After death of Joshua Dean & John Barnett, their lawyers are concerned about the possibility that around 10 more Boeing whistleblowers may suffer the same fate.
Funny, just yesterday probably I was arguing with someone in another thread that was saying the people here don’t actually think Boeing had these whistleblowers killed, it was just making “implications and jokes.”
And here, very clearly, with a massive number of upvotes we have someone claiming that Boeing had them killed and that resulted in brave souls coming out afterward. lol
However, this also exposes another huge complaint I have with your typical lemmy-er (lemming? lemmite? what do you call a user of lemmy?): Almost no one reads the fucking article.
This isn’t about new whistleblowers coming out, but their lawyer claiming he is afraid that current whistle blowers will be “scared away.”
But, of course, what I’ve learned on reddit and even more so on lemmy is that the facts don’t matter, only the narrative.
When I first started on reddit many years ago, while it was clear some people didn’t read the article, usually the top comment in the thread usually showed that they read the article, unless it was some kind joke. Over time it definitely got worse.
I was hoping when jumping to Lemmy that I would be able to recapture some of that magic.
Lemmy has a lot of good things going for it, but what I got in that regard is the top comment, with 100% upvotes, clearly not having read the article and spewing some unsubstantiated conspiratorial claims. It’s like being in r/conspiracy sometimes.
Yes, varying people have different opinions on subjects. It is easy to think a comment with upvotes is the way the hivemind goes, but the hivemind has multiple factions.
I, personally, have no opinion on the matter. The dude was septic and had a stroke. While it seems unlikely that was murder, I guess it is possible if you have infinite resources to make it look natural. But that is one HELL of a coincidence to have two whistle-blowers die . … like. … pretty fucking insane. Watch these next ten all die and no one important bats an eye.
Yes but our current society vests power in the corporation doing the killing. It’s a problem as old as civilization, but one we still haven’t solved. The problem is that these institutions and the technology they wield has never been greater.
We need an impartial lawnmower. Something external to the species that comes in and cuts the biggest ones in half. And it needs to be incorruptible and powerful enough to do this.
Yep… Times will change and eventually the faceless bureaucracy world we have now will morph into something more like Roman imperial military dictatorship or European absolutist monarchies. I only hope we can organically build social mitigations to the centralising power of information technology before that happens. Because as bad as it is now it would be much worse then
Well isn’t there a ruling in aircraft design and safety, that you calculate the probability of a certain failure and judge by its reoccurence if it was just random, or more than likely systematic?
I think i read this in context to the two MAX planes crashing in the exact same way. The first one was ruled as maybe just being some very very freak thing to happen, but it happening twice made it entirely implausible to be without systematic cause.
And well now it is happening twice in a few years with Boeing that weird things happen twice in a row with little time in between in relation to critical security flaws.
I agree, that we cannot rule either death to be an assassination by itself. But their distinct occurrence in this context, e.g. that they prevent whistleblowers from testifying warrants an in depth investigation into both of them. In particular given the circumstances it is sketchy if Police or other officials are eager to close the case and rule it as non assassinations, without actually analyzing what was going on.
There can be far more done than just an autopsy in the second case. Is there a register who has entered and left the building? Is there camera footage showing anyone accessing the room that had no business being there? Is there anything unusual in the nurses schedules? Were all procedures followed according to the rules, especially sanitary rules?
These are all things that should be investigated. If they show no signs of irregularities then the case can be closed. If there is irregularities, then these need to be investigated further, and then the question of motive comes into play, where there is one party with a very strong motive to silence the guy.
Maybe Boeing will learn from their mistakes and go for using their relatives as leverage or tarnishing their reputation by framing them with treason instead.
I don’t know if that’s a rule of thumb or not, but it certainly makes sense.
First, the world of reliability runs on data and math. Lots of statistics, of course.
And second, aircraft are over-engineered for safety margins on top of safety margins. The test data might say you need a part that’s X thickness of aluminum in order to be 99% sure to never fail in the field. So let’s just make it 3X thickness to be safe!
