As evil as Boeing is, you have to give John Barnett his agency. He made that final choice.

Boeing and an arcane legal system may have driven him to it, but he was the one who made that choice.

They’d bring back company script.

And then get eaten by bears.

People contemplating suicide tend to do that. They put on a false front, saying that they’re okay when they really aren’t.

Couple that with a bad session in front of the appeal judges… and yeah. You can see why he did it.

A 7-year legal battle to overturn his loss of the lawsuit against Boeing for their retaliation over his whistleblowing… And it was looking like the final appeal, his final chance, was slipping away.

And yet, the comments here are sort of proving that point.

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.

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.

#4 is to start the apocalypse so that Jesus will come back and kill all the Jews who don’t believe in him.

I’ve literally heard that exact reasoning from nutjobs who know just enough about geopolitics to know that using a nuke in that region would start WW3. Anyone using a nuke in that region would start it. Unless it’s someone like North Korea. That would just mean the end of North Korea as everyone else banded together to take them down.

Anyway, beside the point because no one is insane enough to listen to Lady G.

Fun fact, this is exactly the sort of situation that Ivermectin was made for. It’s an anti-parasite drug.

I’m all for the establishment of a free Palestinian state, but Hamas has to go.

Preferably through police action rather than the genocide that is a military intervention by Israel.

Anyway, the Israeli government is in the wrong on all the counts you raised, but Hamas still needs to go. They’ve been fully co-opted by all sorts of outside groups, and their rule in Gaza before October 7th was one of fear and oppression. They are no one’s saviors, they’re just the meanest bastards in the prison, lashing out at the guards while abusing the other prisoners.

The actual path to peace is a multinational police and peacekeeping force to come in and take over from the IDF, keeping the IDF out of it completely, and then opening up Gaza and the West Bank to the rest of the world. Possibly even ejecting the settlers from the West Bank and giving the land back.

But a large part of this would be arresting Hamas leadership.

And don’t think I’d let the IDF and Israeli government off scot-free for their part in all this. I’m sure there’s plenty of room in the local prisons for all the bastards in this mess.

The end goal might be a single, secular state, where all people are guaranteed full rights and protections by the government.

Closer to Gitmo, in that a percentage of the prisoners are actually a threat to “peace” and have committed various crimes. Also like Gitmo a percentage are only in there because their neighbor wanted to steal their land.

When the news says something like “as much as 45 years in prison” that’s never the amount that even a poor person would have gotten.

To get to the maximum statutory sentence, the reporters had to completely ignore the sentencing guidelines.

This video is talking about Trump, but breaks down how the actual sentencing guidelines work.

A modern civil war will not be fought on battle fields. That shit was pointless and stupid in the first civil war (which is a large reason why the South lost, they wanted glorious battles, and the north just burned cities)

No, a modern civil war will look like the mess in Syria or Haiti. It will be disorganized, chaotic, and there will be far too much pointless bloodshed, with no battle lines. Just a bunch of assholes killing people who they disagree with.

Or even the headline. It clearly says Georgia.

Honestly? Because a national popular vote (for president) would take an amendment, or every state joining the national interstate voting compact, but wouldn’t actually fix the deeper issue of the dysfunction of Congress.

Also, the compact might be of questionable constitutionality.

But fixing congress… This link spells out the problem as well as a one time fix for a problem that’s always going to exist.

A one time fix might be enough to fix things for a while…

But to truly fix things…

Set up something akin to Lemmy mixed with Wikipedia. Now, the only people who can post to this social media would be members of congress. Every single bill would have to be posted in its entirety to this platform for at least 30 days before a vote could be called. And then, members of congress could post in the comments, debating the bill. This would also give them ways to post links and research and shit,

Now, the important thing here, this platform would be open to anyone to view.

Hell, add in the ability to post video comments. Let these people play their popularity contests, but out in the open.

Oh yeah, if the bill is amended, then the 30-day timer restarts. Also, no more breaks. Congress is always officially in session. Then allow voting via the platform. Allow votes to be cast beforehand, but they finalize on the 30th day. If the bill does not get enough votes to pass, it’s dead, but can be resubmitted, or kicked back to committee. (a sub-lemmy for particular topics)

Maybe add in hired transcribers whose only job is to post transcribed text of any meeting or such.

Then make the software open, and get states to use it, and city councils. Basically all government should be done in text and in the open. With time for those making the laws to actually read them, and for the public to be able to know exactly what’s going on in government.

The benefit of my idea here is that it can support quite a bit of expansion, while still allowing a fairly local feeling representation. Because congress could easily work from home most of the time.

My ideal election laws would have an electoral college type setup, but based on congressional district rather than by state. Now, here are the changes that make it workable.

First, the number of congressional districts needs to increase. Massively. There needs to be a fixed ratio of Representatives to state population. At least 1 rep per X people. Then that number needs to be set in stone.

