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This is kind of mind-blowing to me. First case in my lifetime where a US corporation appears to have murdered someone for political reasons. Has this happened b

This is kind of mind-blowing to me. First case in my lifetime where a US corporation appears to have murdered someone for political reasons. Has this happened before? I assume it has but it's very rare.

pulse7 3y ago
The mafia took over the Boeing Corporation...
- dotancohen 3y ago
  McDonnell Douglas are hardly the Mafia.
  - cpursley 3y ago
    No, way worse - they’re MBAs.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gruez 3y ago
>First case in my lifetime where a US corporation appears to have murdered someone for political reasons Is there anything supporting this theory other than the fact the death benefits Boeing?
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  The article we're commenting on, where a friend attests he was told explicitly that any "suicide" is fowl play. Sure, it's nowhere near "beyond a reasonable doubt", but it's plenty, together with the obvious motive, to form an opinion.
  - pdpi 3y ago
    > fowl play You probably meant foul play. "Fowl" means chicken-y (galliformes) or duck-y (anseriformes) birds.
    - dataflow 3y ago
      Fowl play was what the DoJ suspected when they were investigating the chicken industry.
  - georgespencer 3y ago
    > fowl play 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.
  - gruez 3y ago
    > The article we're commenting on, where a friend attests he was told explicitly that any "suicide" is fowl play. 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".
    - hnfong 3y ago
      If you dismiss all the evidence "supporting this theory" (your words) then obviously you wouldn't find anything that supports it. 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.
- windowshopping 3y ago
  I did say "appears," but this is some Epstein levels of "coincidence." I'm not really a conspiracy-theory type, but I mean c'mon. Does anyone believe that Epstein killed himself? Makes me think of this little stand-up comedy snippet. https://www.reddit.com/r/StandUpComedy/comments/14rcr7n/conspiracy_theories/ 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?"
  - blackhawkC17 3y ago
    > Does anyone believe that Epstein killed himself? 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?
    - chii 3y ago
      > Ghislaine 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").
    - alexey-salmin 3y ago
      Curios that she didn't try to reduce her sentence by incriminating others. Furthermore she outright refused to testify at all during the proceedings.
  - optimalsolver 3y ago
    >Does anyone believe that Epstein killed himself? Yes. People of high status frequently take their lives when they realize everything's gone down the drain.
    - hughesjj 3y ago
      On suicide watch, with both guards asleep and the cameras out?
- timthelion 3y ago
  He was shot and there aren't any double blind studies that prove that police are capable of reliably distinguishing self inflicted wounds from non-self inflicted wounds.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    It’s a bit dark, but the idea of trying to get ethics approval for a study of this sort had me laugh.
    - siriaan 3y ago
      Well a university in New Zealand got the ok to blast pigs in the head with a Glock for a blood spatter study - https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/284438/how-did-shooting-pigs-in-head-get-go-ahead https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/284438/how-did-shooting-...
      - sfn42 3y ago
        I thought firing a gun would leave gunpowder residue on your hands
        timthelion 3y ago
        I'm pretty sure there are other ways of putting gun powder resedue on someone.
        sfn42 3y ago
        Yes, the point is that unless they actually take the time to do something like that, you might see that the victim has no residue on their hand and could not have shot themselves.
