He went there

la-me-michael-hastings-20130619-001I bought a used pickup last December, and due to other preoccupations, among them laziness, I have yet to give it a thorough cleaning on the inside, top to bottom, capping it off with a little stinky cardboard pine tree. Recently, while looking for something else, I found a spent shell casing on the floor in front the driver’s seat. My mind immediately thought “Warning!”

We can all pause here and do what I did – laugh at me. It obviously belonged to the former owner, who loved outdoor activities including hunting. If I were to think that shell was meant specifically as a warning for me, I would indeed be paranoid. But I do not matter. I get to live a happy life of privilege without fear of attackers. I have no enemies capable of violence. If I die in a fire, I probably left the stove on.

In a pathocracy, not every accidental death is accidental. But in a pathocracy, fear governs. Normal rigorous investigation of accidental deaths is set aside. So I carry deep suspicions about Malcolm X, Walter Reuther, John Lennon, Paul Wellstone, John Kennedy, Jack Ruby, Lee Oswald, Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy Jr., Bill Hicks, Mike Connell, Hugo Chavez, Hale Boggs, Mel Carnahan, Danny Casolaro, Dorothy Kilgallen, Lisa Howard, Gary Webb … Michael Hastings.

Suicide, car and plane crashes are common, as are lone nuts. Cancer, which we now know was weaponized in the early 1960’s, often strikes at a young age. The deaths are never investigated to a satisfactory degree.

I am far too hard on journalists – the last five on the above list were of that profession. I am smug, as I know no one will ever be threatened by my fearless accounting and tax preparation. But journalism is a profession that, if done well, requires open confrontation with power. Doing so means testing one’s personal courage and concern for one’s family. Perhaps it requires a certain naïveté about the nature of the power that they affront.

We’ll never know the truth about Hastings’ death, as power never investigates power. Perhaps it was just an accident, but as with every name on the list above and so many hundreds of others (just in my lifetime), suspicions will always linger. LAPD will investigate, and they did such a bang-up job on RFK that we know they’ll report honestly on it. FBI might take a shot at it – oops! My apologies to the families of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Ibragim Taramov for the poor choice of words.

Suspicion is not paranoia. Police detectives are not paranoid, nor are investigative journalists. Until right wing hacks start dying in car and small plane crashes and committing suicide, suspicion is warranted. Thomas Friedman, Rush Limbaugh, [makes no claim to journalism – just a shit commentator] Anderson Cooper, Bryan Williams and cohorts will live long, happy and prosperous lives. They are no threat to power. They are shit journalists, and so get to live.

Don’t be afraid to be suspicious. You are not paranoid. You’re just sentient and alert. Don’t stumble around in frustration at never knowing things for certain. Trust your instincts. Certainty is not afforded people of intelligence. Only fools are satisfied by pat answers.

37 thoughts on “He went there”

  1. Certainty is not afforded people of intelligence. Only fools are satisfied by pat answers.

    And you’re certain there are major conspiracies because…

    Oh, your left wing sphere is so under attack. My, just can’t get enough, can we. I believe it is called the stretching of a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement.

    Off the top of my head I thought of Tony Snow and Barbara Olsen.

    Nice to spin conspiracies after the fact, especially when one is essentially innumerate and has little knowledge of statistical distributions. Kind of like the guy who flings a million numbered BBs into a field, walks out and picks up #378956, and then gets weak in the knees contemplating the odds of picking that particular BB.

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  2. Too funny. I don’t recall Tony Snow doing anything ever other than serving power. Barbara was not on the plane that did not hit the Pentagon. I don’t know what happened to her, but assume it invovles an island in a tropical paradise somewhere.

    Jack Ruby, Lee Oswald, Mike Connell, Hale Boggs, Lisa Howard, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Ibragim Taramov were not lefties by any means. The Tsarnaev’s were, it appears, in the pay of FBI as terrorists in the Chechen cause. The common denominator is confrontations with power. These are not all “good” people – in fact, patsies in the FBI/CIA stables are often clowns, losers and schizophrenics. (Oswald was a stand-up guy, I gather.)

    Don’t grapple with statistical analysis in public. You’re not very good at it. In the small field of public people in American history who die unnatural or premature death, there is overwhelming coincidence with confrontation of power. Grass blades on a golf course hit by a ball or BB’s in a field are a fun thought experiment of no bearing here. You must account for all other circumstantial evidence, and if you are happy with pat answers, you have to ignore it. And you do.

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  4. I haven’t seen you throw up any numbers that mean anything. Just your suppositions.

    Again with your body count. The pile in service to your ideology is pretty large.

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    1. I did not introduce statistical analysis into it in that it only applies in terms of event probability – that is, what are the odds that JFK AND RFK are each murdered by lone nuts? The AND is where statistical analysis enters into it – say it’s 1/1000 for each, the odds of both are 1/1,000,000.

