'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death
abcnews4.com
abcnews4.com
I think the same is true of war crimes in wars - enough of the worst type of things have really happened, and been documented, so there's nothing on the face of it that is outlandish if you heard a new report of such a thing.
But how about deaths in suspicious circumstances like this one? Is there a historical record of these kinds of things being carried out, especially in the western world, in circumstances where the motive is corporate self-interest? What's the most clear cut case we have of something falling in that falls into (for lack of a better term) the Michael Clayton category?
But more to your question, I think a great example of corporate self-interest leading to serious crimes is the Ebay stalking scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal
But that said, it's still important to keep it clear dividing line between what we think and what we know for sure.
We have no evidence. It is more that Epstein knew a lot of bad things about some of the most powerful people in the country. It makes sense that they would have wanted him killed, or even that they would have wanted to fake his death to make the court case go away. People who would kill to save themselves would be just as likely to kill a drifter and give that body to the coroner, along with very clear threats to stay quiet.
Of course we have no evidence, we can only speculate. But this is exactly the kind of thing people at these power levels will do, as we know often people at this level will kill thousands of people if it suits them.
He was facing inevitable life in prison while branded as a pedophile.
Frankly, offing himself to avoid that was the most logical move.
>Baden issued a report stating that Epstein's neck injuries were much more consistent with "homicidal strangulation" than suicide
>Baden also said that the wound was much thinner than the strip of bedsheet, and although there was blood on Epstein's neck, it was absent on the bed-sheet ligature.
from the wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeffrey_Epstein
which has photos of his neck and it does look he was strangled by something very much narrower than the bed sheets. I'm reminded a bit of the movie The Act of Killing where one of the former government guys explained how they killed hundreds of people by strangulation with a wire. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing)
I'd say on balance of probability Epstein was murdered but the Boeing guy is quite likely a suicide. Maybe he made the statements about if he dies it's not suicide as a way of getting at Boeing?
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/16/david-kelly...
it becomes a whole different game altogether. since there's a 3 letter agency that has nailed the assassination game to a T. whether on home soil or abroad.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Cor...
[1]: https://www.icij.org/investigations/big-tobacco-smuggling/ba...
Let's make a small mental exercise:
- you end up being a whistleblower against your company
- every of your former friends hates you, your family isn't super supportive either for what you caused to the rest of the family (in reputation, attention, possibly financially)
- you decide to end it
- you leave such statements before ending it to clear your name / further punish the company
I am not saying that this has happened, but people can have millions of motivations and victims being vengeful or lying is actually a surprisingly common phenomenon even though they may really be the victims of the whole situation.
Ah yes, people hate it when people call out corruption that results in the planes they fly to kill people!
>your family isn't super supportive either for what you caused to the rest of the family (in reputation, attention, possibly financially)
Again, I agree their neighbors and friends must have been super pissed when he called out Boeing for building dangerous planes that can kill people! Nothing makes regular people more upset when you put integrity over the profits of some corporation!
And I am sure the family were super pissed when pursuing a civil lawsuit that would benefit them. I am sure they were so upset about the negative repercussions to Boeing!
I guess we can all agree that he killed himself for the benefit of friends and family something that you always hear when a father kills himself! /s
I obviously referred to former coworkers whose livelihood is on the table. Whether you believe it or not, whistleblowing isn't seen favorably from those that still work there. If it was, they would've been themselves.
> Nothing makes regular people more upset when you put integrity over the profits of some corporation!
If you're the wife/child and your own life is dragged by your father losing his job and being dragged in lawsuits, while you're the butt of the mouth of everyone you know may not be an enjoyable experience.
Anyway, mine was a mental exercise to show one of the possibilities, I guess this kind of thinking of different situations is not the strength of people that see the world in black and white.
If you want to deter a hit in a situation like that, I think the only way to do that is to ensure you have very significant additional data (or at least convincingly imply you do) and make it clear they'll be released if you "commit suicide".
If a group does want to murder a whistleblower, they presumably want to do it for two reasons:
- To prevent them from testifying further - To scare other potential whistleblowers into not testifying
A public statement of "if something happens to me it wasn't suicide!" is certainly not evidence enough. But it's a strong hint...which is actually the most favorable outcome to the murdering org, since it maximizes the chilling effect of the murder.
https://www.businessinsider.com/john-mcafee-tweet-said-his-s...
Reminds me of the death of journalist Michael Hastings in 2013.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)#...
Richard Clarke's assessment seemed to carry the weight of truth. But only to a point. Just enough to engage the suspicions of family and friends, but no more.
Same for John Barnett.
The Hastings thing is classic mania for those of us who know people who have experienced that.
"look this person wrote on twitter 2 years ago that it won't be suicide"
hm.
a solution I imagined for this was some sort of point cloud emitting off of everyone's body, so we would have a point cloud based rendering of what happened near someone, could reveal a lot about human interactions
And it'd be natural to think killers would try to hide their traces, such that most such deaths would look like an accident or suicide.
Both of those killings were in pseudo-mafioso states. Both were also immediately recognized as murder. State-sanctioned murder of your own citizens on your own soil is a lot less commmon in a country like the US, although there are well as Mafia and organized crime murders. But I think successful staging as a suicide is uncommon outside of Hollywood and repressive governments.
ugh? there is more law & order in Malta than in the US.
been there for nearly a decade and according to Wikipedia [1] the homicide rate in the US is 6.4 while it is 0.4 in Malta.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucona
Which lead me to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
"According to several Western European researchers, the operation involved the use of assassination, psychological warfare, and false flag operations to delegitimize left-wing parties in Western European countries, and even went so far as to support anti-communist militias and right-wing terrorism as they tortured communists and assassinated them"
Opened a whole box of pandora for me. So I rather think there is much more dark shit going on, than what makes the news, we just see the tip of the iceberg. And not just about the big players. Probably also common people have way more corpses in their basements, than what you would expect, if you grew up in a safe space.
Edit: about Lucona, the wiki page reads quite boring, but the book by the private detective who uncovered it, is quite informative. Casual mentioned details, like that there is a court of the organized crime in london where they settle their cases. Or that the insurance company, who initially hired him to investigate, offered him money in the end, to stop investigating, as he was uncovering up too much dirt.
But there is a world of difference between doing this as a small business owner vs. a massive publicly traded company.
But that now still reminds me of: "A Report on the Banality of Evil" by Hanah Arendt about Eichmann and a holocaust trial.
Just to get started on the rabbit hole, and somewhat relevant for this thread:
Also - many, many people commit suicide after saying they never will. if he was shot with his own gun, i think that is much more likely than any other alternative.
The stakes are MUCH higher for Boeing, and we already know quite well that Boeing decided to put many human lives at risk to save money, and that's already resulted in many deaths. And they have a long history of making products designed specifically for killing humans.
https://www.boeing.com/defense
>This trusted partnership continues as defense customers once again look to Boeing to help them solve their toughest challenges.
Faking a suicide isn't a particularly tough challenge.
This sounds like one of those early 2000's trolling moments before such commentary conformed into a blob on modern social media. But given the rest of the events of the '20's I shouldn't be that surprised.
What stands out to me is, that the executive person ordering it, Steve Wymer, was not charged at all, despite making very plain statements:
"Wymer texted Baugh that Ina Steiner was a "biased troll who needs to be BURNED DOWN"; that he wanted "to see ashes"; and that Baugh should do "whatever it takes.""
I would imagine the same will happen here(if it was murder). Some pawns get executed, who "missunderstood their orders".
Mafia bosses seems to operate like this as well. They don't give plain orders to kill someone. But their underlings know what is expected of them, by a certain nod or comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle
Seems to go both ways, but without a doubt it gets the animal’s attention.
>The cold, hard facts are that anything is possible.