    - fl7305 3y ago
      If you are an organ donor, it will surprise you what kind of research is done using corpses. For example, "body farms".
- georgespencer 3y ago
  It's far more likely that he simply changed his mind after making the statement attributed to him than it is Boeing would arrange for him to be murdered five years after the fact.
  - saulpw 3y ago
    Not "Boeing" in its official capacity, but it has a lot of executives and shareholders, only one of which needs to have the hubris to think they can get away with it. That seems a lot more likely.
    - georgespencer 3y ago
      Yes with their stock at a near record low for the decade, now is certainly the time for Boeing's largest shareholders (Vanguard and Blackrock) to take decisive action by inexplicably murdering someone five years too late to make a difference, and who - if left alive - could have potentially been the single most effective means for the shareholders to take revenge on the executives responsible for the company's demise. Jesus christ.
      - saulpw 3y ago
        You're not responding in good faith. It just takes one person--one out of thousands of people--who is thinking criminally instead of rationally. Of course it's not going to be "Vanguard" (again not a person!) But it might very well be a low-level VP who thinks they will go to jail if this person is allowed to testify. 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.
        georgespencer 3y ago
        In criminal law this sort of nonsense is explicitly inadmissible in court. It's why during the OJ Simpson criminal trial it was not possible for the defense to do anything more than point out inconsistencies with the chain of evidence: they could not say that it pointed to or was in any way evidence of a conspiracy. (In other words: you can't just say "it could be something else" because that's facile, easy to do, and has no means of disproof. So fucking prove it would be a useful rule to adopt.) 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 https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article259213078.html
- carabiner 3y ago
  It doesn't benefit Boeing because of all of this brainless conspiracy thinking, and his allegations over the past 5 years had nothing to do with the current 737 MAX stuff. It was all 787 related which by all reports has been a successful, safe aircraft. The horse has been out of the barn, his words were reported in the NYTimes years ago. Assassinating him now had no upside for Boeing and large downside because of all this predictable inane speculation.
dboreham 3y ago
See: Octopus murders.
doodlebugging 3y ago
Karen Silkwood comes to my mind.[0] Kerr McGee whistleblower back in the 1970's. Maybe not your lifetime but definitely in mine. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood
Qem 3y ago
Coca-Cola ordered some Colombian workers killed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co%2E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co%2...
regentbowerbird 3y ago
Not a US corporation but when it came to light that French defense contractor Thomson-CSF (now Thales) had bribed Taiwan official to award them a defense contract, no less than six whistleblowers died, three of them defenestrated; most famously Thierry Imbot, who fell from the fourth story closing his window shutters on a windy evening, supposedly the night before he was to meet a journalist.
otherme123 3y ago
There's mounting evidence that someone could had dismissed safety to get more profits, and then some planes fell off the sky. That could escalate to involuntary manslaughter quickly.
bamboozled 3y ago
Not in your lifetime but wasn’t Jefferson murdered by the banks for wanting to ban interest on the dollar? Same for President Jackson, he was shot but not killed for the same reason.
wahnfrieden 3y ago
Coca Cola paid death squads to murder workers who were organizing

