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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

#91
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…

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 1988 after the first intifada. Hezbollah after Israeli invasion in Lebanon 1982. The more military force Israel uses, the more orphans it creates who will run into the arms of another group.

There is only one way to solve this, and that's by giving Palestinians a life that's worth living. Not by denying them basic rights. In the West Bank there are 40 checkpoins, nightly raids, 500-700 children who are detained every year. Military rule for Pals, civilian rule for settlers. So if a palestinian child throws a stone, he can get 10-20 years in prison, a settler? Nothing usually. We have 700,000 settlements built in West Bank in the past years.

All of this injustice will create the next group, even if the last hamas person is killed.

[1] In the current Gaza war, Israel is withholding water, food, medicines, and electricity for 2.1 mil. civilians, 1.1 mil children is against Geneva Conventions. It punishes civilians. And destroying the complete infrastructure of Gaza (hospitals, schools, universities, etc) will make Gaza uninhabitable, and that plus the genocidal language of Netanyahu and his cabinet (Netanyahu comparing palestinians to "Amalek", which the old testament says to destroy--their women, children, the babies; Gallant comparing them to human animals; Herzog saying there are no innocent people in Gaza, blaming the civilians as well)

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

#92
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…

Hamas started this last flare up only if history begins on Oct 7. In fact, Hamas's action on that day is an inevitable reaction to decades of systemic oppression, unprovoked aggression and ethnic cleansing.

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

#94
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…

Thousands and thousands of kids have died in the span of a few months. More than 8000 is the latest number!

More than in any other recent war. It's a grotesque display of war actual war crimes now excused by a torrent of fake stories that keeps getting debunked later like the one with "40 dead babies! Absolutely vile and inexcusable!

Don't spread misinformation that it's "just Hamas" that's targeted. It's everyone because they wan't to annex the whole region Risk style, it's bloody classic geopolitics backed by the worlds most powerful military.

Let that sink in, the worlds most powerful militaries have murdered over 8000 kids in the span of 2 months. The west is the moral low ground. We'll do anything for power, resources and money like so many wars before, like so many coups, death squads, and dictators propped up by us.

Hardliner Israeli settlers have been stealing private property for decades before oktober 7. while murdering youth on the borders of Palestine while cheering from luxurious well kept gardens.

I feel bad for all jews getting spearheaded in this very geopolitical conflict. Many if not most do no stand with the military regime currently at war with their neighbours.

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

#95
post #85

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…

Yeah, in the end it all comes down to game theory.

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> continues to do business with China ... It's absolutely disgusting. I want to inject some nuance here. Competition in the labor market, which drives business to low- or middle-income countries like China, is really really good for the typical low-middle income person in China. If wealthy countries pulled out entirely, then China's GDP per capita will probably drop from $12,000 back to sub-$5,000 and you will be cau…

No fuck that argument people use to whitewash bad/harsch working conditions. "A low income is better than no income". "Better be employed as a slave than unemployed" is basically what they say. Inless its not a close relative or your own kids working there. You would immediately change your opinion if thats the case. That fucked western hypocritical way of thinking needs to stop. Its really bad. Better everyone being…

I said that X is bad but Y is worse. It seems you're not even trying to challenge that claim, instead you're saying X is a "fucked western hypocritical way of thinking" and "you would change your opinion from X to Y if you had family in that situation". Then your concluding sentence is "Y is actually better than X" but you didn't even make the case for that in the first place. Unconvincing. I am honestly disgusted at the virtue signalling and moral grandstanding. You would condemn people to the worst depths of poverty because ... well it's not entirely clear to me what moral depravity would cause someone to adopt that position.

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprising that it will go badly. Most of us have some secrets to hide, so the individuals that make up society have an incentive to exclude such people from their lives. I couldn’t trust a whistleblower. While grateful for a lot of the work they do, I never want to be their target and would never risk getting close to them.

No, most of us don't have that kind of secrets. I have secrets, but if someone were to leak them nobody would seriously employ the term "whisteblower". Implying that because someone doesn't want to stay quiet when he sees unethical/unlawful things they can't be trusted on a personal level is a dehumanizing thing to say. I might be breaking a rule here, but this comment could probably be found verbatim in some company…

Imagine someone blows the whistle on you liking K-Pop. By the way, I don't like it at all. But just imagine if you were to like it and someone was to blow the whistle. I seriously haven't listened to K-Pop at all, I know it's just an embarrassing thing people do.

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

#98

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…

Hamas started this last flare up only if history begins on Oct 7. In fact, Hamas's action on that day is an inevitable reaction to decades of systemic oppression, unprovoked aggression and ethnic cleansing.

This entire region is a clusterfuck of, no that side did this first, no the other side did that. No matter what point you are starting at you can go further back in history to say the other side did X.

That said, oct 7 was a clear escalation by hamas and was much more violent than what came before. Unsurprisingly that garnered a response.

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

#99
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…

> While the whole situation is a mess, Hamas definitely started this particular fist-fight.

It's an insanely complicated mess going back a hundred years. Trying to figure out "who started it?" is impossible because at this point we're so far from the domain of applicability of "who started it?" that it isn't a coherent or well defined question any more.

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

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage anyone interested in the consequences of whistleblowing to watch The Insider. A truly excellent film about a whistleblower at a tobacco company and the terrible things they did to try and stop him. Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, Bruce McGill, Christopher Plummer, many others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Wigand Trailer: https://youtu.be/MGOb29aePyc The best scene: https://youtu.be/gNKmmA6_oTQ

A similar film is Silkwood, which is about the life of Karen Silkwood, who reported concerns about corporate practices related to health and safety in a nuclear facility where she worked. She was severely harassed by her employer and then died in a suspicious car accident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/silkwood

Thats the movie that prominently features "Amazing Grace", right? I still remember having watched it on public television in the late 80s. But all I really remember from the movie was amazing grace being played after the car crash scene.
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