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He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

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Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#141

Post by runnerup »

bambax wrote: post #85
PaulKeeble wrote: post #16

My experience of whistleblowing even here in the west is that usually it goes very very badly. The only real thing open to you is to refuse to do anything unethical, quit and walk away. Many people can't afford to do that. Things ought to be different but we live in corrupt societies where the law is different for the rich and powerful than for everyone else.

Of course, but I don't think it's specific to "the west" or "corrupt societies". It's human nature. If you're part of a group and you speak against the group, esp. to another group , the group will move to destroy you. It doesn't matter if you're right; it doesn't matter if the group is doing bad things; it doesn't matter if speaking up will help save lives. The function of the group is to survive as a group; it will…

I don’t think it’s normal human nature to assault / murder / psychologically torture / ruin the life of / etc someone who points out what your group is doing wrong. It may happen from time to time, enough that it should be a potential expected response. But just like psychopathy and schizophrenia are abnormal, so is murdering or ruining the life of a whistleblower.

1-2% of the population may be a sociopath / psychopath — but its still considered “abnormal psychology”.

If someone had proof that a device I made was hurting people, I wouldn’t try to destroy their life or kill them.

A lot of this whistleblowing doesnt even have jailtime as a consequence to those who failed their duty of care - often it just means they’ll make a few million less dollars but still be plenty comfortable.

We shouldn’t feel its “normal” to murder / torture / assault or ruin the lives of these whistleblowers any more than we think sociopaths are “normal”.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/ebay-execs-sent-... <- this is not just normal “human nature”. It’s the result of abnormal psychology.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#142

Post by ikurei »

bambax wrote: post #85
PaulKeeble wrote: post #16

My experience of whistleblowing even here in the west is that usually it goes very very badly. The only real thing open to you is to refuse to do anything unethical, quit and walk away. Many people can't afford to do that. Things ought to be different but we live in corrupt societies where the law is different for the rich and powerful than for everyone else.

Of course, but I don't think it's specific to "the west" or "corrupt societies". It's human nature. If you're part of a group and you speak against the group, esp. to another group , the group will move to destroy you. It doesn't matter if you're right; it doesn't matter if the group is doing bad things; it doesn't matter if speaking up will help save lives. The function of the group is to survive as a group; it will…

So many laws go against human nature; those might be the most important laws.

I don't expect the greedy and powerful to change, but as a society we should do more to protect whistleblowers, the same way we protect threatened witnesses.

Also, more solidarity between workers, although not always possible, would go a long way. So many Google employees can definitely afford to quit in solidarity, or strike. Not saying it's easy, I recognize it isn't.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#143

Post by pgeorgi »

kossTKR wrote: post #117
rightbyte wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to protest the Israeli attack on Hamas Usually the critique is that civilians are targeted.

More than 6000 thousand kids have died in the span of 2 months or so. The most powerful militaries in the world, and more than 12.000 civilians already dead, packed together tightly as in a prison with nowhere to flee bombs raining down on them. I don't get why anyone can support that. No matter the pretext. History going back over 75 years with so much suffering on both sides, but death tolls magnitudes larger on th…

> that was just mostly regular farmers before the first Nakba but slowly became radicalised

Regular farmers who were asked by their Arab "brothers" to step aside while they eradicate the Jews. Surprised Pikachu face when that plan didn't work out and the result was that the farmers couldn't go back.

The same "brothers" now tell them to not leave the Gaza strip (and enforce it by blocking the one non-Israel-controlled exit), and to rather die as meat shield for Hamas. Priorities, priorities...

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#144

Post by gadders »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #16

My experience of whistleblowing even here in the west is that usually it goes very very badly. The only real thing open to you is to refuse to do anything unethical, quit and walk away. Many people can't afford to do that. Things ought to be different but we live in corrupt societies where the law is different for the rich and powerful than for everyone else.

