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Whistleblower Josh Dean of Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems has died

• bioneuralnet 2y ago
  My first thought is "WTF!" But my second is this: every single person who's ever criticized Boeing is going to die (eventually). With so many people in a position to notice and speak out about Boeing's issues, it isn't terribly surprising that a few deaths have occurred. Combine that with one headline-grabbing (apparent) suicide during a deposition, and we're now all primed to notice these deaths and attribute intent.
  • graywh 2y ago
    32 whistleblowers in the last 3 years
    • throwup238 2y ago
      That’s a lot of assassinations! I bet Boeing gets a volume discount.
      • mattmaroon 2y ago
        I assume he meant there were 32, of which those two died, not 32 died. If 32 died, ok, they're killing people. If 2/32 died, that's within the realm of possibility.
        • slg 2y ago
          Yes, it is 2 dead out of 32 total [1]. We can ballpark these odds relatively easily. Dean was 45 and Barnett was 62. Let's assume they are somewhat representative of the average whistleblower and the average whistleblower is in average health. Let's use the standard government actuarial tables[2] and assume the average age is 56 just to make the math easier since the odds of a single 56 year old dying in a given year is roughly 1%. The odds of at least 1 of the 32 dying would be 28% and the odds of 2 dying would be 4%. Unlikely enough to be suspicious, but not unlikely enough to be anything close to the smoking gun that some are suggesting. [1] - https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-subject-of-32-whistleblower-complaints-documents-reveal https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-subject-o... [2] - https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
          • throwup238 2y ago
            So what you’re saying is that there’s a 96% chance Boeing did it. If that doesn't conclusively settle the matter, I don't know what would. Boeing would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for us meddling hackers!
            • deleted 2y ago
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          • amelius 2y ago
            Thank you!
          • foxyv 2y ago
            I always love people who actually do the math.
          • ekianjo 2y ago
            > The odds of at least 1 of the 32 dying would be 28% and the odds of 2 dying would be 4%. the deaths happened in two months. not in the space of a year. you need to take that in account.
            • slg 2y ago
              I think that would be a statistical mistake to cherry-pick the cutoff like that. What would be the argument for ignoring the X months/years beforehand in which no one died? If I asked you for the odds of the next three coin tosses being heads, you don't start counting on the first heads. The first toss being tails is a possible outcome that can't be ignored.
              • rootusrootus 2y ago
                That is an excellent point. Maybe the math has to be using the average length of time the whistleblowers have been 'out' as it were. That could plausibly end up being several years, which pushes the 1:32 number a lot closer to 'certain' and the 2:32 number way up into entirely plausible.
        • blueelephanttea 2y ago
          > If 2/32 died Also his isn't quite correct. John Barnett (first death) left Boeing in 2017 and his whistle blowing did not occur within the last 3 years. The 32 complaints stat is for the last 3 years. Also it's not even clear if the most recent death (Josh Dean) would be included in those stats. He worked for Spirit and claims that he reported improperly drilled holes in the 737 Max fuselage and that nothing was done. The claim would probably be against Spirit not Boeing. It's being reported in the media as Boeing, but in paperwork it would probably be against Spirit.
    • orblivion 2y ago
      Out of how many wistleblowers? How does that compare to other people with the same demographics?
      • orblivion 2y ago
        (I can't edit or delete anymore but see the sibling comments. 32 is the total, not the dead.)
    • tootie 2y ago
      Where did you get that number?
    • coliveira 2y ago
      People should stop and do some very serious investigation about a company that has 32 whistleblowers just in the last 3 years....
      • mulmen 2y ago
        Stop what? The very serious investigations that are happening?
    • dustfinger 2y ago
      Where did you get that number from? Do you have links?
  • danielfoster 2y ago
    Not to mention how old some of them must be.
    • dingnuts 2y ago
      well this guy was 45 and described as healthy in the article, but shows up to the hospital with a mysterious lung problem and then gets MRSA it's not exactly a smoking gun but you can't blame the guy's age, either. 45 is just middle age, I hope
      • cft 2y ago
        The chance to die from all causes at the age of 45 is 0.41% https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html Combined with the suicide two months ago (with his prior warning "please don't believe that I committed suicide") this deserves an investigation, not a simple dismissal.
        • kingTug 2y ago
          Does anyone know if they're investigating that? It was supposedly in his car, in the hotel parking lot he was staying at for the deposition. Seems implausible there wasn't a security camera somewhere in the vicinity.
        • somenameforme 2y ago
          Actuarial tables are for all people. So it also of course includes deaths from cancer, obesity related diseases, alcoholism/drug abuse, etc. The odds of a healthy 45 year old just randomly dying from a mysterious infection are going to be orders of magnitude lower than 0.41%.
        • danielfoster 2y ago
          People can easily be paranoid and suicidal at the same time.
          • rootusrootus 2y ago
  • CrazyPyroLinux 2y ago
    > (apparent) suicide The one where he specifically told his family beforehand that he wasn't suicidal...
    • mattmaroon 2y ago
      My ex killed herself not long after telling me she wasn't suicidal. This may surprise you, but suicidal people often lie about being suicidal. Or, they rapidly go from not being suicidal to being so. Or, due to mental illness, they've lost a grip on reality.
      • shepardrtc 2y ago
        This is a little different, he literally said to his friend, "I ain't scared but if anything happens to me it's not suicide."
        • nathancahill 2y ago
          Not leaning either way, but there was a famous case about a lawyer in Guatemala who recorded a video message claiming he wasn't suicidal and that the government was out to kill him. He was killed days later and the video was released. The country was (briefly) thrown in to turmoil. A few days later it came out that he had ordered a hit on himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigo_Rosenberg_Marzano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigo_Rosenberg_Marzano
          • kenjackson 2y ago
            I'd never considered a technique to strengthen your argument. Put in that light -- it makes it more plausible.
          • lordnacho 2y ago
            Wasn't there an old movie about this scenario? Guy orders a hit on himself, decides actually he wants to live?
          • 2y ago
  • delfinom 2y ago
    OR, we are living in a simulation and this is just a joke. I mean just the other day, the emergency slide fell off a Boeing aircraft and landed essentially, in the backyard of the lawyer suing Boeing. Lol
    • paul7986 2y ago
      omg lol https://www.businessinsider.com/missing-delta-emergency-slide-found-by-lawyer-suing-boeing-2024-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/missing-delta-emergency-slid...
      • rootusrootus 2y ago
        You have to remember that anything about Boeing gets clicks, and immediately engage your critical thinking. The Boeing 767 has been in production for over 40 years, and at this point is very nearly out of production aside from a few that are built each year for cargo use. The plane in question is 33 years old. A typical airliner lifespan is 20-25 years. Any problem with a plane of that age is maintenance, not design.
        • snypher 2y ago
          In my subset of aviation the end user is only to follow manufacturer approved maintenance guidelines, with no deviations. So I believe it's not a critical thinking problem, as much as a distinct lack of domain knowledge in comments like these.
        • NekkoDroid 2y ago
          > Any problem with a plane of that age is maintenance, not design. I am p sure noone has been saying the designes of the aircrafts are fundamentally unsafe and a risk. It's always been a problem of negligence and lack of security culture, which maintenance problems fall under.
        • delfinom 2y ago
          Yea but the slide landed in the backyards of a lawyer suing Boeing. It's a bit more than just "OMG BOEING PLANES FALLING APART" clickbait. Lol. It's the universe fucking with us.
  • sunshine_reggae 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • dralley 2y ago
      No, he did not. This is literally false. Someone who claims they are a "close family friend" who talked with him occasionally "at get-togethers, birthdays, celebrations and whatnot" told a local news affiliate that he told her that in private. Which is something quite different from him personally reaching out to the local news affiliate and telling them that.
    • xhkkffbf 2y ago
      Not to be cynical or make any claim about this particular case, but if a person were going to commit suicide as a kind of FU to someone, then it seems like making this kind of statement before adds an extra layer of FU.
    • lobf 2y ago
      If this were true it should be trivial to prove. Can you cite anything?
    • deleted 2y ago
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    • deleted 2y ago
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  • akira2501 2y ago
    > every single person who's ever criticized Boeing is going to die (eventually) That's extremely tautological. > it isn't terribly surprising that a few deaths have occurred. It's surprising they have so many whistle blowers that more than one has died in a short span of time, in particular, before the investigations over their allegations have been satisfactorily and publicly completed. > and we're now all primed to notice these deaths and attribute intent. That doesn't mean it's pointless to ask questions and to investigate further. There's a lot of people who seem very eager for this all to just "go away." That should make anyone, let alone a forum of hackers, somewhat suspicious.
