• experbia@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I just can’t imagine an executive at Boeing going out and hiring a hit man

    Really? That’s weird, I totally can. It’s an exceptionally narrow-minded and short-sighted knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat of one’s executive career. Most coked-out executives already have a massive god complex once they get their MBA and are installed above the proles workers. I can absolutely realistically imagine one Boeing executive getting angry enough and coked-out enough to just decide, “fuck it, I’m going to fix this problem for us before he threatens my career and reputation any more”.

    The information you present about whistleblowing being stressful is fair. He may indeed have been driven to kill himself instead of being straight-up assassinated like others believe. I refuse, however, to give the benefit of doubt to a massive corporation who has already demonstrated a complete lack of regard for human life and an extremely poor track record of moral and ethical decision-making. This needs to be investigated under the assumption that a hit is an entirely possible reality. Unless you’d rather that nobody blows the whistle on anything in the future - you’ve already demonstrated that it’s an incredibly stressful action. If there’s the lingering remote possibility that you can be simply assassinated over it and everyone will look the other way, nobody will ever raise their voice again. The nature of his actions before his death demand a comprehensive and exhaustive investigation into if any person from Boeing had anything to do with it whatsoever, or whistleblowing will continue sliding into something only the insane consider.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Really? That’s weird, I totally can.

      While Boeing executives may be criminals, they’re pretty much exclusively white collar criminals. They went to business school, not the military. They come from rich households. They don’t have gang or organized crime affiliations. How would they know anything about hiring hit men?

      Hiring a firm to do PR and to dig up dirt on a whistleblower, sure, that’s within their skillset. That’s even something they can brag about in board meetings because it’s legal. It’s the kind of thing they can google, or have a secretary research for them. It doesn’t matter if transcripts leak. But, hiring a hit man, how do they know they won’t get caught – and this time for the kind of crime where people actually get sent to real prisons?

      This needs to be investigated under the assumption that a hit is an entirely possible reality.

      Sure, they should work under the assumption that it was a very careful hitman who made it look like a suicide. They should be 10x more careful than they normally would if they even suspected it might be a suicide. But, I still think driving him to suicide is much more likely.

      IMO, the kind of press this is getting is part of the reason I don’t think it was a hit. If this were Russia, sure. A hit sends the message to anybody else that they better not think of doing the same thing. The press will tell whatever story the government wants. Even on social media nobody very few people will speak up in Russia. But, in the US, this death is going to draw so much more attention to Boeing. Just look at how many articles there are about the whistleblower’s death vs. how many there were about him beforehand. Corporations are used to managing news cycles when it comes to legal cases and congressional hearings. Those are boring and don’t tend to go viral. But a whistleblower dying as he was giving testimony, that’s exciting, it’s like the movies, so it’s all everyone’s going to talk about.

      Unless he had even more damaging information that he somehow didn’t give to anybody yet, despite the fact he had already been testifying, it seems like the damage his death does is much higher than the damage his testimony would have done.

      • ysjet@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Frankly speaking, whether or not a hitman was hired, Boeing is culpable.

        Organizing a concerted effort to drive someone to suicide is just as illegal as murdering them. End of story.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          If there’s evidence they organized a concerted effort to drive someone to suicide, definitely. Otherwise they’re just culpable for gross violations of safety that have cost lives of airline passengers.

      • EchoCT@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        But, in the US, this death is going to draw so much more attention to Boeing.

        Attention sure, nothing will happen to Boeing though. They own too many politicians, and too many powerful people need them to stay where they are. I have no doubt they killed him.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          Attention sure, nothing will happen to Boeing though.

          There’s more of a chance of something happening now than there was before the whistleblower died.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        You didn’t think executives would resort to violence?

        Let me introduce you to Coca Cola and Shell. And the East and West India Companies before them.

        These guys approved MCAS knowing it could create situations that were were unrecoverable. They aren’t above killing people for profit.

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        While Boeing executives may be criminals, they’re pretty much exclusively white collar criminals. They went to business school, not the military. They come from rich households. They don’t have gang or organized crime affiliations. How would they know anything about hiring hit men?

        Someone has never seen the first RoboCop movie.