> Google says that each worker it fired actively disrupted its offices, while the workers dispute the claims, saying some of those fired did not even enter the company’s office on the day of coordinated demonstrations against the company.
Isn't this a pretty critical point that the Washington Post should have looked into a bit more?
They probably got the list of people to fire from some list of people who replied on some internal message board.
Far easier to prove involvement when there is a written record, rather than evidence of you entering a building (you might have other reasons to be there).
I guess you could "disrupt" the productivity of an "office" without physically being there, but ultimately at-will employment probably gives Google a lot of leeway here.
What's there to investigate? "Actively disrupted" is impossible to define. Google may consider it a disruption if you are organizing a protest, even if not participating in it, or if the protest hasn't happened yet. An employee may feel like their peaceful sit-in didn't disrupt anything. Ultimately Google is the one making the decision.
You can disrupt an office without entering the office. Just stand outside and block the entrance, yell at people trying to enter the office, or bang pots and pans and create a disturbance.
(I have no idea what happened at Google. The article is behind a paywall for me.)
There are literally hundreds of videos and witness testimony evidencing war crimes perpetrated by Israel. There are even mass graves being uncovered which is reported by mainstream media. Humanitarianaid is being held back or bombed by IDF. What on Earth are you talking about? How can one dispute that Israel is a genocidal apartheid?
All the same and more also re: Hamas. Who are the elected representatives of the Palestinian people.
This fight is the same as trying to intervene in the drunk, abusive couple down the street’s fight of the day. As is 90% of anything in the Middle East.
No one is ‘clean’, but some are more palatable than others in some contexts. And if G or others won’t do business with the ‘officially more palatable’ option (in this case Israel, per the US gov’t), then it hurts their bottom line - which is also Google Employees bottom line.
And Google can’t ignore the US gov’t, due to both revenue and regulatory involvement, especially now.
If you’re looking for sainthood, non-profits are an option.
> There are literally hundreds of videos and witness testimony evidencing war crimes perpetrated by Israel
What counts as a war crime depends (among other factors) on the knowledge and intentions of the military commanders ordering the attack, and I don’t see how any of these videos or testimony can answer that.
> How can one dispute that Israel is a genocidal apartheid?
Let me talk specifically about the "genocidal" aspect, because Apartheid is a separate topic.
If you're coming from a place of "of course Israel is committing genocide", I don't think it very likely that I'm going to convince you otherwise. That is the "default" narrative in many circles (just like the opposite narrative also exists in many circles). That said, I'll do my best to explain why I think that claims of genocide are very wrong.
> There are literally hundreds of videos and witness testimony evidencing war crimes perpetrated by Israel.
First, there are for sure war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers. Every war crime should be condemned, investigated and prosecuted. Though I don't think there are hundreds of war crimes documented, at least not serious war crimes (serious as in causing bodily harm or death to someone).
That said, war crimes, while horrible, are an unfortunate reality that happens in almost every war. War crimes and genocide are separate things.
Genocide requires Israel intentionally trying to kill Gazans, or at least part of Gaza. That's a big accusation, and it isn't backed up, at all, by the actual actions of Israel. Israel maybe kills "too many" civilians for the amount of militants it kills (though even that is debateable), but it is targeting militants. It isn't going in there and purposefully killing civilians, for the most part, though horrible mistakes do happen all the time.
If you compare the amount of dead in Gaza to almost any modern war, there are far less dead in Gaza. And considering that Israel could do what other countries have done, which is intentionally kill civilians - the fact that there aren't more dead isn't a question of ability, but of will. Israel doesn't want to kill innocent civilians.
Most of the videos you cite are either the kinds of terrible things that happen in every war, or genuine war crimes (which do happen), or, as is often the case, an incident which looks different without having context. This is a war in an urban environment, in which Hamas is doing everything in its power to cause more Palestinian casualties, not less.
> Humanitarianaid is being held back or bombed by IDF.
This is partially true, and I'm very angry at Israel for not allowing even more aid in. But aid isn't being bombed (except for mistakes, which do unfortunately happen). And it's not accurate to blanket say "aid is being held back" - Israel lets in hundreds of aid trucks every day.
I think Israel should do a lot more, don't get me wrong, but if your impression is that literally no aid is getting in, that's very very far from reality.
> There are even mass graves being uncovered which is reported by mainstream media.
This is a story that's only a few days old. I don't think it's fair to draw conclusions on it just yet. The media has a terrible track record of taking claims against Israel at face value, only a few days later backing up the Israeli version, which often vindicates Israel. E.g. the infamous "hospital bombing" in which Israel killed 500 people, which after the fact turned out to be not even an Israel bomb, and only a few dozen died there anyway.
This kinda talking points get muddy when said militants (more like suspected militants) were target specifically when they arrived home with their families.
Besides that, all the talking about Israel not targeting civilians, being interested in protecting civilians, and not deliberately holding back help all of these are Israel talking points; so conceding authority is crazy, not because we are talking about any specific country, but because we are taking at face value statements of an interested party. If you also add that most important humanitarian organizations are ringing alarms, they are not allowing investigations from independent parties, and the domestic discourse is definitely not dovish.
You might be right, there might not be any ill intent from Israel, yet you cannot argue that the conclusion that a genocide is happening is baseless.
> This kinda talking points get muddy when said militants (more like suspected militants) were target specifically when they arrived home with their families.
You're right. And absent further context, I'd consider that to be a war crime. However, there's very little evidence that that is happening - afaik it was one article, which quoted a couple of people in the intelligence units without a clear understanding of their exact position. For all we know, they are junior analysts who don't have the full context.
> Besides that, all the talking about Israel not targeting civilians, being interested in protecting civilians, and not deliberately holding back help all of these are Israel talking points; so conceding authority is crazy, not because we are talking about any specific country, but because we are taking at face value statements of an interested party.
This is kind of true. However, worth noting a few things:
1. Many of these points are backed up by the US. Not all - the US also criticizes some of Israel's actions (as do I). But this only gives it more credibility in the cases where it backs up Israel. Other countries do so as well, and as I pointed out elsewhere, IIRC multiple democracies denounced the ICJ case of genocide against Israel (with multiple autocracies backing it - I certainly know which conclusion I draw from this).
2. Israel is a democracy with a free press. Hence articles like the one about targeting militant's families. There are some very leftist organizations in Israel, and multiple leftist newspapers/journalists. Investigating in real time in a war zone is hard, but most information is eventually discovered and revealed, often by Israeli journalists themselves.
That's paradoxically why democracies sometimes "look worse" compared to autocracies, but also why I trust that many abuses/crimes do eventually get discovered.
3. Everything negative we know is also something we take at face value from an interested party - Hamas itself. This includes the total number of casualties, and some semblance of what is the split between civilians vs militants (though they don't actually provide the number of militants killed).
These numbers are far harder to verify, because Hamas can just make things up and no one really holds them accountable. Again, paradox of autocracies vs democracies.
(That's not to say I think everything is made up or anything - there are obviously tragedies as evidenced by many individual accounts of terrible deaths, including of many civilians!)
> You might be right, there might not be any ill intent from Israel, yet you cannot argue that the conclusion that a genocide is happening is baseless.
Even taking the Hamas death toll numbers totally at face value, and likewise taking Israel's estimates of militants killed also at face value, we can compare the rate of civilian deaths in Gaza vs. in other similar wars fought by the West. And the rates in Gaza are fairly in line with e.g. US war against ISIS in Urban combat. And the situation in Gaza is far harder, as attested by most military experts, because Hamas has had 20 years of rule to entrench themselves in the civilian population.
I think any honest look at the numbers shows that there isn't anything to actually justify calls of genocide, unless you also call the US actions in Iraq/Afghanistan, or the fight against ISIS, also genocide. If you do - ok, that's at least consistent, but I think that's actively misusing that word.
