Clarification on the cremation conspiracy theory......
Exclusive— Hastings ‘Unauthorized Cremation’ Mega-Rumor False, Family Says
By Russ Baker on Aug 13, 2013
According to a member of Michael Hastings’s family, a widely circulated story that the investigative journalist’s body was cremated by authorities without the family’s permission is flat-out untrue.
The story that the cremation was unauthorized—further stoking credible suspicions aroused by Hastings’s strange death in a fiery one-car crash, complete with a dramatic explosion– has raged across the Internet for weeks.
A recent count showed 475,000 results for “Hastings cremated” and 357,000 for “Hastings cremation.” The top results all reported that the family did not want the cremation. The clear implication was that this was proof of a cover-up – that “the authorities” had rushed to dispose of the body in a way that would make further inquiries, such as an autopsy, impossible.
But a family member told WhoWhatWhy, “It was our wish to have Michael’s remains cremated.” In fact, this family member said the cremation came about at the family’s specific request—and only after an autopsy and toxicology tests, whose results are pending.
In light of this simple, clarifying statement, it’s worth asking: How do blatantly counter-factual rumors and untruths get traction in the cybersphere?
Often, as in this case, they start with legitimate suspicions: just before his death Hastings told associates he was working on a blockbuster story involving the “NSA.” Building on these suspicions, a reporter makes an ambiguous statement that sounds like a shocking revelation — but is actually the result of a leap of faith, an unwarranted assumption by the reporter…which turns out to be incorrect.
Here is a local television reporter for a commercial station in San Diego, Kim Dvorak:
“A close family friend did confirm that Michael’s body was sent home in an urn, meaning he was cremated and it wasn’t the request of the family….in fact the family wanted Michael’s body to go home.”
Soon, the story was everywhere—including on almost all of the websites that generate heavy traffic by catering to those who hunger for a steady diet of stories hostile to the government, no matter their veracity.***
When we contacted Dvorak by email to ask where she got the “unauthorized cremation” claim, she replied:
I will not be sharing sources for privacy reasons. I will point you to Elise Jordan’s CNN interview where she had plenty of opportunities to deny details reported on San Diego 6 (we are affiliated with CNN).
The problem with this disingenuous reply is that Elise Jordan (Hastings’s widow) was not asked about the cremation by the program’s host, Piers Morgan. The short interview segment did not include discussion of any details of the crash or aftermath, beyond Jordan’s statement that she accepted the crash as an accident and that her husband was always working on multiple intriguing stories at any one time. While this assertion may well be premature, it is not so surprising given the sort of pressures on family members to demonstrate restraint in such circumstances. (From several sources, WhoWhatWhy understands that the family and friends remain curious, like the public, and open to further information that may shed light on the incident.)Meanwhile, another person Dvorak interviewed fits the description she used in her original report, of “a close family friend.” That’s Joe Biggs, a retired staff sergeant who was close with Hastings and who did in fact speak to her about the cremation.
In a telephone interview, Biggs told us that he was the source of Dvorak’s reporting, but not her mis-reporting. “That lady asked me about being at the memorial service. I said it was the first one I’ve been at without a body. I meant we didn’t have closure….I said that if I were killed, I would never want to be cremated. Somehow all this got mixed up… She took that to be that the body is missing and family didn’t know where it is. Then this whole thing spun out of control.
“I saw the video of her on the news talking about it… That made me sick to my stomach… I finally got hold of her, and she said she’d retract it, and I don’t know if she did.” (She has not.)
Biggs said that as soon as he saw Dvorak’s report, he contacted everyone he could think of to tell them that his comments had been badly distorted to create the appearance he was alleging a conspiracy.
Matt Farwell, who often worked with Hastings as his writing partner and who is finishing Hastings’s final story for Rolling Stone, is furious with Dvorak, whom he called “a fucking disgrace—and that’s on the record.” Farwell says he fired off an angry email to Dvorak, decrying her reports.