      That’s the only use for statistics – dependent variables. What you introduced here has no bearing on anything.

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      1. When we had 40 presidents, 4 of them had been assassinated, so on the face of it the odds are more like 1/10.

        The Kennedys were both of a new media age where they got much of their power from being close to the people, even shunning security for more closeness. But kooks were also more empowered by the celebrity coverage they garnered. Changing times, from which anomalies arise.

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        1. If you were to look at the evidence, your ability to construct tightly knit ass-pulled little paragraphs like that would come unhinged. Your comments are flung from outer space, having not exposed yourself to evidence. Do so, we can talk.

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          1. ??? Weird ad hominem.

            You want every detail explained. I check conclusions to see if they fit general principles.

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          2. I think you want certainty where there is only evidence. It is enough for me to know that every aspect of the official story falls apart on close examination. As to what really happened, it will take decades, but there’s been progress. “No planes” was a huge breakthrough, and Dr. Wood is making headway too, if she’s genuine. There’s also false leads (WTC steel being shipped to China was one, nanothermite another), false investigators (Alex Jones, Stephen Jones, Richard Gage). It’s a maze, a puzzle palace. If you need certainty in your life, read Agatha Christie.

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    2. The odds of them both being murdered by lone nuts are shorter than the odds of them being killed by a conspiracy so tight that it leaves little evidence as to who is behind it.

      I don’t recall Tony Snow doing anything ever other than serving power.

      He was a prominent conservative talk show host before his White House gig. I listened to him quite a bit. Nice guy. Thanks for being so callous.

      Barbara was not on the plane that did not hit the Pentagon. I don’t know what happened to her, but assume it invovles an island in a tropical paradise somewhere.

      If you don’t offer any better evidence for an alternative explanation, why should we believe you?

      Andrew Brietbart and Lawrence Auster also came to mind.

      I read some more about Hasting’s demise. It does look pretty suspicious.

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      1. Good god, what planet? Evidence abounds. But god helps those who help themselves.

        I never said anything aout anyone being or not being a nice guy. I said Snow served power, so that power had no reason to kill him.

        Plane, Pentagon, no evidence of them ever having met. Ergo, a different explanation for the absence of Barbara. Having no clue about that, I made one up. She could really be dead for all I know, just not that day, that place.

        Hastings demise: Like everything else, we’ll get an open and shut with no investigation. He might be blamed for killing officer Tippet.

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      2. So the damage and repair to the Pentagon, the damage and removal of debris; that was all staged by people who planned and hired others, and no one talked or leaked? All the missing people: no word, not even a slip? You are really sick.

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        1. Damage was real, as was death. No plane, however. Might have been a missile, a bomb planted inside. Your perceptions are supplied by TV and news. They are implanted, and are real to you. To imagine that your trusted sources are diddling you is unacceptable, so I am sick.

          Look at the evidence. That’s all it takes to undo your tightly knit little world.

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        2. I know people who saw the wreckage. They said it looked liked plane debris. But maybe the “real” planners are so good they faked that stuff too.

          Look, this isn’t a court case where all you have to do is cast enough doubt on the other side to automatically win. You have to offer a plausible alternative. Your alternatives have more holes than the official line.

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          1. There was debris spread about after the incident, whatever it was. There were 80 surveillance cameras in operation, but no photos have been released. A court case would be useful, with prosecution, discovery and defense, but since we knew by noon on 9/11 who did it, we never had an investigation (of any merit.) That’s what patsies are for – to blame so that investigation does not happen.

            Alternative: Very sketchy, even ten years later. Barbara Olsen could not possibly have mode those phone calls. There’s no evidence that she did. A jet aircraft could not have gone through that hole. It’s too small. Even were it physically possible, there was no reason for “Hijacker” Hani Hanjour to do the incredible maneuvers he did, doing a 270 degree downward spiral to hit the accounting department when he had a stright shot at Rumsfeld’s office.

            There are many theories with more or less evidential support, but the Arab hijacker one has none. You’ll have to confront the evidence yourself. I’ve not time or inclination to begin to tell you what’ s been learned so far. But I’ll give you a starting point: No planes hit buildings that day. You’re on your own. It’s all out there in plain sight.

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          2. We will always have limited knowledge, so all conclusions are tentative.

            But your side here seems too sketchy for me. I’ll keep considering counter points, but you need a seamless and hidden conspiracy that screws up in mundane ways: holes too small, improper approach of a faked plane, improper phone calls. If they got these things wrong, and everything else right in a six sigma way, that is strange.

            And your “powerless defeatism” here. You seem content to live in a country that would commit such a monstrous crime. Let’s band together, raise money, and hire our own investigators.