If we just look at the number of dead in most conflicts - they're orders of magnitude more than killed in Gaza. (Obvious tragic exmaple being the Syrian civil war, in which iirc 600k civilians were killed, but also again, Iraq/Afghanistan war in which 150k civilians were killed.)
(And let me caveat this - all human lives lost are tragedies. Even Hamas militants and IDF soldiers are tragic losses, mostly young people thrown into this situation by circumstance.
I only talk about this in terms of broad numbers because that's necessary for understanding this war compared to similar wars, which is the only valid yardstick for what is happening.)
Maybe it's the fact that I just saw the nth video of a WH spokesman dodging a direct question about an independent investigation with the phrase "we are requesting more information from the Israel government" that makes this point ring really hollow to me.
>Everything negative we know is also something we take at face value from an interested party - Hamas itself
Negatives come from several parties. Including as mentioned independent investigation from the most important human rights organizations, investigation that have in the past, corroborated Gaza Health Ministry past figures.
Which is the actual point, independent investigations are needed. I mean I would have hesitance to trust an independent investigation by the US or by "other democracies" (sic), but I would concede if that were a thing. But we get responses in the vein of "Israel is our ally so we choose to believe them".
>That's paradoxically why democracies sometimes "look worse" compared to autocracies
>US actions in Iraq/Afghanistan
Yeah, I don't think those actions were a genocide, but there are some parallels between those conflicts and the current one, the propaganda and lies, the way that the opposing voices are completely ignored, and the veneer that "we are a democracy" so war crimes are either non existent or will be revealed. After all these years, what do we know about the mass murder weapons that caused the destruction of Iraq? Did the checks and balances worked or was the whistleblower arrested and tortured? Didn't we saw Bush have a lapsus just a few years ago about an authoritarian man deciding to invade a country for no reason and the audience just laughed it off?
>I only talk about this in terms of broad numbers because that's necessary for understanding this war compared to similar wars, which is the only valid yardstick for what is happening.
And this is completely false. Genocide scholars have said time and time again that genocide is not about numbers. If you cannot get this basic fact, please avoid stating that a word is being misused.
Because the topic under discussion is about Google firing workers for protesting Google doing business with Israel. The subtitle is: "Some employees protested the tech giant’s contract with the Israeli government. They’ve been let go."
> it is should not be within the purview of a company to make such moral judgements.
Who should, if not the company who makes the product? Nobody? Courts after harm has occurred?
We have these exact controls in place for military hardware. If your company builds missiles, you better believe it's your responsibility not to sell to enemies of the state.
(Edit: I'd like to avoid the parent's particular example, as it's still an extremely polarizing issue. I hope we can still discuss cooperate responsibility in general.)
If you build missiles, you are not responsible for deciding who to sell to. The government is responsible for deciding who you get to sell. You are just responsible for selling only to approved buyers.
> Correct. AI (or other technology) are tools. They can be used for good, they can be used for evil, it is should not be within the purview of a company to make such moral judgements.
So basically when IBM was selling business machines that were being used in the concentration camps to the Nazi government it was ok. And when other US companies were selling all kinds of things including technology to the Nazis, which were used in the war, including for killing actual American soldiers.
And if the Nazis won and were able to implement all they wanted at a global scale, these companies wouldn't be responsible for aiding the Nazi war effort and its eventual triumph.
> people to mask-off with antisemitism trying
Children are being murdered on live video. That's crazy talk at this point. If murdering children is semitism, then you are on the wrong side. If it isn't, then you are just talking nonsense because what they are doing is unjustifiable.
The murder wont go away and the discussion wont stop if you scream 'anti-semitism'. Stop murdering children first.
Of course, Israelis and their supporters will say the same thing.
There is no one party to this state of affairs still alive that threw the first stone. There was October 7, before that there were settlements and annexations, before that there were intifadas, before that there were mandates, civil wars etc, all the while punctuated by stray killings, bombings and rocket attacks, on and on reaching back millennia.
I think plenty of people are tired of the simplistic, reductive, one-side treatment protesters give the issue, as you’re showing here. They think they can dictate to everyone how it should be solved. Condescension like that just never plays well.
Comparing the Israel-Palestine conflict to Nazi Germany is both a qualitative and quantitative error. The degree to which Israel has killed Palestinians is dwarfed by the numbers the Nazis put up. The Nazis invaded many countries, occupying a total area over ten times the size of modern Germany. All that in the span of a decade or two, depending on when you count the start; compared to a conflict that in modern times alone is measured in a hundred years, with a small fraction of the impact. With multiple countries committed to their destruction.
It’s a disappointing comparison and I can’t help but think it’s made deliberately to provoke an emotional reaction.
Wait. What? A company shouldn’t review if the technology it’s selling is used for mass murder? That’s the most batshit point of view I’ve heard in a long time.
Oh please. This sort of blind “Israel is not POSSIBLY incapable of committing the same atrocities every other State is capable of committing” is a uniquely American brand of anti-anti-Semitism. Considering the actual merits and factors of a situation instead of simplifying everything to “yeah, but Jewish people have had a hard time” is exactly the sort of easily consumable useless drivel that doesn’t belong here.
I don’t get the genocide argument. Israel has complete air superiority, if genocide was the goal they could have leveled Gaza in the first day. Casualties would have been at least over 1 million not 30k. And they wouldn’t go door-to-door, drop flyers and knock-bombs (again why bother if genocide is the intent). The fact that the causality count is as low as it is considering they are fighting a genocidal terrorist organization that’s honeycombed itself in heavily populated civilian centers is already an achievement.
I'm not saying they aren't capable of committing war crimes or genocide or whatever other terms you want to use. Clearly Israel is eminently capable of simply flattening Gaza (and Judaea/Samaria if they wanted) and they are restrained enough to not do so.
I'm saying I don't think they are by any objective measure and the constant fixation with accusing Israel of war crimes and genocide, combined with the disgusting amount of antisemitism I've seen after 10/7 has led me to the conclusion that accusing them of imagined crimes is deeply rooted in antisemitism.
Honestly tiresome to see accusations of antisemitism and reference to the Palestinian West Bank as "Judea and Samaria". How does the Palestinian West Bank become Judea and Samaria? Through forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, and/or genocide.
"Greater Israel" can only come about through mass crimes against humanity and expansionist/pseudo-revanchist military adventurism.
Those are but two of the many names those places have had over the years. Was your usage idiomatic, or expressive of an policy desire for Israel to rule over those lands?
Sarcasm, irony and euphemism are modes indirectness, like gallows humour, to help us talk about the horrific without the equivalent of burning our eyes out staring at the sun. It's a coping mechanism.
Sincere and explicit statements of horror have paradoxical outcomes because such words wear thin. They are overused by the disengenuous to wound others. The sincere are forced onto a semantic treadmill seeking different ways to express themselves.
Sigh. When someone shames powerful people on the internet they are generally not expecting the people in question to see it. (Well, except it's about Elon Musk :) The intention is rather to raise awareness among the general public.
I hope I'm not considered a troll for asking this question; I will ask on my main account and hopefully people will check my comment history to understand I am not intending to be belligerent or intentionally dumb.
But why is it that rainbow flags (pride, et al) are considered the pro-Palestinian side in the conflict.
I might be old but I distinctly remember a humanitarian outcry in the 00's because Palestinians were murdering not only Jews and Christians but also homosexuals[0].
I'm not sure of the Israeli stance to be perfectly honest, but it's surprising to me that the only time I had ever heard of LGBTQ+ rights with relation to the Palestinian people it has been with a strikingly deadly tone, yet it seems that in the US the political divide has fallen such that LGBTQ+ people are almost forced to ally with Palestine.
I'm genuinely curious how this happened.
caveat: I'm not interested in emotional responses, if you feel emotional reading this then please just ignore the comment completely, I am not inviting a flame war, this is genuine ignorance and curiousity.