    • deleted 2y ago
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  • sxg 2y ago
    I'm baffled by this comment. It's exceedingly rare for two middle-aged and otherwise healthy people to die without warning. > With so many people in a position to notice and speak out about Boeing's issues So many? Both were whistleblowers of which there are allegedly no more than 32 in the last few years.
    • cbsmith 2y ago
      > I'm baffled by this comment. It's exceedingly rare for two middle-aged and otherwise healthy people to die without warning. No. It happens every day. Yes, if you pick two random middle-aged people at random, it's exceedingly rare for both of them to die without warning. However, if you pick a large population of otherwise healthy middle-aged people, the probably that two of them might die without warning is actually quite high. The question is, how large is the population? If the union is to be believed (and there's a lot of credibility there), Boeing whistleblowers are a pretty large population. Add in to that the stress & disruption of being a whistleblower, and then layer on the stress from any retaliation from Boeing (which allegedly is happening on a daily basis), and the probability of two of them dying around the same time isn't really that low. e.g., if you assume a mortality rate of 1 in 1000/yr (which seems very low, considering their circumstance) and a population of 100, the odds of two of them dying over the course of a year is over 50% (1-0.999^100)^2 = 53.29%.
      • peter422 2y ago
        One of those people died of a gunshot wound, so whether it was self-inflicted or not, their age and health and any related statistics have nothing to do with the death.
        • cbsmith 2y ago
          > One of those people died of a gunshot wound, so whether it was self-inflicted or not, their age and health and any related statistics have nothing to do with the death. Mental health is health. Age and physical health are factors that can effect mental health, particularly when someone is under tremendous amounts of stress. Their age and health could very well have something to do with their death.
  • cbsmith 2y ago
    > With so many people in a position to notice and speak out about Boeing's issues, it isn't terribly surprising that a few deaths have occurred. Also, let's not kid ourselves, even if Boeing doesn't retaliate (and there is a lot of reason to think they have), being a whistleblower adds a tremendous amount of stress & disruption to your life. Whatever your life expectancy was before you were a whistleblower was, it's going to be lower (likely MUCH lower) afterwards. It's a terrible price to pay, which is why they deserve as much protection & support as possible.
    • jen729w 2y ago
      Indeed. In my home town we had the ‘metric martyr’, a greengrocer who defied EU law and continued selling bananas in metric measures. There was a whole court thing, he lost, and then he died aged 39 of a heart attack. https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/metric-martyrs-20-years-how-20340101 https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/metric-...
      • riffraff 2y ago
        > continued selling bananas in metric measures. Probably in imperial measures? Unless bananas were somehow sold in metric grams and the EU imposed some weird unit I don't know about.
        • pdpi 2y ago
          Yup, you're right. From the link: > The prosecution of Sunderland greengrocer Steven Thoburn for selling bananas in imperial measures helped turn public opinion against the EU
          • jen729w 2y ago
            Brain fart from me, yep!
      • autoexecbat 2y ago
        An actual arrest seems wildly disproportionate for this. Simple administrative fines should have been enough
  • coldtea 2y ago
    Everything is going to die eventually. This is some very specific, public, whistleblowers, in the span of months. Not some pool of thousands, or even hundreds people with mere "potential to criticize".
    • arp242 2y ago
      Unlikely things happen. And there have been more than two (former) Boeing employees who have come forward, most of whom managed to survive.
      • exoverito 2y ago
        Corporations also conspire, especially those deeply embedded in the military industrial complex.
        • arp242 2y ago
          Corporations conspiring to kill not just one but several undesirable employees is very rare. Actually, I don't really know of any other example. And here it also doesn't make any sense; the cat is out of the bag, there is nothing to cover up because we already know about Boeing being a clusterfuck. Killing anyone doesn't really make much difference. "Surely it can't be coincidence", "corporations conspire", and vague references to "military industrial complex" are exceedingly poor arguments – actually they're not really arguments at all because you can say that sort of thing about almost anything.
          • ClumsyPilot 2y ago
            > And here it also doesn't make any sense; the cat is out of the bag, there is nothing to cover up because we already know about Boeing being a clusterfuck Executives are the ones that have motivations, not the abstract entity of Corporation. 'Cat out of the bag' would be 'we have specific evidence that allows us to prosecute a specific executive for criminal negligence or manslaughter'. That would be why you might kill someone, to save your own skin.
  • behringer 2y ago
    This one might be, but the first one is almost certainly no suicide.
    • tootie 2y ago
      This is not alleged as a suicide. It was acute bacterial infection.
      • gitaarik 2y ago
        Yeah, they played safe with this one.
        • tootie 2y ago
          Or he just got an infection. How do you think they MRSA into his lungs? Not even Putin can pull off an execution that slick with a chemical weapons lab.
          • gitaarik 2y ago
            How do you know that? If they can they'll make sure other people wouldn't find out easily.
            • tootie 2y ago
              In your elaborate fantasy there is no upper limit to how sophisticated Boeing's execution squad is, but they can't keep their planes in the air.
              • gitaarik 2y ago
                Whatever makes the most money quickest
  • constantcrying 2y ago
    Sure, but how many people are whistleblowers about Boeing misbehavior. I would guess at most a hundred, the chances that two of them die in such a short time seems low. What are the odds that an apparently healthy person just drops dead in two weeks over the span of maybe two years. Certainly seems somewhat unlikely.
    • mulmen 2y ago
      In the absence of data everyone is apparently healthy. That’s the point. There are more mundane explanations than a Boeing assassination conspiracy.
  • squigz 2y ago
    How many would have to die under these circumstances for you to consider they're not natural deaths?
    • mulmen 2y ago
      As many as it takes to leave even a shred of evidence.
      • ClumsyPilot 2y ago
        Q: How many witches have to burn before you accept that inquisition is doing something wrong? A: As many as it takes for god to interfere. i.e. You are just staying wilfully ignorant Here is a recent case from Britain, there was evidence and the government covered it up. It took almost 50 years for us to learn the truth. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-68881821 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-68881821
        • rootusrootus 2y ago
          > i.e. You are just staying wilfully ignorant You're trying to defend a conspiracy theory by saying that waiting for even a shred of actual evidence is willfully ignorant? Really? And your point of comparison is a religious belief, something by definition not based on evidence? Wow.
          • ClumsyPilot 2y ago
            Apologies, I put my argument across poorly. Here is an illustration that demonstrates that the OP’s expectation is unrealistic and that nobody here actually thinks that way: Dozens of Putin’s opponents died by falling out of a window, and no evidence of any kind was found that they were murdered. However, if I clam that Putin’s opponents were murdered, nobody calls it a conspiracy theory. Why? Because a) we would not be told if there was physical evidence b) dozens of specific people dying suspiciously is statistically impossible, that is evidence in its own right. So either the OP thinks that Putin is innocent, in which case his opinion is questionable Or his position is based on a-priory trust to an institution and not on evidence, in which case it is also questionable. It is probably the second - some people trust Boeing and some people think, hey, they already killed several hundred passengers, civility and sanity can no longer be taken for granted. But as improbably events happen more and more, a sane person must shift their position to account for this. Ignoring improbably events and demanding physical evidence as people die would be madness.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • tomca32 2y ago
    well yeah but the previous whistleblower committed suicide after literally telling his family "If anything happens to me it's not suicide". A month later another whistleblower who was in good health dies suddenly and unexpectedly. I don't think it's surprising to think that this combination of events is extremely unlikely.
    • BobaFloutist 2y ago
      > well yeah but the previous whistleblower committed suicide after literally telling his family "If anything happens to me it's not suicide". I mean if I had dedicated my life to taking Boeing down and was contemplating suicide, I'd consider saying that too.
      • gitaarik 2y ago
        That's a ridiculous idea. If you commit suicide because of years of depression that you can't get out of and don't have any positive outlook on the future, you wouldn't care about wisleblowing and bringing some bad rep to a company. And especially you wouldn't cover up your suicide. You wouldn't want to lie to your family about the cause of your dead just to get back at some company you worked for. I don't think this is a good theory. I don't see the logic in that. Much more logical if he was assassinated because he was spreading info that people with big money didn't want out.
