A second Boeing whistleblower has suddenly died “after a struggle with a sudden, fast-spreading infection.” Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?
Whistleblower Josh Dean of Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems has died (Seattle Times)
“If it’s Boeing I ain’t going”?
Considering they’ve made probably more than half the commercial aircraft flying today, what’s coming out in the news about Boeing’s transformation since their acquisition of Mcdonnell-Douglas is frightening. Some people are even referring to the merger as a testament to the genius of MD management, because “they bought Boeing with Boeing’s money”. The Seattle giant went from being an engineering-first aircraft company to an accountant-first corporation that happened to make aircraft, and that’s when things started going wrong. Even the headquarter move to Chicago was, in hindsight, a big tell that at the corporate level engineering was no longer job #1. But it gets worse.
Suicide Mission (The American Prospect)
See also: The Strange Death of a Boeing Whistleblower (The American Prospect)
Climate change leveled up last year and it’s bad
There’s really no other way to interpret these charts showing the daily average sea surface temperature. About a year ago there was a noticeable increase in average sea temperatures, a serious bump up, and as you will be able to see from this year’s sampling this appears to be an irreversible change.
The article’s author is much more knowledgeable about the details of it so I’ll recommend you read his article: The Climate Charts Are Not Okay.
What drives a man to “suicide”?
On March 9th a man named John Mitchell Barnett was found dead in a Charleston NC hotel parking lot, victim of an apparent suicide. But this wasn’t just any ordinary schmoe, Barnett was the main whistleblower for assembly and quality issues in the Charleston Boeing plant that produced the 737 MAX.
Funny how that happened. The man dedicated the last few years of his life to exposing problems that put the entire flying public at risk, and just when the issues he warned about are making headlines, suddenly, he “commits suicide”. Come on people. Sure, he died of a gunshot wound, but I would stake a large amount of money to say that he was not the one to pull the trigger.
The Charleston County coroner ruled the wound was self-inflicted, but when you think about the amount of pull that a huge employer like Boeing have on a place the size of Charleston you realize how the wheels of justice are sometimes greased just enough by major economic players into “being team players”.
Here is a video on the man and the major safety issues he tried to warn the public about.
This is why I don’t fly Suspiria Airlines.
This week’s weird aviation episode involves… maggots. I kid you not.
Delta flight forced back to Amsterdam after maggots fall onto passenger (CNN)
How times change…
Once upon a time a Canadian didn’t think twice about visiting the United States, but in this “war on terrah” era where American officials can take a foreigner, ship him off to Syria to be tortured, and then simply refuse to have his case for redress heard in their courts because it’s inconvenient why on earth would anyone want to take that insane risk?
When this did become acceptable?
This video is astonishing. It was taken earlier today when during student protests in Montreal. In it a police officer points his tear gas grenade launcher squarely at a protester — almost touching the guy — and fires it, with the clear intent of harming the protester and making no effort whatsoever to arrest him for anything! This is absolutely, completely unacceptable and unless the sadistic officer involved is identified and disciplined in a serious way it will be difficult to take the SPVM at all seriously.
“Lawful access” — coming very soon to a computer near you
Public Security Minister Vic Toews is planning to introduce his so-called “lawful access” bill to the House of Commons later today. So, how does it measure up?
According to Ottawa U Law professor Michael Geist, it’s going to create a panopticon society where online privacy essentially no longer exists and is replaced with a sort of Big Brother. Which is pretty funny when you consider that the Tories are also about to introduce their bill to scrap the long gun registry and proactively delete any and all data therein. Apparently guns don’t kill people, but the freedom to go about one’s own business does… that pretty much tells you what you need to know about Stephen Harper and his cronies.
And then there’s the issue of cost, which is entirely offloaded onto the ISPs themselves, who will now have to keep a record of everything you do online — well, everything you do online taking the direct route via your ISP, making it trivial to circumvent — for 90 days. I rather pity the ISPs who are going to be stuck storing all that data at their own expense. You can be certain that they’ll be glad to pass the savings onto you, of course.
So what’s the justification for this garbage? Mr. Toews, never one to shy away from stooping to scrape the bottom of the barrel, claims that either you are with him or you are siding with “the child pornographers”. Never mind that there have been a number of child porn busts recently which have not required any of the new police state powers Mr. Toews insists are absolutely crucial to fight that crime. Personally I’ve always thought that it was illegal, but apparently by senile old Vic’s reckoning it was impossible to fight this crime before! Of course it wasn’t. Mr. Toews is just pulling his Maud Flanders act, and it sells out very well out West, where evidently people ignorant or mad enough to vote for the insane old codger think “internet” is a kind of potato blight.
But why should we let Vic the impaler set the terms? I say, unless you are against this so-called “lawful access” bill, you are siding with the fascists. I guess the Conservative Party has yet another self-renaming in the works.
Assange extradition case: is the UK CPS under foreign pressure?
Like a rather large number of people I am following the legal proceedings to extradite Julian Assange to Sweden with very keen interest. It is a very unusual case indeed. The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is currently attempting to extradite Mr. Assange, the head of Wikileaks, to Sweden for questioning regarding something which does not appear to be considered prosecutable in any way outside of Sweden. Of course there are additional facts which make this case particularly odd for the CPS to pursue — but pursue it it has, all the way to the UK’s highest court.
One does very well to wonder why. Mr. Assange has not been charged with any crime, in the UK, Sweden, or anywhere else. Mr. Assange has offered to submit himself to questioning at the Swedish embassy in the UK. There are strong questions of prosecutorial misconduct already surrounding the case, and rumours seem to abound to the effect that the “victim” in the affair has been coerced into declaring that there was wrongdoing at all by a particularly zealous and right-wing Swedish prosecutor.
So of course inquiries have been made as to why the CPS is taking on this case. I myself cannot think of a justification to pursue extradition proceedings against a person who is not under a criminal charge for anything. It just doesn’t make sense, unless of course the entire affair is political in nature, in which case there are strong implications that the CPS is being used by another organ of the British government for purposes which, on the outside at least, seem unethical at best and downright illegal at worst.
As I have already mentioned an inquiry was made to obtain information from the CPS as to why they are conducting this campaign, and the CPS’s response can now be published, as it has been here. The CPS is refusing to answer the question, but it’s the cited reasoning which is most interesting:
Information is exempt information under s. 27(1)(a) if its disclosure under the FOIA would, or would be likely to, prejudice relations between the United Kingdom and any other State.
Now, I’m no expert in diplomacy or foreign relations myself, but it seems that the CPS itself is admitting that it is, directly or indirectly, being pressured by a foreign government into proceeding forward with the extradition. That seems highly improper. The CPS is not, nor should it be, answerable to the Foreign Office, or indeed any other body than the Home Office. And what interest does the Home Office have seeking the extradition of a man who is not charged with a crime in the UK or abroad?
And since the response hints at foreign pressure, who is behind that? Sweden has not seen it fit to charge Mr. Assange with a crime. Which country could possibly have a vested interest in getting the head of Wikileaks out of a jurisdiction where he enjoys legal protection and into international territory where he is completely unprotected? Hmm, I wonder. Not to mention that Sweden, Â nice country though it may be, hardly has the clout to tell the Brits what to do. For that you have to look elsewhere. Surely it would have to be a more influential country, perhaps one which operates several military bases in the UK, to pick only one consideration out of a hat. As it is now no question can be answered as the CPS is keeping mum on the subject.
Of course one doesn’t have to spend too long reading between the lines to figure it out…
All you need to know about American cops.
That is all.