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submitted 9 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/news@lemmy.world
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[-] turkishdelight@lemmy.ml 305 points 9 months ago

when a whistleblower dies on the day of his deposition, you have to work really hard to convince me that it's suicide.

[-] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 142 points 9 months ago

They could have threatened to fly his family on a 737 Max if he didn't kill himself

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[-] GenEcon@lemm.ee 25 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Definitely! But a 'friend of the family' is not really a perfect source.

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[-] Wytch@lemmy.zip 191 points 9 months ago

They make airplanes tf is this mafia shit

[-] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 162 points 9 months ago

They also make military equipment, an enormous amount of it

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 81 points 9 months ago

Both incorrect, they make money.

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[-] Illuminostro@lemmy.world 40 points 9 months ago

They also bribe politicians to give them an excuse to sell those weapons. Gulf of Tonkin, anyone? Grenada? Panama? Af-fucking-ghanistan?

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[-] Faresh@lemmy.ml 74 points 9 months ago

They are also involved in the military and aerospace industry. They also practically only have a single competitor in the passenger plane manufacture industry (airbus). So they are rich and powerful and do not shy away from exerting their influence to protect their interests.

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[-] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 190 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Boeing rep: Tragically, it appears that Mr. Barnett was discussing suicide in the lead up to his death.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 87 points 9 months ago

"We will be offering a stock buyback in his memory."

[-] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 30 points 9 months ago

Sounds like an admittance of guilt to me. Nothing will happen, sadly.

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[-] Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 168 points 9 months ago

Wow. That is chilling and very damning of Boeing. Like really…Boeing is that dirty? Surely not?

[-] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 199 points 9 months ago

Friendly reminder that Boeing is not a plucky airline that can't make safe airplanes, it's an AMERICAN MILITARY DEFENSE CONTRACTOR worth billions. If I you threaten that arrangement with slander like the truth and facts, they are good friends with people who kill for a living and completely unashamed in paying for their services.

[-] MagicShel@programming.dev 110 points 9 months ago

Put another way: there are plenty of people who will eagerly issue death threats, stalk you, and swat you over minor differences in opinion. Think what they would do over serious money.

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[-] shiroininja@lemmy.world 30 points 9 months ago

This so much. Put it up there with Lockheed

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[-] mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world 99 points 9 months ago

Do you have any fuckdamn idea how many innocent people died by the command of American fruit companies?

Capitalism feeds on blood, it always has.

[-] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 49 points 9 months ago

United Fruit just turned into Chiquita and continued on like they didnt massacre people too.

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[-] Syndic@feddit.de 85 points 9 months ago

Like really…Boeing is that dirty? Surely not?

I mean they were willing to knowingly keep producing unsafe air planes which lead to several crashes killing 100's. So yeah, I really wouldn't be surprised if they also do assassination to ensure their profit.

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[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 26 points 9 months ago

Boeing is that dirty? Surely not?

Why not?

International profit chasing entities just wouldn't value profits over human life?

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[-] anomoly_@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm not any defender of corporations, by any means, but I'm not sure that I'm willing to take the word of a "close family friend" who "needed help one day" any more than some corporate HR; and "I don't care what they say, I know that Mitch didn't do that" isn't exactly a solid argument to be basing things on.

Edit: I seem to have missed this on my first read:

Jennifer said she thinks somebody "didn't like what he had to say" and wanted to "shut him up" without it coming back to anyone"..."That's why they made it look like a suicide,"

I'm never surprised to hear something bad about Boeing, but this is just a woman convinced with, on the face of it, no other proof than what's in her own head. Unless she's got a recording or document, the article's title could have been, "Family friend tells reporter a story"

[-] Pandantic@midwest.social 45 points 9 months ago

And he said, 'No, I ain't scared, but if anything happens to me, it's not suicide.'

He pretty much said “I think something may happen to me and they will make it look like a suicide.”

