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'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

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231–240 of 505 posts

Re: 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

#231
post #171
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the authorities do know and it's simply not published/released? After all, assuming he shot himself and the gun is right there, it seems fairly reasonable to tentatively presume it's self inflicted.

How did he get the gun? Didn't he have to travel for the proceedings?

According to one news report, he was found in his own truck. If that is correct, he could easily have brought it with him from his home.

Re: 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

#232

This is kind of mind-blowing to me. First case in my lifetime where a US corporation appears to have murdered someone for political reasons. Has this happened before? I assume it has but it's very rare.

Not a US corporation but when it came to light that French defense contractor Thomson-CSF (now Thales) had bribed Taiwan official to award them a defense contract, no less than six whistleblowers died, three of them defenestrated; most famously Thierry Imbot, who fell from the fourth story closing his window shutters on a windy evening, supposedly the night before he was to meet a journalist.

Re: 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

#233

This is kind of mind-blowing to me. First case in my lifetime where a US corporation appears to have murdered someone for political reasons. Has this happened before? I assume it has but it's very rare.

There's mounting evidence that someone could had dismissed safety to get more profits, and then some planes fell off the sky. That could escalate to involuntary manslaughter quickly.

Re: 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was shot and there aren't any double blind studies that prove that police are capable of reliably distinguishing self inflicted wounds from non-self inflicted wounds.

It’s a bit dark, but the idea of trying to get ethics approval for a study of this sort had me laugh.

If you are an organ donor, it will surprise you what kind of research is done using corpses.

For example, "body farms".

Re: 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

#236
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that plausible, though? Why would he not have used that leverage to prevent captivity?

I don't know. He never talked about a captivity switch. Perhaps he is an object lesson that one should create a "switch escalator". Perhaps a dead man's switch used in captivity could also potentially make captivity worse and remove what last remnants of hope he has. I suspect if he pulled the switch now then a lot of the sympathy he got for exposing a war crime might go out the window.

The purpose of a dead-man switch is that an action automatically happens, if a person cannot trigger that action themselves anymore. This is not required in any kind of normal captivity, where the captured still can talk to lawyers and other visitors. So, frankly, if Assange is not using the leverage (using in the sense of using it as a threat) my best explanation so far is that he does not have any (at least not anything substantial enough). But I am open to be convinced otherwise.

Re: 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

#237
post #131

Reading the comments here is now making me even more skeptical about society. It really looks like; It is a waste of time to take risk yourself and expose unethical practices conducted by the powerful. Because, A) The masses don't really care (I expected riots and protest). B) You may mysteriously die. C) Your death instead of sparking an outrage will mostly be labeled a "conspiracy theory". Given these three items,…

> Due to majority of worker being spinless

Are you seriously accusing most employees of being pions?

Re: 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a poor take. People don't find themselves in this situation normally and we should not be expecting them to have TV-murder-mystery style hypervigilance.

>> TV-murder-mystery style hypervigilance. The tv-murder-mystery plot where Boeing killed him and he told ONE friend is much more likely? Anxiety, PTSD, and a hand gun. This is a recipe for a suicide attempt that succeeds from a purely statistical point of view.

Most people do not like to be drama queens, that might also be a possible reason, he did not shouted it out to the world.

Also, it is of course possible, to plan suicide and still tell people it won't be suicide. We all lack the details here. But since Boeing is involved with military and intelligence work who do not like traitors(whistleblowers) in general and have the expertise in covert murder, I think murder is a valid theory that should be really investigated by a neutral agency.

Re: 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

#239
post #12

Oh so in Russia its jumping out a window and in the USA its some random method of suicide? Why not be specific, and consistent, like Russia?

Because in Russia it is an open message to the public 'don't mess with the KGB or we kill you and maybe your children'. Everybody knows and understands who is the sender and the message. Classic mafia move of intimidation. It is a message to the living. In the Western World the secret services kill to silence people, not to broadcast messages to the public. Quite the opposite PR strategy.

Think this comment is a bit too naive on the western side.

There are some high profile cases were the west (or the deep state) very clearly went "full Russian" on some figures to send a "don't mess with us" message.

David Kelly and Epstein come to mind. As also noted in this thread Assange is arguably being given a fate worse than death, rotting in a dungeon an example to terrify whistleblowers around the world.

Granted, it is only used much more sparingly than the KGB, but it is there.

Re: 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death

#240
post #4

This happens way too often, and I'm genuinely curious why. The easy answer is that paranoid people with a vendetta say exactly this to throw guilt onto the other party. The hard answer is harder to swallow. What can we do about it?

There's another "easy" answer: friends and family of the deceased make up these claims, because they want to ensure a thorough investigation of any potential homicide to put their suspicions to rest and so make it look as suspicious and scandalous as possible in the public eye.

Not saying that's what happened here, of course.

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