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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

Stop talking of things you don’t know about. From a more detailed source [0]:

> la procura della Repubblica di Catanzaro scrive nell’inchiesta che una persona molto distinta si presentò nell’ufficio della dipendente minacciandola in modo velato, e facendole capire che la sua incolumità e quella della sua famiglia erano a rischio

“The public prosecutor in Catanzaro writes in the filing that a well-dressed person walked into [the witness’s] office and made veiled threats, suggesting her health and the one of her relatives were at risk.”

Well-dressed man speaking softly of physical violence - clearly the guy wanted to appear connected to the local ‘ndrangheta ras.

[0] https://it.sputniknews.com/italia/2021042010438566-15-anni-d...

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Thank you for the additional context but there was no way I could have known that since I can't read itialian.

Everyone knows threats of "bad things will happen to your career if you do this" outnumber "bad things will physically happen to you" at least 1000:1.

I challenge you (or anyone) to come up with a reason why my assumption was unreasonable using only the information provided by the BBC article submitted.

You should maybe take this as a lesson to not try to speak authoritatively about things you are ignorant about. If you don't know, offer speculation sure but statements like 'almost certainly' and arguing all up and down the thread from a position of ignorance rightly earn you downvotes.

How am I ignorant? Just because I assumed the typical case based on information provided in TFA (surely if it was exceptional they would have mentioned it right, the news loves twists).

In several comments throughout here I have described from experience with accuracy how these kinds of phantom employees exist and the nature of the organizations that provide the conditions for them to exist. I get that portraying government as anything but pure unadulterated competency at every level is not ideologically acceptable to many here but unfortunately that is the reality. Nevertheless, even in highly dysfunctional corners physical threats of violence are not the norm.

Do you seriously think that this flew under the radar for 15yr because he made threats? No, it was because the organization was dysfunctional in many ways and his behavior was not far enough out of line to cause problems back when he did it.

I hope you one day inherit management responsibilities in the kind of organization that has this kind of dysfunction sprinkled throughout it.

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