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Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

bbc.com

171–180 of 618 posts

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not they are not. The military and intelligence apparatus does not care if Boeing has to pay a fine. They will not carry out an execution at Boeing’s behest just to save them from a lawsuit. Conspiracy theorists love conspiracy theories because they allow them to feel smarter than the “sheeple” that believe the official story. They don’t care if the actual conspiracy theory is wildly implausible and stupid, it’s…

The military and intelligence apparatus does not care You don't need the whole apparatus, just someone who has been trained by it and is morally flexible. Well, you don't even need that, but obviously people with professional experience tend to do a better job. We do not have evidence yet of this being a murder-for-hire or similar, but you're insisting on the impossibility of such when in reality it's not all that un…

An S&P 500 corporation hiring a hitman to murder a witness is beyond "unusual", it has literally never happened in contemporary America. You can't even give me an example of it happening because it hasn't.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#173
post #10

He was scheduled to appear for day two of his deposition testimony the morning of his death. Had he died Sat night instead of Sat morning, the transcript of Saturday's testimony could have been read to the jury during trial. Obviously that can't happen now and whatever he was going to say in Saturday's testimony is lost forever.

> the transcript of Saturday's testimony could have been read to the jury during trial. Obviously that can't happen now

I'm not so sure: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/right_to_confront_witness:

> In Barber v. Page, 390 U.S. 719 (1968), the Court recognized a common law exception to the Confrontation Clause's requirement when a witness was unavailable and, during previous judicial proceedings, had testified against the same defendant and was subject to cross-examination by that defendant. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this exception in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), holding that "the Framers would not have allowed admission of testimonial statements of a witness who did not appear at trial unless he was unavailable to testify and the defendant had had a prior opportunity for cross-examination." Further, the Court in Crawford overturned Ohio v. Roberts (above).

The article said he was cross-examined by Boeing's attorneys last week and he now unavailable because he's dead, so it seems to be his deposition would fall under this exception.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#174
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not they are not. The military and intelligence apparatus does not care if Boeing has to pay a fine. They will not carry out an execution at Boeing’s behest just to save them from a lawsuit. Conspiracy theorists love conspiracy theories because they allow them to feel smarter than the “sheeple” that believe the official story. They don’t care if the actual conspiracy theory is wildly implausible and stupid, it’s…

> Conspiracy theorists love conspiracy theories because they allow them to feel smarter than the “sheeple” that believe the official story. [...] Sorry but couldn’t be me, I am not dumb enough to fall for that cognitive hazard. You're right, you'd have to be a total idiot to structure your worldview around the assertion that you're smarter than everyone else.

I'm not claiming to be smarter than everyone else, but I am claiming to be smarter than the people who believe that Boeing hired Michael Fassbender from The Killer to assassinate a former employee after but only after years of whistleblowing and after all the allegedly incriminating information was already out in the open.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#175
post #61

I'm just going to take this story at face value, there's an infinite number of alternate explanations that I'd be powerless to talk about. I've had my own (thankfully brief) moments where I've thought about suicide just from the perception that my coworkers, my bosses, the entire world, just does not care about doing the right thing. Mr Barnett worked for the same company for over three decades and physically watched…

> from the perception that my coworkers, my bosses, the entire world, just does not care about doing the right thing. How did you overcome this?

Quit

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#176

I wish there were an aggressively anti-clickbait news outlet that writes headlines explicitly designed to preempt and neutralize potential misunderstandings. Imagine editors try to anticipate all kinds of ways a candidate headline might mislead the reader, and rewrite the headline to discourage those inferences — succinctly if possible, verbosely if necessary. For this particular piece such a outlet might opt for som…

737 Max whistleblowers should take notice though.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#177
post #14

He should have done like Snowden. Got out of the country before exposing material. Shouldn't a witness in a high profile case like him been granted some sort of police escort by the court? Guy paid the ultimate price for freedom of speech and informing the public. Wonder if someone will sustain there is no threat to freedom of speech because the lawsuit involved the company where he was employed, not the government.…

On the one hand, violence is always a threat to speaking freely. This is not new. At the very least getting fired is what most people can expect if they speak freely about legitimately confidential things at work. Even things like disparaging co-workers, in a public setting, or harassing people at work by saying inappropriate things can get you fired.

You are free to speak freely, but there are consequences, Free Speech does not imply uou can say what you like consequence free.

In some (criminal) industries, speaking freely will get you killed. If Hollywood is to be believed, speaking against the rich and powerful can get you killed. (I suspect it happens, I suspect its nowhere near as common as Hollywood makes out.)

To your point though Free Speech (capital F) has a specific constitutional meaning, and covers the consequences the govt can apply to your speaking freely. It does not promise no consequences by companies.

There is no threat to Freedom of Speech here, because what he was doing was not that kind of speech. Of course there is a chilling effect on speaking freely, his speaking out had consequences (regardless of the hand that pulled the trigger.)

In short you can't just say whatever you like (as E Jean Carrol understands) without consequence. That's not what Freedom of Speech means.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#178
post #95

Is there a pattern? This seems to happen way too often in western corporations. (Here's another example, could give you many more: Suicide of VW whistleblower in 2020: https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/news/unternehmen-verbrauche... - use Google Translate).

[deleted]

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#179
post #49

[flagged]

> Nobody working for a megacorp is loyal enough to the company to eat a murder charge just to boost their employer’s profits by 1%. You might want to look at the lengths eBay executives went in harassing people who criticized eBay: https://www.npr.org/2022/09/30/1126078948/live-spiders-and-c...

The worst example you could find of corporate harassment and no one even got physically harmed, thanks for proving my point that corporations do not hire hitmen to carry out assassinations.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#180
post #9

"Self-inflicted wound"? Obviously the story is still developing but I'm immediately skeptical. EDIT: Also weird that BBC is already memory-holing that it was a gunshot wound. archive.is has the original. https://archive.is/wj0LE

Self inflicted wound in the middle of several days of scheduled depositions. Just about as suspicious as could be.

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