Following up on those slow stories from 7/24/2013 and adding a new one or two.
Guardian 8/13/2013 report Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway. Wikipedia has continuing coverage of the Lac-Méganticare derailment.
On August 6, 2013, Burkhardt stated that MM&A has no further plans to carry oil by rail.[122] On August 7, 2013, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in both the Quebec Superior Court in
Montreal (under the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act) and the United States Bankruptcy Court in Bangor, MaineOn 13 August 2013, the Canadian Transportation Agency suspended the Certificate of Fitness[127] of the MMA effective August 20 because of its failure to obtain adequate insurance coverage,[128] shutting down the line.
No further updates on the 2013 Gansu province earthquake. A strong earthquake shook the Tibet, China on August 11.
It’s been hot in China, South Korea, and Japan.
The City of Detroit bankruptcy has been put on fast-track. “Shock doctrine works better if it’s swift.
The report on the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre has been delayed again. Are the investigators incompetent or they protecting someone or something?
Nothing has yet been released by the FBI regarding its agent’s killing of Ibragim Todashev on May 22, 2013. Todashev’s father arrived today in Orlando, FL. seeking answers.
Autopsy reports on the deaths of Michael Hastings (6/18/2013) and Barnaby Jack (7/25/2013) have yet to be released. It took the Vancouver, BC coroner exactly three days to issue a report on the death of Cory Monteith and the Rome, Italy coroner two days to report on James Gandolfini.
Add the slow news stories you’re following.
Kimberly Dvorak at San Diego 6 continues to report on Michael Hastings. (A word of caution as early on she made a gross error that required debunking because she failed to properly orient herself when viewing the video of the crash site.) Her latest report appears to be more solid and cautious.
She goes on to discuss the links from Brennan to Stratfor. This is troubling because we also know that Barrett Brown and Jeremy Hammond brushed up against Stratfor.
Then there’s this:
Not sure other experts would agree with that Hastings car was traveling that slow, but it does call into question the claim that he was traveling at over 80 MPH. Too much credibility has long been given to the witness Jose. First, he was in a poor position to observe more than the N. Highland and Melrose intersection. He was at a donut shop on the east side of N. Highland and north of the intersection (not at the corner). He’s admitted that he didn’t see the actual crash, but to have observed anything from his vantage point, it would have to have been surprising or unusual. That’s what he’s said, pedal to the metal fast, bumping up and down and sparks flying. Yet slower and no sparks flying a few hundred feet later when he passed Pizzeria Mozza? Such is the unreliability of eyewitnesses.
Dvorak is possibly out on a limb with the speculation of a pre-explosion based on that video. But moves back into more solid ground with:
Knowing that Hastings lived in Hollywood (as indicated by his twitter feed) lessens the mystery. N. Highland is a good route from there to the Buzzfeed LA office and therefore, he would have been familiar with the road. If he were running on east coast time, it was just after seven in the morning for him. But perhaps that’s not what was happening that morning.
35 mph is 51.3 fps. Hence the time to cover 195 feet is 3.8 seconds. Since that’s an average, if he started from zero and accelerated to 80mph in under four seconds, he was driving one Hell of a performance automobile. Maybe he was, but in the ’50s that would have taken a nitro fueled dragster with around 1000HP.
Taking the “bumping up and down and sparks flying” at face value, then he started at a high rate and jammed on the brakes, colliding at 80 mph while averaging 35 mph. That is mathematically impossible.
Have you seen the video? Was the car nose down or nose up?
Here’s the video from Pizzeria Mozza. He was driving a Mercedes C250 Coupé. The assumption has been that Hastings was speeding south on N. Highland and wasn’t slowed down by any intersection signal lights, the last of which was a few hundred feet before the Pizzeria Mozza video.
Ok, he appears to be driving at a fairly constant speed, perhaps accelerating slightly. My guess (and it’s just that) is that the collision occurred at about 45mph. The explosion appears much brighter than a simple collision.
If you haven’t seen it, this video picks up at the crash site several minutes after the Pizzeria Mozza video.
OK, first I’ve seen car fires on the road after a crash. They started smoking from leaked gas and then caught fire, sometimes with an explosion. I note that the muffler is laying on the ground. Unusual for a head on collision. Maybe it was rusty? Sounds unlikely for a Mercedes owned by a journalist. Where was this again? California? No rusty cars in California unless they are thirty years old or parked on the beach. Front end damage is consistent with a 30 mph crash. American cars don’t detonate on front end collisions. Can’t say about German cars, but I’m skeptical. What the Hell happened to the driver door skin? It’s GONE. Was it made of plastic? A bomb on the left side of the fuel tank sounds good to me. As I said, in a front end collision fuel lines can be ripped open , fuel leaks and starts to burn, then it is possible for the gas tank to blow, however I’ve seen oh half a dozen fuel tanks laying on the road, burning with black smoke very high in the air, but the tank intact.
