Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/02/a-2nd-boeing-whistleblower-coincidentally-dies-just-weeks-after-1st-boeing-whistleblower-died.html
…
10 Likes
Ah, the old “accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound to the back of the head with a polonium bullet infused with novichok, causing them to fall out of a window into an open elevator shaft”. Unfortunate accident, but it could happen to anybody.
32 Likes
16 Likes
Technically, Spirit is a Boeing supplier. In reality, Spirit is just the former Boeing facility in Wichita, Kansas that made the fuselages for Boeing planes. Boeing sold the facility to an investment company in 2005, who renamed it Spirit Aerosystems. Its very existence is part of Boeing’s shift from prioritizing engineering and safety to prioritizing profits.
33 Likes
still a bit bit early to speculate but the speed with which he suffered respiratory arrest seems suspect in itself will be curious to find out who the pathologist who does the post mortem examination is.
7 Likes
I would say this is becoming a Grisham novel, but Grisham would at least make it more believable.
14 Likes
Huh. On the one hand, I imagine the health of whistleblowers isn’t great - all that stress, potential loss of health insurance, etc., and in a population of whistleblowers, some are going to get sick and even die, statistically speaking, and a bacterial infection would be tricky to inflict. There’s certainly no smoking gun that proves it’s not natural causes that, uh, a smoking gun would provide. But still, it’s a hell of a coincidence, and especially after an attempt to fake a suicide didn’t work as well as expected. If you were going to murder someone in a way that didn’t look like a murder, you’d have to do something even more elaborate. And we don’t really know for a fact that it even was an infection at this point.
The whole story is really an indictment of late-stage capitalism. The attempt to increase profits by selling off an unprofitable part of the company was clearly not going to have any other outcome than this. The new company couldn’t increase income - there wasn’t another customer for Boeing fuselages and Boeing wasn’t going to pay more for the product, so all they could do was cut costs… with a pretty predictable result. I’m not sure how much of this was Boeing trying to externalize costs, and how much was them trying to externalize responsibility when it all went pear-shaped.
20 Likes
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”
16 Likes
I imagine it will be a Netflix documentary. Possibly before the end of the month.
4 Likes
Was it bought by the same people who bought Red Lobster?
10 Likes
i predicted the 2nd death and gonna make a bold prediction. if there is a 3rd whistleblower, there will be a 3rd death.
5 Likes
My friend had a funny hot take on this:
Boeing might just have SO MANY whistleblowers that at least one of them was bound to die of natural causes.
8 Likes
Whatever you think about Barnett’s death, I’m pretty certain that yes, this actually is just a coincidence.
I can believe some loon at Boeing hiring a hitman to go and shoot a whistleblower. I can’t believe them giving another whistleblower a rapidly spreading MRSA.
7 Likes
– Montgomery Scott (IIRC)
(That’s the quote I was reaching for and missed!)
5 Likes
My understanding is the quote is attributed to Ian Flemming.
3 Likes
“One misattributed quote is happenstance…”
12 Likes
“Well anyway, it wasn’t me!”
– Oscar Wilde
10 Likes
The shareholder lawsuit alleging that Spirit management…
What next? Spirit (and Boeing, also being sued) shareholders now mysteriously dropping off like… flies?
4 Likes
He was channeling The Who.
Or he could roll with it and add a few more suspicious deaths, leading the book to be flogged as a satiric dark comedy.
3 Likes