>Anything, anything. You're just not thinking creatively.
>I have every confidence that you can do that, Phil.
If there would have been a legal angle, they would have send out lawyers letters instead. That was apparently not an option, so crime was the only way to go. And that no one at the top gets prosecuted for this, is quite disappointing.
Or since it was in the US make up some bogus claim and take them to court and hope they cannot afford court proceedings and fold.
We will never know the answer because the chief communication officer choose to contact the security department instead of the legal department.
Court documents show eBay's Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber was copied on the infamous Whatever It Takes email from Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer wherein he referred to the twitter user Fidomaster/unsuckeBay (a frequent commenter and source for the blog) and the owners of the blog and said:
"I am utterly vexed by this! This twitter account dominates our social narrative with his CONSTANT obsession with trolling us. It's more than annoying, it's very damaging. There are a few people (this guy and the eComercebytes gal) infatuated with eBay who have seemingly dedicated their lives to erroneously trashing us as a way to build their own brand - or even build a business. It's genuinely unfair and causes tremendous damage because we look bad fighting back in public and standing up for ourselves. If we could engage, I'd welcome the fight and we have a lot of facts and truth to win with. But, instead we take shots broadside and sit on our powder. This issue gives me ulcers, harms employee moral, and trickles into everything about our brand. I genuinely believe these people are acting out of malice and ANYTHING we can do to solve it should be explored. Somewhere, at some point, someone chose to let this slide. It has grown to a point that is absolutely unacceptable. It's the "blind eye toward graffiti that turns into mayhem" syndrome and I'm sick about it. Whatever. It. Takes."
Oh Huber also engaged in multiple emails back and forth on the topic of Fidomaster/UnsuckeBay in particular as both her and Wymer had attempted to get Twitter to "kill" the account but had been unable to do so because, as mentioned above, there was not a strong legal basis for it.
And in fact at one point when Security Director Jim Baugh said he was investigating to try to identify the person behind the account and was making progress, Oh Huber replied with a smiley emoji and said "Thanks Jim, in light of this, I'll hold off on sending any letter."
Baugh's investigation included creating a fake Twitter account pretending to be an ex-eBay employee who engaged with Fidomaster/unsuckeBay to try to find some "connection" to EcommerceBytes and when that didn't work, part of the plan for escalating to all the crazy deliveries, online harassment and doxing, and in person stalking was a "White Knight Strategy" he hoped could convince the Steiners to "out" Fidomaster/unsuckeBay.
Per Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth B. Kosto:
"The campaign targeted victims one and two for their roles in publishing a newsletter that reported on issues of interest to eBay sellers. Senior executives at eBay were frustrated with the newsletter's tone and content and with the tone and content of comments that appeared underneath the newsletter's articles online.
The harassment campaign arose from communications between those senior executives and Mr. Baugh, who was at that time eBay's senior security employee. Mr. Baugh intended for the harassment and intimidation to distract the victims from publishing the newsletter, to change the newsletter's coverage of eBay, and ultimately to enable eBay to contact the victims to offer assistance with the harassment, what the government has called a White Knight strategy.
The White Knight strategy would earn goodwill with the victims, such that they might help eBay learn the identity of Fidomaster, an anonymous online persona who frequently posted negative comments about eBay underneath the newsletter's articles, and thereby allow eBay to discredit both Fidomaster and the victims."
Inexplicably, not only did Oh Huber keep her job after all this, but the entire security department at eBay was moved from Global Ops to Legal after their "internal investigation" into the scandal, putting it under her purview going forward.
Oh Huber has not been named in either the criminal or civil cases in this matter, but last week she did announce she was stepping down to "pursue a new chapter in her career, while exploring personal interests and passions" - which may or may not be related to the $3 Million fine and 3 years of compliance monitoring eBay will undergo as part of a deal they recently struck with the DOJ to try to avoid further criminal prosecution for the company or to the fact that discovery is moving forward in the civil case and more emails or other internal documents could soon become part of the public record.
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-chief-legal-officer-...
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-cyberstalking-scanda...
Against the general backdrop of Boeing’s woes, suiciding a whistleblower is low-hanging fruit.
Who knows. Maybe he has a deadman’s set up.
The problem with this whole "he totally didn't kill himself" thing is...okay, so how did they kill him? Because you can't just put a gun in the hand of an unwilling person and force them to shoot themselves without leaving evidence.
As for mocking suicide… I think you’d have to talk to a professional about what they do it. Given David Kelly, Epstein, and many other high profile cases, it does seem to be as difficult as you imagine.
The inquest concluded his death was "unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated" though with to little evidence to outright state it was an unlawful killing. The police eventually decided he'd likely locked himself in, despite the lack of fingerprints on both the bath and the padlock having made it a rather extraordinary feat for him to get into the bag and lock the padlock.
Which to me goes to show that whether or not you get away with faking a suicide likely has relatively little to do with how well - or plausible - you fake the suicide vs. how well you sufficiently prevent a link to yourself and the power you have to prevent a proper investigation.
At least in the case of David Kelly the circumstances were plausible.
In my friends highschool, some businesses guy was paying highschool kids (16 - 17 ish) to strangle car owners and steal their cars. They were later caught.
Also, watch or read Killers of The Flowers Moon.
The problem with planned murder is that it is all hidden, and the details are fuzzy. So there is alot of reasonable doubt.
But trust me, there is alot do planned killing going on out there.
Those are not in any way normal people. If someone makes it to 16-17 y/o without acquiring that fundamental moral lesson, I would not characterize them as normal, whatever the cause of that failure.
Moral grandstanding won't change the fact that civilization is rather thinly veiling the violent ape in most of us
I don’t think civilization is a panacea here.
To my mind, civilization is not exactly a strict synonym of peaceful generous enlightened humanism. Of course as a phenomenon it can encompass this kind of behavior, but just as well as it can help foster genocides, war and torture.
Holocaust didn’t happen despite civilized minds, it happened specifically through a civilizational scheme.
They were just attending classes like their class mates.
It's not like they had a horns on thier head or walked around with pitchforks that made them obviously seem like killers.
EYES:……………………………………Medium
HAIR:……………………………………Medium
WEIGHT:………………………………Medium
HEIGHT:………………………………Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES…None
NUMBER OF FINGERS:………..Ten
NUMBER OF TOES………………Ten
INTELLIGENCE…………………….Medium
What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?
Turns out there is currently a fresh play in works that may have some of the same undertones: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-trial-of-eichmann-world-pre...
Now most of them aren't going to kill anyone because that would be dumb. But that is a pretty decent pool of people who would consider the idea for money.
150,000 * (1-23%) * 3% = 3465
What if one of the 3465 males had its job at risk because of Barnett?
150,000 * (1-23%) * 3% = 3465
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations_by_th...
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-sues-boeing-subsidi...
I feel you would have come up with this same solution had you needed to.
But people with well-developed career instincts might not want to look. I think you overestimate how much the regular policeman, coroner etc. cares about truth for its own sake. Do you really want to pick a fight with Boeing?
It's very easy to play Nelson and turn the blind eye. Making up a coherent narrative in a lie is hard. But the lie "I didn't notice anything suspect" is very safe.
Better evidence would be signs of a struggle or calculating bullet velocity to see if it came from the gun in that position. However, there are ways of doing this without actually causing a struggle. Wait for them to go to sleep; you could even give them some melatonin or something to make them drowsy. If it's in a car, put some nitrogen canisters on the A/C intake to make them pass out.
If it is nefarious, there will be evidence somewhere. Whether you care to look for that evidence, know where to look for it or have the technology to find it ... that's another matter altogether.
Of course there are ways to get around that but the killer has to actually perform that workaround.
It does not take much for a motivated medical examiner to rule a death a suicide, their are plenty of examples where clearly not suicide was been rule suicide in history.