pulse7 3y ago

The mafia took over the Boeing Corporation...

dotancohen 3y ago
McDonnell Douglas are hardly the Mafia.
- cpursley 3y ago
  No, way worse - they’re MBAs.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gruez 3y ago

>First case in my lifetime where a US corporation appears to have murdered someone for political reasons Is there anything supporting this theory other than the fact the death benefits Boeing?

tsimionescu 3y ago
The article we're commenting on, where a friend attests he was told explicitly that any "suicide" is fowl play. Sure, it's nowhere near "beyond a reasonable doubt", but it's plenty, together with the obvious motive, to form an opinion.
- pdpi 3y ago
  > fowl play You probably meant foul play. "Fowl" means chicken-y (galliformes) or duck-y (anseriformes) birds.
  - dataflow 3y ago
    Fowl play was what the DoJ suspected when they were investigating the chicken industry.
- georgespencer 3y ago
  > fowl play 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.
- gruez 3y ago
  > The article we're commenting on, where a friend attests he was told explicitly that any "suicide" is fowl play. 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".
  - hnfong 3y ago
    If you dismiss all the evidence "supporting this theory" (your words) then obviously you wouldn't find anything that supports it. 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.
windowshopping 3y ago
I did say "appears," but this is some Epstein levels of "coincidence." I'm not really a conspiracy-theory type, but I mean c'mon. Does anyone believe that Epstein killed himself? Makes me think of this little stand-up comedy snippet. https://www.reddit.com/r/StandUpComedy/comments/14rcr7n/conspiracy_theories/ 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?"
- blackhawkC17 3y ago
  > Does anyone believe that Epstein killed himself? 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?
  - chii 3y ago
    > Ghislaine 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").
  - alexey-salmin 3y ago
    Curios that she didn't try to reduce her sentence by incriminating others. Furthermore she outright refused to testify at all during the proceedings.
- optimalsolver 3y ago
  >Does anyone believe that Epstein killed himself? Yes. People of high status frequently take their lives when they realize everything's gone down the drain.
  - hughesjj 3y ago
    On suicide watch, with both guards asleep and the cameras out?
timthelion 3y ago
He was shot and there aren't any double blind studies that prove that police are capable of reliably distinguishing self inflicted wounds from non-self inflicted wounds.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  It’s a bit dark, but the idea of trying to get ethics approval for a study of this sort had me laugh.
  - siriaan 3y ago
    Well a university in New Zealand got the ok to blast pigs in the head with a Glock for a blood spatter study - https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/284438/how-did-shooting-pigs-in-head-get-go-ahead https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/284438/how-did-shooting-...
    - sfn42 3y ago
      I thought firing a gun would leave gunpowder residue on your hands
      - timthelion 3y ago
        I'm pretty sure there are other ways of putting gun powder resedue on someone.
        sfn42 3y ago
        Yes, the point is that unless they actually take the time to do something like that, you might see that the victim has no residue on their hand and could not have shot themselves.
  - fl7305 3y ago
    If you are an organ donor, it will surprise you what kind of research is done using corpses. For example, "body farms".
georgespencer 3y ago
It's far more likely that he simply changed his mind after making the statement attributed to him than it is Boeing would arrange for him to be murdered five years after the fact.
- saulpw 3y ago
  Not "Boeing" in its official capacity, but it has a lot of executives and shareholders, only one of which needs to have the hubris to think they can get away with it. That seems a lot more likely.
  - georgespencer 3y ago
    Yes with their stock at a near record low for the decade, now is certainly the time for Boeing's largest shareholders (Vanguard and Blackrock) to take decisive action by inexplicably murdering someone five years too late to make a difference, and who - if left alive - could have potentially been the single most effective means for the shareholders to take revenge on the executives responsible for the company's demise. Jesus christ.
    - saulpw 3y ago
      You're not responding in good faith. It just takes one person--one out of thousands of people--who is thinking criminally instead of rationally. Of course it's not going to be "Vanguard" (again not a person!) But it might very well be a low-level VP who thinks they will go to jail if this person is allowed to testify. 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.
      - georgespencer 3y ago
        In criminal law this sort of nonsense is explicitly inadmissible in court. It's why during the OJ Simpson criminal trial it was not possible for the defense to do anything more than point out inconsistencies with the chain of evidence: they could not say that it pointed to or was in any way evidence of a conspiracy. (In other words: you can't just say "it could be something else" because that's facile, easy to do, and has no means of disproof. So fucking prove it would be a useful rule to adopt.) 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 https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article259213078.html
carabiner 3y ago
It doesn't benefit Boeing because of all of this brainless conspiracy thinking, and his allegations over the past 5 years had nothing to do with the current 737 MAX stuff. It was all 787 related which by all reports has been a successful, safe aircraft. The horse has been out of the barn, his words were reported in the NYTimes years ago. Assassinating him now had no upside for Boeing and large downside because of all this predictable inane speculation.

dboreham 3y ago

See: Octopus murders.

doodlebugging 3y ago

Karen Silkwood comes to my mind.[0] Kerr McGee whistleblower back in the 1970's. Maybe not your lifetime but definitely in mine. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood

Qem 3y ago

Coca-Cola ordered some Colombian workers killed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co%2E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co%2...

regentbowerbird 3y ago

Not a US corporation but when it came to light that French defense contractor Thomson-CSF (now Thales) had bribed Taiwan official to award them a defense contract, no less than six whistleblowers died, three of them defenestrated; most famously Thierry Imbot, who fell from the fourth story closing his window shutters on a windy evening, supposedly the night before he was to meet a journalist.

otherme123 3y ago

There's mounting evidence that someone could had dismissed safety to get more profits, and then some planes fell off the sky. That could escalate to involuntary manslaughter quickly.

bamboozled 3y ago

Not in your lifetime but wasn’t Jefferson murdered by the banks for wanting to ban interest on the dollar? Same for President Jackson, he was shot but not killed for the same reason.

wahnfrieden 3y ago

Coca Cola paid death squads to murder workers who were organizing