  • janalsncm 2y ago
    I guess what’s missing is the denominator. How many Boeing whistleblowers are there? It’s a nice little math problem. Let’s say both of the whistleblowers were age 50. The probability of a 50 year old man dying in a year is 0.6%. So the probability of 2 or more of them dying in a year is 1 - (the probability of exactly zero dying in a year + the probability of exactly one dying in a year). 1 - (A+B). A is (1-0.006)^N. B is 0.006N(1-0.006)^(N-1). At 60 A is about 70% and B is about 25% making it statistically insignificant. But they died in the same 2 month period, so that 0.006 should be 0.001. If you rerun the same calculation, it’s 356.
    • deleted 2y ago
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    • mulmen 2y ago
      You are ignoring literally every other variable, especially the ones that are likely common to whistleblowers in general, Boeing employees in general, and Boeing whistleblowers in particular. Characteristics like having spent a career building airplanes surrounded by all kinds of mechanical and chemical hazards. Whistleblowing itself is extremely stressful for the attention it draws, the personal and professional relationships it strains, the media attention and of course the rampant speculation of assassination. Does personal health influence the psychology of a whistleblower? If you get a terminal diagnosis would you be more likely to spill the beans?
      • janalsncm 2y ago
        That’s why I said the denominator is important. If you hit a home run on your first at bat it doesn’t mean you can bat 1000 the whole season. On the other hand, the more variables you add the more variance you’ll get. Actuarial tables use deaths per 100k. To my knowledge there haven’t been 100k Boeing whistleblowers.
        • mulmen 2y ago
          Why would there need to be 100k whistleblowers? That’s not how actuarial tables work. They’re normalized to a population of 100k, that doesn’t mean they’re derived from a population of 100k. Yes, reality is complex and messy and confusing and we often don’t have data to describe it. That’s why it’s important to know when we are dealing with relevant facts and when we are constructing a spherical cow out of scraps in their absence.
  • vicary 2y ago
    45 y/o and healthy though?
    • ChrisRR 2y ago
      No-one is truly healthy. Everything is a game of statistics You may be totally healthy and the peak of physical fitness and a sudden stroke destroys you. Everyone can improve their chances, but no-one can guarantee they're indestructible.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • michaelmrose 2y ago
    The proper comparison is not the size of the employee pool over a human lifespan its the size of the list of people actively advocating or publicly known to be testifying against Boeing over the course of a month.
  • andreygrehov 2y ago
    Not that I disagree with you, but since the is the most upvoted comment - had this happened in, say, Russia, people would say: "The bloody Putin's totalitarianism!". But in the US, well: "[...] every single person who's ever criticized Boeing is going to die". This is absolutely hilarious and deserves the best comment of the year award.
• theGeatZhopa 2y ago
  There is someone who has a interest not in losing money when one.. for sure! Some stock holders with access to Bakteria. It's easy and effective. Without suspects. Hmmm.. I see what you did last summer next year then... /Irony
• 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  > Parsons said Dean became ill and went to the hospital because he was having trouble breathing just over two weeks ago. He was intubated and developed pneumonia and then a serious bacterial infection, MRSA. Am I the only one who knows a half dozen people who have gone into hospitals for a sprained ankle and died of an infection?
  • Pigalowda 2y ago
    Easy to get infected when you’re dying of radiation poisoning and have no immune system.
• helix278 2y ago
  What happened to the other thread about this news item?
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • pvg 2y ago
    Freak milk frother accident.
    • helix278 2y ago
      What does that mean in normal english? I'm not a native speaker, and my question about the other thread was genuine.
      • pvg 2y ago
        You can find the various posts with the search thing. A bunch of them got merged which is what usually happens with a pile of dupes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40239031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40239031
• HumblyTossed 2y ago
  As suspicious as this sounds, surely the amount of pressure he was under could lead to him to getting sick, then once in the hospital contracted the pneumonia and it all went downhill from there.
• squarefoot 2y ago
  According to cdc.gov, the MRSA bacteria which killed him can spread by simple contact with infected people or objects. I can't but recall the anthrax attacks happened shortly after 9/11. It's completely unrelated and 100% speculation, but an infection caught by something received by a intercepted and compromised package couldn't be completely ruled out.
  • deleted 2y ago
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• m3kw9 2y ago
  Vs what are the chances any 40 year olds can die from the same causes in the same geographic area?
• TesterVetter 2y ago
  [dead]
• walterbell 2y ago
  Are whistleblowers considered legal witnesses who qualify for protection programs? A Streisand-effect website could aggregate the claims of all dead whistleblowers, regardless of cause of death. This could increase incentives for protecting whistleblowers until their legal cases have been resolved.
  • deleted 2y ago
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• ddp26 2y ago
  I looked [1] at all the prominent whistleblowers in the last ~50 years, and while some people have been seriously harassed and felt their lives were in danger, there's only a single case where someone was plausibly murdered by a private company. (Governments murder whistleblowers all the time.) Interestingly, it was in the 1970's and the woman blew the whistle for safety practices around the handling of plutonium! [1] https://twitter.com/dschwarz26/status/1786133630474977785 https://twitter.com/dschwarz26/status/1786133630474977785
  • sgt101 2y ago
    There's a really good movie about it too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkwood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkwood
  • cyounkins 2y ago
    Do you mean that you did the research, or your AI product did the research? How are you assessing whether a death was plausibly murder? So strange that the one example you find is of a car crash (one of the most common ways people die!) and no citation that it was found to be murder.
  • squigz 2y ago
    Don't misrepresent this - you used your own AI-powered product to do "research" > So across the ~50 or so prominent whistleblower cases against big co's that I researched with futuresearch.ai, retaliation is common, harassment is rare but does happen, but murder is not. And given the details of Joshua Dean and John Barnett's death, it's simply much too plausible that this is a fluke of timing.
  • sdfhbdf 2y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to tackle this research. I think you should mention that „I looked” was done with help of your AI project. That does not spark much confidence given current state of LLMs and their „research”. From your twitter article: > So across the ~50 or so prominent whistleblower cases against big co's that I researched with futuresearch.ai, retaliation is common, harassment is rare but does happen, but murder is not.
  • 2y ago
• simple10 2y ago
  Suspicious deaths of whistleblowers is terrible PR for Boeing. Seems unlikely anything nefarious would be going on as it only invites additional scrutiny. Unless maybe we buy into the conspiracy that Boeing needed to send a message to future whistleblowers. The airline manufacturing industry has few employers. The threat of being blackballed for future employment is much more of an incentive to keep quite IMO. But maybe I'm being naive? Or maybe there's some backhanded government connection that someone outside of Boeing wants to keep quite.
• from-nibly 2y ago
  I cant put my tin foil hat on any harder boeing.
• avi_vallarapu 2y ago
  Is this a coincidemnce ? Or a pattern leading to an outlier ?
• tptacek 2y ago
  There's a whole mythology about John Barnett, the previous Boeing whistleblower who died. But Barnett's whistleblower case against Boeing had been wrapped up years prior, and his outstanding litigation, over defamation, was insignificant to Boeing's bottom line. Boeing simply didn't have a reasonable motive to be involved in his death; to argue that Boeing had a hand in it, you need to be arguing that Boeing is something more than ruthless. Barnett's case sparked a lot of interest because it was a suicide. Here, Dean died of an illness, so to pursue a conspiracy-theoretic angle to this story, you again need to suggest that Boeing is more than ruthless (for Barnett, that "more" is "irrational"; for Dean, it's "Bond-villain theatrical").
  • srj 2y ago
    If I were considering blowing the whistle on some behavior at Boeing I'd sure think twice now that two people have died. It may be that their testimony was complete but there's still a chilling effect on future whistleblowers.
    • tptacek 2y ago
      By that logic every large corporation in the world should be randomly killing people to deter prospective whistleblowers.
      • tedunangst 2y ago
        Nah, don't need to kill them, just have your PR team make sure that every death that does happen is headline news.
