Tag: Whistle Blower

Closing Thought–27May24

I hope everyone is enjoying their Memorial Day (observed) holiday.

It is a bit hot down here predicted to be 108 today….hope you day is better and cooler than ours.

This is a draft that I forgot about….sorry for the timing.

Remember the days when Putin’s critics were falling out windows at an alarming rate?

Well it seems that we have similar problem here in the US…..they are not Putin critics but rather Boeing whistleblowers.

If you will recall the original Boeing whistleblower about the shoddy safety died suddenly when he was due to testify….looks like lightening has struck twice….

Another whistleblower who had testified about Boeing’s safety protocols has died.

As the Seattle Times reports, Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor with Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems who raised concerns about its manufacturing process and allegedly substandard parts, has died after a two-week-long battle with a fast-acting infection at the age of 45.

The former auditor was said to be in good health before he got sick and began having significant trouble breathing. Soon after entering the hospital, he developed both pneumonia and the rapidly-spreading staph infection MRSA, and ultimately succumbed to the latter.

Based in Wichita, Kansas, Dean had been fired by Spirit — which was spun out from Boeing nearly 20 years ago in an outsourcing push and shouldn’t be confused with the discount flight company Spirit Airlines — in April 2023 after he repeatedly tried to sound alarm bells about the manufacturing processes for parts that went into Boeing’s 737 jets, as the Seattle Times previously reported.

After it was discovered that he’d missed a separate manufacturing flaw in the 737 parts, Spirit sacked Dean. He then filed a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration and a whistleblower complaint with the Department of Labor, alleging that managers ignored safety concerns and mistakes and that he’d been fired wrongfully.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/another-boeing-whistleblower-died

This is strange that this ‘mysterious ailment’ seems to prefer Boeing whistleblowers….how do you treat that?

This has all the earmarks of an up and coming made for TV movie.

I will be watching for the next attack of that ‘mysterious ailment’.

Please take a few moments to remember those that gave their lives in service of this country.

Happy Memorial Day (observed)!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Beware Of Russian Windows

As the pandemic rages I wrote about an interesting development in Russia among Russian pandemic doctors.

It seems they are falling out windows….at least three so far….

Three Russian doctors working to treat coronavirus patients have mysteriously fallen out of windows in recent weeks, underscoring the country’s struggling health care system — and leading to suspicions of foul play.

On April 24, Natalya Lebedeva, the chief of emergency medical services at a training base for Russian astronauts, fell out of a window at the hospital where she was being treated for a Covid-19 infection and died.

Yelena Nepomnyashchaya, the top doctor at a hospital in Siberia, fell out of a window during a conference call at her hospital and died on May 1 after a week in intensive care.

The next day, ambulance doctor Alexander Shulepov fell from a second-floor window at the hospital where he worked and had been receiving treatment for Covid-19. He remains in serious condition with a fractured skull.

Russian authorities are investigating all three incidents, and there is no official indication yet of what happened to the physicians. The circumstances around their falls, though, are more than a little suspicious.

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/6/21248553/coronavirus-russia-doctors-windows-death

Fascinating stories……makes me suspicious of the excuses for the deaths…..

Then I read about a whistle blower in Russia that walk out a window….another window story?

A Russian police major plunged to her death not long after testifying against her old boss in a criminal-extortion case, the Moscow Times reports. The body of Yekaterina Mishkina, 37, was caught on security cameras lying near an apartment building in the city of Khabarovsk (Russia.liveaumap.com has a screen capture), where she apparently fell from the fifth floor. Security cameras are said to show her trying to reach the roof, giving up, and going back down a few flights. Unconfirmed reports say Mishkina had testified against an ex-boss who allegedly extorted money from subordinates. Seems the extortion case was opened after the former boss had gone into retirement.

Regional police in Khabarovsk, roughly 5,000 miles east of Moscow, have begun investigating Mishkina’s fall—though a spokeswoman said the lead investigator is “on yet another vacation.” A Russian news outlet is quoting an anonymous source close to the probe who said officials uncovered a note in Mishkina’s purse with a to-do list she’d only partly completed: “This indicates that what happened wasn’t spontaneous,” the source said. Mishkina was a divorcee with a 14-year-old daughter. Her death comes after at least three Russian health-care workers recently fell from windows amid the coronavirus outbreak, as have two young journalists.

