After death of Joshua Dean & John Barnett, their lawyers are concerned about the possibility that around 10 more Boeing whistleblowers may suffer the same fate.
EDIT: I should've read the article, but I'm taking the L and leaving this up with a strikethrough. The phrasing "after" in the headline definitely creates the wrong impression here. As for what this says about people, I guess we'll have to see if the other ten whistleblowers still testify.
And if you think it's too much to assume Boeing killed these two people, that's the wrong question. It matters more whether as a fellow whistleblower it's reasonable to worry about whether Boeing killed them, and I think it is.
Also Boeing definitely killed the first guy at least. "If I die, it's not suicide." - man who "committed suicide". WTAF.
If you ever hear anyone talking about how humans suck and we're all terrible and will definitely destroy ourselves, just think about the fact that killing whistleblowers was quickly followed by more whistleblowers. Not just lone heros, but ten fucking people said, "hey, fuck you, are you really gonna kill me too?" knowing that the answer could well be "yes".
Funny, just yesterday probably I was arguing with someone in another thread that was saying the people here don't actually think Boeing had these whistleblowers killed, it was just making "implications and jokes."
And here, very clearly, with a massive number of upvotes we have someone claiming that Boeing had them killed and that resulted in brave souls coming out afterward. lol
However, this also exposes another huge complaint I have with your typical lemmy-er (lemming? lemmite? what do you call a user of lemmy?): Almost no one reads the fucking article.
This isn't about new whistleblowers coming out, but their lawyer claiming he is afraid that current whistle blowers will be "scared away."
But, of course, what I've learned on reddit and even more so on lemmy is that the facts don't matter, only the narrative.
Agreed. Although I will say.... While people not reading the articles was extremely common on reddit... Sadly, I feel like Lemmy is even worse about it.
When I first started on reddit many years ago, while it was clear some people didn't read the article, usually the top comment in the thread usually showed that they read the article, unless it was some kind joke. Over time it definitely got worse.
I was hoping when jumping to Lemmy that I would be able to recapture some of that magic.
Lemmy has a lot of good things going for it, but what I got in that regard is the top comment, with 100% upvotes, clearly not having read the article and spewing some unsubstantiated conspiratorial claims. It's like being in r/conspiracy sometimes.
Yes, varying people have different opinions on subjects. It is easy to think a comment with upvotes is the way the hivemind goes, but the hivemind has multiple factions.
I, personally, have no opinion on the matter. The dude was septic and had a stroke. While it seems unlikely that was murder, I guess it is possible if you have infinite resources to make it look natural. But that is one HELL of a coincidence to have two whistle-blowers die . .. like. .. pretty fucking insane. Watch these next ten all die and no one important bats an eye.
Yes but our current society vests power in the corporation doing the killing. It's a problem as old as civilization, but one we still haven't solved. The problem is that these institutions and the technology they wield has never been greater.
We need an impartial lawnmower. Something external to the species that comes in and cuts the biggest ones in half. And it needs to be incorruptible and powerful enough to do this.
Yep.. Times will change and eventually the faceless bureaucracy world we have now will morph into something more like Roman imperial military dictatorship or European absolutist monarchies. I only hope we can organically build social mitigations to the centralising power of information technology before that happens. Because as bad as it is now it would be much worse then
I was talking to someone the other day who was really bent out of shape over an extremely unpleasant customer. The kind of interaction that sticks with you for years.
I told my perspective on people. We tend to remember remarkable things - stuff that really stands out from the normal. The news media does the same thing. Normal, everyday stuff isn't "newsworthy."
So when an asshole customer stands out that much, it's because it's such a rare experience. People are mostly good, so the goodness doesn't stand out.
Yeah, bad customers can ruin your day, but I remember doing customer service that one good customer with a nice smile can make your day good again. That's why I always make an effort to be as nice as possible.
Counterpoint. There was one whistleblower killed, there are lots of people on this case like Boeing staff, government employees, the police, senators, the president, who haven't done shit. Now there are two murders. Any of the people who SHOULD be doing something about it doing anything? No. Now there are 12 brave people against the thousands of shit people.
This is a leap. You can be a good person and also see that people as a whole can be both wonderful and absolutely terrible. This is a story about a mega corp murdering two whistleblowers, so far. In this case, the people involved in making this a headline suck and are terrible.
There is plenty of evidence of foul play you smartass. They willingly risked lives over many years and are still currently flying many planes with defective unsafe parts. Going from that to assasination is not a big leap.
Multiple of the whistleblowers and their colleagues have also independently said that their workplace was directly and deliberately sabotaged in order to continue using defective parts.
Yes the last one doesnt really look like a typical assasination but it doesnt matter in the slightest if it was or not.
Well...the first dude did say something about Boeing killing whistleblowers and the bravery of others to step up in defiance of that.
