Google Fires More Employees Over Protest of Cloud Contract With Israel (axios.com) 228
Google has fired another 20 workers for participating in protests against its $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, according to an activist group representing the workers. From a report: In total, the company has now fired around 50 employees over sit-in protests held in Google offices last week that were part of yearslong discontent among a group of Google and Amazon workers over claims that Israel is using the companies' services to harm Palestinians. Google has denied those claims, saying Project Nimbus, the cloud-computing contract, doesn't involve "highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services," and that Israeli government ministries that use its commercial cloud must agree to its terms of services and other policies.
No Tech For Apartheid, the group representing the workers, claimed in a statement that Google is attempting to "quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them." "That's because Google values its profit, and its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, more than people. And it certainly values it over its own workers," it said. The group said it will continue organizing until Google cancels Project Nimbus. Further reading: Google To Employees: 'We Are a Workplace'.
No Tech For Apartheid, the group representing the workers, claimed in a statement that Google is attempting to "quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them." "That's because Google values its profit, and its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, more than people. And it certainly values it over its own workers," it said. The group said it will continue organizing until Google cancels Project Nimbus. Further reading: Google To Employees: 'We Are a Workplace'.
It's called work (Score:5, Insightful)
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I read an interview with one of the main protestors that got fired in the first wave. Their plan is to become a professional protestor. I suspect that pays better than being an average Googler.
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Hey, if people get paid to hawk and peddle crap on the internet, why not to yell slogans?
In either case, you should not have too strong opinions about what crap you peddle or yell. There's a German proverb that would fit really well here: Whose bread I eat, those songs I sing.
And in this case, quite literally so.
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While true, you also have a moral responsibility from your choice of who to work for. The typical expectation is that if you do not agree with what your employer does, you first try to change culture there (by legal means, obviously), but then you leave. This is not a one-person-one-vote system, personal merit does count.
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I am fortunately by now in a position where I can reject a job when it conflicts with my personal position on some things. I was offered a job for pretty much a fortune in a country whose politics I disagree with and I declined. I'm sure someone else will get this job and consider me a moron for rejecting what's easy money.
But there are things in my life that ain't for sale. One of them is me.
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Err...just out of curiosity, what country was this....and are they still taking resumes??
For how much again??
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Just because they should realistically expect to put their job at risk doesn't mean they did the "wrong thing". The "disturb the peace" line as a reaction to the concept of protest is a bit disconcerting.
Now if they were being obnoxious in the workspace chanting about injustice against palestine in some totally unrelated venue (e.g. if Google did zero business with Israeli government), I could see scoffing at the effort as noisy and disruptive to no end.
However, they are directly protesting their own compan
Re:It's called work (Score:5, Insightful)
And firing employees who are disruptive to the workplace is exactly what is demanded in this scenario. That's what they're being fired for, not for protesting. They can protest all they want off-hours, away from the workplace.
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Disruptively protesting in the workplace is pretty much exactly what their cause demands in this scenario.
Sure, and they should expect that they're putting their jobs on the line for their cause. Without that risk, their protest isn't particularly meaningful. If they were to "win" by getting Google to cancel the contract, they'd actually have little effect because Google is almost certainly right that this contract has little to no effect on the war.
Generating headlines by getting fired from their $500k/year jobs is the most effective thing these Google employees can do for their cause. So, good for them, the
Re: It's called work (Score:2)
You likely have every right to operate your private business that way. Assuming you own it or the board approved the policy. It's a tough way to go if you're trying to hire though. Getting too specific really narrows the talent pool you can choose from.
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I suppose I don't know the particulars of this protest, but *most* protests I see aren't standing up for Hamas but pointing out the broader treatment of Palestinians, whether it's as collateral damage in Gaza or continuing behavior in the West Bank, which is widely recognized as wrong by the UN/ICC/EU/various nations.
Broadly speaking, the muslims I have known personally are good folk. Extremists under any religious cover misbehave similar, though admittedly some Islamic extremists have more formally recogni
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"Judaism has its issues. All three of the Abrahamic religions do,"
There are more than three Abrahamic religions.