Then there is always the movie "The Shooter" where they had an arm contraption purpose built to force someone to "commit suicide", The device itself is plausible
See: Lake City Quiet Pills
Because it's fairly easy to do so for the opposite statement. e.g. https://assassination.globalinitiative.net/monitor/
For the non-Norwegians: "Torpedo" in Norwegian has adopted the 1920s US slang for a hit man / hired gun, and in Norwegian it's in common, contemporary use, though more often for threats and violence than outright murder.
What? There certainly are killers for hire in existence.
Could the union elect/nominate new leadership, or are they corrupt these days as well?
Don't look at their board of directors unless you want to fully realize the magnitude of what you don't yet realize you're saying!
Boeing is a defense contractor. They'll have 'contacts'.
I'm unable to think of anyway in which someone can shoot themselves and not have it described as "self inflicted", even an accidental self shooting would be described by some in either form.
However, in general, with a gunshot wound and and a gun discarded right there some people might not assume that it was self inflicted and perhaps check for handedness, gunshot angle, residue, etc. before leaping to any premature assumptions or conclusions.
Presuming and Assuming when it comes to a death investigation is often the start of how innocent people go to jail
SO if you really feel this way you say this to every reporter you see. You write it down and give it to your lawyer. Your wife. Your kids. You put copies in the safety deposit box. You give notarized copies to every 3rd homeless person you meet.
You don't just tell one friend.
If you're a whistleblower and truly expect there to be a high chance you get suicided, sure, you tell as many people as possible, but if it's not something you think is likely to happen, just telling one friend seems reasonable.
The tv-murder-mystery plot where Boeing killed him and he told ONE friend is much more likely?
Anxiety, PTSD, and a hand gun. This is a recipe for a suicide attempt that succeeds from a purely statistical point of view.
Also, it is of course possible, to plan suicide and still tell people it won't be suicide. We all lack the details here. But since Boeing is involved with military and intelligence work who do not like traitors(whistleblowers) in general and have the expertise in covert murder, I think murder is a valid theory that should be really investigated by a neutral agency.
Also - would all that really move the needle? Surely the only way is 24/7 surveillance. Even then I'm sure there are remote methods of execution that seem natural...
I’m not sure that is correct either.
The easy answer is that paranoid people with a vendetta say exactly this to throw guilt onto the other party.
The hard answer is harder to swallow. What can we do about it?
1. What some other recent occurrences?
2. What's the baseline rate of suicides we should expect for people in high stress positions, like being a whistleblower? How many people could plausibly be categorized as "whistleblowers"?
I vividly remember one two or three years ago, of an Asian man I think in NYC who kept videoing the police calling them corrupt, telling the world if he died it was the police. Well, he died. The police said it wasn't the police. Sadly, I can't find this Googling.
I'd say it's happened enough to become a meme. When people post controversial things about big companies or politicians, people will reply telling them to make a video to say they aren't suicidal.
* Well some people aren't happy with my handwavy answer, so here are a few
https://fresnopeoplesmedia.com/2016/01/2829/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/home-explodes-washingto...
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/who-was-ja... (same case, some context)
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/jeffrey-eps...
I'm referring to ones with real news articles and real videos. The only reason I mentioned it is because news sites rarely even report such info, and definitely don't show the videos.
I'm not much for conspiracies, so my initial question was genuine. Are most or all of these people mentally ill and trying to scapegoat their enemy before offing themselves? It feels weird that it happens enough I was able to reference 4 other recent cases with 15 minutes of effort.
EDIT: Not saying that I believe it or care, but even wiki mentions it. Thought it would fit the other mentions...
> McAfee's death ignited speculation and conspiracy theories about the possibility that he was murdered. Such speculation was particularly fueled by a 2019 post McAfee made on Twitter that read, in part, “If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whackd [sic].”[133]
> Several times, McAfee claimed if he were ever found dead by hanging, it would mean he was murdered.[137] The day after his death, his lawyer told reporters that while he regularly maintained contact with McAfee in prison, there were no signs of suicidal intent.[138] McAfee's widow reaffirmed this position in her first public remarks since her husband's death, and also called for a "thorough" investigation.[139][140]
It mentions the CIA, that must've been it!!!! /s
> I've collected files on corruption in governments. For the first time, I'm naming names and specifics. I'll begin with a corrupt CIA agent and two Bahamian officials. Coming today. If I'm arrested or disappear, 31+ terrabytes of incriminating data will be released to the press.
He wasn't killed over not paying his us tax bill.
The only solution is to remember and to retaliate on an individual basis (stop the wars, don't fly, shun execs, boycotts). And not just until they relent, because they are machines, and have no conscience. Do this until they hit the pink sheet, and then keep doing it.
It's probably what you're paying attention to.
There are lots of shocking occurrences that most people don't notice. Or don't want to notice. Death is among the things we'd rather not think about. Unseemly death more so.
Consider how many US military deaths are suicide every year.
https://dcas.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/app/summaryData/deaths/byYear...
Or how many people are killed by police in the US every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...
Or consider that suicides are more common than either firearm or car crash deaths.
Not saying that's what happened here, of course.
Most importantly, who's gun was it? If it was someone else's gun, sure, it's a murder, but I think we'll find that the gun was Barnett's. And if so, we have to ask, how did the murderer manage to kill Barnett with his own gun?
How did the killer get into the truck? We can assume the killer had to be in the truck, since the alternative (killing Barnett elsewhere and dragging the body through a Holiday Inn parking lot into the driver's seat) is absurd. Did they get lucky and try the door, finding it to be open? If so, wouldn't there be signs of a struggle when a stranger enters your vehicle? Or did they get in because they know Barnett, and he let them in (in which case, they won't have an alibi)?
Why commit a murder in a public location? I won't be surprised if the Holiday Inn parking lot was being surveilled.
The fact that the gun was found in his hand, and the timing of the murder, do seem like pretty big coincidences. But I think it's easier to chalk these up to coincidences than it is to answer the above questions. Additionally, per his Wikipedia page, he suffered from PTSD and anxiety attacks. These don't guarantee that he's suicidal, but it's not the picture of perfect mental health either.
I'm very interested if anyone thinks they have a good explanation of how this could have taken place as a murder.
But someone else wondered if it’s almost worse than murder that even successful whistleblowing can lead to experiences so awful you want to kill yourself. Like “Boeing won’t kill you, they’ll make your life so terrible that you’ll do it for them”.
I don’t think thats a completely reasonable interpretation either — but if we as a society value valid whistleblowing, what can we provide whistleblowers to help them navigate these incredibly difficult times? (financially, emotionally, socially, and spiritually)
That said, if the cameras were off or not covering where the truck parked, I don’t think it would be very complicated for a highly paid individual to steal someone’s non daily-carry gun from their home or hotel room and walk up to their window when they get in their truck, shoot them at point blank, and wipe some gunpowder residue on their hand.
I just don’t think it’s responsible to posit this as the clear reality. We don’t know what happened, and HN has been terribly wrong about the details of various recent high profile deaths - Tony Hsieh and Bob Lee. This type of speculation always causes more pain for the families and is almost always wrong-headed.
The USA has been printing and giving away free money for 30+ years now. The recipients of those funds have proven again and again, they will and do commit heinous crimes to maintain their position.
1) The legislature - Law makers have been captured through campaign contributions. In MOST cases a law maker has no say in how they vote, they are told by their campaign managers.
2) The judicial - Similarly judges tend to run for their seat every 4 years. In family court any divorce attorney worth their salt is donating the maximum amount to every judge every time they run. Then when they are in front of the judge in court just a thumbs up and a nod is enough to remind the judge who REALLY got them elected.