As for the crash itself, he agrees it should be investigated.
“It’s being looked at closely— and unless it’s good solid stuff like the video and [the WhoWhatWhy] piece from the guy whose girlfriend has the pizzeria; unless it’s good solid shoe leather journalism—it’s not helping anyone. It makes the LAPD and the feds go into closed-off mode and makes people not want to say anything.”
***
Many people have taken Dvorak’s work seriously simply because they were pleased to see a “mainstream” local television station carrying the kind of conspiracy-tinged reports she has done.
Indeed, Dvorak has become something of a cult hero on the Internet. As one popular post on Reddit puts it: “Kimberly Dvorak is essentially the only journalist doing work on the ground with the Michael Hastings death. We ***NEED*** to support her. This is her twitter. Spread this far and wide.”
It’s not at all clear Dvorak deserves the title of “journalist.” Her twitter page identifies her not as a television reporter but as “Examiner National Homeland Security Correspondent”—a reference to the Examiner network of conservative-oriented websites. Most of her work has been essays with an editorial tone for conservative or right-wing sites, marked by a clear animus toward the Obama administration, and by alarmist content about “illegal aliens” and other perceived threats.
***
The larger lesson here is one about the state of news today. The media/online world seems increasingly divided between those who are too quick to accept official claims—and those whose default posture is that everything is a plot to cover up the truth. It’s hard to find real journalists—whose work can be trusted because they approach a story with an open mind, a commitment to digging out the facts, and a willingness to report whatever they find.
There are enough truly troubling things about the Michael Hastings story not to have legitimate inquiries sidetracked by a red herring. As Matt Farwell pointed out, instead of advancing a real investigation, such shoddy “reporting” has the exact opposite effect.
Report: Michael Hastings Was Investigating CIA Director John Brennan
Brennan named as being “behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists”
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
August 13, 2013
Infowars.com
August 13, 2013
Journalist Michael Hastings was investigating CIA director John Brennan before his untimely death in a suspicious car accident it has been revealed, with the report set to be published posthumously by Rolling Stone Magazine within the next two weeks.
According to San Diego 6 News reporter Kimberly Dvorak, “John Brennan was Hastings next exposé project.” Dvorak says she received an email from the CIA, “acknowledging Hastings was working on a CIA story,” although the text of that email was not displayed.
Dvorak also cites a Stratfor email hacked by Wikileaks and first published last year which names Brennan as being, “behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources.”
“There is specific tasker from the WH to go after anyone printing materials negative to the Obama agenda (oh my.) Even the FBI is shocked,” states the email.
Before being sworn in as CIA director in March this year, Brennan was a counterterrorism advisor for the Obama administration and helped compile the “kill lists” for the White House’s drone assassination program.
A separate email Dvorak received from CIA media spokesman Todd Ebitz states, “Any suggestion that Director Brennan has ever attempted to infringe on constitutionally-protected press freedoms is offensive and baseless.”
Was Hastings about to reveal that Brennan had been tasked with targeting independent reporters who were in the business of releasing sensitive information?
Dvorak claims that Hastings’ posthumous exposé of Brennan will be published by Rolling Stone Magazine within the next two weeks, although this has yet to be confirmed by the publication itself.
Infowars first reported that Hastings was likely investigating the CIA prior to his death following the comments of Hastings’ close friend Sgt. Joe Biggs, who revealed that the journalist was working on “the biggest story yet” about the CIA.
Hastings sent an email hours before his death stating he was “onto a big story” and needed “to go off the rada[r] for a bit.” A separate close friend of Hastings also told Infowars that the journalist’s home was visited by agents from an unnamed federal agency the day before his death.
Analysis of the recently released surveillance footage of Hastings’ vehicle in the moments before the crash, which was carried out by SDSU professor Morteza M. Mehrabadi, Professor and Interim Chair Areas of Specialization: Mechanics of Materials, also suggests that Hastings was not speeding before his Mercedes hit a tree.
