John Barnett had worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement in 2017.
In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.
Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett’s passing. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday.
It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating.
What would be the correct expression? Someone has committed this whistleblowers suicide?
I am not a conspiracy theorist. Reality is trying it’s damnedest to make me one.
Eh. There will always be real conspiracies and then…lizard people conspiracies.
This shit right here? yeah…they killed him. 100%. No doubt in my fucking mind.
I mean, he was old…people die—
It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating.
oh shit they totally fucking killed him
THEY FUCKING KILLED HIM!
Relevant Chart (open image in new tab to see it larger):
this is bulshit, epstein definetly didnt kill himself, for starters.
How did they make hollow earth antisemitic? MF’rs
Not sure what to make of this chart except that a few items are misplaced imo and I agree conspiracy shit is an alt right pipeline in most cases. Maybe it wasn’t always but whatever.
Anyhow.
I haven’t followed up on the news. But there sure wasn’t much available yesterday. So as far as actual reliable evidence we the public have little.
The guy being dead with an apparent self inflicted wound (as BBC and others said) or gunshot (as Corp Crime Reporter said) during whistleblower court proceedings against a giant company is consistent with suicide from:
- Stress of the case or from blackmail
- Stress from something totally unrelated.
- Some other cause (depression, terminal illness…)
It is also consistent with:
- murder made to look like suicide to silence his further testimony and dissuade others
Any of these is certainly plausible at least. As is Epstein being murdered. Actually, that one is more plausible, given the few suspicious coincidences and the sheer number of people who wanted his secrets to stay that way. Whereas extra-terrestrial UFOs aren’t all that plausible based on our current body of scientific knowledge.
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve written. The only point I would like to make is that the section where the UFOs sits is the “We Have Questions” section, which is between the “Things That Actually Happened” and “Unequivocally False But Mostly Harmless” sections. I interpret this section as containing things that cannot (as of 2021) be conclusively shown to be true or false. Also note that they’re not even saying ET UFOs, but just UFOs. I think the flying saucer is just for visual flair. If I recall correctly, the person who designed this is/was an actual graphic designer.
Lol, they mustn’t be a great one, because their design seems to have led at least one of y’all to interpret the labels as denoting for the category below, rather than upper/lower bounds between two categories. i.e. things in the blue category above the “speculation line” label are speculative but not yet “leaving reality”
Epstein didn’t kill himself though. The circumstances where above the level of questioning, there were cameras turned off and he was supposedly on suicide watch.
As I much as I also believe that, there is no hard evidence (that we know of) that he didn’t kill himself. I think that’s why it’s in that section. The suspiciousness of it is through the roof, but we can’t prove it.
Sure we can’t prove it but that diagram puts it at the same level of UFOs.
Right, the chart is far from perfect, but they just grouped them both under the “we have questions” section. We have lots of unresolved questions about Epstein’s death, we have lots of unresolved questions about UFO sightings.
No, I understand we have questions but explaining epstein requires a couple of details, while UFOs require new laws of physics.
It’s no longer a conspiracy when it’s proven true.
This isn’t proof. That’s the crazy part. I hear ya. I’m with ya. I don’t see anything that is concrete physical evidence to tie it all together. As of now.
I agree, I just was making a joke. It’s a conspiracy until you realize it’s a fact. MK-ULTRA, Government spying on you (which time? ) , Big tobacco hiding that cigerettes cause cancer, Stacks of ET games are buried in New Mexico, even dark stories like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments were all conspiracy theories at one time. Sadly they all turned out to be true.
There’s also the conspiracy theory of conspiracy theories that the government actually likes and even spreads conspiracy theories so that the real ones get lost in the noise and written off by the general public as “just another loony conspiracy theory”
I like that one because I absolutely don’t like it, but it’s hard not to like and think that it’s worth being a likable conspiracy theory.
And that’s the problem with conspiracy theories, you like to like them and then you can’t be sure.It’s just like that sometimes.
Very few conspiracies are as dark and terrifying as (checks notes) Atari games buried in the desert.
