What stands out to me is, that the executive person ordering it, Steve Wymer, was not charged at all, despite making very plain statements:
"Wymer texted Baugh that Ina Steiner was a "biased troll who needs to be BURNED DOWN"; that he wanted "to see ashes"; and that Baugh should do "whatever it takes.""
I would imagine the same will happen here(if it was murder). Some pawns get executed, who "missunderstood their orders".
Mafia bosses seems to operate like this as well. They don't give plain orders to kill someone. But their underlings know what is expected of them, by a certain nod or comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle
Seems to go both ways, but without a doubt it gets the animal’s attention.
>The cold, hard facts are that anything is possible.
>Anything, anything. You're just not thinking creatively.
>I have every confidence that you can do that, Phil.
If there would have been a legal angle, they would have send out lawyers letters instead. That was apparently not an option, so crime was the only way to go. And that no one at the top gets prosecuted for this, is quite disappointing.
Or since it was in the US make up some bogus claim and take them to court and hope they cannot afford court proceedings and fold.
We will never know the answer because the chief communication officer choose to contact the security department instead of the legal department.
Court documents show eBay's Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber was copied on the infamous Whatever It Takes email from Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer wherein he referred to the twitter user Fidomaster/unsuckeBay (a frequent commenter and source for the blog) and the owners of the blog and said:
"I am utterly vexed by this! This twitter account dominates our social narrative with his CONSTANT obsession with trolling us. It's more than annoying, it's very damaging. There are a few people (this guy and the eComercebytes gal) infatuated with eBay who have seemingly dedicated their lives to erroneously trashing us as a way to build their own brand - or even build a business. It's genuinely unfair and causes tremendous damage because we look bad fighting back in public and standing up for ourselves. If we could engage, I'd welcome the fight and we have a lot of facts and truth to win with. But, instead we take shots broadside and sit on our powder. This issue gives me ulcers, harms employee moral, and trickles into everything about our brand. I genuinely believe these people are acting out of malice and ANYTHING we can do to solve it should be explored. Somewhere, at some point, someone chose to let this slide. It has grown to a point that is absolutely unacceptable. It's the "blind eye toward graffiti that turns into mayhem" syndrome and I'm sick about it. Whatever. It. Takes."
Oh Huber also engaged in multiple emails back and forth on the topic of Fidomaster/UnsuckeBay in particular as both her and Wymer had attempted to get Twitter to "kill" the account but had been unable to do so because, as mentioned above, there was not a strong legal basis for it.
And in fact at one point when Security Director Jim Baugh said he was investigating to try to identify the person behind the account and was making progress, Oh Huber replied with a smiley emoji and said "Thanks Jim, in light of this, I'll hold off on sending any letter."
Baugh's investigation included creating a fake Twitter account pretending to be an ex-eBay employee who engaged with Fidomaster/unsuckeBay to try to find some "connection" to EcommerceBytes and when that didn't work, part of the plan for escalating to all the crazy deliveries, online harassment and doxing, and in person stalking was a "White Knight Strategy" he hoped could convince the Steiners to "out" Fidomaster/unsuckeBay.
Per Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth B. Kosto:
"The campaign targeted victims one and two for their roles in publishing a newsletter that reported on issues of interest to eBay sellers. Senior executives at eBay were frustrated with the newsletter's tone and content and with the tone and content of comments that appeared underneath the newsletter's articles online.
The harassment campaign arose from communications between those senior executives and Mr. Baugh, who was at that time eBay's senior security employee. Mr. Baugh intended for the harassment and intimidation to distract the victims from publishing the newsletter, to change the newsletter's coverage of eBay, and ultimately to enable eBay to contact the victims to offer assistance with the harassment, what the government has called a White Knight strategy.
The White Knight strategy would earn goodwill with the victims, such that they might help eBay learn the identity of Fidomaster, an anonymous online persona who frequently posted negative comments about eBay underneath the newsletter's articles, and thereby allow eBay to discredit both Fidomaster and the victims."
Inexplicably, not only did Oh Huber keep her job after all this, but the entire security department at eBay was moved from Global Ops to Legal after their "internal investigation" into the scandal, putting it under her purview going forward.
Oh Huber has not been named in either the criminal or civil cases in this matter, but last week she did announce she was stepping down to "pursue a new chapter in her career, while exploring personal interests and passions" - which may or may not be related to the $3 Million fine and 3 years of compliance monitoring eBay will undergo as part of a deal they recently struck with the DOJ to try to avoid further criminal prosecution for the company or to the fact that discovery is moving forward in the civil case and more emails or other internal documents could soon become part of the public record.
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-chief-legal-officer-...
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-cyberstalking-scanda...
The stakes are MUCH higher for Boeing, and we already know quite well that Boeing decided to put many human lives at risk to save money, and that's already resulted in many deaths. And they have a long history of making products designed specifically for killing humans.
https://www.boeing.com/defense
>This trusted partnership continues as defense customers once again look to Boeing to help them solve their toughest challenges.
Faking a suicide isn't a particularly tough challenge.
