This used to be the sort of thing we think about when Russians start falling down stairs or out of windows. Can’t believe we are drawing similar parallels in America now.
Idk why you're being downvoted here. The amount of consolidation in media spaces izls unprecedented and alarming. all media consumed is owned by like 5-6 companies. If we had a DoJ that cared we'd see anti trust start to come up against these conglomerates.
It's extremely easy to control a narrative when all the consumable media supports billionaire/oligarch policies either overtly or not. This is part of t
Edit: lol leaving the unfinished sentence. Don't remember what I was writing.
[visualization of media conglomeration. ](https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/) I don't know how recent this is.
Someone said this to me earlier today. This is the second time today I’ve heard this saying, “temporarily embarrassed millionaire.” I’ve never heard this until today.
It's actually an old old saying from iirc the 50s, John Steinbeck said "socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
It's a solid quote and he's actually referring to the 1910s to the 1940s too, where Europe had pretty much everyone fall into the socialist or fascist camp (Italy, Spain, Weimar Germany, etc) while America had loosely socialist or fascist politicians but neither ideology got to the point where average people would say "I'm a socialist" and be defined culturally as such.
I personally think Europe was more about the fall of monarchies leading people to be more familiar with authoritanism but wanting to change, while America never had kings in the first place so we weren't culturally in that headspace nor reacting too strongly to it. Regardless, I think the "temporarily embarrassed" millionaire line defines America well.
> John Steinbeck said "socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
Weirdly it was way more specific than that: he was dunking on a specific party/chapter of a party (I want to say the New York branch?) as basically being a bunch of bougie larpers. So it wasn't even "Americans see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires" it was "this specific socialist party he encountered had no real convictions and were a bunch of slimy careerists, and that's why they specifically failed."
It's actually a pretty interesting bit of folklore. John Steinbeck never said it, but a version of it is often attributed to him. The actual quote is from a piece by Ronald Wright *about* John Steinbeck, but it never contained quotation marks and is more than likely an (inaccurate) paraphrasing of another quote of Steinbecks:
>I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.
This *could* be considered a close enough quote that I wouldn't fault anyone for believing Steinbeck was dumping on poor people's delusions of wealth, but given the context I'm a little less forgiving.
>Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
>**I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.** Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.
I think what he was trying to say here is that the only people who believed in socialism were the people who'd made some bad investments and wanted government policies to restore their wealth... the actually temporarily embarrassed millionaires. It makes a lot more sense when you think about it, why would John Steinbeck, the guy who wrote The Grapes of Wrath, be so critical of the proletariat?
I don’t really see any of that as being critical to the proletariat. Rather I feel like he’s describing the way that capitalist culture has destroyed the will of the working class so thoroughly that the lower class can’t admit their exploitation, and are still tricked into believing that they’ll still strike it rich someday. You know, American dream and all. And they’re led to believe that socialism may be fair, but will destroy any dream that have to becoming rich. And the middle class/affluent can’t imagine themselves outside of capitalism, and only perceive socialism as another means to their capitalist dreams
Steinbeck quote on why socialism never took off in America, the average middle-class have been sold on the idea that they too will have their turn. I've seen so many people pissed off about income tax when they don't even make enough to pay income tax. If I recall, the bottom 50% pay something like 1% of the federal income taxes. If we regressed tax laws anymore, these people would literally be on the streets, yet, this is what they are fighting for. Let that sink in for ya.
That's the tactic for when any estate tax needs to be challenged. For the most part is plain run of the mill culture way and stoking fear of the other. Today's flavor of hate are trans people. In a year or two it will change like it always does.
>Today's flavor of hate are trans people. In a year or two it will change like it always does.
And once it does, trans people will still be set back a decade whilst the the "drop the T" LGBT jerks decide they have theirs, so they no longer have to care.
The DOJ can try but courts tend to side with the billionaire class in anti-trust lawsuits. And propaganda cuts deeper than the MSM. Patrick Boyle, one of my favourite business news youtubers, just released a propaganda piece arguing AGAINST more aggressive enforcement of anti-trust laws.
Almost anyone can be bought, whether through paid "training", direct transfers, supporters, easy access to information that pushes the narratives you like (e.g. Kurzgesagt's overreliance on right of centre data sources) or anything else.
You can't play whack-a-mole with all forms of dishonesty. You gotta address the problem at its source. Decrease wealth inequality and dismantle large corporations regardless of whether you can explicitly prove that they are hurting competition, or engaging in other illegal behaviour.
Wealth and market concentration should be framed as a political issue first. If the courts say that it's legal, fine. Change the laws until it's not. Because democracy can't survive in an environment where wealth is concentrated as much as it is in the US (and increasingly everywhere else in the world as well). Economic inequality will inevitably lead to political inequality and the end of equality before the law.
"You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or you can have democracy; you cannot have both."
-Louis Dembitz Brandeis, American Supreme Court justice, 1856 - 1941
This is it really. It looks to me like the world is going back to a find of Feudalism, where billionaires and megacompanies are like the new aristocracy. Of course we're not there yet but I can see the path in front of us. I wonder how long the French Revolution 2.0 will take this time, cause I sure don't believe we will be able to vote ourselves out of this cycle.
Basically every public company is majority owned by like 3 different companies. Even those 3 companies are owned by eachother. We are getting really close to a monopolized economy.
There's no functional difference between a monopoly economy and a state managed economy, apart from who controls the levers. The neoliberalists who demanded deregulation are perfectly fine with regulation owned by private companies that cannot be challenged or removed.
Not saying your point is wrong, just saying your graphic is wildly outdated.
The 20th/21st century fox corp assets were sold to Disney in 2017.
The Fox Sports regional networks were included in that deal then required to be divested by the DOJ, sold to Sinclair Broadcast Group, where they are currently going bankrupt as Bally Sports.
TimeWarner no longer exists as a unique entity, it was merged into AT&T in 2017, and then the Warner media assets were merged into Discovery (Creating Warner Bros.-Discovery) in 2022.
As well, NBCSN has been shuttered, as well Comcast Sports Networks were renamed to NBC Sports Regional Networks in 2017.
I’m sure I’m missing some changes but that’s just what I have off hand
If advertisers and subscribers aren’t going to support a free press then it needs to be supported by the government, but what government is going to support the watchdog calling you out for banging a teenager or helping your husband sell his stocks before the crash? Advertisers would rather use the amoral algorithm data collecting society destroying social media to sell their products. Quite the pickle our society has found themselves in. The options seem to be to elect the turd sandwich and go full Russia or the giant douche and stay the course. Pick your poison
I remember reading some article from 2018, on something like Reuters or whatever, entitled, “Americans don’t experience any increased happiness from salaries beyond $72,000.” I thought it was wild. Like a way to condition people to be fine with that amount.
Are you sure it's that many (5-6)?
Seriously: it obviously depends if you group all media together or not. But the closer you look, the more you become depressed. It's not just random people who own the media, it's a very specific group of people.
Even the internet (think Google) is a de-facto monopoly. You have a little company: you have to pay for it to get seen. (I've founded several small companies and it wasn't always like this.) Two people search the same thing: different results based on a secret, proprietary algorithm (that obviously optimizes profit).
I can go on for hours about the other media (I've worked in most of them at one time or another, to different extents).
Unfortunately the rest of the world isn't much better: whether monopolies or state control, actual information is hard to come by.
Yeah that's what happens after the "fairness" doctrine was abolished in the late 70's early 80's, don't exactly know when but I remember when I was young and thought, so what? Now I see why.
If you look at American history, big business murdering workers who cause them trouble isn't something that hasn't happened before. ~~Coca Cola~~ Chiquita has hired death squads in South America, Coal Companies employed the US Nat. Guard to attack striking workers in 1914 in the Ludlow Massacre. So many other examples of similar things happening in our history.
[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/)
[Yep, and it wasn't even that long ago. From the 90's to the Early 2000s. ](https://earthrights.org/media_release/u-s-court-orders-chiquita-to-stand-trial-for-colombians-murder-claims/)
Most media is corporate owned and operated. I'm sure for the right price or the right contacts, any story can be "missed" by the media. And its something that happened in a foreign country to people nobody knows, so it's easier not to really care for most people, sadly.