It's about oppressed vs oppressor narratives. LGBTQ people tend to sympathize with the oppressed because most of them have memories of being oppressed themselves. Ive actually asked a few about this and they tend to agree that Hamas and palestinains in general would not form a government they would support, but theyre not willing to overlook how oppressed the palestinians have been for the past 80 years.
This oppressed ~= virtuous and support-worthy logic, whose mainstream popularity is a relatively new thing, frankly doesn't make much sense to me. IMO, if you are oppressed, you have a right to be not oppressed - and that is all. If you are oppressed and also jerk, you are a jerk and deserve to be treated accordingly, by which I do not mean the oppression, but whatever the usual consequences are for such behavior.
I also think there are a lot of LGBTQ people who support Israel, but are so warry about supporting oppression that they dont voice their opinion. I could go on and on psychoanalyzing the movement but at the end of the day Id say it makes sense that LGBTQ group seems to be so united behind the palestinian cause.
I have a hypothesis that a lot of the people on the "left" who will stridently defend gay rights (which I'm for, being a gay man myself) are in fact the same sort of bullies that in a previous generation would have bashed gay people. That is, being on "the right side" of a debate doesn't mean one is necessarily more enlightened nor empathetic.
Next, remember that not only are there reasonable people on the right that hate/fear the import of hegemonizing cultures into their own societies, but also plenty of bullies on the right who will hate somebody for having the wrong shade of skin.
Put the two together, and you get the meme where this guy has to pick one button out of two, one of them is labelled "gay" and the other one is "Islam".
That's how we end up in the situation where "queers for Palestine" get attacked at a pro-Hamas rally.
In general, the pro-palistinian side is favored by the progressive left, the same group who are also pro-gay/pro-trans etc.
In a lot of ways, the struggles are similar to BLM - there is a great injustice being done by a powerful force funded by the US government. Or again with opposing the US's global war on terror. The people in those groups aren't forced to be on the palenstinians side, but it is logically consistent with the other two.
I, uh, am not sure how a person can hold those views simultaneously.
Success of Palestine will mean oppression of the groups the cause seeks to protect (LGBTQ+ specifically).
Isn't this "paradox of tolerance"-esque, or is there a belief that if the Palestinian people were not being bombarded by an oppressive force: that they would be equitable to LGBTQ causes.
Posted a different comment further in, but in my opinion it doesn't factor much.
For example, right now the USA is quite progressive in general with gay rights compared to many places, which is great, but I would not support the US government invading other countries, or going back to colonization etc.
I can see those two might be opposed if what you wanted was LBGTQ rights at any cost. But for me at least war, and especially one-sided war, is the bigger injustice and other issues are secondary to that.
I think LGBT people might be against mass slaughter of civilians via bombing campaigns of areas heavily populated by civilians. I don't the the various conservative views held by those civilians matters too much in terms of them being slaughtered.
I think this is especially the case when their tax dollars are used for this bombing.
> But why is it that rainbow flags (pride, et al) are considered the pro-Palestinian side in the conflict.
FWIW in the German speaking countries it's the opposite (for obvious historical reasons).
Generally, I think it's ok to demonstrate against atrocities even if the victims are not your "friends". What I do find disturbing is when progressives try to justify the Hamas terror as an act of "resistance" (one famous example being Judith Butler). That is truely fucked up.
I'm sorry but I don't understand and I think I need a longer answer.
I could interpret this three ways:
1) "Leftist Activists"; are a mixed group with some supporting pro-LGBTQ rights and others supporting Palestine.
2) "Leftist Activists"; are a homogenous group, including LGBTQ people, of which they support Palestine (and thus, support a regime that would wish them harm)
3) "Leftist Activists"; are a homogenous group, including LGBTQ people, who will always attempt to ally to the downtrodden, even in cases where the downtrodden would wish them to not exist.
Are any of these correct or is there another interpretation I missed?
It's mostly 2. The harder point to prove, though I think it's true, that much of the pro-Palestinian rhetoric is as much anti-Israel, i.e anti-Semetic. It's hard to discuss subjects like this without nuance so most of my observations/opinions tend to be around trends. But a good comparison could be Ukraine and Russia. Much of the US widely supports Ukraine's plight and fully believe that Russia is a belligerent, colonialist nation fully at fault for the war. Nothing gray about it compared to the Israel/Palestine conflict. And yet you don't widespread hate and mistreatment of ethnic Russians in the US. You can't say the same about the treatment Jews, even those born and raised in the US.
> The harder point to prove, though I think it's true, that much of the pro-Palestinian rhetoric is as much anti-Israel, i.e anti-Semetic.
What? My view is totally different.
Most of the pro-Palestinian people intersect with the same anti-fascists under fire from newly pro-Israel people that previously criticized anti-fascists for punching Nazis.
When alt-right people defaced Jewish synagogues before this conflict I find the people arguing for it to be publicly acknowledged as a hate crime are the exact same people that are pro-Palestine now.
Accurate or not, the perception of someone being a Nazi made them punchable. It's not hard to argue people desiring to punch Nazis are probably not anti-Semetic.
Of course it's hard to argue that. Nazis are the great bogeymen right now, wanting to punch them might have little to do with feelings about Jews, and everything to do with just looking for an outlet to attack "the bad people" however defined.
When we read historical cases of witch trials or executing "demons" or "possessed people", it's the same thing.
This goes back to the oppressors and the oppressed. In the case of Punching Nazis, the way I read it is the meme of the anti-fascist that punched Richard Spencer during an ABC interview in 2017[1][2]. The post-modernis in me also like to point out that before then Punching Nazis was endorsed by Steven Spielberg when he directed Harrison Ford to do that as Indiana Jones[3]. And—of course—the supreme glorifies of violence against Nazis Quentin Tarantino who doesn’t let a movie go by unless a Nazi, a rapist, KKK members, etc. get severely tortured, bombed, burned with flamethrowers, etc.
Back to 2017, Richard Spencer is an actually nazi. He is a white supremacist that routinely spouts hate speech against Jewish people. In the case of the ABC interview the oppressed were Jewish people, and the oppressor was Richard Spencer. The Anti-facist very much cared about the Jewish people when he punched Richard Spencer. If Richard Spencer weren’t an oppressor of Jewish People, he wouldn’t have gotten punched.
I think you are mistaken that you cannot logically support both LGBT rights and Palestine. For example, I support LBGTQ+ rights and would not want people who opposed them in America to be treated the way Palestinians are.
30,000 Uyghur women and children weren’t indiscriminately bombed to death via advanced drones, nor were hundreds of innocent civilians massacred at hospitals in China and buried in mass graves. It’s happening in Palestine as we type.
Instead over 1 million of them are sent to concentration camps, abused and killed to harvest their organs. It's genocide eitherway.
The issue isn't covered is really the difference here.
Beware that reasoning. We only knew about the holocaust very late into the war and there were denials just as you claim right now.
And indeed, when the Nazi's were losing they tried quite hard to hide the evidence, however it was so total and immutable in many cases that it could not be hidden, mostly because the allied powers controlled their lands and had free access to their previously governed population..
Without such access proof rarely escapes and when it does the total brutality is considered impossible; this is exactly what happened during world war 2.
Exactly, yeah. What's happening there is awful and very sad, but there's almost nothing I can do about it, whereas our government provides billions in weapons to Israel
... and trillions in trade to China. US could cut trade ties with China.
This seems to apply to many conflicts, e.g. Sudan. The US could intervene. Now you might say "US tried something similar and that was not exactly a good experience", but the US certainly can intervene. Or, in Lebanon the US, and all countries in the UN security council promised to intervene (and disarm Hezbollah), but just don't do it.