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"Judaism has its issues. All three of the Abrahamic religions do,"
There are more than three Abrahamic religions.
Really? I know about Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Can you name a few others?
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Re: It's called work (Score:3)
"Simping for Hamas is absolutely a crystal clear example of employees... of human beings in general... who "did the wrong thing."
Yes, netanyahu, who told us that he was deliberately funding Hamas back in 2017 for the purpose of developing support for violently conquering Palestine, certainly did the wrong thing. So why are we funding genocide? He's an American citizen!
Re:It's called work (Score:5, Insightful)
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The whole point of protest is to disturb the normal flow of things and disrupt the thing you are trying to stop. That's why people engage in civil disobedience: you go into it knowing that you are putting your freedom and/or job on the line because you believe strongly in the cause. "expressing those concerns in a way that doesn't disturb the office" is like saying "if you want to change the status quo then vote". That's fine and all, but it is the absolute minimum and probably won't change anything signi
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If I cannot support what my employer does, I have to quit. Simple as that.
Fortunately I'm not weighed down by useless crap like a conscience. Quite seriously, that seems to be a really big problem when it comes to earning money. I can slowly get why CEOs generally don't bother with that crap.
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Then I cannot work for such an employer in the first place.
Choose your battles. If you cannot support what your employer does, why do you support it? Just for the money? So in other words, your morals and standards are for sale.
Good to know.
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Re: It's called work (Score:2)
" Even if I didn't like Google's set of cloud customers I could still work on Google Maps with a clear conscience."
Only if you're so dumb as to think those divisions don't both wind up on the same balance sheet and padding the same pockets.
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Also, there is more to not wanting to work for a defense contractor than whether or not you think supporting the military is ethical. Working for a defense contractor, or a government contractor in general, is a goddamned miserable workplace experience. I made the mistake once in my career. ONCE. Never again.
Every workplace misery you ever thought was stereotyped hyperbole right out of a Dilbert strip? In defense contracting it's a reality. Clueless PHBs? Lazy and unmotivated cow-orkers just taking u
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Every workplace misery you ever thought was stereotyped hyperbole right out of a Dilbert strip? In defense contracting it's a reality. Clueless PHBs? Lazy and unmotivated cow-orkers just taking up space until their pension vests? Officious semi-peers and dotted-line managers who will make you go on a quest through the Black Gates into Mordor for them before coughing up the resources or information you need to do your job? 20-year obsolete maybe-supported hardware and software that is not only not fun to work on, but does nothing to further your career? Writing a page (or more) of documentation for every single line of code? Writing user-facing documentation down to the 8th-grade reading level? Multiple days of the week that are 100% booked, and sometimes double-booked with meetings? Getting lost in a maze of cubicles stretching as far as the eye can see? It. Is. All. 100% True.
How much of that of sitting around and twiddling your thumbs is because someone at government agency A and someone at government agency B, both of whom have a significant amount of policy and direction control, decide that they need to pee in their respective corners to mark the territory and then decide who has control over what part of it? How much of it comes from the people assigned to the contract looking at the project, coming up with a list of requirements/needs, turning it over, and then the govern
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From what I read they tried no disruptive protest, but didn't get any traction. At that point they decided that they were not happy working for Google if it continued to contract with Israel, so would try a disruptive protest. Either it would work, or they would be leaving anyway.
I can't blame them for making that decision. Some of them have family in Palestine, now either starving refugees with no homes or infrastructure, or murdered. Others just couldn't stand to be any part of that, no matter how small.
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Re: It's called work (Score:2)
You might want to look carefully at the NLRA. Retaliation for labor related organization is protect, but retaliation for other activities not related to labor is often not protected.
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I get that people want to wear their politics on their sleeves and complain that their gigantic multinational employer does business with X, but ultimately you work somewhere and if you disturb the peace, you are going to be fired.
This is the truth. Unless you are shareholder or part of the executive, you are there to perform a job requested of you. Also, unless you are working for a cooperative, a business is typically a dictatorship by default. If you don't like it, then get out (there are other jobs out there), or put up.
