[HN Gopher] Whistleblower Josh Dean of Boeing supplier Spirit Ae...
___________________________________________________________________
Whistleblower Josh Dean of Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems has
died
Author : Freedom2
Score : 406 points
Date : 2024-05-01 23:17 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.seattletimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.seattletimes.com)
| slater wrote:
| https://archive.is/zOqdj
| twiddling wrote:
| Hmm. another Boeing-related whistleblower expired
| trhway wrote:
| Just yesterday here were a bunch of comments and jokes about how
| it would look like if this guy dies too. And here we go ... fast
| spreading infection in a 45 years old guy.
| nxobject wrote:
| Spirit Aerosystems: the part Boeing spun off because even it did
| its own thing. Without the public profile of Boeing, it must have
| been an even more hostile place to be.
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| How many are left?
| boring-alterego wrote:
| I thought for a second what if the whistleblowers get into
| witness protection, then I looked up what planes the us Marshalls
| have ... It's not looking good for the whistleblowers.
| carabiner wrote:
| The author, Dominic Gates, long time Boeing coverage reporter for
| Seattle Times and Pulitzer winner, has this to say:
|
| > I've had enough
|
| > Because I knew Josh, I had to report this - and the coincidence
| with Mitch, whom I also knew
|
| > But if you really believe Boeing has adopted Putin-style
| assassination, unfollow me and go away
|
| > If you're joking, it's not even slightly funny to joke about
| this death
|
| https://twitter.com/dominicgates/status/1785812827581849988
|
| FYI 11,000 people die of MRSA every year.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Actuarial table says death from all causes at 45 is ~0.4%. It's
| an unlikely death, paired with another unlikely death - the
| previous Boeing whistleblower.
|
| I'm really confused by the reporter's attitude. It seems like
| the exact opposite attitude from what you'd want in a reporter.
| He seems to be dismissing the unusual coincidence based on... I
| guess nothing? Just "come on, you can't believe that - we
| aren't Russia."
|
| How many Boeing whistleblowers are there? How many should we
| expect will die by chance this year? If another one dies is
| that the cutoff where it's reasonable to be suspicious?
|
| I don't understand why I would extend any courtesy to Boeing. I
| was suspicious when the first whistleblower died. Why shouldn't
| I be? You may be a perfectly nice guy, but if the witnesses
| testifying against you start dying, I'm going to be suspicious.
| Why should I treat Boeing any differently?
| tom_ wrote:
| The reporter does not want his wife, children or other family
| members to commit suicide or fall ill and die.
| carabiner wrote:
| Gates has been reporting news critical of Boeing for 20+
| years. He is not a fanboy and never has been. They probably
| should have taken him out long ago.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| There are still a lot of unanswered questions around the
| first death.
|
| In a post-COVID world, a 45-year-old dying of a respiratory
| infection isn't at all surprising. I concur with the
| reporter's assessment that more evidence of foul play before
| open accusations is warranted in this second case.
| carabiner wrote:
| Check your priors. What's your base rate likelihood for a
| person dying from:
|
| * suicide (many documented cases)
|
| * infectious diseases (ditto)
|
| * corporate assassinations (zero cases in the US documented)
|
| Everyone thinking Boeing is carrying out killings that have
| minimal potential upside and massive downside is succumbing
| to some cloak and dagger deus ex machina. After age 40 people
| die from all sorts of causes. This is not about "courtesy,"
| but rational thinking that there would be almost no point in
| killing an employee when the company is already mired in bad
| news and that corporate assassinations just don't happen in
| the US.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > corporate assassinations (zero cases in the US
| documented)
|
| That's the whole point of corporate assassinations isn't
| it, get rid of people without raising suspicions.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| But the chances of them being both a) widespread and b)
| perfectly gotten away with is pretty slim.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal
| doesn't inspire confidence in big corporate cospiracies,
| heh.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Zero documented cases of corporate assasinations in the US?
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdga/pr/two-sentenced-their-
| rol...
|
| Homicide is a top 10 leading cause of death for americans
| in their mid 40s.
| XorNot wrote:
| "It was definitely a murder to create a chilling effect on
| whistleblowers" says a guy on the internet, pushing a
| narrative that if you whistleblow on Boeing you'll definitely
| be murdered.
|
| What effect do you imagine that might have?
| kube-system wrote:
| > FYI 11,000 people die of MRSA every year.
|
| In the US alone.
| halfer53 wrote:
| Another one damn
| quantified wrote:
| What's the survival rate of Boeing whistleblowers compared to
| non-whistleblowers?
| nokeya wrote:
| Right now it seems close to zero.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Isn't the survival rate of us all technically zero anyway?
| 15155 wrote:
| On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone
| drops to zero.
| nokeya wrote:
| Yes, but we all hope for later zero, not for sooner or
| sudden zero:)
| agilob wrote:
| In the long term yes, but I'm here shitposting and the two
| other guys are dead, and it's only been 2 months.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| Life is the only sexually transmitted disease with a 100%
| mortality rate.
| nithssh wrote:
| Gospel
| glandium wrote:
| Sam Salehpour is not dead yet, is he?
| protomolecule wrote:
| He should be worried then
| RachelF wrote:
| It appears that criticizing Boeing is even more dangerous than
| flying in one.
| hulitu wrote:
| They had the right to remain silent. /s
| penguin_booze wrote:
| At least we know that the survival rates of Boeing whistle
| blowers and passengers are comparable.
| jmcgough wrote:
| This'll definitely have a chilling effect for future witnesses,
| which is likely what they paid for.
| nokeya wrote:
| Shouldn't it attract more attention from prosecution? It is
| clear who is behind all this (some of Boeing top managers), so
| they must interrogate them all about double kill.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Look at how Frito Lay got away with murdering the Mexican Inn
| family.
|
| There are many other cases.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| What is this Frito Lay incident you speak of? Nothing comes
| up for the query "frito lay mexican inn".
| protomolecule wrote:
| That's how Kosovo leaders got away with war crimes and crimes
| against humanity[0]. Even Thaci almost did[1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War_crimes_witness_i
| nti...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashim_Tha%C3%A7i#Resignati
| on_...
| mandmandam wrote:
| > Shouldn't it attract more attention from prosecution?
|
| It 'should' - but it won't.
|
| Look at how the legal system has treated whistleblowers who
| go against the MIC and fossil fuels - Assange, Snowden,
| Donziger, Winner, etc. High profile cases where the whole
| world was watching.
|
| They're not handing out fines to fossil fuel companies for
| lying to the planet as they set it alight. Instead, they're
| handing out harsher and harsher sentences to the activists
| trying to bring attention to the issue. A lovely 54yo woman
| was sentenced to 4k in damages, a 3k fine, 60 days in jail
| and 24 months of supervised release for putting RINSABLE
| PAINT on the CASE of Degas' Little Dancer. Not even NPR would
| state that it was rinsable paint - how often do you hear oil
| companies advertising on them?
|
| Why would you have any faith in that system to protect us
| from murderous corporations? The trend for these things is
| dramatically in the wrong direction, and it was bad when
| companies were allowed to fund and aid literal Nazis without
| repercussion.
| kingspact wrote:
| People who deface art in museums should have their
| citizenship stripped and be banished for life, at a bare
| minimum. The JUST STOP OIL billionaire woman's a heavy
| investor in the Chinese lithium sector.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > People who deface art ...
|
| No art was defaced.
|
| A _glass case_ was smeared with _water rinsable_ paint.
|
| You wouldn't know it from the hysterics from mainstream
| media, the gallery Director, or the Judge, but absolutely
| no damage was done to Degas' piece. This was
| intentionally harmless.
|
| > The JUST STOP OIL billionaire woman's a heavy investor
| in the Chinese lithium sector.
|
| This wasn't a Just Stop Oil thing. It was the 'Declare
| Emergency' group. Your statement is a complete non
| sequitur.
|
| Let's have the war, fossil fuel, polluters and banking
| criminals "stripped of citizenship and banished for life"
| before throwing fits about those who "deface art" by
| putting easily washable paint on their cases. Yaknow?
| Priorities.
|
| Personally, I would rather lose _every_ Degas, Picasso,
| Modigliani, Botticelli, Rodin, and Van Gogh piece; than
| keep losing species at the rate we are.
|
| Fossil fuels, the military, polluters and big agri are
| committing far, far far worse crimes than damaging art,
| and our justice system _protects them_. Our politicians
| need them to win elections. Our media run cover for their
| crimes. Our regulators seem to be mostly former
| employees. Our own taxes subsidize them to an absurd
| degree.
|
| If we only knew what we've already lost, we'd do worse
| than banish these guys..
| stordoff wrote:
| > RINSABLE PAINT
|
| Is there a source for/further information about this? I
| can't find it mentioned anywhere (including on the Declare
| Emergency website), and it seems difficult to square it
| with the gallery's claim that it cost $4,000 to repair the
| damage.
| Stranger43 wrote:
| It should and the if it don't this is going to lead to "House
| Select Committee on Assassinations" levels of distrust with
| the entire sector.
|
| Its still possible that this is a freak occurrence but any
| agency claiming that as a proven fact right now is going to
| look suspicious.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| Boeing is currently 2-0 with whistleblowers.
|
| I wonder if you could give someone MRSA intentionally. Is that
| even possible?
| eqvinox wrote:
| Not in the Aljazeera reporting, but Seattle Times says he
| initially was hospitalized for "trouble breathing":
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dea...
|
| And "trouble breathing" could mean any of a whole bunch of
| things, a few of which you probably _can_ give someone
| intentionally...
| RecycledEle wrote:
| MRSA (staph) can be transmitted by wiping a used bandage on
| someone.
| kingspact wrote:
| You could even mail it to somebody and when they open the
| mail, BAM. Or it could be included in the glue of business
| reply mail. Or wiped on your doorknob.
| topspin wrote:
| > 2-0 with whistleblowers
|
| Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is
| enemy action.
|
| How many are left, anyhow?
| emayljames wrote:
| 30 to go it seems
| https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-
| subject-o...
| XorNot wrote:
| EDIT 3: God damn it - forget it. The rate is per 100,000 - the
| site I got it from was terrible [1].
|
| So the numbers don't work at all - the death rate should be about
| ~0.8% in any given year for the full population going by [2]
| (798.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2022).
|
| Just to elaborate: my thesis before I edited this post was that
| if you have a large number of whistleblowers, the chance of
| someone in the population dying of normal causes over a given
| time frame might become quite large.
|
| [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.AMRT.MA
|
| [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm
| kangda123 wrote:
| "That is, in any given recent year, if you take a sample of
| 1000 random males, within a year, almost 16% of them will have
| died."
|
| Surely this can't be true.
| XorNot wrote:
| You'd be correct they're not - it's much lower - per
| 100,000[1]. Should've cross-checked with birth data.
|
| The underlying point though is valid: whether the rate of
| people dying is particularly high depends on quite a few
| factors. The estimate for 2023 in Q2 is 944 / 100,000 = 0.9%
| or so. So within a population of 100, you'd still be
| unsurprised to find 1 person has randomly died of some cause.
| So if you take say, the 30 presumed people who have
| complained about Boeing over the last 3 years and tracked
| them as a quorum...