The footage appears to confirm eyewitness reports that the car suffered an “explosion” before it hit the tree, suggesting some kind of incendiary device was planted on the vehicle.
By measuring the distance traveled by the car on the surveillance clip and the time that elapsed before the explosion, Professor Mehrabadi was able to calculate that the car was only traveling at a speed of 35 MPH, and not speeding as some reports claimed.
“The pre-explosion and slower speed could also explain the minimal damage to the palm tree and the facts the rear tires rested against the curb. It also provides an explanation for the location of the engine and drive train at more than 100 feet from the tree impact area,” writes Dvorak.
Humanity Is Drowning In Washington’s Criminality
Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
August 13, 2013
Infowars.com
August 13, 2013
Amerika has become despised by everyone who has a moral conscience and a sense of justice.
Americans will soon be locked into an unaccountable police state unless US Representatives and Senators find the courage to ask questions and to sanction the executive branch officials who break the law, violate the Constitution, withhold information from Congress, and give false information about their crimes against law, the Constitution, the American people and those in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. Congress needs to use the impeachment power that the Constitution provides and cease being subservient to the lawless executive branch. The US faces no threat that justifies the lawlessness and abuse of police powers that characterize the executive branch in the 21st century.
Impeachment is the most important power of Congress. Impeachment is what protects the citizens, the Constitution, and the other branches of government from abuse by the executive branch. If the power to remove abusive executive branch officials is not used, the power ceases to exist. An unused power is like a dead letter law. Its authority disappears. By acquiescing to executive branch lawlessness, Congress has allowed the executive branch to place itself above law and to escape accountability for its violations of law and the Constitution.
National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper blatantly lied to Congress and remains in office. Keith B. Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency, has also misled Congress, and he remains in office. Attorney General Holder avoids telling Congress the truth on just about every subject, and he also remains in office. The same can be said for President Obama, one of the great deceivers of our time, who is so adverse to truth that truth seldom finds its way out of his mouth.
If an American citizen lies to a federal investigator, even if not under oath, the citizen can be arrested, prosecuted, and sent to prison. Yet, these same federal personnel can lie to Congress and to citizens with impunity. Whatever the American political system is, it has nothing whatsoever to do with accountable government. In Amerika no one is accountable but citizens, who are accountable not only to law but also to unaccountable charges for which no evidence is required.
Congress has the power to impeach any presidential appointee as well as the president. In the 1970s Congress was going to impeach President Richard Nixon simply because he lied about when he learned of the Watergate burglary. To avoid impeachment, Nixon resigned. In the 1990s, the House impeached President Bill Clinton for lying about his sexual affair with a White House intern. The Senate failed to convict, no doubt as many had sexual affairs of their own and didn’t want to be held accountable themselves.
In the 1970s when I was on the Senate staff, corporate lobbyists would send attractive women to seduce Senators so that the interest groups could blackmail the Senators to do their bidding. Don’t be surprised if the NSA has adopted this corporate practice.
The improprieties of Nixon and Clinton were minor, indeed of little consequence, when compared to the crimes of George W. Bush and Obama, their vice presidents, and the bulk of their presidential appointees. Yet, impeachment is “off the table,” as Nancy Pelosi infamously declared.http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2006/11/08/cq_1916.html Why do Californian voters send a person to Congress who refuses to protect them from an unaccountable executive branch? Who does Nancy Pelosi serve? Certainly not the people of California. Most certainly not the US Constitution. Pelosi is in total violation of her oath of office. Will Californians re-elect her yet again? Little wonder America is failing.
The question demanding to be asked is: What is the purpose of the domestic surveillance of all Americans? This is surveillance out of all proportion to the alleged terrorist threat. The US Constitution is being ignored and domestic law violated. Why? Does the US government have an undeclared agenda for which the “terrorist threat” is a cover?