3) Corporations are DONE paying taxes and have been for a long time. Successful corporations have figured out how to siphon money from not only their customers but their employees and the federal government as well.
4) The money supply and system in general is fucked beyond repair and anyone willing or able to point that out is going to be on the "kill list".
I often see people say corporations arent as big of a problem compared to government because government has the ability to arrest and kill people.
The idea that corporations are some gentle thing that don’t have murderous coercive capacities is beyond outdated
Go and look at how corporations have co-opted local police forces to protect their businesses as the first order requirement of the police force. Best Buy, Walmart etc all have hired “off duty” cops for decades.
The goal of the existing global economic and political structure is to protect business - full stop.
https://money.cnn.com/2015/12/09/news/shell-companies-crime/...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Busin...
And neither of your links have anything to do with major corporations.
The point you should take away is that there is no actual distinction between the coercive capabilities of corporations and those of the state or in absence of a state, the ruling landlord/gang/dictator
Smedley Butler wrote about this in detail in the 1930s (1)
This is well documented in the Banana wars
States are, and have always been, the corrcion arm of the largest employer in a sovereign territory
When a Putin defector falls out of a window nobody questions why - they understand that it’s connected. Why? It has happened enough times that the likelihood of coincidental tragedy and aggression toward the existing economic power structure (irrespective of what it is) are too high to be non-causally influenced.
There’s also this false sense of “that kind of stuff only happens in corrupt/backward/non-advanced/… cultures, not our culture of justice and virtue” which is just demonstrably and statistically wrong
US funded and headquartered corporations don’t dominate the world cause they are that great and make the best product at the best price. It’s cause they are the most ruthless
Your argument applies to both.
We’ve got a fishy death, no documentation on the door plug, and more incidents.
Screenshot of unreadable page:
https://i.imgur.com/LNjbgK5.png
I’m in Europe, maybe that’s why they are serving me the page with these overlays.
Thankfully however, archive.today is able to identify those kinds of overlays in many cases and remove them, including for this page.
Readable archive link:
It really looks like;
It is a waste of time to take risk yourself and expose unethical practices conducted by the powerful.
Because,
A) The masses don't really care (I expected riots and protest).
B) You may mysteriously die.
C) Your death instead of sparking an outrage will mostly be labeled a "conspiracy theory".
Given these three items, I can very confidently predict this in the future.
0. We shall have less exposés.
1. Corporations and other powerful entities will engage in more unethical behaviour.
Due to majority of worker being spinless and complicit to corner cutting and other unethical practices.
2. Powerful entities will know they can get away with evil if they leave enough blanks in the engagement.
Since the masses will label these as conspiracy theories. And they will be stuck in these academic "plausible deniability" kind of foggy minds.
With this, I expect powerful entities to get away with more evil deeds.
In a crowd of a hundred, 50 percent of the wealth, 90 percent of the imagination, and 100 percent of the intellectual courage will reside in a single person—not necessarily the same one.
— Bed of Procrustes
I think companies that might end up doing that kind of stuff first off cultivate that culture. Either in their entire company, or with the people who are going to engage with criminal activities. Security people, upper management, ... Like in the ebay case linked above
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal#Stalking...
I'm not sure we can deduce that most employees of the corporate world are cynical and unethical from just individual cases like this
Are you seriously accusing most employees of being pions?
Why did you expect this?
He already gave his deposition. And the information is on the record. It was also him suing Boeing, he was not a witness for the government or some other party in these proceedings.
I’m 100% supportive of a thorough investigation.
I’m 100% against running with the idea that this man was murdered without any evidence of it.
[1] https://au.news.yahoo.com/boeing-whistleblower-john-barnett-...
This aligns very closely with the Federal rule on the same:
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 32. Using Depositions in Court Proceedings (4) Unavailable Witness. A party may use for any purpose the deposition of a witness, whether or not a party, if the court finds: (A) that the witness is dead; etc...
I can't tell which jurisdiction applies here because the news stories on the case itself are all hot garbage, I'm not trying that hard and IANAL, but my guess is it's the latter. Either way, the deposition(s) will likely get in.
Now, anything can happen, but it's hard to imagine Boeing or whomever, knowing that the deposition(s) is likely admissible in the event of the death of Barnett, would then assassinate him.
The cynic in me wonders if Barnett had recently learned his case was about to fall through for some reason we haven't learned of yet.
[1] https://www.sccourts.org/courtReg/displayRule.cfm?ruleID=32.... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_32#:~:text=A%20d....
My guess is that he was killed, but I don't have a guess whether it was some kind of plot by a higher up at Boeing, a rogue Boeing employee, or some random wackjob that's not involved otherwise. Boeing higher ups have motive, but it does feel too sloppy for a planned hit by a defense contractor. Surely they would have some CIA/FBI contacts who could give them a better plan than a mysterious mid-deposition "suicide". Surely they could rig a car to crash or something that looks more accidental.
This isn’t a criminal proceeding. With his death, it essentially goes away regardless.
Which, surprise! Has recently been announced to have been opened!
(8) Deposition Taken in an Earlier Action. A deposition lawfully taken and, if required, filed in any federal- or state-court action may be used in a later action involving the same subject matter between the same parties, or their representatives or successors in interest, to the same extent as if taken in the later action. A deposition previously taken may also be used as allowed by the Federal Rules of Evidence.
(https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_32)
More specifically, his case was against Boeing for allegedly retaliating against him for being a whistleblower. He was a quality control manager.
So the FAA is crawling up Boeing's ass about poor quality control and lacking a safe and responsible culture, meanwhile a _former quality control manager_ is testifying about how they tried to tell Boeing about systemic quality issues and were retaliated against.
You really don't think Boeing has a vested interested in not being found liable for retaliating against quality control whistleblowers, _while being investigated for having quality control so poor people nearly died_?
If they lose this case, the FAA is going to notice, and they're going to be pissed. It's one thing to be negligent, Boeing could probably paper over that with the FAA and some small regulatory changes because they're defense contractor and vital to national security. It is another thing entirely to not only be aware of the problems due to whistleblowers but to both ignore the issues and attempt to silence the whistleblowers.
We're talking about a clusterfuck of proportions most of us can only have nightmares about. Boeing would spend the next 50 years with the FAA's hand jammed so far up their ass Kermit would feel bad for them. I wouldn't be surprised to see the SEC filing indictments for securities fraud for not disclosing known, material defects in their planes.
Even worse than that, Boeing really only has its "national security" shield in the US. I would expect Asian and especially European (because Airbus) regulators to take an exceptionally dim view of Boeing losing this lawsuit.
It's also very bad news for Boeing on any other wrongful death or injury lawsuits against them if there's a court case setting precedent that at best, Boeing retaliates against their whistleblowers, and at worst ignores them and retaliates against them. Other civil cases would be able to use the judgement against Boeing as evidence that they concretely retaliate against whistleblowers, and Boeing would be unable to challenge that assertion (you can't re-litigate the outcome of case A in case B, whatever was decided in case A is treated as fact).
Having a judgement against Boeing for retaliating against whistleblowers sounds like a great start to a wrongful injury/death claim based on negligence for anyone that got hurt on a Boeing plane. Boeing wouldn't be able to challenge that they retaliated against whistleblowers, so they would either have to claim that retaliating against whistleblowers isn't negligent (good luck with that) or that their negligence in retaliating did not contribute to that accident (again, good luck).
The importance of this case is almost entirely in second-order effects. I doubt Boeing cares about paying out a couple hundred thousand to Barnett for retaliating, they care about getting regulators off their backs and not losing every civil case filed against them for the next decade.
I never suggested otherwise. Having a vested interest does not indicate murder, motive sure.