This sounds like one of those early 2000's trolling moments before such commentary conformed into a blob on modern social media. But given the rest of the events of the '20's I shouldn't be that surprised.
Could the union elect/nominate new leadership, or are they corrupt these days as well?
Don't look at their board of directors unless you want to fully realize the magnitude of what you don't yet realize you're saying!
Boeing is a defense contractor. They'll have 'contacts'.
Against the general backdrop of Boeing’s woes, suiciding a whistleblower is low-hanging fruit.
Who knows. Maybe he has a deadman’s set up.
The problem with this whole "he totally didn't kill himself" thing is...okay, so how did they kill him? Because you can't just put a gun in the hand of an unwilling person and force them to shoot themselves without leaving evidence.
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-sues-boeing-subsidi...
Because it's fairly easy to do so for the opposite statement. e.g. https://assassination.globalinitiative.net/monitor/
In my friends highschool, some businesses guy was paying highschool kids (16 - 17 ish) to strangle car owners and steal their cars. They were later caught.
Also, watch or read Killers of The Flowers Moon.
The problem with planned murder is that it is all hidden, and the details are fuzzy. So there is alot of reasonable doubt.
But trust me, there is alot do planned killing going on out there.
Those are not in any way normal people. If someone makes it to 16-17 y/o without acquiring that fundamental moral lesson, I would not characterize them as normal, whatever the cause of that failure.
They were just attending classes like their class mates.
It's not like they had a horns on thier head or walked around with pitchforks that made them obviously seem like killers.
Moral grandstanding won't change the fact that civilization is rather thinly veiling the violent ape in most of us
I don’t think civilization is a panacea here.
To my mind, civilization is not exactly a strict synonym of peaceful generous enlightened humanism. Of course as a phenomenon it can encompass this kind of behavior, but just as well as it can help foster genocides, war and torture.
Holocaust didn’t happen despite civilized minds, it happened specifically through a civilizational scheme.
EYES:……………………………………Medium
HAIR:……………………………………Medium
WEIGHT:………………………………Medium
HEIGHT:………………………………Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES…None
NUMBER OF FINGERS:………..Ten
NUMBER OF TOES………………Ten
INTELLIGENCE…………………….Medium
What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?
Turns out there is currently a fresh play in works that may have some of the same undertones: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-trial-of-eichmann-world-pre...
Now most of them aren't going to kill anyone because that would be dumb. But that is a pretty decent pool of people who would consider the idea for money.
150,000 * (1-23%) * 3% = 3465
What if one of the 3465 males had its job at risk because of Barnett?
150,000 * (1-23%) * 3% = 3465
For the non-Norwegians: "Torpedo" in Norwegian has adopted the 1920s US slang for a hit man / hired gun, and in Norwegian it's in common, contemporary use, though more often for threats and violence than outright murder.
I feel you would have come up with this same solution had you needed to.
But people with well-developed career instincts might not want to look. I think you overestimate how much the regular policeman, coroner etc. cares about truth for its own sake. Do you really want to pick a fight with Boeing?
It's very easy to play Nelson and turn the blind eye. Making up a coherent narrative in a lie is hard. But the lie "I didn't notice anything suspect" is very safe.
Better evidence would be signs of a struggle or calculating bullet velocity to see if it came from the gun in that position. However, there are ways of doing this without actually causing a struggle. Wait for them to go to sleep; you could even give them some melatonin or something to make them drowsy. If it's in a car, put some nitrogen canisters on the A/C intake to make them pass out.
If it is nefarious, there will be evidence somewhere. Whether you care to look for that evidence, know where to look for it or have the technology to find it ... that's another matter altogether.
Of course there are ways to get around that but the killer has to actually perform that workaround.
See: Lake City Quiet Pills
As for mocking suicide… I think you’d have to talk to a professional about what they do it. Given David Kelly, Epstein, and many other high profile cases, it does seem to be as difficult as you imagine.
The inquest concluded his death was "unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated" though with to little evidence to outright state it was an unlawful killing. The police eventually decided he'd likely locked himself in, despite the lack of fingerprints on both the bath and the padlock having made it a rather extraordinary feat for him to get into the bag and lock the padlock.
Which to me goes to show that whether or not you get away with faking a suicide likely has relatively little to do with how well - or plausible - you fake the suicide vs. how well you sufficiently prevent a link to yourself and the power you have to prevent a proper investigation.
At least in the case of David Kelly the circumstances were plausible.
It does not take much for a motivated medical examiner to rule a death a suicide, their are plenty of examples where clearly not suicide was been rule suicide in history.
Then there is always the movie "The Shooter" where they had an arm contraption purpose built to force someone to "commit suicide", The device itself is plausible
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations_by_th...
What? There certainly are killers for hire in existence.
[1] https://au.news.yahoo.com/boeing-whistleblower-john-barnett-...
This aligns very closely with the Federal rule on the same:
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 32. Using Depositions in Court Proceedings (4) Unavailable Witness. A party may use for any purpose the deposition of a witness, whether or not a party, if the court finds: (A) that the witness is dead; etc...