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-
| dashboard.htm
| blackwateragent wrote:
| OP's original statement of "The death rate in the United
| States per 1000 male adults as of 2022 is 163." comes from
| [1]. That statistic is defined as, "Adult mortality rate,
| male, is the probability of dying between the ages of 15 and
| 60--that is, the probability of a 15-year-old male dying
| before reaching age 60, if subject to age-specific mortality
| rates of the specified year between those ages." [2]
|
| [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.AMRT.MA?end=2
| 022...
|
| [2] https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/health-
| nutri...
| orlp wrote:
| And if you assume that death rate is age agnostic between
| 15 and 60 (it's not of course, but bear with me), then this
| allows you to calculate the yearly chance of death as a US
| male adult as 1 - ((1000 - 163) / 1000)^(1/(60 - 15 + 1)).
| This comes to 0.386%, or ~1 in 259.
| progval wrote:
| > The death rate in the United States per 1000 male adults as
| of 2022 is 163.
|
| Where did you get that number?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
| and https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm are an order of
| magnitude lower for the general population.
| XorNot wrote:
| Yeah I misread the graph - I've corrected the post, although
| the errors sort of cancelled towards the overall result
| anyway. With a CDC reported rate of ~0.8-1% per year, then in
| a group of 10 you'd expect 0.1 deaths if they were suitably
| random. In a group of 100 you'd expect at least 1.
|
| They're not random, but it's also a group with one-way
| membership. John Barnett was a whistleblower from 2017 till
| his death in 2024. So for 7 years he was a Boeing
| whistleblower, but every year he is he's still in that 0.8-1%
| chance of all-cause mortality across the general population
| (likely more given specific non-murder related risk factors).
|
| EDIT: I guess the reason I'm posting up a storm on this is
| not to defend Boeing, but that there's an actual,
| identifiable harm to the conspiracy theory narrative which is
| that it's all fun and games unless _you_ work at Boeing and
| see evidence of wrongdoing. We the public want and need you
| to come forward, and a storm of commentary which says "lol
| Boeing just straight kills people" is all good hot-take fun
| till you're in an actual position where it might feel quite
| real. Even if the odds were _much_ worse, going on the
| internet and saying "this was definitely murder to create a
| chilling effect* is helping create a chilling effect.
| xcv123 wrote:
| > Plug that into the fact that it doesn't work to kill someone
| after they have testified
|
| This way deters future whistleblowers.
|
| If they got rid of whistleblowers before they blew the whistle,
| no one would hear about it. It would not be widely reported.
| Just another random employee who died.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| Wouldn't they want to carry out their whistleblower
| deterrence operation before there were already 30 other
| whistleblowers?
| xcv123 wrote:
| Get rid of whistleblowers before they blow the whistle? So
| they just start killing random employees who look
| suspicious?
| eurleif wrote:
| I agree that it doesn't make much sense to kill someone after
| they've testified, but that 1.6% figure (I think you
| inadvertently omitted a decimal point) doesn't account for age.
| Joshua Dean was 45 (0.4% chance of a 45 year old male dying in
| a given year). John Barnett was 62 (1.5% chance).
| XorNot wrote:
| Yeah I was way off on the death figure, but the point is
| relevant: the risk of a large population and a low
| probability event is that the low probability event can
| become a near certainty due to normal causes.
|
| ~30 whisteblowers[1] over 3 years is a fair number of people
| in your chance pool - not guaranteed, but there's confounding
| factors (i.e. stress, disruption to work and family life
| etc.)
|
| My point was meant to be that saying "there's a chilling
| effect" is also _creating_ the chilling effect by implying it
| 's there, when in reality it can just be something more akin
| to the Birthday Paradox.
|
| [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-
| subject-o...
| jhugo wrote:
| > ~30 whisteblowers[1] over 3 years is a fair number of
| people in your chance pool - not guaranteed, but there's
| confounding factors (i.e. stress, disruption to work and
| family life etc.)
|
| People who already feel like they have nothing to lose
| (which I imagine would be correlated with higher chance of
| death, with causation in either direction) might also be
| more willing to become whistleblowers in the first place.
| Doesn't seem a factor in this case though.
| XorNot wrote:
| The issue is that becoming a Boeing whisteblower is a
| 1-way gate: once you are one, you're a member of that
| group for the rest of your life.
|
| Which means if you have a lot of whistleblowers, because
| you've got a lot of problems, then you have this ever-
| expanding pool of people who are "Boeing whistleblowers".
| Which means the probability a Boeing whistleblower dies
| in any given year goes up as the pool expands.
|
| Which is fine and normal, unless the narrative question
| we're answering is: "is Boeing killing whistleblowers to
| deter future whistleblowers?"
|
| And one conclusion is: "no, but they're being deterred
| anyway, because everyone is insisting they were
| intentionally killed". Basically the "chilling effect" is
| the conspiracy theory, not any actual action.
|
| Though I would note a better way to see if they were
| doing it would be to look at the death rate of _current_
| Boeing employees, since if you were killing
| whistleblowers that 's what it would presumably look like
| - people presently employed by Boeing dying under
| explainable circumstances without ever taking any action.
| jhugo wrote:
| > Though I would note a better way to see if they were
| doing it would be to look at the death rate of current
| Boeing employees, since if you were killing
| whistleblowers that's what it would presumably look like
| - people presently employed by Boeing dying under
| explainable circumstances without ever taking any action.
|
| Well, that wouldn't have much deterrent effect. I don't
| think it's likely that Boeing is knocking off
| whistleblowers, but if they were, it would be more
| effective as a deterrent for them to do it once the
| person became well-known.
| HekeHakkeri wrote:
| Surely the average age of the whistleblowers is quite a bit
| lower than the average male of the whole male pop, or did you
| take that into account?
| eqvinox wrote:
| I've seen some speculation
| [https://zeroes.ca/@maggiejk/112369197303623748] that this looks
| a whole bunch like COVID, and that sounds vaguely on point. Then
| again we're all armchair doctors now...
|
| [Ed.] also note that
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dea...
| says the initial hospitalization was for "trouble breathing";
| this doesn't seem to be in the Aljazeera reporting.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| then again this is why i would kill someone in a way that looks
| like covid if i would be such inclined. also i don't know
| anybody who ever died of covid, not even indirectly. so, yeah
| ...
| drcongo wrote:
| To lose one whistleblower, Mr. Boeing, may be regarded as a
| misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
| sva_ wrote:
| Qatari propaganda outlet Aljazeera on the frontpage. Perhaps it
| could be a replaced by a more credible one?
| isr wrote:
| I reckon the vast majority of planet Earth would take Al
| Jazeera's word over the BBC, CNN, etc, most days of the week.
|
| And twice on Sundays.
| alan-crowe wrote:
| I think that you are missing how credibility and propaganda
| intertwine. The BBC gives you accurate reports on Indonesia and
| Chile to build credibility for when they want to lie to the
| benefit of Britain. Aljazeera give accurate reports on Boeing
| and Airbus to build credibility for when they want to lie to
| the benefit of Qatar. NPR give accurate reports on Angola and
| Bangladesh to build credibility for when they want to lie to
| the benefit of the USA.
|
| One navigates an adversarial information environment by
| harvesting the free truth provided by those seeking to build
| credibility. Then one tries to avoid the flames when the same
| organisations burn their credibility to boost their funders and
| owners.
| xgi wrote:
| Encouraging conspiracy theories against one of the largest
| components of the US military industrial complex is precisely
| something Al Jazeera would be willing to risk losing
| credibility over. Not that they actually would, because there
| could never be sufficient evidence to disprove such a
| conspiracy.
| kome wrote:
| that's crazy. that's the second one... how can the authorities
| ignore the "coincidence"?
|
| government is really weak with the strong and strong with the
| weak.
| lambdaxyzw wrote:
| Do you have any proof it's not actually a coincidence? There
| were 30 whistleblowers, and it's over 3 years.
| kome wrote:
| i hope they won't be stupid enough to kill a third one
| pshirshov wrote:
| What, again? Pure coincidence.
| easywood wrote:
| Good that they have mentioned the actual illness, or people would
| assume it was acute lead poisoning.
| vdfs wrote:
| "Sudden illness"
| Tycho wrote:
| There should be a huge investigation, but since the last death
| was self-inflicted, and this one was due to some mysterious
| illness, I'm not holding my breath. I wonder if the bank accounts
| of coroners ever get audited.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Influenza B is mysterious?
| alamortsubite wrote:
| What's "mysterious" about the flu and MRSA?
| Tycho wrote:
| It's mysterious for healthy people to suddenly die from flu
| in their mid 40s, yes.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Healthy people don't have bacterial co-infections, so no.
| greasegum wrote:
| The movie Michael Clayton springs to mind for some reason.
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| Considering the sensitivity of their profiles, is there going to
| be at least a cursory investigation?
| peteradio wrote:
| It would seem to be pretty rare for this to occur for a man his
| age. Intubation is pretty serious, was that the cause of the
| MRSA?
| datascienced wrote:
| Boeing getting "lucky" again
| sharpshadow wrote:
| If Boeing would only manufacture airplanes they would struggle
| from these recent developments.
| kingspact wrote:
| Boeing's on military welfare, like many companies. It has no need
| to actually produce civilian planes or make profits any more. So
| why not bump off whistleblowers? Anyway the era of air travel for
| the masses is coming to a close if you look at all the different
| plans being hatched to roll up environmental fees into flying
| which are designed to be unaffordable for ordinary people.
| 0xC0ncord wrote:
| Move along. Nothing to see here.
| amne wrote:
| and your username is also a coincidence. moving along now
| bonzini wrote:
| At some point, another one apparently found two missing lug nuts
| on a wheel of his car, and texted his lawyer "if I die I am not
| suicidal".
| eli wrote:
| I doubt that happened.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Got a source for that?
| jader201 wrote:
| No reason to downvote someone for asking for a source (before
| one was given).
|
| A source is helpful context for claims like this, and the
| person that responded with one may not otherwise have had it
| not been questioned.
| sp332 wrote:
| https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-3...
|
| _Inside the whistleblower's text was a photo of a wheel
| missing two lug nuts.... "If anything happens," they told me,
| not for the first time, "I'm not suicidal."_
| eli wrote:
| According to a text from that unnamed (and not reported
| elsewhere?) whistleblower
| lynndotpy wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted and questioned. This
| was widely reported last month when John Barnett was found dead
| from a gunshot wound in the head. AFAIK, (and don't quote me on
| this), only one source had said this.
|
| I don't think it's wildly conspiratorial to discuss this, even
| if the implication is "this might be a pattern of foul play".
|
| Even if both of these deaths are coincidences and within
| statistical reason, I imagine the perceived pattern must have a
| chilling effect on other would-be whistleblowers.
| bonzini wrote:
| Agreed, hence my use of "apparently". Even if it's not
| substantiated further, the implications are much worse than
| those of someone dying of pneumonia (which may be bad luck).
| lionkor wrote:
| Democratic republic and all its bodies working as intended
| baq wrote:
| Boeing has _some_ competent people, apparently. Sad and
| aggravating that it 's this particular department.
| boppo1 wrote:
| C'mon man, haven't you seen Michael Clayton? They're
| independent contractors.
| siva7 wrote:
| Probably the chief of "special operations" dept. could take
| over the QA dept.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| More coincidence? 3rd's the charm, when it will be a trend to
| investigate?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Clever idea, to infect someone with a nasty yet natural
| virus/bacteria. Still, if it doesn't work and unlucky things keep
| happening then authorities may start looking more closely.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Nit: MRSA is a bacterium, not a virus.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Nit picking.
|
| Can't both virus and bacteria be injected?
|
| Has MRSA been used in attacks before?
| a3w wrote:
| Might be a criminal or state behaviour, to chose exposure
| to germs as a method to hurt or kill someone. But that as
| far as we know is not corporate style.
|
| A car bomb, to deter other would-be whistleblowers, is more
| like the typical MO. As has happened with the original
| Panama Papers reporter on Malta.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| A. Who says they need to follow the MO?
|
| B. Plenty of killings that we know of do not follow your
| typical MO. For example, the killing of Litvinenko by
| polonium which can only be created in a nuclear reactor
| (still the most overkill death of a whistleblower ever
| known).
|
| C. In which case, is it possible you think that's the MO,
| because the others didn't get caught? And the
| corporations are now realizing a car bomb is too
| predictable?
| Findecanor wrote:
| BTW, the previous whistleblower: John Barnett, had worked
| at the Material Review Segregation Area (MRSA) at the
| Boeing plant.
|
| If this is just a coincidence, it is a weird one.
| eli wrote:
| How could that possibly be anything other than a
| coincidence?
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| "Let this be a message to all others in our department:
| no one messes with the MRSA".
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| MRSA means Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
|
| A bacterium is a single bacteria and to be resistant there
| needs to be a lot more than one (we all have some on us at
| any time, an infection is greater than or equal to 4
| micrograms/mL).
|
| MRSA is bacterial, not a single bacterium.
| ActionHank wrote:
| Once is by chance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a
| pattern.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is
| enemy action." - Ian Fleming
| ActionHank wrote:
| Thank you for the original.
