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Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

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Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#142
post #132
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. USSR broke to pieces because of internal problems not because some Polish workers locked themselves up in a shipyard.

Animats did not claim otherwise AFAICT. The forming of a union in Poland in 1980 is something I’ve been taught was one of the earliest public signs that Kremlin was losing its grasp over the east bloc. That’s not at all incompatible with Soviet falling apart due to internal problems.

Well I read Animats’ comment in the context of activism producing change - not in the context of activism being a symptom of change…

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#143

Congratulations to people with morals. There's always few of them in the present, but also few of them historically. But we remember them more then people looking the other way out of convenience.

[flagged]

I didn't pick any side. Israel has killed tens of thousands of people including a large percentage of children in 6 months. It doesn't matter to me at all what one side "wants" to do. This is what's happening right now.

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#144
post #14

They said nimbus was for civilian use only, then time publishes an article saying they are dealing with the IDF directly and have a discount given that Nimbus exists… https://time.com/6966102/google-contract-israel-defense-mini...

That isn't at all what the article says. Every liberal democracy subscribes to the idea of civilian control of the military, so the distinction between civilian leadership and the military they oversee isn't a new or foreign concept. Why would you assume MoD use = IDF use? Do you also assume everything the DoD contracts for is used by the U.S. Army?

I also suspect that almost everything to do with actual military operations - intelligence, logistics, targeting, whatever - would be classified, and therefore could not run on civilian infrastructure.

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#145
post #87

> Anti-Semitism appears to be rampant throughout Google’s workforce. If someone would have told me 5 years ago that in just a few years, Google employees would be accused of anti-semitism, or any -ism, really, I would have never believed it. They were on the frontlines "punching nazis" and fighting rising fascism here in US, and here they are, being accused of anti-semitism, themselves.

It's been pretty well-known and much commented on that "the left" is full of anti-semites. E.g. the Black Lives Matter movement was often accused of being at best indifferent to anti-semitism.

(No comment from me on the truth or otherwise of that sentiment, I'm just pointing out this isn't exactly a new thing.)

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#146
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how else you would label spraying "Kill all the Jews" in a toilet stall.

Oh sure, I agree. I am not saying those are not, just that it's so shocking to find it's Googlers.

Ever since that video 8 years ago of a college kid yelling at a professor at Yale [1], it seemed to me that a non-negligible part of American youth, much of it in highly regarded universities (such as Yale, Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford) does not understand, nor want to understand, nuance and proportionality. You don't protest violence by being violent yourself.

Rank-and-file Googlers in the US tend to be young ([1] https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/3rucs2/yale_sjws_sc...

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#147

Congratulations to people with morals. There's always few of them in the present, but also few of them historically. But we remember them more then people looking the other way out of convenience.

[flagged]

> By every available poll, the Palestinians want to kill them all.

I think that's a big stretch. Many/most Palestinians want "their" land back, and many/most might want Israel gone. But that is not at all the same as saying they want all Israelis killed. Some might want a one-state solution that gives them rights without necessarily infringing on Jews's rights, some might think that most Jews will have a place to go if they get their land back (with the settler-colonialism framing), etc. There are many valid things people can think that aren't "we want to kill all Jews".

(I'm purposefully writing Jews and not Israelis, because I assume we both agree that most would explicitly not want to kill the 2 million or so Israeli-Palestinians!)

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#148
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Hamas did not kill 1200 civilians on October 7. There were ~1200 victims total in the attack. There were 274 soldiers, and 95 police or other security officers, and 764 civilians [0]. At least a few of the civilians were not killed by Hamas directly, but by IDF firing on Hamas terrorists holding them hostage [1].

Of course, each and every one of these victims is a tragedy. There are also an additional few hundred people taken hostage, another war crime by Hamas. I don't intend to minimize the hurt or excuse the terrorists. But just as much, every civilian being killed in Gaza is a tragedy and inexcusable. And there are many times more civilians killed in Gaza, even by the most conservative estimates, than the victims in Israel.

Also, while the 30+k victims in Gaza (which also include Hamas soldiers) are indeed coming from Hamas itself, there are no better numbers. The Israeli media and even official sources sometimes quote these numbers, and all external organizations that have looked into them consider them credible. Not to mention, these are only those confirmed dead, each of them identified specifically (the Hamas Palestinian Health Ministry is publishing a list of the exact names of every victim, and not including unidentified dead or those who are missing in the numbers).

Israel has not published any list or even estimate of the casualties, except their claims for Hamas soldiers killed.

[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/14-kids-under-10-25-people-ove...

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-inquiry-fi...

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#149
post #134

Never understood people who work for an employer with whom they don't agree.

It's pretty simple. I don't agree with any tech company, but I would still like to make enough money to live. I hope that clears it up.

Found your own company.
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