That’s the most annoying misunderstanding. A conspiracy is still a conspiracy when you prove it happened/it’s happening. Conspirators remain conspirators, which means they were working together to do something illegal in secret. Ok, so now it’s not secret anymore, but they still conspired.
A conspiracy is when a group plans to do something unlawful. So if it’s proven true it’s still a conspiracy. It just stops being a theory.
I think the confusion arises from the secrecy part. A conspiracy is understood to be a secret unlawful activity, especially of subversive nature. When it’s not secret anymore is it still conspiracy? or is it just organised crime? I know it feels just pedantic, but this is why the media abuses words to steer collective opinion. Nowadays you can just say something is a conspiracy and people will believe it’s fake without recourse.
I was just being kind of funny. Language is weird and I’m pretty sure that the word conspiracy is headed through the change to mean “Crazy people think this thing is true”
Then we need to find another word to express when people gets together to do shady shit, which happens more often than not.
No arguments here. I’d like to be able to differentiate between people going shady shit and flat earth believers.
A “theory” is a collection of information we currently understand to be true.
The term “conspiracy theory” is a misnomer that should be correctly expressed as “conspiracy hypothesis”. But that’s just a theory.
He didn’t show any signs of depression or suicidal tendencies… signs like voluntarily flying on a boeing plane.
If it actually happened, it’s just a “conspiracy,” not a “conspiracy theory.”
The Gulf of Tonkin incident being created by the US was a conspiracy theory until it wasn’t.
Not every “conspiracy theory” is wrong. Sometimes people in charge are actually trying to cover something up. It’s not insane to be skeptical of an official line until it’s backed up with proof.
Lizard people, however, don’t exist.
Lizard people, however, don’t exist.
Speak for yourself, upright ape.
My comment was meant to be tongue in cheek but you pretty much nailed the message I’m after. Don’t jump to the conspiracy conclusion but you have to have something wrong with your brain if this doesn’t at least tickle your skeptic gland.
There are circumstances where conspiracy the likeliest explanation.
This is one of those.
That’s what they want you to think.
It’s possible it was stress from the litigation. In fact, if you don’t specify whose stress, I’d almost guarantee it.
Ha!
…what the fuck?
First whistleblower “suicide”?
The second I see someone’s name next to whistleblower, I know they’re on borrowed time, some manage to be left alone, but most don’t, that’s why we need to keep these people’s names and causes alive, we can’t let corporations get away with silencing a whistleblower, we must amplify it.
“self-inflicted” ahh huuh
ITT: The equivalent of Trump supporters confusing the fact that they are suspicious that the election was stolen, with actually knowing so.
The timing is very convenient… for Boeing.
He was staying at a hotel out-of-state while giving evidence against Boeing.
He was found dead in his car in the hotel parking lot from a ‘self-inflicted wound’.There’s really no other way to look at it logically than he was murdered by Boeing. Nothing else adds up.
It makes no sense for them to kill him, that draws wayyyy too much attention. More likely if they were involved, they blackmailed him and that caused him to kill himself, or another party that also wanted to keep him quiet killed him and they didn’t care if it looked like Boeing did it.
An investor could’ve threatened his family? (So not directly Boeing)
If he got a bunch of hate online, or had crippling anxiety about the testimony he still had to give? I mean you could even speculate he thought he would be killed someday, so he took it into his own hands.
(Please note the above is all BS!)
I would argue the jury is still out and that we may never know.
Direct involvement might be a question still. But general involvement is absolute. If Boeing wasn’t so shitty he almost assuredly would still be alive.
I suppose even if nobody ever said a word to him you could make that argument. No poor business practices = no testimony = no car in a hotel parking lot.
An investor could’ve threatened his family? (So not directly Boeing)
Or somebody involved in corporate corruption and embezzling in Boeing. That would be worse for Boeing as a whole than him remaining alive, but possibly better for that somebody who may not be identified.
They don’t gain much. The FAA is breathing down their neck already.
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We worry about being able to feed our families enough.