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| No conspiracies are true, i know that from my time in the
| business world, even in small companies i've never actually
| seen anyone conspire, create hidden alliances og plot something
| so surely in larger companies it's even less likely to happen.
| /s
| lenerdenator wrote:
| "Trust no one! The minute God crapped out the third caveman,
| a conspiracy was hatched against one of them! " -- Col.
| Hunter Gathers, OSI
| peteradio wrote:
| This might be my favorite quote I've ever heard. Thanks!
| morkalork wrote:
| Look at the size of pool of whistleblowers and associated
| people that bad actors would want to harm, their demographic
| and what that demographic's mortality rate is like. Two deaths
| in a year is borderline acceptable, three would be extremely
| unlikely.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| the question is where do you start to count. how about number 1
| is one of those covered up incidents where dozens of people
| died instead of making sure it doesn't happen again?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Four times is God having a vendetta against you. Five times is
| quantum physics wants you dead. Six...
| free_bip wrote:
| Let me guess, we're chalking this one up to coincidence too, are
| we?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm not saying it's _impossible_ , but were I an assassin I'd
| probably want something a little more guaranteed than inducing
| pneumonia.
| jodacola wrote:
| While the first death opened up many questions for me, this death
| was the result of a MRSA infection, stroke, and pneumonia.
|
| This headline feels like it's trying to play on the conspiracy
| theorists among us, with the important bit way down in the
| article. Well, they got my view.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| As though MRSA isn't a great thing to inject into an enemy...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 2% of people are carrying it around; it's a pretty common
| hospital complication.
| imglorp wrote:
| It's also possible that there were multiple, uncoordinated acts
| of malice and thus not a conspiracy. There are many parties
| that would like this to go away, from investors to unions to
| airlines.
| camgunz wrote:
| Can you imagine working at Boeing right now? Utterly terrifying.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yeah, it would be tough being the target of a media cycle and
| conspiracy theories.
| camgunz wrote:
| I know you're being sarcastic, but isn't what you said also
| true?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I wasn't being sarcastic. I honestly think it would be
| tough and weird to be a Boeing Employee today.
|
| Imagine being a good honest engineer on the good honest
| team in a media cycle painting you and your company as
| incompetent or evil. Imagine reading news articles
| insinuating that your leadership team is hiring assassins
| to sneak into hospitals and kill with whistleblowers.
|
| Everything today is just hyperbalized and emotionally
| cranked up to 10.
| jefftk wrote:
| How many people would, if they suddenly died, be reported as a
| "Boeing whistleblower"? The lower this number is, the more
| surprising the death.
| silverquiet wrote:
| What if it's a giant company with a lot of problems? Couldn't
| there be a ton of whistleblowers? It's easy to suspect foul
| play, but I don't know how pneumonia subsequent to MRSA
| infection could be deployed as a weapon of assassination. And
| I'd imagine that every part of being a whistleblower is
| depressing; you are inevitably alienated from one of your main
| social groups when you do so.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Reports say there were seven whistleblowers in the original
| 737 Max hearing.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It also ought to be pretty shocking, if things are so bad at
| Boeing that multiple whistleblowers dying is just an expected
| thing as a result of statistics.
|
| I mean that's probably the more likely story than MRSA
| corporate assassins. But it is still pretty nuts, right?
| queuebert wrote:
| > ... he had contracted pneumonia in April and suffered a stroke
| following an MSRA infection.
|
| That should be "MRSA", for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
| aureus. Terrible fact checking.
|
| (But they did helpfully provide a hyperlink to Facebook-related
| stories.)
| a3w wrote:
| Bacterial infection, grammatical inflection, both natural
| causes of death [According to uncyclopedia Wiki probably? Don't
| ask me, I am not germ-anist here in germ-any]
| binarymax wrote:
| I'm having a hard time seeing how pneumonia and stroke could be
| inflicted on a person as part of a cover up. Seems like this was
| just unfortunate illness.
| outime wrote:
| I have no idea but if many decades ago they revealed this [1],
| at this point it's safe to assume there are much better things.
|
| [1] https://www.military.com/video/guns/pistols/cias-secret-
| hear...
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Do you know what the toxin was?
| erikerikson wrote:
| I once worked with a researcher who was apparently the world's
| expert on giving mice strokes. Pneumonia seems more difficult.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| certainly not out of reach for a determined and powerful
| adversary. infecting someone with a respiratory virus isn't
| exactly rocket science. just spraying a subperceptibly thin
| aerosol into someone's face should do it.
| siamesedream wrote:
| Or putting black mold in the air ducts in their home. Easy
| to pass off as just poor home maintenance.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| You're putting yourself at a massive risk though. This is
| an airborne bacteria, the "assassin" is probably going to
| get infected too.
| stusmall wrote:
| What a business card
| echelon wrote:
| MRSA [1], though? He could have been inoculated with it.
|
| MRSA is awful, difficult or impossible to clear, and can
| certainly be fatal.
|
| This could be a very diabolical way to assassinate someone.
|
| How would you be able to trace it? It could have been laced in
| his food or drink. Or simply transfered by touch (got on his
| hands, then wiped on his face or nose). Or aerosolized as he
| walked by.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-
| resistant_Staphylo...
| cogman10 wrote:
| MRSA is fairly common especially in hospital settings. After
| all, you have a setting where people are coming in sick with
| a disease that is hard to kill and resistant to antibiotics.
| foxyv wrote:
| It's also trivially easy to culture MRSA. A lot of university
| micro-bio classes induce anti-biotic resistance in e-coli as
| an experiment for under graduates.
| echelon wrote:
| Can confirm. I did undergraduate bio and cultured lots of
| different bacteria species. I even used agrobacterium
| (which smell like feet) to clone genes into plants.
|
| This is easily within the reach of DIY bio folks. You just
| need a freezer, bath, growth serum, and other easy inputs.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are 3 million Americans unknowingly walking around with
| MRSA in their nose right now, all around us. It is so common
| I'm not sure it would be a good assassination weapon even if
| you tried.
| echelon wrote:
| It matters where the infection takes hold. If it's in the
| respiratory system, that's a much different disease than
| surface legions and boils.
| chasil wrote:
| Up to 30 of us carry staph variants in our noses.
|
| https://now.uiowa.edu/news/2013/06/be-gone-bacteria
| peteradio wrote:
| Guy comes in with routine influenza, transfer him to emergency,
| pacify him and forcibly intubate him with MRSA infected tube.
| The rest happens as if by mistake.
| kodt wrote:
| So now Boeing and the hospital staff are in on the
| conspiracy. This place is turning into reddit.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Historically companies have not shyed away from killing
| people for profit. Boeing is a very very well connected
| company, and it can barely be considered a truly private
| company to begin with anyway.
| kodt wrote:
| So now the US government is involved too :)
|
| It seems the risks of murdering whistleblowers,
| especially after they have already testified, is too
| great. They just want revenge here?
| g00gler wrote:
| Just pointing out, now these guys will never be on 60
| minutes or giving interviews to popular mechanics, Rogan
| or Lex Friedman. Whatever testimony is made available
| will be all that we have on the topic.
| kodt wrote:
| And that is better for Boeing than people believing they
| were murdered by Boeing?
| g00gler wrote:
| One guy killed himself and the other got MERSA. Only
| kooks believe that Boeing killed them!
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Historically companies have _absolutely_ shied away from
| killing people.
|
| Has it happened, yes. Is it commonplace, absolutely not!
|
| nobody considers Boeing a private company. It is publicly
| traded on the stock market.
| sophacles wrote:
| Boeing is a private company in the sense that its stock
| is owned by private indviduals as opposed to entities
| like Amtrak, USPS, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc, which
| are companies that are owned by the government. That is
| it's a private sector company (vs public sector or
| government).
|
| It's an admittedly weird overloading of the term "private
| company" but it's a useful thing to know about - usually
| context clues can help, but definitely gives me a pause
| when I encounter the term.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I agree contacts please help a lot, but in this case the
| context was someone that thinks companies casually murder
| people and that Boeing is de facto socially owned because
| of the influence that Boeing has. I'm not sure how
| oversized influence on government translates to citizen
| ownership, but asking for coherence is probably too much.
|
| think using the full terms publicly/privately traded can
| help a lot in this area.
| sophacles wrote:
| It's also worth noting that "killing people for profit"
| is not limited to murder: companies kill people all the
| time - rarely in the form of murder, less rarely in the
| form of homicide (think security and military
| contractors), commonly in the form of gross negligence,
| safety violations, and polution.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If someone thinks that building bombs or killing via
| pollution is evidence for homicide, they are making a
| gross category error. The former has very little bearing
| on the latter.
| highcountess wrote:
| He didn't say that's what happened, just someone did not
| understand how it could be done. The response suggested a
| possible way it could have been done. People are
| blackmailed and encouraged with carrots to do all kinds of
| extreme things. I know this for a fact.
|
| I think people massively underestimate what a huge keystone
| Boeing is in the American empire. The top of the system has
| rapidly started getting extremely anxious about the
| stability of the whole system, especially as they are
| fomenting war with China and Russia and their plans not
| only becoming unstable, but actions they've taken revealing
| themselves as extreme risks in the light of stalled
| progression and unaccounted faults like what has been
| observed at Boeing the last years.
|
| I personally see just the suspicion of what happened to
| these folks far more is a symptom of a failing system than
| is the failing system had neutralized them in hopes of
| snuffing out threats to keystone components if the empire.
| The people arts loosing confidence in the competence of the
| system, a far greater threat than even Boeing failing.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's quickly becoming worse than Reddit w/ regard to
| conspiracy nonsense that hits the first page within 5
| minutes of being posted. Either HN loves conspiracy
| nonsense or it's being played by inauthentic actors.
| colpabar wrote:
| What is so hard to believe about a weapons manufacturer
| killing someone?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| My problem is that you're all implying an unprecedented
| criminal conspiracy and cover up with absolutely no
| evidence. My problem is mainly the no evidence part and
| that's not why I come here- I come here for
| evidence/fact-based discussion. Not conspiracy nonsense.
| With this amount of evidence we could claim anything and
| everything!
| orthecreedence wrote:
| I don't think anybody's saying "This happened!" but are
| rather expressing a deep (and well-founded) distrust for
| the system in which _whatever did actually happen_
| occurred.
| samatman wrote:
| This is specifically against the guidelines:
|
| > _Please don 't post comments saying that HN is turning
| into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the
| hills._
| highcountess wrote:
| Que the leaked pentagon briefing from ... what was it, 12 years
| ago ... about the use of "vaccines" to alter the brain
| chemistry of people with "extremist" views, so they too may
| benefit from approved values.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's a long history of zany ideas being looked at. I'm not
| inclined to conclude it's technologically feasible just from
| that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb, for example.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| both is very easy to achieve and also kind of medically obvious
| ghusto wrote:
| I'm not at all inclined to believe this is anything more than a
| co-incidence, but those things can definitely be induced in a
| way that's difficult to detect.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| The US military used to have a stockpile of Q-fever bioweapons,
| that they claim to have destroyed. Q-fever can cause pneumonia.
| dralley wrote:
| A fucking cold can also cause pneumonia. There are thousands
| of things that cause pneumonia. WTF are you talking about.
| coldtea wrote:
| He talks about a historical factoid. He also talks about
| something that can induce pneumonia that's deadly, not just
| waiting for some common cold to turn to pneumonia in an off
| chance. WTF about what he is talking about was difficult to
| parse?
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Doubt Boeing or its spook going to use a bioweapon to off a
| whistleblower. Too complex, too many parties involved, too
| much of a trail, too high consequences if caught (i.e.
| terrorism), too high survival % vs. the panoply of less
| exotic options. It's a Wile E. Coyote-level plot.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Pneumonia is just a lung infection, so I imagine there's a
| number of ways you can make a person to unknowingly inhale
| something.
|
| However, it looks way too complicated for a plot. There are
| many tried and proven methods of getting rid of people. Spooks
| aren't actually _that_ good in hiding their works - we know
| about a lot of cases where people were assassinated (of course,
| we may also not know about many, but I think we have a good
| sample). Among those, we have a lot of ways it can be done -
| shootings, stabbings, explosions, poisons, drownings, falling
| from heights, whatever - but I can 't remember any case where a
| biological agent were used. And thinking about it - biological
| agents are hard to produce, hard to handle, unstable,
| unpredictable in use, can't be properly targeted, why would
| anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and more common
| methods?
|
| So while it does look suspicious on its face, I'd have hard
| time believing it's an example of an assassination.
| candiodari wrote:
| "Something?". Having them inhale oil or dirt will do it.
| Pneumonia is usually caused by a bacteria that's just
| everywhere (though usually on the skin), that's too simple.
| If it starts growing in your lungs, you can try antibiotics.
| If that doesn't work, well, nice knowing you.
|
| We are surrounded by lethal bacteria. That humans survive
| depends on the immune system having a 100% success rate
| preventing bacteria from forming even a small colony in the
| lungs (and several other places, like the teeth, where
| infections can rapidly and surprisingly turn deadly)
|
| This is why people cough so extremely hard when inhaling
| solid or liquid stuff in their windpipes.
|
| Also this happens all the time. That someone dies from
| pneumonia is not uncommon (though for oil it's usually
| someone who manages to spray themselves with aerosolized oil
| at work). So even if an autopsy found a few specs of dirt in
| the lungs, and even if they actually trace that to be the
| cause, that's not extremely suspicious. (Plus why would they
| check? Obviously with a pneumonia patient you know the cause
| of death)
| matsemann wrote:
| This sounds a bit like the toupee fallacy - you have never
| seen a good toupee, because the good ones you don't recognize
| as anything other than normal hair.
| prmph wrote:
| > why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and
| more common methods?
|
| So that you will think it is not suspicious
| generalizations wrote:
| > Spooks aren't actually that good in hiding their works
|
| This is pretty similar to the old argument about why mass
| surveillance is unlikely to be happening - we're just not
| that good at keeping secrets. Seems like a pretty safe bet
| that there's good spooks who are good at hiding their works.
|
| > we know about a lot of cases where people were assassinated
| (of course, we may also not know about many, but I think we
| have a good sample). Among those, we have a lot of ways it
| can be done
|
| Let's not forget about survivorship bias. You only know about
| the assassinations you know about. You don't know about the
| assassinations that were successfully kept secret.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| > This is pretty similar to the old argument about why mass
| surveillance is unlikely to be happening - we're just not
| that good at keeping secrets.
|
| Not a great example since we know for a fact that mass
| surveillance is happening. The U.S. Congress just voted to
| extend and expand it.
| zarzavat wrote:
| I believe that was indeed their point. People used to
| dismiss mass surveillance of the US on its people as a
| crackpot conspiracy theory, until the full extent of it
| was revealed by Snowden.