So from that standpoint, back to back failures should pretty much always draw a bunch of attention in this industry.
Also understand that it is pretty rare for a whistleblower to have any future in the industry they are blowing the whistle on. That is throwing away years of schooling and often decades of experience. People tend to not do that if they aren’t already ill and not expecting a long life.
As for “if I die, it is not suicide”: Gonna get real dark for a moment. A lot of people are just looking for a way to make their life, or death, matter. Someone realizing they don’t want to put themselves and their family through a very long trial might very well use that as an excuse to take the easy way out.
All that said: Obviously these need to be investigated. But there is a big difference between investigating a suspicious death and immediately jumping to conspiracy.
And suicide rates go up drastically when people are overly stressed and think they have no future. Sort of like… having contributed to incredibly dangerous air travel and burning bridges with an entire industry.
Similarly, like I said, a lot of whistleblowers are ill to begin with. Because, again, it is throwing away your future in an industry. It is a lot easier to consider that when your future on this planet is measured in years or even months.
A LOT of documentaries/youtubes/whatever love to point out “the big evil company is ruining this man’s life when he is just trying to get his chemotherapy so that he can have a few more months with his family”. Which is indeed horrible (and why any good lawyer gets the testimony on record ASAP because people ARE pushed to suicide). But also kind of ignores that said company didn’t give them cancer… Unless we are having a repeat of the COVID conspiracy theories too.
Well, for one thing, the definition of “conspiracy” is “a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act”. So… you can’t have a one person conspiracy.
Circumstantial evidence - relies on an inference to connect it to the conclusion (e.g. guy saying before hand he won’t kill himself).
Direct evidence - no additional inference/evidence is needed (e.g. video of a guy going up to the car and shooting him).
The guy saying he won’t kill himself requires inferring that he’s being truthful when he said it and that he didn’t change his mind. It’s not non-evidence, it does point to suicide being less likely. But it’s far from conclusive. If there’s no sign of entering the vehicle or that a struggle occurred, then I’d argue that far outweighs his prior statement.
They just happened to work at the same company and die right before they could testify on the same thing.
That’s also a common misunderstanding, at least regarding the first (I’m not as familiar with the second). I’m a bit unclear on the details of the deposition - which side wanted it and was asking the questions, etc. (detailed here) but whatever the case, it was Boeing that demanded he come back for one more day. So if Boeing wanted him to not testify that day, they’d just send him home as originally planned. The only reason they’d do it then was to silence him generally…but doing it in a way that draws so much suspicion to them seems like an implausibly bad decision. Then again, it is Boeing. (Note that this is also circumstantial evidence, and requires assuming that Boeing isn’t so dumb as to kill a witness in the middle of their own deposition, which may not be warranted).
Edit: corrected my own misunderstanding of deposition
That guy also had a history of mental issues and anxiety. He was away from home experiencing high stress environments, like a court room, and he was looking at another court appearance that day.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that maybe, just maybe, this is a coincidence instead of murder. He had already given the bulk of his testimony, so I really don’t see the motive here.
There is plenty of evidence of foul play you smartass. They willingly risked lives over many years and are still currently flying many planes with defective unsafe parts. Going from that to assasination is not a big leap.
Multiple of the whistleblowers and their colleagues have also independently said that their workplace was directly and deliberately sabotaged in order to continue using defective parts.
Yes the last one doesnt really look like a typical assasination but it doesnt matter in the slightest if it was or not.
Well…the first dude did say something about Boeing killing whistleblowers and the bravery of others to step up in defiance of that.
So that whole line of thinking is conspiracy theory stuff with no real proof and it is being parroted here. Granted, usually the assassination stuff is usually tongue in cheek, but the top comment seems a bit crazy.
I agree that calling it “killing whistleblowers” is a bit too early, but for the point that the top comment was making, it doesnt actually matter.
