julian Assange as a journalist, high-ranking members of the government have not been shy about making death threats against him. And the recent story about Barrett Brown should give anyone pause. I'm not asking rhetorically; I'd seriously like to know what you're suggesting.

Since you're not answering I'm going to take a guess: you're suggesting that since the actual reality of this whole situation is murky, I should tone down my speculation. And the more I think about it, the more I think you are right (if that's what you're saying).

> they would stoke rumors of their ferocity by claiming responsibility for the otherwise-natural deaths of political contrarians

[citation needed]

>He's just one journalist, there are many like him.

Uh, name a few?

Gary Webb used to be one.

> I tend to see our government (today) as a very mismanaged large corporation.

I don't know, I think the US government seems pretty ruthlessly efficient at toppling Middle Eastern governments, transferring wealth from taxpayers to big banks and large corporations, increasingly centralizing power into the federal government and large corporations, and breaking down families and increasing reliance on the state. And spying on it's own citizens.

I suppose, if you automatically dismissed any such thoughts to the contrary as "ridiculous conspiracy theories", it could look like it is all a problem of mismanagement. Maybe.

I'm usually happy to beat up on conspiracy theorists, I actually sort of hate them. However this guy took down a General.

To be more accurate, the general brought down himself: McCrystal had developed an extremely inflated sense of self and irreplaceability, and was openly dismissive of civilian oversight (which is kind of worrisome coming from a man who directs weapons). The reporter simply reported how McCrystal was openly acting around him, leading to the administration taking action.

I only say this because people often talk about that as if the reporter had done deep black ops to gain covert information, thus making enemies throughout the establishment, when in reality he simply reported quotes directly fed to him, and in some ways acting on behalf of the establishment.

Your conspiracy-theory-mocking is misplaced here since we have actually found a lot of scary conspiracies related to the US government lately.

I also laugh at people who believe in flying saucers and so on. But I'd probably stop if an actual flying saucer landed on the highway and started blowing things up.

Perhaps they didn't want the death to look like an accident but still have plausible deniability. By making it obvious they are warning other journalists.

If we are going to speculate, perhaps Hastings is not dead, maybe he faked his own death to be with Elvis or the martians, and escape the government (I just watched a movie with Orson Wells - the third man - about this) Maybe the government faked his death like they did Osama Bin Laden for whatever reason? (So they can torture and restrain him and no one will know or care)

If you do a search for Economic Hitman Perkins, he was former NSA type who went around the global trying to get political leaders to do oil contracts and such that benefitted the west, if they didn't play ball, CIA Jackals were sent in to assassinate the people, Perkins said the only reason he decided to expose this later on was because he didn't want his daughter growing up in that kind of society where people are murdered for thier beliefs and trying to help thier citizens. Maybe like the comments below, Perkins is just a plant trying to "enhance" the fear of the CIA/NSA to get more people to respect them and they never killed anyone or very few of the deaths that are attributed to them. In the end, what does any of it all really matter? We all have a limited time to exist, and my friend Weev says to have fun, get lots of LULZ, face the madness of this world with Absurdity. Frank Sinatra said to leave them laughing when you go, take us out Frankie...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVVmig6lR0w

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