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            1. It is being investigated up and down and around by “conspiracy theorists” who cannot compel testimony or subpoena evidence. They are doing the best they can and endure ridicule to boot. They have made great headway. “No planes” was a huge breakthrough, and Dr. Wood’s directed energy studies is promising.

              I have a hunch why it appears so “sloppy,” and that is because it does not need to be tighter. It was on TV, news people suggested to us what had happened, and that’s all it took. If it’s on TV news, it’s true. For those of us who don’t believe in TV, maybe 5%, it is enough to marginalize us as CS’s. That’s all it takes.

              It’s a huge country, I like most of it. I suspect all countries are like this to varying degrees depending on the level of propaganda put forth. Ours is exceptionally intense. But it’s possible to live apart from it and in it at once and still be happy.

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  5. Now, it’s activists and journalists and other advocates who serve on the front lines to keep some meaning in the 1st Amendment. More evidence won’t change the fact we are sliding into a dark place that’s very hard to get out of.

    REMEMBER?
    “First They Came for the Jews”
    By Pastor Niemoller
    “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” – Ayn Rand
    First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

    Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

    Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

    Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

    IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN.
    IN FACT, IT NEVER STOPPED.

    v.2000
    First they came for the hackers.
    But I never did anything illegal with my computer,
    so I didn’t speak up.

    Then they came for the pornographers.
    But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway,
    so I didn’t speak up

    Then they came for the anonymous remailers.
    But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi,
    so I didn’t speak up.

    Then they came for the encryption users.
    But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway,
    so I didn’t speak up.

    Then they came for me.

    And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

    – Alara Rogers http://www.alara.net

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    1. I think it is logical not to risk one’s life and comfort to futility. I know why people behave as they do, and understand it. What we see in Brazil, no matter why, is what it takes – more than one, arms locked.

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    1. Wow. Memory lane. That one is and always will be total WTF. EHH was a spook but also a mischief maker, leaving false clues and diddling people. His son St. James, is I think among the didlees.

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  7. I don’t know why the rush to cast the shadow of suspicion bugs me. I think “we” do too much of “their” work.

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    1. “We” don’t have power. How’s that investigation of the Taramov killing coming along? As soon as it leaves public memory, fake investigation ceases too.

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        1. Your perceptions are merely wishes. So I’ll restate: “I wish that we had more power.” We don’t. OWS demonstrated that the forces mounted against us are massive and intelligent. Heck, OWS itself might have been a PSYOP to identify and crush organized opposition.

          I don’t think that you quite grasp that it is possible to be happy in this environment. We’re just one country. Now, take a look at at Brazil, and imagine what a country is like before its population is taken under spell and gelded. I don’t know what it’s all about. I just see locked arms.

          And cheer up! Nothing is new under the sun.

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          1. I’m not an aging accountant with copious amounts of leisure time to travel. I’m going to actually fight to improve what you Baby Boomer’s have so colossally fucked up.

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            1. “Baby Boomers,” now? You’re a poet, so you do your best to economize, a few words giving us maximum benefit. Words should shine light. “Baby Boomers” reduces without benefit of light. What the hell does that mean?

              Baby Boomers gave us the 60’s, a time when light shone as seldom before, movements born that still exist. Let’s have you and your compatriots do something similar.

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              1. the actual leftist activity on campuses across the country in the 50’s morphed into the hedonistic distraction of the 60’s that capitalists easily co-opted and commodified. through the next few decades the left shriveled, shrank, and sputtered, until that glorious boomer, Bill Clinton, killed off any last gasp of a viable left by ushering in capitalist ravages of neoliberalism.

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                1. Just like with OWS, there was a whole lot of infiltration, and TV cameras honed in on acid heads. There were too many drugs, too much free sex, booze. Music was pretty good. But the lasting imprint of the 60’s, other than reactionary politics, is environmentalism, consumer protection, civil rights, feminism, legal services, expansion of welfare, eavesdropping and surveillance, assassinations … all of which are part of the dialogue to this day.

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              2. Don’t forget about the ugly coming out of the 60’s. Altamount was just the tip of the iceberg that turned into yuppism and the reactionary forces of conservatism. The schism of the late 60’s, early 70’s setup the same social forces battling each other today — each born of boomers.

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  8. Intergenerational finger-pointing is brain pollution that divides like racism, sexism, ethnic, religious, and other preoccupations that distract from foundational injustices caused by a system dominated by corrupt financial institutions buttressed by corrupt politicians. There are “lumpers” and “splitters,” pick one, run with it. Propaganda is effective and unavoidable, causing widespread cognition disorder (cultural schizophrenia) that keeps gerbils spinning their wheels, sprinting for the promised land. The 1% is laughing.

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    1. A “generation” is a mental construct, as if every 20 years a new group acts and all others stop, no interaction.

      Let’s break it down further: I’m 1950. Those 1949ers really fucked up 1969.

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