Because his point was about the bravery of the other whistleblowers coming out and for that it doesnt matter if they actually got killed or not.
The 10 other whistleblowers are brave because there is a good chance that at least one of the whistleblowers was killed. They are still brave even if it turns out that the dead ones died of natural causes or suicide.
If the whistleblowers truly believe that the previous ones were assassinated, then they are brave for speaking out. They might be stupid, foolish, whatever, but they would be even more stupid if they didnt consider the possiblity of it being true.
Intent is what matters here not what is actually the case. This is obvious when it comes to law. For example if a judge decides that you truly believed that your life was in danger in a situation and that you had to act in self defense, you can usually not be sentenced for murder, even if it turns out that your life wasnt in danger after all.
Really this is a grammatical framing problem, but i think its totally fair to call these people “brave” either way, because even if their lives arent in danger, then at least their livelihood is.
1: I wholeheartedly believe being a whistleblower is a courageous and brave act. Full stop.
2: drawing conclusions as to why these people decided to speak up when they did without hearing it from them is nonsense.
3: assuming and repeating a John Gresham novel from news articles between corporations and their whistleblowers is not only buying into a conspiracy theory, but is also parroting it.
4: partaking in these conspiratorial shenanigans helps no one and isn’t something to be waved away as harmless - otherwise, what’s the difference here and qanon?
Even if the dude that “killed himself” did do it to himself, he did so because he was harassed by a company for doing his job. Even in the non conspiracy version of the story, the corporation still acted in bad faith and should be held liable for it’s actions. Why is this the hill you want to die on?
This is a leap. You can be a good person and also see that people as a whole can be both wonderful and absolutely terrible. This is a story about a mega corp murdering two whistleblowers, so far. In this case, the people involved in making this a headline suck and are terrible.
I was talking to someone the other day who was really bent out of shape over an extremely unpleasant customer. The kind of interaction that sticks with you for years.
I told my perspective on people. We tend to remember remarkable things - stuff that really stands out from the normal. The news media does the same thing. Normal, everyday stuff isn’t “newsworthy.”
So when an asshole customer stands out that much, it’s because it’s such a rare experience. People are mostly good, so the goodness doesn’t stand out.
Counterpoint. There was one whistleblower killed, there are lots of people on this case like Boeing staff, government employees, the police, senators, the president, who haven’t done shit. Now there are two murders. Any of the people who SHOULD be doing something about it doing anything? No. Now there are 12 brave people against the thousands of shit people.
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Funny, just yesterday probably I was arguing with someone in another thread that was saying the people here don’t actually think Boeing had these whistleblowers killed, it was just making “implications and jokes.”
And here, very clearly, with a massive number of upvotes we have someone claiming that Boeing had them killed and that resulted in brave souls coming out afterward. lol
However, this also exposes another huge complaint I have with your typical lemmy-er (lemming? lemmite? what do you call a user of lemmy?): Almost no one reads the fucking article.
This isn’t about new whistleblowers coming out, but their lawyer claiming he is afraid that current whistle blowers will be “scared away.”
But, of course, what I’ve learned on reddit and even more so on lemmy is that the facts don’t matter, only the narrative.
You are describing the human species. Through its entire history.
Agreed. Although I will say… While people not reading the articles was extremely common on reddit… Sadly, I feel like Lemmy is even worse about it.
When I first started on reddit many years ago, while it was clear some people didn’t read the article, usually the top comment in the thread usually showed that they read the article, unless it was some kind joke. Over time it definitely got worse.
I was hoping when jumping to Lemmy that I would be able to recapture some of that magic.
Lemmy has a lot of good things going for it, but what I got in that regard is the top comment, with 100% upvotes, clearly not having read the article and spewing some unsubstantiated conspiratorial claims. It’s like being in r/conspiracy sometimes.
Yeah if you think we don’t do our due deligence, you should go to more right leaning social media, it’s all sound bites and knee jerk reactions.