|
| Some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Just a
| handful though.
| smsm42 wrote:
| > Seems like a pretty safe bet that there's good spooks who
| are good at hiding their works.
|
| But that's not true - actually, we learned about the mass
| surveillance reasonably soon after it started. They aren't
| actually good at hiding. True, there was a period that
| somebody could say "we haven't learned about it _yet_ so it
| probably doesn 't exist" - which would be fallacious - but
| within a reasonable period of time, that option had
| disappeared.
|
| Now, with assassinations, the biological weapons option has
| been existing for almost 100 years. If that were so common
| that even corporate machinators don't hesitate to use it to
| silence a witness of fairly low importance - we'd have
| heard at least a couple of cases, at least some rumors or
| defector reports. Just as we did with all other means of
| getting rid of witnesses. Since we didn't, I attribute very
| low probability to the possibility that this is how we
| learn about this being common.
|
| > You don't know about the assassinations that were
| successfully kept secret.
|
| Yes, I mentioned that in my comment. However, as I also
| mentioned, we have, over the years, pretty generous sample
| out of the mass of all assassinations. It would be rather
| weird if assassinations specifically using biological
| agents were somehow so special that while we have leaks
| about pretty much every other kind, we don't have any
| indications specifically about those. One could assume that
| is because this method is used only by the very best
| operatives going for very high-value target - but then we'd
| need to explain why suddenly Boeing corporates have access
| to it to deal with a pretty low-grade issue (and frankly I
| don't even see how it helps them by now - they are so deep
| in doo-doo anyway that one less witness is not going to
| save them). Such assumptions do not form a coherent picture
| if you look at the likelihood of the events involved.
| rising-sky wrote:
| > why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and
| more common methods?
|
| Like... head shot in an alley? suffocating them in their
| sleep? drowning them in a body of water?
|
| I think you can probably answer your question yourself if you
| think about it
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Spooks aren 't actually that good in hiding their works_
|
| That's because it's the failures we learn about. Which could
| be 90% or 5% of "their works".
|
| But never mind the spooks. We are also told "there's no
| perfect crime". Yet, less than half the murders get solved in
| the US, for example:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-
| unso...
| generalizations wrote:
| Similar - the average IQ of prison inmates is lower than
| the general population. Which can be taken to imply that we
| only catch the dumb ones.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| That only really holds if you assume criminal behavior is
| evenly distributed among the bell curve of IQ, which is
| is a fairly large assumption!
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| Not really. It depends more on how you interpret the
| phrase "the dumb ones." It's clear that if the IQ
| distribution of prisoners skews lower than the general
| population, then we only catch "the dumb ones" with
| respect to the general population. What isn't necessarily
| clear is that we only catch "the dumb ones" with respect
| to the IQ distribution of all criminals. (I don't think
| we even know or have any good way of determining what the
| IQ distribution of all criminals even is, do we?) It's
| just another instance where plain language can fail to be
| precise.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The Russians _want_ you to know they did it; just with
| plausible deniability.
|
| They brought back the time-tested art of defenestration.
| lordnacho wrote:
| This is a good point. People here seem to be assuming that
| Boeing is competent at carrying out hits, which I highly
| doubt. We should consider whether they have actually tried
| it on a bunch of people.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| The murders not being solved aren't "Perfect crimes". It's
| a matter of resources and timing.
|
| 99% of murder investigations mostly boil down to:
|
| 1. Literally witnessed by one or more people, possibly
| officers or on camera. 2. They brag about it. 3. A brief
| investigation of friends and family where it turns out so
| and so always hated them and happens to have a gun, and hey
| look at that the ballistics match.
|
| There are a very small number of officers in comparison to
| the total population (as it should be), and the vast
| majority of them are not the kind being assigned to
| homicide.
|
| Some major % of the "unsolved" murders in the US that
| mostly just get thrown on the pile because they find out 2
| weeks later and either can't identify the victim, or can't
| find enough useful information to start investigating.
| Forensics is very useful, but hardly as portrayed in shows
| like CSI, and the simple realities of "well we didn't find
| much, found out weeks later, and it'll be weeks before we
| get any lab results back" often just mean there's 10 other
| "no shit" murders to deal with instead.
|
| And this isn't even on the core topic here of "could this
| have been a hit by Boeing", which is just insanely
| unbelievable, ESPECIALLY given the method. People are off
| handledly mentioning things like Ricin or Polonoium
| attacks, but the important things about those is that they
| are INSANELY LETHAL and extremely easy to control.
|
| "Lets infect him with pneumonia that turns into MRSA" has
| got to be one of the most risky, difficult, expensive, and
| unreliable methods of killing someone ever.
|
| Hell if you want deniability there's probably at least 10
| or so ways to easily cause a human to have a heart attack
| and look like they died of natural causes as compared to
| some magic MRSA gun.
| ksherlock wrote:
| If you're a spook for an authoritarian government, it's
| probably better for your work to be somewhat visible to keep
| the serfs in line.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| > why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and
| more common methods?
|
| Ask Suge Knight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxPTtFv4AkM
|
| You can assume criminals have gotten better at this type of
| thing since 1995
| ekianjo wrote:
| ricin was used BY the Soviet Union and Russia also used
| radioactive agents to kill someone not super long ago. And a
| nerve agent was used to kill someone close to Kim too
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-
| na...
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I figure there's like a 99% chance it happened naturally, and a
| 1% chance it was the most brilliant assasination of all time
| specifically because any rational person would think it's
| unlikely to have been one.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| I think there were some heavy metal poisons (not Alice Cooper
| or Bret Michaels) that had symptoms of pneumonia, and the
| treatment for pneumonia fucked up the patient a bit.
| normalaccess wrote:
| Running someones immune system or poisoning them is a fantastic
| way to get plausible deniability. No smoking gun...
|
| Plausible Deniability is when a person's involvement or
| culpability in an event might be denied, or at least mitigated,
| by creating a situation where they can claim ignorance or an
| inability to act.
| jmcgough wrote:
| There are a lot of easy ways to give someone pneumonia, like
| aspiration.
| lubesGordi wrote:
| Agreed. Being a whistleblower is probably very stressful.
| alex_lav wrote:
| Not to say that I believe it happened, but there is a
| difference between actual cause of death and reported cause of
| death. As in, just because it was written down that pneumonia
| and stroke were involved doesn't necessarily make it true.
|
| Again, I do not believe this happened, but that's probably how
| you'd do it.
| walterbell wrote:
| In 2020 and 2021, there was endless online discussion of
| airborne pathogen distribution, measurement and defense.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I don't think too many spooks want to handle something as
| dangerous as MRSA. How do you even infect someone with that
| without infecting yourself in the process.
| autoexec wrote:
| He had a sudden mysterious illness that caused him to have
| problems breathing. If this were a cover up, that illness would
| have been the cover up attempt, not the pneumonia. The
| breathing problems required the whistleblower to be intubated
| and he later developed pneumonia, and later still MRSA.
|
| The pneumonia and MRSA were certainly just an unfortunate
| illness. The more conspiratorial can debate over if the
| original breathing difficulties that brought him into the
| hospital were the result of an assassination attempt or not.
| For all we know he just had Covid.
| swarnie wrote:
| All in on Boeing.
|
| Any company willing to murder two people to maintain the share
| price is an excellent investment in my books.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You should re-think that. First, it's immoral. Second, it's
| highly unwise.
|
| If the whistleblowers are right, then planes are going to keep
| breaking. If planes keep breaking, the share price is going to
| collapse.
| greenavocado wrote:
| A defense contract will suddenly materialize
| kergonath wrote:
| It sounded like sarcasm, to be honest.
| swarnie wrote:
| It was but i also don't see the civilian arm of the USAF
| ever going broke.
|
| Loading up.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| I don't know. Ford Motor Company and General Motors still
| exist after their inventive ways to circumvent repairs that
| could have saved lives. Yes, i know they are very sorry.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Companies don't murder people. People murder people.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Corporate personhood. Checkmate!
| anderber wrote:
| Companies are people S(deg_deg)S
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Then why don't they get sued to the max?
| phatfish wrote:
| Because they are single entity with "rights" when it
| benefits them (them being actual real people with a
| significant stake or control), and completely
| unaccountable in a finger-pointy way when it doesn't.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Will our federal government get off their asses and investigate
| this one?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I hope not. There was nothing suspicious
| cies wrote:
| They may also finally look into all the people that died
| surrounding the Clintons? Fucking wild west if you ask me
| (which according to historians was a pretty peaceful place
| unlike how it's portrayed in popular culture).
| sidcool wrote:
| I thought this only happened in second and third world countries.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| Yes
| dagmx wrote:
| Isn't that viewpoint just the result of nationalist propaganda
| in education/media in the US?
|
| The US is infamous for extra judicial killings, both
| domestically and internationally.
| lupire wrote:
| That's not what the world numbers mean.
| nojs wrote:
| > His mother wrote on Facebook that he had contracted pneumonia
| in April and suffered a stroke following an MSRA infection.
|
| I love a good conspiracy theory but this sounds pretty far
| fetched, how do you cause someone to contract pneumonia?
| chakintosh wrote:
| > His mother wrote on Facebook that he had contracted pneumonia
| in April and suffered a stroke following an MSRA infection.
|
| So which one is it? Suddenly or not?
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I mean, all death is sudden when you think about it.
|
| (I say this with all of the seriousness of a 1980s British
| comedian who probably thought it before I did)
| masfuerte wrote:
| It's like the Hemingway quote:
|
| "How did you go bankrupt?"
|
| "Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly."
| deadbabe wrote:
| It's trivial to make someone's cause of death appear completely
| natural if you know how. Even better if you know they have some
| pre-existing condition you could leverage.
| belter wrote:
| Top Boeing Shareholders -
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052116/top-3-...
| Brosper wrote:
| Whops...
| treprinum wrote:
| Is there a must have course on executive voodoo and "dark
| rhetoric" for execs of large dysfunctional companies? Which MBA
| teaches sociopathic courses like these? I only know about one
| such college in Paris...
| _xander wrote:
| The Onion: "Boeing Promotes Mysterious Employee Known Only As
| 'The Panther'": https://www.theonion.com/boeing-promotes-
| mysterious-employee...
| hx8 wrote:
| The thing about being suspected of one murder is that you tend to
| get blamed for other deaths.
| hinkley wrote:
| You'll never make a good Dread Pirate Robert's with that
| attitude.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| People need to put down the spy thriller books.
|
| Dude was sick. _Really sick_. Had been for awhile. Nothing
| nefarious here, just a shitty clickbait title to get people riled
| up as usual.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| ""He was 45, had been in good health and was noted for having a
| healthy lifestyle.""
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dea...
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| He had pneumonia _and_ MRSA. As we just saw with covid,
| respiratory issues can be a death sentence easily.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Sure. But from Healthy to Dead in 2 weeks is still pretty
| extreme. It isn't like pneumonia and MRSA aren't known
| factors.
|
| Perhaps a 'weaponized' MRSA?
| brianjking wrote:
| Okay, this is just nuts at this point.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| This was before use of the internet was widespread, but I knew a
| women who worked at a regional airport. She repeatedly reported
| safety violations to the (politically connected) operator of the
| airport, but was ignored. Eventually, she reported them to the
| FAA who launched an investigation.
|
| - She started receiving threatening phone calls
|
| - Pictures of her kids walking home from school showed up in her
| mailbox
|
| - Her house was shot up in the middle of the night
|
| - The family dog was killed, disassembled, and the parts were
| strung up in the house
|
| The police wouldn't do anything and she eventually had to quit
| her job and move out of the county.
| lxgr wrote:
| Similar things happened to journalists and activist short
| sellers reporting on irregularities at Wirecard before it all
| blew up. (The German authorities reacted swiftly to the reports
| by... banning short sales of Wirecard shares and investigating
| the journalists for market manipulation.)
|
| Occasionally, reality apparently is as crass as some classic
| corporate conspiracy thrillers suggest.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Do you have a source or reference for this? I'd be really
| surprised if some of your items (e.g. her house being shot up,
| her dog "disassembled") wouldn't result in some level of
| journalistic coverage.
|
| My apologies, but my time on the Internet has definitely
| trained me to be skeptical of extreme reports that make me
| enraged, without additional evidence.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I suppose one would have to take OP's word. A 3 year old
| account doesn't seem to be the kind (hopefully) engaging in
| false rumors. And after all this I definitely wouldn't expect
| her to go forward lest her family gets harmed.
|
| Sidenote, but coming from a country where it's "known" that
| speaking up against corruption can likely end up killing you,
| it's funny to see people being skeptical about it. It's maybe
| similar to racism/sexism - yes, don't believe anything
| without proof - but if someone claims it's happened and give
| details, it's certainly quite plausible.
| arp242 wrote:
| People exaggerate or flat-out lie about these sort of
| things all the time if they feel victimized (rightfully or
| not). Threatening phone calls I can believe, but it gets
| more and more unbelievable the further down the list.
|
| I make no judgements, but this is absolutely a "trust, but
| verify" type of situation IMHO.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| what county? sounds evil-crazy obviously
| hinkley wrote:
| This sounds like a movie plot where the mafia has taken over a
| major corporation.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I know a lot more women who have had this kind of thing happen
| to them, and they didn't work in airlines. They were just women
| with stalkers.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Just call Liam Neeson.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The eBay stalking case
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal) suggests
| this isn't as implausible as it sounds.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Frankly tame compared to the Wolf Tree case.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdga/pr/two-sentenced-their-
| rol...