> If they lose this case, the FAA is going to notice, and they're going to be pissed. It's one thing to be negligent, Boeing could probably paper over that with the FAA and some small regulatory changes because they're defense contractor and vital to national security. It is another thing entirely to not only be aware of the problems due to whistleblowers but to both ignore the issues and attempt to silence the whistleblowers.
The FAA already started an investigation years ago when he first made the claims they are being sued for retaliating against.
> We're talking about a clusterfuck of proportions most of us can only have nightmares about. Boeing would spend the next 50 years with the FAA's hand jammed so far up their ass Kermit would feel bad for them. I wouldn't be surprised to see the SEC filing indictments for securities fraud for not disclosing known, material defects in their planes.
Yeah, as if the widely publicized major incidents weren’t enough already.
You may very well be right, but you may also very well be letting your imagination get far ahead of the facts.
For instance, any Boeing/Spirit employees who might be thinking about going to the FAA with information about who in management knew about and okayed the plug door "opening" scheme. Boeing surely wants the investigations to conclude that this is something no more than a few workers did of their own initiative and successfully hid from management, but that's probably not true.
...actually it has a chilling effect even if it didn't happen to be honest.
If it was an assassination, this is some Michael Clayton level stuff.
He heard later (obviously hearsay at that point) that Big Mike had indeed killed a guy that was causing problems for the owner. There's no way of knowing for sure obviously, but my dad's read on both Big Mike and the story was that it was absolutely true.
If a small pet supply company has connections to clean up a mess, as it were, I can only assume a company the size of Boeing could as well.
He is also known to have quit Boeing on the advice of a DR who said if he stayed he was going to have a heart attack.
PTSD+Anxiety+Gun = suicide from a statistical point of view. Without the gun it is much more likely to be an "attempt".
The family wasnt shocked, and they still blamed Boeing...
They will find surprises... A lot of surprises.
I have been on calls for a non-trivial number of patients who've sworn black and blue that they're "no longer suicidal", "no longer a threat", "if anything happens to me, it wasn't suicide" who, you guessed it, went on to attempt or commit suicide in very short order.
The timing makes no sense.
Seems pointless to kill someone at that point, not to mention how public his name is.
If you were going to kill him, doing it a month ago makes way way more sense.
Killing him after the first part tells everyone else that if they're thinking of doing the same they'll be killed, if they had "suicided" him before people could have though he did actually killed himself.
Allegations and heresay is easy. Pricing in court with evidence is a much steeper climb.
Don’t see much talk of evidence in the article.
No one ever seems to invest in a security system, or a gun, when they make these statements. Why?
Things like: What did the note say? Where did the gun come from? Is there any CCTV video from the hotel and garage? still need to be investigated by the police.
It is possible that he was stressed, depressed, and expected to have his reputation (and life) destroyed by scorched earth lawyers for Boeing.
Now that Boeing is in the hot seat we want to identify journalist sources?
And I don't think there's a rule that we can only talk about things that have been fully investigated.
It's on ongoing current event and a development in it. It can be talked about if people want to talk about it and can do it civilly.
You calling it a counterpoint is actually my point - it in no way is. Being skeptical is good but that isn't skepticism its the gullibility of the cynic
You're grossly misrepresenting what the nieces actually said.
The article is quite unequivocal: the quote in the article is literally "stressed and depressed".
Why did you opted to omit the reference to depression? Do you think direct statements from his family should be ignored but your personal baseless assertions should take center stage?
In addition to that, here's what his own brother had to say about the apparent suicide:
> “He was suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks as a result of being subjected to the hostile work environment at Boeing, which we believe led to his death,” the brother said.
Why is this fact glanced over?
Did I complain about that quote from the brother? So why are you bringing it up?
Its fucking ghoulish to use a nieces statement that the fun uncle got less fun leading up to this stressful thing as a counterpoint here.
> Obama: I'm Boeing's second biggest salesman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
> Webb is best known for his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in The Mercury News in 1996. The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The series provoked outrage, particularly in the Los Angeles African-American community, and led to four major investigations of its charges.
> Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. His death was ruled a suicide.
https://www.wcvb.com/article/ebay-employees-who-sent-live-sp...
Snitches get stitches is as true in the boardroom as it is on the streets. Y'all just haven't seen the wrath of a psychopathic type with something to lose scorned.
Perceived betrayal starts wars, divides families, and gets people killed. We're talking killing 1 guy to prevent or forestall millions to billions in damages, and years in prison for very rich, high profile, powerful people with stakes in one of the biggest money printers in the U.S.
If you think there aren't people who'd gladly make that trade through a proxy that'd whack somebody for a cool 100,000 in a Cayman island or virgin island bank somewhere, taxed and covered by a faked up janitorial contract for a real, yet infrequently occupied warehouse somewhere, you're only deluding yourselves.
You'd qualify as, what's the phrase? "Disney adults."
Doesn't mean the whistleblowing wasn't worth doing. Give 'em hell Barnett.
Corporate America is a lot more thuggish than its defenders want you to know.
Is there anything supporting this theory other than the fact the death benefits Boeing?
Sure, it's nowhere near "beyond a reasonable doubt", but it's plenty, together with the obvious motive, to form an opinion.
You probably meant foul play. "Fowl" means chicken-y (galliformes) or duck-y (anseriformes) birds.
It's "foul" play.
> Sure, it's nowhere near "beyond a reasonable doubt"
To the extent that I do not think it would even be admissible in court in many (all?) states. Hearsay, not under oath, not cross-examinable. Just as possible she misunderstood the dark joke of an obviously suicidal and self-reflective man as people like you and me at Boeing literally arranged to have someone killed lmao.
I can basically only think of more plausible explanations: coincidental victim of murder, suicidal due to stress of whistle-blowing, witness misheard, witness misunderstood, witness made it up…
I can really hear the bottom of the barrel being scraped around here lately.
Isn't there obvious reporting bias here? People typically don't go around saying "btw I'm going to kill myself, if that happens assume it's not foul play", so it shouldn't be too surprising that people kill themselves even though they said they wouldn't. Moreover people who actually tell people they're going to kill themselves likely will receive intervention (eg. suicide watch/hospitalization), which further drives up the relative rate of people committing suicide "unexpectedly".
Evidence does not have to be perfect. Even biased evidence should update your priors. There is evidence supporting this theory. It doesn't mean it is definitely true.
Right, and the converse is you accepting any evidence that vaguely conforms to the narrative of "he got killed by boeing", regardless of how shaky it is.
>Evidence does not have to be perfect. Even biased evidence should update your priors. There is evidence supporting this theory. It doesn't mean it is definitely true.
This feels like a motte and bailey. You claim that we should update our priors even based on biased evidence, but I never claimed otherwise. My previous comment merely pointed out the issues with taking statements like "if anything happens don't assume it's a suicide" at face value. Moreover the comment I was replying to wasn't merely claiming that we should update our priors, it was that the evidence in question was "plenty, together with the obvious motive, to form an opinion". That's a much stronger claim.
I literally said one must update their priors, not just "accepting" it. Or maybe updating priors is a form of "acceptance", but now you claim it isn't a problem:
> You claim that we should update our priors even based on biased evidence, but I never claimed otherwise
The comment you replied to just answered your question: "is there anything supporting this theory". Presumably everyone here knows basic Bayesian probability, or at least knows how to weigh supporting evidence without just blindly accepting it. Claiming otherwise seems to be rather uncharitable interpretation of the comment you replied to.
The resulting conversations have such fundamental disagreements.
Makes me think of this little stand-up comedy snippet. https://www.reddit.com/r/StandUpComedy/comments/14rcr7n/cons...
"I understand not believing in most conspiracy theories, but NONE? You really think the government's batting 100? They ain't lying about ANYTHING?"
Yes, I believe that Epstein was a coward who took the easy way out rather than face repercussions.
