John Barnett had worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement in 2017.

In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.

Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett’s passing. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday.

It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating.

484 points
*

I am not a conspiracy theorist. Reality is trying it’s damnedest to make me one.

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219 points

Eh. There will always be real conspiracies and then…lizard people conspiracies.

This shit right here? yeah…they killed him. 100%. No doubt in my fucking mind.

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172 points

I mean, he was old…people die—

It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating.

oh shit they totally fucking killed him

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8 points

THEY FUCKING KILLED HIM!

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12 points
*

Relevant Chart (open image in new tab to see it larger):

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12 points

Not sure what to make of this chart except that a few items are misplaced imo and I agree conspiracy shit is an alt right pipeline in most cases. Maybe it wasn’t always but whatever.

Anyhow.

I haven’t followed up on the news. But there sure wasn’t much available yesterday. So as far as actual reliable evidence we the public have little.

The guy being dead with an apparent self inflicted wound (as BBC and others said) or gunshot (as Corp Crime Reporter said) during whistleblower court proceedings against a giant company is consistent with suicide from:

  • Stress of the case or from blackmail
  • Stress from something totally unrelated.
  • Some other cause (depression, terminal illness…)

It is also consistent with:

  • murder made to look like suicide to silence his further testimony and dissuade others

Any of these is certainly plausible at least. As is Epstein being murdered. Actually, that one is more plausible, given the few suspicious coincidences and the sheer number of people who wanted his secrets to stay that way. Whereas extra-terrestrial UFOs aren’t all that plausible based on our current body of scientific knowledge.

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4 points

Epstein didn’t kill himself though. The circumstances where above the level of questioning, there were cameras turned off and he was supposedly on suicide watch.

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2 points

this is bulshit, epstein definetly didnt kill himself, for starters.

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1 point
*

How did they make hollow earth antisemitic? MF’rs

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158 points

It’s possible it was stress from the litigation. In fact, if you don’t specify whose stress, I’d almost guarantee it.

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31 points

Ha!

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58 points

There are circumstances where conspiracy the likeliest explanation.

This is one of those.

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35 points

If it actually happened, it’s just a “conspiracy,” not a “conspiracy theory.”

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32 points

He didn’t show any signs of depression or suicidal tendencies… signs like voluntarily flying on a boeing plane.

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14 points

It’s no longer a conspiracy when it’s proven true.

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52 points

This isn’t proof. That’s the crazy part. I hear ya. I’m with ya. I don’t see anything that is concrete physical evidence to tie it all together. As of now.

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44 points

I agree, I just was making a joke. It’s a conspiracy until you realize it’s a fact. MK-ULTRA, Government spying on you (which time? ) , Big tobacco hiding that cigerettes cause cancer, Stacks of ET games are buried in New Mexico, even dark stories like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments were all conspiracy theories at one time. Sadly they all turned out to be true.

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50 points

A conspiracy is when a group plans to do something unlawful. So if it’s proven true it’s still a conspiracy. It just stops being a theory.

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4 points
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A “theory” is a collection of information we currently understand to be true.

The term “conspiracy theory” is a misnomer that should be correctly expressed as “conspiracy hypothesis”. But that’s just a theory.

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2 points
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I think the confusion arises from the secrecy part. A conspiracy is understood to be a secret unlawful activity, especially of subversive nature. When it’s not secret anymore is it still conspiracy? or is it just organised crime? I know it feels just pedantic, but this is why the media abuses words to steer collective opinion. Nowadays you can just say something is a conspiracy and people will believe it’s fake without recourse.

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2 points

That’s the most annoying misunderstanding. A conspiracy is still a conspiracy when you prove it happened/it’s happening. Conspirators remain conspirators, which means they were working together to do something illegal in secret. Ok, so now it’s not secret anymore, but they still conspired.

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11 points

The Gulf of Tonkin incident being created by the US was a conspiracy theory until it wasn’t.

Not every “conspiracy theory” is wrong. Sometimes people in charge are actually trying to cover something up. It’s not insane to be skeptical of an official line until it’s backed up with proof.