Unless she's got a recording or document, the article's title could have been, "Family friend tells reporter a story"

Yeah, it won’t hold up in court, and neither would it if she had recorded this casual, intimate conversation between two old friends.

Maybe, though, it’s enough to get the coroner to take another look at his death.

I'm not any defender of corporations, by any means, but I'm not sure that I'm willing to take the word of a "close family friend" who "needed help one day" any more than some corporate HR;

You sure have a lot more faith in corporations than I do…

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[-] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 22 points 9 months ago

This isn't "I know Mitch didn't do that", it's "he literally told me the specific thing that happened and he wasn't going to do it". What motivation does she have to just fully make up a conversation? Boeing has billions of dollars of motivation, she knew him from family get togethers.

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[-] Prandom_returns@lemm.ee 115 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So the US government will not even investigate this because of the close ties / relationship with Boeing?

I swear to god, the US and its oligarchy is just russia "at home"

[-] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 62 points 9 months ago

Always has been.

Our pig just has nicer lipstick.

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[-] OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 23 points 9 months ago

You are making that up, nobody said it won't be investigated and the case he was a whistle blower for isn't being stopped by this.

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[-] zcd@lemmy.ca 104 points 9 months ago

The feds: Doesn’t look like anything to me

[-] quindraco@lemm.ee 36 points 9 months ago

And it still won't look like anything to them even after they find out the handgun wasn't registered to him. And after they find out the suicide note (pro tip: real suicides generally don't include a note) was written super-generically.

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[-] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 99 points 9 months ago

I don't know whether or not he killed himself, and I strongly suspect he didn't, but I sure as hell know this warrants an intense and thorough investigation. All company and private emails of executives, with forensics to determine if anything was deleted. Long interrogations to see if alibis match up.

There isn't enough evidence to throw the book at Boeing, but there is enough to search every single little thing related to them.

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[-] Thann@lemmy.ml 95 points 9 months ago

if theyre killing witnesses, theyre too big to prosecute, and I think they should be shutdown and sold for parts

[-] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 59 points 9 months ago

Well corpos are people now, so I think Boeing should be put on a bus to Texas and summarily executed for its crimes against humanity and treason against US persons.

Can't have it both ways, Capital!

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[-] Crikeste@lemm.ee 35 points 9 months ago

If they’re killing witnesses, they’re probably working with the government. This is America after all, where money is the ONLY thing that matters.

Can’t let a big business fail, that would communism.

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[-] j4k3@lemmy.world 85 points 9 months ago
[-] fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world 50 points 9 months ago

Seriously. Once we nationalize it and it starts operating like it used to, it would be a shining example of why nationalization works.

It's also why you're going to see an tsunami of useful idiots saying we shouldn't do it.

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[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 83 points 9 months ago

It's important to remember that whistleblowing is extremely stressful, so much that it's one of the main things the government talks about on their whistleblowing site:

Practice self-care and stress-reducing activities throughout your whistleblowing process. It is common to experience toxic forms of retaliation – from professional isolation to gaslighting (manipulating someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity) – which can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or even thoughts of harm.

https://whistleblower.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/whistleblower.house.gov/files/whistleblower_survival_tips.pdf

Researchers have found the same thing, being a whistleblower is terrible for your mental health:

About 85% suffered from severe to very severe anxiety, depression, interpersonal sensitivity and distrust, agoraphobia symptoms, and/or sleeping problems, and 48% reached clinical levels of these specific mental health problems. These specific mental health problems were much more prevalent than among the general population.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6604402/

In addition, "Half of Patients With Suicidal Thoughts Deny It"

Not only did approximately 50% of people with suicidal thoughts deny having those thoughts, roughly 50% of people who had died by suicide, and 30% of people who had attempted suicide had denied having suicidal ideation in the week or month beforehand.

