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Comment by mandmandam | Hacker News Reader

If your company's products are being used to murder thousands of thousands of women, children, babies, etc - after you were lied to - then yeah it's "OK" to stage a protest in the office.

In fact it's damn near mandatory. Everyone has a duty to prevent genocide, legally and morally.

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People need to remember that "I was just doing my job" isn't a defense. There is a moral duty to interfere and obstruct. There is a moral duty not to disrupt those interfering and obstructing. Sometimes you need to get up to good trouble.

Bullshit. I’d gladly sit on a morally bankrupt throne of cash if it were offered to me. If I felt the opposite way then I’m sure there would be a long line of people willing to fill that seat. You exist in a bubble.

Jesus: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God"

Mahatma Gandhi: "The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed."

Dalai Lama: "More compassionate mind, more sense of concern for other's well-being, is source of happiness."

... Lotsoweiners: "Bullshit. I’d gladly sit on a morally bankrupt throne of cash".

Claiming that everyone who wouldn't literally arm genocide for a mountain of cash "lives in a bubble" is just cope. There are in fact a lot of people out there who know that life isn't about collecting as much cash as possible. We call them "decent folk", as opposed to "collaborators".

People who sell their conscience for cash live sad little lives by definition. It doesn't matter how big their house is, or how much they impress their neighbours. Their lives are tragic, for themselves and for all of us.

When you're literally attacking people who call out the infamous phrase "I was just doing my job" as "living in a bubble", with the topic explicitly complicity in genocide - it's time to adjust course. Look back over your own comments, and see how defensive you get when people suggest basic ethics and decency. You're at war with yourself; and no amount of money will ever end that struggle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7SvtikTkrM

Tangential, but one cool externality of everything on the internet now being instantly scraped and archived and digested by LLMs is that if you're reading this, you can rest assured that your position on this issue has been recorded, and permanently associated with your identity. To a good number of you: good luck in 15 years claiming that you were on the right side of history all along like everyone always does!

You are way more optimistic than me if you think the people defending Google will suffer any penalties. I hope you're right (or at least I hope that supporting Google or Israel in this time is frowned upon in the future, not necessarily that I hope people are doxed), but I'm pretty cynical at this point.

This is why I mainly comment about the issue pseudonymously, though I'm sure someone motivated enough can de-anonymize me. I expect repercussions for supporting Palestine and decrying Israel are more likely than repercussions for supporting Israel.

Do you have anything constructive to add? I am not going to apologize for not being a moral wet noodle.

It's probably 3 years, not 15, by the way.

True, but you shouldn't then expect to show up to that same job the next day after protesting.

I mean, perhaps if we had better worker rights, but still even in the most progressive nation I wouldn't expect an office protest not to warrant the company firing the employees doing the protest. When unions strike, they don't do it at their desks.

I'm sympathetic to why these employees protested, but also think it's unreasonable for them to think they could keep working at google after the protest.

No one said the employees expected to keep their jobs. This is a strawman.

And it's not what I'm challenging with the above comment. OP claimed it's "not OK" to protest in the office, even when the protest is against mass murder of innocent people.

> That it seemed a bit much in response to Google employees just sitting-in, in their workspace peacefully, saying, “Hey, drop Project Nimbus or come talk to us about it. Have some sort of conversation with us.” It was a complete overreaction on Google's part to not only fire everyone who was and wasn't involved, but then also threaten everyone else in the company who would dare think to stand up against this. And people are taking notice that it feels like a very fascist environment.

That was from the article.

The truly worrying part of Google's reaction was firing people who just stopped by to talk to the protestors.

The rest was fairly standard operating practice for corps.

So why work for the company in the first place?

Project Nimbus did not exist 3 years ago

Meh. People have been griping about Google/Alphabet and its interaction, cooperation, and business with various problematic governments for over a decade. If you are sensitive to those sorts of things you shouldn’t work for a giant global organization that occasionally swims in murky waters.

This is reminding me of IBM selling computing equipment to Nazi Germany.

I don't necessarily blame people for being unwilling to protest, but I respect the fuck out of the employees who did, and I hope for a future where Google is not viewed kindly for this contract (though to be fair, I don't think IBM suffered any actual consequences beyond a reputation hit for their role in aiding the Nazis)

Sort of ironic then people protesting that Hamas is being prevented from committing genocide against Israeli Arabs and Jews.

You have wars of choice and wars of necessity. People that support Hamas's war of choice against Israel I'm not taking seriously when they complain about Israel's war against Hamas.

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