…and I don’t know which possibility is the least worrying

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    The latest death was due to disease (flu and MSRA, leading to pneumonia and apparently a stroke), though, and his family confirmed as such. Many of these whistle-blowers are older experienced engineers who will be biased towards a higher death rate.

    Still, fuck Boeing though. Corporate scumbags.

    • tyler@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      Influenza B and MRSA? I’m not sure I’m convinced… but yeah. A bit different than the last death.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Many of these whistle-blowers are older experienced engineers who will be biased towards a higher death rate.

      This, plus being highly involved in any court case is extremely stressful, which can take a toll on your mental and physical health.

      Which is why I’m still kinda leaning towards an actual suicide with the first case. Being stressed, tired, having your life dictated around court schedules while you sleep in hotel rooms… I could see that wearing someone down after a while.

      I just don’t think it makes real sense for a company to hire an actual hitman to operate in the US. Corporate murders happen, but usually overseas, and usually not when they’ve already testified.

      Not saying it isn’t a possibility, I just think it’d be cheaper to pay the guy off and have him sign an NDA.

      • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        A whistleblower is the type of person to refuse such an NDA, regardless of buy-off price. They would understand that if Boeing is willing to pay them 10 million or whatever, that the information they have, should they release it, prevent over 10 million dollars worth of damages to the public.

        I just don’t see someone like that committing suicide in a hotel parking lot out of state the day (two days?) before they are supposed to testify. That would go against everything they were doing up until that point.

        They wouldn’t just… go home instead?

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          A whistleblower is the type of person to refuse such an NDA, regardless of buy-off price. They would understand that if Boeing is willing to pay them 10 million or whatever, that the information they have, should they release it, prevent over 10 million dollars worth of damages to the public.

          Maybe, but 10 million dollars is nothing to Boeing, and an awful lot for even an ethically driven person. Especially if they’ve been laid off and are in active lawsuits against a multi billion dollar corporation.

          They can afford to stall as long as legally allowed, and the legal system is built to levy the scale in their favor. It’s basically impossible for a person in this type of suit to have a normal life, and the corporations know that and try to exploit it as much as they can.

          I just don’t see someone like that committing suicide in a hotel parking lot out of state the day (two days?) before they are supposed to testify. That would go against everything they were doing up until that point.

          Suicide isn’t timely, nor is it a logic based decision. Unfortunately it’s fairly common for people to kill themselves at times people (especially their loved ones) would not initially expect.

        • 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 months ago

          I mean there’s an argument to be made that once the allegations are public, there’ll be in investigation regardless, and if you don’t want to go through the ordeal of being grilled by probably some of the best lawyers in the world or put your family through finding your body then it makes sense to commit suicide that way and still have a big impact

      • steventrouble@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        Corporate murders happen, but usually overseas, and usually not when they’ve already testified.

        Do you have a source for that? I doubt there’s graph of “workers murdered by companies, by country” or “murders, pre- vs post- whistleblowing” so it sounds like that might be at best an educated guess, or at worst pro-US bias.

        The only stats I could find show that historically the US has had a terrible record for worker deaths during labor disputes.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Do you have a source for that? I doubt there’s graph of “workers murdered by companies, by country” or “murders, pre- vs post- whistleblowing” so it sounds like that might be at best an educational guess, or at worst pro-US bias.

          There’s no material reason to kill people who are going to testify against you anymore. Corporations basically started to capture the judicial system in the late 60’ and for the most part succeeded in their goals by the late 80s.

          Tort law has been effectively neutered, leaving the only real legal recourse being ineffective , long drawn out class action lawsuits. There is a reason the last person killed on that Wikipedia article was when unions started dying off.

          • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            This is incredibly naive. We are talking about a company that was literally too lazy to check if all the bolts were in place and secured in an airplane, risking a fatal incident with hundreds of people killed. And that is after two planes already force crashed killing everyone on board, because of a faulty IT system that was not properly checked.

            Boeing has proven plenty, that they have a full disregard for human lifes, if they think they can get away with it. So assassinating whistleblowers and using their influential friends to cover it up as opposed to uncertain and lengthy court battles requiring millions to be spent on it, is absolutely in character.

            Again that character was to ignore safety warnings, despite knowing that sooner or later a plane will crash and it will cause a shit ton of damages to the airlines and it will cause a shit ton of litigation towards Boeing. It was by far the obviously cheaper choice to just do proper QA. They have neither a moral nor a long term profit/investment outlook on humans lifes. All they care for is immediate profits.