What is it about Russian windows?

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, you Know

“lego ergo scribo”

As The Whistle Blows

A new opportunity for the grand standing politicians that do love to act up for the cameras.

It is that call to Ukraine by Pres. Trump and someone in the intel service found it disturbing and wrote to his IG….you are caught up with this saga……..and now we have the rest of the story….

We begin the saga with the transcript of the accusation……

Wednesday brought the release of a rough transcript of President Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader. Thursday brings the release of the nine-page whistleblower report that followed. Read it for yourself here. It makes two central allegations: that President Trump asked a foreign leader to interfere in the 2020 election on his behalf, and that alarmed White House officials then tried to “lock down” all records of the call. Details:

  • Interference: “In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple US government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election,” wrote the unidentified intelligence official in the complaint, per the Washington Post. “This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals,” says the complaint, referring to Joe Biden. “The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph W. Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General (William) Barr appears to be involved as well.”
  • ‘Lock down’: “In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple US officials that senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced—as is customary—by the White House Situation Room,” say the complaint, per the New York Times. “This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.”
  • Specifically: White House officials say they were directed by White House attorneys “to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored,” per the complaint.
  • ‘Personal gain’: White House officials “told me that there was already a discussion ongoing with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials’ retelling, that they had witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain.”
  • Trump strikes back: As the House begins an impeachment inquiry over the matter, Trump issued an all-caps rebuttal on Thursday: “The Democrats are trying to destroy the Republican Party and all that it stands for,” he wrote. “Stick together, play their game, and fight hard Republicans. Our country is at stake!”

Reminder–release of a rough transcript of President Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader.

Do yourself a favor and read the document before you try to pretend you understand what is happening.

Now we have the Congressional Hearing……

President Trump has questioned the patriotism of the intelligence official who filed a whistleblower complaint against him, but the acting director of national intelligence feels otherwise. “I think the whistleblower did the right thing,” Joseph Maguire said Thursday during testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, per Reuters. “I think he followed the law every step of the way.” Maguire also defended his initial refusal to release the whistleblower report to Congress, saying the matter was unprecedented in how it touched on “complicated and sensitive issues including executive privilege.” Maguire’s testimony began just after the House panel made a declassified version of the whistleblower report public.

Maguire thinks this case “is unique and unprecedented,” said Maguire. He added that even he doesn’t know the identity of the whistleblower, while deeming the complaint “credible” and “important,” reports the Hill. Committee Chair Adam Schiff said the complaint showed that Trump “has betrayed his oath of office, betrayed his oath to defend our national security, and betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution.” But GOP Rep. Devin Nunes countered with sarcasm: “I want to congratulate the Democrats on their latest information warfare effort against the president,” he said in his opening remarks.

Read the report……made a declassified version of the whistleblower report public. 

Not to let the process go forward our president attacks everything that he can….the process, the evidence and the people……

It’s another day of non-stop developments on the impeachment front—including the release of the whistleblower report and the testimony of the director of national intelligence—and President Trump made some related headlines of his own. Speaking at a breakfast Thursday morning, the president likened the still-unidentified person who filed the whistleblower complaint to a spy who committed treason, reports the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper obtained a recording of Trump’s remarks at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York. Highlights and related developments, including a report that the whistleblower is a CIA officer.