• neilv 2y ago
  It might be interesting to think about reasons a whistleblower assassination could happen. (I found #6 below kinda interesting, because I didn't think of it immediately, but only once I started thinking through possibilities.) Non-exhaustive: 1. Warlord-like show of power, signaling that they're so strong they can openly act with impunity. Such as gratuitously using a military weapon not publicly available and on another country's soil, or a straight-faced coroner's determination of suicide by two self-inflicted gunshots to the back of the head before throwing self through a skyscraper window. (I don't see this in the Boeing situation.) 2. Powerful person lashing out due to mental illness instability/pettiness. Where there's no gain to be had, but their ego or other trigger was stepped upon. In the news in recent years, we've seen at least a couple powerful high-profile personalities who might fit the profile. (I don't see a connection to the Boeing situation.) 3. Prevent the whistleblower from testifying further. (I guess probably the cat's already out of the bag on the Boeing situation.) 4. Warning to other whistleblowers by that same entity, if further testimony could do more harm than has already been done. (Again, I guess probably the cat's out of the bag on Boeing.) 5. Lower-ranking individual's self-interest. Let's say there's no advantage to an organization or higher-up persons in assassinating a whistleblower, but... some lower-ranking person doesn't want to be implicated personally by something this whistleblower knows, or there is some unrelated mini-scandal that could be exposed as the whistleblower is interviewed. In general, I suspect that lower-ranking butt-covering is the source of massive number of problems and misbehavior in organizations, including all sorts of "coverup is worse than the crime" outcomes. (But I'd guess unlikely there's a big enough motivation for any lower-ranking individual connected to the Boeing situation to murder anyone over it.) 6. Uninvolved party sending a message to all high-profile whistleblowers. Let's say you're a powerful person, and evil (or imagining yourself serving some worthy cause through evildoing), and you're sitting on top of what could be a massive scandal, and you're vulnerable to whistleblowers. So, on the occasion of whistleblowers being in the news on some other high-profile scandal -- unrelated to you -- and possibly planting whistleblowing ideas among people who are a threat to you, you take the occasion to shift public sentiment about the desirability of whistleblowing in general. (Farfetched.) 7. Foreign sabotage, sowing social disorder. Make it look to people of the target country like their country is so corrupt that whistleblowers are assassinated openly and with impunity. (Farfetched, especially since we have so much erosion of trust already, I'm not sure we need any more pushes.)
• ein0p 2y ago
  After the government swept Epstein’s client list under the rug (which, let me remind you, is full of alleged child rapists), nothing surprises me anymore. <Grabs popcorn before someone chimes in to defend USG’s profound lack of interest towards investigating people on the list />
• vicary 2y ago
  https://archive.md/hf8QE https://archive.md/hf8QE
• nikisweeting 2y ago
  At this point Boeing should hire bodyguards and top-of-the-line doctors for all their past whistleblowers to make a big show of doing everything in their power to keep them alive. The reputation problems of killing whistleblowers are much worse than the cost of a few bodyguards and doctors.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• TrackerFF 2y ago
  Bad luck, most likely. Sounds like a first got flu, which then progressed into pneumonia. This is normal. Then he was admitted to the hospital, and probably contracted MRSA - which is not unusual either. Or did he get it prior to that? Either way, it happens. And from there it progressed into sepsis, which he might have been fighting for some time? Anyway, heart attacks, strokes, etc. can happen when you get sepsis. Sepsis can come out of nowhere. Doesn't really sound suspicious or sudden.
  • rubatuga 2y ago
    Having a chain of individually likely events still has low total probability i.e. (80%)^8 = 17% chance
    • jncfhnb 2y ago
      The probability of these exact events occurring is not the relevant question though
• sciencesama 2y ago
  Blacklist is real !!
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• hwbunny 2y ago
  This thread feels like is populated by assassins who argue about how assassinating someone cannot be done :DD.
• slater 2y ago
  https://archive.is/zOqdj https://archive.is/zOqdj
• twiddling 2y ago
  Hmm. another Boeing-related whistleblower expired
• geophile 2y ago
  [flagged]
• deleted 2y ago
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• deleted 2y ago
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• trhway 2y ago
  Just yesterday here were a bunch of comments and jokes about how it would look like if this guy dies too. And here we go … fast spreading infection in a 45 years old guy.
• deleted 2y ago
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• deleted 2y ago
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• nxobject 2y ago
  Spirit Aerosystems: the part Boeing spun off because even it did its own thing. Without the public profile of Boeing, it must have been an even more hostile place to be.
• 20after4 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• hnthrowaway0328 2y ago
  How many are left?
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• boring-alterego 2y ago
  I thought for a second what if the whistleblowers get into witness protection, then I looked up what planes the us Marshalls have ... It's not looking good for the whistleblowers.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• cft 2y ago
  [flagged]
• ethanholt1 2y ago
  [flagged]
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  • shadowgovt 2y ago
    The first one is still extremely suspicious. This unfortunate gentleman died of pneumonia after getting the flu and MRSA. To the extent that his testimony last year is relevant, he may have been under a lot of stress, which can wreck up your immune system. But unless they find polonium in his system or that the flu he had was some novel strain of H-neverbeforeseen-N-cookedinalab, I think this doesn't go deeper than "45-year-old industrial worker doesn't recover from respiratory infection," which by itself would not be news.
• carabiner 2y ago
  The author, Dominic Gates, long time Boeing coverage reporter for Seattle Times and Pulitzer winner, has this to say: > I've had enough > Because I knew Josh, I had to report this - and the coincidence with Mitch, whom I also knew > But if you really believe Boeing has adopted Putin-style assassination, unfollow me and go away > If you're joking, it's not even slightly funny to joke about this death https://twitter.com/dominicgates/status/1785812827581849988 https://twitter.com/dominicgates/status/1785812827581849988 FYI 11,000 people die of MRSA every year.
  • kube-system 2y ago
    > FYI 11,000 people die of MRSA every year. In the US alone.
  • postepowanieadm 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • ALittleLight 2y ago
    Actuarial table says death from all causes at 45 is ~0.4%. It's an unlikely death, paired with another unlikely death - the previous Boeing whistleblower. I'm really confused by the reporter's attitude. It seems like the exact opposite attitude from what you'd want in a reporter. He seems to be dismissing the unusual coincidence based on... I guess nothing? Just "come on, you can't believe that - we aren't Russia." How many Boeing whistleblowers are there? How many should we expect will die by chance this year? If another one dies is that the cutoff where it's reasonable to be suspicious? I don't understand why I would extend any courtesy to Boeing. I was suspicious when the first whistleblower died. Why shouldn't I be? You may be a perfectly nice guy, but if the witnesses testifying against you start dying, I'm going to be suspicious. Why should I treat Boeing any differently?
    • carabiner 2y ago
      Check your priors. What's your base rate likelihood for a person dying from: * suicide (many documented cases) * infectious diseases (ditto) * corporate assassinations (zero cases in the US documented) Everyone thinking Boeing is carrying out killings that have minimal potential upside and massive downside is succumbing to some cloak and dagger deus ex machina. After age 40 people die from all sorts of causes. This is not about "courtesy," but rational thinking that there would be almost no point in killing an employee when the company is already mired in bad news and that corporate assassinations just don't happen in the US.
• halfer53 2y ago
  Another one damn
• quantified 2y ago
  What's the survival rate of Boeing whistleblowers compared to non-whistleblowers?
  • nokeya 2y ago
    Right now it seems close to zero.
    • ithkuil 2y ago
      Isn't the survival rate of us all technically zero anyway?
      • 15155 2y ago
        On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
      • nokeya 2y ago
        Yes, but we all hope for later zero, not for sooner or sudden zero:)
      • agilob 2y ago
        In the long term yes, but I'm here shitposting and the two other guys are dead, and it's only been 2 months.
      • 8fingerlouie 2y ago
        Life is the only sexually transmitted disease with a 100% mortality rate.
        • nithssh 2y ago
          Gospel
    • glandium 2y ago
      Sam Salehpour is not dead yet, is he?
• jmcgough 2y ago
  This'll definitely have a chilling effect for future witnesses, which is likely what they paid for.
  • nokeya 2y ago
    Shouldn’t it attract more attention from prosecution? It is clear who is behind all this (some of Boeing top managers), so they must interrogate them all about double kill.
    • RecycledEle 2y ago
      Look at how Frito Lay got away with murdering the Mexican Inn family. There are many other cases.
      • uejfiweun 2y ago
        What is this Frito Lay incident you speak of? Nothing comes up for the query "frito lay mexican inn".
    • protomolecule 2y ago
      That's how Kosovo leaders got away with war crimes and crimes against humanity[0]. Even Thaci almost did[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War_crimes_witness_intimidation_and_deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War_crimes_witness_inti... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashim_Tha%C3%A7i#Resignation_and_arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashim_Tha%C3%A7i#Resignation_...