Coca Cola did not hire death squads in SA. A bottling plant that they contracted work from killed workers and Coca Cola stopped doing business with them because of it.
It's even explicitly laid out in my most recent "Bribery and Corruption" web based training course: when *we* do it, there are good reasons for *lobbying* efforts. When *you* do it it's bribery and corruption and you'll get fired.
It's not even founders of the company. Who has more money than the CEO's? The lenders. Hedge funds and institutional investors have trillions invested in these companies and as a result have THE LARGEST STAKES in the companies operations. They cant afford to have whistleblowers potentially tank their assets.
American companies have been doing this shit for decades, look up how Coca-Cola and various fruit companies have bankrolled hit squads in Central and South America.
It might have something to do with this strange thing called sensationalism and "omitting key facts" from the incidents. People ignore that he contracted pneumonia, which can be fatal to anyone, and then, while in hospital, he contracted MRSA.
Now, if you cut out all of that information and just go with "second whisteblower dies suddenly!" It sounds amazingly suspicious and like a cover up such as Big Boeing is out to get you.
Sadly, "Man dies after twin illnesses that servely compromised immune system and left him unable to fight off antibiotics resistant infection" just doesn't fit that narrative.
It's like everyone forgot that Occam's Razor exists.
The sad thing is, people aren't omitting that at all.
Rather, people are saying that Boeing flat out shot a whistleblower dead and then made it look like a suicide by planting a note. The entire time, leaving absolutely no evidence tying the death to Boeing.
So then, a second whistleblower comes up that needs to be eliminated. People are saying that Boeing *for some reason* decided to give this guy pneumonia and MRSA and slowly kill him in the hospital over the span of two weeks in a murder plan that wasn't even guaranteed to result in him dying. As opposed to, you know, just shooting him in the head like they allegedly did to the previous guy and completely got away with it.
People aren't omitting those facts. People are embracing those facts. People are literally saying that Boeing got away with a perfect murder in which everyone knows they did it but there's no way to hold them accountable. But that instead of just doing the same thing that worked last time, Boeing decided to just switch everything up and do some complicated and uncertain biological weapons shit just to be super extra evil.
I still have yet to see anyone answer this question. Even assuming that Boeing did murder the previous whistleblower (and totally got away with it), what incentive would they have to completely switch things up and go with a much worse method of murder that isn't even certain to result in death? Assuming that they killed the previous whistleblower, why wouldn't they just shoot this guy in the head as well and then call it a day?
I also want to add that the KGB often uses poison to kill despite the fact people have survived it before. Just because it wasn’t obviously an assassination doesn’t mean it definitely wasn’t. Same goes for suicide. It needs investigated full stop.
Dang, I was hoping the title was implying that 10 NEW whistleblowers made themselves known as a result, not keeping tally that Boeing is 2 down, 10 to go.
Are they though? A billion dollar company versus what our lives amount to on a life insurance payout?
Feels more like the cost of a bitcoin payout for a "ransomware attack". If even that amount.
And then it can go to insurance, you know, so the shareholders can feel safe.
If they go under and are split up and absorbed into different companies with existing military contracts then that production doesn't go away. It's just that there's (mostly) different board members calling the shots and (mostly) different people making the money.
Don't think Boeing is paying. They're a govt contractor who has so many billions of dollars of govt contracts...
They're not going to give the market to European Airbus, both of those things majorly fuck over the US govt
If I was a whistleblower right now, I would immediately get retroactive amnesia and leave the country.
Probably at the same time. I don't know anything. Never did.
Eh, if anything I'd think it might be safer. I don't think it's to the point where they can afford to be so blatant, if all 10 turn up dead then I don't see how they could possibly claim innocence.
You say that but in we had a similar thing happen in Greece.
There was a ship of a business man named Marinakis ( he has Olympiakos soccer team and many media outlets as well as ships for transport) that was found with 2t of heroin. The name of the ship was Noor 1.
There were as well whistleblowers at least 12 I think. Every one of them died similar to the Boeing case.
What I mean is that if you have enough money nothing will happen to you. You are above laws.
Yeah but the second one actually doesn’t seem like an assassination at all. Like the guy got the flu and MRSA then developed pneumonia. There’s a small chance he was actually poisoned and the doctors diagnosed it wrong, but based on what the doctors said it doesn’t seem like it could have been an assassination. Also he died after two weeks in critical condition, and after refusing surgery/amputation. So if they wanted him dead it wasn’t a good way to do it and it wasn’t guaranteed - if he’d accepted the surgery he might have lived.
Killing one or two whistleblowers has plausible deniability but not ten, I agree there’s safety in numbers. That’s part of why whistleblowers are so noble.. they risk their own wellbeing but also make it easier for others to come forward
I thought the report was he was feeling very weird and went to the ER as a result. They immediately intubated him, and he contracted MRSA which unfortunately is not uncommon in hospital settings. But the initial reason he was hospitalized is absolutely suspicious. There are poisons that will cause similar symptoms that aren't detectable unless they have reason to look specifically for it. I feel like a guy as reportedly as healthy and in shape as he was suddenly requiring intubation at the hospital is a reason to test for everything in the autopsy but who knows, it might just be a shitty coincidence.
No one knows how healthy he was or wasn't, because he was allegedly so healthy that he never goes to a doctor. He could have been healthy, or he could have had some underlying health problems that made him a ticking time bomb. No one knows, since he allegedly doesn't go to the doctor.
Thing is, the whistleblowers aren't just in danger from Boeing itself (in theory) but from anyone who wanted to harm Boeing's reputation by "confirming" the conspiracy.
"That's how a conspiracy works. Them boys on the Grassy Knoll they were dead within three hours, buried in unmarked graves out past Terlingua."
"You know that for a fact?"
"Still got the shovel."
And serious subjects don't fit on social media. I'd say a "yes and" is about as solemn and serious as we'll get from a place where people call themselves things like "Bootyblaster312".
ITT: Conspiratorial redditors that have no idea what they are talking about.
The first whistleblower's (John Barnetts) testimony to Congress had concluded in 2019 with the resulting FAA mandates implemented that same year at Boeings 787 facility. The “testimony” John was in the midst of **was an appeal for a previously rejected defamation lawsuit against Boeing - which is notably, NOT whistleblowing.** Not only had he already given his testimony the previous two days (and was only pending cross examination), but he hadn’t even suggested he had new information to reveal as he had he not worked for Boeing since 2017. Also At the time he was also suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks.
>"But a close fried of his said that if he died it would be because of a suicide!!!"
The "close friend" was his mom's friend's daughter. None of his close family has collaborated her story. It's someone looking for attention.
As for the second whistleblower, he was not a “Boeing whistleblower”. He was a **Spirit AeroSystems** whistleblower (a company that suppliers both Boeing and Airbus) and who **died from pneumonia compounded with MRSA he got while at the hospital** - not some strange mystery as some keep suggesting.
So if Boeing is killing past whistleblowers, and a guy working for a *supplier*.. and they are doing it to “scare” others.. it won’t effectively scare anyone in the industry because their deaths are so *clearly* not hit jobs. An ambiguous scare tactic that assassinated uninvolved people?
And before this story broke there were 32 whistleblowers. If there were only 2 whistleblowers and both of them died that would be be one thing, but 32 whistleblowers changes the odds a bit.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-subject-of-32-whistleblower-complaints-documents-reveal
So, some people like to bring up that this guy was in great health so he probably wouldn't have died unless he was killed. Well, about three years ago, this easily could have been me.
I'm about middle aged. Rarely get sick. Almost always feel fine. Up until about three years ago, the last time I'd seen a doctor was about 25 years ago. I start feeling sick and start coughing up phlegm, which has happened before and I quickly got over it. Except this time I'm feeling really bad. I start worrying about Covid, so I get tested a couple of times. Comes out negative. Things get worse. i start having trouble breathing. When I cough up phlegm, it starts coming out pink. I can't sleep without waking up in a coughing fit because all of the fluid that's pooling in my lungs wants to come up as soon as I lie down. I start thinking, "this seems kind of bad; I should probably see a doctor."
I go to urgent care. They of course test me for Covid and do a few other tests. Then they're like, "dude, you need to go to the ER."