  • Tough words: Trump said the person who filed the complaint is “almost a spy,” as is anyone who gave him details about the phone call. “I want to know who’s the person, who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information?” Trump said. “Because that’s close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”
  • Other comments: Trump lashed out at the whistleblower in particular because he did not directly hear the famous July phone call between Trump and Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky; he called reporters “scum;” he insulted Joe Biden’s intelligence and reiterated that it’s Biden who should be the focus of an investigation; and he accused Democratic senators including Chris Murphy of Connecticut of having “strong-armed” Zelensky on a visit there.
  • CIA official? The New York Times reports that the whistleblower is a CIA officer who worked at the White House but has since ended that assignment. The newspaper does not identify the officer by name, and his attorneys would not confirm. The complaint made public on Thursday suggests he is “an analyst by training” and “steeped in details of American foreign policy toward Europe” with a particular expertise in Ukraine politics, per the Times.
  • Giuliani: Asked about the whistleblower’s allegation that senior White House officials were so alarmed about the phone call they tried to “lock down” its contents, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani tells CNN he has “no knowledge of any of that crap.” He specifically refuted the allegation that two State Department officials spoke to him to “contain the damage” after Trump’s phone call. At Vanity Fair, an analysis by Bess Levin poses the question, “Will Trump Throw Rudy Giuliani Under The Ukraine Bus?”
  • Pelosi: The House speaker says it’s clear what the newly released whistleblower report reveals: “This is a cover-up,” Nancy Pelosi told reporters, reports Politico. Then she repeated, “This is a cover-up.” Earlier, Trump accused Pelosi of being “hijacked by the radical left.”
  • Takeaways: A Washington Post analysis has takeaways from the whistleblower report, and Pelosi would agree with No. 1: “The White House allegedly tried to bury the Trump-Zelensky call.”

Yesterday was a day that should be studied….but all that will be seen is the attacks and the babble…..

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Whistleblowing

Yep you guessed it!  Time for one of the Professor’s historic perspectives.  (and the peasants weep)

There is a wealth of opinions around those people that have leaked information to Wikileaks….to some they are heroes to others they are traitors….

My first experience with a whistle blower was Daniel Ellsberg and the release of the “Pentagon Paper”(you may dash for the Google button now you need the exercise)….then there was other major “blowers” Manning and Snowden….there have been others but they were minor compared to those three.

you may call these people anything you like but the fact is that whistle blowing is a duty to the nation…..

John McCain and Paul Ryan and numerous other super-patriots condemned President Obama’s pardon of Chelsea Manning.

In 1778 the Continental Congress ruled that “it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states.”

Other pro-whistleblower legislation has been passed in recent years.

Apparently too many do not understand the term “duty”…..

Our nationalist leaders don’t care about any of this. They just want to make sure no one’s “gonna mess with us.” But as more of our misdeeds go unreported, more and more of the world is learning to hate us.

Personally, I have no problem with whistle blowers….any time we can expose the governmental darkness to the public light then they should be celebrated.

Class dismissed!

Whistleblowing As An Art

Whistle Blowers in our history have been hailed as heroes and traitors…..these people take transparency and the public’s right to know the facts seriously…..

Back in my youthful days the hero was Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon Papers….a report that told the story of our involvement in Vietnam and it was not the “approved” version the government fed to the media.

Then there was Manning who released a bunch of “classified” stuff that told a different version the the accepted one…..

Finally, the latest whistle blower to make the news has bee Edward Snowden……

In this foreword from The Assassination Complex, a new book about drone warfare, the whistleblower explains why leaking information about wrongdoing is a vital act of resistance….

I’ve been waiting 40 years for someone like you.” Those were the first words Daniel Ellsberg spoke to me when we met last year. Dan and I felt an immediate kinship; we both knew what it meant to risk so much – and to be irrevocably changed – by revealing secret truths.

One of the challenges of being a whistleblower is living with the knowledge that people continue to sit, just as you did, at those desks, in that unit, throughout the agency; who see what you saw and comply in silence, without resistance or complaint. They learn to live not just with untruths but with unnecessary untruths, dangerous untruths, corrosive untruths. It is a double tragedy: what begins as a survival strategy ends with the compromise of the human being it sought to preserve and the diminishing of the democracy meant to justify the sacrifice.

Source: Edward Snowden: ‘Governments can reduce our dignity to that of tagged animals’ | US news | The Guardian

Legal or not….I still support people that have the gonads to buck the system and release information that they public needs to know……most of the condemnation comes from people that have no idea of what has been released other than what some high paid pundit tells them….it is usually a different story when they learn that their rights are being violated….then their tune usually changes.

Personally, I do not want to be in the dark about the actions of my government……but that is me.