    • mandmandam 2y ago
      > Shouldn’t it attract more attention from prosecution? It 'should' - but it won't. Look at how the legal system has treated whistleblowers who go against the MIC and fossil fuels - Assange, Snowden, Donziger, Winner, etc. High profile cases where the whole world was watching. They're not handing out fines to fossil fuel companies for lying to the planet as they set it alight. Instead, they're handing out harsher and harsher sentences to the activists trying to bring attention to the issue. A lovely 54yo woman was sentenced to 4k in damages, a 3k fine, 60 days in jail and 24 months of supervised release for putting RINSABLE PAINT on the CASE of Degas' Little Dancer. Not even NPR would state that it was rinsable paint - how often do you hear oil companies advertising on them? Why would you have any faith in that system to protect us from murderous corporations? The trend for these things is dramatically in the wrong direction, and it was bad when companies were allowed to fund and aid literal Nazis without repercussion.
• AndyMcConachie 2y ago
  Boeing is currently 2-0 with whistleblowers. I wonder if you could give someone MRSA intentionally. Is that even possible?
  • eqvinox 2y ago
    Not in the Aljazeera reporting, but Seattle Times says he initially was hospitalized for "trouble breathing": https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dean-of-boeing-supplier-spirit-aerosystems-has-died/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dea... And "trouble breathing" could mean any of a whole bunch of things, a few of which you probably can give someone intentionally…
  • RecycledEle 2y ago
    MRSA (staph) can be transmitted by wiping a used bandage on someone.
    • kingspact 2y ago
      You could even mail it to somebody and when they open the mail, BAM. Or it could be included in the glue of business reply mail. Or wiped on your doorknob.
  • topspin 2y ago
    > 2-0 with whistleblowers Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. How many are left, anyhow?
    • emayljames 2y ago
      30 to go it seems https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-subject-of-32-whistleblower-complaints-documents-reveal https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-subject-o...
• XorNot 2y ago
  EDIT 3: God damn it - forget it. The rate is per 100,000 - the site I got it from was terrible [1]. So the numbers don't work at all - the death rate should be about ~0.8% in any given year for the full population going by [2] (798.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2022). Just to elaborate: my thesis before I edited this post was that if you have a large number of whistleblowers, the chance of someone in the population dying of normal causes over a given time frame might become quite large. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.AMRT.MA https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.AMRT.MA [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm
  • kangda123 2y ago
    "That is, in any given recent year, if you take a sample of 1000 random males, within a year, almost 16% of them will have died." Surely this can't be true.
    • XorNot 2y ago
      You'd be correct they're not - it's much lower - per 100,000[1]. Should've cross-checked with birth data. The underlying point though is valid: whether the rate of people dying is particularly high depends on quite a few factors. The estimate for 2023 in Q2 is 944 / 100,000 = 0.9% or so. So within a population of 100, you'd still be unsurprised to find 1 person has randomly died of some cause. So if you take say, the 30 presumed people who have complained about Boeing over the last 3 years and tracked them as a quorum... [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm
    • blackwateragent 2y ago
      OP's original statement of "The death rate in the United States per 1000 male adults as of 2022 is 163." comes from [1]. That statistic is defined as, "Adult mortality rate, male, is the probability of dying between the ages of 15 and 60--that is, the probability of a 15-year-old male dying before reaching age 60, if subject to age-specific mortality rates of the specified year between those ages." [2] [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.AMRT.MA?end=2022&most_recent_value_desc=false&start=1960&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.AMRT.MA?end=2022... [2] https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/health-nutrition-and-population-statistics/series/SP.DYN.AMRT.MA https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/health-nutri...
• eqvinox 2y ago
  I've seen some speculation [https://zeroes.ca/@maggiejk/112369197303623748 https://zeroes.ca/@maggiejk/112369197303623748] that this looks a whole bunch like COVID, and that sounds vaguely on point. Then again we're all armchair doctors now… [Ed.] also note that https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dean-of-boeing-supplier-spirit-aerosystems-has-died/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dea... says the initial hospitalization was for "trouble breathing"; this doesn't seem to be in the Aljazeera reporting.
  • aaron695 2y ago
    [dead]
  • 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
    then again this is why i would kill someone in a way that looks like covid if i would be such inclined. also i don't know anybody who ever died of covid, not even indirectly. so, yeah ...
• drcongo 2y ago
  To lose one whistleblower, Mr. Boeing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
• sva_ 2y ago
  Qatari propaganda outlet Aljazeera on the frontpage. Perhaps it could be a replaced by a more credible one?
  • isr 2y ago
    I reckon the vast majority of planet Earth would take Al Jazeera's word over the BBC, CNN, etc, most days of the week. And twice on Sundays.
  • alan-crowe 2y ago
    I think that you are missing how credibility and propaganda intertwine. The BBC gives you accurate reports on Indonesia and Chile to build credibility for when they want to lie to the benefit of Britain. Aljazeera give accurate reports on Boeing and Airbus to build credibility for when they want to lie to the benefit of Qatar. NPR give accurate reports on Angola and Bangladesh to build credibility for when they want to lie to the benefit of the USA. One navigates an adversarial information environment by harvesting the free truth provided by those seeking to build credibility. Then one tries to avoid the flames when the same organisations burn their credibility to boost their funders and owners.
    • xgi 2y ago
      Encouraging conspiracy theories against one of the largest components of the US military industrial complex is precisely something Al Jazeera would be willing to risk losing credibility over. Not that they actually would, because there could never be sufficient evidence to disprove such a conspiracy.
• kome 2y ago
  that's crazy. that's the second one... how can the authorities ignore the "coincidence"? government is really weak with the strong and strong with the weak.
  • lambdaxyzw 2y ago
    Do you have any proof it's not actually a coincidence? There were 30 whistleblowers, and it's over 3 years.
    • kome 2y ago
      i hope they won't be stupid enough to kill a third one
• pshirshov 2y ago
  What, again? Pure coincidence.
• easywood 2y ago
  Good that they have mentioned the actual illness, or people would assume it was acute lead poisoning.
  • vdfs 2y ago
    "Sudden illness"
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • berkes 2y ago
    Why wouldn't it be?
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
      They had influenza and MRSA and developed pneumonia. It would be news if they survived.
      • cft 2y ago
        Because it's the second [1] Boeing whistleblower that died within 2 months. The chance to die from all causes at the age of 45 is 0.41% [2]. The first whistleblower died at 62. The chance to die from all causes is 1.6% at this age. 1. https://archive.ph/2024.03.13-031502/https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-787-whistleblower-found-dead-in-apparent-suicide/ https://archive.ph/2024.03.13-031502/https://www.seattletime... 2. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
        • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
          Let's be real- it's here because it fuels speculation and conspiracy.
          • cft 2y ago
            "Let's " is that an imperative now?
        • tomrod 2y ago
          Now what are the chances that both died? If independent, very tiny. 1.6% * 0.41% = 0.00656%. I think your initial percents are cumulative, but seem low, or annual, but seem on the higher side. Wasn't sure. The chance of both them dying with an ongoing investigation, if not beset by medical issues (like this person) is pretty low.
• aswegs8 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • krapp 2y ago
    You're behind the times, China is the bogeyman du jour.
• Tycho 2y ago
  There should be a huge investigation, but since the last death was self-inflicted, and this one was due to some mysterious illness, I’m not holding my breath. I wonder if the bank accounts of coroners ever get audited.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    Influenza B is mysterious?
  • alamortsubite 2y ago
    What's "mysterious" about the flu and MRSA?
    • Tycho 2y ago
      It’s mysterious for healthy people to suddenly die from flu in their mid 40s, yes.
      • alamortsubite 2y ago
        Healthy people don't have bacterial co-infections, so no.
• greasegum 2y ago
  The movie Michael Clayton springs to mind for some reason.
• hnthrowaway0328 2y ago
  Considering the sensitivity of their profiles, is there going to be at least a cursory investigation?
  • peteradio 2y ago
    It would seem to be pretty rare for this to occur for a man his age. Intubation is pretty serious, was that the cause of the MRSA?
• datascienced 2y ago
  Boeing getting “lucky” again
• sharpshadow 2y ago
  If Boeing would only manufacture airplanes they would struggle from these recent developments.
• kingspact 2y ago
  Boeing's on military welfare, like many companies. It has no need to actually produce civilian planes or make profits any more. So why not bump off whistleblowers? Anyway the era of air travel for the masses is coming to a close if you look at all the different plans being hatched to roll up environmental fees into flying which are designed to be unaffordable for ordinary people.
• hasselhoftd 2y ago
  [flagged]
• 0xC0ncord 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • amne 2y ago
    and your username is also a coincidence. moving along now
• bonzini 2y ago
  At some point, another one apparently found two missing lug nuts on a wheel of his car, and texted his lawyer "if I die I am not suicidal".
  • eli 2y ago
    I doubt that happened.