Lizard people, however, don’t exist.

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5 points

My comment was meant to be tongue in cheek but you pretty much nailed the message I’m after. Don’t jump to the conspiracy conclusion but you have to have something wrong with your brain if this doesn’t at least tickle your skeptic gland.

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2 points

Lizard people, however, don’t exist.

Speak for yourself, upright ape.

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2 points

That’s what they want you to think.

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345 points

He was staying at a hotel out-of-state while giving evidence against Boeing.
He was found dead in his car in the hotel parking lot from a ‘self-inflicted wound’.

There’s really no other way to look at it logically than he was murdered by Boeing. Nothing else adds up.

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190 points

He wasn’t even done giving the deposition that he literally volunteered to give…

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-262 points

literall–

Downvote.

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92 points

I don’t know what you were trying to achieve beyond publicly announcing you’re a petty, boring person.

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66 points

You could’ve just done so and moved on, my guy. It’s not a profound statement.

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57 points

Did he not literally volunteer?

I mean, I get it, I’m sick of “literally” meaning “figuratively”, and I’d die on that hill with you, but this is the dumbest possible time to make that stand. In this case “literally” just means “literally”.

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33 points
*

Literally has been used as an intensifier for over 200 years. The Oxford English Dictionary includes a definition of literally meaning “figuratively”. Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry David Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper, James Joyce, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain all used it that way in their writing.

So until you write something as well respected and enduring as Sanditon, The Great Gatsby, Tom Sawyer, or Ulysses and collect your mother fucking Nobel prize in literature, please choke on a literal dick you confidently incorrect fuckwit.

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15 points

i’m literally sorry that you literally don’t know standard english my guy, i literally don’t know what to literally say to you 😭

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11 points

Found the boeing employee

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8 points
Removed by mod
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8 points

🤓

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2 points

“Literally” CAN be used as an hyperbole. It’s just a more emphatic way to say “very”

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0 points

Please don’t reddit up the place, I like it here

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85 points

I mean, I think the logical thing to do is wait until the evidence comes out and we know for sure. It’s entirely possible he was under a lot of stress from all this and did kill himself. Now, I don’t deny that it’s a HUGE. FUCKING. CONICIDENCE. but those do happen from time to time. Its also a hell of a story, good-guy whistleblower murdered by greedy multinational aerospace company and defense contractor…during an election year…if you wrote the script nobody would buy it.

Let’s be suspicious, but not jump to conclusions.

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6 points
*

Jesus, do you think maybe they’re trying to run out the clock too? Who wants to bet that a certain CEO is angling for a political position within a certain potential administration? Perhaps head of the FAA?

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7 points

This is the kind of go get em attitude a certain potential administration might be impressed by.

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74 points

Look, I’m not gonna say Boeing did it. Though if they did, I’d bet money they drove.

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45 points

An investor could’ve threatened his family? (So not directly Boeing)

If he got a bunch of hate online, or had crippling anxiety about the testimony he still had to give? I mean you could even speculate he thought he would be killed someday, so he took it into his own hands.

(Please note the above is all BS!)

I would argue the jury is still out and that we may never know.

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45 points

Direct involvement might be a question still. But general involvement is absolute. If Boeing wasn’t so shitty he almost assuredly would still be alive.

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18 points

I suppose even if nobody ever said a word to him you could make that argument. No poor business practices = no testimony = no car in a hotel parking lot.

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3 points

An investor could’ve threatened his family? (So not directly Boeing)

Or somebody involved in corporate corruption and embezzling in Boeing. That would be worse for Boeing as a whole than him remaining alive, but possibly better for that somebody who may not be identified.

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8 points

They don’t gain much. The FAA is breathing down their neck already.

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18 points

The FAA has allowed this mess to continue for far too long because Boeing is an industry titan. Too big to fail. Well, maybe not anymore.

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16 points

Watch politician holdings of Boeing stock.

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5 points
*

Too big to fail is a terrible concept that was invented.