Not intervening is different than actively supporting. We have given ~ a hundred billion and are about to give tens of billions more in no strings attached military aid. We used our UN Veto dozens of times to prevent calling for a ceasefire
Should we intervene for the Uyghurs? Maybe! But this one seems way more obvious
If that were truly the reason there are protests there wouldn't be any support in Europe, when in reality the movements there are far bigger than in the US.
I mean, sorry, but the black flags and open hostility towards Jews shows what at least a large percentage of the movement is really about. Especially in Europe.
The rest of the movement is the same as leftist movements, imho. It's also not about supporting Palestinians it's about fighting the power, ie. attempting to have political impact by "campaigning" for something SO immoral, unacceptable and unrealistic that there is bound to be a fight. It's about the fight, NOT about a solution. And by campaigning I don't mean campaigning in the sense of political campaigning, or even the vitriol spouting semi-threatening Trump is doing, but being so in the way, sabotaging people's lives, that normal people pretty much have to react with violence (because that's the point of blocking, for example, the Golden Gate bridge: to threaten people's livelihoods, and get a strong reaction that way).
It's not about saving tax dollars ... Yes, there's 1% fringe rightists in there. But seriously? It's not about that.
> It's not about saving tax dollars ... Yes, there's 1% fringe rightists in there. But seriously? It's not about that.
That's missing the point about money. Buying the murder weapon is not in the same category as all the inactions that may go into knowing a murder will happen and not ultimately stopping it.
First, no its not about tax dollars, you're right. It's about the US actively participating. Its something we have the power to easily stop doing. If what's happening in Palestine is comparable to the Uyghurs you're conceding that there are human rights problems.
As for antisemitism is Europe, I can't say. You might be right there. But in the US, most of it as far as I can tell is being horrified at pictures and videos of what's happening and feeling responsible. A lot of people hate what happened in the global war on terror and this is very comparable. I won't say that there is Nobody in it for antisemitic reasons here but I think that's a terrible awful reason, I disavow any antisemitism, and i believe that the vast majority of US people in the movement aren't.
The fight vs solution thing, I'm a little baffled by. Yeah the point of blocking the golden gate bridge is to show that things aren't stable in the status quo, that's how protests work. But it sounds like you're saying that getting a reaction is the entire goal and that's uncharitable and untrue
> It's about the US actively participating. Its something we have the power to easily stop doing.
The same goes for the Syrian massacres. US was very clearly providing support for one side of the conflict.
No protests.
Central Africa. Same.
No protests.
Nigeria. Same.
No protests.
Or how about a HUGE ongoing us involvement resulting in lots of dead? Ukraine.
No protests. (and, no, Minimal Thinking Girl protesting by herself doesn't count)
Lebanon. Yemen. Kashmir. Hungary. Finland ... the list goes on and on. What makes this case of support different? We all know what makes it different ...
The difference is extremely clear: Israel is viewed as a key US ally. We give them more foreign aid than any other nation. We got to bat for them very frequently, and almost all of our UN Vetos have been used preventing things from being said to them. The two countries are very connected. When Nigeria eg. does something, we don't rush to approve more weapons immediately.
The closest equivalent imo is South Africa, which the US government was similarly close with and people were Very Mad in almost the exact same way.
& Finally, I truly do not understand the viewpoint that we should give aid to Israel and not Ukraine. I can see the arguments for both or neither or for just Ukraine but this one's baffling. They are currently being invaded by a much bigger power. They are required to use the weapons they get purely defensively.
Armenia and Lebanon have the same problem in the UN, but it only lasts weeks, and then they fail to defend themselves, and the muslim voting block in the UN is happy when they're militarily defeated, and they just don't care about themselves: not about human rights violations by muslims against anyone else. Not even about disgusting human rights violations by muslims against muslims. Look how much effort people put into getting attention for Sudan, and it's just not getting anywhere, and it won't.
Israel seems content to keep Palestine as a ghettoized territory, leaving local administrative matters to Palestinians. How will an Israeli victory, no matter how complete, lead to LGBT Palestinians gaining more rights?
What I'm referring to is that Israel is both "in charge" and "not in charge" of Gaza. They control Gaza's borders and move their troops into Gaza at will. On the other hand of course Gazans do not enjoy Israel's constitutional protections, etc.
Israel didn't "move their troops into Gaza at will", not until this current war. After Israel's disengagement from Gaza, it had no soldiers in Gaza at all.
It also doesn't "control Gaza's borders" alone, fwiw.
> On the other hand of course Gazans do not enjoy Israel's constitutional protections, etc.
Not sure what this is "on the other hand" of exactly. Palestinian's want self-determination, Gaza was an incomplete, one-sided and limited form of that, but a form of that. When you're talking about them enjoying Israeli constitutional protections, you're talking about the opposite - Israel essentially conquering Gaza and annexing it officially, turning Gazans into Israeli citizens. Not an outcome that Israel wants and also not an outcome that Gazans want.
And in the context of LGBT rights, that's an outcome that is almost guaranteed to lead to a huge erosion of LGBT rights in Israel, as it'd be adding millions of voters who currently live in a place and culture in which homosexuals are ilterally thrown off rooftops.
You're right! Thanks for correcting me. I indeed saw that video that was apparently incorrectly attributed to Hamas, when in fact it was Isis.
(Btw, I wasn't "confusing" Hamas with ISIS, I was intentionally misled by that video. I usually try to fact check anything I post but obviously some things get through, so again, thanks for correcting me. I hate disinformation.)
> Not denying that bad stuff happens to gay people in Gaza (such as extrajudicial honour killings) but not aware that it happens like that
Yes, despite me getting this detail wrong, bad things really do happen to gay people in Gaza, as can be found in multiple places. Still, not quite that bad.
> But again my question is: given the above, how would an Israeli victory, no matter how complete, improve things for LGBT Palestinians?
Ah, I was confused why you asked this until I saw this is where the thread started (not by me).
No, you're right, an Israeli victory probably won't help improve things for LGBT Palestinians at all, unless Israel takes over Gaza entirely and starts running it according to more liberal laws. A very unlikely prospect.
anti-Semitic progressives see Jews as White and the Arabs there as people of color.
Look for people talking about Europeans, Settler's (i.e) every Jew in Mandatory Palestine is a settler. People that ignore that the war that gained them the land was a final solution attempt and the only embarrassment (nabka) is the failure to succeed at taht
There's the idea, that TBH I don't fully subscribe, that solidarity is not transactional. But what I do subscribe is that little kids don't bear the blame of what people do against LGBTQ+ communities.
I hope that's enough, there's a lot of documented evidence of pride flags and watermelons in the bio of pro-Palestinian people, almost to the point where many online forums treat it like a meme.
> I might be old but I distinctly remember a humanitarian outcry in the 00's because Palestinians were murdering not only Jews and Christians but also homosexuals[0].
Just because there are anti-lgbt elements in Palestinian society and politics LGBT people wont be pro-genocide and side with Israel.
The proposition defies description no sane person who is not a psychoapath will say "Oh, are they anti-LGBT and they may kill LGBT people? I guess its okay for Israel to murder their children then..."
> I'm not interested in emotional responses
The murder of children cant be reacted to with any other response than an emotional one.
> no sane person who is not a psychoapath will say "Oh, are they anti-LGBT and they may kill LGBT people? I guess its okay for Israel to murder their children then..."
I'd like to strip that sentence of the LGBT context, and point out that the general line of thinking (that there are legitimate reasons for wanting to kill a group of people's children) is actually popular enough to drive major policy. For example, given the historical record, Israeli society has been conditioned to be okay with murdered children and applying disproportionate and devastating force [0]. That state of mind is achieved through diverting the blame for one's atrocities entirely on the other party, and decrying their insanity and evilness for "making you do that" [2], as if one is not responsible for one's own actions, but is entirely reacting to another's action with no capability to alter course.
Think this is far fetched and out of the line? There are 14000 children accounted for as dead as the result of current offensive that strongly suggest otherwise, and the killing is not even over yet.