  • bovermyer 2y ago
    Got a source for that?
    • jader201 2y ago
      No reason to downvote someone for asking for a source (before one was given). A source is helpful context for claims like this, and the person that responded with one may not otherwise have had it not been questioned.
  • sp332 2y ago
    https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-30-whistleblower-laws-protect-lawbreakers/ https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-3... Inside the whistleblower’s text was a photo of a wheel missing two lug nuts.... “If anything happens,” they told me, not for the first time, “I’m not suicidal.”
    • eli 2y ago
      According to a text from that unnamed (and not reported elsewhere?) whistleblower
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • lynndotpy 2y ago
    I don't know why you're being downvoted and questioned. This was widely reported last month when John Barnett was found dead from a gunshot wound in the head. AFAIK, (and don't quote me on this), only one source had said this. I don't think it's wildly conspiratorial to discuss this, even if the implication is "this might be a pattern of foul play". Even if both of these deaths are coincidences and within statistical reason, I imagine the perceived pattern must have a chilling effect on other would-be whistleblowers.
• lionkor 2y ago
  Democratic republic and all its bodies working as intended
• baq 2y ago
  Boeing has some competent people, apparently. Sad and aggravating that it's this particular department.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • boppo1 2y ago
    C'mon man, haven't you seen Michael Clayton? They're independent contractors.
  • siva7 2y ago
    Probably the chief of "special operations" dept. could take over the QA dept.
• FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  More coincidence? 3rd's the charm, when it will be a trend to investigate?
• paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Clever idea, to infect someone with a nasty yet natural virus/bacteria. Still, if it doesn't work and unlucky things keep happening then authorities may start looking more closely.
  • AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Nit: MRSA is a bacterium, not a virus.
    • FrustratedMonky 2y ago
      Nit picking. Can't both virus and bacteria be injected? Has MRSA been used in attacks before?
      • a3w 2y ago
        Might be a criminal or state behaviour, to chose exposure to germs as a method to hurt or kill someone. But that as far as we know is not corporate style. A car bomb, to deter other would-be whistleblowers, is more like the typical MO. As has happened with the original Panama Papers reporter on Malta.
        • gjsman-1000 2y ago
          A. Who says they need to follow the MO? B. Plenty of killings that we know of do not follow your typical MO. For example, the killing of Litvinenko by polonium which can only be created in a nuclear reactor (still the most overkill death of a whistleblower ever known). C. In which case, is it possible you think that's the MO, because the others didn't get caught? And the corporations are now realizing a car bomb is too predictable?
        • Findecanor 2y ago
          BTW, the previous whistleblower: John Barnett, had worked at the Material Review Segregation Area (MRSA) at the Boeing plant. If this is just a coincidence, it is a weird one.
• ulfw 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • sgt 2y ago
    He's also obliterating Ukraine. So many reasons to keep grinning.
    • cies 2y ago
      Not really obliterating. Gaza is being obliterated (civ casualties through the roof). The Ukraine conflict has very little civ death compared to the mil deaths. Compare that to the wars the US fought and you see the Russians are very careful. No bombs om population centers.
      • sgt 2y ago
        There are many examples to the contrary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre In Israel, Gaza has higher casualties but you also have terrorists hiding among civilians, within hospitals, building tunnels with foreign aid, etc. It's regrettable, but it's also an extremely hard problem to solve. Hamas now has a fantastic (and generous, given what they did) deal on the table and hopefully they will be reasonable and take it.
        • cies 2y ago
          Bucha is contested. If is was a Ukrainian Gaza it would have looks VERY different. A Ukrainian Gaza would be bombing densely populated city centers: never happened. Only the Ukranians somtimes seem to be launching some mortars at trainstations and market areas. When the Russians destroy a hotel we usually see a lot of military was staying there. The west (including Israel and Ukraine) is rapidly losing what ever moral high-ground it had left.
          • sgt 2y ago
            Even if you successfully argue that the West is losing its moral high-ground, simply look at the alternatives. They are not great. Russia is deeply corrupt and undemocratic. And in Israel you have Hamas on the other side - they are literally genuine terrorists with little regard for western and democratic values. If they were in power of all of Israel, then what people call genocide in Gaza would seem trivial.
• ActionHank 2y ago
  Once is by chance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern.
  • 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    Four times is God having a vendetta against you. Five times is quantum physics wants you dead. Six...
  • HideousKojima 2y ago
    "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action." - Ian Fleming
    • ActionHank 2y ago
      Thank you for the original.
  • MyFirstSass 2y ago
    No conspiracies are true, i know that from my time in the business world, even in small companies i've never actually seen anyone conspire, create hidden alliances og plot something so surely in larger companies it's even less likely to happen. /s
    • lenerdenator 2y ago
      “Trust no one! The minute God crapped out the third caveman, a conspiracy was hatched against one of them! ” ― Col. Hunter Gathers, OSI
      • peteradio 2y ago
        This might be my favorite quote I've ever heard. Thanks!
  • morkalork 2y ago
    Look at the size of pool of whistleblowers and associated people that bad actors would want to harm, their demographic and what that demographic's mortality rate is like. Two deaths in a year is borderline acceptable, three would be extremely unlikely.
• free_bip 2y ago
  Let me guess, we're chalking this one up to coincidence too, are we?
  • ceejayoz 2y ago
    I'm not saying it's impossible, but were I an assassin I'd probably want something a little more guaranteed than inducing pneumonia.
• jodacola 2y ago
  While the first death opened up many questions for me, this death was the result of a MRSA infection, stroke, and pneumonia. This headline feels like it's trying to play on the conspiracy theorists among us, with the important bit way down in the article. Well, they got my view.
  • gjsman-1000 2y ago
    As though MRSA isn't a great thing to inject into an enemy...
    • ceejayoz 2y ago
      2% of people are carrying it around; it's a pretty common hospital complication.
  • imglorp 2y ago
    It's also possible that there were multiple, uncoordinated acts of malice and thus not a conspiracy. There are many parties that would like this to go away, from investors to unions to airlines.
• camgunz 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Yeah, it would be tough being the target of a media cycle and conspiracy theories.
    • camgunz 2y ago
      I know you're being sarcastic, but isn't what you said also true?
      • s1artibartfast 2y ago
        I wasn't being sarcastic. I honestly think it would be tough and weird to be a Boeing Employee today. Imagine being a good honest engineer on the good honest team in a media cycle painting you and your company as incompetent or evil. Imagine reading news articles insinuating that your leadership team is hiring assassins to sneak into hospitals and kill with whistleblowers. Everything today is just hyperbalized and emotionally cranked up to 10.
        • camgunz 2y ago
          They're not painting engineers as evil are they? I think all the articles I've read are basically about Boeing execs. TFA only talks about "management". > Everything today is just hyperbalized and emotionally cranked up to 10. I mean, the situation is pretty bonkers. Planes are falling apart in the sky and whistleblowers are dying--those are facts and not unfair characterizations. I don't think I've seen anything that's hyperbolic; the coverage I've seen is pretty matter-of-fact about what's going on. > Imagine reading news articles insinuating that your leadership team is hiring assassins to sneak into hospitals and kill with whistleblowers. Yeah I mean, this would terrify me.
• westmeal 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • dang 2y ago
    Please don't do this here.
  • hasselhoftd 2y ago
    [dead]
• jefftk 2y ago
  How many people would, if they suddenly died, be reported as a "Boeing whistleblower"? The lower this number is, the more surprising the death.
  • silverquiet 2y ago
    What if it's a giant company with a lot of problems? Couldn't there be a ton of whistleblowers? It's easy to suspect foul play, but I don't know how pneumonia subsequent to MRSA infection could be deployed as a weapon of assassination. And I'd imagine that every part of being a whistleblower is depressing; you are inevitably alienated from one of your main social groups when you do so.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • ricardobeat 2y ago
      Reports say there were seven whistleblowers in the original 737 Max hearing.
  • bee_rider 2y ago
    It also ought to be pretty shocking, if things are so bad at Boeing that multiple whistleblowers dying is just an expected thing as a result of statistics. I mean that’s probably the more likely story than MRSA corporate assassins. But it is still pretty nuts, right?
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• queuebert 2y ago
  > ... he had contracted pneumonia in April and suffered a stroke following an MSRA infection. That should be "MRSA", for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Terrible fact checking. (But they did helpfully provide a hyperlink to Facebook-related stories.)
