Tinker ☀️
C.E.O. of UnitedHealthcare Insurance Assassinated at Investors Conference in downtown Manhattan NYC
Assassin rode off on a bicycle and has not been caught. Described as wearing a ski mask. Average height, build, and dress.
#united #unitedHealthCare #Assassination #healthInsurance #NYC
Dennis Faucher :donor: :mastodon:
@tinker That's crazy. Gentleman leaves behind a wife and two kids. Awful.
Tinker ☀️
@dennisfaucher - Yeah it gets hairier when you read of how many wives and kids were left behind after denied insurance claims.
Or considering how many assassinated mob bosses left behind wives and kids too.
This isn't cut and dry.
The man had the power of life and death and often chose death to increase profit. He was even at an investors event where he promised to make others profit off of death.
Avitus
@dennisfaucher @tinker Millions of spouses and children in families that don't have millions of dollars are left behind every year when insurance denies coverage for life-saving care.
Cybarbie
@tinker Assassination is not the right word here - 'targeted killing' or just 'murdered'. I'm not trying to be a grammar nazi either.
Robert Link
Robert Link
@nf3xn @tinker As head of a company that size he was hardly a "private individual." We do not know the motive of the assassin. Might be paid for by another rich fuck who lost money when the victim cashed some stock, that's the theory that makes most sense to me. But what it wasn't: It wasn't an jealous husband or a starving peasant behind this. Someone with power wants to send a message.
Tinker ☀️
@nf3xn - We do disagree.
Cybarbie
@tinker Then I miss your political point entirely since afaik he was a private individual and we do not know the motive of the assailant.
Tinker ☀️
@nf3xn - I want to frame this discussion first. I fully respect your stance and disagreement and I think having this conversation is an important one, so I appreciate you engaging with me. I can absolutely be wrong and have room to be corrected.
With that!
We do not know the motive yet. You are correct.
I am positing that the motive is *likely* (again I could be wrong) to be political.
Here's how I reached that conclusion:
- The method of killing was planned and methodical. The Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures of the killer indicate an understanding of the act, training, pre-operational intelligence gathering, and an accounting for escape.
- He knew the victim's movements and plans. He arrived at the location prior to the victim, waited for the victim to arrive, and hit the victim just as they were entering the building. He engaged in close combat, fired multiple rounds in an effort to kill, and then methodically escaped.
- He took effort to hide his identity. He wore nondescript clothes and a mask.
- His method of escape was a bicycle that has little identifying markings and can easily be stolen. That method of travel works very well in a large city like new york where it separates the killer from the victim and creates distance quickly. The bike can be tossed easily and the victim can move to get into a car or subway, or hide, etc once enough distance has been established.
- He left quickly and wasn't seen hanging around. This indicates that his escape path was planned (and perhaps practiced).
- He did not seek to rob the victim. The death was the purpose of the encounter.
Now. I don't know whether the person is a professional - meaning this is what they do for a living. Or whether it was an interested party that took the time to prepare. Either way though, the methods were the same.
So we've established that it was a "professional" or at least "skilled" killing. This indicates that it was not in the heat of a moment due to a disagreement, it wasn't a mugging due to lack of robbery, location, method, etc.
Ok.
Why do I think it's political.
It certainly COULD have been... say, his wife hiring a killer after finding out her husband had a love affair. But I don't imagine it would have been done so publicly.
In fact, the public nature points to it being a political act as well.
This was the CEO of a health insurance company meeting at an INVESTOR event.
In the current climate of the US as it relates to politics, economy, and healthcare, this CEO was a prime target for a politically motivated killing.
In traditional warfare, enemy combatants, soldiers, and generals are "valid" targets. (Valid here means serving to further the ends of a military goal).
In asymmetrical warfare, softer targets such as production plants, economic targets, critical infrastructure are "valid" targets (they cripple an enemy's ability to conduct violence down the line).
In political warfare (terrorism, revolutions, class warfare, etc), politicians and royalty are "valid" targets in that they are both decision makers and act as example killings.
When the local politics contain an element of corporate oligarchy (such as the US where monied corporate interested write actual laws and sway politics and economy through lobbying), CEOs become "valid" targets (again furthering the goal of a political movement engaging in violence).
