Michael Hastings – Death By Remote Control?

We present and encourage progressive Caribbean views of Caribbean and world affairs.
Michael Hastings – Death By Remote Control?
  by Pachamama 
Michael Hastings
‘ ’And one morning all that was burning, 
one morning the bonfires 
leapt out of the earth 
devouring human beings 
and from then on fire, 
gunpowder from then on, 
and from then on blood. 
Bandits with planes and Moors, 
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses, 
bandits with black friars spattering blessings ….’’ 
-        Pablo Neruda - 
He was driving along a street in California when eye witnesses saw his Mercedes explode in a ball of flames. Others heard a massive explosion. This explosion threw the engine of his car sixty meters from the resting place of the rest of the vehicle. The rest of the car slammed into a tree. Hastings was left in an inferno while residents attempted to control the fire ahead of the arrival of the emergency services. Hastings was reportedly working on a game changing CIA/NSA story and had contacted his employers to inform them that the FBI was investigating him and that he wanted to hang low to avoid their attentions. He was also reported to have been in contact with Wikileaks in the hours before his death. He is said to have insulated his family from authorities by keeping them in the dark about the work he was doing at the time. However, an attorney is said to have been given certain documents for safe keeping or publication. Is it now possible for the intelligence agencies to remotely hack into the computer systems of vehicles and cause them to explode? Is this science fiction now non-fiction? 


Michael Hastings was one of the few journalists within the great tradition of mud raking. He never suffered fools lightly. He never believed officialdom until they made a denial. He was severe in his critique of popular stenographers for the establishment in mainstream media. His work was always biting, blockbusting and well presented. So much so that the mainstream media itself could not long ignore him. But what would it mean if suspicions that he was murdered be confirmed? It would mean that the maker of the vehicle (Mercedes Benz) would have provided the requisite government agency with the internal electronics of the vehicle. We are well aware of the connections between this company and another low point in our recent history. Could it be that the drone war of Obama has come home to the US of A? These are troubling issues and if suspicion is established as fact we would have gone a longer way towards a kind of world others are imposing on us – a world where death by remote control could become the order of the day – a perfect crime inspite of claims that every crime leaves evidence. This is the world that Aldous Huxley envisioned. 


This writer avoids watching television, however a few nights ago we say parts of the program ‘’Person of Interest”. In this program a laptop was made to explode remotely as a means of dealing with a percieved threat. We have long considered that there are forces that use propaganda media to get a gullible population accustomed to new initiatives, we see this particularly in cartoons. Could this be part of somebody’s sick agenda and a trial balloon that a system of ‘’pre-crime’’ is being implemented or advanced? In recent years Hollywood has even had a movie around such a plot. If suspicions are correct and coming at a time where other disclosures are revealing the nature of the security state, what are we to do as citizens? How can it be that the hegemon could embark on such projects that will at some time include all the people of the globe and it is being done by stealth, no pun intended? 


Further, we are seeing reports that Hastings’ body was cremated and an urn delivered to his family. There are other indications local investigators were prevented from taking the normal crime scene procedures. The corporate media seemed to have accepted the official story about a car accident. Yet there are murky details that appear not to be consistent with other similar car accidents. His close friends are saying that Hastings drove like an old woman for a young man of 31. Mercedes Benz are rated one of the safest vehicles on the road and are not normally regarded as the type of vehicle to have such an ‘accident’. Moreover Mercedes market their cars at price points that consider a higher than normal level of safety. Hastings was driving a relatively new model that, as standard features, would have air bags and a number of other safety features. It is at time like these that we miss the voice of people like Harold Pinter. Pinter had an unusual gift of helping us to understand the madness that we are. 
And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry 
speak of dreams and leaves 
and the great volcanoes of his native land. 
Come and see the blood in the streets. 
Come and see 
the blood in the streets. 
Come and see the blood 
in the streets! 
-Pablo Neruda- 
  

  

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