this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 352 points 8 months ago (7 children)

I never thought I'd see the day when a respectable blue chip company like Boeing is publicly outed as ordering an assassination. They fucked up royally. The timing of it all is too eyebrow raising not to be noticed by the entirety of the airplane-using world. Top down criminal investigation. Now.

[–] [email protected] 123 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (7 children)

I kind of thought corporations aren't allowed to murder people but at this point I don't know anymore.

[–] [email protected] 108 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Murdering people has been a normal part of corporations for a long time, but they generally do it to union organizers in the developing world.

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 8 months ago (1 children)

In America it used to be you could just bribe your governor and they'd deploy the national guard to kill striking worker's families like the Ludlow Massacre and the Battle of Blair mountain.

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 8 months ago (6 children)

well your first mistake was thinking Boeing was a respectable corporation (that ship sailed in 1997 when they dropped the "engineering first" priority in lieu of "business first")...

your second mistake is thinking any corporation is respectable ;-)

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Their third mistake is thinking any corporation will be held accountable

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Boeing is a major part of the military industrial complex. They own the politicians in both parties, the regulators, and the courts. Laws don't apply to them.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (6 children)

If you're the government, you want your military planes to work. It's in their interests to have whistleblowers. (Now there's lots of steps that are problems in realizing that.)

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[–] [email protected] 312 points 8 months ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 143 points 8 months ago (3 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 195 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 91 points 8 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] Wytch 189 points 8 months ago (14 children)

They make airplanes tf is this mafia shit

[–] [email protected] 164 points 8 months ago (2 children)

They also make military equipment, an enormous amount of it

[–] [email protected] 79 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Both incorrect, they make money.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 8 months ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 157 points 8 months ago (31 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 200 points 8 months ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 110 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

Capitalism feeds on blood, it always has.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Like really…Boeing is that dirty? Surely not?

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

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 8 months ago (3 children)

The feds: Doesn’t look like anything to me

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 8 months ago (9 children)

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

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

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 8 months ago (8 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 61 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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

Can't have it both ways, Capital!

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago

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

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

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (7 children)

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

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

[–] JasonDJ 55 points 8 months ago (16 children)

Always has been.

Our pig just has nicer lipstick.

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 47 points 8 months ago

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

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

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 8 months ago (8 children)
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[–] [email protected] 65 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

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

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

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

[–] [email protected] 139 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 8 months ago (4 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Holy shit some Boeing motherfuckers better go TO BIG JAIL

[–] [email protected] 73 points 8 months ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 8 months ago

Shit's getting real.

John Oliver better watch his back.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 8 months ago (13 children)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[–] [email protected] 62 points 8 months ago (41 children)

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

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

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

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 8 months ago (8 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago (9 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago

Like Epstein was

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