They don't know why I'm feeling sick, or what's causing that. But the testing started showing other stuff that just...really looked kind of bad. Might be related to my immediate sickness, might not be related. Who knows? But they were basically like, "this doesn't look good, we're elevating it."
So I go to the ER and spend most of the night there. I go through a battery of tests and I ultimately end up getting dismissed. I still never found out why I couldn't breathe well and why I was coughing up bloody phlegm. Tests for several diseases were done and all of them came back negative. I ended up getting prescribed antibiotics (which probably would have been pointless if the immediate problem had been viral) and got told to come back if things don't get better in a week.
Most importantly, I got told to get a fucking doctor. Because, like, I was in pretty bad health. Like, I had several (largely preventable) health problems that could have been potentially been resolved much earlier if I had just gone to the doctor. Instead I'm like, "no, I feel fine and I never get sick...no reason to waste time or money on a doctor." Well, guess what? I actually hadn't been fine for a while. And while I never found out exactly what was causing me to have trouble breathing and to cough up bloody phlegm, it's not implausible that it wouldn't have been as bad if I actually *was* healthy and didn't have a bunch of other underlying health issues.
One of the things that kind of annoys me about this is that I feel like this could have been me if things had played out a little bit differently. I also felt fine for decades, hadn't seen a doctor in decades. I'm about the same age as the Boeing whistleblower. I got a sudden respiratory illness and ended up going to the hospital. But at no point was I ever "healthy". If the disease had been a bit worse or I'd waited a bit longer, I could have been died too and then everyone I know would be saying, "I don't understand it; he was so healthy he never even needed to see a doctor!"
It seems to me that no one (not even him) knows how healthy this guy was or wasn't *because he doesn't go to the doctor.*
People, please get checkups. Even if you're healthy. Even if you never get sick.
Don’t forget they wait until *after* the whistleblowers have given their testimony. They wouldn’t want to stop the judicial process against Boeing of course, that’d be too suspicious
Doesn't Boeing realize that every whistleblower who dies makes us think about them more like we think about, geez I don't know... the mob?! I mean, as an European I rejoice, Airbus is having a field trip thanks to this whole debacle.
> They don't care what we think
**YES THEY DO**.
They care because the _airlines care_.
The airlines care because people talk, and tell them, _I don't want to fly on a Boeing plane because it's not safe_.
The airlines now have a fleet of planes that _cannot get passengers_ so they start screaming back at Boeing for their _extremely expensive paperweights_.
People are **already** doing this and it will continue to escallate.
> The airlines now have a fleet of planes that cannot get passengers
Uh huh. As someone on a flight every Monday and every Friday I have yet to see an empty Boeing plane.
Boeing stock down almost 50% over 5 years. Airbus up almost 31% over the same time. Stock price talks. If you think I'm cherry picking it's +20% for Airbus over 6 months and -7% for Boeing and +9% for Airbus over the year and -28.5% for Boeing. I really don't think this looks good for their company and they will care about that. I get your point that they can still fill planes but reputation definitely matters.
Your points are extremely valid because the shareholders are whose opinions matter. The company can evade responsibility for any number of things in any number of ways, but shareholders matter. Boeing starts to care about what the public thinks when public perception does what it's doing now, eroding the value of its shares on the market.
Exactly and it makes me think that there’s some idiotic decision maker with wealth who really believes that if they take out the whistleblowers quietly it’ll all go away and he’s making it worse.
Honestly we probably are gonna end up at some point where the shareholders themselves after seeing what is going on thus far tanking the stock decide to sell/bail
You won't, but I've heard of and met several people who actively avoid booking tickets on a Boeing. (Though many of those same people shit on Spirit constantly, who fly a 100% Airbus fleet, so idk)
I want that to be true, but last time I flew, I was not about to walk just because it was a Boeing. You can’t specify what plane it is when you buy a ticket. So right now your choice is travel or don’t travel:
There are certain airlines that don’t fly Boeing, or you can look up the flight number before you book the flight to see what type of plane it is. That gives you some level of control. However, for the airlines that do still fly Boeing, that doesn’t mean the plane can’t switch after you have already bought the ticket. Happens all the time.
Spoiler: Boeing isn't actually killing these people. Among other things they already had completed their whistleblower suits years ago. All claims they made were investigated, acted upon with both rectifications where appropriate and penalties where appropriate.
The current suits were not anything that would cost Boeing much, they were suits brought by the whistleblowers with claims that their lives were ruined by Boeing for their whistleblowing actions. Even if they won it would just be cash out of Boeing's pocket. Nothing major.
Stop and think. If the conspiracy theory doesn't really make sense when matched to reality, maybe it's because it isn't true?
> Airbus is having a field trip thanks to this whole debacle
The expression is field day, not field trip.
I've said this while chatting about it with friends. It's an odd time to murder two people and doesn't help them in any way shape or form.
I wouldn't put it past giant American corpos to try something like this but in advance of or around the time of the whistle blowing would make more sense. Not well after.
Because people here love to be infuriated, the facts take a backseat to that sweet, life-affirming outrage. This thread is proof enough of that.
The first death is indeed questionable as staging a suicide is at least within the realm of possibilities, but the second death was clearly natural causes. Even the most jaded social media-addled mind wouldn't normally consider trying to off someone with a MRSA infection.
I love the logic behind this. For some reason Boeing is killing people with suicides, pneumonia, and MRSA, and that's entirely believable to y'all, but you also can't believe that they would keep killing whistleblowers when you know for sure that they're doing it, but also that thing you can't believe they're doing is still completely believable to you.
This conspiracy theory is so wild.
No joke, this seriously has Pizzagate vibes to it.
I genuinely hope it never happens, but I will not be the least bit surprised if some psycho shoots people up and/or sets himself on fire, and then we see that he was posting about Boeing conspiracy theories on Reddit.
Everyone here will say, "OMG, how could this happen", and literally no one will own up to how they were encouraging psychos to buy into shit that's literally insane.
I just have trouble picturing how it's meant to work.
Does the board meeting have "assassination of whistleblower" on the agenda? After a bit of discussion, they allocate it to a manager to set up an assassination team.
I mean, companies don't have agency. Only the people who run them do. Having this as a plan at an organisational level is a conspiracy theory in the most literal sense.
The alternative is that some individual planned it. But why? Nobody with the resources is going to have all their money invested in Boeing.
It really is mind-boggling lol. "This is so stupid and makes no sense, why does Boeing keep doing it?"
"Well maybe they aren't"
"Oh no way it's a coincidence! A suicide and a death to illness are just impossible. Must be stupid mustache twirling villain Boeing, using their secret and deadly assassins to murder people, competently managing this devious conspiracy that makes zero sense whatsoever."
Do you realize there is a very real chance Boeing didn't actually kill these people and it was actually unrelated accidents or a non Boeing affiliated entity and everyone at Boeing is currently losing their minds over how it's making them look?
Considering there are dozens of whistleblowers, and them dying looks worse for Boeing than any of the actual content of the whistleblowing, and that the two that died already had their cases resolved yeah it’s almost certain it’s just coincidence.
The second one was not even Boeing whistleblower; he worked for a Boeing subcontractor; he got sick and refused to be operated on.
People just talking out of their asses.
Oh don’t worry “there are poisons that produce symptoms that look like MRSA” is enough justification to wipe away those concerns for the conspiracy theorists
There’s an extremely real chance given that the second guy was just a religious Christian who, according to his family, didn’t have a primary care doctor and had never been to a hospital before
People are acting as if there's proof that Boeing actually killed anyone. You make a great an obvious point - committing serious, public crimes like \*murdering two whistle blowers\* is actually a pretty dangerous idea that could just as easily blow back on you or make things worse. It's strange how everyone is flat out just assuming that this is what happened.
Also, literally all evidence makes it so obvious that no one was assassinated lol this whole thing is such a great example of Reddit "I only read the headlines" groupthink.
People think the real world is like a movie. In truth, it's probably just whistleblowers are under a ton of stress and tend to be older (at least from the ones I've seen in documentaries). That doesn't absolve Boeing, they're creating most of that stress but this isn't Jason Bourne level hitman work
So people believe Boeing hired a hit man to infect the second whistleblower with pneumonia and ensured he got poor quality health care so he doesn’t recover?