Murdering children does not require an active war against a territory either [1]. It is simply how things are done in their society.
> I'd like to strip that sentence of the LGBT context, and point out that the general line of thinking (that there are legitimate reasons for wanting to kill a group of people's children) is actually popular enough to drive major policy. For example, given the historical record, Israeli society has been conditioned to be okay with murdered children and applying disproportionate and devastating force
Yes, Im aware that this 'Kill their mothers/children' thing was brought to top-level public policy by their recent foreign affairs minister who for the first time publicly and openly used that rhetoric and it helped her career a lot. After this, their prominent politicians seem to have stopped hesitating from openly calling for it and this is the result.
Without getting into the Palestine/Israel part, something I feel strongly about but cannot phrase nicely in a pithy internet comment - I really think that for someone griping about ignoring nuance or deep analysis you are grossly mischaracterizing trans rights.
Being trans is a huge hassle, and not something done as a lark to get into female spaces. You also ignore transmasc people who are equally oppressed by the new laws coming out of places like Florida and Texas.
> Being trans is a huge hassle, and not something done as a lark to get into female spaces.
I think this might have become a little motte and bailey. There's a whole gamut of people covered by the same rule, and not just people who genuinely have gender disphoria.
There is some nuance there! See my other comment- but I wish is was motte and bailey, that would mean that in general trans rights are respected and I can retreat into the motte of that.
But what's happening in Florida and elsewhere is oppression of any transness, including what you call "genuine". This sort of anti-all-trans ideology has a lot of support unfortunately. And a common tactic by this sort is to pick at only the controversial parts that are right wing talking points.
> Even though much of the actual conflict here is a reaction to males demanding to use female spaces. Any sexism against actual women in this context is disregarded and discarded.
is not true. Being trans of any sort is under attack from the right, see: recent laws in Florida. Calling other people unnuanced while saying this is silly.
My second point is that arguing specific controversial details is a losing battle. Like any group, the left has differences in opinion. I don't want the battles to be infighting about details while we're losing the war.
I have some complicated opinions on this but I'm not going to say them here because that's not going to help anything.
I say this only to clear up the misconception that the left is unnanced in general. Sticking to easy slogans is what works best in hostile online flame threads and if that's all you're looking at I can see why it could come off that way. But if you talk to someone in a friendly noncombattative way I think they will be more likely to share more subtle takes. That's all.
If I can be annoying about language a bit- insisting on calling trans women "trans identifying males" makes you sound anti-trans rights as a whole instead of trying to add nuance to a complicated subject.
I agree there are complications and there's plenty of situations where one oppressed group opresses another and that those are hard to sort out on a purely "support the oppressed" ideology. But when someone starts talking purely about a specific nuance that's been made into a right wing talking point, its hard not to feel like the goal is to deliberately distract from the big picture.
In general though, I think you mischaracterize the left as not having nuance, instead of not wanting to debate nuance with people who are staunchly opposed and just trying to score points. I'm not saying that's what you're going for, but your first comment came off as combatative to me and I think you'll find people are more willing to share nuance and work through uncomfortable contradictions if you start by emphasizing what you do agree with. Talking IRL is much better with this too
"Trans Identifying Males" is a shibboleth used by the UK "gender critical" extremists, and it is exceedingly rare to see it used by a neutral party. Big red flag for a bad faith discussion.
It is a term that comes from gender-critical feminism but this is a mainstream view in the UK, there's nothing extremist about it. It's effectively a sensible middle ground between anti-trans parochialism and trans rights dogma.
Even the term "trans-identifying male" is a middle-ground compromise, to avoid calling them men and to not cede the argument by referring to them as women. In my experience, the most thoughtful and well-considered discussion on this topic has been with gender-critical feminists who have thought critically about their perspective and have it based in the material reality of sex.
> The thing is that people who hold 'progressive' views on these sort of topics tend to see the world through an 'oppressor/oppressed' dynamic with very little nuance applied.
What if your characterization here is borne out of the fact very little nuance is applied?
See also YouTube happily selling millions of dollars in advertising every year to the Orbán regime and pals. If you don't have AdBlock or premium in Hungary you get five minutes of brainwashing before every video.
These are the same regime saying that the fact that gay people exist is propaganda and a threat to children. If Google actually gave a fuck they could start with that.
Any semblance of being progressive is horseshit if you're happy to do business with fascists overseas.
> The advertisements thus formally promote the Hungarian government’s anti-migrant measures. At the same time, they also stress the dangers of migration and the violence of migrants. These advertisements also appeared in countries when allies of the Orbán government, also campaigning with anti-migrant slogans, were competing in parliamentary or local elections. [...]
> Google distinguishes between two types of advertising: political and non-political. The former is subject to stricter transparency rules. [...] Google confirmed that the relevant Hungarian government ads do not violate the terms of use and, as they do not promote political parties or politicians, are not political ads.
Are you not aware of the Nakba or Israel using banned weapons on civilians for decades? I'm not saying hamas' actions are justified but there is no side in this conflict that can confidently claim moral superiority.
This post and siblings all have maybe the most pro-zionist historical reading of the Nakba imaginable. Look into the Irgun organization for instance and you'll realize that the first Jewish settelers in palestine where incredibly violent against native peoples, and the war of 1948 was not entirely unprovoked.
I also have to clarify that I do believe Israel has the right to defend it's interests and retaliate against enemies. That does not make their actions moral.
Starting a war and losing it should have consequences.
They tried to genocide the Jews in 1948 and lost.
If there are no consequences for what they did - they'll just keep doing it until they'll be successful. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what Hamas said about Oct 7 - that they'll repeat it again and again.
If one views what is happening in Gaza as a genocide, then one has to admit that the Palestinians attempted (and succeeded) at genociding Jews multiple times previous to the creation of the state of Israel as well. Most notably the destruction of the Hebron Jewish community in 1929.
The common thread running through Palestinian nationalism from its inceptions is the desire for genocide (though we didn't have the term then) of Jews.
Arab states declaring war on Israel is widely documented part of history. You post does not include supporting arguments for any alternative explanation.
Meanwhile, the arabs that stayed in Israel during that war make up 20% of the population and interestingly enjoy more rights than any arab country.
Arab states declaring war on Israel is a part of history.
Right, but certain other things happened in that time period which are hugely important also.
Meanwhile, [the Palestinians] in Israel enjoy more rights than in [some] Arab countries.
The bigger point is that they have distinctly fewer rights, and are fundamentally less equal as citizens, than a certain other group of people in that country.
Your post does not include supporting arguments for any alternative explanation
There's no need. All of what I'm saying is common knowledge in Israel. It's mostly government propagandists, and Israel's uncritical supporters in other countries who keep rehashing these tired narratives.
> > Meanwhile, the arabs that stayed in Israel during that war make up 20% of the population and interestingly enjoy more rights than any arab country.
> The bigger point is that they have distinctly fewer rights, and are fundamentally less equal as citizens, than a certain other group of people in that country.
No. The 2M Israeli arabs have the same rights as Druze and Jews do. This is a very basic verifiable fact you should be aware of before participating in this discussion.
Your misinterperting my point. I'm not making a political comment on the current conflict. My point is people think Google actually stands for something, but in the end they are a publicly traded company and will act in the interest of their shareholders.
I understand you’re attempting to show an inconsistency. But believing gay people have a right to exist is quite similar to believing Jewish people have a right to exist.
There isn't much of a connection between being Israeli and being gay though. A quick check of the LGBTQ demographics[1] shows that actually Israelis are only a little over twice as likely to be gay vs. the US for example.
> In a sample representative of the Israeli Jewish population aged 18 to 44, it was found that 11.3% of men and 15.2% of women self-reported attraction to the same-gender
> A 2017 Gallup poll concluded that 4.5% of adult Americans identified as LGBT with 5.1% of women identifying as LGBT, compared with 3.9% of men
The figure attributed to Netanyahu in that article is a total of fighters and civilians -- not the "women and children" you claimed above. It's also a very rough estimate.