Furthermore, in many cases, people who had disclosed in apps and on paper that they had thoughts of suicide then denied that they had suicidal ideation when questioned directly in face-to-face assessments or interviews. For example, in one study, nearly 60% of those who reported their suicidal ideation on an app then denied their suicidal ideation in a telephone interview less than 24 hours later.

https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2021.10.9

So, just because he denied he was suicidal doesn't mean that's necessarily true. He might have been trying to appear strong to everyone while suffering in silence.

This should definitely be investigated as possibly being murder. And, even if the investigation does determine that he shot himself, they should keep looking to see if he was being blackmailed or if he might have been pressured into suicide.

I just can't imagine an executive at Boeing going out and hiring a hit man. But, what I can imagine them doing is hiring a team of private investigators to go through this guy's entire life and dig up every bit of dirt on him. It could be they found something really embarrassing and were going to blackmail him with it. It could be that they found something innocent that they could frame as being awful, like to make him look like he was a child molester or something.

[-] experbia@lemmy.world 67 points 9 months ago

I just can’t imagine an executive at Boeing going out and hiring a hit man

Really? That's weird, I totally can. It's an exceptionally narrow-minded and short-sighted knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat of one's executive career. Most coked-out executives already have a massive god complex once they get their MBA and are installed above the ~~proles~~ workers. I can absolutely realistically imagine one Boeing executive getting angry enough and coked-out enough to just decide, "fuck it, I'm going to fix this problem for us before he threatens my career and reputation any more".

The information you present about whistleblowing being stressful is fair. He may indeed have been driven to kill himself instead of being straight-up assassinated like others believe. I refuse, however, to give the benefit of doubt to a massive corporation who has already demonstrated a complete lack of regard for human life and an extremely poor track record of moral and ethical decision-making. This needs to be investigated under the assumption that a hit is an entirely possible reality. Unless you'd rather that nobody blows the whistle on anything in the future - you've already demonstrated that it's an incredibly stressful action. If there's the lingering remote possibility that you can be simply assassinated over it and everyone will look the other way, nobody will ever raise their voice again. The nature of his actions before his death demand a comprehensive and exhaustive investigation into if any person from Boeing had anything to do with it whatsoever, or whistleblowing will continue sliding into something only the insane consider.

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[-] kn0wmad1c@programming.dev 79 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Look, we all know he didn't off himself, but here's my issue with these stories where a friend or family member says that the person said they told them it won't be suicide:

If Barnett really said that, why not also set up a dead man's switch? If he was truly afraid that he had info so damming he'd be killed for it, then why not set it up so that the info still finds a way to come out even in the event of his death?

If anything, ensuring the info comes out one way or another might have even protected him.

[-] anton 139 points 9 months ago

He already published his information and was in the process of repeating it in front of a court.
His death prevented him from giving his information as sworn testimony which a dead man switch could not do.

[-] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 42 points 9 months ago

Well because according to his quote he wasn't afraid. I don't think he thought the company he worked for for 30 years would do this. Seems he said this remark only in response to what she asked.

[-] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 26 points 9 months ago

It just takes one psycho in management with their own ass on the line to do something insane to cover their tracks.

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[-] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 77 points 9 months ago
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[-] xantoxis@lemmy.world 66 points 9 months ago

Holy shit some Boeing motherfuckers better go TO BIG JAIL

[-] Grayox@lemmy.ml 72 points 9 months ago

If Corporations are People, I say Boeing should get the Death Penalty and be Nationalized.

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[-] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 54 points 9 months ago

Shit's getting real.

John Oliver better watch his back.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 51 points 9 months ago

Another site in which "accidentally" the GdpR cookie forms weirdly aren't scrollable so you can't reject them

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 35 points 9 months ago

People in this situation might consider putting themselves under video surveillance.

[-] Assman@sh.itjust.works 39 points 9 months ago

Like Epstein was

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 28 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

And mentioning on social media so it's public/informing journalists so they can make it public beforehand that you don't plan on killing yourself.

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this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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