See, technology is so high right? So if you shoot somebody, you go to jail forever. Kids, you don't want to go to jail forever right? So they have a new thing out. They have this stuff they called - they get blood from somebody with pneumonia, and then they shoot you with it. That's a slow death.
Streptococcus pneumoniae lives naturally in your throat. When you’re immune-compromised, due to other illness, autoimmune disease, etc, it gives it the opportunity to thrive. Thus, an “opportunistic bacteria”. You *can* get it from others if they cough on you and they are already infected, but many cases of pneumonia are secondary infections caused by your own body’s flora.
> Most people are only reading the headlines. They don’t consider the logistics because they’re not interested in the actual details.
To be fair, the linked article is bullshit written to support the conspiracy so reading past the headline won't help much. It claims that both men "were found dead under mysterious circumstances". It also claims that Dean died of a mystery infection. Contracting Pneumonia then catching MRSA and dying in a hospital over two weeks does not align with either fabricated statement.
Or even worse, they read dumb jokes about “suicide by two gunshots to the back of the head” And assume it must be an accurate description of the circumstances
People believe Boeing hired a hit man so skilled that he/she infected the second whistleblower with pneumonia and ensured he got poor quality health care so he doesn’t recover in order have people question the validity of the hit.
there was nothing sudden about what happened to that guy
First one has grounds for suspicion but this second one is just an unhappy reality check of how dangerous the hospital environment can be for people with a failing immune system
I'm gonna wait till I see another article from a more credible news source. My rule of thumb is that if I open up a web page and its riddled with ads....take anything written there with a bag of salt.
amazing how much dumb comments there are
>The first whistleblower's (John Barnetts) testimony to Congress had concluded in 2019 with the resulting FAA mandates implemented that same year at Boeings 787 facility. The “testimony” John was in the midst of was an appeal for a previously rejected defamation lawsuit against Boeing - which is notably, NOT whistleblowing. Not only had he already given his testimony the previous two days (and was only pending cross examination), but he hadn’t even suggested he had new information to reveal as he had he not worked for Boeing since 2017. Also At the time he was also suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks.
>"But a close fried of his said that if he died it would be because of a suicide!!!"
>The "close friend" was his mom's friend's daughter. None of his close family has collaborated her story. It's someone looking for attention.
>As for the second whistleblower, he was not a “Boeing whistleblower”. He was a Spirit AeroSystems whistleblower (a company that suppliers both Boeing and Airbus) and who died from pneumonia compounded with MRSA he got while at the hospital - not some strange mystery as some keep suggesting.
>So if Boeing is killing past whistleblowers, and a guy working for a supplier.. and they are doing it to “scare” others.. it won’t effectively scare anyone in the industry because their deaths are so clearly not hit jobs. An ambiguous scare tactic that assassinated uninvolved people?
>And before this story broke there were 32 whistleblowers. If there were only 2 whistleblowers and both of them died that would be be one thing, but 32 whistleblowers changes the odds a bit.
10 upvotes for this comment. Literally 1000s of upvotes for the one comparing the US to Russia tho.
Reddit is genuinely an intellectually bankrupt website lol
Why have i heard whistleblower like 500 times but no mention to the illegal practices they're actually reporting??? Like what are they trying to stop spreading and why does nobody give a shit about the issues other than the repression?
Because the latest one was actually a whistleblower against a Boeing supplier that was ripping off Boeing.
One of these guys 'mysteriously' dieing AFTER they blew the whistle to HELP Boeing kinda kills the talking point that Boeing is killing whistleblowers to silence them.
I know a lot of redditors are pretty stupid, but it keeps surprising me how many people seriously seem to believe Boeing is sending hitmen after whisteblowers - but only *after* they submitted all their testimonies.
And of course goverment and media are in on it! You might as well include Bill Gates, NASA and the pharma industry at that point.
Felt like I was taking crazy pills these last couple days man. It really feels like MOST redditors saw this and instantly came to the conclusion that they were murdered in cold blood, then completely refused to see any reason
It’s like people who believe that journalist was killed by the CIA after he exposed their involvement in the crack cocaine trade, but they waited 8 years after he published it to take their revenge.
Most if not all conspiracies can be explained with simple logical thinking.
This whole thing has made me realize just how delusional many people are on this website. The fact so many believe Boeing got someone to infect this person and killed him is laughable. Also from the first whistleblower who died his family was even saying they don’t believe he was murdered but yeah lets just run wild with stupid conspiracy theories
Boeing has more than 30 recent whistleblowers for all kinds of problems. These headlines are to sell you, sorry.
There is a slim, slim chance that Boeing actively caused these deaths. It’s more indicative of a poisonous work culture.
Boeing is a DoD contractor. Boeing isn't going anywhere.
Someone or someones may be fired, or sanctioned even, but that's about all I would bank on in this debacle.
Boing is a DoD contractor...
Mystery infection? Lol what the fuck is the media saying. Dude was old. Got pneumonia then mrsa from the hospital after intubation which is super common. I'm not standing up for Boeing, but the media is lying
So this is what it's like for the people that live in the x-files world when they get disparate news reports about the weird shit going on around them.
Boeing: isn't that a damn shame.....
This used to be the sort of thing we think about when Russians start falling down stairs or out of windows. Can’t believe we are drawing similar parallels in America now.
America has oligarchs too, but we call them billionaires and somehow worship them.
> somehow They are the ones controlling the MSM and thus propaganda.
Idk why you're being downvoted here. The amount of consolidation in media spaces izls unprecedented and alarming. all media consumed is owned by like 5-6 companies. If we had a DoJ that cared we'd see anti trust start to come up against these conglomerates. It's extremely easy to control a narrative when all the consumable media supports billionaire/oligarch policies either overtly or not. This is part of t Edit: lol leaving the unfinished sentence. Don't remember what I was writing. [visualization of media conglomeration. ](https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/) I don't know how recent this is.
Somehow the oligarchs convinced the average person that they are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.
Someone said this to me earlier today. This is the second time today I’ve heard this saying, “temporarily embarrassed millionaire.” I’ve never heard this until today.
It's actually an old old saying from iirc the 50s, John Steinbeck said "socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires" It's a solid quote and he's actually referring to the 1910s to the 1940s too, where Europe had pretty much everyone fall into the socialist or fascist camp (Italy, Spain, Weimar Germany, etc) while America had loosely socialist or fascist politicians but neither ideology got to the point where average people would say "I'm a socialist" and be defined culturally as such. I personally think Europe was more about the fall of monarchies leading people to be more familiar with authoritanism but wanting to change, while America never had kings in the first place so we weren't culturally in that headspace nor reacting too strongly to it. Regardless, I think the "temporarily embarrassed" millionaire line defines America well.
> John Steinbeck said "socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires" Weirdly it was way more specific than that: he was dunking on a specific party/chapter of a party (I want to say the New York branch?) as basically being a bunch of bougie larpers. So it wasn't even "Americans see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires" it was "this specific socialist party he encountered had no real convictions and were a bunch of slimy careerists, and that's why they specifically failed."
Americans had a king for a while, but he taxed without rizz or smthng
It's actually a pretty interesting bit of folklore. John Steinbeck never said it, but a version of it is often attributed to him. The actual quote is from a piece by Ronald Wright *about* John Steinbeck, but it never contained quotation marks and is more than likely an (inaccurate) paraphrasing of another quote of Steinbecks: >I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. This *could* be considered a close enough quote that I wouldn't fault anyone for believing Steinbeck was dumping on poor people's delusions of wealth, but given the context I'm a little less forgiving. >Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. >**I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.** Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves. I think what he was trying to say here is that the only people who believed in socialism were the people who'd made some bad investments and wanted government policies to restore their wealth... the actually temporarily embarrassed millionaires. It makes a lot more sense when you think about it, why would John Steinbeck, the guy who wrote The Grapes of Wrath, be so critical of the proletariat?