I can't tell which jurisdiction applies here because the news stories on the case itself are all hot garbage, I'm not trying that hard and IANAL, but my guess is it's the latter. Either way, the deposition(s) will likely get in.
Now, anything can happen, but it's hard to imagine Boeing or whomever, knowing that the deposition(s) is likely admissible in the event of the death of Barnett, would then assassinate him.
[1] https://www.sccourts.org/courtReg/displayRule.cfm?ruleID=32.... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_32#:~:text=A%20d....
My guess is that he was killed, but I don't have a guess whether it was some kind of plot by a higher up at Boeing, a rogue Boeing employee, or some random wackjob that's not involved otherwise. Boeing higher ups have motive, but it does feel too sloppy for a planned hit by a defense contractor. Surely they would have some CIA/FBI contacts who could give them a better plan than a mysterious mid-deposition "suicide". Surely they could rig a car to crash or something that looks more accidental.
This isn’t a criminal proceeding. With his death, it essentially goes away regardless.
(8) Deposition Taken in an Earlier Action. A deposition lawfully taken and, if required, filed in any federal- or state-court action may be used in a later action involving the same subject matter between the same parties, or their representatives or successors in interest, to the same extent as if taken in the later action. A deposition previously taken may also be used as allowed by the Federal Rules of Evidence.
(https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_32)
More specifically, his case was against Boeing for allegedly retaliating against him for being a whistleblower. He was a quality control manager.
So the FAA is crawling up Boeing's ass about poor quality control and lacking a safe and responsible culture, meanwhile a _former quality control manager_ is testifying about how they tried to tell Boeing about systemic quality issues and were retaliated against.
You really don't think Boeing has a vested interested in not being found liable for retaliating against quality control whistleblowers, _while being investigated for having quality control so poor people nearly died_?
If they lose this case, the FAA is going to notice, and they're going to be pissed. It's one thing to be negligent, Boeing could probably paper over that with the FAA and some small regulatory changes because they're defense contractor and vital to national security. It is another thing entirely to not only be aware of the problems due to whistleblowers but to both ignore the issues and attempt to silence the whistleblowers.
We're talking about a clusterfuck of proportions most of us can only have nightmares about. Boeing would spend the next 50 years with the FAA's hand jammed so far up their ass Kermit would feel bad for them. I wouldn't be surprised to see the SEC filing indictments for securities fraud for not disclosing known, material defects in their planes.
Even worse than that, Boeing really only has its "national security" shield in the US. I would expect Asian and especially European (because Airbus) regulators to take an exceptionally dim view of Boeing losing this lawsuit.
It's also very bad news for Boeing on any other wrongful death or injury lawsuits against them if there's a court case setting precedent that at best, Boeing retaliates against their whistleblowers, and at worst ignores them and retaliates against them. Other civil cases would be able to use the judgement against Boeing as evidence that they concretely retaliate against whistleblowers, and Boeing would be unable to challenge that assertion (you can't re-litigate the outcome of case A in case B, whatever was decided in case A is treated as fact).
Having a judgement against Boeing for retaliating against whistleblowers sounds like a great start to a wrongful injury/death claim based on negligence for anyone that got hurt on a Boeing plane. Boeing wouldn't be able to challenge that they retaliated against whistleblowers, so they would either have to claim that retaliating against whistleblowers isn't negligent (good luck with that) or that their negligence in retaliating did not contribute to that accident (again, good luck).
The importance of this case is almost entirely in second-order effects. I doubt Boeing cares about paying out a couple hundred thousand to Barnett for retaliating, they care about getting regulators off their backs and not losing every civil case filed against them for the next decade.
I never suggested otherwise. Having a vested interest does not indicate murder, motive sure.
> If they lose this case, the FAA is going to notice, and they're going to be pissed. It's one thing to be negligent, Boeing could probably paper over that with the FAA and some small regulatory changes because they're defense contractor and vital to national security. It is another thing entirely to not only be aware of the problems due to whistleblowers but to both ignore the issues and attempt to silence the whistleblowers.
The FAA already started an investigation years ago when he first made the claims they are being sued for retaliating against.
> We're talking about a clusterfuck of proportions most of us can only have nightmares about. Boeing would spend the next 50 years with the FAA's hand jammed so far up their ass Kermit would feel bad for them. I wouldn't be surprised to see the SEC filing indictments for securities fraud for not disclosing known, material defects in their planes.
Yeah, as if the widely publicized major incidents weren’t enough already.
You may very well be right, but you may also very well be letting your imagination get far ahead of the facts.
Which, surprise! Has recently been announced to have been opened!
For instance, any Boeing/Spirit employees who might be thinking about going to the FAA with information about who in management knew about and okayed the plug door "opening" scheme. Boeing surely wants the investigations to conclude that this is something no more than a few workers did of their own initiative and successfully hid from management, but that's probably not true.
...actually it has a chilling effect even if it didn't happen to be honest.
2. The stigma of suicide and association with mental ill health is taken by a lot of people to be discrediting even after the fact. The depositions are still damaging to Boeing but less so if he were alive. The “fact” that someone shot himself is a signal diminisher.