It would be really good to get as much information about these deaths (and closure for the families)
PS. for arguments sake, if another Boeing whistleblower would get a sudden disease I would be more inclined to think that maybe there is some chemical/mechanical exposure in the Boeing / Spirit factories rather then some Michael Clayton-type action...
Either way, rest assured that in the real world, a hypothetical executive who was convicted of ordering a hit would end up being treated the exact same way as a mafioso who did the same.
Sure, but the point is they'll never be convicted.
Why not? Are they special because they hurt people indirectly instead of directly?
> a hypothetical executive who was convicted of ordering a hit
Well, there's the rub. They would have to be convicted. How often are executives held accountable for anything their company does?
But yeah, white color crime that for example kills people (deadly pollution for example) should absolutely be treated like murder, or manslaughter at the very least. Why the hell not?
Looking at Nestle's historic stock performance I see no (significant) change around 2005 or 2012.
[0] - https://www.dw.com/en/nestle-under-fire-over-colombian-murde...
If boeing is SO important to the government that justice doesn't matter, then it's probably a fuckload easier to bribe a judge or two and make sure the court cases never get anywhere than to orchestrate not one, but two, clandestine hits.
Further, why the fuck would you do the hits now? In both cases the information was brought out YEARS ago, and already in court. It hardly matters if they're alive or dead at this point.
However, Boeing executives can (and should) get in to trouble. They probably care very much about what comes to light in court.
If the trial concludes with “Yes boing knew the planes were not safe but let people fly in them” it doesn’t matter how important it is to the US, no passenger will want to fly them.
2. As last resort: Us Gov can take over and actually reform Boeing (fixing public perception)
And there is whole continuum between 1 and 2.
(I really doubt that anything shady happened with this pneumonia; but IF something shady was done, US will make effort to preserve/save national aviation giant)
Also humans have startlingly short term memories.
Even if all US airlines wanted to switch, it would take Airbus a few decades to deliver replacements, by which time the issue will be forgotten (unless they keep crashing and falling apart midair).
US airlines will probably not be allowed use chineese planes as replacements.
I’m not trying to minimise Boeing’s responsibility, just saying that assuming the company starts to turn things around, nothing that comes out of the trial will affect the future of Boeing the company much, but it might well be catastrophic for the top brass.
Boeing does do highly classified things in other branches of the company that have nothing to do with any of this, even then nobody would be assassinated for the most egregious espionage outside of some absurd movie plot scenario. Spies go to prison if they’re not recruited for counterintelligence.
Influenza and MRSA would be very odd assassination tools.
I have in mind for instance the Taiwan frigate scandal that has seen all sort of mysterious deaths, including Thiery Imbot (former DGSE, and son of former head of the DGSE), who died falling from a window in Paris. The official investigation blamed the wind which will make anyone who lived in Paris laugh.
So, I don't know, but not implausible.
It's a warning to future whistleblowers.
When Putin's regime punishes a critic or dissident, it is not done to stop this particular critic disclosing something sensitive. It is done as a warning to future critics. If you think this principle is never applied by western agencies, look at what happened to Julian Assange - after being prosecuted for 12 years the dude has lost it and Ecuador has kicked him out for smearing faeces on embassy walls.
Additionally, western corporations were, multiple times, accused of being involved in assassinations of union leaders in developing countries.
And they used to do it in the USA, in 1920's.
https://prospect.org/features/coca-cola-killings/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/88n97g/3-union-leaders-were-...
> Additionally, western corporations were, multiple times, accused of being involved in assassinations of union leaders in developing countries.
Unions are the kryptonite of capitalists and threaten their very existence, so it isn't that out of field; if we are to make the parallel, it means there is something in what they know that threatens the very existence of Boeing and I fail to imagine what
I hope not because that’s exactly the risk in entertaining baseless conspiracy theories. If whistleblowers are disincentivized by conspiracy theories then why does Boeing need to go to the trouble of actually pulling off a conspiracy?
... but I'm like 99.9998% confident this is actually just a series of non-malicious, tragic coincidences rather than a conspiracy.