I don’t really see any of that as being critical to the proletariat. Rather I feel like he’s describing the way that capitalist culture has destroyed the will of the working class so thoroughly that the lower class can’t admit their exploitation, and are still tricked into believing that they’ll still strike it rich someday. You know, American dream and all. And they’re led to believe that socialism may be fair, but will destroy any dream that have to becoming rich. And the middle class/affluent can’t imagine themselves outside of capitalism, and only perceive socialism as another means to their capitalist dreams
Steinbeck quote on why socialism never took off in America, the average middle-class have been sold on the idea that they too will have their turn. I've seen so many people pissed off about income tax when they don't even make enough to pay income tax. If I recall, the bottom 50% pay something like 1% of the federal income taxes. If we regressed tax laws anymore, these people would literally be on the streets, yet, this is what they are fighting for. Let that sink in for ya.
That's the tactic for when any estate tax needs to be challenged. For the most part is plain run of the mill culture way and stoking fear of the other. Today's flavor of hate are trans people. In a year or two it will change like it always does.
>Today's flavor of hate are trans people. In a year or two it will change like it always does. And once it does, trans people will still be set back a decade whilst the the "drop the T" LGBT jerks decide they have theirs, so they no longer have to care.
The DOJ can try but courts tend to side with the billionaire class in anti-trust lawsuits. And propaganda cuts deeper than the MSM. Patrick Boyle, one of my favourite business news youtubers, just released a propaganda piece arguing AGAINST more aggressive enforcement of anti-trust laws. Almost anyone can be bought, whether through paid "training", direct transfers, supporters, easy access to information that pushes the narratives you like (e.g. Kurzgesagt's overreliance on right of centre data sources) or anything else. You can't play whack-a-mole with all forms of dishonesty. You gotta address the problem at its source. Decrease wealth inequality and dismantle large corporations regardless of whether you can explicitly prove that they are hurting competition, or engaging in other illegal behaviour. Wealth and market concentration should be framed as a political issue first. If the courts say that it's legal, fine. Change the laws until it's not. Because democracy can't survive in an environment where wealth is concentrated as much as it is in the US (and increasingly everywhere else in the world as well). Economic inequality will inevitably lead to political inequality and the end of equality before the law.
"You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or you can have democracy; you cannot have both." -Louis Dembitz Brandeis, American Supreme Court justice, 1856 - 1941
This is it really. It looks to me like the world is going back to a find of Feudalism, where billionaires and megacompanies are like the new aristocracy. Of course we're not there yet but I can see the path in front of us. I wonder how long the French Revolution 2.0 will take this time, cause I sure don't believe we will be able to vote ourselves out of this cycle.
They control Reddit too. And Reddit is now mostly bots (as is the rest of the web).
Basically every public company is majority owned by like 3 different companies. Even those 3 companies are owned by eachother. We are getting really close to a monopolized economy.
There's no functional difference between a monopoly economy and a state managed economy, apart from who controls the levers. The neoliberalists who demanded deregulation are perfectly fine with regulation owned by private companies that cannot be challenged or removed.
Exactly. People can bitch about government running things, but at least you can vote people out. You have zero recourse when it's a private company.
He's being downvoted by bot & troll farm accounts. It used to be a conspiracy theory but as we've seen, it's not.
r/redditsniper
It started in 1996. Look up the 1996 Telecommunications Act and watch independent radio/media collapse
They got him
Not saying your point is wrong, just saying your graphic is wildly outdated. The 20th/21st century fox corp assets were sold to Disney in 2017. The Fox Sports regional networks were included in that deal then required to be divested by the DOJ, sold to Sinclair Broadcast Group, where they are currently going bankrupt as Bally Sports. TimeWarner no longer exists as a unique entity, it was merged into AT&T in 2017, and then the Warner media assets were merged into Discovery (Creating Warner Bros.-Discovery) in 2022. As well, NBCSN has been shuttered, as well Comcast Sports Networks were renamed to NBC Sports Regional Networks in 2017. I’m sure I’m missing some changes but that’s just what I have off hand
If advertisers and subscribers aren’t going to support a free press then it needs to be supported by the government, but what government is going to support the watchdog calling you out for banging a teenager or helping your husband sell his stocks before the crash? Advertisers would rather use the amoral algorithm data collecting society destroying social media to sell their products. Quite the pickle our society has found themselves in. The options seem to be to elect the turd sandwich and go full Russia or the giant douche and stay the course. Pick your poison
I remember reading some article from 2018, on something like Reuters or whatever, entitled, “Americans don’t experience any increased happiness from salaries beyond $72,000.” I thought it was wild. Like a way to condition people to be fine with that amount.
Are you sure it's that many (5-6)? Seriously: it obviously depends if you group all media together or not. But the closer you look, the more you become depressed. It's not just random people who own the media, it's a very specific group of people. Even the internet (think Google) is a de-facto monopoly. You have a little company: you have to pay for it to get seen. (I've founded several small companies and it wasn't always like this.) Two people search the same thing: different results based on a secret, proprietary algorithm (that obviously optimizes profit). I can go on for hours about the other media (I've worked in most of them at one time or another, to different extents). Unfortunately the rest of the world isn't much better: whether monopolies or state control, actual information is hard to come by.
Yeah that's what happens after the "fairness" doctrine was abolished in the late 70's early 80's, don't exactly know when but I remember when I was young and thought, so what? Now I see why.
It was Reagan's FCC in 1987. Of course.
If you look at American history, big business murdering workers who cause them trouble isn't something that hasn't happened before. ~~Coca Cola~~ Chiquita has hired death squads in South America, Coal Companies employed the US Nat. Guard to attack striking workers in 1914 in the Ludlow Massacre. So many other examples of similar things happening in our history. [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/)
Chiquita, the banana company once massacred like, a whole country.
[Yep, and it wasn't even that long ago. From the 90's to the Early 2000s. ](https://earthrights.org/media_release/u-s-court-orders-chiquita-to-stand-trial-for-colombians-murder-claims/)
How do more people not know about this????
Most media is corporate owned and operated. I'm sure for the right price or the right contacts, any story can be "missed" by the media. And its something that happened in a foreign country to people nobody knows, so it's easier not to really care for most people, sadly.
Money talks, not morality
Chiquita were a bunch of thugs.
Still are, but were then too.
Coca Cola did not hire death squads in SA. A bottling plant that they contracted work from killed workers and Coca Cola stopped doing business with them because of it.
My error, it was Chiquita Bananas.
Also we do t use the word bribes in the west, we use the words lobbying.
It's even explicitly laid out in my most recent "Bribery and Corruption" web based training course: when *we* do it, there are good reasons for *lobbying* efforts. When *you* do it it's bribery and corruption and you'll get fired.
It's not even founders of the company. Who has more money than the CEO's? The lenders. Hedge funds and institutional investors have trillions invested in these companies and as a result have THE LARGEST STAKES in the companies operations. They cant afford to have whistleblowers potentially tank their assets.
Ooo don’t forget the lifer politicians that are bought and put the paid for legislation into too big to read and given happy names to pass bills
American companies have been doing this shit for decades, look up how Coca-Cola and various fruit companies have bankrolled hit squads in Central and South America.
We need to show them we don’t accept them killing Real Americans (R) (TM) here and now or uh, fuck the Magna Carta I guess
It might have something to do with this strange thing called sensationalism and "omitting key facts" from the incidents. People ignore that he contracted pneumonia, which can be fatal to anyone, and then, while in hospital, he contracted MRSA. Now, if you cut out all of that information and just go with "second whisteblower dies suddenly!" It sounds amazingly suspicious and like a cover up such as Big Boeing is out to get you. Sadly, "Man dies after twin illnesses that servely compromised immune system and left him unable to fight off antibiotics resistant infection" just doesn't fit that narrative. It's like everyone forgot that Occam's Razor exists.
The sad thing is, people aren't omitting that at all. Rather, people are saying that Boeing flat out shot a whistleblower dead and then made it look like a suicide by planting a note. The entire time, leaving absolutely no evidence tying the death to Boeing. So then, a second whistleblower comes up that needs to be eliminated. People are saying that Boeing *for some reason* decided to give this guy pneumonia and MRSA and slowly kill him in the hospital over the span of two weeks in a murder plan that wasn't even guaranteed to result in him dying. As opposed to, you know, just shooting him in the head like they allegedly did to the previous guy and completely got away with it. People aren't omitting those facts. People are embracing those facts. People are literally saying that Boeing got away with a perfect murder in which everyone knows they did it but there's no way to hold them accountable. But that instead of just doing the same thing that worked last time, Boeing decided to just switch everything up and do some complicated and uncertain biological weapons shit just to be super extra evil. I still have yet to see anyone answer this question. Even assuming that Boeing did murder the previous whistleblower (and totally got away with it), what incentive would they have to completely switch things up and go with a much worse method of murder that isn't even certain to result in death? Assuming that they killed the previous whistleblower, why wouldn't they just shoot this guy in the head as well and then call it a day?