What does open air prison mean in this context? Would you like to comment why the family of the first minister of Scotland decided it was safe enough to go on holiday in this "open air prison"? Is it common for "inmates" from "open air prisons" to go and work in the neighbouring country while their fellow "inmates" want to wipe out this neighbouring country? Is it common for "inmates" from "open air prisons" to invade their neighbouring countries and murder, rape, burn and drag hostages back to hide in the homes of "innocent civilians" and under schools and hospitals?
Can you think of anything that happened around 2006 that might have made the neighbours not want an open border with this "open air prison"?
James Damore was fired from Google[0] when he went out of his way to ensure his politics were to be kept private. What on earth did these people think would happen if they didn't attempt to keep their politics private?
They're probably quite surprised that they're getting fired. Opposing colonialism was safe politics at Google until Israel started colonizing/raping/genociding Gaza.
That's a pretty big, and IMO false, accusation to throw at Israel.
Unlike abstract "opposing colonialism", which I assume lots of people would get behind, I assume others, like me, find the specific case against Israel to be completely different in many relevant ways.
That is one of the main accusations against Israel among protesters. Do you see how people who believe Israel's actions are colonial in nature might not understand that they would be fired for continuing their long-supported stand against colonialism?
I think it's best to keep all politics, "right" and "wrong" (however you define it) out of business.
But businesses thought they can score some easy brownie points by supporting "good" politics (in any case the kind they thought makes them look better). Well someone turns around and does the other kind of politics - something the firm thinks makes it look bad, and suddenly it doesn't like flags and activism.
Google did nothing about Israeli co-workers at Google sending me messages such as "Do you support Hamas?" They targeted me because I +1ed a memegen post mourning civilians who have died in Gaza.
I'll even explicitly say this: They were on the search experience team.
Multiple of them were also managers. (Both Engineer Managers and Hiring Managers)
Right, and that was understood already. The point I'm making is that (apart from that information) they were drawing unnecessary attention to the coworkers' nationality.
Profoundly disagree. Perhaps in rhetorical or philosophical contexts it may be relevant. But concerning questions of what constitutes acceptable workplace conduct, it is way off the page (and in my view, completely out of line).
Yes, it can certainly be relevant on that and other contextual grounds. It's also where things drift into realm of speculation, away from what we know from the facts at hand.
All I've been saying (which I thought was obvious) was: when considering whether the actions of these people (who sent the "Do you support Hamas?" emails) -- as individuals -- constitute a form of intimidation (and it seems obvious that they do; and from what you said, apparently sanctioned by their higher-ups, no less) --
One has to keep their personal attributes out of the discussion. That's just how the legal and ethical standards for these things work.
Again, thanks for the disclosure. It definitely sounds quite creepy. Especially considering the apparent lack of action taken by the higher-ups.
Read the article. Many of the employees fired were not even on the premises that day. This is 100% pure political reprisals, which is illegal in California.
Joining a union is essentially saying you're ready to throw down for any worker, even a stranger, and you know without having to ask that they've made the same promise to you. Metal as hell, everyone should do it.
> Joining a union is essentially saying you're ready to throw down for any worker, even a stranger, and you know without having to ask that they've made the same promise to you.
No. Joining a union means you agree to collective action. Niche political positions wouldn't really qualify, and if pushed, would actual tear the union apart because just any many people are against as are for.
Children are being murdered in live video in front of the eyes of the entire world. This is not an exaggeration. Those who propagate it are posting videos on the Israeli internet and these are being propagated to the 80% of the world that you call the global south. Them not reaching your eyes because the complicit media in the West keeps them out of sight does not mean that the rest of the world is not able to access them.
All the companies who collaborate with Israel in their activities are being vilified in the rest of the world at this moment. And rightfully so. If IBM selling machinery to the Nazi government during Ww2 so that they could run their concentration camps was a bad thing to do, this is the same. The standing of all these corporations is being affected just like how the standing of the US went to hell with their complicity and the Biden admn. is trying to put out the fire with its hollow pr declarations.
That is the rational, business-angle approach to this. From the human angle, anyone who condones a corporation that helps a vicious extremist government to murder children would be classified as a sociopath. Not 'rational'.
Everyone who abets and aids this and everyone who defends them is complicit with what is happening in Gaza.
...
I know that a lot of you, the tech and business colleagues who are regulars of this forum, will take these statements as 'emotional', 'non-rational', and 'unrealistic' and you will think that the resulting diplomatic and business fallout wont be that bad.
That is not how it seems from the global south. Israel appears as an unrepentant genocidal rogue state and from the US to Europe who aid and abet them are seen as hypocritical fcks. If even Joseph Borrell, the Eu parliamentarian who likes to openly classify Europe as 'a garden' and the rest of the world as 'jungle', started saying that the West is appearing as a hypocrite with its Gaza policy and losing its diplomatic standing and clout in the eyes of the rest of the world, there is no debating what's happening.
Long story short, you are all appearing as hypocritical fcks, including Google who went all the way to lay off those who protested its complicity in what 80% of the world considers a genocide. This wont go away.
(amazing - someone from the global south is telling these people what the people who live there think and what the public opinion is turning towards, and they are downvoting the messenger as a response as if it will make their problem go away)
Folks saying politics should get removed are effectively saying they're fine with the status quo. Its intellectually dishonest for people to not recognize this in themselves with that opinion. Everything we do is inherently political as we are operating in this political landscape.
LGBTQ+ being welcomed in tech in the earlier days is partially what's responsible for the LGBTQ+ being somewhat welcomed in society in general today.
Status quo for companies back then would've been to never support anything LGBT related until 2015. That's something that a lot of people right now would say would be absurd.
IBM has been rightfully criticized in its role in the Genocide of Nazi Germany. "Never again" means understanding what circumstances in society led to the decisions being made back then. "Never again" can't be actuated if speaking against authority is discouraged.
> Its intellectually dishonest for people to not recognize this in themselves with that opinion. Everything we do is inherently political as we are operating in this political landscape.
This is how fundamentalists think, whether religious or political. Everything is somehow tied to their ideology and they want to push it everywhere.
"Bring your whole selves to the office" can work pretty darn well (at least from the C-suite PoV) when the company is a (relative) plucky little startup, and you're trying to get the drones to work 80+ hour weeks for crap pay.
But when you're a corporate behemoth, with a "keep turning crank to keep making $billions" business model...then not so much.
The “bring your whole/authentic self to work” is a terrible thing to tell people. Precisely because companies have cultural values they are giving you at the same time. They are literally telling you who you should be at work and then telling you to be your “authentic self” out of the other side of their mouth. Those of us who are older know what they mean. We know they don’t want us to actually be ourselves. But I think younger folks actually believe this and I feel like they are basically being setup to get fired this way.
There is no conflict, if your complete authentic self is a manifestation of the corporate values -- the Word Made Flesh, Google incarnate. You are Google in the boardroom and Google in the bedroom. Ungoogly thoughts are unrepresentable within your mind.
Well to be fair I imagine your workplace isn't also wading into a contentious geopolitical conflict with billions of dollars. I don't think I would ever protest in the manner described at my job but I would probably quit over it. If you want your employees to stay out of politics then you should probably lead by example.
As an outside observer, I just hear a lot of hyperbolic reasoning like:
"Tech workers are demanding that they have right to know how their labour is going to be used. With little clarity about the project, they fear the technology might be used for harm."
Is there actual specifics about Project Nimbus that "are helping it commit atrocities in Palestine", or is it just that Google is selling general cloud computing to Israel as a customer?
Not just to "Israel" as a customer -- but at least part of the project has been earmarked to the IDF specifically (per documents obtained in a recent Time magazine investigation).