Yes, varying people have different opinions on subjects. It is easy to think a comment with upvotes is the way the hivemind goes, but the hivemind has multiple factions.
I, personally, have no opinion on the matter. The dude was septic and had a stroke. While it seems unlikely that was murder, I guess it is possible if you have infinite resources to make it look natural. But that is one HELL of a coincidence to have two whistle-blowers die . … like. … pretty fucking insane. Watch these next ten all die and no one important bats an eye.
Same as it ever was
Yes but our current society vests power in the corporation doing the killing. It’s a problem as old as civilization, but one we still haven’t solved. The problem is that these institutions and the technology they wield has never been greater.
We need an impartial lawnmower. Something external to the species that comes in and cuts the biggest ones in half. And it needs to be incorruptible and powerful enough to do this.
Damn, I think I just invented god again.
I like to think that climate change is that lawnmower, we either learn to cooperate or die.
"This world needs no savior,
just a headsman to cut her down".
“Erscheine!” (2008) By Eisregen, translated from German.
The Germans did this…
I invite to read history. Roman generals, European kings…
Yep… Times will change and eventually the faceless bureaucracy world we have now will morph into something more like Roman imperial military dictatorship or European absolutist monarchies. I only hope we can organically build social mitigations to the centralising power of information technology before that happens. Because as bad as it is now it would be much worse then
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Well isn’t there a ruling in aircraft design and safety, that you calculate the probability of a certain failure and judge by its reoccurence if it was just random, or more than likely systematic?
I think i read this in context to the two MAX planes crashing in the exact same way. The first one was ruled as maybe just being some very very freak thing to happen, but it happening twice made it entirely implausible to be without systematic cause.
And well now it is happening twice in a few years with Boeing that weird things happen twice in a row with little time in between in relation to critical security flaws.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
years
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I agree, that we cannot rule either death to be an assassination by itself. But their distinct occurrence in this context, e.g. that they prevent whistleblowers from testifying warrants an in depth investigation into both of them. In particular given the circumstances it is sketchy if Police or other officials are eager to close the case and rule it as non assassinations, without actually analyzing what was going on.
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There can be far more done than just an autopsy in the second case. Is there a register who has entered and left the building? Is there camera footage showing anyone accessing the room that had no business being there? Is there anything unusual in the nurses schedules? Were all procedures followed according to the rules, especially sanitary rules?
These are all things that should be investigated. If they show no signs of irregularities then the case can be closed. If there is irregularities, then these need to be investigated further, and then the question of motive comes into play, where there is one party with a very strong motive to silence the guy.
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*after agreeing to testify
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Maybe Boeing will learn from their mistakes and go for using their relatives as leverage or tarnishing their reputation by framing them with treason instead.
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I don’t know if that’s a rule of thumb or not, but it certainly makes sense.
First, the world of reliability runs on data and math. Lots of statistics, of course.
And second, aircraft are over-engineered for safety margins on top of safety margins. The test data might say you need a part that’s X thickness of aluminum in order to be 99% sure to never fail in the field. So let’s just make it 3X thickness to be safe!
So from that standpoint, back to back failures should pretty much always draw a bunch of attention in this industry.
I did do the math on it and the second guy only had a 1 in 3630 chance of dying of natural causes in that time window.
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https://lemmy.world/comment/9809397
I admit I am not a stats guy. Please tell me what I did wrong in my math. Totally open to being corrected here.
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Ok can you give me an actual number?
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Yeah yeah I suck, get in line and take a number. Now, will attacking me bring those two murdered men back to life?
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You good. Enjoy your weekend
Yes. What you are listing are coincidences.
Also understand that it is pretty rare for a whistleblower to have any future in the industry they are blowing the whistle on. That is throwing away years of schooling and often decades of experience. People tend to not do that if they aren’t already ill and not expecting a long life.
As for “if I die, it is not suicide”: Gonna get real dark for a moment. A lot of people are just looking for a way to make their life, or death, matter. Someone realizing they don’t want to put themselves and their family through a very long trial might very well use that as an excuse to take the easy way out.