So I certainly disagree with the idea that a CEO of a publicly traded company that determines the literal life and death of their clientele and the greater politic to be a "private" citizen. In many elements of warfare and political unrest - CEOs are fully "valid" targets (again, measuring this in a political science and threat assessment model).
So.... we don't know the motives as no one has claimed responsibility nor issued motives. no one has been caught yet, etc et al.
But based on the circumstances of the killing, the location, the background of the victim, and the TTPs of the killer, I feel quite assured in my assessment that this was a political assassination.
Time will tell.
(cc @krypt3ia
Tinker ☀️
@nf3xn @krypt3ia - Yep! I am. Killing this CEO and killing Elon Musk (prior to any cabinet appointments) could certainly be within the same motive space.
Cybarbie
@tinker @krypt3ia Indeed the lines are blurred. If someone offed Elon - you could say that was political. So I did not realise that was exactly what you were saying about this individual?
Robert Link
@nf3xn @tinker @krypt3ia Why? Why be wary of using any particular word for this killing? What makes you need to correct the word choice? How does it matter if I say it's a mob hit or an assassination?
Cybarbie
@tinker @krypt3ia I appreciate you taking the time to explain your thinking. I would be extremely wary myself of any CEO killing or any, say F500 company automatically becoming an 'assassination' - even though every last one of them plays politics to some extent. Very happy to accept your analysis - probably you know more about the guy than I do.
Cybarbie
@NosirrahSec @tinker @krypt3ia Again I was not making a value judgement. He may well have got what he so richly deserved. I just do not want to elevate CEOs to some important status, nor would I want 'assassinate' to become synonymous with 'bitch had it coming'.
Robert Link
@nf3xn @NosirrahSec @tinker @krypt3ia "... I just do not want to elevate CEOs to some important status..." Infantile and naive. They are an important status. They are the rich , they are lunch for the guillotine. #EatTheRich
NosirrahSec 🏴☠️
@tinker @nf3xn @krypt3ia I couldn't possibly, even the tiniest bit, give a fuck that this piece of shit got what he deserved.
I am not normally so callous, but there's a SPECIAL place in the deepest hole of existence for scum like that.
This "person" has destroyed so many lives through sheer, unadulterated, greed; the sort of uncaring, cold, calculation of others' lives as chattel for dollars.
May he rot in piss.
Cybarbie
@phaedral @tinker @krypt3ia Because it would not be true obviously.
Robert Link
@nf3xn @tinker @krypt3ia Of all the potentially inaccurate or "untrue" things in the world, this is the one that bothers you, that someone might consider, absent evidence to the contrary, that this was an assassination?
https://www.bennetyee.org/http_webster.cgi?isindex=assassinate&method=exact
Darwin Woodka
I've been warning about something like that happening for a while now when someone's claim gets denied. Someone dies or can't get get care and it sends their loved one off the deep end... Especially now with the abortion bans, when the "wrong woman" dies. These people running things need to realize how dangerous it is to fuck around with people's healthcare.
Robert Link
@darwinwoodka @tinker Doesn't feel like a disgruntled customer, to me. I'm more inclined to think he pissed off someone with power.
Cybarbie
@phaedral I understand you, like many people, are having an emotive response to the killing and I in no way seek to deminish or devalue that. For me it is interesting to have a more objective discussion around reporting anomalies re:pro hit or keen amateur e.g being able to clear a jam is firearms 101, yet how did he know where to be and when, a fucking bike? lol ok. Why was the CEO in town and so on.
Robert Link
@nf3xn Those are great talking points...which we're just now getting to because of your thirst for lexical purity. The smooth in-and-out, the absence of a manifesto, and I'm suddenly seeing in my mind's eye, a western and someone shouting something like "I'm the guy who shot Jesse James!" Definitely feels pro to me.
Robert Link
@nf3xn Oh, there was a capture? I missed that.
Robert Link
@nf3xn The #DenyDefendDepose message on the casings might go to support your position about this being "an amateur" rather than a mob hit, but, then, I think that would also support the label "ideologically motivated assassination" (since "assassination" itself really just means murder.)
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