In my view, almost all of these are accidents or suicides and people watch way too many hollywood films.

The Hastings thing is classic mania for those of us who know people who have experienced that.

But people _do_ die when exposing corruption of the rich. Such as Daphne Caruana Galizia and Ján Kuciak for the Panama papers. Would you call their deaths "hollywood films"?

And it'd be natural to think killers would try to hide their traces, such that most such deaths would look like an accident or suicide.

I am more skeptical of the perfect staging to make it look like a suicide theory.

Both of those killings were in pseudo-mafioso states. Both were also immediately recognized as murder. State-sanctioned murder of your own citizens on your own soil is a lot less commmon in a country like the US, although there are well as Mafia and organized crime murders. But I think successful staging as a suicide is uncommon outside of Hollywood and repressive governments.

I'm confused - has there been any implication that (if this was a murder) it was "state-sanctioned"?

> Both of those killings were in pseudo-mafioso states

ugh? there is more law & order in Malta than in the US.

been there for nearly a decade and according to Wikipedia [1] the homicide rate in the US is 6.4 while it is 0.4 in Malta.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

Just a correction, Kuciak wasn't killed for Panama Papers, but regular investigative journalism into the corruption of the rich (your point still stands).

Daphne was exposing corruption long before the Panama Papers. She was already a target.

I wouldn't be so sure. I dropped that point of view, after I read about the Lucona incident in europe and all the dirt behind it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucona

Which lead me to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

"According to several Western European researchers, the operation involved the use of assassination, psychological warfare, and false flag operations to delegitimize left-wing parties in Western European countries, and even went so far as to support anti-communist militias and right-wing terrorism as they tortured communists and assassinated them"

Opened a whole box of pandora for me. So I rather think there is much more dark shit going on, than what makes the news, we just see the tip of the iceberg. And not just about the big players. Probably also common people have way more corpses in their basements, than what you would expect, if you grew up in a safe space.

Edit: about Lucona, the wiki page reads quite boring, but the book by the private detective who uncovered it, is quite informative. Casual mentioned details, like that there is a court of the organized crime in london where they settle their cases. Or that the insurance company, who initially hired him to investigate, offered him money in the end, to stop investigating, as he was uncovering up too much dirt.

Definitely stuff going on that does not make the news, but a lot of people also just commit suicide, swear to their friends and family they wont, and do it anyways.

But there is a world of difference between doing this as a small business owner vs. a massive publicly traded company.

True, most things are also much more mundane and boring, than what people would expect. No hidden 5 layers of conspiracy are deployed everywhere.

But that now still reminds me of: "A Report on the Banality of Evil" by Hanah Arendt about Eichmann and a holocaust trial.

Regarding Gladio, what is wild conspiracy theories anywhere else, in Italy is just a slow Tuesday.

Just to get started on the rabbit hole, and somewhat relevant for this thread:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Calvi

Because Italians are naturally conspirative and are well accustomed with the mafia, so things like that are just obvious to them. While Anglo-Saxons or northern Europeans are much more trusting and rather believe they're living in a system of laws where corruption doesn't happen, even when it blatantly does. They're only allowed to believe conspiracies about the current or bogeyman enemies of the establishment, like they believe that the fascist did things like that in 1930s, but would call you crazy if you believe anything like that could happen today in their own governments. Italians see some whistleblower/informant died days before his testimony, to them it would be insane to think anything other than he was murdered. They are right, meanwhile other peoples are like deer in the headlights, with no defense. That's why the mafia immediately took over cities like Chicago and New York when Italian immigrants came in.

The man warned he's not going to commit suicide in case something happens to him and your immediate conclusion is that it was suicide. Interesting line of logic, I have to admit.

Not in the Michael Hastings case being linked.

Also - many, many people commit suicide after saying they never will. if he was shot with his own gun, i think that is much more likely than any other alternative.

yeah the other issue with these things are that they are unlimited statements and indefinite in length

"look this person wrote on twitter 2 years ago that it won't be suicide"

hm.

a solution I imagined for this was some sort of point cloud emitting off of everyone's body, so we would have a point cloud based rendering of what happened near someone, could reveal a lot about human interactions

And yet murders happen everyday for dubious reasons. If some party has big incentives in a death then it is a moral duty to suspect that party first. Suicide is a special case (suicide rates are not far from murder rates), it is not the default one. The burden should not be on the family to prove it was not suicide, but on the party who has big to gain it was not them.

Also reminds me of ex TYT journalist Michael Brooks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Brooks_(political_co...