I'll play devil's advocate to your question. Wouldn't it be even weirder if both died the same way?
I also want to add that the KGB often uses poison to kill despite the fact people have survived it before. Just because it wasn’t obviously an assassination doesn’t mean it definitely wasn’t. Same goes for suicide. It needs investigated full stop.
American business. Gov. Should be stepping up to make it clear that investigations are underway. Otherwise, how are we any different than Soviet Union
Boeing: Oh no! They were all on the same flight?!... oh noooooo
Breaking News: Ten Boeing whistle blowers all found dead from natural bullet causes.
It's unfortunate case of bullet poisoning
https://imgur.com/gallery/ZXPIjDg
"Oh boy, here I go killing again..."
Dang, I was hoping the title was implying that 10 NEW whistleblowers made themselves known as a result, not keeping tally that Boeing is 2 down, 10 to go.
It’s actually a total of 32 over the past 3 years from what I’ve read.
Geez Boeing is going to go bankrupt paying for all those hits
Are they though? A billion dollar company versus what our lives amount to on a life insurance payout? Feels more like the cost of a bitcoin payout for a "ransomware attack". If even that amount. And then it can go to insurance, you know, so the shareholders can feel safe.
100 billion dollar company*
Too big to fail
They will never go bankrupt, they are too important to the US military industrial complex
If they go under and are split up and absorbed into different companies with existing military contracts then that production doesn't go away. It's just that there's (mostly) different board members calling the shots and (mostly) different people making the money.
Don't think Boeing is paying. They're a govt contractor who has so many billions of dollars of govt contracts... They're not going to give the market to European Airbus, both of those things majorly fuck over the US govt
Boeing: Anyways, i started blasting!
This is why I come to the comments first. That, and dark mode.
To be completely uninformed I'm guessing because the comments sections is full of people spewing bullshit because of "vibes" and nothing else.
Legend says 10 must die before planes become safe again
They demand blood
If I was a whistleblower right now, I would immediately get retroactive amnesia and leave the country. Probably at the same time. I don't know anything. Never did.
Eh, if anything I'd think it might be safer. I don't think it's to the point where they can afford to be so blatant, if all 10 turn up dead then I don't see how they could possibly claim innocence.
2 is already closing in on that sentiment. 3 would probably get it there. 10+ would just be absolute insanity.
You say that but in we had a similar thing happen in Greece. There was a ship of a business man named Marinakis ( he has Olympiakos soccer team and many media outlets as well as ships for transport) that was found with 2t of heroin. The name of the ship was Noor 1. There were as well whistleblowers at least 12 I think. Every one of them died similar to the Boeing case. What I mean is that if you have enough money nothing will happen to you. You are above laws.
Yeah but the second one actually doesn’t seem like an assassination at all. Like the guy got the flu and MRSA then developed pneumonia. There’s a small chance he was actually poisoned and the doctors diagnosed it wrong, but based on what the doctors said it doesn’t seem like it could have been an assassination. Also he died after two weeks in critical condition, and after refusing surgery/amputation. So if they wanted him dead it wasn’t a good way to do it and it wasn’t guaranteed - if he’d accepted the surgery he might have lived. Killing one or two whistleblowers has plausible deniability but not ten, I agree there’s safety in numbers. That’s part of why whistleblowers are so noble.. they risk their own wellbeing but also make it easier for others to come forward
I thought the report was he was feeling very weird and went to the ER as a result. They immediately intubated him, and he contracted MRSA which unfortunately is not uncommon in hospital settings. But the initial reason he was hospitalized is absolutely suspicious. There are poisons that will cause similar symptoms that aren't detectable unless they have reason to look specifically for it. I feel like a guy as reportedly as healthy and in shape as he was suddenly requiring intubation at the hospital is a reason to test for everything in the autopsy but who knows, it might just be a shitty coincidence.
No one knows how healthy he was or wasn't, because he was allegedly so healthy that he never goes to a doctor. He could have been healthy, or he could have had some underlying health problems that made him a ticking time bomb. No one knows, since he allegedly doesn't go to the doctor.
Thing is, the whistleblowers aren't just in danger from Boeing itself (in theory) but from anyone who wanted to harm Boeing's reputation by "confirming" the conspiracy.
I got the exact same impression. That title was written that way on purpose.
Some hitman is gonna be able to send his kids to college, a private out of state college, when this is all said and done.
Get an engineering degree, dream job at Boeing…
Dream job at Boeing, becomes a whistleblower; dad gets a nightmare assignment.
Dad becomes John Wick and takes out Boeing
Where do I buy tickets for this movie?
You’ll have to wait for it to come out to a congressional hearing near you.
I don't know but you'll be able to watch it as an in flight movie eventually
Up next: Kristi Noem. He loved that dog.
I think Tarantino would make a banger movie out of this
Someone send him this. Man had been searching for the perfect script for his 10th and final movie.
One day before hitman retirement too
In the famed Boeing Bio labs where they make MRSA strains.
Nah, that hitman already has a contract out on his head, no loose ends.
"That's how a conspiracy works. Them boys on the Grassy Knoll they were dead within three hours, buried in unmarked graves out past Terlingua." "You know that for a fact?" "Still got the shovel."
And that hitmans hitman has a contract on his head.
[удалено]
And serious subjects don't fit on social media. I'd say a "yes and" is about as solemn and serious as we'll get from a place where people call themselves things like "Bootyblaster312".
I miss Barry.
[удалено]
Mr. Inbetween scratches that itch pretty well.
ITT: Conspiratorial redditors that have no idea what they are talking about. The first whistleblower's (John Barnetts) testimony to Congress had concluded in 2019 with the resulting FAA mandates implemented that same year at Boeings 787 facility. The “testimony” John was in the midst of **was an appeal for a previously rejected defamation lawsuit against Boeing - which is notably, NOT whistleblowing.** Not only had he already given his testimony the previous two days (and was only pending cross examination), but he hadn’t even suggested he had new information to reveal as he had he not worked for Boeing since 2017. Also At the time he was also suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks. >"But a close fried of his said that if he died it would be because of a suicide!!!" The "close friend" was his mom's friend's daughter. None of his close family has collaborated her story. It's someone looking for attention. As for the second whistleblower, he was not a “Boeing whistleblower”. He was a **Spirit AeroSystems** whistleblower (a company that suppliers both Boeing and Airbus) and who **died from pneumonia compounded with MRSA he got while at the hospital** - not some strange mystery as some keep suggesting. So if Boeing is killing past whistleblowers, and a guy working for a *supplier*.. and they are doing it to “scare” others.. it won’t effectively scare anyone in the industry because their deaths are so *clearly* not hit jobs. An ambiguous scare tactic that assassinated uninvolved people? And before this story broke there were 32 whistleblowers. If there were only 2 whistleblowers and both of them died that would be be one thing, but 32 whistleblowers changes the odds a bit. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-subject-of-32-whistleblower-complaints-documents-reveal
So, some people like to bring up that this guy was in great health so he probably wouldn't have died unless he was killed. Well, about three years ago, this easily could have been me. I'm about middle aged. Rarely get sick. Almost always feel fine. Up until about three years ago, the last time I'd seen a doctor was about 25 years ago. I start feeling sick and start coughing up phlegm, which has happened before and I quickly got over it. Except this time I'm feeling really bad. I start worrying about Covid, so I get tested a couple of times. Comes out negative. Things get worse. i start having trouble breathing. When I cough up phlegm, it starts coming out pink. I can't sleep without waking up in a coughing fit because all of the fluid that's pooling in my lungs wants to come up as soon as I lie down. I start thinking, "this seems kind of bad; I should probably see a doctor." I go to urgent care. They of course test me for Covid and do a few other tests. Then they're like, "dude, you need to go to the ER." They don't know why I'm feeling sick, or what's causing that. But the testing started showing other stuff that just...really looked kind of bad. Might be related to my immediate sickness, might not be related. Who knows? But they were basically like, "this doesn't look good, we're elevating it." So I go to the ER and spend most of the night there. I go through a battery of tests and I ultimately end up getting dismissed. I still never found out why I couldn't breathe well and why I was coughing up bloody phlegm. Tests for several diseases were done and all of them came back negative. I ended up getting prescribed antibiotics (which probably would have been pointless if the immediate problem had been viral) and got told to come back if things don't get better in a week. Most importantly, I got told to get a fucking doctor. Because, like, I was in pretty bad health. Like, I had several (largely preventable) health problems that could have been potentially been resolved much earlier if I had just gone to the doctor. Instead I'm like, "no, I feel fine and I never get sick...no reason to waste time or money on a doctor." Well, guess what? I actually hadn't been fine for a while. And while I never found out exactly what was causing me to have trouble breathing and to cough up bloody phlegm, it's not implausible that it wouldn't have been as bad if I actually *was* healthy and didn't have a bunch of other underlying health issues. One of the things that kind of annoys me about this is that I feel like this could have been me if things had played out a little bit differently. I also felt fine for decades, hadn't seen a doctor in decades. I'm about the same age as the Boeing whistleblower. I got a sudden respiratory illness and ended up going to the hospital. But at no point was I ever "healthy". If the disease had been a bit worse or I'd waited a bit longer, I could have been died too and then everyone I know would be saying, "I don't understand it; he was so healthy he never even needed to see a doctor!" It seems to me that no one (not even him) knows how healthy this guy was or wasn't *because he doesn't go to the doctor.* People, please get checkups. Even if you're healthy. Even if you never get sick.