If a company gets too big to the point that it’s failure is going to drag down the company. That company should be broken up to allow them to to fail. Anything else is either reward the company for making bad decisions or allow companies to become stagnant because if anything happens, the government will bail them out.

Edit: Spelling and grammar are important.

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4 points

What do you mean? They fail all the time. Fail to secure doors. Fail to have working oxygen masks. Fail to warn pilots about a system that points the nose of the plane down constantly…

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11 points
Removed by mod
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2 points

We worry about being able to feed our families enough.

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6 points

Not sure how much jurisdiction or investigation the FFA does for murders that occur on the ground though.

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3 points

At the point of a deposition, his complaints are already documented and can be verified by regulators.

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-5 points

It makes no sense for them to kill him, that draws wayyyy too much attention. More likely if they were involved, they blackmailed him and that caused him to kill himself, or another party that also wanted to keep him quiet killed him and they didn’t care if it looked like Boeing did it.

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-6 points

Does suicide ever add up? It being a hit doesn’t add up either. A hotel parking lot is a rather public place to try to force someone to kill themselves.

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218 points

Guess the executives didn’t want to wait for him to take one of their planes and die naturally by getting sucked out at 35,000 feet when a door falls off.

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83 points
29 points

I absolutely love that bit!

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26 points

Which bit- the front? Because I’m sorry to say it fell off

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23 points

Well, that’s not typical, if like to point that out.

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1 point

…yet.

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206 points
*

“Local officials confirmed Mr. Barnett’s suicide. When asked how Mr. Barnett managed to fire the sniper shot through his bedroom window, the officer first on the scene only replied, “Trust me bro.”, while stuffing a large stack of 100 dollars bills back down the front of his pants.”

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89 points

[2 week later] Former lead detective found dead in in what investigators have ruled a suicide. He apparently hung himself after a fit of rage where his house appeared to have kicked in his own front door, tore the hard drive out of his security camera hub, punched himself in the face a number of times, then tied the rope to a bannister and strung himself up.

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34 points

(Interwebz pedant voice) actually there are several scenarios possible where one could conceivably kill themselves with a sniper rifle 100 yards away . . . People who don’t know about this are just so credulous, but weapons science has known for a long time that JFK actually killed himself . . .

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169 points

i can’t find it online, but im reasonably certain i heard an interview with this guy on Canadian public radio several years ago that really shook me. he talked basically about how he wouldn’t fly on a Boeing plane, knowing what he knows and having seen what he’d seen, stuff like quality rejected parts getting taken back into inventory to meet quotas. the takeaway for me was that the quality control system that had previously worked so well was an invention of equal or possibly higher importance to any kind of aerodynamic innovation present on those planes. i work in an analogous role (in a different industry) and i really do take it more seriously after having heard the interview. nobody likes the work of quality assurance and you’ll never see someone doing a non-conformance report on TV but it’s a necessary condition for planes to stay in the sky. RIP to a real one and if he got murdered then i hope the industry burns

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51 points
*

Neat, I’m jumping on a Boeing 737-700 in about 8 hours. Nice knowin ya while it lasted.

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31 points

That feel was created before they started cutting corners. You should be fine.

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4 points

I think even Boeing is still safer per passenger mile than any car, or biking/walking.

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3 points

It’s not a MAX so you’ll probably be fine haha

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3 points

My southwest flight will be on a max 8 both ways. Wish me luck.

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47 points

John Oliver’s Boeing broadcast last week included a video of a guy walking around a Boeing production floor asking all the people if any of them would be willing to fly in a Boeing. Of everyone he asked a single guy said yes and then followed it up with “but I kind of have a death wish.”

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20 points

There were more yes’s, but they were cut out of the video. However, Oliver mentions after the video what amount of them said yes and what amount said no. Most of them did say “no” though.

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3 points
*

If Boeing was running a tight ship with safety in mind, they should all have been yes. If one said no, that could be a disgruntled employee for some reason or another, but jesus…

Anyways, Airbus for me it is.

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