Congress got into a pissing match 100 years ago over how to do apportionment, so now we’re stuck with 435 Representatives when the population of the US has more than tripled and two new states have been added.

The next thing that needs to be set in stone is a way to draw districts. Shortest split-line is the method of choice here. Now, it can favor conservatives and rural areas a bit, but only if your number of districts is too low. With enough districts, the output starts to look a lot like actual population maps. If you squint.

I’d ditch the Senate. Or roll it into the House. Maybe say that each state gets an equal number of representatives who serve more than 2 years. So that there’s a group of people who have institutional knowledge when the next congress forms.

This would be important for the next change I’d make. Term limits, or rather, consecutive term limits. You’d be able to serve two terms, but then to serve a third you’d have to take one full term off, actually living in your district. You must spend 25 of every 30 days living in the district for at least 2 years to qualify to represent that district.

The final, and most impactful, change would be the voting system itself. We desperately need to ditch FPtP, and Ordinal voting systems in general. Cardinal voting systems are the only way to have viable third parties, with actual, separate identities.

My current favorite system is STAR. It’s the absolute best single winner election system out there. There may be better systems in the future, but for now, this is it.

So let’s talk practicality of these fixes.

Increasing the size of Congress is a single law. That’s it. If you want to push things a bit further, there’s James Madison’s Congressional Apportionment Amendment, which despite being introduced in the late 1700s, is still a viable amendment, and could theoretically finish the ratification process.

Fun fact, the 27th amendment, which was ratified within my lifetime, was introduced along with the congressional apportionment amendment.

Drawing districts is a State level thing, but Congress does have the power to set requirements on federal elections. They could require that federal districts be drawn via a certain way.

But still, an amendment is likely the only way that it would be implemented.

Term limits flat out need an amendment, same with ditching the senate.

And the final note, the voting system needs to either be done state by state, or via the ability to control federal elections. Possibly needs an amendment to actually apply to everyone,

It’s a two pronged attack.

It has always been a two pronged attack.

The rich assholes who want to fuck everyone over can’t just come out and say it, they need a Face to rile up the crowds, but that Face is a problem. The Face can turn on the rich fucks. Well, to an extent. They’re a useful charismatic fool, and possibly a danger to the rich, but mostly a danger to everyone else.

Anyway, the solution is to stand next to the fool king, and pass him “advice”. Like a list of judges to appoint. “Don’t think about it, we vetted these guys, and they love you”.

Then there’s the congressmen. “Don’t have time to write a bill? Well, we saved you the trouble. It even does some of the shit you’ve been ranting about, but mostly it makes us richer”.

And that’s how it goes. People like Leonard Leo, Peter Thiel, Joel Kaplan. They’re the brains.

They also funnel a shit-load of money into pushing their twisted ideologies.

Guardians 3 was good.

Mostly because they weren’t trying to shoehorn future movie plot setups into it.

On that note, the Holiday Special was also pretty good.

Shang-Chi wasn’t a bad movie… Not one I’m likely to rewatch much, but a good popcorn movie…

Other than that, no Marvel has started falling into producer interference mode, where every movie must explicitly set up the next, even if they don’t have a full plan for what’s next.

They’ve lost sight of the key to their success; telling a tight, self-contained story made by people who love the characters.

Um, the IDF has been killing Palestinian civilians en-mass since the start of the war. Using 2000lbs bombs in civilian areas kills civilians.

High level Israeli officials have flat out said that the end goal is 100% ethnic cleansing. An Israel completely free of Palestinians.

They’ve been slow rolling the Ethnic Cleansing for decades, but now they have an excuse to speed things up a bit. With the unwavering support of various major powers, Israel can speed run the ethnic cleansing.

https://www.cnn.com/gaza-israel-big-bombs/index.html

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/un-expert-warns-new-instance-mass-ethnic-cleansing-palestinians-calls

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/26/settler-violence-israels-ethnic-cleansing-plan-for-the-west-bank

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-gaza-palestinians-concept-paper-1.7015576

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/16/israel-gaza-mass-evacuation-ethnic-cleansing

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/10/bartov_genocide_apartheid

From the looks of things, the IDF laid a trap for Palestinians.

The IDF promised food aid to the people they’ve been starving for the past few months (and keeping on the brink of starvation for the past 17 years)

The crowds gathered, waiting for the food aid to trickle out, when the IDF opened fire with vehicle mounted, heavy machine guns. Over 100 people are dead, and something like 750 were wounded.

Here’s an article about it.

To be fair about most American’s never leaving the country, it’s a big country. You can spend literal days driving from one side to the other.

If you asked the average American, “What’s the furthest you’ve traveled?” That distance will most likely exceed the average distance traveled by someone from, say, Germany.

The German could have been to half a dozen countries, and never gone outside of Continental Europe.