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Comment by knowaveragejoe | Hacker News Reader

Sure, I agree, it's important to be skeptical. But, one wonders why they would choose to kill him in such an open manner, after he sent an email saying that he was being investigated by the FBI to Wikileaks' lawyers among other folks. Surely he could be dealt with in a much quieter fashion that isn't so open to being discovered. We can also confirm that he was indeed traveling very fast, certainly fast enough for things to go as wrong as they did very quickly.

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Well, if we're looking at hits, a few things stand out historically.

Sometimes murders are done as an open warning. The mafia has used that approach forever.

Why did the Russians use polonium to kill Alexander Litvinenko? Surely there were better ways to kill him that wouldn't leave behind a radiated dying body. Were they trying to make a statement? Seems plausible.

What could be better than to publicly kill the target in a manner that can't be provably traced back, but stands as an open and dramatic point for everybody else to 'learn' from?

EXACTLY. He was a JOURNALIST. The point is to kill someone who might be about to disclose something you don't want disclosed, and create a chilling effect preventing others who might consider disclosing, whistleblowing, leaking, or simply reporting such things from doing so for fear they too would be murdered. This WORKS. Killing someone in secret only performs the first function. This is the essence of the idiom "killing two birds with one stone." In this case, it's killing 1,000 (or more) journalists with one rigged car.

> This WORKS.

Quoth the person who is apparently oblivious to the media shit-storm occurring right now.

There is really no media shitstorm about Michael Hastings. It's practically over now. What stays long afterwards is the chilling effect sensed by journalists and would-be-whistleblowers - the fear that by disclosing or reporting on the wrong story, they too might find themselves up in smoke.

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