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Re: It's called work (Score:2)
If you can't sue over anything then you can be prevented from suing over anything.
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Well, when you hire people based on their strong political opinions rather than their strong skill set, you should not be surprised when they actually use it.
Duh.
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Just so I know who to side with here, what marginalized group are we talking about? The Palestinians who get mowed down by the Israel army or the Jews that get blown to pieces by Hamas?
The tragedy in this whole farce is that the ones that could make peace don't want it and the ones that would want peace can't make it.
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The tragedy is that nobody actually wants peace enough to make it happen.
I'm fairly sure that on both sides, there are plenty of people who just want to live there in peace. Whether their next door neighbor is a Jew, Muslim or a polka dotted alien, they couldn't care less.
They just want to do what almost all people (outside those with small dicks and power fantasies) want: Watching their kids grow up in peace and a chance for increased prosperity.
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The tragedy is that nobody actually wants peace enough to make it happen.
I'm fairly sure that on both sides, there are plenty of people who just want to live there in peace. Whether their next door neighbor is a Jew, Muslim or a polka dotted alien, they couldn't care less.
They just want to do what almost all people (outside those with small dicks and power fantasies) want: Watching their kids grow up in peace and a chance for increased prosperity.
Yeah, I'm overstating things a bit. I'm sure there are a certain percentage of people who aren't in power who want peace. But the problem is that the people with power mostly don't seem to want peace if it comes with any strings attached, and most of the people voting for them are too blinded by the rhetoric from their leaders to realize that both sides are the problem, not just one.
Until the overwhelming majority of people are willing to do what is needed to actually bring about peace — specificall
Re: It's called work (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, while I admire your passion for what's happening over there, and your love for peace, your statement REALLY troubles me.
I mean, who the fuck is the UN to tell ANY sovereign power what to do, much less occupy any country?
I mean, the UN is a place for the world to talk, but they simply have no power nor jurisdiction to go into a country and force anyone to do shit....
I mean, let's move it to another country for an example....the UN has no power nor would they have any to come into the US with an armed force and demand us to do anything. I dont care what happens, they are not the world police and have no hold over any sovereign country.
The UN has no power nor authority to declare anything.
I'm curious where you got this idea that they did....?
And wow..that part where you have the UN "shooting anyone who refuses to comply"....
Seriously???
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the UN has no power nor would they have any to come into the US with an armed force and demand us to do anything. I dont care what happens, they are not the world police and have no hold over any sovereign country.
The UN has no power nor authority to declare anything.
You're right, but GP is right about something else.
Given a 200 year commitment, it might actually work.
Re: It's called work (Score:5, Insightful)
"who the fuck is the UN to tell ANY sovereign power what to do, much less occupy any country?"
Good point. They should not have founded the nation of Israel in the partition of Palestine in the first place.
But now that they have, there is a moral obligation to address the problem of Israel perpetrating a holocaust against Palestine.
You are happy with a status quo which involves the torture and murder of Muslims, so you don't want anything done. Just admit that so we can move on without you.
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The tragedy is that nobody actually wants peace enough to make it happen. All it would take is the U.N. declaring all of Israel to be a demilitarized zone, ordering the Israeli government and Hamas to both disarm, shooting anyone who refuses to comply, and then keeping those million or so troops in that region to help rebuild, slowly drawing down the number of troops over... say 200 years, so that by the time they are gone, no one alive still remembers the horrors of this day.
So rather than them hating each other, they'll be united in their hatred for the UN.
Nobody wants anyone coming into their home and telling them what to do. The issue between Israel and Palestine is that both of them consider the land theirs, and and foreign interference that sides with one side will be hated by the other, and any that supports neither side or both sides equally will be hated by both sides.
The reality is that the elites of both sides want to fight . . . but realistically Israel is the side
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The tragedy is that nobody actually wants peace enough to make it happen. All it would take is the U.N. declaring all of Israel to be a demilitarized zone, ordering the Israeli government and Hamas to both disarm, shooting anyone who refuses to comply, and then keeping those million or so troops in that region to help rebuild, slowly drawing down the number of troops over... say 200 years, so that by the time they are gone, no one alive still remembers the horrors of this day.