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I'm not surprised to read this, as it only takes 1-2 people to
| do these sorts of things, and some people are capable of it.
| They may not be totally mentally stable, or they feel
| desperate, or confident they can get away with it, or all of
| the above.
|
| American history is full of these sorts of incidents of
| harassment, violence, and sometimes even murder. The history of
| the labor movement or civil rights movement is sobering.
|
| It doesn't take a CEO making a call to some assassin on the
| corporate payroll. Usually the reality is far more banal: a
| supervisor or coworker or neighbor who just takes matters into
| their own hands.
|
| To be clear, I'm NOT claiming that that is what happened to
| Josh Dean; I'm speaking generally about people getting harassed
| for trying to do what they think is the right thing.
| sagebird wrote:
| Perhaps the whistle itself is contaminated.
| m00x wrote:
| Damn, what a crazy coincidence.
| bicijay wrote:
| Shit, im gonna play the devils advocate... Unless they forged the
| cause of death, we are indeed having a surge in pneumonia cases
| around the globe...
| andai wrote:
| Is deadly infection really a viable assassination method? Seems
| kind of like blowing a zero day exploit. Doesn't really seem
| worth it?
| kube-system wrote:
| MRSA was already killing 120,000+ people per year already. It
| is nasty shit.
| whatamidoingyo wrote:
| Are there other whistleblowers?
|
| If there are, I can't imagine how they feel.
| josu wrote:
| According to this article there are 30[1]. Another
| whistleblower allegedly committed suicide two months ago [2].
|
| [1] "Aside from Mr Barnett and Mr Dean, there are some 30
| Boeing whistleblowers, including Mr Salehpour."
| https://theloadstar.com/im-scared-says-boeing-
| whistleblower-....
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barnett_(whistleblower)
| foobarian wrote:
| Could be there are just a lot of Boeing whistleblowers.
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| Yes, 2 out of how many? The denominator is important here.
| DavidSJ wrote:
| Something something survivorship bias plane meme. But maybe
| that one's in poor taste under the circumstances.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Would punch too many holes in the argument :)
| dmbche wrote:
| I believe there were 7
|
| Edit0: Nope - 32 whistleblower complaints in the last three
| years, but I imagine some of those could be from the same
| person - so up to 32.
| https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-subject-o...
| sophacles wrote:
| Either way, boeing looks kinda suspect here...
|
| Small number of whistle-blowers: boeing looks pretty suspect,
| because why do they keep dying?
|
| Large number of whistle-blowers: boeing looks pretty suspect,
| because why so many?
| causal wrote:
| Yeah, so perhaps there's no conspiracy of assassination. But if
| you're so shady that SO many people have come forward to blow
| the whistle that MULTIPLE are likely to die purely by chance in
| the course of investigation - you probably deserve whatever
| suspicion you're getting by that point.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| ""He was 45, had been in good health and was noted for having a
| healthy lifestyle.""
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dea...
|
| From Healthy to Dead in 2 weeks is still pretty extreme. It isn't
| like pneumonia and MRSA aren't known factors.
|
| Perhaps a 'weaponized' MRSA?
| eep_social wrote:
| Stress kills and he was under a lot of stress but I'm not sure
| how anyone would be able to produce enough evidence to be
| certain.
| samdcbu wrote:
| Antibiotic resistant MRSA kills thousands of people a year in
| the US. The idea that he went to the hospital with pneumonia
| and then contracted antibiotic resistant MRSA from the hospital
| environment is very plausible.
| marricks wrote:
| Pretty sure the cause of death "seeming very plausible" is
| highly valued.
| wrs wrote:
| Indeed. That doesn't make it less plausible.
| withinboredom wrote:
| > then contracted antibiotic resistant MRSA from the hospital
| environment is very plausible.
|
| Wouldn't other people in the hospital contract it as well?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| MRSA is already a weaponized MRSA.
|
| I don't think people who don't spend a lot of time in hospitals
| have any idea how quickly a person's fortune can change.
| They're still the best place to care for the sick, but they're
| also hotbeds of disease because, hey, we keep all the sick
| people there.
|
| One overlooked sanitization, one visit from a relative who
| touched the wrong thing on the way to your room, one spot of
| genetic bad luck that makes you particularly susceptible to
| infections you'd be likeliest to encounter _in_ a hospital, one
| never-diagnosed allergic response... That 's all she wrote.
| Doesn't matter over-much how healthy you were before because
| "on your back struggling to breathe for days on end in a
| strange environment" is a wildly different environment to
| "enjoying the fresh mountain air close to home."
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Boeing and Conspiracies aside, this is the scary thing.
|
| Discussing 'conspiracies' is actually an entertainment so we
| don't have to think about the reality like anti-biotic
| resistant diseases that could cause another pandemic.
|
| Easier to contemplate secret assassin organizations, hired by
| big Corps. Or a Boeing, Military Industrial complex, CIA
| connected death squad.
| intunderflow wrote:
| The only thing more dangerous than flying on Boeing appears to be
| criticising them
| kube-system wrote:
| The total number of deaths in _all_ airplane crashes combined
| since 1970 is about as much as MRSA kills in 8 months of a
| typical year.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I'm not sure what you think this shows.
|
| If we had an organization responsible and capable of
| preventing MRSA deaths, and was failing to do so, they'd be
| in prison at 8 million deaths.
|
| The issue here isn't how many deaths, it's whether boeing has
| a duty and capability to prevent them; whether it has failed
| to do so; and whether this failure has caused a systematic
| problem with its recent planes that could lead to more
| deaths.
|
| On all accounts it seems: yes, they've gutted product quality
| and it has lead to severe accidents.
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm simply pointing out the relative frequency of these
| incidents, that's all.
|
| > If we had an organization responsible and capable of
| preventing MRSA deaths
|
| MRSA is known for spreading in hospital settings. Hospitals
| are supposed to prevent this from happening, but it is
| hard.
| sxg wrote:
| > Hospitals are supposed to prevent this from happening,
| but it is hard.
|
| Physician here. Hospitals do work to prevent the spread,
| and it is hard--so much so that it's nearly inevitable.
| MRSA is a naturally occurring part of the respiratory
| tract and skin. How do you stop that? Also important to
| note that those who do acquire and die from MRSA
| infections tend to be relatively ill to begin with.
| Usually those patients are admitted to the hospital for
| some other serious issue and then develop a MRSA
| infection either from their own body or the hospital.
| While you can mitigate the latter, you can't do anything
| about the former.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > relative frequency of these incidents
|
| Is about the same as frequency with which Putin kills his
| political opponents. [1]. So either frequency is not a
| very good way of judging criminal culpability and
| morality, or Putin is a great guy.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/putin-critics-dead-full-list-
| navaln...
| singleshot_ wrote:
| I agree, preventing the spread of illness in a hospital
| sounds challenging.
|
| You know what isn't very hard, is making sure nuts are on
| bolts instead of in the trash.
| kube-system wrote:
| I agree! And if Boeing can't manage to do that, they
| probably can't manage to surreptitiously assassinate
| people. Infectious disease is more than common enough on
| its own to explain this.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Trapped by my own logic. Totally fair and also grounded
| in the article rather than slinging mud at Boing. Well
| put.
| clankyclanker wrote:
| ...but, like drowning, plane crashes aren't infectious.
|
| There might be something to your analogy if a crash in
| Boise caused everyone in town to come down with a plane
| to the head, but that's not how that works so it's kind
| of apples to oranges.
| electric_mayhem wrote:
| So you're saying there's a tremendous allowance to be made
| for quality to diminish further before you feel like it's a
| real problem?
| kube-system wrote:
| No, I'm saying that this MRSA infection was likely natural.
| About 3 million Americans are MRSA carriers.
| atlas_hugged wrote:
| While your point is perfectly valid, I think it should
| include fairer comparisons than infectious diseases. Most
| people don't willingly participate in something that would
| risk MRSA, whereas many do fly. Not sure what a better
| comparison would be though.
|
| In this case, it would be something that includes: number of
| deaths or injury or near death (door flying off and
| potentially getting sucked out at 30000 ft) due to flying
| Boeing vs driving X number of miles in a car.
|
| This would be a similarly rare occurrence but would be nice
| to see the comparison between plane types.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Viruses tend to kill the old and the sick whereas plane
| crashes kill all equally.
| reactordev wrote:
| You don't find it concerning and possibly suspicious that
| both whistleblowers have died? The first one said "if
| anything happens to me, it's not suicide". Now this...
| kube-system wrote:
| > The first one said "if anything happens to me, it's not
| suicide".
|
| That's what one of his female friends claimed he said. You
| don't think it's more likely that a grown man of the boomer
| generation might not be up-front about his mental health to
| his female friends?
|
| Meanwhile, others who were closer to him said he was having
| a tough time. And he was found in his own truck, shot with
| his own gun, with his hand on the trigger, and a note,
| across state lines from where he lived. And the responding
| investigators didn't report any signs of foul play.
|
| It's certainly a possibly, but the evidence just doesn't
| add up that way. As humans, our brains are wired to fall
| for the narrative fallacy, even when it isn't a good
| explanation.
| Zenzero wrote:
| This is just juxtaposition of two completely unrelated
| things. The only relationship they have is an endpoint of
| death.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I dunno, I'd imagine that being on the receiving end of a
| Boeing Harpoon missile is probably a bit more dangerous.
| phaedryx wrote:
| Could the explanation be that being a whistleblower is really
| stressful and hard on your health?
| marricks wrote:
| Sure, but I'm not sure why we have to invent excuses for
| companies. They create them themselves just fine.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I wouldn't say "expecting horses and not zebra" is "creating
| excuses."
|
| You can refrain from giving Boeing the benefit of the doubt
| here and still come to the conclusion "It's not weird that
| someone didn't recover from a respiratory infection during
| flu season."
| ryandrake wrote:
| I wonder how many whistleblowers (raw number or percentage)
| dying would cross the threshold where we don't give Boeing
| the benefit of doubt or explain it as a coincidence. Seems
| the answer so far on HN is "unknown but at least greater
| than two."
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Me personally: I find the first death extremely
| suspicious and someone with MRSA dying in a hospital not
| very suspicious.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Given that he died of MRSA in a hospital two weeks after
| falling ill, yes.
| sevagh wrote:
| That's how the thread dismissed the last one.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| The first Boeing whistleblower to "off himself" allegedly told
| his family shortly before he died that if anything happened to
| him, "it's not suicide."
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/john-barnett-boeing-whistleblower-p...
| sciolistse wrote:
| From what I've seen that's kind of overselling it, his own
| family hasn't claimed that he said that, an anonymous person
| who claimed to be a friend of his did.
|
| But I may have missed any further developments to actually
| verify that his family had been told something similar.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Yeah, his family said "He was suffering from PTSD and anxiety
| attacks as a result of being subjected to the hostile work
| environment at Boeing which we believe led to his death". As
| much as a conspiracy for fear of being next could come into
| it I'd have to believe it'd be more than a lone and anonymous
| friend of the family that would speak out if confided with
| this info.
|
| Between that and the 30 some whistleblowers in the last 5
| years that two died close to one another isn't all that
| damning.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-barnett-boeing-
| whistleblow...
| simplicio wrote:
| And in Barnett's case, he'd been talking since 2019. Even
| if one thinks Boeing would be willing to have people
| murdered, the time to do so would be _before_ they became
| public whistleblowers, not a half-decade later.
| codedokode wrote:
| Maybe they were hoping he will give up himself due to
| bureaucracy.
| dralley wrote:
| >But I may have missed any further developments to actually
| verify that his family had been told something similar.
|
| You have not, his family thinks he killed himself, but blames
| Boeing for making his life awful for several years.
| TylerE wrote:
| An unarmed "family friend" who hadn't spoken to him in over a
| decade. Total hearsay at best.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Apropos of the context of this situation...
|
| As a paramedic, I'd take this with a grain of salt: I have been
| on calls for a non-trivial number of patients who've sworn
| black and blue that they're "no longer suicidal", "no longer a
| threat", "if anything happens to me, it wasn't suicide" who,
| you guessed it, went on to attempt or commit suicide in very
| short order.
| rakoo wrote:
| If they were really killed because of their leaks, I struggle to
| find what could be so sensitive that an assassination is ever an
| option. Do Boeing engineers work on stuff that secretive ? Are
| you given the nuclear codes on your first day ? I'm really
| curious
| intunderflow wrote:
| The effect on the value of the company and the strategic effect
| of letting Airbus (a European company) dominate aerospace
| manufacturing is a pretty big threat
| dh2022 wrote:
| well, whoever would make this type of "executive decision"
| should be prepared to go to jail for a really long time next
| to really violent bad people. Multinational execs did not
| show propensity for these types of decisions (the propensity
| at C-Suite is to pay a fine and move on....) So prior
| knowledge makes me think these are accidents.
|
| It would be really good to get as much information about
| these deaths (and closure for the families)
|
| PS. for arguments sake, if another Boeing whistleblower would
| get a sudden disease I would be more inclined to think that
| maybe there is some chemical/mechanical exposure in the
| Boeing / Spirit factories rather then some Michael Clayton-
| type action...