What is this agenda? Whose agenda is more important than the US Constitution and the accountability of government to law? No citizen is secure unless government is accountable to the Constitution and to law. It is an absurd idea that any American is more threatened by terrorism than by unaccountable government that can execute them, torture them, and throw them in prison for life without due process or any accountability whatsoever. Under Bush/Obama, the US has returned to the unaccountable power of caesars, czars, and autocrats.
In the famous play, “A Man For All Seasons,” Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, asks: So, you would have me to cut down the law in order to chase after devils? And what will we do, with the law cut down, when the devil turns on us?
This is the most important legal question ever asked, and it is seldom asked today, not in our law schools, not by our bar associations, and most certainly not by the Justice (sic) Department or US Attorneys.
American conservatives regard civil liberties as mere excuses for liberal judges to coddle criminals and terrorists. Never expect a conservative Republican, or more than two or three of them, to defend your civil liberty. Republicans simply do not believe in civil liberty. Democrats cannot conceive that Obama–the first black president in office, a member of an oppressed minority–would not defend civil liberty. This combination of disinterest and denial is why the US has become a police state.
Civil liberty has few friends in government, the political parties, law schools, bar associations, or the federal judiciary. Consequently, no citizen is secure. Recently, a housewife researched online for pressure cookers looking for the best deal. Her husband was searching for a backpack. The result was that a fully armed SWAT team appeared at the door demanding to search the premises and to have questions answered. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/government-knocking-doors-because-google-searches/67864/
I am always amazed when someone says: “I haven’t done anything wrong. I have nothing to fear.” If you have nothing to fear from the government, why did the Founding Fathers put the protections in the Constitution that Bush and Obama have stripped out? Unlike the Founding Fathers who designed our government to protect the citizens, the American sheeple trust the government to their own demise.
Glenn Greenwald recently explained how the mass of data that is being accumulated on every American is being mined for any signs of non-terrorist-related criminal behavior. As such warrantless searches are illegal evidence in a criminal trial, the authorities disguise the illegal way in which the evidence is obtained in order to secure conviction based on illegally obtained evidence.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35773.htm
In other words, the use of the surveillance justified by the “war on terror” has already spread into prosecutions of ordinary criminals where it has corrupted legal safeguards and the integrity, if any, of the criminal court system, prosecutors and judges.
This is just one of the many ways in which you have much to fear, whether you think you are doing anything wrong or not. You can be framed for crimes based on inferences drawn from your Internet activity and jokes with friends on social media. Jurors made paranoid by the “terrorist threat” will convict you.
We should be very suspicious of the motive behind the universal spying on US citizens. The authorities are aware that the terrorist threat does not justify the unconstitutional and illegal spying. There have been hardly any real terrorist events in the US, which is why the FBI has to find clueless people around whom to organize an FBI orchestrated plot in order to keep the “terrorist threat” alive in the public’s mind. At last count, there have been 150 “sting operations” in which the FBI recruits people, who are out of touch with reality, to engage in a well-paid FBI designed plot. Once the dupes agree, they are arrested as terrorists and the plot revealed, always with the accompanying statement that the public was never in any danger as the FBI was in control.
When 99 percent of all terrorism is organized by the FBI, why do we need NSA spying on every communication of every American and people in the rest of the world?
Terrorism seldom comes from outside. The source almost always is the government in power. The Czarist secret police set off bombs in order to blame and arrest labor agitators. The Nazis burned down the Reichstag in order to decimate the communists and assume unaccountable power in the name of “public safety.” An alleged terrorist threat is a way of using fear to block popular objection to the exercise of arbitrary government power.
In order to be “safe from terrorists,” the US population, with few objections, has accepted the demise of their civil liberties, such as habeas corpus, which reaches back centuries to Magna Carta as a constraint on government power. How, then, are they safe from their government? Americans today are in the same position as the English prior to the Great Charter of 1215. Americans are no longer protected by law and the Constitution from government tyranny.
The reason the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution was to make citizens safe from their government. If citizens allow the government to take away the Constitution, they might be safe from foreign terrorists, but they are no longer safe from their government.