  • a3w 2y ago
    Bacterial infection, grammatical inflection, both natural causes of death [According to uncyclopedia Wiki probably? Don't ask me, I am not germ-anist here in germ-any]
• binarymax 2y ago
  I’m having a hard time seeing how pneumonia and stroke could be inflicted on a person as part of a cover up. Seems like this was just unfortunate illness.
  • smsm42 2y ago
    Pneumonia is just a lung infection, so I imagine there's a number of ways you can make a person to unknowingly inhale something. However, it looks way too complicated for a plot. There are many tried and proven methods of getting rid of people. Spooks aren't actually that good in hiding their works - we know about a lot of cases where people were assassinated (of course, we may also not know about many, but I think we have a good sample). Among those, we have a lot of ways it can be done - shootings, stabbings, explosions, poisons, drownings, falling from heights, whatever - but I can't remember any case where a biological agent were used. And thinking about it - biological agents are hard to produce, hard to handle, unstable, unpredictable in use, can't be properly targeted, why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and more common methods? So while it does look suspicious on its face, I'd have hard time believing it's an example of an assassination.
    • RamiAwar 2y ago
      kind of the point though
    • candiodari 2y ago
      "Something?". Having them inhale oil or dirt will do it. Pneumonia is usually caused by a bacteria that's just everywhere (though usually on the skin), that's too simple. If it starts growing in your lungs, you can try antibiotics. If that doesn't work, well, nice knowing you. We are surrounded by lethal bacteria. That humans survive depends on the immune system having a 100% success rate preventing bacteria from forming even a small colony in the lungs (and several other places, like the teeth, where infections can rapidly and surprisingly turn deadly) This is why people cough so extremely hard when inhaling solid or liquid stuff in their windpipes. Also this happens all the time. That someone dies from pneumonia is not uncommon (though for oil it's usually someone who manages to spray themselves with aerosolized oil at work). So even if an autopsy found a few specs of dirt in the lungs, and even if they actually trace that to be the cause, that's not extremely suspicious. (Plus why would they check? Obviously with a pneumonia patient you know the cause of death)
• swarnie 2y ago
  All in on Boeing. Any company willing to murder two people to maintain the share price is an excellent investment in my books.
  • AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    You should re-think that. First, it's immoral. Second, it's highly unwise. If the whistleblowers are right, then planes are going to keep breaking. If planes keep breaking, the share price is going to collapse.
    • kergonath 2y ago
      It sounded like sarcasm, to be honest.
      • swarnie 2y ago
        It was but i also don't see the civilian arm of the USAF ever going broke. Loading up.
    • greenavocado 2y ago
      A defense contract will suddenly materialize
    • b3lvedere 2y ago
      I don't know. Ford Motor Company and General Motors still exist after their inventive ways to circumvent repairs that could have saved lives. Yes, i know they are very sorry.
  • b3lvedere 2y ago
    Companies don't murder people. People murder people.
    • Zigurd 2y ago
      Corporate personhood. Checkmate!
• JasserInicide 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I hope not. There was nothing suspicious
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • cies 2y ago
    They may also finally look into all the people that died surrounding the Clintons? Fucking wild west if you ask me (which according to historians was a pretty peaceful place unlike how it's portrayed in popular culture).
• sidcool 2y ago
  I thought this only happened in second and third world countries.
  • ethagnawl 2y ago
    Yes
  • dagmx 2y ago
    Isn’t that viewpoint just the result of nationalist propaganda in education/media in the US? The US is infamous for extra judicial killings, both domestically and internationally.
  • lupire 2y ago
    That's not what the world numbers mean.
• nojs 2y ago
  > His mother wrote on Facebook that he had contracted pneumonia in April and suffered a stroke following an MSRA infection. I love a good conspiracy theory but this sounds pretty far fetched, how do you cause someone to contract pneumonia?
• chakintosh 2y ago
  > His mother wrote on Facebook that he had contracted pneumonia in April and suffered a stroke following an MSRA infection. So which one is it? Suddenly or not?
  • bryan_w 2y ago
    I've learned recently that sometimes dying is just getting sick, and failing to get better.
  • lenerdenator 2y ago
    I mean, all death is sudden when you think about it. (I say this with all of the seriousness of a 1980s British comedian who probably thought it before I did)
    • masfuerte 2y ago
      It's like the Hemingway quote: "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly."
• deadbabe 2y ago
  It’s trivial to make someone’s cause of death appear completely natural if you know how. Even better if you know they have some pre-existing condition you could leverage.
• belter 2y ago
  [flagged]
• Brosper 2y ago
  Whops...
• treprinum 2y ago
  Is there a must have course on executive voodoo and "dark rhetoric" for execs of large dysfunctional companies? Which MBA teaches sociopathic courses like these? I only know about one such college in Paris...
• avnfish 2y ago
  The Onion: "Boeing Promotes Mysterious Employee Known Only As ‘The Panther’": https://www.theonion.com/boeing-promotes-mysterious-employee-known-only-as-the-1851333169 https://www.theonion.com/boeing-promotes-mysterious-employee...
• hx8 2y ago
  The thing about being suspected of one murder is that you tend to get blamed for other deaths.
  • hinkley 2y ago
    You’ll never make a good Dread Pirate Robert’s with that attitude.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Night_Thastus 2y ago
  People need to put down the spy thriller books. Dude was sick. Really sick. Had been for awhile. Nothing nefarious here, just a shitty clickbait title to get people riled up as usual.
  • FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    ""He was 45, had been in good health and was noted for having a healthy lifestyle."" https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dean-of-boeing-supplier-spirit-aerosystems-has-died/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dea...
    • Night_Thastus 2y ago
      He had pneumonia and MRSA. As we just saw with covid, respiratory issues can be a death sentence easily.
      • FrustratedMonky 2y ago
        Sure. But from Healthy to Dead in 2 weeks is still pretty extreme. It isn't like pneumonia and MRSA aren't known factors. Perhaps a 'weaponized' MRSA?
• brianjking 2y ago
  Okay, this is just nuts at this point.
• GartzenDeHaes 2y ago
  This was before use of the internet was widespread, but I knew a women who worked at a regional airport. She repeatedly reported safety violations to the (politically connected) operator of the airport, but was ignored. Eventually, she reported them to the FAA who launched an investigation. - She started receiving threatening phone calls - Pictures of her kids walking home from school showed up in her mailbox - Her house was shot up in the middle of the night - The family dog was killed, disassembled, and the parts were strung up in the house The police wouldn't do anything and she eventually had to quit her job and move out of the county.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • jjtheblunt 2y ago
    what county? sounds evil-crazy obviously
  • hinkley 2y ago
    This sounds like a movie plot where the mafia has taken over a major corporation.
  • 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    I know a lot more women who have had this kind of thing happen to them, and they didn't work in airlines. They were just women with stalkers.
  • HumblyTossed 2y ago
    Just call Liam Neeson.
  • Nextgrid 2y ago
    The eBay stalking case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal) suggests this isn't as implausible as it sounds.
    • jjk166 2y ago
• em1sar 2y ago
  [dead]
• sagebird 2y ago
  Perhaps the whistle itself is contaminated.
• m00x 2y ago
  Damn, what a crazy coincidence.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • tossit444 2y ago
      [flagged]
• bicijay 2y ago
  Shit, im gonna play the devils advocate... Unless they forged the cause of death, we are indeed having a surge in pneumonia cases around the globe...
  • andai 2y ago
    Is deadly infection really a viable assassination method? Seems kind of like blowing a zero day exploit. Doesn't really seem worth it?
  • kube-system 2y ago
    MRSA was already killing 120,000+ people per year already. It is nasty shit.
• uslic001 2y ago
  [flagged]
• whatamidoingyo 2y ago
  Are there other whistleblowers? If there are, I can't imagine how they feel.
  • josu 2y ago
    According to this article there are 30[1]. Another whistleblower allegedly committed suicide two months ago [2]. [1] "Aside from Mr Barnett and Mr Dean, there are some 30 Boeing whistleblowers, including Mr Salehpour." https://theloadstar.com/im-scared-says-boeing-whistleblower-after-two-others-suffer-mysterious-deaths/#:~:text=Aside%20from%20Mr%20Barnett%20and,Boeing%20whistleblowers%2C%20including%20Mr%20Salehpour https://theloadstar.com/im-scared-says-boeing-whistleblower-.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barnett_(whistleblower) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barnett_(whistleblower)
• foobarian 2y ago
  Could be there are just a lot of Boeing whistleblowers.