So rather than them hating each other, they'll be united in their hatred for the UN.
Not if they're allowed civil autonomy. I'm not suggesting a plan where they would be *governed* by someone else, just one in which those governments don't have an active military or police force, relying instead on a neutral third party for all security for an extended period of time. And yeah, they might eventually grow to resent the rest of the world subjecting them to that, particularly if policing isn't even-handed. But them not being happy about it isn't in and of itself a good reason not to do so.
The reality is that the elites of both sides want to fight . . . but realistically Israel is the side that will come out on top militarily, so the Palestinian leaders have to be willing to come to the table and negotiate. They're not getting one state, and they're not getting any historic territory back - not without land swaps anyways.
R
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The tragedy is that nobody actually wants peace enough to make it happen. All it would take is the U.N. declaring all of Israel to be a demilitarized zone, ordering the Israeli government and Hamas to both disarm, shooting anyone who refuses to comply, and then keeping those million or so troops in that region to help rebuild, slowly drawing down the number of troops over... say 200 years, so that by the time they are gone, no one alive still remembers the horrors of this day.
That plan sounds a lot like what was supposed to happen under the "Mandate for Palestine" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) with predictable results...
Aaron Z
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Bravo, sir, bravo ( Slow clap)
Re: It's called work (Score:3)
Seems like protesting politics Google disagrees with is the main problem here.
Re: It's called work (Score:5, Informative)
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No, probably not.
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All it takes to permit atrocities is to say you're disturbing someone's peace?
At work yes. Work is not a democracy. It is not there to look out for you. It's not your family, your company is not your friend. You are paid in exchange of services under a contract. Nothing more, nothing less. The contractual terms allow parties to part way often for all manner of simple reasons. If your employer permits atrocities your choice is to ignore it, leave the employer, or argue with them and be shown the door.
That's all there is to it. No more, no less. If you bring your politics and free spee
Re: It's called work (Score:2)
Username checks out.
Googlers are already doing unethical work (Score:5, Insightful)
Googlers are supporting a corporation that's violating privacy and enjoying monopoly or at least oligopoly power in many areas of business. Suddenly they get a conscience about something that's trendy and easy to virtue-signal.
Re:Googlers are already doing unethical work (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Googlers are already doing unethical work (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Googlers are already doing unethical work (Score:4, Insightful)
"violating privacy and enjoying monopoly" is bad and all, but it is in a whole other category from aiding and abetting a genocide.
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I'd also be protesting if Google aided and abetted Hamas, which is the only actor in the conflict that actually has expressed genocidal intentions.
Re: Googlers are already doing unethical work (Score:2)
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Googlers are supporting a corporation that's violating privacy and enjoying monopoly or at least oligopoly power in many areas of business.
Yes let's equate violating privacy with contributing to a regime very likely committing war crimes. Tooooootaaaly the same thing worthy of the same response. Fuck you for gaslighting the protestors.
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No, genocide, unlike privacy violations, is something Google didn't do on me.
Yet, hey, you never know what the future will bring.
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That depends entirely on who you allow to define what qualifies as Hamas.
They're Corporations... (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't care. They don't' have to care. They have no responsibility to. People think a large corporation has responsibilities to people...but they don't. They've firmly held their responsibilities are to shareholders...something that's been upheld in court. In most states...employment is 100% at-will; you can be terminated by the employer at any time for any reason with no explanation. Companies can decide to not pay you; there's no law against it. You can take them to court to get your money...but at the end of the day, there is no law or puhishment for it and they are free to continue to do so until they fire you.
Thinking a large conglormate is responsible is foolish. If you want responsible companies...start them. Don't let yourself get bought out. The actions that needed to be taken to prevent this were eliminated years ago.
Workers can protest all they want...but in the modern capitalist world; the corporation just fires the problem and continues.
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Far be it from me to defend Google, but their industry is full of people with sensibilities running in this direction. I'm sure if their business was ...agriculture or coal mining, they'd not have these issues, regardless of what their corporate culture was like.