That's a huge distinction, especially given what we now know about Project Lavender. And in itself is ample grounds to not to meekly ask, but to demand from Google that it provide clarification as whether the tools or services it is providing will be used in such projects, and if doing so is in accord with its own stated policies.
A question to which it thus far seems hellbent on not providing anything resembling a straight answer to.
But afaik Lavender is an Israeli internal tool, not Google developed. I'm not arguing for Google or Israel here, just that people passionate about this aren't straightforward either.
Do you have any proof this is running on infrastructure and support of Google?
I have to say I would be extremely surprised if Israel hosts intelligence data on GCP. Extremely surprised to a level I'd suspect high negligence on their part.
"High negligence" seems to has characterized the IDF response to the situation in Gaza at nearly every turn since Oct 7th.
The point the protesters are making is not that there is hard proof in hand about any specific projects at this point - but that there is ample ground, their view, to demand positive clarification from these companies that these tools aren't being used to cause harm in the occupied territories.
Given the magnitude of the crimes we are seeing on the ground, after all. And that thousands upon thousands of lives -- of persons who are unambiguously noncombatants -- have already been extinguished on far lower standards of proof. In the most gruesome circumstances imaginable.
I used to have a co worker who always wanted to discuss his conspiracy theories at work. From "the moon landing didn't happen", "vaccination causes autism" to the "earth is flat" it just wouldn't end.
It was exhausting because I just wanted to show up and do my work and stay professional. I didn't even judge him for having those opinions. For all I cared he could do what he likes in private but it was infuriating that he did not realize that he was actively bothering by wanting to discuss controversial opinions at the workplace. I also remembered this guy as not really a very interested or efficient worker. He came to work to talk basically.
Years later, the guy now has 1K+ linked in connections, every bs certification imaginable and calls himself an "AI and futurism consultant". He may have learned that if he just talked about some other bs than before, he could make a lot of money.
New rule: as long as companies can donate infinite amounts of money to lobbyists and politicians, employees can organize around political issues within those companies.
If either of those is wrong, I’d say they both are.
If your goal is to change the companies behavior, then protesting and getting fired and getting a WaPo story is more effective than resigning in protest.
> protesting and getting fired and getting a WaPo story is more effective than resigning in protest
Idk, these guys looked unplanned and childish, which lightens the credibility of their claims. They went zero to occupying an executive’s office—there wasn’t even a petition stage. That’s not the kind of escalation anyone wants precedent for, because if you provide it you’d better be ready to make space for a perpetual environmental and MAGA lobby in every leader’s workspace.
And while the PR impact of this hasn’t been negligible, it’s also been light. Outside HN it hasn’t really registered.
>And while the PR impact of this hasn’t been negligible, it’s also been light. Outside HN it hasn’t really registered.
I divested all my GOOG stock when the Gemini debacle happened. I figured they were too entrenched in political ideology to compete with AI and would just slowly decay. For me, this is a positive PR impact as it shows GOOG is getting back to competing instead of collecting rents on technology they created decades ago.
Because all anyone not on your immediate team would know is the HR sanitized "they left for other opportunities, we're so happy for the contribution they..."
I think it's silly that people will protest like this with the expectation that they won't immediately get fired but that's the play if you want to make noise.
>If your goal is to change the companies behavior, then protesting and getting fired and getting a WaPo story is more effective than resigning in protest.
Doesn't it seem like there's quite a gulf between compliant silence and quitting?
I don't know much about these protests so I can't say whether I agree with them or not, but the general idea that there's a black and white choice here doesn't make sense.
Also, doesn't it seem likely that many of these people understood that they could be terminated or face other discipline for their participation in these protests? That is, many may have understood they were putting their jobs on the line, right? That's no small sacrifice.
It's egotistical and selfish to speak for and expect such a large company to change for their minority opinions. You can't control Google but you can control yourself.
How would you even find out if you have a minority opinion without speaking out?
Maybe the company coffee machine starts using new beans and I don't like the taste. No one else is complaining, so should I keep my mouth shut?
If I say "hey I don't like this coffee" and everyone else goes "it's fine" then I have to get different coffee. If however everyone else says "it sucks" then maybe it'll get changed back.
You're essentially discounting all major civil right movements as selfish, since all included an attempt to change the behavior of large institutions and companies to accommodate what began as a minority opinion.
Who do you think should take it upon themselves to try to steer an organization like Google away from evil actions? Is there anyone that isn't "egotistical" and "selfish" for doing so? Employees are arguably some of the most visible people to that company and possibly most well positioned to actually make something happen. It follows that if they truly believe Google is being evil, they have a moral obligation to act. Quite the opposite of "selfish" if they do this at personal risk.
Absolutely. Have the courage of your convictions to refuse to work for a company you find immoral.
I assume these people would have refused to work for an arms manufacturer or an oil company, but maybe they could try to change one of those from the inside.
Arms manufacturers do not actually start wars. While I understand why some people may find that line of work not aligning with your morals, there isn't you can really change within the company
Right. My point is that if you don't find that Google aligns with your morals, simply don't work for them. If you do, you've already violated your morals. Protesting your own employer just proves that on top of having bad judgment, you also have no loyalty. Two good reasons to be fired.
I have no loyalty to my employer. I like my workplace, and the work I do, and I think that the company treats employees well. However the relationship is entirely transactional.
Ok, good enough for you? All work is transactional. But I've fired high paying clients and quit high paying jobs because I didn't want to put my stamp on their politics, religion, or simply what their business model was extracting or selling.
I'm serious, have the balls to tell them you won't work for them because you consider them immoral. Take a stand. Something else will come along.
Having said all that I think if you don't quit then having an in-office protest without resigning is pathetic; it lacks the honesty of giving up your paycheck and reeks of entitlement.
It's only logical if you ignore the strawman assumption that these protesters assumed no personal risk.
Though morality can be subjective, culturally we have coalesced on many shared moral values (a subset of which have been codified into law, for example, it is both immoral and illegal to kill someone in most peace time circumstances). And since "morality" encompasses a broad set of expected behaviors that manifests in practically every facet of our lives, it's unfortunately relevant at pretty much all times. Morality is quite necessary for high functioning societies.
Since companies like Google dilute responsibility and behave collectively as sociopaths in the pursuit of money, I'm quite glad we have people willing to self-sacrifice to keep them from behaving a-socially (or, arguably, evilly). Yes, it's probably safer and "logical" for most people to avoid sticking their necks out for what the believe in.
I'd do the same if my employer helps a regime kill 74 children every day through precision airstrikes.
When Russia invaded Ukraine we saw a massive redrawl of companies, funny how this isn't happening with Israel at the same speed when the crimes are far worse.
I'm not defending this but as an important data point, in most states in the US it is entirely legal to fire people for political speech. This is not a First Amendment issue. The First Amendment restricts the government and extensions of the government. Whether you agree with this action or not, let's still deal with facts. Agree with them or not, they're taking a stand for something they believe in that comes at potentially great cost to them and you have to at least respect that.
Now I want to bring up Time's 2019 Person of the Year, Greta Thunberg. Remember her? The teenager who spoke out for climate action, something she was widely lauded for. You don't hear much about her now even though she's still active (eg [1]). Why is that? Because she started criticizing capitalism [2].
Why do I bring her up? Because she was praised while doing performative speech over climate change and sidelined when her criticism was at odds with the bottom line.
That's exactly what's happening at Google and most other companies. They're happy to put up rainbow flags and celebrate Pride because it's performative. It doesn't affect the bottom line. It's good PR in that way.
But these protestors were demanding action that would put Google at odds with the US government policy and that cannot be tolerated. We've seen this before. Google famously pulled out of China over censorship many years ago [3] but the bottom line meant they tried (and failed) to go back in years later [4].
For the record, what I've described above (with both Greta Thunberg and Google) is simply materialist analysis.