All that said: Obviously these need to be investigated. But there is a big difference between investigating a suspicious death and immediately jumping to conspiracy.
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And suicide rates go up drastically when people are overly stressed and think they have no future. Sort of like… having contributed to incredibly dangerous air travel and burning bridges with an entire industry.
Similarly, like I said, a lot of whistleblowers are ill to begin with. Because, again, it is throwing away your future in an industry. It is a lot easier to consider that when your future on this planet is measured in years or even months.
A LOT of documentaries/youtubes/whatever love to point out “the big evil company is ruining this man’s life when he is just trying to get his chemotherapy so that he can have a few more months with his family”. Which is indeed horrible (and why any good lawyer gets the testimony on record ASAP because people ARE pushed to suicide). But also kind of ignores that said company didn’t give them cancer… Unless we are having a repeat of the COVID conspiracy theories too.
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You do for disease and suicide as it can happen to literally anyone.
If working for a specific company or being a whistleblower affects those statistics, the company should be held responsible anyway.
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Better than 1 in a thousand, makes it seem less unlikely.
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The SEC had 12k. Whistle blower tips in 2022 alone, so I’m going to say that less then 1000 cases in recorded history is a lie.
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How is your take also not a conspiracy theory? You just pinned it on the little guy instead of a megacorp
Well, for one thing, the definition of “conspiracy” is “a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act”. So… you can’t have a one person conspiracy.
Ah yes, technicalities, the best of defenses
I mean, ask a stupid question…
I was trying to match OP’s and your IQ level
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There’s 2 kinds of evidence.
The guy saying he won’t kill himself requires inferring that he’s being truthful when he said it and that he didn’t change his mind. It’s not non-evidence, it does point to suicide being less likely. But it’s far from conclusive. If there’s no sign of entering the vehicle or that a struggle occurred, then I’d argue that far outweighs his prior statement.
That’s also a common misunderstanding, at least regarding the first (I’m not as familiar with the second). I’m a bit unclear on the details of the deposition - which side wanted it and was asking the questions, etc. (detailed here) but whatever the case, it was Boeing that demanded he come back for one more day. So if Boeing wanted him to not testify that day, they’d just send him home as originally planned. The only reason they’d do it then was to silence him generally…but doing it in a way that draws so much suspicion to them seems like an implausibly bad decision. Then again, it is Boeing. (Note that this is also circumstantial evidence, and requires assuming that Boeing isn’t so dumb as to kill a witness in the middle of their own deposition, which may not be warranted).
Edit: corrected my own misunderstanding of deposition
Its also inferring his friend is being truthful when he said that’s what the guy said.
Hey.
Yeah?
See this gun?
I do.
Kill yourself with it or I will kill everyone in your family. Here is a list of their names and addresses.
What if I kill you instead?
Guys who sent me will send someone else.
That guy also had a history of mental issues and anxiety. He was away from home experiencing high stress environments, like a court room, and he was looking at another court appearance that day.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that maybe, just maybe, this is a coincidence instead of murder. He had already given the bulk of his testimony, so I really don’t see the motive here.
Testimony is thrown out because he was obviously mentally unstable
Is that what happened…?
Will
Probably would have happened if it was going to.
Can I have source plz
I’m not doubting you it’s just that’s so comedic I need to see it for myself
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There is plenty of evidence of foul play you smartass. They willingly risked lives over many years and are still currently flying many planes with defective unsafe parts. Going from that to assasination is not a big leap.
Multiple of the whistleblowers and their colleagues have also independently said that their workplace was directly and deliberately sabotaged in order to continue using defective parts.
Yes the last one doesnt really look like a typical assasination but it doesnt matter in the slightest if it was or not.
Well…the first dude did say something about Boeing killing whistleblowers and the bravery of others to step up in defiance of that.
So that whole line of thinking is conspiracy theory stuff with no real proof and it is being parroted here. Granted, usually the assassination stuff is usually tongue in cheek, but the top comment seems a bit crazy.