The only change here for Google is that in the past, they've been willing to accommodate and tolerate this kind of behavior, while MIcrosoft was firing people and otherwise telling them to STFU, such as when the DoD cloud controversy (Jedi, etc) wa
No, they missed work & their cause is stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Google has made themselves vulnerable to this kind of action by being woke. It's their own fault. Left wing activists are never satisfied.
Google is a sociopathic corporation, not "woke." They have no liberal bias. They adapt to whatever position works for them. Sorry, more talented engineers lean left than right. If Alabama produced more talented programmers than California, Google would open an office there with an indoor shooting range and have regular rodeo outings and offer company shuttles to the megachurch of your choice.
It's just people that use the term "woke" or bitch about "left wing activists" tend to suck at the jobs Google
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Because they are hypocrites. They "pretend" to be woke but in all reality, are just another monster tech company that better aligns with being libertarian then woke. Claiming to be woke lets them get fresh workers that generally are cheaper to hire then experienced workers and also tend to eat the dog food until they realize they've been deceived. Rinse and repeat. Do no evil, right?
That's 50 down, 950 to go (Score:5, Interesting)
From the No Tech For Apartheid [notechforapartheid.com] website:
Frankly, the only reason groups like these continue to exist is because people believe their BS. Israel isn't engaging in "apartheid", they evacuated the Gaza Strip in 2005, and it has been run by Hamas ever since. They aren't engaging in "ethnic cleansing", they're not the ones stockpiling weapons and command centers in hospitals, schools, and homes, that's what Hamas is doing. Nor are they "colonizing" the Gaza Strip, they literally built a wall around it to separate themselves from it.
I'm no Israel apologist, but BS is BS, it smells the same all over the world. It's a lot more important to use the brain God gave you than to be "on the right side of history". Stop listening to these guys.
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. Israel isn't engaging in "apartheid"
they literally built a wall around it to separate themselves from it.
apartheid:
a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.
Seems like walling off Palestinians would be consistent. Also, you have the West Bank situation, which the ICC/UN, France, UK, EU, and US have all described as a war crime (US temporarily said it wasn't, but switched back in February). In Gaza the objection is the disproportionate response, even though the settlements did stop, but the West Bank still suffers from the settlements and associated forced transfer of prope
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They built the wall to protect themselves from Hamas, not to keep Palestinians in. Before Oct. 7th, people who lived in Gaza could commute to jobs in Israel.
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The Israeli approached to migration (e.g. right of return for any jew), their treatment of people who are historically from israeli territory (who should be citizens), and their continued il
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I'm no Israel apologist, but BS is BS, it smells the same all over the world. It's a lot more important to use the brain God gave you than to be "on the right side of history". Stop listening to these guys.
You are a censorship apologist, as you are calling for people to get fired over opinions. It does not matter if you think that what they believe is BS, in a free country you should not be fired for political beliefs.
Re:That's 50 down, 950 to go (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't get fired over their opinions. They got fired because they brought them to work and actively disrupted it.
People can have opinions, they can talk about it during lunch or the coffee break. But if you try to disrupt work and make everyone agree with you by being a bully, then you need a reality check.
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Then you should have quoted that part in your initial reply, to make it obvious that was the point you were referring to.
They were fired for not doing their job (Score:3)
I'm no Israel apologist, but BS is BS, it smells the same all over the world. It's a lot more important to use the brain God gave you than to be "on the right side of history". Stop listening to these guys.
You are a censorship apologist, as you are calling for people to get fired over opinions. It does not matter if you think that what they believe is BS, in a free country you should not be fired for political beliefs.
Keep your political beliefs all you like, but don't disrupt work. If I had a "peaceful sit in" to play video games on company property, you'd support my instant firing. They were on company property, not doing their job and trying to discourage others from getting their work done. I don't see the injustice here. You want to collect a paycheck, you have to do the work...it doesn't matter if you're protesting your company or sitting in the bathroom and wanking off...you have a job to do if you want to col
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I'm no Israel apologist, but BS is BS, it smells the same all over the world. It's a lot more important to use the brain God gave you than to be "on the right side of history". Stop listening to these guys.
