https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-whistleblower-john-barnett-suicide-police-investigation/
Police released what they say was a suicide note left by Boeing whistleblower John Barnett.
Yes, it was a suicide, because his testimony wasn't part of anything related to whistleblowing, he was appealing a loss of the wrongful termination lawsuit against Boeing.
The idiots who never bothered to learn more than the man's name think "big company killed whistleblower" are showing just how little they understand things.
To recap, all the evidence from his whistleblowing was submitted to authorities 7 years ago. He had no bombshells to drop, no story that hadn't been told, just a lawsuit over how Boeing retaliated against him for Whistleblowing 7 years ago, forcing him to "retire".
A few days before he killed himself, he was on the stand in front of the appeals judges, and from all accounts, they did not seem like they were going to overturn his loss. He was then called back for another round of testimony, but was already dead by then.
Can you imagine a 7-year legal battle over being fired for having integrity? The stress this man must have felt?
Boeing killed John Barnett, but they didn't pull the trigger, he did. Don't cheapen that with lies about some sort of conspiracy. Just know that Boeing is one of dozens of companies who have worked for decades to weaken labor protections.
You sound like qAnon, no matter what is said, you can always just say it's deepstate trickery.
Of course he had bombshells to drop. All of the things that he had done through the legal system were done in the hopes of achieving legal victory. When that process ended, the next step would be the court of public opinion. There's an awfully big difference in impact on the general public versus reading what someone wrote and hearing them talk about it live on TV or the internet. When you can ask them questions and get detailed answers, that adds a greater level of weight to the entire issue.
It's interesting that you would bring up half of the timeline and ignore the other half. You know, the part where problems happening to airplanes in the very recent past connects with actions that happened 7 years ago. When people want explanations for what's going wrong now, of course they're going to want to talk to people who were around when it started to go awry.
And I'm not saying you're right or wrong about the accuracy of the police investigation. But I do think your analysis of the pressures on him and the current public climate is inaccurate.
Well, you don't understand the legal system at all.
You cannot submit new evidence in appeal, and again, the appeal was of the lawsuit for the Wrongful Termination. The whistleblowing was a separate item handled 7 years ago.
John Barnett had not worked for Boeing for 7 years, that's why that's the only part of this timeline that mattered. He turned over the evidence that he had, and literally could not collect more, because he was forced into retirement.
There's a chance he might have been called on for testimony by someone investigating the current and ongoing issues, but he had already submitted extensive sworn testimony on the subject, so there would be little need.
But that wrongful termination lawsuit, that was personal to him, and he was losing the final appeal. Hell, the reporting at the time of his death even said that he "retired" rather than being forced out of the company. That alone should tell you something.
But no, you want to spin an outlandish conspiracy theory based on a complete misunderstanding of the law and this man's life, all to say that Boeing, an admittedly evil company, is evil in a more personal way instead of the nebulous greed based evil that infects every corporation. The truth is, the company and its executives don't fucking care.
They're shielded from liability and have gotten their payouts, they ruin lives, and their greed has resulted in deaths as planes fall from the sky, but they admit no wrong doing and pay a small fine out of the employee pension fund. That's the true conspiracy. Not some made up contract killing of a man who was no threat at all, because all of his evidence was submitted to authorities 7 years ago.
I don't want to spin anything, and I've been wrong about a lot, but it's kind of sad that you went into attack dog mode and then completely overlooked the important details. Please do better.
You keep focusing on how John worked for them 7 years ago and totally ignore the present. People today are worried about Boeing now, and when they want to learn more about how things went wrong, they will look to people who used to work for Boeing. Retired whistleblowers are excellent candidates for talk show TV, YouTube, podcasts. That type of negative exposure could easily turn the general public, lawmakers, government oversight employees, against the company.
Gigantic companies don't care about wrongful termination lawsuits. That's chump change. But potentially losing lucrative government contracts, or potentially seeing your executives locked up because now public pressure is strong enough that regulators are forced to investigate, that type of stuff scares the big bosses.
I'm not saying that shady actions happened in this situation. I haven't looked into it. The police did, and in theory they did a proper job, but we've seen the police botch investigations in the past, too. That brings up an interesting tangential issue, which is that when your investigators have a long history of incompetence, it's harder to rule out conspiracy theories.
You're absolutely right. I can't imagine the stress and depression they might have felt just by seeing how the system was completely against them. Labor protection laws in the US really need to change.
Also ruining someone's life in endless lawsuits against a company behind a squad of lawyers and walls of papers in a legal system in favor of power, is another form of killing someone.
The idiots who never bothered to learn more than the man's name think "big company killed whistleblower" are showing just how little they understand things
And you have supernatural powers to understand all things? Don't act like you've got it all figured out, big guy.
"What about this note that says, 'If I die, it wasn't suicide'?"
"That's still technically a suicide note."
I wonder what kind of yacht the police investigators are going to buy with the donations from the representative of the Boeing Corporation.
Yacht? They're getting themselves an Apache. You can't recklessly gun down minorities suspects with a yacht.
They probably don't actually get much. Fascists kind of instinctively back eachother up.
Yeah. I was being hyperbolic. They didn’t get anything I’m sure, because cops serve power and even if they didn’t, they are bad at solving crime because they are dipshits. And their function isn’t to solve crime.
I read the article and I have one outstanding question. Is this the same guy who stated he is not suicidal days before?
People contemplating suicide tend to do that. They put on a false front, saying that they're okay when they really aren't.
Couple that with a bad session in front of the appeal judges... and yeah. You can see why he did it.
A 7-year legal battle to overturn his loss of the lawsuit against Boeing for their retaliation over his whistleblowing... And it was looking like the final appeal, his final chance, was slipping away.
Same as most other whistleblowers are die because of suicide, accident or a sudden and strange illness, by system.
So its either presured into suicide by lawsuit from Boeing or murdered and made to look like suicide. Either way its fucked up.
Just like those people who shoot themselves in the back of cop cars with their hands cuffed behind them.
If yours got converted, then the server you're using, doesn't support drag and drop gifs.
Instead of drag and drop, upload the gif to some other server, that allows such stuff and use that link in the  format as given by @Riccosuave@lemmy.world.
For instance, the above comment has its GIF stored on tenor.com, which is less probably the default provider (for when you drag and drop) given by lemmy.world
The bullet that killed him matched the gun in his hand, like okay that’s fair. But they use that as the justification for suicide. Like, of course if you want someone to look like they killed themselves you would use a gun and place it in their hand. Didn’t we learn about this kind of basic subterfuge in our teenage years watching TV/Movies.
Whistleblowers risk their entire reputations and careers in the pursuit of doing the right thing and stopping corporations from committing crimes. Isn’t that the opposite of wanting to kill yourself? Courage in the face of tremendous opposition??
Also in spite of what we learn on TV, matching a bullet to a gun is mostly junk science.
Well I certainly hope all those pigs don't do the same thing, but they always have a high tolerance for shame