  • causal 2y ago
    Yeah, so perhaps there's no conspiracy of assassination. But if you're so shady that SO many people have come forward to blow the whistle that MULTIPLE are likely to die purely by chance in the course of investigation - you probably deserve whatever suspicion you're getting by that point.
  • hrdwdmrbl 2y ago
    Yes, 2 out of how many? The denominator is important here.
    • hackerlight 2y ago
      And the denominator isn't just the number of Boeing whistleblowers but the number of similar cases where whistleblowers could have died and raised suspicions, but didn't. We can't just cherry pick the Boeing example after the fact.
  • DavidSJ 2y ago
    Something something survivorship bias plane meme. But maybe that one's in poor taste under the circumstances.
    • dotnet00 2y ago
      Would punch too many holes in the argument :)
  • dmbche 2y ago
    I believe there were 7 Edit0: Nope - 32 whistleblower complaints in the last three years, but I imagine some of those could be from the same person - so up to 32. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-subject-of-32-whistleblower-complaints-documents-reveal https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-subject-o...
• intunderflow 2y ago
  The only thing more dangerous than flying on Boeing appears to be criticising them
  • aaronbrethorst 2y ago
    I dunno, I'd imagine that being on the receiving end of a Boeing Harpoon missile is probably a bit more dangerous.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • kube-system 2y ago
    The total number of deaths in all airplane crashes combined since 1970 is about as much as MRSA kills in 8 months of a typical year.
    • mjburgess 2y ago
      I'm not sure what you think this shows. If we had an organization responsible and capable of preventing MRSA deaths, and was failing to do so, they'd be in prison at 8 million deaths. The issue here isn't how many deaths, it's whether boeing has a duty and capability to prevent them; whether it has failed to do so; and whether this failure has caused a systematic problem with its recent planes that could lead to more deaths. On all accounts it seems: yes, they've gutted product quality and it has lead to severe accidents.
      • kube-system 2y ago
        I'm simply pointing out the relative frequency of these incidents, that's all. > If we had an organization responsible and capable of preventing MRSA deaths MRSA is known for spreading in hospital settings. Hospitals are supposed to prevent this from happening, but it is hard.
        • sxg 2y ago
          > Hospitals are supposed to prevent this from happening, but it is hard. Physician here. Hospitals do work to prevent the spread, and it is hard—so much so that it's nearly inevitable. MRSA is a naturally occurring part of the respiratory tract and skin. How do you stop that? Also important to note that those who do acquire and die from MRSA infections tend to be relatively ill to begin with. Usually those patients are admitted to the hospital for some other serious issue and then develop a MRSA infection either from their own body or the hospital. While you can mitigate the latter, you can't do anything about the former.
• FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  ""He was 45, had been in good health and was noted for having a healthy lifestyle."" https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dea https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dea... From Healthy to Dead in 2 weeks is still pretty extreme. It isn't like pneumonia and MRSA aren't known factors. Perhaps a 'weaponized' MRSA?
  • eep_social 2y ago
    Stress kills and he was under a lot of stress but I’m not sure how anyone would be able to produce enough evidence to be certain.
  • samdcbu 2y ago
    Antibiotic resistant MRSA kills thousands of people a year in the US. The idea that he went to the hospital with pneumonia and then contracted antibiotic resistant MRSA from the hospital environment is very plausible.
    • withinboredom 2y ago
      > then contracted antibiotic resistant MRSA from the hospital environment is very plausible. Wouldn't other people in the hospital contract it as well?
    • marricks 2y ago
      Pretty sure the cause of death "seeming very plausible" is highly valued.
      • wrs 2y ago
        Indeed. That doesn't make it less plausible.
  • shadowgovt 2y ago
    MRSA is already a weaponized MRSA. I don't think people who don't spend a lot of time in hospitals have any idea how quickly a person's fortune can change. They're still the best place to care for the sick, but they're also hotbeds of disease because, hey, we keep all the sick people there. One overlooked sanitization, one visit from a relative who touched the wrong thing on the way to your room, one spot of genetic bad luck that makes you particularly susceptible to infections you'd be likeliest to encounter in a hospital, one never-diagnosed allergic response... That's all she wrote. Doesn't matter over-much how healthy you were before because "on your back struggling to breathe for days on end in a strange environment" is a wildly different environment to "enjoying the fresh mountain air close to home."
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• phaedryx 2y ago
  Could the explanation be that being a whistleblower is really stressful and hard on your health?
  • sevagh 2y ago
    That's how the thread dismissed the last one.
  • marricks 2y ago
    Sure, but I'm not sure why we have to invent excuses for companies. They create them themselves just fine.
    • shadowgovt 2y ago
      I wouldn't say "expecting horses and not zebra" is "creating excuses." You can refrain from giving Boeing the benefit of the doubt here and still come to the conclusion "It's not weird that someone didn't recover from a respiratory infection during flu season."
      • ryandrake 2y ago
        I wonder how many whistleblowers (raw number or percentage) dying would cross the threshold where we don't give Boeing the benefit of doubt or explain it as a coincidence. Seems the answer so far on HN is "unknown but at least greater than two."
        • shadowgovt 2y ago
          Me personally: I find the first death extremely suspicious and someone with MRSA dying in a hospital not very suspicious.
  • shadowgovt 2y ago
    Given that he died of MRSA in a hospital two weeks after falling ill, yes.
• ComputerGuru 2y ago
  The first Boeing whistleblower to “off himself” allegedly told his family shortly before he died that if anything happened to him, “it’s not suicide.” https://www.newsweek.com/john-barnett-boeing-whistleblower-predicted-death-scandal-1879548 https://www.newsweek.com/john-barnett-boeing-whistleblower-p...
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • FireBeyond 2y ago
    Apropos of the context of this situation... As a paramedic, I'd take this with a grain of salt: 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.
  • sciolistse 2y ago
    From what I've seen that's kind of overselling it, his own family hasn't claimed that he said that, an anonymous person who claimed to be a friend of his did. But I may have missed any further developments to actually verify that his family had been told something similar.
    • zamadatix 2y ago
      Yeah, his family said "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". As much as a conspiracy for fear of being next could come into it I'd have to believe it'd be more than a lone and anonymous friend of the family that would speak out if confided with this info. Between that and the 30 some whistleblowers in the last 5 years that two died close to one another isn't all that damning. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-barnett-boeing-whistleblower-death/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-barnett-boeing-whistleblow...
      • 2y ago
• Hypocritelefty 2y ago
  [dead]
• rakoo 2y ago
  If they were really killed because of their leaks, I struggle to find what could be so sensitive that an assassination is ever an option. Do Boeing engineers work on stuff that secretive ? Are you given the nuclear codes on your first day ? I'm really curious
  • colechristensen 2y ago
    This is the commercial arm of Boeing, but not even that bit a spun off bit of Boeing that just builds airframes called Spirit. Boeing does do highly classified things in other branches of the company that have nothing to do with any of this, even then nobody would be assassinated for the most egregious espionage outside of some absurd movie plot scenario. Spies go to prison if they’re not recruited for counterintelligence. Influenza and MRSA would be very odd assassination tools.
  • cm2187 2y ago
    Any other industry I would have called bullshit, but defense companies are always a bit murky, with close links to intelligence services (who help in international negotiations and industrial spying) and current/former military. So lots of people who would know who to call to make things happen. I have in mind for instance the Taiwan frigate scandal that has seen all sort of mysterious deaths, including Thiery Imbot (former DGSE, and son of former head of the DGSE), who died falling from a window in Paris. The official investigation blamed the wind which will make anyone who lived in Paris laugh. So, I don't know, but not implausible.
    • rakoo 2y ago
      Oh you're right, I completely forgot their involvement in defense projects. Maybe something involving the level at which Boeing along wiah the US gov spied on Airbus to win contracts as well.
  • ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    > I struggle to find what could be so sensitive that an assassination is ever an option. When Putin's regime punishes a critic or dissident, it is not done to stop this particular critic disclosing something sensitive. It is done as a warning to future critics. If you think this principle is never applied by western agencies, look at what happened to Julian Assange - after being prosecuted for 12 years the dude has lost it and Ecuador has kicked him out for smearing faeces on embassy walls. Additionally, western corporations were, multiple times, accused of being involved in assassinations of union leaders in developing countries. And they used to do it in the USA, in 1920's. https://prospect.org/features/coca-cola-killings/ https://prospect.org/features/coca-cola-killings/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/88n97g/3-union-leaders-were-shot-dead-and-colombia-says-an-american-company-financed-their-killers https://www.vice.com/en/article/88n97g/3-union-leaders-were-...