You are right. This thing smells.
Car only a few months old. Accident in the Hancock Park section of LA. The initial reports of Hasting death in a high-speed, solo vehicle, crash on N. Highland in Hancock Park was a “huh?” for me. Seemed to me like an odd location for such an accident.
I know almost nothing about cars and invariably respond to images of car accidents with “how did that happen?” while fully accepting that it was an accident. Others have noted oddities about the driver’s side door, but that’s too technical for me to notice. The engine and trany a few hundred feet south and across the street and the intensity of the fire made me go more than “huh?”
Something’s off about this, but haven’t a clue what it is.
Been driving for 52 years, mostly at around 25K miles per year. Seen lots of accidents. Studied auto mechanics at the local community college as a hobby. Overhauled and modified a couple of engines. Seen a lot of cars in junkyards looking for parts. Have seen photos of engines torn out in collisions at over 100 mph, but never 100 feet away from the crash site. That first video looks like the car rolled over a land mine.
An engine weighs at least a few hundred pounds. An aluminum transmission adds about another hundred. Although in manual transmission class I supported a Pinto transmission on my shoulder while changing the clutch. To throw a few hundred pounds 100 feet takes a lot of energy. remember the engine has to be ripped off the mounts and thrown through the hood and the trans has to be ripped off the driveshaft.
LOT’S is off about this.
Well, appearances can be deceiving. It’s just that alternative explanations are going to struggle to get that car in that position with an explosive fire as quickly as the video tells us it happened. And with enough force to send that engine flying. (The front left tire ended up on the sidewalk SW of the crash)
Well, tires can roll.
Or bounce like engines.
A lot better than engines. A LOT better.
Gavin Aronson at “Mother Jones” provides a much needed critique Kimberly Dvorak’s “reporting” in Meet the Journalist Spreading Michael Hastings Conspiracy Theories.
What he doesn’t mention is that some of Dvorak’s hysteria has been based on what Hastings’ so-called friend Sgt Joe Biggs has been claiming. Primarily that Hastings was cremated contrary to the family’s wishes and that Hastings’ sent a cryptic or panicky sounding e-mail the day before the accident. The cremation story sounded enough off to me that I didn’t blog on it. Russ Baker has now been told by a family member that the story is false. It wasn’t helpful for his friends and family not to have dispelled this earlier. Baker properly chastises all sides:
Jason Leopold FOIA lawsuit update: Justice Department: FBI Has Started to Process Michael Hastings Documents . Maybe they shouldn’t lie so frequently given all the federal documentation created and saved these days.
More fodder for the CT gangs that believe Hastings was murdered and that it was carried out by a US government agency. And as only rightwing CT gangs on this one are speaking, in their world it’s not just the US government, but Obama’s US government.
The heatwaves, along with the continued unprecedented warmth across the planet, deserve far more coverage. While the ice cap over the Arctic Ocean continues to shrivel, some geniuses are in the process of figuring out how to capitalize on the disaster – after all there is oil to be drilled, ships to be sailed, and profits to be made I suppose.
With the cool summer this year in the US, global weirding is off our radar. As “we the people” don’t have the will to choose a different path and either willingly or grudgingly will accept what the elites view as in their best interests, maybe it’s not so healthy for some of us to stress out about global weirding.
A shame really, but we’ve had plenty of warnings and can’t even see how Detroit’s bankruptcy ties into our hundred year follies.
I know it’s only one data point that means nothing, but I turned my furnace on this morning in the Chicago Suburbs. In mid-August! You’ll be laughed out of town if you talk to the man in the street about heat waves right now.
Then there’s the silliness of a so-called futurist: The Problem With Elon Musk and the Hyperloop.
Michael Dawson concludes with the only real option:
Jury acquits escort shooter.
Defense team:
Facts in this case are clear — unlike the Zimmerman case — and it all appeared to hinge on the definition of “stolen property.” An egregious decision IMHO but we won’t see protests for it.
So it was theft that she collected the fee openly stated in the ad that he “believed” offered illegal prostitution. He thought she advertised sex for sale. He found out he was wrong. Enraged, he shot here. And a stupid Texas jury says that was justifiable homicide.
Texas. Florida. You know they are terminally stupid by the politicians they elect.