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| When is the last time someone from the C suite and had a
| good relationship to the government/defense sector went to
| big boy jail? I can't think of an occasion, even though I
| can think of many deadly events where it's very well
| arguable there should be criminal liability
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Generally any white collar criminal does not need to go
| to "big boy jail," and I'm not sure why that needs to be
| a thing. Is this like joking about prison rape, where we
| just assume that the consequences of being incarcerated
| aren't enough, and we need "Bubba" to add a little
| "extra" because we're not as civilized as we believe we
| are?
|
| Either way, rest assured that in the real world, a
| hypothetical executive who was convicted of ordering a
| hit would end up being treated the exact same way as a
| mafioso who did the same.
| grecy wrote:
| > _a hypothetical executive who was convicted of ordering
| a hit would end up being treated the exact same way_
|
| Sure, but the point is they'll never be convicted.
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| > Generally any white collar criminal does not need to go
| to "big boy jail"
|
| Why not? Are they special because they hurt people
| indirectly instead of directly?
|
| > a hypothetical executive who was convicted of ordering
| a hit
|
| Well, there's the rub. They would have to be convicted.
| How often are executives held accountable for anything
| their company does?
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| You seem to be reading something into my wording there
| that I didn't intend. I meant proper jail, not a fine,
| not a suspended sentence or one of the cushy prisons
| financial criminals tend to go to. I mean the same jail
| as a non-rich murderer, for example. No " don't drop the
| soap" tropes implied. Those piss me off too.
|
| But yeah, white color crime that for example kills people
| (deadly pollution for example) should absolutely be
| treated like murder, or manslaughter at the very least.
| Why the hell not?
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| I see two different instinctual kneejerks here from HN.
| One, that this person's death must be a conspiracy, and
| two, that there is never accountability about any of
| these things. I understand why that is intuitive, but I
| think it betrays an understanding of the world that is
| closer to a movie-plot rather than reality(which is slow
| and boring and doesn't always result in satisfying
| "justice" delivered).
| psunavy03 wrote:
| And the (hypothetical) effect on the value of a company in
| the (hypothetical) event they are proven to assassinate
| critics is . . . what exactly?
| barryrandall wrote:
| In the long term? Not much. Dow is Boeing's future.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I'm sorry, your tinfoil hat is slipping.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Are we talking about cases where someone at the company
| _explicitly_ asked /ordered a kill, or including *wink*
| "handlings" of people? For example in 2012 the (EU) ECCHR
| said Nestle was responsible for the 2005 death of Luciano
| Romero in 2005. What about when in the case of the Banana
| Massacre you had Chiquita Banana making payments to the
| United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, who caused the
| deaths?
|
| Looking at Nestle's historic stock performance I see no
| (significant) change around 2005 or 2012.
|
| [0] - https://www.dw.com/en/nestle-under-fire-over-
| colombian-murde...
| Eji1700 wrote:
| While obviously horrific, there's a large difference
| between paying a bunch of paramilitary members of a
| country where out and out murder by government is already
| an issue, and murdering citizens using arcane secretive
| methods such as suicide by hanging and magic mrsa
| infection.
|
| If boeing is SO important to the government that justice
| doesn't matter, then it's probably a fuckload easier to
| bribe a judge or two and make sure the court cases never
| get anywhere than to orchestrate not one, but two,
| clandestine hits.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Boeing will never fail financially or fall out of use because
| of their importance for US geopolitical status. I don't think
| the USA cares much about the issue except insofar as the USA
| wants Boeing to deliver reliable high quality products.
|
| However, Boeing executives can (and should) get in to
| trouble. They probably care very much about what comes to
| light in court.
| gklitz wrote:
| > Boeing will never fail financially or fall out of use
| because of their importance for US geopolitical status
|
| If the trial concludes with "Yes boing knew the planes were
| not safe but let people fly in them" it doesn't matter how
| important it is to the US, no passenger will want to fly
| them.
| stoperaticless wrote:
| 1. Ivestigation/prosecution/Trial of which country?
| (people can be influenced)
|
| 2. As last resort: Us Gov can take over and actually
| reform Boeing (fixing public perception)
|
| And there is whole continuum between 1 and 2.
|
| (I really doubt that anything shady happened with this
| pneumonia; but IF something shady was done, US will make
| effort to preserve/save national aviation giant)
| jamwil wrote:
| We already know that is the case and we continue to fly
| in them because we have no choice but to.
|
| Also humans have startlingly short term memories.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| People may not want to fly Boeing but they still want to
| fly.
|
| Even if all US airlines wanted to switch, it would take
| Airbus a few decades to deliver replacements, by which
| time the issue will be forgotten (unless they keep
| crashing and falling apart midair).
|
| US airlines will probably not be allowed use chineese
| planes as replacements.
|
| I'm not trying to minimise Boeing's responsibility, just
| saying that assuming the company starts to turn things
| around, nothing that comes out of the trial will affect
| the future of Boeing the company much, but it might well
| be catastrophic for the top brass.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| By turning out bad product, Boeing has let Airbus dominate
| commercial aerospace manufacturing all on their own.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This is the commercial arm of Boeing, but not even that bit a
| spun off bit of Boeing that just builds airframes called
| Spirit.
|
| Boeing does do highly classified things in other branches of
| the company that have nothing to do with any of this, even then
| nobody would be assassinated for the most egregious espionage
| outside of some absurd movie plot scenario. Spies go to prison
| if they're not recruited for counterintelligence.
|
| Influenza and MRSA would be very odd assassination tools.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Any other industry I would have called bullshit, but defense
| companies are always a bit murky, with close links to
| intelligence services (who help in international negotiations
| and industrial spying) and current/former military. So lots of
| people who would know who to call to make things happen.
|
| I have in mind for instance the Taiwan frigate scandal that has
| seen all sort of mysterious deaths, including Thiery Imbot
| (former DGSE, and son of former head of the DGSE), who died
| falling from a window in Paris. The official investigation
| blamed the wind which will make anyone who lived in Paris
| laugh.
|
| So, I don't know, but not implausible.
| rakoo wrote:
| Oh you're right, I completely forgot their involvement in
| defense projects. Maybe something involving the level at
| which Boeing along wiah the US gov spied on Airbus to win
| contracts as well.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > I struggle to find what could be so sensitive that an
| assassination is ever an option.
|
| When Putin's regime punishes a critic or dissident, it is not
| done to stop this particular critic disclosing something
| sensitive. It is done as a warning to future critics. If you
| think this principle is never applied by western agencies, look
| at what happened to Julian Assange - after being prosecuted for
| 12 years the dude has lost it and Ecuador has kicked him out
| for smearing faeces on embassy walls.
|
| Additionally, western corporations were, multiple times,
| accused of being involved in assassinations of union leaders in
| developing countries.
|
| And they used to do it in the USA, in 1920's.
|
| https://prospect.org/features/coca-cola-killings/
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/88n97g/3-union-leaders-were-...
| rakoo wrote:
| Yeah I have no doubt this serves as a message for future
| whistleblowers, but damn that is some level of prevention.
|
| > Additionally, western corporations were, multiple times,
| accused of being involved in assassinations of union leaders
| in developing countries.
|
| Unions are the kryptonite of capitalists and threaten their
| very existence, so it isn't that out of field; if we are to
| make the parallel, it means there is something in what they
| know that threatens the very existence of Boeing and I fail
| to imagine what
| bogwog wrote:
| I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, but I do like crime
| thrillers so I'll add that one potential reason could be that
| one or more people at the company are worried about prison time
| for something they did. That kind of thing could lead someone
| to make desperate moves, like assassinating a whistleblower.
| Hell, it doesn't even need to be someone high up on the ladder,
| it could be one of the factory workers that worked on a plane
| that went down, and is panicking because he got bad legal
| advice from ChatGPT!
|
| ... but I'm like 99.9998% confident this is actually just a
| series of non-malicious, tragic coincidences rather than a
| conspiracy.
| shepardrtc wrote:
| > I struggle to find what could be so sensitive that an
| assassination is ever an option
|
| It's a warning to future whistleblowers.
| bioneuralnet wrote:
| My first thought is "WTF!" But my second is this: every single
| person who's ever criticized Boeing is going to die (eventually).
| With so many people in a position to notice and speak out about
| Boeing's issues, it isn't terribly surprising that a few deaths
| have occurred.
|
| Combine that with one headline-grabbing (apparent) suicide during
| a deposition, and we're now all primed to notice these deaths and
| attribute intent.
| graywh wrote:
| 32 whistleblowers in the last 3 years
| throwup238 wrote:
| That's a lot of assassinations! I bet Boeing gets a volume
| discount.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I assume he meant there were 32, of which those two died,
| not 32 died.
|
| If 32 died, ok, they're killing people. If 2/32 died,
| that's within the realm of possibility.
| slg wrote:
| Yes, it is 2 dead out of 32 total [1].
|
| We can ballpark these odds relatively easily. Dean was 45
| and Barnett was 62. Let's assume they are somewhat
| representative of the average whistleblower and the
| average whistleblower is in average health. Let's use the
| standard government actuarial tables[2] and assume the
| average age is 56 just to make the math easier since the
| odds of a single 56 year old dying in a given year is
| roughly 1%. The odds of at least 1 of the 32 dying would
| be 28% and the odds of 2 dying would be 4%. Unlikely
| enough to be suspicious, but not unlikely enough to be
| anything close to the smoking gun that some are
| suggesting.
|
| [1] - https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-
| subject-o...
|
| [2] - https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
| throwup238 wrote:
| So what you're saying is that there's a 96% chance Boeing
| did it. If that doesn't conclusively settle the matter, I
| don't know what would.
|
| Boeing would have gotten away with it too if it weren't
| for us meddling hackers!
| amelius wrote:
| Thank you!
| foxyv wrote:
| I always love people who actually do the math.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > The odds of at least 1 of the 32 dying would be 28% and
| the odds of 2 dying would be 4%.
|
| the deaths happened in two months. not in the space of a
| year. you need to take that in account.
| blueelephanttea wrote:
| > If 2/32 died
|
| Also his isn't quite correct. John Barnett (first death)
| left Boeing in 2017 and his whistle blowing did not occur
| within the last 3 years. The 32 complaints stat is for
| the last 3 years.
|
| Also it's not even clear if the most recent death (Josh
| Dean) would be included in those stats. He worked for
| Spirit and claims that he reported improperly drilled
| holes in the 737 Max fuselage and that nothing was done.
| The claim would probably be against Spirit not Boeing.
| It's being reported in the media as Boeing, but in
| paperwork it would probably be against Spirit.
| orblivion wrote:
| Out of how many wistleblowers? How does that compare to other
| people with the same demographics?
| orblivion wrote:
| (I can't edit or delete anymore but see the sibling
| comments. 32 is the total, not the dead.)
| tootie wrote:
| Where did you get that number?
| coliveira wrote:
| People should stop and do some very serious investigation
| about a company that has 32 whistleblowers just in the last 3
| years....
| danielfoster wrote:
| Not to mention how old some of them must be.
| dingnuts wrote:
| well this guy was 45 and described as healthy in the article,
| but shows up to the hospital with a mysterious lung problem
| and then gets MRSA
|
| it's not exactly a smoking gun but you can't blame the guy's
| age, either. 45 is just middle age, I hope
| cft wrote:
| The chance to die from all causes at the age of 45 is 0.41%
| https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
|
| Combined with the suicide two months ago (with his prior
| warning "please don't believe that I committed suicide")
| this deserves an investigation, not a simple dismissal.
| kingTug wrote:
| Does anyone know if they're investigating that? It was
| supposedly in his car, in the hotel parking lot he was
| staying at for the deposition. Seems implausible there
| wasn't a security camera somewhere in the vicinity.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Actuarial tables are for all people. So it also of course
| includes deaths from cancer, obesity related diseases,
| alcoholism/drug abuse, etc. The odds of a healthy 45 year
| old just randomly dying from a mysterious infection are
| going to be orders of magnitude lower than 0.41%.
| danielfoster wrote:
| People can easily be paranoid and suicidal at the same
| time.
| neom wrote:
| In my opinion it's highly unlikely he was murdered, however
| if he was, personally, I would be more inclined to pin the
| blame on an adversary of the Americans to sew some distrust
| vs Boeing or it's shareholders.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| As someone who crossed 45 not that long ago, I gotta say
| that I have definitely noticed an uptick in people dying
| who I'm acquainted with.