Unless you're Bradley Birkenfield [1]

TBH that's the only circumstance in which I think it would make sense to whistle blow.

"In 2012, as a consequence of his whistleblower status, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) awarded him $104 million, 26% of the total $400 million in taxes returned. It was the 4th reward paid to date since the IRS Whistleblower Program went into effect in 2006."

He did 40 months in prison as well but stil...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Birkenfeld

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#145

Post by MrVandemar »

mrweasel wrote: post #10
sgjohnson wrote: post #6

Slavery is de-facto legal in China and their justice system is rotten to the core. Is this really news to anyone? I would be surprised if this had ended differently.

The slavery and working conditions in China no longer really surprises me, what I do struggle to understand is that Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE. I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China. What I cannot accept or understand is that the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly shar…

> what I do struggle to understand is that Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE.

Here's what it is: in law corporations are essentially given a weird kind of personhood. It's that way so corporations can get things done.

Unfortunately, corporations aren't people: they don't care, they don't have ethics, they don't have morals, they don't have values, they don't have family, they don't have a conscience.

It's not an original observation, but due to this, the type of person a company most resembles is one of posessing profound psychopathological traits.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#146

Post by constantly »

dieselgate wrote: post #44
mrweasel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slavery and working conditions in China no longer really surprises me, what I do struggle to understand is that Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE. I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China. What I cannot accept or understand is that the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly shar…

> Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE. Western Consumers don't care either

I’m a western consumer and I care.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#147

Post by rf15 »

submeta wrote: post #91
bradley13 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite sure what your objection is? Are you generally against companies providing services related to warfare? Or are you specifically against providing services for the Israel/Gaza conflict? If the former - if you are generally protesting commercial services for the military - then there are a lot of companies you need to boycott, before you get around to Amazon. Amazon is a small fish in the sea. If the latt…

I have family in Israel, people who protested against the judicial overhaul every week for weeks. Some of them are also in the military, saying after the Hamas attacks "now is the time to kill arabs". - The way Israel is reacting to the hamas atrocities [1] will not make Israel a safer place. We haven't eradicated Taliban in 20 years, but sat with them at the table after 20 years and negotiated. - Hamas was built in…

The sad truth is that all of this was very predictable. It is also very convenient for Netanyahu, whose family[0] and government coalition has some interesting views about the area as a whole[1], including who Jordan belongs to. One could argue a lasting peace is utterly impossible due to ideological reasons/religious extremism on both sides.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzion_Netanyahu

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#148

Post by wizerdrobe »

isilofi wrote: post #136
bawolff wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, i think we can answer the question of who escalated the situation from a mostly cold conflict to the current hot war.

We can also answer (in the same way) about the escalations in the last few decades since 1948. Almost everything Israel did was reactive, they rarely shot first.

I don’t think you can justify ethnically cleansing the Palestinians in 1948, and I hardly think the (Jewish) Israeli government gets to play the “it was 80 years ago, it’s old news” since playing on the historical misfortunes of the Jewish community is their justification for existing.

After Ariel Sharon went full false-flag terrorist in Lebanon, again it’s hard to describe these actions as “reactive”. They were very proactive in their assassination campaigns up to and including their attempts to kill an American ambassador.

The sniper killings of civilians throwing rocks in recent years really precipitated the current (can you call it a third Intifada?)

It’s no easy task saying who started what, nor can we really consider it a cold conflict. It’s constantly simmering, knife attack here, sniper shots there. It’s just going on to keep going.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#150

Post by globalnode »

bradley13 wrote: post #75
submeta wrote: post #62

[flagged]

I'm not quite sure what your objection is? Are you generally against companies providing services related to warfare? Or are you specifically against providing services for the Israel/Gaza conflict? If the former - if you are generally protesting commercial services for the military - then there are a lot of companies you need to boycott, before you get around to Amazon. Amazon is a small fish in the sea. If the latt…

its delusions of this sort that remind me why as a species we just cant have nice things.
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