If it was a grand conspiracy, why is Ghislaine Maxwell (Epstein’s partner-in-crime) still alive in prison?
may be she just knew less incriminating shit. Could also be that one death as an example, to keep her in line from saying anything too incriminating (against somebody who's capable of orchestrating a prison "suicide").
Yes. People of high status frequently take their lives when they realize everything's gone down the drain.
"government lying about something" =/= "my pet conspiracy theory is true"
The government was responsible for the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, but that doesn't mean the covid vaccines contains 5g nanobots or whatever.
It's so achingly dumb. HN has a really awful conspiratorial leaning these days, it's completely baffling to me.
Maybe in 5 or 10 years, they get paid off. History teaches that truth isn't available immediately or at the time. The world is a rough place and I can wait to be convinced. As patsies, they are possibly the best, given the outcome today.
> And presumably the FBI and DOJ are in on it too?
Now you're just reaching.
> It's so achingly dumb.
Ah, the sideways name calling. Good luck with that.
If a powerful individual had:
1. Much to lose in the event of Epstein cooperating (he wasn't), and,
2. The means to arrange a complex assassination (in a prison, in solitary confinement, and -- I repeat that this is a matter of fact for which you have zero repudiation -- without being seen by the security cameras which were active and monitoring the entrance to Epstein's block from the communal entrance), and,
3. The public knowledge that Epstein had weeks earlier attempted to commit suicide (I literally cannot believe I'm having to enumerate this)…
… why wouldn't you simply pressure Epstein to commit suicide and obviate the insane risk of detection or mishap in a scheme to murder him that would, at a minimum, require either the cooperation of multiple heretofore uncontrolled/unknown operatives within the prison, in addition to the brokering and lifting being done by a proxy (i.e.: at least 3 people, probably closer to 5-10, all of whom would be highly brittle points of failure both during and after the operation)?
Or find a way to provide him with the mysterious extra bed sheets[^1] if he were intending on doing it anyway? You know, perhaps on an unmonitored telephone call[^2] made to his "mother" (dead for years) immediately prior to the suicide?
Sorry, but yes you are dumb if you think Epstein was murdered in prison. You are knowingly taking a position unsupported by fact, considered and rejected by thousands of more qualified investigators from across the judiciary, and the best you can appear to do is accuse me of not being gentle in my treatment of your utterly inane conjecture.
You are leaping to the most exciting conclusion and rejecting the myriad simpler ones supported by the overwhelming evidence. Each of the following is inescapably a simpler and more likely explanation for his death than him being murdered:
1) He succeeded in his second attempt at suicide due to deteriorated mental health,
2) He succeeded in his second attempt at suicide due to his fear of being mistreated or murdered by an inmate (he's a pedophile in prison etc.),
3) He succeeded in his second attempt at suicide due to his fear of being murdered by a guard in the employ of people he might betray,
4) He succeeded in his second attempt at suicide due to his fear of loved ones being murdered at the behest of people he might betray,
5) He succeeded in his second attempt at suicide due to being provided the means by guards operating at the behest of people he might betray,
6) He succeeded in his second attempt at suicide due to befriending a guard who took pity on him or to whom he promised or arranged financial reward himself (yes, it's more likely Epstein was motivated to essentially pay for his own suicide than someone murdered him in his prison cell, sigh),
7) He succeeded in his second attempt at suicide because he was pressured by external forces capable of harming those he loved.
It's just staggering that you cannot evaluate this properly. I don't want to be unkind, I'm sure you're very smart and a lovely person, but I would encourage you to discuss this with any lawyer, prosecutor, or investigator you might have access to and go through the facts line by line. You should absolutely be alarmed that you are out of step with so many informed individuals on this, even before considering people like me who are simply 50th percentile with logic.
[^1]: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/white-collar-and-criminal-law/...
[^2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/jail-officials-jeffrey-epste...
Or when you look at the reams of evidence supporting a verdict of suicide and the other side has conspiratorial non-arguments like this.
If any of you get selected for jury duty I would encourage you to please show an adult this thread so you can be recused on grounds of mental incapacity.
I know you think this is really brilliant invective, but it just reveals that you don't know what you're talking about.
Epstein was being monitored by guards and cameras in part because he had already tried to kill himself once. (I suppose you don't dispute that?)
The cameras you're referring to are the specific cameras with his cell door in their FOV. MCC New York had a history of such lapses, and the cameras were seized and analysed by the FBI. No evidence was found of anything other than the US prison system being shitty.
But more importantly there were functioning cameras showing the entrance to Epstein's block from the accessible communal area an assassin would have used for entrance/egress. From the DOJ report:
> Thus, anyone entering or attempting to enter Epstein’s SHU tier from the SHU common area would have been picked up by that video camera.
No such person was seen.
1. Epstein was found hanged in his cell
2. Video footage from the communal area an assassin would have to use for entrance/egress was analyzed by the FBI and showed nobody entering his block
3. There is video footage of his first suicide attempt on July 23rd, a few weeks before he was found hanging in his cell[^1]
4. An investigation by the FBI, and an autopsy performed by a coroner, concluded that the death was a suicide.
Now you go. Tell me what evidence you have of murder. Address all of my points. Read the DOJ report.
[^1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/20/video-of-jeffrey-epstein-jai...
2. Source? Was this footage ever published? It also doesn't rule out someone inside the prison killing him which is much easier to arrange.
3. The article you linked doesn't confirm the video exists. It says that some officials said it existed but then it wasn't found when searched for. And in any case first suicide attempt is not inconsistent with murder.
4. Current and past New York City's Chief Medical Examiners were both present during the autopsy and strongly disagree over the results.
> Now you go. Tell me what evidence you have of murder. Address all of my points. Read the DOJ report.
Read my original message again. I'm not saying there is a solid evidence of murder. I'm saying there's no solid evidence of suicide that would rule out murder, so you can't say that "suicide is self-evident".
Amongst idiots.
> eg Clinton's bj in the whitehouse
A thing which happened, was admitted by Clinton, and proved by DNA evidence.
Epstein's suicide is different because the evidence overwhelmingly points to suicide, and people are either ignorant or unable to think logically.
Amongst culture. Doesn't matter that you don't agree.
> A thing which happened, was admitted by Clinton,
Clinton's BJ was in popular culture before the conviction. Pointing to a legal case is moving the goalpost.
> Epstein's suicide is different because the evidence overwhelmingly points to suicide,
It is not and does not. Good luck with whatever.
I don't know what this means.
> Doesn't matter that you don't agree.
It is fundamental to this discussion that the narrative you describe is fringe (credible polling puts it at around 30% uptake) and directly contradicted by both the evidence and conclusions reached by the institutions required to evaluate said evidence (DOJ, FBI).
It is a narrative in the same way as flat earthism or QAnon are narratives. We should be careful to not imply equivalence ("both sides"-ing) to the situation: there is reality, and then there is a group of people who either do not possess the facts (many people in this thread, for example), or are unfortunately not capable of grasping them for whatever reason.
> Clinton's BJ was in popular culture before the conviction.
Clinton was credibly and publicly accused by an individual, and had a long history of such accusations.
> Pointing to a legal case is moving the goalpost.
My point is that there is no equivalence between Clinton and Epstein, but I don't think you were drawing any really, you were just saying (I think?) that they were both narratives that took hold prior to the facts being established and conclusions reached.
> It is not and does not.
Just sit down and try to write the narrative of what happened and you might see what I mean:
1. Was it the guards, or a professional assassin?
2. If guards: how were they identified? Who put them on the right shift at the right time? Who else helped? How did the benefactor of the scheme know that the guards wouldn't grass on the approach? How did the benefactor of the scheme find the guards and approach them? When the guards walked into the room, how did they restrain Epstein without injuring him or leaving behind any DNA evidence? Did they tie the bedsheets together before or after the murder? How would they be remunerated given the scrutiny on them and their associates from the FBI? Why would they admit to falsifying logs and draw more attention to themselves rather than engineering an excuse less likely to draw huge scrutiny?