| tootie wrote:
| A friend died at 40 from lung cancer despite never smoking.
| It's rare but it happens. How many proven assassinations of
| corporate whistleblowers have happened in the US? I think
| it's zero in the last 100 years at least.
| jjk166 wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdga/pr/two-sentenced-their-
| rol...
|
| Assassinations of corporate whistleblowers also falls
| under the category of "it's rare but it happens."
| tootie wrote:
| I mean, that's not exactly the same. These guys were
| running a local tree-cutting serving, not a Fortune 500.
| And they weren't just accused of negligent business
| practice, they were accused of human trafficking and
| theft. They murdered a whistleblower to keep themselves
| out of jail, not to protect share prices.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > These guys were running a local tree-cutting serving,
| not a Fortune 500.
|
| I imagine Boeing can do anything a local tree-cutting
| service can do.
|
| > And they weren't just accused of negligent business
| practice, they were accused of human trafficking and
| theft. They murdered a whistleblower to keep themselves
| out of jail, not to protect share prices.
|
| Boeing execs are accused of committing massive fraud
| which endangered the lives of thousands, as well as other
| crimes to cover up the safety issues. They are currently
| under criminal investigation, with many individuals
| facing possible jail time. When people say corporate
| assassination, they mean people working for a corporation
| orchestrate the death of a person for reasons associated
| with the corporation.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > then gets MRSA
|
| That's just due to what is happening to health care in this
| country.
|
| The underlying cause is the same short-term-profits
| capitalism that has fucked over Boeing.
|
| The conspiracy is just the trivial one that requires only
| perverse economic incentives and not assassination.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| > (apparent) suicide
|
| The one where he specifically told his family beforehand that
| he wasn't suicidal...
| mattmaroon wrote:
| My ex killed herself not long after telling me she wasn't
| suicidal. This may surprise you, but suicidal people often
| lie about being suicidal. Or, they rapidly go from not being
| suicidal to being so. Or, due to mental illness, they've lost
| a grip on reality.
| shepardrtc wrote:
| This is a little different, he literally said to his
| friend, "I ain't scared but if anything happens to me it's
| not suicide."
| nathancahill wrote:
| Not leaning either way, but there was a famous case about
| a lawyer in Guatemala who recorded a video message
| claiming he wasn't suicidal and that the government was
| out to kill him. He was killed days later and the video
| was released. The country was (briefly) thrown in to
| turmoil. A few days later it came out that he had ordered
| a hit on himself.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigo_Rosenberg_Marzano
| kenjackson wrote:
| I'd never considered a technique to strengthen your
| argument. Put in that light -- it makes it more
| plausible.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Wasn't there an old movie about this scenario? Guy orders
| a hit on himself, decides actually he wants to live?
| nkingsy wrote:
| That article is an absolute hodgepodge of statements and
| retractions, but the same hitman appears to have also
| killed the laywer's clients, who were causing problems
| for the regime. That seems like pretty strong evidence
| that it wasn't a suicide by hitman, unless the lawyer
| also had his own clients killed?
| karaterobot wrote:
| He was also in the _middle_ of testifying against the
| company that had made his life hell for years. That is a
| rather strange time to kill yourself.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I don't know, it was presumably extremely stressful.
| Extremely stressful events or when a lot of people kill
| them themselves.
|
| I don't really have a strong opinion on this particular
| instance one way or another. It seems unlikely to me that
| even Boeing is like hiring hitman to whack people and
| make it look like suicide, and that seems much more
| unlikely than a guy who was about to commit suicide
| saying he wasn't going to make it look that way.
|
| But also, it is not impossible. People have undoubtedly
| killed for a lot less money than what this stuff is
| costing Boeing.
| dralley wrote:
| >The one where he specifically told his family beforehand
| that he wasn't suicidal...
|
| This game of telephone is absurd.
|
| His family has said no such thing. A proclaimed "friend of
| the family" claimed he told her this.
| delfinom wrote:
| OR, we are living in a simulation and this is just a joke.
|
| I mean just the other day, the emergency slide fell off a
| Boeing aircraft and landed essentially, in the backyard of the
| lawyer suing Boeing. Lol
| paul7986 wrote:
| omg lol https://www.businessinsider.com/missing-delta-
| emergency-slid...
| akira2501 wrote:
| > every single person who's ever criticized Boeing is going to
| die (eventually)
|
| That's extremely tautological.
|
| > it isn't terribly surprising that a few deaths have occurred.
|
| It's surprising they have so many whistle blowers that more
| than one has died in a short span of time, in particular,
| before the investigations over their allegations have been
| satisfactorily and publicly completed.
|
| > and we're now all primed to notice these deaths and attribute
| intent.
|
| That doesn't mean it's pointless to ask questions and to
| investigate further. There's a lot of people who seem very
| eager for this all to just "go away." That should make anyone,
| let alone a forum of hackers, somewhat suspicious.
| sxg wrote:
| I'm baffled by this comment. It's exceedingly rare for two
| middle-aged and otherwise healthy people to die without
| warning.
|
| > With so many people in a position to notice and speak out
| about Boeing's issues
|
| So many? Both were whistleblowers of which there are allegedly
| no more than 32 in the last few years.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > I'm baffled by this comment. It's exceedingly rare for two
| middle-aged and otherwise healthy people to die without
| warning.
|
| No. It happens every day. Yes, if you pick two random middle-
| aged people at random, it's exceedingly rare for both of them
| to die without warning. However, if you pick a large
| population of otherwise healthy middle-aged people, the
| probably that two of them might die without warning is
| actually quite high.
|
| The question is, how large is the population? If the union is
| to be believed (and there's a lot of credibility there),
| Boeing whistleblowers are a pretty large population. Add in
| to that the stress & disruption of being a whistleblower, and
| then layer on the stress from any retaliation from Boeing
| (which allegedly is happening on a daily basis), and the
| probability of two of them dying around the same time isn't
| really that low.
|
| e.g., if you assume a mortality rate of 1 in 1000/yr (which
| seems very low, considering their circumstance) and a
| population of 100, the odds of two of them dying over the
| course of a year is over 50% (1-0.999^100)^2 = 53.29%.
| peter422 wrote:
| One of those people died of a gunshot wound, so whether it
| was self-inflicted or not, their age and health and any
| related statistics have nothing to do with the death.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > One of those people died of a gunshot wound, so whether
| it was self-inflicted or not, their age and health and
| any related statistics have nothing to do with the death.
|
| Mental health is health. Age and physical health are
| factors that can effect mental health, particularly when
| someone is under tremendous amounts of stress. Their age
| and health could very well have something to do with
| their death.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'm really trying to figure out where you got 53.29% from.
| Your formula is not only not how you'd calculate this, but
| gives 0.009. If you want to know the right answer, the
| easiest way is to do a binomial calculation, which is
| easiest using a calculator [1].
|
| The answer is there being _at least_ (so this value
| includes all possible values >= 2) 2 deaths in a
| population of 100 with a rate of 1 in 1000, would be
| 0.464%.
|
| [1] - https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial
| cbsmith wrote:
| You're right. I screwed up the math.
| LZ_Khan wrote:
| So... it's extremely unlikely two would die in the same
| year from natural causes.
|
| (given a pool of 100, not even 32!)
| cbsmith wrote:
| _If_ we assume their base mortality rate is 0.1%, that
| the pool is only 100, and that the deaths are completely
| independent (and we know that since they were both
| whistleblowers, both worked for the sample employer, that
| may very well not be true), it 's a low probability case,
| yes. The sense is that those are both extremely
| conservative numbers.
|
| Try looking at the cumulative probability for P(X>=2)
| when you manipulate the numbers a bit. Even if you just
| change the base probability of mortality to 1%, it jumps
| to 26% chance. If you restrict the population to 32
| people, the threshold for it be more likely to happen
| than not is a 5.2% chance of death.
| LZ_Khan wrote:
| Well luckily the mortality rate for 45-55 in the US is
| well-documented at 0.5%.
|
| Plugging that in the binomial calculator, P(X>=2) at 32
| trials is... 0.09%!! Astronomically low odds.
|
| And you are right, their deaths are certainly not
| independent :)
| cbsmith wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think the 0.5% figure is relevant.
| One of them was 62. Even if they were both 45-55, their
| risk of death would no doubt be dramatically higher than
| the mean. They were both whistle blowers, and not just
| ordinary whistle blowers, but whistle blowers in a high
| profile story. IIRC, at least one of them had been fired
| from their job in the last year. That's not average for
| that age group.
| sxg wrote:
| I agree with you in that the population size is the key
| question here. However, I have two issues:
|
| First, otherwise healthy people don't just die from stress.
| Stress can sometimes exacerbate underlying health issues
| and lead to a long, downward spiral in health that can
| result in death, but it does not happen in a matter of just
| weeks or a couple months. It also does not happen in people
| without underlying health issues.
|
| Second, while a mortality rate of 0.001/yr is reasonable
| for middle-aged men, that assumes we know nothing about
| them or their deaths--that isn't the case here. John
| Barnett's death was a suicide. According to the CDC, there
| were 14,668 suicides in the 45-64 age group in 2021. The
| 2020 census shows that there are 85 million people in the
| US in that same age group. The suicide mortality rate comes
| out to 0.00017, which is about an order of magnitude lower
| than your estimate. Josh Dean was otherwise healthy from
| what's being reported. Given his age and state of health,
| his 1-year mortality rate is also likely substantially
| lower than your estimate
| cbsmith wrote:
| > First, otherwise healthy people don't just die from
| stress. Stress can sometimes exacerbate underlying health
| issues and lead to a long, downward spiral in health that
| can result in death, but it does not happen in a matter
| of just weeks or a couple months. It also does not happen
| in people without underlying health issues.
|
| First, there's a difference between being "otherwise
| healthy" and _appearing_ to be "otherwise healthy".
| People who seem otherwise healthy but under a tremendous
| amount of stress are absolutely more likely to die from a
| sudden heart attack or stroke. People who seem otherwise
| healthy but under a tremendous amount of stress are
| absolutely more likely to commit suicide. People who seem
| otherwise healthy but under a tremendous amount of stress
| are absolutely more likely to be in a car accident...
|
| > Second, while a mortality rate of 0.001/yr is
| reasonable for middle-aged men, that assumes we know
| nothing about them or their deaths--that isn't the case
| here. John Barnett's death was a suicide. According to
| the CDC, there were 14,668 suicides in the 45-64 age
| group in 2021. The 2020 census shows that there are 85
| million people in the US in that same age group. The
| suicide mortality rate comes out to 0.00017, which is
| about an order of magnitude lower than your estimate.
| Josh Dean was otherwise healthy from what's being
| reported. Given his age and state of health, his 1-year
| mortality rate is also likely substantially lower than
| your estimate
|
| I don't agree that John Barnett's death was as likely to
| occur as anyone else in that age group. He was almost
| certainly experiencing stress above the level of the top
| percentile of the 45-64 population. The mean likelihood
| of suicide mortality isn't representative of his risk
| condition.
|
| But you're right, if you narrow it down to the specifics
| of the deaths, you can absolutely reduce the probability
| to ridiculously low percentages. Like throw in the day of
| the week that they died, the hour of the day, the use of
| a gun, the specific gun used, etc. Does that really
| reduce the chances that they died though?
| jjk166 wrote:
| > But you're right, if you narrow it down to the
| specifics of the deaths, you can absolutely reduce the
| probability to ridiculously low percentages. Like throw
| in the day of the week that they died, the hour of the
| day, the use of a gun, the specific gun used, etc. Does
| that really reduce the chances that they died though?
|
| The chance they died is 100%. The question we're asking
| is what are the odds we'd be talking about their death.
| If it had been a different day of the week or a different
| model of gun, that would not have an influence. If the
| cause of death were different, it would. No one would be
| talking about foul play had he died of say a long term
| chronic condition, or cancer, or a natural disaster. The
| odds of dying under suspicious circumstances are
| inherently less than the odds of just dying in general.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > The chance they died is 100%.
|
| There you go. Because it is after the fact, it's a given.
| It's not surprising that you can find a connection of
| some kind between them after the fact. Just because you
| can, after the fact, draw the connection, doesn't change
| the probability that they are dead.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > Both were whistleblowers of which there are allegedly no
| more than 32 in the last few years.
|
| Yeah, out of a population of 32, it's unlikely to happen. It
| seems likely that this number is grossly underrepresenting
| the size of the population. Maybe whistleblowers are being
| targeted, maybe there are a lot more than 32, maybe both of
| those are true, but it seems unlikely that both of them are
| false.
| jjk166 wrote:
| There were 2 deaths from the population of known
| whistleblowers. If there are additional unknown
| whistleblowers, they still don't count as members of the
| population. There's no way to count deaths among unknown
| whistleblowers.
| cbsmith wrote:
| "I'm baffled by this comment. It's exceedingly rare for
| two middle-aged and otherwise healthy people to die
| without warning."
|
| That statement is not even limited to whistleblowers.