I agree that calling it “killing whistleblowers” is a bit too early, but for the point that the top comment was making, it doesnt actually matter. Because his point was about the bravery of the other whistleblowers coming out and for that it doesnt matter if they actually got killed or not.
The 10 other whistleblowers are brave because there is a good chance that at least one of the whistleblowers was killed. They are still brave even if it turns out that the dead ones died of natural causes or suicide.
If the “bravery” and admiration comes against the idea of assassination, then it completely matters. Idk why you’re hand waving the nonsense here
If the whistleblowers truly believe that the previous ones were assassinated, then they are brave for speaking out. They might be stupid, foolish, whatever, but they would be even more stupid if they didnt consider the possiblity of it being true.
Intent is what matters here not what is actually the case. This is obvious when it comes to law. For example if a judge decides that you truly believed that your life was in danger in a situation and that you had to act in self defense, you can usually not be sentenced for murder, even if it turns out that your life wasnt in danger after all.
Really this is a grammatical framing problem, but i think its totally fair to call these people “brave” either way, because even if their lives arent in danger, then at least their livelihood is.
1: I wholeheartedly believe being a whistleblower is a courageous and brave act. Full stop.
2: drawing conclusions as to why these people decided to speak up when they did without hearing it from them is nonsense.
3: assuming and repeating a John Gresham novel from news articles between corporations and their whistleblowers is not only buying into a conspiracy theory, but is also parroting it.
4: partaking in these conspiratorial shenanigans helps no one and isn’t something to be waved away as harmless - otherwise, what’s the difference here and qanon?
Even if the dude that “killed himself” did do it to himself, he did so because he was harassed by a company for doing his job. Even in the non conspiracy version of the story, the corporation still acted in bad faith and should be held liable for it’s actions. Why is this the hill you want to die on?
OK, but that’s a pretty big difference from hiring a hitman to explicitly murder him.
Yes, it is different.
No one is saying Boeing execs shouldn’t be prosecuted.
It’s very naive to think that a weapons dealer who also kills it’s commercial airline passengers for profit isn’t also killing whistleblowers.
Nice try Boeing
Bolexforpoop back wih pigshit again. The reason i don’t block you is your neverending entertainment value. Keep posting king.
Three-day old account, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had another one that was banned.
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But this whole thread is about assuming the worst based on half info, why would they stop when you’re saying something they don’t like?
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I’m on your side dude, the response here is kinda nuts.
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2 people dying is kind of fishy.
I needed to see this, just in general, today
I mean If it was an organized thing then I’m not sure it’s so dumb
They can kill two people but if ten more people die it would look really bad on there part and would become undeniable
It already looks really bad
I don’t know seems like everyone I know is convinced that the first two murders were coincidence. What is keeping 10 more being that way?
The first was probably murder, the second just coincidence.
Or they just tried harder to make it seem like a coincidence.
Anyone saying humans suck and are terrible is likely a terrible person themselves. Decent people tend to see the better aspect of humanity.
This is a leap. You can be a good person and also see that people as a whole can be both wonderful and absolutely terrible. This is a story about a mega corp murdering two whistleblowers, so far. In this case, the people involved in making this a headline suck and are terrible.
I was talking to someone the other day who was really bent out of shape over an extremely unpleasant customer. The kind of interaction that sticks with you for years.
I told my perspective on people. We tend to remember remarkable things - stuff that really stands out from the normal. The news media does the same thing. Normal, everyday stuff isn’t “newsworthy.”
So when an asshole customer stands out that much, it’s because it’s such a rare experience. People are mostly good, so the goodness doesn’t stand out.
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Counterpoint. There was one whistleblower killed, there are lots of people on this case like Boeing staff, government employees, the police, senators, the president, who haven’t done shit. Now there are two murders. Any of the people who SHOULD be doing something about it doing anything? No. Now there are 12 brave people against the thousands of shit people.