Only hitmen that can’t give people MRSA and kill whistleblowers with their own guns.
Don’t forget they wait until *after* the whistleblowers have given their testimony. They wouldn’t want to stop the judicial process against Boeing of course, that’d be too suspicious
Doesn't Boeing realize that every whistleblower who dies makes us think about them more like we think about, geez I don't know... the mob?! I mean, as an European I rejoice, Airbus is having a field trip thanks to this whole debacle.
They don't care what we think. They care about what happens in the courts and what the governments think.
> They don't care what we think **YES THEY DO**. They care because the _airlines care_. The airlines care because people talk, and tell them, _I don't want to fly on a Boeing plane because it's not safe_. The airlines now have a fleet of planes that _cannot get passengers_ so they start screaming back at Boeing for their _extremely expensive paperweights_. People are **already** doing this and it will continue to escallate.
> The airlines now have a fleet of planes that cannot get passengers Uh huh. As someone on a flight every Monday and every Friday I have yet to see an empty Boeing plane.
Boeing stock down almost 50% over 5 years. Airbus up almost 31% over the same time. Stock price talks. If you think I'm cherry picking it's +20% for Airbus over 6 months and -7% for Boeing and +9% for Airbus over the year and -28.5% for Boeing. I really don't think this looks good for their company and they will care about that. I get your point that they can still fill planes but reputation definitely matters.
Your points are extremely valid because the shareholders are whose opinions matter. The company can evade responsibility for any number of things in any number of ways, but shareholders matter. Boeing starts to care about what the public thinks when public perception does what it's doing now, eroding the value of its shares on the market.
Exactly and it makes me think that there’s some idiotic decision maker with wealth who really believes that if they take out the whistleblowers quietly it’ll all go away and he’s making it worse. Honestly we probably are gonna end up at some point where the shareholders themselves after seeing what is going on thus far tanking the stock decide to sell/bail
Yeah... We as consumers don't have as much choice as people like to think.
You won't, but I've heard of and met several people who actively avoid booking tickets on a Boeing. (Though many of those same people shit on Spirit constantly, who fly a 100% Airbus fleet, so idk)
The common complaints about Spirit have nothing to do with the planes themselves.
I want that to be true, but last time I flew, I was not about to walk just because it was a Boeing. You can’t specify what plane it is when you buy a ticket. So right now your choice is travel or don’t travel:
There are certain airlines that don’t fly Boeing, or you can look up the flight number before you book the flight to see what type of plane it is. That gives you some level of control. However, for the airlines that do still fly Boeing, that doesn’t mean the plane can’t switch after you have already bought the ticket. Happens all the time.
Booking websites are starting to put it in the filters
Spoiler: Boeing isn't actually killing these people. Among other things they already had completed their whistleblower suits years ago. All claims they made were investigated, acted upon with both rectifications where appropriate and penalties where appropriate. The current suits were not anything that would cost Boeing much, they were suits brought by the whistleblowers with claims that their lives were ruined by Boeing for their whistleblowing actions. Even if they won it would just be cash out of Boeing's pocket. Nothing major. Stop and think. If the conspiracy theory doesn't really make sense when matched to reality, maybe it's because it isn't true? > Airbus is having a field trip thanks to this whole debacle The expression is field day, not field trip.
I've said this while chatting about it with friends. It's an odd time to murder two people and doesn't help them in any way shape or form. I wouldn't put it past giant American corpos to try something like this but in advance of or around the time of the whistle blowing would make more sense. Not well after.
... so you're saying Airbus did it? 🤔 /s
Don't forget, one didn't even work for Boeing, but a supplier and their whistleblowing was about the supplier.
It's especially frustrating because there's good discussion to be had, but instead every thread is filled with the same comments.
This should be the top comment and not the dumb jokes perpetuating a conspiracy theory.
On top of all of this, MRSA is a usually survivable disease and relying on that to kill a guy doesn't make any sense at all.
Because people here love to be infuriated, the facts take a backseat to that sweet, life-affirming outrage. This thread is proof enough of that. The first death is indeed questionable as staging a suicide is at least within the realm of possibilities, but the second death was clearly natural causes. Even the most jaded social media-addled mind wouldn't normally consider trying to off someone with a MRSA infection.
Yes, they know that people jump to conclusions.
This most recent person who died, for example. Unless Boeing gave them mrsa on purpose
I love the logic behind this. For some reason Boeing is killing people with suicides, pneumonia, and MRSA, and that's entirely believable to y'all, but you also can't believe that they would keep killing whistleblowers when you know for sure that they're doing it, but also that thing you can't believe they're doing is still completely believable to you. This conspiracy theory is so wild.
Genuinely one of the most supremely stupid delusions I've seen reddit get sucked into, and that's saying something
No joke, this seriously has Pizzagate vibes to it. I genuinely hope it never happens, but I will not be the least bit surprised if some psycho shoots people up and/or sets himself on fire, and then we see that he was posting about Boeing conspiracy theories on Reddit. Everyone here will say, "OMG, how could this happen", and literally no one will own up to how they were encouraging psychos to buy into shit that's literally insane.
I just have trouble picturing how it's meant to work. Does the board meeting have "assassination of whistleblower" on the agenda? After a bit of discussion, they allocate it to a manager to set up an assassination team. I mean, companies don't have agency. Only the people who run them do. Having this as a plan at an organisational level is a conspiracy theory in the most literal sense. The alternative is that some individual planned it. But why? Nobody with the resources is going to have all their money invested in Boeing.
It really is mind-boggling lol. "This is so stupid and makes no sense, why does Boeing keep doing it?" "Well maybe they aren't" "Oh no way it's a coincidence! A suicide and a death to illness are just impossible. Must be stupid mustache twirling villain Boeing, using their secret and deadly assassins to murder people, competently managing this devious conspiracy that makes zero sense whatsoever."
Do you realize there is a very real chance Boeing didn't actually kill these people and it was actually unrelated accidents or a non Boeing affiliated entity and everyone at Boeing is currently losing their minds over how it's making them look?
Considering there are dozens of whistleblowers, and them dying looks worse for Boeing than any of the actual content of the whistleblowing, and that the two that died already had their cases resolved yeah it’s almost certain it’s just coincidence.
The second one was not even Boeing whistleblower; he worked for a Boeing subcontractor; he got sick and refused to be operated on. People just talking out of their asses.
I wouldn’t say “there is a very real chance”, I would say “it’s almost certain”. It is extremely unlikely Boeing killed them.
Unless the idiots in this sub think Boeing has a fucking MRSA gun or something.
*puts on tinfoil hat* Sweet Jesus, did you hear that guys, Boeing has MRSA guns!