1. One of Google's largest engineering office is in Israel, so it has thousands of employees directly affected by the war. Obviously seeing fellow employees protest against their own country at work is at least a huge distraction. A Google employee entire family was kidnapped to Gaza, by the way.
2. Project Nimbus is a way to get cloud regions in Israel in exchange for government budgets. Although the IDF will get its share, it's naturally going to be extremely limited. There isn't going to be some killer AI running on GCP simply because you don't run classified data/software on public clouds.
The fact Israel does not even have a government cloud region means the defensive nature of the workloads are going to be extremely limited, and even if it had, intelligence would not be there.
3. The fact that you are sure Israel is a reincarnation of nazi germany, apartheid south africa and scare word, scare word, genocide, doesn't make it is so or also does not mean it is a popular opinion outside your twitter echo chamber. This might also not be a common opinion in your work place, even though people around you rather keep quiet.
There isn't going to be some killer AI running on GCP simply because you don't run classified data/software on public clouds.
We hear this disclaimer a lot -- but isn't the whole point of Project Nimbus is that it's effectively a private cloud environment? Per a recent press release:
As part of the "Project Nimbus", the cloud computing services will be provided from local cloud computing sites while the information will be processed and stored within the borders of the State of Israel under the provisions of Israeli law, strict information security guidelines, and under the guidance of the relevant authorities in the government.
Also, it doesn't have to be a genocide-as-a-service app like Project Lavender to be worrisome. It can also be some far more boring facial recognition tools making everyday life in the OTP incrementally more miserable, for example.
Google engineers reading this over your miso-roasted salmon & quinoa bowls are more than welcome to chime in with the relevant details.
In terms of protest visibility, the protesters could ask for nothing more than the ongoing drip of news articles on this.
I would think that the news articles have far more impact than booting the Israeli government off GCP. Getting kicked off GCP certainly hasn't done anything to stop Russia's genocidal war.
If we're going to do ad hoc sanctions, at least learn the lessons about what are good and bad sanctions. Doing partial sanctions has shown to be worthless.
Well I'm pretty sure the people protesting were aware this could be the outcome.
So in that regard, I think it's very admirable for them to put their convictions over money. From the outside, I agree with their opinion. But then again, money screams and people talk.
I feel like a lot of people in tech tend to be very much "not interested" when it comes to politics, even though tech and particularly these big companies are so involved in what goes around in the world. But I get it, when you're being paid 250k+ a year you get to live a really comfortable life; upsetting the status quo is difficult.
But yeah, I wish these people received more support from their peers than they do. Rather than people thinking we shouldn't "bring politics into the workspace" when the decisions being made in our workspaces are making deals with a government that is currently committing genocide.
Personally I do think you should try to avoid bringing politics into the workplace, but I also think it's fair game if the workplace brings politics to you.
Supporting one side or the other in such a highly contentious war is politics and anyone who tells you different simply thinks their politics is the right one.
What does genocide mean in this context? Are you saying that an enemy can just put women and children in front of every military installation and the other side can never respond to any attacks anymore?
I find it hard to justify that thousands of children killed in the past few months and the countless reports from human rights organizations calling for the abuse that's happening to civilians in Gaza does not constitute genocidal intent. Not only that, but killing people trying to flee the conflict is also something that they've done.
The words themselves of the people in government in Israel very much point to it.
I just invite you to do some research on the topic.
I don't think the Israeli soldiers want to be there, and I don't think their family want them risking their lives. What they really don't want is a repeat of the 7th October, and the only way that's going to be the case is to eradicate Hamas and control the gaza strip. It's clear that leaving them to self-govern is never lead to peace.
Right. No one in military conflict can really claim moral superiority.
E.g., Nazis vs Soviets. While yes, I'm not here to dispute that Nazis were on the wrong side of history, the soviets committed a fair amount of atrocities including towards their own people. Same with pretty much any military conflict the US has been involved in (e.g. remember how the US shot down iranian passenger plane and refused to apologize?).
My point is, wars do not determine who is right, only who is left.
The Darfur Genocide is still happening, is on a much larger scale than Gaza and despite media coverage, the people who are very worked up about the Israeli actions don’t seem to care. I wonder why that is.
The US government could stop giving aid to Israel six months ago and it would have done nothing to discourage or stop Israel from doing what its done in Gaza since Oct 7, because its neither contingent on US funding nor US or UN approval.
First of all the military conflict in Gaza is asymmetric warfare, unlike Ukraine - Israel does not need any more money or weapons than it already has to destroy buildings. They already have everything they need, they already had it five years ago. No US military funding or weapons required.
Second, this is like 9/11 for Israel in terms of # of deaths of citizens (oct 7). They are not acting in a calculated manner but a vengeful manner. The UN could condemn them and nothing would happen. They have and will pursue this unless they are prevented forcefully, not merely criticized or tsk tsk'd.
The only thing that might do something to stop them from doing what they have done / are doing is economic sanctions or military intervention. But both those measures could be applied equally to Darfur or any other ongoing conflict, many of which are far more deadly than the war in Gaza currently. So it really isn't that different from those other conflicts, except optically (we love to hate on rich "white" people harming poor brown people, but when brown people kill brown people in Africa we don't really care, or Asian people kill Asian people, etc).
Ok, I disagree that this is just happening because (many, not all) Israelis would be classified as white. The diversity on the streets of Tel Aviv is phenomenal, but I digress.
Fundamentally the reason that I hold Israel to a higher standard is because of the Holocaust, and all the pogroms that occurred before, all of which were incredibly morally wrong.
And here we are 80 years later, and they are acting in ways that are very very similar to the ways that their oppressors acted. Like, Gaza is equivalent to a ghetto, the West Bank is basically occupied territory, and there are many Palestinians who have their rights violated in ways that simply would not happen to Israeli citizens.
It's profoundly disappointing and depressing, that if even the Jewish people haven't learned from all of the terrible historical things that have happened to them, then what hope for the rest of the species?
Thats why I, at least care more about what's happening in Gaza right now.
All politics should not be acceptable in some sense. As in it's fine to discuss your views with colleagues over lunch. It's fine to express concerns privately over appropriate channels.
If you disagree with the contracts your company takes on you can always quit. There is no need to make your coworkers feel threatened for just doing their job.
Statistically speaking some of my coworkers voted for trump. I ll never know. Some of my coworkers probably think abortion is murder. Some think that women should stay at home, or that being trans is a mental disorder. None of these are the things to discuss at work
As absurd as your comment may seem, I honestly would genuinely prefer this over the current approach. As you said, it's currently pretty much a guessing game as to what left-leaning opinions you need to pretend to support in order to not get cancelled or ostracized. It's so stupid... if Google truly just cares about the bottom line, why play this idiotic game where you need to get all huffy and puffy about individual workers opinions? Why not just dispense with the whole façade of pretending to care about left-wing causes? Like at this point the fervent supporters of left-wing ideology HAVE to sense the "how do you do fellow kids" energy coming off of these major corporations.
Why do you think this discussion should be shut down?
It seems like there's a significant topic worth exploring here: a tech company with "liberal activism" as a core value is now terminating employees for being political.
Seems like there is a pretty relevant topic to be examined.
Personally if my customer was using my services to figure out the optimal time to kill someone in a way that also kills their family, and my employees were collectively protesting that, I would just decline their money.
Sarcastic thought: with Google Cloud being an order of magnitude more expensive than dedicated servers Israel will end up killing fewer people for the same money. It's not like they couldn't buy servers elsewhere, so in a twisted way this could be a humane move by Google.
Fair point. I think without the protests you could have some plausible deniability.
You could even claim it was for legitimate military purposes.
But after all the information that has gone around we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this software is specifically used to maximize family-deaths.
I think lots of companies love money, but the only way to defend this is if you also love death.
Except I left out the part where they also ask chatGPT who should they kill and it gives them recommendations based on browsing history and what group chats they're in.