3. If professional assassin: how did they get in without being seen on the security cameras monitoring the single point of entrance/egress from Epstein's block? How did they get into the prison through multiple layers of security? Were the guards also paid off? How did the assassin restrain him without injuring him or themselves? Why would you go to the trouble of infiltrating a prison - which is after all an axiomatically hard thing to do – when the guy had already tried to hang himself weeks earlier?
4. General: why do you discount the conclusions of the DOJ psychologist who reviewed Epstein's prison records and evaluations and concluded that it was suicide? Why would a shadowy figure trying to kill Epstein not simply pressure him from the outside by threatening his family (given that they apparently have the capacity to infiltrate a prison facility utterly unnoticed)? Why would you conclude that Epstein's first suicide attempt was sincere but his second was not? Why would you leave it until after he was suicidal and by all accounts uncooperative with the authorities to kill him rather than killing him at a time when it was both easier to achieve and less clear that he would not cooperate? Why do you think the FBI found no cause for suspicion in the testimony of the guards, if you think they did it or were in the loop?
People who spout conspiratorial nonsense with conviction and a poor grasp of the facts / ability to reason are the very reason conspiracy theories propagate. You might be a brilliant mind in other areas, but you should know that to the 70% of the population who do not believe that Epstein was murdered, you are in broadly the same bucket as someone who believes they saw Elvis alive in Hawaii a few weeks ago.
Sorry but lol at Insider being your source for robust polling of the American zeitgeist. In 2019 Certus put the figure of Americans believing he was murdered at 35%, with the remainder believing it to be suicide or "don't know".
"Don't know" is the critical thing here: there aren't too many more crazy conspiracists who could be shown the overwhelming evidence of suicide and conclude that it was murder.
And, of course, irrespective: literally any thinking person who can read the DOJ report will immediately conclude that it's suicide. It's just inarguable (hence the arguments in this thread being mainly "b-b-b-b-but shadowy cabal of powerful people!!!1" and not anything to do with, for example, Epstein already having attempted suicide once, or the camera footage showing nobody entering his block, etc.
As an aside, I don't believe that most of the 1/3 of each party's members that were polled think that there is some sort of "dark cabal". That is just you baselessly projecting, just as was your unnecessary projection of opinion of using an Insider poll.
https://certusinsights.com/new-certus-poll-results-americans...
> Certus poll found that over 30% each of Democrats, Independents and Republicans believed it to be murder.
I believe the Certus poll found that of those who believed him to be murdered, that was the split along political lines.
> That is not a tiny fringe as you claimed it to be.
Three in ten is a tiny minority – winning a vote with 70% would be considered a landslide – but you're right it's a scarily high number of loudmouthed imbeciles.
The good news is that you don't have to worry! Adults are in charge! Hundreds of thousands of smart, capable people are employed to investigate things like this, and will cheerfully tell you that it's far more likely that the unmonitored and illicit phone call made by Epstein directly before his suicide was him being told to have another go or risk the lives of friends or loved ones. (What with that being fucking orders of magnitude easier to do than having a hitman break into solitary confinement in a prison.)
> just as was your unnecessary projection of opinion of using an Insider poll.
Business Insider is right up there with Yahoo Answers for robust, disinterested polling data.
Since it is not clear that English is your first language due to your poor grasp of my comment, the sentence in question contains "it" in reference to the circumstance of the death, as an object of the verb "believed", not the person of Epstein. The phrase "it was murder" is a complement to the verb "believed", meaning that subject of "Democrats, Independents and Republicans", had an belief that what occurred (it) was murder.
Also, the percentages I mentioned, which were cited in the linked page, do not represent the split along political lines, but represent a separate percentage for each, as I said. Since you also don't seem to recall elementary arithmetic, 40% + 32% + 33% = 105%, not 100%.
Very relaxed about informal grammar, the point is that this:
"Certus found that of those who believed Epstein to be murdered…"
is materially different to
"Certus found that of those who identify as [political party]…"
You didn't repeat the numbers and I didn't check, so I'll take you at your word that this is not the segmentation Certus meant :)
(See how easy it is to change your perspective to accommodate reality?!)
Yes, I do. Like you, I found the circumstances of Epstein's death incredibly suspicious and thought it was a murder. But the more information that has come out, the more it looks like it was a typical prison suicide. [The latest AP article](https://apnews.com/article/jeffrey-epstein-jail-suicide-pris...) is pretty good.
>Two weeks before ending his life, Jeffrey Epstein sat in the corner of his Manhattan jail cell with his hands over his ears, desperate to muffle the sound of a toilet that wouldn’t stop running.
For example, "body farms".
And so statistically this seems a lot more likely than this otherwise stable person committing suicide for no reason and after having an explicit discussion with their family about it.
Anyway, I'll be more charitable since this isn't court and you aren't a lawyer, but the substance of my point remains: even the circumstantial evidence does not appear to support murder. Certainly if it were murder it would be revenge, given that the whistle was blown five years ago, and the whistleblower will have provided sworn affidavits and is unlikely to be the difference between conviction and freedom for any individual.
Moreover your insinuation of "a low-level VP" worrying about the testimony seems be totally euphemistic. Do you have any evidence that any one individual or number of individuals might be facing jail time as a result of the whistleblower's testimony, and could somehow avoid it without their direct testimony under cross-examination?
I'm glad you've moved away from the insinuation that it might be a shareholder somehow taking it out on the guy for no reason, at least. Now you have all of your work ahead of you to explain how and why a Boeing executive would be motivated to murder someone five years after the fact when the damage is very probably already done.
> And so statistically
Suspect what you're about to say is going to be nothing to do with statistics
> this seems a lot more likely than this otherwise stable person
Just so we're clear, you think that this…
"A Boeing executive committed or arranged a premeditated murder in public in broad daylight, five years after the fact, and made it look like suicide."
…is more probable than this…
"A whistleblower killed himself."
Let's simplify it a bit: given 100 cases of whistleblowing, do you think you would see greater incidence of murder/violence perpetrated on the whistleblower, or greater incidence of the whistleblowers experiencing meaningfully deterioration of mental health?
What about this one[^1]? Murder as well? What about Ian Gibbons? Elizabeth Holmes presumably killed him?
[^1]: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article259213078.html
It's interesting how the English language labels people "conspiracy theorists", like how the totally batshit crazy ones gets lumped together with those that actually seem to be suspect.
The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the subject of a conspiracy theory, which posits that the term was popularized by the CIA in order to discredit conspiratorial believers, particularly critics of the Warren Commission, by making them a target of ridicule.
The idea that the CIA was responsible for popularising the term "conspiracy theory" was analyzed by Michael Butter, a Professor of American Literary and Cultural History at the University of Tübingen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Origin_and_u...
A major whistleblower dies in any non-natural manner should be a major investigation by the highest levels of the FBI, not immediately handled and released by the podunk no-resource local police that don't want to touch the case with a ten-foot pole.
That's what is most galling. The media and police work in lockstep to immediately brand it a suicide. The only headline should be "Boeing whistleblower found dead, FBI is investigating".
Call me crazy all you want, but murder is the most probable theory here.
The money interests are massive. People kill for tens of thousands of dollars. We’re talking millions of dollars here.
Boeing does not make $7B from the 787.
If you want to take someone out, make it a 737 MAX whistleblower.
But the 737 MAX whistleblower was also taken out yesterday.
A. Most people dismiss an actual conspiracy to murder a whistleblower witness as a conspiracy theory automatically. Such a cliché seems possible. Remember, Boeing is run by MD dickhead bros who traded in camel fucking magazine covers.