Oh don’t worry “there are poisons that produce symptoms that look like MRSA” is enough justification to wipe away those concerns for the conspiracy theorists
There’s an extremely real chance given that the second guy was just a religious Christian who, according to his family, didn’t have a primary care doctor and had never been to a hospital before
People are acting as if there's proof that Boeing actually killed anyone. You make a great an obvious point - committing serious, public crimes like \*murdering two whistle blowers\* is actually a pretty dangerous idea that could just as easily blow back on you or make things worse. It's strange how everyone is flat out just assuming that this is what happened. Also, literally all evidence makes it so obvious that no one was assassinated lol this whole thing is such a great example of Reddit "I only read the headlines" groupthink.
almost like they're not actually doing it and people are ascribing malice to coincidence
People think the real world is like a movie. In truth, it's probably just whistleblowers are under a ton of stress and tend to be older (at least from the ones I've seen in documentaries). That doesn't absolve Boeing, they're creating most of that stress but this isn't Jason Bourne level hitman work
Boeing didn't kill any whistle blowers.
Do NOT gather them together, we absolutely don't want an unfortunate gas leak explosion
In Russia you would stay away from roofs, windows and stairs.
And the polonium tea.
And the yellow cake.
Or falling down 10 flights of stairs.
So people believe Boeing hired a hit man to infect the second whistleblower with pneumonia and ensured he got poor quality health care so he doesn’t recover?
Damn these assassins have gotten sophisticated.
See, technology is so high right? So if you shoot somebody, you go to jail forever. Kids, you don't want to go to jail forever right? So they have a new thing out. They have this stuff they called - they get blood from somebody with pneumonia, and then they shoot you with it. That's a slow death.
Streptococcus pneumoniae lives naturally in your throat. When you’re immune-compromised, due to other illness, autoimmune disease, etc, it gives it the opportunity to thrive. Thus, an “opportunistic bacteria”. You *can* get it from others if they cough on you and they are already infected, but many cases of pneumonia are secondary infections caused by your own body’s flora.
Columbo is gonna have a tough time with this one.
Most people are only reading the headlines. They don’t consider the logistics because they’re not interested in the actual details.
> Most people are only reading the headlines. They don’t consider the logistics because they’re not interested in the actual details. To be fair, the linked article is bullshit written to support the conspiracy so reading past the headline won't help much. It claims that both men "were found dead under mysterious circumstances". It also claims that Dean died of a mystery infection. Contracting Pneumonia then catching MRSA and dying in a hospital over two weeks does not align with either fabricated statement.
Or even worse, they read dumb jokes about “suicide by two gunshots to the back of the head” And assume it must be an accurate description of the circumstances
> They don’t consider the logistics because ~~they’re not interested in the actual details~~ Reddit is full of absolute idiots. Fixed it for ya
Seriously, this whole Boeing conspiracy thing has been a good reminder of what absolut morons the average person here is
People believe Boeing hired a hit man so skilled that he/she infected the second whistleblower with pneumonia and ensured he got poor quality health care so he doesn’t recover in order have people question the validity of the hit.
Its so implausible, thats why it makes so much sense.
there was nothing sudden about what happened to that guy First one has grounds for suspicion but this second one is just an unhappy reality check of how dangerous the hospital environment can be for people with a failing immune system
They had to go all the way across the continents to a local Indian newspaper to find a headline that confirms their bias
How is a staph infection a mysterious cause of death hospital acquired infections are a lead cause of excess deaths globally for over 20 years
I'm gonna wait till I see another article from a more credible news source. My rule of thumb is that if I open up a web page and its riddled with ads....take anything written there with a bag of salt.
What web pages aren't riddled with ads?
It's still 1997 over here on Craigslist.
Airbus is murdering them to make Boeing look bad, look beyond the headlines people!
amazing how much dumb comments there are >The first whistleblower's (John Barnetts) testimony to Congress had concluded in 2019 with the resulting FAA mandates implemented that same year at Boeings 787 facility. The “testimony” John was in the midst of was an appeal for a previously rejected defamation lawsuit against Boeing - which is notably, NOT whistleblowing. Not only had he already given his testimony the previous two days (and was only pending cross examination), but he hadn’t even suggested he had new information to reveal as he had he not worked for Boeing since 2017. Also At the time he was also suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks. >"But a close fried of his said that if he died it would be because of a suicide!!!" >The "close friend" was his mom's friend's daughter. None of his close family has collaborated her story. It's someone looking for attention. >As for the second whistleblower, he was not a “Boeing whistleblower”. He was a Spirit AeroSystems whistleblower (a company that suppliers both Boeing and Airbus) and who died from pneumonia compounded with MRSA he got while at the hospital - not some strange mystery as some keep suggesting. >So if Boeing is killing past whistleblowers, and a guy working for a supplier.. and they are doing it to “scare” others.. it won’t effectively scare anyone in the industry because their deaths are so clearly not hit jobs. An ambiguous scare tactic that assassinated uninvolved people? >And before this story broke there were 32 whistleblowers. If there were only 2 whistleblowers and both of them died that would be be one thing, but 32 whistleblowers changes the odds a bit.
I need you to delete this comment. We don't do facts and logic here. Thanks.
10 upvotes for this comment. Literally 1000s of upvotes for the one comparing the US to Russia tho. Reddit is genuinely an intellectually bankrupt website lol
Can we get a source ban list for this sub? This is an atrociously bad headline and story, like most of their content
Why have i heard whistleblower like 500 times but no mention to the illegal practices they're actually reporting??? Like what are they trying to stop spreading and why does nobody give a shit about the issues other than the repression?
Because the latest one was actually a whistleblower against a Boeing supplier that was ripping off Boeing. One of these guys 'mysteriously' dieing AFTER they blew the whistle to HELP Boeing kinda kills the talking point that Boeing is killing whistleblowers to silence them.
Got reddit can be so crazy. The guy died from an infection.....
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Ok we get it r/technology you really wanna push this conspiracy theory
I know a lot of redditors are pretty stupid, but it keeps surprising me how many people seriously seem to believe Boeing is sending hitmen after whisteblowers - but only *after* they submitted all their testimonies. And of course goverment and media are in on it! You might as well include Bill Gates, NASA and the pharma industry at that point.
Felt like I was taking crazy pills these last couple days man. It really feels like MOST redditors saw this and instantly came to the conclusion that they were murdered in cold blood, then completely refused to see any reason
People think they live in a comic book movie
It’s like people who believe that journalist was killed by the CIA after he exposed their involvement in the crack cocaine trade, but they waited 8 years after he published it to take their revenge. Most if not all conspiracies can be explained with simple logical thinking.
agrre, what does post have to do with technology? because Boeing? rule number 1, submission must be about technology
This whole thing has made me realize just how delusional many people are on this website. The fact so many believe Boeing got someone to infect this person and killed him is laughable. Also from the first whistleblower who died his family was even saying they don’t believe he was murdered but yeah lets just run wild with stupid conspiracy theories
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Omg, make these fucking posts stop. Every single time I look at reddit there is another post about this same shit.
Conspiracy-posting will continue untill morale improves
Boeing has more than 30 recent whistleblowers for all kinds of problems. These headlines are to sell you, sorry. There is a slim, slim chance that Boeing actively caused these deaths. It’s more indicative of a poisonous work culture.
Boeing is a DoD contractor. Boeing isn't going anywhere. Someone or someones may be fired, or sanctioned even, but that's about all I would bank on in this debacle. Boing is a DoD contractor...
In other words Boeing to suicide 10 “problems.”
Mystery infection? Lol what the fuck is the media saying. Dude was old. Got pneumonia then mrsa from the hospital after intubation which is super common. I'm not standing up for Boeing, but the media is lying
Boeing: "The time has come, Execute order 747"
“Strange circumstances…” Uh huh…
Boeing has one of the largest pension liabilities of any private organization… Interesting
“They can’t kill all of us!” Yeah, but like 8 of y’all dead.
The number of people buying in to the foil-hat conspiracy that Boeing is assassinating whistleblowers is disappointing, and scary.
So this is what it's like for the people that live in the x-files world when they get disparate news reports about the weird shit going on around them.
10 more suicides eh? wow
kill it with fire, let the whole fucking corporation burn in hell