You are a censorship apologist, as you are calling for people to get fired over opinions. It does not matter if you think that what they believe is BS, in a free country you should not be fired for political beliefs.
Back to corporations have no speech rights. What a brief interlude it was!
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I'm calling for people to stop believing nonsense and to think for a couple of seconds before signing onto some political agenda. If there are in fact 950 more knuckleheads at Google who are planning to disrupt the workplace like the last 50, then everyone benefits if they get shown to the door.
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They got fired for disrupting a workplace and refusing to leave when they were told they were trespassing. Not for merely "expressing opinions".
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Frankly, the only reason groups like these continue to exist is because people believe their BS.
Frankly, you've swallowed a fair amount of BS yourself.
Israel isn't engaging in "apartheid", they evacuated the Gaza Strip in 2005, and it has been run by Hamas ever since.
They 'evacuated' because it wasn't really part of their vision of Biblical Israel, and it helped split the Palestinian Authority.
They aren't engaging in "ethnic cleansing",
They're just removing ethnic Palestinians from their communities in the West Bank (not to mention some literal talk of ethnically cleansing Gaza from Israeli Ministers [cnn.com].
they're not the ones stockpiling weapons and command centers in hospitals, schools, and homes, that's what Hamas is doing.
Hamas are definitely bad guys, but that's pretty much what any force does when fighting against a much stronger enemy.
Nor are they "colonizing" the Gaza Strip,
Not anymore, though they might again soon.
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Of course, Hamas is simply a fun-loving group that plans parties and birthday celebrations all the time.
You are definitely not the one influenced by any form of propaganda.
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You mean donate the water and power, not "control" it. Look, if Hamas were to release the hostages and lay down their arms, this conflict would be over in an instant. Hamas has rejected what, four consecutive deals for a cease fire? This isn't on Israel. This is on Hamas.
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Gaza’s Collapsing Water Systems and Infrastructure
Even more destructive than previous conflicts in Gaza, the current violence impairs an already brittle water sector. Years of clashes between Hamas and Israel have severely deteriorated Gaza’s water and sanitation services. The 2014 war alone caused $34 million in damage to these systems. During the May 2021 escalation, 290 water infrastructure “objects” were damaged, inflicting $10–15 million in damages. At the same time, the denial of humanitarian access and the blockade on Gaza significantly slowed repairs and restoration of water services, leaving them vulnerable to further degradation. Following the 2021 conflict, untreated sewage flowed into the streets, lakes, and sea from damaged wastewater infrastructure. With the destruction still incompletely repaired months later, severe storms in 2022 led to flash flooding worsened by damaged pipes and stormwater drains clogged with untreated waste.
Was that intentional? https://www.thenation.com/arti... [thenation.com]
the decades-long U.S. fostering of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamically oriented groups throughout the Middle East as counterweights to what were perceived as radical, nationalist, anti-American forces. Conservative Arab regimes allied with the United States, like those of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, followed a similar policy. For well over two decades after the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel did much the same thing with the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas in Gaza as a counterweight to the nationalist Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). This reached the point where the Israeli military occupation encouraged Brotherhood thugs to intimidate PLO supporters.
That's my take, Israel is making Gaza unlivable so they can take more land.
The honorable thing (Score:5, Insightful)
The honorable thing to do when you don't agree with the ethics of your employer is to resign in protest, rather than be fired for being a nuisance.
The former says that you have uncompromising integrity in how you act in all areas of life, and are willing to make personal sacrifices to do the right thing, while the latter suggests you're a bit unhinged and a potential nightmare employee.
Re:The honorable thing (Score:4, Informative)
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They goaded action, but not necessarily the action they wanted. Same thing for those who shut down bridges in Norcal.
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It may be the honorable thing to do, but that won't have an impact on the company continuing to do it.
The best way to affect change in any organization is from the inside, not the outside.
And just like collective bargaining, individuals will have very little sway on a goliath like Google. It takes numbers to drive the desired change, and if you can't get the numbers behind you, the honorable path is still viable.
