this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
1404 points (99.0% liked)

News

23311 readers
4109 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 51 points 8 months ago (5 children)

It's important to remember that whistleblowing is extremely stressful, so much that it's one of the main things the government talks about on their whistleblowing site:

Practice self-care and stress-reducing activities throughout your whistleblowing process. It is common to experience toxic forms of retaliation – from professional isolation to gaslighting (manipulating someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity) – which can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or even thoughts of harm.

https://whistleblower.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/whistleblower.house.gov/files/whistleblower_survival_tips.pdf

Researchers have found the same thing, being a whistleblower is terrible for your mental health:

About 85% suffered from severe to very severe anxiety, depression, interpersonal sensitivity and distrust, agoraphobia symptoms, and/or sleeping problems, and 48% reached clinical levels of these specific mental health problems. These specific mental health problems were much more prevalent than among the general population.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6604402/

In addition, "Half of Patients With Suicidal Thoughts Deny It"

Not only did approximately 50% of people with suicidal thoughts deny having those thoughts, roughly 50% of people who had died by suicide, and 30% of people who had attempted suicide had denied having suicidal ideation in the week or month beforehand.

Furthermore, in many cases, people who had disclosed in apps and on paper that they had thoughts of suicide then denied that they had suicidal ideation when questioned directly in face-to-face assessments or interviews. For example, in one study, nearly 60% of those who reported their suicidal ideation on an app then denied their suicidal ideation in a telephone interview less than 24 hours later.

https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2021.10.9

So, just because he denied he was suicidal doesn't mean that's necessarily true. He might have been trying to appear strong to everyone while suffering in silence.

This should definitely be investigated as possibly being murder. And, even if the investigation does determine that he shot himself, they should keep looking to see if he was being blackmailed or if he might have been pressured into suicide.

I just can't imagine an executive at Boeing going out and hiring a hit man. But, what I can imagine them doing is hiring a team of private investigators to go through this guy's entire life and dig up every bit of dirt on him. It could be they found something really embarrassing and were going to blackmail him with it. It could be that they found something innocent that they could frame as being awful, like to make him look like he was a child molester or something.

[–] experbia@lemmy.world 62 points 8 months ago (41 children)

I just can’t imagine an executive at Boeing going out and hiring a hit man

Really? That's weird, I totally can. It's an exceptionally narrow-minded and short-sighted knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat of one's executive career. Most coked-out executives already have a massive god complex once they get their MBA and are installed above the ~~proles~~ workers. I can absolutely realistically imagine one Boeing executive getting angry enough and coked-out enough to just decide, "fuck it, I'm going to fix this problem for us before he threatens my career and reputation any more".

The information you present about whistleblowing being stressful is fair. He may indeed have been driven to kill himself instead of being straight-up assassinated like others believe. I refuse, however, to give the benefit of doubt to a massive corporation who has already demonstrated a complete lack of regard for human life and an extremely poor track record of moral and ethical decision-making. This needs to be investigated under the assumption that a hit is an entirely possible reality. Unless you'd rather that nobody blows the whistle on anything in the future - you've already demonstrated that it's an incredibly stressful action. If there's the lingering remote possibility that you can be simply assassinated over it and everyone will look the other way, nobody will ever raise their voice again. The nature of his actions before his death demand a comprehensive and exhaustive investigation into if any person from Boeing had anything to do with it whatsoever, or whistleblowing will continue sliding into something only the insane consider.

load more comments (41 replies)
[–] systemglitch@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] bestonecrazy@lemmy.zip 9 points 8 months ago

Murder by proxy.

[–] STOMPYI@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (5 children)

They fucking killed him with a hit man dude...

[–] VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works 0 points 8 months ago

Of course they didn't this isn't a movie

In the real world companies like Boeing don't hire hit men, they use the cia

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There's maybe an absurd theory no one has considered: He worried that the accusations weren't going to be taken seriously, so he killed himself in a relatively suspicious manner/timing, to make sure public trust in Boeing disappeared.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works -3 points 8 months ago

It seems unlikely because there was a lot of interest in the stuff he was testifying about, but it's possible.