|
| If you restrict the population to known Boeing
| whistleblowers whose first name starts with J, the odds
| get even longer.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| _I 'm baffled by this comment. It's exceedingly rare for two
| middle-aged and otherwise healthy people to die without
| warning._
|
| Suicide is the 7th leading cause of death for men 55-62. It's
| considerably more common than murder.
|
| _Both were whistleblowers of which there are allegedly no
| more than 32 in the last few years._
|
| Barnett hadn't worked for Boeing since 2017, and was being
| deposed as part of his appeal of his original whistleblower
| complaint. It makes no sense to think that someone trying to
| silence him would wait until 7 years and one Netflix
| documentary have transpired.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| 2 down 30 to go.
| genewitch wrote:
| I'd say it _was_ exceedingly rare for people in that cohort
| to die suddenly without warning. Now, though?
|
| and one died after ventilation?
| cbsmith wrote:
| > With so many people in a position to notice and speak out
| about Boeing's issues, it isn't terribly surprising that a few
| deaths have occurred.
|
| Also, let's not kid ourselves, even if Boeing doesn't retaliate
| (and there is a lot of reason to think they have), being a
| whistleblower adds a tremendous amount of stress & disruption
| to your life. Whatever your life expectancy was before you were
| a whistleblower was, it's going to be lower (likely MUCH lower)
| afterwards. It's a terrible price to pay, which is why they
| deserve as much protection & support as possible.
| jen729w wrote:
| Indeed. In my home town we had the 'metric martyr', a
| greengrocer who defied EU law and continued selling bananas
| in metric measures.
|
| There was a whole court thing, he lost, and then he died aged
| 39 of a heart attack.
|
| https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-
| news/metric-...
| riffraff wrote:
| > continued selling bananas in metric measures.
|
| Probably in imperial measures? Unless bananas were somehow
| sold in metric grams and the EU imposed some weird unit I
| don't know about.
| pdpi wrote:
| Yup, you're right. From the link:
|
| > The prosecution of Sunderland greengrocer Steven
| Thoburn for selling bananas in imperial measures helped
| turn public opinion against the EU
| autoexecbat wrote:
| An actual arrest seems wildly disproportionate for this.
| Simple administrative fines should have been enough
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| To be pedantic though, refusing to comply with a recently-
| passed law is not whistleblowing; it is civil disobedience.
| coldtea wrote:
| Everything is going to die eventually.
|
| This is some very specific, public, whistleblowers, in the span
| of months. Not some pool of thousands, or even hundreds people
| with mere "potential to criticize".
| arp242 wrote:
| Unlikely things happen. And there have been more than two
| (former) Boeing employees who have come forward, most of whom
| managed to survive.
| exoverito wrote:
| Corporations also conspire, especially those deeply
| embedded in the military industrial complex.
| arp242 wrote:
| Corporations conspiring to kill not just one but several
| undesirable employees is very rare. Actually, I don't
| really know of any other example.
|
| And here it also doesn't make any sense; the cat is out
| of the bag, there is nothing to cover up because we
| already know about Boeing being a clusterfuck. Killing
| anyone doesn't really make much difference.
|
| "Surely it can't be coincidence", "corporations
| conspire", and vague references to "military industrial
| complex" are exceedingly poor arguments - actually
| they're not really arguments at all because you can say
| that sort of thing about almost anything.
| behringer wrote:
| This one might be, but the first one is almost certainly no
| suicide.
| tootie wrote:
| This is not alleged as a suicide. It was acute bacterial
| infection.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Sure, but how many people are whistleblowers about Boeing
| misbehavior. I would guess at most a hundred, the chances that
| two of them die in such a short time seems low. What are the
| odds that an apparently healthy person just drops dead in two
| weeks over the span of maybe two years. Certainly seems
| somewhat unlikely.
| squigz wrote:
| How many would have to die under these circumstances for you to
| consider they're not natural deaths?
| volkk wrote:
| at LEAST one more...then i'll raise an eyebrow!
| tomca32 wrote:
| well yeah but the previous whistleblower committed suicide
| after literally telling his family "If anything happens to me
| it's not suicide".
|
| A month later another whistleblower who was in good health dies
| suddenly and unexpectedly.
|
| I don't think it's surprising to think that this combination of
| events is extremely unlikely.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| > well yeah but the previous whistleblower committed suicide
| after literally telling his family "If anything happens to me
| it's not suicide".
|
| I mean if I had dedicated my life to taking Boeing down and
| was contemplating suicide, I'd consider saying that too.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I guess what's missing is the denominator. How many Boeing
| whistleblowers are there? It's a nice little math problem.
|
| Let's say both of the whistleblowers were age 50. The
| probability of a 50 year old man dying in a year is 0.6%. So
| the probability of 2 or more of them dying in a year is 1 -
| (the probability of exactly zero dying in a year + the
| probability of exactly one dying in a year). 1 - (A+B).
|
| A is (1-0.006)^N. B is 0.006 _N_ (1-0.006)^(N-1). At 60 A is
| about 70% and B is about 25% making it statistically
| insignificant.
|
| But they died in the same 2 month period, so that 0.006 should
| be 0.001. If you rerun the same calculation, it's 356.
| theGeatZhopa wrote:
| There is someone who has a interest not in losing money when
| one.. for sure! Some stock holders with access to Bakteria. It's
| easy and effective. Without suspects. Hmmm.. I see what you did
| last summer next year then...
|
| /Irony
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| > Parsons said Dean became ill and went to the hospital because
| he was having trouble breathing just over two weeks ago. He was
| intubated and developed pneumonia and then a serious bacterial
| infection, MRSA.
|
| Am I the only one who knows a half dozen people who have gone
| into hospitals for a sprained ankle and died of an infection?
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Easy to get infected when you're dying of radiation poisoning
| and have no immune system.
| helix278 wrote:
| What happened to the other thread about this news item?
| pvg wrote:
| Freak milk frother accident.
| helix278 wrote:
| What does that mean in normal english? I'm not a native
| speaker, and my question about the other thread was genuine.
| pvg wrote:
| You can find the various posts with the search thing. A
| bunch of them got merged which is what usually happens with
| a pile of dupes
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40239031
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| As suspicious as this sounds, surely the amount of pressure he
| was under could lead to him to getting sick, then once in the
| hospital contracted the pneumonia and it all went downhill from
| there.
| squarefoot wrote:
| According to cdc.gov, the MRSA bacteria which killed him can
| spread by simple contact with infected people _or objects_. I can
| 't but recall the anthrax attacks happened shortly after 9/11.
| It's completely unrelated and 100% speculation, but an infection
| caught by something received by a intercepted and compromised
| package couldn't be completely ruled out.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Vs what are the chances any 40 year olds can die from the same
| causes in the same geographic area?
| walterbell wrote:
| Are whistleblowers considered legal witnesses who qualify for
| protection programs? A Streisand-effect website could aggregate
| the claims of all dead whistleblowers, regardless of cause of
| death. This could increase incentives for protecting
| whistleblowers until their legal cases have been resolved.
| ddp26 wrote:
| I looked [1] at all the prominent whistleblowers in the last ~50
| years, and while some people have been seriously harassed and
| felt their lives were in danger, there's only a single case where
| someone was plausibly murdered by a private company. (Governments
| murder whistleblowers all the time.)
|
| Interestingly, it was in the 1970's and the woman blew the
| whistle for safety practices around the handling of plutonium!
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/dschwarz26/status/1786133630474977785
| sgt101 wrote:
| There's a really good movie about it too.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkwood
| cyounkins wrote:
| Do you mean that you did the research, or your AI product did
| the research? How are you assessing whether a death was
| plausibly murder? So strange that the one example you find is
| of a car crash (one of the most common ways people die!) and no
| citation that it was found to be murder.
| squigz wrote:
| Don't misrepresent this - you used your own AI-powered product
| to do "research"
|
| > So across the ~50 or so prominent whistleblower cases against
| big co's that I researched with futuresearch.ai, retaliation is
| common, harassment is rare but does happen, but murder is not.
| And given the details of Joshua Dean and John Barnett's death,
| it's simply much too plausible that this is a fluke of timing.
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| Thanks for taking the time to tackle this research.
|
| I think you should mention that ,,I looked" was done with help
| of your AI project. That does not spark much confidence given
| current state of LLMs and their ,,research".
|
| From your twitter article:
|
| > So across the ~50 or so prominent whistleblower cases against
| big co's that I researched with futuresearch.ai, retaliation is
| common, harassment is rare but does happen, but murder is not.
| jjulius wrote:
| >I looked [1]...
|
| Your AI looked at it, you didn't. I also have the hunch that
| your research was limited to US whistleblowers only, can you
| confirm?
| simple10 wrote:
| Suspicious deaths of whistleblowers is terrible PR for Boeing.
| Seems unlikely anything nefarious would be going on as it only
| invites additional scrutiny. Unless maybe we buy into the
| conspiracy that Boeing needed to send a message to future
| whistleblowers.
|
| The airline manufacturing industry has few employers. The threat
| of being blackballed for future employment is much more of an
| incentive to keep quite IMO. But maybe I'm being naive?
|
| Or maybe there's some backhanded government connection that
| someone outside of Boeing wants to keep quite.
| from-nibly wrote:
| I cant put my tin foil hat on any harder boeing.
| avi_vallarapu wrote:
| Is this a coincidemnce ? Or a pattern leading to an outlier ?
| tptacek wrote:
| There's a whole mythology about John Barnett, the previous Boeing
| whistleblower who died. But Barnett's whistleblower case against
| Boeing had been wrapped up years prior, and his outstanding
| litigation, over defamation, was insignificant to Boeing's bottom
| line. Boeing simply didn't have a reasonable motive to be
| involved in his death; to argue that Boeing had a hand in it, you
| need to be arguing that Boeing is something more than ruthless.
|
| Barnett's case sparked a lot of interest because it was a
| suicide. Here, Dean died of an illness, so to pursue a
| conspiracy-theoretic angle to this story, you again need to
| suggest that Boeing is more than ruthless (for Barnett, that
| "more" is "irrational"; for Dean, it's "Bond-villain
| theatrical").
| srj wrote:
| If I were considering blowing the whistle on some behavior at
| Boeing I'd sure think twice now that two people have died. It
| may be that their testimony was complete but there's still a
| chilling effect on future whistleblowers.
| tptacek wrote:
| By that logic every large corporation in the world should be
| randomly killing people to deter prospective whistleblowers.
| neilv wrote:
| It might be interesting to think about reasons a whistleblower
| assassination could happen. (I found #6 below kinda interesting,
| because I didn't think of it immediately, but only once I started
| thinking through possibilities.) Non-exhaustive:
|
| 1. Warlord-like show of power, signaling that they're so strong
| they can openly act with impunity. Such as gratuitously using a
| military weapon not publicly available and on another country's
| soil, or a straight-faced coroner's determination of suicide by
| two self-inflicted gunshots to the back of the head before
| throwing self through a skyscraper window. (I don't see this in
| the Boeing situation.)
|
| 2. Powerful person lashing out due to mental illness
| instability/pettiness. Where there's no gain to be had, but their
| ego or other trigger was stepped upon. In the news in recent
| years, we've seen at least a couple powerful high-profile
| personalities who might fit the profile. (I don't see a
| connection to the Boeing situation.)
|
| 3. Prevent the whistleblower from testifying further. (I guess
| probably the cat's already out of the bag on the Boeing
| situation.)
|
| 4. Warning to other whistleblowers by that same entity, if
| further testimony could do more harm than has already been done.
| (Again, I guess probably the cat's out of the bag on Boeing.)
|
| 5. Lower-ranking individual's self-interest. Let's say there's no
| advantage to an organization or higher-up persons in
| assassinating a whistleblower, but... some lower-ranking person
| doesn't want to be implicated personally by something this
| whistleblower knows, or there is some unrelated mini-scandal that
| could be exposed as the whistleblower is interviewed. In general,
| I suspect that lower-ranking butt-covering is the source of
| massive number of problems and misbehavior in organizations,
| including all sorts of "coverup is worse than the crime"
| outcomes. (But I'd guess unlikely there's a big enough motivation
| for any lower-ranking individual connected to the Boeing
| situation to murder anyone over it.)
|
| 6. Uninvolved party sending a message to all high-profile
| whistleblowers. Let's say you're a powerful person, and evil (or
| imagining yourself serving some worthy cause through evildoing),
| and you're sitting on top of what could be a massive scandal, and
| you're vulnerable to whistleblowers. So, on the occasion of
| whistleblowers being in the news on some other high-profile
| scandal -- unrelated to you -- and possibly planting
| whistleblowing ideas among people who are a threat to you, you
| take the occasion to shift public sentiment about the
| desirability of whistleblowing in general. (Farfetched.)
|
| 7. Foreign sabotage, sowing social disorder. Make it look to
| people of the target country like their country is so corrupt
| that whistleblowers are assassinated openly and with impunity.
| (Farfetched, especially since we have so much erosion of trust
| already, I'm not sure we need any more pushes.)
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