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Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

bbc.com

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Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#181

Post by hayst4ck »

briantakita wrote: post #112
falsandtru wrote: post #103

Hm, this thread once again slid down the top page at an alarming rate, even though the safety of the environment surrounding engineers is a serious concern of engineers. Hacker News is surprisingly dismissive of user interests and votes. Note that even if it is a suicide, it is still a safety problem of the environment surrounding engineers. Since it is Boeing that pressured him until he committed suicide.

Are you surprised about the lack of curiosity on this sort of case? When many here are within 2 degrees of the people involved. Most within 3 degrees. It's a small world

> Are you surprised about the lack of curiosity on this sort of case?

I don't think it's a matter of curiosity. If most of the comments in this thread were things like the history of corporate violence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_Uni...) then I think there would be less downvotes. Few people are aware of corporate oppression of the past which robs people of context for the present.

Unfortunately rather than provoking curiosity by introducing people to information they didn't know they didn't know, most of the comments here are some form of "in the back of the head twice..." which just isn't interesting or thought provoking.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#182

Post by dathinab »

dehrmann wrote: post #164
jjk166 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not convinced. Boeing doesn't want more attention, depositions are stressful, and whistleblowers are predisposed to martyrdom. If you're Boeing, this doesn't make the problem go away, it makes it worse .

if you are Boeing the company that would be stupid sure

but what about some specific arbitrary high level figure from Boeing?

One which if the person says certain things might lose their job because of this or which is afraid to lose more then their job (e.g. due to them knowingly acting in gross negligence for personal gains).

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#183

Post by esoterica »

anigbrowl wrote: post #161
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretending this is common in the West is absurd. Why wouldn’t POTUS have journalists killed then? Surely he’s more powerful than boeings CEO.

Murder-for-hire happens regularly. Corporate involvement is very unusual, but that might be colored by a greater ability to throw resources at the problem. Most murder-for hire prosecutions that make the news seem to have something in common - the protagonists were amateurish, typically motivated by personal grudges, and spent relatively small sums of money ( Why wouldn’t POTUS have journalists killed then? One curre…

Corporations get caught doing crime all of the time. The fact that no large corporation in contemporary America has ever been caught hiring a hitman to assassinate a former employee is a very good sign that unlike all the other crimes they DO get caught doing, this one has never actually happened.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#184

Post by salawat »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #66
yifanl wrote: 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…

And he not only watched the company fail spectacularly, in several of those cases those failures were connected to deaths, which I imagine he could feel personally responsible for not preventing, even if the corporate machine is really where the responsibility lies.

Table stakes for QA. It would have been worse because he reported and escalated these things just to end up having his department butchered further.

I still don't see a snap happening until after the testimony was over.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#186

Post by dang »

falsandtru wrote: post #160
falsandtru wrote: post #103

Hm, this thread once again slid down the top page at an alarming rate, even though the safety of the environment surrounding engineers is a serious concern of engineers. Hacker News is surprisingly dismissive of user interests and votes. Note that even if it is a suicide, it is still a safety problem of the environment surrounding engineers. Since it is Boeing that pressured him until he committed suicide.

[flagged]

It's standard moderation practice on HN to downweight offtopic comments. If we didn't do that, most HN threads would have something generic or offtopic at the top of the page, choking out more interesting discussion. There's nothing secretive here—I've posted about this lots of times over lots of years.

I know it's fun internet time to play sinister speculation, but if anyone wants to know what's actually happening, all they have to do is ask.

Edit: I mean about anything happening on HN. Suspicious deaths, I can't help with.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#188

Post by blast »

The timing is suspicious but that doesn't mean it wasn't suicide. If he was determined to kill himself there might be several reasons to do it today. Maybe he wanted to cast suspicion on Boeing. Or maybe he didn't want to testify - could be tons of reasons for that. I have no idea. Just saying the two events could be connected without it being murder.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#189

Post by qwertyuiop_ »

Well-known Boeing critic and whistleblower John Barnett was found shot to death Saturday in Charleston, South Carolina. According to the BBC, the local coroner’s office said the gunshot wound that killed him was “self inflicted” and that police are investigating. Barnett’s body was found in his truck in a hotel parking lot. He had completed two days of depositions concerning a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit against Boeing. He was found after he failed to show up for his third day of testimony. Boeing told BBC it was saddened by Barnett’s death.

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/boeing-whistleblower-dea...

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#190

Post by logicchains »

KerrAvon wrote: post #155
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, even if this were murder. If the people investigating Hunter Biden suddenly turned up dead, or the people investigating Trump, and if that happened over and over across several years, then I'd say yes. Oh, and if you could be arrested for a protest.

You can be arrested for a protest. You can also be shot and killed without consequences for protesting in some scenarios. Whether either of these survive a SCOTUS challenge, not sure, but in the meantime it sure fucking happens. We’re less free in 2024 than we were in 2001. But at least you’re still right about the political assassinations, which is not yet a thing that happens here on an organized basis.

You could be shot for protesting in the US well before 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings .
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