• chaogomu@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • chaogomu@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        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.

        • orcrist@lemm.ee
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          7 months 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.

      • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        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.

    • pop@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      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.