Not sure how much jurisdiction or investigation the FFA does for murders that occur on the ground though.
At the point of a deposition, his complaints are already documented and can be verified by regulators.
The FAA has allowed this mess to continue for far too long because Boeing is an industry titan. Too big to fail. Well, maybe not anymore.
What do you mean? They fail all the time. Fail to secure doors. Fail to have working oxygen masks. Fail to warn pilots about a system that points the nose of the plane down constantly…
Too big to fail is a terrible concept that was invented.
If a company gets too big to the point that it’s failure is going to drag down the company. That company should be broken up to allow them to to fail. Anything else is either reward the company for making bad decisions or allow companies to become stagnant because if anything happens, the government will bail them out.
Edit: Spelling and grammar are important.
B-but the propagandists said that corporate consolidation was freedom!
I would 100% vote for you (unironically).
Watch politician holdings of Boeing stock.
I expect Nancy to sell lol
Look, I’m not gonna say Boeing did it. Though if they did, I’d bet money they drove.
He wasn’t even done giving the deposition that he literally volunteered to give…
literall–
Downvote.
Please don’t reddit up the place, I like it here
Did he not literally volunteer?
I mean, I get it, I’m sick of “literally” meaning “figuratively”, and I’d die on that hill with you, but this is the dumbest possible time to make that stand. In this case “literally” just means “literally”.
That was indeed a perfectly cromulent use of “literally”.
🤓
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I don’t know what you were trying to achieve beyond publicly announcing you’re a petty, boring person.
Found the boeing employee
Literally has been used as an intensifier for over 200 years. The Oxford English Dictionary includes a definition of literally meaning “figuratively”. Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry David Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper, James Joyce, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain all used it that way in their writing.
So until you write something as well respected and enduring as Sanditon, The Great Gatsby, Tom Sawyer, or Ulysses and collect your mother fucking Nobel prize in literature, please choke on a literal dick you confidently incorrect fuckwit.
In this case literally literally did mean literally, though, not figuratively. Which makes the fuckwit even more incorrect.
I don’t care what justification you throw out. Misuse of literally drives me figuratively insane!
How is it misused? Did he figuratively agree to give a deposition?
It’s just a general statement. Not specific to this article or comments 🤷
Wondering if they historically used it more as in a ‘literarily’ sense and with license
Evolving language and all that
(I’m not trying to argue anything, just musing)
You could’ve just done so and moved on, my guy. It’s not a profound statement.
I upvoted this.
Why?
Let me list the reasons: it’s creative, provocative and a little sultry.
I’m about half hard right now so you deserve it.
Downvote
You can have an upvote too!
I’m floppier then a rubber tube full of jelly but that’s because I’m in my refractory period.
Flaccid. Downvote
“Literally” CAN be used as an hyperbole. It’s just a more emphatic way to say “very”
i’m literally sorry that you literally don’t know standard english my guy, i literally don’t know what to literally say to you 😭
I mean, I think the logical thing to do is wait until the evidence comes out and we know for sure. It’s entirely possible he was under a lot of stress from all this and did kill himself. Now, I don’t deny that it’s a HUGE. FUCKING. CONICIDENCE. but those do happen from time to time. Its also a hell of a story, good-guy whistleblower murdered by greedy multinational aerospace company and defense contractor…during an election year…if you wrote the script nobody would buy it.
Let’s be suspicious, but not jump to conclusions.
Jesus, do you think maybe they’re trying to run out the clock too? Who wants to bet that a certain CEO is angling for a political position within a certain potential administration? Perhaps head of the FAA?
This is the kind of go get em attitude a certain potential administration might be impressed by.
Hugely impressed. Big, so big. Huge
Does suicide ever add up? It being a hit doesn’t add up either. A hotel parking lot is a rather public place to try to force someone to kill themselves.
Is this a Russian style self inflicted wound…?
My brother in Freedom Jesus, faking a murder to look like suicide is as American as apple pie!