Protest is good (Score:3)
Write rants, sing songs, carry signs, contact elected representatives, vote for like minded candidates, express your opinion on social media, show up at government meetings where public comment is allowed, contact news organizations, or do any other peaceful thing you can think of
Do NOT block roads or disrupt activity at work
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Would you say the same ("Do NOT block roads or disrupt activity at work") if we were talking about the Nazi party forcing Jews to live in ghettos?
Peace is a great idea when you're not getting bombed.
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Go ahead. Block roads. Disrupt work. But don't collect a paycheque from the company you're disrupting. If you do, you're opting in for the blood money, so maybe you should shut up.
Um, yeah. What did you think you were doing? (Score:2)
No Tech For Apartheid, the group representing the workers, claimed in a statement that Google is attempting to "quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them." "That's because Google values its profit, and its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, more than people. And it certainly values it over its own workers," it said. The group said it will continue organizing until Google cancels Project Nimbus.
Uh, yeah. This is the modern world, where capitalism rules the roost and profit absolutely is the *ONLY* thing that matters. They could be throwing infants in a wood chipper, and so long as money came out the other end, the executives would sit around that wood chipper toasting each other and planning to buy another summer/vacation home. That's the world we live in. Thinking that you can grow a conscience and still play a part in the existing profit-above-all melee? Uh, no. That's not how it works. I hate t
reaping (Score:2)
You reap what you sow, and that goes both for the employees and Google. Another way to put it is that sometimes the rubber eventually meets the road.
Dishonest and non-productive employees (Score:2)
Companies employ people to do tasks. If the people employed to do the tasks refuse to do the tasks, and then double-down by publicly denouncing the company, there's no reason on Earth why the company should keep them on the payroll. If these employees themselves, who have such strong anti-Israel opinions, hired people to serve them and then found their employed servants to be strong Israel supporters, they would certainly fire them
Now to the dishonesty part:
If you look into their group "No Tech for Aparthe
Good on them! (Score:3)
When Russia waged war on Ukraine, companies around the world pulled out of Russia, often at the insistence of their employees. The underlying reasoning was simple: waging war on an opponent just to gain their land, or control or kill their people, is wrong, and should be fought even at the level of boycotting products or companies.
Favoritism and cultural allegiance shouldn't be an excuse to support an unethical government. I hope these workers continue to push for the change they want to see in the world.
Leadership? (Score:2)
Weren't the founders and top management of Google citizens of Israel?
It dozen't seem all surprising from that perspective.
These protesters should have gone back to writing code to surveil Americans, I guess?
Re:Unionise and Strike (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely. Everyone should act against any corporation that offers the slightest bit of support to Hamas.
Re:Unionise and Strike (Score:4, Interesting)
Iraq quagmire sequel (Score:3)
Supporting Palestinian rights is not the same as supporting Hamas. Both Israel's and Gaza's gov't are bottom-of-the-line assholes. They are zealot-controlled Hatfields and McCoys.
Leave my union out of your sockpuppet mouth! (Score:2)
The contractors?...well...I've read they'r
Re: (Score:2)
You mean google search and youtube can get worse?
You sure about that? (Score:3)
Having a say in how the company you work for is run is something we should all desire, at least if you don't believe in Divine Command Theory.
These asshats are protesting a contract with the gov of Israel. Not the IDF, just the gov. We don't know how much of the contract is for defense vs mundane municipal services. This could be supporting ensuring teachers' pensions can be managed online or for social work services for the unhoused. We don't know and I am confident those idiots don't either. So their cause is stupid. They don't know cloud computing is being used for the war, just that it's being used by a nation they don't like. Don't yo
Re: (Score:2)
Having a say in how the company you work for is run is something we should all desire
Agreed. I expect my boss to hear me out when I raise objections and, where appropriate, help me escalate them up the chain.
I also I expect I would be fired if I staged a sit in after the business made a decision to do something I disagree with. That's not an appropriate way to have a say in the way your employer operates.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, that slogan is pretty popular in the whole region in general. They're maybe just joining the bandwagon.