Who do you think has more power over you, foreign terrorists or “your” government?
Washington defines all resistance to its imperialism and tyranny as “terrorism.” Thus, Americans who defend the environment, who defend wildlife, who defend civil liberties and human rights, who protest Washington’s wars and robbery of the people in behalf of special interests, all become “domestic extremists,” the term Homeland Security has substituted for “terrorist.” Those who are out of step with Washington and the powerful private interests that exploit us, other peoples, and the earth for their profits and power fall into the wrong side of Bush’s black and white division of the world: “you are for us or against us.”
In the United States independent thought is on the verge of being criminalized as are constitutionally guaranteed protests and the freedom of the press.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/10/james-risen-prison-journalism-criminalised The constitutional principle of freedom of speech is being redefined as treason, as aiding an undefined enemy, and as seeking to overthrow the government by casting aspersions on its motives and revealing its secret misdeeds. The power-mad inhabitants of Washington have brought the US so close to Gestapo Germany and Stalinist Russia that it is no longer funny. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to see the difference.
The neoconservatives have declared that Americans are the “exceptional” and “indispensable people.” Yet, the civil liberties of Americans have declined the more “exceptional” and “indispensable” that Americans become. We are now so exceptional and indispensable that we no longer have any rights.
And neither does the rest of the world. Neoconservatism has created a new dangerous American nationalism. Neoconservatives have given Washington a monopoly on right and endowed its military aggressions with a morality that supersedes the Geneva Conventions and human rights. Washington, justified by its “exceptionalism,” has the right to attack populations in countries with which Washington is not at war, such as Pakistan and Yemen. Washington is using the cover of its “exceptionalism” to murder people in many countries. http://news.antiwar.com/2013/08/11/us-drones-pound-yemen-but-targets-arent-all-militants/print/ Hitler tried to market the exceptionalism of the German people, but he lacked Washington’s Madison Avenue skills.
Washington is always morally right, whatever it does, and those who report its crimes are traitors who, stripped of their coddling by civil liberties, are locked away and abused until they confess to their crimes against the state. Anyone who tells the truth, such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden, are branded enemies of the state and are ruthlessly persecuted.
How does the “indispensable, exceptional nation” have a diplomatic policy? How can a neoconized State Department be based on anything except coercion? It can’t. That is why Washington produces nothing but war and threats of war.
Wherever a person looks, whatever a person hears, it is Washington’s threat–“we are going to bomb you into the stone age” if you don’t do what we want and agree to what we require. We are going to impose “sanctions,” Washington’s euphemism for embargoes, and starve your women and children to death, permit no medical supplies, ban you from the international payments system unless you relent and consent to being Washington’s puppet, and ban you from posting your news broadcasts on the Internet.
This is the face that Washington presents to the world: the hard, mean face of a tyrant.
Washington’s power will survive a bit longer, because there are still politicians in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the NGOs in Russia, who are paid off by the almighty dollar. In exchange for Washington’s money, they endorse Washington’s immorality and murderous destruction of law and life.
But the dollar is being destroyed by Quantitative Easing, and the domestic US economy is being destroyed by jobs offshoring. http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/TAA0731131.html
Rome was powerful until the Germans ceased to believe it. Then the rotten edifice collapsed. Washington faces sooner or later the same fate. An inhumane, illegal, unconstitutional regime based on violence alone, devoid of all morality and all human compassion, is not acceptable to China, Russia, India, Iran, and Brazil, or to readers of this column.
The evil that is Washington cannot last forever. The criminals might destroy the world in nuclear war, but the lawlessness and lack of humanity in Washington, which murders more people as I write, is no longer acceptable to the rest of the world, not even to its European puppet states, despite the leaders being on Washington’s payroll.
Gorbachev is correct. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a debacle for the entire world. It transformed the US from the “city upon the hill,” the “beacon for humanity,” into an aggressive militarist state. Consequently, Amerika has become despised by everyone who has a moral conscience and a sense of justice.
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