Hell the most notorious pedophile in history, who definitely had video of the world’s richest men committing statutory rape and assault, killed himself in one of the most secure locations anyone could imagine, surrounded by guards and video cameras! And nobody saw a thing! HA! And we’re all like “well i guess that sordid chapter is over” hahahaha. Oh man. It literally works every. single. time.
The FBI famously sent a letter to MLK urging him to kill himself.
Wow the FBI are gamers
Jokes aside, holy shit that’s monstrous
Monstrous yes, but not as monstrous as what they did next.
Cases like these should be called Russian Suicides.
With how many assassinations the US carries out, I think they deserve to at least be called USicides
No, it’s probably more of a mob style self-inflicted wound. Didn’t say he shot himself in the head twice and jumped out a window.
No window was involved, so- probably not.
The Russians will throw someone out the window or poison them in a very obvious way, the Americans will put two in their head and have it ruled a suicide.
I love the one where the guy “killed himself” by duck taping himself to a lawn chair and then throwing himself in the pool.
i can’t find it online, but im reasonably certain i heard an interview with this guy on Canadian public radio several years ago that really shook me. he talked basically about how he wouldn’t fly on a Boeing plane, knowing what he knows and having seen what he’d seen, stuff like quality rejected parts getting taken back into inventory to meet quotas. the takeaway for me was that the quality control system that had previously worked so well was an invention of equal or possibly higher importance to any kind of aerodynamic innovation present on those planes. i work in an analogous role (in a different industry) and i really do take it more seriously after having heard the interview. nobody likes the work of quality assurance and you’ll never see someone doing a non-conformance report on TV but it’s a necessary condition for planes to stay in the sky. RIP to a real one and if he got murdered then i hope the industry burns
Neat, I’m jumping on a Boeing 737-700 in about 8 hours. Nice knowin ya while it lasted.
That feel was created before they started cutting corners. You should be fine.
It’s not a MAX so you’ll probably be fine haha
My southwest flight will be on a max 8 both ways. Wish me luck.
I think even Boeing is still safer per passenger mile than any car, or biking/walking.
John Oliver’s Boeing broadcast last week included a video of a guy walking around a Boeing production floor asking all the people if any of them would be willing to fly in a Boeing. Of everyone he asked a single guy said yes and then followed it up with “but I kind of have a death wish.”
There were more yes’s, but they were cut out of the video. However, Oliver mentions after the video what amount of them said yes and what amount said no. Most of them did say “no” though.
If Boeing was running a tight ship with safety in mind, they should all have been yes. If one said no, that could be a disgruntled employee for some reason or another, but jesus…
Anyways, Airbus for me it is.
Why don’t news organizations address the elephant in the room? They can say there is no evidence of foul play but the circumstances warrant further investigation as his death is quite convenient for Bowing. I don’t see how that could be libelous.
Because news organizations no longer do any work investigating, only propagandizing for the sweet greenback$. 💰
They can be sued if they claim Boeing executives murdered a guy unless there are court records showing Boeing executives were convicted for murdering a guy. However, I guarantee you people like Trevor Noah and John Oliver will absolutely run with this bit if they get the chance.
“WhY iSN’t ThE MEdiA CoVEriNG tHe NeWs” people scream in the comments of a news feed that alerted them to this exact issue.
That’s simply not true. Defamation/libel against a public company requires “actual malice”, which essentially means that the news outlet would have to have evidence that what they’re saying is not true.
Fox was going to lose to Dominion because they 100% knew they were lying about the company, and there were records proving it. It’s not actually common at all for cases regarding defamation against public figures or corporations to go anywhere.
You bringing up the Fox News counter-example and claiming it was a one off is kind of self-awarewolf.
I’m bringing it up because it was a remarkably rare thing that recently happened.
The reason Fox lies 50 times a minute is because defamation is incredibly difficult to prove.
did you even read the comment you’re responding to?
Not only did I read it but I answered the question.
You absolutely did not. The question was not: “Why don’t news organizations claim Boeing execs murdered a guy…?” The commenter was clearly aware of the problem of libel, which you completely ignored. They asked why news orgs aren’t discussing the fact that the death comes at a suspiciously convenient time - because they aren’t. This is not the same as claiming that he was murdered by Boeing.