B. He wanted additional scrutiny on Boeing, and was willing to die for it.
C. Friend is seeking attention.
It will require honest and diligent investigation to be sure it was truly suicide because none of us know from afar. C seems most likely.
I'm finding the immediate "it was an an assassination" rhetoric gross and unproductive here, because what it's dismissing is a very real problem: becoming a whistleblower tends to ruin people's lives between the media scrutiny, the legal scrutiny, the career jeopardy and being in and out of court rooms. Marriages breakdown, and people get depressed or develop substance problems.
"He was assassinated" is just casually ignoring the fact that Boeing can kill this man dead completely legally through the normal shitshow which is the legal wringer whistleblowers get put through.
His lawyers came out almost immediately claiming he seemed in good spirits. Perhaps this was a superficial assessment or he was hiding his true feelings.
Like I said, wait until the investigation is complete because we don't know. It seems like the friend and media are grabbing attention rather than doing anything constructive.
On the other hand, if you were obsessed with some conspiracy theory, were feeling suicidal, and wanted to create maximum effect with your death ... "it's not suicide" is exactly what you'd say.
> 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower's prediction before death
Why not be specific, and consistent, like Russia?
It doesn’t seem surprising to me that there would be an affinity towards a particular method within entities.
Or a poisoning with a ludicrously rare poison, a strange car crash, a plane falling out the sky, dying at a gulag when you were fine a few days earlier etc etc.
It’s a very unsafe place when you don’t toe the line.
Very much like America, apparently.
The part where plenty of people express skepticism that theses death were really suspicious seems to be similar too.
No. America isn't in the habit of regularily murdering dissidents
The two are not equal.
If you go far enough back in time, sure.
Then again, if you go far enough back in time (not that long, truth be told), the US committed genocide against the Native Americans.
Russian ballistic missiles just hit residential area in Odessa, killing at least 16 and injuring 70. It was a double-tap attack. The second missile hit the same place 15 minutes later to kill first responders that had arrived: one paramedic and one firefighter died on the scene.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-aid-convoy-deaths-al...
It’s within living memory.
However we have gone off track, as the other responses show.
If happening at all, political killings are not occurring in the US at anything like the rate that they occur in Russia.
This post exists because they are.
> It’s a very unsafe place when you don’t toe the line.
This one seems less like "it's a very unsafe place" and more like Prigozhin was trying to be killed. He went into open armed rebellion and negotiated a deal where he was exiled to Belarus. Then he went back to Russia, where he experienced a fatal plane crash. He would have to have been a total idiot not to see that coming.† What happened?
† My favorite story in this general vein is what happened with the Mitanni king Tushratta, whose brother the king was killed by a usurper when Tushratta was young. Tushratta inherited the throne, and the usurper, Tuhi, held power as regent until Tushratta came of age.
At which point Tushratta had Tuhi and his coconspirators executed. This was 3400 years ago, but somehow I suspect that even then this wouldn't have been hard to predict.
The confusing bit for me is why did it go on for so long? It’s one thing to kill him, but seemingly letting him back into Putin’s circle before killing him is surprising. I hope to hear the story one day.
Now I’m imagining a show set in Greenwich, Connecticut, where a gentle white-haired family man trades options during the day and manages assassinations after the kids go to bed. “The Americans” meets “The Big Short”?
In the Western World the secret services kill to silence people, not to broadcast messages to the public. Quite the opposite PR strategy.
Although that being said, I wouldn't rule this out as being organised by Boeing's management or a major shareholder or something. It is a company in the military-industrial complex.
Perhaps he is an object lesson that one should create a "switch escalator".
Perhaps a dead man's switch used in captivity could also potentially make captivity worse and remove what last remnants of hope he has. I suspect if he pulled the switch now then a lot of the sympathy he got for exposing a war crime might go out the window.
There are still lots of angry articles about how it will PUT LIVES AT RISK if it is unencrypted.
The powers that be appear to be walking a tightrope between not exposing their own assets and trying to make an example out of people who expose war crimes while trying not to put lives at risk.
If the US government pardoned him they’d be doing themselves a massive favor.
Because this time wasn't about silencing him (too late for that), but making an example. And for this, a blatant enough assassination would likely tarnish the image the US government wants to project too much. Going through the courts, making a show of "due process", now that's looking pretty good: "hey journalists, we can't kill you if you babble too much, but we can make you wish we did, and since it's all legal good luck about rousing public opinion about it".
Yep. I totally didn't get the "don't mess with big corps" message at all.
Maybe you'll find a few who will say, off the record, that of course it wasn't a suicide.
But those people aren't rare in the US either! Feds are just as "paranoid" as the rest of in these matters.
There are some high profile cases were the west (or the deep state) very clearly went "full Russian" on some figures to send a "don't mess with us" message.
David Kelly and Epstein come to mind. As also noted in this thread Assange is arguably being given a fate worse than death, rotting in a dungeon an example to terrify whistleblowers around the world.
Granted, it is only used much more sparingly than the KGB, but it is there.
Man in Sioux Falls, South Dakota shoots himself in penis and tries to blame black guy:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/man-shoots...
‘We failed the city of Boston’: how a racist manhunt led to chaos in 1989:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/dec/07/we-fail...
Blake Masters blames Black people for gun violence. But remember, he's no racist:
https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2...
Drowning related however, the most known is this one (even got a wiki page, so it's really well known!) en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boulin
But Choukri Ghanem also managed to drown himself in Vienna.
A related death was Albichari, a 37 yo dying of diabetes, and 6 years later, Bechir Saleh assassination attempt by a commando (with his bodyguard crew saving him), so the DGSE clearly have multiple ways of doing business.
If you agree is that it's not a suicide, opinions differ on whether it's government team that did it or the "SAC", a paramilitary group linked to the then ruling party, not an official secret service
But i've read that recently "https://www.amazon.fr/tueurs-R%C3%A9publique-Assassinats-op%..." and now i have to jump in when people talk about political assassination, even though i know almost nothing about the subject, and everything i know is so thin it should be disregarded anyway. As the memory fade, i will stop doing that. Sorry :/
I was one of the first on the scene. The passenger window of his car was shattered, all of the glass on the inside of the car. No blood on the glass. The car was still in drive and had driven itself off the road. A gun was found on the floor under the seat, a gun that was unknown to family members.
Ruled a suicide and multiple attempts to open an investigation all the way up to the federal level were ignored, and his son received numerous, documented death threats warning him to stop perusing an investigation.
The USA is just another banana republic, only with a higher price of admission to the table.
I think most people know that these kind of “suicides” or “accidental falls” from hotel balconies are not suicides, yet we all know we are powerless to root out this level of imbedded corruption.
What most people fail to understand is that it isn’t so much the work of corrupt politicians or shadowy crime bosses, but more often is rooted in the C-Suite. Since criminal and sociopathic characteristics are often rewarded at the executive level , it should be no surprise that crime and corporate governance are frequently intermingled.
/s
Tweet it, send it in a message, leave a note in your home. But, “hey push that side, and let’s lift this in 3..2…. oh by the way I have no intention of killing myself… 1… go! There you go”. No. That doesn’t check out. Even if that conversation actually took place, it’s not helpful at all because it’s so easy to dismiss as hearsay. That’s actually a curse you put on your friend if it really happened.
EDIT: Apparently, the aforementioned help in the article was being a pallbearer at the friend’s father’s funeral. That turns out to be a less and less proper conversation for the occasion.
People who are stressed, sick, anxious, depressed etc often operate more on emotion and in aa reactive way rather than with foresight, clarity and rationality.
My point isn't about what he supposedly did made sense or not, but what he did was completely useless if true, and even debating it is useless now because of the way it was done. That's why I mentioned how he cursed his friend with that.