So that whole line of thinking is conspiracy theory stuff with no real proof and it is being parroted here. Granted, usually the assassination stuff is usually tongue in cheek, but the top comment seems a bit crazy.
I agree that calling it "killing whistleblowers" is a bit too early, but for the point that the top comment was making, it doesnt actually matter.
Because his point was about the bravery of the other whistleblowers coming out and for that it doesnt matter if they actually got killed or not.
The 10 other whistleblowers are brave because there is a good chance that at least one of the whistleblowers was killed. They are still brave even if it turns out that the dead ones died of natural causes or suicide.
If the whistleblowers truly believe that the previous ones were assassinated, then they are brave for speaking out. They might be stupid, foolish, whatever, but they would be even more stupid if they didnt consider the possiblity of it being true.
Intent is what matters here not what is actually the case. This is obvious when it comes to law. For example if a judge decides that you truly believed that your life was in danger in a situation and that you had to act in self defense, you can usually not be sentenced for murder, even if it turns out that your life wasnt in danger after all.
Really this is a grammatical framing problem, but i think its totally fair to call these people "brave" either way, because even if their lives arent in danger, then at least their livelihood is.
1: I wholeheartedly believe being a whistleblower is a courageous and brave act. Full stop.
2: drawing conclusions as to why these people decided to speak up when they did without hearing it from them is nonsense.
3: assuming and repeating a John Gresham novel from news articles between corporations and their whistleblowers is not only buying into a conspiracy theory, but is also parroting it.
4: partaking in these conspiratorial shenanigans helps no one and isn't something to be waved away as harmless - otherwise, what's the difference here and qanon?
Even if the dude that "killed himself" did do it to himself, he did so because he was harassed by a company for doing his job. Even in the non conspiracy version of the story, the corporation still acted in bad faith and should be held liable for it's actions. Why is this the hill you want to die on?
Yeah Kbin really jumped the shark. I gave up on it as well. Maybe one day Ernst will do literally everything that he said he would but... today is not that day, nor was yesterday, and I'm done waiting. In the meantime I'm wondering if I should block the entire instance due to all the spam that the complete lack of moderation (in some communities) is sending out to the entire Fediverse. Seriously, I am surprised it hasn't been hit by waves of CP as many other instances have, in an attempt to swat it by getting the FBI involved. Anyway, I hope you enjoy your new instance better!:-) Weird conversations such as is happening on this post aside, the Fediverse is kind of a neat place!
Also, you might check the list of which instances Kbin blocks by default, and choose to block them here (Settings -> Blocks, scroll way down to instances). e.g. lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net are some really common ones that people often block. Ofc you feel free to do you, and decide first what you want to see in your feed!:-) I just mention that bc after leaving the safe and protected Kbin.social I game close to leaving Lemmy too, until I blocked those two instances and it improved my experience on the Fediverse 95%.
For a user, you hit the @ sign then start typing, then you may have to wait a bit and it will make a list of every user that matches that partial string that you typed, and you have to select it from the list for it to convert into the actual link - e.g. @[email protected].
For communities, I'm only recently learning this myself, it's the ! sign and then the same process - e.g. [email protected].
You can hit the view source - icon to the right of up & down votes, left of reply - to see how it translates into, but that's a LOT to try to remember, while the above is a lot easier process. The web browser UI isn't really intuitive though - e.g. there are no buttons for either of those, and a bunch of other stuff doesn't work all that well either when you click it, plus beware of clicking the formatting help button b/c it won't open a new tab or anything - even though you can ONLY access it from within an EXISTING reply, nonetheless by default it will obliterate all of the text that you have typed so far and navigate to another page. None of the other options do that... but despite how there is basically zero distinction wrt its icon color or placement that might hint at that fact, that one behaves fundamentally differently from all the rest of them. So, if you are struggling, note that it may not be your fault: Lemmy is still in its infancy, and a lot of this isn't as "polished" as it may one day become.
I still love it 100-fold better than Kbin's interface. I did not think that I would, but I do.
Tbh, I feel less bad for Ernst the more time that goes by. At first I thought he was a GREAT dude, to take upon himself that whole concept of entirely re-envisioning the whole Lemmy code, and I definitely get that he was handed a bunch of lemons by life, but he also was the only one who decided what to do with them. e.g. he could have allowed a couple of other admins onto the kbin.social instance, even if he retained full & total control of the code side of things. I would not dream of trying to tell him what to do but... I also have the same rights, and since I no longer trust his word, him having broken it far too many times, I don't think I will ever go back, even if everything that he hoped to do with Kbin ends up being done. He's made his choices, and I do not respect them, though meanwhile everyone will move on regardless - which I do agree is really sad, especially after such an auspicious beginning, and along with everything I am saying I really truly do wish him the best, but... I am no longer willing to hold my breath anxiously awaiting that to happen anytime soon.