He claimed it shouldn’t be libelous and I explained that it would be libelous. You’re implying that journalists are somehow dancing around the issue, which is silly because we’re all pretty well informed that the whistleblower was probably murdered.
it’s not libelous to discuss the elephant in the room. you did not explain anything. you just disregarded the question with your assumption.
If you say a person or entity with a public image did something really bad that they haven’t been strictly proven to have done, with exceptions for things such as parody, then that is defamation. So, yes, it can be libelous to talk about the fucking elephant.
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Removed by the admins but lives forever in our hearts. I bet even they know you’re right, but you know how comments like those tend to go.
^gets it
It’s time to pop them piñatas.
Ah yes, “found dead” like the people who reported on the Panama papers “died in car accidents”
Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett’s passing.
I’m sure they were distraught.
This is something I thought would be on the Onion.
How about customers just flat out refuse to fly on Boeing planes?
Because its kind of possible to organize such mass boycotts without groups set up to manage it, and none are coming forward on this.
I mean hell, even the republicunt boycott of beer couldn’t be arsed to actually make a difference, and MAN the mixture of beer and queerness is the exact trigger to rile those bigots.
The fact that several airlines let you filter out plane models indicates people are indeed doing that. Airbus: no fuss; no muss.
Or refuse to fly all together. Flying is extremely carbon intensive.
At what part of the trip. When boarding? You think the airline will accommodate? You already paid.
You can filter for aircraft used when booking a plane.
That assumes there will always be a good alternative to choose from.
From where I live to go back home to my parents there is exactly one provider that flies directly. All other connections have stop-overs. Not even talking about price difference.
I get wanting to save your time, but if you die there’s no time left to save
The airline will accommodate just fine: “Oh, you don’t want to fly? Too bad, the exit is that way.”
“I know where the exit is, it’s that hole where the door used to be”
I am actually at the point where I will avoid Boeing 737-MAX at booking, ask again at check-in to confirm the plane type, and if I saw one at the gate, I would refuse to board and accept the money as a loss. Unfortunately not everyone can afford re-booking like that. So f*ck Boeing and I just hope that Airbus won’t ever be that corrupt (chances are they are or will be at some point).
If you’re going to fly Boeing at all, what is the point in avoiding the 737-max?
Because most older Boeing models are actually robust aircraft & when the maintenance is in the hand of a capable airline, there’s nothing wrong with them from the perspective of safety. But as Boeing continues to fuck this up, and murder whistleblowers - I doubt there will be Boeing airplanes left to safely board in the future.
Pilots should also refuse to fly them.
I mean… It takes a bit to learn how to fly a plane. They wouldn’t really want to dispose of that skill and learn to fly Airbus instead.
I’m no pilot, but I can’t imagine these particular variants have been around so long for retraining to be a serious issue. Not when mass death is on the line and older, reliable Boeing planes still exist.
I am not sure what you are trying to say exactly, however the re-certification that should be required for the 737-MAX was exactly the reason for introducing the MCAS software to prevent the crew certified for older 737 models from pushing the nose into the ground on take-off. That, together with glossing over the major design change so that no pilot would flag “hey, this is a new plane, we should get a proper new certification for this” contributed to the two crashes, murdering 350something people over profit.
Boeing wanted to sell a new plane model with significantly altered aerodynamic behavior as a “variant” of an existing one so airlines could save cost on not having to re-certify pilots.
I’m saying if the newer, problematic planes aren’t going to be forced to ground by regulators, pilots should refuse to fly them. Surely there are plenty of planes still flying built by Boeing before they sold souls. Surely those won’t require massive retraining. Fly them instead.
You paying not to fly is the optimal result for the airlines.
Perhaps the goal is to feel safe, not to damage the company.
yeah, looks like previous poster didn’t understand I value my life more than money :)
Yesterday I’ve read a joke about something like that exactly about audits and proceedings connected to Boeing’s recent accidents.
I thought this is satire first.
